NUCLEAR
U.S., Ex - Republics Sign Agreement
Russia, Cuba Revive Ties, But Debt Unresolved
Putin talks with Castro in Cuba
Truce Brings Relief for Kashmiris
Dialogue hinges on Pak. ending terrorism: Panja
Iraq resumes loading oil at gulf
Inter-Korean talks falter
Calderon firm on Vieques stance
Navy sets date for Puerto Rico vote
Vladimir Putin's secret dream
Ukraine set for Chernobyl closure
Chernobyl Closure Lays to Rest Powerful Symbol
The legacy of Chernobyl
Pulling the plug at Chernobyl
Sub Critical Test Scheduled Today
U.S. Energy Chief Steps In, Keeps Lights On in California
In Crisis, California to Force Big Utilities to Supply Power
Imports Help Calif. Power Grid Limp Through Day
Discarded Tapes Checked for Los Alamos Link
TVA Chairman Announces Retirement
Hello, World
A Shift on U.S. Security Policy
Ridge says he'll serve out term
Clinton Reminds Leaders of Their Duty to the Poor
World Congratulates Bush
Man in the News: The 43rd President, George Walker Bush

MILITARY
Albright to urge defense cooperation
Prince Andrew leaving Royal Navy
Colombia reopens bomb death probe
Teen Drug Use Holds Steady
Teen Drug Use in United States Unchanged: Study
Ecstasy use shows big rise among teens
Study links marijuana and infertility
Slightly off center . . .
South Korea urges North on projects
Problems to prolong Alpha mission
GEORGIA: U.N. WORKERS FREED
6 suspects named in Cole bombing
U.S. experts thinks Cole bombers fled
To digress
WWII rocket inadvertently launched
Buried rocket inadvertently launched

OTHER
Gerry Levin says it all
Tank spills 60,000 gallons of gas
105,000-gallon spill cleanup begins
Chinese city to relocate 50,000
Environmental trade guidelines set
EPA Selects 43 Charter Members
Bay City News Report
EU debates big cuts in fish catches
TRENTON: STATE TO RELEASE E.P.A. REPORT
States
Scientists Decode Plant Genome
Genetic map of a plant completed
'Dolly' Company to Produce Proteins in Cloned Cattle
Different under Bush
NYC police sorry for taking Qurans
Legal Setbacks Against Police Policies Mount
Minor Charges Dropped Against 2 Accused in Pepper Spray Case
Charges Sought for Troopers Involved in Turnpike Shooting
L.A. OKs more corruption settlements
Arrest by Police Leader Takes Him Back to Roots
Slightly off center . . .
BOSNIA: WAR CRIMES PLEA
New Mexico
Freed U.S. prisoner leaves Russia
Convicted Spy Leaves Russia After Pardon
Spy Agency in Brazil Is Accused of Abuses
New anti-terrorist strategy sought
Yemen: Bin Laden Possibly Involved in Cole Attack
U.S. vows campaign against Taliban
Panel seeks 'coherent' anti-terrorist strategy
Taleban suspected of aiding terrorists
Two to avoid
Greek terrorists mock authorities

ACTIVISTS
Charges dropped against protesters
Working poor descend on food banks
Cities still seeing high need for assistance
Protests Planned for Bush Inauguration
U.S. Crop Protest in France
China jail term for sect member
Chinese protest removal of monument
Animal Rights Voters Flex Their Muscle/Help Decide Election
Serbs Protest Near Kosovo
SPAIN: WORKERS PROTEST
New York
China sect member's funeral held
S. Korean bank workers end protest
Freepers flamed


-------- NUCLEAR

U.S., Ex - Republics Sign Agreement

Associated Press
December 14, 2000 Filed at 8:02 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Disarmament.html

GENEVA (AP) -- An agreement signed Thursday by five nations spells out the details of ending round-the-clock monitoring at missile plants in Utah and Russia.

The May 31, 2001, deadline for dismantling the plants' monitoring systems was set out in the U.S.-Soviet treaty banning intermediate-range nuclear weapons. Thursday's agreement, signed by the United States and the former Soviet republics of Russia, Ukraine, Kazakstan and Belarus, spelled out the technical details of how to accomplish the dismantling.

The Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces treaty was signed by Presidents Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in December 1987. It banned intermediate-range nuclear missiles and was the first treaty to lead to the destruction of an entire class of nuclear weapons. ``Although the INF treaty is of unlimited duration, the treaty's extensive inspection regime, including continuous monitoring at missile assembly plants in Magna, Utah, and Votkinsk, Russia, will be concluded at midnight May 31, 2001,'' the countries said in a joint statement.

``The newly signed amendment provides principles and procedures for the completion of INF inspections,'' it added.

The round-the-clock monitoring system at the gates to the two missile assembly plants has to be dismantled by the May 31 deadline.

The INF treaty imposed a permanent ban on ground-launched missiles with ranges between 310 and 3,418 miles.

Belarus, Kazakstan and Ukraine were, along with Russia, the former Soviet republics most concerned with the class of weapons.

The same five nations on Monday signed an agreement specifying procedures for the phased elimination, under the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, of the last SS-24 intercontinental missiles in Ukraine.

It will see major components that are essential to the missiles' use destroyed in a first phase, after which they will no longer be usable. The final date for the missiles to be eliminated is Dec. 4, 2001.

-------

Russia, Cuba Revive Ties, But Debt Unresolved

Reuters
December 14, 2000 Filed at 4:14 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-cuba-ru.html
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20001214/wl/cuba_russia_dc_4.html

HAVANA (Reuters) - Russian and Cuban Presidents Vladimir Putin and Fidel Castro agreed on Thursday to breathe new life into Moscow-Havana ties but apparently failed to resolve a major bilateral problem -- Cuba's enormous Soviet-era debt.

After a morning of talks in Havana, Putin joined Castro in condemning the U.S. trade embargo against the communist-ruled Caribbean island. But he also sent congratulations to U.S. president-elect George W. Bush and freed a convicted U.S. spy.

``Our mutual trade has reached $930 million in recent years, which is not bad for both Russia and Cuba,'' Putin told a news conference following the talks.

``But there are still some problems remaining which have accumulated in the last 10 years and they demand especially close attention and solution. The Soviet Union has invested a lot in Cuba's economy. ... This is worth billions of dollars. We have to understand what to do about this.''

Cuba's debt to the ex-Soviet Union, inherited by Russia, has been previously estimated in Moscow at around $20 billion.

But Havana disputes this figure and argues in return that the damage caused to its economy by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 adds up to an equivalent value.

Putin and Castro signed a joint declaration at Havana's Revolution Palace which condemned the U.S. embargo, called for a multipolar world to counter U.S. influence and lamented the perils of economic globalization for poor nations.

In a reference to events like last year's Balkans conflict, where Havana and Moscow were united in their disapproval of NATO military action, both leaders also underlined in their statement the ``fruitlessness'' of ``humanitarian interventions.''

U.S. EMBARGO A TARGET

But it was the mention of the U.S. embargo which will have most pleased the 74-year-old Castro, hosting Putin since Wednesday night on the first visit by a Russian leader to Latin America since the collapse of the Soviet Union a decade ago.

``They have repeated their condemnation of the continued trade, economic and financial blockade of Cuba by the United States, as well as any other extraterritorial acts linked to the blockade,'' said a Russian-language version of the joint communique, signed after a first round of formal talks.

That came just after Putin sent his message to U.S. election winner Bush wishing him ``success in this important and responsible post'' and looking forward to ``an intensive and constructive dialogue with you and your administration.''

Bush has promised a tough line on Castro, defiantly maintaining one of the world's last few bastions of Communism and a longtime political thorn in the side of Washington.

Putin also gave a pardon on Thursday to convicted U.S. spy Edmond Pope, who had been condemned to 20 years in jail. The pardon cited his poor health and the importance of U.S.-Russian ties.

Although himself a proponent of multi-party democracy and free-market economics -- both of which Castro has rejected in Cuba -- Putin wants to rekindle Moscow's political and economic ties with its former Cold War ally.

In addition to the bilateral trade and investment benefits for Cuba, Putin is thought to want to rebuild Russia's global role, particularly in the Third World, and has not been shy about making advances to other nations viewed suspiciously by the West -- including Libya, North Korea and Iraq.

PUTIN AND CASTRO OFF TO THE BEACH

Besides their joint communique, Castro and Putin also penned five other agreements, covering legal and health cooperation, avoidance of double taxation, trade targets for 2001-2005 and a project on archives of mutual interest.

``I believe new prospects have opened up for the development of relations between Russia and Cuba. ... They have received a special boost from President Putin's visit,'' Castro said.

The presidents, who met at Havana airport for Putin's arrival, were to spend most of the day together, with a visit to the Russian-operated Lourdes electronic intelligence center outside the Cuban capital scheduled for the afternoon.

Putin's two days of formal activities -- prior to a weekend at the world-famous beach resort of Varadero, at Castro's invitation -- began with a military guard of honor in front of Havana's Revolution Palace.

The Russian also held an unscheduled 20-minute meeting with Castro after his arrival shortly before midnight on Wednesday, during which he invited Castro to visit Moscow.

BEARHUG FOR GORBACHEV

The last major visit to Cuba from Moscow was by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1989, who received an effusive bearhug from Castro and an open-top drive into Havana past cheering masses, rather than the businesslike handshake and quiet drive he shared with Putin on Wednesday.

The Soviet Union became Cuba's strategic partner shortly after Castro came to power in his 1959 revolution, which toppled dictator Fulgencio Batista. But relations loosened dramatically after the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1991.

Russia believes part of Cuba's debt could be covered by Russian participation in some potentially lucrative projects left over from the Soviet era.

Unfinished projects include a nickel ore processing plant at Las Camariocas, modernization of the Cienfuegos and Santiago oil refineries and the incomplete Juragua nuclear plant, whose construction was halted in 1992.

But no concrete agreements on these tasks were announced.

The two governments also signed a protocol extending a $350 million Russian credit to the island, originally granted in 1993 and intended to finance the completion of industrial projects.

---

Putin talks with Castro in Cuba

Infobeat
Thursday, December 14, 2000
By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405338097

HAVANA (AP) - Vladimir Putin, the first Russian president to visit Cuba since the collapse of the Soviet Union, held talks with Fidel Castro on Thursday as he started a trip aimed at warming ties between the former Cold War allies.

Putin, in a dark suit and tie, and Castro, in his customary olive green uniform and cap, stood at attention as a Cuban military band played the national anthems of both countries outside the Palace of the Revolution.

After greeting a Russian delegation and members of Cuba's top leadership, the two presidents held formal talks inside the palace and signed a series of accords. Russian officials have said six documents were prepared for the trip, including agreements on cooperation in legal affairs and health.

The two presidents appeared to be chatting amiably through an interpreter on Wednesday, shortly after Castro greeted Putin at the Havana airport. They posed for photographs and sped away in a Russian-made limousine without talking with reporters.

Later, at the residence where Putin and his wife, Lyudmila, are staying, they spoke briefly in the presence of their respective foreign ministers, Russian officials said. Putin invited Castro to visit Russia, they said.

Putin sent congratulations to President-elect George W. Bush via telegram early Thursday, foreign affairs adviser Sergei Prikhodoko said. There was no immediate reaction from the Cuban government.

Cuba was a strategic outpost during the Cold War, and 20 percent of its gross national product is estimated to have come from Soviet subsidies. But it is a much-changed country since the Soviet collapse: Politics are now second to economics as Russian-Cuban trade replaces Soviet-Cuban aid at the top of the agenda.

During Putin's two-day state visit, the two countries will examine ways to help wipe out Cuba's $11 billion Soviet-era debt. Putin and Castro were meeting formally on Thursday morning for talks on trade and other economic issues. Putin was to attend a ceremony in the afternoon honoring Cuba's monument to the Unknown Soviet Soldier.

Also Thursday, Putin was to meet with Ricardo Alarcon, president of Cuba's National Assembly and Castro's point man on Cuba-U.S. affairs.

On Friday, the Russian president was scheduled to pay tribute to Cuban independence hero Jose Marti and visit Cuba's Institute of Genetics and Biotechnology. He then heads to Cuba's Varadero beach resort for a two-day rest before going to Canada on Sunday.

His wife was keeping a separate, more low-key program, meeting Thursday morning with Russian teachers and students Thursday morning at the University of Havana.

Both Cuba and Russia hope the visit will breathe new life into a decades-old relationship that thrived during the Cold War era.

Cuba was thrown into economic crisis by the loss of its Soviet bloc trading partners at the beginning of the last decade but is slowly learning to become economically self-sufficient. From the Russian perspective, Putin said this week his country must revive economic ties with Cuba or risk losing out to companies from other countries.

Russian trade with Cuba now totals about $1 billion per year, Putin said earlier this week - down from about $3.6 billion in 1991.

Putin was expected to promote Russia's participation in completing construction of Soviet-era projects, including the Las Camariocas nickel plant and the Cienfuegos oil refinery, according to Russian media.

-------- india / pakistan

Truce Brings Relief for Kashmiris

Associated Press
December 14, 2000 Filed at 2:29 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Kashmir-Violence.html

NOUSADA, Pakistan (AP) -- In Nousada, a Pakistani village tucked away in the Himalayan mountain shadows, children are going to classes for the first time this year -- but not in their school buildings. They bear the scars of war.

Like hospitals and homes here on the violent Kashmir border, the schools are too damaged to use. Wind whistles through broken windows. Shrapnel pockmarks the walls. Spent shells litter the playgrounds.

So despite the icy wind, students kneel outside during their lessons. Wrapped in sweaters and coats, they watch as teachers scribble on blackboards under the lukewarm winter sun.

Students and teachers alike cling to the hope that life can return to normal in Kashmir, where a temporary cease-fire has quieted the guns. But many are skeptical.

``We don't know how long these moments of peace will last. Indians can start targeting us again any time,'' teacher Syed Liaquat said while pointing toward Indian military posts barely three miles away in the Indian-ruled section of Kashmir.

Nousada sits at ground zero in the Kashmir dispute, a territorial fight between India and Pakistan that has raged for half a century and cost thousands of lives.

Kashmir has been divided between Pakistan and India since British rule ended on the subcontinent in 1947, but each country claims the Himalayan province in its entirety. The dispute has been the cause of two full-fledged wars, and for people who live on either side of the dividing line the violence has been relentless.

The two countries have deployed their armies along the border, and soldiers exchange fire daily. Thousands of villagers have died in the crossfire. Adding to the bloodshed, separatists who want the Indian-ruled section to either become independent or join Pakistan have waged an 11-year insurgency that has killed thousands more there.

In recent days, though, the guns along the Kashmir frontier have been uncharacteristically silent.

Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee offered a temporary cease-fire to the separatist guerrillas late last month, and Pakistan responded with a border truce. In the days that followed, residents of Nousada began returning to their ruggedly beautiful town and its rocket-ruined homes.

But Vajpayee's monthlong cease-fire is to end when Ramadan, the Islamic holy month, ends on Dec. 27. Knowing their respite may be a temporary one, villagers on both sides of the dividing line are making the most of it.

In Karanah, on the Indian side, children have returned to their cricket pitches: About 200 people in flowing Kashmiri tunics cheered cricketers on a recent day as they competed in the Mehtab Memorial Tournament.

The tournament is named for a 7-year-old boy killed by Pakistani shelling last April. Its duration depends on the durability of the cease-fires, the young players say.

``Shells used to land every half hour or so. We were indoors most of the time. We could not play,'' 18-year-old Abdul Aziz said.

After so many years of war, mistrust runs deep on both sides. Haji Bashir, a villager in Pakistani Kashmir whose shop was destroyed by shells, said he worries that the Indian cease-fire is only a ploy.

``They have always cheated us,'' said Bashir, who was hit in the right eye by shrapnel last June. ``They will use the opportunity to give their soldiers rest, consolidate positions along the Line of Control and bring in fresh supplies.''

Internationally, the tit-for-tat cease-fires have been welcome news: With both India and Pakistan in possession of nuclear weapons, the international community has been pressing to resolve the Kashmir issue and avoid another war.

But Bashir, like many along the disputed border, fears the cease-fire will not hold up.

``It is too fragile to last for long,'' he said. ``We want permanent peace.''

-------

Dialogue hinges on Pak. ending terrorism: Panja

The Hindu
Thursday, December 14, 2000
http://www.indiaserver.com/thehindu/2000/12/14/stories/0214000p.htm

NEW DELHI, DEC. 13. The Government today reiterated its commitment to resolve all outstanding issues with Pakistan through dialogue on the basis of the Shimla agreement and the Lahore declaration but emphasised that Islamabad must first stop cross-border terrorism and end anti-India propaganda.

Replying to a question in the Lok Sabha, the Minister of State for External Affairs, Mr. Ajit Panja, said it was necessary for the resumption of dialogue that Pakistan should abandon sponsoring cross-border terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir and other parts of India and also end its hostile propaganda and calls for jehad against India.

He said many Islamic countries had in their bilateral interaction with India shown sensitivity to New Delhi's position on Kashmir and generally subscribed to the view that it needed to be resolved through bilateral discussions. However, on Pakistan's instigation the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) routinely adopted resolutions on Jammu and Kashmir. India had rejected all such resolutions saying the OIC had no locus standi on India's internal matters. India and China, which recently exchanged maps of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the middle sector, will start comparing the two maps to identify differences in the respective perceptions of the LAC. In reply to a question in the Lok Sabha, Mr. Panja said the maps were exchanged at the recently held meeting of the India-China expert group.

The Minister while replying to another question, said Pakistan continued to acquire nuclear-related and dual use equipment and materials from various sources. He said the Indian Government has consistently highlighted the adverse effect on India's security from continuing nuclear and missile proliferations in Pakistan despite the existence of various export control regimes and declarations of restraint by supplier countries.

N-plant: The Government is considering roping in the private sector for setting up atomic energy plants in the country, the Lok Sabha was informed today.

The process of reviewing the Atomic Energy Act for this purpose is underway and a Bill would be introduced after completion of this process, the Minister of State for Atomic Energy, Ms. Vasundhara Raje, said in reply to a written question.

-------- iraq

Iraq resumes loading oil at gulf

Infobeat
Thursday, December 14, 2000
By WAIEL FALEH Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405330746

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Iraq has resumed loading oil at its Gulf terminal, the head of its state marketing organization said Wednesday, 13 days after it halted oil exports in a pricing dispute with the United Nations.

``We started loading two Indian oil tankers on Tuesday at Mina al-Bakr'' terminal, Saddam al-Hassan, chairman of the State Organization for Marketing Oil, told the The Associated Press in a phone interview.

In New York, U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard confirmed the Indian loadings. It wasn't immediately clear, however, if they would lead to a full resumption of exports.

The loading began a week after the U.N. Security Council approved the next six-month phase of Iraq's oil-for-food program.

The dispute began in November when Iraq made its monthly proposal for prices on its oil exports. The U.N. sanctions committee rejected the prices, saying they were too low.

Under the oil-for-food program, Iraq is allowed to sell oil provided the money goes into a U.N.-controlled account whose funds are spent on food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies. The program was launched to help ordinary Iraqis cope with the effects of U.N. sanctions.

Under Security Council resolutions, sanctions can be lifted only after U.N. inspectors certify that Iraq's weapons programs have been dismantled. Baghdad says it has done so, but it refuses to cooperate with U.N. inspectors

-------- korea

Inter-Korean talks falter

Infobeat
Thursday, December 14, 2000
By SANG-HUN CHOE Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405338741

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - Reconciliation talks between South and North Korea faltered Thursday amid a dispute over South Korea's policy of viewing the communist North as its main enemy.

North Korean negotiators accused the South of warmongering after they saw an annual report released last week by the South Korean defense ministry, according to pool reports filed by South Korean journalists in Pyongyang.

The defense ministry's report, called the ``White Paper,'' renewed its description of North Korea as the South's ``main enemy,'' the news accounts said. The White Paper urged the South's military to maintain a high state of vigilance despite improving ties between Seoul and Pyongyang.

The two Koreas have made progress toward reconciliation since a historic summit in June between South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. But concern is spreading in South Korea that inter-Korean initiatives are losing momentum.

North Korea has delayed a series of humanitarian and other projects it had promised to undertake jointly with South Korea in the past several months. At the most recent talks, the South's negotiators again urged the North to discuss how to accelerate reunions of separated families and other friendly gestures.

But North Korean negotiators focused on the White Paper, saying it violated the spirit of the summit agreement to work toward reunification, pool reports said.

The South's unification minister, Park Jae-kyu, had arrived in Pyongyang on Tuesday to review inter-Korean cooperation and discuss joint plans in 2001. The talks end Friday.

Park stressed the importance of the family reunion programs and suggested that another reunion be held before the next lunar new year, which falls on Jan. 24, the pool reports said. South Korea also proposed that the two Koreas set up a permanent meeting place for elderly separated family members by March. North Korea's response was not reported.

Millions of Koreans were separated from their relatives during the 1950-53 Korean War and have not spoken to them since. The border remains sealed and guarded by huge armies, and there is no direct means of communication between ordinary citizens of the two Koreas.

-------- puerto rico

Calderon firm on Vieques stance

Infobeat
Thursday, December 14, 2000
By EILEEN McNAMARA Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405330836

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) - Governor-elect Sila Calderon on Wednesday refused to back down on a promise to seek the eviction of the U.S. Navy from its prized Vieques bombing range.

Her stance threatened an agreement reached among President Clinton, outgoing Gov. Pedro Rossello, and the Navy that ended a yearlong occupation of the bombing range by protesters angered by an April 1999 accident on the range that killed a civilian guard.

Under the agreement, Puerto Rico allows the Navy to set the date for a referendum on the island about whether the U.S. force should leave. The Navy has proposed Nov. 6 as the vote date.

If islanders vote to expel the Navy, it would have to leave by May 2003. If they allow the Navy to stay, it can resume training using live ammunition. The Navy says the exercises at Vieques are vital to national defense since they uniquely combine air, sea and land maneuvers.

Calderon, who takes office on Jan. 2, has angered U.S. officials by saying she wants a referendum to evict the Navy immediately from the island of 9,400 and that she would withdraw local police guarding the range from protesters.

``My position on Vieques and that of the overwhelming majority of the people of Puerto Rico is well known. I stand firm by that position,'' wrote Calderon in a letter Wednesday.

In a letter Monday, Navy Secretary Richard Danzig warned Calderon that if she does not comply with the agreement, the U.S. government won't fulfill its promises, including the transfer of 8,000 acres of Navy-owned land by Dec. 31.

``It's clear from what we're seeing here that she doesn't intend to honor the agreement,'' Danzig's spokesman Capt. Brian Cullin said.

Decades of resentment over the Navy's live bombing of Vieques turned to outrage after a U.S. Marine Corps jet dropped two 500-pound bombs off target and killed security guard David Sanes Rodriguez.

Protesters invaded the range for a year, thwarting exercises until they were forced out by U.S. Marshals in May, allowing the Navy to resume exercises with non-explosive bombs. Smaller groups of activists have sneaked onto the range since then.

---

Navy sets date for Puerto Rico vote

USA Today
12/14/00- Updated 04:48 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/nc1.htm

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - The U.S. Navy has set Nov. 6 as the date for a vote on whether it must leave its bombing range on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques, according to a letter released Tuesday. If islanders vote to expel the U.S. Navy, the servicemen and women would have to leave by May 2003. If they allow the Navy to stay, it can resume training using live ammunition - something the military has agreed not to do since an April 1999 accident on the range that killed a civilian guard.

-------- russia

Vladimir Putin's secret dream
Russia's steely leader likes eco-warriors, the ski slopes and the '72 hockey summit. But most of all, he'd like you to like him

Toronto's Globe and Mail
Thursday, December 14, 2000
GEOFFREY YORK AND CHRYSTIA FREELAND
http://www.globeandmail.ca/gam/International/20001214/UVLADN.html

MOSCOW -- Vladimir Putin has a secret dream. He might be known to the world as the tough-talking KGB veteran who waged a ruthless war in Chechnya, but he confesses that some day he might prefer a kinder and gentler life -- as an ecological activist.

"To be honest, I've always admired people who devote their lives to environmental problems," he said. "I've watched with astonishment as a group of people on a little boat try to oppose a huge military or industrial ship. I must say this inspires only sympathy."

When his time in the Kremlin runs out (he is constitutionally limited to serving eight years over two terms), the Russian President coyly hints that he might consider a second career as an environmentalist.

"I've often thought about what I should do when my term expires," Mr. Putin said in an exclusive interview with The Globe and Mail and two Canadian television networks.

"It is a noble task to support the ecological movement. At least I wouldn't be sorry to spend time on it."

Canada should get ready to meet a softer and cuddlier Kremlin chief when he arrives in Ottawa this weekend. Mr. Putin captured the Russian presidency on the strength of his brutal military campaign against Chechen separatists. He misses no opportunity to display his bone-breaking judo skills, and last week he reinstated the melody of Joseph Stalin's national anthem as Russia's new national hymn. But on the eve of his first state visit to Canada, he is trying very hard to present a friendlier side.

It's not that Mr. Putin has suddenly converted from red to green. Rather, the Russian leader -- who once told a friend that his KGB training had made him "a specialist in human relations" -- seems to have decided that the best way to defuse mounting Western concerns about the fate of Russian democracy is with a personal-charm offensive.

In a 70-minute conversation in the Kremlin, he smiled, joked, and even flirted with his Canadian guests. He praised Canada as a good neighbour, paid homage to the memorable 1972 Canada-Soviet hockey series, offered soothing responses to tough political questions, and modestly deflected a question about a newspaper survey that rated him the sexiest man in Russia.

For the first time publicly, he confirmed he is studying English, which makes him the only Russian leader in modern times to try to learn the language of Britain and North America. "English is a world language," he said. "For me, studying English is something like intellectual gymnastics. And any language is a glimpse into another world, a different culture. It's exciting."

Still, Mr. Putin -- who also speaks German -- did the entire interview in Russian.

At the end of the session, he chatted amiably about skiing, asking for the names of top resorts in Western Canada, just in case he has a chance to go there in the future.

But beneath the charm, the steel is clearly there. Mr. Putin, whose cool-headed forcefulness came as such a relief to a nation exhausted by the boozy bombast of former president Boris Yeltsin, remains almost Teutonic in his precision and his control.

Even at 10 p.m. on a Friday night -- as the interview proceeds -- he is the model of crisp efficiency. His thinning, blondish hair is combed neatly, his face has been painted smooth for the television cameras, his white shirt gleams and his navy suit is freshly pressed.

Grey-blue eyes fixed on his questioner, Mr. Putin sits ramrod straight, his hands disciplined into stillness. Only his feet, hidden beneath the table his handlers insisted upon, are allowed to be unruly, dancing up and down.

Sitting in front of a white ceramic fireplace in one of the ornate, high-ceilinged rooms of the Kremlin, with gold-gilded walls, parquet floors and plush, faux antique furniture, there is sometimes an earnest scholarliness in his desire to please his audience with carefully prepared answers.

Aware that Canadians are keen hockey fans, Mr. Putin memorized a series of precise statistics on the number of Russians in the National Hockey League. When nobody asked the right question, he finally managed to reveal his data in the final moments of the interview, while answering an unrelated question.

(Mr. Putin calculated that 408 Russians have played in the NHL since 1975, and 128 have signed professional contracts in the past year alone.)

Asked about his KGB years, he offers an old tale about how he once admitted his spy background to Henry Kissinger, who promptly assured him that "all decent people got their start in intelligence." It is an anecdote he has recycled in his memoirs and in other interviews, but he still relies on it as a way of disarming critics.

He makes it clear he is proud of his espionage work in the Soviet Union and East Germany in the 1970s and 1980s. "I served my country, I did it in good faith, and I don't have any regrets," he said. "And by the way, surprisingly enough, I never violated the laws of any foreign countries. It was an interesting, highly professional job."

Despite his studious preparation, he occasionally reveals his inexperience on the world stage. At one point in the interview, he borrowed a quaintly chauvinistic quotation from a film to suggest that a state's efforts to restrict the media are like the sexual tension between a man and a woman.

"A real man should always try, and a decent woman should always resist," he said, oblivious to notions of political correctness.

At another point, he hinted that the opposition media could be seen as "hooligans" for their attacks on him. Then he quickly retreated from the remark, insisting he was speaking hypothetically.

Mr. Putin's public-relations efforts have been highly effective. He remains massively popular in Russia, and he has already won friends and admirers among some Western leaders.

But it remains difficult to glimpse the real Vladimir Putin. Even his close adviser, Gleb Pavlovsky, referred to him as a "black box."

There is still a raging debate in Russia and the West about whether Mr. Putin is a would-be dictator or a progressive modernizer who will drag Russia into the 21st century.

One thing is clear: he is determined to create a strong Russian state. Throughout the interview, he spoke of the need to strengthen the state, to force everyone to obey the law, and to "consolidate" political power to assure parliamentary approval for economic reforms.

The key question, of course, is whether a strong state would impose limits on freedom. Asked about that, Mr. Putin revealed a prudishly moral side of his character. Alluding to the erotic programming on late-night Russian television, he expressed envy for Canada's broadcasting regulations.

"In the United States and Canada, many things can be shown only on cable television, for moral reasons," he said approvingly. "Here, unfortunately, anything can be put on the air."

The Putin file

Personal: Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was born Oct. 7, 1952, in St. Petersburg (then called Leningrad). He and his wife, Lyudmila, have two teenaged daughters, Katya and Maria. Education: Mr. Putin studied law at Leningrad State University between 1970 and 1975. Career: He joined Moscow's foreign-intelligence training unit in 1982 after being recruited by the KGB. He is believed by some German sources to have spied in West Germany between 1982 and 1984. He was officially posted in Dresden, East Germany, between 1985 and 1990 before returning to the Soviet Union and retiring from the KGB. After a brief turn in the foreign-affairs department at Leningrad State University, he launched his political career as adviser to Leningrad mayor Anatoly Sobchak. He joined the Kremlin staff in 1996 and was appointed director of the FSB, the successor agency to the KGB, in 1998. President Boris Yeltsin named him prime minister in August, 1999, then acting president when Mr. Yeltsin resigned on Dec. 31, 1999. Mr. Putin was elected president in March. Quote: "Competition today has shifted from the military sphere to the economic sphere. We have to look at things realistically."

-------- ukraine

Ukraine set for Chernobyl closure

Infobeat
Thursday, December 14, 2000
By SERGEI SHARGORODSKY Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405339161

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) - The site of the world's worst nuclear accident, it came to symbolize the potential dangers of atomic energy. Now, after years of limping along in defiance of international criticism, the Chernobyl atomic power plant is about to be shut down for good.

Ukraine restarted Chernobyl's only working reactor one last time on Thursday, planning to let it run for a day before Friday's shutdown. Technically the final shutdown will be a very small step - three of the four reactors have been closed for years and the fourth was only operating at 1 percent capacity Thursday morning, the state-run Energoatom company said. But for many here it carries great import.

``It is very symbolic that the world will enter the next millennium without the Chernobyl plant,'' presidential spokesman Oleksandr Martynenko said.

Preparing for the shutdown, President Leonid Kuchma took visiting dignitaries on a tour of the site Thursday. A Friday ceremony at the posh Ukraina Palace in Kiev is to mark the actual closure. Kuchma will issue the shutdown command through a television link with the plant 85 miles away.

As the closure neared, the parliament on Thursday adopted a resolution urging the government to postpone the shutdown at least until April. Proponents said other nuclear power plants are not able to make up the lost electricity and that Ukraine needs to wait until foreign leaders make good on promises to build two new reactors.

However, the resolution was nonbinding, and the government was unlikely to heed the request.

Outside Parliament, about 300 victims of the Chernobyl disaster rallied to demand more social services and international recognition of their suffering.

``Let us live, give us bread!'' said Vira Korbut, the widow of a cleanup worker.

The Chernobyl tragedy began on April 26, 1986, when reactor No. 4 exploded and caught fire, contaminating vast areas of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus and spewing a radioactive cloud over Europe. Thousands of people who took part in the cleanup died. A 1,040 square-mile area around Chernobyl that was once home to 120,000 people became a no man's land.

And Chernobyl's troubles did not stop with the accident. The plant's No. 2 reactor caught fire and was shut down in 1991, and reactor No. 1 was halted in 1996.

The one remaining working reactor, No. 3, has experienced numerous unplanned shutdowns and malfunctions. Yet energy-strapped Ukraine refused to close it before securing Western aid to build two new nuclear reactors.

Reactor No. 3 stopped producing electricity on Dec. 6 when it was shut down because of a steam leak. Ukraine's nuclear regulatory body reluctantly approved the reactor's restart to conduct unspecified experiments, as if to give this former Soviet republic something to ceremonially close down.

``The reactor will be brought to 5 percent of capacity, the experiments will take some 24 hours and it will be stopped Dec. 15,'' said Viktor Stovbun, a senior official at Energoatom.

Even after stoppage, the reactors will not be considered safe until all nuclear fuel is removed, a process expected to be completed in 2008.

It will take years to make the leaky concrete and steel sarcophagus that encases the ruined reactor No. 4 environmentally safe. And the government still appears to have no clear program of assistance for Chernobyl's nearly 6,000 workers and their families. Few of them, if any, will rejoice Friday.

``The decision is taken and we'll close down here,'' says Chernobyl spokesman Stanislav Shekstelo. ``But it will be a sad day for us.''

---

Chernobyl Closure Lays to Rest Powerful Symbol

Reuters
December 14, 2000 Filed at 6:15 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-ukraine.html
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20001214/wl/ukraine_chernobyl_dc_4.html

KIEV (Reuters) - Ukraine lays to rest the world's most powerful symbol of the dangers of nuclear power on Friday when engineers at Chernobyl power station depress a button marked BAZ -- ``rapid emergency defense'' -- for the last time.

The button will slowly drop control rods into Chernobyl's last functioning reactor and herald the start of a long process of decommissioning the plant which caused the world's worst nuclear accident in 1986.

Fourteen years after the accident, the concrete entombed, burned-out and highly radioactive remains of Reactor Number Four, which exploded after a controversial experiment, loom over a small monument to 30 firemen who died fighting its flames.

Thousands are thought to have died a result of radiation which spewed from the reactor's burning shell. One in 16 Ukrainians, and millions of Russians and Belarussians suffer health disorders.

Chernobyl is encircled by a poisoned 20-mile no-go zone, which scientists say will be uninhabitable for centuries.

Reactors One and Two have already been stopped -- Two was shut down after a huge fire in 1991 and One passed its expiration date five years later.

But the third reactor has, on-and-off, been providing Ukraine with five percent of its electricity. Ukraine's President Leonid Kuchma agreed earlier this year to shut the reactor down in return for Western financial aid to complete replacement reactors elsewhere.

RESTART FOR FINAL DAY

Technical glitches forced the reactor to shut down twice in the past two weeks. It was restarted for its final day on Thursday, only to be shut down again by engineers when Kuchma toured the control room.

A technician on duty at the complex said by telephone the reactor would be restarted at 1.00 a.m., ahead of Friday's closing ceremony which will be broadcast live to dignitaries in the capital Kiev, 70 miles south of Chernobyl.

Representatives of all Ukraine's religions will pray together during a morning service in St Sophia's church, followed by a gathering of representatives of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, along with others in Kiev's cavernous National Palace.

But the 6,000 workers at Chernobyl have indicated they will not be joining in the champagne cork-popping as they face their uncertain future.

During the eight years it will take to remove all fuel rods from reactor Three, jobs will gradually be shed, and many workers have said they do not trust government assurances of pensions and social benefits.

Kuchma sought again to reassure the workers that the economically battered state would provide for them.

``I want you to know from me and the government: nobody will be ignored,'' he said during his visit on Thursday.

``I don't believe him,'' said one worker in the audience. ''This pension will be paid in kopecks.''

--------

The legacy of Chernobyl
Chernobyl's last reactor is due to close

BBC News
Thursday, 14 December, 2000, 12:08 GMT
By Robin Aitken in the Ukraine
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/from_our_own_correspondent/newsid_1061000/1061703.stm

You probably won't be able to find the village of Masany on maps for very much longer. It must always have been a remote sort of place - tucked down in the south-east corner of Belarus a few kilometres from the border with the Ukraine. But these days it's deserted and you need a special permit to visit it.

Masany lies deep within the 30 kilometre exclusion zone which encircles the Chernobyl nuclear power station - the area which was most contaminated when the plant blew-up on 26 April 1986.

But despite the high levels of background radiation - the area is one of the most radioactive spots on Earth - Masany is not entirely uninhabited.

When we arrived, late on a sun-filled afternoon, two figures could be seen making their way across an otherwise un-peopled landscape.

Yuri Sushko and Slava Yevdokimov are both scientists who work in the zone on a two-week on, two-week off cycle. Their job is to measure radioactivity levels - in the soil, air, plants and animals - so that the contamination levels can be accurately tracked.

Yuri, a smiling, weatherbeaten sixty-something, said he loved his work . It's the solitude, the beauty and the wildlife, he told me - that and getting away from the wife and daughters.

Haven for wildlife

Masany is indeed beautiful. The dense forests which surround it are a haven for wildlife which, undisturbed by man, thrives in this accidental wilderness.

The place teems with wild boar - a herd ran right across the path of our vehicle - and I was told there are more than 200 bird species regularly seen in the area.

In the past couple of years, rare European bison have been introduced by Belarusian scientists curious to see how they would do. We didn't see any but apparently the herd is thriving.

Yuri Sushko says it looks as though nature is proving remarkably resilient to the increased radiation levels. He doesn't take any chances himself though - he and Slava are careful not to eat or drink anything which originates in the zone.

But their attitude towards the radioactivity was strikingly relaxed which is also what struck me when, a few days later, my producer and I travelled to Ukraine to visit the town of Chernobyl itself.

Our guide, a vivacious Tartar woman called Rima, couldn't have been more matter of fact. To her, showing Western visitors around the power station and its environs was all part of the day's routine.

Living in Chernobyl

She took us first to Pripyat, the town built to house the Chernobyl workers when it was built in the 1970s, now utterly abandoned. It has a separate checkpoint of its own - the soldiers manning it were glad to talk and break the monotony of duty.

They had no worries about serving their time at Chernobyl and the radiation didn't bother them. The main problem was the boredom.

For a first time visitor, though, Pripyat is a sobering place. It had been a showpiece town, well provided for with amenities and good housing.

From the top of the lifeless hotel you got a good view of the place - the children's funfair with it's rusted big wheel, the hospital with a huge Soviet style slogan that reads The health of the people is the wealth of the country - which, given what happened here, makes further comment superfluous.

Pripyat, and all the immediate surroundings of the power plant, will be uninhabitable for hundreds of years but the plant itself is still working.

Indeed there are 5,000 employees still on the payroll who come and go each day. That is because number three reactor is still working though it's due to shut after a long international campaign. The closure is deeply resented.

We were then taken into the plant itself. In the administrative block, the deputy director told me darkly that closure was a "political" decision. The reactor could have carried on going for years, he said, if the plant had been upgraded like its equivalents in Russia.

In the control room of number reactor, the atmosphere couldn't have been more relaxed. Strange to think that just through the wall - albeit a very,very thick one - lay the ruins of the reactor that exploded.

In amongst the rubble are about 200 tons of radioactive fuel rods mixed up with fallen masonry and a kind of lava that was formed by the intense heat after the initial explosion.

All that will stay radioactive for 100,000 years, which, when you think of it, is far beyond any human time horizon. But that doesn't trouble the workforce much, it would seem. To them, closure is a bread and butter issue.

In the control room, I was introduced to Andre Slavin, the shift leader. The following day we travelled to his home in the town of Slavutich - built after Pripyat was abandoned.

To Andre and his wife Elena the closure of Chernobyl is a sad, even a wrong, thing.

Slavutich, she told me, is a good town that is clean and beautiful. Her friends who have left regretted it, and she would like to stay - Chernobyl has been good to her.

---------

Pulling the plug at Chernobyl

Sydney Morning Herald
Date: 14/12/2000
The Guardian
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0012/14/text/features1.html

Fourteen years after one of its reactors exploded, the Chernobyl power plant is closing. The world may breathe a sigh of relief, writes Ian Traynor, but the locals are far from happy.

Six weeks after the explosion at Chernobyl spewed clouds of radioactive dust into the skies over Europe in April 1986, Sasha Novikov packed up his meagre belongings in what was then Leningrad and headed for a new life of danger and adventure on the nuclear frontline.

The nuclear physicist was 21 years old, just graduated and ambitious. He didn't think twice. "It was a war situation here at Chernobyl and we were the soldiers called to serve," he says. "Live work, dangerous work. So many people died. So many people got sick. But there's such a thing as patriotism and professional duty. And now? After all that effort, after all that suffering, after all the money that's been spent on making this place safe, they're closing it down. That's politics," he spits in disgust.

Environmentally, technologically and politically, Chernobyl's impact was, and continues to be, huge. The flat marshlands in Ukraine, north of Kiev, near the Belarus border, were chosen by the geriatric Soviet leadership in the '70s to be the site of the world's biggest nuclear power plant, a luminous symbol of communist progress and superiority.

But when a half-baked experiment at the station's fourth reactor backfired at 1.24am on April 26, 1986, the atomic explosion and the reactor meltdown not only instantly vaporised Valery Khodimchuk, the night-shift charge hand at reactor No 4, but terrified Europe, shocked the world, corroded public confidence in nuclear power everywhere, and hammered several large nails into the coffin in which the Soviet Union would be buried a few years later.

Igor Oleynich was on the night shift next door at reactor No 3 that night. "I was the only person in the reactor room. It filled with smoke instantly; within five seconds I was getting trapped. I ran outside and watched the explosion. It was awesome. We didn't know what a nuclear accident was. Some of us wanted to go in on kamikaze missions to get Khodimchuk's body out. No-one could have survived more than 15 seconds."

Almost 15 years on, with $US300 million ($550 million) spent on patching up the station, hundreds of millions more pledged to entomb the stricken reactor anew, and years of Western pressure on the Ukrainians, Chernobyl is finally to be closed for good tomorrow. (Indeed, only one of its four reactors is still operating. After the explosion at reactor No 4 in 1986, two more reactors were closed in 1991 and 1996.)

The world will breathe a mighty sigh of relief. But for the 6,000 people who take a sealed commuter train through the 30-kilometre exclusion zone every day to put on their turquoise suits, pick up their personal radiation dosimeters and go to work at Chernobyl, the closure is a disaster equal to April 1986. They are frightened and furious - not at having to work in what is perhaps the most toxic environment in Europe, but at the prospect of losing their jobs.

If you think Chernobyl is bad, says Oleg Goloskokov, the plant's assistant general director, try elsewhere in the Russian nuclear industry. "I came here in 1989 from Siberia. I've got two kids and my wife and I took a conscious decision. There are definite risks and there are really dirty zones. But I worked at Tomsk and Chelyabinsk. There was a terrible accident there in 1957. It's very dangerous, very polluted. And we wanted to get away from the nine-month winters. It's much better, much safer here."

Ustina Rudnichenko is even more stoical. In the hamlet of Opachichi, a few kilometres from the station and well inside the exclusion zone, the 84-year-old peasant woman lives alone with her chickens, her plum-brandy still and her outhouse piled with home-grown potatoes, garlic, pumpkins and pears. More than 100,000 people were belatedly evacuated from the zone after the disaster. Rudnichenko is one of the 600 or so mainly elderly peasants who have since returned illegally to their native villages to see out their last years. "My husband's dead, my children refuse to visit me. I'm very lonely," she says. "But I belong here. I'm not moving. This is where I was born. What is there to be afraid of? Death?"

Her countryside is enchanting, thickly wooded and unspoilt, at least to the eye. You can't see or smell radioactive contamination. After nearly 15 years of lying untouched, the no-go zone has become a bizarre safe haven for wildlife, plants and grasses.

"The exclusion zone has become a giant laboratory for natural research," says Anatoly Nosovsky, a former Chernobyl engineer now running a US-funded regional research centre. We don't understand the impact of radionuclides on nature, and, apart from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we can try to find out here."

There is an experimental dairy farm where cows - named Uranium, Alpha, Beta and Gamma - are put through their paces. Their milk is fed to pigs to observe the effects of contaminated milk. Plant research includes observing the extent of genetic mutation in strains of wheat grown on irradiated soil.

Rudnichenko and her fellow villagers are oblivious to the dangers, eating perch from the rivers and collecting mushrooms - especially hazardous - in autumn. But at 84, she is lively, articulate and alert. "We get lots of promises, but we never get any help."

And despite the batteries of statistics and the endless research into the impact of Chernobyl, the human cost of the disaster is less than clear. In the days that followed the blast, 31 emergency workers died. The years since have seen an alarming rise in thyroid cancer among children in Ukraine and neighbouring Belarus, with cases running at almost 100 times the normal rate. One worker who loads fuel rods into reactor No 3, and who asks not to be named, says that he sent his 10-year-old daughter's medical data to the West for analysis and fears she will not live to be an adult. "I lost 12 of my friends and I've seen so much death and suffering," he says. "I don't think about my own health. I don't have the right. But I haven't told anyone here about my daughter."

Those who claim to have suffered from the disaster run into millions, but such figures are manipulated politically in Ukraine and Belarus. Three million people are categorised in Ukraine as "liquidators", the term for those who battled to contain the fallout to qualify for paltry government benefits. But Ukraine is broke, sunk in corruption. The past few months have seen strikes, demonstrations and hunger strikes in Ukraine, Moscow and Belarus in protest at the non-receipt of promised benefits. By contrast, Western engineers and consultants working at Chernobyl can earn monthly five-figure salaries and, health permitting, can look forward to an early, well-heeled retirement.

The West has pledged more than $US700 million to erect a new sarcophagus around reactor No 4 by 2015, but the plant managers complain that most of the money will go to the big Western nuclear engineering firms contracted to do the work. The project is urgent and extremely perilous. The existing sarcophagus was improvised after the catastrophe when helicopters dropped sand and concrete onto the smouldering reactor and huge remote-controlled cranes smothered the lot in hundreds of tonnes of thick sheet steel. Beneath the hulking battleship-grey containment there now lurks 200 tonnes of radioactive lava, poison, dust and debris, with radiation levels four times higher than lethal. The vehicles, hoisting equipment and helicopters - 12,000 items in total, and all highly contaminated - are dumped in a large metal graveyard a few kilometres from the station. More tall cranes and the red walls for the prospective fifth and sixth reactors stand frozen in time, relics of when construction was abandoned in 1986.

"The sarcophagus beams are not stable, the supports are weak. There is damp, rain and corrosion," says Anatoly Gora, chief engineer of the entombment project, who has worked at Chernobyl since 1976, the year before the first of the four reactors was started up. "We still haven't decided on the new type of containment, but we've been preparing for 2 years. Nothing like this has ever been tried before. It's a one-off project."

The existing sarcophagus could not be welded or screwed down because the work was too dangerous, so there are gaps big enough to crawl through - and more than big enough for the radiation to seep through unseen.

"The situation is getting worse," says Oleg Goloskokov. "There were 200 tonnes of nuclear fuel in the reactor when it exploded. About 3 per cent of that was expelled in the blast. The rest is still inside, including 30 tonnes of radioactive dust. The sarcophagus is not sealed. A lot of snow and rain gets in - up to 3,000 cubic metres of water every year. There's a chance the roof could cave in. A highly radioactive solution of water, plutonium and uranium is constantly leaking out.

"It's a problem we have not solved, controlling the water and the dust. The nuclear fuel has to be extracted, controlled and buried. Otherwise there could be another accident. But that's a very difficult problem and it has never been attempted anywhere before."

Chain-smoking Kent cigarettes in his spacious office, Vitaly Tolstonogov, the Chernobyl director, glances up from working through a pile of papers with his expensive fountain pen and snorts: "The end? You think Chernobyl's closure is the end? It's only the beginning. A political decision has been taken to close us down. But that does not solve the problems here. We'll solve the problems eventually. It's just a question of how long it takes and how much money it costs."

But that is little comfort to Sasha Novikov. The nuclear physicist, who is married with two children, expects to be among the 3,000 people to lose their jobs tomorrow, along with his salary of $US250 a month: "We were heroes back then in the war. Now they've no use for us."

Novikov delivers a bitter and mischievous grin. "I suppose I can always go and work for Gaddafi or Saddam Hussein. They're always looking for people like me and the money's a lot better."

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

Sub Critical Test Scheduled Today

Thu, 14 Dec 2000 10:48:53 -0800
From: Shundahai Network <shundahai@shundahai.org>

Hello everyone

I have just received word and it has been confirmed, Oboe 6 is being tested today. It is with blatent disrespect, that the DOE continues to violate our Mother Earth as well as disregard the Treaty of Ruby Valley.

Charles F Hilfenhaus of the Atomic Veterens wrote

The U.S. Department of Energy has scheduled the 12th in a series of subcritical nuclear experiments for Thursday, December 14, 2000 at the Nevada Test Site. Subcritical experiments produce scientific and technical information about nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal. The replaced underground nuclear tests, which were halted in 1992. This subcritical test is named Oboe 6.

It was also confirmed by Sally Light of the Nevada Desert Experience...

"I just got an email from Derek. He's involved in DOE publicly announcing the "subcritical" nuclear tests 24-48 hours before the detonations.

He states that two weeks ago, the January date he gave me was the correct info., but that they subsequently changed it to 12/14/00. He never volunteers information - I always contact him. Over the last several years of "subcritical" testing, he's generally been very reliable about the "subcritical" timeframes, but I believe that DOE has just neatly trumped our attempt to get many people to the demonstration we always do at Bechtel in San Francisco on test days.

I've spoken with NTS public relations and they've stated that it was Livermore Lab that decided to detonate "Oboe 6" today, 12/14/00 and that NTS was also given very short notice by Livermore Lab of this decision."

When will this maddness end? There must be some way to put an end to all of this destruction. We must make our Earth safe for our children's children to come.

Many Blessings to all of you

SHUNDAHAI NETWORK "Peace and Harmony with all Creation" Po Box 6360, Pahrump, NV 89041 Phone:(775) 537-6088 Email: shundahai@shundahai.org http://www.shundahai.org

Shundahai Network is proud to be part of: US Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons Abolition 2000: A Global Network to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons People of Color/Disenfranchised Communities Environmental Health Network and the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability

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

-------- california

U.S. Energy Chief Steps In, Keeps Lights On in California

San Francisco Chronicle
Thursday, December 14, 2000
Chronicle Staff Writers
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/12/14/MN82445.DTL

California narrowly averted an unprecedented electricity crisis yesterday, including widespread rolling blackouts, only after the U.S. energy secretary exercised emergency authority and ordered 12 generating companies to sell power to California.

The generators, many based outside California, had refused to sell electricity to utilities such as Pacific Gas and Electric Co. because they feared they would not be paid.

"Our objective is to keep the lights on," said Energy Secretary Bill Richardson.

California's electricity problems had been marginally improving in recent days. Many generators returned to operation and put more power into the marketplace, and imports from other regions increased.

But a severe cold front in the northwest on Wednesday dropped imports from there to virtually zero.

When the 12 power companies balked later yesterday morning, officials who manage the state's electricity grid feared that by 1 p.m. they would be short of power by about 1,000 megawatts -- enough juice to power 1 million homes.

Officials estimated that by the peak demand period of 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., they would have a shortfall of 3,000 megawatts -- or 3 million homes. Had that occurred, it would have been the largest shortfall ever because of limited supply, officials of the California Independent System Operator said.

The ISO yesterday declared a Stage 2 power emergency, meaning that demand for electricity rose to within 5 percent of the actual supply. It was the 30th Stage 2 alert the ISO has called since May.

ELECTED OFFICIALS WORRIED

Gov. Gray Davis and U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein expressed dismay that rising electricity prices were harming the state's economy.

Feinstein said growers were worried they would not be able to protect citrus orchards from freezes if there were no electricity. She also said she had received letters from workers who were laid off because their employers could not afford higher electricity costs.

In addition, Feinstein worried about the fallout if energy prices bankrupt California's two largest utilities, PG&E and Southern California Edison.

"They employ 100,000 people in the state," she said. "It would have a dramatic ripple effect on the economy."

In other developments Wednesday:

-- John Bryson, the chief executive of Edison International, called for the full-scale re-regulation of California's electricity system;

-- Standard & Poors warned it might downgrade PG&E's and Edison's creditworthiness, making it more difficult and expensive for them to borrow money;

-- The president of the California Public Utilities Commission, Loretta Lynch, reversed its stance and said it would consider raising retail electricity rates and ending rate freezes even though they were frozen by law under deregulation, taking note of the companies' precarious financial stability.

Richardson's order, announced after noon on the West Coast, and other emergency measures helped avert what otherwise would have been rolling blackouts throughout the state affecting millions of households. The order, combined with other emergency measures, succeeded in drawing about 5,000 more megawatts of power into the state to cover peak demand, the ISO said.

GENERATORS FEAR CREDIT RISK

The power companies that generate electricity and sell it to California had refused to do so earlier in the day out of fears that the state's investor- owned utilities -- PG&E and Southern California Edison -- would not be able to pay their bills.

Wholesale power costs have risen to unseen levels in California in recent weeks as supply has tightened, from $30 in July 1999 to more than $1,400 per megawatt hour for power delivered during peak times on Wednesday. As a result, the utilities have piled on billions of dollars in debt to continue paying the bills.

In fact, PG&E has warned it may soon run out of money and the ability to secure more credit to continue buying power.

Davis, who was in Washington to plead California's case with officials of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, tried to put public pressure on FERC officials to help repair the dysfunctional California market.

"Because of the extraordinarily high prices being charged our utilities, bankruptcy is a distinct possibility," said Davis, appearing at a news conference with Richardson and Feinstein. "The lights will go off if FERC does not act."

FERC ACTION EXPECTED

Feinstein and Davis asked FERC to establish an immediate region-wide wholesale price cap to prevent generators from playing states off one another to get the highest price for their electricity.

They also asked FERC to mandate long-term contracts between privately owned electricity generators and utilities that would prevent price fluctuations.

FERC is expected to issue a final order addressing California's electricity crisis tomorrow.

James Hoecker, FERC's chairman, who has taken much of the wrath from Davis and other officials, said he could not comment on what action the board would take.

"As you can see, FERC is a small agency with a large responsibility," he said. "I believe that the commission is going to take strong action soon. I want to assure people that FERC will be part of the solution, not part of the problem."

It was a day of dubious firsts. Secretary Richardson, speaking at a news conference in Washington, said he had never before enacted emergency authority, granted under the Federal Power Act, and added that it had been used extremely rarely in the past.

He also said he would determine a fair rate at which the generators would sell power to California, rather than the astronomical prices for which it has been going in the last few days.

The 12 Tight-Fisted Power Generators

The following companies were identified by the Davis administration yesterday as having refused to supply California with more power unless they received cash payments in advance or other guarantees they would be paid:

-- Dynegy Power Marketing
-- Trans Alta
-- Eugene Water and Electric
-- PowerEx (British Columbia Hydro)
-- Public Service Colorado
-- Enron Power Marketing
-- Portland General
-- Avista (Washington Water Power)
-- Idaho Power Co.
-- PPL Montana
-- Seattle City Light
-- Puget Sound Energy

E-mail Christian Berthelsen at cberthelsen@sfchronicle.com and Lynda Gledhill at lgledhill@sfchronicle.com.

---

In Crisis, California to Force Big Utilities to Supply Power

New York Times
December 14, 2000
By JAMES STERNGOLD
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/14/national/14POWE.html

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 13 - California's power crisis deepened today as some big electricity generating companies refused to sell power to the state's financially ailing utilities, prompting Energy Secretary Bill Richardson to say that he would invoke rarely used emergency powers and force them to ship the desperately needed power.

Under the measures, about a dozen power producers in the West and Northwest would have to provide power to California's utilities at a price the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission would determine.

Mr. Richardson, backed by Gov. Gray Davis of California, said the price would be fair, but, he added, "I will not allow them to unjustly profit from these conditions."

The day's events suggested that a sudden cascade of financial and market developments were threatening the entire power system in California and may have spelled the doom of the market's short-lived experiment with deregulation. It was a harsh blow to those who had backed the state's pioneering, and now disastrous, energy deregulation plan, which was supposed to have been a boon to consumers.

Prices have been skyrocketing this year because of severe shortages, and the system has been barely fending off rolling blackouts, which loomed here again this afternoon.

Now several of the state's largest utilities, like Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas and Electric, have said they face bankruptcy if something is not done to bring down the unprecedented prices they are being forced to pay for their power on the wholesale market.

For instance, a Pacific Gas and Electric spokesman said the company had been paying as much as 25 cents a kilowatt-hour for power that it is selling to customers, by law, at about 5 cents a kilowatt-hour.

Because of the losses they are sustaining, the utilities have had their credit ratings downgraded sharply, prompting some of the power generators to refuse to sell them electricity out of concern the companies might never pay for it.

Adding to the problems, the organization that was created to operate the power supply system, the Independent System Operator, declared a Stage 2 alert, which means that it had moved dangerously close to running out of power. In the afternoon, the organization said it might be edging toward a Stage 3 alert, when rolling blackouts would have been required. A Stage 2 alert means that the system has only 5 percent more power than is being used, a low margin of safety. The Stage 3 alert means the margin is down to 1.5 percent, which requires utilities to shut down blocks in their grids for one hour at a time.

The state had its first Stage 3 alert last Thursday and just managed to avoid blackouts by shutting down some large state-run pump stations.

Some areas would not be affected. Cities like Los Angeles and Sacramento, for instance, have municipal power companies with their own ample generating capacity. Los Angeles' Department of Water and Power said today that it was selling surpluses to other utilities.

After the crisis-like atmosphere that prevailed throughout the day, the chairman of one of the state's largest utilities reversed his earlier stand and declared deregulation a disaster that had to be ended quickly.

"This situation is not sustainable," said the official, John E. Bryson, of Edison International, the parent of Southern California Edison. "The new market structure is broken and must be discarded."

He added that the company, which had already been forced to pay more than $3.5 billion for its power above what it has been able to charge customers, might have to ration power to its customers in the southern portion of the state.

Jan Smutny-Jones, the executive director of the Independent Energy Producers Association, which represents most of the state's power generating companies, denied that his members were price gouging and said that an unfortunate series of events had brought about the crisis. These included, he said, soaring prices for natural gas, which is used at many big generating plants, and the fact that many plants are shut down for repairs or other problems.

---

Imports Help Calif. Power Grid Limp Through Day

Yahoo News
Top Stories News
Thursday December 14 7:21 PM ET
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20001214/ts/utilities_california_dc_8.html

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Power suppliers in the Pacific Northwest continued to ship badly-needed electricity south to California Thursday, helping the state to limp through its eleventh consecutive day of emergencies on the grid.

The Bonneville Power Administration, a federal power marketing agency, tapped supplies from big hydroelectric dams in Oregon and Washington to ship power south, said California power officials.

The California Independent System Operator (ISO), which manages most of the state's grid, said 3,000 to 4,000 megawatts was flowing into the state Thursday afternoon to boost supplies for the peak evening demand hours from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. That is enough energy for up to 4 million homes.

The volume was 1,000 megawatts less than the emergency shipments ordered Wednesday by U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson to enable California to prevent the breakdown of the entire grid and rolling blackouts across the state.

Richardson acted Wednesday after power suppliers threatened to halt sales to California for fear they might not be paid by the state's biggest utilities, now strapped by more than $8 billion in power costs.

To keep the lights on in the state, Richardson said the federal government would require all generators and marketers to sell power to California at set prices.

Kellan Fluckiger, chief operating officer of the ISO, said the agency also received emergency help Thursday from California's municipal utilities and the state's Department of Water Resources, which turned off electrical pumps in the central valley water project to save power.

State and federal office buildings also dimmed lights to conserve megawatts and the ISO continued to plead for voluntary reductions by all Californians, including keeping holiday lighting displays dark until after 7 p.m.

Despite these actions, however, the grid was still on emergency footing and the ISO did not rule out the possibility of cutting off some industrial customers Thursday evening to protect the power system.

The ISO reported that 8,300 megawatts of in-state generating capacity was out of service Thursday -- 3,600 megawatts for scheduled maintenance and the balance idled for emergency repairs.

Fluckiger said California's power plants are rapidly becoming more prone to breakdowns because they have been working overtime since last spring to meet the high demand for electricity caused by a strong economy and growing population.

He said the plants, many of them built 30 to 40 years ago, are running too hard to keep up with demand.

``This means they will have more breakdowns because they just cannot keep operating at this pace,'' he said.

-------- new mexico

Discarded Tapes Checked for Los Alamos Link

New York Times
December 14, 2000
By WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID JOHNSTON
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/14/national/14LAB.html

Federal officials said yesterday that investigators had found several tapes in a landfill outside Los Alamos, N.M., and were analyzing them to see if any had been discarded by Dr. Wen Ho Lee, the former Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist who told of filling computer tapes with nuclear secrets and then throwing them in the trash.

The suspect tapes are cassettes, officials said, and thus resemble those on which Dr. Lee illegally downloaded highly sensitive weapons data.

But a preliminary analysis so far indicates that none of the tapes are Dr. Lee's, federal officials said yesterday, adding that further inquiry might reverse the tentative finding.

"They have clearly found something," said one official, who added that only detailed analysis by the Federal Bureau of Investigation would tell if any of the recovered tapes could help solve one of the case's central mysteries.

On Monday, officials said they had asked the Los Alamos laboratory to help analyze some of the tapes.

Julie Habiger, a spokeswoman for Los Alamos County, said the F.B.I. started digging at the dump site on Nov. 28, and finished last Friday, breaking for weekends and working a total of nine days.

Workers, Mrs. Habiger said, used bulldozers and hand rakes to comb through piles of trash, and security agents still guard the site continuously.

Mrs. Habiger said F.B.I. workers did not return to the landfill on Monday and, instead, agents told the county they were finished for now.

The hunt started after Dr. Lee told investigators as part of a plea agreement with the government in September that he had thrown the tapes in the garbage and that they had probably ended up in the landfill.

Dr. Lee, a former weapon scientist at Los Alamos, had originally been charged in a 59-count indictment with illegally downloading a wealth of weapons data with the intention of aiding a foreign nation and harming the United States.

Dr. Lee spent more than nine months in solitary confinement and was described as a major risk to national security.

But the government dropped almost its entire case, and Dr. Lee pleaded guilty to one count of mishandling secrets.

Dr. Lee won his freedom and agreed to explain why he had downloaded the data and what had happened to the tapes, at least seven of which are missing.

After Dr. Lee told of throwing the tapes in the trash, F.B.I. agents determined roughly where the laboratory's garbage bins were emptied at the landfill and began searching there two weeks ago.

The tapes are regarded by the government as having major importance and have been the focus of an enormous investigation, both to preserve them and to keep them from enemy hands. In court hearings, the tapes were described as containing data that could aid the building of advanced nuclear weapons.

On the tapes, or at least on one of them, was a virtual library of nuclear weapons testing and design data that Dr. Lee admitted to having created over many years.

As part of his plea deal, Dr. Lee agreed to meet with government investigators for 10 sessions up to six hours each and to answer all their questions about his illegal downloading and other activities. He had his 9th and 10th sessions Monday and Tuesday this week.

-------- tennessee

TVA Chairman Announces Retirement

Associated Press
December 14, 2000 Filed at 9:26 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-TVA-Chairman.html

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- The chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority, the country's largest public power provider, said Thursday he will retire in April.

Craven Crowell, 57, a Clinton appointee and former colleague of Vice President Al Gore, will retire with nearly a year remaining on his nine-year term, making way for President-elect Bush to name a new chairman.

The head of the federal agency is always appointed by the president, and is typically chosen from the same political party. TVA board members are subject to confirmation by the Senate.

While Crowell's announcement came a day after Gore conceded the election, he said his decision was personal and had not been made under pressure.

``This is not the kind of decision you make without giving it a great deal of thought ... I plan to have another career, and maybe another one after that,'' he told The Associated Press.

Crowell, who was city editor at The Tennessean newspaper in Nashville in the 1970s while Gore was a reporter, said he had not told Gore of his decision.

Crowell's tenure has been marked by a major effort to pay down TVA's multibillion-dollar debt, restore its nuclear power program, maintain stable electric rates and launch a green power energy program.

TVA is a self-financing government corporation created as part of the New Deal in 1933 to improve the economy of the Tennessee Valley. It provides electricity to nearly 8 million people in Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi.

The agency also manages flood control, river navigation and shoreline along the 652-mile Tennessee River.

-------- us nuc politics

Hello, World
A Foreign Policy Novice, But Bush Has Principles

Dec. 14
ABC News
By David Storey Reuters
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/world_policy001214.html

George W. Bush, meets with retired Gen. Colin Powell, right, at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, Nov. 30. Powell is expected to be secretary of state in Bush's administration. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo)
http://a1188.g.akamai.net/7/1188/810/14c5a1eec3f3e4/download.akamai.com/reuters/abc.gif

WASHINGTON, - George W. Bush, who takes over as U.S. president in January after squeaking through a protracted contest with Democrat Al Gore, did not get the job for his foreign policy expertise.

The Texas governor, wealthy son of a former president who had served as ambassador to China and as CIA Director, has shown little interest in the world outside the United States, traveling abroad only a handful of times in his 54 years.

But since the Nov. 7 election, he has publicly given special attention to foreign policy, perhaps to assure a nervous world that despite weeks of uncertainty over the result there will be no hiatus in U.S. policy.

He will choose his national security team from a pool of well-seasoned advisers, including retired Army Gen. Colin Powell as secretary of state, to make up for his inexperience and boost his legitimacy after a knife-edge election win.

In a campaign dominated by domestic issues Bush staked out some principles on which his foreign policy would differ with that of outgoing President Bill Clinton, in particular a greater reluctance to intervene in foreign conflicts.

Bush will to continue U.S. commitment to free trade and to NATO, although he worried European allies by suggesting withdrawing U.S. peacekeeping forces from the Balkans, saying American troops are for "fighting wars" not peacekeeping.

He says he will maintain tough sanctions on Iraq and engagement with China, although he sees the communist giant more as a "strategic competitor" than as a "strategic partner" and promises more emphasis on traditional ties with Japan.

Old Friends, Old Foes

Bush has a host of foreign policy advisers, many of whom served his father and former President Ronald Reagan and will recall some of the enduring foes, like Yugoslavia's Slobodan Milosevic and Iraq's Saddam Hussein, from the old days.

Many analysts believe a more pronounced "America-first" attitude adopted by some of those advisers, particularly those who built their careers during the Cold War, could emerge, contrasting with a globalist approach under Clinton.

This could be encouraged by some powerful isolationist members in the Republican-led Congress.

In his first interview after the election, Bush sought to dispel such fears, going out of his way to stress the U.S. must accept its responsibilities in the world, not retreat into isolationism, and build up the major alliances.

"America can't go it alone," he told CBS television's 60 Minutes II. "The principal threat facing America is isolationism," he said, adding: "We've got to build our alliances, we've got to work with our friends."

Arms Ahoy

Bush has vowed to press ahead with a controversial National Missile Defense system, expanding it to protect not just the U.S. but also U.S. allies and troops around the world, despite threats from Russia that it would wreck existing international arms treaties.

Bush's comments have prompted concern in Moscow that the era of formal arms agreements, a basis of world stability during the Cold War, may be over and that a Bush White House would move toward a more unilateralist strategy.

Bush also supports Congress's decision last year not to ratify the nuclear Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which was seen by many allies as undermining U.S. leadership in the struggle to halt the spread of nuclear weapons in the world.

His close aide, Condoleezza Rice, who is expected to become his national security adviser, said the treaty would inhibit the U.S. in maintaining its own nuclear stockpile and would do little to stop the proliferation of such weapons.

Apparently to head off fears that as president he might encourage an American swagger, Bush says the U.S. must show humility while being firm in its principles.

Arrogant America

The U.S. role in the world must be "not an arrogant presence, but a humble presence, yet a consistent presence," he said in the 60 Minutes II interview.

The message would be: "When we say something, we mean it, and we're going to back up our word. We have great opportunities to help make the world more peaceful, but we can't do so if we become isolationists," he said.

Attacks on U.S. interests abroad would prompt a tough response, he said, saying: "The best way for our nation and other free nations is to punish those who would harm our citizens."

Referring specifically to the bombing of the USS Cole warship at Aden in October, which has been linked to Saudi exile Osama bin Laden, he said: "If we find out who did it, there's going to be a consequence."

Rice, a Russia expert who served with Bush's father, President George Bush, has condemned Clinton's Moscow policy as based on "a romantic view of Russia" in the 1990s.

"Pouring IMF funding into an unreformed and corrupt economy in fact weakened Russia and helped to lead to the 1998 crash," she said in an interview earlier this year.

She said Washington must support "real economic reform, not pretend economic reform," although she did not elaborate. In President Vladimir Putin, Bush will have to deal with a leader apparently intent on reviving Russia's lost world clout.

One of the strongest points Bush repeated during his year-and-a-half of campaigning for the presidency has been a belief that Clinton has sent U.S. troops abroad too often, weakening the U.S. military's core role to defend America.

Leave Regional Conflicts Alone

He and Rice have said he would let regional allies take the strain in regional conflicts, like the Balkans, while massing force to overwhelm enemies in major conflicts directly affecting the U.S., like in the Gulf or in East Asia.

This matches the approach of the charismatic and widely respected Powell, who directed U.S. forces in the Gulf War.

Bush has generally adopted a similar approach to the Middle East as Clinton and Gore.

On one significant point they differ-Bush says he will begin preparations for moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv once he is inaugurated, while Clinton argues this should await a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

One issue that will confront Bush immediately will be North Korea, the Stalinist Asian wild card whose nuclear program and unrestrained sale of missiles to potential U.S. enemies made it a top priority for Clinton's national security team.

Clinton spent years brokering a deal to defuse its nuclear program and appears on the brink of a missile agreement, but some Republicans have accused him of appeasement and Bush will be under pressure to take a more cautious approach.

---

A Shift on U.S. Security Policy

International Herald Tribune
Thursday, December 14, 2000
Joseph Fitchett International Herald Tribune
http://www.iht.com/articles/4259.htm

PARIS The first actions abroad by the next U.S. president, George W. Bush, are bound to bring surprises for the partners and adversaries of the United States because he revealed so little during the campaign about his international priorities.

Mr. Bush seems committed to some initiatives - notably national missile defense - that would impose painful choices on the European allies, Russia and China. While shunning radical rhetoric, Mr. Bush - more accurately, the advisers around him - intend to move steadily toward the deployment of a much bigger anti-missile system than the one postponed last summer by President Bill Clinton.

Politically, this U.S. move signals a much wider shift in thinking on security policy, toward an approach that will rely more on U.S. power and less on international cooperation enshrined in arms control agreements. Those deals, particularly on nuclear weapons, underpinned restraint by the two superpowers in the Cold War. But the Bush team sees less value in such deals in an era where the threats come from smaller and more volatile nations.

Mr. Bush may also take a more unilateral approach in dealing with international financial crises, a major success of Mr. Clinton's foreign policy. The new team hopes to head off trouble by early moves, and by reviving closer working ties with a few key allies, like Japan.

Mr. Bush's foreign policy views never came into clear focus during the campaign. But that could change quickly after the divisive election, as the new president quickly embraces the special authority of his office in foreign affairs. Even though the Republicans will control the White House and Congress, diplomacy may be an area where Mr. Bush can seek early momentum to avoid the gridlock that has dogged Washington in recent years.

Overall, advisers to Mr. Bush have made clear, his administration would move to define U.S. interests more sharply than its predecessor, and then defend that agenda more aggressively.

Their approach was apparently foreshadowed last week when Washington suddenly adopted a harsher tone toward the military ambitions of the European Union, warning that the United States would rethink its NATO commitments unless the EU agreed to raise defense spending and align its defense preparations more closely with the alliance.

In contrast to this more hard-nosed, narrowly defined sense of U.S. interests, Mr. Clinton through his two terms took the view that the best protection for the United States lay in promoting multinational cooperation across the board: from NATO to international financial institutions, from environmental concerns to the battle against AIDS.

In putting new emphasis on strong U.S. national leadership, Washington would be more inclined to press unilateral initiatives, sometimes defying the lack of international consensus or even allied support.

In Europe and Asia, officials phrase their edginess about the Bush team as a question: How far does the world's only superpower feel it can go in ignoring allies as its pursues its own objectives?

French and other European officials have expressed concern about a tendency in Washington to believe that whatever seems right in the United States should be accepted by the rest of the world as good for them. The price of U.S. leadership, European officials maintain, should be shared trans-Atlantic risks in peacekeeping and shared universal rules in globalization.

Advisers to Mr. Bush insist that they want to take a more coherent, consistent approach that will ultimately be more effective in providing a clear road-map for how the U.S. intends to help allies and thwart adversaries.

One check on a Bush administration's actions would be the financial markets and the danger of jeopardizing the world's economic boom. No matter how strongly they resent Iraq's president, Saddam Hussein, for example, the Bush team would hesitate about actions against Baghdad for fear of upsetting world oil supplies.

To help fend off accusations about his international inexperience, Mr. Bush spent time this past month, during the suspense about the voting results, with Colin Powell, the retired army general and likely secretary of state in Bush administration.

General Powell is one of a team of veteran policymakers who worked closely with Mr. Bush's father when he was president and are comfortable wielding power.

Their combination of experience and pragmatism may produce some surprises. In waging the Gulf War, General Powell, as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, imposed a doctrine of using overwhelming force to minimize U.S. casualties. This approach has inhibited subsequent, less-decisive U.S. military interventions, including in Kosovo.

Now, Washington insiders ask, will General Powell find innovative new ways to accomplish tough jobs, without resorting to the overwhelming U.S. force he prefers? For example, eager to reduce the peacekeeping burden on U.S. forces, he could use his stature to turn around congressional objections and back UN peacekeeping as a cheaper, better alternative to using U.S. troops.

Supporters of Mr. Bush have signaled changes in style or substance in U.S. foreign policy in several key areas, including these:

•NATO. The Bush team has already signaled that it wants to reduce the peacekeeping role of U.S. forces so that they can concentrate on readiness for major wars. A logical suggestion would involve a deal in which the planned European Union rapid-reaction force would take over peacekeeping in Kosovo and Bosnia.

This approach would ease U.S. concerns about European Union ambitions to play a military role by giving the Europeans a practical mission, under NATO.

Agreement on this concrete step would allow time, perhaps two years, for a Bush administration and the European allies to work out the unfinished business of defining relations between the European Union and NATO. Overall, a Bush administration would take a tougher line with Europe on the need for the allies to spend more on military modernization and follow the U.S. lead toward more high-technology warfare. A critical unknown is a Bush administration's readiness to back trans-Atlantic mergers in the defense industry as a way to motivate European initiative.

•National Missile Defense. A Bush administration would almost certainly start moving to end a 1972 treaty with Moscow that prohibits anti-missile defenses.

Most European allies fear that a Bush administration would underestimate the risk of a backlash in Moscow and new militarism in Russia. But advisers to Mr. Bush have said the Russian government under President Vladimir Putin will agree to treaty changes as the price of good relations with Washington.

•China. A Bush administration would act to counter Beijing's military threats to Taiwan, one of the most dangerous flashpoints for U.S. security interests. Beijing objects strongly to U.S. plans to deploy missile defenses, which it fears could be extended to protect Taiwan. Initially, a Bush administration would try to emphasize newly institutionalized trade ties. Any hopes of revisiting the anti-missile issue would depend on North Korea's performance in curbing its own missile program, the other major issue in the region.

•The Middle East. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be the priority issue unless Mr. Clinton pulls off a peace agreement in his remaining weeks in office. The Bush team has ties to the Arab world, especially through Mr. Bush's father, who as president led the coalition that won the Gulf War and then worked on the foundations for a regional Arab-Israeli peace.

In confronting Baghdad, a Bush administration would have no obvious alternative to the current policy of containment. The new team may encourage support for dissident Iraqi factions, but a new military action to topple Mr. Saddam would run counter to the Bush team's emphasis on clear-cut campaigns with an exit strategy.

The most intriguing possibility involves Iran: A Bush administration might open toward Tehran in hopes of finding an ally against Baghdad and also of creating a shorter, more economical pipeline to the oil wealth at the Caspian Sea.

---

Ridge says he'll serve out term
But he said he would have to consider a cabinet offer if Bush were to extend one.

Philadelphia Inquirer
Thursday, December 14, 2000
By Amy Worden INQUIRER HARRISBURG BUREAU
http://inq.philly.com/content/inquirer/2000/12/14/national/RIDGE14.htm

HARRISBURG - With Gov. Ridge's name surfacing again for secretary of defense, he yesterday maintained his intention to serve out his term but did not fully close the door on a cabinet post.

"It's flattering speculation about a possible offer, but, as I said in July, I would complete my term," he said at a news conference.

"That was my decision then. That is my decision now. If Governor, now President-elect, Bush chooses to call and offer a position, I will entertain it, but I think he's got a very deep bench.

"He's got plenty of ready, willing and able and very competent people to serve with him, who are very, very anxious to serve with him. And I think, I suspect, he will probably go to that bench."

Bush advisers said yesterday that former Indiana Sen. Dan Coats was now the leading, but not the only, candidate to be defense secretary.

Ridge said he had spoken to Bush two times since the election.

"I've talked to him twice personally just as a friend, not as a would-be member of his administration in any capacity," Ridge said.

Political analysts say Ridge must remain noncommittal because of the intense national focus on this particular cabinet post.

"You can't campaign for vice president, and you can't campaign for cabinet," said G. Terry Madonna, a political science professor at Millersville University. "This is the most important cabinet post next to state."

Ridge has deflected speculation about a cabinet job since July, when he announced that he had opted out of consideration for the vice president's job, weeks before Bush selected Dick Cheney as his running mate.

Some say Ridge, known for his support for abortion rights and his opposition as a member of Congress to high-profile defense initiatives, could face a difficult road to confirmation.

"He has a checkered record to some conservatives who will jump on his support of a nuclear freeze and his opposition to the 'Star Wars' missile-defense system," Madonna said.

Ridge, 55, and a decorated Vietnam veteran, is already facing opposition from right-wing interest groups.

"He was unhelpful in the Reagan years," said Gary Bauer, founder of the Campaign for Working Families and Reagan's domestic policy adviser.

Bauer said yesterday that his group had expressed its views on Ridge and other candidates in letters and e-mail to the Bush transition team. "We would like to find someone who is pro-defense," Bauer said. "Ridge was a thorn in our side on defense issues."

Amy Worden's e-mail address is aworden@phillynews.com

---

Clinton Reminds Leaders of Their Duty to the Poor

New York Times
December 14, 2000
By MARC LACEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/14/world/14CND-PREXY.html

COVENTRY, England, Dec. 14 - Laying out some of the challenges that will face the world after he leaves office, President Clinton today wound up what may be his final overseas trip as president with a plea to developed countries not to forget the poor in this era of high technology and globalization.

"No generation has ever had the opportunity that all of us now have to build a global economy that leaves no one behind and, in the process, to create a new century of peace and prosperity in a world that is more constructively and truly independent," Mr. Clinton told several hundred people at the University of Warwick, which has an institute that specializes in global issues.

"It is a wonderful opportunity," Mr. Clinton said of the spread of trade, communications and computer technology throughout the globe. "It is also a profound responsibility."

Mr. Clinton, who was to fly back to Washington late tonight, spent the morning in London, where he and Hillary Rodham Clinton had tea, coffee and cookies for about 20 minutes with Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace.

Presidential aides are still mulling whether Mr. Clinton ought to make a trip to North Korea but that visit grows more unlikely by the day. So this may have been the final trip beyond the United States borders by the president who has traveled more than any other. It was Mr. Clinton's seventh trip to Britain, where he has established a close bond with Prime Minister Tony Blair.

"Bill Clinton has been a true leader of the western world," Mr. Blair said in introducing the president, not long after he telephoned congratulations to the next one, President-elect George W. Bush. The prime minister noted that Mr. Clinton has "been a friend and confidant to me and leaders around the world.

In his foreign policy speech today, Mr. Clinton urged wealthy countries to consider forgiving the debts of nations in the developing world and to ensure that the "digital divide" is reduced between countries connected to computers and those left behind in the computer age.

"It's fair to ask, I suppose, are computers really an answer for people who are starving or can't yet read?" Mr. Clinton asked. "Is e-commerce an answer for villages that don't even have electricity? Of course, I wouldn't say that.

"We have to begin with the basics. But there should not be a choice between Pentium and penicillin."

The president, who often touts rosy statistics showing prosperity spreading throughout the world, focused today on the many problems that will outlast his presidency. He said half the world's people are struggling to survive on less than $2 a day, that nearly 1 billion live in chronic hunger, that half the children in the poorest countries are not in school and almost a billion adults have never learned to read.

Mr. Clinton has made globalization the foreign policy theme of much of his presidency, pursuing a free-trade agenda resisted by many critics, some of them members of his own party. That resistance, Mr. Clinton said, does not indicate flaws in globalization itself but rather a thoughtless approach to breaking down barriers among nations.

"The great question before us is not whether globalization will proceed, but how," the president said. "And what is our responsibility in the developed world to try to shape this process so that it lifts people in all nations."

Mr. Clinton largely steered clear of many high-profile issues the world will face in the years to come - the spread of terrorism, the effects of a missile shield, the role of peacekeepers stationed around the globe. Today, he focused on matters that often fall below the radar screens of foreign ministries - like the dangers of climate change, the national security threat that AIDS presents and the importance that education and school lunches can play in stabilizing a country.

White House aides said that the president's speech was aimed at leaders the world over, not at Mr. Clinton's successor, who comes to the job with modest credentials in foreign affairs.

"President Clinton made the transition from governor to world leader and it will be up to President-elect Bush to make that same transition," said P.J. Crowley, the president's national security spokesman. "He will, because the president of the United States has a unique mantle as a world leader. I don't think anyone will question that the United States will stay engaged. The question is how do you handle the challenges we all face?"

---

World Congratulates Bush

Associated Press
December 14, 2000 Filed at 5:09 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/politics/AP-Election-World-Reaction.html

LONDON (AP) -- The world's presidents, prime ministers and monarchs showered President-elect George W. Bush with congratulations Thursday, but some leaders worried over his plans for a missile shield and his promise to defend Taiwan.

Despite the closeness of the U.S. vote and the five extra weeks it took America to determine a president, there were mainly kind words for the man a German official called ``the most important person for the most important and powerful country in the world.''

``The world needs a strong America and America is strong today, and I'm sure under President-elect Bush it will continue to be so,'' said British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

A number of British newspapers, however, made snide references to Bush's reputation for lacking a deep knowledge of foreign affairs. The tabloid Mirror had a front-page photo of Earth, with an arrow pointing to Britain: ``Congrats on becoming the president, Dubya ... P.S. We are here.''

But a Russian politician, Dmitry Rogozin, welcomed the possibility that the new administration would be more inward-looking.

A Bush administration ``will focus its attention on the solution of their own problems, on the strengthening of domestic security, and will not assume the role of a global Messiah, which Democrats sometimes liked to do,'' Rogozin told the ITAR-Tass news agency.

``People in Russia have hope that Republicans will not care how Russia acts on Chechnya, on human rights,'' said Liliya Shevtsova of the Carnegie Endowment's Moscow office. ``The Bush policy will have less idealism. It will be calculated and not be sentimental toward Russia.''

During his campaign, Bush alarmed China by pledging to defend Taiwan if it were attacked and to build up military ties with the island. Such vocal support was more explicit than any U.S. president has given in years.

While offering ``warm congratulations'' to Bush, Chinese President Jiang Zemin telegraphed China's misgivings about his policies. Jiang reiterated his view that relations must adhere to three U.S.-China communiques -- agreements that Beijing says commit Washington to recognizing Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan.

Washington and Beijing also are at odds over human rights, weapons sales and trade.

Bush has strongly supported a missile defense shield, a project that has disturbed some allies.

NATO's secretary-general, Lord Robertson, indicated Thursday that he hoped for no sudden moves to go ahead with the controversial and unproven system.

``I have no doubt that the new administration would want to look at some of the technical issues that are involved here,'' Robertson told British Broadcasting Corp. radio. ``But what I do know is that there is a commitment to consult other NATO allies.''

In France, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin expressed hope for the future, but he also touched on the challenge Bush faces in the coming months.

``Gore won the popular vote by 300,000,'' Jospin said. ``There was not a recount in Florida, so there will always be some uncertainty'' about who the real winner was.

Still, others cautioned that to dismiss Bush's potential would be a mistake.

``Don't underestimate the possibility of a president under those circumstances,'' said Karsten Voigt, the German government's coordinator for relations with the United States. ``We would be well advised to accept the fact and start from the assumption that this is still the most important person for the most important and powerful country in the world.''

There was a strong view in the Middle East that the outcome of the election would make little difference in U.S. policy, which has supported Israel through Republican and Democratic administrations.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak remarked last month: ``It makes no difference to me whether Bush or Gore wins.''

On Thursday, he sent Bush a message saying he looked forward to mutual cooperation ``to reach a just and permanent peace in the Middle East.''

Kuwaitis were more enthusiastic, having rooted for the son of the president who led the international coalition that drove the Iraqi army out of their country in 1991.

``The word `Bush' has become a part of Kuwaiti culture,'' said Abdullah Sahar, a political scientist at Kuwait University. ``We want to return the favor, even if it is only by good wishes.''

Bush's victory was good news for the church in Messing, a village 50 miles northeast of London, where Reynold Bush lived before emigrating to Massachusetts in 1631.

The win gives All Saints church another chance to sell coffee mugs made in the 1980s that proclaim: ``Messing: birthplace of Reynold Bush, ancestor of George Bush, President of the USA.''

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Man in the News: The 43rd President, George Walker Bush

New York Times
December 14, 2000
By ALISON MITCHELL
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/14/politics/14BMAN.html

AUSTIN, Tex., Dec. 13 - Gov. George W. Bush cast his quest for the presidency as a stand against poisonous Washington - its gridlock, its scandals, its bruising partisanship - and in the very last week of his campaign he was barnstorming under bright banners that promised, "Bringing America Together."

But as Mr. Bush was finally able to claim a belated and minuscule victory over Vice President Al Gore, after a debilitating month of bare-knuckled court fighting, it was as if he had somehow crossed through the looking glass.

In the contested aftermath of Election Day, the man who presented himself as a Texas outsider turned to the ultimate Washington insiders to secure his victory. James A. Baker III, Dick Cheney and Andrew H. Card, all from Mr. Bush's father's administration, became the faces of the Bush presidency in waiting, and Theodore B. Olson, the capital's reigning conservative litigator, argued the case at the Supreme Court.

Far from calming the flames of partisanship, Mr. Bush's struggle for victory against Mr. Gore fanned them to an intensity not seen since President Clinton's impeachment. And suddenly Mr. Bush seemed lassoed to the Congressional leaders whom he had once kept so carefully at a distance, as they thundered on his behalf against the "unelected judges" of Florida who were rendering verdicts about the vote.

Now George Walker Bush, 54, comes into office as only the fourth man in history - and the first in more than a century - to assume the presidency without winning the popular vote. Like the only other son of a president to win the office himself, John Quincy Adams in 1824 (who had fewer popular votes than Andrew Jackson), Mr. Bush lost the popular vote in a disputed election to a Tennessean. Indeed, Mr. Bush won office with 271 electoral votes, just one more than the minimum.

Mr. Bush is not facing personal scandal, as President Clinton did. But his situation may be just as searing politically, for Mr. Bush ultimately won through a bruising legal battle over the 25 electoral votes in a state run by his brother, Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida. It was a fight that was finally decided by nine Supreme Court justices, who split bitterly over the issue.

With his speech tonight from the Texas House of Representatives, Mr. Bush began trying to pull the nation together after this grueling ordeal, choosing the House because it is a chamber where the Democrats have a majority. He quoted the words of Thomas Jefferson who won the presidency in 1800 only after 36 ballots in the House of Representatives.

And he said that the rancor and strange circumstances of his election could lead to healing and help him bring the warring Congressional leaders together.

"I am optimistic that we can change the tone in Washington, D.C.," Mr. Bush said. "I believe things happen for a reason, and I hope the long wait of the last five weeks will heighten a desire to move beyond the bitterness and partisanship of the past."

Republicans say Mr. Bush's quick instincts about people and his years of reaching across the aisle in Texas have prepared him for this moment.

"It will take extraordinary effort, but you know, he's known for that," said Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, who was one of Mr. Bush's Republican primary opponents. "When he took over in Texas it wasn't exactly a Republican paradise. He's worked well with Democrats."

But on Capitol Hill, Democratic partisans suggest that the bitterness will not evaporate overnight.

"There will always be this sense that there was some larceny involved in this election," said Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut.

Indeed, it is hard to see how Mr. Bush can claim any mandate at all, a blow to his once confident prediction that his disciplined repetition of a campaign agenda would allow him to say: "This is what the American people have heard. This is what the American people want."

The extraordinary political divide in Congress only magnifies Mr. Bush's problems, with the Senate split 50-50 and the House lineup of 221 Republicans, 210 Democrats, 2 independents and a vacancy, giving the majority party one of the smallest margins in a century.

Under these circumstances, and with the economy showing signs of slowing, even members of Congress from Mr. Bush's own party say the next few years will be a time for incremental compromise - not for his grand plans for a sweeping tax cut or for diverting some Social Security payroll taxes into private investment accounts.

Yet Republicans from the conservative wing of the party are practically bursting with pent-up desires to pass a conservative agenda. "The things we have been dreaming about we can now do unfettered," Representative Tom DeLay, the hard-driving House majority whip from Texas said recently, though he added, "hopefully with bipartisan Democratic support."

A Leader Lacking Definition

Mr. Bush's path to the Oval Office has left him with only a small reserve of governing experience to draw upon as he tries to navigate these shoals.

Born on July 6, 1946, Mr. Bush drifted through much of his adult life, from oil ventures to partial ownership of a baseball team, until he won his first political office six years ago. Though he was himself the son of a president, his own mother did not expect him to win that race, against a formidable Texas governor, Ann Richards.

Mr. Bush may well prove again - as he did in that Texas race and in this year's presidential debates - that people underestimate him. But because of the partisan animosities that have hardened over the past five weeks no one in Washington is expecting Mr. Bush to have any honeymoon. He will quickly be forced to define who he is, how flexible he is, whether he will be an ideologue, a pragmatist of something in between.

Whatever he does will be revealing because even after almost 17 months on the campaign trail before the inconclusive Election Day, the amiable Mr. Bush remained something of a political Rorschach test, rounding off the edges of ideology and image enough for voters to see in him what they wanted to see. And even after this postelection interval the picture became no clearer. He kept such a low profile, at his Texas ranch or in the Texas Capitol, that his running mate, Mr. Cheney, was forced to fend off questions about whether he was really the one in charge.

At times during the campaign, Mr. Bush simply seemed to be selling his infectious optimism to the point that it almost did not seem to matter how much he tortured the English language or what he was really trying to say. The cheers did not stop at one Wisconsin rally even as Mr. Bush twisted a sentence into a sunny but nonsensical knot, proclaiming, "Families is where our nation takes hope, where wings take dream."

Is he a principled conservative or a pragmatic deal-maker? A brash and politically savvy Texas outsider or a privileged Ivy Leaguer plugged into his father's old-boy network? A clever politician tapping into the nation's anti-elitism or a defiant anti-intellectual uninterested in the fine points of policy and ideas?

In some ways the lack of definition might be a blessing now, allowing him to adjust to the divided nation.

Over the course of his campaign, Mr. Bush created a new Republican synthesis; he ran against Bill Clinton and sounded like him at the same time.

At one moment he was raising his right hand high and making his signature pledge to restore "honor and integrity" to the White House, a slap at Mr. Clinton's behavior in office. In the next breath, he was speaking about being a president "willing to reach across the partisan divide and to unite this nation" - a paraphrase of Mr. Clinton's own vow four years ago in the final days of his re-election bid, "to get away from the politics of division and embrace the politics of union."

Mr. Bush said he would be a "compassionate conservative" who cared about the less well-off in society. His declaration that "I do not believe that government is the enemy, but I do not believe it is always the answer" was a gentle half-turn away from Ronald Reagan's blunt assertion that "government is the problem."

Mr. Bush so played down divisive social issues that abortion opponents could trust his pledge to name "strict constructionists" to the Supreme Court, while Republicans on the other side of the issue could argue that he would do nothing to overturn the decision that legalized abortion.

Yet at the same time Mr. Bush never shied away from forthrightly calling himself a conservative. Indeed, it could be argued that his agenda was as conservative as Mr. Reagan's: a tax cut larger than Congressional Republicans had ever dreamed of, a robust missile defense shield and sweeping overhauls of those two Democratic pillars, Social Security and Medicare.

Indeed, Mr. Bush's anti-government tones became more pronounced as he tried to fire up his partisans in the closing weeks of the campaign, deriding his opponent as being "of Washington, D.C., by Washington, D.C., for Washington, D.C." He thundered that Mr. Gore "trusts government, which stands in stark contrast to our view."

"We trust people," Mr. Bush said.

A Test of His Easy Charm

Mr. Bush now faces the test of his drive, his leadership abilities, his way with people.

To push anything through the bitterly divided Congress, Mr. Bush will have to build coalitions that reach across party lines. In this, he is counting on the easy charm that served him so well, as a cheerleader at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., as a businessman wooing investors for his oil ventures or to build a baseball stadium or a presidential candidate courting the journalists in the back of his campaign plane.

More than six years ago, Mr. Bush was still weeks away from victory in his first campaign for governor, when he paid a secret visit to Bob Bullock, the Democrat who was the lieutenant governor of Texas and the most powerful person in state politics.

"You may not think I'm going to win," Mr. Bush told Mr. Bullock. "But when I do I want to work with you."

Mr. Bush has made some overtures to Democrats already. He spoke recently to Senator John B. Breaux, the centrist Louisiana Democrat who broke with his party to promote an overhaul of Medicare much like the one Mr. Bush later came to endorse. He also reached out to Representative Gene Taylor, the Mississippi Democrat who said he would support Mr. Bush if the election were thrown into the House.

Mr. Bush's advisers insist that the efforts to reach out will only intensify, and that Mr. Bush will quickly meet with Congressional leaders of both parties.

"Look at this guy's record," said Representative Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, who is a close adviser to Mr. Bush. "He is going to reach out to get things done. People have talked about the Clinton-Gore administration as a permanent campaign. That's not going to happen with George Bush. His style's to reach out across party lines."

Some of Mr. Bush's hopes of putting prominent Democrats in his cabinet have been made far more difficult by the 50-50 split in the Senate which has made Democrats loath to desert their party and give up their seats. But aides say Mr. Bush would still like to see at least one Democrat in a high-ranking or cabinet position.

Advisers predict that he will also move to form commissions on Social Security and Medicare that would include Democrats like Bob Kerrey and Daniel P. Moynihan, two retiring senators who broke with their party to support the introduction of individual investment accounts into Social Security.

Will such gestures work? Mr. Bush may well find that his skill at dealing with like-minded conservative Democrats in Texas will not be as transferable to Washington as he believes, particularly after the acrimony over Florida.

Mr. Bush's advisers believe he can draw support from the Blue-Dog Democrats, a conservative Democratic caucus. But for this to work in these partisan times it will require more than just asking for their votes.

"We're not going to be charmed by whoever the president is," said Representative Gary A. Condit, a California Democrat and one of the founders of the group. "We're not going to be browbeaten by who the leadership is. We're there to be equal partners in the drafting of public policy."

If the Democrats are warning that they will not be pliant, Mr. Bush has to hope that his efforts to reach out do not cause a rebellion from conservatives like Mr. DeLay who recently proclaimed triumphantly: "We have the House. We have the Senate. We have the White House. Which means we have the agenda."

One adviser to Mr. Bush acknowledges, "One of the challenges will be the relationship with some of the more conservative or partisan Republicans on the Hill." The adviser added, "I think they will need to adjust to a president who is more interested in results than in politics, and that in the end may be a larger challenge than to get Democrats to sit down and roll up their sleeves and work."

Mr. Bush has said that one of his earliest priorities will be to win passage of his education agenda. He also wants to move fast to give states help in assisting the neediest elderly with prescription drugs until a more far-reaching overhaul of the federal Medicare program could be put in place.

Other decisions are more difficult. Mr. Bush will have to decide soon whether to try for his $1.3 tr