------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Spanish get no access to British nuclear sub fault
New Chinese Missile Could Form Menace To Taiwan, Expert Says
Ex-official warns of native Iraq's nuclear abilities
North Korea staged a military pageant for Madeleine Albrigh
Clinton Not Yet Set to Go to North Korea
Nuclear Agency Pins Hope on N. Korea
Taiwan's Chen apologises for nuclear deal timing
Taiwan's Leader Under Fire, With Some Out to Unseat Him
California
Foreign policy clashes are real
... and posing sharp choices

MILITARY
C.I.A. Links Cited on Peru Arms Deal That Backfired
Ex-Teamsters official ran drug ring
New 'toy' for mercenaries in J&K?
Explosion kills three in Pakistan
Iraq Flies Passengers Through No-Flight Zones
Iraq flies in no-fly zone for second day
Iraq sends domestic flights in no-fly zone
A space odyssey Look up.
CHICKEN LITTLE WAS RIGHT
Boondoggle in Space
... And Weighing War
Four New Arrests in Yemen in U.S.S. Cole Investigation
States

OTHER
DOE centers on biomass energy
Tenaga eyeing renewable energy - report
Humans in the hot seat We really do seem to be warming the planet
Get serious on warming
Alaska
Let's Use the Sun to Keep the Earth Cool
Charged atmosphere surrounds EPA cases
Out of sight
Other Spy Probes Run More Quietly Than Lee's
Russian merchant ships used in spying
Desperately seeking Montesinos

ACTIVISTS
Protest staged atop Statue of Liberty
David Brower, environmental activist, dies
U.N. Peacekeepers and Sierra Leone Police Fire on Protesters
Troops, police fire on protesters
Malaysian police block, arrest protesters
Rosie O'Donnell to Air Streisand Speech



-------- NUCLEAR

-------- britain

Spanish get no access to British nuclear sub fault

SPAIN: November 6, 2000
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=8817

MADRID - Spanish technicians who inspected a stranded British nuclear submarine in Gibraltar were not allowed to check the reactor's damaged cooling system, Spain's Nuclear Security Council (CSN) said on Saturday.

The inspection, agreed last week by the Spanish government and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, led Gibraltar Prime Minister Peter Caruana to complain on Friday of unacceptable interference in the British colony's internal affairs.

"Military restrictions impeded access to the nuclear reactor and its control panel," the CSN said in a statement.

The team, who visited Gibraltar's submarine facilities for four hours on Friday, saw all other "non-restricted" parts of the vessel and plans for the repairs of its reactor, whose cooling system sprang a leak in May.

Juan Carlos Lentijo, one of the two Spanish technicians, told Spanish National Radio that he had seen nothing that posed a threat to the population.

Local people living near Gibraltar - a British colony on Spain's south coast that has long been a thorn in diplomatic relations - fear contamination from the submarine and are campaigning for it to be transported back to Britain for repair.

Blair said in Madrid last week that such an operation would be far too complex and that the sub would have to be repaired in Gibraltar.

-------- china

New Chinese Missile Could Form Menace To Taiwan, Expert Says

Inside China Today
Nov 6, 2000
Agence France Presse
http://www.insidechina.com/news.php3?id=217412

ZHUHAI, China -- (Agence France Presse) A new missile which China has shown to the public for the first time could pose a grave threat to the defense of Taiwan if deployed, a U.S. military expert said on Monday.

The missile, which has not been given an official Chinese name, appeared at the Zhuhai airshow in south China, attached to a model of the Chinese-made JH-7 fighter-bomber, also known as the "Flying Leopard."

"It's a brand-new supersonic missile, anti-ship or anti-radar, which could have a considerable range," said Richard Fisher, an expert on military affairs at Washington's Jamestown Foundation.

"It is only a model, but this is the first confirmation that this kind of program is alive and making progress," he told AFP. "I would be worried if I was in Taiwan."

He said that since the missile is super-sonic, it can not be destroyed in flight and appears primarily aimed at destroying radars, which form Taiwan's first line of defense.

The missile would be easily able to traverse the Taiwan Straits, which separates the mainland from the island, he said.

"For people in charge of deterrence in the Taiwan Straits, this is a big problem," he said.

He said the fact that the missile appears at an international air show indicates China also plans to export this technology to other countries.

-------- iraq

Ex-official warns of native Iraq's nuclear abilities
Khidhir Hamza, who escaped in 1994, says Hussein has a small bomb and could make more.
The CIA disagrees.

Philadelphia Inquirer
Monday, November 6, 2000
By Vernon Loeb WASHINGTON POST
http://web.philly.com/content/inquirer/2000/11/06/national/IRAQ06.htm

WASHINGTON - Iraq's one-time chief nuclear-weapons scientist says he thinks Saddam Hussein's regime has at least one crude nuclear weapon and could possibly build more, a conclusion disputed by the CIA.

Khidhir Hamza escaped from Baghdad in 1994 and eventually wound up in the United States after an initial rebuff from the CIA.

Speaking last week to nonproliferation experts at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Hamza said Hussein probably possessed a crude, two- to three-kiloton atomic bomb and could conceivably begin limited bomb production within two to three years if international sanctions were lifted.

The bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945 was about 15 kilotons (the explosive power of 15,000 tons of TNT).

The CIA does not agree that Iraq possesses a crude nuclear weapon.

"We don't believe they have the fissile material required for a nuclear weapon," said one senior U.S. official, noting that Hamza had been away from the Iraqi program for six years. "Nor do we believe they currently have the infrastructure to build a nuclear weapon."

But the agency does not minimize what Hamza has contributed to its understanding of Iraq's nuclear capabilities.

"He is viewed as valuable," the official said, "and his insights have been valuable."

Hamza thought his quest for freedom was over in 1994, when he offered to tell the CIA everything he knew about Hussein's weapons program.

But in the satellite telephone call, the CIA said it was not interested, forcing him on a desperate flight from Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq that took him to Turkey, Libya, Tunisia and Hungary.

Finally, after Hamza turned up at the U.S. Embassy in Budapest in 1995, the CIA realized its mistake, began debriefing Hamza, and smuggled his family out of Baghdad.

"I held secrets no one outside Iraq, and only a handful of people inside the country, could know," Hamza wrote in a new book coauthored with journalist Jeff Stein, Saddam's Bombmaker: The Terrifying Inside Story of the Iraqi Nuclear and Biological Weapons Agenda. "Not even the aggressive U.N. inspectors . . . knew what we still had and how dangerous the situation was. None of them knew that Saddam had been within a few months of completing the bomb when he invaded Kuwait."

Hamza said in an interview that he had long ago forgiven CIA officials for the way in which "they rebuffed and even ridiculed my pleas for help in 1994," as he puts it in his book.

"They did redeem themselves," Hamza said. "They went through a large operation to save my family, with a five-man planning team here and a nine-man team in the north of Iraq. They saved my family's lives literally - they all would have been killed. For me, that's a lot. That's everything."

Now living in Virginia with his wife and three sons, Hamza, 61, received a master's degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his doctorate in nuclear physics from Florida State University. He was teaching at a small college in Georgia in 1970 when he was ordered home to work in Iraq's fledgling atomic energy program.

By 1985, he had become Hussein's personal nuclear-weapons adviser, charged with directing a crash program to make Iraq a nuclear power. The country had 25 kilograms of bomb-grade uranium from a French-built reactor, Hamza wrote, and volumes of nuclear-weapons technology from the World War II Manhattan Project that produced the first U.S. atomic bomb. Hamza wrote that he discovered the declassified Manhattan Project reports on a dusty shelf in Baghdad, a gift from the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission in 1956.

But by 1994, with Iraq close to enriching its own uranium through diffusion technology, Hamza plotted his escape and soon found himself at the headquarters of the opposition Iraqi National Congress in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, talking on a secure, satellite telephone to CIA officers 10,000 miles away in Langley, Va.

"I wasn't a low-level official," Hamza wrote. "I had designed Saddam's bomb. That should be easy enough for them to confirm. I also knew about the chemical and biological programs."

But after 15 or 20 minutes, Hamza came to believe his long-distance debriefers had never heard of him and knew little about Iraq's bomb program, headquartered at Al-Atheer. Hamza writes that a CIA officer chuckled at the notion of a weapons plant at Al-Atheer and closed the door on his only demand: asylum. Warren Marik, a former CIA case officer who was present at CIA headquarters at the time of the call, said Friday that he was appalled at the way his colleagues dismissed Hamza.

"They blew him off, and you don't do that to a walk-in," Marik said.

In any event, the CIA knew Hamza's name a year later, when he showed up at the U.S. Embassy in Budapest. Part of the difference then, Marik said, was that Hamza's approach had been coordinated through an Iraqi opposition group, the Iraqi National Accord, which had closer ties to Langley.

"In fact, with every passing hour of my arrival in Germany, where I was first debriefed, the attitude of the CIA grew more trusting, friendly and respectful," Hamza wrote.

-------- korea

North Korea staged a military pageant for Madeleine Albrigh
Warming Up To Washington After Madeleine Albright's visit to Pyongyang, U.S. officials believe that a 'practical' Kim Jong Il may be ready to make a deal.

MSNBC
11/06/00
By Michael Hirsh NEWSWEEK
http://www.msnbc.com/news/482614.asp?cp1=1

November 6 issue - A little dialogue can make a big difference. By giving the outside world a peek into his secluded country, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has transformed his image, in just a few months, from that of ominous rogue power in Asia to something like a benign Yertle the Turtle, a tin-pot dictator ruling over an impoverished mud patch of a nation.

U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE MADELEINE ALBRIGHT, returning home last week from her historic visit, echoed the comments of South Korean, Chinese and other officials who have met the newly gregarious Kim recently. He is not, she said, what he once seemed to be.

Kim's makeover is nothing less than an about-face. Formerly viewed by U.S. intelligence as a lascivious kook who might soon be able to fire missiles at America, he is now routinely described as logical, reasonable-and ready to deal. That would entail halting his missile and nuclear-weapons programs in exchange for massive U.S. aid, along with help in installing civilian satellite and nuclear-power capacity. "He strikes me as very decisive and practical and serious," Albright said after six hours of talks with him. A senior administration official, asked whether any U.S. intelligence on Kim had been accurate, could respond only that "he may have changed over the last years." Others are more forthright. "It shows you what idiots we are," says Bob Manning, a former State Department Asia policymaker. "North Korea is one massive intelligence failure."

But Kim's new profile raises a lot of questions about the U.S. strategy in Korea-and in Asia as a whole. First, with President Bill Clinton contemplating a visit to North Korea in his final weeks in office-a visit bound to be even more of a lovefest than Albright's was-is Washington going too far too fast in trying to cuddle up to Kim? U.S. officials believe he's ready to make deals now because he understands what a desperate state his economy is in. But if so, some Asia experts say, why is Washington not demanding more, like forcing him to account for missing nuclear-fissile material, in return for the billions in international aid Kim so badly needs? Last week Albright looked uncomfortable applauding next to Kim at a performance of 100,000 dancers and acrobats that was a paean to his totalitarian system and his missile and nuclear program. In the end the appearance added nothing to her reputation and was a big bonus for Kim. A Clinton trip would do even more to legitimize him in the world's eyes. "There's no reason to suck up to them," says Manning.

To Build Trust, Think Small

Clinton-administration officials insist they're not. This week, Robert Einhorn, Albright's nonproliferation expert, is to resume talks on North Korea's missile program that U.S. officials say are critical to deciding whether Clinton will visit. In those talks, U.S. officials are demanding an end to missile development and sales-and a monitoring capability to be sure it happens-in exchange for massive aid. "What is already on the table, if it were to come to pass, would be profound," says a senior administration official.

Of course, it's far too soon to say how benign the "new" Kim Jong Il really is. If he seems reasonable now, that mainly has to do with his willingness to cut a deal on missiles and nukes. In other respects, however, he seems to be living in a bizarre dream world. At one point during their talks, U.S. officials said, Kim blamed his central planners, rather than his nation's lack of markets, for the fact that his people have no anesthesia or meat, and few cars or appliances. At another point, this autocrat who wallows in a Stalinist-era personality cult spoke of the "Swedish model" of reform-something that requires a modern market economy and democracy.

"You don't want to be in a situation where a state like North Korea is not only desperate but also has the means to hurt you." - U.S. OFFICIAL

Kim also commands a society bent on obeying him. Such mass psychology has proved dangerous in the past, whether in Nazi Germany or China under Mao. The zeal of the performers at last week's mass spectacle could easily become the fanatical suicide charge of a million-man army in extremis. That's one reason U.S. officials say they don't want to demand too much at once. "You don't want to be in a situation where a state like North Korea is not only desperate but also has the means to hurt you," says another U.S. official involved in talks with North Korea. "So what we're trying to do is reduce their desperation and their means of hurting us."

Korea's Mystery Man

During Albright's two-day visit last week, the depths of North Korea's desperation-and the reason for Kim's outreach-became apparent to the more than 50 journalists who accompanied her. In the 10 years since North Korea lost its Soviet and East-bloc partners, its economy has run utterly off the rails. In North Korea "everybody has a job," as one official insisted, but few factories run. It is a country ruled by juche, Kim's ideology of self-reliance, but kept afloat by international food aid. In the stores, shabby consumer goods sit unsold under coats of dust, often falling apart within hours of being used. Those impressions have been reinforced by recent satellite images: pictures of North Korea's Nodong missile site earlier this year, for example, showed a much more primitive capability than officials had thought. South Korea, in contrast, is now the eleventh largest economy on earth; as recently as the 1960s, it was at parity with the North.

Kim's moves to beef up his conventional Army-including laying fiber-optic cable for command and control, and stepping up exercises-are still considered serious. Still, no one believes any longer that North Korea could win a drawn-out war with South Korea, much less with the United States-another fact that the newly practical Kim Jong Il probably knows.

Ultimately, if Kim truly opts to become friend and not foe, a lot of other things could change for the United States in Asia. And not necessarily for the better. Consider: by being willing to engage his former enemies, Kim undercuts his importance in Asia. Kim's rogue status was almost the only reason the world cared about him. By opening its door, North Korea may move swiftly from threat to farce.

Newsweek On Air North Korea and Peace Keeping

But the removal of North Korea as a bugaboo, following the waning of the threat from Moscow in Asia, would some day leave the United States without an obvious enemy there. The Chinese are bound to think that they are the reason for America's continued military presence. And that, U.S. officials fear, could prove to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, creating a U.S.-Chinese cold war in Asia. Indeed, it is noteworthy that the Chinese have been so active in pushing Korean rapprochement. One obvious reason, experts say, is that a cooperative Kim undercuts the argument for national or theater missile defense in Asia, which will strengthen the Chinese vis-a-vis Taiwan.

If democracy truly takes hold on the Korean Peninsula-leading some day to reunification-it could yield other complications for Washington. While at present most Asian nations want the U.S. military presence in the region in order to keep the peace, some observers fear that public opinion will rise against U.S. hegemony in a newly democratized Asia. Nations might seek to kick out the U.S. Navy from local ports, not to mention the 100,000 or so U.S. troops based in the region. This, of course, is what happened in the Philippines in the early 1990s, when Manila forced the U.S. naval base in Subic Bay to close down.

The result is that the Clinton administration is clearly not too eager to move fast. It is not pushing democracy in North Korea. And it is trying a little image makeover of its own. Washington is seeking to de-emphasize America's role as a traditional ally to South Korea and Japan in the region and play up its value as a regional stabilizer or a balancing force. This shift parallels in some ways what has happened to NATO in Europe, but it is still at its beginning stages. "Just to insist on our role is not enough," says James Laney, the former U.S. ambassador to South Korea. "We have to help public opinion in South Korea, Japan and Russia to understand that we are not just playing the role of a hegemonic aggrandizer but a peacekeeper." Albright herself called the situation "very, very dynamic." The question now is, how will the newly pragmatic strategist in Pyongyang play it?

---

Clinton Not Yet Set to Go to North Korea

International Herald Tribune
Paris, Monday, November 6, 2000
By Steven Mufsonand Ellen Nakashima Washington Post Service
http://www.iht.com/IHT/TODAY/MON/IN/kor.2.html

WASHINGTON - President Bill Clinton is unlikely to add a stop in North Korea when he visits Vietnam later this month, according to a White House official, despite missile control talks that the State Department described as ''detailed, constructive and very substantive.''

The official said there was still a possibility of a visit to North Korea by Mr. Clinton before the end of his administration.

''We have clear goals about reducing tensions in the Korean Peninsula and eliminating the threat that missiles pose to the United States and our allies,'' the official said Friday.

But administration officials played down expectations that had been raised during Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's visit to the Communist-ruled nation last week.

''Nothing's changed in terms of timetables, because there never was one,'' said the State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher. ''Nothing's changed in terms of progress, because we continue to make the progress that we want in a systematic, step-by-step way.''

In the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, Robert Einhorn, assistant secretary of state for nuclear nonproliferation, who led a U.S. team in three days of negotiations with North Korean officials, said that ''significant issues remain to be explored and resolved,'' although he also said the two sides had ''continued to expand areas of common ground.''

Some analysts said it had never been likely that the talks would produce a breakthrough because the North Korean representatives were not senior enough to have negotiating latitude.

''The goal of these talks was to clarify positions,'' Mr. Boucher said. ''We were not out there to reach an agreement, and therefore one shouldn't be surprised that we didn't.''

Mrs. Albright has said that the talks with North Korea are focused on making a deal that would end North Korea's missile development program, permanently bar tests of long-range missiles and restrict its exports of missiles to countries such as Pakistan and Iran.

In return, the United States would help arrange the launching of a nonmilitary North Korean satellite, probably piggybacked on a commercial launching by a European consortium to control costs and to minimize the risk of any technology transfer to North Korea.

In a speech Thursday, Mrs. Albright said that the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, had not told her what he expected in economic assistance in return for curbs on his missile program.

Mrs. Albright, who has been criticized for not paying enough attention to North Korean human rights violations during her visit, defended her approach.

''America's immediate interest is to make gains on core security issues,'' she said. ''There are, after all, few human rights imperatives more meaningful than preventing war, and I hope that cooperation in this area will improve the climate for broader discussions at a later time.''

---

Nuclear Agency Pins Hope on N. Korea

Associated Press
November 6, 2000 Filed at 9:52 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-UN-North-Korea-Nuclear.html

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said Monday he was hopeful that recent positive developments on the Korean peninsula would spur North Korea to allow inspection of its nuclear program.

Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told the U.N. General Assembly that nuclear inspectors would like to start work immediately to verify that North Korea isn't developing atomic bombs.

North Korea is among 187 nations committed to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which allows the U.N. nuclear agency to make sure their nuclear technology is used for peaceful purposes. But the North has limited the agency's access to its facilities.

In late September, North Korea reiterated that it has no intention of allowing the agency to inspect its nuclear program, which it says is for peaceful purposes only. North Korea said it does not have the ability to develop nuclear weapons ``and therefore, there can be no `nuclear' suspicion in our country.''

But ElBaradei said his agency must assess this claim. Since verification may take two to three years, work should begin immediately so a nuclear reactor project agreed to by the United States and North Korea can proceed as scheduled, he said.

In 1994, the United States -- fearful that North Korea was working on nuclear weapons -- signed an agreement in which the North agreed to freeze its nuclear program. In return, a U.S.-led international consortium is building two nuclear reactors worth $4.6 billion in North Korea.

U.S. experts say that before the accord, North Korea was suspected of having extracted enough plutonium to make one or two atomic bombs.

The Korean Peninsula was divided into the communist North and the capitalist South in 1945. An American-led U.N. force fought on the South Korean side during the 1950-53 Korean War.

Relations between North and South Korea, which have been extremely tense for decades, have improved in recent months. South Korean President Kim Dae-jung traveled to the North's capital in June for a historic summit with Kim Jong Il.

North Korean diplomat Hong Je Ryong told the General Assembly that the nuclear issue was a political and military issue to be solved with the United States -- not in the United Nations.

Also Monday, ElBaradei reiterated to the General Assembly that his inspectors remain ready to resume work in Iraq on short notice if Baghdad allows inspectors back in the country.

The agency could move to a less intrusive type of monitoring there, he said, provided Iraq hadn't acquired new nuclear weapons or begun new nuclear activities since inspectors left in December 1998.

-------- taiwan

Taiwan's Chen apologises for nuclear deal timing

Planet Ark
TAIWAN: November 6, 2000
Story by Alice Hung
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=8805

TAIPEI - Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian tried to defuse a political row on Sunday by apologising to the head of the opposition Nationalist Party for the timing of a decision to scrap a controversial nuclear power plant.

But the Nationalists, who have teamed up with two other opposition parties to petition the legislature to dismiss Chen, politely rejected the president's apology and said the opposition had not changed its mind.

Chen issued the rare apology on national television, more than a week after Premier Chang Chun-hsing announced on October 27 that the cabinet was cancelling the $5.5 billion nuclear plant deal, a darling of the Nationalists.

"I must support Premier Chang's decision not to further delay the decision, but for the timing, I should personally shoulder full responsibility," Chen said.

The deal was scrapped just a half hour after Chen met Nationalist Party leader Lien Chan, and was perceived as a slap in the face to the opposition.

"I understand chairman Lien doesn't care about the issue of face, but I must offer my sincerest apologies to Mr Lien and all our countrymen," Chen said on Sunday.

"Taiwan is such a small place, we definitely cannot afford to have confrontation. My personal position is nothing, but we must cherish the fruit of democracy that did not come easily," he said.

The Nationalists, who ruled the country for 55 years before being ousted in elections in March, indicated they were forging ahead with their bid to unseat Chen.

"REALLY UNNECESSARY"

"This is really unnecessary," Nationalist spokesman Jason Hu told reporters in response to Chen's statement.

"So far there are no indications that the Nationalist legislative caucus has changed or softened its position."

The opposition parties, which far outnumber Chen's Democratic Progressive Party in parliament, had been expected to bring the issue to a vote as early as Tuesday.

Chen took office in May in Taiwan's first democratic transfer of power, ending more than five decades of Nationalist rule. He has been embroiled in a constitutional crisis since the nuclear deal was scrapped.

The stock and currency markets have been on a roller coaster ride, weakening early in the crisis but recovering somewhat as days passed without the opposition bringing the issue to vote.

The embattled Chen said he had been too anxious to deal with pressing domestic and foreign issues as well as relations with rival China since taking office.

Chen has turned his attention this week to twin disasters - the crash of a Singapore Airlines jet that killed 81 people and a devastating typhoon that triggered flash floods and landslides and took at least 62 lives.

Some in the opposition feared the disasters could divert public attention and take the steam out of the dismissal bid.

The Nationalists, People First Party, and New Party said on Tuesday that they had enough signatures to introduce a motion for dismissal, but needed seven more votes to pass it.

Both sides are courting the nine independents.

If approved, the measure would force a popular vote on whether to dismiss Chen, leading to a new election.

---

Taiwan's Leader Under Fire, With Some Out to Unseat Him

New York Times
November 6, 2000
By ERIK ECKHOLM
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/06/world/06TAIW.html

TAIPEI, Taiwan, Nov. 3 - Less than six months after Chen Shui- bian's inauguration as president, an event widely hailed as a milestone because it was Taiwan's first democratic transfer of power from the long-ruling Nationalists, Mr. Chen and opposing parties are mired in an ugly and divisive stalemate with no end in sight.

Not only has Mr. Chen been unable to press his ambitious dreams of reform, but his very survival in office could also be in peril as opponents wave before him the ultimate political weapon, a recall election.

Nor has the weakened president been able to work out a unified response to the ever-menacing mainland, which demands that Taiwan agree that it is part of some loose "one China," leaving it unclear how peace talks could begin.

Mr. Chen faced a rough landscape from the outset, winning with just 39 percent of the vote as the traditional Nationalist vote was split, with the popular maverick James Soong coming in a close second. In Parliament, which is not scheduled for elections until late next year, Mr. Chen's Democratic Progressives held fewer than one-third of the seats and the Nationalists remained dominant.

But Mr. Chen's opponents say that through arrogance, incompetence and a refusal to forge coalitions, he has brought his troubles on himself. While they allow that with enough apologies and true sharing of power Mr. Chen might still save his political neck, leaders of the Nationalists and Mr. Soong's newly formed People's First Party now freely talk about forcing him from office.

"Some people say, `Give him more time,' or worry that a recall may bring uncertainty," said Jason Hu, the Nationalist Party spokesman, in an interview. "But we'd rather have two more months of uncertainty and get him out than face three and a half more years of confusion and uncertainty."

Mr. Chen's supporters counter that the Nationalists plotted to destroy him from Day One, and are now blaming him for economic problems rooted in their past misdeeds. "It's a power play, pure and simple," said Hsu Tain-tsair, the Democratic Progressive whip in Parliament.

Both sides can muster evidence for their views, but indisputably things have not gone well for Mr. Chen since the afterglow of his inauguration. He took office as a white knight with a mandate to end political corruption, and he eased global fears of a cross-straits war by reversing his stance and announcing that he had no plans to provoke China by declaring independence.

But while some corruption cases have been opened and the Nationalists have vowed to reform themselves, Mr. Chen has not been able to secure fundamental reform measures. The Nationalist military leader he picked as prime minister, in an effort to broaden his appeal, was mercilessly attacked in Parliament and eventually resigned.

More important, and eating away at his initially spectacular public approval ratings, the economy has been listing, with the stock market falling by one-third, investment lagging and credit tightening.

The gathering tensions exploded into open fury on Oct. 27 when Mr. Chen's new prime minister announced that the government would halt building of Taiwan's fourth nuclear power plant, a $5 billion project that has divided the island for years.

But worse than the cancellation was the timing of the announcement: it was made less than an hour after Mr. Chen finished a televised meeting with the Nationalist chairman, Lien Chan. The long-awaited meeting had been billed as an effort at reconciliation, but the announcement was seen by Mr. Lien and much of the public as a deliberate humiliation and a sign of dupicity.

Within days, Nationalists began collecting legislators' pledges to support a recall. "To save a great Taiwan, we need to dump Chen Shui- bian," one Nationalist legislator shouted at a televised caucus meeting.

The groundswell of anger also prodded the rivals Mr. Lien and Mr. Soong to take a drastic step, meeting for the first time since the elections and discussing whether to form a common front.

But before any recall, a simple majority of Parliament must first pass a law filling out the procedures, a step expected in the coming week. After that, if two-thirds of the Parliament votes for a recall motion, then the issue must be put to a public vote 60 days later. If a majority support his ouster, Mr. Chen could not run in the new presidential election.

One week after the nuclear announcement, promoters of the recall contended that they already had more than the 146 required legislators on board, though many experts believe that is unlikely.

The very prospect of a recall sent thousands of fervent supporters of Mr. Chen into the streets on Friday, loudly demonstrating outside the Parliament building and providing a hint of the social turmoil that such a move could potentially unleash.

"The Nationalists are bandits, they're as bad as the Communists!" said one demonstrator, Chen Wu- ying, 50, a construction worker who had traveled to Taipei from Mr. Chen's stronghold in the south.

A few Nationalist politicians have warned that a recall election would upend this society, which struggles with deep ethnic and political divisions.

And Mr. Hu, the party spokesman, left room for backing down, saying, "It cannot be done if the voters are not ready." The Nationalists have another reason to avoid a recall: the victor in a new election would almost certainly be Mr. Soong.

Whether or not the recall drive goes ahead, political and economic experts here fear that Taiwan is in for years of stalemate and instability.

"The situation is really bad, and you can't see any light at the end of the tunnel," said Chu Yun-han, a political scientist at National Taiwan University. Mr. Chen is likely to survive the current crisis and serve his four-year term, Mr. Chu said, "but along the way, he'll be continually challenged and confronted."

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

-------- california

USA Today
11/06/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

California

San Luis Obispo - Workers found a fake bomb inside a small office building at the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant. The device was made out of a clock and batteries attached to a putty-like substance resembling plastic explosives. The device was found during a routine security check, the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff's Department said.

-------- us nuc politics

Foreign policy clashes are real
Bush and Gore differ on the Middle East, NATO, and a missile defence system to protect the US

Irish Times
Monday, November 6, 2000
Patrick Smyth, in Washington
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/world/2000/1106/wor3.htm

The outside world and its problems have barely intruded into the US presidential election. And when they have, most often in the form of the Middle East, polemics have been remarkably free of real differences of substance and of the sort of isolationism that characterises the Republican right and Democratic left.

At stake is a choice between two forms of internationalism that can be characterised broadly as "unilateralist" - the Republicans, and "multilateralist" - the Democrats.

The former reflects a more goit-alone desire to assert distinctly US leadership on the world stage, the latter, a partnership approach, particularly with regard to international institutions such as the UN, World Bank, IMF, and World Trade Organisation, and more sensitive perhaps to the interdependence that globalisation has brought. Vice-President Al Gore has buried his party's anti-war McGovernism and become a leading global proponent of a US engagement in peacekeeping and humanitarian work abroad. Indeed he is understood to have played a key role in pushing the US to agree to NATO bombing of Serb forces in Bosnia in 1995 after being shocked by film of the overrunning of the UN "safe haven" of Srebrenica and the subsequent massacre of local men.

And while his rival, Governor George Bush, criticises the nature and over-extension of the US international presence abroad and the "rundown" of the country's capacity to fight a traditional war, he promotes what he calls a "distinctly American internationalism". US engagement abroad is critical, his foreign policy adviser, Ms Condoleeza Rice, insists but must be focused more on US interests.

Indeed, in one of the few campaign attacks on Mr Bush's foreign policy, Vice-President Gore's running mate, Senator Joe Lieberman, on Friday emphasised experience over content, reminding his audience that Mr Bush's father in 1988 had claimed "that there is no area where experience matters more than in diplomacy and war".

Apart from a number of trips to Mexico, Mr Bush has only ever left US shores three times in his life: five weeks in China in 1975, a trip to Gambia as part of a US delegation which went during his father's presidency to celebrate the country's independence, and in 1998 on a tour of the Middle East.

He is known to lean heavily on advisers like Ms Rice, the former adviser to Chief of Staff Gen Colin Powell, and veterans of his father's administration like the former Secretary of State, Mr George Shultz.

Yet, despite the campaign rhetoric, observers believe we will see a continuity of US policy to most of the rest of the world, with some notable exceptions. On two areas of particular concern to European allies, Mr Bush's strong espousal of a national missile defence system, and his support for gradual disengagement of US troops from European peacekeeping, Mr Bush has reassured NATO partners that nothing will happen without extensive discussions.

But a national missile defence system would breach the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty which the US would have to formally repudiate, and prospects of its development are already causing tensions with Moscow and Beijing as well as with European NATO partners. They all view the unilateral development of such a defence shield as undermining the core nuclear defence concept of mutually assured destruction and therefore as deeply destabilising of warming relationships.

The two candidates disagree on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty rejected by the Senate last year. NATO allies also view with concern the concept elaborated by Ms Rice of a new division of labour within the organisation, leaving the US to concentrate on traditional defence, and Mr Gore has criticised it for potentially reducing US influence in Europe.

Mr Bush has been careful not to criticise the Democrats' traditional championing of Israel's security concerns and has emphasised the US role as "honest broker" in the Middle East. But a Bush administration, like his father's, is likely to be distinctly more Arabist in sympathies, seeking to build alliances of moderate Arab nations.

Less tied to a vocal Jewish constituency at home, it may also be more willing to put pressure on Israel. On China it is difficult in practice to see clear blue water between the candidates. Mr Bush emphasises that China should be seen as a "strategic competitor" rather than a "strategic partner" but like Mr Gore he also backs free trade with Beijing and the country's membership of the World Trade Organisation.

Both speak about defending Taiwan's autonomy but fall short of guaranteeing it for fear of encouraging it to take further provocative steps towards independence.

And on Russia, although Mr Bush criticises the Clinton-Gore administration for cosying up to the Russian leadership, he remains committed to engagement with the Russians in assisting institution building and the development of business. Both want a close dialogue over the problem of "loose nukes".

---

... and posing sharp choices

USA Today
11/06/00- Updated 03:39 AM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/comment/ncguest1.htm

Some of the ways a Gore presidency would differ from a Bush presidency:

Abortion. A President Bush and a Republican Congress could be expected to make a priority of tightening restrictions on abortions, except in cases of rape or incest or when a woman's life is endangered. Bush Supreme Court nominations likely would OK more state limits on abortions, perhaps outright bans. Gore and a Democratic Congress would broadly favor abortion rights and be less likely to restrict so-called "partial-birth" abortions without also approving exceptions that protect women's health.

Campaign reform. Gore and congressional Democrats say they'll close the "soft money" loophole that permits otherwise illegal contributions from corporations, unions and wealthy individuals, though politicians of both parties have been known to sabotage campaign reform once they got the power to do so. Bush would leave the loophole open only for individuals, but GOP congressional leaders have fiercely resisted any change. Neither side has made any move toward broader reform, like the public-campaign-finance plans emerging in some states.

Civil rights. Bush and Republicans would end racial preferences inherent in affirmative action, but Bush's Texas record indicates he might seek alternatives not based solely on race. Gore supports existing affirmative action programs.

Defense. Both campaigns promise to expand defense spending, but Gore and a Democratic Congress could be divided over how much, given their other initiatives. Gore also supports developing technology for a limited missile defense. Bush would focus on a more extensive missile defense system and increased weapons research and military pay. Gore would allow gays to serve openly; Bush would continue "don't ask, don't tell."

Education. Bush and Republicans would combine increased spending on literacy and college grants with tax breaks for education savings accounts and incentives for states to improve, easing spending restrictions for states that meet testing requirements. In failing districts, the Republicans support vouchers. Gore & Co. also would push testing, but oppose vouchers and spend three times as much, subsidizing preschool, giving raises to teachers in poor areas and those who meet "master teacher" standards, expanding education tax breaks and giving new aid for school construction and teacher recruiting.

Health care. Gore and Democrats would launch more federal spending on and regulation of health care. Gore wants to expand current programs to cover more children and move from there to universal coverage. He and congressional Democrats would enact tough patient-bill-of-rights laws. Bush and Republicans would offer more tax relief for health insurance costs, but less stringent HMO regulation.

Retirement programs. Bush and Republicans would push Medicare reform aimed at encouraging seniors to pick from a wider menu of low-cost health plans. Any broad drug benefit would be folded into that reform. Gore and Democrats would add a new prescription drug benefit to Medicare.

Bush would move to privatize Social Security partially, offering workers the option of diverting a portion of payroll taxes into individual investment accounts with potential for bigger returns. Gore instead would offer new savings incentives to low- and middle-income workers on top of Social Security, while shoring up its trust fund by using current surpluses to pay off federal debt.

Taxes. Bush and the Republicans would broadly cut basic income tax rates for everyone, double the child tax credit and eliminate the estate tax. In the last debate, Bush agreed wealthy taxpayers would get much of the benefit. Gore and a Democratic Congress would seek about one-third as much in tax cuts. They favor a complex $500 billion pastiche of targeted tax cuts, from refundable tax credits for the after-school-care expenses of children ages 13-16 to incentives for businesses to give employees health insurance and retirement plans.


-------- MILITARY

-------- arms sales

C.I.A. Links Cited on Peru Arms Deal That Backfired

New York Times
November 6, 2000
By TIM GOLDEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/06/world/06INTE.html

WASHINGTON, Nov. 5 - Late in 1998, Jordanian officials went to the chief of the Central Intelligence Agency's station in Amman with a routine question. Would the United States mind if they sold 50,000 surplus AK-47 assault rifles to the Peruvian military?

The C.I.A. official did some checking and got right back. "Our answer was, 'No, we can live with that,' " an American intelligence official recalled.

What seemed a modest arms deal, however, turned out to be anything but. Last spring, C.I.A. officials told the Clinton administration that they had discovered that thousands of the rifles had gone not to Peru but to leftist guerrillas in Colombia, perhaps the most baneful of Washington's enemies in Latin America.

Peru's longtime intelligence chief, Vladimiro Montesinos, a crucial C.I.A. ally in the region, then stepped forward to take credit for dismantling an international ring that he said had smuggled the guns. But his account was immediately challenged by officials in Jordan and Colombia, who suggested that he Peruvian government was more deeply involved than it cared to admit.

Now, since his ouster in September, Mr. Montesinos has himself been implicated in the arms deal by two of the men who organized it. Peruvian officials are moving to prosecute him in connection with a large personal fortune he apparently hid in Swiss banks, and State Department officials are complaining privately that the C.I.A. was slow to inform them fully about what had gone on.

American officials say the evidence of Mr. Montesinos's possible role in the gun running remains unclear. But they say the C.I.A.'s handling of the case has raised new questions about the agency's ties to Mr. Montesinos, deepening a rift in the Clinton administration over how closely it should dealing with an official who has been linked to human rights abuses and other crimes.

"We don't know for sure that he was involved, but there's a lot of smoke coming from his direction," an administration official said. "We do know that we should have had a lot of the information a lot earlier than we got it."

Intelligence officials, who like others would discuss the matter only on condition of anonymity, defended the C.I.A.'s actions. They said that while the agency may have been slow to uncover what had happened, it informed administration officials promptly this year after the guns had been traced back to Jordan.

While the C.I.A. had worked closely with Mr. Montesinos and depended on him to support covert anti-terrorism and drug-interdiction programs the United States has operated in Peru since the late 1980's, they said, the agency has also reported in detail on his purported misdeeds.

Mr. Montesinos has not been heard from. He fled to Panama on Sept. 24, after the disclosure of a videotape that showed him bribing an opposition legislator. When Panamanian officials refused private pleas from the United States and the Organization of American States to grant Mr. Montesinos political asylum, he flew back to Peru on Oct. 23 and went into hiding.

On Friday, after Switzerland's discovery of five bank accounts holding some $50 million, Peruvian officials announced that they would try to prosecute him for illegally enriching himself during his decade-long tenure as President Alberto K. Fujimori's most powerful adviser.

If Mr. Montesinos was in fact earning money from arms trading, that apparently never crossed the minds of the American intelligence officers in Amman.

Intelligence officials said there was nothing unusual about Jordanian military or intelligence officials running a proposed arms sale past the C.I.A., even though they were under no formal obligation to do so.

"They said, `Would it upset our relationship with you if we sold these weapons to the Peruvian government?" one of the officials said. "It's not unreasonable that the Peruvian government might want weapons of this type. The Jordanians aren't required to ask us."

Although the United States had closely watched weapons purchases by Peru since its longstanding border dispute with Ecuador erupted in open warfare in 1995, C.I.A. officials did only a cursory check of the deal, several American officials said.

Agency officers in Amman informed senior diplomats and defense attachés at the American Embassy, officials said, but no one cabled word of proposal to the State Department.

The C.I.A. officers did notify their headquarters in Langley, Va., where it was then passed along to the agency station in Lima. Nonetheless, intelligence officers there never raised the matter with Peruvian security officials because, an intelligence official said, "it was told to us in confidence by the Jordanians."

Several administration officials argued that this amounted to far less than adequate notification by the C.I.A., regardless of the outcome. "This was not an appropriate thing to have happen," a senior official said. "This was an issue that should have been put before policy makers."

The arms broker who arranged the sale, Sarkis Soghanalian, said in an interview that he, too, had been told the guns were going to the Peruvian military, and that he had demanded and received end-user certificates validating that claim.

But Mr. Soghanalian, who is awaiting trial in Los Angeles on unrelated money laundering and bank fraud charges, also said the Peruvians sought from the start to establish a discreet relationship they might use to buy more sophisticated weapons. And after agreeing in December 1998 to sell the 50,000 Jordanian rifles for just under $500,000, Mr. Soghanalian said he flew to Lima to discuss Peru's other weapons needs.

The arms dealer, a Lebanese citizen who has sold vast amounts of weapons worldwide, said he had met in Lima with several senior military officials and had lunch at a private Lima yacht club with Mr. Montesinos, who was introduced to him as "the boss."

He said, `We need someone like you,' " Mr. Soghanalian recalled.

Peruvian officials presented Mr. Soghanalian with a shopping list of more than $70 million worth of hardware that he thought could have been meant only for a regular army: antiaircraft weapons, communications gear and equipment to upgrade tanks.

The broker said there were some strange aspects to the arrangement: The Peruvians asked to pay for the future purchases in cash and offered him $22 million as a down payment. They insisted on air-dropping the AK-47's to their troops. The first of the cargoes was also turned back in the Amazon basin for reasons that were never clear, and the shipments were finally aborted in August 1999 after 9,540 of the rifles had been sent.

But Mr. Soghanalian said he did not think much of the fact that the Peruvians also wanted to buy a large quantity of Russian SA-7 Strella missiles, a shoulder-fired weapon that would immediately change the balance of power in Colombia if obtained by the insurgents.

Many military analysts have speculated that it is only a matter of time before the guerrillas try to obtain such weapons in response to a $1.3 billion package of American aid that includes almost $400 million for new helicopters for the Colombian security forces. The retired Peruvian Army lieutenant who arranged for the Jordanian shipment with Mr. Soghanalian, José Luis Aybar, has also identified Mr. Montesinos as the official who oversaw the arms deal. But Mr. Aybar said he was unaware that the Jordanian cargo consisted of assault rifles, a claim that Mr. Soghanalian and others contradicted.

American officials remain divided about Mr. Montesinos's possible role in the affair.

Several officials said C.I.A. reporting on the matter had been notably thin, despite the agency's extensive contacts in the Peruvian security forces. They said senior State Department officials, including the under secretary, Thomas R. Pickering, had been deeply dissatisfied with the flow of information from the agency, both about the its own early role in the case and about the possible involvement of Peruvian officials.

"Every time you asked a question, it would take a few days to get an answer," an official said. "And every time, their story would change a little. It was like pulling teeth."

But an intelligence official noted that after the Colombian military seized some of the AK-47's in mid-1999, the C.I.A. helped trace them, confirming in April that they had come from the Jordanian shipment. That discovery was promptly reported to White House, State Department and Defense officials.

The agency also informed Peru, apparently prompting the news conference on Aug. 21 at which Mr. Fujimori and Mr. Montesinos claimed to have broken up a ring of international smugglers who had sought to pass themselves off as Peruvian officials.

The intelligence official also said that despite the claims of Mr. Soghanalian and Mr. Aybar, the C.I.A. still had no credible information that the fugitive Peruvian intelligence chief had been involved in sending guns to the Colombian rebels.

"We don't have any illusions about his background," the official said of Mr. Montesinos. "But we do not have intelligence information - other than the statements of a couple of individuals - that ties him to it."

-------- drug war

U.S.: Ex-Teamsters official ran drug ring
8 people arrested in bust of alleged Fla. smuggling operation

USA Today
11/06/00- Updated 09:39 PM ET
By Donna Leinwand, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/ndsmon09.htm

A former president of the Teamsters union in South Florida is accused of running a drug ring that slipped about 47 tons of cocaine and marijuana through ports in Miami and Fort Lauderdale, then laundered the proceeds through a pornographer in California.

A 43-count federal indictment unsealed Monday in Fort Lauderdale named Clarence Lark, former president of Teamsters Local 390, and Larry Crenshaw, Lark's brother-in-law, as co-conspirators.

The indictment says Lark and Crenshaw used the money to finance Star's Choice, which rented trucks to movie and television production companies filming in South Florida. Prosecutors also say the men extorted money from rank-and-file union members who sought jobs as truck drivers for the film industry.

U.S. Customs agents and other federal authorities arrested Lark, Crenshaw and six other alleged co-conspirators over the weekend. Among those arrested was John Gallo of Bermuda Dunes, Calif., who is charged with laundering more than $1 million from narcotics sales through foreign banks and companies that produced and marketed pornography.

Two members of the International Longshoreman's Association were also among the eight people arrested. A ninth person, William Garcia, escaped arrest and is a fugitive, Customs spokesman Dean Boyd said Monday. Garcia is accused of being a cocaine supplier.

Prosecutors will seek forfeiture of $11 million in cash, 15 vehicles owned by Lark's trucking business and Gallo's interests in at least three pornography businesses.

The Teamsters had stripped the local presidency from Lark in 1996 after accusing him and his brother-in-law of nepotism and extortion. The union charged that Lark awarded at least 17 of 60 lucrative movie industry jobs to relatives and supporters and then solicited those union members for cash gifts and contributions to his re-election campaign.

Lark, who served as Local 390 president from 1979 to 1996, denied the charges.

The newest charges stem from a three-year investigation that began after a narcotics seizure in 1997 at Port Everglades near Fort Lauderdale. Customs and DEA agents have arrested 46 people, including 35 dock workers and contract security workers, on drug smuggling or related offenses.

Port of Miami and Port Everglades rank among the top drug smuggling sites in the nation. From 1996 through 1998, authorities seized 63,662 pounds of cocaine at the Port of Miami and 30,283 at Port Everglades. In 1999, authorities caught 27,126 pounds coming through the ports. This year, cocaine seizures have dropped while marijuana seizures have increased.

In early October, Customs found 1,235 pounds of cocaine worth $8.4 million and 3,283 pounds of marijuana worth $1.5 million concealed in cargo containers at Port Everglades.

Two weeks ago, Customs seized 375 pounds of cocaine and 5.5 pounds of heroin at the Miami Seaport.

-------- india/pakistan

New 'toy' for mercenaries in J&K?

The Hindu - PTI
Monday, November 06, 2000
http://www.indiaserver.com/thehindu/2000/11/06/stories/02060006.htm

NEW DELHI, NOV. 5. The Pakistan army may have passed on the deadly Estrela surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) to mercenary groups in Jammu and Kashmir adding a dangerous dimension to the ongoing militancy there.

Estrela, a SAM-7 variant is a 1970 vintage tube- launched passive missile with a source seeking lock-on system, highly-placed defence sources said. It, however, lacks the state- of-the-art features of the American Stinger, which the Pakistan Army usurped from supplies meant for the Afghan Mujahideen.

The sources were commenting on recent claims of a top mercenary Shaikh Jamil-ur-Rehman that militants had acquired shoulder-fired SAMs and planned to induct them into J&K soon.

``We have designed and produced an indigenous anti- aircraft missile to counter the Indian Air Force,'' Rehman, who is also Amir of the Tehreek-ul-Mujahideen, was quoted by the Pakistani media as saying.

Defence officials scoffed at the claim saying it could be a signal that the Pakistan Army might have passed on the missiles to the militants. According to defence sources, the Estrela is essentially an infantry missile with a vertical range of 50 metres to 2.5 km.

An Army regiment engaged in counter-insurgency operations captured an Estrela missile with its tube-launcher in the Poonch- Rajouri sector last year after a fierce encounter with a combined group of Lashkar and Tehreek Mujahideen militants.

This was the second capture of a SAM in the State. In 1997 an Estrela tube-launcher was seized in Kupwara district, leading the then Prime Minister, Mr. I. K. Gujral, to warn his Pakistani counterpart, Mr. Nawaz Sharif, that any attempt by militants to down an Indian aircraft could add a dangerous dimension to the conflict.

akistani experts say militants had planned to target Indian helicopters with surface-to-air missiles, but were warned that this could be a major escalation, which could incur western wrath.

Pakistani mercenary groups, which now constitute almost 85 per cent of militants in J&K, recently received big setbacks after IAF helicopters were used to dislodge them from the heights in Doda district.

After the seizure, the Estrela missile had been examined closely by experts who felt it would be of little effect against state-of-the-art fighters but could pose a danger to helicopters and civil aircraft.

The Army is planning to use helicopters against big bands of mercenaries trapped in the heights around Gandoh in Doda district.

According to radio intercepts by the Army, about 600 to 700 militants holed up in the area are running out of food and medicines and have no alternative but to stage a breakout.

---

Explosion kills three in Pakistan

USA Today
11/06/00- Updated 06:43 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/world/nw1.htm#cole

KARACHI, Pakistan - A powerful bomb ripped through a newspaper office in the restive port city of Karachi on Monday, killing at least three people and wounding five others, police said. The explosion severely damaged the building of the Urdu-language daily Nawa-e-Waqat, shattering doors and windowpanes, blowing out walls and parts of the roof, witnesses said. An unidentified woman who died in the explosion carried the bomb inside the office, but it apparently exploded sooner than planned, killing the women along with two others. No group has taken responsibility.

-------- iraq

Iraq Flies Passengers Through No-Flight Zones

New York Times
November 6, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/06/world/06IRAQ.html

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 5 - Iraq today sent domestic passenger flights carrying more than 150 people into areas patrolled by American and British warplanes, the first challenge of its kind to the no-flight zones that Iraq considers infringements on its sovereignty.

Two planes left Baghdad at 1 p.m., one bound for Basra, in the southern zone and one for Mosul, in the northern zone, the official Iraqi News Agency reported. They returned safely to Baghdad about four hours later, the agency said.

Iraq, which says the flights mark the resumption of regular passenger service to the cities, used Russian- made military cargo planes for the flights - an Antonov with 42 passengers to Mosul and an Ilyushin with 114 passengers to Basra.

The resumption of the flights, which Iraq announced on Oct. 30, came nearly a decade after Iraq's fleet of 15 Boeing airliners was moved to Jordan, Iran and Tunisia to escape bombing during the Persian Gulf war, in 1991. The planes remain abroad.

Passengers aboard the inaugural flights included officials and journalists who returned with the planes to Baghdad. Thousands of people had gathered to welcome the planes on arrival in Basra and Mosul, according to the Iraqi news agency.

Transport Minister Ahmed Murtada Ahmed Khalil said there will be daily flights to the two cities.

Iraqi Airways, the country's national carrier, is charging $13 per passenger to Basra, 343 miles south of Baghdad, and $11 per passenger to Mosul, 250 miles north of the capital.

The United States and Britain maintain that the no-flight zones are needed to protect Kurdish and Shiite Muslim minorities from Iraqi forces. Iraq says the zones, which are not mandated by the United Nations, violate its sovereignty and international law. Iraq has been firing missiles and antiaircraft artillery at the American and British warplanes.

The resumption of domestic flights follows the arrival in Baghdad of dozens of international flights from nongovernmental organizations and foreign countries seeking an end to United Nations sanctions imposed to punish Iraq for invading Kuwait in 1990.

The State Department warned on Friday that foreign aircraft flying into Iraq should avoid the no-flight zones because of "aggressive Iraqi activities" in these areas.

The United States says Iraqi military planes have violated the zones often with quick in-and-out forays since December 1998, when Iraq began challenging the patrols. Although today's flights were made with military aircraft, these were the first civilian flights into the zone.

The American and British patrols prohibit fixed-wing Iraqi aircraft or helicopters from entering the zones. There was no word on whether Iraq had given Britain and the United States advance notice of the domestic flights.

"We will continue to monitor closely any Iraqi aviation to determine whether it poses a threat to our forces, Iraq's neighbors or the Iraqi people," a State Department official said. "We reiterate that the Iraqis should notify the U.N. of all civilian flight schedules and routes no less than 48 hours in advance of each flight."

In Egypt, the Iraqi foreign minister, Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf, who met today with President Hosni Mubarak, said that the flights will continue, "since the aim of these flights is to destroy the American- British criminal act of imposing the no-flight zones."

---

Iraq flies in no-fly zone for second day

USA Today
11/06/00- Updated 06:18 AM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/world/nwsmon04.htm

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - For the second consecutive day, Iraq on Monday sent two domestic passenger flights from Baghdad to the cities of Basra and Mosul in defiance of no-fly zones enforced by U.S. and British warplanes since 1991.

The official Iraqi News Agency said the morning flight to Basra, 343 miles south of Baghdad, left with eight passengers on board, while the one to Mosul, 250 miles north of the capital, left about 30 minutes earlier with 14.

On Sunday, Iraq flew a total of 156 passengers to the two cities, using converted Russian-made military cargo aircraft. The type of aircraft used on Monday was not known.

Iraq's fleet of 15 Boeing airliners was moved to Jordan, Iran and Tunisia to escape bombing during the 1991 Gulf War over Kuwait. They remain abroad.

Iraq announced the resumption of domestic flights on Oct. 30 and Transport Minister Ahmed Murtada Ahmed Khalil said Sunday that flights will take off daily to the two cities.

The United States says Iraqi military planes have often violated the non-fly zones over the north and south of Iraq with quick in-and-out forays since December 1998, when the Arab nation began challenging the patrols.

The new challenges - though in military aircraft - marked the first civilian flights into the no-fly zones, which the United States and Britain say are needed to protect Kurdish and Shiite Muslim communities from Iraqi forces. Iraq says the zones, which are not mandated by the United Nations, violate its sovereignty and international law and has been firing missiles and anti-aircraft artillery at the U.S. and British warplanes.

The U.S.-British patrols bar fixed-wing Iraqi aircraft or helicopters from entering the zones. There has so far been no word on whether Iraq had given Britain and the United States advance notice of the domestic flights. The State Department said it was monitoring any Iraqi aviation to determine whether it poses a threat.

The resumption of domestic flights follows the arrival in Baghdad in recent weeks of dozens of international flights from non-governmental organizations and foreign countries seeking an end to U.N. sanctions imposed to punish Iraq for invading Kuwait in 1990.

In a move to encourage flights, Iraq said Monday it will refuel incoming aircraft free of charge and will not collect any airport tax or charges, a transportation ministry official told the official Iraqi News Agency.

---

Iraq sends domestic flights in no-fly zone

Washington Times
November 6, 2000
http://208.246.212.80/world/default-2000116214653.htm

BAGHDAD - Iraq sent domestic passenger flights carrying more than 150 people into skies patrolled by U.S. and British warplanes yesterday, the first challenge of its kind to the no-fly zones that Iraq considers infringements on its sovereignty.

Two planes left Baghdad at 1 p.m. bound for Basra in the southern no-fly zone and Mosul in the northern zone, the official Iraqi News Agency (INA) reported. They returned safely to Baghdad about four hours later, the agency said.

Iraq, which says the flights mark the resumption of regular passenger service to the cities, used Russian-made military cargo planes for the flights - an Antonov with 42 passengers to Mosul and an Ilyushin with 114 passengers to Basra.

The resumption of the flights, which Iraq announced on Oct. 30, came nearly a decade after Iraq's fleet of 15 Boeing airliners was moved to Jordan, Iran and Tunisia to escape bombing during the 1991 Gulf war. They remain abroad.

In response to the announcement, officials at the United Nations said that Iraqi domestic flights are legal under U.N. sanctions.

But a spokesman for the U.S. diplomatic mission in New York said that "for reasons of safety, it would be helpful if Iraq notified the United Nations about schedules and routes" to avoid possible incidents in the no-fly zones.

"We reiterate that the Iraqis should notify the U.N. of all civilian flight schedules and routes no less than 48 hours in advance of each flight," a State Department official said in Washington yesterday.

"We will continue to monitor closely any Iraqi aviation to determine whether it poses a threat to our forces, Iraq's neighbors or the Iraqi people," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Iraqi Transport Minister Ahmad Murtada, however, said his country would not comply with the U.S. request.

"We are free on our land and in our skies, and will not ask for authorization from anyone. That's our decision," the minister said at Baghdad's airport yesterday as the planes departed.

Passengers aboard the inaugural flights included officials and journalists who returned with the planes to Baghdad. Thousands of people had gathered to welcome the planes on arrival in Basra and Mosul, according to the INA.

"It's the first time in 10 years that I have seen a plane in the national colors over the skies of Iraq," Kamal Ali, a 28-year-old resident of the southern city of Basra, told the Agence France-Presse news agency.

"The only things we see over Basra are enemy planes," another resident said.

Mr. Murtada, the transportation minister, said flights will take off daily to the two cities. The United States says Iraqi military planes have violated the zones often with quick in-and-out forays since December 1998, when Iraq began challenging the patrols. The new challenges - though in military aircraft - marked the first civilian flights into the zones. Iraq has also been firing missiles and anti-aircraft artillery at the U.S. and British warplanes.

In Egypt, Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohammed Saeed Sahhaf said after meeting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak that "these flights will continue . . . since the aim of these flights is to destroy the American-British criminal act of imposing the no-fly zones."

The United States and Britain maintain the no-fly zones are needed to protect Kurdish and Shi'ite Muslim minorities from Iraqi forces.

Their flights, launched from Turkey, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and carriers in Gulf waters, result in frequent clashes with the air defenses of Iraq.

The resumption of domestic flights follows the reopening on Aug. 17 of Saddam International Airport.

Almost 50 foreign planes have since landed in Baghdad despite the U.N. air embargo. Iraq insists the international sanctions regime does not cover international passenger flights, while the U.N. Security Council is divided on the issue.

Iraqi Airways, the country's national carrier, is charging $13 per passenger to Basra, 343 miles south of Baghdad, and $11 per passenger to Mosul, 250 miles north of the capital.

-------- space

A space odyssey Look up.
From now on, a human presence in the heavens

US News & World Report
Science & Ideas 11/6/00
By Charles W. Petit
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/001106/space.htm

It may be the biggest thing to appear in orbit around Earth since the moon showed up a few billion years ago. No wandering rock, it is the International Space Station. It finally gives NASA and its junior partners from 15 other nations a full-time home on the zero-gravity range. Long-delayed, harshly criticized, redesigned several times, its price tag sure to surpass $50 billion from American taxpayers alone by the time it's finished in 2006, it now stands ready for its first three full-time residents.

Perhaps as soon as October 31, a Russian Soyuz rocket will rise from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and head for the fast-growing laboratory complex that circles the world 16 times a day 240 miles up. After two days of maneuvers, the cramped capsule will dock, and through the hatch will float expedition commander William M. Shepherd-a former Navy SEAL and underwater commando-plus veteran Russian cosmonauts Yuri Pavlovich Gidzenko and Sergei Konstantinovich Krikalev.

It should be an epochal moment. From now on, space planners hope, somebody will always be in space. Since April 12, 1961, when Yuri Gagarin became the first person to reach orbit, hundreds of people have made forays off Earth. But even Russia's venerable Mir space station that the Soviet Union launched in 1986-where U.S. astronauts have spent 950 days learning lessons for the new station-has been empty at times. (It is now on the verge of abandonment for lack of funds and will likely be ditched in the Pacific Ocean.) The new, NASA-designed station will be different. "The idea from the start, way back in the '70s and even before, was that this human presence in space would be continuous. Initially, somebody would always be in Earth orbit, but then it would be back to the moon and on to the planets," says Howard E. McCurdy, professor of public affairs at American University in Washington, D.C., who has written a book on the topic. "[Officials] saw this as a turning point in history."

If it's such a big deal, where's the excitement? Schoolchildren are boggled by anything in space, and a stalwart band of adult space fans follows the project avidly. Congress supports the station, partly because its construction brings money to districts all over the country, and partly because it stimulates U.S. technological prowess and burnishes its international image. But the attention pales compared with earlier major space projects. During the 1960s Apollo program, NASA astronauts and even ground controllers were celebrities embarked upon grand forays into the unknown. One explanation: The space station is mere infrastructure, like an airport or the interstate highway system-interesting, but not exciting.

Fire in the sky. But even the most jaded ground dwellers may find this thing hard to ignore. As it nears full size it will be among the most brilliant objects in the predawn and early-evening skies, the sun glinting off its half-acre solar array, outshone only by the moon and Venus. "You'll look up and say, what is that?" says Patrick Meyer, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center engineer and designer of a Web site that advises the public when and where it is visible. Unlike other satellites, it won't merely be a dot; sharp-eyed sky watchers should see a distinct shape.

Less than a fifth done now, the station's labyrinth of labs and passageways will have a volume greater than that of a 747 airliner, some 46,000 cubic feet, and about four times that of Mir. Live-aboard crews will rotate every three to six months, and more people will come up for brief visits onboard space shuttles while delivering cargo and hooking up new pieces. Unmanned Russian vehicles will deliver still more material and haul garbage back. After a U.S.-built habitation segment is hooked up-due in 2005-seven men and women will be able to live comfortably on board with small private rooms and even a shower stall. Its windows will look down from a million-pound structure spanning 356 feet-a football field plus. Just to build it will take 160 spacewalks, with 10 already performed.

But the one being built is not nearly what people at NASA had in mind when they started detailed planning in the early 1980s. First visions called for a station glittering with industrial and government research labs, hangars for construction and repair of satellites, and astronomical observatories. It was to be a launchpad for satellites headed for higher orbit and for human expeditions back to the moon, to Mars, to the asteroid belt, or farther. President Reagan proclaimed that a national goal in 1984 and plunked the name "Freedom" on the facility-which was then supposed to cost around $8 billion. Despite the hoopla, a long line of critics were cool or even hostile to the space station, and many still are.

Indeed, there were glitches from the start. Costs soared, and NASA learned that some space tasks are not easily compatible. The workaday hammering together of satellites, for instance, could disturb low-gravity experiments. What is left is a science and engineering research laboratory, period. The United States, Russia, Europe, and Japan are all building lab modules for low-gravity physics and biology research; nobody is planning satellite workshops. As for a steppingstone to moon or Mars expeditions, that could be added later, but the station's only immediate relevance to such trips will be medical study of the long-term effects of weightlessness on human health. The station's labs will be first-class, but many researchers are convinced that they could do a lot more with less money on the ground or with robotic spacecraft.

Chris Kraft, NASA's legendary first flight director, who shepherded the first astronauts in the '60s, calls the station a "white elephant in space" burdened by political and technical compromise. "My only regret is that we couldn't kill this thing seven years ago," says Rep. Tim Roemer, a Democratic congressman from Indiana. A big fan of such things as the Hubble Space Telescope, Roemer has campaigned relentlessly to scuttle the station, and he came within one House vote of success in 1993. "Since then, our worst fears have come to pass. Costs are through the roof, and we've seen cannibalization of other good NASA programs to pay for this one. The latest was suspension of a [robotic] mission to Pluto." The Reagan administration hoped the station could be up by 1991. Just five years ago, it was to be finished in 2002, and it has slipped four years since then, largely because the cash-strapped Russian space agency was slow with vital components.

Political tool. For all the griping, however, there's no stopping the program now, short of some catastrophe. "It's become a foreign-policy program, not just a space program," says John Logsdon, a science policy analyst at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The Russians, for instance, were invited by NASA in 1994 to help prop up that country's nearly bankrupt space program-and to discourage its experts from finding work in rogue nations with ballistic missile programs.

NASA Administrator Dan Goldin says the station project, above all, has taught him and his top aides humility. If U.S. astronauts had not gained practical lessons during long months on board Russia's Mir in the mid-'90s, he says, "I doubt we could have built the station at all." While the nearly broke Russians needed cash from the United States to build vital components, "we learned those guys really know how to keep people alive in space."

The sheer awkwardness of managing a partnership of 16 nations is one reason nobody has agreed on a name other than the generic International Space Station. Instead, providers of big pieces are giving each its own label. The European Space Agency calls its upcoming laboratory module Columbus. The Japanese lab will be Kibo ( Hope), while the American lab will be Destiny. Russia has the Zarya (Sunrise) module that was the first to go up, and Zvezda (Star), in which the first crew will live.

Logsdon is generally cynical about the station-he calls it the program from hell-but can't dismiss its importance: "This is the greatest technological, cooperative undertaking in history, outside of war."

The hard part has hardly begun. The first three occupants, collectively dubbed "Expedition One," will live for four months in the 43-foot-long Zvezda module, part of a string of three components launched in the past two years. Like anybody in a new home, they'll spend the first few weeks getting the appliances to work. First on the agenda after turning on the lights is to get the toilet running and the boxes unpacked. With only two closet-size quarters for three men, one will have to sleep in a corner, his sleeping bag tied to anything handy. A Russian cargo vessel is supposed to reach them with more equipment early in their stay, and two shuttles with more pieces will come and go before they journey home and another crew arrives in mid-February.

---

CHICKEN LITTLE WAS RIGHT

Mon, 06 Nov 2000
DayTips.Com Daily Lists
Strange News

The skywatchers with the International Astronomical Union say one of the many objects circling the Sun may hit the Earth in 30 years. Or maybe not. The IAU posted its warning on its Web page last Friday, having gotten confirmation from observers in Italy and Finland that object SG344 could indeed ram into Earth at high speed in September 2030. It's pegged the odds at 1 in 500. Teams that took the coordinates and helped compute the object's track included NASA's Near-Earth Object Program office in Pasadena, Calif., where interest is especially high since the object could be a spent Saturn rocket booster -- one of five Apollo mission booster stages believed to be somewhere in similar orbits. The new warning program has given SG344 a danger rating of "1" -- the lowest possible yet subject to "careful monitoring" -- because no one yet knows how big or dense it is. A rocket booster casing would probably burn up in the atmosphere and never strike Earth. But if the object is instead a house-sized piece of solid rock, it could unleash the force of a two-megaton nuclear blast upon contact. On average, something big hits the atmosphere and possibly the Earth's surface every 100 years. The last big event was in 1908, when an asteroid about 300 feet in diameter flattened millions of trees in an airborne explosion above Siberia.

---

Boondoggle in Space

New York Times
November 6, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/06/opinion/L06SPA.html

To the Editor:

A Nov. 3 letter extols the benefits of the International Space Station, saying it might encourage entrepreneurs to take a risk, "repaying" our "investment." France is already profitably using space by focusing on real commercial goals with much cheaper unmanned flight.

For the United States to throw billions at a resource with no purpose is no "investment," and will only inspire venture capitalists with more money than sense. Worse, it detracts from space projects that would be useful and are needed now.

BILL ELDRIDGE Zeist, the Netherlands, Nov. 3, 2000

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

... And Weighing War
Gore in the cross-fire: Why the young senator bucked his party and voted to back the gulf war. President Bush and Sen. Al Gore in 1989

MSNBC
11/06/00
By Bill Turque NEWSWEEK
http://www.msnbc.com/news/482610.asp

November 6 issue - It was nearing midnight on Jan. 11, 1991, and Al Gore was still in his Senate office, grappling with the vote of his life. In a few hours he would have to decide whether to support President George Bush in a war against Saddam Hussein.

ANALYSTS WARNED THAT LIBERATING Kuwait could mean U.S. casualties in the thousands. Democratic leaders wanted to give sanctions against Iraq more time and were pushing Gore hard to fall in line.

Two opposing aides made their final arguments. It was now or never, said Leon Fuerth, his national-security adviser. Saddam threatened the stability of the Middle East and the world's oil supply. The international coalition assembled by Bush to oppose him could not hold much longer. Press secretary Marla Romash warned that supporting the war could be a career killer. She didn't say so explicitly, but her meaning was clear: break with the party and forget about another shot at the presidential nomination he lost in 1988. Gore listened, and said he was going home. "I'm going to think about this overnight," he said. The next day, he joined nine Democrats, including Sen. Joe Lieberman, in a 52-47 vote backing Bush.

Far from wrecking Gore's career, the gulf war gave it a critical boost. With lighter-than-expected casualties, Operation Desert Storm was, from a political standpoint at least, a winner. Gore's stature as a Democrat willing to use force was one reason that Bill Clinton-who waffled on the issue-picked him as his 1992 running mate. Gore's vote also reveals a decision-making style he would bring to the presidency: a mix of personal conviction and careful attention to public opinion; of a journalist's zeal in ferreting out fresh information, and a reluctance to commit until the last possible moment-even if he's already made up his mind.

Gore was hawkish by nature. He'd bucked party orthodoxy in the past to support the Grenada invasion. And while Gore publicly voiced support for sanctions, he believed that only force could ultimately drive Saddam from Kuwait. Still, Gore wanted to make sure he didn't overlook any compelling argument for sanctions. A member of the Armed Services Committee, he pored over testimony and kept a running e-mail colloquy with Fuerth. Gore also reached out to an unusually wide range of contacts. Joseph Wilson, deputy chief of the U.S. mission in Baghdad, says Gore was the only senator regularly in touch with him to discuss the situation inside Iraq. Wondering about the readiness of Tennessee kids dug into the Saudi desert, he consulted the head of the state's National Guard.

Home-state sentiment ran heavily in favor of invasion. But Gore pressed aides for a closer look at public opinion. On conference calls with his Tennessee staff, he was especially interested in the African-American community, where blacks worried they would suffer disproportionate casualties, as they did early in the Vietnam War.

---

Four New Arrests in Yemen in U.S.S. Cole Investigation

New York Times
November 6, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/06WIRE-COLE.html
http://usatoday.com/news/world/nwsmon07.htm

ADEN, Yemen - Four men arrested over the past two days are being questioned about the fatal bombing of the U.S.S. Cole last month, sources close to the investigation said Monday.

The newest suspects were tracked down through phone records showing that the suspected bombers had been in contact with them, the sources said on condition of anonymity.

All four live in the southern port city of Aden, where the two suspected suicide bombers blew up a small boat filled with explosives alongside the Cole on Oct. 12 as it prepared to refuel. Seventeen Americans were killed.

Investigations have also revealed that officials in Lahej, a stronghold of the militant Islamic Jihad, provided the suspected bombers with government cars for use within Aden and between Aden and Lahej, 22 miles to the north.

The sources said the suspected bombers knew the officials from their time together fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

The officials are believed to be affiliated with the Islamic Jihad, a group formed by veterans of the Afghan war, and had met several times with the suspected bombers since March, when preparations for the bombing are believed to have started.

According to the sources, the two men took their boat for a test ride in the harbor where the Cole was to dock, one month before the bombing. One of the fishermen who helped them take the boat down into the water is believed to have been an accomplice, the sources said.

The United States is pressing Yemeni authorities leading the probe to allow U.S. agents a greater role in the investigation.

A Yemeni official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Monday that authorities have turned down an American request to relay their questions to the detainees. He said that expanding the American role in the investigation is being discussed, but that his country's stand remains that the Americans cannot interrogate any Yemeni citizens.

There has been no claim of responsibility considered credible in the strike on the Cole. American officials have said Osama bin Laden -- America's No. 1 terror suspect who has pledged to drive the U.S. military out of the Middle East -- is a focus of the bombing investigation. The Saudi millionaire, who is living in Afghanistan, is accused of masterminding the 1998 bombings on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

---

USA Today
11/06/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Kansas

Wichita - The aviation industry here is scrambling for workers. Raytheon Aircraft Co., Cessna Aircraft Co. and Bombardier Aerospace are trying to fill a record backlog of orders while manufacturing new planes. The companies estimate that they will add more than 1,500 jobs in 2001. In the meantime, employees are working overtime.

Maryland

Annapolis - A third Naval Academy football player was indicted in a sexual assault against a female midshipman in June. Shaka Amin Martin, 21, of Danville, Va., was charged with second-degree rape and assault. The junior starting linebacker was arrested after a sample of his DNA matched evidence collected at the scene.

Ohio

Dayton - Some business leaders say western Ohio is trying to drum up community support for efforts to reverse job losses at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Since 1988, employment at the base has dropped to 22,200 from nearly 30,000. Also, the base's economic impact in terms of payroll and contracts has dropped from $3.7 billion to $2.4 billion.

-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

DOE centers on biomass energy

Monday, November 6, 2000
By Lucy Chubb
http://enn.com/news/enn-stories/2000/11/11062000/biomass_39815.asp

Biomass - plant matter and its byproducts including crops, wood waste, animal manure and aquatic plants - is believed to be one of the most technologically promising renewable energy sources in the United States.

Plants and plant waste can be transformed into electricity, liquid fuels that enhance or replace gasoline, and chemicals now made from petroleum.

Scientists are working on ways to develop biofuels out of everything from wood pulp factory waste, rice plant byproducts and forest debris. Biomass fuel most familiar to Americans is ethanol, a clean gasoline supplement derived from corn.

In an effort to streamline biomass technology, the U.S. Department of Energy has added the National Bioenergy Center to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado. The center will serve as a biomass clearinghouse for science and industry.

"The biomass initiative gives new meaning to the words 'power plant,'" said U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson. "Focusing our efforts to help industry through the National Bioenergy Center will create new economic opportunities for farmers, enhance U.S. energy security and help manage the impact of energy on the environment. Together we will work to accelerate development of a new industry that can provide a significant source of home-grown energy."

"This will help put a national spotlight on what we believe is the tremendous potential that these new technologies have to offer," said Gary Schmitz of NREL. "This is a tremendous resource that is not even being used."

The money to fund the center comes from the DOE's current budget. But the creation of the facility may draw much needed attention to the potential of bioenergy and thus generate more federal dollars. "Our hope is that the increased focus will result in an increase in funding over the long term," said Schmitz.

The center will work closely with U.S. industry and universities to make the cost of bioenergy production more competitive in the global market. The center will also coordinate biomass research efforts between NREL and other national labs.

Some 350 U.S. biomass power plants generate more than 7,500 megawatts of electricity, or enough power to meet the energy needs of several million American homes. But the DOE estimates that there is enough biomass in the country to supply a much greater portion of U.S. power, bringing with it economic and environmental benefits.

Economically, biomass production represents an enormous new industry for farmers and rural communities, who collectively could reap as much as $20 billion a year in new income, according to DOE estimates. The success of bioenergy could also help offset the country's reliance on foreign oil supplies.

Biomass emissions are significantly lower than fossil fuel emissions, according to Schmitz. The DOE calculates that by replacing petroleum products with biomass, the United States could reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 100 million tons a year, the equivalent of removing 70 million cars from the road.

The center is the next step in the DOE's efforts to implement President Clinton's August 1999 executive order that mandates tripling the nation's use of bioenergy and bioproducts by 2010.

----

Tenaga eyeing renewable energy - report

MALAYSIA: November 6, 2000
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=8804

KUALA LUMPUR - Malaysia's national power utility Tenaga Nasional Bhd will look for renewable energy sources to boost its generating capacity, the Edge business weekly said.

The weekly quoted Tenaga chairman Jamaludin Jarjis as saying that the company would revisit the hydroelectric sector.

"We are looking back again at hydro areas in Peninsular Malaysia. For instance, we are considering old hydroelectric plants with the possibility of refurbishing them for more capacity," Jamaludin told the Edge.

"We are also looking at geographical areas where it might be possible to generate hydroelectric power. So, basically, we are revisiting the renewable energy area so that we do not have to depend a lot on non-renewable energy sources such as gas and coal," he said.

Gas currently accounts for 75 percent of Tenaga's fuel costs while 18 percent comes from coal and seven percent from oil.

National oil company Petronas, which supplies natural gas to Tenaga, was reported to be seeking a hike in the price of gas when its contract with Tenaga expires at the end of this year.

Jamaludin said Tenaga would either go alone or work with other companies if it finds suitable areas for hydroelectric power development. "We are open. If we have the financial capacity, we will do it ourselves," he said.

In its 2001 budget presented last month, Malaysia announced incentives to encourage the industry to seek renewable energy sources, especially biomass, which included a 70 percent tax exemption on statutory income for five years and exemptions on import duty and sales tax for machinery and equipment.

Tenaga shares closed up 50 cents at 12.40 ringgit on Friday.

-------- environment

Humans in the hot seat We really do seem to be warming the planet

US News & World Report
Science & Ideas 11/6/00
By Tim Appenzeller
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/001106/warming.htm

Greenhouse warming has officially arrived. Global temperatures crept up by about a degree over the past century, and most scientists expect that gases from cars and industry will eventually add to the heat. But whether our energy-hungry ways have already changed the climate, or whether the warming so far has been natural, few experts would say for sure. "The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate," was the best scientists could do five years ago, in a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), convened by the United Nations.

Five hot years have melted away most doubts. The latest IPCC report isn't out yet, but a summary leaked to the press last week puts it baldly: "It is likely that [greenhouse gases from human activities] have contributed substantially to the observed warming over the last 50 years." Over the next 100 years, they could push up the mercury by 2.5 to 10.4 degrees-nearly twice as much as the worst case foreseen in 1995.

"The weight of evidence is just getting heavier and heavier," says contributor Tom Wigley of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. Computer modeling can better distinguish natural from human-caused climate changes. New studies of tree rings, glaciers, and other markers from the ancient climate show that 20th-century warming "is a magnitude of change that hasn't been seen for thousands of years," says David Rind of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. And each of the scorching past five years ranked among the 10 hottest ever recorded.

High seas. To gauge how much more warming is in store, the IPCC modeled scenarios of future energy use, from sparing to profligate. Most project a warming of 4 to 6 degrees by 2100-enough to raise seas by several feet, melt more polar ice, and intensify storms. The estimates have risen since 1995, ironically, because of the likelihood that China, India, and other developing countries will clean up their industries, says Wigley. "As countries become richer and more able to deal with pollution, they'll reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide"-a gas that forms a sun-blocking haze and counteracts warming.

Some die-hard skeptics still don't buy it. Sure, "man's activities have had some influence on climate," says IPCC member Richard Lindzen of MIT-but he calls the summary a political document, designed to boost the international climate treaty that was negotiated in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997 but is still unratified by most nations.

Whoever leaked the summary surely had politics in mind. A meeting to discuss details of the Kyoto treaty is scheduled for November in The Hague.

---

Get serious on warming

Montreal Gazette
Monday 6 November 2000
http://www.montrealgazette.com/editorial/pages/001106/4817455.html

Evidence that global climate change is accelerating is more compelling than ever. Last month a panel of hundreds of scientists sponsored by the United Nations said that over the next 100 years the planet could, at the present rate, heat up by as much as 6 degrees C - nearly twice the same group's prediction five years ago.

The scientists also declared unambiguously that human activity has "contributed substantially" to this warming trend.

Yet the gap between this scientific consensus and government action seems as wide as ever. Starting a week from today, delegates from 160 countries will begin to negotiate in The Hague on how to achieve the targets for greenhouse-gas reduction to which their governments agreed in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. There are few signs that either Canada or the United States are taking their responsibilities seriously.

That's partly due to a serious flaw in the Kyoto accord, which does not bind developing nations. It's hard to rally the major industrialized economies to make sacrifices when developing nations are spared.

To meet its Kyoto commitment, Canada would have to slash its current greenhouse-gas emissions over the coming decade by at least 25 per cent - inevitably dealing a strong jolt to many industrial and consumer practices. Canada, a cold-weather nation that depends heavily on fossil-fuel consumption, would face huge economic dislocation if it attempted to meet the targets.

Although the Chretien government last month did unveil an action plan on global warming, calling on industry to adopt emission-cutting programs on a largely voluntary basis, the scheme would - at a cost of $1.1 billion over five years - eliminate only one-third of the gases that the Kyoto pact requires.

Canada will not feel further pressure to act until the United States, far and away the world's largest producer of greenhouse gases, gets serious.

Ottawa also seems keen on avoiding tough choices. For example, it wants the conference at The Hague to agree to give Canada credit for the greenhouse gases that its extensive forests and farm soils absorb. The Chretien government also wants credit for selling nuclear reactors abroad, since these don't create air pollution; instead, of course, they create another major headache, radioactive wastes, for which no truly safe disposal exists.

Misinterpretation of a prominent U.S. scientist's report has lessened pressure for tough action in both countries.

In August, James E. Hansen, a longtime advocate of severe measures against the chief greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, was widely quoted as having changed his mind and believing that this gas was not so harmful after all. He has since clarified his view, saying that while carbon dioxide is indeed a major culprit, it would be economically and politically easier to crack down first on soot, methane and ozone.

Canada should not ignore the threat posed by global warming. Its response should be tough, but within the bounds of what the economy can withstand. The longer modern economies keep ignoring the likelihood that human-made climate change is a monumental problem, the more massive the problem will grow.

---

USA Today
11/06/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Alaska

Ketchikan - The opening of a once-defunct pulp mill to produce veneer is a boost to the struggling timber industry of southeast Alaska. Gateway Forest Products plans to fire up the veneer plant by mid-November. Old-growth trees from the Tongass National Forest will be used. Up to 35 jobs could be created by year's end.

Arkansas

Stamps - A Utah company has expressed interest in acquiring hazardous wastes at the old Red River Aluminum plant that some residents say had caused them health problems. A biologist overseeing the site's cleanup said the Imco chemical company contacted the Environmental Protection Agency. He did not say how Imco plans to use the byproduct of aluminum production.

Nevada

Reno - Global warming could accelerate the spread of exotic plant species, crowding out native varieties and increasing the risk of devastating wildfires in Nevada and other arid Western regions, researchers from Nevada's higher education system reported in the science journal Nature. Two non-native grasses were largely blamed for contributing to Nevada's record 1999 fire season.

Oklahoma

Tulsa - Foul-smelling and bitter-tasting water from Lake Eucha was attributed to too many nutrients from chicken waste used as fertilizer. About half the city's 500,000 customers get drinking water from the lake. Officials have discussed drawing water from Lake Hudson, and the Grand River Dam Authority has agreed to allow the city to do that.

South Carolina

Columbia - State, county and industry officials blame each other for South Carolina's biggest pollution problem. One of the state's longest trails of groundwater contamination lies at Red Bank Creek, affecting about 50,000 Lexington County residents. The cleanup could take 20 years and cost up to $20 million, state officials estimate.

---

Let's Use the Sun to Keep the Earth Cool

New York Times
November 6, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/06/opinion/L06WAR.html

To the Editor:

Bob Herbert's question regarding the dire consequences of climate change - "Is anyone paying attention?" - has justifiably desperate overtones (column, Oct. 30). After all, we seemed to learn little from the energy crisis of the 70's; once oil prices dropped, so did our push toward renewable energy sources like solar and wind.

Now we're getting a second chance; energy seems to be on everyone's mind. Presidential candidates talk about clean energy. Rising oil and electricity prices, coupled with deregulation, are front-burner concerns for policy makers and consumers.

Scientific evidence about global warming has pushed the debate beyond the argument of whether it is for real and on to a hard look at solutions. The renewable energy industry is poised to go big time. Solar electricity, for example, could be shining on a million roofs by 2010.

LINDA ANNE BURTIS
Delmar, N.Y, Oct. 31, 2000
The writer is director of N.Y. Shines, a solar-energy education campaign.

---

Charged atmosphere surrounds EPA cases

USA Today
11/06/00- Updated 08:37 PM ET
By Joan Biskupic, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/court/nsco1423.htm

WASHINGTON - When the Environmental Protection Agency announced new air-quality rules for ozone and fine particles of soot three years ago, Administrator Carol Browner said standards of earlier decades were failing to protect millions of Americans from respiratory illness and even early death.

''What we are talking about are little tiny things, 2.5 microns in size,'' Browner said of the particles the EPA was targeting for the first time. ''You cannot see them, but when they become imbedded in your lungs, you cannot cough them out, you cannot spit them out.''

The Clinton administration's most ambitious environmental effort, aimed largely at the health of children and the elderly, ignited a political and legal firestorm that arrives at the Supreme Court Tuesday in a pair of cases that will test the limits of the EPA's authority under the Clean Air Act.

The American Trucking Associations and other industries, along with three smokestack-rich states, challenged the new limits for smog-causing ozone and what's known as ''particulate matter.'' Businesses say the new rules would cost them billions of dollars.

Their claims were distilled in lower court proceedings and now, simply put, come down to whether the EPA exceeded its fundamental authority under the Clean Air Act and whether, in developing the standards, the agency should have considered their feasibility and financial implications.

As the 2-foot stack of legal briefs in the case lays bare, the case pits manufacturing interests against environmentalists, factory-rich Midwest states against downwind Eastern states, and Republican members of Congress against the administration and other Democrats.

Law professors and economists also have submitted briefs in the dispute, which raises practical questions about air quality as well as constitutional issues of federal power tracing to the New Deal era.

A five-justice majority has been restructuring power between the states and Washington in many areas of the law (with Washington on the losing end of the battle). The stakes in this Election Day dispute reach beyond the environment to federal agencies' ability to address myriad national problems of public health and safety.

Seizing the opportunity to argue for greater checks on regulators, dozens of business interests, from accountants to chemical manufacturers to gun owners, have submitted ''friend of the court'' briefs.

Massachusetts and New Jersey, along with the American Lung Association, are parties on the EPA's side. They are backed by 10 other states, some of which told the justices in a brief that their interest is ''real and immediate, as real as the decision as to which industries to control ... and as immediate as the asthma attack that takes a child from the softball field to the hospital on a hot summer day.''

But Ohio, Michigan and West Virginia, which have joined the industries, counter that the EPA improperly failed to consider the burdens of new pollution control, spiraling energy costs and the fact that ''an unjustified standard may be impossible to implement.''

At its simplest, the case tests how much latitude the EPA or any federal agency has to carry out an arguably broadly worded act of Congress, particularly when lawmakers have given regulators much discretion in an ever-evolving area of public health.

Part of the Clean Air Act requires the EPA to use the latest scientific knowledge to establish and periodically revise the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) to protect public health ''with an adequate margin for safety.''

When a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., reviewed the 1997 standards for ozone and particulate matter, it ruled that the EPA lacked the requisite ''intelligible principle'' for determining the degree of public health protection necessary. Dusting off a decades-old constitutional theory, the appeals court said Congress had over-delegated its lawmaking authority to the agency.

The appeals court said the EPA's interpretation of the act leaves it free to pick a clean-air standard at ''any point between zero (pollution) and a hair below the concentrations (that created) London's Killer Fog,'' a reference to an episode in 1952 in which pollution was blamed for about 4,000 deaths over four days.

In a separate part of the case, the appeals court rejected the industries' claim that the Clean Air Act requires the EPA to consider economic burdens.

In the government's appeal, Solicitor General Seth Waxman argues that the EPA standards do not amount to an ''unconstitutional delegation'' of legislative power: ''Congress has properly assigned to EPA the ''executive ''responsibility to determine, based on current scientific knowledge and extensive public input,'' air-quality standards. He emphasizes that the EPA followed the statute in consulting experts, holding hearings and analyzing scientific studies before making its highly technical scientific decision.

Edward Warren, representing the trucking associations and other industries, says the statute's mandate to protect public health demands that the EPA synthesize medical and social sciences and consider the economic burden its standards place on business. Congress' delegation of such authority, he asserts, is particularly egregious ''in cases involving regulations that affect the whole economy.''

The paired legal cases arise against a backdrop of political, economic and scientific disputes over what degree of smog and soot control is necessary. Experts differ on how much ozone and sooty particles can be blamed for serious medical problems.

The EPA contends that the 1997 standards would provide new health protection to 125 million Americans, including 35 million children.

Lawyers for Massachusetts and New Jersey add that past standards under the Clean Air Act have been a success, dramatically cutting emissions of most regulated pollutants over three decades.

But Julie Becker, counsel for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, counters that this time, the EPA might have gone too far: ''If you're choosing standards from among a range that is protective of public health and you made a choice that's unnecessarily strict, you're going to add unnecessarily to the costs of goods and services.''

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Out of sight

Montreal Gazette
Monday 6 November 2000
http://www.montrealgazette.com/editorial/pages/001106/4817454.html

Almost six months before a big summit of the Americas is to take place in Quebec City, police have devised security arrangements that are, to say the least, sweeping.

Too sweeping.

Quebec City police are seeking to avoid the sort of tumultuous demonstrations that have marked other globalization gatherings in Seattle and Prague (and, on a far smaller scale, in Montreal last month). Fine. Every such demonstration has its small knot of troublemakers, and police need to be prepared.

But the police's plan would do more than simply prevent protesters from closing down or otherwise disrupting next April's Summit of the Americas, to which 34 heads of state have been invited. The strategy calls for keeping demonstrators so remote from VIPs as to render them inaudible and invisible.

Quebec City officials say they'll erect a metal fence that will encircle about four or five square kilometres of the city. The fence would extend west from the Chateau Frontenac to well beyond the National Assembly and even the Loews Le Concorde hotel. All but the western tip of the Plains of Abraham would be out of bounds. Crossing this restricted area in any direction would take a pedestrian 20 to 25 minutes.

The fence will, of course, inconvenience residents. To enter the zone, they and their guests will have to obtain special passes. But demonstrators have by far the most reason for complaint. Unless they line the road from the airport into town, and correctly guess which vehicles to shout at, there's little way they can communicate with policymakers.

Authorities in this country have a truly excessive phobia about allowing foreign dignitaries to spot public dissent. At the APEC summit meeting in Vancouver in 1997, the RCMP sought to keep crowds at bay while nonetheless allowing them to be just faintly visible. (The plan's breakdown led to the notorious pepper-spraying of demonstrators.)

Now Quebec City police want no visibility at all.

Quebec Public Security Minister Serge Menard and the police are right to insist on the safety of delegates traveling between hotels and meeting places. But they should find a way to reconcile that need with the right of dissenters to make their point heard.

Those who oppose a free-trade agreement of the Americas may have a poor case, but they have a perfect right to make it. If there can be no audience, the democratic right to free expression means precisely nothing.

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Other Spy Probes Run More Quietly Than Lee's

By Walter Pincus and Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday , November 6, 2000 ; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A20039-2000Nov5?language=printer

In December 1978, an American scientist walked into the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa and handed over secret documents about the technology used to silence the propulsion systems of U.S. nuclear submarines.

Although this loss was considered extremely significant during the Cold War and the Navy spent more than a billion dollars to try to remedy it, the scientist was not prosecuted and the essence of the espionage case has never previously been made public, according to present and former U.S. officials.

The case, code-named Buffalo Slaughter by the FBI, was mentioned briefly, without any details, in an affidavit filed in federal court in August by lawyers for Wen Ho Lee. They planned to use it to support their argument that Lee, a Taiwanese American scientist charged with copying nuclear weapons data from the secure computer system at Los Alamos National Laboratory, was a victim of selective prosecution.

The selective prosecution motion became moot in September, when Lee pleaded guilty to a single felony count of mishandling classified information and was freed after nine months in jail awaiting trial. Under a plea bargain, prosecutors dropped 58 other counts against him, and he promised to cooperate fully with federal investigators seeking to find out what happened to the sensitive data he had downloaded onto portable computer tapes.

Still, the contrast between the highly public handling of the Lee case and the 22 years of silence around Buffalo Slaughter is striking, in part because the earlier case was so much more serious. It involved deliberate espionage and indisputable damage to national security, while Lee was never charged with spying and has adamantly denied passing secrets to any foreign country.

Of the two cases, according to U.S. military and intelligence officials, Buffalo Slaughter is more typical of the way the government handles suspected espionage when it has not caught anyone red-handed. If the nature of the damage is unclear, the officials said, the government's first priority is not to prosecute, but to find out exactly what secrets have been lost and to whom.

In another spy incident with many similarities to the Lee case, for example, a Taiwanese American scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory was suspected of giving secrets about America's W-70 neutron warhead to China in the late 1970s. In the climax of that case, codenamed Tiger Trap, FBI agents caught the scientist at an airport carrying hand-written notes answering questions allegedly posed by the Chinese. The scientist was fired but never prosecuted because a decade-long investigation failed to turn up enough evidence to go to court, and the case is still considered open by the FBI, officials said.

Some law enforcement officials believe the Lee case would have been handled quietly and outside of court, like Buffalo Slaughter and Tiger Trap, if details of the FBI's investigation at Los Alamos had not been given to Congress and then leaked to the press early last year as evidence that the Clinton administration was lax on national security.

Once the allegations were leaked, the FBI and the Justice Department were in "an impossible situation," caught between Congress's desire to catch a spy on one hand and a lack of hard evidence on the other, said Paul Moore, a former senior FBI counterintelligence analyst specializing on China.

"To say that these things do not have a political dimension is just crazy," Moore added.

One reason that investigators focused on Lee as an espionage suspect was a phone call he had placed in 1982 to the Livermore scientist then under investigation in the Tiger Trap case. The FBI, which had wiretapped the Livermore scientist's phone, heard Lee offering to help him find out who had turned him in to the authorities.

When FBI agents questioned Lee about the call in 1983, he denied making it or even knowing the other scientist. After FBI agents told him that they had recorded the call, Lee explained that he had thought the Livermore scientist was in trouble merely for sending unclassified documents to Taiwanese officials--something Lee himself had also done.

Lee's lawyers insist he did not know the Livermore scientist was under investigation for espionage, and they note that the FBI closed its initial investigation of Lee in 1984 after he passed a polygraph examination in which he denied ever passing classified information to unauthorized individuals.

Typically, espionage investigations and damage assessments take place far away from the public arena of political charges and countercharges that marked the multiyear investigation of Lee, said another retired counterintelligence official who worked on major spy cases in the 1980s.

"Instead, it's a silent world where trade-offs have to be made in order to gain knowledge of what occurred with sufficient precision to make sure the loss is not that damaging and it won't happen again," the retired official said.

In the Buffalo Slaughter case, the scientist who was implicated in espionage had worked at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, where Navy nuclear propulsion systems were tested. He was offered immunity from prosecution in return for his cooperation in explaining exactly what he had given to the Soviet Union.

FBI agents were bowled over by what he told them, which was considerably worse than the bureau had suspected, officials said.

"We lost a whole host of things related to noise-quieting techniques" for submarines in the 1970s, recalled retired Adm. James D. Watkins, who served as chief of naval operations from 1982 to 1986 and as energy secretary in the Bush administration. "When they steal something, we want to know what it was so we can develop a counter technology," he added.

U.S. counterintelligence officers eventually concluded that Buffalo Slaughter was an outgrowth of earlier espionage activity by Navy Chief Warrant Officer John Walker and his family, who had delivered naval secrets to the Soviets and made them aware that the United States was easily tracking their submarines through the open seas.

What the Soviets realized, according to a former counterintelligence analyst, was that "underwater, Russian submarines were about as noisy as an American F-4 fighter." Moscow's response, he added, "was to try to correct the problem . . . by stealing U.S. technologies" for making submarine reactors, engines and propellers run as silently as possible.

The scientist in Idaho eventually handed the Soviets key information about the U.S. approach, which was to trade speed for silence and isolate the vibrations of the sub's nuclear power plant.

This was critical during the Cold War, when U.S. and Soviet submarines played cat-and-mouse through the world's oceans. In the event of full-scale war, U.S. ships would have tried to sink the Soviet Union's ballistic missile subs before they could fire nuclear weapons at the United States, and vice versa.

For years, the United States had a decided advantage in this running battle. "They knew we could defeat their ballistic missile reserves" aboard submarines, said one former Navy expert.

But in the mid-1980s, a former U.S. Navy captain recalled, Soviet submarines went "quiet all of a sudden." He said there was a brief public discussion at the time about how secrets related to propellers had leaked out. In 1987, newspapers reported that starting in 1982, a Japanese firm, Toshiba Machine Co., had sold sophisticated computer programs and machine tools that enabled the Soviet Union to build finely-honed submarine propeller blades that were more silent.

No public mention was made of the loss of technology for dampening the vibrations from nuclear reactors and other methods of quieting U.S. subs.

As result of the espionage, U.S. officials now say, the Soviet Union not only was able to quiet its own subs, but also was better able to detect and follow America's Trident missile subs. "We have had to make a number of design changes in our nuclear submarines," said Watkins. "The new Virginia class of Trident being built now has new designs to counter knowledge Soviets obtained of past designs."

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Russian merchant ships used in spying

Washington Times
November 6, 2000
By Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://208.246.212.80/national/default-200011622921.htm

Russian merchant ships are spying on U.S. nuclear submarines in the Pacific Northwest and reporting the information to Moscow's military intelligence service, according to classified U.S. intelligence reports.

The classified July 2000 CIA report obtained by The Washington Times states that recent intelligence "provides the first solid evidence of long-suspected Russian merchant ship intelligence collection efforts against U.S. nuclear submarine bases."

The confirmation challenges the official Pentagon response to the April 1997 incident involving the firing of a laser at a U.S. intelligence officer and Canadian helicopter pilot as they photographed the Russian merchant ship Kapitan Man as it spied on a nuclear missile submarine in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, north of Seattle.

One of the Russian crew is believed to have fired the laser device at a Canadian helicopter, causing permanent damage to the eyes of Navy Lt. Cmdr. Jack Daly, an intelligence officer, and Canadian Capt. Pat Barnes, the helicopter pilot.

Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said at the time there was no evidence the Kapitan Man was engaged in intelligence gathering.

According to the CIA report, stamped "secret," the cargo ship Kapitan Konev informed intelligence officials in Vladivostok about a "visual contact" with a U.S. submarine while transiting the Strait of Juan de Fuca on its way to Seattle. The strait is a major transit point for U.S. nuclear missile submarines heading out to sea from Submarine Group Nine based in Bremerton, Wash.

The CIA stated the Kapitan Konev identified the U.S. submarine as a ballistic missile sub. However, other intelligence reports obtained by The Times stated that a Russian national, identified only as "Anatoli Anatolyevich," notified Vladivostok that he had spotted the USS Parche, an attack submarine used in U.S. covert operations.

Russia is continuing to spy on U.S. warships and submarines and some Pentagon officials fear the data could be sold or leaked to international terrorists, like those who bombed the destroyer USS Cole last month.

A separate