------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Britain hid nukes abroad during Cold War
Peacekeepers face radiation testing as more deaths reported
Gulf War Syndrome Not Imagined
Pakistan And India Swap Nuclear Target Lists
Facing up to Fluoride
New Mexico
Radioactive waste - hot issue gets hotter
Envirocare workers drop union efforts

MILITARY
A Stubborn Cuba and a Stubborn America
Marijuana warlords set up shop beneath redwoods of California
Rhode Island
Give Mideast Talks a Real Chance
Iraq's Biggest Show of Armed Might Since Gulf War
In Nod to Zapatistas, Fox Closes 2nd Chiapas Base, After Protest
Key Events in Taiwan - China Relations
Clinton's Words: `The Right Action'
U.S. Signs Treaty for World Court to Try Atrocities
Clinton backs a world criminal court
To Run Pentagon, Bush Sought Proven Manager With Muscle

OTHER
9 Million Gaining Upgraded Benefit for Mental Care
Misused Antibiotics
Addict's Suit Claims Police Ignore Needle-Swap Law

ACTIVISTS
Alan Cranston, Former U.S. Senator, Is Dead at 86


-------- NUCLEAR

-------- britain

Britain hid nukes abroad during Cold War

Times of India
Monday 1 January 2001
http://www.timesofindia.com/010101/01worl6.htm

LONDON: Britain hid nuclear weapons in Cyprus and Singapore during the Cold War without telling the unsuspecting host governments, the Sunday Times reported on Sunday citing a soon-to-be-published study.

The British paper says that as early as 1960, Britain deployed tactical nuclear weapons at its Royal Air Force (RAF) base in Akrotiri in southern Cyprus, according the Chicago-based Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

The report claims that two years later, then British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan personally authorised nuclear arms to be stored in the RAF's Tengah base in Singapore.

Recently declassified files reveal that neither Malaysia's Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman -- Singapore was then a part of the Malaysian Federation -- nor Cyprus' leader at the time, Archbishop Makarios, were aware of the deployment.

According to Stephen Schwartz, publisher of the Bulletin, "If this information had been available to the public in Cyprus and Singapore at that time, I don't think these operations would ever have been carried out".

The Sunday Times says that a squadron of British bombers able to carry nuclear arms remained in Singapore until 1970 and in Cyprus until 1975 although it is not known how long they remained equipped with nuclear weapons. (AFP)

-------- depleted uranium

Peacekeepers face radiation testing as more deaths reported

Date: 01/01/2001
Sydney Morning Herald
The Daily Telegraph/AFP

Tests will try to determine if US use of uranium in shells is killing NATO soldiers. Christina Lamb and Macer Hall report from London

Thousands of European soldiers who served in NATO forces in Kosovo will be tested for radiation amid claims of serious medical problems caused by "Balkan War Syndrome" after being exposed to depleted uranium in ammunition used by American forces.

Portugal and Spain this week will join the Italians, French and Belgians in systematically reviewing the health of the troops they sent to the region to discover whether they were exposed to dangerous levels of depleted uranium. Portugal will also send a mission of military personnel and nuclear medicine experts to test radiation levels in areas where depleted uranium shells fell.

The decision follows a national outcry over the death from leukaemia of Hugo Paulino, a young Portuguese corporal, three weeks after returning from peacekeeping in Kosovo.

The Defence Ministry refused to release his body to his family for a post-mortem examination and radiation testing, citing "herpes of the brain" as the cause of death. "It was depleted uranium that killed him," his father, Luis, insisted.

The death of a fifth Italian soldier was also confirmed this weekend. The Italian gendarmes' newspaper reported that Rinaldo Colombo, 31, died in September of leukaemia, after working as a peacekeeper in Bosnia in 1995.

His death brought to five the number of Italian soldiers who are believed to have died from "Balkans Syndrome", and the Italian press reported that four other Italians were being tested.

Research has shown that exposure to depleted uranium causes health problems that may lead to cancer and neurological and immune system defects, and damage to the reproductive organs.

Politicians in Portugal and Italy have accused NATO of a cover-up and demanded their governments should think more carefully before joining NATO operations.

Britain is one of the few members of the NATO forces not to be carrying out an investigation. A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Defence said it was monitoring the investigations but had no plans to test its own soldiers.

"We do take the welfare of our personnel very seriously and we'll keep an eye on the outcome of any further investigations into depleted uranium," she said, while insisting there was no cause for concern. "Our medical advice has told us that depleted uranium is no more radioactive than, for example, a household smoke detector. It does have a recognised toxicity but only if ingested into the digestive system, not if it merely comes into contact with the skin."

She said the ministry had carried out substantial scientific research into the issue after the Gulf War, the first time weapons tipped or packed with depleted uranium were used extensively.

Campaigners say exposure to depleted uranium is partly to blame for the recent deaths. Canadian tests last year found some Gulf War veterans had uranium in their blood. Iraq claims the uranium is responsible for a surge in cancers and birth defects in the country's south.

The Pentagon originally denied uranium shells were used in Kosovo but in March the secretary-general of NATO, Lord Robertson, said 31,000 shells containing depleted uranium had been used by American A10 ground-attack aircraft in Kosovo.

The A10s use uranium bullets for knocking out tanks. The fine, poisonous dust stays in the atmosphere and pollutes water supplies.

The UN has a team in Kosovo carrying out its own investigation. It will report next month.

--------

Gulf War Syndrome Not Imagined

January 01, 2000
By Nancy A. Melville HealthScout Reporter
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/hsn/20010101/hl/gulf_war_syndrome_not_imagined_1. html

MONDAY, Jan. 1 (HealthScout) -- While debate over the possible causes of Gulf War syndrome continues, researchers now say state-of-the-art brain scans link veterans' symptoms with actual brain damage.

The proof is in the form of brain scans made with magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), which shows chemical levels in the brain.

When compared with the scans of 18 healthy veterans, the MRS scans of 12 veterans with the most severe symptoms of Gulf War syndrome showed significant brain cell losses in specific areas of the brain that correlate with symptoms the veterans have experienced.

The results were presented at a recent meeting of the Radiological Society of North America in Chicago.

Specifically, the scans showed damage to the right side of the brain, which is believed to be linked to symptoms such as an impaired sense of direction, memory lapses and depression.

And damage to areas of the left side appears to have caused the veterans a more general state of confusion, and difficulties in tasks like understanding directions, reading, solving problems and making decisions.

"With this research, we've correlated the degree of symptoms and abnormality on neurological exams with the degree of brain damage," says Dr. James Fleckenstein, a professor of radiology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.

Significantly, the brain cell damage seen in the veterans was not consistent with the types of chemical differences associated with post-traumatic stress or major depression.

That's important because the crux of the debate over Gulf War syndrome has centered on whether symptoms are the result of post-traumatic stress or exposure to toxic chemicals, such as nerve gas.

Evidence boosting the latter argument includes research showing veterans with the most severe types of Gulf War syndrome, known as Haley syndrome 2, have been been eight times more likely than those without symptoms to report exposure to nerve gas and up to 32 times more likely to have experienced severe side effects after taking anti-nerve gas tablets.

More than 100,000 American service members sent to the Persian Gulf in 1990 and 1991 have reported experiencing symptoms such as fatigue, muscle pain, memory loss and sleep disorders. Collectively, the symptoms have come to be known as Gulf War syndrome.

According to Dr. Brian Ross, director of the MRS Unit at the Huntington Medical Research Institute in California, one of the remarkable aspects of the study is that it underscores the benefit of MRS scanning. It shows damage that normally would not be seen on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which is the current standard for brain scans.

"MRI consists of measuring magnetic signal and is based on the water content of the brain, while MRS measures the chemical composition of the brain, so it's very helpful in identifying conditions like Alzheimer's disease or early brain tumors," he explains. "And when you get into a controversial area like Gulf War syndrome, MRS can really help answer some questions."

Fleckenstein agrees the technology could play a central role in solving the mystery of Gulf War syndrome.

"MRS scanning continues to validate an organic basis for Gulf War patients' complaints and disabilities, and in a more specific way than older tests in past research," he says. "The fact that findings on MRS mirror patients' signs and symptoms underscores the power of this tool in evaluating patients with these kinds of problems."

What To Do

Visit the Naval Health Research Center for more information on clinical trials involving Gulf War veterans. Also, read these clips about Gulf War syndrome.

For more information on Gulf War syndrome, read these HealthScout stories.

-------- india / pakistan

Pakistan And India Swap Nuclear Target Lists

January 1, 2001
By REUTERS

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Nuclear weapons-capable rivals India and Pakistan exchanged lists of their nuclear sites on Monday to comply with a 1988 bilateral pact, the state-run Radio Pakistan said.

Although the two arch-rivals have not been on talking terms to resolve their disputes for more than a year, the third exchange since the two neighbors became declared nuclear powers in May 1998 was carried out through diplomatic channels, the radio said.

The 1988 agreement, which was ratified in 1991, binds the two old foes not to attack each other's nuclear sites and to exchange lists of their nuclear installations and facilities on the first working day of each year.

India carried out five nuclear tests in mid-May 1998 and Pakistan responded with six later the same month.

Indo-Pakistani talks to settle their dispute over the Himalayan region of Kashmir have been deadlocked since the two sides came to the brink of their fourth war in 1999 after pro-Pakistan guerrillas occupied strategic heights on the Indian side of a military control line Kashmir.

India has rejected repeated Pakistani offers to talk, saying Islamabad must first stop sending guerrillas into Kashmir. The two countries have fought two of their three wars over the region since their independence from Britain in 1947.

Pakistan says it gives only moral and political support to Kashmiri ``freedom-fighters.''

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

GREEN LIVING YOUR HEALTH
Facing up to Fluoride
It's in Our Water and in Our Toothpaste. Should We Worry?

E Magazine
01/01/01
By Jim Motavalli
http://www.emagazine.com/january-february_2001/0101gl_health.html

Since the 1940s, municipal water supplies across the United States have been routinely dosed with fluoride. Even if you don't live in the half of America that adds fluoride to the water supply to help prevent tooth decay, low doses of fluoride occur naturally in virtually all water. It's routinely added to toothpaste as well, which provides a route for small children to ingest it regularly. It's hard to drink, swim or brush your teeth in this country without being exposed to this highly toxic chemical.

Recently released government documents reveal that the scientists who first asserted that fluoride was both a good cavity fighter and harmless to human health were associated with the bomb-making Manhattan Project, which found itself with large stockpiles of toxic fluoride (an unwanted byproduct of manufacturing weapons-grade plutonium and uranium). A convenient disposal option--the nation's municipal water supply--allowed the nuclear scientists to avoid a hazardous waste storage problem similar to that encountered by low-level nuclear power waste (which, conveniently enough, can and is being used to kill bacteria in food).

According to Waste Not magazine, atomic scientists helped design and implement a groundbreaking water fluoridation study in Newburgh, New York, from 1945 to 1956. The results of that study were classified until recently. One uncovered document, however, suggests that fluoride "may have a rather marked central nervous system effect."

The Cancer Risk

Putting aside the question of how fluoride got into the water supply, is our massive national experiment with this chemical worth the risk? Some say yes. Water fluoridation is "a remarkably efficient way of controlling dental [cavities] at the community level," says Dr. Lawrence Furman, a scientist at the National Institute of Dental Research. A 1991 study by the Public Health Service credited fluoridation with reducing cavity rates by 20 to 40 percent. But questions persist about fluoride's role as a carcinogen. Dr. Robert D. Morris, writing in Environmental Health Perspectives, says that chlorine, not fluoride, is the most dangerous carcinogen in water. He links chlorine in the water supply to 5,000 cases of bladder cancer and 8,000 cases of rectal cancer per year in the U.S. "Fluoridation of water has received great scrutiny but appears to pose little or no cancer risk," writes Morris.

Nevertheless, water fluoridation remains highly controversial, especially in the wake of a 1990 National Toxicology Program study that dosed lab rats with fluoride in amounts 25 to 100 times the concentration found in the municipal water supply. While the female rats were given a clean bill of health (aside from teeth discoloration), the male rats showed "equivocal evidence of carcinogenic activity," based on the occurrence of a small number of bone osteosarcomas. The cancers occurred in one in 50 rats when the dosage was at 100 parts per million; it increased to three in 80 at 175 parts per million concentrations.

But those results were achieved with high concentrations of fluoride. Municipal water supplies are optimally fluoridated at a rate of between 0.7 and 1.2 parts per million, and no studies exist to link that dosage with cancer. A recent National Cancer Institute study, which examined 2.2 million cancer death records, found no indication of an increased cancer risk from fluoridation. A year-long Public Health Service study concluded the same thing in 1991.

Good news, assuming Americans are receiving that optimal dose of fluoride. However, Jeff Green, director of the San Diego-based Citizens for Safe Drinking Water (CSDW), thinks that fluoridation monitoring is grossly inadequate, performed largely by industry-supported groups. Green adds that much of the fluoride used in municipal water supplies today is a byproduct of the phosphate fertilizer industry, which has to remove the substance because it's poisonous to plants.

Though the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sets maximum contaminant levels for fluoride and officially supports its use in drinking water, there's considerable dissent about the chemical within the agency. In Congressional testimony earlier this year, Dr. J. William Hirzy, representing the EPA professional employees' union, called for a national moratorium on water fluoridation. The practice, he said, is "a massive experiment that has been run on the American public, without informed consent, for over 50 years." Hirzy cited the case of Dr. William Marcus, who was fired from a senior EPA post for going public with concerns about fluoride. Marcus sued the EPA, and was reinstated with back pay. He charged that the dental benefits of fluoride are limited to children three years old and younger, and that in senior citizens its main effect is to double the rate of hip fractures and hearing loss.

Whitens Teeth?

Fluoride is also present in many brands of toothpaste, and recent evidence suggests that children in particular may be getting too much of it. "There probably is excess exposure," says Kit Shaddix, fluoride team leader at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, which published a 1999 study showing that children are getting dosed on fluoride from drinking water, toothpaste, mouthwashes, fluoride supplements and even grape juice. A 1991 Journal of Clinical Pediatric Dentistry study found fluoride in every sample of bottled fruit beverage tested. A Gerber's grape juice sample contained 6.8 parts per million fluoride, 70 percent higher than the EPA's maximum contaminant level for drinking water.

According to the Wall Street Journal, children are most at risk because fluoride exposure occurs when their teeth are forming, leading to a permanent brown stain called "dental fluorisis" (which now affects 22 percent of American kids). The Canadian broadcaster CBC Radio reports that fluorisis in its mild form affects as many as half of all Canadian kids.

Procter & Gamble, makers of Crest, told reporters that parents of children under six should "supervise" the use of fluoridated toothpaste. But no such reticence is reflected in the Crest "kids' tips" website, which calls fluoride "a naturally occurring substance" and one of the "building blocks of healthy teeth." The site adds that dentists or physicians "may recommend or prescribe additional fluoride treatments." Left unmentioned is the fact that some dentists are now recommending that young children brush their teeth only once a day to avoid excessive fluoride dosage.

The Backlash

Groups like Citizens for Safe Drinking Water are leading a growing movement on the local and state level to get fluoride out of the water supply. The city of Bremerton, Washington voted to keep fluoride out of its water in 1999, joining 78 other U.S. cities that have rejected the additive since 1996. Wilmington, Massachusetts rejected the use of fluoride last March. Wilmington Public Health Director Gregory Erickson used Public Health Service statistics to predict that fluoridated water would lead to 216 children in town schools with moderate to severe fluorisis. "This is a totally unacceptable tradeoff," Erickson said in his own report. He noted that much of the most damaging information about fluoride originates from the EPA itself. "No other drug or medicine has such a widespread application, and yet has had so little scrutiny as to its safety," he concluded.

Fluoride's backers point to high-level endorsements from professional groups, but even some of those are ambiguous. The American Medical Association (AMA), a respected authority that could provide leadership on the issue, takes a rather murky official position. The AMA endorses fluoride application in general, but admits it has not carried out any research work on the subject. Consequently the AMA "is not prepared to state that no harm will be done to any person by water fluoridation."

Given the corporate interest in maintaining the fluoride status quo, there's some evidence that pressure has been exerted to alter scientific findings. Hirzy, in his Congressional testimony, charged that the 1990 National Toxicology Program animal tests that found "equivocal evidence" of cancer was watered down by a "hastily convened" special commission. The initial findings, he said, had described "clear evidence of carcinogenicity in male rats."

-------- new mexico

USA Today
States
01/01/02
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

New Mexico

Carlsbad - Scientists at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology will continue to monitor earthquake activity at a nuclear waste dump in southeastern New Mexico. The Energy Department awarded the school an $81,014 contract to observe seismic movements at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant for another year. Nuclear sites must be monitored for seismic activity for safety reasons, officials said.

-------- us nuc waste

Radioactive waste - hot issue gets hotter
Envirocare seeking license for a superhot dumping ground

Deseret News
Monday, January 01, 2001
By Donna Kemp Spangler Deseret News staff writer
http://deseretnews.com/dn/staff/card/1,1228,131,00.html
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,245011403,00.html?textfield=nuclea

For years, organizers of the 2002 Winter Games have been sending the message: "The world is welcome here."

But Utah lawmakers have a more immediate concern: whether or not the world's waste is also welcome here.

When Utah's 104 lawmakers convene Jan. 15, they will have to deal with perennial problems like funding education and programs for the needy. But the hottest issue on Capitol Hill this year could be waste, more specifically, radioactive wastes.

Gov. Mike Leavitt has asked lawmakers to give him $1.6 million to fight a proposal by mostly Eastern nuclear power utilities to store 40,000 tons of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel rods on Goshute tribal lands about 70 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.

That request isn't likely to cause lawmakers too much grief, except maybe the high price tag in a year when there are so many other budget needs. However, an unrelated proposal could stir lawmakers into fierce debate. Envirocare of Utah wants to store Class B and C radioactive wastes, which are about 70 times hotter than the contaminated soils they now accept, called Class A wastes. To do that, they need the approval of the Legislature and the governor.

The company has already received the approval of Tooele County commissioners, and its license application to the Department of Environmental Quality will soon be available for public comment.

But what on paper looks like a straightforward process has already sparked concerns. The public hearing period on Envirocare's application does not end until two days after the end of the legislative session on Feb. 28. Company officials say Sen. Bill Wright, R-Elberta, has agreed to sponsor legislation that would clarify the Legislature's approval even if the public hearing process hasn't been completed. (Wright did not return Deseret News calls.)

That has some lawmakers and activists concerned. If lawmakers approve the license request, what then is the purpose of even having the public hearings, they ask.

Speaker of the House Marty Stephens, R-Farr West, told the Deseret News he does not favor changing the process just to push through a license for Envirocare. Stephens suggested a special legislative session to address the Envirocare issue, but company officials have adamantly opposed that idea.

Any special session would focus all legislative and media attention on the Envirocare proposal, something company officials fear could get out of hand.

Critics point out the irony that Utah lawmakers are even considering the Envirocare proposal at the same time they are pulling out all the stops to block high-level nuclear waste.

Envirocare President Charles Judd said the company must get legislative approval this session or the company may abandon its plans entirely. Other waste companies are trying to get into the Class B and C waste market, and any delays would put Envirocare at a competitive disadvantage.

"We don't want to wait, we need to get it done now," Judd said.

Envirocare and its owner, Khosrow Semnani, are major contributors to Utah political campaigns, both Republican and Democrat, and because of that they have easy access to lawmakers, critics say. The company also has a team of well-heeled lobbyists, some of them former lawmakers themselves, who know how to navigate the political quagmires surrounding waste issues.

Utah's current system that requires legislative and gubernatorial approval of waste disposal permits stems from the 1980s when large numbers of waste companies were targeting remote areas of Utah for storage of hazardous and nuclear wastes. While various county officials openly embraced the waste companies as economic development, Utah lawmakers were concerned about the emerging reputation of the state as a national dumping ground. Whether or not to allow any future dumps was a statewide policy decision requiring approval at the highest levels of state government, lawmakers decided.

Envirocare's timing could not have been worse. Leavitt's campaign to block high-level nuclear waste has garnered headlines and attention across the country, and many people do not understand the difference between the high-level waste from nuclear reactors and the Class B and C wastes from decommissioned power plants, research laboratories and hospitals.

Judd often uses an analogy involving a ruler. If the Class A wastes they now accept could be compared to a one-foot ruler, then B and C wastes would measure about 70 feet long. The spent nuclear fuel would be high-level waste stretching from Salt Lake City to Paris, France.

"It's like comparing a BB gun to a howitzer," agreed Leavitt. Yet the governor has indicated he does not support any changes to Utah's current law that would expedite Envirocare's request.

E-MAIL: dkemp@desnews.com

---

Envirocare workers drop union efforts

Deseret News
Monday, January 01, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,245011435,00.html

Envirocare of Utah employees abandoned a unionizing push after what organizers said was retaliation by the company.

They complained to the National Labor Relations Board, and the company agreed to post a memo at its Clive landfill that workers were free to talk about unions and with union representatives.

"This is something we handled," said Envirocare President Charles Judd. "We did it properly."

Envirocare employees first made contact with Denver-based PACE International, a union representing about 320,000 paper, industrial chemical and energy workers, last February. The union represents about 1,000 Utah workers, most of them refinery employees.

Envirocare employs about 250 workers to receive and dispose of low-level radioactive waste at its landfill about 80 miles west of Salt Lake City.

The complaints to the NLRB contended the company laid off five workers who were at the heart of the organizing effort. Judd suggested the layoffs were coincidental with a decline in waste arriving at the Clive facility. An entire shift was shut down because of that workload decline, he said.

A couple of the complaining employees said the jobs were posted at the state Workforce Services office the day after the layoffs.

The labor board ended up making no ruling on the charge of retaliatory layoffs after the company rehired - at lower pay - all of the employees who wanted their jobs back.

"None of them had bad records," said Jack Cavanaugh, the PACE organizer who worked with the Envirocare employees.

He said the layoffs scared the Envirocare employees.

The organizers also complained about an address to workers by a lawyer and a memo that suggested union interviews and meetings on the company's property could be viewed as employees not performing assigned tasks or disrupting the workplace and they could be fired.

The labor board took up the case in the fall. It found there was sufficient evidence to suggest Envirocare had breached the law, but the board did not file charges.

Instead, the company volunteered a settlement. It agreed to post a notice at the Clive facility for two months that assured employees of their rights to take part in union activities if they choose.



-------- MILITARY

-------- cuba

A Stubborn Cuba and a Stubborn America

The New York Times
January 1, 2001
By JAVIER CORRALES

WASHINGTON -- Today the Cuban regime celebrates its 42nd anniversary. Soon it will mark another milestone: surviving nine American presidents without showing any signs of democratization. Will the Cuban regime remain unchanged through the administration of another American president? The answer depends on the conservatives both in Cuba and in the United States.

The resistance of the Cuban system to political reform is remarkable. In the 1990's, Fidel Castro's government faced what would seem to be inexorable pressure for reform: the extinction of its patron (the Soviet bloc), the collapse of its economy (a 40 percent contraction from 1989 to 1994), an avalanche of Western tourists reminding Cubans of their deprivation, declining labor productivity and a historic papal admonition. And yet, the regime endures.

The longevity of the United States embargo against Cuba is similarly remarkable. Although embargoes against tyrannies are customary in American foreign policy, those that last four decades, as this one has, are rare. It has survived despite mounting political pressure against it in the 1990's. Pressure now comes in part from groups dear to Republican interests: agribusinesses, biotechnology companies, financial firms and even some Cuban-American groups in Florida. A proposal to create a bipartisan commission to review the embargo was signed by 24 senators, including 16 Republicans, but this initiative failed, and the embargo survived.

In the face of pressure to liberalize in the early 1990's, Mr. Castro sought the support of the most risk-averse, die-hard members of the ruling party, the duros, who hated glasnost and perestroika when those ideas were in vogue in the Soviet world. His decision to side with the duros has left Cuban politics frozen in time.

The American government's response to Cuba over the past four decades has remained similarly tough. President Clinton has softened the embargo by increasing people-to- people contacts, and Congress approved limited sales of food and pharmaceuticals to Cuba this year. But these changes in policy have not weakened the resolve of conservatives in Congress who support the ongoing embargo. In fact, many embargo supporters are convinced that efforts to draw Cuba out of its isolation, like Canada's policy of increasing business ventures and Latin America's policy of diplomatic inclusion, have failed. They rightly point out that the Cuban regime has become more repressive since 1994.

President-elect George Bush may feel it would be politically difficult to press for liberalization of this policy. After all, the costs of forgoing normal relations with Cuba are not high. Neither our economy nor our national security will improve significantly by normalized ties with Cuba. The seemingly low geopolitical value of Cuba, together with Mr. Bush's own desire to shore up his conservative support, could cause him to leave Cuba policy to the conservatives of his party.

Yet one can imagine a different outcome. Mr. Bush could tell his conservative allies that change was inevitable, that if he did not sponsor it, the business and humanitarian groups pushing to end the embargo would yield more than necessary.

Rather than a full repeal of the embargo - which would amount to an excessive accommodation to a dictatorship - Mr. Bush could push for repeal of the 1966 Helms-Burton law, which toughened the embargo in two regrettable ways. First, it internationalized the embargo by allowing the United States to penalize foreign companies for operating properties in Cuba that had been previously owned by Americans. Second, it shifted power to alter the embargo from the president to Congress. This policy is unnecessarily irritating to our allies and unwisely reduces the power of the executive branch - now in Republican hands - over foreign policy.

Returning control over the embargo to the White House could give Mr. Castro and the duros incentive to negotiate with Mr. Bush. The result might be an exchange of concessions, and perhaps the beginnings of real political reform. Mr. Bush should argue to Congressional conservatives that his administration is more likely to outsmart the Castro regime than a divided and interest-group-dominated Congress. He might even remind them of Richard Nixon's policy of engagement with China, which conservatives now consider one of their smartest moves during the cold war.

Mr. Bush has a chance to break with the past. He has the conservative credentials to alter Cuba policy, and perhaps the vision to do it.

Javier Corrales is a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center and an assistant professor of political science at Amherst College.

-------- drug war

Marijuana warlords set up shop beneath redwoods of California

January 1, 2001
By Thomas D. Elias
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

LOS ANGELES - Marijuana gardens planted illegally by squatters in the national forests of California are growing steadily larger, producing crops that are becoming ever more lucrative and potent, law-enforcement agencies reported in December as they wrapped up a record season of seizures in America's leading pot-growing state.

"There is a lot more growing out there," said Eric Nishimoto, spokesman for the Ventura County Sheriff's Department, which cut down more than 15,000 plants with a combined street value of about $22 million in the county's portion of the Los Padres National Forest during one month last fall.

"We're seeing more sophistication in the methods used, which can yield a much larger crop. We're not talking about the old days when some potheads grew some plants for their own use."

Overall, California authorities seized more than 420,000 marijuana plants, or pot, last year -almost double the 241,000 they grabbed in 1999. Agents of the joint local-state-federal California Campaign Against Marijuana Planting (CAMP) scored their biggest single-raid haul ever in September, confiscating 58,000 plants from a patch in the Sequoia National Forest, northeast of Bakersfield.

They staged their biggest-ever San Francisco Bay area bust that same month, taking $49 million worth of plants from a patch planted beneath coastal redwoods in a county park near Woodside, on the edge of the Silicon Valley. Most marijuana plants produce about a pound of smokeable weed apiece, with the street value ranging from $600 to $5,000 per pound, depending on the potency of their tetrahydrocannabinol, the active ingredient in marijuana.

That big money, said Sonya Barna, CAMP's director of operations, is the reason "we're not dealing with traditional hippie farmers any more. A lot of them have been pushed out by pseudo-criminal organizations from Mexico who import labor and armed guards. It's more cost-effective to grow it here than to smuggle it in. If they plant 20 big gardens, they can easily afford to lose most of them [to police] and still make millions."

Although one armed grower was killed this year by a CAMP agent -the first fatality in the campaign's 15-year history - most raids net no suspected growers. Many patches now are equipped with watchtowers and dummies made to look like armed farmers. Police say these are principally intended to scare off poachers, but also can provide growers with warnings when police approach. Some patches feature guards carrying AK-47s, intended to fight off thieves, not for resisting police.

Authorities also have found irrigation pipes running to the pot patches from creeks and springs as far as five miles away. Growers or their workers carry food, ammunition and other supplies into the park and later pack mature pot out on their backs.

Forest Service officials worry that the pot patches are affecting wildlife in the national forests, as growers kill animals for food, cut away natural vegetation, litter and leave human waste.

"They're using the forest as a toilet," said Kathy Good, a Forest Service spokeswoman. "Birds and animals are dying because of the pesticides they use. They're also a big fire hazard because they use stoves and campfires unsafely."

Nevertheless, some law-enforcement officials believe their campaign is succeeding. "It's very, very expensive to set these gardens up, and they take a big hit financially when we strike," said Ms. Barna. "And the more we take from them, the less they can put out on the street. I don't think we'll ever eliminate this entirely, but we are at least holding it down."

Improved police techniques are one reason for the increased amounts of confiscated pot from raids. They have become more efficient at spotting gardens from cruising helicopters, then either landing on level ground or dropping officers into remote ravines by cables that can extend down as far as 150 feet.

But the more law enforcement does, it seems, the more inventive the growers become. Where California pot growing was once largely confined to the so-called "Emerald Triangle" of three North Coast counties, now growers operate all over the state.

"You can grow almost anything in the San Joaquin Valley with a little water, and they're taking advantage of that," Ms. Barna said.

Some law-enforcement officials say the conflicted attitude of the California public makes enforcement difficult. The 1996 Proposition 215, aimed at legalizing medical marijuana, passed 60 percent to 40 percent. Even state Attorney General Bill Lockyer, a Democrat, admits to some ambivalence.

"I don't use drugs, and I don't condone drug use," he said.

"I will use our authority to stamp out illegal drugs. But this is totally separate from my support of medical uses of marijuana."

--------

USA Today
States
01/01/02
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Rhode Island

East Providence - A 29-year-old man arrested for drug possession was charged with trying to bribe police to let him go. Shaun Brown of Providence allegedly promised an officer guarding him $2,000 in exchange for his freedom, police said. Brown had been taken into custody after police allegedly found marijuana during a traffic stop.

-------- israel

Give Mideast Talks a Real Chance

New York Times
January 1, 2001

To the Editor:

Re "Fork in Arafat's Road" (news analysis, front page, Dec. 29):

In view of President Clinton's latest proposal for a historical agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, and the concern that his administration may run out of time to complete an agreement, George W. Bush has an extraordinary opportunity to exercise dramatic bipartisanship by appointing Mr. Clinton as his temporary special representative on Israel-Palestinian Authority peace negotiations.

Mr. Clinton's experience would materially enhance the strength of Mr. Bush's foreign policy team on this issue, and the notion of bipartisanship would acquire new meaning following the divisions caused by the recent election.

DAVID QUENTZEL Englewood, N.J., Dec. 29, 2000

To the Editor:

Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, has not been offered a choice between "comprehensive peace" and perpetual victimhood (news analysis, front page, Dec. 29). A comprehensive peace would provide a solution to the refugee problem, providing a process to guarantee the refugees' rights to return to the lands from which they were dispossessed.

These rights are guaranteed by international law, through United Nations Resolution 194 of December 1948.

Since such rights are held individually, no agreement can abrogate them. Any signed agreement that doesn't allow for refugee return simply papers over a problem that will only fester, perpetuating a bitterness and desperation of millions of Palestinians, inevitably leading to violence. That doesn't seem like comprehensive peace to me.

JAMES RAYBURN La Crescenta, Calif., Dec. 29, 2000

-------- iraq

Iraq's Biggest Show of Armed Might Since Gulf War

New York Times
January 1, 2001
By REUTERS

AGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 31 - President Saddam Hussein presided today over what appeared to be the biggest military parade in Baghdad since the 1991 Persian Gulf war, greeting army units with shots from a rifle he held in one hand.

The parade displayed sophisticated surface-to-surface and anti-aircraft missiles, artillery and more than 1,000 modern, Russian-made tanks as well as infantry units.

The president wore a blue suit and a hat and was accompanied by top aides in military fatigues on his reviewing stand.

Formations of jet fighters and helicopter gunships hovered over central Baghdad's Grand Festivities Square as forces representing all Iraqi military units, including the navy, infantry and paramilitary Saddam commandos, flowed past.

Missiles in the four-hour parade were the Al-Samoud, Al-Fath and Al- Raad, all with ranges under 95 miles that do not violate restrictions imposed by the United Nations after the gulf war.

The parade was officially called Al Aksa Call Parade and was intended as a show of support for Palestinians in their uprising against Israel.

Last month, President Hussein attended a parade in Baghdad by nearly two million Iraqis who are said to have volunteered to fight with the Palestinians against the Israeli army.

That parade capped a monthlong training campaign called by President Hussein "for volunteers willing to launch jihad to liberate Palestine." He said last month that more than 6.6 million Iraqis, including just over 2 million women, had volunteered.

The president said in October that Iraq was ready to "put an end to Zionism" if Arab rulers did not defend the Palestinians against Israel. Iraq has always taken a hard line toward Israel and during the gulf war it fired Scud missiles at Israeli territory.

Iraq also opposes the peace accords signed so far by the Israelis and Palestinians, and the treaties signed by Egypt and Jordan with Israel.

-------- mexico

In Nod to Zapatistas, Fox Closes 2nd Chiapas Base, After Protest

New York Times
January 1, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

SAN CRISTÓBAL DE LAS CASAS, Mexico, Dec. 31 - President Vicente Fox ordered the closing of a second military base outside an Indian community in troubled Chiapas State today, hours after villagers marched onto the base and demanded that the troops leave.

The surprise closing was the latest in a series of recent gestures by Mr. Fox to meet conditions set by the Zapatista rebels to restart peace talks.

Talks have been stalled since 1996. On Saturday, the government released 17 jailed Zapatista guerrillas, meeting another rebel demand.

The base closing - the second in little over a week - comes almost seven years to the day after the start of the Zapatista rebel uprising on Jan. 1, 1994, in the name of Indian rights. Since then, rebel sympathizers and paramilitary groups have often sparred.

The five-year-old base in the municipality of Jolnachoj was only 875 yards from Oventic, a crucial Zapatista rebel base.

Shortly after 7 a.m. on Saturday, a group of 700 Indian men, women and children accompanied by foreigners marched onto the base.

The protesters, many wearing bandannas to cover their faces, retreated shortly after demanding the base's closing.

By 12:30 p.m., their demands had been met. The soldiers had loaded up rolls of barbed wire, cots, propane gas tanks and their personal belongings on five buses and were headed to their central base here in San Cristóbal de Las Casas, 40 miles south of the area.

Since taking office, President Fox and the governor of Chiapas, Pablo Sálazar Mendiguchía, have made restarting peace talks a top priority.

This summer, Mr. Fox and Mr. Sálazar ousted the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which had held Mexico's presidency and the Chiapas governorship for more than 70 years.

Hours after taking office on Dec. 1, Mr. Fox ordered the closing of military checkpoints in Chiapas and later sent an Indian rights bill to Congress, thus meeting two other rebel demands.

A day after Mr. Fox's inauguration, the rebel leader, Subcommander Marcos, said his fighters were ready to return to peace talks.

On Dec. 22, Mr. Fox ordered troops to withdraw from Amador Hernández, a jungle town where soldiers faced daily confrontations with townspeople for more than a year over the military's base there.

-------- taiwan

Key Events in Taiwan - China Relations

January 1, 2001
CHRONOLOGY
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/world/taiwan-china-chrono.html

TAIPEI, Jan 2 - Following is a chronology of key events in Taiwan's uneasy ties with China:

1949 - Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist troops lose civil war to Mao Zedong's Communist forces on mainland China and set up government-in-exile on Taiwan.

August 1958 - Sporadic shellings across Taiwan Strait begin as China seeks in vain to bring Taiwan under communist rule.

October 1971- Beijing assumes Taipei's seat in United Nations as Taiwan becomes increasingly isolated in international arena.

January 1979 - Washington switches diplomatic recognition to Beijing from Taipei. Beijing woos Taiwan to reunify peacefully under ``one country, two systems'' formula, promising the island high degree of autonomy.

November 1987 - After almost four decades of hostility, Taiwan and China embark on cautious path of rapprochement, starting with family visits.

May 1991 - Taiwan renounces use of force to retake mainland, paving way for unofficial talks.

April 1993 - Taiwan and Chinese negotiators hold landmark meeting in Singapore.

March 1994 - Robbery and murder of 24 Taiwan tourists aboard pleasure boat in central China sparks angry backlash in Taiwan, freezing detente for nearly a year.

January 1995 - Chinese President Jiang Zemin woos Taiwan to reunify with call for high-level talks and exchanges to end state of hostility. Taiwan rejects overture.

June 1995 - Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui makes landmark, private trip to United States, enraging Beijing which indefinitely puts off semi-official talks and launches months of invective against Lee.

July-August 1995 - China intimidates Taiwan with missile tests, shaking island's stock market.

March 1996 - China menaces Taiwan with war games in run-up to island's first direct presidential elections, but threats backfire and voters hand Lee Teng-hui landslide victory. The United States sends two aircraft carrier battle groups to waters near Taiwan.

October 1998 - Taiwan envoy Koo Chen-fu visits China and meets President Jiang in highest-level contact between two sides in nearly five decades.

July 1999 - Lee Teng-hui enrages China again with call for political parity by redefining bilateral ties as ``special state-to-state.'' Beijing freezes semi-official talks.

March 2000 - Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji tries without success to sway Taiwan voters away from Chen Shui-bian on eve of presidential elections. Chen wins despite warning of bloodshed if island drifts towards independence, and Beijing says it will look and listen to his deeds and words.

January 2001 - Taiwan opens direct but limited trade and travel links with China.

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

Clinton's Words: `The Right Action'

New York Times
January 1, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON, Dec. 31 (AP) - Following is the text of President Clinton's statement today authorizing the United States to sign the Treaty on the International Criminal Court:

The United States is today signing the 1998 Rome Treaty on the International Criminal Court. In taking this action, we join more than 130 other countries that have signed by the December 31, 2000 deadline established in the treaty. We do so to reaffirm our strong support for international accountability and for bringing to justice perpetrators of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. We do so as well because we wish to remain engaged in making the I.C.C. an instrument of impartial and effective justice in the years to come.

The United States has a long history of commitment to the principle of accountability, from our involvement in the Nuremberg tribunals that brought Nazi war criminals to justice to our leadership in the effort to establish the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Our action today sustains that tradition of moral leadership.

Under the Rome Treaty, the International Criminal Court (I.C.C.) will come into being with the ratification of 60 governments, and will have jurisdiction over the most heinous abuses that result from international conflict, such as war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. The Treaty requires that the I.C.C. not supersede or interfere with functioning national judicial systems; that is, the I.C.C. prosecutor is authorized to take action against a suspect only if the country of nationality is unwilling or unable to investigate allegations of egregious crimes by their national. The U.S. delegation to the Rome conference worked hard to achieve these limitations, which we believer are essential to the international credibility and success of the I.C.C.

In signing, however, we are not abandoning our concerns about significant flaws in the treaty. In particular, we are concerned that when the court comes into existence, it will not only exercise authority over personnel of states that have ratified the treaty, but also claim jurisdiction over personnel of states that have not. With signature, however, we will be in a position to influence the evolution of the court. Without signature, we will not.

Signature will enhance our ability to further protect U.S. officials from unfounded charges and to achieve the human rights and accountability objectives of the I.C.C. In fact, in negotiations following the Rome Conference, we have worked effectively to develop procedures that limit the likelihood of politicized prosecutions. For example, U.S. civilian and military negotiators helped to ensure greater precision in the definitions of crimes within the Court's jurisdiction.

But more must be done. Court jurisdictions over U.S. personnel should come only with U.S. ratification of the Treaty. The United States should have the chance to observe and assess the functioning of the Court, over time, before choosing to become subject to its jurisdiction. Given these concerns, I will not, and do not recommend that my successor submit the Treaty to the Senate for advice and consent until our fundamental concerns are satisfied.

Nonetheless, signature is the right action to take at this point. I believe that a properly constituted and structured International Criminal Court would make a profound contribution in deterring egregious human rights abuses worldwide, and that signature increases the chances for productive discussions with other governments to advance these goals in the months and years ahead.

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U.S. Signs Treaty for World Court to Try Atrocities

New York Times
January 1, 2001
By STEVEN LEE MYERS

WASHINGTON, Dec. 31 - The United States signed a treaty today to establish a permanent international criminal tribunal, after President Clinton overrode objections from the Pentagon and defied Republicans in the Senate.

Mr. Clinton's decision, in the waning days of his second term, is not legally binding without Senate approval, which appears unlikely any time soon. Still, it represents a powerful American endorsement of the treaty's goals, and poses a political and diplomatic challenge for the incoming administration of George W. Bush.

Senior advisers to Mr. Bush, like many Republicans in Congress, have strongly opposed the treaty. One of them is Mr. Bush's selection for secretary of defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld, who joined 11 other prominent retired policy makers last month in signing a letter warning that "American leadership in the world could be the first casualty" of the tribunal.

The treaty, if ratified by 60 nations, will create the International Criminal Court, the world's first standing court with jurisdiction to try individuals on charges of genocide, war crimes and other crimes against humanity.

It was a measure of the influence of Mr. Clinton's action that Israel reversed its position on the treaty in the course of day, announcing just hours before the New Year's deadline set by the United Nations that it, too, would sign, though the Israeli cabinet had voted not to do so.

In a statement released by the White House, Mr. Clinton said he remained concerned about "significant flaws" in the treaty that he hoped would be corrected in negotiations before the court becomes a reality. He said that, nevertheless, it was important to sign the treaty to "reaffirm our strong support for international accountability" and to place the United States in a better position to negotiate changes in the court's structure and rules.

"With signature," he said in his statement "we will be in a position to influence the evolution of the court. Without signature, we will not." [Text, Page A6.]

David J. Scheffer, the administration's ambassador at large for war crimes issues, signed for the United States at the United Nations this evening.

"I do so today in honor of the victims of these crimes," he said as he signed, "and also in honor of the United States armed services, who uphold these laws of war and have been so responsible for the foundations of the principles underlying this treaty."

In response to a question, he said he believes that the treaty has a large number of safeguards, and that, by signing, "we remain in the game, negotiating and continuing to represent the interests of the United States government and the United States military."

In addition to Israel, Iran also signed the treaty today, bringing the total of signers to 139. Twenty-seven nations have already approved it, nearly half of the 60 needed for the court to come into being.

When the treaty was negotiated in Rome in 1998, President Clinton refused to endorse it. While administration officials have strongly supported the creation of an international court, Mr. Clinton had until today heeded warnings from the Pentagon that such a court would subject American troops, diplomats and other officials to frivolous or politically motivated prosecutions.

Mr. Clinton, in Camp David for the weekend, made his decision after a final, spirited debate within his administration in recent weeks. While Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and others at the State Department supported signing the treaty, civilian and military officials at the Pentagon remained opposed, said senior officials in both departments.

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Clinton backs a world criminal court

By Bill Nichols,
USA TODAY
01/01/01

WASHINGTON - President Clinton's decision to back a treaty creating the world's first permanent criminal court might prove to be largely symbolic, as the Senate appears poised to reject the agreement.

Clinton joined the leaders of 138 other nations Sunday in endorsing the establishment of a world court that would try cases of alleged genocide and war crimes. Sunday was the last day that countries could join the treaty without having first ratified it.

In a statement from the presidential retreat at Camp David, Md., Clinton said he made the decision to "reaffirm our strong support for international accountability and for bringing to justice perpetrators of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity."

David Scheffer, the Clinton administration's ambassador-at-large for war crimes, signed the treaty on the president's behalf at the United Nations on Sunday night.

"I do so today in honor of the victims of these crimes and also in the honor of the United States armed services, who uphold these laws of war and have been so responsible for the foundations of principles underlying this treaty," Scheffer said.

Human rights activists hailed the action. They said it sends an important message to countries that have not yet endorsed or ratified the treaty. In an immediate example of the impact of Clinton's decision, Israel reversed its position on the treaty Sunday and announced that it, too, would sign the measure.

Even so, Clinton's decision is largely for show. While the move enables the United States to continue to have a voice in setting up the tribunal's procedures, ratification by two-thirds of the Senate, which would let Washington participate in the global court, is unlikely.

Ratification faces significant opposition from Senate Republicans, particularly from Foreign Relations Chairman Jesse Helms of North Carolina.

President-elect Bush has not taken a specific position on the treaty, but his nominee to be Defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, signed a recent letter to Congress calling the treaty a "threat to American sovereignty and international freedom of action."

Helms, who has bedeviled the Clinton administration on foreign policy issues since the GOP took control of the Senate after elections in 1994, was even blunter.

"This decision will not stand," Helms said in a statement. He called Clinton's decision "outrageous" and described the tribunal as an "international kangaroo court."

The incoming Bush administration declined to comment on Clinton's action. The issue hands the president-elect's foreign policy team an early decision to make. Bush cannot revoke Clinton's decision, but he could decide against submitting the treaty for ratification. Bush also could send the treaty to the Senate but work with lawmakers to defeat the accord.

In addition to opposing ratification, GOP leaders in both the House and the Senate have drafted legislation to forbid the United States from participating in the court.

The bills also would require permanent immunity for U.S. military personnel before Washington could participate in any peacekeeping operation and bar military aid to any country that participates in the court except for NATO members and other key allies.

The Pentagon has long opposed the creation of a world court, which is scheduled to be set up in the Netherlands in about two years. U.S. military officials fear that the court, which is to be based on the Nazi war crimes court convened at the end of World War II, could lead to unfair and politically motivated prosecutions of U.S. soldiers abroad.

Clinton, noting those concerns in the statement about his decision, said he remains uneasy about "significant flaws" in the treaty concerning the legal liability of U.S. troops that he hoped would be fixed through further negotiations. To influence the final language, Clinton was required to endorse the accord.

When a preliminary treaty was negotiated in Rome in 1998, Clinton declined to endorse it, largely because of the Pentagon's concerns.

White House officials argue, however, that significant safeguards have been built into the treaty during months of subsequent negotiations, specifically that the court would preserve the right of nations to conduct their own trials of military personnel accused of crimes abroad.

Still, Defense Secretary William Cohen had continued to oppose a U.S. endorsement of the treaty, while Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had urged Clinton to sign it.

The president said he would not submit the treaty for ratification during the remaining 18 days of his presidency, and he would not recommend that Bush submit it any time soon, either, until additional changes are made.

For the treaty to take effect, 60 countries must ratify it. At present, 27 nations have voted for ratification.

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To Run Pentagon, Bush Sought Proven Manager With Muscle

New York Times
January 1, 2001
By ERIC SCHMITT and ELAINE SCIOLINO

WASHINGTON, Dec. 31 - The questions hung heavily in the air and then seemed to fill the room.

Daniel R. Coats, the former Republican senator from Indiana, had been summoned to a suite at the Madison Hotel near the White House by President-elect George W. Bush and Vice President-elect Dick Cheney for an audition of sorts for the job of secretary of defense, advisers to the participants recalled.

And in the midst of their 45- minute conversation, on Dec. 18, the two auditioners began to ask themselves whether Mr. Coats was up to the job of running the world's largest corporation, or whether there was a stature gap.

Could a former lawmaker who had been a top aide to Dan Quayle when he was a congressman go mano a mano with Colin L. Powell, a four-star general who had served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had run the war that ousted Iraq from Kuwait, had flirted with running for president and was now poised to become secretary of state?

Or would he turn out to be Aspin redux, a figure like the Clinton administration's first defense secretary, Representative Les Aspin, who was well liked and respected as a brilliant mind on defense matters but who was widely viewed by White House and Pentagon officials at the end of his tenure as an indecisive and ineffective manager who lost President Clinton's confidence and had to resign?

Mr. Coats left the interview feeling that he had performed well and had connected with the soon-to-be commander in chief, according to colleagues. But asked four days after the interview why the process was taking so long, Mr. Bush told reporters, "It's so important for us to make sure that we get it right in the beginning."

It took six more days before Mr. Bush announced that he had chosen not Mr. Coats, 57, or Paul D. Wolfowitz, another leading contender, also 57, but Donald H. Rumsfeld, 68. Mr. Rumsfeld, an experienced bureaucrat and corporate executive, had held the top Pentagon job a quarter-century and seven secretaries of defense ago, back when Gerald Ford was president.

Interviews with members of the Bush team, lawmakers and other current and former officials indicate that the decision to reach back in time reflected the strong desire by Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney to choose a candidate with enough government and business experience and gravitas to trump any other candidate, understand existing and emerging security threats, neutralize opposition in Congress and, most important, run and restructure a $309 billion operation.

In an interview on Friday, Mr. Cheney described Mr. Bush's criteria for secretary of defense. Mr. Cheney said that prospective candidates had been evaluated against a "sort of model" in Mr. Bush's mind: "Somebody who obviously is able to participate in the policy debates; somebody who's a good manager - huge management task, the Pentagon; somebody who works well as part of the national security team; somebody who's good on the Hill." Then, he added, "you look at the candidates and sort of match them against those standards."

Mr. Coats had the advantage of being the first choice of Trent Lott, the Senate majority leader, as well as Bob Dole, the Republican presidential nominee in 1996. But in Mr. Coats's interview, it became clear to Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney that they needed someone with impeccable management skills and experience.

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-------- health

9 Million Gaining Upgraded Benefit for Mental Care

New York Times
January 1, 2001
By ERICA GOODE

Acting on an executive order issued by President Clinton, the federal government will begin today to offer its nine million employees improved mental health benefits equal to those for physical ailments.

Federal officials' embrace of equal insurance protection for mental and physical ills represents a significant victory for mental health advocates, who have argued for more than a decade that the widespread practice of providing far less coverage for mental disorders is discriminatory.

The new policy also offers further evidence that the notion of equality in coverage is gaining wider acceptance. Thirty-two states now have laws that in some way address such insurance disparities, and many large corporations provide equal coverage for their employees, believing that doing so saves money in the long run.

The notion of equal coverage, referred to as parity, was also endorsed by Vice President Al Gore and Gov. George W. Bush during their presidential campaigns.

"There has been definite progress," said Jennifer Heffron, senior director of state affairs for the National Mental Health Association, a nonprofit group.

Yet Ms. Heffron, echoing the concerns of other mental health groups, said that despite such advances, true equal coverage, in its fullest sense, remained elusive. She said that many state laws included so many restrictions that they had little impact, and that in some cases, insurance companies had simply found other, more subtle ways to limit coverage for mental illness.

Dr. Richard Frank, a professor of health economics at Harvard University, said: "Parity is very much symbolic, and somewhat real. But it does not fix as many problems, when it winds up on the ground, as most people thought it would."

In offering equal coverage, federal officials hope to provide a model for employers around the country. The initiative is also likely to be monitored closely by Congress, which will probably take up the parity issue in its next session.

Under guidelines developed by the federal Office of Personnel Management, private health plans for federal employees will no longer impose higher co-payments or deductibles for mental health services, or set limits on outpatient visits or hospital days for mental disorders that are lower than those applied to general medical or surgical care.

Treatment for alcohol and drug abuse will also be covered equally under the new policy.

Even a decade ago, equal coverage for mental illness seemed more a pipe dream than a practical possibility. Opponents, including the insurance industry and business groups, warned that without limits on mental health coverage, the "worried well" would spend endless years on the couch and health care costs would spin out of control, forcing many employers to forgo health insurance altogether.

Yet over the last 10 years, much has changed.

Increased understanding of the biological underpinnings of many mental disorders and the advent of new and better treatments have led to a greater acceptance of the idea that conditions like manic depression and schizophrenia are illnesses like any other.

The cost-control strategies of managed care, still in their infancy in 1990, are now in widespread use.

And on Capitol Hill, lobbying by mental health groups - combined with the testimonials of celebrities like Tipper Gore, who last year revealed her own struggle with depression - has garnered unprecedented attention and bipartisan support for psychiatric issues.

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Misused Antibiotics

January 1, 2001

To the Editor:

Three new medical studies show that antibiotic-resistant illnesses are becoming increasingly common (news article, Dec. 28). The tragedy is that doctors and health officials have known of the widespread misuse of antibiotics for years, but have failed to take action.

Doctors prescribe antibiotics for outpatients inappropriately about half the time. The reasons are complex: drug-company marketing tactics, fear of litigation if a diagnosis is missed, and demanding patients all play a role. And millions of pounds of antibiotics are squandered every year just to fatten livestock a bit faster.

Congress should pay for a national education campaign aimed at doctors and patients, for vaccination programs to prevent infections that are treated with antibiotics, and for hospital-based antibiotic control programs. And it should follow Europe's lead and ban using antibiotics to fatten livestock.

TAMAR F. BARLAM, M.D. Washington, Dec. 28, 2000

The writer is director, project on antibiotic resistance, Center for Science in the Public Interest.

-------- police

Addict's Suit Claims Police Ignore Needle-Swap Law

New York Times
January 1, 2001
By LAURA MANSNERUS

James Roe, as he is identified in his lawsuit against New York City, was 21, homeless and a heroin addict when he was searched and arrested in the West Village on a spring afternoon in 1999. He was carrying a syringe from a needle-exchange program on the Lower East Side.

He said he was also carrying a card showing that he was enrolled in the program, in a storefront on Avenue C, and could lawfully carry syringes he picked up there. But the card was of no help.

When he was released the next morning, "I was starting to sweat and shake because I was way past my last fix." He left with two cigarettes and a court summons on a charge of criminal possession of a hypodermic instrument.

And the card that was supposed to protect him was gone, he said: the officer he gave it to had cut it up.

New York, like many states, carved an exception to its drug paraphernalia laws when it became clear in the early 1990's that needle sharing was spreading H.I.V. and hepatitis. But the suit against New York City, and a similar case in Connecticut, contend that the exception is often ignored, innocently or willfully, by officers on the street.

"They get a kick out of it," the New York plaintiff said in a telephone interview from New Jersey, where he now lives. "They say, `You stupid junkie.' I know I'm stupid for shooting dope, but they just like to watch you get sick."

The district attorney's office declined to prosecute, but the man is seeking damages for his arrest. In his suit, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, he remains anonymous, with the agreement of the corporation counsel's office and the court, and he agreed to speak for publication only on the condition that his name not be used.

His lawyer, Corinne Carey of the Urban Justice Center, a Manhattan organization that provides legal services to the poor, said he would be in danger from users and dealers if he were identified.

His story and those of two addicts in Bridgeport, Conn., all disputed by the police, are simple allegations of unconstitutional search and seizure. But in effect they ask for a resolution of disparate policies on public health and law enforcement.

"These two cases are going to be a real litmus test of how this country is going to deal with the whole question," said Scott Burris, a law professor at Temple University. "It doesn't make sense for the state to decide we have a policy of encouraging needle exchanges and a policy of arresting people who have needles."

The people who run needle exchanges hope that litigation will stop arrests of the people who use them. Even more, they hope that court intervention will quiet addicts' fears of using the exchanges, because the consequences of one shared needle can be staggering.

As one heroin addict in California told interviewers for an academic study, "I would rather get AIDS than go to jail."

In Connecticut, possession of a syringe is legal, but a class action suit in Federal District Court there maintains that the police harass people who use the Bridgeport Exchange Program, sometimes charging them with drug possession on the basis of residue in their used syringes.

In November, a judge in Federal District Court issued a temporary order barring arrests of exchange participants carrying dirty needles.

Some medical and legal experts do not support needle exchanges at all, and dispute the broader strategy known as harm reduction, which encourages addicts who will not quit to adopt the safest practices possible. In a few states, including New Jersey, needle exchanges remain illegal. And even some of those people who run exchanges, most of them patched together by social service agencies using anything from shopping carts to storefronts, do not welcome a lawsuit that could bring a backlash against their tenuous legitimacy.

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Alan Cranston, Former U.S. Senator, Is Dead at 86

New York Times
January 1, 2001
By ANDY NEWMAN

Former Senator Alan Cranston of California, who balanced the roles of crusader and behind-the-scenes deal- maker during a long political career until he was brought down by the savings and loan scandal of the late 1980's, died yesterday at the age of 86.

Mr. Cranston, a Democrat who served in the senate for 24 years and ran for president in 1984, died at his home in Los Altos Hills, Calif., not far from where he was born, said his son, Kim. Although Mr. Cranston had prostate cancer in the early 1990's, Kim Cranston said he had conquered the cancer and died of natural causes unrelated to it.

He had left the Senate in 1993 and since then founded and helped run a nonprofit group, the Global Security Institute, which seeks to abolish nuclear weapons.

During his four terms in the Senate, Mr. Cranston spent 14 years as the Democratic whip and was as tireless at rounding up votes as he was in pushing to end the Vietnam War and control nuclear arms.

But in the late 1980's, Senator Cranston, always a prodigious fund- raiser, raised $1 million from a constituent, Charles H. Keating Jr., at the same time Mr. Cranston was intervening with federal regulators to save Mr. Keating's Lincoln Federal Savings and Loan Association from collapse. In 1991, the Senate ethics committee formally rebuked Mr. Cranston's behavior as "improper and repugnant."

While Mr. Cranston cited his battle with prostate cancer as the reason he decided not to run for a fifth term in 1992, the savings and loan debacle had badly damaged his credibility and popularity.

Alan MacGregor Cranston was born on June 19, 1914, in Palo Alto, Calif., the son and grandson of successful real estate developers. He studied journalism at Stanford University and received his bachelor's degree in 1936. He was also on the nation's fastest quarter-mile sprint relay team in college and was a competitive runner for most of his life. At one point, he held the world record for the 100-yard dash among 55-year-olds.

After college, Mr. Cranston found work as a foreign correspondent, a job he said he felt drawn to because he wanted to warn the American people about the rise of fascism. He traveled Europe and North Africa, covering Mussolini and Hitler and Ethiopia for the International News Service, but found himself frustrated with his role as a journalist, he recalled in an interview last year.

"I became very concerned about American isolationism, the fact that there were many Americans wanting to have nothing to do with what was happening in the rest of the world," he said. "I didn't want to spend my life writing about such evil people and their terrible deeds; I'd rather be involved in the action."

When he returned to the United States, he saw a translation of Hitler's "Mein Kampf" for sale and, having read the original, recognized that it had been watered down to make it less worrisome to Americans, he said. So he quickly brought out an unauthorized, fuller translation and sold half a million copies of it for 10 cents apiece until the Third Reich sued him for copyright violation.

Around 1940, he married Geneva McMath. They had two sons, Robin, who was killed in a car accident in 1980, and Kim. Mr. Cranston's marriage to Geneva ended in divorce, as did a second marriage to the former Norma Weintraub. Mr. Cranston is also survived by an older sister, R. E. Cameron, and a granddaughter.

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