NUCLEAR
Inspections to End Under INF Treaty
SWITZERLAND: MISSILE CONTROL PACT
Putin Sees Cuba As Russia's Gate to Latam
Putin Feels Whiff of Soviet Era in Cuba
A Russian Return to Havana
In Cuba, Putin Signals Russia's Return to Region
U.S., ex-republics sign agreement
Putin talks with Castro in Cuba
Putin, Castro speak on relationship
China Sets Terms for Rights Talks With U.S.
Putin may discuss U.S. policy during Canada visit
Russia increases number of single-warhead missiles in service
Putin Hopeful on U.S. - Russian Relations Under Bush
Russia To Deploy More Missiles
Russia Will Allow Norway Inspection
Chernobyl shut down for good
Chernobyl powers down permanently
Chernobyl Closing: A Relief For Many
Chernobyl at a Glance
Lights Go Out at Chernobyl Nuclear Plant
Chernobyl Nuclear Plant Shut Down for Good
Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Shut Down
Chernobyl Is a Vast Wasteland
Workers Bid Ill-Fated Chernobyl a Bitter Farewell
Chernobyl nuclear plant shut down for last time
Ukraine to close Chernobyl nuke plant
After disaster: the people who call Chernobyl home
Chernobyl - One Secret the Soviets Could not Keep
Military Chief Seeks Money, Saying Forces Are Strapped
Man with windmill scheme tilts against U.S. missile shield
America's Nuclear Flying Saucer
Wen Ho Lee mystery deepens
Search for Lee Tapes Fruitless
FBI might resume digging for secret tapes
To Prevent Price Jumps, Changes in Electricity Market Are Urged
DOE makes first steps in fluorine cleanup
Tribe Wants 2 Hanford Landfills Recleaned
World waits to see how Bush will handle global issues
Meeting the World
Run to the Right, Not the Middle
Clinton, Winding Up Trip, Tells Developed Nations Not to Forget the World's Poor
Congratulations, and Some Skepticism, as Other Nations Size Up Bush
Conservatives Looking for Action
Bush Turns to Foreign Policy Experts
DOE To Probe Leak Re Yucca Mountain DOE, Industry Scam
MILITARY
Workers Get Greater Drug Test Protection
New Charges in Ecstasy Case Are Filed Against Gravano
U.S. arrests 50 in Mexican drug ring probe
U.N. Peacekeeping Mission to Congo Is Revived
Final slap
Gen. Shelton sees China as growing threat to U.S.
Military votes must count
OTHER
Recount, Sue, Await Results. Sound Familiar?
Modified-Crop Studies Are Called Inconclusive
I'm Not Dead Yet
American Jailed as Spy in Moscow Is Freed on Putin's Orders;
Yemen on Delicate Path in bin Laden Hunt
Fearing Terrorism, U.S. Keeps Consulates in Turkey Closed
Yemen chief says role of bin Laden not clear
Terrorism strategy criticized
Pope expresses joy over prison release
ACTIVISTS
Dyspeptic D.C. demonstrations
FBI agents protest Peltier clemency request
Protesters Lift Road Blockade in Southern Serbia
Serbs enforce blockade near Kosovo border
Police hold 39 after Greenpeace protest missile campaign at NATO
-------- NUCLEAR
Inspections to End Under INF Treaty
International Herald Tribune
Friday, December 15, 2000
Reuters
http://www.iht.com/articles/4417.htm
GENEVA The United States and Russia signed an agreement Thursday to end inspections of each other's missile assembly plants begun under the landmark Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which scrapped medium-range missiles and denuclearized Europe.
Under the treaty, the missiles were due to be eliminated by May 1991 and the inspections by May 2001.
"Although the INF Treaty is of unlimited duration, the treaty's extensive inspection regime, including continuous monitoring at missile assembly plants at Magna, Utah, U.S.A., and Votkinsk, Udmurtia, Russia, will be concluded at midnight on May 31, 2001," a joint statement said.
U.S. officials will continue to monitor the Votkinsk plant under the 1991 START Treaty, while Russia has no such rights at the Magna facility under the 1991 START pact, U.S. officials said.
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SWITZERLAND: MISSILE CONTROL PACT
New York Times
December 15, 2000
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/15/world/15BRIE.html
Arms control negotiators meeting in Geneva from the United States, Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine have agreed to the phased elimination under the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty of the last 50 to 60 SS-24 intercontinental ballistic missiles on Ukrainian soil. The negotiators also signed an accord to complete the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty's inspection regime, which involves continuous monitoring at missile assembly plants in Utah and Russia. Elizabeth Olson (NYT)
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Putin Sees Cuba As Russia's Gate to Latam
New York Times
December 15, 2000 Filed at 3:18 p.m. ET
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-cuba-ru.html
HAVANA (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that Moscow would like to use communist-ruled Cuba, its former Cold War ally, as a stepping-stone for a wider and more active role in Latin American and the Caribbean.
Putin ended the official part of his five-day visit to Cuba early on Friday by laying a wreath and holding a news conference -- before taking off for a weekend in the sun at the Caribbean island's leading beach resort of Varadero.
``Our visit to Cuba is a kind of demonstration of intent of reactivation of Russia's external political efforts in Latin America's direction in general,'' Putin told reporters.
``Currently very many countries want to see a more active position of Russia in international affairs. And Russia understands that this corresponds to its national interests. And here we find an understanding by Cuba's authorities.''
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 Castro's four-decade-old government.
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.
NO CHALLENGE TO WASHINGTON
Putin said the positions of Russia and Cuba relating to most international issues coincided or were close to each other. But, he said, Cuba and Russia had no agreements aimed against ``third countries'' -- a comment referring to some interpretations of his visit as a challenge to Washington.
After flying in the night before, Putin spent most of Thursday with Castro for formal ceremonies, talks and the signing of documents aimed at breathing new life into Moscow- Havana ties that disintegrated after the Soviet collapse.
There was apparently no breakthrough in the crucial question of Cuba's enormous Soviet-era debt, estimated at $20 billion. Moscow wants repayment, but Havana says Russia should write it off as ``compensation'' for damages caused to Cuba's economy by the abrupt Soviet fall.
``The debt is counted by billions. This issue is being discussed by experts. It has not yet been solved definitely ... But this should be solved on the basis of the special character of friendly relations between the two countries,'' Putin said.
``We intend to offer to Cuba a most favorable regime (of debt solution), but, naturally, within the framework of international rules.''
Putin said an immediate task for Russian and Cuban experts would be a decision on the fate of unfinished industrial projects left from the Soviet era. He said Russia had recently had to invest around $30 million in preservation work at the Juragua nuclear station, which Cuban authorities were not interested in completing.
``We don't insist (on its completion) but we have to understand what to do with this project as we have invested a lot in it,'' he said.
RUSSIA MULLS OLD PROJECTS
Moscow 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, and the modernization of the Cienfuegos and Santiago oil refineries.
Putin said Russia would like to continue cooperating with Cuba in traditional sectors, but also in new high-tech spheres such as telecommunications.
On Thursday Putin joined Castro in condemning the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba. But he was also careful to send congratulations to U.S. President-elect George W. Bush, and, in another gesture to Washington, has freed a convicted U.S. spy.
Also on Thursday, Putin visited with Castro the Russian- operated Lourdes electronic intelligence center outside the Cuban capital, laid a wreath at the monument to ``the Soviet internationalist warrior'' and met parliamentary speaker Ricardo Alarcon, seen by some as a possible Castro successor.
Putin said Russia and Cuba were keen to keep the Lourdes base, which U.S. opponents want to see dismantled.
``It functions in strict accordance with the international norms and rules currently in force ... Russia and Cuba are in favor of continuing its existence, but what will happen later, let's wait and see,'' he said.
Putin also visited a biotechnology center before heading to Varadero for a weekend on the beach. He was personally invited to Varadero by Castro, who is expected to join him for part of the time until he flies to Canada on Sunday.
---
Putin Feels Whiff of Soviet Era in Cuba
New York Times
December 15, 2000
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/15/world/15PUTI.html
HAVANA, Dec. 14 - Russia and Cuba, two battered allies who fell out a decade ago when the Soviet Union fell apart, officially got back together today when President Vladimir V. Putin and President Fidel Castro pledged to reinvent the relationship based on a modest agenda of trade and commerce and an equally modest smattering of ideological alignment.
The Russian leader wore a business suit - he is here mostly to talk business about the billions of dollars in Soviet-era investments in Cuba that have come to naught, and for which debts are owed.
And the Cuban leader, looking fit and animated at 74, wore the trademark olive fatigues of his revolution - reflecting his own preoccupation with the evils of globalization, the poverty of many nations in a world of great wealth and the "repression" that Cuba continues to suffer under four decades of an American economic blockade.
Mr. Castro and Mr. Putin found some common language in complaining about the advent of a world dominated by the United States. Mr. Castro claimed seniority in the struggle by asking, "Who knows better than the country situated only 90 miles from the biggest superpower of the world?"
Mr. Putin, without mentioning the United States, agreed that such "unipolarity" allows one country to "monopolize international relationships and to dominate them." He said the last time this occurred, "we all know how it ended," apparently a reference to Nazi Germany and World War II.
Both leaders condemned the continuing American economic embargo of Cuba.
But Mr. Putin signaled in other ways that the world has changed and that Russia is not looking to return to the era of confrontation with the United States. As he arrived in Cuba late Wednesday, the Kremlin acted on his decree and released Edmond Pope, the American businessman convicted of espionage by a Moscow court a week ago and sentenced to 20 years in jail.
And in a telegram to President- elect George W. Bush, Mr. Putin sent good wishes for "success in this important and responsible post," adding, "I am counting on an intensive and constructive dialogue with you and your administration" with a goal of "further deepening of the productive and mutually beneficial cooperation between Russia and the United States" and a "strengthening of international security and strategic stability."
Mr. Castro was less effusive. A government statement today said, "It seems that the empire finally has a new leader" and "from the new boss, we expect little."
Mr. Castro, seated next to Mr. Putin at a news conference, challenged Washington's "preoccupation" with increasing its military spending after the cold war and criticized Mr. Bush's support for erecting an antimissile shield over the United States.
In the Palace of the Revolution, the two leaders signed minor accords to cooperate in medical research, reopen a $50 million line of credit for Cuba and lay the groundwork for future trade, but they have yet to announce agreement on how Cuba might repay its estimated $20 billion in debts accumulated over three decades during which Moscow subsidized Cuban agriculture, industry and a significant military buildup.
Mr. Putin pointed out that even though the Russian and Cuban economies have contracted by a third or more in the past decade, the two countries still carry on nearly $1 billion in trade a year, mostly in barter by which Cuba receives Russian oil and sends much of its annual sugar output to Russia.
"This level of trade is not bad," Mr. Putin said. "But there are still some problems that have accumulated in the last 10 years, and they demand especially close attention. The Soviet Union has invested a lot in Cuba's economy. This is worth billions of dollars, and we have to understand what to do about this."
Russian officials traveling with Mr. Putin said Moscow is most concerned that if it does not re-establish strong trade ties with Cuba, Europe, Canada and eventually the United States will move in and capitalize on abandoned Soviet-era investments and equipment, which still form much of the island's industrial base.
These officials said Moscow had presented to Mr. Castro several proposals for swapping Cuba's debt for Russian stakes in potentially profitable Cuban enterprises in oil refining, nickel production and other sectors.
But Cuban officials are looking for debt forgiveness as part of the bargain, pressing Cuba's standing grievance that aid was withdrawn by Moscow so abruptly that Cuba's economy suffered billions of dollars in damage and has yet to recover.
Mr. Castro indicated that Cuba, as a charter member of the World Trade Organization, which Russia would like to enter, has leverage that might be of use to Moscow, but he has yet to publicly specify his price.
Mr. Putin also brought along his defense minister, Marshal Igor D. Sergeyev, for discussions that appeared to be related to the degraded state of the Cuban armed forces since Soviet advisers were withdrawn and spare parts for Soviet equipment left in Cuba dried up.
Mr. Putin and Mr. Castro toured the secret intelligence base that Russia inherited at Lourdes, outside Havana, where a huge array of antennas allows Russian military technicians to monitor civilian and military communications in the United States and Latin America. Russia still pays rent for the facility with oil shipments, Western officials say.
Western journalists were barred from the tour.
Also unresolved at this stage of Mr. Putin's visit is whether the two countries can find the financing that would allow Russia to complete a large nuclear power station near Cienfuegos.
The electricity plant, with most of its foundations complete and about 40 percent of its reactor and generating equipment delivered, requires an estimated $600 million in additional investment.
Neither Russia nor Cuba is able to finance the completion, and efforts over the past decade to find financing elsewhere have failed. The plant's design is not the Chernobyl- style graphite-core reactor that is of greatest concern to Western governments, but is based on pressurized- water reactors within a containment building.
Still, the plant's location - 180 miles southwest of Key West, Fla. - has prompted American officials to express concern about Cuba's ability to operate it safely.
For ordinary Cubans, Mr. Putin's visit carries much less excitement than that of the last leader from Moscow, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who came here in 1989 at the peak of perestroika and glasnost. Those Soviet reforms emboldened a generation of dissidents to challenge Mr. Castro's authoritarian lock on the country.
"Cuban intellectuals used to read with great interest the materials that would come from Russia about reform," said Elizardo Sánchez, a leading dissident. "But in the last four to five years, we have not received much material from Russia, and there is no clear picture here of who Putin is, except that people realize that he comes from the K.G.B. and that he is governing a different country" than the Soviet one.
"For this reason, we don't expect a great deal from this visit," Mr. Sánchez said, noting that Russia and Cuba today harmonize their opposition to human rights programs at the United Nations.
"On the contrary," he added, "we expect the alliance between these two countries to reinforce each other's positions on human rights."
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A Russian Return to Havana
New York Times
December 15, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/15/opinion/15FRI3.html
President Vladimir Putin is in Cuba this week, on a visit rich in symbolism. But Mr. Putin, the first Russian leader to visit Havana since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, brings a substantive agenda as well. He seeks to repair political and economic ties that have frayed in recent years. The days are past when Moscow's relations with Havana threatened American security. But Mr. Putin should not provoke Washington by expanding Russian arms sales to Cuba or helping Havana complete an unfinished civilian nuclear reactor.
After the demise of the Soviet Union, Moscow cut off its $2 billion annual subsidy, plunging Cuba into economic crisis. European and other Western companies stepped in with investments and trade, shouldering Russian businesses aside. Annual trade between Moscow and Havana has plummeted from $3.6 billion in 1991 to less than $1 billion today.
How far Mr. Putin plans to go in rebuilding the relationship is unclear. He will surely promote new Russian investment, particularly in developing Cuba's rich nickel deposits, and will try to work out terms for repayment of some of the estimated $20 billion that Havana owes Moscow. But his ambitions may go beyond the purely commercial. There has been discussion of new Russian weapons sales to Cuba's military and of help in completing the unfinished power reactor, near Cienfuegos. Washington fears that once this reactor is completed, its fuel could be secretly diverted to nuclear weapons production. It is also concerned about safety risks to Florida.
This trip is part of Mr. Putin's effort to raise Russia's diplomatic profile after its erosion during the final years of Boris Yeltsin's rule. He has tried to strike a balance between challenging American policies on problems like Iran and Iraq and cooperating with Washington on other issues, like arms control and Mideast peace.
Yesterday Mr. Putin made the right decision in pardoning Edmond Pope, the American businessman convicted of espionage last week. Mr. Pope suffers from bone cancer and his release is a welcome humanitarian and diplomatic gesture. But Moscow was wrong in pressing Spain earlier this week to arrest Vladimir Gusinsky for extradition to Russia on fraud charges. Mr. Gusinsky's television stations and print outlets have been critical of the Putin government, and his prosecution appears politically motivated.
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In Cuba, Putin Signals Russia's Return to Region
Washington Post
Friday, December 15, 2000 ; Page A30
By Scott Wilson Washington Post Foreign Service
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/world/americas/A7577-2000Dec14.html
HAVANA, Dec. 14 -- Russian President Vladimir Putin began an official visit to Cuba today, a high-profile sign of Russia's desire to revive an alliance with a country that the Soviet Union supported for decades but effectively abandoned after the Cold War.
The visit is the first by a Kremlin leader since the collapse of the Soviet Union, which plunged Cuba into a decade-long economic crisis it is still trying to escape. For the first time in years, Cubans witnessed caravans of Russian-made limousines, brought out just for the occasion, speeding through the capital's streets. Billboards written in Russian celebrated Putin's arrival.
Putin wasted no time in giving his hosts hope for at least a partial restoration of close ties, agreeing to new trade deals and joining Cuban President Fidel Castro in criticizing U.S. plans for a national missile defense system.
Both leaders hope to benefit politically from the reunion of old allies, once aligned against the United States and still deeply anxious about its role as the lone superpower. In a brief news conference today, Putin and Castro pointedly outlined their concern about the emerging "unipolar world." As part of a joint declaration, Putin pledged to "increase cooperation with Latin American and Caribbean countries, a region rapidly becoming an independent center in the formation of a multipolar world."
"Putin does want to stake out a position for Russia as a world power that doesn't always do what the United States wants," a Western diplomat here said. "Cuba is a good place to start. Putin and Fidel reinforce each other."
In pre-visit interviews with Cuba's state-run media, Putin said his visit to "Russia's old and traditional ally" should be understood as a return to a region that was a primary Cold War venue for confrontation with the United States. He said Russia has been preoccupied with domestic issues, but that he viewed returning to Latin America as a strategically important step for Russia.
"Now it is clear that the moment has arrived to reestablish our position in this region of the world," Putin said in an interview with the Communist Party newspaper Granma. "This corresponds with the economic and national interests of Russia, and it will permit us to strengthen our position around the globe."
Castro is also eager for a fresh start with a country that 10 years ago accounted for 80 percent of its foreign trade--or about $7 billion. That figure sunk to $250 million five years later, but this year is expected to exceed $1 billion.
Today Cuban and Russian officials signed agreements to continue their long-standing trading of Russian oil for Cuban sugar and expand it to other products, establish a historic archive of Cuban-Russian relations and cooperate on public health issues. No agreement was announced regarding Russian aid to help repair Cuba's Soviet-era military equipment, although talks described by Russian defense officials as "technical" are proceeding.
Castro, facing chronic power shortages and an international credit crunch, had hoped Putin would commit more than $1 billion to restart construction of a nuclear power plant and oil refinery in southern Cienfuegos and a nickel mine in northeastern Holguin province. The United States has repeatedly raised concerns about the nuclear power plant, begun in the 1980s, because of what it calls faulty design standards.
Putin suggested decisions on those issues might have to wait until the two countries can resolve Cuba's roughly $20 billion debt to Russia.
"Russia wants to produce some answers to get these projects going again and raise the level of the relationship between Russia and Cuba," Putin said. "I don't have any doubt about [the success] of this."
Putin's visit comes during what human rights activists here describe as one of the harshest government crackdowns on dissent in decades. More than 200 people have been jailed since Dec. 6 during a period of high-profile visits by politicians and trade groups from the United States, China and Russia. Though most were jailed briefly, two of those arrested were tried this week in secret hearings and sentenced to one-year prison terms, according to the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation.
"Putin has said he hopes to reform Russia's market economy and strengthen democracy--things Cuba has no intention of doing," said Elizardo Sanchez, president of the independent commission that is Cuba's most prominent dissident group. "Cuba is trapped in the past. This is the big difference between our countries."
Putin's three-day stay will take him to Cuba's pharmaceutical factories and tourist resorts, the country's most promising foreign currency earners. Though it was not listed on his official agenda, Putin also made a visit this afternoon to the Russian listening post at Lourdes, east of Havana, a Soviet-era installation he plans to modernize.
Castro and Putin, who have met only once before, in New York, plan to spend the weekend together at a beach resort.
The last Kremlin leader to visit was Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in 1989, who, despite a bear hug from Castro on arrival, told Cuba it could no longer count on favorable trading terms.
After the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, the relationship worsened under Russian President Boris Yeltsin, whom Castro viewed as unreliable and a pawn of the United States. But in Putin, a former KGB official whose crackdown on separatists in Chechnya paved the way for his presidency, Castro sees a potential ally.
Castro has used U.S. plans to construct a missile defense system to persuade Putin to help Cuba repair its military equipment and strengthen its economy as a countermeasure. President-elect Bush has been a strong supporter of the anti-missile system, which Putin and others have said violates U.S.-Russia nuclear arms-control agreements.
"The amount of arms [the United States] exports, the breaking of nuclear agreements--this worries us enormously," said Castro, sitting at Putin's side.
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U.S., ex-republics sign agreement
Infobeat
December 15, 2000
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405344964
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.
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Putin talks with Castro in Cuba
Infobeat
December 15, 2000
By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405345231
HAVANA (AP) - Reviving a friendship that withered after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian President Vladimir Putin met Thursday with Cuban leader Fidel Castro, promising little by way of economic aid but pledging to strengthen ties.
``We decided we will build a relationship between our countries based upon the warm feelings and high level relations that already exist,'' Putin said after their morning meeting. ``We agreed to give a new push to solving problems that have piled up during the last years.''
But the only solid economic agreement from talks between the two leaders was $50 million in commercial credit from Russia to Cuba _ an amount that pales in comparison with the multibillion-dollar subsidies of the Soviet era.
The generous Soviet-era aid to Cuba ended abruptly in the early 1990s when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev cut subsidies shortly after his 1989 visit to Cuba. He added to the insult by deciding to withdraw Soviet troops without consulting Havana.
Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin, Putin's predecessor, never even visited Cuba.
Putin has made a point of restoring ties with old Soviet allies alienated by his predecessor. There were none of the bear hugs and kisses typical during Soviet times, but after meeting Castro, Putin extolled the old friendship and pledged to strengthen it.
``We must clearly and precisely realize what in our relationship has perspective and what is the heritage of the past,'' Putin said.
Russian and Cuban officials signed agreements in the economic, legal and medical spheres but failed to reach a solution on uncompleted Soviet-era projects in Cuba that would cost billions of dollars to finish. There also was no agreement on how to eliminate part of Cuba's $11 billion Soviet-era debt with Russia.
But the two leaders found common ground in international politics, discussing the need to develop the multipolar world _ a reference to what they see as U.S. attempts at global domination. In a joint statement, they condemned the United States' economic embargo against Cuba.
Meeting at the Palace of the Revolution, where a military band struck up both countries' anthems before they went inside for talks, Putin and Castro also agreed to further political dialogue, economic cooperation and trade.
The two countries do about $1 billion in trade a year, down from about $3.6 billion in 1991, Putin said Thursday.
The Soviet Union valued Cuba during the Cold War, and considered it a strategic outpost. Twenty percent of Cuba's gross national product is estimated to have come from Soviet subsidies. But today, in a country much changed since the Soviet collapse, politics are now second to economics.
Later Thursday, Putin was to attend a ceremony honoring Cuba's monument to the Unknown Soviet Soldier, then meet with Ricardo Alarcon, president of Cuba's National Assembly and Castro's point man on Cuba-U.S. affairs.
A state dinner, not listed on the original agenda, was scheduled for the evening, Russian officials said.
The Russian delegation included Gen. Valentin Korabelnikov, head of military intelligence, who apparently will accompany Putin on his visit to the Russian electronic intelligence center in Lourdes, the only remaining Russian military facility in Cuba.
On Friday, the Russian president was to play 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.
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Putin, Castro speak on relationship
Infobeat
December 15, 2000
By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405354067
HAVANA (AP) - Reaching out to an old ally, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke to Fidel Castro about reviving Moscow's Soviet-era friendship with communist Cuba - but suggested it will come without the handouts of the past.
``We decided we will build a relationship between our countries based upon the warm feelings and high-level relations that already exist,'' Putin said Thursday after meeting with the Cuban president, who welcomed a Russian leader to Cuba for the first time since the 1991 Soviet collapse.
But the only solid economic agreement to emerge from Thursday's talks was $50 million in commercial credit from Russia to Cuba - and even that was merely an extension of an earlier credit line.
The amount pales in comparison with the multibillion-dollar subsidies of the Soviet era, when Cuba's location just 90 miles from Florida made the island nation a peerless Cold War ally of the Kremlin. The subsidies were equal to 20 percent of Cuba's gross national product.
The generous aid stopped when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev cut subsidies shortly after his 1989 visit to Cuba and then added to the insult by deciding to withdraw Soviet troops without consulting Havana. The sharp economic crisis that ensued has fed anti-Russian feelings in Cuba.
Putin's predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, never visited Cuba, reflecting both his disdain for communism and economically struggling Russia's worldwide retreat. Trade between Cuba and Russia was $1 billion last year, down from about $3.6 billion in 1991, Putin said.
Putin has made a point of restoring ties with old Soviet allies. His cold and formal style differed sharply from the bear hugs and kisses of the Soviet times, but after meeting Castro, Putin extolled the old friendship and pledged to strengthen it.
At the same time, however, he emphasized the need for a more practical relationship this time around.
``We must clearly and precisely realize what in our relationship has promise and what is the heritage of the past,'' Putin said.
Russian and Cuban officials signed agreements in the economic, legal and medical spheres but failed to reach a solution on uncompleted Soviet-era projects in Cuba that would cost billions of dollars to finish.
Putin did not push Cuba on paying off its Soviet-era debt to Russia - estimated by Cubans at $11 billion, while some Russian media have put it above $20 billion. Neither leader mentioned the debt Thursday.
They were on the same page in a discussion of international affairs, stressing the need to develop a multipolar world - a reference to what they see as U.S. attempts at global domination. In a joint statement, Putin and Castro condemned the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba and assailed American plans to develop a missile-defense system.
Meeting at the Palace of the Revolution, where a military band struck up both countries' anthems before they went inside for talks, Putin and Castro also agreed to further political dialogue and economic cooperation.
Putin later visited an electronic intelligence center in Lourdes that is the only Russian military facility left in Cuba. Accompanied by Castro, he also visited a nearby Russian military cemetery and laid flowers to a monument honoring fallen soldiers.
The Russian president ended the day with a state dinner after meeting with Ricardo Alarcon, president of Cuba's National Assembly and Castro's point man on Cuba-U.S. affairs.
Putin's wife, Lyudmila, met with teachers and students of Russian at the University of Havana. In a brief interview with Associated Press Television News, she praised Cuba's beauty and the kindness of its people.
On Friday, Putin was to pay tribute to Cuban independence hero Jose Marti and visit Cuba's Institute of Genetics and Biotechnology. He was then scheduled to head to Cuba's Varadero beach resort for a two-day rest before going to Canada on Sunday.
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China Sets Terms for Rights Talks With U.S.
Inside China Today
Dec 15, 2000
http://www.insidechina.com/news.php3?id=230208
WASHINGTON -- (Reuters) The Chinese embassy in Washington said on Thursday that a human rights dialogue with the United States would be possible only when Washington gives up what it called a confrontational approach.
One example of such an approach would be U.S. sponsorship of a resolution critical of China's record at next year's meeting of the UN Human Rights Commission, embassy spokesman Zhang Yuanyuan told a news conference.
The meeting of the commission, in Geneva in the northern hemisphere spring, has become an annual showdown between China and the United States. China has repeatedly thwarted attempts to have the commission debate its human rights record.
After a meeting in Brunei in November between U.S. President Bill Clinton and Chinese President Jiang Zemin, a U.S. official said the two leaders had agreed in principle to resume human rights talks, frozen since the United States bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999.
The official, Assistant Secretary of State Stanley Roth, described the understanding as an agreement in principle and said issues such as a date would be worked out later.
The embassy spokesman did not mention the Brunei agreement but he put the burden on Washington to prove it was willing to create the right atmosphere for the human rights talks.
"If the United States insists on this confrontational course, which includes introducing or getting others to introduce anti-China resolutions at the UN Human Rights Commission meeting, that means we are not seeing the United States willing to return to the course of dialogue," he said.
"So we hope the United States will give up its confrontational approach, return to the negotiating table and we are for dialogue," he added.
The decision on how to handle China at the Geneva meeting will be one of the first big decisions which an incoming Republican administration led by President-elect George Bush will have to take in relations with China.
FALUN GONG
Zhang argued that China's human rights record is improving and that it is inappropriate to apply to a developing country like China the standards of a country like the United States.
The United States says China's record deteriorated in 1999, especially because of a crackdown on the Falun Gong spiritual movement and a campaign against pro-democracy activists.
The spokesman, commenting on protests in the United States in support of the Falun Gong, said the U.S. government should "stamp out anti-China activities on its soil".
Falun Gong protesters are a regular sight just across the street from the Chinese embassy in Washington.
Asked about Bush's support for the controversial Taiwan Security Enhancement Act, Zhang said: "We pay attention to the campaign rhetoric but, once a person gets elected, we place more emphasis on what he is going to do."
The bill, which would establish direct military ties between the United States and Taiwan, was passed in the House of Representatives this year but not in the Senate. The Clinton administration strongly opposed it on the grounds that it would damage Chinese-American relations.
The spokesman also reminded the incoming Bush administration of Chinese opposition to U.S. plans for a national missile defense (NMD) system or a more limited theater missile defense system covering Taiwan.
"We will certainly weigh the impact of NMD on China's security environment and adjust our policies on disarmament, nuclear reduction and non-proliferation accordingly," he said.
President Clinton has left to his successor the decision on whether to start deploying the missile defense system, meant to protect the United States from a limited nuclear attack.
-------- russia
Putin may discuss U.S. policy during Canada visit
CNN
December 15, 2000
http://www.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/americas/12/15/russia.canada.reut/index.html
MOSCOW, Russia (Reuters) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin flies to Canada on Sunday for talks stressing the similarities of the two vast snowbound countries, but discussion may gravitate to arms control and the new U.S. administration.
http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/maps/russia.moscow.jpg
Putin arrives on Sunday for meetings with Prime Minister Jean Chretien after a four-day visit to restore close ties with Cuba -- Washington's longstanding Caribbean antagonist where Canadian investment is high despite U.S. objections.
Talks also open three days after the emergence as U.S. President-elect of George W. Bush, a proponent of both a tougher line on Russia and a new National Missile Defense system denounced by Moscow and viewed with deep suspicion in Canada.
NATO-member Canada has periodic, subtle foreign policy differences with the United States and, like Russia, it says the 1972 U.S.-Soviet Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty must stay intact.
Bush flavors altering ABM to be able to proceed with the new system to guard against possible missile strikes by "rogue states" like Iran and North Korea.
Diplomats say Putin and Chretien will sign a "statement on strategic stability issues," but they discount any suggestion that Moscow might try to exploit Canada's reservations.
"Nuclear disarmament will be a big issue. The National Missile Defense and overall missile numbers will be among things discussed," Canadian ambassador Rodney Irwin told reporters.
"We hope common ground can be found between Canada, Russia and the United States. I don't think you will see Canada being played off against the United States. That would be too unsophisticated for Russian diplomacy."
In an interview with the CBC and CTV television networks and the Toronto Globe and Mail before his departure, Putin pointed to the missile issue as proof of potential for closer ties.
"The fact that our positions are very close on issues of world security, on maintaining the treaty of 1972, shows that we can find points of contact on key issues and use them for the benefit of our countries and all mankind," he said.
But he added: "Our agreements must not and cannot be directed against the interests of third parties."
Both leaders are riding high from election victories, Putin gliding to power last March after taking over from Boris Yeltsin in the Kremlin on New Year's Eve, and Chretien securing his third straight majority last month with unexpected ease.
Putin will not be accompanied by the prominent figures with him in Cuba, like Foreign Minister Sergei Ivanov and Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev. Included are Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Khristenko and officials committed to developing depressed areas of northern Russia.
The two sides say geography and common experience with a harsh climate and far-flung minorities make Russia and G7-member Canada ideal partners.
Ahead of the visit, officials laid on a seminar on federalism to explain Canada's approach to regional issues, the threat of separatism in French-speaking Quebec notwithstanding.
But strategic interests again enter the equation.
Sergei Rogov, director of Russia's USA and Canada Institute, told Reuters it was natural for Russia to draw closer to Canada and Cuba as the United States extends its influence in what Russians refer to as the "near abroad" of ex-Soviet states:
"If the United States has interests in Russia's 'near abroad', Russia has interests in Canada, Mexico and Cuba...
"Russia is not now a superpower. It is an important player, but to some extent belongs to the league to which Canada belongs."
Both sides hope to boost trade, due to climb back this year to around C$1 billion ($650 million) -- about the same as before Russia's 1998 financial crisis, but less than Canada's daily volume of trade with the United States. Canada will offer support for Russia's bid to join the World Trade Organization.
--------
Russia increases number of single-warhead missiles in service
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Friday, December 15, 2000
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/business/miss16.shtml
MOSCOW -- Russia will equip a third regiment of its strategic missile forces with the Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missile before the end of the year, the strategic forces commander said yesterday.
The government says the recently developed Topol-M will form the backbone of its nuclear forces for years to come. The small, rugged missile can be fired from a mobile launcher, which means it would be hard to detect and therefore more likely to survive a first strike in a nuclear confrontation.
The single-warhead missiles will be deployed to the regiment Dec. 25-26, Gen. Vladimir Yakovlev was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency. Russia already has 20 Topol-M missiles in service, 10 per regiment, deployed late in 1998 and 1999.
--------
Putin Hopeful on U.S. - Russian Relations Under Bush
December 15, 2000
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-russia-.html
HAVANA (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin, visiting one of the U.S. government's traditional arch- enemies Cuba, said on Friday he was optimistic about the future of Washington-Moscow ties under incoming President-elect George W. Bush.
``Currently we have no special grounds to worry about the fate of Russian-American relations,'' Putin told a news conference in Havana on the second full day of his visit to the communist-ruled Caribbean island.
Putin, who sent a message on Thursday congratulating Bush, added, however, that Russia continued to have various ''differences'' with the United States, including issues of international security.
``Much will depend on the policy of the new administration. The most important thing is that all the positive things we accumulated in recent years be preserved and increased. We have ground to hope that this development is possible,'' he said.
``During Bush's election campaign he expressed exactly this attitude to the prospects of Russia-U.S. relations. And judging by the staff surrounding the U.S. president-elect, these people are quite well-known professionals, who know the situation deeply in the relations between the two states.''
Putin underlined, however, Moscow's outstanding bones of contention with Washington.
``We have differences with the U.S. Our positions referring to the anti-missile defense and to the system of international security differ,'' he said. ``We don't think that the principle of humanitarian interventions is right.''
PUTIN CALLS FOR BETTER RICH-POOR BALANCE
Putin, who joined President Fidel Castro in publicly condemning on Thursday the U.S. embargo on Cuba, also called for a narrowing of wealth differences between ``the golden billion'' and the rest of the world's population.
``We believe that in order to guarantee more balance to the world the interests of both poor and rich countries should be taken into account,'' he said.
Asked about the effect of the recent jailing then pardon by Moscow of American Edmond Pope, convicted of being a spy, he said that should not have any lasting impact on U.S.-Russian ties.
``The activities of secret services of any state is aimed to protect state interests. But actions of these services, including intelligence and counterintelligence, shouldn't interfere in relations between states especially such key states as Russia and the U.S.,'' said Putin, a former KGB agent.
In Germany on Friday, the newly freed Pope denied he was a spy and said he would write a book about his eight-month-long ordeal in Russia which led to his conviction for espionage.
Massive pressure from outgoing President Clinton won a pardon for Pope from Putin in a gesture interpreted by analysts as likely to ease relations with the incoming Bush administration.
Putin's visit to Cuba, intended to revive political and economic ties with what was one of Moscow's strongest and most controversial Cold War allies, has raised some eyebrows in the United States. It has followed earlier rapprochement with other nations viewed suspiciously by the West such as North Korea, Libya and Iraq.
-------
Russia To Deploy More Missiles
Associated Press
December 15, 2000 Filed at 5:32 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Russia-Missile-Deployment.html
MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia will equip a third regiment of its strategic missile forces with the new Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missile before the end of the year, the strategic forces commander said Friday.
The single-warhead missiles will be deployed on Dec. 25-26, Gen. Vladimir Yakovlev was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.
The government says the recently developed Topol-M will form the backbone of its nuclear forces for years to come. The small, rugged missile can be fired from a mobile launcher, which means they would be hard to detect and therefore more likely to survive a first strike in a nuclear confrontation.
Russia already has 20 Topol-M missiles in service, 10 per regiment, deployed late in 1998 and 1999.
---
Russia Will Allow Norway Inspection
Associated Press
December 15, 2000 Filed at 10:33 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Norway-Russia-Radiation.html
OSLO, Norway (AP) -- Russia will allow Norway to inspect a Russian storage area for spent nuclear fuel and radiocative waste, the Norwegian government said Friday.
Norway considers the site, located in the Russian arctic near the Norwegian border, to be a threat.
The area has been off limits because it's near a key submarine base on Russia's Kola Peninsula, the foreign ministry said Friday.
``This is a breakthrough,'' deputy foreign minister Espen Eide was quoted as telling the Norwegian news agency NTB by telephone from Moscow, where he met this week with Russian foreign ministry officials.
``For several years, we have been sitting on 20 million kroner ($2.1 million) that have been earmarked for cleaning up of Andreeva Bay,'' he said.
Andreeva Bay is considered one of the world's most radioactively dangerous places. There are more than 100 nuclear submarines at Russian's Northern Fleet bases on the Kola Peninsula, which borders Norway. Most are rusted hulks, often with nuclear fuel on board, according to Bellona, a Norwegian environmental group that specializes in the issue.
Many containers at Andreeva are leaking, Bellona claims.
Norway is concerned because Andreeva is just 28 miles from its northeast border.
Eide said Norwegian assistance during the Kursk nuclear submarine disaster, in which 118 Russian sailors died off the Kola Peninsula last August 12, may have influenced the decision. Norway twice sent deep-sea divers to the wreck site to confirm that the crew was dead and then to recover some bodies.
Wealthy Norway, the world's second-largest oil exporter and a member of the NATO military alliance, has been willing to held fund a cleanup.
``The Russians admit improper storage, but they wanted the money to clean up themselves,'' Eide was quoted as telling NTB. ``We, the whole time, have wanted access.''
He said one hurdle was Russian reluctance to have NATO visitors see advanced nuclear submarines docked nearby.
-------- ukraine
Chernobyl shut down for good
BBC News
Friday, 15 December, 2000, 15:15 GMT
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_1071000/1071344.stm
Mr Kuchma and PM Yushchenko remember the dead
The ill-fated Chernobyl nuclear plant has been permanently shut down in Ukraine - more than 14 years after a reactor exploded in the world's worst civil nuclear catastrophe.
Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma gave a nationwide television address before ordering the Chernobyl control room to turn a knob shutting down the last working reactor.
"To fulfil a state decision and Ukraine's international obligations, I hereby order the premature stoppage of the operation of reactor No 3 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant," Mr Kuchma said.
His words were relayed to Chernobyl via a live television link.
In the control room, shift chief Oleksandr Yelchishchev turned a black switch - marked BAZ, short for "rapid emergency defence" - sending containment rods sliding into the reactor core to stop the atomic chain reaction.
Workers' tears
Within seconds, a dial showed the reactor's output dropping to zero.
"Mr President of Ukraine, the third reactor is being stopped for good. I have nothing more to add," reported the station's director, Vitaly Tovstonohov, wearing white protective clothing.
About 100 workers at the plant followed events in the control room on a large television screen. Many had tears in their eyes as they stood to watch.
Representatives from more than 10 countries including the United States attended the closing ceremony.
The ceremony followed a church service in Kiev to remember those who died in the nuclear disaster.
Thirty-one people, mostly firemen, were killed immediately after the explosion, and several thousand more - those involved in the clean-up and children - have since died from radiation-related illnesses.
Ukraine says the health of millions of its people have been affected by the disaster.
International pressure
The country agreed to close down the plant under intense international pressure. The schedule was finally agreed during a visit by US President Bill Clinton to Kiev earlier this year.
Even so the Ukrainian parliament made a last-minute attempt on Thursday to keep the plant open for the rest of the winter, voting to postpone closure until April 2001.
Angry Chernobyl workers staged protests as President Kuchma took foreign dignitaries including the premiers of Russia, Belarus and Georgia on a tour of the plant, which supplies roughly 5% of the country's electricity needs.
Ukraine has pledged not to use Chernobyl for electricity generation again, though it will take until 2008 before the last fuel rods are removed from the plant.
The disaster occurred nearly 15 years ago on 26 April 1986, when an experiment went wrong, causing the fourth reactor to explode and melt down.
Funding plans attacked
The European Union has agreed to provide a total of nearly $1bn to help two replacement nuclear reactors in the former Soviet republic.
But environmentalists Greenpeace International condemned the EU plans terming them as "utterly cynical".
The pressure group's nuclear expert, Tobias Munchmeyer, said Ukraine should instead meet its energy capacity needs through renewable sources and improving efficiency.
Greenpeace International also said the closure of the Ukrainian plant should be followed by shutdowns at similar plants in Russia and Lithuania.
"We cannot afford to wait another 14 years before the remainder are shutdown," said Mr Munchmeyer.
International funds have been made available to make safe the concrete sarcophagus hastily thrown up around the ruins of the stricken fourth reactor, in the months following the 1986 explosion.
However a permanent solution, including the possible construction of a second shelter, remains a long way in the future.
---
Chernobyl powers down permanently
CNN
December 15, 2000
http://www.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/europe/12/15/chernobyl.shutdown/index.html
CHERNOBYL, Ukraine (CNN) -- The Chernobyl nuclear power station in Ukraine has been officially closed down -- 14 years after the plant exploded and sent a cloud of radioactive dust over Europe.
The country's president, Leonid Kuchma, gave the order to shut down the plant permanently, saying the world would now be a safer place.
More than 4,000 Ukrainians who took part in the hasty clean-up effort since the 1986 disaster have died and 70,000 were disabled by radiation, according to government figures.
About 3.4 million of Ukraine's 50 million people, including some 1.26 million children, are also considered to have been affected by Chernobyl.
Kuchma issued the instruction during a televised ceremony in the capital, Kiev, over a video link-up with the plant 135 kilometres (84 miles) away.
Speaking at the Ukraina Palace, where the ceremony took place, Kuchma said the former Soviet republic had taken a historic step.
"This decision came from our experience of suffering," he said. "We understand that Chernobyl is a danger for all of humanity and we forsake a part of our national interests for the sake of global safety."
Engineers then pressed the plant's closedown button for the last time, lowering control rods into Chernobyl's last functioning reactor.
Chernobyl shift chief Oleksandr Yelchishchev turned the black AZ switch, activating the automatic safety system at 1.16 p.m. (1116 GMT).
Within seconds, a dial showed the reactor's output dropping to zero. The shutdown went to plan, the plant reported.
The simple procedure closed a facility that has become synonymous with nuclear fears. It was in 1986 that a fire engulfed reactor number four in the same building and triggered the world's worst nuclear disaster.
U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Ruchardson, who attended the closing ceremony, told CNN: "It is a historic day because it signals the end of Chernobyl and that Ukraine is moving away from its Soviet past.
"The West and the U.S. should look at the Ukraine and say 'they kept their word' and now we have to return the favour and help them."
He said this assistance would come by helping to clean up the site, by creating alternative employment, and by developing new sources of energy in the Ukraine, using its gas and oil resources.
CNN's Moscow bureau chief Jill Dougherty said: "The shutdown is just the beginning of a complex and dangerous process of closing it forever -- something that scientists say could take 100 years."
She added that the closure is welcome news for the outside world, but to the residents of the nearby town of Slauvitch, almost all of whom work at Chernobyl, "the closure is a tragedy."
About 6,000 people will lose their jobs, although some staff will continue working at the plant.
Some people at the site said Chernobyl was safer than many Russian nuclear power stations and it was only being closed on political grounds.
Ukraine plans to construct a new encasement for the mammoth concrete and steel sarcophagus covering the ruined reactor number four.
There is no decision yet on how to treat the tonnes of radioactive dust and nuclear fuel inside, and work on making the structure environmentally safe will take decades.
It will also take years to unload nuclear fuel from the three other Chernobyl reactors.
The European Commission has approved a $585 million loan to help Ukraine build two new reactors to replace the electricity produced at Chernobyl, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development will provide $215 million.
But environmental group Greenpeace urged Ukraine to honour the memory of Chernobyl victims by looking for alternative sources of energy.
CNN's Moscow bureau chief Jill Dougherty, the Associated Press & Reuters contributed to this report.
---
Chernobyl Closing: A Relief For Many
Washington Post
Friday, December 15, 2000 ; Page A30
By Sharon LaFraniere Washington Post Foreign Service
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7315-2000Dec14.html
CHERNOBYL, Ukraine, Dec. 14 -- From her narrow cot at a treatment clinic in Kiev, Jenna Nitsko views Friday's closing of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant with grim satisfaction.
The 24-year-old dark-haired mother has a thick, ugly scar across her throat where, six weeks ago, a surgeon removed a large malignant tumor from her thyroid. Her doctor blames her cancer on the 1986 meltdown at one of Chernobyl's reactors. It was the world's worst nuclear accident, spewing radioactive dust and debris over Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and other parts of Europe.
"Excellent," said Nitsko, pausing momentarily from her book to comment on the Ukrainian authorities' decision to shut down the plant for safety reasons.
Her view is widely shared by the patients and staff at Kiev's National Institute of Endocrinology, where the number of thyroid cancer patients has grown exponentially since the disaster.
But two hours away by car, in the town of Slavutich, built especially for Chernobyl workers, people regard the closing with dread.
As they see it, they risked their physical well-being in exchange for what they thought would be life-long, well-paying jobs at the Chernobyl plant, which provides about 5 percent of Ukraine's electricity. Now they will have fears for their health, but no work.
Anatoli Ignatenko, a 23-year veteran of the plant, said Ukrainian authorities are breaking their promises to Chernobyl workers for purely political reasons. "They told us this would be a city of [the] 21st century," he said. "I think they just deceived us."
As the debate between the clinic and the town illustrates, Chernobyl's fallout continues even as workers prepare to push the button in the control room of reactor No. 3, the only unit of four still operating. Nor will the fallout end any time soon.
Questions persist about how to safely deal with the 200 tons of uranium and plutonium that remain inside the ruined reactor No. 4, which blew up on April 26, 1986. Reactor No. 2 was shut down in 1991 after a fire and reactor No. 1 was closed in 1996 at the end of its safe lifespan.
The long-term health consequences of the accident are also a matter of continuing debate. In a recent report, the United Nations said the worst effects might be yet to come.
More than 4,000 Ukrainians who took part in the cleanup effort have died and 70,000 were disabled by radiation, according to the government. About 3.4 million of Ukraine's 50 million people, including about 1.26 million children, are believed to have been affected by the accident.
Under pressure from the West, Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma decided this summer to decommission the plant, although Ukraine badly needs the power and the jobs it provides. Western funding will help complete replacement reactors in western Ukraine.
U.S. officials have argued for years that the RBMK Chernobyl-style reactors--which exist only in Russia and the former Soviet Union--are highly unsafe.
Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said today that Kuchma's decision "is a turning point for the Ukraine, a symbolic break from its Soviet past and an entrance into the West."
With the plant closed, U.S. officials hope Ukrainian authorities can focus on the job of encasing, for the second time, the reactor that melted down 14 years ago, releasing 100 times more radiation than the atomic bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II. That reactor unit is now entombed in a "sarcophagus" of concrete and metal sheeting above which a reinforced smokestack rises about 250 feet.
The cover, built in the months after the accident, was supposed to last 30 years. But water leaks inside, and under some scenarios the whole basketball arena-sized structure could collapse.
Plans call for a new one to built on top of the old one over the next seven years. Western countries have pledged to come up with $710 million of the estimated cost of $750 million. But how exactly it will be done, without risking more lives, is not yet clear. "There has never been a project like this before," said Carlos Pascual, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.
Fresh evidence of the uncertainties that surround that reactor block surfaced only a month ago. Plant officials said an eight-inch radioactive chunk of melted fuel dislodged itself from the smokestack and dropped onto the 10-story-high sarcophagus roof. Now workers must figure out how to remove it.
At Kiev's endocrinology institute, deputy director Valery Tereschenko faces more puzzles. He knows that the Chernobyl accident dramatically drove up thyroid cancer rates in children. Among children who lived closest to the plant, the rate of thyroid cancer--curable if caught early enough--is 100 times greater than the norm, he said. The disease won't peak until 2005.
What can't be said for certain, according to Tereschenko, is what other health problems might be traced to Chernobyl. "Decades will pass before we know all the consequences," he noted.
Chernobyl workers have heard this kind of talk almost since the day of the accident, which killed 31 workers. But today, foremost in their minds is how they will live after the closure of the plant, not what a doctor might tell them in the future.
About a third of the plant's 9,192 workers will lose their jobs after the televised ceremony in reactor No. 3's control room. Eventually, only a few thousand workers will pass through the plant's phone-booth-sized radiation detectors every day.
Slavutich, with its cheerful yellow apartment buildings, grove of trees and electric train to the plant, could start to resemble Pripyat, Chernobyl's old housing development. Evacuated after the accident, Pripyat is now deserted and decaying under the shadow of a rusted Ferris wheel, its yellow seats frozen in the air for 14 years.
---
Chernobyl at a Glance
Yahoo News
World News
Friday December 15 3:02 PM ET
By The Associated Press
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20001215/wl/chernobyl_glance_1.html
Some facts and figures about the Chernobyl nuclear plant and its 1986 disaster:
-DISASTER: The April 26, 1986 explosion and fire at reactor No. 4 was the world's worst nuclear accident. It resulted from a badly conceived safety experiment and was aggravated by faulty reactor design. The disaster contaminated vast areas and sent a radioactive cloud over Europe.
-HEALTH EFFECTS: Some 9 million people were directly or indirectly affected, according to the United Nations (news - web sites). The official Soviet death toll was 32, among them 30 who died within three months of the disaster. Ukraine has reported more than 4,000 radiation-related deaths among cleanup workers.
-CONTAMINATION: 64,000 square miles contaminated in Ukraine, Russia and Belarus. An area of 1,400 square miles around the plant remains off-limits.
-EVACUATION AND CLEANUP: At least 120,000 people from 90 towns and villages around Chernobyl evacuated and eventually resettled. An estimated 600,000 people were involved in the hasty Soviet cleanup effort, often working with no proper protection from radiation.
-COSTS: At least $300 billion already incurred and to be incurred in the future, according to the Greenpeace environmental group.
-THE PLANT: Located 84 miles north of the Ukrainian capital, Kiev. Nearly 9,200 people employed, including over 3,500 at related enterprises.
---
Lights Go Out at Chernobyl Nuclear Plant
Yahoo News
Top Stories News
Friday December 15 11:28 AM ET
By Dmitry Solovyov
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20001215/ts/ukraine_chernobyl_dc_7.html
CHERNOBYL, Ukraine (Reuters) - The lights finally went out at the Chernobyl nuclear power station on Friday.
Duty operator Serhiy Bashtovoi, 30, turned a switch on the command of Ukraine's President Leonid Kuchma, and one by one the bright circular array of lights indicating activity in reactor Number Three went out.
``The atmosphere in here was very glum,'' he told Reuters in an interview in the control room just a few hours after the shutdown. ``A feeling of despair. I guess life goes on.''
The official closure of the site of the world's worst nuclear accident in 1986 was marked by congratulatory messages from around the world and a gala performance after a lavish ceremony in the capital Kiev, 70 miles away.
Workers watching a television broadcast of the ceremony reacted with anger and disgust. ``Idiots,'' said one. ``We despise Leonid Kuchma,'' said another.
However odd it may seem that people would want to work at the center of a radioactive no-go zone surrounded by deserted houses with grass growing through their roofs, the 6,000 staff of Chernobyl clung to the hope that their jobs provided.
``This reactor was the only one of its type left in Ukraine,'' said Bashtovoi. ``I just don't have the skills to do anything else.''
Prospects Bleak
Another employee, a woman in her 30s who did not want to be named, cried: ``What am I meant to do? I'll turn into a beggar, become virtually homeless. I have no money.''
The government has promised to look after the workers' social welfare, but in a country where pensions are frequently paid late or not at all and state coffers are often empty, such pledges hold little credibility.
It was the Number Four reactor that exploded 14 years ago. Reactor Two was shut down in 1991 after a fire, and Reactor One reached the end of its service life in 1996.
But Reactor Three limped on, providing energy-poor Ukraine with five percent of its electricity.
A tour of the control room of the first reactor showed what lay in store for the years ahead. A draught blew through the darkened room, with just one black-and-white television monitor flickering in the corner, showing the reactor hall where some fuel rods are still stored.
It will take years to remove all the fuel rods from the reactors, guaranteeing some jobs at least until 2008.
The crumbling concrete sarcophagus encasing the burned-out wreck of Reactor Four is also in need of repair. Nobody knows exactly how much radioactive dust and debris are trapped inside, but the experts fear the quantities are huge.
Stray dogs now sniff around the complex -- once a proud example of Soviet engineering. They go unheeded by depressed workers who received cards on Friday congratulating them on Energy Day -- their trade's national day -- this Sunday.
Casting a glance at the reactor building, surrounded by fog and with light drizzle falling, one worker, Serhiy Pavlovsky, apologized for the lack of hospitality.
``You are always welcome here, but we cannot be as welcoming as usual,'' he said. ``Today, it is as if someone had died.''
---
Chernobyl Nuclear Plant Shut Down for Good
Top Stories News
Friday December 15 1:05 PM ET
By Dmitry Solovyov
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20001215/ts/ukraine_chernobyl_dc_8.html
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-ukraine.html
CHERNOBYL, Ukraine (Reuters) - Engineers at the Chernobyl nuclear power station flicked its stop switch for the last time on Friday, officially closing the plant which became a chilling symbol of the dangers of atomic power.
President Leonid Kuchma relayed an order to the control room of reactor Number Three, where duty operator Serhiy Bashtovoi turned a switch marked BAZ for ``rapid emergency defense.''
That lowered control rods into Chernobyl's last functioning reactor to begin the long process of decommissioning a plant which, in 1986, caused the world's worst nuclear accident.
Western governments and environmentalists breathed a sigh of relief and Ukraine took a step away from the disaster's legacy.
``What is Chernobyl for Ukraine?'' Kuchma said during a lavish ceremony in Kiev, 70 miles south of the plant.
``It's almost three-and-a-half million victims of the catastrophe and its consequences. Almost 10 percent of our territory tainted by radiation. 160,000 people who had to leave the places where they were born and move elsewhere.''
Outgoing President Clinton (news - web sites) sent a videotaped message of congratulation, played on major television channels.
``It's fitting that while a communist government of the USSR built this unsafe plant, a free and independent Ukraine is shutting it down,'' he said.
Fourteen years after the accident, the concrete-entombed, burned-out and highly radioactive remains of Reactor Number Four, which exploded after a controversial experiment, looms over a small monument to 30 firemen who died fighting its flames.
Thousands are thought to have died since as 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 attributable to the disaster, including thyroid cancer and respiratory problems, Ukrainian authorities say.
Chernobyl is encircled by a poisoned 20-mile no-go zone, which scientists say will be uninhabitable for centuries.
Lavish Ceremony Irks Workers
More than 2,000 invited guests packed Kiev's cavernous Palace of Ukraine hall to watch the ceremony, including French couturier Pierre Cardin and a group of bemused-looking clean-up workers who dealt with the accident's aftermath.
Seen from a ramshackle assembly hall at the Chernobyl complex, where around 100 workers watched the television broadcast, the event in Kiev seemed a pompous affair.
The station's 6,000 workers now face an uncertain future and one worker cried out: ``We despise Leonid Kuchma.''
Another worker, Anatoly Fedchenko, 42, said with tears running down his face: ``What do I have to be happy about? I worked here for 12 years and now will have to leave.''
It will take many years to decommission the station and the last fuel rods are not expected to be removed until 2008.
Chernobyl's Number Three reactor has, on-and-off, been providing Ukraine with five percent of its electricity.
Reactors One and Two are already stopped. Two was shut after a huge fire in 1991 and One passed its expiration date in 1996.
But technical glitches had forced the reactor to shut down twice in the past two weeks. It was only restarted on Friday, at minimum power output, for the benefit of the ceremony.
Chief engineer Yuri Neretin remembers when he oversaw Number Three reactor's launch in 1981, a prestigious Soviet project. Now he directs a desolate complex infamous throughout the world.
``I look at this as a lifecycle. The station was born, it has lived through its lifecycle, and now we should see it off with honors,'' he said.
``The atmosphere in here was very glum,'' Bashtovoi, who turned the final switch, told Reuters just a few hours after the shutdown. ``A feeling of despair. I guess life goes on.''
Years Of Western Pressure
It was only after years of Western pressure and promises of financial aid to complete replacement reactors elsewhere that Kuchma agreed to the closure.
But, in his speech in Kiev, he said the country also saw it as a moral obligation, likening it to the ex-Soviet state's voluntary dismantling in the mid-1990s of its inherited nuclear arms, the world's third largest arsenal.
The Red Cross and Red Crescent in Geneva welcomed the shutdown, but warned that thousands still lived on contaminated land. Italy and Germany, which this year began a long-term phaseout of nuclear power, also hailed the closure.
Environmental group Greenpeace called for closures of other Soviet-designed nuclear plants, especially those built around the same notorious RBMK-1000 reactors used at Chernobyl.
In Lithuania, the closure of one of those reactors, at Ignalina, had been delayed but officials said they expected to get it back on track in January.
---
Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Shut Down
Associated Press
December 15, 2000 Filed at 10:05 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Ukraine-Chernobyl.html
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20001215/ts/ukraine_chernobyl.html
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20001215/ts/ukraine_chernobyl_11.html
http://www.msnbc.com/news/501684.asp
KIEV, Ukraine - Operators shut down the Chernobyl nuclear power plant with the flip of a switch Friday, closing the facility for good 14 years after it spawned the world's worst nuclear accident.
The simple procedure ended the long, troubled run of a facility that became a synonym for nuclear fears and the dangers of atomic power.
Ukraine President Leonid Kuchma gave the shutdown order from Kiev over a video linkup with the plant, located some 85 miles away. ``To fulfill the state decision and Ukraine's international obligations, I hereby order to start work for the premature stoppage of the operation of reactor No. 3 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant,'' Kuchma said.
At 1:16 p.m., Chernobyl shift chief Oleksandr Yelchishchev turned the black AZ switch, activating the automatic safety system of the plant's only working reactor and sending containment rods sliding into the reactor core.
Within seconds, a dial showed the reactor's output dropping to zero. The procedure went flawlessly, the plant reported.
The shutdown, which followed years of intense international pressure, should erase the danger of future accidents at the plant. Yet Ukraine will suffer the effects of the 1986 Chernobyl accident for years to come: Millions of its citizens are affected by radiation-related ailments.
The leaders of this former Soviet republic said they were undertaking a historic mission in closing down the last functioning reactor at Chernobyl.
``The world will become a safer place. People will sleep in peace,'' Kuchma said Thursday during a ceremony to commemorate the shutdown.
The plant's last reactor, the one shut down Friday, was reactor No. 3. It is located in the same building as reactor No. 4, which exploded and caught fire on April 26, 1986, contaminating vast areas of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus and spewing a radioactive cloud over Europe.
The Kremlin tried to conceal the accident and delayed evacuation of people from nearby towns for days. Firefighters and other workers who were the first at the destroyed reactor had little or no protection from radiation.
Those moves only added to the death toll: More than 4,000 cleanup workers have died since and 70,000 have been disabled by radiation in Ukraine alone. About 3.4 million of Ukraine's 50 million people, including some 1.26 million children, are considered affected by Chernobyl.
``Chernobyl was a complex page of our history, in which there was much heroism and a lot of unique deeds,'' said Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko.
Since the accident, the plant has experienced numerous malfunctions. Many Ukrainians, tired of living with radiation scares, were relieved at its closure.
For others, though, the shutdown means lost electricity and lost jobs.
Kuchma, who on Thursday toured the ill-fated plant and tidy Slavutych, the town where Chernobyl workers live, was confronted by dozens of gloomy protesters wearing black armbands. Thousands from among the plant's 6,000 workers will be laid off.
``I have not seen anything better than this,'' Yevhen Laptsov, a Chernobyl electrician who lives in Slavutych, said of his town. ``I have two small children and we all live in this beautiful town. I'm very much afraid of the closure.''
For years, energy-strapped Ukraine faced pressure from environmental groups and foreign leaders to close Chernobyl. But it refused to do so, citing the electricity the plant provided and demanding foreign aid in return. Kuchma finally pledged to shut down Chernobyl during a visit by President Clinton earlier this year.
``This decision came from our experience of suffering,'' Kuchma said. ``We understand that Chernobyl is a danger for all of humanity and we forsake a part of our national interests for the sake of global safety.''
The European Commission has approved a $585 million loan to help Ukraine build two new reactors to make up for Chernobyl's electricity. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is to chip in another $215 million.
Despite the closure, much remains to be done at Chernobyl.
Ukraine plans to construct a new casing for the mammoth concrete and steel sarcophagus covering the ruined reactor No. 4. There is no decision yet on what to do with the tons of radioactive dust and nuclear fuel still inside, and work on making the structure environmentally safe will take decades.
It also will take years to unload nuclear fuel from the three other Chernobyl reactors.
``We shall continue to bear this,'' a weary Kuchma said Thursday in Slavutych. ``This is our fate.''
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Chernobyl Is a Vast Wasteland
Associated Press
December 15, 2000 Filed at 2:33 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Chernobyl-Zone.html
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20001215/wl/chernobyl_zone_1.html
CHERNOBYL, Ukraine (AP) -- At first glance, it looks the same as the outside world: forests, fields and streams, peaceful village houses. But barbed-wire fences, radiation warning signs and checkpoints caution visitors that they are entering a different land.
It's called the ``Zone,'' a term lifted from a Soviet science fiction novel written by the Strugatsky brothers more than a decade before the April 26, 1986, Chernobyl nuclear plant accident.
Here the rivers, land and trees are poisoned by radiation, and a closer look reveals that the quiet wooden houses are crumbling structures abandoned 14 years ago.
Barred to outsiders by about 800 guards, the 19-mile-radius zone around Chernobyl absorbed the bulk of the radioactive fallout from the 1986 explosion and fire. It covers 1,400 square miles and was once home to 120,000 people who lived in 90 communities.
Winding roads now lead to ruined settlements. In a field, nearly 1,400 contaminated vehicles and aircraft used in the Chernobyl cleanup are rusting.
The forests are rich in berries, mushrooms and animals, including some exotic varieties like the Przhevalsky horses brought here to eat and stamp out the high grass which is highly contaminated by radiation.
Pripyat, once the area's largest city and home to 48,000 people before the accident, is a ghost town of apartment high-rises still sporting Communist Party slogans and Soviet-era symbols, overgrown bushes and an abandoned playground with a motionless Ferris wheel and broken toy cars.
Electric poles and wires announce the approach to the Chernobyl plant itself. A giant red structure surrounded by rusty cranes is the remnant of two unfinished reactors. A sprawling building behind a fence houses reactors No. 1 and No. 2.
A bust of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin greets visitors at the plant's entrance. Next to it stands a curvy modernist statue, a memorial to those who died trying to contain the 1986 catastrophe.
Farther away is a huge building, its single smokestack supported by metal bearings. This is where it all happened 14 years ago.
At one end is reactor No. 3, Chernobyl's last working one, which was stopped for good on Friday. The building's other reactor, No. 4, is encased in a 1.1-million-ton sarcophagus that looks like a haphazard assortment of cement and rust-streaked steel plates.
Beneath is all that remains of reactor No. 4, a maze of collapsed ceilings, corridors littered with debris, and bizarre cankers produced by melted nuclear fuel that no human can approach without being killed by radiation.
Just one brick-sized piece of fuel that recently fell onto the sarcophagus roof emits deadly radiation. And radiation on a balcony facing the sarcophagus is about 80 times normal background levels.
The road out of the zone passes through the ``Red Forest'' -- trees so damaged by radiation that they took on a reddish hue. Today, most of the forest is dead, and only a few dried trees stretch out their branches in a silent reminder of the century's worst nuclear accident.
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Workers Bid Ill-Fated Chernobyl a Bitter Farewell
New York Times
December 15, 2000
By MICHAEL WINES
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/15/world/15CHER.html
PRIPYAT, Ukraine, Dec. 14 - Fourteen years and seven months after an experiment here went unimaginably awry, spewing the radiation of dozens of Hiroshimas across Europe, workers at the Chernobyl nuclear complex gathered today to bid the site's last working nuclear reactor - and many of their jobs - a bitter goodbye.
Standing outdoors before a jet- black statue of Prometheus, the Greek of myth who stole fire from the gods, they watched President Leonid Kuchma lay a wreath in memory of the dead and dying of the world's worst nuclear power disaster and then assure them that they would not be forgotten, either.
"I want you to know from me and the goverin Ukrainenment that nobody will be ignored," Mr. Kuchma told workers in a brief speech.
Many of them are nevertheless disbelieving.
"We're hearing a lot of promises, but they're not backed up by finances," said Yevgeny Lobtsov, 43, an electrician who began working at Chernobyl two months after the accident. "I don't know what will be done for my children now."
On Friday, Mr. Kuchma will send an order from his presidential palace in Kiev to shut Unit 3, the lone remaining working part of the Chernobyl complex.
That reactor is separated by only a wall from Unit 4, which exploded in a ball of flame and dust on April 26, 1986.
Thirty-one workers died in the immediate aftermath of the blast. Thousands of Ukrainians have since died or contracted thyroid cancer or leukemia directly associated with the spread of radioactivity after the explosion.
The shutdown order for Friday arrives after a decade of intense pressure by Western nations, led by the United States, that fear that the ancient Soviet-design reactor at Unit 3 is another Chernobyl disaster in waiting.
But to Ukrainians, the principal effect of the command will be to begin a process already destined to lead within two years to the layoff of 2,200 of the plant's 5,600 operators and 3,000 support workers.
Many additional workers are widely expected to be gone by 2008, when the last of the reactor's fuel is to be unloaded and what once was the world's mightiest atomic power station will officially become its biggest and most infamous nuclear graveyard.
Ukrainians are no less horrified by the disaster than others. But they have a huge economic dependence on the complex - and no small fear that closing the last reactor will remove their best lever to pry loose international aid vital to maintaining the site.
The closing of Unit 3 will cut off 5 percent of the electricity supply in a nation already deeply in hock to Russia for natural gas and dogged by shortages in its shoddily run power grid.
The closing will also gradually eliminate the jobs of thousands of Ukrainians whose work depends, directly or indirectly, on Chernobyl's continued operation as a power plant. Beyond the layoffs at the plant itself, thousands of Ukrainians provide goods or services to Chernobyl workers.
Ukraine also faces immense costs in the future - $750 million to cover the disaster site with a new dome- shaped sarcophagus, hundreds of additional millions of dollars to remove 180 tons of lethal melted fuel and steel from the damaged core of Unit 4 and to store it safely, millions to build a new heating system and other necessities for the crews that will permanently care for the idle reactor site and millions for solid and liquid waste-processing plants to handle the fuel from the closing of Unit 3.
The wealthiest industrial nations have pledged much of the money needed to build the new dome and help construct other projects. But they have been reluctant to commit more money, given Ukraine's history of pervasive corruption and mismanagement since the Soviet collapse.
One key to assuring the shutdown fell into place this month, when Ukraine obtained a $215 million international loan to complete the construction of two long-idled reactor sites that will make up for the loss of Unit 3.
Mr. Kuchma sought to today to put a good face on the shutdown, traveling to the reactor to honor the dead workers and the Ukrainians sickened by radiation.
Later, he spoke to workers in Slavutich, a trim city of 30,000 built in the late 1980's for Chernobyl workers who lost their houses in the disaster.
In both places, he encountered signs of resistance. Some workers at Chernobyl signaled their opposition to the shutdown by wearing black ribbons on their jumpsuits. In Slavutich, knots of workers unfurled banners that called the shutdown a tragedy and declared, "No!" to the closing.
Slavutich residents have been rewarded for their Chernobyl labors with far higher pay and more amenities than most Ukrainians, from more modern apartments to free cable television. The town's future is cast into doubt by closing the plant.
In the dreams of Soviet planners, Chernobyl was to have been a mammoth array of eight reactors, a wellspring of cheap power for Ukraine and neighboring Belarus. The disaster changed that.
Today, the unfinished hulk of a fifth reactor - the last attempted - sits a few hundred yards from the explosion site. The two other undamaged reactors, Units 1 and 2, were closed years ago.
Officials have declared everything within 18 miles of the reactor an irradiated no man's land of decaying ghost towns and burial pits for thousands of bulldozers and trucks used in the cleanup and now too radioactive to touch.
An extensive decontamination effort has rendered the reactor complex itself comparatively secure for workers and visitors, officials insist.
"It's safe where we are," Sergei Saversky, deputy chief of the agency that manages the no man's land, said today. "Just don't walk where you're not supposed to."
In the ghost city of Pripyat about a mile from the disaster site, a city of 50,000 that the publicity-wary Soviets did not evacuate until 36 hours after the explosion, that means staying on streets blacktopped after the disaster and avoiding the grass. Most safe areas have been paved over or bulldozed, removing the top 40 inches of radioactive soil.
In a Pripyat scene straight from the apocalyptic novel "On the Beach," blocks of deserted apartment houses faced gardens grown wild and sidewalks cracked by sprouting weeds. Journalists who sought to visit a surreally silent amusement park, its yellow Ferris wheel parked dead still a few hundred yards away, were told that it was too dangerous.
Although Geiger counter readings that flash around the reactor complex suggest that all is well - the radiation exposure for visitors today was said to equal that of a two-hour airplane ride - outside experts are skeptical.
In particular, they say the hulking steel-and-concrete sarcophagus erected over the blown-apart Unit 4 - 10,000 tons of material thrown together by remote-control cranes and helicopters - may be rusting inside and is increasingly vulnerable to collapse.
Hazards continue to pop up. Last month, a sweep detected a red-hot chunk of melted reactor core eight inches long atop the steel roof of the sarcophagus. How it arrived outside the reactor is unclear. Experts said they suspected that it was somehow spewed upward through the 250-foot smokestack in the initial explosion and went undetected until it fell from atop the stack a few weeks ago.
Workers are studying how to remove the lethal piece of metal.
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Chernobyl nuclear plant shut down for last time
Washington Times
December 15, 2000
By Sergei Shargorodsky
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-2000121516323.htm
KIEV, Ukraine -- Chernobyl was shut down forever with the flip of a switch today, shifting attention to needed repairs on the sarcophagus covering the nuclear plant's ruined reactor, which is leaking radiation 14 years after the world's worst nuclear accident.
The closing of Chernobyl's last working reactor was intended to prevent disasters like the one that sent a radioactive cloud across Europe, affecting millions of people and leaving a poisoned zone in this former Soviet republic.
President Leonid Kuchma, issuing the order to halt the reactor, alluded to the difficult work still ahead, saying: "This menacing page of the book of modern history cannot be considered closed."
At a state ceremony in Kiev, Mr. Kuchma gave the order to halt the reactor over a video linkup with the plant 84 miles away. At 1:16 p.m., Chernobyl shift chief Oleksandr Yelchishchev turned a switch, sending containment rods sliding into the core of reactor No. 3. Within seconds, a dial showed the atomic reaction in the core dropping to zero.
Mr. Kuchma asserted that energy-starved Ukraine was "forsaking a part of our national interests for the sake of global safety."
President Clinton, in a taped address released by the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, called it a "triumph for the common good."
"America is on your side. We wish you God speed," he said, adding in Ukrainian: "Slava Ukrayini (Glory to Ukraine)!"
On April 26, 1986, Chernobyl's reactor No. 4 exploded and caught fire, contaminating vast areas of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus -- all part of the Soviet Union at the time -- and spewing a radioactive cloud over Europe.
The Kremlin tried to conceal the accident and delayed evacuation of people from nearby towns for days. Firefighters and other workers who were the first at the destroyed reactor had little or no protection from radiation.
More than 4,000 cleanup workers have died since and 70,000 have been disabled by radiation in Ukraine alone. About 3.4 million of Ukraine's 50 million people, including some 1.26 million children, are considered affected by Chernobyl.
A haphazardly built concrete and steel sarcophagus covers the ruined reactor, but it has developed leaks over the years. It emits high radiation levels and is also leaking water that may be contaminated.
The grayish Soviet-era structure is believed to contain up to 66 tons of melted nuclear fuel, in addition to some 37 tons of radioactive dust.
The covering now "automatically assumes a leading role. It's our largest project," said the structure's director, Valentyn Kupny.
Ukraine hopes to build a new, airtight covering over the sarcophagus as part of a $758 million international project running through 2007. But that will not solve the problem entirely, Mr. Kupny said.
"The work of handling the fuel remaining inside will take dozens of years," he said. "We'll have to work out an engineering decision on what to do with this fuel. At present, there is no such decision."
The unloading of fuel rods from the other idled reactors will also last for years. And Ukraine still has to figure out how to help the 6,000 plant workers and their families survive the closure.
U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said today in Kiev that he had approved a grant to create a nuclear safety center that would employ Chernobyl workers, but which likely could offer jobs only to a fraction of those laid off. He did not say how much funding the grant would provide.
While many Ukrainians, tired of living with radiation fears, rejoiced over the plant's closure, some nuclear workers and officials called today a day of mourning.
"This event is like a funeral," said Russian Atomic Energy Minister Yevgeny Adamov.
Anatoliy Brig, a veteran nuclear worker who participated in the cleanup and attended today's closure ceremony, was bitter.
"This child of ours should have been kept working," Mr. Brig said. "This reactor could have heated the country until 2007."
For years, the energy-strapped government faced pressure from environmental groups and foreign leaders but refused to close the plant, citing the electricity it provided and demanding foreign aid in return. Mr. Kuchma finally pledged to shut down Chernobyl during a visit by Mr. Clinton earlier this year.
The European Commission has approved a $585 million loan to help Ukraine build two new reactors to replace the electricity produced at Chernobyl, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development will provide an additional $215 million.
The environmental group Greenpeace has called on Ukraine to abandon nuclear plant construction and find alternative sources of energy.
Pierre Cardin, the French fashion designer attending the ceremony as a UNESCO goodwill ambassador, seemed to echo that sentiment.
"It is a big, very big day today for your country and for the world too," he said. "Don't begin again the drama of Chernobyl."
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Ukraine to close Chernobyl nuke plant
Washington Times
December 15, 2000
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-20001215213148.htm
KIEV, Ukraine - Ukraine lays to rest the world's most powerful symbol of the dangers of nuclear power today when engineers at the Chernobyl power station depress a button marked BAZ "rapid emergency defense" for the final 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 that 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 an experiment, loom over a small monument to 30 firemen who died fighting its flames.
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After disaster: the people who call Chernobyl home
The power plant that triggered the worst-ever nuclear accident shuts down today.
Christian Science Monitor
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2000
By Scott Peterson Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2000/12/15/fp7s1-csm.shtml
CHERNOBYL EXCLUSION ZONE, UKRAINE
For the contaminated area closest to Chernobyl - site of the world's worst-ever nuclear accident -time appears to have stopped on April 26, 1986.
Silence took over as more than 100,000 evacuees fled fallout 100 times more radioactive than the two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II.
Across a vast restricted area, towns and villages remain eerily empty, an amusement park lies in ruins, weeds have grown into trees. The moss near an empty bumper car makes a Geiger counter crackle and sing at three times the normal rate. Nearby, pine trees show multiple signs of mutation.
Today, after years of Western pressure on Ukraine, Chernobyl is to be officially shut down. It's something of a formality-Reactor No. 3 has been on-again, off-again during three weeks of technical glitches. Engineers will press the button that stops the nuclear chain reaction for the final time, in a move critics say is long overdue.
Fallout persists
Chernobyl's legacy of contamination across Eastern Europe is expected to last for decades. Among victims are the 30 or so firemen who died in the initial explosion of Reactor No. 4, and the thousands of subsequent deaths widely attributed to the fallout in Ukraine, Belarus, and western Russia - although the figure is disputed by some.
"The danger is tremendous, and we don't know the impact on future generations because we don't know about lower doses," says Andrei Zabov, with the nuclear nonproliferation project of the Carnegie Endowment in Moscow. Ukraine took over the reactor after the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.
"Living there is a risk, and the risk is higher than in other areas," he adds. "People take risks every day, just crossing the road. But I would be afraid to go there."
Contamination is still spreading: One town 30 miles west of Chernobyl was evacuated just last year. But as scientists debate the long-term effects of low-level radiation exposure, amid the radioactive detritus there is a human face. The risks are in the eye of the beholder, and there may be no more cavalier attitude than among the few who live closest to the reactor itself, in the barbed-wire fenced "exclusion zone" that marks an 18-mile radius from the epicenter of the blast.
"We've already consumed all that radiation," says Nina Franko, a large-handed collective farm veteran in the near-empty village of Obachichi. She is one of 3,000 people who returned to homes in the zone a year after the blast, despite warnings. Today, only 300 remain, all of them elderly.
"We've stayed here all these years. It means we got used to the radiation, and the radiation got used to us," says Mrs. Franko, who worked briefly as a cleaner at the reactor. Virtually all other plant workers commute to work by shuttle from a purpose-built city outside the zone perimeter.
The radioactive cloud was large: Belarus received 70 percent of the fallout, and research in 1989 indicated that one-fifth of that former-Soviet state is "significantly contaminated." In Ukraine, officials say 3.5 million people live on "hot" soil. Cases of thyroid cancer have surged 100-fold in some areas, and by one count, 15,000 have died.
As many as 800,000 soldiers and volunteers, called "liquidators," were heavily exposed to radiation while helping to clean up the Chernobyl site. There is no record of who they were, or their current state of health.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan noted earlier this year: "The catastrophe is far from over. It continues to have a devastating effect not only on the health of the people, but on every aspect of society."
Still, those living nearby get by. More than 40 percent of the exclusion zone is covered with pine trees, and many of the so-called "self-settlers" left after a 1991 forest fire spread radioactive particles farther and turned some villages to ash.
"We thought we would die when we returned, but we are still here," laughs Nastasia Chikalovets, the silver-capped arc of her teeth flashing with a broad smile. She runs a modest farm, though nobody beyond the exclusion zone will touch the local produce.
Locals shrug off the fears of outsiders, point to their own robust health, and cite tests-selective though they may be-that show no danger as long as 22 pounds of local mushrooms are not consumed at a single sitting. Radiation levels, they contend, are higher elsewhere in Ukraine.
"What is radiation?" asks Mrs. Chikalovets. "We didn't feel it then, we don't feel it now. Let it be radiation. It's on our land."
"They explained it all to us," adds Valentina Kortunenko, as Fluffy, her long-haired cat, slinks through the living room graced with six perfect red roses from the garden. "They said don't go, its dangerous. Don't eat anything," Mrs. Kortunenko says. Since then, "all the world" has visited, measuring radiation levels and writing reports.
So these three friends, who might be simple babushka anywhere else in the former Soviet Union, know some things about radiation. They can tick off differences in the half-life and ionizing characteristics of radioactive elements that they live with: plutonium, cesium-137, strontium, and radioactive iodine. That is also the language of nuclear scientists and officials at the Chernobyl plant, who argue that Ukraine desperately needs the 5 percent of the nation's electricity it produces.
The destroyed core of the reactor has been encased in a "sarcophagus," a concrete and steel shell that requires constant care and remains extremely radioactive. Inside, the control room for unit No. 4 is covered with a veneer of purple goo designed to keep down radioactive dust.
In front of the console, a technician points to the trigger for the accident: the last button pushed at 1:26 am on April 26, as part of an experiment to test the reactor's capacity, while most safety mechanisms were off.
"Half of Ukraine's regions have 'hot' spots," says Nikolai Dmytruk, of the official InterInform agency in Chernobyl, who estimates that some 3.5 million Ukrainians "live in contaminated areas. Even now, the zone grows to the west." Other towns in that direction are likely to be evacuated in coming years.
Part of the cesium cloud that soared into the atmosphere during the explosion was detected across Europe, as well as in northern Iraq.
Lingering concerns
Officials here worry that the international community may forget about Chernobyl - and its continuing need for cash to be safe - once it shuts down for good.
A particular concern is the river that flows past the reactor and feeds into the Dnieper River, past the capital, Kiev, and finally into the Black Sea - the watershed that provides 9 million Ukrainians with drinking water.
In the "exclusion zone," where settlers this year fought off growing packs of wolves, the government provides an allowance for buying "safe" food from outside. A vehicle brings food for purchase every week.
Still, residents say they find a certain pleasure in being pioneers, though it is often a lonely business. No one, for example, lives in Pripyat, a city once home to 50,000 people, where lamp posts are still hung with festive Soviet hammer-and-sickle signs, in preparation for 1986 May Day celebrations that never took place.
The amusement park was supposed to open that day, too.
Back in Obachichi village, the three lady friends laugh about a neighbor who once dug up her entire garden. "I never found radiation!" the woman exclaimed. "Where is it?"
"We are sorry the villages are empty and trees grow in the gardens. It's very sad," says Kortunenko. "It is awkward to live here. But they won't take us forcefully."
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Chernobyl - One Secret the Soviets Could not Keep
Russia Today
Dec 15, 2000
http://www.russiatoday.com/news.php3?id=230241
LONDON -- (Reuters) There were secrets even the mighty Soviet propaganda machine could not keep from the prying eyes of the outside world.
Two days after Reactor Number Four at Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear power plant blew up in 1986, it was a softly-spoken engineer in Sweden who first began to guess the source and scale of what emerged to be the world's worst nuclear disaster.
His discovery helped prise the truth from the Communist leadership, which for all Mikhail Gorbachev's talk of glasnost and openness did its utmost to hide the accident from a worried West puzzled by high radiation levels across Europe.
"It happened on the Monday, two days after April 26th 1986," recalls Frigyes Reisch, former chief engineer at Sweden's Nuclear Inspection Board, referring to the date of the blast.
"A nuclear power station near Stockholm found high radiation levels and reported them to us. The strange thing was that they found nothing inside the plant but did find traces of radiation in the grass around the plant."
He asked all of Sweden's nuclear stations to report their radiation levels, and made a simple but startling discovery.
"While the other plants found similar high radiation, the levels were decreasing as we moved from east to west," he told Reuters by telephone from Stockholm.
"It was then that we looked at each other and realized what had probably happened -- that this was coming from the East."
He and other nuclear scientists piecing together the events surrounding Chernobyl are convinced that the trickle of details from Moscow at that time triggered the chain reaction of social and political change which would bring down the Iron Curtain.
FULL PICTURE SLOW TO EMERGE
Reisch's suspicion prompted a visit by Sweden's scientific attache in Moscow to the authorities. He was told blankly that nothing had happened.
But the first chink in the Kremlin's armor came soon after, with a report from the official Tass news agency the same evening that an accident had hit the Chernobyl plant north of Kiev in Ukraine with some casualties.
One or two days after that, with the world desperate for more news, Soviet diplomats posted in Western Europe made discreet contacts with scientists to gather information on how to contain the crisis.
Reisch described his own meeting with a Soviet diplomat as businesslike, but in an historical context a "real ice-breaker".
It took weeks for the official death toll from the reactor blast to reach 30, and only a sensational presentation by the Soviet authorities to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) based in Vienna late in August finally put the details straight.
Until then the nuclear world was adrift on a sea of rumor and ignorance, yet all the time knowing that the levels of radiation so far away from the source meant it was serious.
"Everyone thought at the time of the first revelations by the Swedes, 'My God, this is a big one'," said Jim Reed, who was working for Britain's nuclear watchdog at the time.
"But even when we found out it was Chernobyl most of us were asking ourselves 'where is it?' Until the Vienna conference there was a lot of conjecture about what could have gone wrong. We were completely in the dark."
The picture is much clearer 15 years on. At 1.26 a.m. on that fateful day, after staff had temporarily cut off the fourth reactor's safety systems to test the unit's capacity, it exploded, triggering a series of powerful blasts.
Tonnes of radioactive strontium, caesium, iodine and plutonium spread from North Europe to the Mediterranean.
The accident has been linked to thousands of deaths. Hundreds of thousands of people developed radiation sickness.
SECOND BOMBSHELL
The second bombshell in the Chernobyl story came at the IAEA conference in Vienna, four months after the disaster.
The Soviet Union's chief delegate Valery Legasov stunned his audience with a detailed and frank expose of what went wrong.
Among those present was Professor John Gittus, reporting from the meeting for the British government.
"We had tried to work out what had gone wrong," he said. "But it was not until we got to Vienna that we understood. This was the first time they gave out such detailed information."
He received a thick package of carefully prepared documents containing details such as copies of chart recorders at Chernobyl's stricken reactor at the time of the blast.
"For me this was the beginning of perestroika," he said. "We didn't realize that at the time, of course, but Chernobyl was a turning point -- a punctuation mark in Russian history."
Legasov urged scientists to check their systems "twice, three times and again". A medical annexe to the report estimated that there would be nearly 6,500 cancer deaths, including 1,500 from thyroid cancer over the next 70 years.
"Chernobyl was one of the key factors in Gorbachev's perestroika. It forced the Soviet Union to be open with the West and with the country itself," said Adrian Collings, who was then working at Britain's Central Electricity Generating Board.
But despite radical changes over the last decade, a culture of suspicion and secrecy still lingers in Russia, he added:
"To reveal this secret (of Chernobyl) was totally against the fear of information getting to the outside, and we still see this kind of thing even now, as with the Kursk disaster."
The Russian navy said initially that there were no deaths when the nuclear submarine sank to the bottom of the Barents Sea in August killing all 118 on board, and that rescuers were in contact with the crew. Officials later said there was never contact with the crew, most of whom died instantly.
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Military Chief Seeks Money, Saying Forces Are Strapped
New York Times
December 15, 2000
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/15/politics/15DEFE.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 14 - Gen. Henry H. Shelton, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned today that the military faced "an unsustainable burden" caused by aging equipment, shrinking forces and the pace of military operations.
General Shelton's warnings, which echoed those he and other senior commanders had made in recent weeks, underscored the increasingly public campaign under way at the Pentagon to increase military spending as a new administration takes office.
The timing of General Shelton's remarks - at the National Press Club here the day after Gov. George W. Bush of Texas became president- elect - was coincidental. But his wide-ranging speech amounted to an outline of the strategic and fiscal problems that Mr. Bush will face as he juggles campaign promises.
General Shelton, who will continue to serve as chairman until next September, said there was a growing imbalance between the nation's military strategy and the forces and equipment the armed services have.
Although he stopped short of asking for a specific budget increase, he generally endorsed recent studies that advocated significant rises in the Pentagon's budget, which this year totals $309 billion. He cited a study by the Congressional Budget Office that called for increasing spending on new weapons and equipment to $90 billion a year, from roughly $60 billion today, saying the armed services needed to replace weapons built a generation ago.
"Flush from historic victories in the cold war, Desert Storm and most recently in Kosovo, the extraordinary capabilities of our forces are in great demand," General Shelton said. "We were just unable to anticipate how high that demand would be. And the results are that our men and women in uniform are busier than ever before. And the wear and tear on our equipment is significant, leading to what has been termed as a fraying of our force."
The themes of General Shelton's remarks - and even some of the language - were similar to those of Mr. Bush's campaign. Mr. Bush and his running mate, Dick Cheney, a former secretary of defense, complained that the armed forces had withered under President Clinton and vowed to rebuild the country's military might.
In his address to the nation on Wednesday night, Mr. Bush restated that pledge, vowing, "We will have a military equal to every challenge and superior to every adversary," a phrase General Shelton cited today.
But the scale of the increases in military spending embraced by General Shelton and other senior commanders far exceeds the $4.5 billion that Mr. Bush's campaign outlined in its proposals. And it could probably clash with the host of competing spending demands, like tax cuts and new programs, that will face Mr. Bush and a narrowly divided Congress.
In recent interviews, commanders of the armed services made arguments similar to General Shelton's. Gen. Michael E. Ryan, chief of staff of the Air Force, said on Wednesday that downsizing after the cold war led the nation to postpone modernization of its equipment. General Ryan said the need for new weapons like the Air Force's F-22 fighter meant the nation could no longer defer significant spending increases.
"We've taken a holiday from procurement and paid the peace dividend over the past decade," General Ryan said. "And now it's time to recapitalize the force, if you want it to be the premier, in my case, air force in the world."
General Shelton and the others agree that the Pentagon's upcoming strategic study, the Quadrennial Defense Review, would have to confront the increasing demands on the military.
He complained that the last review, in 1997, had been driven by budgetary constraints rather than strategic concerns. Although the new review has only begun, he made it clear that the Pentagon needed additional forces to do all that is asked of it, whether conducting humanitarian operations or preparing to fight two major wars nearly at once.
In making the case for increased spending, General Shelton cited the "changing nature of the international security environment," noting the potential threats posed by the rise of nationalism in Russia and the increasingly anti-American sentiment in China.
In unusually pointed language, he warned that China had a "distrustful view" of the United States and was "aggressively modernizing" its conventional and nuclear forces.
"I am firmly convinced," General Shelton said, "that we need to focus all elements of U.S. power and diplomacy on ensuring that China does not become the 21st-century version of the Soviet bear."
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Man with windmill scheme tilts against U.S. missile shield
Pioneer Planet
Published: Friday, December 15, 2000
ROBIN WRIGHT LOS ANGELES TIMES
http://www.pioneerplanet.com/seven-days/3/news/docs/018023.htm
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/12/17/MN161506.DTL
BERKELEY, Calif. Peter Hayes is a Don Quixote for the 21st century, a tall, dashing dreamer with a mission that some find foolhardy and others farfetched, but all deem noble in spirit and purpose. With a lot of imagination and a little money, Hayes has set out to rid the world of its deadliest weapons.
And he's trying to do it with windmills.
To counter a well-financed campaign to build a U.S. missile defense system, Hayes is putting up wind turbines and windmills -- ``like right out of Kansas in the 1930s,'' he says -- in Communist North Korea.
The graceful towers with their spinning wheels are already providing water for dozens of North Korean homes and fields. The tall, spindly turbines, planted in fields of cabbage cultivated for the Korean dish kimchee, produce electricity for kindergartens, clinics and homes in the village of Unhari, about 60 miles southeast of the capital, Pyongyang.
The goal is to demonstrate the viability of alternative energy sources, particularly in rural areas, so the government will feel less need to build nuclear power plants that could, in turn, be used to develop nuclear weapons.
To some arms experts, it is indeed a Quixotic quest. And Hayes concedes that his project is not a solution for the entire country -- nor a guarantee that a potential nuclear foe will soon become a peaceful neighbor. ``North Korea is not a windy place. Windmills won't work everywhere,'' he said in an interview in a modest office in Berkeley, Calif.
But to others, the groundbreaking collaboration between American and North Korean scientists represents a new kind of ``alternative defense'' that might reduce pressure for multibillion-dollar programs to block Pyongyang's ability to fire a nuclear-tipped missile at the United States.
In recognition of his imaginative approach, Hayes this year was awarded one of the ``genius'' grants given to thinkers, scientists, writers and other innovators by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
At its heart, Hayes' windmill project underscores a brewing debate over the best way to defend a nation in the 21st century.
``The missile defense argument is like saying the solution to America's handgun problem is for everyone to wear body armor. It doesn't work,'' said Hayes, founder of the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainable Development, one of America's smallest think tanks.
``Besides, the issue really isn't about missiles and warheads. It's about strategic rivalry and distrust and perceptions at a much deeper level. And that's what we're trying to deal with.''
An energy specialist who's worked for the United Nations and the World Bank, Hayes began looking for ways to reverse tensions when North Korea crossed the nuclear threshold a decade ago by building reactors it said would be used to generate electricity. By 1994, the government's suspected ability to siphon off fissile material to make nuclear weapons led the Pentagon to devise plans to attack the reactors.
The United States pulled back from ``the brink of war,'' according to a recent book by former Defense Secretary William Perry, after Perry advised the Clinton administration it might ignite a wider conflict. Former President Jimmy Carter then mediated an agreement that froze North Korea's nuclear program in exchange for U.S.-orchestrated aid and technology to build two ``safe'' nuclear reactors.
But the danger remains. For one thing, North Korea does not have to give a full accounting of its nuclear program until the reactors are built and working. Meanwhile, it may have in reserve enough plutonium for one or two bombs.
Because the reactors won't be ready for several years, Pyongyang still feels vulnerable. Fuel supplies ended after the Soviet Union's demise. North Korea's electrical grid has been devastated by natural disasters. Millions of people have been left without regular electricity, contributing to the collapse of industry, communications, agriculture, transportation and the economy.
So Hayes and a small crew of energy experts set out to find an interim source of energy -- and to plant the seeds of a relationship between the nations.
With funding from American foundations, the Hayes team took the first seven wind turbines to Unhari in 1998. In October, on his sixth trip, he took a team to build two windmills to channel water for crops and human consumption to ease a famine that has killed an estimated 2 million people.
Both windmills and wind turbines have appeal because of low cost ($2,500 to $12,000 each), low maintenance, readily accessible technology, environmental safety and sustainability, even in rural areas. The next step is designing a windmill using local materials.
The project illustrates the evolution of ideas about national security policy.
Throughout history, military might has been the key to defending a nation. But after World War II, with the development of apocalyptic weapons, President Harry Truman proposed nuclear disarmament. President Dwight Eisenhower created the first nuclear-power monitoring agency. And President John Kennedy, who warned that 25 nations could have nuclear arms by the end of the 1960s, launched the first major treaty banning nuclear-weapons tests in the water and atmosphere.
A half-century of treaties on all weapons of mass destruction -- nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and ballistic missiles -- has led to destruction of existing arms, and agreements to halt new weapons, and has limited the spread of nuclear arms to only eight countries.
By 1996, former Defense Secretary Perry dared to say that the first line of defense was no longer weaponry but pieces of paper -- a network of treaties.
``Paper has been more effective in intercepting and destroying more missiles than other weapons,'' said Joseph Cirincione, director of the Non-Proliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. ``And the military has increasingly become the second line of defense, as a deterrent threat against those who use these weapons against you.''
Others disagree. ``Treaties codify the status quo. But pure military power is still the key to influence, the coin of the realm,'' said Mitchell Reiss, former chief U.S. negotiator with North Korea and member of the National Security Council during the Reagan and Bush administrations.
As the 21st century dawns, two other visions are shaping ideas about defending a nation.
One is a national missile defense shield, a popular, pricey idea of uncertain capability. Some arms experts call it the third line of defense; others say it should