------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Russia Seeks 'Strategic Partnership'
Russia - Iraq Arms Trade: No New Deal
All the way with the USA? Not necessarily
Canberra fails to get Jabiluka all-clear
Fraser says don't rely on the US
China Gave Up Little in U.S. Deal on Banning Sale of Missile Parts
UN COUNSELS CAUTION AT DU SITES IN KOSOVO
Japan to Reopen Nuclear Reactor That Leaked Coolant
Russia Says Could Join EU Military Force
Thousands Protest Nuclear Sub Stranded in Gibraltar
Film Explores Navajo Family's Story

MILITARY
Today In History
Pinochet hesitantly admits responsibility
Russia Starts Lost Satellite Probe
U.S. man believes he will be space tourist
Today In History
THE ABSENTEE BALLOTS

OTHER
On a Student Field Trip, With the Planet at Stake
U.S. and I.M.F. Welcome Salvador's Adoption of Dollar
Expansion Continues in Asia, but I.M.F. Warns of Slowdown
Behind the Success Story, a Vulnerable Police Force

ACTIVIST
Théodore Monod, Sahara-Loving Naturalist, Dies at 98


-------- NUCLEAR

Russia Seeks 'Strategic Partnership'

Associated Press
November 25, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Germany-Russia.html

BERLIN (AP) -- Russia called for a ``strategic partnership'' with Western Europe on Saturday, saying it wants stronger economic ties with the region and supports Europe's efforts for a more independent role in the NATO military alliance.

Speaking at a private conference in Berlin on Europe's future, Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov also aired Russia's longstanding criticism of last year's NATO airstrikes against Yugoslavia and U.S. exploration of a missile defense system.

``Europe can and must become the generator of comprehensive strategic stability in the world,'' Ivanov said. ``Overall, our relations with the European Union are now rising to a new level -- the level of a strategic partnership.''

Urging the 15-nation EU to take a stronger, more united role on the world stage, he said one such initiative could be joint Russian-European peacemaking in the Middle East.

Ivanov said non-member Russia is open to cooperation with NATO, but made it clear that Russia still views the alliance's expansion to include former Soviet allies Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary as a step back toward the Cold War.

In contrast, he praised Europe's efforts to claim a stronger role in the U.S.-dominated alliance.

``We view the Europeans' desire to provide forces for their own security and to quell conflicts as something absolutely natural and are ready for constructive cooperation,'' Ivanov said. ``I am certain that this opens good perspectives for our common contribution to bolstering stability and security in Europe.''

He also pushed for more European trade and investment for his country, including in the energy industry and telecommunications.

Ivanov was to wind up a four-day visit to Germany on Sunday by laying a wreath in memory of Soviet prisoners of war at the site of a former Nazi concentration camp at Sachsenhausen, just outside Berlin.

---

Russia - Iraq Arms Trade: No New Deal

New York Times
November 25, 2000 Filed at 5:47 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Russia-Iran.html

MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia has not yet signed any new arms contracts with Iran, Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov insisted Saturday, playing down U.S. concern over Moscow's decision to resume weapons sales to Iran.

Ivanov also angrily criticized U.S. warnings that Washington could impose sanctions on Moscow if it resumes arms sales to Tehran.

Ivanov said the warnings were an attempt to talk with Russia in ``the language of the past,'' the ITAR-Tass news agency said.

``It seems to me that the topic is too exaggerated now and there is too much unnecessary passion around it. In fact, nothing serious has happened,'' Ivanov said in an interview with Russia's state-run RTR television from Berlin, where he was attending a conference.

``No one has signed any contracts with Iran,'' he said. ``The issue is that Russia, when it comes to military cooperation with Iran as well as with other countries, does not consider itself constrained by any special obligations in spheres which are not restricted by international obligations.''

Russia recently notified Secretary of State Madeleine Albright that it will no longer observe a 1995 pledge that it would not sell tanks and battlefield weapons to Iran.

The Russian Defense Ministry insists it will not supply any hardware capable of delivering weapons of mass destruction. But the White House opposes any arms sales to Iran and is trying to get Moscow to change its mind, threatening sanctions against Russia, a U.S. official said.

Washington has repeatedly accused Russian scientific institutes of selling missile technology to Iran or helping Iran develop weapons by teaching Iranian students.

-------- australia

All the way with the USA? Not necessarily

The Age
Saturday 25 November 2000
BY MALCOLM FRASER
http://www.theage.com.au/news/20001125/A35397-2000Nov24.html

Ausralia's region is undergoing "profound strategic change". I see people writing that "it is crucial that in this uncertain situation the United States is kept involved in the region". In too many quarters this basic assumption is asserted as though it were a self-evident truth.

We need to ask questions. We need to examine the past, to see how much the United States has supported us and how much it has not. We need to make an objective assessment of our shared or disparate interest in the future.

Nobody can challenge that the United States, as the world's one super-power and major economic power, will have a continuing influence on every country in the world. What one can legitimately ask, however, is whether that interest will coincide sufficiently with Australia's interest to make a close "partnership".

In any relationship between a country as large as the United States and a country like Australia, there will be a major imbalance. The United States is all-powerful; our power is obviously strictly limited.

Because of language and historic and cultural associations, it is natural that many people should look to the United States for security. But, as I concluded at the Dunlop Asialink lecture three years ago, we may have to come to terms with the fact that our future security depends more on relationships with countries of our own region than it does on the United States.

Whatever one may wish to read into the interpretation of the ANZUS Treaty, the words are far less committing than the words of the North Atlantic Treaty.

I have never doubted that, during the time of the Cold War, Australia was right to give precedence to ANZUS and the strategic relationship with the United States. In retrospect however, how much support did we get?

The first test of our relationship with the United States came over what was West New Guinea, what is now West Irian. For a range of reasons, the United States took little notice of the Australian Government's view. The lesson is quite simply that the United States gave very little weight to Australia's views.

During the post-war years, Australian defence and foreign policy establishments developed very close bilateral relationships with the US. We believe we share in information that is not generally made available to others. The facilities at Pine Gap give us a continuous entree into the highest levels of American intelligence. Military exercises take place between our armed forces.

There is no doubt that these relationships have advantages for Australia. Even here, however, we need a note of caution. In intelligence matters, we are generally told what others believe it is good for us to know. It is not a complete open book. That is the way great powers operate.

With the end of the Cold War, the primary need for ANZUS has been taken off the table. There should be more flexibility in Australian policy. We do not need to be quite so close to the United States.

Events since the end of the Cold War have not created any strong argument for giving the strategic relationship with the United States primacy over other policy objectives. There are, however, events lurking in the background that are likely to bring Australia into direct conflict with American interests.

When we turn to the future, there are two issues that will be on the agenda where America's interests and Australia's will diverge strongly and sharply. One of these is the American search for an anti-missile defence system. If this is pursued, it will seriously upset the current nuclear balance.

If Australia were to allow facilities at Pine Gap to be used as part of the establishment of the forward echelon of anti-missile defence for the United States, it would clearly become, not a 10th-rate target but a first-rate target in the event of hostilities between America and some other country. There is another issue that may give more than a little reality to these fears - Taiwan.

The United States' role, through the Taiwan Relations Act, has been to give Taiwan enough confidence so that she will not be attacked militarily by China but not so much confidence that she would refuse to negotiate with the ultimate objective of re-establishing one China. If American policy ever were to support an independent Taiwan, the outcome would be war between China and America. America would withdraw to the United States, to her own hemisphere. If we had supported her, we would be an exposed and isolated ex-ally. Any government that took any action that could lead to that outcome would be guilty of a grave dereliction of duty to the Australian people.

Only this week the commander of the US Pacific fleet wrote in our press what we should do for our security. We are not yet a US province.

We need to make sure when our own defence review is being implemented that it is designed to maximise Australia's capacity to meet our own strategic objectives and that it is not designed merely to complement something that may be required of us by the United States.

This is an edited extract from the Dunlop Asialink lecture given in Melbourne last night. Malcolm Fraser was Prime Minister from 1975-83.

---

Canberra fails to get Jabiluka all-clear

The Age
Saturday 25 November 2000
By CLAIRE MILLER ENVIRONMENT REPORTER CAIRNS
http://www.theage.com.au/news/20001125/A35929-2000Nov24.html

The Federal Government failed last night to win the all-clear from the World Heritage Bureau for uranium mining at the Jabiluka enclave inside Kakadu National Park.

The bureau, the executive arm of the World Heritage Committee that last year considered whether Kakadu should be placed on the in-danger list, has instead referred the matter for debate at the committee's meeting here next week.

Despite intense pressure by Australia to quash the prospect of debate next week on whether uranium mining should go ahead, the committee will consider two critical reports from its environmental and scientific advisory bodies.

The independent international reports have recommended that more comprehensive environmental impact assessments be done before uranium mining begins at Jabiluka.

The reports by the International Council of Science and the World Conservation Union are the latest on the government's progress in meeting the World Heritage Committee's conditions to avoid Kakadu being placed on the in-danger list.

The government will also be asked to consider whether there is a need for a "new approach to consultation in relation to cultural management" with the traditional owners of Jabiluka, the Mirrar people.

The Mirrar and the government have been in deadlock over devising a cultural assessment and heritage management plan, which is another condition to prevent Kakadu's indigenous cultural values from being added to the World Heritage in-danger list.

The government wanted to involve the Jabiluka mine developer, Energy Resources Australia, in a cultural reference group to devise the plan. But the Mirrar people have said they will not take part in a process to help ERA facilitate its commercial objectives.

The Mirrar people's representative, Jacqui Katona, declined to comment on yesterday's developments after the World Heritage Bureau banned accredited international, green and indigenous observers from discussing the proceedings outside the forum.

The head of the Australian delegation, Roger Beale, the secretary of Environment Australia, said the Mirrar people had agreed to the wording of the recommendation to the committee for a new approach to cultural management.

---

Fraser says don't rely on the US

The Age
Saturday 25 November 2000
By TONY PARKINSON INTERNATIONAL EDITOR
http://www.theage.com.au/news/20001125/A35731-2000Nov24.html

It would be lunacy for Australia to take sides with the United States in any future confrontation with China over the fate of Taiwan because our longer-term security interests would be better served by closer links with Asia, former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Fraser said last night.

Calling for a dramatic reappraisal of the value of the US alliance, Mr Fraser accused the US of standing aloof from the recent turmoil in Asia, both during the East Timor crisis and at the time of Indonesia's economic collapse. "That has its own message for the future," Mr Fraser said.

Mr Fraser said the ANZUS alliance was no longer crucial to Australia and warned that participation in US missile defence projects could make Australia a "first-rate target" in the event of war.

Delivering the Asialink lecture in Melbourne in the lead-up to the release of the defence white paper, Mr Fraser called for a doubling of defence spending - to ensure Australia could protect its own interests.

"Our future security depends more on relationships with countries of our own region than it does on the United States," he said. "With the end of the Cold War, the primary need for ANZUS has been taken off the table ... We do not need to be quite so close to the US."

Mr Fraser was a fervent supporter of the American alliance during his years in office, at the height of the Cold War. Three years ago, however, he began expressing doubts about the strategic value of maintaining a security pact with the US.

In his speech last night he said that the alliance may now serve US interests more than Australia's. Mr Fraser said the ANZUS Treaty was far less binding on the US to respond to aggression against Australia than the corresponding NATO text. He said the US had demonstrated as early as the 1950s that it gave little priority to the alliance unless Australia's interests coincided with its own.

Mr Fraser said this was illustrated during last year's crisis in East Timor, where "America was remote, and appeared to be standing back from the difficulties".

He said Australia's close defence, foreign policy and intelligence links with the US gave Australia only limited privileges. "In intelligence matters, we are generally told what others believe it is good for us to know," he said.

Mr Fraser said that although these arrangements were an advantage, Australia could become "a first-rate target" if it participated in US missile defence research, through the joint facilities at Pine Gap. "When we have no control over the policy that might involve America in conflict, we should be wary of making ourselves hostage to US actions," he said.

He said that if US policy was ever to support an independent Taiwan "the outcome would be war between China and America".

He said it was doubtful the US could win such a war without deploying nuclear weapons, and that a likely scenario would be America retreating to its own hemisphere, leaving Australia as an "exposed and isolated ex-ally".

Mr Fraser said that any Australian government that put the country in such a position would be "guilty of a grave dereliction of duty to the Australian people".

-------- china

China Gave Up Little in U.S. Deal on Banning Sale of Missile Parts

New York Times
November 25, 2000
By JANE PERLEZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/25/world/25MISS.html

WASHINGTON, Nov. 24 - When American negotiators visited Beijing this fall to persuade the Chinese to curb their sales of missile parts, they found the going easier than usual.

One result of those talks was that China announced this week that it would publish a list of missile-related items that would be banned for export. That announcement was the basis for a new agreement under which the United States waived sanctions against China, but administration officials and critics agree that Beijing gave up little to get that deal.

In the first place, they say, missile sales were becoming less lucrative than the launchings of American satellites that the new arrangement clears the way for. Second, they say, the Chinese have failed to live up to previous, though less explicit, accords on weapons proliferation, and it is far from clear that they will do better this time.

The realities of finance and geopolitics, however, could bring improved compliance, they suggested.

This week the United States agreed to waive sanctions for past sales of such material to Pakistan and Iran. American companies will now be free to seek State Department permission to launch satellites on Chinese rockets.

An important element in the Chinese decision, officials said, was the fact that deals with Pakistan, China's most important market for missile technology, have become less lucrative as the Pakistani missile program has become more developed, and now receives its most pressing needs from North Korea.

Another incentive for pledging to stop the sale of missile parts was the increasing security threat on China's borders from the nuclear stand-off between Pakistan and India.

The Chinese sent missile components to Pakistan after the nuclear tests between India and Pakistan in mid-1998, but China has become concerned about the tensions between the two countries and has tried to improve its poor relations with India.

Two of the administration's top proliferation experts - Gary Samore of the National Security Council, and Robert J. Einhorn, the assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation affairs - negotiated the accord this month with the Foreign Ministry in Beijing. President Clinton and the Chinese president, Jiang Zemin, reviewed the agreement in Brunei before the announcement.

China has sent so much missile matériel to Pakistan that there was now less demand from Pakistan, said Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, a nonprofit group. "The Chinese don't see the need for a lot of additional systems for export to Pakistan," he said.

Launching American satellites into space may be more financially rewarding for the Chinese rocket companies than under-the-table exports to Pakistan, he said. But for the most part, the Chinese did not see launching services for American satellites and exports to Pakistan as an either-or proposition, he said.

Many of the Chinese companies that provide the launching services also sell to Pakistan. The new accord was supposed to stop this, but it was unclear that it would turn out any differently than past pledges, which were broken by the Chinese, he said.

By failing in this new accord to impose sanctions on the Chinese entities, the United States was most likely allowing the Chinese companies to reap revenues both from American companies and from illicit missile deals abroad, Mr. Milhollin said.

In the early 1990's, experts estimate, China supplied Pakistan with several dozen M-11 missiles, a solid- fuel version of the Scud-B missile. At about the same time, North Korea began to supply technology to Pakistan based on their liquid-fueled Nodong missile.

The Pakistanis built their Ghauri rocket on the Nodong model. The Ghauri has a far superior range and payload - a 900-mile range and capacity for a 1,540-pound warhead - to the Chinese M-11, which has a range of 180 miles and carrying capacity of 1,100 pounds.

"In strategic terms, Pakistan needs to be able to threaten all of India, and the Nodong from North Korea gives them that capability, and the missiles from China don't," said Simon Henderson, a London- based expert on missile technology.

A major uncertainty about the new accord, administration officials acknowledged, revolves around the power of the Foreign Ministry over the missile-parts factories, which are run by the Chinese military. In the past, the Foreign Ministry, which signed the new accord, has wielded little influence over the factories.

About 100 companies in China produce missile-related materials, an administration official said.

About half a dozen companies were involved in sending the M-11 missiles to Pakistan in the early 1990's and the production facilities later on, the official said. These companies were hit with sanctions that were immediately waived in exchange for the new curbs.

-------- depleted uranium

UN COUNSELS CAUTION AT DU SITES IN KOSOVO

From a report in the Guardian, 25/11/00

United Nations scientists investigating the effects of depleted uranium used in Kosovo during the 1999 war have called for precautions in handling ammunition that can still be found at numerous attack sites. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) research team, led by Finland's former minister of Environment and Development Co-operation, Pekka Haavisto, is financed by donations from several governments, with Switzerland as the principal contributor.

UNEP sent a team of scientists to Kosovo to determine if there are health or environmental risks now or in the future due to the use of depleted uranium during the conflict. "It was possible to detect higher than normal levels of beta and gamma radiation," Pekka Haavisto, head of the team told reporters. "These sites should be marked. The danger is perhaps less than having an X-ray at the dentists, but it is an unnecessary risk."

The team took "several hundred samples" of spent DU ammunition and contaminated earth, soil, plants and cow's milk, from 13 sites in Kosovo where NATO planes had fired on suspected Yugoslav positions during the alliance's 1999 air war. The samples will be tested in laboratories elsewhere in Europe and the results of the study become available in February next year. The team's recently released preliminary report, however, counsels that "precautions be taken when dealing with penetrators and sabots (which contain DU) found at the identified sites and also in other locations where these ammunitions might be present."

The UN agency's investigations began in May 1999 while NATO air attacks were still occurring. But the first studies were made even more difficult by the fact that NATO would not confirm that it was indeed using DU ammunition. NATO took 5 months to respond to the UN's request for information, and finally acknowledged in March this year that its A-10 'Warthog' aircraft had used munitions with DU in approximately 100 attacks over Kosovo territory. Haavisto said he was disappointed that NATO had not supplied precise details of the bomb sites until a year and a half after the conflict, but that the information when given had appeared accurate.

The Warthog airplanes are equipped with GAU-8/A cannons capable of firing 4,200 rounds of 30-millimetre DU shells per minute. The same weapons were used against Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War, and later in the NATO bombings against Bosnia.

{UNEP also found that most of the 42 areas of Kosovo and Metohija on which shells with DU were dropped during the NATO bombing are in the zone between Pec and Djakovica, Deputy Italian Ecology Minister Valerio Calzolaio said on Monday. Of the total 31,500 fired shells with depleted uranium, 14,180 fell in the zone now controlled by KFOR Italian troops, Calzolaio said.}

Iraqi victims of cancer and former American soldiers suffering from Gulf war syndrome are joining forces to sue the US government over use of depleted uranium (DU) missiles. Meetings have been held between US-based families of the Iraqis, former American service personnel and lawyers over legal action in America. Former British personnel who say they have been affected by DU will be invited to join the multi-million-dollar claims.

A decade after Operation Desert Storm, lawyers believe there is enough evidence to link the massive rise in cancer in Iraq and the effect on British and American soldiers to almost 950,000 DU missiles and shells fired. At the conference in Gijon, Spain held last month, (see page 7) the impending legal action was high on the agenda. International medical experts, Gulf war veterans including Ray Bristow, a Briton, and the former US sergeant Carol Picou, and lawyers, including Ramsay Clark, a former American attorney general discussed the action.

Lawyers for the veterans claim the American government "recklessly" used DU, knowing its devastating effect. One of the main arguments expected to be put forward is that American soldiers were not given protective clothing when sent to inspect damage caused by shells coated with DU.

-------- japan

Japan to Reopen Nuclear Reactor That Leaked Coolant

Salt Lake Tribune
Saturday, November 25, 2000
http://www.sltrib.com/11252000/nation_w/47388.htm

TOKYO -- Japan on Friday approved the reopening of an accident-tainted nuclear reactor and defended its nuclear policy as vital for a resource-poor nation.

Japan's Atomic Energy Commission decided to restart Japan's experimental Monju fast-breeder reactor as soon as possible. The reactor was shut down in December 1995 after an accident in which several tons of sodium leaked from its cooling system.

Japan's Science and Technol- ogy agency said the leak was one of the worst nuclear accidents anywhere in the world. Nine similar liquid sodium leaks have occurred worldwide since 1960. The worst was 20 tons from a fuel storage tank at a nuclear plant in France in 1987.

The decision reaffirmed Tokyo's commitment to nuclear power, and it comes with public trust in the industry shaken by a series of mishaps and cover-ups including an accident last September at a reprocessing plant northwest of Tokyo that killed two people and exposed hundreds to radiation.

Friday's decision didn't specify when the reactor, about 220 miles west of Tokyo would be in operation.

Japan relies almost entirely on imports for oil and other natural resources. The government is betting heavily on nuclear power to achieve a measure of long-term energy self-sufficiency.

"It is vital for Japan to restart the reactor as soon as safety is assured," a statement by the commission said.

-------- russia

Russia Says Could Join EU Military Force

Reuters
November 25, 2000 Filed at 1:35 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-europe-.html

BERLIN (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said on Saturday that Russia was ready to cooperate with the European Union's new military force.

``We consider it completely natural, the effort by Europe with their own forces to provide for their own security,'' Ivanov told leading European policy makers and analysts at a forum on Europe. ''And in a crisis situation we are ready for constructive cooperation.''

European countries announced this week they would form their own rapid reaction force outside NATO, the Atlantic alliance heavily dependent on U.S. military might which formed the West's primary Cold War buffer against the former Soviet Union.

EU countries said they would create a force of up to 60,000 ground troops from the EU's 15 member states by 2003 to deal with regional conflicts and humanitarian crises.

``The possibility of a Russian contribution in the conduct of European Union operations in regulating crises will be studied,'' Ivanov said. ``I am sure that this will open good possibilities for our joint contribution to strengthening stability and security in Europe.''

Ivanov's proposal could raise U.S. fears of losing influence in European peacekeeping operations, and his remarks sought to highlight cases where U.S. and European interests diverged.

For example, Ivanov mentioned Europe's differences with Washington over the possible development of a ballistic missile defense system.

''We very much appreciate that a whole series of leading European governments have come out with us and the overwhelming majority of the world in defense of strategic stability,'' he said. ``One would like to believe that the series of supporters on our continent for the preservation of the ABM treaty will expand.''

Warning that a failure to following international norms would lead to chaos, Ivanov cited the 1999 U.S.-led NATO air war against Yugoslavia as an example of NATO gone astray.

``Unfortunately, the well-known events in the Balkans in the spring of 1999 are evidence that such an alternative cannot be excluded,'' he said. ``After the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, there was again talk in the world that maintaining security was only possible by military means, including through the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction.

``I am sure that such a negative development of events is not in the interests of a single European government.''

He called for the European Union to be more involved in the peace process in the Middle East.

``Russia, as a co-sponsor of the Middle East peace process believes that the European Union should take a more active role in its international mediation,'' he said. ``The very proximity and approaches on these questions between Moscow and Brussels allows us to act in tandem and if necessary, in a joint effort.''

In another proposal, Ivanov called for the creation of a European monument to the victims of repression during the Nazi era and Stalin's iron rule in the former Soviet Union.

-------- spain

Thousands Protest Nuclear Sub Stranded in Gibraltar

Reuters
November 25, 2000 Filed at 12:19 p.m. ET
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-spain-t.html

MADRID (Reuters) - Thousands of people took to the streets in the Spanish town of La Linea on Saturday calling for the removal of British nuclear-powered submarine Tireless which is stranded in neighboring Gibraltar, local media reported.

National police said the protesters numbered some 2,500 while the organizers estimated 15,000. It was the latest in a string of protests against the submarine HMS Tireless.

Britain's entire fleet of 12 nuclear-powered submarines was recalled in October for checks after a fault was discovered in the cooling system of HMS Tireless, which has been stranded in Gibraltar at the southern tip of Spain since May.

The presence of the crippled submarine has exacerbated the dispute over the British colony, a rocky outcrop guarding the entrance to the Mediterranean whose return Spain has claimed for many years.

Earlier this month, the European Commission asked Britain for information on the Tireless which the London government has repeatedly said does not pose a safety risk.

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

Film Explores Navajo Family's Story

Associated Press
November 25, 2000 Filed at 12:30 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-Navajo-Boy.html
http://www.star-telegram.com/news/doc/1047/1:POLITICS73A/1:POLITICS73A1125100.html
http://news.excite.com/news/ap/001125/12/navajo-boy

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The film gathered dust for decades, a silent, 28-minute documentary titled ``Navaho Boy: The Monument Valley Story,'' about a Navajo family whose home was the backdrop for one of John Wayne's most famous Westerns.

Years later, filmmakers traveled to the land of otherworldly stone promontories on the Arizona-Utah line to locate the people and stories behind the blurry, Technicolor images. They found Elsie Mae Cly Begay, matriarch of a family still strong in its Navajo traditions but sickened by uranium mining's radioactive legacy and grieving over a brother adopted away by white missionaries 40 years before.

The film's return set off a chain of events that led to the brother's reunion with the family he had never known -- as well as the discovery that the traditional dwelling where Begay lived for years was dangerously radioactive.

Now the Cly family is chronicled in another documentary, ``The Return of Navajo Boy,'' being shown at independent film festivals and on public television stations across the country.

``Things happened because of the camera coming back into their lives,'' director Jeff Spitz said after a screening at the Smithsonian Institution last week. ``It led to the recapture of a lot of family history, the expression of a lot of pain, and the return of Elsie's brother, who many people thought was a myth.''

------

The Cly family -- pronounced ``klah,'' it's an English rendition of a Navajo term meaning ``left-handed'' -- has lived for generations in Monument Valley, a stretch of high desert studded with rock formations that look like huge mittens and chimney spires.

The white photographers and filmmakers who came to the exotic landscape in the mid-1900s took thousands of pictures of the family's daily life: herding sheep, weaving rugs, wrapping their long hair into the traditional Navajo bun at the back of the neck.

One of the visitors was Robert Kennedy, a Chicago businessman whose midlife crisis found him trying his hand at moviemaking. Kennedy shot ``Navajo Boy,'' depicting events in the Cly family's life as well as a traditional healing ceremony performed for Elsie Zina Cly, Begay's mother.

Kennedy's son, Bill Kennedy, started trying to find his father's film subjects in the 1980s, and hooked up with Spitz in 1997, when they first traveled to the Navajo reservation.

A better-known visitor to the Clys was director John Ford, who used Monument Valley as a dramatic backdrop for his classic 1956 Western, ``The Searchers,'' starring John Wayne. Some Cly relatives even worked as extras, playing some of the ``Commanches'' who had kidnapped the niece of Wayne's character, played by Natalie Wood.

Wayne also stopped by the Cly home one day. Spotting an infant boy -- Elsie Zina Cly's son -- he asked the child's name. When told the boy did not yet have a name, the actor suggested one that stuck: John Wayne Cly.

The lung ailment that prompted the healing ceremony took Elsie Zina Cly's life sometime after that. Records of that time are hard to come by, and the Cly siblings do not have birth certificates, but little John Wayne was only about 2 years old. A missionary couple adopted the boy, telling the family they would return him in four years. They never did.

John Wayne Cly grew up in New Mexico with other Indian foster brothers and sisters. In the movie, he tells of watching cars on the highway and dreaming that his Navajo family would pull up and take him away. Or John Wayne himself would show up and take him to the relatives he pined for.

``All my life I felt I never fit in with anyone,'' he said.

About three years ago, he read a newspaper article about the Chicago filmmakers who had found the family that were the subjects of an amateur documentary, and how one of them was Bernie Cly, Begay's brother and a former uranium miner seeking compensation from the government. John Wayne Cly had found his family.

The documentary captures John Wayne Cly's reunion, his nervous approach to the family he had not seen in 40 years and the fierce, wailing hug from Begay, his long-lost sister.

``I hope I'm not a disappointment to you,'' John Wayne Cly says during the reunion.

He has not been, Begay said. The siblings now visit frequently, and John Wayne Cly, now in his mid-40s, is starting to learn the Navajo language that he had lost but that his siblings prefer.

John Wayne Cly's siblings recently held a traditional Navajo ceremony for him -- the Blessing Way, a ritual for someone who has returned after a long journey.

------

Filmmakers were not the only outsiders who came to Monument Valley in the 1940s and '50s.

The vast Navajo reservation, spanning parts of New Mexico, Arizona and Utah, holds extensive deposits of uranium. As the Cold War nuclear arms race heated up, mining companies dug hundreds of shafts and open pits in the area to extract the valuable and deadly mineral.

The mines provided plentiful jobs and the unseen danger of radiation. By the late 1970s, the mines were closing and many miners were dying of lung cancer, emphysema or other radiation-related ailments.

Whole communities were affected, too. Children played in the rocks left over from the mining and milling. Miners brought home yellow uranium dust on their clothes. The mines helped speed the flow of radioactivity into drinking water supplies. People used stones striped with yellow uranium ore to build homes.

``It (radioactivity) is everywhere,'' Begay said in Navajo, with Indian Health Service official Rosetta Tracy translating. ``It's in the air. It's in the ground. It's in the water.''

People kept getting sick, often with lung problems like the one that felled Begay's mother.

Under pressure from Navajo and other uranium miners, Congress in 1990 passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, giving $100,000 payments for a list of ailments.

Navajo miners have criticized the law, saying its requirements are too strict. Bernie Cly, for example, had part of a lung removed because of cancer but had his compensation claim denied because he had smoked tobacco during traditional ceremonies.

Congress changed the law this year to remove many of those impediments and increase compensation to $150,000. Bernie Cly's compensation application was finally approved.

Earlier this year, the Environmental Protection Agency tested radioactivity levels in Begay's hogan -- a traditional Navajo dwelling where Begay and her family had lived for years.

The hogan's stone floor has the telltale yellowish stripes of uranium ore. Radiation levels inside, the EPA found, are up to 100 times acceptable levels. The agency told Begay to keep out of the hogan and agreed to help the family tear down the structure and rebuild without radioactive materials.

Begay and Spitz say they hope ``The Return of Navajo Boy'' will aid efforts to expand compensation and cleanup.

-------- MILITARY

Today In History

Associated Press
November 25, 2000 Filed at 7:01 p.m. ET

Today's Highlight in History:

On Nov. 26, 1943, one of the least-known American catastrophes of World War II took place as the HMT Rohna, a British transport ship carrying U.S. soldiers, was hit by a German missile off Algeria; 1,138 men were killed, including 1,015 American troops.

On this date:

In 1950, China entered the Korean conflict, launching a counteroffensive against soldiers from the United Nations, the United States and South Korea.

Ten years ago: Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev met with Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz at the Kremlin to demand that Iraq withdraw from Kuwait.

Five years ago: Senior U.S. officials declared the Dayton treaty on Bosnia was final, rejecting demands from Bosnian Serbs that provisions relating to the future of Sarajevo be changed.

-------- chile

Pinochet hesitantly admits responsibility

USA Today
11/25/00
http://usatoday.com/news/world/nwssat05.htm

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) - Former Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet has made a hesitant admission of responsibility for atrocities the military committed during his years of rule, saying in a taped birthday message that he accepts ''all the facts.''

Pinochet made a rare public appearance Saturday before scores of supporters who gathered to greet him on his 85th birthday. The previous night, Pinochet backers at birthday dinners throughout the country watched the taped message, which showed Pinochet talking about his 1973-90 regime.

''As a former president of the republic, I accept all the facts that they say the army and the armed forces did,'' Pinochet said, speaking hesitatingly. But he also added that some of the accusations against his government are just propaganda.

Pinochet made similar statements last year in a ''Letter to Chileans,'' a lengthy document he sent home from London while he was under house arrest there.

Although Pinochet did not use the word responsibility in Friday's statement, his son Marco Antonio, who has often acted as his spokesman, said his father meant to assume political responsibility for the events of his long reign.

According to a report by the civilian government that succeeded Pinochet, 3,197 people disappeared or were killed while he was in power. He faces 177 criminal complaints stemming from the human rights violations during his rule, and he was kept under house arrest in London from October 1998 until he was freed in March because of his declining health.

Pinochet's words were met with caution.

''If he is moving toward expressing some kind of pain for all that happened under his government, that would be encouraging,'' said Ricardo Hormazabal, president of the pro-government Christian Democratic Party, Chile's largest.

Sen. Hernan Larrain, a strong Pinochet supporter, said Pinochet's words ''show that he is trying to contribute to peace in Chile.'' The government's chief spokesman, Claudio Huepe, said only: ''His responsibility is clear. He had full control of the army and the government.''

In his brief message Friday, Pinochet also made an appeal for unity among Chileans, who remain deeply divided as a result of his dictatorship. Saying his arrest in London brought him suffering and sorrow, he said: ''I offer all that to God so unity can be achieved in this Chile that I so much love.''

Pinochet said he taped the message instead of attending the dinner in Santiago because doctors do not allow him to go out after 6 p.m.

The ex-dictator is recovering from acute pneumonia. On Saturday, he appeared briefly at the main entrance to his heavily guarded suburban Santiago home to acknowledge greetings from supporters on his birthday.

Pinochet, using a walking cane and aided by bodyguards, appeared to walk with difficulty but smiled broadly and raised his left arm as he received a large white birthday cake. He had not been seen in public in weeks.

-------- space

Russia Starts Lost Satellite Probe

Associated Press
November 25, 2000 Filed at 6:48 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Russia-Lost-Satellite.html

MOSCOW (AP) -- A preliminary investigation into the loss of an American commercial satellite indicated that launch operations were performed properly, a Russian military official said Saturday.

The QuickBird 1 was launched from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in northern Russia on Tuesday. It was the first of two satellites the Longmont, Colo.-based company Earth Watch planned to launch on Russian rockets.

The Russian Kosmos-3 rocket carrying the satellite ascended without trouble, but controllers lost contact with it.

A preliminary analysis showed that Plesetsk personnel involved in the launch performed properly, Col. Ilshat Baichurin, head of the Russian Strategic Missile Forces' press service, told the Interfax news agency.

Plesetsk is under the jurisdiction of the Strategic Missile Forces.

Earlier, Interfax said specialists at the Russian Aerospace Agency believe the second stage of the rocket shut down too early and that the satellite would likely plunge back into the Earth's atmosphere.

Baichurin said a commission including specialists from the Russian Aerospace Agency and the Defense Ministry would continue the investigation.

U.S. companies often use Russian space facilities to launch commercial satellites. The rockets are usually considered reliable and a good bargain compared with European and American competitors.

---

U.S. man believes he will be space tourist

USA Today
11/25/00- Updated 09:57 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/world/nwssat07.htm

STAR CITY, Russia (AP) - For years, people have talked of traveling to space as tourists, but it has only been talk - until now.

Dennis Tito, who started dreaming of space flight when he watched Sputnik's launch as a teen-ager, who worked as a rocket scientist charting paths to planets, then switched to investing and became a multimillionaire, has a ticket to ride.

The fit, 60-year-old Californian has left his 30,000-square-foot Pacific Palisades mansion for two rooms in the Star City cosmonaut training center in Russia to prepare for the launch, which could come early next year.

He has deposited millions of dollars - each one worth 28 rubles - in an escrow account, to be released to the cash-strapped Russian space authorities the moment he is launched as the first space tourist, but not a millisecond before.

That's all in his contract, his ticket.

''The key is launch,'' Tito said recently during an interview in Star City. ''All they have to do is light the rockets and the escrow opens up and they get all the money. And it's a lot of money. ... There's a real strong incentive, I think, for the Russians to fly me.''

But the question remains: Which space station will he fly to?

There's a chance, however slight, it will be a turn-out-the-lights mission in January to the Russian Space Agency's abandoned Mir. A suicide dive is planned for February, and a crew will be sent beforehand only if a problem in preparations arises.

More likely it will be a taxi ride to the newly occupied, NASA-led international space station Alpha. In April, the attached Soyuz capsule, the crew's lifeboat, needs to be replaced.

Tito says the pendulum has swung toward Alpha in light of Russia's recent decision to ditch Mir. Either way, if he hasn't left Earth by June 30, 2001, the deal's off. That's also in his contract with the Russians.

''I just hope this doesn't become some kind of a political mess between the two agencies or the two countries,'' he says with a sigh at the end of the training day, weary from the uncertainty surrounding his promised mission, not from the work.

A clash of titans, though, may be coming.

Yuri Semyonov, president and general designer of Russia's RSC Energia corporation, says he's committed to honoring Tito's contract.

He doesn't need NASA's or anyone else's permission to launch Tito on a Soyuz capsule to Mir, or to the international space station if Mir can be decommissioned by autopilot, Semyonov says huffily. NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin finds the whole matter distasteful. It's wrong, he contends, to peddle spaceship seats to rich guys looking for fun.

''I can't tell the Russians what to do. They're a sovereign program, a sovereign nation,'' Goldin says. ''But we do have a part to play in it because the lives, the safety of the astronauts are at stake,'' along with the future of the space station.

The NASA chief worries that Tito's deal could spur ticket demand for the international space station. And yet, he says, spare seats on Russian Soyuz rockets should go to European or Japanese astronauts who have been training for years, not to wealthy ''spectators.''

The would-be space tourist insists he's more than a spectator.

The oldest child of working-class Italian immigrants became smitten with space the same way many did: with the launch of the first space satellite, the Soviet Union's Sputnik, in 1957.

''That opened the Space Age,'' he says, his eyes bright with the recollection. ''To have experienced the excitement of seeing the first Earth satellite and then at the same time experiencing the fear that the Soviet Union was way ahead of us in technology ... what I saw when I was 17 led me to enroll in aerospace engineering the next year.''

Tito ended up at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., in 1964, plotting the flight paths for NASA's Mariner probes to Mars and Venus. During that time, he once called the space agency to get information on becoming an astronaut, but it never went beyond that single phone call.

Eventually, he put his dream on hold and changed course.

Quitting his $15,000-a-year lab job to start his own investment business, he made his first million before he turned 40. His firm, Wilshire Associates, is a powerhouse that manages more than $10 billion in assets. At his quarters in the cosmonaut complex, a computer chirps constantly with e-mail messages from his home office in Santa Monica, Calif.

Even as he built his business, though, the idea of space travel remained with him.

In 1991, the now wealthy Tito, in Russia on business, found himself checking out the ''guest cosmonaut'' program, under which a Japanese TV reporter and a British chemist flew to Mir for a price. Tito was interested in participating, but the Soviet Union's collapse prevented that from happening.

Then, earlier this year, he got a call from MirCorp, the Amsterdam-based firm trying to raise money to keep the space station going, with commercial applications in mind. MirCorp eventually signed ''Survivor'' producer Mark Burnett for a ''Destination Mir'' series. And ''Titanic'' director James Cameron expressed interest in a trip to Mir, but did not put down any money.

Would Tito be interested, MirCorp wondered, in flying to a resurrected Mir?

In April, MirCorp's bigwigs went to his home in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles and, within 15 minutes, a deal was clinched.

Tito, who's divorced with three children in their 20s, won't say how much he's paying for the one- to two-week space adventure. MirCorp's list price: $20 million.

Recalling the deal as he sits amid the Russian woods, more than an hour's drive from Moscow, Tito says his willingness to undergo months of rigorous training - he's taking a break to go home for Thanksgiving - shows his serious intentions.

Day after day at Star City, morning until evening is spent cramming. Besides classwork, Tito has endured eight times the force of Earth's gravity in the centrifuge and spent considerable time in a Soyuz mock-up.

''It's not a prison or anything,'' Tito said in early November, sitting in his Star City apartment. ''But it's a far cry from someone of my living standard would have.''

How many rooms are there in his Pacific Palisades home, by comparison?

''I never even counted them,'' he says. ''It's 30,000 square feet on nine acres with a guest house and a pool house, a running track. It's probably one of the biggest houses in the city.''

Trappings of success aside, Tito insists he's not ''just a wealthy guy who's looking for kicks.''

He stresses: ''I'm not crazy. ... I haven't let the success go to my head. I've let the success say: Look, let's take my life in more places. Let's make life more fulfilling.''

To be launched from the same pad where Sputnik soared would be especially gratifying, since it's Sputnik that motivated him 43 years ago.

''I could just see myself lying on my deathbed at 90,'' Tito says, ''and saying, 'Yeah, what a life. You did it all. You made the full circle.' ''

There's nothing wrong with civilians shelling out cash for the opportunity to fly to space, says Alex Roland, a former NASA historian who teaches at Duke University. But to Mir - scene of an intense fire and near-catastrophic collision in 1997 and uninhabited since June? (The fate of Mir appears to be sealed: Russia's cabinet decided on Nov. 16 to abandon the space station and let it fall into the Pacific in February on its 15th birthday.)

''To think people would line up to pay big money to get on the Titanic like that ...,'' Roland says. Still, he called Tito's ''an open contract among consenting adults.''

NASA astronaut Ken Bowersox, who served as the backup for international space station skipper Bill Shepherd, considers it money well spent.

''It's not like the money is just going to waste,'' Bowersox notes. ''That money is going to go into the space program and it's going to pay for people over here, it's going to pay salaries. ... He's supporting the program and that helps us.''

Some at NASA worry about Tito's physical ability to handle a space trip. If anything goes wrong, the safety of the entire crew could be jeopardized by this cosmonaut-come-lately.

''He meets the parameters,'' Semyonov responds, noting Tito had to pass all the cosmonaut medical tests.

Short, slim and bald, Tito looks years younger than 60. Evidence of a healthy lifestyle is everywhere in his Star City apartment: worn running shoes, whole-wheat pasta, organic tomato sauce, soy protein.

He says he was inspired by John Glenn's return to orbit at age 77 in 1998: ''If he wasn't too old, I'm not too old.'' Yet he quickly notes, ''I'll be the oldest person to fly the first time. The oldest rookie.'' Tito insists he won't be shattered if the Russians break their contract and he never makes it to space.

''The way I look at it is, every day counts and every day I'm learning about manned space flight. I'm learning about systems. I'm not sacrificing anything in terms of my business. My business is trucking along.

''I'm learning how to be alone. I'm learning how a different society works. I'm meeting astronauts and cosmonauts. I'm living in a spartan environment and learning that I don't need all this wealth and if I didn't have this wealth, I'd still be happy.

''Oh, I've already won.''

---

Associated Press
November 25, 2000
Today In History

Today is Sunday, Nov. 26, the 331st day of 2000. There are 35 days left in the year.

On this date:

In 1965, France launched its first satellite, sending a 92-pound capsule into orbit.

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

THE ABSENTEE BALLOTS
A Tactical Change in Bush Lawsuit Over Military Ballots

New York Times
November 26, 2000
By MICHAEL COOPER
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/26/politics/26ABSE.html

TALLAHASSEE, Fla., Nov. 25 - After bludgeoning Democrats in the court of public opinion for a week with accusations that they had tried to disqualify overseas military ballots, Republicans abruptly withdrew one suit over the ballots from a court of law today before filing four new ones.

Lawyers for Gov. George W. Bush began filing suits in five counties late today to force them to review military absentee ballots before Sunday's deadline for certification of a winner.

As Vice President Al Gore ate into the extremely narrow Bush lead in other recounts, lawyers filed suits with court clerks in Hillsborough, Okaloosa, Pasco and Polk counties. A Bush spokeswoman, Mindy Tucker, at first said a suit was also filed in Orange County but later said she learned it was prepared but would be filed early Sunday.

No other county-level suits are planned "at this time," she said.

Just hours before a judge in Leon County was expected to rule in their suit to reinstate absentee military ballots in more than a dozen Florida counties, lawyers for Mr. Bush said, in effect, that they had already won their point: some counties were counting military ballots that had been disqualified.

George Meros, a lawyer for Mr. Bush, said that he deemed that suit successful because the pressure it brought to bear on some of the canvassing boards caused them to reconsider the absentee ballots and count more for Mr. Bush.

"Several of these boards were already doing what we requested," Mr. Meros said. "We did not want the suit to delay or hamper their counting of the ballots."

An unofficial tally by The Associated Press indicates that the recounted military ballots netted Mr. Bush 45 more votes.

But lawyers for some of the canvassing boards named in the suit in Leon County said that they believed Mr. Bush's lawyers dropped the suit because they feared they would lose. "They saw the writing on the wall," said Wayne Malaney, a lawyer representing the supervisor of elections in Collier County. "Rather than putting themselves in the position of having to appeal a decision they didn't like, they punted."

Indeed, in a hearing on Friday, Judge L. Ralph Smith of the Leon County Circuit Court said Mr. Bush's lawyers had failed to present any evidence that the local elections officials were violating the law when they rejected ballots for such reasons as lack of proper postmarks, dates and signatures.

But in court papers filed today, Mr. Bush's lawyers continued to exert pressure on those boards which have not decided to re-examine their absentee ballots. The lawyers threatened to file suits in other courts "against those defendant canvassing boards that continue to unfairly deny men and women in the armed forces their right to participate in the election of the next president of the United States and commander in chief."

Ronald Labasky, an attorney who represented two elections supervisors in the Leon County case, said that any new lawsuits filed by the Bush camp may be an effort to find a more sympathetic judge.

The back-and-forth over the overseas military ballots has gone on since Nov. 17, when Florida's absentee ballots were opened and counted.

Democrats sent a memorandum to their lawyers in each of Florida's 67 counties, explaining their understanding of which ballots should legally be counted and which should not. Republicans seized on the memo to suggest that the Democrats were trying to throw out military votes, the majority of which went for Mr. Bush.

A full-scale public relations war ensued. It was in part an effort by Republicans to suggest that the Democrats were unpatriotically trying to keep uniformed men and women from having their votes counted. And it was in part a precautionary measure on their part to try to secure enough additional votes for Mr. Bush to offset any gains Mr. Gore might make as recounts continued in two heavily Democratic counties.

Early on, the Republicans enlisted retired Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, an ardent Bush supporter, to complain that it was "a very sad day in our country" when service members find that "because of some technicality out of their control they are denied the right to vote for the president of the United States, who will be their commander in chief."

There was confusion over whether the absentee ballots needed a postmark. Republicans were particularly outraged by the suggestion that they do, noting that military mail can be sent without a postmark. In many of the more conservative counties with large military populations, the canvassing boards accepted military ballots with no postmarks. Some were thrown out, but only if they had more serious violations of state law, like a missing voter signature.

Then the Democrats retreated. Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, their vice-presidential nominee, last weekend urged that the excluded military ballots be counted. Florida's Democratic attorney general, Robert A. Butterworth, issued a memorandum explaining that military ballots did not necessarily need a postmark to be counted: they were legal, he said, as long as they either had a postmark or a dated signature.

But the Republicans kept on pressing the issue, and Mr. Bush himself went on television this week to proclaim, "Our men and women in uniform overseas should not lose their right to vote."

Then the Republicans filed suit. Judge Smith, in a hearing Friday, held out little hope that he would rule in their favor, complaining that he had heard no evidence that the local canvassing boards were failing to follow the law when they disqualified the ballots. But even before the case was heard, the publicity had led a number of canvassing boards to reconsider the disqualified ballots. Of the 14 counties that were originally named in the lawsuit, at least six have decided to count votes that they had previously disqualified.

The hearing on Friday underscored just how tangled the Florida election law governing absentee ballots is.

One state law says that only ballots with a valid postmark should be counted, while another code states that ballots can be counted as long as they have either a postmark or are signed and dated before the date of the election. (One of Mr. Bush's lawyers, Fred H. Bartlit, suggested that some ballots should be counted even if they bore neither a postmark or a date, because many absentee ballots have no space where a date is requested.)

And the suit threatened to open a legal hornet's nest that neither Mr. Bush's lawyers nor the county canvassing boards they were suing appeared prepared for: Judge Smith noted repeatedly that one Florida law requires that all absentee ballots be received by 7 p.m. on the day of the election, while an administrative rule allows absentee ballots to be counted as long as they are received within 10 days of the election.

In this election, all of the counties in Florida followed the 10-day rule. But Judge Smith noted that state laws usually take precedence over administrative rules. Mr. Bush's lawyers noted that the rule was adopted to settle a federal lawsuit against Florida's elections laws, and said that it should be considered to have the force of federal law behind it.

-------- OTHER

-------- environment

On a Student Field Trip, With the Planet at Stake

New York Times
November 25, 2000
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/25/science/25WARM.html

THE HAGUE, Nov. 24 - If it had been a normal November, Daniel Jones would have stayed at Hunter College through the Thanksgiving break instead of heading home to Kalamazoo, Mich. "There's a lot of stuff I want to do in New York City," said Mr. Jones, a 19-year-old sophomore who had never been to the city before last year.

But this was no normal November. The fate of the planet was at stake, and Mr. Jones had a chance to jump in and try to save it.

Months earlier, he had seen a bulletin from an environmental group inviting more than 200 college students to come to this Dutch city to help influence negotiators who were going to tussle for two weeks over the details of a proposed treaty to fight global warming.

And now he was here, with an emergency cell phone number scribbled on his forearm in case he was arrested, with a pad full of notes on where Senator Larry Craig's aide was headed, when the reception put on by nuclear power lobbyists was scheduled, what restaurant the delegates from the United States frequented for breakfast.

He was on the inside.

"It's a beautiful thing," Mr. Jones said, cracking a shy, sly smile. "It's just so great - like college pranks, but with a difference."

Over the course of a week here, he and more than 220 students from dozens of states had the ultimate class in environmental education, some of it uplifting and some of it a sobering reality check.

Their goal was to serve as a goad, a conscience, a jab in the ribs of the lobbyists and delegates from 170 countries, conveying the message that all the minutiae they were debating - articles 3.14 and 4.8, the emissions targets, loopholes and disputed phrases marked by brackets - really mattered to somebody.

The treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, was conceived in Japan in 1997 after a decade of debate on how to curb the flow of heat- trapping greenhouse gases from cars and power plants and burning forests.

A century-long buildup of these gases, mainly carbon dioxide from fossil fuels, was thought to be raising the planet's thermostat. If enacted, the treaty would require dozens of industrialized countries to cut emissions of warming gases by 2012 to at least 5 percent below where they stood in 1990.

Until the meeting here, the Kyoto treaty was essentially a new, high- stakes sport, but with no rule book, no field boundaries, no penalties.

Greenpeace USA, concerned that this was going to be another in a long line of inconsequential conclaves full of huddling dark-suited diplomats, decided to inject a big dose of adrenaline. And it wouldn't hurt to foster a new generation of activists, said John Passacantando, who became the group's executive director this fall.

"The environmental movement these days is mainly a bunch of 30- somethings or 40-somethings," he explained as he assembled the students this week for a news conference and photo session with journalists from Bangladesh, Japan, Australia and a dozen other countries. "We need a back bench."

Mr. Jones was one of about 1,000 students who sent in applications, replete with essay questions, for the 225 openings. He lacked money to cover the $400 airfare, and sent a letter to Hunter's dean of student affairs, Sylvia Fishman. "Her only question was how much did I need?" he said. "She's amazing."

The students' days began at 8:30 a.m., as they roused groggily at the youth hostel near the city's central rail station.

One morning early last week, dozens of dreadlocked, pierced, tie-dyed young people - and a few in jackets and ties, including Mr. Jones - gathered for a breakfast of nut-laced whole grain bread, granola and strong coffee and a dose of strategizing.

Chris Ball, a Greenpeace official from Washington with the perky air of a camp counselor, strode to a podium and went over some of the highlights of the days ahead, which would include all manner of theatrics and gentle monkey wrenching. He then asked for "quick downloads" from participants about their experiences so far.

A student from Northern California described how he and several others had presented a "head in the sand" award outside a news conference by Senator Craig, Republican of Idaho, and Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, who had just finished describing why they opposed the treaty. The award was five Barbie dolls buried upside down in a box of sand.

Across the breakfast room, another student stood and described how he and more than 20 others had sat in on a presentation by a European organization called Young Generation in Nuclear, which was at the climate conference to promote nuclear power as an alternative energy source that produces no greenhouse gas emissions.

The young Greenpeace campaigners did not share that view. "We challenged them with question after question," the student said. "It was kind of depressing that someone our age could be so backward."

A Greenpeace official told them that a delegation of eight representatives from Congress had arrived. "Six out of eight got a zero" on the League of Conservation Voters' report card ranking votes on environmental bills, the official said.

"Hissssssssssssss," came the communal response.

The students were divided into more than a dozen groups, each focused on a different task: attracting news media attention with catchy demonstrations, dogging the tracks of lobbyists for oil companies and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, talking with American negotiators, who were seen as seeking loopholes, or delegates from countries that had strong environmental policies.

Mr. Jones was in group 13. His task was "research and dissemination," in other words, intelligence gathering and communicating the latest tactics to all the other groups.

Every hour or so, in a basement room tucked away from the bustling action in the rest of the sprawling convention center, he and others convened to plot moves.

They donned Santa Claus hats and handed out stockings full of coal - the dirtiest of the fossil fuels - taken by a Greenpeace team a week earlier from a freighter in the nearby harbor of Rotterdam.

While doing so, they sang modified Christmas carols, including a greenhouse version of "Jingle Bells": "Hot as hell, oceans swell, warmer every day, oh, what fun it is to fry in a world with climate change."

One night, Mr. Jones and Janet Sawin, a graduate student at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University, jumped on a tram to head to the elegant Des Indies Hotel, where the International Nuclear Forum was the host of a reception for Republican congressmen.

Mr. Jones, playing the role of decoy, strode straight into the crowd of tailored business suits wearing his red suspenders and a half-dozen brightly colored pins with strident environmental messages.

Displaying his sly smile, Mr. Jones was swiftly escorted away, but this created an opening for Ms. Sawin, who was wearing an elegant maroon dress and long scarf - and who quickly cornered Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. Earlier in the day, Mr. Sensenbrenner, Republican of Wisconsin and chairman of the House Science Committee, had blasted the treaty as a waste of time that would never be supported by Congress.

Screwing up her courage, Ms. Sawin began peppering him with questions and criticisms of nuclear power and of Republican opposition to the treaty.

At first, Mr. Sensenbrenner engaged in the debate, but he slowly realized this was a no-win situation and soon made for the exit. Ms. Sawin smiled.

By late Wednesday night, with the negotiators making little progress, 80 of the students were starting to feel discouraged and decided to begin a fast that would take the place of the Thanksgiving feast they might otherwise be enjoying back home with friends and families.

On Thanksgiving, they sat in the restaurants around the convention center staring at empty white plates, with armbands that read, "Fasting: Ask Me Why."

Three of them sat at a table with two White House officials who picked self-consciously at their lunches but gamely conversed with the students.

Amanda Long, a Wesleyan University student from Wappingers Falls, N.Y., said, "The U.S. should really take the lead on these things."

John Gibson, a member of the American delegation, said that the negotiators were doing the best they could, but that they had to find some compromise that would protect the environment while satisfying the Senate, which must approve a treaty by a two-thirds majority.

"It wouldn't do the environment much good to sign an agreement that will never be ratified," he said.

Late Thanksgiving night, the students put on a performance of "The Lorax," the environmental parable by Dr. Seuss. At the same time, an energy industry group held a reception in the basement, serving sliced turkey and cranberry sauce while a tape of Monday night's National Football League game between the Redskins and the Rams played on a projection television.

Then it was time for one of the final crunch sessions, with the conference president calling a late-night session to order.

Around 1 a.m. today, as bleary delegates filed into the meeting, Mr. Jones, Ms. Sawin and a half-dozen other students joined a gantlet of campaigners and lobbyists handing out fliers pinpointing problems with the latest negotiating positions.

The talks had developed a momentum that largely shrugged off their efforts. Most of the leaflets would end up on the floor.

"The big issue here should be the environment," Ms. Sawin said, "but it's at the bottom of the list."

Their 24-hour fast could have ended an hour earlier, but none of the students seemed to be thinking about food.

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

U.S. and I.M.F. Welcome Salvador's Adoption of Dollar

New York Times
November 25, 2000
By JOSEPH KAHN
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/25/business/25SALV.html

El Salvador's decision to adopt the United States dollar as its currency won immediate support from the United States Treasury Department and the International Monetary Fund yesterday, reflecting a growing trend in Latin America to embrace the dollar as official tender.

President Francisco Flores said on Wednesday that he would introduce a law that would fix the colon, the local currency, to the dollar and allow free circulation of the dollar in the economy. The move, if approved by the nation's Congress, is intended to end the sharp swings in the value of the local currency against the dollar, which are viewed as discouraging foreign investment and complicating management of the economy.

Officials said the colon would also remain legal tender.

Earlier this year, Ecuador scrapped its local currency, the sucre, for the dollar. Panama uses the dollar as official tender, and Argentina has pegged the value of its peso to the dollar, one for one.

There is a continuing debate in other Latin American economies, most notably Mexico, about whether to allow the American currency to replace local money.

Some economists say such moves enhance financial stability and may help attract foreign business because investors are reassured of getting their money out without suffering a foreign exchange loss.

Critics say that so-called dollarization makes little sense because it turns over an important tool used in macro-economic management to the Federal Reserve of the United States. The Fed uses its control of interest rates to stimulate or cool the American economy, but does not directly consider the needs of other nations that use the dollar.

International financial authorities have generally remained neutral about the advisability of small nations' adopting a larger nation's currency as their own. But both the Treasury Department and the I.M.F. welcomed El Salvador's decision.

"Combined with a strong economic policy framework, this step should help contribute to financial stability and economic growth in El Salvador and its further integration into the global economy," Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers said in a statement.

El Salvador, a nation of five million people, has not grown as fast as many of its neighbors in recent years. Its economy expanded at a 2.5 percent pace in 1999, about one-third of the rate of growth in neighboring Costa Rica and Nicaragua.

Horst Köhler, managing director of the I.M.F., said dollarization could help stoke economic growth, though he also urged the nation to improve its banking system and enact some proposed budgetary changes to accompany the monetary change. Mr. Köhler said the I.M.F. would consider making a loan to El Salvador to back the transition to the dollar.

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Expansion Continues in Asia, but I.M.F. Warns of Slowdown

New York Times
November 25, 2000
By MARK LANDLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/25/business/25HONG.html

HONG KONG, Nov. 24 - For most of the year, Asia's economies have performed a sort of levitating act, growing by double-digit rates month after month even as economists predicted that they would fall to earth.

That dichotomy was on vivid display here today. Hong Kong reported that its economic output grew 10.4 percent in the third quarter, and it raised its projection for full-year growth to 10 percent from 8.5 percent.

Yet a block away, the International Monetary Fund warned in a news conference that Asian economies could be hit hard by soaring oil prices and turmoil in the financial markets. The fund said a $5 increase in the price of a barrel of oil could slow economic growth in Asian countries next year.

"The prospects for growth in 2001 have weakened," said David Robinson, assistant director for research at the monetary fund.

"There has also been increased political instability" not just in Asia but around the world, Mr. Robinson said today.

Several Asian countries - notably the Philippines, Taiwan and Indonesia - have been gripped by political tumult. President Joseph Estrada of the Philippines was impeached last week, while Chen Shui- bian, the president of Taiwan, is fighting off a recall vote.

Even in more stable countries, like Malaysia and South Korea, Mr. Robinson said the fund was concerned about the haphazard pace of economic change. In many countries, the banks and corporations remain financially shaky. And in Korea, he said, the heavily indebted conglomerates are still a problem.

But Mr. Robinson acknowledged that the weaknesses have not yet affected economic performances of the countries. On Tuesday, South Korea reported a 9.2 percent increase in its third-quarter output - beating the estimates of most analysts.

Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore have also beaten expectations, while Hong Kong's growth rate was nearly three percentage points above the median forecast of 12 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.

Like other Asian economies, Hong Kong has been buoyed by an unquenchable appetite for its exports, principally in the United States. Exports surged 17.7 percent in the third quarter. Hong Kong has done a particularly booming business in repackaging and shipping goods from China.

Consumer spending in Hong Kong rose by a much less impressive 5.6 percent, as retail sales slackened from the second quarter. Consumer prices fell 2 percent.

Ian K. Perkin, chief economist at the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce, said the double-digit growth in Hong Kong and other Asian countries masked their underlying condition. While export growth has been torrid, domestic demand has remained tenuous.

"We haven't built up our domestic economies yet," Mr. Perkin said. "The recovery has relied almost completely on export growth.

"If consumer spending slows down in the states, it will have a devastating effect on Asia," Mr. Perkin said. "2001 could be a crunch year."

Mr. Robinson of the monetary fund was also wary about next year.

In October, the fund projected that the world economy would grow 4.2 percent in 2001, while Asia as a region would grow 6.6 percent. Today, Mr. Robinson said the growth rate could be lower though he would not say by how much.

A main culprit, he said, is the dependence of many Asian countries on imported oil. Oil prices have risen $5 a barrel since the fund issued its twice-yearly economic outlook in October.

Asia has little control over oil, but Mr. Robinson said the region could improve its economic prospects by reducing its political turmoil.

"It is important that the political uncertainties be resolved as quickly as possible," he said.

One bright spot is China, which is on track to record 8 percent growth in 2000. Mr. Robinson said the main question facing China's leaders was whether they needed to spend billions on public projects to stimulate an economy that seemed quite stimulated on its own.

Like Mr. Perkin, Mr. Robinson said Asia's future depended in large part on the United States. But he disputed those who predicted drastically slowing growth - the so-called hard landing - for the American economy.

"The chances of that happening are less than 40 percent," he said, "substantially less."

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Behind the Success Story, a Vulnerable Police Force

New York Times
November 25, 2000
By KEVIN FLYNN
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/25/nyregion/25POLI.html

Murders in New York City have been cut by nearly two-thirds since their peak in 1990, and violent crime over all has fallen to levels not seen since the 1960's. Nonviolent crimes like auto theft have also shrunk by huge margins. Thousands of people who fled what they considered a dangerous and dirty city have been replaced by families who regard the city as safe and revitalized.

Together, these crime-fighting achievements, and their role in the turnaround of the city, amount to a story of sensational success for the New York City Police Department and for Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who has wasted few chances to trumpet it.

But quietly, inside station house locker rooms and recruiting offices, a more troubling tale of the department is also unfolding.

The number of officers leaving the force, including scores of its most senior supervisors, is surging. The difficulty in attracting men and women to join the 41,000- officer department has become acute, and the latest classes graduating from the department's training academy have shown signs of being more prone to mistakes or misconduct.

Moreover, the special tax funds and federal grants that helped underwrite a huge expansion of the force during the 1990's have dried up, or are about to, raising the specter that the cost of maintaining the largest police force in city history will become an unwieldy burden if the economy slows.

The department's personnel struggles and the looming uncertainties about its financing, then, are posing unsettling questions about the future of one of the city's essential institutions.

The simultaneous realities - far-reaching triumphs and deepening institutional problems - make for a remarkable civic incongruity: a police force at the top of its game and yet perhaps more vulnerable than at any time in years.

Consider, for instance, what many regard as the department's internal cracks, as disclosed in department records and interviews with police and union officials:

•More than 1,700 officers have left the department this year through retirement or resignation, a third more than last year. Of those, roughly half left before qualifying for a full pension. Further, because of a departmental demographic bubble, the overall number of officers eligible to retire will triple next year.

•Three times as many captains have left the department during the fiscal year that began in July than left during the same period last year. Over the next five years, more than half of the force's 2,100 captains and lieutenants will be eligible to retire. The departure of senior officers threatens to accelerate a recent trend in which the experience level of senior supervisors has dipped. Three years ago, more than half of the force's captains had 20 years of experience or more; today, less than a third do.

•The number of people taking the test to become police officers has fallen precipitously in recent years, to 12,000 in 2000 from 32,000 in 1996.

•The rate at which recruits have been cited for infractions during their time in the academy tripled between 1997 and 2000.

A range of forces are behind the department's current challenges. The number of officers eligible to retire is climbing. A thriving economy has made it harder to lure candidates, especially when the starting salary is less than what a police officer makes in Bridgeport, Conn. The pressure to produce ever-declining crime statistics has left some of the department's most experienced commanders weary of ever-rising expectations. The perception that many citizens, and the news media, do not appreciate them, or even scorn them, has left officers demoralized.

Indeed, the growing number of departures and the dwindling number of applicants have raised this question: Is a department that expanded to meet a growing crime problem about to backslide in both size and supervisory experience, leaving the city more vulnerable?

"In 10, maybe 5 years, the consequences of losing so many good people are going to be felt," said Eli B. Silverman, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and author of "NYPD Battles Crime," (Northeastern University Press, 1999). "The consequence is that you may become far less effective as crimefighters, and the bad guys may reassume their ascendancy."

Others are even more blunt.

"It seems the next mayor is being set up," said John Driscoll, president of the Captains Endowment Association, the union that represents captains and other supervisors. "The guy can't succeed. The problems being left behind are mind boggling. Morale is so low. People are leaving and there is no one to replace them."

Police Commissioner Bernard B. Kerik, who took over the department three months ago, has tried to address issues undermining the appeal of the job. He has said pay should be raised and ordered quick renovations to improve conditions at often decaying station houses. He has begun having dinners in his conference room with officers from various commands, prodding them to discuss their frustrations.

"Do they have issues?" Mr. Kerik said. "Yeah, they have some issues. But, you know what, they are not like major issues, and they are issues that can be addressed."

Mr. Kerik said much of the grumbling grew from the sort of cynicism that is endemic to the department, especially during contract talks, which are taking place now.

"If you look at the overall shape of the department, it is in good shape," he said. "Can it be tweaked? Yes. Could you focus in on certain things in certain areas to make it better? Yes. But that doesn't mean that it wasn't working in the first place."

Better Tactics, and Results

Many analysts agree that the department is a more effective crime- fighting agency than it was when Mr. Giuliani took office in 1994.

For decades, the analysts said, the department's approach to crime had been largely reactive. Resources were focused on responding to 911 calls. Many officers viewed crime as the outcome of social forces beyond their control. Commanders were evaluated more on their arrest numbers, or effort, than the crime rate, or results. Large numbers of officers never worked weekends, when much of the crime occurred.

Mr. Giuliani's police managers are credited with changing much of that. They created a system of accountability for commanders, mapped crime trends to detect patterns and promoted people on the basis of results, not seniority. They made sure suspects were questioned in case they knew something about an unsolved crime. They changed the way officers were deployed, placing more in narcotics units that were assigned to high-crime areas.

The police concentrated on violent crimes, while refocusing attention on minor, quality-of-life offenses that had often been overlooked. Misdemeanors not only bred a sense of disorder that could invite more crime, but also were often committed by serious criminals who had otherwise escaped arrest.

Most important, perhaps, the Giuliani team re-energized the rank and file, said Thomas Reppetto, a crime analyst and co-author of "NYPD: A City and Its Police" (John Macrae/Holt, 2000).

"The cops got what they had long sought," he said. "They regained the freedom to go out and be cops, to arrest criminals instead of driving past them."

Another Side of Success The flip side of some of these strategies has been evident for some time. Residents in neighborhoods both affluent and impoverished have complained about what they interpreted as overly aggressive police work. What was quality-of-life enforcement for the police was often seen as harassment by residents, and misdemeanor arrests swamped the city's criminal courts with defendants of every race and nearly every economic class.

The shooting death of Amadou Diallo in the doorway of his Bronx home spurred outrage and a debate about whether the encounter was a result of reckless or racist patrol tactics, as some critics argued, or an isolated incident in a department that is otherwise showing greater restraint in using force. The torture of Abner Louima in a Brooklyn station house also prompted charges that the police had become an arrogant and sometimes violent presence.

Federal prosecutors in both Brooklyn and Manhattan are now weighing whether to push for the appointment of monitors to oversee some of the department's operations, including its disciplinary system.

But largely lost in the louder, more familiar disputes has been an appreciation of what is taking place inside the department itself: a damaging drop in morale, a rising tide of departures and a worsening struggle to recruit new candidates.

Opinion is divided over how closely this internal uproar is tied to Mr. Giuliani's leadership.

The $3.2 billion budget he has afforded the department is its largest ever and has clearly been vital to its impressive work. Mr. Kerik said many officers also appreciated the support Mr. Giuliani showed for officers in disputed incidents.

"When the mayor doesn't support the cops of this city," Mr. Kerik said, "you are not going to get worse morale than that."

But the contract Mr. Giuliani awarded the police several years ago was considered miserly by many officers because it contained a two- year wage freeze. They cite the low pay and pressure to produce as reasons that they have chosen to end their career, eager to work for other police departments or to be paid better for their expertise, in the private sector.

"The deal was take back the streets and I will do something for you," said one commander with more than 20 years on the force. "It was quid pro quo, and it was done, and then nothing happened and the cops got zero, zero."

The sentiments of those departing can be just as grim.

"Most of the people that were in my academy class are getting out," said Detective William O'Connor, a 19-year veteran. "The only ones who are staying are people who may have a child with an illness and they need the coverage."

'Nothing Was Good Enough'

Capt. John Costello, a 30-year veteran, and Officer Philip Halpin, who had just completed his third year, both left the Police Department this year. Captain Costello chose retirement. Officer Halpin took a better- paying job with the Suffolk County Police Department on Long Island.

"Whether I should stay or not was not even a thought," said Officer Halpin, who spent three years patrolling Brooklyn and quit one week after getting the Suffolk job. "I knew the N.Y.P.D. wasn't paying me what I was worth and that the working conditions and morale weren't going to get better."

Captain Costello's primary complaint was not pay, but what he viewed as the numbingly relentless demand to top his own arrest or summons numbers.

"Nothing was good enough," said Captain Costello, who had been a commander in the Vice Enforcement Division. In 1997, for example, he recalled being assigned to crack down on public drinking at the St. Patrick's Day parade. His officers were fortunate to stumble onto a large crowd of teenagers drinking in a plaza along Fifth Avenue and issued hundreds of summonses. The following year, though, the teenagers were not there.

Still, he said, he feared he would be chastised if his summons number dropped. So his plainclothes officers found themselves skulking in doorways. Any container in a paper bag was suspect, as was anyone with a plastic cup.

"You are so desperate to get these summonses, you are like sniffing their coffee," Captain Costello said.

These two former members of the force reflect the drain many fear is going on in the department.

A total of 937 members of the department have retired this year through October, compared with 736 during the same period last year. The increase stems in part from the fact that the number of officers eligible for retirement - those who have completed 20 years of service - rose sharply this year.

In the mid-1990's, very few officers became eligible for retirement because virtually none had been hired two decades earlier, during the city's fiscal crisis. Last year, for example, only 218 became eligible to retire. Even this year, only 411 officers who were hired in 1980 are scheduled to complete their 20th year. But next year the number jumps to 1,501. Over the next five years, a quarter of the force will become eligible to retire.

The surge in departures is not merely a matter of increased eligibility. The number of officers who have resigned this year before serving out their 20 years has also increased remarkably. Some 801 have left this year, compared with 570 during the same period last year, an increase of 46 percent.

Some left simply because they were disappointed in the job. Many took advantage of a new benefit, effective this year, that awards partial pensions to officers who leave with as few as five years on the force.

Police officials insist that, looking forward, most officers will stay, even those eligible to retire. But the signs do not look promising. A total of 1,508 officers left the department during the fiscal year that ended in June, or 47 percent more than the number police officials projected in a 1993 attrition study.

Certainly, many members of the rank and file believe an exodus is under way. In station houses, billboards are awash with retirement party notices. Officers check off the days to their departure on calendars tucked in their desks. Pension seminars are filled to overflowing.

"The only people who know how much time they have left," said one lieutenant in the Bronx, "are cops and prisoners."

Losing Experience at Top

The outflow can be measured in different ways.

For instance, Officer Halpin will hardly be the only former New York City officer who becomes a Suffolk County officer when he graduates from Suffolk's academy next March. A third of the 134 recruits in that academy are converts from the New York Police Department. And the Manhattan North homicide squad, which investigates murders north of 59th Street, lost 6 of 26 detectives this year, investigators said.

"We are losing so many senior people at the same time," said Thomas McKenna, who retired in June after 35 years. "It will be difficult for the young investigators to get the sort of on-the-job training that goes beyond what you might have learned in college."

Some of the urge to leave is economic. Even those who are retiring to an easy chair, not a second career, find that with tax breaks, their pensions nearly match their working salaries. And in some cases, the department's own policies appear to have given some supervisors an added incentive to leave.

Operation Condor, for example, an enforcement initiative financed through overtime, has raised the pay of some senior lieutenants and sergeants by more than 20 percent this year, officers and union officials said. As a result, several commanders and union officials said they knew officers who suddenly decided to retire because their pension would be calculated on the basis of their higher pay this year.

There, are, too, numerous seasoned supervisors who have left because of the pressure noted by Captain Costello.

But police officials, who describe the system they have set up as a meritocracy, say they enjoy broad public support in pushing for greater declines in crime. And Mr. Kerik said he had made a point of stressing that he expects supervisors to be civil and respectful when dealing with subordinates.

But so far this year, 85 officers who held the rank of captain or above have filed for retirement, according to police union officials. During all of last year, only 61 retired.

Police officials, asked if the departures might make for a more inexperienced tier of supervisors, said they were not worried. Supervisors with less time on the job, especially younger captains who came to the department better educated than their predecessors, are not necessarily less qualified, they said. Nonetheless, an official said Mr. Kerik was reviewing proposals to create additional financial incentives for officers who agree to stay past 20 years.

More Pay as Hotel Guard

Ernest Boyd was many of the things New York City looks for in a police officer. He was a mature man, 34, with a stable work record, a bachelor's degree in fine arts and a 97 average from the Police Academy. He was also a black man who would help to diversify a poorly integrated force.

But Mr. Boyd quit the force in April, after two months patrolling the streets of Brooklyn, saying he was disgusted with his salary.

To make more money, he said, he returned to his old job, as a security guard at the Marriott World Trade Center hotel, where from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. he watches the lobby, delivers packages and patrols the bathrooms. The $500 a week he takes home is more than the $411 he took home as a police officer, he said.

"I had to ask myself," he said, "do I want to hang around this neighborhood for five years and see what happens or make something of myself?"

Mr. Boyd's short tenure with the Police Department underscores the challenges it is facing in attracting and keeping new recruits.

In New York this month, only 12,000 people signed up to take the police test, despite an elaborate advertising campaign and many deadline extensions. Four years ago, the test takers numbered 32,000. And for the first time in memory, the department this fall came several hundred recruits short of filling its academy class.

The declining interest in police careers is a national problem, with many departments struggling to compete with an enticing private sector. Some, like Los Angeles, are operating several hundred officers short.

But the problem threatens to become similarly acute in New York, where $20 million in advertising over the past two years has not done much to drum up interest. For every person like Daniel Maher, 33, who gave up a teaching career last month to try police work, officials run into several candidates who will not take the job, even after they ace the entrance examination.

Eddie W. Santiago, for example, earned one of the 10 highest scores on his civil service exam in October 1999. But Mr. Santiago, 32, of Brooklyn, turned down the job. Although it paid better than his job as a typist for the United Nations, he said, "My mother was not so happy about my being a cop because it is so dangerous and they don't get respect from people."

A former chief, Aaron Rosenthal, said the mystique of the New York Police Department had faded for applicants. "At one time, when you contemplated a police job, you thought only of New York," he said. "It was like being recruited by scouts to play for the Yankees. It was more a calling than a job. Today it's strictly a job."

Many analysts said the primary obstacle to attracting more police candidates was pay. The salaries of New York officers now lag behind not only Nassau and Suffolk Counties, where a disparity with the city has long existed, but also places like Newark and Jersey City. A five-year Newark officer, for example, earns $60,000, or $20,000 more than his New York City counterpart.

"The lack of pay is pathetic," said Gerald W. Lynch, president of John Jay College, which monitors the job market for its graduates.

In the past seven years, largely owing to the pay differential, more than 400 New York officers have left for police jobs on Long Island. It has become so routine that officials in the village of Rockville Centre have been known to thank the city for training its officers.

"I say it in a positive sense," said Jack McKeon, the village police commissioner. "It's not meant to make fun of New York. It's just done to show the community what a quality product we have."

City officials say that salary comparisons alone do not measure the extent of compensation that New York officers receive through benefits like unlimited sick leave and pension supplements. One benefit, for instance, gives retired police officers a yearly bonus of $8,500 on top of their pensions.

But given the eroding interest in the job, critics have questioned whether the department will have to lower standards to gain recruits. Police officials reject that, noting that the average score on entrance exams has improved in recent years. But there are indications that some of the recruits in the last academy class of 1,321 had more difficulty in training than their predecessors.

For example, the number of disciplinary and rule infractions committed by that class, which graduated in October, was triple the number cited for the 1997 class. Similarly, 170 members of that class either dropped out or were dismissed, double the number in 1997.

Fears of Lower Standards

The age and education level of lower-ranking patrol officers have risen under Mr. Giuliani, whose administration raised the entry age from 20 to 22 and required new officers to have two years of college. But several weeks ago, to help with recruiting, the city dropped the minimum age by a year and said that applicants with two years as school safety officers or traffic enforcement agents did not need college.

Mr. Kerik said neither move had lowered standards, and that the increase in disciplinary infractions did not indicate a growing problem with new recruit classes. "I haven't seen standards drop at all," he said.

The city's recent recruiting campaigns have been as expensive as any in the country. This year, recruiters used $10 million to, among other things, visit seven military bases and to run their television ad more than 2,000 times. Teams of recruiters personally visited street corners and subway stations, focusing on neighborhoods where the residents were largely black or Hispanic.

The efforts have begun to attract a more diverse group of candidates, with 19 percent of the current academy class black and 28 percent Hispanic, the most minority recruits in history.

But in an unreleased report last summer, the Board of Visitors, a study panel appointed by Howard Safir, the police commissioner at the time, found that the department needed to hire more recruiters and do more long-range planning. The report warned that if recruitment continued to slump, the department would find itself unable to keep pace with attrition. "It is estimated," the board's report concluded, "that in the next five years there will be an attrition of thousands of officers."

That prospect does not loom as a calamity to critics who think the force has grown too large. In fact, the force has grown by a third since 1990, even as the number of city employees has dropped by 4 percent.

Maintaining the force at its current level is expensive, but the city has barely felt the cost, in part because of prosperous times and in part because some costs were underwritten by federal grants and an income tax surcharge that expired in 1998. The economic climate has grown cloudier, however, and federal money that offset the cost of hiring 4,300 officers, about 11 percent of the force, began to expire last year.

This year, the city is paying $214 million to cover the cost of those officers, according to figures from the Independent Budget Office, a city agency. Next year, the cost jumps to $300 million, a figure that will rise even higher if the city gives officers a raise, as anticipated.

If the economy falters, the cost of carrying so many officers could become a burden. On the flip side, Mr. Kerik said, the appeal of a stable civil service job with good benefits would only improve in the midst of economic trouble.

"When the economy is horrible, " said Mr. Kerik, "people are jumping on these jobs."

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Théodore Monod, Sahara-Loving Naturalist, Dies at 98

New York Times
November 25, 2000
By PAUL LEWIS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/25/national/25MONO.html

Théodore André Monod, a distinguished French naturalist and authority on the Sahara, died on Tuesday at a nursing home in Versailles, outside Paris. He was 98.

A member of the French Academy of Sciences and a professor at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, Dr. Monod discovered and gave his name to some 30 new species of plant and insect life, about 50 crustaceans and several fish.

During a lifetime spent studying the natural life of the Sahara, he developed an almost mystical relationship with its empty sands and drew spiritual strength from their vastness, once saying, "You go into the desert the way you enter religious life."

Paying tribute to his life and work, the French president, Jacques Chirac, called Dr. Monod "an immense humanist, a guide and a sage who reminds us at every moment that progress is nothing unless it is in the service of mankind."

The son and grandson of Protestant pastors, Dr. Monod said he decided to become a naturalist at the age of 5 after visiting the Jardin des Plantes near his family's home in Paris. He received a doctorate in science at the Sorbonne in 1922 and joined the National Museum of Natural History, becoming a professor there in 1946.

Dr. Monod became an expert on the crustaceans and fish of the tropical oceans surrounding the Sahara as well as on the desert's own plant and animal life and its prehistory.

He traveled thousands of miles on foot and by camel across the Sahara, which he described as "beautiful because it is clean and never dies." In 1925 he discovered a rare early human skeleton in Mali dating from neolithic times, known as Asselar Man. He also found and recorded rare prehistoric rock paintings depicting life in the Sahara before it became a desert.

In 1930 he married Olga Pickova, who survives him, along with three children, Béatrice, Cyrille and Ambroise.

In 1938 he founded the Institut Français d'Afrique Noire in Dakar, Senegal's capital, and served as its first director until 1965. During World War II he represented de Gaulle's Free French movement in Senegal, making regular anti-Nazi radio broadcasts and, in 1944, welcoming de Gaulle to Dakar.

After the war Dr. Monod worked closely with the Belgian physicist Auguste Piccard, developing the world's first bathyscaph, or deep-sea diving machine, and in 1954, off the coast of Dakar, he made a dive of more than 4,000 feet.

He wrote many books, including an autobiography titled "Mémoires d'un Naturaliste Voyageur" (1990). He received numerous honors in France and abroad, and in 1961 won the Charles P. Daly Award from the American Geographic Society.

A pacificist and an ardent defender of animal rights, Dr. Monod was also a vegetarian who never touched alcohol or tobacco. He strongly opposed France's development of nuclear weapons as well as its ambitious atomic energy program, and he organized a protest fast every year on the anniversary of the nuclear attacks against Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

He opposed bull-fighting and hunting as well. But nothing infuriated him more than the annual Paris- Dakar motor rally, in which scores of rugged, jeep-type vehicles roar off toward the Senegalese capital, churning up the sands of his beloved Sahara.

------- Onelist (submissions from subscribers)