NUCLEAR
Feds To Probe Uranium Trade
U.S. discovers uranium being channeled from Ukraine
Russia, Iran expand military ties
U.S. Watches Russian, Iran Armament
Russia, Iran open new chapter of military cooperation
Moscow in Unofficial Contacts With New U.S. Administration over NMD
Russian Discusses Arms Sales in Iran
To Bush on Russia: Forward, Not Back
IRAN: RUSSIAN ARMS SALES
Louis Leprince-Ringuet, French Physicist, Dies at 99
Caffeine and radiation
Clinton Statement on North Korea
Clinton won't go to North Korea, leaves further progress to Bush
Koreas Open Economic Talks
Clinton Won't Visit North Korea
Clinton Says He Will Not Visit N. Korea
Clinton Rules Out Visit to North Korea
No N. Korea trip for Clinton
Russian Warns Bush on Anti-Missile Shield
Moscow Warns Against Missile Shield
Russian Navy Returning to Atlantic
Repaired Ukraine reactor restarted
Bush's Pentagon Pick Is Missile-Shield Savvy
Bush Will Face Money Questions on U.S. Military
Schools, Not Shields
New Fuel Improves Proliferation Resistance Of Research Reactors
Killer Once Employed at MY
Radiation pills to be given to Perry neighbors
Officials respond to layoff questions
Former ORNL employee shares story of her dismissal
Officials respond to layoff questions
Rumsfeld Returns to Pentagon
Text of Bush's Press Conference
Bush Nominates Rumsfeld As Defense Secretary
Bush Names Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense
Bush names Rumsfeld as defense secretary
Bush Chooses Cold War Veteran As Defense Chief
Donald Rumsfeld Bio
MILITARY
Cuba, China Sign Military Cooperation Protocol
U.S., S. Korea OK troops rules
Russia says arms sales to Iran are legal
FRANCE: MITTERRAND STAYS IN JAIL
Mitterrand's son to stay in jail
Colombia gunmen abduct 8 people
Bush Could Get Tougher on Venezuela's Leader
Drug Aid at Home
FCC Slaps Anti-Drug TV Shows
Downey Pleads Innocent to Drug Charges
Nebraska
A Time to Plant Mines, a Time to Make Amends
Suu Kyi property court date set
Russian navy returning to Atlantic
Tsiklon 3 Booster Fails, Six Satellites Lost
Russia Loses Contact With Satellites After Launch
Russia Loses Six Satellites
Deadline awaits Clinton on world criminal court
Developing Nations Want UN Libya Sanctions Lifted
THE CLINTON LEGACY
Hawaii
WWII veterans sail 4,250 miles
OTHER
A Pact Against Oil Company Abuses
Metro Briefing
An Everglades Airport
States
Cyanide spill forces evacuation
Nassau Officer Held Liable in a Death Had a Record
S. Korean Police Break Up Protest
Cop's dummy partner not deductible
Arkansas
Police storm women's prison
Ex-Defense Secretary Seems to Be Bush Choice for C.I.A.
Peru Uses Internet to Hunt Former Spy Chief
Clinton signs intelligence budget
Germany arrests 4 terror suspects
ACTIVISTS
No Pardon for Peltier
Ohio
KOREAN BANK SIT-IN
Pacifica Foundation Locks WBAI Station Manager Out of Office
Herman Feshbach, Theorized on Nuclei of Atoms, Dies at 83
Having a ball
Israelis protest at Holy site
Czech TV programs halted by protest
Palme Prize awarded to U.S. lawyer
Report: Laid off Chinese protest
-------- NUCLEAR
Feds To Probe Uranium Trade
Associated Press
December 28, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Uranium-Trade.html
http://www.ohio.com/bj/news/ohio/docs/012582.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The federal government is investigating whether European companies are dumping cheap enriched uranium illegally onto the U.S. market.
The Commerce Department released a memo Thursday that it intends to scrutinize sales of low enriched uranium from France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.
At issue is whether fair market forces or illegal, unfair competition has led U.S. nuclear power plants to increase oversees purchases of enriched uranium.
U.S. Enrichment Corp., which operates government-owned enrichment plants in Piketon, Ohio, and Paducah, Ky., filed a trade complaint this month that prompted the investigation.
It alleged Eurodif SA, controlled by the French government, and Urenco Ltd., a British-Dutch-German consortium, were pricing enriched uranium below their cost of production and, in the case of Eurodif, below prices charged in its home market. Both are illegal under U.S. law.
``We are pleased that the department has chosen to initiate an investigation. We believe we have presented a strong, compelling case that Eurodif and Urenco continue to dump enriched uranium into the U.S. market,'' USEC spokeswoman Elizabeth Stuckle said Thursday.
USEC Inc., the only American producer of enriched uranium, sells finished uranium and acts as the middleman for sales of uranium recycled from former Soviet warheads, a program designed to keep bomb-grade uranium from terrorists.
Both the Commerce Department and the U.S. International Trade Commission are investigating the allegations.
The Commerce Department will determine whether dumping has taken place. The commission is investigating claims of material injury resulting from any unfairly traded imports. If both agencies make a finding against the companies, punitive trade duties could be imposed.
----
U.S. discovers uranium being channeled from Ukraine to Iraq, Iran
World Tribune
Thursday, December 28, 2000
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
http://www.worldtribune.com/Archive-2000/ss-nuclear-12-28.html
LONDON - The United States is trying to block the flow of uranium from Ukraine to Iraq and Iran, a prominent Arab daily said.
The London-based A-Sharq Al Awsat daily reported on Wednesday that the United States is monitoring what the newspaper termed a channel of uranium and plutonium from Ukraine to Iraq and Iran. The flow of the nuclear material is said to be passing through Bulgaria and Turkey.
The newspaper said the United States was informed of the channel after the arrest by Bulgarian authorities of a Turkish national identified as Hani Yukazan. Yukazan was said to have been in possession of nuclear equipment when he was arrested on May 29, Middle East Newsline reported.
Later, the suspect was said to have provided details of the flow of uranium from Ukraine through Bulgaria and to Iraq.
A Bulgarian source told the newspaper that weapons grade material produced in Russia was found by custom authorities.
The United States and Bulgaria have been cooperating in stopping the flow of uranium, plutonium and other nuclear material from the former Soviet Union through eastern and central Europe. The newspaper said Washington has sent experts from top U.S. laboratories to examine the seized material in Bulgaria.
The flow of uranium through Bulgaria was a leading topic on the agenda of CIA director George Tenet during his visit to Sofia in August. The CIA has warned that Iraq, in the absence of United Nations inspectors, is believed to have resumed its nuclear weapons and missile programs.
For their part, Bulgarian officials have acknowledged that the country is being used as a route for the flow of uranium to Middle East countries.
---
Russia, Iran expand military ties
'New phase' of cooperation likely to anger Washington
MSNBC
12/28/00
http://www.msnbc.com/news/508283.asp?cp1=1
TEHRAN, Iran, Dec. 28 - Iran and Russia said on Thursday they had agreed on broad military cooperation and declared that a 1995 Russia-U.S. deal that prevented Moscow from selling conventional arms to Iran was effectively dead. The announcement was likely to anger Washington, which has put pressure on Russia not to sell arms to the Islamic republic.
"IT WAS agreed that a new phase of military and technical cooperation would begin between the two sides," Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev told journalists at a joint news conference with his Iranian counterpart Ali Shamkhani.
The ministers said that the deal made in 1995 between Russia and the United States, in which Russia had agreed not to sell conventional arms to Iran, was no longer a factor.
"The 1995 agreement has been buried by history," Shamkhani said as a tired-looking Sergeyev looked on. "It has been proven today that independent countries will choose their partners without taking into account extraneous issues."
Russia alarmed Washington by announcing last month that it was abandoning the 1995 pledge not to sell tanks and other battlefield weapons to Iran. Washington, which accuses Tehran of sponsoring terrorism, is trying to persuade Moscow to change its mind and has threatened economic sanctions.
The United States and other countries also have raised concerns that Russia's construction of a nuclear power plant in Iran could give it access to materials and knowledge for making nuclear weapons. Both Moscow and Tehran have denied the claim.
Shamkhani said Iran and Russia shared a common security viewpoint because of NATO expansion, the ongoing crisis in Afghanistan and increased Western influence in the Caucasus and Central Asia.
He said those issues had caused the two sides to "develop and deepen long-term security and Defense cooperation," including the training of Iranian military officers in the Russian federation.
But Iran and Russia did not discuss sales of specific military hardware during Sergeyev's three-day visit, the first by a Russian Defense minister since Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution, Shamkhani said.
"The general agreement is to cooperate in all defensive issues because of the common understanding between the two countries. Against such a background, there was no need to discuss specific items."
HOMEGROWN MISSILE TECHNOLOGY
Shamkhani said Iran's missile capabilities were totally dependent on domestically produced hardware, technology and know-how.
"Our domestic potential and capabilities are strong compared to the technology of eastern Europe," he said. "We do not need foreign assistance in developing missile technology."
Shamkhani said it was Iran's natural right to enter space and Iran was developing a non-military missile, the Shahab-4, to carry satellites into orbit.
"You will learn of its success the day we test-fire it," he said. "Just as you learnt of the success of the Shahab-3 (intermediate range ballistic missile) when it was test fired.
"We are producing solid fuel (for missile propulsion) in Iran," Shamkhani told Reuters after the news conference. "We are producing the raw materials for solid fuel ourselves."
"In the Defense sector, we are determined to elevate Iran to the position it deserves. We will make every effort to do so."
---
U.S. Watches Russian, Iran Armament
Associated Press
December 28, 2000 Filed at 7:14 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-US-Russia-Iran.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The United States is disturbed by reports that Russia is prepared to sell Iran missiles, submarines and other equipment, the State Department said Thursday.
``It's not sufficient for Russia to simply call this type of equipment quote `defensive,''' spokesman Philip Reeker said. ``Some of the equipment reportedly being discussed between the Russian defense minister and his Iranian counterpart would pose a serious threat'' to security interests of the United States and others.
Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev and Iranian Adm. Ali Shamkhani said in Tehran as they signed several agreements that a new chapter in military cooperation had been opened between their countries.
Russia alarmed Washington by announcing last month that it was abandoning a 1995 pledge not to sell tanks and other battlefield weapons to Iran. Washington, which accuses Tehran of sponsoring terrorism, is trying to persuade Moscow to change its mind and has threatened economic sanctions.
On Wednesday, Sergeyev said Russia will abide by international agreements on arms sales to Iran, an apparent reference to international nuclear and other nonproliferation agreements. The Russian government has said it will not supply hardware capable of creating or delivering weapons of mass destruction.
Reeker said the United States will continue to watch closely the evolving military relationship between Russia and Iran and is ready to impose sanctions if it were to determine Russia is making unacceptable weapons sales to Iran.
He said the United States would continue talks with Russia aimed at keeping in place a freeze on certain Russian military sales to Iran as agreed earlier this month by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov.
---
Russia, Iran open new chapter of military cooperation
CNN
December 28, 2000
http://www.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/meast/12/28/iran.russia.ap/index.html
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- The visit of Russia's defense minister to Iran opened a new chapter of military cooperation between the two countries and led to several agreements, he and his Iranian counterpart said here Thursday.
http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/maps/iran.tehran.jpg
Russia's Igor Sergeyev said the agreements included training Iranian army officers in Russia, and the "exchange of information about the military structures, military doctrine and general threats to both countries."
Iran's Rear Adm. Ali Shamkhani said Iran and Russia had reached a "historic" point.
"The two countries have made concrete decisions to expand and deepen all kinds of military, security and defense relations on the long term," Shamkhani said. "This will guarantee peace and stability to the region."
Sergeyev, the first Russian defense minister to visit Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, held talks with senior Iranian political and military officials, including President Mohammed Khatami and Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi. Khatami described the visit of the military delegation as "an important landmark" in relations between the two countries.
The Russian official discussed among, other things, the situation in Afghanistan and security issues in the region.
Both countries are opposed to the Taliban, the Muslim fundamentalist militia that controls 95 percent of Afghanistan, which borders both countries.
The visit came amid American pressure on Russia not to sell arms to the Islamic republic.
Russia alarmed Washington by announcing last month that it was abandoning a 1995 pledge not to sell tanks and other battlefield weapons to Iran. Washington, which accuses Tehran of sponsoring terrorism, is trying to persuade Moscow to change its mind and has threatened economic sanctions.
On Wednesday, Sergeyev said his country will abide by international agreements concerning arms sales to Iran, an apparent reference to international nuclear and other nonproliferation agreements. The Russian government has said it will not supply any hardware capable of creating or delivering weapons of mass destruction.
The United States and other countries also have raised concerns that Russia's construction of a nuclear power plant in Iran could give it access to materials and knowledge that could be used in making nuclear weapons. Both Moscow and Tehran have denied the claim.
Sergeyev also visited the Organization of Aerospace Industry of Iran, where he focused on learning about Iran's missile systems. He was to leave Iran late Thursday after a visit to Iran's Planes Industries factory in the central city of Isfahan.
Iran, which has declared itself self-sufficient in missiles production, has built and tested several missiles, including the Shahab-3, which has a range of 1,300 kilometers (810 miles). Washington denounced a July test of the Shahab-3, which it said could reach Israel or U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia.
Iran also has built its own tanks, armored personnel carriers and a fighter plane.
---
Moscow in Unofficial Contacts With New U.S. Administration over NMD
Russia Today
Dec 28, 2000
http://www.russiatoday.com/news.php3?id=238174§ion=default
MOSCOW -- (Agence France Presse) Moscow said Wednesday it has begun unofficial contacts with the incoming U.S. administration on Washington's contested plans to deploy a national missile defense (NMD) system, the Interfax news agency reported.
Foreign ministry chief spokesman Alexander Yakovenko said that Russia was "open to dialogue" about strategic stability issues, but insisted that it would not drop its opposition to the NMD scheme.
"Russia's... attitude towards NMD is perfectly clear: such a system is clearly probihited by the ABM Treaty and therefore would destroy it and the entire system of nuclear disarmament treaties," he said.
Moscow has so far rejected Washington's proposal to amend the cornerstone 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty to allow for the construction of the 60-billion-dollar defense system, which would fend off threats from so-called "rogue states" Iran, Iraq and North Korea.
Colin Powell, nominated as the new U.S. secretary of state under Republican President-elect George Bush, has spoken out in favor of deploying the NMD.
Moscow warns that abandoning ABM would trigger a new arms race, and has threatened in response to tear up the START-I and START-II nuclear disarmament deals.
The foreign ministry spokesman recalled that Moscow had proposed a "radical" reduction of U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals to less than 1,500 warheads each.
"We hope to begin concrete discussions on our proposals and the U.S. counter-proposals at negotiations with the new U.S. administration in the near future," said Yakovenko.
Analysts have suggested that cash-strapped Russia, which finds it hard to maintain its costly and aging nuclear arsenal, might agree to amend the ABM treaty in return for slashing warhead levels.
---
Russian Discusses Arms Sales in Iran
Washington Post
Thursday, December 28, 2000; Page A16
Associated Press
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A57271-2000Dec27?language=printer
TEHRAN -- Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev said his country will abide by international agreements concerning arms sales to Iran but added that these do not preclude some arms deals, the Iranian state news agency reported.
Making the first visit by a Russian defense minister to Iran since the Islamic revolution of 1979, Sergeyev met with Iranian military officials and said the two countries' positions on arms deals are close, the agency said.
Sergeyev met later with Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, who described the visit as "an important landmark" in relations between the two countries, the news service said. The United States has vigorously opposed any Russian arms sales to Iran.
---
To Bush on Russia: Forward, Not Back
New York Times
December 28, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/28/opinion/L28RUS.html
To the Editor:
Re "A New Look at Russia" (Week in Review, Dec. 24):
As an American working with Russians to build a civil society and a market economy, I feel offended by President-elect George W. Bush's focus on cold-war security issues as the means to work with Russia.
Reversing President Clinton's focus on Russian civil society and market reform will not result in what Condoleezza Rice, Mr. Bush's choice for national security adviser, calls her hope for "a more realistic and a more fruitful relationship with Russia." The open discussions on security were possible because of the intensive contact with all sectors of Russian society.
Treating Russia as part of Europe in the State Department, abrogating the Antiballistic Missile Treaty and rattling sabers over missile defense systems will only create impossible conditions for a market economy, increased trade and the protection of civil liberties and human rights in Russia.
SARAH TISCH Washington, Dec. 24, 2000 The writer is an economic development adviser.
---
New York Times
December 28, 2000
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/28/world/28BRIE.html?pagewanted=all
MIDDLE EAST
IRAN: RUSSIAN ARMS SALES Russia's defense minister tried to allay American concerns over the Kremlin's latest plans to sell arms to Iran, saying during a visit to Tehran that the sales would not break international accords or work "to the prejudice of any third country." American officials have warned against transferring nuclear or advanced missile technology to Iran; Russia says it would sell only defensive arms. Michael Wines (NYT)
-------- france
Louis Leprince-Ringuet, French Physicist, Dies at 99
New York Times
December 28, 2000
By WOLFGANG SAXON
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/28/world/28RING.html
Prof. Louis Leprince-Ringuet, a French nuclear physicist who was the first to spot evidence of a new type of subatomic particle, died Saturday at his home in Paris, just three months shy of his 100th birthday.
Professor Leprince-Ringuet was one of the world's leading researchers in particle physics and cosmic rays, high-energy particles that slam into the earth from outer space. An experimental physicist, he worked to puzzle out what cosmic rays are made of - primarily protons, electrons and the nuclei of light atoms - and to unlock the many mysteries those rays hold to this day.
In 1944 he and another French physicist, Michel l'Héritier, published an article describing evidence of a new subatomic particle mixed with the cosmic rays. The particle that they observed was too heavy to be an electron, but too light to be a proton or neutron, the usual building blocks of matter. It is likely that the particle was what was later called a meson.
Like the proton and neutron (the constituents of atomic nuclei) mesons are made of smaller building blocks known as quarks. But protons and neutrons each contain three quarks; mesons contain only two.
Professor Leprince-Ringuet wrote enthusiastically about his research high up in the Swiss Alps. An English version of his book "Cosmic Rays," which was published in 1950, was described in The New York Times Book Review as "an informal, readable account of one of the most important fields of modern physics."
He wrote several more books about celebrated inventors, discoveries of the 20th century, the atom and human society as well as the phenomenon of electricity. In the 1950's he also helped draft a system of symbols for the various particles known to strike the earth.
Professor Leprince-Ringuet, who was born in Alès, France, and studied engineering, worked in telecommunications and at an X-ray laboratory in Paris before being named a professor of physics at the École Polytechnique in 1936. Early in his career he knew or worked with scientists like Marie Curie and Albert Einstein.
He later headed the nuclear physics department at the Collège de France and served on the French Atomic Energy Commission and CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research. He was a member of the French Academy and the Academy of Sciences, and a past president of the French Physics Society.
His wife, the former Jelanne Motte, died 10 years ago. They had seven children.
President Jacques Chirac said of his death: "Our country has lost one of its greatest minds." Others noted how much he had looked forward to reaching 100.
-------- india / pakistan
Caffeine and radiation
Four-minute warning
Thu, 28 Dec 2000 10:40:17 -0800
Rob Edwards
DRINKING COFFEE could protect people from radioactivity, according to scientists in India who have found that mice given caffeine survive otherwise lethal doses of radiation.
A team from the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Bombay injected 471 mice with varying amounts of caffeine and then exposed them to 7.5 grays of gamma radiation--usually a lethal dose. But 25 days later, 70 per cent of the mice given 80 milligrams of caffeine per kilogram of body weight one hour before radiation exposure were still alive. By contrast, all 196 of the mice not given caffeine and exposed to the same dose of radiation had died.
Higher doses of caffeine--100 milligrams per kilogram--also led to the majority of the mice surviving over the same period, as did administering the drug just half an hour before irradiation. But all those given a lower dose of 50 milligrams per kilogram died, along with mice that were only injected with caffeine after they had been irradiated.
Kachadpillill C. George, who led the research, points to earlier studies which suggest that caffeine--1,3,7-trimethylxanthine--reacts with the hydroxyl radicals produced when cells are irradiated. This, he says, could prevent the radicals from damaging cells and shutting down vital bodily functions, such as the production of blood cells in bone marrow. Bone marrow failure was the main cause of death among the irradiated mice.
George suggests that a better understanding of the protection offered by caffeine might lead to improvements in the way that radiation is used to treat cancer. His study is published in the latest Journal of Radiological Protection (vol 19, p 171).
Other scientists are cautious about interpreting George's results, however. Peter O'Neill, a radiation researcher from the Medical Research Council's Radiation and Genome Stability Unit at Harwell in Oxfordshire, agrees that caffeine reacts with hydroxyl radicals. "But it may require very high concentrations in order to protect cells from these radicals," he says.
A cup of fresh coffee typically contains between 80 and 100 milligrams of caffeine while instant coffee contains slightly less, according to Audrey Baker of the European Coffee Science Information Centre in Oxfordshire. A person weighing 70 kilograms might therefore need to drink at least 100 cups to receive the same dose as the mice. However, George believes that smaller amounts of caffeine might protect people from lower doses of radiation than those used in his experiment.
George is aware of the difficulty of extrapolating his data from mice to humans. "But at the same time," he says, "it does suggest that coffee might have some beneficial effects in protecting against radiation."
From New Scientist, 26 June 1999
-------- korea
Clinton Statement on North Korea
US Newswire
28 Dec 12:42
http://www.usnewswire.com/topnews/Current_Releases/1228-110.html
Clinton Statement: North Korea
To: National Desk
Contact: White House Press Office, 202-347-2770
WASHINGTON, Dec. 28 -- The following statement was released today by the White House:
STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT
For several years, we have been working with our East Asian allies to improve relations with North Korea in a way that strengthens peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula. We have made substantial progress, including the 1994 Agreed Framework, which froze North Korea's production of plutonium for nuclear weapons under ongoing international inspections, and the 1999 moratorium on long-range missile tests. I believe new opportunities are opening for progress toward greater stability and peace on the Korean Peninsula. However, I have determined that there is not enough time while I am President to prepare the way for an agreement with North Korea that advances our national interest and provides the basis for a trip by me to Pyongyang. Let me emphasize that I believe this process of engagement with North Korea, in coordination with South Korea and Japan, holds great promise and that the United States should continue to build on the progress we have made.
Our policy toward North Korea has been based on a strong framework developed at my request by former Secretary of Defense William Perry and carried out by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Special Advisor Wendy Sherman. We have coordinated each step forward with our allies, the Republic of Korea and Japan. The engagement policy of President Kim Dae Jung and his personal leadership have spurred this process and earned the World's admiration. Taken together, our efforts have reduced tensions on the Korean Peninsula, improved prospects for enduring peace and stability in the region, and opened an opportunity to substantially reduce, if not eliminate, the threat posed by North Korean missile development and exports.
This past October, when DPRK Chairman Kim Jong Il invited me to visit his country, and later when Secretary Albright traveled to Pyongyang, Chairman Kim put forward a serious proposal concerning his missile program. Since then, we have discussed with North Korea proposals to eliminate its missile export program as well as to halt further missile development. While there is insufficient time for me to complete the work at hand, there is sufficient promise to continue this effort. The United States has a clear national interest in seeing it through.
---
Clinton won't go to North Korea, leaves further progress to Bush
Fort Worth Star Telegram
Updated: Thursday, Dec. 28, 2000 at 17:00 CST
By Larry Margasak Associated Press
http://www.star-telegram.com/news/doc/1047/1:POLITICS43A/1:POLITICS43A1228100.html
WASHINGTON -- President Clinton will not travel to North Korea before the end of his term, leaving further progress in establishing an accord with the communist nation to his successor, George W. Bush.
"I believe the next administration will be able to consummate this agreement," Clinton said. "I expect visits back and forth. I think a lot of things will happen" that will "make the world a much safer place."
Clinton said at a news conference that there is not enough time left in his presidency -- just three weeks -- to prepare and execute the trip "in an appropriate manner."
The United States has been seeking an agreement to curb North Korean missile production and development.
In an earlier statement, the president explained that there would have to be progress toward an agreement "that advances our national interest" before he made such a trip.
The president insisted he had made a "lot of progress" with North Korea. "I expect the next administration to build on it," he said.
Clinton said he had talked extensively with Bush about North Korea and the Republican president-elect did not influence his decision not to make the trip.
"We had a very, very good talk about it, and he did not discourage it at all," Clinton said. "It would not be fair to put that on him."
Clinton said he briefed Bush on his administration's efforts with North Korea and there were also other high-level discussions with Colin Powell, Bush's nominee for secretary of state, and his designated national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice.
Clinton said that with the leadership of South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and the success of talks with the North Koreans on the nuclear issue, further progress can be made.
The North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, invited Clinton in October and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright traveled to the communist nation for talks with Kim.
The president said Kim "put forward a serious proposal concerning his missile program. Since then, we have discussed with North Korea proposals to eliminate its missile export program as well as to halt further missile development."
Clinton said engagement with North Korea, in coordination with South Korea and Japan, "holds great promise and that the United States should continue to build on the progress we have made."
He also praised the engagement policy of South Korea's president.
Clinton said he told Bush "that further progress could be made and that it might just have to be something that was done when he became president."
Distributed by The Associated Press (AP)
---
Koreas Open Economic Talks
Associated Press
December 28, 2000 Filed at 2:38 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Koreas-Economic-Talks.html
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- South Korea and electricity-starved North Korea opened three days of talks in the North's capital Thursday on ways of boosting economic cooperation.
The talks, the first high-level government dialogue between the sides to focus solely on economic matters, came as South Korean officials said Thursday that 307 North Koreans defected to the South this year, more than double the 148 who fled the hunger-stricken Communist state last year.
The isolated Stalinist North's food shortages are so severe that its own government has admitted that at least 220,000 people have died of hunger since 1995.
South Korean Vice Finance and Economy Minister Lee Jung-jae and his aides arrived in Pyongyang on Wednesday for the talks. The North Korean delegation was led by Pak Chang Ryon, vice chairman of the national planning committee.
In the opening session, North Korea proposed that the first topic should be its earlier request for 500,000 kilowatts of electricity from South Korea, South Korean pool reports said. South Korean officials in Seoul said the meeting is unlikely to reach agreement on the request.
North Korea's energy shortage is believed to be severe. Power failures are common even in Pyongyang, and travelers have reported seeing public buildings and homes without heating and electricity in winter.
In 1994, a U.S.-led consortium agreed to build nuclear reactors in North Korea in exchange for the North's freezing its suspect nuclear weapons program. Completion of the first light-water reactor had been scheduled for 2003, but delays have pushed back the date by several years.
Other items on the agenda in Pyongyang include reconnecting a cross-border railway, building an industrial complex in the North close to the border with South Korea and jointly erecting a dam on a river shared by the Koreas to prevent flooding, pool reports said.
Meanwhile, North Korea failed to respond to a South Korean proposal to hold a military dialogue Thursday at the border village of Panmunjom.
After a third round of working-level military talks last week, Seoul had proposed holding another round to discuss cooperation for building the railway and a four-lane highway across the sides' heavily fortified border. The North gave no explanation for its failure to respond.
In earlier talks, the two Koreas discussed safeguards to prevent accidental clashes between their two militaries, which have maintained an uneasy truce since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.
The Korean border has been tightly sealed since the war. There is no regular means of cross-border travel or communication for ordinary Korean citizens on opposite sides of the divide.
---
Clinton Won't Visit North Korea
New York Times
December 28, 2000 Filed at 6:12 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Clinton-North-Korea.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Ending more than two months of suspense, President Clinton said Thursday he will not make a presidential visit to North Korea and is looking to his successor for progress in curbing the communist country's missile program.
Clinton told reporters at the White House he informed President-elect George W. Bush that he would not make the trip, which would have been a historic first, because in his three remaining weeks he lacked the time ``to make it right.''
In a statement, Clinton also noted ``sufficient promise'' in the talks his administration has held with Pyongyang on development and export of missiles to continue the effort. ``The United States has a clear national interest in seeing it through,'' he said.
``I believe the next administration will be able to consummate this agreement,'' Clinton said. ``I expect visits back and forth. I think a lot of things will happen'' that will ``make the world a much safer place.''
North Korea has been a focus of Clinton's foreign policy. In 1994, the two sides negotiated an agreement to freeze North Korea's nuclear program in exchange for safer reactors and energy supplies from the United States, Japan and South Korea.
Last week, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who visited Pyongyang in October, cited a ``genuine possibility'' that North Korea would agree to limit its production and export of missiles and missile technology.
One reason the United States is considering construction of an anti-missile shield was unease over North Korea's missile strength. Clinton deferred to Bush a decision on whether to begin activities toward deployment of the defense system. The next president favors a far more extensive and expensive program than the Clinton administration envisioned.
The president said he has made a ``lot of progress'' with North Korea. ``I expect the next administration to build on it,'' he said.
Clinton said he has talked extensively with Bush about North Korea, and the Republican president-elect did not influence Clinton's decision not to make the trip.
``We had a very, very good talk about it, and he did not discourage it at all,'' Clinton said. ``It would not be fair to put that on him.''
Clinton said North Korean leader Kim Jong Il ``put forward a serious proposal concerning his missile program,'' and the United States had discussed with Pyongyang proposals to eliminate the export program and halt further missile development.
Richard Solomon, a former chief of the State Department's Asia bureau, said the administration ``deserves real credit for advancing the process of opening contact with North Korea in close coordination with our ally in the South (Korea) and other key regional players like Japan.''
Solomon, president of the U.S. Institute for Peace, said North Korea apparently was not prepared to agree to the kind of restraints on missile exports that would have justified a presidential trip.
``From that perspective, the president deserves credit for his restraint as well as for the administration's progress in advancing a North-South dialogue'' in Korea, Solomon said in an interview.
At the Heritage Foundation, Larry Wortzel, director of the research group's Asia program, said two conditions should be met before a U.S. president should visit North Korea.
Kim Jong Il should go to Seoul to reciprocate South Korean President's Kim Dae-jung's visit to Pyongyang, and the state of war should be ended on the Korean peninsula, Wortzel said.
``The president has had a tendency to take discussion and form as a substitute for real substance, and he was falling into that trap here,'' Wortzel said in an interview. ``The North Koreans are very good at that stuff.''
Peter Rodman, director of national security studies at the Nixon Center, said the incoming Bush administration has ``very different policy views'' on North Korea, ``and that ought to inhibit the outgoing administration from dramatic initiatives'' like a presidential trip to North Korea.
The Republican position has been much more skeptical of North Korea and generally critical of the Clinton adminstration's policy in the past, Rodman said in an interview.
---
Clinton Says He Will Not Visit N. Korea
Yahoo News
Top Stories News
Thursday December 28 4:39 PM ET
By Deborah Charles
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20001228/ts/korea_usa_dc_7.html
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/world/28WIRE-KOREA.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Clinton (news - web sites) said on Thursday he had decided not to visit North Korea (news - web sites) before leaving office on Jan. 20 because there was not enough time to prepare for a useful agreement between the two countries.
``I believe new opportunities are opening for progress toward greater stability and peace on the Korean peninsula,'' Clinton said in a statement.
``However, I have determined that there is not enough time while I am president to prepare the way for an agreement with North Korea that advances our national interest and provides the basis for a trip by me to Pyongyang.''
Madeleine Albright (news - web sites) made the first visit by a U.S. secretary of state to communist North Korea in October.
Clinton had since expressed an interest in becoming the first U.S. president to travel to the Stalinist state, hoping to seal a deal under which Pyongyang would stop producing and selling ballistic missiles in exchange for foreign assistance in launching satellites.
One of the world's most isolated countries, North Korea has opened up somewhat since South Korean (news - web sites) President Kim Dae-jung (news - web sites) took office in February 1998 and embarked on his ``sunshine policy'' of engagement with the North.
Clinton said he had great hopes of continued improvement in the U.S. relationship with North Korea.
``Let me emphasize that I believe this process of engagement with North Korea, in coordination with South Korea and Japan, holds great promise and that the United States should continue to build on the progress we have made,'' Clinton said.
Bush Played No Role In Decision
In a news conference later, Clinton said President-elect George W. Bush (news - web sites) did not have any influence on his decision.
Clinton said he briefed Bush during a meeting earlier this month on what his administration was doing to improve ties with North Korea.
``But I also told him that I wouldn't take the trip unless I thought that I had time to organize it and devote the time to it to make it right,'' Clinton said.
``... I was convinced that because of the leadership of President Kim in South Korea and because of the very good talks that we have had with the North Koreans and the success we've had now for six years on the nuclear issue, that further progress could be made, and that it might just have to be something that was done when he became president,'' he said.
Under a 1994 agreement, North Korea agreed to freeze a nuclear program suspected of developing atomic weapons in exchange for two light water reactors and free supplies of heavy fuel oil.
Some Republican congressional leaders had warned Clinton against pushing ahead with the trip in the final weeks of his administration. During the presidential campaign, some Bush aides also had expressed concern over a rushed trip.
When asked at a separate news conference if he supported Clinton's decision, Bush said: ``On all matters between now and the inauguration, the country must speak with the one voice. The president made the decision he thought was important.''
Clinton said the United States has coordinated each step forward in North Korea with South Korea and Japan.
``Taken together, our efforts have reduced tensions on the Korean peninsula, improved prospects for enduring peace and stability in the region, and opened an opportunity to substantially reduce, if not eliminate, the threat posed by North Korean missile development and exports,'' the president said.
Clinton said the United States had a ``clear national interest'' in following up on talks to halt further missile development in North Korea.
---
Clinton Rules Out Visit to North Korea
New York Times
December 28, 2000
By DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/28/world/28CND-KOREA.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 28 - President Clinton said today that he had decided not to visit North Korea before the end of his term next month because he lacked sufficient time to put together a deal ending the country's nuclear missile program.
While Mr. Clinton said he made the decision after evaluating progress in last-minute talks with the secretive North Korean government, and not because of any pressure from the incoming Bush administration, Mr. Clinton's efforts to strike a last-minute deal with the North Korean government was clearly a source of tension with Mr. Bush and his aides.
Mr. Bush's advisers and Republicans in Congress had warned against tying their hands with an agreement that Mr. Bush would be left to execute - and it was unclear whether the new administration would even honor an agreement. But Mr. Clinton's decision today could well indicate a long pause in an intense effort to bring North Korea out of the family of rogue states. It could take a year or more, some White House officials and members of Congress say, before the new Administration has reassessed the new relationship with the North.
North Korea did offer to cease exports of missiles and related technologies, and there was discussion of freezing the development of new missiles, a senior Administration official said today. But the talks hung up on questions of verification and whether to destroy existing missile stocks, the official said.
"We've made a lot of progress with the North Koreans," Mr. Clinton said. "But I concluded that I did not have sufficient time to put the trip together and to execute the trip in an appropriate manner in the days remaining.
---
No N. Korea trip for Clinton
USA Today
12/28/00- Updated 06:23 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncsthu04.htm
WASHINGTON - President Clinton, focusing his remaining days in office on trying to reach a Middle East peace agreement, has decided not to make a historic visit to North Korea. "We've made a lot of progress with the North Koreans," Clinton told a news conference Thursday. "But I concluded that I did not have sufficient time to put the trip together and to execute the trip in an appropriate manner in the days remaining."
A senior White House official, explaining the decision before the official announcement, said the time devoted to the Middle East had been a factor as well as the prolonged hiatus in deciding the result of the presidential election. The Clinton administration wanted to brief its successor before going ahead with such a controversial trip, the official said.
At his news conference, Clinton said he had spoken to President-elect Bush on the negotiations to limit North Korea's missile program and Bush "did not discourage" a trip.
According to U.S. officials, much progress was made toward an agreement during Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's trip to North Korea in October - the highest level visit by an American to the former U.S. foe - as well as subsequent talks in Malaysia between experts from the two sides.
But U.S. officials said more work was needed to complete a deal curbing missile development and exports in return for foreign launches of three North Korean satellites. Another series of negotiations would have been required to complete work on verification procedures and on an agreement to reduce the North's existing missile stockpiles, the officials said.
Some Republicans have criticized the negotiations, concerned about possible transfer of militarily useful technology and not trusting a country run by a regime that National Security adviser Samuel Berger called in a recent article for Foreign Affairs "the most perfectly constituted totalitarian society on the planet."
"We have been spared another agreement at least as problemmatical as the nuclear deal," said Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Non-Proliferaiton Policy Education Center. He was referring to a 1994 accord that froze North Korean nuclear weapons development in return for Western energy aid.
Douglas Paal, president of the Asia Pacific Policy Center, said he expects the incoming Republican administration "to take a slightly more patient approach. There was a sense that we were getting ahead" of South Korea, which has sought confidence building measures dealing with conventional weapons to lessen tensions on the world's last Cold War frontier.
Paal and others have suggested that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, who hosted South Korean president Kim Dae Jung last summer, should pay a return visit to South Korea before a U.S. president goes to North Korea for the first time.
The Clinton administration has stressed nonproliferaiton in dealing with North Korea, a bankrupt socialist state whose major hard currency earner is weaponry. North Korea is the world's leading exporter of missiles, with clients including Pakistan, Iran and Libya. In 1998, the North Koreans stunned the world by launching a three-stage ballistic missile over Japan, indicating an ability to build a weapon that could strike the continental United States.
U.S. officials briefed Secretary of State designate Colin Powell and incoming National Security adviser Condoleezza Rice on the elements of the agreement two weeks ago.
"I believe that the next administration will be able to consummate this agreement," Clinton said. "And I think it will make the world a much safer place."
-------- russia
Russian Warns Bush on Anti-Missile Shield
International Heralf Tribune
Thursday, December 28, 2000
Reuters
http://www.iht.com/articles/5624.htm
MOSCOW The head of the Russian nuclear rocket force warned Wednesday that Moscow would respond to any unilateral move by the incoming administration of George W. Bush to deploy a national missile defense shield without Russia's consent.
The warning came from General Vladimir Yakovlev, who commands the Strategic Rocket Force.
"I am afraid that if that happens, then positive initiatives will, unfortunately, be lost," the Interfax news agency quoted General Yakovlev as saying. "Then we will simply be forced to speak in a different language and a different tone of voice."
Moscow has steadfastly refused to amend the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which bans missile shields, saying it would undermine Russia's own deterrent and provoke a new arms race that would include China.
---
Moscow Warns Against Missile Shield
Washington Post
Thursday, December 28, 2000; Page A16
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A57271-2000Dec27?language=printer
MOSCOW -- Russia would respond to any unilateral move by the incoming U.S. administration to deploy a national missile defense shield without Kremlin acquiescence, the head of the nuclear missile force said.
"I am afraid that if that happens, then positive initiatives will, unfortunately, be lost," the Interfax news agency quoted Gen. Vladimir Yakovlev as saying. "Then we will simply be forced to speak in a different language and a different tone of voice," Yakovlev said.
His comments appeared to be a direct response to assertions by Secretary of State-designate Colin Powell, who has voiced support for a national missile defense. Outgoing President Clinton deferred a decision on deployment of the missile shield, saying his successor should make the choice. Moscow has steadfastly refused to amend the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which bans such systems.
---
Russian Navy Returning to Atlantic
Associated Press
December 28, 2000 Filed at 2:08 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Russia-Navy.html
MOSCOW (AP) -- The Russian Navy will return to the world stage next year, sailing to the Atlantic and Indian oceans and the Mediterranean for the first time in years, a top naval official said Thursday.
``It is time for our ships to move away from the pier,'' Russia's Navy commander Adm. Vladimir Kuroyedov was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.
The two-month mission will mostly involve surface ships, he said, without providing other details.
The Russian Navy has deteriorated amid money troubles and legal chaos that followed the 1991 Soviet collapse. Government financing has dried up, equipment has been pilfered away or aged beyond repair, and ships are rusting at their moorings.
The troubles have weakened the Navy to the degree it is unable even to combat poachers in Russia's waters, government officials have said.
President Vladimir Putin planned to revive the Navy, and Russian ships were to sail to the Mediterranean following this summer's exercises. But the exercises ended in a disaster when one of Russia's newest and best nuclear submarines, the Kursk, sunk on Aug. 12. All 118 sailors aboard were killed.
Kuroyedov said that Russia needs to streamline its Navy with a 20 percent personnel cut starting next year, getting rid of redundant positions. Many jobs to be eliminated are those that are currently vacant, he said.
-------- ukraine
Repaired Ukraine reactor restarted
InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 12/28/2000
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405561365
KIEV, Ukraine (AP) - A nuclear reactor at Ukraine's Yuzhna atomic power plant was restarted Wednesday after an unexpected shutdown for repairs, nuclear officials said.
Operators restarted the No. 2 reactor, whose leaking steam generator had been under repair since Dec. 7, the state Energoatom nuclear company said.
The plant's No. 1 reactor was halted for several hours following a malfunction in its electrical system and was restarted before dawn Tuesday.
Currently, 11 of 13 nuclear reactors at Ukraine's four atomic power plants are working, Energoatom said.
On Dec. 15, Ukraine permanently shut down the only working reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant following pressure from foreign governments and environmental groups.
Chernobyl was the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster when one of its reactors exploded in1986, sending a radioactive cloud over much of Europe.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Bush's Pentagon Pick Is Missile-Shield Savvy
Yahoo News
Politics News
Thursday December 28 4:38 PM ET
By Jim Wolf
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20001228/pl/rumsfeld_newsmaker_dc_1.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Donald Rumsfeld, who headed the Pentagon (news - web sites) in the traumatic post-Vietnam War years, was poised on Thursday to confront new post-Cold War challenges that play to his strength as an expert on national missile defense and protecting U.S. satellites.
A four-time Republican U.S. congressman from Illinois and one-time American ambassador to NATO (news - web sites), Rumsfeld, 68, served from 1975 to 1977 as President Gerald Ford's defense secretary.
Since then, Rumsfeld has acquired expertise in high-technology, 21st-century issues by heading a bipartisan commission that concluded in 1998 that U.S. intelligence had underestimated missile threats to the United States.
The findings of the congressionally chartered, nine-member Rumsfeld Commission led President Clinton (news - web sites), in his final two years in office, to take the idea of a missile shield more seriously, bowing to long-standing Republican pressure.
Rumsfeld -- who was nominated by President-elect George W. Bush (news - web sites) on Thursday to serve again as defense secretary a quarter century after his first stint in the job -- would bring top-level managerial experience from inside and outside the government to the Pentagon, which already has spent more than $50 billion on development of an anti-missile shield.
If confirmed to the post by the U.S. Senate as expected, one of his first tasks would be to modernize U.S. forces by making them more mobile and swifter within existing budget constraints.
``We've got a great opportunity in America to redefine how wars are fought and won, and therefore how the peace is kept,'' Bush said in nominating Rumsfeld.
New Threats
Rumsfeld said the United States must prepare itself to cope with new threats, including ``information warfare'' or computer-generated attacks on vital systems, defense of space assets such as satellites and the spread of weapons of mass destruction throughout the world.
Rumsfeld also currently heads a congressionally mandated commission that is studying the use of space for national security purposes, including employing space assets to support military operations and protecting U.S. satellites from possible attack.
Clinton deferred to his successor the question of whether to start breaking ground in Alaska to field a limited, land-based anti-missile system by 2005 or 2006. Bush campaigned for the presidency on promises of early deployment of a shield to protect U.S. forces and allies from the threat of missile attack or accidental launch.
Russia steadfastly has refused to amend the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, a cornerstone of Cold War strategic stability, which bans such systems. China also strongly rejects any such system.
Rumsfeld served as White House chief of staff for Ford in 1974 and 1975 before becoming the 13th U.S. secretary of defense from 1975 to 1977, the youngest in history, following the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam.
In 1962, at the age of 30, he was elected to the first of his four terms in the House of Representatives as a Republican from the 13th Congressional District of Illinois. Earlier, he attended Princeton University on a scholarship, served in the Navy as an aviator and became an all-Navy wrestling champion, according to his official biography.
In 1969, he resigned from Congress to serve as a top aide to President Richard Nixon and director of the Office of Economic Opportunity. In January 1973, Nixon sent him to Brussels as U.S. ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
After stepping down as defense secretary, Rumsfeld became chief executive of G.D. Searle & Co., a pharmaceutical giant, from 1977 to 1985. For the next five years, he worked as an adviser to William Blair & Co., an investment banking firm.
From October 1990 to August 1993, he served as chairman and chief executive of General Instrument Corp., a leader in broadband and digital high-definition television technology.
Since January 1997, Rumsfeld has been board chairman of Gilead Sciences Inc., a Foster City, California-based bio-pharmaceutical company.
He was born on July 9, 1932 and graduated from Princeton in 1954. The Chicago native is married to the former Joyce Pierson of Wilmette, Illinois, and is the father of three.
In 1977, Ford awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.
Ballistic Missile Threat
Rumsfeld made a major impact as head of the blue-ribbon Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States, which found a vulnerability to attack sooner than had been suggested by the CIA (news - web sites).
An unclassified, 27-page summary of the panel's report, made public on July 15, 1998, contradicted a 1995 CIA national intelligence estimate that predicted no nation outside of declared nuclear powers would be capable of hitting the contiguous 48 U.S. states and Canada before 2011.
Instead, the Rumsfeld panel of defense and intelligence experts unanimously found that countries such as Iran, North Korea (news - web sites) and, eventually, Iraq could field ballistic missiles with ''little or no warning.''
The CIA at first stood by its 1995 conclusions. In a July 15, 1998, letter to Congress, CIA Director George Tenet said the intelligence community's predictions were ``supported by the available evidence and were well tested'' in an internal review. Since then, the CIA has said it agrees that a missile threat could emerge sooner than it originally had predicted.
Rumsfeld said his panel reached a different conclusion because Tenet had granted it unrestricted access to a range of classified material that was unavailable in its entirety for security reasons to all but the most senior analysts.
The Rumsfeld panel also called into question the ability of U.S. intelligence agencies to detect emerging threats, saying this was ``eroding.''
``Deception and denial efforts are intense and often successful, and U.S. collection and analysis assets are limited,'' the panel's report said. ``Together they create a high risk of continued surprise.''
If confirmed, Rumsfeld also would preside over possible shake-ups in billions of dollars in weapons programs, including the largest -- the proposed Joint Strike Fighter warplane.
---
Bush Will Face Money Questions on U.S. Military
Yahoo News
Politics News
Thursday December 28 3:53 PM ET
By Charles Aldinger
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20001228/pl/bush_defense_dc_1.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When George W. Bush (news - web sites) becomes president and commander-in-chief of the U.S. military on Jan. 20, he could quickly find that putting new muscle in an overworked armed force is more easily promised than done.
Analysts say the current $310 billion defense budget will increase under Bush, but it is unlikely he can add perhaps hundreds of billions over the next four years for new arms, more troops and higher pay while giving Americans a tax cut and building a costly, unproven National Missile Defense (NMD).
The military of the world's only remaining superpower has shrunk from 2.1 million a decade ago to 1.4 million today, and the top brass are warning that growing non-combat missions such as Balkans peacekeeping are sapping U.S. readiness to fight two wars at once.
``Even in good financial times, it's going to be tough to get any big increases in military spending while there is peace and no unbeatable enemy on the horizon,'' said former Assistant Defense Secretary Larry Korb, now with the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
Some Pentagon (news - web sites) leaders say that as much as $100 billion extra a year may be needed for the defense budget in order to replace aging Cold War weapons and get the force in trim to carry out the Pentagon's current two-conflict mandate.
Bush campaigned on promises to raise spending on high-tech weapons, give troops better pay and conditions and push an ambitious NMD program to protect the United States and allies from missile attack by ``rogue'' nations, even if it means scrapping the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia.
That missile defense, bitterly opposed by Moscow and Beijing and causing major concern among European allies, would cost well over $60 billion. Meanwhile, two of the previous three attempts to shoot down test missiles have failed.
Rumsfeld Well Placed
Bush's choice to be the next defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, is well placed to deal with the thorny question of deploying a missile defense.
He headed a bipartisan commission that in mid-1998 concluded that U.S. intelligence had underestimated the missile threat to the United States.
As defense secretary, he will work closely with the rest of a Bush national security team that masterminded the U.S.-led victory in the 1991 Gulf War under the president-elect's father, former President George Bush.
Vice President-elect Dick Cheney (news - web sites) was defense secretary and Secretary of State-designate Colin Powell (news - web sites) was chairman of the military Joint Chiefs of Staff during the war.
Powell told reporters after his nomination as secretary of state was announced that ``we will defend our interests from a position of strength,'' especially against nations that pursue nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
``We will not be afraid of them. We will not be frightened by them. We will meet them. We will match them. We will contend with them,'' he said.
Bush and Cheney won a close election partly on a promise to curb U.S. peacekeeping, humanitarian and other non-combat military deployments and re-hone the force for its traditional tasks of fighting and winning wars.
Bush charged that ``our military has been over-extended, taken for granted and neglected'' in eight years under President Clinton (news - web sites) and Vice President Al Gore (news - web sites).
But the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Army Gen. Henry Shelton, warned in a recent speech that it was ``naive'' to believe that America could stop taking part in peacekeeping and other efforts if America was to retain its global authority and influence as a superpower.
Instead, Shelton and other military leaders have tentatively called for increases in the number of troops -- a move which would greatly boost basic costs in, pay, arms, logistical support and health care.
One major immediate task faced by the new defense secretary will be the Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review, or ``QDR,'' a study undertaken every four years to make sure that strategy and forces are well-matched.
The study, beginning in January, will determine if the current policy of being prepared to win two major wars virtually at once should be retained or modified.
Money Needed
Bush and Cheney promised only $54 billion in total extra funding for the armed forces over the next decade, a figure far short of what many defense experts say is needed.
The spending problems are certain to be complicated by an even split between Bush's Republican Party and opposition Democrats in the Senate and a wafer-thin Republican plurality in the House of Representatives after the November election.
The Texas governor has not openly challenged the ongoing permanent deployment of 100,000 U.S. troops in Europe and 100,000 in the Asia-Pacific, but has vowed to stop using the military for what he calls ``nation-building'' abroad.
Such a reversal, including the president-elect's call for removal of 12,000 U.S. peacekeepers from the troubled Balkans as soon as practical, has raised concerns among NATO (news - web sites) allies about alliance-backed stability in Kosovo and Bosnia.
But Bush has more recently softened that threat, indicating that his national security team will work closely with the allies in both peace and conflict.
Despite promises to quickly improve U.S. fighting readiness, Bush and his team suggested during the campaign that it might be smart to skip the next generation of planned Pentagon weapons -- ranging from warplanes to submarines -- and instead vault ahead to even more futuristic arms.
Bush did not make clear what such a move -- certain to be opposed by military leaders -- would entail.
That could call into question the Pentagon's $200 billion Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program, a plan to build up to 3,000 new attack jets for the Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps and British Royal Navy.
U.S. aerospace giants Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co are fighting to win the JSF contract, which could be awarded as early as next year, but Bush advisers have suggested that his national security team will completely revisit expensive new aircraft programs.
Another planned $40 billion military program currently in trouble is the V-22 tilt-rotor helicopter, built jointly by Boeing and the Bell Helicopter division of Textron Inc.
Two Marine Corps versions of the revolutionary aircraft have crashed this year, killing 23 Marines and causing an indefinite delay in any decision to go forward with initial full-scale production of the swivel-engine aircraft.
---
Schools, Not Shields
New York Times
December 28, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/28/opinion/L28MIS.html
To the Editor:
Re "The New Push for a Missile Shield" (letters, Dec. 21):
Your letter writers skirt the issue of what an appropriate defense might be for the dangers that confront us today. President-elect George W. Bush could promote his agenda by combining education reform with national defense, since our first line of defense, no matter what the threat, is our young men and women.
We could drop the idea of building a nuclear missile deterrent and instead, offer two years of education to all high school graduates in the field of their choice - reopening military bases as vocational schools and liberal arts institutions.
Understanding common human needs and concerns might defuse religiously motivated terrorist attacks globally and lead to a world at peace.
JOANNA C. ROVELSTAD Key Largo, Fla., Dec. 21, 2000
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- illinois
New Fuel Improves Proliferation Resistance Of Research Reactors
Science Daily
Argonne National Laboratory (http://www.anl.gov)
Date: Posted 12/28/2000
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/12/001228084456.htm
http://www.anl.gov/OPA/frontiers/e4part.html
A new nuclear fuel that will soon allow almost every research reactor in the world to convert to proliferation-resistant fuel is being developed by Argonne's Reduced Enrichment for Research and Test Reactor (RERTR) program.
Approximately 250 nuclear research and test reactors in 57 nations play a vital role in medicine, agriculture and industry. For example, they provide neutrons for cancer therapy, medical isotope production and improved pharmaceuticals. They also produce tracer elements for pollution and waste migration studies. Through neutron radiography, these reactors help diagnose defects in metals and engines; through neutron scattering they assist the development of new magnetic and superconducting materials. The reactors also allow reactor fuels and materials testing, and training for reactor operators and international inspectors. Unfortunately, about half of these reactors are powered by fuels that contain highly enriched uranium; that is, uranium with a uranium-235 content of 20 percent or more that can be directly used to make nuclear weapons.
Argonne's RERTR program is concentrating on developing a new, low-enrichment-uranium (LEU) fuel suitable for almost all the world's research reactors. LEU fuel contains less than 20 percent uranium-235 and provides an isotopic barrier to weapons usability by rogue nations and terrorists. The new fuel is a dispersion of uranium-molybdenum (U-Mo) alloy in aluminum. Argonne is testing it in research reactors in the United States and in Europe.
"By the end of 2005, we expect to qualify a very dense LEU fuel based on uranium-molybdenum alloy," said Armando Travelli, who manages the RERTR program. "This fuel should meet all the main non-proliferation goals of the RERTR program with favorable implications for the reactors' performance and research productivity." This new U-Mo fuel will enable the LEU conversion of reactors that cannot be converted today, he said. It will also ensure better efficiency and performance for all LEU research reactors and will allow the design of more efficient and powerful new advanced LEU research reactors.
The RERTR program plans to qualify the U-Mo dispersion fuel with an intermediate uranium density by the end of 2003. The future of several foreign research reactors that currently use LEU silicide fuel depends on reaching this intermediate goal. In 2006, the United States will no longer accept spent fuel from foreign research reactors. The spent fuel would then be sent to the COGEMA fuel-processing facility in France, but COGEMA does not process silicide fuel. LEU U-Mo fuel is acceptable to COGEMA and, if qualified by 2003, will give the reactor operators sufficient time to gain regulatory approval and to complete irradiation of their current fuel before the 2006 deadline.
The U.S. Department of Energy started the RERTR program in 1978 under Argonne leadership. The department was motivated by concerns that international traffic in highly enriched uranium fuel could provide opportunities for terrorists or rogue nations to divert some of this material to weapons use. Under the RERTR program's guidance, 36 reactors in 22 countries have converted or are converting to RERTR-developed LEU fuel, and 21 new research reactors have been built or planned that use this fuel. In addition, six nations, including the United States, can now fabricate and supply research reactors with LEU fuels developed by the RERTR program, and three more nations are developing this capability.
Editor's Note: The original news release can be found at http://www.anl.gov/OPA/frontiers/e4part.html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/12/001228084456.htm
-------- maine
Killer Once Employed at MY
Alleged gunman once worked at Maine Yankee
Thursday, December 28, 2000
Blethen Maine Newspapers
By JOSHUA L. WEINSTEIN,
Portland Press Herald Writer
He is a monster now, a man whose name will be lumped with Klebold and Whitman.
But before Tuesday, before he was accused of killing seven of his colleagues at Edgewater Technology in Wakefield, Mass., Michael McDermott was a fairly normal guy - a U.S. Navy veteran who worked for Maine Yankee in Wiscasset in the 1980s.
"He wasn't necessarily outgoing, but he was a sociable enough, amiable fellow," John Harvey, who was in maintenance for 25 years at the nuclear power plant, said Wednesday. "I can't remember anything negative about him."
John McArdle, a New Hampshire resident, also confirmed McDermott's employment at Maine Yankee. He served with McDermott aboard the USS Narwhal, a submarine, and remembers him well.
"He was an average guy, he was a good sailor, he did his job . . . he was very competent," McArdle said.
"All I can tell you for a fact is, he is an individual who, in an earlier life, was willing to put his life on the line for the rest of the people in the country in the Cold War and go into harm's way and to uphold the Constitution of the country and he did that voluntarily.
"Something has happened to him, and I'm not going to defend what he allegedly did, but the man that I knew and I served with was an upstanding man."
When McArdle left the submarine, his colleagues aboard signed a photograph for him.
"John Henry," McDermott wrote, "good luck in civ land. McDermott." Civ stands for civilian.
McArdle last saw McDermott in 1987, when McDermott was working for Maine Yankee.
McArdle was working for Yankee Atomic Electric Co.'s Nuclear Services Division, and was in Maine as a consultant to Maine Yankee.
He was at the company's office in Augusta one day when he saw McDermott.
"He said, 'Hey, John Henry, how are you?' " recalled McArdle. The two reminisced for a while and McDermott explained that he was working for Maine Yankee.
About 10 years later, in 1997, McDermott posted a notice on a Web site for the Narwhal, remembering the encounter:
"I ran into John Henry McArdle about ten years ago," he wrote. "I was working at Maine Yankee and I think he was with Yankee Atomic (?) . . . I do research and development for Duracell Batteries now. . . .Well, I came back to the land of my youth and married a childhood friend. Lasted three and a half years before she split."
Eric Howes, a spokesman for Maine Yankee, said a Michael McDermott worked at the plant from 1982 to 1988 as an auxiliary power plant operator. He said plant officials could not confirm that it was the McDermott accused of the murders.
But McArdle is certain it's the same person.
He remembered him from the submarine and remembered him from the encounter in Augusta. He also remembers McDermott's nickname - "Mucko."
"It's sad," McArdle said. "I hear people saying they ought to kill him . . . If this had been somebody else I did not have a personal knowledge of, I'd probably be saying the same thing. But I go back to knowing something happened to this guy.
"Something happened, and sadly . . . the results of this are seven people that aren't coming home again."
-------- ohio
Radiation pills to be given to Perry neighbors
Cleveland Plains Dealer
Thursday, December 28, 2000
By SUSAN JAFFE PLAIN DEALER REPORTER
http://www.cleveland.com:80/news/index.ssf?/news/pd/cc28pill.html
The federal government has a little something for the 200,000 people in Ohio who live within 10 miles of a nuclear power plant.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which oversees the nuclear power industry, will provide communities near nuclear plants across the country with potassium iodide pills next year. The pills protect against some effects of an accidental radiation release.
The offer reverses a 1999 decision in which the NRC said it supported public use of the tablets but could not afford them. This time, the five-member commission has earmarked $400,000 to buy them and is requiring local governments to consider the pills in their nuclear accident response plans.
In Ohio, the pills would go to people in Lake, Ashtabula and Geauga counties near the Perry nuclear power plant, residents who live near the Davis-Besse plant in= Ottawa County and those in Columbiana County near the Beaver Valley plant in western Pennsylvania. All three plants are operated by FirstEnergy Corp.
Potassium iodide can prevent the thyroid from absorbing radioactive iodine, one of dozens of radioactive gases that can be released in an accident. It must be taken within four hours of exposure and loses its effect after eight hours.
Lake County Health Commissioner Joel Lucia welcomed the renewed offer. He said the Lake County Health District would distribute the pills if the state health department also helps out.
Lake and Ottawa counties already provide the pills for police, firefighters and other emergency workers as well as for people who cannot be evacuated easily, such as nursing-home residents and prisoners.
NRC spokesman Jan Strasma said there might not be enough pills to fill requests from localities near all 103 operating nuclear power facilities. He said only a few states currently provide tablets to the public.
The NRC first recommended the pills after the 1979 Three Mile Island accident. But, nothing happened until NRC staff attorney Peter Crane, acting as a private citizen, petitioned the agency in 1995 to take action.
From Richard Goldizen's front yard, he can see the steam wafting from the massive cooling tower of the Perry nuclear power plant in Lake County.
"If they do have a pill and it would help, I would take it," said Goldizen, who lives about five miles from the power plant. "But I don't think anything catastrophic will happen."
Connie Kline, a Lake County environmentalist, was relieved to hear the NRC had found the money to buy the drug.
"Our country is one of the few with nuclear power that has not made it available," she said.
State health officials said they hadn't decided how to get the pills to the public. Initial plans in 1998, before the NRC withdrew its offer, recommended the pills be distributed at reception centers after people were evacuated from areas around the Perry plant.
Ottawa County Health Commissioner Nancy Osborn was concerned about how to pay for the distribution and public information effort. The funds are not in her 2001 budget, she said.
It's not in the NRC budget either. NRC spokesman Victor Dricks said the commission allocated money only for buying the pills.
FirstEnergy spokesman Todd Schneider said the possibility of an accident at the plants was slim.
If the drug is needed one day, Bob Archer, Lake County's emergency-management director, and other officials cautioned that it only protects one organ and only blocks iodine.
"It's not a magic pill."
-------- tennessee
Officials respond to layoff questions
Thu, 28 Dec 2000 16:22:10 EST
http://www.oakridger.com/
by Paul Parson OakRidger staff
A lot of issues and questions have been raised about the recent layoffs at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and officials this morning responded to some of those.
Several ORNL workers who received involuntary severance notices have voiced dissatisfaction about getting only three days' notice before losing their jobs. They were notified by UT-Battelle, which manages the lab for the Department of Energy, on Nov. 28, and their last day of work was Dec. 1.
"DOE was advised by UT-Battelle management of their plans to adhere to the Dec. 1 schedule," DOE spokesman Steven Wyatt said. "This is completely within ORNL's management responsibility and did not violate any DOE regulations. While the notice to individual employees was limited, ORNL employees affected by the layoff were provided with 60 days of pay in lieu of a longer-term notice."
The Oak Ridger has been told by several current and former ORNL employees that a letter was sent by Leah Dever, manager of the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge Operations office, to UT-Battelle stating that no layoffs should occur prior to the Nov. 7 presidential election.
Wyatt said no such letter was sent.
UT-Battelle and ORNL officials were contacted by The Oak Ridger about these questions and accusations that a lot of "older" lab workers were targeted for dismissal. ORNL spokesman Billy Stair issued the following response to The Oak Ridger's inquiries:
"The reduction in force was announced last summer as a way of making the lab's research programs more competitive," Stair stated. "When hundreds of employees are involved, the process takes time. We could not implement involuntary reductions until we knew the number of voluntary reductions. Salaries and other decisions could not be finalized until we knew the financial impact of the voluntary and involuntary reductions. Working with DOE, we took great care to make sure the reductions were as fair as possible to employees and did not affect ongoing research projects."
---
Former ORNL employee shares story of her dismissal
December 28, 2000
by Paul Parson Oak Ridger staff
http://www.oakridger.com/
Janet Westbrook says she's dissatisfied with how the recent involuntary layoffs at Oak Ridge National Laboratory were handled.
"It was cold and cruel," she said Wednesday afternoon. "The sudden notice, then you're out. Most of the people I've talked to felt hurt."
Westbrook, 50, who spent the past 11 years as a radiological engineer at ORNL, found out on Nov. 28 that her job had been eliminated. She was one of 92 lab employees to receive an involuntary severance notice informing them that their last day of work would be Dec. 1 -- three days later.
Jobs were found for 27 of those employees, and six people who were supposed to get notices were saved when funding for their work was obtained. However, Westbrook, an Oak Ridge resident, is among the 65 laid-off ORNL employees who were not so lucky. She still has no job.
Westbrook's story began in September when UT-Battelle, the company that manages ORNL for the Department of Energy, announced it planned to reduce the facility's operating costs by $20 million for the current fiscal year. In order to accomplish this, layoffs would be necessary.
Initially, ORNL workers were given an opportunity to apply for voluntary departures from the lab. Westbrook said she did not apply because she didn't think she would be laid off due to her qualifications and the need for her type of work. Among the duties Westbrook performed were radiological analyses and reviews for design or modification of radiological facilities.
A total of 212 people out of the 315 who applied for voluntary departures were approved, but it wasn't enough to accomplish UT-Battelle's cost-cutting objective. So company officials began looking at involuntary departures.
"Naturally everybody wondered who it would be," she said.
And on Nov. 28, a Tuesday, employees found out. That's when lab officials began issuing the 92 involuntary severance notices.
Westbrook said she was told to report to her division director's office, where she was issued a piece of paper.
"It was not pink, but I recognized it was my pink slip," she said.
"I asked three times why I was chosen," she said, adding that she was told, "It was not performance-based, but resource-driven."
It was a less-than-satisfying answer, Westbrook maintains.
Westbrook said she asked for something in writing describing the elimination process, but got nothing. She said she was told she could find information about it on ORNL's internal Web site.
Westbrook said if people had known they might be let go, then they could have chosen to take a voluntary departure. She said no one in her department, the Office of Radiation Protection, was given any indication of their fate until Nov. 28.
"It was demoralizing," she said.
Westbrook said she was shocked, and so were many others, by the people who were let go.
"It seems to me that the layoffs were the older, more experienced people," she said.
But now, with her days at ORNL behind her, life goes on for Westbrook. She said she will get about five months' worth of income, including severance pay, from her former job. And she is also currently looking for a job.
With confidence in her voice, Westbrook said, "I feel very optimistic," when asked if she believes she'll find another job.
---
Officials respond to layoff questions
December 28, 2000
by Paul Parson OakRidger staff
http://www.oakridger.com/
A lot of issues and questions have been raised about the recent layoffs at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and officials this morning responded to some of those.
Several ORNL workers who received involuntary severance notices have voiced dissatisfaction about getting only three days' notice before losing their jobs. They were notified by UT-Battelle, which manages the lab for the Department of Energy, on Nov. 28, and their last day of work was Dec. 1.
"DOE was advised by UT-Battelle management of their plans to adhere to the Dec. 1 schedule," DOE spokesman Steven Wyatt said. "This is completely within ORNL's management responsibility and did not violate any DOE regulations. While the notice to individual employees was limited, ORNL employees affected by the layoff were provided with 60 days of pay in lieu of a longer-term notice."
The Oak Ridger has been told by several current and former ORNL employees that a letter was sent by Leah Dever, manager of the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge Operations office, to UT-Battelle stating that no layoffs should occur prior to the Nov. 7 presidential election.
Wyatt said no such letter was sent.
UT-Battelle and ORNL officials were contacted by The Oak Ridger about these questions and accusations that a lot of "older" lab workers were targeted for dismissal. ORNL spokesman Billy Stair issued the following response to The Oak Ridger's inquiries:
"The reduction in force was announced last summer as a way of making the lab's research programs more competitive," Stair stated. "When hundreds of employees are involved, the process takes time. We could not implement involuntary reductions until we knew the number of voluntary reductions. Salaries and other decisions could not be finalized until we knew the financial impact of the voluntary and involuntary reductions. Working with DOE, we took great care to make sure the reductions were as fair as possible to employees and did not affect ongoing research projects."
-------- us nuc politics
Rumsfeld Returns to Pentagon
Associated Press
December 28, 2000 Filed at 8:10 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/politics/AP-Bush-Rumsfeld-Profile.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A quarter-century ago, when Donald Rumsfeld became the nation's youngest defense secretary, the times were much different for the U.S. military. Bloody images from the Vietnam War were fresh in American minds, and the armed forces stood guard against an easily identifiable enemy: the Soviet Union.
In the years since, new threats of global terrorism and missile attack from emerging powers have not eluded Rumsfeld, President-elect Bush's choice to lead the Pentagon again.
He headed a commission in 1998 that warned of the new missile threat. He has spoken out on the Chinese military threat. He was disturbed about how the United States involved its military in Yugoslavia. He warned of the spread of chemical weapons but opposed a chemical weapons treaty that the Senate ratified.
Frank Carlucci, the last secretary of defense in the Reagan administration and a college wrestling teammate of Rumsfeld, said Americans need not fear that they're getting a retread.
``Talent is talent, and this guy's got it,'' Carlucci said in an interview Thursday. ``If you look at his career, he's been a successful congressman, he ran the poverty program, he was a chief of staff to the president (Gerald Ford), the ambassador to NATO, the secretary of defense, and he ran two major companies.
``This is not somebody who can't adjust. He's a quick study.''
Rumsfeld's introduction to the military began after his graduation from Princeton University. He joined the post-Korean War Navy in 1954, served as a naval aviator until 1957 and became the All-Navy wrestling champion.
His first term in Congress, at age 30, began in 1962. He resigned in 1969 to join the administration of President Nixon, the first of four presidents he has served largely in military or economic capacities.
Rumsfeld was the nation's 13th defense secretary, from 1975 to 1977. When he took over the Pentagon for President Ford, he was the youngest to serve in that position at age 43.
Henry Kissinger, secretary of state while Rumsfeld was at the Pentagon, has kept up with his old Cabinet colleague, now 68. Kissinger said in an interview that Rumsfeld can ``adopt strategic doctrine to a new situation. It's something he is qualified to do.''
Both Kissinger and Carlucci said Rumsfeld not only would shape the military to meet today's threats but would build a consensus to do it.
They cited the 1998 report of the Rumsfeld Commission on emerging powers' missile threats. The former defense secretary won unanimous agreement from a diverse group of nine commissioners.
The report concluded a missile attack against targets in the United States could be mounted with ``little or no warning'' and challenged previous intelligence estimates about the severity of the threat. The commission recommended a full review of U.S. analyses and policies regarding the ballistic missile threat.
``The major implication of our conclusions is that warning time is reduced,'' Rumsfeld said. He foresaw ``little or no warning'' of threats ``from several emerging powers.''
It was no surprise to Carlucci that Rumsfeld would lead a commission that ignored conventional intelligence wisdom, and he predicted his friend of more than 40 years would be his own man at the Pentagon.
``Don Rumsfeld is not a figurehead,'' Carlucci said. ``He's got a forceful personality. He's not somebody who is shy. He's not someone who is ego-driven, either.''
Initial congressional reaction to Rumsfeld's selection, from both parties, was positive. Carl Levin, D-Mich., ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, called him ``a strong choice.'' Committee Chairman John Warner, R-Va., said the nation was ``fortunate that this experienced, tested, tough-minded old hand'' was returning.
When the United States became engaged against Yugoslavia, Rumsfeld worried that ``we seem to have drifted into this, and I worry about a gradualist approach. ... I think we certainly learned in Vietnam that gradualism does not work.'' In Yugoslavia, however, NATO won solely with an air campaign.
In congressional testimony in 1997, Rumsfeld said that while proliferation of weapons of mass destruction was a tremendous threat, the chemical weapons treaty then before the Senate was flawed and should be rejected. President Clinton went all-out and won Senate ratification, 74-26.
Rumsfeld said that as a former member of the House, he recalled ``the difficulty of finding oneself in the position of opposing a position that is strongly supported by a president.''
John Robson, deputy secretary of the Treasury under former President Bush, said Rumsfeld, a high school classmate, ``will speak his views, whether he agrees with somebody else's views or not.''
As for Rumsfeld's return to his old job, Robson said, ``He's kept himself very much up to date with national security issues. He's not out of touch.''
---
Text of Bush's Press Conference
New York Times
December 28, 2000
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/28/politics/28BUSH-TEXT.html?pagewanted=all
The following is the text of President-elect George W. Bush's press conference today.
BUSH: Good afternoon. Thank you for coming today.
Today it is my honor to announce that I'm submitting the name of Donald Rumsfeld to be secretary of defense.
There's no question in my mind that his record of service to the country is extraordinary. Former chief of staff, CEO, former secretary of defense, this is a man who has got great judgment, he has got strong vision, and he's going to be a great secretary of defense, again.
Our mission for the next four years will be to build a durable peace. This will require strong alliances, expanding trade, advancing our ideals and interests with a clear and consistent diplomacy. With General Powell serving as the secretary of state, that mission is in very good hands.
But the foundation of peace is to have a military ready to keep the peace, ready for every danger, equal to every challenge.
Today, American armed forces have an irreplaceable role in our world. They give confidence to our allies, they deter the aggression of our enemies.
I've set three goals for our nation's defense. One is to strengthen the bond of trust between the American president and those who wear our nation's uniform. Secondly is defend our people and allies against missiles and terror. And thirdly is to begin creating a military prepared for the dangers of a new century.
Strengthen the bond of trust between the president and the military, rebuilding morale, it means never forgetting that ours is a military of volunteers. Whether someone is in the active forces or Reserves or Guard, they're their at their own choosing, and we must honor that service by better pay, better training and clear missions with attainable goals.
We hope to never send our troops into combat. But if deterrence were to fail, we must send them fully prepared and equipped for the dangers that they will face.
Secondly, to defend our forces and allies and our own country from the threat of missile attack or accidental launch, we must develop a missile defense system.
I was most impressed by the chairman of the national commission's ballistic missile threats work. That chairman was Don Rumsfeld. I felt he did an extraordinary job with a delicate assignment. He brought people together to understand the realities of the modern world.
In picking Don Rumsfeld, we'll have a person who is thoughtful and considerate and wise on the subject of missile defense.
And, finally, we must work to change our military to meet the threats of a new century. Effective military power is increasingly defined not by size or mass but by mobility and swiftness. Influence is measure in information. Safety is gained in stealth.
We've got a great opportunity in America to redefine how wars are fought and won, and therefore how the peace is kept. Our nation is positioned well to use technologies to redefine the military. And so one of Secretary Rumsfeld's first tasks will be to challenge the status quo inside the Pentagon, to develop a strategy necessary to have a force equipped for warfare of the 21st century.
It's going to take a lot of cooperation and close work with the Congress. Both of us pledge to do just that.
And so, it is my honor to bring forth a man who will be an integral part of a national security team that I'm confident will serve America's interests well, a good man, an honorable man, Mr. Don Rumsfeld.
RUMSFELD: Thank you, sir. Thank you very much.
Good afternoon, President-elect Bush and Dick Cheney. I thank you for those very generous words and for your confidence in asking me to return to public service, which I'm delighted to do.
I look forward to serving our country again and, under your leadership, working with the very fine national security team you are assembling, my former associate and colleague Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Condi Rice, and your director of central intelligence, whoever that may be.
And I guess we can confirm today, Mr. President-elect, that it's not me.
I've admired your leadership in Texas. I have valued our discussions on defense issues over the many months. I have studied carefully your address and blue print for defense that you outlined at the Citadel, and I support it enthusiastically.
In your address there, you called for America's capabilities to be designed to meet the challenges of the 21st century. It is clearly not a time at the Pentagon for presiding or calibrating modestly. Rather, we are in a new national security environment. We do need to be arranged to deal with the new threats, not the old ones, as you point out, with information warfare, missile defense, terrorism, defense of our space assets and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction throughout the world.
History teaches us that weakness is provocative. The task you have outlined is to fashion deterrence and defense capabilities, so that our country will be able to successfully contribute to peace and stability in the world.
I look forward to building a team at the Defense Department that, as you mentioned, can help to develop bipartisan support for the many tasks ahead. It's a great institution, the Defense Department, with a proud heritage, and with enormously talented and courageous people. I look forward to serving with them again and, under your leadership, serving with you and your team.
Sir, I thank you.
Q: Mr. President-elect, much has been made about how long it took you to make this decision. I wonder if you could comment on that and also tell us whether you have a target for completing your Cabinet.
BUSH: I thought I moved pretty quickly. I can't remember the exact date the election was finally certified, but... (LAUGHTER)
... I know it was 35 days or 36 days after it was supposed to have ended.
But I felt like we're making pretty good progress. And I hope to have the Cabinet completed at the end of the first week of January. Don't hold me to it, though.
Q: Mr. President-elect, during the campaign, you spoke a lot about military -- the decline in military morale and readiness. But since the election, you've focused on education and tax relief. So what priority will you give rebuilding the military in your first 100 days?
And, perhaps, Secretary-designate Rumsfeld?
BUSH: Well, first, in my budget, I can assure you, there's going to be a military pay raise greater than the pay raise which was enacted a year ago.
And secondly, I've always believed that we're going to have a selling job to do on Congress as to how to modernize the military. BUSH: And that requires, first and foremost, a top-to-bottom -- a bottom-to-top review of what exists today and what the military ought to look like tomorrow. And that's going to be one of Don Rumsfeld's first jobs.
As to missile defense, there's a selling job to do there as well. But a good place to start is the report that he put out, which is a compelling argument of the need for the United States to develop a missile defense system that will work.
And so, Patsy, part of our job is to make sure the budget is right for the military. But part of our job in the executive branch is to provide a blueprint for change, a strategy, and then go to the Hill and sell it. I'll work with Don and Dick to do just that.
Russert.
Q: I yield to Norah.
BUSH: We've just made history.
Norah?
Most thoughtful of you. Please take note of the generosity of spirit here, a senior correspondent such as Russert lateraling a question to one of his colleagues.
Yes, ma'am?
Q: I'll yield then back to Tim.
BUSH: If that's the case, this press conference is over.
Q: I wonder, President-elect, and also the secretary can address, what kind of influence Powell and Vice President-elect Cheney will then have over the Pentagon, given certainly his experience and Powell's stature?
BUSH: Well, I think little, because I picked a strong leader who is willing to listen to others but is a decisive leader.
Secondly, inherent in your question is the arrangement that's going to be, you know, inside the national security apparatus of the White House.
I think that those who follow American diplomacy and politics understand that I've assembled a team of very strong, smart people. And I look forward to hearing their advice.
One of the things that's really important for the American people to understand is, I'll be getting some of the best counsel possible. And so, you bet, General Powell's a strong figure and Dick Cheney's no shrinking violet ... but neither is Don Rumsfeld, nor Condi Rice. I view the four as being able to complement each other.
There's going to be disagreements. I hope there is disagreement, because I know that disagreement will be based upon solid thought. And what you need to know is that if there is disagreement, I'll be prepared to make the decision necessary for the good of the country.
Q: Mr. Bush, you talked about the need for missile defense, the pay raise, where's all this money going to come from?
BUSH: Well, the pay raise is $1 billion, John. And I think it's easily attainable in the budget.
The missile defense, there is money being spent now on missile defense. But one of the things Secretary Rumsfeld will do is to work with our OMB director to make sure that the missile defense receives the priority we think it must receive in future Pentagon budgets.
Q: Would you push the Palestinians and Israelis, at this point, to conclude a peace treaty? Or would you allow the status quo? And do you favor this Clinton plan, which in effect calls for a de facto division of Jerusalem?
BUSH: We have one president, and we'll have one president, and the current president is President Clinton. And our nation must speak with one voice, and therefore, his is the voice that needs to speak.
Having said that, I will tell you, I'm impressed by these efforts to bring the folks together. Obviously, we hope it works. We hope it works.
Q: Do you believe that the majority of the American people think that it is appropriate that your nominee for attorney general be asked, quote, "tough questions" by Vermont's Senator Leahy, who voted to condone what Judge Susan Webber Wright ruled was lying under oath and obstruction of justice?
BUSH: I suspect all my nominees will get tough questions, including Don Rumsfeld. But the good news is that they can all answer the question.
And I am confident that, when it's all said and done, the Senate will give our folks good hearings, and I'm confident they'll be confirmed. And I stand by my choices and will all the way through the process, because I made them for certain reasons, starting with the fact that these good Americans can do the job and do it well.
Q: Mr. President-elect, are you having trouble getting a Democrat to join your administration?
BUSH: That's an interesting question.
I'm not having any trouble getting Democrats to return my phone calls.
Q: That's a different question, sir.
BUSH: Yes, it was, but the same answer.
You know, we've talked to some Democrats. I've talked to Democrats about their willingness to work with us in Congress. I've talked to some Democrats about whether or not there may be an interest of leaving their current positions, and most people want to stay in place.
I think that it's pretty well known that John Breaux and I had an early conversation. I never offered him a Cabinet position, but I did talk generically about his interests. And I said in Austin, Texas -- I don't know if you were there or not -- but when John was there, I said, you know, he wants to stay in the Senate, which I think is good news, in many ways, because he's a person with whom I can work. As I told him down there, the only thing that separates John and me is the Sabine River, at least the way we think.
Q: Mr. President-elect, President Clinton announced just a while ago that he's not going to North Korea. First, do you support his decision, given the current situation in the country, the missile program? And secondly, what will be the biggest difference between the Bush administration's policy for East Asia -- Japan, China and the Korean Peninsula -- and the Clinton administration's East Asia policy, of which you have been quite critical?
BUSH: On this matter, on all matters between now and the inauguration, the country must speak with the one voice. The president made the decision he thought was important.
Secondly, let me get sworn in first.
BUSH: And if there are differences, they'll become apparent as a result of what we do and how we act.
STAFF: Final question.
Q: While your appointments to the Cabinet have been moving along publicly at pretty good pace, what's going on with preparation of your budget? And, you know, behind the scenes, there are a whole lot of other projects that you need to do ...
BUSH: Absolutely.
Q: ... in short order. So how do you feel that process is coming along? Will things come in on time? Do you expect to tinker with it later? What's the status of that?
BUSH: I think we're making pretty darn good progress on the budget. As a matter of fact, Ari can brief you afterwards. But I believe the White House said that we'll have the budget -- Mr. Cogan, who is handling our budget transition, will be giving a look at the current -- what?
Q: The OMB budget?
BUSH: Yes, the OMB budget.
Feel like we're making very good progress there. It's a very legitimate question. Mitch Daniels is who I've designated to be the OMB director. Mitch feels confident that our budget will be ready on time.
As to the deputy secretaries and assistant secretaries and legal counsels for all the departments, again, we feel like we're making pretty darn good progress, but it's hard to move quickly until we get the secretaries named. And, obviously, we've been somewhat delayed in that as a result of the election taking a little longer than most people anticipated it would.
But let me just put it to you this way: On inauguration day, we'll be ready to assume our respective offices.
I want to thank you all. I hope everybody has a good new year. And by the way, see you in the morning.
Q: Who with?
BUSH: I'm not supposed to say anything, I'm sorry.
I'm learning the discipline. I'm learning life within the bubble.
Yes?
Q: Can we ask Mr. Rumsfeld one more question about what it'd be like coming back again as secretary of defense.
BUSH: Sure, absolutely.
RUMSFELD: Well, I won't know that until I make my calls up on Capitol Hill, to the Senate, and go through the confirmation process.
But I have been doing a number of things with respect to national security and foreign policies issues in the intervening years, and I look forward to it. I really do. It's a fine institution and a wonderful group of people. Thank you.
Q: Mr. Rumsfeld, are you going to take another look at gays in the military?
RUMSFELD: I tell you, this has all happened very rapidly, and I intend to sit down and go through the confirmation process and think about a host of things. That is not an issue that President-elect Bush has discussed in his pronouncements on defense, and certainly, the priorities are in other areas for me.
Q: Has he discussed it with you in your conversations?
RUMSFELD: Pardon me?
Q: Do you regard the missile threat as real, and where do they come from?
RUMSFELD: I'm sorry, I couldn't understand.
Q: Do you regard, sir, the missile threats for which (inaudible) have designed as real or potential? Because the Russians, for instance, say that there is no threat, at this point, to America.
RUMSFELD: There's no question but that the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the delivery systems for them is extensive across the world. There is no question but that a number of nations are supplying other nations with elements that they need and assisting them in bypassing the normal period of years it would take them to develop these capabilities.
And I consider that, myself, to be a real threat.
And it exists among other threats: Terrorism is a threat, cruise missiles are threats, information warfare is a threat. There's vulnerability to space assets. There are any number of things that need to be addressed. But in answer to your question, certainly it's a real threat.
Q: Is the Star Wars program in need of reinvigoration? Has the Clinton administration...
STAFF: Thank you. Thank you.
---
Bush Nominates Rumsfeld As Defense Secretary
Yahoo News
Politics News
Thursday December 28 3:06 PM ET
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20001228/pl/bush_leadall_dc_46.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect George W. Bush on Thursday nominated Donald Rumsfeld, a veteran Washington hand who served as defense secretary under President Gerald Ford, as his new defense secretary.
Bush, working to fill the top tier of his administration before being sworn in as the 43rd U.S. president on Jan. 20, called Rumsfeld's government and corporate service ''extraordinary.''
``This is a man who has got great judgement. He's got strong vision. He's going to be a great secretary of defense,'' Bush said at a news conference at his transition headquarters just hours after arriving back from a brief vacation in Florida.
Rumsfeld, 68, served as White House chief of staff for Ford in 1974 and 1975 before becoming the 13th U.S. secretary of defense, the youngest in history, from 1975 to 1977, following the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam.
With Rumsfeld's nomination, Bush has chosen eight of those he expects to have in his Cabinet, a group he said would be politically and ethnically diverse. There are 14 statutory Cabinet members, but every president can elevate any number of agencies to that level during his term. All of them must be confirmed by the Senate.
Aides said they expected Bush to make additional personnel announcements on Friday before returning to Texas to celebrate the New Year at his ranch.
Bush said he hoped to have his Cabinet appointments done by the end of the first week of January, adding with a laugh that he didn't want to be held to that deadline.
The president-elect later added, ``Let me just put it to you this way: On Inauguration Day, we will be ready to assume our respective offices.''
Rumsfeld's selection as defense secretary came as a surprise to most observers. He had been tipped as a possible choice to head the Central Intelligence Agency (news - web sites) and other names, former Indiana senator Dan Coats among them, has been circulating as possibilities to run the Pentagon (news - web sites).
Rumsfeld said he looked forward to a second tour of duty as Pentagon chief.
``I have been doing a number of things with respect to national security and foreign policy issues in the intervening years and I look forward to it, I really do,'' Rumsfeld said. ''It's a fine institution and a wonderful group of people.''
Rumsfeld was elected to the first of four terms in Congress as a Republican from the 13th District of Illinois at the age of 30 in 1962. Earlier, he attended Princeton University on a scholarship, served in the Navy as an aviator and became an all Navy wrestling champion, according to his official biography.
In 1969, he resigned from Congress to serve as a top aide to Richard Nixon and director of the Office of Economic Opportunity. In January 1973, Nixon sent him to Brussels as U.S. ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
After stepping down as defense secretary, Rumsfeld became chief executive of G.D. Searle & Co., a pharmaceutical giant, from 1977 to 1985. For the next five years, he worked as an adviser to William Blair & Co, an investment banking firm.
From October 1990 to August 1993, he served as chairman and chief executive of General Instrument Corp., a leader in broadband and digital high-definition television technology.
Since January 1997, Rumsfeld, a Chicago native and father of three, has been board chairman of Gilead Sciences Inc., a Foster City, CA., bio-pharmaceutical company.
But Rumsfeld made his biggest waves as head of the blue-ribbon Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States, which found a vulnerability to attack sooner than the CIA (news - web sites) had suggested.
An unclassified, 27-page summary of the panel's report, made public on July 15, 1998, contradicted a 1995 national intelligence estimate that predicted no nation outside of declared nuclear powers would be capable of hitting the contiguous 48 states and Canada before 2011.
Instead, the Rumsfeld panel of defense and intelligence experts unanimously found that countries such as Iran, North Korea (news - web sites) and, eventually, Iraq, could field ballistic missiles with ``little or no warning.''
---
Bush Names Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense
New York Times
December 28, 2000
By DAVID STOUT
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/28/politics/28CND-BUSH.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 28 - President-elect George W. Bush today picked Donald H. Rumsfeld, who was Secretary of Defense a quarter-century ago, to the same post in his new administration.
Mr. Rumsfeld, 68, a former Republican Congressman from Illinois and a representative to NATO, was praised by Mr. Bush as a man of "great judgment and strong vision."
"He's going to be a great secretary of defense - again," Mr. Bush said.
Mr. Rumsfeld, who also headed the Pentagon from 1975 to 1977 under President Gerald R. Ford, said, "I look forward to serving our country again."
Mr. Rumsfeld heaped praise on the Defense Department as "a great institution. . .with a proud heritage."
But Mr. Bush said he wanted Mr. Rumsfeld to "challenge the status quo" at the Pentagon, a bureaucratic giant which has often been slow to change, sometimes because of resistance from generals and admirals, other times because of pure inertia.
Mr. Rumsfeld said he would put missile defense, information technology and anti-terrorism high on his priorities.
The prospective defense head is seasoned in government, having served in Congress from 1963 to 1969. Under President Richard M. Nixon, he was head of the Office of Economic Opportunity, then directed the Cost of Living Council.
Mr. Rumsfeld headed a bipartisan commission that in mid-1998 concluded that American intelligence officials had been far too relaxed about missile threats and noted that other nations could use shortcuts to develop such a weapon. Critics complained that panel's mandate was politically skewed to promote the case for antimissile defenses.
Mr. Bush said he hoped to round out his Cabinet appointments by the end of next week.
Returning to the Pentagon will be a double homecoming for Mr. Rumsfeld, in a sense. When he served under Mr. Ford, he was well acquainted with Dick Cheney, then Mr. Ford's chief of staff, now about to be the Vice President. Mr. Rumsfeld also served as Mr. Ford's chief of staff.
But by any measure, Mr. Rumsfeld, who has been in private business in recent years, will be returning to a Defense Department - assuming he is confirmed by the Senate - that will have vastly different concerns.
When he served under President Ford, the Soviet Union and the Cold War will geopolitical realties. Today, they are history, shunted aside on the worry list by terrorists and third-world dictators. In Mr. Rumsfeld's first tenure, the American defeat in Vietnam was a fresh memory, and the draft had ended only a few years before. Today, there are more women in the armed forces than ever before, and the services have had to become more friendly to lure young people into the ranks.
Mr. Rumsfeld had been mentioned as a possible Director of Central Intelligence. He turned that speculation into a joke today, deadpanning that he looked forward to serving with Mr. Bush's C.I.A. chief, "whoever that may be."
Amid laughter, Mr. Rumsfeld said, "I can confirm that it's not me."
---
Bush names Rumsfeld as defense secretary
USA Today
12/28/00- Updated 05:58 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/vote2000/bush114.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) - President-elect Bush chose Donald Rumsfeld to be his secretary of defense, unexpectedly summoning a veteran of four Republican administrations back to the Pentagon post he held a generation ago. Bush said Rumsfeld will be ''a great secretary of defense - again.''
Bush's announcement that he will nominate Rumsfeld, 68, came after days of speculation that the top defense job would go to former Indiana Sen. Dan Coats, or to one of two former aides to Vice President-elect Dick Cheney.
Instead, it went to a man who once was Cheney's White House boss. With the Rumsfeld selection, Bush said he has a team of ''very strong, smart people'' to deal with national defense and diplomacy in the Cabinet and the White House. He said Secretary of State-designate Colin Powell, national security adviser Condeleezza Rice, Rumsfeld and Cheney - also a former defense secretary - will provide him some of the best counsel a president could get.
''General Powell's a strong figure and Dick Cheney's no shrinking violet,'' Bush said, ''but neither is Don Rumsfeld nor Condi Rice.'' He said he knows there will be disagreements among them and when there is, ''I'll be prepared to make the decision necessary for the good of the country.''
Bush said he would have another announcement on Friday. Republican sources said that would include the nomination of Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson to be secretary of Health and Human Services.
At a separate transition briefing, spokesman Ari Fleischer announced his own appointment, saying Bush had chosen him to be White House press secretary. The Thompson choice is as expected as Rumsfeld's was surprising. Rumsfeld himself joked about the speculation that he was headed for the Central Intelligence Agency, saying he looked forward to working with the new director there, ''whoever that may be.''
Rumsfeld was the youngest secretary of defense when President Gerald R. Ford named him to the job at 43, late in 1975. He spent 14 months at the Pentagon. He had been Ford's White House chief of staff; Cheney, who had been his deputy, succeeded Rumsfeld in that position.
A Thompson nomination on Friday would leave Bush five Cabinet posts to fill, at the departments of Education, Energy, Interior, Labor, Transportation and Veterans Affairs.
Bush told a news conference after the Rumsfeld announcement that he felt he was making good progress, given the five weeks of uncertainty that followed the contested Nov. 7 election. ''And I hope to have the Cabinet completed at the end of the first week in January,'' he said. ''Don't hold me to it, though.''
But he did guarantee that ''on Inauguration Day, we'll be ready to assume our respective offices.'' That's Jan. 20.
After his hairbreadth victory over Al Gore for the White House, Bush indicated he would have Democrats in his administration, but there are none so far. ''I'm not having any trouble getting Democrats to return my phone calls,'' he said. But he clearly is having trouble getting them to join his Republican administration. ''I've talked to some Democrats about whether or not there may be an interest of leaving their current positions, and most people want to stay in place,'' he said.
Democratic Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, calling Rumsfeld ''a solid choice, a good choice'' for the Pentagon, said he shouldn't be on ''any speculative list'' about the Bush Cabinet because he is staying in Congress. His name had been mentioned for Veterans Affairs.
Rumsfeld was an Illinois congressman from 1963 until 1969, when he joined the Nixon administration, later serving as ambassador to NATO, then as President Ford's chief of staff. Since leaving the government in 1975, he has been a business executive and adviser to presidents, most recently as chairman of a commission on the threat posed to the United States by ballistic missiles.
So Bush said that in Rumsfeld, he will have a man ''wise on the subject of missile defense,'' one of his declared goals.
''To defend our forces and allies and our own country from the threat of missile attack or accidental launch, we must develop a missile defense system,'' he said. President Clinton delayed a firm decision on proceeding with one, over allied, Russian and Chinese objections.
Bush said he also intends to ''strengthen the bond of trust'' between the White House and the men and women of the military, and that a pay raise for them will be in his first budget.
The president-elect said one of Rumsfeld's first tasks ''will be to challenge the status quo inside the Pentagon, to develop a strategy necessary to have a force equipped for warfare of the 21st Century.''
Bush said Rumsfeld's record of service is an extraordinary one.
''Former chief of staff, CEO, former secretary of defense, this is a man who has got great judgment, he has got strong vision, and he's going to be a great secretary of defense - again,'' Bush said.
Answering questions after the announcement:
Bush declined to discuss Middle East peace efforts, saying only that he is impressed with Clinton's efforts for a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians and ''we hope it works.'' He said the United States must speak with one voice and that is Clinton's so long as he is president.
The president-elect said he expected tough Senate questioning of all his Cabinet nominees, not only Attorney General-designate John Ashcroft, who has drawn sharp Democratic criticism.
Bush avoided discussing North Korea and Asia policy. Clinton announced earlier Thursday that he would not travel North Korea before leaving office. ''Let me get sworn in first,'' he said.
Rumsfeld sidestepped the question of changing the don't ask-don't tell policy on gays in the military, an issue that stirred trouble for Clinton when he took office in 1993. He said it was not an issue Bush had discussed and ''certainly, the priorities are in other areas for me.''
Bush flew to Washington for the Rumsfeld announcement and other transition work after a two-day golf and fishing break with his parents and brothers in Boca Grande, Fla.
''Load 'em up,'' he said as he strode out of his vacation inn at dawn on Thursday to head for the airport and the flight north.
---
Bush Chooses Cold War Veteran As Defense Chief
Yahoo News
Top Stories News
Thursday December 28 5:02 PM ET
By Randall Mikkelsen
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20001228/ts/bush_leadall_dc_91.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President-elect George W. Bush (news - web sites) on Thursday nominated Donald Rumsfeld, a defense secretary during the Cold War, to return to the post to carry out Bush's plans to renew the military for the 21st century.
``This is a man who has got great judgement, he has got strong vision, and he's going to be a great secretary of defense, again,'' Bush said in introducing his pick to reporters while on a two-day visit to Washington.
With Rumsfeld's nomination, Bush has chosen eight of those he expects to have in his Cabinet, a group he said would be politically and ethnically diverse. There are 14 statutory Cabinet members, but every president can elevate any number of agencies to that level during his term. All of them must be confirmed by the Senate.
Bush said he hoped to have his Cabinet appointments done by the end of the first week of January, adding with a laugh that he did not want to be held to that deadline.
``On Inauguration Day, we will be ready to assume our respective offices,'' he said. Bush will be sworn in on Jan. 20.
The choice of Rumsfeld came as a surprise to most observers. Rumsfeld had been regarded as a possible choice for CIA (news - web sites) director, but Bush transition spokesman Ari Fleischer said Bush decided to make Rumsfeld defense secretary a ``couple of days ago.''
Bush's nomination of Rumsfeld to the Pentagon (news - web sites) post may reflect difficulties in finding a defense secretary who could work in the shadows of Secretary of State-designate Colin Powell (news - web sites) and Vice President-elect Dick Cheney (news - web sites).
Rumsfeld served as a security adviser to Bush, helping devise his military reform goals outlined in 1999. He also headed a missile defense commission whose 1998 report helped bolster Bush's case for deploying a missile defense system hotly opposed by Russia.
``In picking Don Rumsfeld, we'll have a person who is thoughtful and considerate and wise on the subject of missile defense,'' Bush said.
He said Rumsfeld would be charged with overhauling the military to take advantage of new technologies.
``Our nation is positioned well to use technologies to redefine the military. And so one of Secretary Rumsfeld's first tasks will be to challenge the status quo inside the Pentagon, to develop a strategy necessary to have a force equipped for warfare of the 21st century,'' he said.
Rumsfeld, 68, served as White House chief of staff for President Gerald Ford in 1974 and 1975 before serving as the 13th secretary of defense, the youngest in history, from 1975 to 1977.
Fleischer Appointed Press Secretary
Later on Thursday, Fleischer announced his own appointment as press secretary in the Bush White House along with other White House appointments. Additional appointments and nominations were expected to be announced on Friday, before Bush returns to Austin, Texas, and begins a New Year's holiday break.
Bush has yet to choose a high-ranking Democrat for his administration, despite an expressed interest in doing so and well-publicized overtures.
``I've talked to some Democrats about whether or not there may be an interest of leaving their current positions, and most people want to stay in place,'' he said.
Fleischer acknowledged that Bush took a ``little extra time'' to decide on Rumsfeld, but said the choice followed a ''deliberative'' search. He denied reports of competition between Cheney, a former defense secretary, and Powell, a former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman and national security adviser, over filling the post.
Appearing with Bush, Rumsfeld said he looked forward to a second tour of duty as Pentagon chief.
``I have been doing a number of things with respect to national security and foreign policy issues in the intervening years and I look forward to it, I really do,'' Rumsfeld said. ''It's a fine institution and a wonderful group of people.''
Rumsfeld was elected to the first of four terms in Congress as a Republican from Illinois at age 30 in 1962. Earlier, he attended Princeton University on a scholarship, served in the Navy as an aviator and became an all-Navy wrestling champion, according to his official biography.
In 1969, he resigned from Congress to serve as a top aide to President Richard Nixon and director of the Office of Economic Opportunity. In January 1973, Nixon sent him to Brussels as U.S. ambassador to NATO (news - web sites).
After stepping down as defense secretary, Rumsfeld served in several top corporate posts.
But he made his biggest waves as head of the blue-ribbon Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States, which found a vulnerability to attack sooner than the CIA had suggested.
An unclassified 27-page summary of the panel's report made public on July 15, 1998, contradicted a 1995 national intelligence estimate that predicted no nation outside of the declared nuclear powers would be capable of hitting the contiguous 48 states and Canada before 2011.
Instead, the Rumsfeld panel of defense and intelligence experts unanimously found that countries such as Iran, North Korea (news - web sites) and, eventually, Iraq, could field ballistic missiles with ``little or no warning.''
Rumsfeld reiterated on Thursday that he considered ballistic missiles from so-called rogue states as a threat, along with terrorism, cruise missiles, and attacks on ``space assets.''
---
Donald Rumsfeld Bio
Associated Press
December 28, 2000 Filed at 8:01 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/politics/AP-Rumsfeld-Bio-Box.html
NAME -- Donald H. Rumsfeld.
AGE-BIRTHDATE -- 68; July 9, 1932.
EDUCATION -- B.A. in Politics, Princeton University, 1954.
EXPERIENCE: Various executive positions with a number of corporations, 1985-present; president and chief executive officer of G.D. Searle and Company, 1977-85; various Ford administration positions 1974-77, including head of Ford's 1974 transition team, assistant to the president, director of the White House Office of Operations, and chief of staff; Defense Secretary under Ford, 1975-77; U.S. ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, 1973-74; various Nixon administration positions 1969-74, including assistant to the president, director of the Office Of Economic Opportunity, counselor to the president and director of the Cost of Living Council; U.S. Representative from Illinois, 1962-1969; A.G. Becker & Co., 1960-62; assistant to two different congressmen, 1957-59; aviator and flight instructor, U.S. Navy, 1954-57.
FAMILY -- Wife, Joyce; three children; five grandchildren.
QUOTE -- ``We are in a new national security environment. We do need to be arranged to deal with the new threats, not the old ones ... with information warfare, missile defense, terrorism, defense of our space assets and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction throughout the world.''
-------- MILITARY
Cuba, China Sign Military Cooperation Protocol
Yahoo News
World News
Thursday December 28 10:33 AM ET
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20001228/wl/cuba_china_dc_1.html
HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba and China have signed an agreement to strengthen cooperation between their armed forces, Cuban state media said Thursday.
The protocol was signed Wednesday by General Fu Quanyou, chief of the General Staff of the Chinese People's Liberation Army and by his Cuban counterpart, General Alvaro Lopez.
Fu Quanyou was on a five-day goodwill visit to the communist-ruled Caribbean island.
Cuba's Armed Forces Minister, General Raul Castro, brother of president Fidel Castro (news - web sites), attended the signing ceremony.
Cuban media gave no details of the contents of the accord, saying only that it was aimed at strengthening the ``friendship'' between the armed forces of the two one-party communist states.
Until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Cuba's armed forces had a close relationship with the Soviet military, who supplied arms, equipment and training.
But over the last decade, Cuba and China have moved to deepen their political and economic ties.
--------
U.S., S. Korea OK troops rules
InfoBeat News - Afternoon
Edition - 12/28/2000
By SANG-HUN CHOE Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405571457
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - South Korea has received the right to detain American servicemen suspected of rape and murder as part of a revised agreement governing the 37,000 U.S. troops stationed throughout the country.
The new accord, reached Thursday after 11 rounds of talks since 1995, resolves one of the most contentious disputes between the two allies.
Under the old Status of Forces Agreement, first signed in 1966 and revised in 1991, American troops accused of a crime were detained in U.S. military custody until convicted in the South Korean judicial system and all appeals were exhausted.
Calling it too lenient and an infringement upon its sovereignty, South Korea sought revisions to the agreement, which governs the legal treatment of U.S. troops stationed there since 1954 as protection against communist North Korean aggression. Activists said the accord discriminated against South Korea compared to similar arrangements the United States has with Japan and Germany.
Under the revised treaty, U.S. soldiers accused of murder, rape, arson, drug trafficking and eight other serious crimes would be turned over to South Korea upon indictment. In murder or rape cases, South Korean police would have the right to arrest and detain U.S. military suspects.
South Korea, in return, promised to protect and strengthen suspects' rights to legal counsel and speedy trial. The new agreement also called for enhanced safeguards for accused U.S. soldiers regarding detention facilities and media exposure, said Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Frederick Smith, who signed the accord with his South Korean counterpart, Song Min-soon.
The rights and responsibilities of the U.S. troops stationed here is a politically sensitive subject among South Koreans.
Many were enraged by the handling of a murder case involving a U.S. soldier accused of killing a South Korean waitress. Under the old agreement, the soldier was detained by the U.S. military but fled the base hours before he was to stand trial in a Seoul court. Eventually apprehended by Seoul police, he later was sentenced to eight years in prison.
Environmentalists also blasted the U.S. military for dumping 24 gallons of formaldehyde into the Han River, a main source of drinking water for Seoul's 12 million people, earlier this year. The U.S. says the chemicals did not pose any risk to public.
President Kim Dae-jung urged Washington to revise the treaty as quickly as possible to prevent anti-American activists in Seoul from using the issue to demand that all U.S. forces leave South Korea.
The new agreement calls for U.S. troops at 85 facilities nationwide to respect South Korean environmental regulations. It also boosts the labor rights of South Koreans working for the U.S. military, and calls for joint quarantine inspections on animals, plants and other products imported by U.S. forces.
Civic groups welcomed the changes in custody but accused the U.S. and South Korean governments of failing to offer concrete measures to prevent or compensate for environmental damage already caused by American forces.
``The revision is full of lip service and lacks substance,'' they said in a joint statement.
-------- arms sales
Russia says arms sales to Iran are legal
Washington Times
December 28, 2000
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-20001228212250.htm
TEHRAN - Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev said yesterday that Moscow would not break international agreements by selling arms to Iran and insisted any deal would not "prejudice a third country."
His statement echoed an assurance he gave the United States earlier this month when he said Moscow would sell only defensive weapons to Iran.
U.S. concern over military ties between Moscow and Tehran rose recently when Russia decided to pull out of a secret 1995 pact in which it agreed not to sell conventional arms to Iran. Russia dropped the pact after details were reported in The Washington Times.
---
New York Times
December 28, 2000
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/28/world/28BRIE.html?pagewanted=all
EUROPE
FRANCE: MITTERRAND STAYS IN JAIL The eldest son of former President François Mitterrand, accused of arms trafficking, had his request for bail denied and will stay in prison for at least another six days while police investigations continue. A lawyer for Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, 54, who was his father's special counselor for Africa, called the decision "purely political." Mr. Mitterrand is also accused of laundering money from deals in Angola. Donald G. McNeil Jr. (NYT)
--------
Mitterrand's son to stay in jail
InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 12/28/2000
By PIERRE-ANTOINE SOUCHARD Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405561431
PARIS (AP) - A son of the late French President Francois Mitterrand, jailed nearly a week for alleged illegal weapons sales to Africa, will spend at least another six days behind bars, his lawyers said Wednesday.
A Paris appeals court that was expected to rule Wednesday on a request for Jean-Christophe Mitterrand's release from La Sante Prison in Paris has delayed its decision until Jan. 2.
``This is purely a political decision,'' said Remy Wilner, one of Mitterrand's lawyers. ``This measure is based on a judge's wish to keep the son of the former president of the republic in prison.'' Prosecutors have asked the court to keep Mitterrand in jail.
Mitterrand, 54, was placed under investigation late Thursday for alleged complicity in arms trafficking and misuse of political power in a scheme that involved money laundering in illicit deals to Angola.
Mitterrand, who worked under his father from 1986 to 1992 as special presidential counselor for Africa, has denied any illegal role in the affair, which centers on the activities of the French company Brenco International.
Mitterrand is alleged to have received $1.8 million via Brenco's president, Pierre Falcone, between 1993 and 1998. Falcone was placed under investigation Dec. 1 for tax fraud, arms trafficking and influence trafficking.
Attorneys for Mitterrand said Wednesday there was no proof that their client committed any wrongdoing and that he was being wrongly punished.
Jean-Pierre Versini-Campinchi, a Mitterrand lawyer, said that his client had arranged introductions for Falcone in Angola that allowed the businessman ``to set up swaps.''
``Which is to say, exchange contracts of intergovernmental bank loans for oil,'' Versini-Campinchi said, adding: ``This type of operation, worth billions of dollars, leads to certain commissions.'' He did not elaborate.
Danielle Mitterrand, the suspect's mother who herself is a prominent human rights campaigner, demanded that authorities ``explain the serious, precise reasons'' for her son's detainment, Versini-Campinchi said.
The former president's son is only one of several well-known personalities suspected of playing a role in the alleged affair.
Best-selling author Paul-Loup Sulitzer also was placed under investigation, but freed on his own recognizance.
Jean-Christophe Mitterrand's residence was searched, along with the residence of Jacques Attali, the former president's top adviser, on Dec. 1.
Francois Mitterrand served two terms as president, from 1981 until 1995. He died in 1996.
-------- colombia
Colombia gunmen abduct 8 people
InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 12/28/2000
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405561519
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - Gunmen placed a roadblock on a bridge in northern Colombia on Wednesday and kidnapped eight people from their vehicles, including a small town mayor.
National Police Gen. Alfredo Salgado blamed the mass abduction in Bosconia, a town in Cesar State located 320 miles from Bogota, on a guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army, or ELN.
But police anti-kidnapping chief Col. Leonardo Gallego told the Associated Press it was not yet clear whether the ELN was involved. He said some eyewitnesses had accused the rebels.
There was no immediate comment or claim of responsibility from the ELN, Colombia's second-largest leftist insurgency. The group has a strong presence in Cesar.
Police had no information on where the victims were taken or whether the kidnapers asked for ransom.
With about 3,000 abductions ever year, most by leftist guerrillas and common criminals, Colombia has the world's highest kidnapping rate.
Many of the kidnappings are for ransom but some are political. Guerrillas sometimes abduct mayors and hold ``revolutionary trials'' in which they are accused of corruption and other misdeeds.
-------- drug war
Bush Could Get Tougher on Venezuela's Leader
New York Times
December 28, 2000
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/28/world/28VENE.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON, Dec. 27 - After two years in which the United States has carefully avoided a feud with President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, the administration of George W. Bush will probably take a tougher stand against the populist leader, Republican officials and foreign policy analysts say.
There is a growing belief in Republican circles that Mr. Chávez is undercutting American foreign policy by providing oil to Cuba, by opposing "Plan Colombia," which includes $1.3 billion in United States counternarcotics aid for South America, and by giving political support to guerrillas and anti-government forces in neighboring Andean nations.
There is also concern that Mr. Chávez, a former paratrooper who led a failed coup in 1992, is distorting the democratic free-market model advocated in Washington by consolidating institutions under his control and setting himself up as an elected dictator.
While there is no bipartisan consensus on whether Mr. Chávez is merely a nuisance or a real threat to United States interests in Latin America, Republican advisers to the Bush team say the friction is increasingly hard to overlook.
"The Venezuela issue is likely to be troubling, or a hot spot in the first three to six months" as anti-drug battalions trained by the United States begin operations in Colombia, said Georges A. Fauriol, director of the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a foreign policy research center with close ties to Republicans.
But the analysts also preach caution. The stakes are high, they note, as Venezuela holds the largest oil reserves outside the Middle East and is America's fourth largest supplier. An openly hostile stance toward Mr. Chávez could do more harm than good.
"It's been a conscious policy of trying to engage with him on a positive basis wherever possible without rising to the rhetorical bait when he pokes us in the eye," said Bernard Aronson, a former assistant secretary of state for Latin America in the previous Bush administration. "His actions are getting harder and harder to ignore. I'm not sure the incoming administration is going to be as tolerant."
Venezuela's ambassador to Washington, Toro Hardy, said that Mr. Chávez had legitimate concerns over Plan Colombia, including a fear that it will bring refugees, renewed violence and an arms race to Venezuela.
"He is a president who believes a nation, no matter its size, has the right to act in a sovereign fashion," he said. "But it in no way is a hostile posture."
Some Clinton administration officials agree. One longtime diplomat who served in Venezuela said Mr. Chávez had not jeopardized the United States priorities of fighting drugs, protecting democracy and safeguarding the oil supply. "All of our interests are pretty well taken care of," the diplomat said. However troublesome Mr. Chávez's moves to purge the judiciary and neutralize political parties and labor unions, the envoy added, "what Chávez did he did on the basis of clean elections. So far he is functioning within the democratic structure."
Republican Party foreign policy experts say they would look to Mexico to help reduce America's dependence on Venezuelan oil, which currently accounts for 13 percent of United States imports. Mr. Chávez has helped in that regard, slashing his nation's oil production to drive up prices; in the process, Venezuela slipped behind Canada, Saudi Arabia and Mexico as a United States supplier.
While governor of Texas, Mr. Bush built a comfortable relationship with Mexico's conservative new president, Vicente Fox, and he is expected to make United States-Mexican relations a cornerstone of his Latin policy.
"We need to cultivate the Mexicans on this," said a Republican foreign policy aide who served Presidents Reagan and Bush. "They could conceivably be a much more reliable supplier."
The next administration is also expected to solidify contacts within the Venezuelan military, which is increasingly uncomfortable with Mr. Chávez, the Republican experts say. Unlike Mr. Chávez, many Venezuelan officers studied and trained in the United States and do not share his suspicions, they said.
Rather than clash directly with Mr. Chávez, the Republicans say, they would favor a quiet effort to prod other Latin American nations to spurn Mr. Chávez and ignore his appeals to regional solidarity. Most of Venezuela's Andean neighbors have already voiced distress over what they say is meddling by Mr. Chávez in their internal affairs, but the most influential nation, Brazil, has taken a more benign view.
"Bush has an opportunity with Venezuela to say, I'm going to deal with the hemisphere respectfully, and to a certain extent, I'm got to let the hemisphere be the judge of Chávez's behavior," said Dan Fisk, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research group. "What Chávez wants is to provoke some sort of overreaction from Washington."
The incoming administration will also try to blunt regional skepticism toward Plan Colombia by providing a significant amount of development aid to Venezuela's neighbors, officials and analysts said.
Since Mr. Chávez took office in February of last year, he has seemed determined to display his independence from the United States, a posture that plays well with his nationalistic, mostly poor supporters. He spurned United States flood aid when American troops came to deliver it. He became the first head of state to break the international isolation of Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi leader, when he visited Iraq in August.
He lavished admiration on Fidel Castro, and helped him combat the American trade ban by sending him oil in return for medical service for Venezuelans. He has fostered the greatest increase in tensions with Colombia in two decades, has reached out to Colombian rebels and has predicted that American military aid will lead to a regional conflagration. His expressions of sympathy for anti-government forces in Bolivia and Ecuador have drawn howls of protest from those countries.
He has barred American counter- narcotics pilots from flying in Venezuelan airspace, and he has led the charge in OPEC to force up prices by scaling back production. During the uncertain days after the United States presidential election, Mr. Chávez could not resist a jab at his northern neighbor. "We're willing to help out if necessary," he said.
Such positions play well at home, and some analysts say it is occasionally difficult to determine whether Mr. Chávez's appeals to class resentment and regional leadership are merely bluster.
Toro Hardy, Venezuela's ambassador to Washington, argues that Mr. Chávez has been a reliable economic partner of the United States and has taken major steps toward market reform and privatization that have benefited American investors.
"When two countries have such close economic ties you can't speak of conflicting relations," Mr. Hardy said in an interview.
He denied that Venezuela provides any material support to rebels in the Andean region, and he attributed the concern over Mr. Chávez to "misperceptions." He said Mr. Chávez's five trips to the United States prove he is not anti-American.
---
Drug Aid at Home
New York Times
December 28, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/28/opinion/L28DRU.html
To the Editor:
Re "Bush Should Start Over in Colombia," by Paul Wellstone (Op- Ed, Dec. 26):
Senator Wellstone is correct in declaring that "strong human rights conditions" be maintained in Colombia as a requirement for its receiving American drug-war aid.
But some American drug-related human rights also need more support. Drug addicts are mentally and physically ill, but they do not always receive treatment.
ABRAHAM G. WHITE, M.D. Forest Hills, Queens, Dec. 26, 2000
---
FCC Slaps Anti-Drug TV Shows
Looks like the Scriptgate scandal isn't quite over.
Yahoo News
Entertainment News
Thursday December 28 04:04 PM EST
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/eo/20001228/en/fcc_slaps_anti-drug_tv_shows_5.html
http://rd.yahoo.com/Dailynews/eo/inlinks/*http://www.eonline.com/News/Items/0,1,5866,00.html?yhnws
The Federal Communications Commission says that if Uncle Sam helps bankroll TV programs like The Practice and The Drew Carey Show because of those shows' anti-drug messages, the networks have to let the people know where the funding is coming from.
The FCC ruled that ABC, NBC, Fox and CBS should've identified the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy as a sponsor of shows. However, the agency refused to order the nets to pay any fines.
The news first hit the fan last year, when it was discovered that the big networks received a total of $25 million to include anti-drug messages in prime-time programming. The White House reviewed more than 100 scripts to determine eligibility, but network officials swear they never changed a plot to get more money from the government.
The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) recently filed a complaint with the FCC claiming that the networks' failure to identify the White House as a sponsor of the anti-drug shows violated FCC disclosure rules. The disclosure rules, which haven't changed since 1927, state listeners and viewers "are entitled to know by whom they are being persuaded."
"We have been told by these programmers that they have influenced the programs in order to please the government. That is not the kind of free press we have grown accustomed to," R. Keith Stroup, executive director of NORML, told the Washington Post.
Stroup says the FCC's ruling doesn't mention whether or not the government should support a specific viewpoint in prime-time entertainment shows. Stroup says this arrangement threatens the First Amendment guarantee of free speech.
All of this goes back to 1997, when Congress gave the go-ahead to a five-year, $1 billion ad campaign for anti-drug advertising. The clincher was that the networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, the WB and UPN) agreed to match ad dollars spent by the ONDCP, giving the government half-price rates during prime-time hours.
It was a money-losing proposition for the nets, which had to make room for the cheaper PSAs by bumping full-price-paying advertisers. So the ONDCP and nets struck a compromise. To help save money, the networks began submitting scripts (often without the knowledge of producers) that contained anti-drug messages to the ONDCP, which would decide how much such a message was worth in ad dollars. For example, a main plot about the evils of drug use could count as much as five 30-second spots.
The networks have not responded to the FCC ruling.
---
Downey Pleads Innocent to Drug Charges
Yahoo News
Entertainment News
Thursday December 28 04:04 PM EST
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/eo/20001228/en/downey_pleads_innocent_to_drug_charges_9.html
With dozens of flashbulbs catching his every sober stare and major news networks from CNN to MSNBC broadcasting the proceedings, Robert Downey Jr.'s battle with drug addiction has become America's case du jour.
The sobriety-challenged actor was arraigned Wednesday in an Indio, California, courtroom on drug charges stemming from an alleged Thanksgiving weekend binge in which he was busted for possession of cocaine and Valium.
With a steady voice, Downey pleaded not guilty to two felony charges of possession of cocaine and the prescription depressant diazepam. He also plead not guilty to misdemeanor charge of being under the influence of a controlled substance.
Downey's lead attorney, Daniel Brookman, kicked off the day's hearing by asking the judge for a continuance, because he said his team had only received the evidence from the District Attorney's office on December 22.
However, Judge B.J. Bjork denied the request at Deputy District Attorney Tricia Kelly's urging, and instead ordered Downey to enter his plea.
Brookman sought to delay the arraignment to give his side more time to review the evidence, such as videotapes, audio tapes and laboratory analysis of a Downey blood sample taken by police when they arrested him Thanksgiving weekend in a Palm Springs hotel room. Police went to the 35-year-old actor's room at the Merv Griffin Resort the night of November 25, after an anonymous 911 caller said there were drugs and weapons there. They allegedly found a small amount of drugs, but no weapons.
If convicted on all charges, Downey could face up to four years and eight months in state prison.
"I wasn't surprised [by the Judge's decision]," said Brookman, in a press conference following Wednesday's court hearing. "The prosecution has indicated they want to go forward with this case. This is just a normal procedural motion. Generally we're pleased with what happened today."
Downey, who looked more lucid than previous court appearances, stood before the judge and answered his questions with a polite "yes" or "no."
"Mr. Downey is very optimistic and upbeat," added Brookman when asked about the actor's current state of mind. "He's committed to moving on and addressing the issues as they present themselves."
Since Downey was arrested in Indio, the charges against him are considered an EDP case--meaning it falls under the county's and the state of California's Expedited Drug Program.
As part of EDP, counsel for Downey and the prosecution will sit down and try to resolve the charges themselves. If they fail to strike a deal by the EDP court date (in this case, Downey will return to court January 29), then Downey's case will go through the regular trial motions.
"Settlement talks are something traditionally we don't comment on," said Deputy District Attorney Tricia Kelly afterward. "Mr. Downey faces anywhere between probation and state prison, and sentencing would be up to a judge, but we are moving forward on this."
Downey's current legal woes are just the latest in a sad string of troubles dating back to June 1996, when a traffic stop turned up cocaine, heroin and a loaded pistol. A month later, the actor was found passed out on a child's bed in a neighbor's house. Three days later, he was busted for leaving a recovery center.
Downey got off with three years' probation in 1996, but failed to escape his addictions, and the following year, ended up spending time in Los Angeles County jail for violating his probation. In 1999, he was sentenced to Corcoran State Prison in central California after again relapsing.
All told, Downey has made at least eight trips to rehab in the past four years, including time spent in a halfway house in August, after he was released from Corcoran.
Downey's transition back to show-biz, up until Thanksgiving, had been smooth. Considered one of the most talented actors of his generation, Downey landed a recurring role as Ally's love interest on Fox's Ally McBeal. The part even snagged him a Golden Globe nomination.
It's still too early to tell how Downey's latest battle with his addiction will affect his future in Hollywood.
"We might recommend very intense treatment," John Schwarzlose of the Betty Ford clinic told CNN. "For someone who's gone through treatment before, we might be talking a long-term [program]. . .where he's cut off from the outside world, and doing nothing but working on his addiction."
The threat of jail time will likely sink his participation in several other high-profile projects. Downey was scheduled to appear onstage in Los Angeles as the tortured lead in a Mel Gibson-directed Hamlet as well as costar with Julia Roberts in the comedy America's Sweethearts. Fox is taking a wait-and-see approach as to whether the actor will continue on Ally.
---
Robert Downey Jr. Pleads Not Guilty in Drug Case
Yahoo News
Entertainment News
Thursday December 28 12:35 AM ET
By Dan Whitcomb
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20001228/re/people_downey_dc_21.html
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20001227/en/people-downey_13.html
INDIO, Calif. (Reuters) - Troubled actor Robert Downey Jr. (news - web sites) pleaded not guilty to felony drug charges that could send him back to prison for close to five years and endanger a promising Hollywood career.
The charges stemmed from his arrest last month at a hotel in the desert resort of Palm Springs just three months after his release from prison on a prior drug conviction.
During the 20-minute court hearing Wednesday, a lawyer for the 35-year-old Oscar-nominated performer, who has remained free on $15,000 bail since the day after his Nov. 25 arrest, sought a continuance of his arraignment. But the judge refused his request and ordered the plea entered immediately.
Downey, dressed entirely in black, entered the packed courtroom through a back door, and was greeted by a barrage of camera flashes from a crowd of photographers crammed into a jury box in a scene resembling a movie premiere.
The actor smiled briefly at spectators in the courtroom gallery and spoke only in response to the judge's questions about whether he understood the proceedings. His lawyer, Daniel Brookman, entered the not-guilty plea on his behalf.
Downey left the courtroom without speaking to reporters and drove away at the wheel of a blue Chevrolet Monte Carlo, but he was mobbed again by photographers when forced to stop at a traffic light a short distance from the courthouse.
``He's very optimistic and upbeat about ... moving on with his personal life,'' Brookman told reporters after the arraignment. ''His legal problems are of some concern to him, but he's optimistic.''
Downey was ordered to appear for another court hearing Jan. 29.
Nearly Five Years In Prison Possible
Riverside County prosecutors have charged Downey with felony possession of cocaine, felony possession of the prescription drug Valium and a misdemeanor count of being under the influence of a controlled substance.
Under California sentencing guidelines, he faces a maximum prison term of four years and eight months in state prison if convicted on all charges. That includes one year for having served time on a prior drug conviction.
Downey's attorneys are expected to challenge the evidence police seized during a search of the actor's hotel room. Brookman Wednesday asked Riverside County Superior Court Judge V.J. Bjork for a continuance because he needed more time to study the evidence, but the judge refused to grant one.
The actor's latest arrest came about three months after he ended a yearlong prison stay for a previous cocaine possession conviction and entered a rehabilitation program.
Downey, who earned an Oscar nomination for his title role in the 1992 film ``Chaplin,'' renewed his acting career after his release from prison in August, landing a role as a recurring guest star on the popular Fox television series ``Ally McBeal.''
Until his latest arrest, many in Hollywood predicted that he could stage a major comeback, describing him as one of the most talented and most likable actors in show business.
Spending the Thanksgiving holiday weekend in Palm Springs, he was arrested by police responding to an anonymous telephone tip from a man who claimed there were guns and cocaine in Downey's hotel room.
Police said a search of Downey's room turned up a small quantity of cocaine and some pills but no firearms, and the actor tested positive for drug use. He was arrested that night and freed on bail the following day.
Besides shocking friends who thought he was on the road to recovery, Downey's latest drug problem cost him a role in a high-profile movie project, ``America's Sweethearts,'' to be directed by former Disney studio chief Joe Roth and starring Julia Roberts, Catherine Zeta-Jones and John Cusack.
His legal status has also clouded Downey's future on ``Ally McBeal,'' where he has earned plaudits for his on-screen chemistry with series star Calista Flockhart. Fox executives have said they would like to extend Downey's appearance on the show beyond the 10 episodes he has made, but the drug charges against him have left his future availability in doubt.
---
USA Today
12/28/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm
Nebraska
Lincoln - Parole was approved for a woman who sold methamphetamine that ultimately killed a York High School student at the school's prom in 1996. Lori Connely, 29, was accused of originally selling the drug that killed Kory Sierp, which he obtained through others. His death was blamed on meth-related cardiac arrest. Connely was sentenced in January 1999 to 1 to five years in prison.
-------- land mines
A Time to Plant Mines, a Time to Make Amends
New York Times
December 28, 2000
SIEM REAP JOURNAL
By SETH MYDANS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/28/world/28CAMB.html?pagewanted=all
SIEM REAP, Cambodia, Dec. 22 - In this threadbare land where few children can afford to have toys, a pineapple mine is a real find.
A hefty little metal cylinder that looks as much as anything like half an ear of corn, it offers delights as a plaything that are limited only by the imagination of a small boy or girl.
As luck would have it, there was a pineapple mine lying right beside the path where 9-year-old Sot Tol and four of his friends were walking in single file three years ago as they headed into a rice field to round up their families' cows.
"Hey, look at this!" were the last words of one of Sot Tol's friends, the first boy in line.
Then, said Sot Tol, "Boom!"
He was the only survivor - a child with only one leg and only one likely future, as a beggar, like thousands of other victims who cluster with their crutches around the markets and temples of Cambodia.
It is estimated that 80,000 people have been killed by land mines in Cambodia's various wars since 1970. As many as 40,000 people - or one of every 250 Cambodians - have survived the blasts crippled, like Sot Tol.
Sot Tol is 12 years old now and has found an unlikely refuge from the life of a beggar. He lives with Aki Ra, 27, one of the former soldiers who is responsible for these deaths and maimings.
Mr. Aki Ra is an expert in laying mines and in their terrible effects. It is all he knows and all he seems to think about.
As a boy about the age of Sot Tol, he was trained to lay mines for the Communist Khmer Rouge guerrilla movement in the early 1980's. Then, when he was captured by the occupying Vietnamese Army, he laid mines for them. In 1989, after the Vietnamese withdrew, he was conscripted to lay more mines for the Cambodian government.
Like the mines he planted, he was indiscriminate in his killing.
It is pointless to ask him how many deaths he thinks he caused. Land mines are patient killers that lie where they have been sown for years and decades, waiting for a soldier or a farmer or a troupe of children herding cows to pass by.
"Many civilians, many animals, many children step on my mines, even my friends," Mr. Aki Ra said. "What could I do? It was my job."
Cambodia's wars have finally sputtered to an end in the past two years, their tangled enmities blurring, alliances shifting, casualties seeming more pointless than ever. But anywhere from 4 million to 10 million mines still lie scattered through the country's fields and jungles, still killing and maiming an estimated 200 people a year.
They are like the memories of the killers and their surviving victims - of Mr. Aki Ra and the boy Sot Tol - still buried, not yet defused, waiting to explode unexpectedly.
For Mr. Aki Ra they have become an obsession.
When the United Nations arrived to hold elections in the early 1990's he learned English, joined a mine-clearing agency and returned to the battle lines to search for and remove some of the mines he and his comrades on all sides had planted.
He was as good at his new job as at his old one. He seemed to have an instinct, almost an affinity, for hidden minefields. With a long-handled trowel he learned to nudge a buried mine to the surface and then, carefully, to remove its blasting cap.
"I can clear 50 mines in a day, sometimes more," he said.
The defused mines fascinated him, and he began collecting them: American-made claymores; pancake- shaped anti-tank mines; little round Vietnamese anti-personnel mines filled with ball bearings; Russian MON-50's; Bulgarian POMZ-2's; and plenty of pineapple mines from around the world.
With his earnings from the United Nations he bought a bit of land and laid out a pretty garden by a stream. And among its pale flowers and feathery bushes, under the shade of young fruit trees, he planted his new collection of mines.
The mines are safe, he said; he has defused them all. But around the edges of his garden, as a sort of object lesson, he has posted the bright red signs with a white skull and crossbones that can be seen alongside fields and streams all around Cambodia: "Danger!! Mines!!"
That was just the beginning. Mr. Aki Ra has continued searching for mines on his own, traveling on his motorbike into the countryside to help villagers clear a vegetable plot or create a narrow path of safety to a local well.
His collection of defused mines has grown into the thousands and has expanded to include bombs and rockets and grenades and bazooka rounds and bullets and mortar shells and dented helmets.
It has become the Land Mine Museum and Information Center - a dusty shed by his garden that is piled with heaps of deadly metal and managed by one man, Mr. Aki Ra.
There are information sheets and requests for donations and didactic posters pleading, among other things, that children refrain from playing with land mines.
And there are souvenirs: black Khmer Rouge pajamas and rubber sandals, Vietnamese Army pith helmets, canteens, belts, flags and military insignia. There are photographs of maimed people for sale, and Mr. Aki Ra's own simple paintings of people and animals being shattered by land mine blasts.
Ducks peck around the edges of piles of anti-personnel mines. Cats sleep in the shade. And disabled children like Sot Tol - seven of them - hop around on their crutches. Their ages range from 5 to 12.
When Mr. Aki Ra was 5 he lost both his parents to the Khmer Rouge, who caused the deaths of more than a million people during their rule from 1975 to 1979. Like many other children then, he was taught only to labor and to kill. He never had a family, never went to school.
Now that peace has come, Mr. Aki Ra, like millions of his countrymen, must find meaning in his broken life.
"I live alone," he said. "So I let these children stay with me. Otherwise they would be beggars at the market. I help them to go to school. I teach them English. I explain to them about everything in the world."
-------- myanmar
Suu Kyi property court date set
InfoBeat News - Afternoon
Edition - 12/28/2000
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405570054
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) - Arguments will be heard next week in a lawsuit filed against Myanmar pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi by her estranged brother claiming half her lakeside property, court officials said Thursday.
Suu Kyi's elder brother, Aung San Oo, a U.S. citizen and resident, is demanding half-ownership of the residential compound in Yangon inherited from their mother, who died in December 1988. Suu Kyi has lived there for the past 12 years. Arguments are scheduled to begin Jan. 5.
Suu Kyi was held under house arrest without trial there on national security charges from 1989-95. In 1990 she won the Nobel Peace prize for her nonviolent efforts to promote democracy.
Suu Kyi's elder brother applied to a Yangon court in November for partition of the property.
The law prohibits foreigners from purchasing or transferring property, but the government granted Aung San Oo an exemption. Suu Kyi's lawyers, in a written statement to the court, questioned the legality of the exemption.
The government continues to restrict visitors to Suu Kyi's house, and greatly limits her freedom of movement. Her National League for Democracy party won a 1990 general election but was never allowed to take power, and its members face harassment and jail.
Earlier this month in Washington, President Clinton awarded in absentia the highest U.S. civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, to Suu Kyi for her peaceful struggle for democracy and human rights in Myanmar, also known as Burma.
-------- russia
Russian navy returning to Atlantic
InfoBeat News - Afternoon
Edition - 12/28/2000
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405571556
MOSCOW (AP) - The Russian navy will return to the world stage next year, sailing to the Atlantic and Indian oceans and the Mediterranean for the first time in years, a top naval official said Thursday.
``It is time for our ships to move away from the pier,'' Russia's navy commander Adm. Vladimir Kuroyedov was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.
The two-month mission will mostly involve surface ships, he said, without providing other details.
The Russian navy has deteriorated amid money troubles and legal chaos that followed the 1991 Soviet collapse. Government financing has dried up, equipment has been pilfered away or aged beyond repair, and ships are rusting at their moorings.
The troubles have weakened the navy to the degree it is unable even to combat poachers in Russia's waters, government officials have said.
President Vladimir Putin planned to revive the navy, and Russian ships were to sail to the Mediterranean following this summer's exercises. But the exercises ended in a disaster when one of Russia's newest and best nuclear submarines, the Kursk, sunk on Aug. 12. All 118 sailors aboard were killed.
Kuroyedov said that Russia needs to streamline its navy with a 20 percent personnel cut starting next year, getting rid of redundant positions. Many jobs to be eliminated are those that are currently vacant, he said.
-------- space
Tsiklon 3 Booster Fails, Six Satellites Lost
space.com
posted: 10:00 am ET 28 December 2000
By Yuri Karash Moscow Contributing Correspondent
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/launches/tsiklon_launch_001227.html
MOSCOW -- A Tsiklon (Cyclone) 3 light booster failed Wednesday in its attempt to carry six Russian satellites into Earth orbit.
An unspecified failure in the rocket's third stage is apparently to blame.
Liftoff from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome located in the northern Russia was at 1:57 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (18:57 GMT), but without the thrust of the third stage the satellites reportedly fell to Earth, crashing on Russian territory near Vrangel Island.
The spacecraft were to be used by the Russian Ministry of Defense and Rosaviakosmos, the Russian Aviation and Space Agency.
The Tsiklon 3 booster -- the U.S. Library of Congress designation is F-2, while the Department of Defence designation is SL-14 -- was developed in 1970 by the Mikhail Yangel design bureau in Ukraine.
Tsiklon 3 is a modification of the 8K68 (SS-9 Mod 2) ICBM with an S5M third stage. In comparison with the Tsiklon 2, the launch vehicle has an increased payload capacity of four tons. It was also upgraded for completely automated launch operations and its orbital injection accuracy has been increased.
The booster's total mass is 189.000 kilograms. Its core diameter is 3 meters and total length is 39.3 meters. It can deliver up to 3,600 kilograms to a 200 kilometer orbit at 74.0 degrees orbital inclination. Its launch price is reported to be $15 million in 1994 dollars.
Tsiklon 3's inaugural launch took place in June 1977, with the most recent taking place in June 1998. During the past 21 years of its operation it was launched 118 times, 113 of them successfully until Wednesday's failure.
Tsiklon 3 was also used for launch of the AUOS scientific and Okean-O radar satellites. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, it became inappropriate to use this booster for Russian national security payloads since its manufacturer ended up in a different country, namely Ukraine.
Existing stocks of the booster were used, but no new ones were built thereafter. In 1998 the launch team at Baikonur was disbanded and only four boosters remain available, including the one launched and lost on Wednesday.
Missile test
Meanwhile, a Russian nuclear submarine on Wednesday test launched an unarmed missile and successfully hit its target at the Kuru proving ground in the Russian Far East, according to Russian Navy spokesman Igor Dygalo.
The submarine involved was the Novomoskovsk, which is part of the Russian Northern Fleet.
The same boat in 1998 hosted the world's first civil space launch of a satellite to low Earth orbit using a rocket launched from underwater.
---
Russia Loses Contact With Satellites After Launch
New York Times
December 28, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/28/science/28WIRE-RUS.html
MOSCOW - Russian ground controllers lost contact with six small satellites Thursday soon after they were blasted into space from a far northern launch pad, a Russian space official said.
The communications satellites were packed on top of a Cyclone-3 booster rocket launched Wednesday evening from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in the Russian Arctic. Radio contact was lost early Thursday morning, Russian Missile Forces spokesman Ilshat Bakchurin said.
It was the second failure of a satellite launch from the site in two months: An American communications satellite, Quickbird 1, failed to make contact with ground controllers and was lost soon after blastoff from Plesetsk on Nov. 21. A preliminary investigation suggested ground controllers at Plesetsk were not to blame, Russian officials said.
Wednesday's failed launch also came two days after Mission Control in Moscow lost contact with the now-uninhabited Mir space station for 20 hours. A dead battery was blamed for the mishap, and controllers said Tuesday they had regained full control over Mir.
In Wednesday's launch, the first and second stages of the rocket functioned normally, Bakchurin said, as the rocket lifted off the launch pad and blasted through the thicker layers of Earth's atmosphere without complications. Radio contact was lost when the third stage was about to enter orbit, he said.
Controllers believe the group of tiny satellites failed to separate from the rocket's third stage, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported, citing unnamed sources at the Plesetsk cosmodrome. The satellites may have fallen in the Bering Strait, which separates Russia from Alaska in the far northern Pacific Ocean, the report said.
The Russian Aerospace Agency and the Strategic Missile Forces, which control the Plesetsk launch pad, would not immediately comment on the report.
The tiny satellites were intended for both military and civilian use, Russian news reports said earlier.
Russia's satellite network has deteriorated since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union due to lack of funding. But in recent months, the pace of defense-related satellite launches has increased.
---
Russia Loses Six Satellites
Associated Press
December 28, 2000Filed at 7:09 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Russia-Lost-Satellites.html
MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia lost six communications satellites Thursday when a booster rocket carrying them to space from a far northern cosmodrome failed shortly after launch, the second such failure in as many months.
Three civilian and three military communications satellites were launched Wednesday from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in the Russian Arctic atop a Ukrainian-made Cyclone-3 booster rocket.
The first and second stages of the rocket functioned normally, but the third one failed, leading to the loss of the satellites, Strategic Missile Forces spokesman Ilshat Bakchurin said in a telephone interview.
Radio contact with the satellites was lost early Thursday, and they burned up in the atmosphere shortly afterward, scattering debris into the Arctic Ocean some 35 miles southeast of Wrangel Island off the Far Eastern Chukotka Peninsula. The debris caused no damage, officials said.
The bad news came a month after an American communications satellite failed to make contact with ground controllers and was lost soon after blasting off from Plesetsk on Nov. 21 atop a Russian Cosmos-3 rocket. A preliminary investigation into the failure suggested that ground controllers at Plesetsk were not to blame, Russian officials said. The satellite belonged to the Longmont, Colo.-based company Earth Watch.
Wednesday's failure also came two days after Mission Control in Moscow lost contact for 20 hours with the unoccupied Mir space station. The accident was blamed on Mir's batteries losing power. Controllers said they regained full control over the Mir on Tuesday.
Georgy Polishchuk, a deputy director of the Russian Aerospace Agency, blamed the loss of the satellites on the Soviet-designed booster, manufactured by the Ukrainian company Yuzhmash.
The space agency has suspended launches of Cyclone-3 rockets until the cause of the failed launch is determined, agency spokesman Vyacheslav Mikhailichenko told The Associated Press.
A similar failed launch two years ago nearly led to the loss of six Strela military satellites, but space officials managed to save them.
The failed launch could deal a painful blow to the cash-strapped Aerospace Agency, which is struggling to maintain the nation's aging satellite network.
Its chief, Yuri Koptev, said Wednesday that Russia had 109 satellites in orbit as of Dec. 1, and 66 of them had already surpassed their designated lifetime -- meaning they were no longer sending signals.
In recent months the pace of satellite launches has increased, but it isn't enough to keep the necessary number of satellites in operation, Koptev said.
-------- u.n.
Deadline awaits Clinton on world criminal court
USA Today
12/28/00- Updated 01:14 AM ET
By Carroll Bogert
http://usatoday.com/news/comment/ncguest2.htm
He hasn't managed to bring peace to the Middle East, and he won't be appointing any more Supreme Court justices in the next few weeks. But President Clinton still has a chance to shape his legacy: He can bring hope and justice to the lives of millions of people all over the world, decades after he leaves office, by signing the treaty for an international criminal court before the deadline Sunday.
The international criminal court is the biggest thing to happen in human rights in 50 years. The court will prosecute people suspected of committing the worst atrocities known to mankind: genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Without such a court, we have nowhere to deposit the tyrants and tin-pot rebel leaders who commit these terrible deeds.
Just one example: Six months ago, the government of Sierra Leone finally captured the rebel leader, Foday Sankoh, whose troops have been killing, raping and cutting off the limbs of civilians in that West African country for the past 10 years. But now that they have him, what can they do with him? After a decade of civil war, the Sierra Leonean judicial system is, to say the least, a shambles. So the past half year has been spent wrangling at the United Nations about the makeup and jurisdiction of a special tribunal - which is still not off the ground.
Meanwhile, the rebels in Sierra Leone are bargaining to lay down their weapons only if their leader is released from prison - a pact with the devil if there ever was one.
Court simplifies things
How much simpler it would be to have an international court with judges and prosecutors at the ready, where people such as this rebel leader routinely could be handed over. That's the only way to return a failed country such as Sierra Leone to normalcy: a sober judicial proceeding in which the crimes of the past are laid out, addressed and punished.
The international court will be established in less than two years. Already, 122 governments have signed the treaty for the court, and 25 have ratified it. Sixty ratifications are needed.
The United States stands almost alone in opposing this process. Virtually every single one of its democratic allies, including all of Western Europe, vigorously supports the court. Court opponents such as Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., simply mistrust international institutions that put any obligations on the United States. The Pentagon has legitimate worries that as the world's sole remaining superpower, the United States could become the target of frivolous international lawsuits. But the court has been designed to preclude politically motivated trials.
Any citizen charged with genocide or other serious crimes would not come before the court unless his own government had completely failed to investigate the case. That hardly describes the U.S. system of justice. The international criminal court is designed for the dysfunctional Sierra Leones of this world, not for the United States.
Some Senate opposition
Despite the court's many safeguards and protections for American citizens, some U.S. lawmakers have said they'll never allow it to be ratified in the Senate, which must approve the treaty.
And after Sunday, any country that wants to join the court has to ratify it straight away. So Clinton has a very small window of opportunity to do the right thing. If he signs the treaty by Sunday, he will lend American prestige and expertise to the fledgling court.
If he lets the deadline pass, the court will go ahead without U.S. support - and the president will have allowed the forces of short-sightedness and expediency to hold sway over his final days in office.
That's not much of a legacy for history. Just ask the people of Sierra Leone.
Carroll Bogert is the communications director of Human Rights Watch.
---
Developing Nations Want UN Libya Sanctions Lifted
Yahoo News
World News - updated 5:07 PM ET Dec 28 Thursday December 28 4:15 PM ET
By Evelyn Leopold
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20001228/wl/libya_un_dc_3.html
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Developing nations on the U.N. Security Council proposed on Thursday lifting all sanctions against Libya, saying Tripoli had fulfilled its obligations in connection with the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.
Namibian ambassador Martin Andjaba, who introduced a resolution on behalf of six developing nations, said it was time the embargoes were ended, not just suspended, and he hoped for a vote on Friday. Nations supporting him included Jamaica, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Mali and Tunisia.
But Britain and the United States said they would oppose the measure until the trial of Libyan suspects, charged with blowing the Pan Am airliner out of the sky, had ended.
``We have made it very clear that we would not be able to support such a resolution,'' British ambassador Sir Jeremy Greenstock said.
All 259 people aboard the Boeing 747 were killed, as well as 11 people on the ground, the majority of them Americans.
The sanctions were suspended in April 1999 after the suspects were extradited to face a Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands. In practice, they are as good as ended as they cannot be reimposed without another vote by the council.
An air and arms embargo and a ban on some oil equipment, were imposed in 1992 and 1993 to force Libya to hand over for trial two suspects, Abdel Basset al-Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifa Fahima, who had been indicted by London and Washington.
The prosecution rested its case on Nov. 20 after calling 230 witnesses in 72 days of hearings. Defense proceedings are expected to take at least another two months.
Since the surrender of the two men, Libya and Arab nations have insisted Libya kept its side of the bargain and had not only handed over the accused, but also complied with other council demands such as cooperating with the trial.
One of them was compensation to the victims and British ambassador Sir Jeremy Greenstock said this would have to wait until the trial ended as any monies had to be paid, not just promised.
Another requirement was Libya's cooperation with the court. ''The requirement to cooperate with the trial lasts all the way through the trial because there may be other witnesses and other actions to be taken that need Libyan cooperation,'' Greenstock said.
He said the delay in lifting sanctions completely was an understanding reached by all sides.
``Why are we given a few hours notice? It's very strange.'' Greenstock added.
Diplomats said because of an annual rotation among five members in the 15-seat council next week, the developing nations wanted to push through the resolution now, perhaps to force a public veto by the United States and Britain if the measure reaches the council floor.
The United States, separately, has kept its own travel ban in place against Libyan passport holders.
-------- u.s.
THE CLINTON LEGACY
For 8 Years, a Strained Relationship With the Military
New York Times
December 28, 2000
By JANE PERLEZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/28/politics/28LEGA.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON, Dec. 27 - In the second year of President Clinton's term, after 18 soldiers were killed in Somalia in a conflict that few Americans understood, his advisers set about trying to repair his relationship with the military.
They arranged a somber, dignified ceremony at the White House for the posthumous presentation of awards to the relatives of two soldiers killed in Somalia.
But instead of polite gratitude, Mr. Clinton received a dressing down from Herbert Shughart, whose son Randy was one of the dead soldiers.
"I told him that for a man who dodged the draft he wasn't fit for the job," Mr. Shughart said, as he recalled his encounter with Mr. Clinton. He refused to shake the president's hand.
Aides recalled the moment as one of the most painful of Mr. Clinton's presidency. He had tried to connect with Mr. Shughart and explain the tragedy in human terms. But the aggrieved father, an Air Force veteran, was immune to Mr. Clinton's charm.
Somalia was to remain a defining, even haunting experience for the Clinton administration. As the administration faced problems in the Balkans, East Africa, Haiti and Iraq - as it framed its responses to terrorist attacks on American targets - its priority was to conduct casualty-free combat, a goal that was the result of the deaths in Somalia.
By the end of his presidency, as his confidence grew, Mr. Clinton was able to improve his relationship with the military, his advisers and Pentagon officials said.
"He did not get off on the right start," said Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, who recently retired as commander of the United States Central Command, which includes American forces in the Persian Gulf. "Over time, I saw a better understanding of the situation and more willingness to trust the chain of command."
A Weakening of Authority
General Zinni's view suggested that President Clinton's relationship with the military became less prickly as he yielded to the military's culture. But, in essence, said several foreign policy officials in the administration, that led to a president unwilling to exercise full authority over military commanders.
The advisers said they agreed with the results of a study by the Triangle Institute for Security Studies, a nonprofit foundation in North Carolina, which concluded that under President Clinton, civilian authority has eroded as military officers increasingly considered civilian leadership incompetent.
"Officers today believe that it is their role to insist and advocate rather than merely advise on key elements of decisions concerning the use of force," the study said.
Criticism of a different kind came from Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, who in his campaign for president, said Mr. Clinton had squandered American credibility abroad and neglected important alliances in Europe and Asia.
"The administration has pursued a feckless, photo-op foreign policy," Mr. McCain said, "with little or no effort to define a coherent plan for United States engagement in the world."
From the beginning, Mr. Clinton was charting new territory, defining the appropriate use of force in a world of smaller wars and ethnic conflicts posing little threat to American power. He had inherited a military configured to deal with major wars - specifically, simultaneous conflicts in Asia and the Middle East - but regional ethnic or religious conflicts presented the more immediate challenge.
One of the first tests in the aftermath of Somalia was a civil conflict in Rwanda in 1994, an East African country that few Americans could find on the map. As in Somalia, the United States had no clear national interest, even if the killings there pained its sense of right and wrong. The administration did not intervene and was later criticized for failing to stop the dominant Hutu ethnic group from killing hundreds of thousands of Tutsi.
In recent interviews, two of Mr. Clinton's foreign policy advisers said the killings in Somalia had hung so heavily that the question of intervening in Rwanda never even reached Mr. Clinton's desk.
Mr. Clinton would later apologize for the failure to stop the killings, and said in an Oval Office interview that perhaps things could have been done differently if an international force had existed to do the job.
"In retrospect," he said, "maybe we and the British and French could have - four or five others - gone in there with a relatively small number of troops and slowed it down. But if you think about it, all those hundreds of thousands of people who were killed in 100 days and hardly anybody had a gun, and I think we were not really properly organized to deal with it and respond to it."
Intervention in the Balkans
In the Balkans, Mr. Clinton at first hesitated as Bosnian Serb forces, backed by President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia, battled Bosnia's Muslims and Croats.
He was facing a Pentagon flush with victory from a more traditional war in the Persian Gulf, but one unwilling to enter a small conflict whose political objective was to bring the parties to the negotiating table. In campaign speeches, Mr. Clinton had criticized former President George Bush's inaction in Bosnia, but once in office, Mr. Clinton saw the conflict as internal, fueled by a history of ethnic hatreds that the United States could not resolve.
Further, General Zinni said, the United States wanted the help of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and the Europeans argued against airstrikes, fearing reprisals from Bosnian Serbs, since European troops, and not Americans, were serving in the United Nations protection force.
By 1995, after a massacre of Muslims at Srebrenica and the release of photographs proving the atrocities, which came in a bold display by then-United Nations Ambassador Madeleine K. Albright, the president, with Gen. John M. Shalikashvili as his chairman of the joint chiefs, arranged airstrikes by the Atlantic alliance. Combined with ground operations of the Croatian Army, the air power brought the Serbs into negotiations that ended the war and put alliance troops in Bosnia as peacekeepers.
Those troops remain, combining armed peacekeeping and more civilian-style administration in a mission that has come to be known as nation building.
In the presidential campaign, Gov. George W. Bush of Texas expressed an almost visceral distaste for assigning America's fighting forces to nation-building missions. He has pledged that as president, he will negotiate the withdrawal of American peacekeepers from the Balkans and their replacement by an all-European force.
"There are no analogies" to the Bosnia debate, said Mr. Clinton's national security adviser, Samuel R. Berger. "NATO never had been in combat in its 50 years. We have been defining the appropriate use of United States military force under totally new circumstances."
As Mr. Milosevic turned his aggression toward the Kosovar Albanians in 1999, Secretary of State Albright, backed by her chief ally, Gen. Wesley K. Clark, the supreme commander of the alliance, became the point person for threatening to use force to stop Serbian "ethnic cleansing." This occurred far earlier than it had in the Bosnia conflict, and in the end, Mr. Clinton agreed to take on Mr. Milosevic over Kosovo.
Although the president publicly described the intervention as a humanitarian action, the preservation of NATO as a meaningful military alliance was an underlying reason.
Several of Mr. Clinton's advisers said in recent interviews that fears of casualties and protracted debates in Congress and among allies explained the caution on the use of American ground troops in Kosovo.
In his televised speech announcing the move, Mr. Clinton ruled out the use of ground troops. Afterward, as the airstrikes dragged on, he came to regret the promise and from time to time berated Mr. Berger, who had written it into the speech.
Only later, after Mr. Clinton made clear that he was considering changing his mind and ordering troops into Serbia, did Mr. Milosevic give in, said Ivo Daalder, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. This proved, Mr. Daalder argued, that air power needed to be reinforced with the threat of ground troops.
Indeed, the day before Mr. Milosevic agreed to negotiate, the joint chiefs of staff met at the White House to discuss ground operations and the "substantial" casualties that would be entailed, one adviser said.
Proposal for the Future
General Zinni said his experiences in the last eight years have led him to draw several conclusions, and he foresaw a four- pronged approach for the future use of American armed forces:
First, where the national interest is involved, the United States should commit ground forces. Second, where vital national interests are not at stake but military action needs to be taken - as in East Timor, when Australia supplied troops - the United States should offer logistics and intelligence support. Third, the United States should provide more support for regional military groups, as with the Nigerian troops it is training to help in war-torn Sierra Leone. Fourth, armies in friendly but financially strapped countries - Kenya, for instance - should be strengthened with American training.
But, the general said, Mr. Clinton failed to make this kind of case for intervention overseas. General Zinni ascribed this hesitation to the overriding question of casualties - which, he asserted, Americans will tolerate if given a good reason.
Mr. Berger, the national security adviser, disagreed. He said that after three chairmen of the joint chiefs of staff - starting with Secretary of State-designate Colin L. Powell and ending with Gen. Henry H. Shelton - the Clinton era would be known for navigating a "middle ground" on the use of force.
General Powell's approach has been that the military should be used only when there is a clear goal, a specific national interest at stake, popular support and an exit strategy - and when overwhelming numbers of troops and weapons can be deployed.
Mr. Berger did not go so far as to suggest that in the Balkans, Mr. Clinton had been pursuing an "anti-Powell doctrine," as some Clinton officials said at the time.
But he did note a slight mutation away from the Powell approach: When air campaigns can be conducted with no American casualties and no American ground troops, there is "another generation of thinking that is not inconsistent with the doctrine of using overwhelming force - and that is using force for more limited purposes but in a way that gives us overwhelming advantage," Mr. Berger said.
Further, he said, to Mr. Clinton, a lawyer who has made consensus building the key to his tenure, this approach struck an acceptable administration middle ground between "those who want the United States to do everything and the United States to do nothing."
---
USA Today
12/28/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm
Hawaii
Honolulu - A federal jury found two men guilty of murder in the death of an Army helicopter pilot on June 3, 1998. Chief Warrant Officer John Latchum, 33, was shot in an apparent robbery attempt while vacationing with his family at a rented Army beach cabin. Roberto Miguel, 19, and Bryson Jose, 22, face mandatory life sentences without parole.
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WWII veterans sail 4,250 miles
InfoBeat News - Afternoon
Edition - 12/28/2000
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405569525
MADRID, Spain (AP) - After logging 4,250 miles on a journey from Greece to Alabama, the captain of a World War II vessel carrying 29 aging U.S. Navy veterans can still crack a joke, his wife says.
Lois Jornlin, wife of Capt. Bob Jornlin, said she spoke to him by satellite phone Wednesday. ``All the crew are fine but getting a little tired,'' he told her, and the sea had been rough Tuesday.
``When I asked how fast they were going,'' Lois Jornlin added, he replied: ''6 1/2 knots up the waves, and 7 knots down.''
She shared the news in an e-mail to the Ohio-based U.S. Landing Ship Tank Association, a group of veterans who served on vessels used to transport tanks for the Normandy invasion and other U.S. landings during World War II.
Jornlin and 28 veterans of World War II and the wars in Korea and Vietnam set sail from Greece on Nov. 17 aboard the LST-325 and stopped in Gibraltar 13 days later on their way to Mobile, Ala. They plan to convert the 328-foot ship into a floating museum.
Jornlin plans to dock briefly in the Bahamas on Jan. 3 or 4 for oil and repairs, and arrive in Mobile on Jan. 10.
The crew, which has an average age of 72, ate ham for Christmas dinner and decorated tree, Lois Jornlin said.
The captain said the ship was functioning well except for a faulty gyroscope, but they could get by without it, she added.
The crew set sail from Gibraltar on Dec. 12, despite forecasts of severe weather and warnings from the Portsmouth, Va.-based U.S. Coast Guard commander that the ship was not ready for a monthlong voyage.
The ship was loaned to Greece in 1964 and was decommissioned last summer. Congress passed a bill authorizing Greece to turn over the ship for use as a memorial.
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
A Pact Against Oil Company Abuses
New York Times
December 28, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/28/opinion/28THU2.html
Oil and mining companies do not have the luxury of relocation. They often find themselves working in poor and violent places where protecting a mine or pipeline is a challenge. Occasionally the security forces hired by American or European corporations have gone too far. In the Indonesian province of Irian Jaya in the mid-1990's, military men hired as guards at Freeport-McMoRan's Grasberg gold and copper mine were accused of killing civilians. The security forces contracted by British Petroleum in Colombia and Shell and Chevron in Nigeria, among other companies, have been accused of similar abuses.
This week these corporations, along with Texaco, Conoco and the Rio Tinto mining company, signed an agreement with the British and American governments and human rights groups on standards for security. The pact is a modest step toward reducing a major source of abuses committed by corporations in the third world. For now, compliance is voluntary, and the only penalty for violation is public exposure by human rights groups and journalists. But at least the companies have endorsed rules that can be used to measure their behavior.
In general, the companies agreed to use their influence to see that their security forces respect human rights. For example, they will attempt to ensure that people implicated in abuses are not hired as guards and that security forces respect local residents' rights to free assembly and collective bargaining. Perhaps the most controversial provision of the agreement says that companies should report human rights abuses to the host government and urge investigations and measures to prevent a recurrence. Most corporations have long resisted speaking up on human rights, fearing it would hurt their business.
It is no coincidence that countries with oilfields or gold mines frequently suffer from repressive regimes, political instability or guerrilla forces. Sudden wealth from natural resources can become a curse, distorting the economy, fostering corruption or financing wars that are little more than a grab for the minerals. Too often the drilling has spoiled the local environment and given little back to the people who live nearby, thus breeding unrest. Oil drilling in Nigeria's delta region is an example.
While the agreement has been signed by some of the businesses most burned by bad publicity about their behavior in the past, it does not include some major American companies, among them Unocal and Exxon Mobil. Unocal has been accused of benefiting from the repression by government forces at a gas pipeline in Myanmar. Exxon Mobil is beginning work on a pipeline through Chad and Cameroon where the possibilities of abuse are rife. Nor does the pact address the larger question of whether oil and mining companies should be working with some governments at all. While companies cannot control where oil is found, they should refrain from exploiting those resources when to do so produces misery as well as energy.
---
New York Times
December 28, 2000
Metro Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/28/nyregion/28MBRF.html?pagewanted=all
NEW JERSEY
NEWARK: HARBOR DREDGING STUDIED
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey will spend $4 million to find more efficient, environmentally friendly ways of dredging shipping channels that serve ports in Newark and Elizabeth. The authority is faced with a huge channel-deepening project that is scheduled for completion in 2009 as well as a new generation of deep-water superships. Officials said they must find an alternative to the current system, which involves dredging and dumping the material at sea. New federal rules restrict ocean dumping. Andrew Jacobs (NYT)
NORTH BRUNSWICK: WATER ALERT LIFTED
State officials lifted a water alert in North Brunswick yesterday after tests of water filtered through a treatment plant yielded satisfactory levels. The plant, North Brunswick Water L.L.C., shut down on Monday, saying its water supply had become cloudy because of unusually low temperatures and recent heavy rains. The water was not necessarily harmful, but may not have been disinfected fully and could have affected the elderly or people with compromised immune systems, Judy Vereen, a company spokeswoman, said. (AP)
---
An Everglades Airport
New York Times
December 28, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/28/opinion/L28EVE.html
To the Editor:
Re "Scuttle the Everglades Airport" (editorial, Dec. 22):
Plans to redevelop Homestead Air Force Base as a commercial airport are neither "unecessary" nor a potential "environmental disaster."
An Air Force environmental impact statement states the need for "additional airport capacity" to supplement Miami International Airport and adds that Homestead is the only airport with the potential to do this. And a federal study shows that a commercial airport at Homestead meets the Air Force goals of disposing of Homestead in a manner that "protects Biscayne Bay and the nearby national parks."
The local community's proposed commercial airport plan would generate an estimated 38,000 new jobs while helping to improve national air transportation safety and soundness. Recent surveys show that the majority of Miami-Dade residents support commercial aviation at Homestead.
ALEX PENELAS Mayor, Miami-Dade County Miami, Dec. 26, 2000
---
USA Today
12/28/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm
Conneticut
Hartford - NRG Energy Inc. is buying the last of Connecticut's polluted power plants for $325 million. The Minnesota-based company plans to cut emissions by burning cleaner fuel and using other pollution-control technologies. It purchased the Bridgeport and New Haven stations from Wisconsin Energy Corp. It now owns all six of the state's oldest and dirtiest power plants.
Florida
Sanford - Residents in the St. Johns River Water Management District might soon face tougher water restrictions. Rules expected to be passed by district officials would limit lawn watering to twice a week in a rain-deprived area stretching from Orlando east to Daytona Beach. Water managers say they will launch an all-out effort to make sure the restrictions are obeyed.
Montana
Billings - The Bureau of Land Management has designated 85,000 acres of mostly undisturbed prairie in northeastern Montana as an "area of critical environmental concern" to prevent development and protect habitat of the mountain plover. Ranchers will continue to lease some of the land for grazing but will be subject to some restrictions to protect the bird.
New Jersey
Newark - The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey plans to spend $4 million to study dredging technologies to speed up the tedious work necessary to enable big ships to continue using ports in Elizabeth and Newark. The goal is to find the quickest and most environmentally friendly way to deepen the channels to 50 feet. They now average 38 feet.
North Carolina
Bryson City - Eagles are making a comeback in the western part of the state after showing signs of a resurgence in the eastern part. Area bird watchers and biologists have reported increasing numbers of eagles near lakes in Swain, Graham and Clay counties. However, nests have only been found on Lake James in McDowell County and in east Tennessee.
North Dakota
Fargo - The workers smelled it first and soil samples confirmed it The construction site where a downtown parking ramp is being built was once a dumping ground for manure. Craig Helenske, an architect on the construction project, says the site was likely a waste depository during Fargo's horse-and-buggy days. Dump trucks removed about 300 loads of manure, replacing it with rock.
Wyoming
Jackson - A biologist has proposed analyzing DNA from grizzly bear hair to estimate the species' population in the Yellowstone area. The federal Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team says the current method of counting female bears with cubs is less accurate because the effort invested can vary from year to year.
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Cyanide spill forces evacuation
USA Today
12/28/00- Updated 01:29 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/world/nw1.htm
GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador - Residents of a heavily populated district of this coastal city were evacuated after a truck transporting more than 15,400 pounds of deadly cyanide flipped over, authorities said. The truck overturned at the entrance to a bridge crossing the Guayas River. Several of the crates were thrown to the river's edge, prompting an emergency response to prevent the toxic powder from making contact with the water, which could have produced a poisonous cloud. No injuries were reported. The accident was under investigation, police said.
-------- police
Nassau Officer Held Liable in a Death Had a Record
New York Times
December 28, 2000
By AL BAKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/28/nyregion/28OFFI.html
GARDEN CITY, N.Y., Dec. 27 - A Nassau County police officer who was found liable by a civil jury last week for the death of a man he shot on the street five years ago had been arrested twice himself: first as a teenage gas station attendant and later as an officer in the New York Police Department.
The officer, Anthony Raymond, 37, also was the subject of 10 civilian complaint cases, including 19 separate allegations of wrongdoing, according to court records, during his 11-year career as a city police officer.
The criminal charges were dismissed, in both cases, and the complaints about Officer Raymond's performance to the city's Civilian Complaint Review Board - including four cases in one year - were all found to be unsubstantiated. But details of Officer Raymond's past, first reported today by The Daily News, will figure prominently in the second phase of a civil suit being pursued in federal court by relatives of Christopher Wade, the man Officer Raymond fatally shot in 1995.
Frederick K. Brewington, a lawyer representing Mr. Wade's family, said he hoped the records would help prove that Nassau County was negligent in hiring Officer Raymond and that that contributed to the constitutional violations for which he has been found liable.
"From a review of all the information and documentation available, Nassau County showed a deliberate indifference to the great likelihood that this officer would commit the type of wrong found by the jury," Mr. Brewington said.
Paul F. Millus, a lawyer who represents both Nassau County and the county's Police Department, refused to speak today about Officer Raymond's past. "This case is far from over, for a lot of reasons, and I am going to wait until we are done before I comment on any of the substantive claims of this case," he said.
Officer Raymond, who was cleared of criminal wrongdoing in the Dec. 30, 1995, shooting of Mr. Wade, was found by a federal civil jury to have violated Mr. Wade's Fourth Amendment civil rights when he shot him nine times after stopping him for a search in an area of Elmont known for drug activity.
Mr. Wade, 28 at the time of the shooting, was on parole for a 1992 drug-related conviction.
Jurors cleared Officer Raymond of additional allegations of violating Mr. Wade's Fourth Amendment right to be free from unlawful stop- and-frisk, confinement or excessive force, and they found he was not liable for false arrest.
The jurors are to return Thursday to the courtroom of Judge Joanna Seybert, of Federal District Court in Central Islip, to rule on the awarding of damages in the case. Mr. Brewington said he was seeking $4.5 million in compensatory damages, plus punitive damages.
According to court records contained in pleadings filed by the plaintiff, Officer Raymond was 18 and working in a Garden City gas station when he was first arrested on charges of third-degree grand larceny and falsely reporting a robbery.
Officer Raymond wrote in his application for a job with the Nassau Police Department that he took $250 in receipts on April 10, 1982, because his employer had been withholding his wages.
"I took money and reported to the police that I was a victim of a robbery," Officer Raymond wrote on Sept. 9, 1993. "The court disposition was a youthful offender. A dismissal - reserved decision."
Rick Hinshaw, a spokesman for the Nassau County district attorney's office, said he could not comment because the case is sealed. But during the civil trial, on Nov. 20, Officer Raymond came under withering questioning from Mr. Brewington over the incident and whether he correctly answered a question on the Nassau police application about it. In that questioning, Officer Raymond admitted he pleaded guilty to filing a false report.
In 1989, Officer Raymond was arrested again, this time after an on- duty altercation on a Queens street while he was working as part of a plainclothes rape prevention detail. A Queens grand jury indicted Officer Raymond on May 1, 1989, on an official misconduct charge, but a judge dismissed that indictment.
"According to our case tracking system, the case is sealed and therefore we have no comment," said Mary DeBourbon, a spokeswoman for the Queens district attorney.
Alan J. Reardon, the lawyer who represents Officer Raymond, would not comment on the case today. "It would not be appropriate to talk," Mr. Reardon said. "We are still in the middle of the litigation."
Officer Raymond joined the Nassau police on Oct. 4, 1994, said Deputy Inspector Peter A. Matuza, a department spokesman, and he is now working in the same Fifth Precinct where the 1995 shooting occurred.
---
S. Korean Police Break Up Protest
Washington Post
Thursday, December 28, 2000; Page A16
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A57271-2000Dec27?language=printer
ILSAN, South Korea -- Riot police broke up a sit-in here by thousands of striking bank workers yesterday, but union leaders vowed to ignore government threats and push ahead with the work stoppage, which has shut down two major banks.
Columns of policemen armed with clubs and shields marched into the crowd of strikers at a bank training center four miles north of Seoul, where they had been staging their protest for six days. Officers scuffled with a few protesters, but the raid was mostly peaceful.
"Don't go back to work, continue the fight," a strike leader shouted through a microphone as helmeted police herded the workers into groups, then pulled them out of the facility one by one.
The operation came amid government fears that other workers would stage sympathy strikes, expanding a protest that has already become a major irritant to President Kim Dae Jung's economic reform program. Fearing massive layoffs, the unions launched the strikes Friday to protest plans to merge South Korea's two major commercial banks, Kookmin and the Housing & Commercial Bank.
The walkout has virtually shut down the two banks, which maintain 1,020 retail outlets and handle one-fourth of the country's retail banking.
---
Cop's dummy partner not deductible
USA Today
12/28/00- Updated 12:34 PM ET
Slightly off center . . .
http://usatoday.com/news/nweird.htm
SAN FRANCISCO - A police officer whom voters let patrol with a 10-pound wooden dummy partner can't deduct the campaign costs as a business expense, a court said. Robert J. Geary spent nearly $11,500 of his own money to get the measure on the 1993 ballot, a move designed to counter the brass who ordered the ventriloquist dummy to remain in a locker because they said it made the department look silly. San Francisco voters, though, approved of using the Howdy Doody look-alike, Officer Brendan O'Smarty, to calm children. Now, Geary must pay the Internal Revenue Service $3,500 in back taxes.
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USA Today
12/28/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm
Arkansas
Conway - The city has agreed to pay $45,000 to a man who claimed he was beaten by police in 1996. The agreement settled the last of three lawsuits against the city stemming from the incident. William Wynne said he was beaten at a motel as he was being questioned as a suspect in an attempted robbery, for which he was later exonerated. The other lawsuits were filed by officers who reported what they believed to be a cover-up.
Oregon
Hillsboro - A robbery suspect in handcuffs escaped by climbing out the window of a locked patrol car. Brandon Clayton, 28, was the second person to escape from Washington County deputies this year. In February, a confessed serial rapist escaped but was captured three days later.
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Police storm women's prison
USA Today
12/28/00- Updated 01:29 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/world/nw1.htm
SAO PAULO, Brazil - Riot police with dogs and stun grenades stormed a women's prison Wednesday to end a 22-hour uprising and free seven guards held hostage, a prison official said. The rebellion began after a failed escape attempt when 470 rioting inmates took the guards hostage and demanded better food and the release of some inmates who claimed they had served their sentences.
-------- spying
Ex-Defense Secretary Seems to Be Bush Choice for C.I.A.
New York Times
December 28, 2000
By ERIC SCHMITT
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/28/politics/28NAME.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 27 - As President-elect George W. Bush prepared to name additional choices for his cabinet, former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld appeared to be the front-runner for director of central intelligence, Republican officials said today.
Mr. Bush has scheduled an afternoon news conference here on Thursday to announce what aides said could be several selections. The choices could include Gov. Tommy G. Thompson of Wisconsin to be secretary of health and human services; Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's chief campaign strategist, to be a special counselor to the president, and Lawrence B. Lindsey, Mr. Bush's chief economic adviser, to become chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers.
"You'll have to just wait and see who I announce," Mr. Bush told reporters today in Boca Grande, Fla., where he was fishing with his father, former President George Bush, and his brother Jeb Bush, the governor of Florida.
On Friday, Mr. Bush made a surprise announcement of Senator John Ashcroft of Missouri to be his attorney general-designate. Mr. Ashcroft's name cropped up on early lists of possible candidates, but seemed to fade from consideration because of the strong opposition it would draw from civil rights and women's rights groups.
Aides said that over the holidays, Mr. Bush had closely conferred with Vice President-elect Dick Cheney, who is heading the transition team and has been calling and interviewing cabinet candidates in the past few days.
But even top advisers say they are not privvy to what the two men are thinking about appointments, at least not until shortly before they are announced.
"Cheney's keeping this very close to the vest," a transition aide said.
Selecting Mr. Rumsfeld, 68, a former Republican congressman from Illinois, representative to NATO and secretary of defense from 1975 to 1977, would reunite him with his star protégé, Mr. Cheney. The vice president-elect was deputy White House chief of staff to Mr. Rumsfeld in the Ford administration, and later succeeded Mr. Rumsfeld as chief of staff.
Mr. Rumsfeld headed a bipartisan commission that in mid-1998 concluded that American intelligence officials had been far too relaxed about missile threats and noted that other nations could use shortcuts to develop such a weapon. Critics complained that panel's mandate was politically skewed to promote the case for antimissile defenses.
When asked in a telephone interview last week if he would consider a cabinet position under Mr. Bush, Mr. Rumsfeld said, "I'm fully engaged."
But associates say Mr. Rumsfeld, whose name has also been mentioned for defense secretary, has not ruled out an offer.
Other candidates to head the nation's intelligence agencies include George J. Tenet, the current director, appointed by President Clinton, and Paul D. Wolfowitz, a former top Pentagon official under Mr. Cheney.
Lawmakers say Mr. Tenet has lobbied to keep his job, but transition officials said that move was unlikely.
"I had hoped that they would be asking George Tenet to stay on for a while, to take the agency job out of the political cycle," Robert M. Gates, the last director of central intelligence under President Bush, said in a telephone interview.
Mr. Wolfowitz has told friends he is not interested in the intelligence job, which would take him away from his strong suit: policy making.
Mr. Bush still needs to fill the top job at the Pentagon, and Mr. Wolfowitz, along with former Senator Daniel R. Coats of Indiana, are in the running for that position.
But Mr. Coats did not quite meet Mr. Bush's expectations during a meeting here last week, and some in the Bush camp worry that Mr. Wolfowitz is not organized enough to manage the sprawling Pentagon bureaucracy.
Supporters of Mr. Wolfowitz, in particular, have rallied to his defense, noting that since he became dean of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, seven years ago, he has successfully managed more than 300 faculty and staff members at three campuses, and raised $77 million for the school in five years.
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Peru Uses Internet to Hunt Former Spy Chief
New York Times
December 28, 2000
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/28/world/28PERU.html
LIMA, Peru, Dec. 27 - The manhunt for Peru's former spy chief, Vladimiro Montesinos, which has spanned Latin America and intrigued Peruvians with its James Bond-style tale of a fugitive on the run, has spread to the Internet.
Want to know what the former spy chief may look like with a false beard? Need a psychological profile of the man said to have a taste for diamond-encrusted watches and to have placed an escape tunnel underneath his bathtub at home?
Turn to Peru's Interior Ministry, which began a Web site today - with "Wanted" plastered in red across its home page - offering information on Mr. Montesinos, who is facing charges ranging from money laundering to running death squads.
The Web site also features hot-line telephone numbers for anyone with information that may lead to his capture.
On the Web site, information ranges from the mundane - he speaks English and has black hair - to the personal - he wants to get rich at any cost and does not believe in the existence of friends, according to a psychological profile. The Web site is at www.mininter.gob.pe.
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Clinton signs intelligence budget
InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 12/28/2000
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405559797
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Clinton signed legislation Wednesday authorizing an estimated $30 billion in spending by the CIA and other intelligence agencies after lawmakers agreed to remove a provision that would have made the leaking of government secrets a criminal offense.
Clinton on Nov. 4 vetoed the original intelligence authorization bill because of the provision making almost all unauthorized and willful disclosures of classified information by government employees a felony punishable by up to three years in prison.
Currently, disclosure of classified material that does not directly harm national security is dealt with through administrative actions such as firing. But the new language would have made such an act a felony punishable by up to three years in prison.
The House and Senate removed the provision and sent the bill back on Dec. 11.
``I thank Congress for working with me to produce a bill that I can sign,'' the president said Wednesday.
The secrecy measure drew sharp criticism from news organizations, which said it could seriously jeopardize their ability to obtain information vital to the public. Clinton agreed that it could silence whistleblowers and impede the free flow of information.
The overall bill authorizes about $30 billion _ the exact figure is secret _ in fiscal 2001 for the CIA, National Reconnaissance Office, National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies.
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Germany arrests 4 terror suspects
InfoBeat News - Afternoon
Edition - 12/28/2000
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405569679
FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) - German authorities arrested four suspected terrorists with ties to Osama bin Laden and seized weapons and explosives during a search of two Frankfurt apartments, federal prosecutors announced Thursday.
The four were arrested Tuesday on charges of belonging to a criminal organization, arms and explosives violations and falsifying documents.
During a subsequent search of two apartments Wednesday, authorities seized 44 pounds of a chemical prosecutors said can be used to manufacture explosives, as well as homemade detonators, a hand grenade, sub-machine guns, dismantled rifles, revolvers and ammunition.
All four suspects were living under assumed names, and prosecutors said their true identities were not yet known. Their documents identified them as Ayoubi B. of Algeria, Hisham E. and Lamin M. of Iraq and Fouad S. of France.
Prosecutors said they were part of an international network trained by bin Laden's followers in Afghanistan, and that they set up logistics in Germany to support attacks on the enemies of Islam.
No evidence linking them to any actual or planned attack was found, prosecutors said.
Bin Laden, a Saudi exile accused of running a global terrorist network from bases in Afghanistan, is wanted in the United States on charges of directing the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
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No Pardon for Peltier
New York Times
December 28, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/28/opinion/L28PAR.html
To the Editor:
Re "For Restraint on Pardons" (editorial, Dec. 23):
You caution President Clinton against issuing a politically motivated pardon to Leonard Peltier, who was convicted and sentenced for killing two F.B.I. agents in 1975.
Several of Mr. Peltier's appeals have been denied. Instead of urging further review of this case, you should support what our justice system repeatedly decided.
The murdered agents had names: Ronald A. Williams and Jack R. Coler.
For those of us who chose F.B.I. careers, this case remains a very emotional one.
CHARLES DOMROE Mountainside, N.J., Dec. 23, 2000
The writer was an assistant special agent in charge, New York division, Federal Bureau of Investigation.
---
USA Today
12/28/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm
Ohio
Toledo - An environmental activist is fighting to save a coal-burning power plant across the Maumee River from downtown Toledo. A developer wants to demolish the brick Toledo Edison Acme plant to make way for a sports arena. Activist Rick Van Landingham says the plant, which opened in 1918 and closed in 1993, has historical value and unique architecture.
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KOREAN BANK SIT-IN
New York Times
December 28, 2000
World Business Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/28/business/28FOBR.html
Riot police in South Korea broke up a sit-in by thousands of bank workers, and the government warned the protesters to return to work soon or face suspension. The union, however, said its fight would continue. The walkout has virtually shut down South Korea's two major commercial banks, Kookmin and the Housing and Commercial Bank. Fearing huge layoffs, about three-fourths of the banks' 23,000 union workers struck on Dec. 22, protesting the banks' plan to merge in June.
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Pacifica Foundation Locks WBAI Station Manager Out of Office
New York Times
December 28, 2000
By JAYSON BLAIR
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/28/nyregion/28WBAI.html
The station manager of WBAI, the Pacifica Foundation's New York City affiliate, was locked out of her office on Friday, three and a half weeks after being given a choice of accepting a new job in Washington or leaving the company on Dec. 31.
Two other employees of the station were locked out with her, and many of the volunteers who had protested the dismissals were banned from the station as of Tuesday.
The three were the station manager, Valerie Van Isler; the program director, Bernard White; and the union steward, Sharan Harper, who was a program assistant on the morning program "Wake Up Call."
Ms. Isler was told on Nov. 28 that she must accept a position at Pacifica's national office in Washington or be terminated on Dec. 31. Early this month, she refused the new job.
But Pacifica management acted early by ousting Ms. Isler on Friday afternoon and replacing her with Utrice Leid, a producer. Bessie M. Wash, the executive director of the Pacifica Foundation, arrived with a locksmith and changed the locks on the station's doors at 120 Wall Street. The next morning, messengers with severance checks and termination letters arrived at the homes of Mr. White and Ms. Harper.
Ms. Wash and the foundation's communications director did not return several telephone calls requesting comment.
The foundation owns licenses for stations in Berkeley, Calif., Los Angeles, Houston and Washington in addition to the one in New York City. With its free-form spontaneous style, WBAI, which joined the network in 1960, became a prominent component of the foundation's grass-roots, alternative broadcasting.
Pacifica was founded in 1946 by a group of former conscientious objectors to World War II. It prided itself on a lack of corporate control and its dedication to peace.
But since 1998, when the Corporation for Public Broadcasting released an advisory opinion reducing the roles of the local advisory boards, the foundation has begun wresting much of the control of its stations from local listener boards.
In March 1999, Pacifica fired the general manager of KPFA, the Berkeley station. When protests followed, the foundation warned employees not to discuss the firing on the air. When they did so anyway, one was fired and another was pulled off the air in midsentence.
That year, an e-mail message about the possible sale price for the licenses of some of the foundation's stations for tens of millions of dollars was sent to Media Alliance, a San Francisco media watchdog group, by a board member who said it was sent by mistake. The memorandum added fuel to the flames and eventually, Pacifica temporarily shut down KPFA's offices.
More recently, Amy Goodman, the host of the WBAI-based national program "Democracy Now!" filed grievances against Pacifica's program director, alleging harassment and censorship, after she was ordered to give advance notice of the programs she was working on.
Ms. Isler, who was at the station for 22 years and its manager for the last decade, had supported Ms. Wash's efforts to weaken the control of local boards.
WBAI staff members and volunteers have been holding protests outside the station since Sunday and held a meeting last night to discuss their options. Yesterday, Mr. White said that the staff was calling the move "the Christmas coup" because they had made it clear through protests and petitions that "we did not want this to happen."
The demonstrators have complained that the Pacifica board has been trying to force a more corporate structure, with strong central control, on its stations. Many of the critics fear that the board is interested either in softening WBAI's leftist stance to reach broader audiences or in selling its frequency, which by some estimates could fetch $150 million to $200 million.
But Rob Robinson, a member of Pacifica's national board who has been at odds with the majority on several issues, said that the strife in Berkeley and New York had less to do with station identity than with personality conflicts.
"We are at a point now where we are not putting professional managers in place, both nationally or locally," Mr. Robinson said. "The people who are running Pacifica are not just not radio professionals, but they are not professional. And they are good at eating their own."
This week, a Pacifica employee has been standing at the doors of the station, which was recently renovated through a fund-raising campaign led by Ms. Isler, with a list of workers allowed to enter.
For her part, Ms. Isler said she still did not understand why she was forced out. She has filed a grievance with the foundation's board, but has yet to receive a response.
"I worked on that station for thousands of hours, for more than a year, and now I am barred from that station," Ms. Isler said. "We built it."
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Herman Feshbach, Theorized on Nuclei of Atoms, Dies at 83
New York Times
December 28, 2000
By KENNETH CHANG
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/28/national/28FESH.html
Mr. Herman Feshbach, a nuclear physicist who helped develop the theories underlying the behavior of the nuclei of atoms and later became active in the antinuclear movement, died on Friday at a hospital in Cambridge, Mass., where he lived. He was 83.
The cause was congestive heart failure, said his son Mark.
A professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dr. Feshbach described the phenomenon now known as Feshbach resonance. Usually when two atoms collide, they bounce off each other like billiard balls. But Dr. Feshbach showed that when the kinetic energy of two atoms exactly equals the energy needed to bind them together, the two atoms instead stick to form a temporary molecule.
In 1953, Dr. Feshbach and Dr. Philip M. Morse wrote the two-volume textbook "Methods of Theoretical Physics," a standard reference for decades of physics graduate students.
Beyond his research, Dr. Feshbach was "a very vigorous, active supporter of human rights," said Dr. Kurt Gottfried, an emeritus professor of physics at Cornell University and the chairman of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Early in his career, Dr. Feshbach rebuffed Dr. Edward Teller, who was working to develop the hydrogen bomb.
"In the early 50's, he was asked to be involved in the development of the H-bomb," Mark Feshbach said. "He said no. He was never in favor of nuclear weapons, except during World War II."
Dr. Feshbach helped found the Union of Concerned Scientists, serving as its first chairman. In 1969, he participated in a "research stoppage" protesting military research at M.I.T., and he later championed the cause of the Soviet dissident physicist Andrei Sakharov.
In 1989, he was one of the scientists who signed a letter urging the United States not to build new reactors to produce weapons-grade uranium and plutonium.
A native of New York City, Dr. Feshbach spent his entire professional career at M.I.T., rising from graduate student to instructor to professor to director of the Center for Theoretical Physics. He served as chairman of the physics department from 1973 to 1983 and retired on emeritus status in 1987.
Dr. Feshbach was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1969 and was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1986. He was president of the American Physical Society in 1980 and 1981. He was also the longtime editor of the journal Annals of Physics.
In addition to his son Mark, of Minneapolis, Dr. Feshbach is survived by his wife, Sylvia; a daughter, Carolyn, of Lexington, Mass.; a second son, Theodore, of Hopedale, Mass.; a sister, Florence Nadelman of Cranford, N.J.; two brothers, Bernard, of Palo Alto, Calif., and Sidney, of Amherst, Mass.; and two grandchildren.
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Having a ball
Washington Times
December 28, 2000
Inside the Beltway John McCaslin Political tidbits and other shenanigans from around the nation's capital.
http://www.washtimes.com/national/inbeltway.htm
It wasn't too long after President Clinton made his inaugural waltz into the Oval Office that protest vigils began outside, orchestrated by members of the Washington chapter of the Free Republic.
Everyday folks - moms and dads mostly - agitated about everything from Whitewater to a certain White House intern.
Now, after so many years of standing outside in the cold, the Free Republic chapter has earned the privilege of hosting its own inaugural ball next month.
Wouldn't you know they've dubbed it the "Free Republic Inaugural Ball and Count the White House Silverware Party."
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Israelis protest at Holy site
InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 12/28/2000
By LAURIE COPANS Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405560994
JERUSALEM (AP) - About 200 members of a small Israeli national movement scuffled with police Wednesday outside a disputed holy site in Jerusalem that's the focus of a U.S. peace plan.
``The Jewish people live on!'' shouted demonstrators as several lunged at human chains formed by police to prevent them from forcing their way into the Al Aqsa Mosque compound.
The mosque, Islam's third-holiest site, is built above the ruins of the biblical Jewish Temples, and the Jews call it the Temple Mount. Both sides claim sovereignty there.
Reports that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak is willing to accept an American plan to relinquish Israeli claims of sovereignty sparked the demonstration. Israel's Cabinet said early Thursday that it would accept the plan for an accord with the Palestinians as a basis for new peace talks.
An Israeli-Palestinian summit to discuss the U.S. plan was canceled Thursday, Egypt said, leaving the next move for a quick Mideast peace in doubt.
``We are calling on the Jewish people to wake up,'' shouted Gershon Solomon of the Temple Mount Faithful group.
The demonstrators marched, waving blue and white Israeli flags, from an entrance to Jerusalem's Old City to the base of the complex.
``Come fight for our soul!'' said Solomon, whose small group has demonstrated for years against the ban on Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount and advocates rebuilding the ancient Jewish Temple on the site, which now holds two major Muslim shrines, Al Aqsa and the gold-topped Dome of the Rock.
Under arrangements to prevent Jews and Muslims from coming into conflict, Israeli police allow only small numbers of Jews to enter the site, insisting that they do not pray there.
Several extremists in the crowd chanted ``Ehud is a traitor,'' referring to Barak. A few shouted ``Blow up the mosques,'' and others called for a ``revolt'' as the protesters gathered near a ramp leading to an entrance to the disputed holy site.
Israel captured the compound in the Old City of Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast War, but turned day-to-day control of the site back to the Supreme Muslim Council.
Most Orthodox rabbis forbid Jews from entering the site because of issues of ritual impurity.
Several demonstrators tried to climb over a fence onto a ramp leading to the hilltop but were pushed back by dozens of police wearing helmets and wielding clubs.
``The mosques are a desecration of our holiest site,'' said Lenny Goldberg, 42, an Orthodox Jew who immigrated to Israel from the New York City borough of Queens 15 years ago. ``I say throw the Arabs off.''
Many Israelis, both secular and religious, oppose the idea of Israel's giving up the hilltop. The demonstrators chanted traditional prayers noting Judaism's 2,000-year connection to the site.
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Czech TV programs halted by protest
InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 12/28/2000
By NADIA RYBAROVA Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405561335
PRAGUE, Czech Republic (AP) - Czech television canceled its programming Wednesday in a dispute with news staff who have barricaded themselves in the station's building to demand that the newly appointed director step down.
Up to 5,000 people demonstrated in front of the studio to support the journalists, who charge the new director of the state-run station, Jiri Hodac, of favoring the Civic Democratic Party of former Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus.
Hodac, who was appointed on Dec. 20, has filed a criminal complaint against the rebellious journalists and said he would dismiss them.
President Vaclav Havel, a rival of Klaus, joined the fray in support of the journalists Wednesday, describing the standoff as ``very dangerous,'' and comparing it to the turmoil which led to the 1948 Communist takeover of power in the former Czechoslovakia.
Hodac is the station's third general director in two years. Each of his two predecessors lasted about a year. Changes in leadership have always spurred political disputes but never led to similar incidents.
``If somebody seizes the property of Czech television and produces his own, unauthorized, programs, then it is my duty to act,'' Hodac said.
The mutineers have been broadcasting their own news programs on the internet and cable systems. But the new management controls the other transmission facilities and has blocked the rebel broadcasts from reaching most viewers.
When the evening news was to begin Wednesday evening, a printed statement appeared on television screens stating that no programs would be transmitted until the parliamentary Council for Radio and Television Broadcasts decides in favor of either the new management or the protesters.
Czech news agency CTK said two deputy prime ministers had gone to the station late Wednesday to propose that Hodac reverse his decision to fire the staffers and that the rebels, in turn, accept the new management.
The rebels refused the proposal, CTK reported.
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Palme Prize awarded to U.S. lawyer
InfoBeat News - Afternoon
Edition - 12/28/2000
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405569551
STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) - U.S. lawyer and activist Bryan Stevenson has been awarded this year's Olof Palme Prize for his fight to abolish capital punishment.
The prize is awarded annually by the Olof Palme Memorial Fund for International Understanding and Common Security.
Stevenson, 38, of Alabama, ``is a courageous representative of all the individuals, women and men from the entire world, who have maintained tirelessly that the right to life cannot be controverted, that the death penalty is an ultimate form of torture, and that the state does not have the right to kill its citizens,'' Pierre Schori, chairman of the fund, stated in a news release.
In 1989, Stevenson founded the Alabama Capital Representation Resource Center, now called the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Ala.
``In a state with no public defender system, where the average capital trial lasts only three days, Stevenson and his colleagues at the Equal Justice Initiative have been successful in reducing or overturning death sentences in 67 cases over the past eight years,'' the release stated.
The prize is awarded for an outstanding achievement chosen by the Fund's board. Previous winners include Czech President Vaclav Havel in 1989 when he was a dissident fighting communism, Amnesty International in 1991 and Chinese dissident Wei Jingsheng in 1995.
The prize consists of a diploma and $50,000 in cash. A prize ceremony will be held in Stockholm on Jan. 30, Olof Palme's birthday. It was funded by Palme's family and his Social Democratic Party to foster international understanding.
The former prime minister was shot to death Feb. 28, 1986, on a Stockholm street as he and his wife walked home unguarded from a downtown movie theater. The case has not been solved.
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Report: Laid off Chinese protest
InfoBeat News - Afternoon
Edition - 12/28/2000
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405569823
BEIJING (AP) - Protesting workers laid off by state companies blocked streets in two Chinese cities, demanding unemployment benefits from their former bosses, a human rights group said Thursday.
As many as 2,000 workers from a struggling machine-tool factory in the central city of Wuhan have closed a road in front of the provincial government offices, the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said.
It said they were protesting the company's refusal to pay annual $97 stipends promised in addition to lump sum settlements.
In western China, 500 fired workers from the Specialized Steel plant blocked a road on the outskirts of the city of Chongqing on Wednesday, the Information Center said. They accused factory officials of stealing compensation payments of $1,200 per worker promised three months ago.
Worker protests, often involving blocking roads or train lines, are increasingly common in China as state companies under pressure to cut losses in a market-style economy slash their work forces. With many firms on the edge of bankruptcy, salaries and severance pay often are late, less than expected or never paid.
Officials in Wuhan and Chongqing refused to confirm the reports.
An employee of Wuhan's traffic radio station who wouldn't give his name said the road cited by the Information Center has been closed since Tuesday, but he claimed not to know why.
A woman at a worker hot line in Chongqing declined to confirm the protest there. But she said the 2,000 workers laid off had agreed to quit, and the steel plant was to pay compensation by Jan. 12.
A woman who answered the phone at the factory said she knew of the protest but had not attended. Neither woman would give her name.
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