------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Minister was under pressure on N-reactor
U.S. has tough words for EU allies
Nuclear discord with France history, says NZ Foreign Minister
Russia ends pact not to arm Iran;
Russian Defense Chief Talks Tough on ABM
Russian Power Plant Reports Leak
Russian Rocket Launches Satellite
The Chernobyl accident: What happened
Board takes control of WWII-era Project
Letters: Maintaining Nuclear Weapons
Crow, Clemente R., 86

MILITARY
Army Will Give National Guard the Entire U.S. Role in Bosnia
Rightist Squads in Colombia Beating the Rebels
Ex-Colombia Cabinet Member Grabbed
States
A Few Tanks for Iran
Israeli Copters Attack Palestinian Gunmen
NASA Unfurls Second Solar Wing Without Problems
Russian rocket launches Israeli observation satellite
Warning by U.N. Kosovo Envoy
USS Cole will be home next week

OTHER
Clinton Creates Huge Underwater Nature Preserve in Hawaii
Global Warming Talks to Resume in Ottawa
EPA to phase out popular insecticide
States
Off-road rules 'disappointment' to some
Gene Altered Foods: A Case Against Panic
China bids to restart WTO membership
We Need To Be Guerrillas
Convicted L.A. officers will seek new trial
Autopsy finds actor was shot in back
'Homicide': Real Detectives. Real Crimes. Real Voyeurism.
Nebraska
COP SHOT HALLOWEEN PARTY-GOER IN BACK
Carnivore Privacy Concerns Remain
U.S. prisoner's wife braces herself
Serious concerns remain over FBI's 'Carnivore' system
Jordan Plans New Terror Trial of Muslim Militant Syria Seized
Seattle was only the beginning


-------- NUCLEAR

-------- australia

Minister was under pressure on N-reactor

Sydney Morning Herald
12/05/2000
By Andrew Clennell in Canberra
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0012/05/text/national5.html

Australia's nuclear agency put pressure on the Federal Government for speedy approval for the builder of a new reactor in Sydney, claiming production of cancer-treating nuclear medicines could otherwise be held up for two years.

In a May 19 letter, obtained by the Herald under Freedom of Information laws, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation asked the Science Minister, Senator Minchin, to move quickly to approve the controversial Argentine company INVAP - which he did in June.

Of four preferred tenderers, INVAP was seen by some competitors as the least qualified.

But yesterday, a nuclear medicine supplier, Mr Todd Donaghy from Mallinckrodt/Tyro Healthcare, told a Senate inquiry into the new reactor that it was possible all medical radioisotopes could be imported.

And the public representative on the Government's nuclear safety watchdog ARPANSA, Ms. Jean McSorley, said the nuclear agency, ANSTO, was rushing the new reactor because it feared a two-year break in supply of Australian radioisotopes would make people realise there was no need for local production.

Radioisotopes are injected into patients and used broadly for diagnostic imaging in all branches of medicine, and for cancer treatment and pain relief.

The Government has argued that the new reactor is necessary because Australia must manufacture its own radioisotopes. It says it cannot rely on all radioisotopes living long enough if imported or on reliability of supply.

In the letter to Senator Minchin, ANSTO's chief executive, Professor Helen Garnett, recommended INVAP should win the project. She said ANSTO wanted the contracts signed by July 13 to keep up with the construction schedule.

"In order we meet the July 13 deadline, I seek your assistance by dealing with the approval expeditiously," her letter said.

Senator Minchin announced that INVAP had won the tender on June 6. The deal was signed on July 13.

Professor Garnett had said it was "essential" the reactor was operational by the end of 2005.

The old reactor and its replacement had to be operating in tandem "to enable the Therapeutic Goods Administration to make a comparison of the medical radioisotopes produced from both reactors", she wrote.

"... If for any reason, dual operation does not occur, ANSTO would have to relicense all such reactor-based radioisotopes, which could prevent supply for a period of around two years."

The old reactor must close by May 2006, the letter said, to conform with a deal with the US Government to accept final delivery of nuclear waste in the form of spent fuel it provided.

Construction of the reactor is due to begin next year, subject to ARPANSA licensing approvals.

Ms McSorley said the letter was "a worry" as it implied the Government was rushing to have the reactor built. "ANSTO doesn't want to be in the position where the Australian public is thinking we can live [without a reactor]."

A nuclear physician, Dr Andrew McLaughlin, from Burwood nuclear medicine, confirmed yesterday Australia could import all the radioisotopes it needed.

But that would not be the preferred option, as taking the radioisotopes from "local source" meant there was more chance they would remain radioactive when they got to hospitals.

A spokeswoman for Senator Minchin said the timetable for the new reactor was not rushed. The letter and the fear of running out of radioisotopes "demonstrates the need for a new reactor". The minister had "complete confidence in the tender process".

Asked if there were any contingency plans if radioisotopes were not available from the reactor for two years, the spokeswoman said: "We're confident the timetable will be met."

ARPANSA's chief executive, Dr John Loy, said the grant of an operating licence, once the reactor was built, would take at least nine months' consideration, but he felt "no pressure".

-------- europe

U.S. has tough words for EU allies

Infobeat
December 05, 2000
By JEFFREY ULBRICH Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405226254

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - The United States wants a military force the European Union is developing to be well funded and effective, but Defense Secretary William Cohen warned Tuesday that if the EU takes on too much military autonomy it could weaken NATO.

The 15-nation European Union is developing its own rapid-reaction force, separate from NATO but with plans to share some NATO planning facilities, intelligence and communications. It would use the force to address crises that the transatlantic alliance does not want to get involved in.

Cohen was expected to stress to fellow defense chiefs at a NATO meeting here Tuesday and Wednesday that Washington does not want the EU to duplicate NATO's extensive system for planning operations.

``If ... they try to or are desirous of a separate operational planning capability, separate and distinct of that from NATO itself, then that is going to weaken the ties between the United States and NATO, and NATO and the EU,'' Cohen told reporters traveling with him to Brussels.

``There should be a single planning operation, and not duplicative and redundant, because that will only weaken NATO itself,'' Cohen said on the way to the last NATO ministerial meeting he will address before leaving his post at the end of the Clinton administration.

France, which is not a member of NATO's integrated military command, would prefer the European Union's military force to be more autonomous than the United States and some of the other allies would like.

U.S. officials fear a separate EU planning system could cut European NATO members that are not EU members out of the decision-making process. They also are concerned about how NATO and the EU military organization would cooperate and keep security tight.

The NATO meeting comes before a EU summit in Nice, France, on Thursday and Friday, during which the European organization's leaders are expected to discuss a new blueprint to guide their defense and security policy.

The 19-nation NATO alliance pledged at a summit last year to increase its military capability, making forces lighter, quicker and better equipped to deal with future threats. This coincides with EU plans for its own force.

Both projects are expensive, and so far, few military budgets have increased.

Ministers will discuss the NATO plan and the EU's proposed rapid reaction corps _ a 60,000-man force that is to be ready by 2003.

The key question, a senior NATO diplomat said, is whether the Europeans follow through with the resources needed to make the rapid reaction force genuinely deployable and capable of acting independently while also fulfilling their pledges under NATO.

NATO members collected their ``peace dividend'' _ savings off military spending during the decade following the end of the Cold War. Now, top officials say, it's time to think about the future and pay to restructure military forces for new kinds of threats, including terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, regional and ethnic conflict.

The United States is increasing its defense budget, and the Europeans ``need to do more in order to modernize their forces,'' Cohen said.

The defense ministers also will review Bosnia and Kosovo, where the alliance leads forces totaling 60,000 troops. There are no immediate plans to reduce troop numbers in Bosnia, which were cut to 20,000 last spring, or in Kosovo, where the situation remains volatile.

--------- New Zealand

Nuclear discord with France history, says NZ Foreign Minister

Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Tue, 5 Dec 2000 5:02 ADST
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newslink/weekly/newsnat-5dec2000-11.htm

New Zealand Foreign Minister Phil Goff is in the French Pacific territory of New Caledonia for a two-day visit, declaring that discord with France over the nuclear issue is history.

Mr Goff says he will be seeking stronger contacts with current leaders of New Caledonia and will also study the territory's progress towards autonomy.

France's nuclear testing in the Pacific ended in 1996.

Mr Goff has held talks with the French representative in the territory as well as leaders of political groups on different sides of the independence debate.

-------- russia

Russia ends pact not to arm Iran;
Jewish groups warn of threat to Israel

Jewish Telegraphic Agency Inc.
12/05/00
By Sharon Samber
http://jta.virtualjerusalem.com/index.exe?00120515

WASHINGTON, Dec. 5 (JTA) - Russia's decision to terminate its agreement with the U.S. on stopping Russian arms sales to Iran poses new threats to Israel's security, Jewish groups warn.

Last Friday, Moscow pulled out of a pact sealed in 1995 by then-Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and Vice President Al Gore under which Russia agreed to end conventional arms exports to Iran.

A U.S. delegation will travel to Moscow on Wednesday, trying to preserve the embargo on weapons sales to Tehran.

"We remain committed to constraining arms sales that pose a threat to regional stability and to the national security interests of the United States, our friends, our allies in the region," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Monday.

Boucher said the United States is not aware of any new Russian arms contracts with Iran, but wants the delegation to have a "frank and comprehensive discussion" with Russian officials about Moscow's future intentions.

Russian involvement in Iranian weapons programs remains a major concern, said Barry Jacobs, the for the American Jewish Committee's director of strategic studies.

Jacobs voiced disappointment that the formal agreement was allowed to lapse, but said the Gore-Chernomyrdin deal was not very effective anyway.

"Russian assistance never stopped," Jacobs said, and therefore Iran remains a primary threat to Israel.

In testimony at an Oct. 5 Senate hearing on the transfer of Russian technology and strategic weapons capabilities to Iran, the AJCommittee called for U.S. restrictions on Iranian technology proliferation, and accused Iran of continuing to smuggle and develop weapons of mass destruction and delivery systems that could reach Israel.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel lobby, said Russian supply of weapons technology to rogue states like Iran remains an extremely serious problem.

Despite the passage this year of the Iran Nonproliferation Act, a measure designed to stop the flow of weapons technology from Russia to Iran, many have viewed the Clinton administration's approach to the problem as too soft.

The issue will remain a top priority for AIPAC regardless of who assumes the presidency in January, AIPAC spokesman Kenneth Bricker said.

"The next administration may take this matter more seriously,'' he added.

American Jewish groups had supported congressional attempts in 1998 to impose sanctions on Russian companies exporting missile technology to Iran. The Clinton administration, however, preferred to address the issue through diplomatic channels and stopped the legislation, saying it wanted more time to put a tough nuclear nonproliferation policy in place.

President Clinton did issue an executive order imposing economic penalties against Russian organizations that were found to be providing sensitive missile or nuclear assistance to Iran.

In 1998 Russia was involved in the construction of an Iranian nuclear facility, which Israel said might help Iran advance its military nuclear program and the production of nuclear byproducts. Earlier that year, the Kremlin announced that it had stopped supplying missile technology to Iran, and officials said they thwarted some Russian companies' plans to provide the Islamic republic with technology that could have military uses.

According to a Central Intelligence Agency report, Iran sought nuclear-related equipment, material, and technical expertise from Russia during the second half of 1999.

---

Russian Defense Chief Talks Tough on ABM

December 5, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-arms-ru.html
By REUTERS

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's defense minister disavowed an eye-catching arms control proposal from his nuclear missiles chief Tuesday, saying Moscow would not countenance changes in the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

In written answers to questions from Reuters, Marshal Igor Sergeyev also said he planned to discuss ways to help retrain officers made redundant and to avoid submarine accidents during talks in London and at NATO headquarters in Brussels this week.

Last month, the head of the Strategic Rocket Forces, General Vladimir Yakovlev, said it would be hard to persuade the United States to ditch its plans for a Star Wars-style shield against rogue missiles and to avoid rewriting the ABM treaty altogether.

He proposed introducing an index of strategic weapons as a counterbalance.

But Sergeyev said: ``At the moment various opinions are being expressed about solving the problem of retaining the ABM treaty.

``I should like to stress again that Russia's position on the question of the ABM treaty is consistent and unchangeable. Russia will not agree to any 'adaptation' of the ABM treaty which would allow national anti-missile defenses to be deployed and thus in fact destroy the treaty.''

Russian and Western arms control experts were more intrigued at the time by Yakovlev's comments than President Vladimir Putin's own revived proposal the same day to Washington for cuts in nuclear weapons. It was not clear then whether Yakovlev's comments were a trial balloon agreed with Sergeyev and Putin.

Sergeyev, a former missile chief himself, left little doubt he was disavowing Yakovlev's idea, under which anti-missile systems would be lumped together with nuclear forces. A country wanting to increase one would have to make cuts in the other.

SUBMARINES ALSO ON AGENDA

``We have not held any talks on this questionand we will not hold any,'' Sergeyev said. ``Our position on this is dictated by the highest interests of maintaining strategic stability and national and international security.''

Putin said in his proposal before meeting President Clinton in Brunei last month that Moscow would continue to talk to Washington about the ABM treaty. But he also described it as a cornerstone of post-World War Two disarmament accords.

The United States wants to alter the ABM treaty to allow it to deploy a limited National Missile Defense against rogue rockets. Both presidential contenders -- Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush -- back the scheme in some form.

Sergeyev gave approval for his answers to be published as he flew to Brussels for a meeting of the NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council, a discussion forum aimed at improving ties between the Alliance and Moscow. He flies on to London from Brussels for his first official visit to Britain.

While ruling out talks on ABM, he picked up on another Putin proposal for a non-strategic missile defense that plays on European criticism of U.S. plans and hinted at refinements.

``Strong cooperation (with NATO) could possibly lie ahead in the area of setting up a European anti-missile system which should be aimed at guaranteeing that strategic and regional stability is maintained in Europe,'' he said.

``To bring this initiative to life we have the requisite proposals which I plan to discuss with Britain's chief of Defense Staff,'' he added.

Britain has played an important role in retraining Russian officers made redundant in earlier post-Soviet defense cuts. Russia plans to cut more than half a million more men by 2005.

``Significant cuts lie ahead for the armed forces personnel which will create a huge problem because of the need to help them adapt to civilian life,'' Sergeyev said.

He said he would discuss ways to improve Britain's training program to cope with the new cuts -- a sign he may ask British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon for more funding.

He said an important question to be discussed with NATO was how to rescue submarine crews.

``The views of Russia and NATO on this question and on how to agree on it almost coincide and we hope for balanced cooperation in this area,'' he said.

He did not mention the Kursk disaster in which a submarine sank in August with the loss of all 118 sailors on board.

Russian officials have said a collision with a foreign submarine was the most likely cause but NATO has denied its vessels were involved. Sergeyev said he aimed to discuss a bilateral deal with Britain on avoiding submarine accidents.

--------

Russian Power Plant Reports Leak

December 5, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Russia-Nuclear-Leak.html

MOSCOW (AP) -- Workers at a Russian nuclear power plant on Tuesday detected higher than normal radiation levels in soil on the plant's territory, a spokesman for Russia's state nuclear power company said.

The radiation appeared to have come from a leaking water pipe attached to the cooling system of two reactors at the Novovoronezh plant, about 300 miles south of Moscow. The reactors have been out of service for a decade.

Rosenergoatom spokesman Konstantin Romburger could not say how high the radiation level was, but he said it did not pose a danger to surrounding areas. Still, authorities sealed off the area with barbed wire and posted signs about the radiation risk while a commission studied the cause of the leak, he said.

Romburger could not immediately say when the radiation leak occurred or how large an area was contaminated.

Three other reactors at the plant were operating normally on Tuesday, he said.

Small malfunctions are common at Russian nuclear power plants. Officials reported 53 minor breakdowns or malfunctions at Russia's 22 working nuclear reactors during the first nine months of this year. It was not clear how many had resulted in radiation leaks.

--------

Russian Rocket Launches Satellite

December 5, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Russia-Israel-Satellite.html

MOSCOW (AP) -- A Start-1 rocket on Tuesday successfully launched an imaging satellite into orbit from Russia's Far East, the Strategic Missile Forces said.

The Eros-A1 satellite, whose design is based on an Israeli spy satellite, can take pictures of objects as small as 6 feet, according to Russian and Israeli media.

It was launched from the Svobodny cosmodrome in the Amur region of the Russian Far East, about 3,400 miles east of Moscow, and later went into orbit, said Lt. Maxim Fedin, a missile forces spokesman.

The rocket used to launch it was converted from a Topol intercontinental ballistic missile.

The 550-pound satellite was built by ImageSat Ltd., a Netherlands Antilles-registered joint venture including Israel Aircraft Industries, El-Op Electro-Optics Industries of Israel, and European and American investors.

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

A statement from ImageSat said images collected by the satellite would be sent to 14 receiving centers on the ground, from which they will be distributed to customers.

Satellite images have applications ranging from national security to infrastructure assessment, mapmaking, and environmental and natural resources studies.

-------- ukraine

The Chernobyl accident: What happened

BBC News
Monday, 5 June, 2000, 16:29 GMT 17:29 UK
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_778000/778477.stm

Chernobyl in 1999: Human error was a major facto

Reactor Four at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant began to fail in the early hours of 26 April, 1986.

Seven seconds after the operators activated the 20-second shut down system, there was a power surge. The chemical explosions that followed were so powerful that they blew the 1,000 ton cover off the top of the reactor.

Design flaws in the power plant's cooling system probably caused the uncontrollable power surge that led to Chernobyl's destruction.

Serious mistakes had also been made by the plant operators, who had disengaged several safety and cooling systems and taken other unauthorised actions during tests of electrical equipment.

With procedures intended to ensure safe operation of the plant operating less than effectively, the Chernobyl unit was even more vulnerable to unforeseen power discharges.

The Chernobyl plant did not have an effective containment structure, and without that protection, radioactive material escaped into the wider environment.

The crippled reactor is still encased in a hurriedly constructed concrete sarcophagus, which is growing weaker over time.

Contamination

The accident that destroyed the reactor in Unit Four killed 31 people almost immediately.

Soviet scientists estimate that about 4% of the 190 tons of uranium dioxide products escaped and began to spread unevenly across the surrounding countryside, affected by the vagaries of the weather.

Both Soviet and Western scientists agree that most of the contaminating material affected Belarus, but that 40% spread to other nearby areas, including Ukraine.

Immediately after the accident, the main health concern involved levels of radio-iodine radiation.

Although the 600,000 workers involved in the recovery and clean-up after the accident were exposed to high doses of radiation, the exact amount cannot be accurately measured.

The workers, many of them volunteers, were not equipped with measuring instruments to monitor the dosages they were receiving, but estimates of about 165 millisieverts have been made.

Doses of radiation above 10 millisieverts pose significant threats to the human body.

Evacuation

Soviet authorities started evacuating people from the area around Chernobyl within 36 hours of the accident.

A month later, all those living within a 30 kilometre (18 mile) radius of the plant - about 116,000 people - had been relocated.

Several international organisations have studied the environmental and health impacts of the Chernobyl accident.

The World Health Organisation says that, so far, there has been a large increase in thyroid cancer among children in the affected areas.

It is estimated that five million people were exposed to radiation in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.

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

-------- colorado

Board takes control of WWII-era Project
X DOE boss transfers ownership of compound that processed uranium for U.S. nuclear arsenal

Denver Rocky Mountain News
12/05/00
By Ellen Miller Special to the Denver Rocky Mountain News
http://insidedenver.com/news/1205clea6.shtml

GRAND JUNCTION - Energy Secretary Bill Richardson on Monday transferred ownership of the 46-acre federal compound that for decades directed the mining, processing and shipping of uranium for the nation's nuclear arsenal.

The change caps an era that established the compound in 1943 as Project X, saw it become a cog in the nuclear arms race of the '50s and '60s, and cost nearly $500 million in still uncompleted cleanup expenses.

The memo of understanding Richardson signed shifts control of the compound to a nonprofit quasi-governmental board called the Riverview Technology Corp.

This board, appointed by the city of Grand Junction and Mesa County, will own the land until the Energy Department completes cleanup of the site in 2006. Then the land will be redeveloped for light-industrial businesses.

The compound's role as a key uranium research station and distribution point is nearly at an end.

"This meets the DOE's goal of cutting its overhead, putting its money to real work and turning it over for you to use for economic development," Richardson said.

The federal government first arrived at the spot in August 1943, when Army Lt. Philip Leahy arrived with top-secret orders to find a place to produce uranium for the Manhattan Project, the supersecret World War II effort to build the first atomic bomb.

"The original deed says it's to the U.S. government, Project X," said Mike Tucker, a DOE project engineer who has worked at the site for 18 years and is informally regarded as its historian. "All the uranium for the first bombs came through here."

Uranium mining spread quickly after the war when Cold War panic caused a nuclear buildup that spurred a uranium boom in western Colorado and eastern Utah.

Miners scouted the entire Uncompahgre Plateau for uranium, which they milled at commercial sites in Grand Junction, Rifle and Slick Rock; Moab, Utah; and other towns.

Since only the U.S. government could possess or purchase uranium, the commercial mills sold its product to the Atomic Energy Commission, which later became the Department of Energy.

"The actual milling was done in different places, but it all came here for storage until it was shipped," Tucker said.

Uranium headed for further enrichment and eventual delivery to Rocky Flats and other bomb-manufacturing plants, came through the Grand Junction compound.

"There were federal employees and contractors here, about 700 in all, during the late '40s and early '50s. I'd have loved to have been here then," Tucker said.

During the 1950s, Grand Junction contractors took uranium tailings away from mills by the truckload for use as construction fill, little realizing that decades later the tailings would be regarded as a health hazard even at a low level of radioactivity.

By the late 1980s, a massive cleanup in Grand Junction began, with nearly $500 million so far going into uranium tailings cleanup projects in Grand Junction, Rifle and other towns.

"This valley and this spot have been part of the federal government, and we did like our tailings ... in our streets, in our basements, in our driveways," Mesa County Commissioner Doralyn Genova said. "Now we're moving back to private ownership and preserving community jobs."

The DOE's presence will remain in Grand Junction for a long time, Richardson said. The 100 Energy Department employees are working in the Moab mill cleanup, groundwater cleanup and environmental monitoring, and about 230 contractors are at work at or out of the compound.

By leasing back only the amount of office space the agency needs instead of bearing the cost of operating the entire compound, Richardson said, the department will save $1.3 million a year.

The actual title transfer to Riverview Technology will occur by February, once Gov. Bill Owens approves groundwater cleanup standards and procedures for the site.

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

Letters: Maintaining Nuclear Weapons

December 5, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/05/science/05LETT.html

To the Editor:

The article "Testing the Aging Stockpile in a Test Ban Era" (Nov. 28) presents an incomplete picture of nuclear-explosion testing in sustaining the United States' arsenal.

Reasons for nuclear testing range from technical to political (for example, a nation wanting to advertise a newly acquired nuclear-weapons capability).

Considering only technical issues, the principal goal of testing is to verify new designs prior to deployment. Since the Bush administration's decision in 1992, no need has been seen for the United States to add new designs to the enduring stockpile of nuclear weapons.

Nuclear tests are too few in number to provide statistically reliable quality assurance for stockpile warheads. The principal tool for assuring reliability of stockpile weapons is surveillance, in which samples are periodically disassembled and examined. This has been pursued for decades and, of the rare defects found, the vast majority are associated with nonnuclear components that can be tested in the laboratory.

Findings for the nuclear system have not been considered as reasons for nuclear testing. If considered significant, defective components are rebuilt or replaced.

Straightforward practical measures, now being effected, overwhelm hypothetical sensitivities of our weapons to uncertainties in the rebuilding process.

Gaps in our understanding of nuclear weapons could be narrowed by nuclear testing, but will always exist. Fortunately, the measures just mentioned compensate adequately for any resulting uncertainties. Testing to answer other less critical questions is precluded by the threshold test ban treaty, in force since 1976.

In short, nuclear testing is not a significant tool for maintaining confidence in the United States' enduring stockpile of nuclear weapons.

SEYMOUR SACK Berkeley, Calif.

The writer worked for 45 years as a weapons design physicist and laboratory associate at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

To the Editor:

If there is any valid doubt about the wartime readiness of our nuclear arsenal today, the arsenals of other nations must now be wholly suspect ("Testing the Aging Stockpile").

Resumption of testing, as lab officials clearly want to do, will only open the door for others to end their own test moratoriums, and we will have succeeded in increasing nuclear dangers to ourselves as well as undermining the entire global nonproliferation regime in one ill- considered action.

REAR ADM. EUGENE J. CARROLL JR., RETIRED Washington

To the Editor:

The article "Testing the Aging Stockpile" on weapons designers' doubts about the safety and security of our nuclear arsenal under the computer simulations of the stockpile stewardship program are indeed shocking, not because of any amazement at such concerns by weapons designers, but because of the blatancy of this Pentagon trial balloon on ending the moratorium on underground testing.

From its inception it has been clear that the stockpile stewardship program was not really about the safety and reliability of our existing stockpile, but an effort to keep scientists fully engaged in processes that could lead to the development of new types of nuclear weapons.

It is also clear from this desire to resume testing as well as the drive to deploy Star Wars missile defense that the United States is not committed to nonproliferation or disarmament. In fact, we are prepared to violate or abrogate key agreements essential to the safety of this planet in order to keep on developing new nuclear weapons.

The question today should not be whether the stockpile is safe but whether the world is safe with nuclear stockpiles in the hands of such weapons designers.

BERNICE R. BILD Chicago

To the Editor:

The article "Testing the Aging Stockpile" on stockpile stewardship is incomplete in three respects:

It assumes that nuclear arsenals should be maintained into the indefinite future. However, the United States has a binding treat obligation, under the nonproliferation treaty, to negotiate genuine nuclear disarmament.

The article suggests that the stockpile stewardship program is intended merely to assure the safety and reliability of existing devices. In fact, the program has been used as a vehicle to develop new and more destructive weapons.

It states without qualification that "subcritical" tests - tests not involving the creation of a chain reaction - are permitted under the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. A number of nations have taken the position that this interpretation violates the spirit and possibly the letter of the treaty.

The decision by the United States in 1997 to proceed with subcritical testing, in the face of wide international protests, was one of the reasons cited by the government of India for its nuclear tests in 1998.

GUY C. QUINLAN New York

The writer is chairman of the Nuclear Disarmament Task Force at All Souls Unitarian Church.

---

Crow, Clemente R., 86, who worked for General Electric Co., where he helped design the first nuclear-powered

Miami Herald
Tuesday, December 5, 2000
http://www.herald.com/content/tue/news/national/digdocs/105703.htm

submarines, the Nautilus and the Sea Wolf; in Schenectady, N.Y. Crow worked at Knolls Atomic Power Lab, a subsidiary of GE, as an electrical, mechanical and nuclear engineer for 40 years and retired in 1979.

-------- MILITARY

Army Will Give National Guard the Entire U.S. Role in Bosnia

New York Times
December 5, 2000
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/05/world/05GUAR.html

WASHINGTON, Dec. 4 - The Army announced today that it would effectively turn over its mission in Bosnia to part-time National Guard soldiers, including troops from Kansas, Minnesota, Indiana and New York, over the next two years.

The Army, like the other armed services, is increasingly relying on the Guard to supplement active-duty soldiers in military operations like the one in Bosnia. But the announcement today significantly expands the reliance on the citizen soldiers.

Beginning this year, the Army has rotated command of the Bosnian mission between active and guard units, including the 49th Armored Division of the Texas National Guard. That unit oversaw the American sector in Bosnia for seven months, until the Third Infantry Division, an active unit from Fort Stewart, Ga., took over in October.

By late 2002, the peacekeeping mission is to be commanded exclusively in six-month rotations by troops from the eight National Guard divisions. They include the 28th Infantry from Pennsylvania, the 35th from Kansas, the 34th from Minnesota, the 38th from Indiana and the 42nd from New York.

Under the command of the Texas Guard, members of the National Guard and Reserves constituted roughly one-fourth of the 4,300 American troops in Bosnia. By the time the other divisions take command, Guard and Reserve troops will make up most of those in Bosnia. "They will have the preponderance of that mission," said a spokesman for the Army, Maj. Thomas Artis.

Commanders have long complained that the extended Bosnia mission, which began five years ago this month, was straining the active Army divisions. In a statement today, the Army said the reliance on Guard units would "mitigate the effects of high operational tempo and better sustain the Army's overall level of readiness for contingency operations," that is, other operations or conflicts.

By announcing its rotation schedule for five years, the Army hoped to give the Guard troops, who generally serve no more than a weekend a month and two weeks each summer, ample time to train for the difficulties of an extended overseas operation. Few members have experienced such operations.

The announcement also signaled that the Pentagon, at least, plans to keep troops in Bosnia through 2005. That could change if Gov. George W. Bush of Texas becomes president. In his campaign, he and his advisers said they would review the American military presence in the Balkans with an eye to shifting the burden to the NATO allies.

The Army also detailed troop rotations for Kosovo through 2005. American troops arrived there 18 months ago, after NATO's air campaign against Yugoslavia.

-------- colombia

Rightist Squads in Colombia Beating the Rebels

New York Times
December 5, 2000
By JUAN FORERO
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/05/world/05COLO.html

BOGOTÁ, Colombia, Dec. 4 - They began as a gang of thugs backed by the once-powerful Columbian drug cartels. But when the guerrilla war intensified, they evolved into quasi-independent right-wing paramilitary squads that killed peasants suspected of supporting Colombia's leftist rebels.

Now the paramilitary forces have demonstrated with alarming clarity that they have become something else again: an army of combat-ready fighters that is directly engaging guerrillas and winning wide swaths of territory.

The United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, as the paramilitary groups are known formally, or A.U.C. by the Spanish initials, are also gaining an important degree of popular support from Colombia's middle class, say experts on the conflict and government officials here and in the United States.

As the government tries to restart frozen peace talks this week, the right-wing militias may well have a role in the process.

With 11,000 fighters, nearly double what they boasted a few years ago, and the backing of landowners, businessmen and coca growers, the paramilitary forces have beaten guerrillas on their own turf.

Through intimidation, massacres and, increasingly, direct confrontations, the militias have tightened their hold on the northern provinces of Antioquia, Bolívar and Córdoba and expanded into other regions, especially the coca-growing strongholds in the south.

They have also thrust themselves into the roiling world of Colombian politics, upsetting peace negotiations between President Andrés Pastrana's administration and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the nation's largest rebel group.

Through savvy public relations efforts by its straight-talking leader, Carlos Castaño, and intimidation aimed at Colombia's establishment - notably the kidnapping of seven congressmen in October in a successful attempt to broker a meeting with a top government official - the paramilitary fighters have shown a determination to be heard.

Military success is widely believed to be strengthening Mr. Castaño's hand in his quest for political recognition. Achieving military victory would make it more difficult for the government to prosecute him and other paramilitary leaders for war crimes if the conflict comes to an end. For the first six months of this year, the government's ombudsman has reported that 512 unarmed civilians were killed by paramilitary gunmen, compared with 120 killed by guerrillas.

Despite criticism from human rights groups, the public relations drive appears to be working. A large group of congressmen and several influential Colombians are publicly suggesting that the paramilitary units should have a role in the peace talks, a possibility that others say could produce years of conflict because of rebel opposition.

The debate comes as Colombia prepares to spend $1.1 billion in mostly military aid from the United States and other Western allies to curtail coca production in prime coca-growing regions like Putumayo Province in the south, an area where guerrillas and the paramilitary units have been battling for control.

"They are an unquestioned reality," said Senator Miguel Pinedo, who was among those kidnapped in October. "There's going to have to be a moment when they will have to be a part of the negotiating table, either independently or together with the rebels, but they have to be a part of it."

Phillip Chicola, director of Andean affairs for the United States State Department, agreed recently in a radio interview here. The paramilitary forces "are at some moment going to have to be part of a process," he said, "and I think the government and Colombian society are going to have to decide how to manage this issue."

Their growth can be attributed in part to the failure by the Pastrana administration to advance the peace effort in the last two years. The government is trying to resume talks before Thursday, when Mr. Pastrana must decide whether to reclaim by force the Switzerland-sized swath of territory ceded to the FARC guerrillas two years ago to lure them to the peace table. The talks have sputtered, but the guerrillas control the land.

Max Alberto Morales, who has served as an intermediary between the government and Mr. Castaño, the paramilitary leader, said that Mr. Castaño had been prepared to allow the peace talks with the FARC to proceed but that Mr. Castaño had become concerned when the talks stalled, the FARC took control of a major chunk of territory and guerrilla violence continued.

"We had hope for a year that the peace process would get rolling, but what happened in that year is kidnappings became more common, roadblocks increased, they began to hijack airplanes and people were taken from churches," Mr. Morales said. "I think that all this touched the hearts of Colombians, and they said, `We won't take this anymore.' For that reason the people in this country love Castaño so much."

Beloved or not, Mr. Castaño has been quick to take advantage of the shifting moods in Colombian society.

In two highly emotional televised interviews last spring, he cast himself as a protector not of the large landowning class that has helped finance the paramilitary forces, but rather of middle-class workers fearful of kidnappings. "The ones who have no one to defend them are the middle classes," Mr. Castaño said. "The Self-Defense Forces are looking out for the interests of the middle class."

After the interviews, a poll in El Tiempo, Colombia's most respected newspaper, showed that 38 percent of those questioned said their image of Mr. Castaño had improved. Seventy-two percent said the paramilitary forces should take part in the peace talks.

"Castaño is the only Colombian who has the nerve to attack the guerrillas, and that makes him the good guy," said Luis Jaime Córdoba, a Bogotá teacher.

Mario Fernando Hurtado, a geographer, said he had come to agree with Mr. Castaño's logic after watching him on television. "He knows the reality of the problems of the country, and though he justifies his actions with force, he's convincing in his arguments," he said. "I'm not in accordance with many of his methods, but in this country they're necessary, because having a peace dialogue with the guerrillas when they're not interested doesn't make sense."

Colombia is a poor country, but its cities have large middle-class communities that feel little kinship or connection to the peasant farmers in the countryside who are most often the victims of the paramilitary units' violence. With Colombia's unsteady political situation and a harsh economic downturn worsening, the vacuum was open for Mr. Castaño to step in.

"Against this backdrop of deepening chaos and the absolute lack of the rule of law, then a charismatic and articulate individual has risen to the level of leadership," said Bruce Bagley, an expert on the conflict at the University of Miami who is worried about a deepening conflict if the paramilitary forces gain political support.

"Carlos Castaño, the fixture, the man, has found the right time for his leadership to emerge as powerful and important in Colombia," he said. "He has resonance among important sectors in Colombian society."

Mr. Castaño has also expanded his forces' reach into sparsely populated regions where they had only occasionally operated in the past, notably Putumayo Province along the Ecuadorian border.

"It's remarkable, from a military perspective, that he's been able to push into new areas without any concern about his rear flanks," said Robin Kirk, who has interviewed Mr. Castaño for her work as the Colombia researcher for Human Rights Watch.

"He's able to project a force way beyond his base of strength, which is northern Colombia, and he has the E.L.N. on the ropes, and that is very new," she said, referring to the National Liberation Army, the second- largest leftist guerrilla group, by its Spanish initials.

In Putumayo, the paramilitary fighters have so unnerved the FARC in a series of brutal entanglements since September that the rebels responded by closing off the province's roads.

The FARC's tactics have created an embarrassing crisis for the Pastrana administration, because it is in Putumayo that much of Plan Colombia, a multibillion-dollar effort backed by the United States to root out drug trafficking, is focused.

Mr. Castaño's efforts to push deep into Putumayo are aimed at controlling the region's lucrative coca production. It remains unclear if the paramilitary forces have been able to gain the upper hand in the conflict there, but a top State Department official said intelligence reports showed that "at a minimum they've held their own against men who've had a full run of the place."

Human Rights Watch and other human rights groups insist that the paramilitary forces should not be allowed into peace talks until the government fully investigates their connections to the military, which the rights groups accuse of having provided munitions and tactical support to the paramilitary units. A Human Rights Watch report in February showed that half of Colombia's 18 brigade-level army units had links to paramilitary units.

"They have to disappear as an armed force and submit themselves to justice," said Senator Jaime Dussan, an outspoken opponent of including the paramilitary units in the talks. "How can we give amnesty to those who have killed, those who have massacred?"

Still, even among those who have aggressively pushed for the government to rein in the paramilitary fighters, there is a sense that it may be too late, that the right-wing forces have grown so large and independent that they cannot easily be disbanded.

"Today, the paramilitaries have grown too much," said Germán Martínez, the legal officer in Puerto Asís who has investigated paramilitary killings in Putumayo. "It is a monster created by the state, but now it's at the point where it's free of the state. It's a lion that the state controlled, but it has freed itself, broken away."

---

Ex-Colombia Cabinet Member Grabbed

New York Times
December 5, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Colombia-Kidnap.html

BOGOTA, Colombia -- A former minister in President Andres Pastrana's Cabinet has been kidnapped, continuing a rash of high-profile abductions, authorities said Tuesday.

Fernando Araujo, who served as Pastrana's development minister until August 1999, was kidnapped Monday night in the Caribbean seaport of Cartagena. Five gunmen forced him into a jeep in Boca Grande, an upscale section of the city where Araujo operates a land development business, police said.

Police announced a search operation, but said they had no clues yet as to who kidnapped the former minister. Leftist guerrillas and criminals are responsible for the vast majority of the roughly 3,000 kidnappings committed annually in the South American country, usually for ransom.

Pastrana replaced Araujo one year into his administration, after prosecutors named him in corruption investigations surrounding a government land sale in Cartagena.

The city, Colombia's top tourist destination, is relatively free of the violence plaguing the rest of the South American country, and hosted President Clinton's one-day visit in August.

Araujo's kidnapping is the third in two weeks to hit the business community.

On Nov. 28, the 19-year-old daughter of a top industrial leader was kidnapped near a Bogota university she attends. On Nov. 25, gunmen abducted the Colombian manager of Korean automaker Hyundai Corp. from his weekend retreat near the capital.

-------- drug war

USA Today
12/05/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Virginia

Charlottesville - Research suggests that more teenagers and Virginia college students are using Ecstasy. A University of Virginia study finds that about 2.5% of college students regularly use the hallucinogenic drug, up from 0.5% in 1997. And 10% of 7,290 teens in grades seven through 12 said they tried Ecstasy in a nationwide survey released by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America. That's up from 7% in 1996-98.

-------- iran

A Few Tanks for Iran

Washington Post
Tuesday, December 5, 2000; Page A43
By Michael O'Hanlon
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24869-2000Dec4.html

Early in November, Moscow informed Washington that it intended to withdraw from a 1995 U.S.-Russian agreement limiting sales of advanced conventional weapons to Iran. Under the terms of that accord, Russia had promised to stop exporting arms to Iran by the end of last year. In exchange, Washington agreed not to impose sanctions on Russia for its existing arms contracts with Iran. Now Moscow says that because the 1995 agreement was supposed to be secret, but has recently become public in the United States, Russia will no longer be bound by its terms.

That Russian argument is bogus, and U.S. policymakers are right to reject it. But Moscow will probably sell arms to Iran anyway. It is not surprising that a cash-strapped country such as Russia would continue to sell weapons abroad--and the United States is hardly beyond the temptation of making arms sales for largely economic reasons itself. So, rather than try to prevent all sales, Washington should focus on making sure that Russia does not sell Iran truly dangerous weaponry.

U.S. policymakers have correctly put a great deal of pressure on both Moscow and Beijing to curtail transfers of nuclear technologies to potentially dangerous countries, and they should continue doing so if necessary. Were such states to acquire nuclear weapons, even in very limited numbers, they could acutely threaten large numbers of American, Israeli or other allied citizens.

Next on the hierarchy of dangerous military materials are ballistic missiles, antiship cruise missiles, submarines and advanced sea mines. If Iran's hard-liners remain in control of the country's security institutions, and again become aggressive in the future, they could use relatively modest numbers of these types of assets to terrible effect. Iran could use ballistic missiles to strike Israeli or Saudi cities, or U.S. bases in the region. It could use submarines, antiship missiles and mines to sink ships in the Persian Gulf or Strait of Hormuz, and possibly even to attack U.S. warships in those waters. The region's stability, and secure global access to Persian Gulf oil supplies, could be put at serious risk.

However, most of the systems Russia is selling Iran are tanks, armored personnel carriers, artillery and related ground combat equipment. They are not particularly dangerous in limited numbers. For example, although a single Iranian submarine might sink a U.S. warship, even a few hundred modern tanks would have a hard time seriously threatening American interests in the region. To do so, they would need to conduct a large-scale invasion of a country such as Kuwait or Saudi Arabia, opening themselves up to rapid and massive retribution from U.S. combat forces that remain nearby and that have already demonstrated their prowess in open-desert warfare.

Moreover, Iran's interest in strengthening its army and air force may be legitimate. Living next to Saddam Hussein, its government and people have sound reasons for wanting a strong defense. At present, even after the effects of the Persian Gulf War and a decade of sanctions, Iraq continues to have more military equipment than Iran. For example, Saddam's armed forces are equipped with some 2,200 tanks, 3,400 smaller armored vehicles (light tanks and armored personnel carriers) and about 320 combat aircraft. Iran is behind in all categories: It owns roughly 1,150 tanks, about 1,000 smaller armored vehicles and 290 combat aircraft. These "bean counts" do not prove that Iraq is militarily superior to Iran. But they do suggest that Tehran may have defensive motives when it buys tanks and similar weapons.

Nor have Tehran's recent arms purchases been egregiously large. Since 1992, Iran has imported about $5 billion worth of weapons--less than the totals for Egypt, Israel, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and of course Saudi Arabia.

Rather than hinge everything on convincing Russian president Vladimir Putin to stop all arms sales to Iran, U.S. policymakers need a fallback position. They should be prepared to tolerate limited sales of weapons that Iran may want for self-defense and save their fierce objections for destabilizing weapons that have little legitimate military purpose in the Persian Gulf context. Sales of a few tanks may not be such a bad thing.

The writer is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

-------- israel

Israeli Copters Attack Palestinian Gunmen

By Deborah Camiel
Reuters
Tuesday , December 5, 2000 ; Page A39
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A23859-2000Dec4?language=printer

JERUSALEM, Dec. 4 -- Israeli combat helicopters fired two missiles at Palestinian gunmen early today during a three-hour battle near a biblical shrine in the West Bank town of Bethlehem, eroding hopes of ending more than nine weeks of bloodshed in which nearly 300 people have been killed.

The army said the helicopters fired on a target close to a Palestinian refugee camp to halt an attempt to storm Rachel's Tomb--revered as the burial site of the Old Testament figure--which has become a flash point in the violence. An army spokesman called it "one of the most dangerous events in the past two months."

But Palestinians denied trying to storm the tomb. They said the fighting in Bethlehem, the traditional birthplace of Jesus, was provoked by an incident in a nearby village on Sunday, in which they said soldiers shot and wounded 25 people.

Dazed Bethlehem residents examined rubble and shrapnel on a main street after the fighting died down, saying troops and Jewish West Bank settlers had attacked the town and nearby refugee camps from three directions. Denying accusations that Palestinians had tried to storm the tomb, shop owner George Canavati said: "This is crazy."

"Even if we fired one bullet, [the Israelis] use tanks, rockets and helicopters," said a businessman named Mohammed, standing beside a newly built commercial building pockmarked by bullet and shrapnel holes.

Clashes also erupted in other parts of the West Bank and particularly near Jerusalem, only hours after Israel said it would cooperate with a U.S.-led international inquiry into the bloodshed.

The army said a bomb exploded near a bus as it traveled along a West Bank road near the Allenby Bridge between Israel and Jordan. Witnesses said Palestinian gunmen opened fire at an Israeli military vehicle in the West Bank town of Jenin and that the soldiers returned fire. No one was injured in either incident.

The army said gunmen fired at Rachel's Tomb from three directions for three hours until about 1 a.m. The army returned fire, and the helicopters launched two missiles at the area around the nearby Al-Aida refugee camp, where some of the Palestinian gunfire originated, the military spokesman said.

"The attack on Rachel's Tomb during the night was one of the most dangerous events in the past two months because it was a very well-planned and orchestrated attack on a holy site," he said. He mentioned no casualties.

The Palestinians said the shooting was provoked by an incident on Sunday in the West Bank village of Husan, where Israeli soldiers shot and wounded at least 25 Palestinians. Palestinian witnesses and hospital officials said soldiers and settlers stormed Husan and fired at its mosque, where worshipers were holed up for more than an hour.

"We appeal to the whole world to secure protection for our people from attacks by settlers and soldiers, and we hold the Israeli government fully responsible for this ugly crime in Husan," the Palestinian Authority said in a statement.

The army said Palestinians prompted the events in Husan by hurling gasoline bombs and rocks at soldiers. It denied soldiers or settlers entered the mosque.

At least 294 people have been killed, most of them Palestinians, since the start of the revolt by Palestinians demanding an end to Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, territories Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

-------- space

NASA Unfurls Second Solar Wing Without Problems

New Times Times
December 5, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/05/science/05SHUTTLE.html

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Space shuttle Endeavour's astronauts slowly began unfurling the second of the International Space Station's giant new solar wings Monday, opening it a few feet at a time to avoid problems.

NASA delayed spreading the wing after the first solar wing, extended Sunday night, appeared too slack.

To keep the same thing from happening to the second wing, the astronauts unfolded it section by section in a start-and-stop procedure that was expected to take at least an hour.

``When in doubt, stop,'' flight director Bill Reeves advised the crew after hours of analysis of the problem by Mission Control.

The first wing had been extended via computer command to its entire length of 115 feet in just 13 minutes. But it snapped back and forth as it went out, and two tension cables apparently came off their pulleys, leaving the blanket of solar cells less taut than desired.

The problem did not appear to affect the wing's electricity-generating ability, Reeves said.

The main concern was whether the wing would be secure enough during the docking or undocking of a space shuttle, or during orbit-changing maneuvers. The worry is that vibrations could tear, bend or break off the solar panels.

The space agency said that it is possible no repairs or extra work will be needed and that the solar wing has an acceptable amount of tension.

Shuttle astronauts Joe Tanner and Carlos Noriega, who installed the panels on Sunday afternoon, said there is little they could do during a spacewalk to provide more tension to the right wing. They plan to go out two more times, on Tuesday and Thursday.

``There are not too many options because the work site is very high,'' Tanner said. One possibility would be for Noriega to step into a foot restraint and hold Tanner's feet ``and we essentially become a stack of two people to get me up high enough to get a tether around the tension bar and pull it down.''

``It should be exciting -- if we try it,'' Tanner said, cautioning that nothing has been approved.

The $600 million set of solar wings is the largest, most powerful and most expensive ever built for a spacecraft. The panels are based on a design originally intended for NASA's space station Freedom, a project proposed by President Reagan in 1984 that slowly and agonizingly evolved into what is currently orbiting Earth.

The wingspan of space station Alpha's new solar panels, once unfurled, is 240 feet from tip to tip. The width is 38 feet. That amounts to half an acre on which to collect sunlight and transform it into electricity.

Alpha commander Bill Shepherd and his Russian crew need more power in order to spread out in the complex where they have been living for the past month. One of the space station's three rooms has been unheated and sealed to conserve power. A fourth room, the American-made Destiny lab module, due to soar in January, requires considerable electricity for experiments.

-----

Russian rocket launches Israeli observation satellite

CNN
December 5, 2000
http://www.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/meast/12/05/russia.israel.ap/index.html

MOSCOW, Russia (AP) -- A Start-1 rocket on Tuesday successfully launched an Israeli observation satellite into orbit from Russia's Far East, the Strategic Missile Forces said.

http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/maps/russia.moscow.jpg

The Eros-A1 satellite is Israel's first civilian photography satellite, and it can take pictures of objects as small as 1.8 meters (5.9 feet), according to Russian and Israeli media.

It was launched from the Svobodny cosmodrome in the Amur region of the Russian Far East, about 5,500 kilometers (3,400 miles) east of Moscow and entered its orbit, said Lt. Maxim Fedin, a missile forces spokesman. The rocket used to launch it was converted from a Topol intercontinental ballistic missile.

The 250-kilogram (550-pound) satellite was built by ImageSat, Ltd., a joint venture including Israel Aircraft Industries, El-Op Electro-Optics Industries of Israel, and European and American investors. It is based on an Israeli spy satellite, the Ofeq-3.

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

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

Warning by U.N. Kosovo Envoy

New Yoek Times
December 5, 2000
By CARLOTTA GALL
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/05/world/05YUGO.html

BELGRADE, Serbia, Dec. 4 - A United Nations envoy urged the Serbian government and the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo today to act fast to prevent tensions from worsening on the border.

Eric Morris, who represents the United Nations high commissioner for refugees in Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo, spoke on his return from the Presevo valley in southern Serbia. Albanian militants attacked the Serbian police there 10 days ago and seized control of a three-mile-wide buffer zone along Kosovo's eastern boundary.

The police, meanwhile, reported another attack and a member of President Vojislav Kostunica's Yugoslav coalition called for the police to use force to rout the militants.

Mr. Morris told reporters in Belgrade: "It is urgent that all the concerned parties, including the Yugoslav government, act as quickly as possible so that the Presevo region does not get out of hand, because the consequences are potentially very, very great."

People on both sides of the fight want the situation to explode, he said, and that means there is an urgent need for extra measures. "We are very concerned about a large-scale exodus," he said. "There are a number of Albanians living close to the concentration of security forces."

On Sunday, Serbian policemen came under mortar attack while on patrol just inside the buffer zone, said Novica Zdravkovic, the regional police chief. No one was injured.

On a visit to the region today, the Democratic Party leader, Zoran Djindjic, vowed to send troops into the region immediately after the Dec. 23 Serbian parliamentary elections if NATO-led peacekeepers fail to check the rebel activity. Mr. Djindjic, a leading member of the coalition that supported Mr. Kostunica for president, is expected to be appointed prime minister if the coalition, as expected, wins the elections.

"We need to ask the international community if those goals can be reached by putting pressure on the Albanians," Mr. Djindjic said. "If not, then Serbian forces should enter the buffer zone and sweep out the terrorist formations."

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

USS Cole will be home next week

Infobeat
December 05, 2000
By ROBERT BURNS AP Military Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405225898

WASHINGTON (AP) - The USS Cole, the destroyer heavily damaged by a terrorist bomb while refueling in a Yemeni port Oct. 12, is due to arrive back in U.S. waters next week, the Navy's top officer said Tuesday.

The crippled Cole, which lost 17 sailors in the attack, has been in transit from the Middle East since early November aboard a Norwegian-owned heavy lift ship. It will be off-loaded at Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Miss., for repairs that are expected to take one year and cost roughly $240 million.

A small boat maneuvered close to the Cole while it was refueling in Aden harbor and detonated a bomb that blew a hole in the ship's hull 40 feet wide and 40 feet high. Yemeni and American law enforcement authorities are still investigating the attack, for which no credible claim of responsibility has been made.

Adm. Vern Clark, the chief of naval operations, told reporters that he could not comment on the ongoing investigations, which include an internal Navy probe focusing on whether the Cole's captain took the required self-protection measures prior to entering Aden harbor for what was supposed to be a four-hour stop.

A separate investigation, by an outside panel appointed by Defense Secretary William Cohen, is reviewing whether the U.S. military as a whole can take steps to improve the way it protects and supports U.S. forces abroad.

Clark said the Navy investigation's preliminary results are expected to be forwarded in the next few days from the U.S. Fifth Fleet commander in Bahrain, Vice Adm. Charles W. Moore, Jr., to the commander of U.S. Atlantic Command in Norfolk, Va., Adm. Robert Natter. Because it ultimately will come to Clark for review, ``it would be totally inappropriate'' to comment on the specifics of the investigation, he said.

Clark said one of the toughest issues raised by the Cole attack is how the Navy can better improve the security of its ships in foreign ports without violating the sovereign interests of host nations.

To illustrate his point, the four-star admiral postulated a circumstance in which a foreign ship entered an American port and established its own security perimeter with armed guards that prohibited U.S. vessels from moving about.

``How long would we tolerate that?'' he asked. ``About four seconds. We can't go do that in other people's countries, either.''

On the Net: Navy site for Cole: http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/news/news_stories/cole.html

USS Cole site: http://www.spear.navy.mil/ships/ddg67


-------- OTHER

-------- environment

Clinton Creates Huge Underwater Nature Preserve in Hawaii

New York Times
December 5, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/05/politics/05CORA.html

WASHINGTON, Dec. 4 (AP) - Against a backdrop of pictures of colorful fish, leathery sea turtles and endangered Hawaiian monk seals, President Clinton today created the largest United States nature preserve, 84 million acres underwater around the northwestern Hawaiian Islands, to help save the area's coral reefs and other wildlife.

The Pacific Ocean preserve, which, at 99,500 square nautical miles, is as large as Florida and Georgia combined, contains nearly 70 percent of the coral reefs in the United States, as well as pristine remote islands, atolls and submerged lagoons - "a special place where the sea is a living rainbow," Mr. Clinton said.

The order bans oil and gas exploration, the dumping of any material and any alterations of the seabed or the coral in the preserve. It also caps fishing at recent or current levels.

Mr. Clinton said coral reefs supported thousands of species of fish and sea life, generated millions of dollars in revenue from fishing and tourism, protected coastal communities from pounding waves and provided new hope for medical breakthroughs.

"However, the world's reefs are in peril," the president told the National Geographic Society as a projection screen behind him showed constantly changing scenes of ocean wildlife. "Pollution, damage from dynamite fishing, coral poachers, unwise coastal development and global warming have already killed more than 25 percent of the world's reefs. In some areas, like the Central Indian Ocean, 90 percent of the coral reefs have died, bleached as white as dead bone."

The new Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Coral Reef Reserve encompasses the Hawaiian Islands National Wildlife Refuge set up by President Theodore Roosevelt.

Tammy Leilani Harp, a seventh- generation Hawaiian from a family that has long fished in those waters, came to Washington for the announcement and praised Mr. Clinton's action, saying her family and other Hawaiians took only what they needed from the seas.

"We must stop destroying what we have or there will be nothing left to pass on when we are dead and gone," Ms. Harp said.

But some members of the Hawaiian fishing industry opposed creation of the new reserve.

"The president's order should be renamed the `new Hawaiian Territorial Act' as it gives the great white father in Washington control of Hawaiian resources," said Jim Cook, a fisherman and former chairman of the Western Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Council.

The council is one of eight regional councils established by Congress to regulate the use of waters 3 to 200 miles off United States shores. Its members say the reserve would close all commercial fisheries except bottom-fishing in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands and would close nearly one-third of the area's bottom-fishing grounds.

Nearly half of Hawaii's commercially caught bottom fish - like pink and red snapper and sea bass - comes from the northwestern Hawaiian Islands, the council said. Freezing the current fishing levels could hurt the islands' fishing industry, officials said.

"The devil is in the details," said Kitty Simonds, executive director of the council. "We would be very concerned if something was done that hurt our fishermen."

Some environmentalists said they believed that Mr. Clinton's declaration did not go far enough.

David Guggenheim, of the Center for Marine Conservation, said his group wanted Mr. Clinton to declare the area a national monument, which would ban fishing within it completely.

"We didn't get everything we had hoped," Mr. Guggenheim said, "but we certainly consider this an important first step."

---

Global Warming Talks to Resume in Ottawa

New York Times
December 5, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/05/world/05CLIM.html

TORONTO, Dec. 4 - The European Union and the United States will resume talks on global warming this week in hopes of reaching a deal that eluded them last month in the Netherlands, Canadian officials said today.

Two weeks of international talks at The Hague on how to make cuts in emissions of greenhouse gases ended in failure on Nov. 25 with disputes primarily between the United States and the Europeans.

The purpose of the new talks between the European Union, the United States, Canada, Japan and Australia is to see if common ground exists for a ministerial-level meeting, said Velma McColl, spokeswoman for the Canadian environment ministry. The two-day meeting will begin Wednesday in Ottawa.

The key issue is whether countries should be allowed to count carbon dioxide absorbed by forests and farmlands toward targets for reducing emissions. Greenhouse gas emissions come mostly from burning fossil fuels for factories, power plants and cars.

---

EPA to phase out popular insecticide

USA Today
12/05/00- Updated 12:18 AM ET
By Peter Eisler, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/ndsmon08.htm

WASHINGTON - The government will announce a ban Tuesday on the insecticide diazinon, the last widely used pest-control product made from a class of chemicals linked to health risks for children. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has reached a voluntary agreement with diazinon's chief manufacturer, Syngenta, to phase out all home and garden applications of the pesticide over the next four years, according to sources familiar with the deal. Used in everything from household ant and roach killers to grub-killing lawn sprays, diazinon is marketed under such brands as Ortho, Spectracide and Real-Kill.

The agreement is a major milestone in pesticide regulation, effectively marking the end of organophosphates, or OPs, chemicals derived from nerve gas agents developed during World War II.

Once among the nation's most widely used pesticides, OPs were singled out for a regulatory crackdown six years ago amid studies linking them to neurological disorders and other health problems in children.

"All of these chemicals act through the same biochemical mechanism in the brain ... they all occupy the same chemical family as sarin nerve gas," said Philip Landrigan of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, leader of a coalition of pediatricians seeking to abolish the use of OP pesticides.

Under the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996, Congress ordered sweeping safety reviews of all pesticides, starting with OPs. But thousands of pesticide uses have yet to be evaluated. Chemical and agriculture interests have fought the process, arguing that the EPA is targeting safe pesticides needed to protect crops.

Diazinon manufacturers say the product poses no health threat with normal application, and the EPA, which considers it less risky than other banned OPs, will continue to allow some commercial crop uses. But Syngenta officials say they can't justify paying for new studies needed to prove diazinon's safety for consumer use.

The EPA's agreement to a phase out "confirms the value and safety of this product," Syngenta's Eileen Watson said.

Environmental and consumer groups urged retailers to halt diazinon sales immediately.

"This is probably the best EPA could do for consumers in the face of pressure from a pesticide industry that's exposed people to unsafe products for decades," said Richard Wiles of the Environmental Working Group. "Policy here is slowly catching up to science."

---

USA Today
12/05/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Delaware

Dover - Secretary of Natural Resources and Environmental Control Nicholas Di Pasquale plans to establish a permanent advisory panel to help his agency deal with communities and private industries facing environmental problems. Di Pasquale said the panel would hear concerns from citizens and serve as a liaison between government and private interests.

Florida

Naples - The federal government is taking public comments until Jan. 31 on what criteria to use in determining if manatees should be removed from the endangered species list. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released a draft version of the recovery plan for manatees. A public hearing on manatees is scheduled today in Fort Myers. Meanwhile, environmental groups are suing state and federal agencies for not doing enough to protect Florida manatees.

---

Off-road rules 'disappointment' to some

USA Today
12/05/00- Updated 10:34 AM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/digest/nd1.htm

A draft strategy for managing off-highway vehicles such as dirt bikes, all-terrain vehicles and dune buggies on federal land drew disdain from environmentalists. The proposal by the Bureau of Land Management, which oversees 264 millions acres of mountains and deserts in the West, calls for the agency to re-evaluate off-highway use on BLM land where endangered species live or might live. But the strategy also could open up other BLM land.

-------- genetics

Gene Altered Foods: A Case Against Panic

December 5, 2000
PERSONAL HEALTH
By JANE E. BRODY
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/05/science/05BROD.html?pagewanted=all

Ask American consumers whether they support the use of biotechnology in food and agriculture and nearly 70 percent say they do. But ask the question another way, "Do you approve of genetically engineered (or genetically modified) foods?" and two- thirds say they do not.

Yet there is no difference between them. The techniques involved and the products that result are identical. Rather, the words "genetic" and "engineer" seem to provoke alarm among millions of consumers.

The situation recalls the introduction of the M.R.I. (for magnetic resonance imaging), which was originally called an N.M.R., for nuclear magnetic resonance. The word nuclear, which in this case referred only to the nucleus of cells, caused such public concern, it threatened to stymie the growth of this valuable medical tool.

The idea of genetically modified foods, known as G.M. foods, is particularly frightening to those who know little about how foods are now produced and how modern genetic technology, if properly regulated, could result in significant improvements by reducing environmental hazards, improving the nutritional value of foods, enhancing agricultural productivity and fostering the survival worldwide of small farms and the rural landscape.

Without G.M. foods, Dr. Alan McHughen, a biotechnologist at the University of Saskatchewan, told a recent conference on agricultural biotechnology at Cornell, the earth will not be able to feed the ever-growing billions of people who inhabit it.

Still, there are good reasons for concern about a powerful technology that is currently imperfectly regulated and could, if inadequately tested or misapplied, bring on both nutritional and environmental havoc. To render a rational opinion on the subject and make reasoned choices in the marketplace, it is essential to understand what genetic engineering of foods and crops involves and its potential benefits and risks.

Genetics in Agriculture

People have been genetically modifying foods and crops for tens of thousands of years. The most commonly used method has involved crossing two parents with different desirable characteristics in an effort to produce offspring that express the best of both of them. That and another approach, inducing mutations, are time-consuming and hit-or-miss and can result in good and bad characteristics.

Genetic engineering, on the other hand, involves the introduction into a plant or animal or micro-organism of a single gene or group of genes that are known quantities, genes that dictate the production of one or more desired elements, for example, the ability to resist the attack of insects, withstand herbicide treatments or produce foods with higher levels of essential nutrients.

Since all organisms use the same genetic material (DNA), the power of the technique includes the ability to transfer genes between organisms that normally would never interbreed.

Thus, an antifreeze gene from Arctic flounder has been introduced into strawberries to extend their growing season in northern climates. But contrary to what many people think, this does not make the strawberries "fishy" any more than the use of porcine insulin turned people into pigs.

Dr. Steven Kresovich, a plant breeder at Cornell, said, "Genes should be characterized by function, not origin. It's not a flounder gene but a cold tolerance gene that was introduced into strawberries."

As Dr. McHughen points out in his new book, "Pandora's Picnic Basket: The Potential and Hazards of Genetically Modified Foods" (Oxford, $25), people share about 7,000 genes with a worm called C. elegans. The main difference between organisms lies in the total number of genes their cells contain, how the genes are arranged and which ones are turned on or off in different cells at different times.

Current and Potential Benefits

An insecticidal toxin from a bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) has been genetically introduced into two major field crops, corn and cotton, resulting in increased productivity and decreased use of pesticides, which means less environmental contamination and greater profits for farmers. For example, by growing Bt cotton, farmers could reduce spraying for bollworm and budworm from seven times a season to none. Bt corn also contains much lower levels of fungal toxins, which are potentially carcinogenic.

The genetic introduction of herbicide tolerance into soybeans is saving farmers about $200 million a year by reducing the number of applications of herbicide needed to control weed growth, said Leonard Gianessi, a pesticide analyst at the National Center for Food and Agricultural Policy, a research organization in Washington.

Genetically engineered pharmaceuticals are already widely used, with more than 150 products on the market. Since 1978, genetically modified bacteria have been producing human insulin, which is used by 3.3 million people with diabetes.

Future food benefits are likely to accrue directly to the consumer. For example, genetic engineers have developed golden rice, a yellow rice rich in beta carotene (which the body converts to vitamin A) and iron.

If farmers in developing countries accept this crop and if the millions of people who suffer from nutrient deficiencies will eat it, golden rice could prevent widespread anemia and blindness in half a million children a year and the deaths of one million to two million children who succumb each year to the consequences of vitamin A deficiency.

Future possibilities include peanuts or shrimp lacking proteins that can cause life- threatening food allergies, fruits and vegetables with longer shelf lives, foods with fewer toxicants and antinutrients, meat and dairy products and oils with heart-healthier fats and foods that deliver vaccines.

Real and Potential Risks

G.M. foods and crops arrived without adequate mechanisms in place to regulate them. Three agencies are responsible for monitoring their safety for consumers, farmers and the environment: the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency. But the drug agency says its law does not allow it to require premarket testing of G.M. foods unless they contain a new substance that is not "generally recognized as safe."

For most products, safety tests are done voluntarily by producers. The recent recall of taco shells containing G.M. corn that had not been approved for human consumption was done voluntarily by the producer. The agency is now formulating new guidelines to test G.M. products and to label foods as "G.M.-free" but says it lacks a legal basis to require labeling of G.M. foods.

"In the current environment, such a label would be almost a kiss of death on a product," said Dr. Michael Jacobson, director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nonprofit consumer group. "But it may be that the public is simply not going to have confidence in transgenic ingredients if their presence is kept secret."

The introduction of possible food allergens through genetic engineering is a major concern. If the most common sources of food allergens - peanuts, shellfish, celery, nuts, milk or eggs - had to pass through an approval process today, they would never make it to market.

But consumers could be taken unaware if an otherwise safe food was genetically endowed with an allergen, as almost happened with an allergenic protein from Brazil nuts. Even if known allergenic proteins are avoided in G.M. foods, it is hard to predict allergenicity of new proteins.

A potentially serious environmental risk involves the "escape" of G.M. genes from crops into the environment, where they may harm innocent organisms or contaminate crops that are meant to be G.M.-free.

Dr. Jacobson concluded, "Now is the time, while agricultural biotechnology is still young, for Congress and regulatory agencies to create the framework that will maximize the safe use of these products, bolster public confidence in them and allow all of humankind to benefit from their enormous potential." Two Congressional bills now under discussion can do much to assure safer use of agricultural biotechnology, he said.

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

China bids to restart WTO membership

USA Today
12/05/00- Updated 07:43 AM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/world/nwstue04.htm

GENEVA (AP) - Chinese negotiators and members of the World Trade Organization met Tuesday in a new effort to overcome final obstacles to China's WTO membership.

''I think the momentum is there,'' China's lead negotiator Long Yongtu told reporters as he entered the meeting. China was ''not far'' from completing the deal, he added.

The body's working party dealing with the Chinese membership bid meets from Tuesday to Thursday, with a formal meeting set for Friday. China has been trying for more than 14 years to join the body that sets global rules for international trade.

Members were hopeful that progress would be made on some of the issues that still divide China and the WTO's 140 members, WTO spokesman Keith Rockwell said.

The issues include China's use of agricultural and industrial subsidies, the right of foreign services companies to trade in China, and how to determine whether Chinese goods are being sold below market price.

''It would be a surprise if this is the breakthrough meeting which brings China in to the WTO,'' Rockwell added.

Talks last month brought substantial progress on some issues that had been holding up membership, including a transitional mechanism to monitor Chinese compliance with its WTO obligations, measures to increase transparency and a system to simplify and standardize administration of import duties.

China still has to complete a trade deal with Mexico, but the country has said it will not oppose Chinese membership even if that deal isn't completed.

It is now impossible for China to join the WTO this year. The WTO general council, which is holding this year's last meeting this week, needs to approve the final deal before Beijing ratifies it. China would become a member 30 days after reporting the ratification to the WTO.

Speaking in Brussels Monday, EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy said he was hopeful this week's talks would make progress.

''There's momentum on both sides,'' Lamy said. ''They have the will to get there so it's moving.''

--------

We Need To Be Guerrillas

by Hilary Wainwright <hilary1@manc.org>

The Guardian of London December 5, 2000

The year 2000 is to be brought to a close by the opening round of the auctioning of selected public services to the world's most predatory - mainly US -corporations. This process is sanctioned by GATS (the General Agreement on Trade in Services), and items that could be on offer range from Mexico's telecommunications to Britain's schools. The deadline being offered to governments by the World Trade Organisation is this month.

GATS is a set of international regulations which will require national governments to open up public services to the market. Its aim is to remove all internal government controls over service delivery that are barriers to trade. In effect, it is the framework for a global programme of privatisation. GATS identifies 160 sectors to be subject to its rules. They range from hi-tech telecommunications to emptying the dustbins. They would make government actions to keep local control over these services illegal.

This new machinery of liberalisation comes at a time when profits in manufacturing are falling and corporations are hungry for new markets. AT&T, Arthur Anderson, the Chase Manhattan bank, IBM, the energy company ENRON, accountants Price Waterhouse Cooper and Ernst and Young and many others, as democratic as a band of feudal lords, are salivating in anticipation.

What power has voting had over this international regime which will, in the long run, transform the quality of our lives? None. On the other hand, people did originally vote for the services now being sold. They still do. David Hartridge, director of the WTO Services Division, indicates where power lies: "Without the enormous pressure generated by the American financial services sector, particularly companies like American Express and Citicorp, there would have been no GATS."

There has been no parliamentary debate on Britain's support for GATS. The only electoral arena in which it has been raised is the US. Thanks to Ralph Nader. The one positive feature of the recent US campaign has been a platform for Nader to sound the alarm on how strangled democracy has become. The importance of this has sunk under recriminations about taking votes from Al Gore. But Nader's campaign was especially important because he was able to combine his well-deserved reputation for exposing and curbing corporate power with the new anti-capitalist energies of those who led the protests in Seattle and Prague.

What next? What can be learnt for the green left in Britain in the face of corporate dominance? Holding inspiring rallies gives a kick start to a movement, but any new counter power has to root its ideas and demands in our potentially powerful community and workplace organisations: win the trust of black and feminist organisations; persuade organisations like the Green party and different socialist parties to let go of their exclusive claims to leadership.

In Britain something is stirring in relations between left parties. The election of green socialist Penny Kemp as chair of the Green party might improve the chances of socialist/green collaboration. In Preston, where a New Labour candidate was selected over outstanding socialist Valerie Wise, Labour party members talked privately about putting principle before party and voting for the Socialist Alliance.

Even the largest far left organisations are beginning to overcome their debilitating sectarianism. The Scottish Socialist party built its considerable influence through its involvement in resistance to the poll tax, water privatisation and motorways cutting through working-class estates. The SSP gained more votes than the Lib-Dems in the last two byelections for the Scottish parliament and six out of the last seven council byelections across Scotland.

Modest cooperative alternatives, ranging from organic food providers to local recycling, credit unions and environmental resource centres, will not bring about fundamental change on their own; they need allies with other kinds of power. One source of alliance is the much diminished power of organised workers. On both sides of the Atlantic, trade unions have begun to reinvigorate themselves by addressing the limitations of their old workplace-based, national structures.

All these initiatives on the independent left are part of the toolkit of a nimble, plural, international guerrilla strategy to break the corporate grip on democracy.

Hilary Wainwright is editor of Red Pepper

-------- police

Convicted L.A. officers will seek new trial

USA Today
12/05/00- Updated 07:33 AM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/ndstue05.htm

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Lawyers for the first three officers convicted in a police corruption scandal say they plan to file a formal motion next week seeking a new trial.

The attorneys contend their clients - Sgts. Edward Ortiz and Brian Liddy, and Officer Michael Buchanan - were convicted Nov. 15 because some jurors were confused and at least one engaged in misconduct.

The officers were found guilty of conspiracy and perjury for framing gang members during a 1996 arrest. Prosecutors said the officers made false police reports claiming they were intentionally struck by a pickup truck. A fourth officer was acquitted.

The Los Angeles district attorney's office plans to argue against the request at a hearing set for Dec. 21 before Superior Court Judge Jacqueline A. Connor, who presided over the trial.

Harland Braun, representing Buchanan, said jurors wrongly relied on a computer-generated police report about the incident that said ''great bodily injury'' was involved - which the officers did not allege in their handwritten account.

Braun said the defense will also argue that the officers deserve a new trial because jury foreman Victor Flores allegedly told two alternate jurors on the first day of trial that he believed the officers were guilty.

The police probe surfaced after ex-officer Rafael Perez - in a plea bargain on charges of stealing cocaine from an evidence locker - told prosecutors of widespread corruption in the city's Rampart station.

Perez never testified in the officers' trial. Just before the trial was to begin, a former girlfriend of Perez's came forward with allegations that Perez and another officer had killed three people.

The former girlfriend, Sonia Flores, 24, later recanted the statement. She was arraigned Monday for allegedly filing a false report with the FBI and was expected to plead guilty Tuesday.

''I think she's apologized already,'' said her attorney, Marshall Bitkower.

---

Autopsy finds actor was shot in back

USA Today
12/05/00- Updated 08:58 AM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/ndstue06.htm

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A policeman who killed an actor holding a toy gun at a Halloween party shot the man from behind, an autopsy concluded.

Deputy Medical Examiner Jeffrey P. Gutstadt declared Monday that Anthony Dwain Lee was shot four times Oct. 28, three in the back and one in the back of the head.

The night of the Halloween party, officers Tarriel Hopper and Natalie Humpherys were responding to a noise complaint at a Hollywood Hills mansion when they were asked by a guard for the party to wait in the foyer for a host.

Instead, Hopper rounded the house and fired nine shots through a glass door after seeing Lee's rubber replica of a handgun.

Attorney Cameron Stewart said she plans to file a wrongful death claim with the city for Lee's family.

LAPD spokesman Lt. Horace Frank declined to comment on the autopsy, which also found Lee had cocaine and alcohol in Lee's system. Frank did say the shots from behind could be explained.

Lee, 39, had appeared on TV shows such as ER and NYPD Blue, and had a small role in the 1997 Jim Carrey movie Liar Liar. Years before, he had turned from gangs to Buddhism.

---

'Homicide': Real Detectives. Real Crimes. Real Voyeurism.

New York Times
December 5, 2000
By CARYN JAMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/05/arts/05JAME.html

In a Brooklyn neighborhood the police hover around the body of a murdered man lying on the ground; his hands and feet stick out from under a sheet tossed over him, and blood streams onto the sidewalk.

Soon his grieving fiancée, a young woman in a knit cap, sits alone in a police station holding a snapshot. She turns to the camera with a half smile, kisses the picture and says, "His name is John; I call him Daddy," then turns away and sobs. Her speaking to the camera, to us, seems both intimate and self-conscious, which only makes the gripping "Brooklyn North Homicide Squad" creepier when you stand back and think about it.

The three-part reality series, beginning tonight on Court TV, followed homicide detectives in Brooklyn from March through September. Brilliantly edited and paced, it is as slick and compelling as any police drama on television, which is exactly the problem. From the swift montage of characters and New York streets in the opening credits to the thumping music between scenes, the series applies the techniques of dramas like "N.Y.P.D. Blue" and "Homicide" to gruesome reality. The series's energetic storytelling engages us even when its voyeurism is repellent.

"Brooklyn North" legitimately raises the issues that reality game shows like "Survivor" and "Big Brother" evoked in a hyped and bogus way. Where is the line between private and public? How does the camera's presence affect events? Why are we peering into these lives at all?

If "Brooklyn North" weren't so artful it wouldn't be so disturbing; unenhanced reality, however upsetting, rarely makes great television. (That is one difference between this program and Court TV's quickly canceled exploitation series "Confessions," which played tapes of murderers' confessions.)

Here, there are good guys and bad guys, and a structure that copies episodic television right down to the deft mix of plots and subplots. Fictional techniques have been applied to murder stories for decades, of course, in books like Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood" and Norman Mailer's "Executioner's Song" and in films like Errol Morris's "Thin Blue Line." It's a wonder television took so long to get there, wallowing instead in cut- rate video reality programs like "Cops." But "Brooklyn North," with its upbeat tone and dramatic flair, goes further than other genres in turning real-life tragedy into sheer entertainment.

The first episode, about the hunt for John's killer, focuses on a suspect called the Dread (as in dreadlocks, not as in terror). Tomorrow's installment concerns a dead infant found in the trash and the murder of a homosexual drug dealer. (The third was not available for review.)

Running through all three is a subplot that the narrator teases as the series begins: "Tonight on `Brooklyn North Homicide Squad,' detectives investigate the strangulations of five women by a possible serial killer." The off-screen narrator is James McDaniel, who plays Lieutenant Fancy on "N.Y.P.D. Blue." It's no accident that the promos say: "It's just like N.Y.P.D Blue. But real."

The "Brooklyn North" detectives become recurring characters, though they are less articulate and not nearly as well dressed as their fictional counterparts. Their New York accents are less exaggerated than on "N.Y.P.D. Blue," though they use familiar slang. "Two witnesses ID'ed the perp," one detective says.

Lt. Joe Heffernan, who supervises the detectives, seems to be posturing for the camera, talking to his officers for our benefit, but he is the exception. Detective Richie Sullivan, a family man with thinning hair and "18 years on the job," as the program puts it, is the most sympathetic. He is entirely believable as he talks about how the murder cases stay with him.

Detective Louis Savarese is a case of odd casting. Heavily tattooed, a biker in his off-hours and hugely overweight, he is what Andy Sipowicz of "N.Y.P.D. Blue" would be in real life: that is, less engaging. Yet he can look at a pattern of blood on the floor and see what happened by the way it is splattered.

In no time, the line between reality and fiction all but disappears. Sitting in a car through a long rainy night on a stakeout, one detective says, "Everybody thinks it's like on TV, everything's done in an hour, you finish the paperwork, and you go home to your family." His partner says, "TV doesn't do paperwork."

But on "Brooklyn North" cases are wrapped up in an hour. What little paperwork we see seems quaint because the detectives use old-fashioned typewriters. And just like the usual television detectives, the real ones have a camera filming them from the back seat.

There are, however, constant reminders that this is not made up. Suspects are shown with their faces out of focus to obscure their identities. Nauseating scenes (a shirt sopping with blood) suggest that even the toughest dramas are prettified. In reality a homeless man was arrested for the strangulations last summer, though that plot will not be resolved on the series until the next batch of episodes, early next year.

As "Survivor" never did, "Brooklyn North" carries a frisson of the forbidden. We have no right to be here; murder shouldn't be replayed as entertainment; yet this insidiously effective drama makes it hard to turn away.

BROOKLYN NORTH
HOMICIDE SQUAD
Court TV, tonight, tomorrow and Thursday nights at 10

Produced by David Houts and Daniel Elias; directed by Mr. Elias; edited by Po Kutchins and Victoria Toth; music by Joel Goodman; Robyn Hutt, executive producer for Court TV. James McDaniel, narrator.

---

USA Today
12/05/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Nebraska

Grand Island - A Nebraska State Trooper accused of assaulting his estranged wife convinced a Hall County District judge to temporarily halt his decertification as a law enforcement officer. Sgt. Steve Hauser requested the injunction after the Nebraska Crime Commission revoked his license last month. Hauser, a 20-year patrol veteran, was fired last year after being arraigned on felony assault charges. After the charges were reduced to misdemeanors, an arbitrator ruled he should be reinstated to his job.

New Hampshire

Portsmouth - A part-time Stratham police officer charged with driving a boat while intoxicated wants his case thrown out because he says the New Hampshire Marine Patrol didn't have jurisdiction to arrest him. Michael Gobbi, 34, said he was operating his boat July 3 on the Piscataqua River in Maine waters. The U.S. Supreme Court is reviewing a dispute between Maine and New Hampshire over the boundary line on the river.

Washington

Seattle - A missing King County sheriff's patrol car wasn't stolen; it was misplaced. The white car, which did not have police markings, was mistakenly taken to an auto paint shop Friday. Deputies searched for the car over the weekend and finally found it at the shop.

--------

Morrock News, Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2000
Tue, 05 Dec 2000 15:46:37 -0800

*COP SHOT HALLOWEEN PARTY-GOER IN BACK: The autopsy on bit-actor Anthony Lee, who was killed by a Los Angeles policeman investigating a noisy Halloween party, shows that Lee was shot in the back. The officer who fired the fatal shots reacted when Lee pulled a rubber gun on him -- other party-goers said Lee apparently believed the officer was in costume, too. Lee's sister filed a legal action Tuesday against the Los Angeles Police Dept, and famed lawyer Johnny Cochrane is representing her.

-------- spying

Carnivore Privacy Concerns Remain

New Times Times
December 5, 2000
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/05/technology/05CARN.html

Despite winning a favorable review by an outside group, the F.B.I.'s Carnivore Internet wiretap system continues to raise strong concerns about privacy and the legal limits of government surveillance, a prominent panel of computer security experts said yesterday.

The new report could mean further trouble for a system that has drawn criticism since its existence was first revealed in July.

The new report responds to a review of Carnivore by the Illinois Institute of Technology's Research Institute, which released a draft report on Nov. 17.

While lauding the Justice Department and the Illinois group for a good-faith effort to examine the Internet wiretap system, the computer experts said that that study was designed too narrowly to answer the most pressing questions.

The "limited nature of the analysis described in the draft report simply cannot support a conclusion that Carnivore is correct, safe, or always consistent with legal limitations," the scientists wrote.

The authors include some of the best-known names in computer security, including Steven M. Bellovin and Matt Blaze of AT&T Labs, David J. Farber of the University of Pennsylvania, Peter Neumann of SRI International and Eugene Spafford of the Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security at Purdue University.

Members of the informal group of computer scientists were initially contacted by the Justice Department to review the Carnivore system.

"I honestly believe they didn't call us in to win us over," Mr. Blaze said in an interview yesterday, adding that the officials wanted "to actually hear what we wanted to say."

Still, Mr. Blaze said, when the Illinois review was published, "we were disappointed by the limited scope of the report."

The group concluded, "Serious technical questions remain about the ability of Carnivore to satisfy its requirements for security, safety and soundness."

The Illinois review, the group said, should have included a thorough search for programming flaws, and should have more deeply explored whether the system provides the kind of precise records that wiretapping calls for - especially in systems that can be operated remotely, such as Carnivore.

Carnivore is a modified version of a common piece of software known as a packet sniffer that is used by Internet service providers to maintain their networks. The Carnivore version is installed during criminal investigations at the office of the suspect's Internet service provider.

The system has been used dozens of times in criminal and national security cases under federal wiretap authority. It is designed to be adjustable so that it can skim only some information from the flood of data that make up online communication; law enforcement officials assert that it provides a tool for the Internet similar to "pen register" and "trap and trace" devices, which capture the telephone numbers of criminal suspects and those who call them.

What worries privacy advocates and lawmakers critical of Carnivore is that the Justice Department wants to follow the rules for pen registers in using the device. Those rules are far less restrictive than the regulations governing wiretaps. Justice Department officials confirmed that the system has been used, in most cases, under the less-restrictive rules.

Since the system can be used to collect much more than Internet addresses, lawmakers and civil liberties advocates contend that the government should not be able to use the less-stringent standards of proof.

Another review of the Illinois report from the Privacy Foundation, which is based in Denver, sounded similar notes of concern about auditing Carnivore's use and its place in the legal system.

"Carnivore is, potentially, an appropriate law enforcement tool," said Philip L. Gordon, a Denver lawyer and a fellow of the foundation. "But there are technical deficiencies that have to be addressed," as well as legal questions.

Henry H. Perritt Jr., dean of the Chicago-Kent College of Law and head of the panel that produced the Illinois report on Carnivore, said the panel of scientists was a "first-rate group." Mr. Perritt stood by his work but said he agreed with two of the criticisms: that the legal framework for wiretapping must be revised for the digital age, and that the system must undergo continuing review.

"Software is a moving target," Mr. Perritt said, and a one-time review "doesn't tell you what you need to know about future versions."

The final report of the Illinois group is due later this month.

A spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Paul Bresson, said officials had not yet seen the critical report and could not comment on it.

--------

U.S. prisoner's wife braces herself

Infobeat
December 05, 2000
By ANNA DOLGOV Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405226138

MOSCOW (AP) - The wife of a U.S. businessman being tried on Russian espionage charges said Tuesday there was no hope for an acquittal and pledged to carry on efforts to free her husband from a Moscow jail.

Cheri Pope arrived in Moscow on Monday to support her husband Edmond through the last days of his trial. Pope is scheduled to deliver his closing defense argument on Wednesday, and a verdict is expected soon afterward.

``I am bracing myself for him to be found guilty,'' Cheri Pope said outside the Lefortovo Prison, where she was to be allowed a rare, hourlong visit with her husband.

``I'm going to have to sit there and listen to my husband be sentenced to the maximum penalty and proceed from there. I'm not going to give up and I'm not going to go away,'' she said.

It was only her fourth visit with Pope since he was arrested in April and imprisoned on charges of obtaining classified blueprints for a high-speed torpedo. The trial judge turned down Cheri Pope's request to see her husband again on Thursday, the latest in a string of rejections, but she will be allowed to attend the reading of the verdict.

``One hour every two months is not enough,'' protested Rep. John Peterson of Pennsylvania, who accompanied Cheri Pope to Moscow. ``He is shut off from his family and the whole world. ... His life stopped 245 days ago.''

Prosecutors in the closed-door trial have demanded the maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, and payment of a staggering $250 million for damages to Russia's defense industry.

Pope's family and defense lawyers have accused the judge of bias, and they have expressed only pessimism about the trial's possible outcome.

The defense contends that the torpedo blueprints had already been sold abroad and published in open sources. And Pope's main accuser has recanted his testimony.

Washington has urged Russia to release Pope, partly because he is in poor health. Pope has suffered from bone cancer, which was in remission when he came to Moscow but which his family fears may have returned.

Cheri Pope said after seeing her husband Tuesday that she was shocked at his condition.

He is ``a sick man and he needs medical care now. Not a week from now, not a month from now,'' she said.

During the seven-week trial, Pope has suffered from attacks of sharp pain, and he has been permitted to sit during the hearings rather than standing as prisoners usually do. However, the judge has turned down repeated defense requests for an independent medical evaluation by English-speaking doctors.

Pope, 54, is a retired U.S. Navy officer and founder of CERF Technologies International, a company specializing in studying foreign maritime equipment.

---

Report: Serious concerns remain over FBI's 'Carnivore' system

CNN
December 5, 2000 Web posted at: 12:10 PM EST (1710 GMT)
By Daniel Sieberg CNN.com Technology Editor
http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/12/05/carnivore.critics/index.html

(CNN) -- A prominent group of computer experts have released a critical assessment of a recent independent review of the FBI's Internet surveillance system, sparking further debate over its privacy and technological limitations.

The new report addresses a review of the "Carnivore" system by the Illinois Institute of Technology's Research Institute (IITRI), which released a draft report on November 17.

Although the authors of the latest report acknowledge the "good-faith effort" on behalf of the IITRI, it says the scope of their review was not broad enough to address all the pertinent matters.

"Those who are concerned that the system produces correct evidence, represents no threat to the networks on which it is installed, or complies with the scope of court orders should not take much comfort from the analysis described in the report or its conclusions," the experts wrote.

Participants in the new report are listed as Steven Bellovin and Matt Blaze from the AT&T Laboratories, David Farber from the University of Pennsylvania, Peter Neumann from SRI International and Eugene Spafford from Purdue University.

The Justice Department initially contacted members of the ad hoc group in September.

Specific technical concerns noted by the scientists include a lack of analysis between the Carnivore code and its host environment and operating system, inadequate discussion of the remote access provided by the use of the "PC Anywhere" program, and no evidence of a systematic search for bugs or serious errors. "PC Anywhere" is an application that allows computer professionals or employees to connect to a network from a remote location.

The scientists went on to urge the Justice Department to publish the inner workings of Carnivore for a public review, a request that has also been suggested by several privacy advocate groups.

Using "sniffing" technology, the Carnivore system is installed at an Internet service provider (ISP) to keep court-ordered tabs on a suspect's e-mail and instant messages. It has already been used more than 25 times during criminal investigations.

The FBI spokesman associated with Carnivore said the whole purpose of making the IITRI draft report available for public scrutiny was to solicit opinion from outside groups. He could not comment on how the scientists' information might be applied.

When correctly used, the IITRI said Carnivore "provides investigators with no more information than is permitted by a given court order."

A final report on Carnivore by the IITRI should be presented to U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno later this month.

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Jordan Plans New Terror Trial of Muslim Militant Syria Seized

New York Times
December 5, 2000
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/05/world/05SYRI.html

AMMAN, Jordan, Dec. 4 - A Jordanian-American who was sentenced in absentia for planning terror attacks has been extradited from Syria and will be put on trial again, judicial officials said today.

Raed Hijazi, 32, who has dual Jordanian and American citizenship, was apprehended in Damascus two months ago and was sent to Jordan in late November, one official said.

The officials confirmed a report on Sunday by the London-based Islamic Observation Center that Mr. Hijazi, who is of Palestinian origin, was arrested in Syria in September and deported to Jordan late last month.

The Islamic Observation Center said Mr. Hijazi entered Syria in December 1999 using an American passport.

A United States Embassy spokeswoman confirmed that Mr. Hijazi held American citizenship and said an American diplomat had visited him in jail in Jordan. She said Mr. Hijazi was receiving consular services, but she would not go into details of the case against him.

Mr. Hijazi was born in the United States, but traveled often to Jordan, where his family lives.

He was among 28 defendants who were tried in Amman this year on charges of links to the suspected master of terror Osama bin Laden and of plotting to attack American and Israeli targets in Jordan during millennium celebrations last December. Twelve of them, including Mr. Hijazi, were tried in absentia.

At the end of the trial in September, six defendants, including Mr. Hijazi and three others at large, were sentenced to hang.

The Jordanian judicial officials said the State Security Court would retry Mr. Hijazi at an undisclosed date.

The charges included possessing weapons and explosives, having membership in Al Qaeda, the Saudi- born Mr. bin Laden's group, and plotting bombings.

Six defendants were acquitted in the earlier trial, and the rest received jail sentences ranging from 7 1/2 to 15 years. Most of those convicted are Arabs of Palestinian origin.

The defendants who appeared at the trial had denied links to Mr. bin Laden and charges that they planned strikes at tourist sites frequented by Israeli and American tourists.

[In Washington tonight, Clinton administration officials said that Mr. Hijazi was believed to have links to the Qaeda group, but that he was not a suspect in the bombing of the American destroyer Cole in Yemen in October, or in any other plot linked to Mr. bin Laden's group.]

Mr. bin Laden, who is believed to be living in Afghanistan, is accused by the United States of masterminding explosions at two United States embassies in East Africa in 1998 that killed more than 200 people. He also is the prime suspect in planning the suicide bombing of the Cole in Aden, Yemen, which killed 17 sailors.

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Seattle was only the beginning

December 5, 2000
By Pamela White
Colorado Daily U. Colorado

(U-WIRE) BOULDER, Colo. -- A year has already passed since more than 50,000 anti-globalization protesters gathered in Seattle. Opposed to the human-rights, environmental and economic abuses associated with rape-and-run capitalism and global corporatization, they came from across the United States and beyond in an attempt to shut down a week-long meeting of the World Trade Organization.

And they succeeded -- at least for a while.

Concerned citizens managed -- largely without violence -- to bring WTO business to a halt for one day, while making it difficult at best for delegates to meet the other four.

Like a pebble dropped in a vast, dark lake, the event caused a ripple that has spread and continues to spread today. Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Prague, Melbourne, Australia; Windsor, Ontario; Ft. Benning, Ga., and Cincinnati -- the battle has been joined on more fronts than anyone could have imagined last December.

And a battle it has been, with more than 100,000 activists having put themselves on the line in the United States alone against an increasingly hostile and militarized police force. With the aid of unrepentantly violent U.S. Marshals, the police have committed acts of unprovoked violence, striking the first blow in Seattle and deliberately targeting reporters with rubber bullets in Los Angeles.

The ripple made by the Battle in Seattle would be larger if newspapers and television had reported the facts. Rather than people reading about brave police and "militant protesters," readers would have learned that the police had begun bashing heads before a single window was smashed. They would have read about the group of protesters that sat singing peacefully in a park -- until riot police arrived and began literally beating them on their heads with batons. They would have read about the locals who were held from their homes by police -- then sprayed with pepper spray by those same police when they applauded the cops' departure from their neighborhood.

The past year has provided horrific images that many of us will never forget: activists with missing teeth, torn skin, and bleeding faces in Seattle; police on motorcycles deliberately driving over the prostrate bodies of protesters in D.C.; panicked youth fleeing a concert in L.A. under a hail of rubber bullets.

And absurd images: a police chief displaying chili peppers confiscated from the activists' kitchen; a standoff between puppet-makers and police in Philly that resulted in the apprehension of many street puppets; Clinton giving a speech in the Staples Center about how much better off the United States has been under Democratic leadership while cops cut the power to protesters' TV outside.

But it has provided wonderful images, as well, images that hint at new possibilities: a young woman in a yellow raincoat dancing with a grin on her face in front of hundreds of police clad in riot gear; thousands of activists arriving simultaneously at intersections around the International Monetary Fund and locking down to the sounds of drums and cheers in D.C.; street puppets, dancing, fire-eating, Native drumming -- and some rather unorthodox cheerleading.

It's like nothing we've seen in the United States since Vietnam. But unlike the activism of the '60s, this movement isn't the creation of one particular generation or class of people. It isn't just white college students from middle- and upper-class families who've been protesting the WTO, but grandmothers, high school students and blue-collar workers.

And it's growing.

Still, there's a lot of work to be done, both in educating the American TV addicted masses and in bridging the gap between the middle-class experience of most progressives and the struggle that defines the lives of colonized peoples, including those within our own borders. A conscious effort must be made to reach out to those who don't understand the issues -- and to those whose daily lives make the violence of Seattle seem trivial.

Often, Americans tend to think of themselves as leading the way, whether with regard to technology or entertainment. When it comes to social revolution, however, we are following, just waking up from a comfort-induced stupor. Seattle did not spark a global movement -- it simply joined one that was already in motion.

Regardless of how you look at it, Seattle was and is cause for celebration. Changing the world is a long-term process. And we've shown we're up to the challenge.


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