NUCLEAR
A free trade pact could have long-term costs
Construction of spent fuel repository in Finland approved
Russia's Duma approves spent fuel imports
East Asia Needs Balance, and Balance Means Missile Defense Robyn Lim
Panel Finds Stress a Main Cause of Gulf War Syndrome
India, Pakistan Mistrustful But Peace Drive Rolls On
Pakistanis and Indians Make Moves for Less Strife
CIA: Iran could test ICBM next year
Cautiously Along a Korean Tightrope
Negotiating With North Korea
Albright: Deal With NKorea Possible
Don't go, Mr. President
Russia Tentatively OKs Waste Imports
Russia considers importing nuclear waste
Taiwan Justices Begin Reviewing Nuclear Decision
Ukraine's Kuchma in Moscow for Talks on Energy Debts
Bush on a sticky wicket with N. Korea
Why U.S. missile defense is a bad idea
The New Push for a Missile Shield
Conneticut
Corrections
Flour Hanford To Manage Nuke Reserve
Engineers Look for Nuke Plant Leak
Bush missile stance could mean rocky road
Bush introduces Colin Powell as his nominee for Secretary of State
'Reminiscence and Farewell'
Yucca Mountain backer pulls out as energy secretary choice

MILITARY
Trafficking proof points to Liberian
Kidnapped Brits freed in Colombia
Colombia wants more
COLOMBIA: BRITONS FREED
Drug danger in U.S. forests
Clinton examines clemency cases
Georgia
Hatch in movie
Pakistan withdraws Kashmir troops
Pentagon stops imports from Myanmar
Spacecraft maneuvering problem halts Jupiter studies
NASA may attempt trip to Pluto
Taiwan Will Be Tricky Task for Bush
Gem Sanctions Sought by U.N. are Delayed
In Final Fight, Weary Envoy Counts Ticks on U.N. Clock
New sanctions cause Taleban to close U.N. offices
AFGHANISTAN: TALIBAN ACTS OVER SANCTIONS
U.N. aide condemns Liberian president
Northrop Agrees to Buy Litton for $3.8 Billion
Northrop Grumman To Acquire Litton
Northrop to Buy Litton for $5.1 Billion
Fuel was not factor in Osprey crash
Utah

OTHER
'Thirteen Days' worth the time it takes to grab you
U.S. Finalizes National Organic Food Standards
New standards in organic farming
U.S. OKs new pollution regulations
New Rules to Cut Diesel Emissions
Whitman Stays Silent on E.P.A. Post
After Recount, Tight Race for Water Board Is Over
Whitman Seen as Strong Choice to Lead E.P.A.
Bush will tap Whitman to head EPA
Seeds of Hope, to Keep Mother Earth in Gardening
U.S. Imposes Standards for Organic-Food Labeling
Clinton reaches largest Clean Air settlement
National organic standards released
'Organic' standard: 95% of ingredients
Fox hunting ban passes hurdle
ALBANY: WATERSHED TO BE STUDIED
What Bush Can Do on the Environment
States
EPA investigator says his ouster was retaliatory
The year 2000 in medicine and science
In Orange, Closed Ranks and Relief After Officers' Conviction in Beating
Sheriff's killing called 'professional hit'
Michigan
District police union probed
Nuclear Cookies

ACTIVISTS
Overcoming Repression Against Activists
Right-Wing Countersubversion Networks & the Philadelphia Raid
Exercising Your Rights Of Political Protest In Philadelphia
Exercising Your Rights Of Political Protest
WAR AT HOME
Bugs Bugs, Taps And Infiltrators
Some Images to Help you Visualize Resisting Repression
BRINGING IN AN UNDEMOCRATIC INSTITUTION
Why the Center for National Security Studies is Needed
WIRETAPPING
Counter-Terrorism Proposals
COINTELPRO
The Hunt for Red Menace:
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and Martial Law
RE-FRAMING DISSENT AS CRIMINAL SUBVERSION
Government Intelligence Abuse
Terrorism and the Constitution
Home of radio pirate again raided by feds
SIGN-ON: PETITION TO ALL NUCLEAR CORPORATIONS
Extradition Based On False Evidence, Peltier Inquiry Says
trial results
Protest on Nuclear Cargo
Greenpeace slams nuclear shipment
Election Anger Fuels Inaugural Protesters
MANHATTAN: STUDENTS STORM U.N. ASSEMBLY
Vermont

-------- NUCLEAR

A free trade pact could have long-term costs

The Australian
21dec00
By MALCOLM FRASER
http://news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,1539023%255E1683,00.html

AT first blush, a free trade deal with the US seems attractive. Our worst trade deficit is with the US, not because we are inefficient but because it still imposes restrictions on our agricultural and mineral exports. Before considering any deal, we should understand its implications.

During earlier rounds of world trade negotiations, when Japan's agricultural market was opened to world competition, the US pressed Japan for a bilateral arrangement. Japan always rejected such approaches and adopted the principled view that any opening of its markets would be on a multilateral basis. Australia has also argued strongly for a similar approach. Why change?

Some may argue that an Australia that seems to have been rebuffed in approaches to join East or South-East Asian associations should look for other options. We should not conclude, however, that the decision in relation to these regional associations is final. I am sure it is capable of change.

A number of matters need consideration. Arrangements that are called free trade have never been that. They have involved exemptions and exclusions. It is hard to believe that the US would, at this late stage, accept genuine free trade for agricultural and mineral products.

Irrespective of the merits, a trade deal with the US cannot be looked at in isolation. Other issues are on the agenda that seriously affect Australia's strategic outlook.

It has been made plain to us that if the US decides to pursue anti-missile defence, facilities at Pine Gap will be required. The degree of risk to Australia through facilities at Pine Gap and at North West Cape have been minimal. If the facilities at Pine Gap were to become the forward reach of anti-missile defence for North America, they would become a prime target in the event of American conflict with a leading power. We would be in the front line and hostage to US policy over which we would have no control.

US arguments that it needs anti-missile defence as a protection against a rogue state are nonsense. Such a state would find it easier to place a bomb in a ship tied up in New York Harbor. Anti-missile defence is aimed at traditional rivals of the US. If the US goes down this path, Russia will upgrade its own nuclear capacities. Arrangements for the reduction and control of nuclear arms worldwide are likely to be put on hold and reversed.

Australia's participation in anti-missile defence would limit our capacity for independent action. This is highlighted by possible problems over Taiwan. Every president from Richard Nixon to Bill Clinton has reaffirmed that Taiwan and China are two parts of one country and that there must be negotiation leading to reunification. We cannot be sure that position will be maintained.

The incipient independence movement in Taiwan and the unofficial visit of ex-president Lee Teng-hui to the US have caused concern. We should not underestimate the influence of the Taiwan lobby in Washington. If requests for independence were supported by the US Government, it would almost certainly lead to war with China. A number of people have put it on the record that senior Americans expect us to be with them on such an issue.

On the contrary, the US's two defence partners in the Asia-Pacific, Japan and Australia, should have no part in such a conflict. We should be encouraging the US to press upon Taiwan that independence is not an option and it should negotiate realistically with Beijing.

If such a conflict did arise, the US may have no greater capacity to win than it did in Vietnam, unless nuclear weapons were used. Then we would all be the losers. In the outcome, America would likely withdraw to the continental US. We would be left as a discredited US ally that had denied the logic of our geography and economic interests.

The idea of a free trade deal cannot be separated from these strategic issues, the question of anti-missile defence and Taiwan. US officials would be quite capable of enticing Australia with a deal, believing that by so doing they could tie Australia to US policy on the strategic issues. Such a step would have enormous consequences.

One of our problems throughout East and South-East Asia is the view that we are too closely tied to the US. This has been re-emphasised since 1996, when revitalisation of the US relationship was made a primary objective of government.

Free trade, anti-missile defence and policy over Taiwan represent a set of policies that would pull us too closely into the US orbit. Is it not time that we exercised more independence?

--------

Construction of spent fuel repository in Finland approved

Paris (Nuclear News Flashes)--
21Dec2000

The Finnish government gave approval in principle today for construction of a final repository for spent fuel in Eurajoki, near the Olkiluoto reactor site.

Although the decision still must be ratified by parliament, and a construction license isn't expected for a decade, the decision was hailed by the European nuclear industry as a decisive step toward the world's first final repository.

Posiva Oy, the utility-owned company that handles Finnish spent fuel and nuclear waste, applied for the policy decision last year, after signing an exclusive contract with the Eurajoki municipality to build the repository.

-------------

Russia's Duma approves spent fuel imports

Paris (Nuclear News Flashes)--
21Dec2000

In what the Ministry of Atomic Energy (Minatom) hailed as a "great victory," Russia's State Duma today approved legislation that would allow Minatom to import spent nuclear fuel from western countries for temporary storage and potentially reprocessing, a business the ministry says could be worth $20-bil over the next decade or so.

The deputies passed the measure--a package that amends the country's environmental and nuclear energy laws and creates a new funding mechanism for addressing Minatom's own Cold War waste legacy--by a comfortable margin of 318 (of the chamber's 450 total members).

-------- asia

East Asia Needs Balance, and Balance Means Missile Defense Robyn Lim

International Herald Tribune
Thursday, December 21, 2000
http://www.iht.com/articles/5008.htm

NAGOYA, Japan Drama in the Middle East should not distract the incoming U.S. administration from security problems in East Asia.

China and the United States have a growing collision of strategic interest over Taiwan. And little trust exists between China and Japan, which have never previously been strong at the same time. China has strategic ambition, while Japan has strategic anxieties.

East Asia's future will turn on whether Japan and China continue to believe that the United States will guarantee Japan's security.

Currently, America underwrites Japanese security in return for access to bases that allow it to project power across the vast reaches of the Pacific Ocean. If Tokyo were to conclude that it could no longer rely on the United States, it might develop an independent military policy that could frighten many of its neighbors who suffered under Japanese occupation before and during World War II.

The Bush administration's priority should be to develop Theater Missile Defenses to protect Japan (and U.S. forces based there) from the growing threat of Chinese and North Korean missiles. At stake is nothing less than America's ability to remain an Asia-Pacific power.

While U.S. allies sit mute and intimidated, China is exploiting regional security venues, such as the ASEAN Regional Forum, to rail against missile defense. Japan has neither nuclear weapons nor the means to deliver them, but Beijing insists that Japan must not cooperate with the United States to develop non-nuclear defenses against missile attack.

China's buildup of increasingly accurate missiles pointed at Japan could undermine Tokyo's confidence in U.S. strategic protection. And, despite recent reductions in tension on the Korean Peninsula, North Korea's Nodong missiles still target bases in Japan where more than 40,000 American troops are stationed, presumably to prevent their use in support of South Korea if the North attacks.

China's missile buildup opposite Taiwan threatens the military balance in the Taiwan Strait. The link between the Taiwan problem and Japan's security is one reason why Washington should help preserve Taiwan's de facto independence. Unless Washington continues to sell Taiwan weapons to defend itself, China will take Taiwan by force. That would set a dangerous precedent, especially in relation to Japan.

Isolationists think that strategic tensions on the far side of the Pacific should not concern them. History says otherwise. Three times in a century America needed to redress a power imbalance in Europe/Eurasia that would have threatened it in its own hemisphere. U.S. success finally proved definitive in the Cold War.

Thus Washington learned that it is vastly preferable to keep its forces forward-deployed, helping to shape developments at both ends of Eurasia and in the Middle East, rather than have to return in a crisis when allies and bases might not be available.

It would best suit U.S. interests if China were integrated peacefully intothe global order. The Bush administration should build on President Bill Clinton's support for China's entry into the World Trade Organization, provided Beijing is held to its commitments. But it would be a mistake to think that China cannot threaten vital U.S. interests because it is not a global peer competitor. That ignores the importance of strategic geography.

Because of the maritime basis of its own security, the United States cannot allow a potentially hostile great power to dominate Eurasia or any of its critical parts. With Russia down if not out, China, with its huge population and landmass, rapidly growing economy and military modernization program, is the rising regional power. China occupies the central position on the East Asian littoral, and has the will to try to exclude the United States from the region.

The bases in Japan, which allow American forces to move rapidly to the volatile Middle East, are now even more important because the United States cannot count on keeping its bases in South Korea after reunification.

But the U.S.-Japanese alliance is lopsided because America shoulders all the risk. Japan must be prepared to provide at least rear area support for the United States in a Taiwan or Korean crisis. It will be willing to do so only if its homeland is secure from missile attack. The Bush administration should not lose sight of the importance of theater missile defense for East Asia even as it pursues the wider objective of national missile defense at home.

George W. Bush and his aides are right to say they will abandon the outmoded dogma that America should remain deliberately vulnerable to missile attack. But national missile defense is costly, technically difficult and controversial with allies. It must not be allowed to detract attention from the need for theater missile defense to redress the dangerous force imbalances in East Asia that are a legacy of the Clinton years.

The writer, a professor of international relations at Nanzan University, Nagoya, contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.

-------- depleted uranium

Panel Finds Stress a Main Cause of Gulf War Syndrome

Reuters
December 21, 2000 Filed at 5:39 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/health/health-stress.html

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) -- A panel ordered by President Bill Clinton to oversee the Pentagon's investigation into Gulf War syndrome has found that stress may be a primary cause of the headaches, memory loss, nervous system disorders, chronic fatigue and other unexplained symptoms described by thousands of veterans of the war.

But in a three-page dissent, Dr. Vinh Cam, one of the board's seven members, called the conclusion ``a blatant misrepresentation.'' And a veterans group called the conclusion ''the biggest cover-up of the century,'' likening the finding to ''criminal and medical negligence'' as well as ``treason.''

``The Department of Defense has made a fatal error in relegating these diseases to the stress of a 100-hour war. The vets know they and their families are sick as a result of biological warfare or experimental vaccines,'' Joyce Riley, a spokesperson for the American Gulf War Veterans Association, told Reuters Health.

``This is the biggest cover-up of the century. It is not only the spoilage of records, it is criminal and medical negligence. We are aiding and abetting the enemy by not caring for these soldiers, and this is defined as treason,'' she said.

The 90-page report released this week concludes that ''stress is likely a primary cause of illness in at least some Gulf War veterans.''

It also found that that the Defense Department ``worked diligently'' to investigate potential causes of the mysterious illness and has not deliberately withheld information from the general public or from veterans. Rather, the Department ``has made an extraordinary effort to publicize its findings through the publication of reports and newsletters, public outreach meetings, briefings to veterans and active duty service members,'' and the creation of a toll-free hotline and a Web site.

Veterans' groups have charged that the government is hiding information about Iraqi chemical warfare agents to which veterans of the 1991 war may have been exposed. An estimated $300 million has been spent to investigate possible causes for the syndrome, including vaccinations, chemical and biological weapons, oil well fires, desert sand and anti-nerve agent tablets.

So far, no specific cause for these symptoms has been identified. In September, the Institute of Medicine issued a report concluding there is no scientific evidence that long-term health problems suffered by Gulf War veterans can be linked to exposure to such chemicals and vaccines as the nerve agent sarin, the drug pyridostigmine bromide, depleted uranium, and anthrax and botulism vaccines.

This week's report called for more research into the mysterious syndrome.

-------- india / pakistan

India, Pakistan Mistrustful But Peace Drive Rolls On

Reuters
December 21, 2000 Filed at 12:46 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-kashmir.html

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The cautious peace initiative launched by India and taken up by Pakistan to reduce tension on their flashpoint Himalayan border seemed to be gaining momentum on Thursday, despite expressions of doubt by both sides.

Eight people were killed as violence persisted in disputed Kashmir, but the main separatist alliance in the Indian-ruled part of the state said it would send a delegation to Pakistan next month to carry forward the drive for peace.

Leaders of the All Parties' Hurriyat (freedom) Conference, which combines 22 groups, said after a meeting in Srinigar that a delegation would leave for Pakistan on January 15 and meet Kashmiri separatist leaders based there.

Kashmir was divided between India and Pakistan when both became independent in 1947, and disputes over its future have provoked two of the three wars the two nations have fought since then.

Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee launched the latest initiative on Wednesday, when he extended by a further month a cease-fire by Indian forces in Kashmir, aimed at paving the way for a renewal of long-stalled peace talks.

Islamabad responded only a few hours later by announcing a partial pullback of troops from the military Line of Control (LOC) between the two sides' forces, and urged India to match its action.

Pakistan's Foreign Ministry spokesman said India's extension of the cease-fire, which began last month to mark the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, set a ``positive tone'' but was not enough.

``It falls short of a clear response to Pakistan's initiative of 2nd December (on maximum restraint) that could justify optimism for the early start of a negotiating process for a just settlement of the Kashmir dispute,'' said Riaz Mohammad Khan.

Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes also cast doubt on the rival side's announcement, saying ``We can't believe that it is possible for any army to start pulling out in such a short time.''

SEPARATISTS WELCOME INITIATIVE

Despite such reservations by the two governments, their actions were welcomed by the separatists meeting in Srinigar.

``The extension of the cease-fire by India, and Pakistan's withdrawal of troops from the border were described as laudable in the Hurriyat meeting,'' said Yasin Malik, chairman of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, one of Hurriyat's members.

Britain also welcomed Vajpayee's gesture in extending the cease-fire and urged India and Pakistan to help create a climate for dialogue.

``It is particularly important that the militants who support them respond positively to these constructive measures,'' British Foreign Office Minister Peter Hain said in a statement.

Peace talks between the nuclear rivals have been stalled since 1999, when hundreds of armed guerrillas from the Pakistani side crossed to the Indian side of Kashmir, prompting air strikes, major Indian counter-attacks and talk of war.

India says it is ready to hold talks with all Kashmiri groups, but has ruled out dialogue with Pakistan as meaningless until Islamabad stops ``cross-border terrorism.''

Pakistan denies that it arms Kashmiri separatists but says they have its political support.

DOUBTS OVER TROOP WITHDRAWAL

India holds about 45 percent and Pakistan more than one-third of Kashmir. China holds the rest.

Troops are in eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation at several points along the 720 km (450 mile) LOC which divides Kashmir.

``The LOC runs across mountains and peaks, you can't bring helicopters and buses to take people out to the cantonments. So we want to understand from Pakistan the meaning of its statement,'' Fernandes said.

Cross-border shelling has been reduced, but by no means ended, since the Indian truce began.

At least two militants were killed and two policemen critically wounded on Thursday in a clash in the Samba sector of the southern Jammu portion of the region, police said.

The army said separatists killed two soldiers in an attack on an army convoy in the region. Four people were killed and seven wounded elsewhere in the Himalayan state.

Fernandes said that guerrilla groups controlled by Pakistan, who have rejected the Indian truce, had unleashed terror in Kashmir.

Former Hurriyat chairman Syed Ali Shah Geelani has dubbed the truce a sinister move to sabotage Kashmir's freedom struggle.

Nearly a dozen guerrilla groups are fighting New Delhi's rule in Kashmir, and more than 30,000 people have been killed in incidents linked to the 10-year-old rebellion.

---

Pakistanis and Indians Make Moves for Less Strife

New York Times
December 21, 2000
By BARRY BEARAK
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/21/world/21KASH.html

NEW DELHI, Dec. 20 - In a rare run of encouraging news in one of the world's most discouraging conflicts, India and Pakistan announced steps today to reduce tensions along their de facto border in divided Kashmir.

India's prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, told Parliament early in the afternoon that he was extending a unilateral cease-fire in Kashmir by another month and beginning "exploratory steps" to rejuvenate peace talks with Pakistan.

Then, within hours, the spotlight shifted. Pakistan's army announced a partial withdrawal of troops along the so-called Line of Control, which divides the two nuclear-armed rivals in the Himalayan territory they both claim.

The three-paragraph Pakistani statement made no mention of how many soldiers would be pulled back - or from where. Skirmishing between the countries extends from the forested mountains in western Kashmir to the icebound peaks near the Siachen Glacier to the east.

"The move back has already commenced, and the troops have started moving towards cantonments," the announcement read. "However, necessary safeguards have been taken against any possibility of Indian misadventure across the Line of Control and to ensure protection of the local population.

"The action manifests Pakistan's earnest and genuine desire to de- escalate the situation in order to facilitate the process of meaningful dialogue on the issue. It is hoped that India would also reciprocate in a similar manner and de-induct part of its 700,000 strong force deployed in Indian-occupied Kashmir."

The number of Indian security forces in Kashmir is usually estimated at about half of what Pakistan alleges. There was no immediate response by New Delhi. And it is likely that India will view any peace initiative from Pakistan with suspicion.

In early 1999, while the countries were last engaged in talks, the Pakistani military was planning a huge incursion into the mountains near the Indian town of Kargil. Weeks of combat nearly led to an all-out war.

"This time may be different; we'll just have to wait and see," said Amitabh Mattoo, an expert on Indian security issues at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. "Either Pakistan is posturing or they have come to the genuine belief that they have to get out of this mess."

India and Pakistan were both carved from the British Empire in 1947, and they have been fighting over Kashmir ever since. Two of their three wars have been rooted in the dispute. The Line of Control runs through the most populous parts of Kashmir, giving about two-thirds to India and one-third to Pakistan.

The state called Jammu and Kashmir is part of the Indian federation. Guerrilla attacks have been a major problem there since 1989, when a separatist insurgency began. More than a dozen militant groups now engage in hit-and-run attacks that have turned life upside down. India has tried to fight back with overwhelming might. At least 34,000 people have died in the violence, according to government totals.

Pakistan assists the insurgency. But while Pakistan admits to furnishing moral and diplomatic support, India contends that its arch- enemy does far more than that, providing arms, training, food, money and marching orders.

On Nov. 19, Mr. Vajpayee made a surprise announcement, declaring a cease-fire by Indian forces during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. He presented it as a challenge, asking the militant groups to reciprocate.

Initially, the gesture was scoffed at as a bald manipulation. The militants answered him with their customary bullets and explosives. But then the attacks slacked off.

Today, in renewing the cease-fire, Mr. Vajpayee told Parliament that there had been "a decline in incidents of terrorist violence" and that infiltration across the Line of Control has also dropped. Also, he said, "we have witnessed a marked improvement in incidents of exchange of fire" with Pakistani soldiers.

The prime minister's report was far from a clean bill of health, however. He singled out two militant groups - Lashkar-e-Taiba and Harkat-ul-Mujahedeen - for continuing to fight in their customary manner. He promised to "defeat their inhuman and nefarious designs."

In a separate statement, the government said that during the first 20 days of Ramadan, there were 149 violent incidents in Jammu and Kashmir, with 63 civilians killed and 183 injured.

The cease-fire has certainly unsettled the militant groups. They are a varied lot, united in their opposition to Indian rule but quite different in their motivations. Some are primarily Kashmiris with a goal of independence. Some are mostly Pakistanis and other foreigners off on a jihad, trying to wrest a largely Muslim region from a largely Hindu nation.

-------- iran

CIA: Iran could test ICBM next year

World Tribune
Thursday, December 21, 2000
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
http://www.worldtribune.com/Archive-2000/ss-iran-12-21.html

WASHINGTON - Iran could test an intercontinental ballistic missile as early as next year, the CIA says.

The National Intelligence Council, a 15-member CIA-sponsored panel, says Iran could test either an intercontinental ballistic missile in 2001 and a land-attack cruise missile in 2004.

"Iran sees its short- and medium-range missiles as deterrents, as force-multiplying weapons of war, primarily with conventional warheads, and as options for delivering biological, chemical, and eventually nuclear weapons," a new global assessment by the council said. "Iran could test an IRBM or land-attack cruise missile by 2004 and perhaps even an ICBM or space launch vehicle as early as 2001."

The report said that by 2015 the United States could face an intercontinental ballistic missile threat from Iran and perhaps Iraq. By 2015, the report said, Iran is expected to tip its missiles with nuclear warheads.

"Weapons development programs, in many cases fueled by foreign assistance, have led to new capabilities -- as illustrated by Iran's Shahab-3 launches in 1998 and 2000 and North Korea's Taepo Dong-1 space launch attempt in August 1998," the report said. "In addition, some countries that have been traditional recipients of missile technologies have become exporters."

The report, entitled "Global Trends 2015: A Dialogue about the Future with Nongovernmental Experts," said Iraq's missile program will be dependent on the level of international control and United Nations sanctions. The report said Iraq could test an intercontinental ballistic missile with nuclear warheads before 2015.

The United States and the European Union will have less control over missile and weaopns of mass destruction programs as export control regimes and sanctions will be less effective. The report said this will result in a loss of control over weapons technology transfers.

"Theater-range ballistic and cruise missile proliferation will continue," the report said. "Most proliferation will involve systems a generation or two behind state of the art, but they will be substantially new capabilities for the states that acquire them. Such missiles will be capable of delivering WMD or conventional payloads inter-regionally against fixed targets. Major air and sea ports, logistics bases and facilities, troop concentrations, and fixed communications nodes increasingly will be at risk."

-------- korea

Cautiously Along a Korean Tightrope

International Herald Tribune
Thursday, December 21, 2000
Ralph A. Cossa
http://www.iht.com/articles/4999.htm

SEOUL South Koreans are openly nervous about what George W. Bush's election portends for the Korean peace process. The anxiety is based on an exaggerated assumption that a Republican administration will take a more hard-line approach that could undermine the South's engagement policy toward the North.

At the same time, many thoughtful South Koreans are concerned about the fast pace of South-North rapprochement and about what they see as its one-sided nature. They hope that a firmer U.S. approach might have a sobering effect on Seoul, while also compelling Pyongyang to be more forthcoming.

It is important for Mr. Bush to send an early signal to both Koreas that his administration is committed to the process of engagement and fully supports President Kim Dae Jung's "sunshine policy." This includes continued backing for the 1994 Agreed Framework between the United States and North Korea under which the North froze its nuclear research activities in return for the eventual construction of two less proliferation prone light water reactors.

U.S. commitments to its allies and agreements with others do not change when administrations change; the guiding principle is American national security interests. Support for the sunshine policy and continued adherence to the agreed framework, as long as Pyongyang continues to honor its promises, are in the U.S. national interest.

A last-minute trip to North Korea by President Bill Clinton before he leaves office next month would be counterproductive for the broader Korean peace process and should not occur. Nor should Mr. Bush, as president, go to Pyongyang until certain conditions are in place.

However, Mr. Bush should be prepared to continue high level contacts to signal to Seoul as well as to Pyongyang America's continued commitment to the peace process.

A general timetable and set of milestones should be set for high-level talks to proceed between the United States and North Korea. A significant breakthrough in the negotiations to end North Korea's long-range ballistic missile development program could justify a visit to the North by a very senior U.S. official, but only if it is accompanied by North Korean agreement to increase cooperation with the South on security issues.

So far, North-South cooperation has been primarily in the economic and social spheres. Real peace will not be achieved until Pyongyang acknowledges that Seoul is its primary negotiating partner in reducing tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

Mr. Bush should reaffirm Mr. Clinton's firm assertion that there will be no separate deal between Washington and Pyongyang.

Another important milestone needed to show North Korea's commitment to the peace process is for Kim Jong Il to fulfill his promise to visit the South next spring. No U.S. president should visit North Korea until the Northern leader goes to Seoul and substantive North South talks on security start.

The writer is executive director of the Pacific Forum CSIS, a Honolulu-based research institute. He contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.

---

Negotiating With North Korea

New York Times
December 21, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/21/opinion/21THU1.html

President Clinton will decide in the next week or so whether to close out his presidency with a trip to North Korea. Such a visit would be justified if he can come home with a firm, verifiable agreement committing Pyongyang to end the production and export of its missiles in exchange for international help in launching North Korean satellites for civilian uses. Mr. Clinton must also be certain that a visit to North Korea would not interfere with a possible final effort to produce a peace agreement in the Middle East.

North Korea has cast off much of its self- imposed isolation in the past year. Its leader, Kim Jong Il, has held constructive meetings with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and South Korea's president, Kim Dae Jung.

Yet dealing with Pyongyang has its perils, including the fact that a Clinton visit would lend prestige to the North Korean leader, one of the world's last Stalinist dictators and a brazen violator of his people's human rights. The United States and North Korea have yet to establish diplomatic relations or even sign a peace treaty ending the Korean War.

During the past few years, patient diplomatic efforts by the Clinton administration have persuaded North Korea to limit some of its most dangerous activities. Pyongyang agreed to freeze plutonium production for nuclear weapons in 1994 in exchange for help in constructing civilian power reactors. Last year it suspended testing of its longer-range missiles and was later rewarded with an easing of American economic sanctions.

If North Korea will now agree to terminate the development and export of all its long- and medium- range missiles, that would mark a major advance. The North is one of the world's leading missile exporters. Its sales to Pakistan and Iran fuel arms races in South Asia and the Middle East.

Washington still has only sketchy notions of the inner workings of North Korea's government. Verification mechanisms must therefore be a crucial part of any missile agreement. Establishing at least the basic principles of a strict monitoring system should be a precondition for a Clinton trip. Much of this monitoring can be done by satellite. But some provision for on-site observation should be included as well.

The terms on which other countries agree to launch North Korean satellites must also be carefully defined. All launchings must take place outside North Korea, with strict safeguards to prevent leakage of sensitive technologies. There must also be provisions insuring that these satellites pose no threat to American military forces or communications. If these terms can be agreed upon, Mr. Clinton would serve American interests by sealing a preliminary deal. A visit to Pyongyang before the end of the year by the administration's top Korea specialists could clarify whether an acceptable agreement is now within reach.

President-elect George W. Bush and his aides are reasonably reserving public judgment on the issue, at least until more details emerge. But a sound framework agreement would give the new administration a chance to work out the details and timetable to its own satisfaction, or to walk away from the table if North Korea proves insincere.

---

Albright: Deal With NKorea Possible

Associated Press
December 21, 2000 Filed at 3:30 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Albright-NKorea.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- There is a ``genuine possibility'' that North Korea will agree to limit its production and export of missiles and missile technology, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told The Associated Press Thursday.

President Clinton continues to weigh a visit to North Korea during his last month in office -- quite possibly to clinch a deal. Many senior Republicans on Capitol Hill oppose such a visit.

White House spokesman Jake Siewert said Clinton will make a judgment based on whether he thinks a trip would advance the process of curtailing Pyongyang's missile program.

Asked when a decision will be made, Siewert said, ``As soon as we can.''

According to an official who asked not to be identified, an interim trip to Pyongyang by Wendy Sherman, Albright's top aide to North Korea, is under consideration.

The White House raised the possibility of a Clinton visit to North Korea more than two months ago. His decision has been awaited by Korea-watchers with great anticipation.

At a State Department press Christmas party hosted by Albright Wednesday night, Sherman showed up with a sign hanging from her neck that said: ``No decision yet.'' Another sign, hanging on her back, said, ``Don't ask, don't tell.''

In an interview with the AP, Albright said she discussed the missile question at length with Chairman Kim Jong Il when she visited Pyongyang in October.

``What is out there is the genuine possibility of their limiting further their missile testing and further production and export of various technologies in exchange basically for our launching civilian satellites,'' she said.

If the U.S. steps in to launch North Korean civilian satellites, this would satisfy Pyongyang's stated goal, while easing U.S. fears about the country's military capabilities.

But senior Republican lawmakers and other analysts are concerned about the risk of technology transfer to North Korea if the United States agrees to launch satellites.

This concern was spelled out in a letter to Clinton last week from Senate Majority leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill, and the Senate and House chairmen of the committees on foreign affairs and intelligence.

The group also indicated opposition to a Clinton trip to North Korea.

``No one is more alarmed about the North Korean missile program than we,'' the letter said. ``But any hurried or ill-considered deal with North Korea could be worse than no solution at all.''

President-elect Bush has said that since Clinton is in charge until Jan. 20, any decision on travel to North Korea is entirely up to him. Administration officials have briefed members of the Bush team on the North Korean situation and said they received no advice from them on whether Clinton should make the trip.

---

Don't go, Mr. President

Washington Times
December 21, 2000
Doug Bereuter
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-column-20001221185521.htm

Recent press reports and comments by administration officials continue to signal that President Clinton is contemplating a last minute January state visit to North Korea. Such a visit in the waning days of his administration would be unwise, perhaps even dangerous.

Responding to Mr. Clinton's worldwide hunt for foreign policy "successes" to patch together a lasting legacy, the White House and State Department are pushing to complete a "deal" on missiles with the North Koreans to allow Mr. Clinton to add North Korea to his legacy list. Americans and the incoming new administration should have deep reservations regarding a hurried state visit to North Korea in the last month of the Clinton administration.

We in Congress are, at most, only guardedly encouraged that the North Korean leadership is starting to recognize that ties with the rest of the world and the requisite restraint of its nuclear and missile proliferation policies are in its national interests. Secretary Albright's October visit to North Korea and North Korean President Kim Jong-Il's statements on the possibility of restraining the DPRK missile program are signs that Mr. Kim may actually be re-evaluating North Korea's isolation. Most encouraging, of course, is the continued engagement between the two Koreas, even as one-sided as it still remains.

It is unambiguously premature to consider a state visit. North Korea repeatedly has demonstrated its proclivity for radically reversing its positions, backpedaling, and engaging in intentionally provocative and confrontational behavior. Pyongyang has mastered the art of brinkmanship, continually seeking to extract financial rewards in return for a temporary improvement in behavior. We should never assume that Mr. Kim has suddenly committed to transforming himself or his country. The North has merely agreed to a moratorium on missile testing - undoubtedly missile development activities continue without restraint. Equally important, we have seen little or no progress with the North Koreans on issues of serious concern to the United States and to our major allies in the region, particularly Japan.

A presidential visit would reward North Korea without its having made any significant commitments on missile programs - both long-range and short-range missile programs. The administration has not shared with Congress or the American people the nature of the "deal" that the Clinton administration is reportedly trying to achieve prior to a Clinton visit. A key question that the administration has yet to answer is what types of missiles the "deal" would include. While the administration's concern has been focused on development of long-range missiles that could potentially be targeted at the United States, we should also be deeply concerned about North Korea's short-range missile program and the security threat it may pose to Japan, South Korea and U.S. forces stationed in the region. There are also very serious lingering concerns regarding North Korea's nuclear program and its compliance with the 1994 Agreed Framework. Reports suggest that North Korea continues to seek external assistance for its nuclear ambitions and that it has sought to acquire critical dual-use equipment in Europe and Japan.

Unlike China or former Soviet bloc countries, North Korea has not undertaken any steps with regard to economic or trade reform. Instead, it has sought massive international assistance to feed its people without being willing to change its economic system. To its credit, the United States has put the lives of innocent women and children above politics - our humanitarian aid donations are now sufficiently large to provide food for virtually every child in North Korea - if they are receiving it. However, the leadership in Pyongyang seems unfazed by the suffering of its people. Certainly, we have no evidence that Mr. Kim has decided to undertake any political reforms or steps to grant his people greater human rights protections.

It is striking that the United States has not established the most basic level of diplomatic ties with North Korea because of its continued designation as a state sponsor of terrorism and yet a presidential trip is still being considered. A state visit prior to concluding significant agreements on these outstanding issues would be rewarding Mr. Kim and the North Koreans without having obtained any commitments, and it is highly doubtful whether such a premature presidential visit would be in the interests of the United States or its regional allies. President-elect Bush and his administration must be given the opportunity of further developing U.S. relations with North Korea with careful deliberation and in close consultation with our allies in the region.

The new administration will have diminished diplomatic leverage and flexibility in negotiating with North Korea if Mr. Clinton's state visit has already taken place. Rushed negotiations with a totalitarian state, such as North Korea, on such crucial matters as missile proliferation will definitely not result in the best foreign policy decision-making.

Therefore, in the interests of the American people, U.S. allies, and our future president, I call upon Mr. Clinton to reconsider any ill-conceived plans for a last minute state visit to North Korea.

Rep. Doug Bereuter, Nebraska Republican, is vice chairman of the House Committee on International Relations and chairman of the subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific.

-------- russia

Russia Tentatively OKs Waste Imports

Associated Press
December 21, 2000 Filed at 5:22 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Russia-Nuclear.html

MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia's Atomic Energy Ministry on Thursday won preliminary approval of its dream of earning as much as $20 billion by importing other countries' nuclear waste for processing -- up to 21,000 tons of it over the next decade.

Environmentalists say it will turn Russia into the world's nuclear dump.

The State Duma, or lower house of parliament, on Thursday approved by 319-38 the proposal to bring spent nuclear fuel rods to Russia. It must clear two more readings, pass the upper chamber and be signed by President Vladimir Putin to become law.

Proponents stressed that Russia should take advantage of its Cold War-era nuclear and scientific facilities, that it could make up to $20 billion over 10 years, and that the money could help clean up radiation spills in Russia.

``We'll get financing and won't disgracefully beg the International Monetary Fund for money as we do now,'' Atomic Energy Minister Yevgeny Adamov said.

Russian and foreign environmental groups said Russia should treat its own nuclear waste before importing more radioactive material.

The environmental group Greenpeace described the promise to use profits for cleanup as a public relations ploy.

``We see this as a disaster for the Russian people,'' Greenpeace spokesman Jon Walter said. ``It will create another Chernobyl generation, whose lives will be cut short by radioactive contamination.'' Chernobyl was the site of the 1986 nuclear disaster in neighboring Ukraine.

The Atomic Energy ministry wants to get Western funds to expand the Russian nuclear industry, ``whose disregard for safety and the environment is starkly demonstrated'' by past mistakes, Greenpeace said in a statement.

The program to import waste foresees a market in Europe and Asia for the service, which would solve temporarily the problem of spent fuel rods piling up at civilian nuclear reactors.

Nuclear power stations around the world have about 200,000 tons of waste in temporary storage.

For a fee, spent fuel would be sent by armored train to Russia's Mayak facility near Chelyabinsk in the Ural Mountains for reprocessing.

The recycling process extracts useable nuclear material from the spent rods while reducing their potential to be used in weapons, the Nuclear Ministry has said.

Mayak has been the site of several accidents, including a 1957 waste facility explosion that contaminated 9,200 square miles. The region has been called the most radioactive place on the planet because of Soviet-era nuclear waste dumping into lakes and rivers.

France and Britain are the only countries now operating commercial reprocessing plants.

A 1992 law forbids importing nuclear materials from countries other than former East Bloc nations with existing contracts. Russia now imports spent fuel rods from Ukraine, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Hungary for reprocessing, a system established during Soviet times.

---

Russia considers importing nuclear waste

USA Today
12/21/00- Updated 10:31 AM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/world/nwsthu03.htm
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Russia-Nuclear-Waste.html
http://us.f23.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login?.rand=4krvk0f1b1g6r

MOSCOW (AP) - Lawmakers on Thursday tentatively approved a law allowing Russia to import spent nuclear fuel rods for reprocessing, a plan that could bring the country $20 billion - and 21,000 tons of nuclear waste.

The Russian Atomic Energy Ministry said that the money, which Russia would earn over 10 years, could be used to clean up past radioactive spills in Russia.

The proposal has been in the works for years. It is fiercely opposed by environmental groups, who say it amounts to selling downtrodden Russia as the world's nuclear waste dump.

The Duma - the legislature's lower house - overwhelmingly passed the law on the first reading, but it must clear two more readings, pass the parliament's upper chamber and be signed by President Vladimir Putin before it takes effect.

Proponents said Russia could earn much-needed foreign income by taking advantage of the country's Cold War-era nuclear facilities.

''We'll get financing and won't disgracefully beg the International Monetary Fund for money as we do now,'' Atomic Energy Minister Yevgeny Adamov said.

The environmental group Greenpeace said the promise to use profits to cleanup past nuclear disasters was a public relations ploy.

The ministry just wants ''to get Western money for an expansion of the Russian nuclear industry, whose disregard for safety and the environment is starkly demonstrated'' by past mistakes, a statement from Greenpeace said Thursday.

The program foresees a market in Europe and Asia by offering a temporary solution to the problem of spent fuel rods piling up at civilian nuclear reactors.

Nuclear power stations around the world currently have about 200,000 tons of waste in temporary storage.

For a fee, small shipments would be sent to Russia's Mayak facility in the central Ural Mountains. They would travel by rail in armored wagons.

The recycling process extracts useable nuclear material from the spent nuclear rods while reducing their potential to be used in weapons, the Russian Nuclear Ministry has said.

Under current law, waste left over after reprocessing must be returned to the country of origin. The new measure would allow Russia to keep the waste.

France and Britain are currently the only countries operating commercial reprocessing plants.

Both Russian and foreign environmental groups object to the Russian ministry's plan, saying Russia should treat its own nuclear waste before receiving more.

A 1992 law forbids importing nuclear materials from foreign countries other than former East Bloc nations with existing contracts. Russia now treats spent fuel rods from Ukraine, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Hungary under a system established during Soviet times.

-------- taiwan

Taiwan Justices Begin Reviewing Nuclear Decision

Inside China Today
Dec 21, 2000
http://www.insidechina.com/news.php3?id=232619

TAIPEI -- (Reuters) Taiwan's Council of Grand Justices, which interprets the constitution, began reviewing on Thursday a cabinet decision to end construction on a nuclear power plant, which had ignited an acrimonious partisan feud.

Taiwan's premier Chang Chun-hsiung announced in October it would scrap the island's US$5.5 billion fourth nuclear power plant, now already one-third complete, citing safety concerns.

The opposition-dominated legislature challenged the decision, saying it had already approved the budget for the nuclear plant and the cabinet's move was unconstitutional.

On Thursday, representatives from both the Executive Yuan, or cabinet, and the lawmaking Legislative Yuan began submitting evidence and making their case to the Grand Justices.

"The legislature's budget merely gives the Executive Yuan the right to build the fourth nuclear plant. It is not an obligation," cabinet representative Hsu Tsung-li told reporters on the sidelines of the grand justice hearing.

Lawmakers called the cabinet's override of the parliament's budget a show of bad faith.

"If the Executive Yuan alone can make decisions on a major budget item and policy like the fourth nuclear plant, then I would like to ask if it can accept the legislature's supervision on other major policies and spending," queried opposition People First Party lawmaker Chou Hsi-wei.

The nine-member Council of Grand Justices is expected to take several months before making their decision, judicial officials said. A two-thirds majority is required before the judicial body hands down a ruling.

New president Chen Shui-bian's Democratic Progressive Party has traditionally opposed nuclear power, and he initiated a review of the nuclear plant project after taking office in May, sweeping out the long-ruling Nationalist Party.

The cabinet decided in October to scrap the nuclear project in favor of private liquefied natural gas plants, ending a pet Nationalist project.

The cancellation crushed budding multipartisan cooperation and led the opposition Nationalist, People First, and New Parties to form a loose coalition and call for Chen's dismissal.

Most business leaders favor the nuclear plant, fearing power shortages in the future.

Ratings agency Standard & Poor's cut state utility firm Taiwan Power Co's long-term rating to "AA-" from "AA" with a negative outlook, after placing the company on creditwatch following the cancellation.

-------- ukraine

Ukraine's Kuchma in Moscow for Talks on Energy Debts

Reuters
December 21, 2000 Filed at 2:46 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-russia-.html

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Ukraine's embattled President Leonid Kuchma arrived in Moscow on Thursday for a two-day visit likely to be dominated by the thorny issue of energy debts to Russia.

Late on Thursday Kuchma and Russian President Vladimir Putin met at a riverside state residence, but no details of the meeting were released.

Senior officials in both states had said a memorandum between Russia and Ukraine to restructure gas debts of more than $1.4 billion might be signed during the visit.

The deal, unveiled during the leaders' last meeting in the Belarussian capital Minsk earlier this month, is a major breakthrough in a long-running row which has overshadowed relations between the Slav neighbors.

Kuchma's press service said that besides energy issues the Ukrainian and Russian leaders would also discuss the prospects for improved trade as well as economic and political relations.

The Interfax-Ukraine news agency said Kuchma would visit Russia's second city St Petersburg on Friday.

Back in Ukraine, Kuchma faces growing criticism sparked by the disappearance of journalist Georgiy Gongadze. The opposition have implicated Kuchma and his entourage in the affair, accusations the president has vigorously denied.

Gongadze, whose www.pravda.com.ua Web site had been harshly critical of Kuchma, went missing in mid-September. His friends and colleagues say they believe a decapitated corpse found outside the capital, Kiev, is that of the journalist.

The Gongadze case has sparked protests in the center of Kiev, where students set up a tent camp last week. The daily newspaper Den said on Thursday that protests had started to subside after Kuchma met protesters on Wednesday.

At a news conference in Moscow, Kuchma denied any connection to Gongadze's disappearance and accused elements in his own country of masterminding the deepening scandal.

``Big money and professionals stand behind this,'' Kuchma said. ''I tend to believe that they are ours, Ukrainians.

``I tried to find a logic in all these actions but could not see any,'' he added.

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

Bush on a sticky wicket with N. Korea

The Hindu
Thursday, December 21, 2000
By F.J. Khergamvala http://www.indiaserver.com/thehindu/2000/12/21/stories/03210005.htm

TOKYO, DEC. 20. As the Clinton administration winds down to give way to a Bush administration that threatens to make the national missile defence (NMD) an essential ingredient of its strategic plans, North Korea's missiles development policy waits at the crossroads between what has been offered to Mr. Bill Clinton and what is acceptable to Mr. George W. Bush.

The entire question of a Clinton visit to Pyongyang has boiled down to the missiles deal, which in turn, may lead to the U.S. lifting many sanctions and providing or blessing aid to North Korea. That in turn implies not merely recognition but firm intent on the part of the U.S. to help preserve the North Korean system. But aid also requires the so far absent consensus among the Republicans. North Korea gains prestige from a Clinton visit, but would probably give little away without assurances that Mr. Bush will pick up from where Mr. Clinton left.

When the Clinton administration began debating the overall viability of a national missile defence scheme, the real strategic motive was China but the U.S. used the ``rogue'' North Korean State's missiles capabilities to cloak its real justification. Mr. Kim Jong Il has put many missile related concessions up for bargain, but acceptance by the U.S. could also undermine the justifications advanced by Mr. Bush for developing the missile defence. The transition in the U.S. takes place at a time when the terms are still being negotiated. Mr. Kim Jong Il may have timed it such that a negotiation begun by one administration could either commit the next one, or at the very least lock any post-Clinton administration into his singular purpose, that of obtaining commitment to survival of the North Korean system.

The next Secretary of State, Gen. Colin Powell and the National Security Advisor, Ms. Condoleezza Rice have made fairly explicit that the Bush administration will go ahead with national missile defence. Neither have recently linked the NMD with North Korea. In a statement that bore no hint of a compromise on NMD, but which could only be inferred to include Pyongyang, Gen. Powell said the time had come to move in the direction ``to take away the currency associated with strategic offensive weapons and the blackmail that is inherent in some regime having that kind of a weapon and thinking they can hold us hostage.''

Over the past six years, the U.S. has negotiated successfully with blackmail, and reciprocally, so too has North Korea. Dr. William Perry, who as Defence Secretary, scarcely uttered a sentence without the term ``rogue State,'' two years later became the Clinton administration's chief coordinator for North Korea. He eventually did the carrot and stick deal with the North. It was a deal conceptually founded on the South Korean President, Mr. Kim Dae Jung's sunshine policy of engagement but negotiated by brandishing U.S. military power and financial influence in international lending institutions. But it was also Part II of the 1994 Agreed Framework on Pyongyang's nuclear capabilities.

Many saw the contradiction between the rhetoric about the North as a ``rogue State'' (now ``States of concern'') and constant, serious engagement with North Korea over six years. North Korea's shrewd policy-making architects also saw the opportunity to follow through the 1994 deal and advance its foreign policy of extortion.

In 1994, the U.S. and North Korea were absolutely on the brink of war on Pyongyang's nuclear programme. A back down by both led to an Agreed Framework, whereby the North would abandon, step by step its nuclear programme, if a U.S. led consortium would take step by step measures to provide it with two replacement 1,000 megawatt light water reactors and heavy fuel oil until the new reactors were ready. If a deal could be done on the nuclear programme, the North felt the U.S. might also see fit to engage it on a bargain on missiles.

---

Why U.S. missile defense is a bad idea

San Jose Mercury News
Thursday, Dec. 21, 2000 in the San Jose Mercury News
World Stories from The Mercury News
Globe and Mail (Toronto)
http://www0.mercurycenter.com/premium/world/docs/worldvu21.htm

(Opinion) It was a scene guaranteed to cause conniptions in Washington. In Ottawa on Monday, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and Russian President Vladimir Putin stood side by side, discussing their mutual concerns about the U.S. military's big project: national missile defense.

The Americans have been leaning hard on Canada to join the project, which has gained renewed life with the election of Republican George W. Bush as president. One U.S. admiral even warned that if we didn't join, they might not shoot down missiles headed for Canada.

Before brass buttons start popping, though, the Americans should consider a few points.

First, Canada has not said whether it will join the project. That decision has yet to be made. Second, Chrétien did not say Canada would mediate between Russia and the United States on the missile-defense issue. Third, Canada has every right to express concern about this worrying project and to discuss those concerns with the Russians. Though some people seem not to have heard, the Cold War is over.

In a world that still bristles with nuclear weapons, our survival rests on the concept known as mutually assured destruction, aptly nicknamed MAD. No one would win, so no one is tempted to attack in the first place.

Mad as it may be, the concept has worked. One of the reasons it has worked is that the United States, Russia and other nuclear powers have agreed not to develop comprehensive defense systems that would cancel out the deterrent effect of mutually assured destruction.

National missile defense would fly in the face of that agreement. Though Washington says it is designed to fend off attacks from rogue regimes such as North Korea and Iraq, other countries such as Russia and China might conclude that the U.S. was trying to make itself invulnerable to missile attacks from any source. They might then try to build better offensive systems. Result: a new arms race.

-----

The New Push for a Missile Shield

New York Times
December 21, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/21/opinion/L21MIS.html

To the Editor:

Re "Prelude to a Missile Defense" (editorial, Dec. 19):

The Bush administration's plan to install a missile defense system lacks common sense. Such a maneuver is motivated by fear and politics, not scientific research and the appropriate weighing of pros and cons.

Unfortunately, no antimissile system will ever be 100 percent reliable. Even if near-perfect technology were available, resourceful and motivated countries would almost certainly develop novel offensive countermeasures, as history has repeatedly shown.

Moreover, it seems foolhardy to invest a disproportionate amount of resources in a less than adequate nuclear defense system when chemical and biological weaponry appears to be an equal, or perhaps even greater, threat to our national security in the coming years.

YOSEF BRODY New York, Dec. 19, 2000

•To the Editor:

You make a plausible case for a go-slow approach to missile defense (editorial, Dec. 19). But this argument is now an old chestnut in strategic thinking. Ever since President Ronald Reagan first proposed a national space-based shield, we've been researching and researching and researching. It's time to stop lining the pockets of the missile defense research establishment and put our money where our mouth is: either build the thing or drop the idea permanently.

It is now clear that the dream of a perfect defense against nuclear attack is not going away. Therefore, our best option is to build some kind of shield right away.

CARL BIRMAN Brooklyn, Dec. 19, 2000

•To the Editor:

You write about perfecting the technology of a national missile defense system (editorial, Dec. 19). But whether technically feasible or not, the system is flawed as a concept. Since the inception of the nuclear age, the United States has possessed reliable protection against a nuclear attack. It is called deterrence, and it has worked for half a century.

Neither the Soviet Union, with its vast nuclear arsenal, nor China, with its smaller capability, launched a nuclear attack against the United States, out of fear of a devastating nuclear reprisal. If deterrence works against these powers, there is little reason to think that it won't work against lesser emerging nuclear states.

Further, a national missile defense would cause China (as you note) as well as new nuclear adversaries to develop larger arsenals than they otherwise would.

So a national missile defense would offer no additional security while costing billions of taxpayer dollars, the alienation of allies and a possible increase in the number of nuclear weapons in the world.

BRIAN ALEXANDER Cincinnati, Dec. 20, 2000

•To the Editor:

Re "Prelude to a Missile Defense" (editorial, Dec. 19):

Why is it that no one discusses "cargo-container defense"? Surely the first nuclear weapon delivered to New York will come by cargo container, the truck of international commerce. As with missile defense, this may be an unsolvable problem, but by tackling it, we would be addressing a real threat.

PHILIP E. NORGREN Stamford, Conn., Dec. 19, 2000

•To the Editor:

You pointed out the bad consequences from building a missile defense system (editorial, Dec. 19). But there is more involved. What good could that money do on the world stage, along with positive diplomatic policies aimed at bringing the world together?

Instead, we hear the incoming Bush administration starting to beat the military-power drum with talk about fighting and winning wars. We hear words that make our allies uneasy. We do not see much sensitivity to what other countries are thinking.

Wouldn't it be wiser to work on political and diplomatic solutions than to rely on a fantasy defense system while playing tough guy around the world?

BAYARD MICHAEL Boulder, Colo., Dec. 19, 2000

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

-------- connecticut

USA Today
12/21/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Conneticut

Groton - General Dynamics' Electric Boat division gave a few lucky employees $150,000 in prizes through a lottery for workers who didn't use all their sick days this year. The shipyard started the lottery six years ago to cut costs. This year, 1,540 salaried employees who didn't use up their allotted sick days were eligible for prizes. The prizes included $2,500 cash prizes, gift certificates and free parking spaces.

-------- vermont

Corrections

New York Times
December 21, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/21/pageoneplus/corrections.html

An article in Business Day yesterday about renewed interest in old nuclear plants misstated the name of the company that is buying the Nine Mile Point plants. It is Constellation Nuclear, not Entergy. The article also misstated the name of the plant that could be run by the original workers' grandchildren. It is Vermont Yankee, not Yankee Rowe.

-------- washington

Flour Hanford To Manage Nuke Reserve

Associated Press
December 21, 2000 Filed at 8:35 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Nuclear-Contract.html

YAKIMA, Wash. (AP) -- The U.S. Department of Energy is extending for six years its contract with Fluor Hanford, which has managed the Hanford nuclear reservation since October 1996.

The $3.8 billion contract carries with it the opportunity for Fluor to earn about $168 million in performance-based fees, said Keith Klein, DOE's Hanford manager.

``We come to this conclusion following a very tough but productive year,'' Klein said in a teleconference Thursday.

``We've seen Fluor demonstrate improved ability to make progress, especially with the timely movement of spent nuclear fuel from the K Basins.

``We're impressed with Fluor's willingness to make changes, aggressively attack problems and, in the final analysis, perform.''

Last year, DOE fined Fluor $330,000 -- the biggest fine issued by the department -- for violating safety rules in the K Basins project, one of Hanford's top priority radiation cleanup efforts, which for years was delayed by technical difficulties and cost overruns.

But by December 1999, the department said Fluor had corrected the problems satisfactorily.

This month, Fluor began moving 2,300 tons of spent nuclear fuel from the aging, leaky basins, which are old reactor cooling pools 400 yards from the Columbia River. The corroded fuel rods are being prepared for interim storage and moved to the central part of the 560-square-mile reservation.

The contract calls for multiyear planning and goals, rather than an annual approach, which has been more typical of Hanford projects.

---

Engineers Look for Nuke Plant Leak

Associated Press
December 21, 2000 Filed at 7:49 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-BRF-Nuclear-Plant-Leak.html

RICHLAND, Wash. (AP) -- Engineers were trying to determine Thursday if there's a leaky fuel rod in the reactor at a nuclear power plant.

Instruments three weeks ago indicated a possible leak with slightly elevated isotope readings in recirculated water at the Columbia Generating Station. New numbers this week show readings at less than one-tenth the level that would normally indicate a leak.

Over the weekend, power generation was reduced to 75 percent at the 1,200-megawatt plant for some rod adjustments, which takes about two or three hours. Engineers had hoped to find the problem then.

``It may not be a leak. It may be a problem with instrumentation,'' said Don McManman, a spokesman for Energy Northwest, a 13-utility public power consortium that owns the nuclear plant.

-------- us nuc politics

Bush missile stance could mean rocky road

San Jose Mercury News
Thursday, Dec. 21, 2000 in the San Jose Mercury News
World Stories from The Mercury News
Straights Times (Singapore)
http://www0.mercurycenter.com/premium/world/docs/worldvu21.htm

(Opinion) The U.S. President-elect George W. Bush has nominated Gen. Colin Powell as his secretary of state and Condoleezza Rice as national security adviser. Together with former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney as vice president, they will bring stature to the new president's foreign-policy team. Their knowledge and experience will compensate for Bush's lack of curiosity about the world and inexperience.

It remains to be seen, however, what sort of foreign policy they will fashion. Powell began well by saying all the right things when Bush introduced him. With a command of the issues that tended to place his boss in the shade, he signaled that U.S. foreign policy will not shift dramatically with the new administration, but indicated that there will be subtle shifts, in tone as well as substance. A Bush administration, he suggested, will take a tougher line toward Russia and China -- they are neither enemies nor ``strategic partners,'' he said.

Of more immediate concern to Asia are the plans for a national missile-defense system and attitudes toward China. Conventional wisdom has it that a Republican administration will soft-pedal human rights issues, so U.S. relations with China are likely to be better, but this view may be a little out of date.

Hopefully, Bush will soften his rhetoric once he is in office, but if he does not, Asia (and indeed, the world) will have to negotiate some rough passages ahead.

Unfortunately for the world, every time a new U.S. administration comes into office, a period of experimentation ensues, when the new team tries new postures, only to discover soon enough that the reality is a tough master that does not allow for free-form experimentation.

-- straitstimes.asia1.com.sg

---

Bush introduces Colin Powell as his nominee for Secretary of State
Back to the Future Is W's team up to the job?

MSNBC
12/21/00
By Joseph S. Nye Jr. NEWSWEEK
http://www.msnbc.com/news/506682.asp

Dec. 21 - George W. Bush sent several important signals by making Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice his first cabinet appointments.

AT HOME, he was mending fences with an African-American community that had voted by a nine-to-one margin for his opponent, Al Gore. In foreign-policy terms, he was signaling continuity with the past: Both had served with distinction in his father's administration, Powell as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Rice as a key member of the National Security Council. On Wednesday, with his nomination of Paul O'Neill at Treasury, Bush has also demonstrated that he's determined to choose top talent.

The most immediate effect of Bush's foreign-policy choices could be a dramatic revival of the State Department. Plagued by low morale and starved for adequate resources to carry out its tasks, State has long been the sick man of Washington politics. The problems antedate the Clinton administration. During the Nixon, Ford, Carter and Reagan eras, State frequently lost struggles with the National Security Council. Colin Powell, as a larger-than-life figure with a constituency of his own, is well placed to resist White House encroachments on State's authority. Moreover, Rice is a protégée of former national security advisor Brent Scowcroft, whose tenure in the first Bush administration is often cited as a model of how to handle the job.

As a military hero and former JCS chairman, Powell's background will also help level the playing field in State's relations with the Pentagon. That's not to say Powell-the-diplomat will necessarily have the upper hand in relations with military brass. State may be in charge of diplomacy with other countries, but the secretary of Defense and the regional commanders in chief play significant roles in international relations. And the Pentagon commands sixteen times the budgetary resources of State, greatly amplifying the military's voice overseas as well as on Capitol Hill. What's more, Dick Cheney, as a former secretary of Defense and an activist vice president, could prove to be the wild card in this deck.

Although foreign-policy played only a minor role before the election, one area of contention between Bush and Gore was whether the United States should become involved in humanitarian missions.

CLUES FROM THE CAMPAIGN

How will the team come down on key national security issues? There are clues in statements made during the campaign. Although foreign-policy played only a minor role before the election, one area of contention between Bush and Gore was whether the United States should become involved in humanitarian missions. President-elect Bush said he would be less likely to intervene than the Clinton administration, and Rice argued that the United States should take military action only when national interests are stake. Powell, moreover, is known for a similarly cautious approach to the use of American troops. That means African-Americans who think these first two appointments make it more likely that Americans will become involved in conflicts in Sierra Leone or Congo are likely to be disappointed. On the other hand, the political dynamics of intervention in the Information Age are difficult to control. After all, it was President Bush, moved by pictures of starving infants, who placed American troops in Somalia in l992. And European allies have already sought reassurance that a new administration will not pull American troops out of NATO peacekeeping missions in the Balkans.

The issue of nuclear weapons also came up briefly during the campaign. Bush presented more ambitious plans than Gore for reductions in offensive weapons and for building defenses against ballistic missiles. But any effort to make deep cuts in offensive missiles will encounter resistance from the Joint Chiefs. And on both offense and defense, ambitious proposals are likely to face opposition in a closely divided Congress. Given the growing consensus that the Clinton plan for national missile defense was the wrong technical system at the wrong time and the fact that Clinton postponed a decision on deployment after a test failed last fall, Powell and Rice would be wise to advise Bush to undertake a new study before plunging ahead.

China also played a modest role in the campaign, with Bush suggesting a somewhat more hard-line attitude. But changes in China policy are unlikely. Since the Nixon administration, American policy toward China, particularly in Congress, has been an odd alliance of left-wing liberals and right-wing conservatives against a moderate middle that has tried to engage China while creating conditions (such as reinforcing the U.S.-Japan relationship) that discourage aggression. On the sensitive issue of Taiwan, this has meant acceptance of "one China" while rejecting any use of force on China's part to reunite with Taiwan.

Not only does Bush have the authority of commander in chief, but there is a strong tendency for the American public to rally round the president during times of crisis.

Some commentators have speculated that the close election and prolonged process of decision will weaken the foreign policy of Bush's presidency. On issues that require budgetary approval, President-elect Bush will have to endure tough negotiations with Congress. But on issues under the control of the executive branch, such as the Middle East peace process, his powers will be little diminished. Not only does Bush have the authority of commander in chief, but there is a strong tendency for the American public to rally round the president during times of crisis. And the presence of skilled professionals like Powell and Rice at the heart of things will only help rally public opinion.

NEW GLOBAL THREAT

The real question is how Bush's foreign policy team will cope with new issues. When Powell and Rice last served in government, the Web was in its infancy. Now, the information revolution and globalization are transforming world politics. In a report released last week, the National Intelligence Council warned that issues like the availability of water and food, population pressures, the spread of diseases like AIDS, transnational crime, cyberterrorism and the spread of weapons of mass destruction will increasingly affect the national security of the United States.

That brings us to Treasury. In tapping Paul O'Neill, Bush has turned to a man with a stellar reputation as the chief executive of Alcoa, broad interests as a business statesman, and prior experience in the White House as deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget. With O'Neill at the helm, Treasury will be a strong player. One of the interesting features of the last administration was the increased influence of the Treasury Department on a broad range of foreign affairs, from bailing out the Mexican peso and weighing in on China's membership in the World Trade Organization to countering the money-laundering activities of transnational criminals. All that means that Powell and Rice will have to coordinate not just with Defense, but with Treasury as well.

The first Bush administration did a masterful job of presiding over the end of the Cold War. The second Bush administration will have to mind the classical problems, while also coping with the new issues of globalization. Will they be up to it?

Joseph S. Nye Jr. is dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and co-author of the recently published "Governance in a Globalizing World"

---

'Reminiscence and Farewell'

Washington Post
Thursday, December 21, 2000; Page A03
By MARY McGRORY
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34473-2000Dec20?language=printer

No one had planned his farewell speech to the Senate more meticulously than Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the body's most prolific author, its only intellectual and time-tested prophet.

Moynihan started preparing his remarks in October. He wrote several drafts, which were circulated to friends. The press was told it must wait even to know the subject. The four-term senator may have anticipated an audience: He has fans in the Senate who are, as he intends them to be, dazzled by his erudition. All recognize that they are ankle-high when measured against him. He's 6-foot-4 in many ways.

But the last day came, and by the time that Moynihan got to the floor, the Senate was beyond listening, even to him. It had been a trying day. A fierce argument about Alaska's gluttonous sea lions, an endangered species that eats so much pollock that they are endangering the livelihood of fishermen, had consumed much of the day. Moynihan was co-sponsor of an Amtrak bill of much consequence to New York, which had gone down. When Moynihan hit the floor at 5:48 last Friday, six others were clamoring for recognition.

When his final turn on the Senate floor came, the often discursive Moynihan spoke succinctly. He asked to be allowed a "moment of reminiscence and farewell." He handed his statement over to the clerk to be printed in the Congressional Record.

His best friend in the Senate, who is also retiring, Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, thinks the whole anticlimax was appropriate. "Once again, the Senate is not listening to what it needs to hear. How many times has he been disregarded? I think it's perfect."

Kerrey cited the most notable instance of Moynihan's being ahead of his time: In 1965, in Moynihan's report about the black family, he detailed the dire effects of illegitimacy and fatherlessness. There was an outcry among black leaders, and timid white politicians did not dare echo such unpopular views.

Moynihan also foresaw the demise of the Soviet Union. He called for the abolition of the CIA, which missed the poverty and potholes in Soviet life. He is that rare prophet who is also a skilled numbers-cruncher.

Moynihan's interest extends beyond Social Security, Medicare and arcane matters before the Senate Finance Committee. For 35 years, he worked for the redemption of Pennsylvania Avenue, the "Avenue of the Presidents," which in Kennedy's time was a place of tacky bars and souvenir stands. Now it has been restored to majesty and Moynihan lives in a new apartment building overlooking the scene.

He is the only member of the Senate to have a stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue named after him. Moynihan Place, which occurs near 13th Street, was chosen after a site at Seventh Street had been rejected. It was dedicated to Indiana and had a statue devoted to Temperance, which greatly amused the bibulous senator, but he turned down the site because he did not want to alienate Hoosiers.

Pal Kerrey got the appropriation for Moynihan Place passed in the classified section of the intelligence bill, and the pair got a great chuckle out of that.

From a large portfolio of potential subjects, he picked one that receives no attention whatev er and was hardly mentioned in the recent campaign -- our nuclear arsenal.

He thinks we should reduce the thousands of nuclear bombs we keep at the ready. He doesn't say what the numbers should be. He just thinks we should be talking about it.

He discusses the importance of some maturity in our policy on government secrecy and its deleterious impact on science and scientists, who would be disinclined to do weapons research for a paranoid government.

It is this ability to see around corners that makes the Senate sage. I remember when John Kennedy was shot, Moynihan was desperate to see the alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, taken into federal custody. He went from one government official to another begging for action to be taken. None was, and the consequences are still with us.

Moynihan's discussion of the need to face the consequences of our unexamined nuclear policy might not have been heeded even if it had been heard. Decades ago, he went before a meeting of New York's Democratic Party. He talked to them about the tensions between India and Pakistan and the "Islamic bomb." The bosses, eager for party talk, were furious, but he was right.

But they forgave him because they knew he was exceptional. Even if he had worked once for Richard M. Nixon, and was a "new Democrat" -- a self-proclaimed disciple of hawkish Scoop Jackson -- before there was such a thing, and has now reverted to traditional Democratic views, they knew there wasn't anybody like him.

-------- us nuc waste

Yucca Mountain backer pulls out as energy secretary choice
Ex-Louisiana senator denies Nevada outcry influenced his decision

Las Vegas Review-Journal
Thursday, December 21, 2000
By STEVE TETREAULT DONREY WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON -- Former Sen. J. Bennett Johnston of Louisiana took himself out of the running Thursday as a potential energy secretary for George W. Bush's administration.

Johnston, a Democrat with strong ties to energy industries and a leading proponent of building a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, said his decision was for family reasons.

"I have removed myself from consideration," he said in a statement. "I decided it would be unfair to ask my dear wife, Mary, who spent many years being a political widow, to be asked once again to put aside her wishes for my political career. She would've said yes had I insisted."

Johnston, 68, is a partner in a successful Washington consulting firm, Johnston and Associates, whose clients include energy and defense firms. He retired from the Senate in 1996 after 24 years.

According to a news report, Johnston said he was contacted by Vice President-elect Richard Cheney on Monday with what he took to be an offer for the job. After calling colleagues and sleeping on it for several days, he said he decided Wednesday morning to take a pass.

Reports that Johnston was on the verge of being selected spurred frantic telephone calls Tuesday from Nevada leaders to Bush's transition team, including Chief of Staff Andrew Card.

It couldn't be determined what role the objections from Nevada had in Johnston's decision to withdraw. State leaders said they were not aware of opposition to Johnston from any other part of the country.

"We sent word up to the Bush people that it would be basically a slap in all our faces out here, and to please consider other people, and that we would do everything we could to stop it," said Sen.-elect John Ensign, R-Nev.

"They told us that (Johnston) wasn't going to do it, but it wasn't until this morning that we got confirmation."

Tucker Eskew, a Bush spokesman, declined to discuss Johnston.

"Our comment is that we will not join in the public speculation," he said. "President-elect Bush is moving with dispatch and is well under way to deciding."

Johnston said the objections from Nevada were not surprising and played no role in his decision. He wrestled with Nevada lawmakers ever since writing the 1987 bill that singled out Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as the only site to be studied for a nuclear waste repository.

Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., said he thought otherwise. "The expressions we collectively made was that a Johnston nomination would face a very difficult time in the Senate, and Harry Reid was prepared to do everything to hold it up," hesaid. "Nobody wants to be dragged through a bitter nomination fight."

Sen. Reid, D-Nev., said he began working the phones Tuesday, shortly after learning that Johnston might be nominated.

"I am of course very happy he (withdrew)," Reid said. "It's good for the state of Nevada and for the country. Bennett Johnston is someone I consider a friend, but he's not somebody I want to be secretary of energy."

Johnston was chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resource Committee. He had close ties to energy industries and was considered a champion of nuclear power and oil and gas development.

Reid had enlisted environmental groups to start making noise against Johnston. On Wednesday, they applauded his withdrawal.

"We're very pleased to see he dropped out of the race. It would not have boded well for the DOE to have someone with such close ties to the energy industry," said Wenonah Hauter, an energy director at the Ralph Nader-founded Public Citizen organization.

Johnston is at least the second person to turn away from the post. Last week, Sen. John Breaux, D-La., met with Bush but said afterward he wasn't interested.

Others mentioned as possible energy secretary candidates are Alaska Gov. Tony Knowles; Rep. Ralph Hall, D-Texas; Thomas Kuhn, president of Edison Electric Institute; and Tony Garza, 40, a member of the Texas Railroad Commission.

This story is located at: http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2000/Dec-21-Thu-2000/news/15083147.html

-------- MILITARY

-------- arms sales

Trafficking proof points to Liberian

Infobeat
December 21, 2000
By EDITH M. LEDERER Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405461630

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Evidence of Liberian President Charles Taylor's involvement in illegal diamond and arms trafficking with Sierra Leone's rebels is ''100 percent'' solid, the top diamond expert on a U.N.-appointed panel said Wednesday.

The panel called Tuesday for an embargo on all diamonds from Liberia until it demonstrates that it is no longer involved in trafficking gems from and arms to war-ravaged Sierra Leone.

Taylor on Wednesday insisted his administration was not involved in any diamond smuggling or gun-running for Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Front rebels, with whom he has close ties.

But the panel's report accused the Liberian president of actively fueling the nine-year civil war in Sierra Leone, and with a small coterie of officials and businessmen, of controlling ``a covert sanctions-busting apparatus that includes international criminal activity and the arming of the RUF.''

``The sanctions-busting is fed by the smuggling of diamonds and the extraction of natural resources in both Liberia and areas under rebel control in Sierra Leone,'' it said. ``In addition, the sovereign right of Liberia to register planes and ships, and to issue diplomatic passports, is being misused in order to further the operations of this group.''

Ian Smillie of Canada, the diamond expert on the five-member panel, was asked Wednesday how strongly the panel believes in the evidence implicating Taylor.

``One hundred percent on both sides _ the business of diamonds going out through Liberia ... and the weapons going into Sierra Leone,'' he said.

The United Nations has banned diamond exports by rebels in Angola and Sierra Leone in a bid to strangle their ability to finance two of Africa's most brutal conflicts. In July, the United States and Britain charged that the presidents of Liberia and Burkina Faso were helping Sierra Leone's rebels sell diamonds and buy sophisticated weapons.

Smillie spoke outside the Security Council where the report had been expected to be formally introduced to the 15 members by Bangladesh's U.N. Ambassador Anwarul Chowdhury, chairman of the committee monitoring sanctions against Sierra Leone.

But in an indication of the sensitivity of the report's findings, Ukraine objected, saying it wanted more time to study the report, western diplomats said. Chowdhury expressed disappointment that the report would not be presented at an open council meeting, complaining that this ``works against transparency and openness.''

The report cites a shipment of arms from Ukraine which wound up in RUF hands via Burkina Faso and Liberia. It makes clear, though, that Burkina Faso's defense ministry provided an end-user certificate.

One of the report's key recommendations, however, could be troubling for Ukraine. It suggests that the Security Council consider slapping an embargo on weapons exports from producer countries, such as those in eastern Europe, to areas under regional or U.N. embargoes to stem the flow of arms.

Russia's U.N. Ambassador Sergey Lavrov, the current council president, was sympathetic to the Ukrainian request, diplomats said. ``The committee on sanctions has to discuss it first and then the council would be ready to receive the report as soon as the committee is ready,'' he said.

A U.S. official said the report lays the groundwork for sanctions

-------- colombia

Kidnapped Brits freed in Colombia

Infobeat
December 21, 2000
By ANDREW SELSKY Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405461878

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - Two Britons kidnapped while trekking across a lawless, jungle frontier have been freed after nine months in captivity.

``All we want is to get home for Christmas,'' Paul Winder, 29, one of the two freed adventurers, told a news conference Wednesday, a day after arriving safely in Colombia's capital.

Winder and Tom Hartdyke, 24, were released after negotiations involving the embassy and the International Committee of the Red Cross, embassy spokesman Johnny Welsh said. Their captors were not identified.

``As you can see we are well and in very good spirits in spite of our experiences during the past nine months,'' Winder said. ``However we are very tired and anxious to be reunited with our families in the UK as soon as possible.''

The pair then left to catch a British Airways flight to London.

The men disappeared in March while trekking from Panama to Colombia, reportedly to collect orchids.

In a short prepared statement, Winder said they were detained March 16 by an armed group while walking through the Darien Gap. He said the captors held them against their will and never identified themselves.

The Darien Gap is a roadless region in thick rainforest inhabited by Indian tribes, leftist Colombian rebels and right-wing Colombian paramilitary forces. Colombian armed groups routinely cross the border into Panama.

Three American missionaries _ David Mankins, Richard Tenenoff, and Mark Rich _ disappeared in the same area in 1993, in the Darien in Panama, and have not been found.

On Dec. 10, Winder said, they were released without explanation and set out on an eight-day walk to freedom through the jungles into northern Colombia. On Monday, they stumbled upon a park ranger near the Colombian town of Sautata.

With the ranger's help, they managed Tuesday to speak by radio and telephone with the British consul in Bogota, who helped arrange their trip back to the capital with the Red Cross.

Colombia has one of the highest kidnapping rates in the world with roughly 3,000 kidnappings a year. Armed groups _ most of them leftist rebels _ seize hostages for political gain or for ransom.

---

Colombia wants more

Washington Times
December 21, 2000
Embassy Row
James Morrison News and dispatches from the diplomatic corridor.
http://www.washtimes.com/world/embassy-20001221213432.htm

Colombian Ambassador Luis Moreno hopes the Bush administration can pull together at least one bipartisan coalition to support more money for his country to fight drug smugglers.

Mr. Moreno told the Associated Press that Colombia will need $600 million a year in addition to the $1.3 billion Congress approved earlier this year.

"This was a bipartisan policy," he said in a recent interview. "It began as a bipartisan policy and it should remain that way."

The aid package approved in the summer includes helicopters to help Colombia fight Marxist rebels who profit from the drug trade and protect the coca fields and cocaine laboratories.

The Clinton administration tied the use of the helicopters to combat guerrillas linked to the cocaine trade, not for the Colombian military to use to fight the broader civil war.

The AP, however, noted that some Republicans hope President-elect George W. Bush will drop that restriction and allow Colombian President Andres Pastrana a freer hand with U.S. military aid if current peace talks fail.

---

New York Times
December 21, 2000
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/21/world/21BRIE.html?pagewanted=all

COLOMBIA: BRITONS FREED Two Britons kidnapped in the Darien Gap rain forest on Colombia's Panamanian border were freed after nine months, the British Embassy said. Paul Winder and Tom Hartdyke were abducted in the same region where three American missionaries disappeared in 1993. The Darien Gap is a roadless swatch of jungle and rivers where left-wing rebels and right-wing death squads battle. Juan Forero (NYT)

-------- drug war

Drug danger in U.S. forests

USA Today
By Kevin Johnson,
12/21/00- Updated 07:44 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/nlead.htm

WASHINGTON - Drug seizures on federal forestlands from California to Appalachia are reaching near-record levels this year, and U.S. authorities increasingly are worried about the dangers posed to tourists by renegade marijuana growers protecting their turf. Through October, marijuana seizures on forestlands already were up by nearly 30% from last year, according to new U.S. Forest Service reports, a haul representing more than 1.3 million pounds of the plant. Authorities believe street value of the pot could run as high as $3,000 per pound.

Forestry officials say they fear that those growing marijuana in public forests are increasingly establishing links with international drug traffickers. The officials say they have seen signs that the renegade operations are using violence, or the threat of it, to protect their crops.

In California, where more than 500,000 pounds have been seized this year, agents have discovered large "farms" protected around the clock by armed guards. Earlier this year, a man and his 8-year-old son were critically wounded in northern California while tracking deer across a large marijuana garden in the El Dorado National Forest.

"The risks to the public and our employees in California alone are frightening," says Kim Thorsen, the Forest Service's deputy director of enforcement.

In the Daniel Boone National Forest in Kentucky, supervisory law enforcement officer Harold Sizemore said marijuana seizures and arrests are at their highest levels in 10 years.

Authorities have seized more than 200,000 plants in the Boone forest so far this year, up nearly 5% from 1999.

"We busted one family - a father and five kids in April - who were doing more business than a Wendy's hamburger stand."

Marijuana isn't the only crop being grown illegally in the USA's forests.

Seizures of methamphetamine operations are up 150% this year, Forest Service reports show. Those seizures have included working laboratories and related chemical dumpsites that threaten forestlands' water sources.

Methamphetamine seizures have been concentrated in the Mark Twain National Forest in Missouri, where drug producers have found a perfect combination of deep cover and proximity to interstate highways.

Remote areas of the national forests always have been attractive to illegal drug operations. But authorities say they have not seen drug activity like this in perhaps 20 years.

Bill Wasley, the Forest Service's director of law enforcement , says traffickers are seeking increased cover as law enforcement efforts have intensified in U.S. cities and suburbs.

The Forest Service has asked Congress for an additional $10 million in its 2002 budget for more drug agents and equipment.

---

Clinton examines clemency cases

USA Today
12/21/00- Updated 10:28 PM ET
By Dennis Cauchon, USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncsthu08.htm

President Clinton is considering whether to offer clemency to scores of low-level drug offenders, raising the possibility that one of his last acts in office could be the broadest grant of clemency since presidents Ford and Carter pardoned thousands of Vietnam-era draft evaders more than two decades ago.

The White House has been tight-lipped about what Clinton might do, but officials indicated Thursday that a decision could come as early as Friday.

Several groups are trying to persuade the president to release some low-level drug offenders - perhaps as many as several hundred - before he leaves office, saying that their sentences were far too harsh.

Clinton gave them hope during a recent interview with Rolling Stone magazine, in which he hinted that he might act dramatically to shorten the five-, 10- and 20-year sentences of some non-violent drug offenders. Clinton said drug sentencing policies should be re-examined.

"The sentences in many cases are too long for non-violent offenders," he said, adding that it was "unconscionable" to punish crack cocaine offenders - more than 90% of whom are black - much more harshly than powder cocaine offenders, who are more likely to be white.

The Constitution gives the president the authority to commute sentences and pardon those convicted of federal crimes. But in the last 20 years, presidents seldom have used that power.

About 58% of the USA's 146,640 federal prisoners are drug offenders, many serving long mandatory sentences.

"There is no question that the timing is better than it has been in a long, long time for having these cases considered for clemency," says Margaret Love, the Justice Department's pardon attorney from 1990 to 1997.

Three major efforts advocating clemency for low-level drug offenders are underway:

A group called Families Against Mandatory Minimums has screened hundreds of cases and chosen a dozen inmates it considers to be prime candidates for having their sentences commuted.

"It was an awful proposition because we had to pass over so many worthy cases," says Julie Stewart, president of the group. "We picked cases that the pardon office was most likely to look on favorably" - felons whose cases did not involve guns, those who have served large chunks of their sentences, and those whose co-defendants played a bigger role in the crime but received shorter sentences.

The Coalition for Jubilee Clemency, a group of 675 clergy members, has asked Clinton to grant clemency to all low-level, non-violent drug offenders who have served five or more years in prison. Another group, the November Coalition in Col ville, Wash., has collected 32,000 signatures on a petition seeking the early release of the same type of felons targeted by the Jubilee group.

In 1994, Congress passed a "safety valve" law that let nonviolent drug offenders avoid mandatory minimum sentences and be sentenced based on the federal sentencing guidelines. However, the policy was not made retroactive.

Families Against Mandatory Minimums has supplied the White House with a list of the 487 inmates who meet the "safety valve" rules but were sentenced before 1994. If Clinton were to commute those sentences, about 350 inmates would be released immediately. The rest would get out in the next few years.

Phillip Gaines, 16, of Mobile, Ala., says he is optimistic that his mother, Dorothy, will be freed by the president.

Dorothy Gaines, who is on the FAMM group's list of top clemency candidates, is in the sixth year of a 19-year sentence she received for being a minor player in a big crack cocaine ring.

She was convicted of letting a boyfriend keep crack in her house, and she received a longer sentence than the boyfriend (who has been released from prison) and the drug ring's leader, who is scheduled to be released in 2004.

After her conviction, her son's life went into a downward spiral. Phillip's grades tumbled; he's been held back two years in school and is in the eighth grade. His older sister dropped out of college to take care of him and another sister.

"My sister tries to be my mother, but nobody can be a mom like a mom," he says.

"I feel sorry for Dorothy Gaines," says U.S. Attorney Don Foster, chief federal prosecutor in Mobile. "I feel sorry for her children. But it's not a question of sympathy. It's a question of enforcing the laws as written by Congress. She was fairly treated relative to other people in her position."

Arthur Curry, a Maryland educator, has a son whom inmate advocates see as another leading candidate for clemency. Derrick Curry was arrested for a crack offense at 19, is now 30 and is scheduled for release at age 40.

"I will be very grateful if my son is granted clemency," Arthur Curry says. "But I have a hard time answering the question: Why my son and not someone's else's? There are a lot of Derrick Currys in (prison). They are not monsters. They are kids who made mistakes."

---

USA Today
12/21/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Georgia

Douglas - The widow of Coffee County Sheriff Carlton Evans filed a $10 million lawsuit against two Georgia Bureau of Investigation agents. Authorities say Evans shot himself as officers moved to arrest him on marijuana charges. Karleen Evans' suit accuses agents Bill Butler and Scott Whitley of illegally invading her home Oct. 3.

---

Hatch in movie

Washington Times
December 21, 2000
Inside Politics
Greg Pierce News and political dispatches from around the nation.
http://www.washtimes.com/national/inpolitics.htm

Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, long a critic of violence in Hollywood, has a cameo in the new Michael Douglas movie "Traffic," which includes nudity, sex, drug use and profane language.

"I'm glad I did it," the Utah Republican said.

The R-rated movie, which has received high praise from critics, has an anti-drug message.

"I don't see how they could have made it without violence and still accurately portray the drug culture - and how degrading it is," Mr. Hatch told the Deseret News of Salt Lake City. "For adults who really need to know what kids are getting into, it's OK" to see the movie.

Mr. Hatch has a bit part in a scene where Mr. Douglas, playing a man nominated to become the nation's drug czar, is talking to senators at a Georgetown party. Mr. Hatch tells him what he thinks a drug czar ought to do.

The senator said the film's producer called the Judiciary Committee and asked if Mr. Hatch -its chairman - and other members would appear. Several agreed. Mr. Hatch said that as far as he knows, he wasn't paid for the cameo.

"They told my staff the movie would be about how drugs destroy families, and I thought that would be worthwhile," Mr. Hatch said.

-------- india/pakistan

Pakistan withdraws Kashmir troops

Infobeat
December 21, 2000
By KATHY GANNON Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405461657

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) - Pakistan made a peace overture to its rival India on Wednesday, announcing the withdrawal of some of its troops from the volatile border of Kashmir, the flashpoint of two wars between the South Asian nuclear powers.

The gesture came in response to India's offer to extend by a month a cease-fire with Islamic militants waging a bitter insurgency in the Indian-held part of the divided Himalayan territory.

Pakistan urged India to withdraw troops from its side of the Line of Control, the 1973 cease-fire line through Kashmir, which last year was the scene of fierce fighting between India and Islamic militants. Those clashes nearly escalated into another full-fledged war between the two countries.

``The fact is that we have withdrawn troops from the line of control and that is a very positive step and we would like to see India now reciprocate,'' Gen. Rashid Quereshi, a Pakistani army spokesman, said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Concerns mounted over India and Pakistan's bloody rivalry over Kashmir _ which both claim in its entirety _ after the two countries tested nuclear weapons in 1998. They have fought two wars over the territory, divided between them after British rule in the subcontinent ended in 1947.

Pakistan has 25,000 to 30,000 troops deployed along the frontier, where they and Indian forces often trade fire. The army did not specify how many would be withdrawn, but it said the pullback already had begun.

The withdrawal ``manifests Pakistan's earnest and genuine desire to de-escalate the situation in order to facilitate the process of meaningful dialogue on the issue,'' the army said in a statement.

It comes on top of a withdrawal of some troops ordered by Pakistan's military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf soon after he came to power in an October 1999 coup. ``Those soldiers never returned to the Line of Control and this is more that we are withdrawing,'' said Quereshi.

In Washington, President Clinton welcomed the moves by both countries as steps toward reducing tension in the region.

India's ``initiative, along with Pakistan's announcement today that it will withdraw part of its forces deployed along the Line of Control and its earlier decision to exercise maximum restraint there, raises the hopes of the world community that peace is possible in Kashmir,'' Clinton said.

The United Nations was also pleased by the initiatives. ``We hope it will contribute to the resolution of the problem of Jammu-Kashmir,'' U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said.

Islamic guerrillas battling Indian forces in Kashmir are demanding either independence or unification with Pakistan. India accuses Islamabad of fomenting the insurgency, but Pakistan said it gives only moral and political support to the rebels, many of whom are based on its soil.

India says it is willing to open negotiations with the guerrillas, but refuses to include Pakistan in the talks. It has refused separate negotiations with Pakistan over the broader issues of their rivalry until it halts support for the insurgents.

India called a unilateral cease-fire in Kashmir in early December. Though Kashmiri rebels rejected a truce, Pakistan responded at the time by calling a halt in hostilities along the Line of Control, and tensions were reduced.

On Wednesday, Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee told Parliament the cease-fire _ due to end Dec. 28 _ would be extended until at least Jan. 26, India's Republic Day. He said that despite some fighting over the past weeks, the cease-fire had been a success.

``A distinctively different and more optimistic mood prevails. The constituency for peace has expanded significantly,'' Vajpayee said.

Kashmiri groups were skeptical about both India and Pakistan's moves.

One of the top guerrilla groups, the Pakistan-based Hezb-ul Mujahedeen, said it was monitoring the Pakistani withdrawal. Other militants dismissed it as a means to bringing peace. ``Such moves won't get the desired results. Jehad (holy war) will continue until Kashmir's liberation,'' said Yahya Mujahed, a spokesman for Lashkar-e-Tayyaba.

The All Parties Hurriyat Conference, Kashmir's main separatist alliance, reacted cautiously to the cease-fire extension, saying talks among India, Pakistan and the representatives of the Kashmiri people were essential to resolve the 11-year insurgency.

Hezb-ul Mujahedeen _ which currently chairs the United Jehad Council, the umbrella group of militant factions _ dismissed the extension as a ``bluff.''

``If India is serious it will go for three-way talks, release prisoners in its jail and reduce its army in Kashmir,'' said Salim Hashmi, a spokesman for the group. ``For us peace will come only with our freedom.''

At least 30,000 people have been killed in the disputed province since the Islamic uprising began in 1989. Human rights activists say the death toll is closer to 60,000.

-------- myanmar (burma)

Pentagon stops imports from Myanmar

Infobeat
December 21, 2000
http://us.f23.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login?.rand=4krvk0f1b1g6r

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Pentagon abruptly stopped importing clothing from Myanmar this week in response to criticism that the practice violated the spirit of Clinton administration policy, officials said Thursday. In a report Tuesday disclosing the imports, the New York Times said shipping documents showed that in October the Army and Air Force Exchange Service imported $138,290 in clothing made in Myanmar, the former Burma. "AAFES has ceased doing business with Burma," Pentagon spokesman Maj. Tim Blair said. The exchange service's purchases were not illegal. But the Times report quoted critics in Congress and in human rights groups as saying the practice ran contrary to the administration's efforts to put an economic squeeze on Myanmar, whose military rulers refused to recognize the 1988 election victory by the opposition party. In 1997 the administration banned new investment in Myanmar. Although it has not prohibited trade with Myanmar, the administration has discouraged Americans from doing business in that country. In the first nine months of this year, American apparel companies imported $308 million in goods from Myanmar, the Times reported.

-------- space

Spacecraft maneuvering problem halts Jupiter studies

CNN
December 21, 2000
http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/space/12/21/nasa.cassini/index.html

PASADENA, California -- NASA has temporarily suspended the Cassini spacecraft's observations of Jupiter because of a problem with a maneuvering system.

http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/space/12/21/nasa.cassini/map.california.pasadena.lg.jpg

http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405471403

Cassini had been sending back images and other scientific data on a $3.4 billion, U.S.-European mission about Jupiter as it moves toward Saturn and its moon Titan .

Observations were halted on Wednesday after one of the spacecraft's four "reaction wheels" experienced problems, causing Cassini to switch to a different maneuvering system.

Cassini's wheels can point the spacecraft in any desired direction by taking advantage of the law of physics that each action has an opposite reaction. When an electric motor spins one of Cassini's wheels, the spacecraft rotates in the opposite direction.

The problem surfaced Sunday when the No. 2 reaction wheel began to need extra force to turn, and the spacecraft reacted by automatically switching from electricity to a hydrazine thrusting system to maneuver.

The hydrazine must be conserved for the primary mission at Saturn, according to officials at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the mission for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the European and Italian space agencies.

Cassini program manager Bob Mitchell said the situation was improving because the wheel functioned properly in a test Tuesday.

Program may resume when problem fixed

"If things go favorable for us from now on for the rest of the testing that we're doing it's conceivable that we'd be back up and running in a week to 10 days," he said.

Engineers don't know what caused the problem but speculation has centered on the possibility that some type of material got into the wheel mechanism and then either wore down or was spit out, Mitchell said.

Since Cassini was launched in 1997, the probe has flown by Earth once and Venus twice, each time using gravity to gain speed and change direction as it heads for Saturn. Its closest approach to Jupiter -- at a distance of 6 million miles -- is expected to take place December 30.

Cassini is scheduled to arrive at Saturn on July 1, 2004.

NASA briefly suspended the Cassini's operations once before, when the probe detected a possible error in its spatial orientation in January 1999.

At the time, Jet Propulsion Laboratory officials said engineers suspected that during a tracking maneuver, Cassini's star scanner may have viewed a patch of sky without the bright stars the spacecraft uses to orient itself in space. NASA resumed Cassini's operations after the problem was corrected.

Anti-nuclear activists have protested against Cassini because of concern that an accident while the probe was over Earth could release the 72 pounds of plutonium it carries. The spacecraft requires plutonium not for propulsion but to power its dozen scientific instruments. The decaying plutonium generates heat, which circuitry converts into electricity.

The craft's nuclear units were built especially strong to prevent rupture in the event of an accident during launch or fly-by. Each pellet is boxed in layers of heat-and corrosion- resistant iridium and graphite.

---

NASA may attempt trip to Pluto

Infobeat
December 21, 2000
By PAUL RECER AP Science Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405471313

WASHINGTON (AP) - NASA wants to tap the brains of America's space thinkers to develop a mission to faraway Pluto that is cheap enough to be feasible and won't significantly delay a planned exploration of one of Jupiter's moons.

Ed Weiler, the agency's chief of space science, announced Wednesday that the agency was seeking proposals that would make it possible to send a robot craft to Pluto before the most distant of the solar system planets sweeps out of reach.

A launch planned in 2004 to Pluto, the only planet not yet visited by robot probes, was canceled in June because of spiraling costs.

Weiler said at the time that rising expenses for the Pluto-Kuiper Express were threatening the schedule for a higher-priority mission: a probe to Europa, a Jupiter moon that may harbor an ocean and possibly life.

The costs of the Europa and Pluto missions had risen from $650 million to $1.5 billion and Weiler said he acted to stay within budget and preserve the Europa mission.

The decision prompted protests from space-oriented organizations such as the Planetary Society and the American Astronomical Society.

Planetary scientists feared the opportunity to explore Pluto would be lost for years. Reaching Pluto with current technology requires a spacecraft first to pass by Jupiter and pick up speed with a gravitational boost from that huge planet. After 2006, Pluto will move out of alignment for such a boost from Jupiter, and the opportunity for a Pluto mission could be lost for about 20 years.

Under the new plan, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is soliciting proposals for a cheaper Pluto mission that would have only a modest impact on the Europa mission launch plans.

A delay of the Europa mission to 2008 would be acceptable, Weiler said, but not much beyond that. Its original launch date was to have been 2003, delayed by costs.

There is high interest and support for the Europa mission because early studies suggest that its Jovian moon has an ice-capped ocean. Some scientists believe that if this is true, then the possibility exists of life there. The search for life beyond Earth is among NASA's highest priorities.

Weiler said NASA will accept Pluto mission proposals from any organization, including universities, aerospace companies, even NASA centers such as the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which was in charge of the canceled Pluto mission.

``We'll leave it to the best minds in the country to determine the mission,'' he said. ``We are trying to cast the net wide to see what ideas are out there.''

Weiler said NASA is open to considering any ``viable option'' but is not committed to a Pluto mission. If no acceptable proposal comes, then the Pluto plans could be scrubbed.

At least two of the proposals, which are due March 19, will be picked in May for more study. If NASA concludes a Pluto mission is possible, the announcement will be made next fall, Weiler said.

The proposals require that a spacecraft, with specific scientific and imaging capabilities, reach Pluto by 2015 and cost no more than $500 million.

``We are gratified that NASA is trying to restore the Pluto mission to its launch schedule,'' Louis Friedman, director of the Planetary Society, said in a statement.

He said both the Europa and Pluto missions are ``essential steps in exploring our planetary environment,'' and NASA ``must find a way to launch missions to both worlds in the next eight years.''

-------- taiwan

Taiwan Will Be Tricky Task for Bush

Associated Press
December 21, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/politics/AP-Taiwan-Bush.html

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) -- Protecting Taiwan without provoking China is one of the trickiest foreign policy tasks for a U.S. leader -- one that could test President-elect George W. Bush soon after he takes office.

The new president will have to decide whether the United States should sell Taiwan weapons on the wish list the island submits to Washington each year. This month, Taiwanese and Pentagon officials began discussing the arms sales in secret meetings and a decision traditionally comes in April.

Few other nations sell Taiwan weapons and risk enraging Beijing, which claims the island is a breakaway province. China, the world's No. 3 nuclear power, has repeatedly threatened to attack the island, about 100 miles off the mainland's southeastern coast.

As the island's main protector, the United States could quickly get dragged into a China-Taiwan conflict, making the Taiwan Strait one of the world's most explosive hot spots.

In 1996, China test-fired missiles near Taiwan's two main ports, prompting the United States to send two aircraft carrier groups to the strait. It was the largest U.S. naval movement in the Asia-Pacific region since the Vietnam War.

Unlike most nations, the United States is required by law -- the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act -- to sell the island weapo