------- Index of Articles
NUCLEAR
Turner, Nunn To Form Foundation
Nuclear Test Ban Report Sought by Clinton Urges Ratification
Poland wants inspections in Kaliningrad
Greenpeace decries nuclear cargo near Argentine waters
Experts say China is warily eyeing Bush's defense plans
Seawater Desalination by Using Nuclear Power
UN Tests Shows Kosovo Sites Radioactive
Information from Vinca Institute on DU use in Southern Serbia
Montenegro to begin decontamination of DU impact site
Uranium May Not Have Caused Harm
EU Demands Truth From NATO Over Uranium Shells
EU Backs Prodi Over 'Balkan Syndrome' Warning
Pentagon Denies Balkan Uranium Worry
Scare - Mongering Suspected As Uranium Fears Revive
NATO denies uranium-tipped weapons made soldiers sick
UN Tests Shows Kosovo Sites Radioactive-Report
Radiation found at Kosovo bomb sites
NATO urged to probe 'Balkans sickness'
UNEP samples from depleted uranium sites in Kosovo
STOP NATO: ¡NO PASARAN!
FRANCE REVEALS THAT BALKAN SYNDROME IS AFFECTING SOLDIERS
Pentagon: no risk from depleted uranium
NATO FIRED 50,000 PROJECTILES WITH DEPLETED URANIUM
Extremists attract students
Pak. to test new missile in March
One killed as missile fires accidentally
A Baltic missile crisis
Russia Calls Reports a 'Dangerous Joke'
Clinton gets nuke test ban report
Bush Team May Undue Late Changes
My '13 Days'
U.S. should ratify nuclear treaty
Gunman Said Battled Depression
Public Officials Urge That Indian Point Plant Shut Again
A Tough-Talking, but Self-Effacing, Loyalist Joe Marvin Allbaugh
Nuclear Proliferation Risk Seen in Plutonium Deal
MILITARY
TODAY'S SIGN THE WORLD IS ENDING
Colombian envoy flies to rebel enclave
Departing drug czar cites progress, says more to be done
Let Former Addicts Help
India-Pakistan talks said likely
UN envoy arrives in Myanmar
Russians order discarding of Mir
Russia Plans 29 Space Launches in 2001
Holbrooke lands post in think tank
Japan cops seek US Marine probe
OTHER
Manatee Settlement Fair To Boaters, Industry
Clinton forest rule draws heat
Clinton's Forest 'Legacy' Unlikely to Be Reversed by Bush Allies
Forest rules to curb logging, roads
U.S. forests to close 10,000 miles of roads
Clinton to Add Protection For Forests
Clinton moves to protect forests
Road Ban Set for One-Third of U.S. Forests
Republicans, Trade Groups Balk at Road Ban in Forests
Clinton's 'Environmental Legacy' Leaves Behind Legacy of Energy Problems
Babbitt Advises Clinton on Refuge
NCPA Seeks to Join Lawsuit
Too Hot to Handle
Terrific News in Mexico City: Air Is Sometimes Breathable
Cabinet Selections Over, Transition Now Focuses on Those Important No. 2's
Something Green in the Garbage Smells Nice
PCB Study Stays Neutral on Dredging Plan
Reindeer farmers seek federal aid
To Fix the Electricity Mess, More Power Plants Are Needed
International Kangaroo Court
Second L.I. Woman Says an Officer Made Her Strip
After Criticism of Street Frisk Records, Police Expand Report Form
F.B.I. Director Will Stay On, Government Officials Say
A Way to Fight Crime
Romania spy chief resigns
Clinton creates secrets panel
Clinton Creates Post to Protect Nation's Secrets
F.B.I. Raids Brooklyn Office of Kahane Followers
ACTIVISTS
German Official Denies Accusation
Beijing, Falun Gong trade barbs
Banned Chinese Sect Is Spurred On by Exiled Leader
Book Says Tiananmen Sparked Bitter Debate in China
-------- NUCLEAR
Turner, Nunn To Form Foundation
Associated Press
January 5, 2001 Filed at 10:06 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-BRF-Turner-Nunn-Nukes.html
ATLANTA (AP) -- Broadcaster Ted Turner and former Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn will announce next week that they are putting together a foundation aimed at reducing the threat of nuclear weapons and materials.
The organization will be run by Nunn and funded and co-chaired by Turner, the billionaire founder of Cable News Network and vice-chairman of Time Warner.
The organization will serve as ``a catalyst for action and a sponsor of activities that could be replicated on a larger scale,'' the two men said Thursday. An announcement is planned Monday in Washington.
In November, Nunn said Turner was committed to paying $50 million per year for five years for the project.
In 1991, Turner created a foundation which grants millions of dollars to groups involved in protecting the environment and reducing population growth. In 1997, he announced he would donate $1 billion over 10 years to United Nations projects.
---
Nuclear Test Ban Report Sought by Clinton Urges Ratification
New York Times
By MICHAEL R. GORDON,
January 5, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/05/world/05NUKE.html?pagewanted=all
A former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who conducted a comprehensive study of the nuclear test ban treaty at the request of President Clinton has concluded that the United States must ratify it in order to mount an effective campaign against the spread of nuclear weapons.
The assessment by Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs from 1993 to 1997, is part of a last-ditch attempt by Mr. Clinton to build support for the treaty, which Senate Republicans rejected in 1999 and on which President- elect George W. Bush's own top aides have sharply disagreed.
General Shalikashvili's report outlines measures intended to assuage critics of the treaty, including increased spending on verification, greater efforts to maintain the United States nuclear arsenal and a joint review by the Senate and administration every 10 years to determine whether the treaty is still in American interests.
President-elect Bush assailed the treaty as unverifiable and unenforceable during the campaign, but he has also promised to continue the Clinton administration's moratorium on nuclear testing for the time being. And some Republican lawmakers have suggested that they might reconsider their votes against the accord if the treaty was modified or accompanied by new safeguards and if the new Republican administration supported it.
Mr. Bush's advisers have been deeply divided on the merits of a test ban. Like most top military men, Gen. Colin L. Powell, the secretary of state-designate, backed the treaty after he retired as chairman of the Joint Chiefs in 1993, even urging India to sign the accord during a trip there.
"The treaty is necessary for the safety and reliability of the world because it will reduce the threat of nuclear weapon attacks," General Powell said at the time.
But Donald Rumsfeld, the conservative defense secretary-designate, has heatedly opposed the treaty, saying it would preclude the United States from developing new generations of nuclear weapons.
"By weakening confidence in existing U.S. weapons designs, and by inhibiting the development of new designs to respond to a changing world, the C.T.B.T., in my view, would have begun a slow erosion of U.S. and allied confidence in our stockpile," Mr. Rumsfeld has said, using the abbreviation for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, as the agreement is formally known.
Mr. Bush's aides declined to comment yesterday on General Shalikashvili's assessment, which is to be presented to Mr. Clinton today.
But it comes at a sensitive juncture in the arms control debate. With Mr. Bush's vow to develop an antimissile defense and uncertainty over Washington's position on nuclear testing, there is considerable concern in allied capitals that the broader framework of arms control may be in jeopardy. If Mr. Bush proceeds with the antimissile defense, despite the allies' concerns, he could find himself under pressure to make some gestures on the testing issue, some arms control supporters say, to ease that opposition, particularly in Europe.
The nuclear test ban treaty was rejected by the Senate in October 1999 by a vote of 51 to 48, a decisive setback for the Clinton administration given the constitutional requirement that treaties be approved by a two-thirds vote.
President Clinton responded by proclaiming the United States' intention to observe a self-imposed moratorium on nuclear testing and by asking General Shalikashvili to meet with Senate critics, nuclear arms designers and other experts to see if it was possible to work out a way to win eventual approval by the Senate. The retired general was assisted by James E. Goodby, a senior arms control official in Republican and Democratic administrations.
The test ban treaty was completed in 1996. By December, it had been signed by 160 countries and ratified by 69. But the treaty cannot take effect until it has been approved by the United States and 43 other nations that have nuclear research or power reactors.
Of these, Britain, France and Russia have signed and ratified the accord. China has signed the agreement, but has yet to ratify it. India and Pakistan, which have engaged in a nuclear arms race in South Asia, have not signed. Nor has North Korea.
General Shalikashvili and other recent military leaders have argued that United States' ratification is essential to persuade other nations to accept the treaty and strengthen other measures to curtail the spread of nuclear arms, like the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty under which nonnuclear states forgo the right to develop nuclear weapons.
"The view of the chairman and the chiefs has been that while there are risks with this treaty, as with most treaties, the advantages in helping the fight against proliferation outweigh the disadvantages," General Shalikashvili said in a telephone interview.
Given his harsh criticism of the treaty during the campaign and the passions the treaty has stirred up in Washington, Mr. Bush may be tempted to let the treaty languish unratified. But General Shalikashvili asserted in his report that postponing American approval of the accord could be risky.
General Shalikashvili's assessment turns on several key points. The former military chief argues that the United States has a military stake in instituting a formal ban on testing to slow the nuclear arms race.
Stopping China from conducting nuclear tests, he said, would prevent Beijing from fielding a new generation of mobile, multiple warhead missiles. More generally, he argued, it is in the Pentagon's interest to discourage other nations from developing tactical nuclear weapons that could be used as a counterweight to the United States' huge advantage in nonnuclear arms.
"Any activities that erode the firebreak between nuclear and conventional weapons or that encourage the use of nuclear weapons for purposes that are not strategic and deterrent in nature would undermine the advantage that we derive from overwhelming conventional superiority," he wrote.
Addressing worries about verification, General Shalikashvili argued that the kind of low-level clandestine nuclear tests that Russia or China might try to carry out would be of little use in developing militarily decisive weapons. Further, he argued, it would be easier to detect such testing if the verification provisions in the accord, including on-site inspections, were in effect.
In submitting the treaty for approval, the Clinton administration instituted a number of safeguards, including a $4.5 billion a year program to maintain the reliability of nuclear weapons through computer simulations, the disassembly of nuclear weapons and other measures.
While General Shalikashvili said that the program was adequate, he urged several new measures. The United States should step up intelligence efforts to monitor test activities, including the use of new satellite-based sensors, he said in an interview. It should also expand efforts to assure the reliability of the United States nuclear arsenal. One measure, he said, would be the construction of a new factory to remanufacture the plutonium "pits," or triggers, for nuclear bombs.
Some critics of the treaty said it might be more acceptable if it had a 10-year time limit instead of lasting indefinitely.
General Shalikashvili said it was unrealistic to think the accord could be renegotiated now, but suggested a procedure to address the anxieties of the treaty's opponents on this point. Ten years after ratification, the Senate and the executive branch would jointly review compliance with the treaty and efforts to ensure the viability of the nuclear arsenal. If there were doubts about the value of the treaty, the United States could withdraw from the accord.
General Shalikashvili conceded that wining support for the treaty would not be easy, but said that most of the measures he proposed were needed in any event.
"These are things we need to do regardless of the treaty," he said.
---
Poland wants inspections in Kaliningrad
Washington Times
January 5, 2001
By Bill Gertz
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-200115233426.htm
Poland's government yesterday called for international inspections of military facilities in a neighboring Russian enclave to see if Moscow secretly moved nuclear arms there last summer.
A State Department official, however, rejected the idea and said it hopes Poland will "consult" with its NATO allies on the issue.
The Pentagon also sought to play down the issue, claiming that the new battlefield nuclear weapons do not represent a dramatic power shift in Europe.
However, Poland's defense minister questioned the veracity of Russian denials about the nuclear weapons and said inspections, perhaps under NATO direction, are needed.
"Poland needs to monitor the situation in Kaliningrad on a day-to-day basis, and it is doing that," Polish Defense Minister Bronislaw Komorowski told Polish television. "Verification will include pushing for international inspection, which is a normal thing."
He did not say how any inspections would be conducted, but said they could be done under NATO auspices, through contacts between the alliance and Russia. Poland joined the alliance in 1998, along with Hungary and the Czech Republic.
The defense minister was commenting on reports that Russia recently moved tactical nuclear weapons to Kaliningrad, located on the Baltic Sea between Poland and Lithuania, in violation of a pledge to keep the region free of nuclear arms.
Russia's government, meanwhile, again denied that nuclear arms were moved to Kaliningrad, headquarters of the Russian Baltic Fleet. The nuclear arms transfer was first reported Tuesday by The Washington Times.
"The Baltic Sea has been declared a nuclear-free zone, and the Baltic Fleet unfailingly fulfills its commitments," said fleet spokesman Anatoly Lobsky.
U.S. intelligence officials told The Times that Russia in June moved unspecified tactical nuclear weapons to military facilities in Kaliningrad. Tactical nuclear weapons are low-yield arms that can be deployed on missiles, aircraft, artillery shells and torpedoes.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher did not return telephone calls seeking comment on the Polish government's call for nuclear inspections.
A State Department official, however, said the U.S. government does not support the inspection request because there are no arms-control agreements allowing them.
"We do not inspect nuclear storage facilities except as agreed to under relevant arms-control agreements," said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
On Capitol Hill, Rep. Curt Weldon, Pennsylvania Republican, said international inspection in Kaliningrad should be a "minimum requirement."
"I'm very troubled by the movement of these nuclear arms to the Baltics that the Russians had said they would not move forward on," said Mr. Weldon. "It sends a very bad signal."
"At a very minimum, there needs to be inspections because they should have nothing to hide," the Pennsylvania Republican said.
Mr. Weldon also said the Clinton administration has not been "open and candid" with Congress regarding the movement of the tactical nuclear weapons.
The Russians also should take steps to "reach out" to the incoming administration of President-elect George W. Bush.
Mr. Komorowski, the Polish defense minister, questioned Russian military statements on the matter. "It is a problem whether to regard Russian assurances as credible," he said, noting that Moscow in the past has blocked inspection of certain facilities in Kaliningrad.
The defense minister noted that if the Russians refuse to allow inspections in a search for nuclear arms it would raise questions because "when one does not let somebody in, it means he has something to hide."
At the Pentagon, spokesman Kenneth Bacon said he could not answer questions directly about the tactical nuclear weapons transfers, citing a policy of not commenting on intelligence reports.
He suggested that movement of the arms to the region may be linked to Moscow's revised military doctrine that calls for greater reliance on nuclear weapons to compensate for Russia's declining conventional forces.
"We do not think there has been a dramatic change in the military balance in Europe recently, certainly, and we're aware that the Russians have made statements saying that as their conventional forces get weaker, that they will look more and more to their nuclear forces," he said.
The Pentagon spokesman said any nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad may be arms that were removed from ships and air and ground forces as part of a cutback that began in the early 1990s.
"It's highly possible that they took tactical nuclear weapons off their ships and stored them in Kaliningrad," he said. "It's highly possible they stored army and air force weapons at storage sites in Kaliningrad."
On Tuesday, Mr. Bacon said the movement of tactical nuclear arms to Kaliningrad would be a violation of a Russian pledge to remove all forward-deployed nuclear weapons to Russia and to keep all nuclear arms out of the Baltic region.
Asked if the arms are vulnerable to theft or attack, Mr. Bacon said, "Our experience has been that generally the Russians have been quite diligent in securing their weapons."
Russia's government viewed the NATO alliance expansion as threatening and warned in 1998 that it might position nuclear weapons outside Russia because of NATO expansion.
After NATO carried out an aerial bombing campaign in Yugoslavia in 1999, Russia's then-national security chief, Vladimir Putin, announced that Russia had issued new military decrees on the use of nuclear weapons, including battlefield nuclear arms. Mr. Putin is now president.
Pavel Felgenhauer, a Russian military affairs analyst, said any new tactical nuclear arms are probably related to the Russian Navy.
"If they did bring tactical nuclear weapons for training or some other purpose to Kaliningrad, they would most likely be naval, like torpedo warheads," Mr. Felgenhauer said.
• This article is based in part on wire service reports.
------- argentina
Greenpeace decries nuclear cargo near Argentine waters
Excite News
January 5, 2001
http://news.excite.com/news/r/010105/13/environment-argentina
BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Environmental group Greenpeace staged a demonstration outside the British embassy in Buenos Aires Friday to try to prevent a UK-owned ship carrying nuclear waste from sailing through Argentine waters.
Plans to transport the highly radioactive 80-ton cargo of French-processed, spent nuclear fuel around Cape Horn -- one of the world's most treacherous stretches of water -- has alarmed Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile, whose coastlines are on the planned route.
Greenpeace said the "Pacific Swan" -- which is owned by British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) and set sail from Cherbourg, France, with cargo of Japanese nuclear reactor waste mixed with glass Dec. 19 -- was due to enter Argentine waters at the weekend.
The group fears the passage around South America's icy southern tip could become the preferred route for transporting nuclear waste between Europe and Japan, replacing the traditional, shorter route through the Panama Canal.
Greenpeace said shipping companies have had more trouble getting permits to travel through the Canal since the United States returned it to Panamanian control Dec. 31, 1999, but Panamanian authorities have denied that.
"There are going to be dozens of boats over the coming years ... carrying nuclear waste and plutonium," Greenpeace spokesman Juan Carlos Villalonga said as activists unfurled a pirate flag emblazoned with a nuclear hazard symbol outside the British mission.
"None of the countries involved in the transport can give safety guarantees ... We are exposing the Southern Atlantic to serious risk and this should be stopped," Villalonga said.
The vessel is due to dock in Aomori in northern Japan in February.
-------- china
Experts say China is warily eyeing Bush's defense plans
Philadelphia Inquirer
Friday, January 5, 2001
By Michael Dorgan
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWS SERVICE
http://inq.philly.com/content/inquirer/2001/01/05/national/CHINA05.htm
BEIJING - Even before he has been sworn into office, President-elect George W. Bush may be on a collision course with China.
Bush and his advisers have argued that China is a competitor, rather than a partner, and Bush has signaled firm support for Taiwan and advocated development of a ballistic missile-defense system, a plan China strongly opposes.
The appointments of Colin L. Powell as secretary of state and Donald H. Rumsfeld as secretary of defense have China's leaders worried that "it may be tougher to deal with the U.S.," said Zhang Yebai, a senior fellow at the Institute of American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a government-linked think tank.
Yan Xuetong, executive director of the Institute of International Studies at prestigious Tsinghua University in Beijing, said U.S.-China relations could become strained beyond mere verbal disagreements.
"In the next four years, I would not rule out a possible military confrontation like in 1996," he said, referring to the time when the Clinton administration sent two aircraft-carrier battle groups to the Taiwan Strait after China fired missiles into the waters near Taiwanese ports.
The Chinese government has refrained from making any objections before Bush takes power. But leading experts with government connections say the leadership is uneasy about Bush's China policy.
Bush's campaign described China as a competitor rather than a "strategic partner," a term President Clinton used and then let fade. Condoleezza Rice, Bush's national security adviser, wrote last year in Foreign Affairs magazine that China is a "strategic competitor." China, she wrote, has sold ballistic-missile technology to Iran and Pakistan and "is still a potential threat to stability in the Asia-Pacific region."
But China's top foreign-policy official, Deputy Prime Minister Qian Qichen, indicated yesterday that his country was willing to be more flexible on Taiwan and urged the Bush administration not to view Beijing as a strategic competitor.
In an interview with the Washington Post, Qian said China's emergence as a regional Asian power was "irresistible" and warned that a U.S. decision to sell advanced Aegis radars to Taiwan would harm bilateral relations. But he also declared that "China and the United States have no need to begin a war against each other" over Taiwan despite a U.S. commitment to help defend the island.
In Rumsfeld, 68, Bush selected someone who has held numerous jobs in Republican administrations, including secretary of defense under President Gerald Ford. But what won praise from Bush was Rumsfeld's work as chairman of the National Commission on Ballistic Missile Threat, which in 1998 issued a report citing a growing threat of attack from such countries as Iraq, Iran and North Korea.
"In picking Don Rumsfeld, we'll have a person who is thoughtful and considerate and wise on the subject of missile defense," Bush said.
Powell favors developing a missile defense, but only after difficult negotiations with U.S. allies and other nuclear powers.
China has vehemently objected to U.S. plans under Clinton to build a missile-defense system. Beijing fears the system would neutralize its small nuclear-missile arsenal and provide protection for Taiwan.
Taiwan has been the most troublesome issue in China-U.S. relations. China insists Taiwan is part of its territory and must be reunited.
Ever since Chinese Nationalist forces fled to the island after their defeat by the Communists in 1949, Taiwan has maintained its independence largely because of arms sales and support from the United States.
The Clinton administration tried to improve relations with China while honoring U.S. commitments to Taiwan by pursuing a policy of "strategic ambiguity" - deliberately leaving unclear just how far the United States would go to protect Taiwan. The goal was to avoid encouraging Taiwan to declare independence, which could provoke China to attack, but also not to withdraw support for Taiwan, a shift that might encourage China to take over by force.
Some of Bush's main foreign-policy advisers were among 22 conservatives who called publicly in 1999 for scrapping strategic ambiguity. They argued the United States instead should declare unambiguously that the Untied States would come to Taiwan's defense if China attacked or blockaded the island.
In March Bush said the Chinese should assume that "if they decide to use force, the United States must help Taiwan defend itself."
"Now, the Chinese can figure out what that means," he added.
Such words may offend China but are welcomed by Taiwan, said Parris Chang, who chairs the Foreign Relations Committee of Taiwan's parliament.
Michael Dorgan's e-mail address is mdorgan@krwashington.com
---------
Seawater Desalination by Using Nuclear Power
Friday, January 05, 2001
People's Daily (China)
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200101/05/eng20010105_59720.html
A new project to remove the salt from seawater by using nuclear power, which could help solve China's deficiency in water resources, is currently under study, according to the latest issue of Beijing Review.
The project is being jointly undertaken by scientists at the China Society of Nuclear Science and the Beijing Institute of Nuclear Engineering.
Research into seawater desalination began as early as the 1960s. To date, 11 seawater desalination plants using nuclear energy are in operation around the world. However, the small scale and high costs of seawater desalination of four to eight yuan per ton is too expensive for China.
The initiator of China's seawater desalination project is Li Zhaoheng, a nuclear expert who majored in nuclear technology during the 1950s at the Moscow Dynamics Institution. He participated in or led reactor projects.
Seawater desalination technology has a long history, Li explains. Currently, the Middle East produces about 60 percent of the world 's desalinated seawater, with distilled petroleum as the heat source. The nuclear reactor is the heat source when nuclear energy is used to desalinate seawater.
The nuclear desalination research team, headed by Li, in light of the natural conditions of China, developed three different models for seawater desalination, 300 million tons, 600 million tons and 1 billion tons respectively. On such a grand scale, nuclear power is the most economical and cleanest source of heat for seawater desalination.
One important index among the many determining the cost of seawater desalination is the proportion of desalination, which refers to the amount of desalinated water obtained when consuming one kg of steam. It represents the energy used during the course of desalinating seawater. To acquire the same amount of desalinated water, the higher the proportion, the less energy is consumed, and the lower the cost.
Two of the latest distillation techniques, which lead the desalination proportion 2.5 times higher than traditional ways, were developed by Chinese scientists and have been adopted for the project.
The most prominent aspect of the project is its scale. Large seawater desalination plants are not needed in some foreign countries where populations are small, but in China, severe water shortages call for desalination of seawater on a large scale. In Li's project, the cost of desalinated seawater will be cut to about 1 yuan per ton because of its large scale.
"Such a large desalination plant needs an investment of several billion yuan, which is reasonable for building infrastructure, " Li notes, "It is also the most economical method among other ones in this regard."
The Project to Divert Water from the South to the North, which is now under debate, requires a 100 billion yuan investment, says Zhang Guoliang, President of the Administration of the Project to Divert Water from the South to the North of the Ministry of Water Resources. Water diverted from the Yangtze River to Beijing will cost 20 yuan per ton when the projects are completed, he adds.
Comparatively, the desalination project costs less. So the government or commercial organizations that engage in the project could profit considerably, Li points out.
"Desalinated seawater is as pure as purified water sold on the market, " Li says. "A small amount of seawater would be added to meet the mineral needs of the human body. After high-temperature treatment, the water is purified, its salt content even lower than that in the piped water we drink now."
Then is the operation safe£¿ Zhang Jingwu, a senior engineer from BINE, says the project now under discussion will adopt a low-temperature heating reactor, which has a perfectly safe protection system. It is easier to use and much safer, he adds.
In 1993, the International Atomic Energy Agency concluded that using nuclear energy to desalinate seawater could be carried out safely and reliably, without any technical obstacles.
At a public symposium on nuclear energy in Beijing, scientists pointed out that nuclear power is a clean, safe and reliable form of energy.
"Humankind will eventually demand drinking water from the ocean, " said a senior official from the Ministry of Water Resources. Once the seawater desalination project, being explored by Chinese scientists, is adopted by the Government, it will signal China 's success in this new field of peaceful use of nuclear power.
-------- depleted uranium
UN Tests Shows Kosovo Sites Radioactive
Reuters
January 5, 2001 Filed at 12:10 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/science/science-balkans-un-dc.html
BERLIN (Reuters) - Tests conducted by the United Nations Environmental Program on sites in Kosovo struck by NATO ammunition with depleted uranium have found evidence of significant radioactivity, a German newspaper said on Friday.
Germany's TAZ daily said the UNEP tests had found that eight of 11 sites a U.N. team had tested in November were in part ``considerably contaminated.''
Uranium dust as well as unexploded munitions had been discovered, the paper said in an advance release of a story due for publication on Saturday. The paper said it had obtained a copy of an interim UNEP report dated December 29, 2000.
NATO has come under increasing pressure from several European governments over claims that depleted uranium used in NATO weapons had caused death or illness among Balkan peacekeepers, dubbed ``Balkans Syndrome.''
The condition came under the spotlight after reports that six Italian soldiers who served in the former Yugoslavia had developed leukemia and died after exposure to spent ammunition.
A U.N. report in May warned that much of Kosovo's water could be so contaminated as to be unfit to drink, and that a clean-up of the province could cost billions of dollars. It warned U.N. staff not to approach any target which might have been hit by a depleted uranium weapon.
U.S. attack jets fired some 31,000 rounds of depleted uranium ammunition against Serbian targets during NATO's 1999 campaign to drive the Yugoslav army out of Kosovo. Some 10,000 rounds were also fired in neighboring Bosnia in 1994-5.
The 11 sites the UNEP tested were among 112 in Kosovo hit by weapons containing depleted uranium according to a NATO map. The UNEP considers that the 11 sites tested are representative of all 112 and wants them all cordoned off, the paper said.
The UNEP report also recommended that health checks should be carried out at least on residents of the immediate area, the paper said.
Depleted uranium is used in the tips of missiles, shells and bullets to increase their ability to penetrate armor and can be pulverized on impact into a toxic radioactive dust, defense experts say.
---
Information from Vinca Institute on DU use in Southern Serbia
(compiled and translated from Berliner Zeitung (Germany) Jan. 5, 2001), From: uranium@t-online.de
The mountain Plackovica near Vranje and three other areas in southern Serbia are contaminated by DU ammunition since the ending of the NATO bombings in summer 1999. The areas are located in the communities of Vranje, Presevo, and Bujanovac, and are closed to the public, nuclear scientist Radojko Pavlovic of the Belgrade Radiation Protection Institute Vinca said.
Parts of the contaminated areas have been decontaminated in intense efforts meanwhile. Many projectiles had entered the soil to depths of 1.5 to 2 meters and were only difficult to locate.
Srdjan Markovic, the director of the institue, said that nothing reliable could be said about any increase of cancer and leukema incidence in Serbia, since epidemiological data were not available. But local clinics would have no knowledge of any increase. Radojko Pavlovic pointed out, however that latency periods of 3 to 4 years must be taken into consideration.
----
Montenegro to begin decontamination of DU impact site
(translated from ZuerichExpress, Jan. 5, 2001), From: uranium@t-online.de
Montenegro will soon start decontamination of a site contaminated by uranium located on the peninsula of Lustica. This was announced by environmental minister Miodrag Gomilanovic. This were the only location in Montenegro hit by uranium ammunition in the NATO Kosovo War. The decontaminiation is to be completed before the start of the tourist season. The government has allocated around 330,000 Swiss Francs (US$ 200,000) for this purpose.
----
Uranium May Not Have Caused Harm
Associated Press
January 5, 2001 Filed at 3:44 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Depleted-Uranium.html
LONDON (AP) -- While European governments scramble to screen soldiers who may have been exposed to depleted uranium in the Balkans, many medical experts are skeptical that it caused cancer and other illnesses reported by veterans.
A heavy metal with low levels of radioactivity, depleted uranium is used in ammunition to penetrate tanks and other armor. Some scientists believe the dust created when rounds hit targets may be harmful, but studies of Gulf War troops have found no proof it caused diseases.
Some experts say the health screenings are little more than a political strategy to head off accusations that governments are covering up ill health effects, as is alleged by some Gulf War veterans with unexplained illnesses.
``Depleted uranium vaporizes instantly. You would have to be very close to a damaged tank and be there within seconds of it being hit,'' said Yan Grosse, a toxicologist at the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a division of the World Health Organization. ``These soldiers were very unlikely to have been exposed.''
But Roger William Coghill, a British radiation researcher, argued that depleted uranium -- first used in ammunition during the Gulf War -- could be the cause of illnesses reported by soldiers who served in the Balkans.
Not all the depleted uranium vaporizes immediately and radioactive derivatives can linger in the air for months, he said.
``Just one particle in the lungs is enough,'' Coghill said, adding a single particle could travel to the lymph nodes, where the radioactivity would lower the body's defenses against lymphomas and leukemia.
``There's still a lot of science to be found out, but I can't believe you can dismiss the link out of hand,'' he said.
The controversy in Europe over NATO's use of depleted uranium in Bosnia in 1994-95 and later in Kosovo flared in December after Italy's Defense Minister Sergio Mattarella announced an investigation of 30 cases of illness involving soldiers who served in the region, 12 of whom developed cancer. Five have died of leukemia.
Spain, Portugal, Greece, Finland, Belgium, Turkey, Russia, Bulgaria, Czech Republic and the European Union have also said they would screen troops and check radiation levels where their peacekeepers are serving.
The Pentagon said this week that regular health checks have revealed no problems with leukemia and other illnesses among U.S. troops who served in the Balkans.
A United Nations investigative team went to the region in November and is expected to publish its report next month.
Uranium occurs naturally in soil, water and air, and humans normally pick up trace amounts from food and water.
Depleted uranium carries two threats -- radiation and chemical poisoning. The main threat comes from inhaling the dust or ingesting it, experts say.
Radiation can cause leukemia, and other cancers, while metal poisoning can lead to kidney damage, experts said.
The five leukemia deaths among the 60,000 Italian soldiers equates to a rate of 8 per 100,000. The Italian government has not revealed whether any of the seven other cancer cases are leukemia.
According to the World Health Organization, the normal leukemia incidence for Italian men is 13 per 100,000.
``The scientific consensus for depleted uranium is that if you ingested or inhaled the dust, you would see kidney damage before you'd see leukemia,'' said Michael Clark, science spokesman for the British National Radiological Protection Board. ``I can understand the connection they are trying to make with the war and it needs to be looked at, but to instinctively blame it on depleted uranium? You have to be very skeptical of that.''
Depleted uranium, the spent fuel of nuclear reactors, is 40 percent less radioactive than uranium in its natural state.
Robert Haley, an epidemiologist at the University of Texas Southwest Medical Center who researches Gulf War Syndrome, doubts there is enough radiation in depleted uranium to cause radiation-related diseases.
One reason depleted uranium is not a likely suspect is because it doesn't emit gamma rays -- the most dangerous type, Haley said. It mostly emits alpha radiation, the least powerful, which reaches about an inch from the source.
``In the Balkan case, you don't expect to see leukemia, and certainly not this early,'' Haley said. ``If anything, you'd expect to see lung cancer from the inhaled particles, but not for another 20 years.''
Haley accused European governments of conducting the screenings for political reasons.
``Everybody has learned from the Gulf War and what happened with the veterans and the accusations of a cover-up. They've learned that you better take it seriously and act early,'' Haley said.
The few studies on depleted uranium relate to the Gulf War.
The U.S. Defense Department says approximately 90,000 American troops who served in the Gulf War complain of ailments such as fatigue, rashes, headaches, muscle and joint pain.
A report in April by the U.S. General Accounting Office, which reviewed the medical evidence, concluded that inhaling or ingesting depleted uranium was unlikely to cause radiation sickness or cancer.
---
EU Demands Truth From NATO Over Uranium Shells
Excite News
January 5, 2001
By Anna Baker
http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/010105/02/international-health-balkans-dc
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-health-.html
LONDON (Reuters) - European Commission President Romano Prodi demanded to know the truth behind claims that depleted uranium used in NATO weapons had caused death or illness among Balkan peacekeepers.
Several European nations including the current holders of the European Union presidency, Sweden, echoed Prodi's concerns, intensifying pressure on NATO to investigate the so-called "Balkan Syndrome."
In Bosnia, the NATO-led Stabilization Force (SFOR) dismissed the claims, saying ammunition with depleted uranium used during the 1992-95 war there posed only a "negligible hazard."
The syndrome came under the spotlight following reports that six Italian soldiers who served in the former Yugoslavia had developed leukemia and died after exposure to spent ammunition.
France became the latest country Thursday to announce that it was conducting its own inquiry into the syndrome, after four of its Balkan veterans contracted leukemia. It noted that as yet no link to spent ammunition was apparent.
Depleted uranium is used in the tips of missiles, shells and bullets to increase their ability to penetrate armor and can be pulverized on impact into a toxic radioactive dust, defense experts say.
NATO SAYS NO PLANS TO CHANGE
Prodi said that even if there were the slightest risk from the munitions, they should be abolished.
"I want the truth to be ascertained, not only concerning the soldiers, but also for the people who lived near them, the population," Prodi told Italian state radio.
U.S. attack jets fired some 31,000 rounds of depleted uranium ammunition against Serbian tanks and armored vehicles during NATO's 1999 Kosovo campaign, according to a United Nations expert. Some 10,000 were fired in neighboring Bosnia in 1994-95, NATO officials reported only last month.
NATO spokesman Mark Laity ruled out any immediate plans to destroy stocks of depleted uranium munitions.
"The onus is on those who call ill health to prove it, rather than on us, who don't," he told CNN.
"If things change, NATO will change."
In a bid to establish the facts, Belgium has urged EU defense ministers to analyze and debate peacekeepers' health problems for the first time at EU level.
Sweden welcomed the proposal and said it would be discussed at a meeting next Tuesday of the interim Political and Security Committee. "It is important that we act," Swedish Defense Minister Bjorn von Sydow said in a statement Thursday.
He said that Sweden's ambassador to NATO would consult with the alliance, although the country is not itself a NATO member.
NATO ambassadors are expected to discuss the issue at their regular meeting next Wednesday, NATO sources said.
MYSTERY AILMENTS
Belgium has reported that five peacekeepers who were in Bosnia and other parts of the former Yugoslavia have died from cancer.
It said that other soldiers who had been on Balkan peacekeeping missions during the 1990s reported a variety of unexplained ailments, including headaches and insomnia.
The Netherlands reported that two soldiers who served in Kosovo and Bosnia had died from leukemia and Portugal has raised concerns over the death of one of its Balkans veterans.
Both countries, along with Bulgaria, Finland and Greece, said tests were being conducted among troops who served in the Balkans and who are still in Kosovo.
Germany and Spain said tests among their peacekeeping troops had so far turned up no evidence of "Balkan Syndrome."
CONCERNS GROW FOR CIVILIANS
Concerns over the risks of depleted uranium shells during the Kosovo campaign have been voiced by civilian aid workers in Britain, the Netherlands and Italy.
An umbrella group called the Italian Consortium for Solidarity, comprising some 100 non-governmental organizations active in the Balkans since 1992, cited a study by British scientist Roger Coghill which estimated some 10,000 possible future deaths from cancer due to use of uranium in the Balkans.
"I think the local people are in most danger," said Martina Iannizzotto, the Belgrade-based coordinator of the group's activities in Yugoslavia.
Italian fishermen urged their government to investigate whether any of the bombs dumped by planes during the Kosovo campaign and dredged up in nets contained depleted uranium.
A U.N. report in May warned that much of Kosovo's water could be so contaminated as to be unfit to drink, and that a clean-up of the province could cost billions of dollars. It warned U.N. staff not to approach any target which might have been hit by a depleted uranium weapon.
Prodi proposed setting up immediate contact with the governments of Bosnia and Serbia to discuss pollution and problems linked to depleted uranium.
SFOR said a U.N. Environmental Program was due to report early in 2001 on any possible risks after measuring radiation levels in soil samples.
----
EU Backs Prodi Over 'Balkan Syndrome' Warning
Reuters
January 5, 2001 Filed at 1:56 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-balkans.html
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/science/science-balkans-syndr.html
LONDON (Reuters) - The European Commission Friday stood by warnings from its president about the potential dangers of uranium-tipped shells amid a swirl of competing claims about the health risks to troops using the controversial ammunition.
The Defense Department said it had no plans to suspend use of the tank-killing shells but would cooperate with any NATO study into possible deaths from cancer and other ills -- the so-called ``Balkan Syndrome.''
Britain said it had no evidence NATO's use of the munitions adversely affected British peacekeepers in the Balkans and had no plans to screen soldiers who served in Kosovo and Bosnia.
Turkey and Yugoslavia found no cases of radiation exposure among their troops, and the International Committee of the Red Cross disclosed that tests on over 30 staff deployed during the 1999 Kosovo war showed no traces of depleted uranium.
Depleted uranium is used in the tips of missiles, shells and bullets to boost their ability to penetrate armor and can be pulverized on impact into a toxic radioactive dust easily ingested by the body, defense experts say.
Kosovo moderate leader Ibrahim Rugova said he feared irresponsible claims could lead to a stampede of peacekeeping and international agency staff from the province.
But Germany's Taz daily newspaper reported that tests conducted by the U.N. Environmental Program on sites in Kosovo struck by NATO forces showed evidence of significant radioactivity.
SITES ``CONSIDERABLY CONTAMINATED''
The newspaper said the UNEP report found that eight of 11 sites a U.N. team tested in November were in part ``considerably contaminated'' with uranium dust and unexploded munitions.
Russia, which has about 3,000 peacekeepers in Kosovo, and France joined several countries backing Italy's call for NATO to examine the claims, and Portugal began testing 10,000 military and civilian personnel who had served in the Balkans.
``The Italian request is justified,'' French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said, adding that France would ''provide its partners with all the information they needed.''
NATO said the Italian request would be examined by the North Atlantic Council next Tuesday.
Wolfgang Koehnlein, the deputy head of Germany's Radiation Safety Committee, backed a ban on the use of depleted uranium.
``It is high time to demand a stop to these tank-penetrating weapons, because they hurt not only soldiers but also a large bulk of the population,'' he told InfoRadio.
Prodi told Italian radio Thursday that the weapons should be abolished if they posed even minimal risk, adding, ``Even if this risk was not there I don't like the idea of using these particular weapons.
``I want the truth to be ascertained,'' Prodi said.
EU and NATO diplomatic sources suggested that Prodi, a former Italian premier, was trying to support Prime Minister Giuliano Amato, who is under pressure from left-wing allies to probe charges that NATO's use of the rounds in its 1999 air war in Kosovo caused six leukemia deaths in Italy.
France confirmed Thursday that four of its soldiers had contracted leukemia after working in the Balkans.
The French Defense Ministry said there was nothing currently linking their illness to exposure to the ammunition, but added it had ordered an investigation into how the soldiers became ill and the risks they had faced.
EU RIGHT TO BE CONCERNED
Prodi's spokesman, Jonathan Faull, said his boss was right to speak out, that the Commission was entitled to be concerned, and that the EU's 15 member states would also support it.
``The president did not say anything untoward. He made his comments at the right moment,'' he said.
``In case people might be thinking that this is not necessarily the European Union's business, we have a well-established policy in the Balkan region,'' Faull added.
U.S. attack jets fired some 31,000 rounds of depleted uranium ammunition against Serbian tanks and armored vehicles during the 1999 Kosovo campaign, according to a U.N. expert.
Some 10,000 were fired in neighboring Bosnia in 1994 and 1995, NATO officials reported last month.
Despite the absence of scientific evidence that its debris is life-threatening, some military analysts say the ammunition has become the target of such an obsessive international campaign that it is now more of a political liability than it is worth.
---
Pentagon Denies Balkan Uranium Worry
Excite News
Updated 4:32 AM ET January 5, 2001
By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer
http://news.excite.com/news/ap/010105/04/us-uranium
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Uranium.html
WASHINGTON (AP) - Responding to a growing chorus of European suspicions, the Pentagon denies that U.S. and allied peacekeepers in the Balkans face a health hazard from remnants of American weapons that contain depleted uranium.
"We have not found any link between illnesses and exposure to depleted uranium," Kenneth Bacon, spokesman for Defense Secretary William Cohen, said Thursday. "We're pretty confident of what we've said, which is we have found no direct link."
The Pentagon has been investigating the question since the 1991 Gulf War, when such weapons were used in combat for the first time.
The United Nations sent a team of experts last year to take samples of soil and water in Kosovo, where Air Force A-10 aircraft fired depleted uranium munitions in missions against Serb armored vehicles. Bacon said the samples are being evaluated at five laboratories, and the U.N. work is expected to be completed this spring.
In several European countries, questions are being raised about whether depleted uranium exposure may pose cancer risks.
On Thursday, a spokesman for the European Union said the 15-nation group would conduct an inquiry, and Bacon said the United States expects the issue to be raised at a NATO meeting next week. Last week, Italy began investigating possible links between depleted uranium munitions and about 30 cases of serious illness among soldiers who served in Kosovo and Bosnia.
Bacon said 31,000 rounds of depleted uranium weapons were fired by American aircraft during the 1999 war in Kosovo. In U.S.-led NATO airstrikes against Bosnia in 1994 and 1995, about 10,800 rounds were fired around Sarajevo, he said.
Questions about possible health risks have persisted, particularly within veterans groups, since shortly after the Gulf War.
Some in Europe have raised the possibility that exposure to depleted uranium could cause cancers such as leukemia.
Noting this, Bacon said "a logical starting point" for addressing that question would be an epidemiological study to determine if an unusually high incidence of leukemia occurred among soldiers who served in either Bosnia or Kosovo.
"That's something that could be done by European allies, it could be done by us, but it hasn't been done yet," Bacon said. "And until people do that basic type of epidemiological work, which involves comparison groups, et cetera, I think it's premature to talk about any link between depleted uranium and leukemia. We have found nothing to link the two in our research."
Uranium is best known in its enriched form, which is used to power nuclear plants and in nuclear weapons. A byproduct of the enrichment process is depleted uranium which, as its name implies, is depleted of much of its radioactivity. Because depleted uranium is extremely dense, it is an unusually effective penetrator of conventional tank armor.
A 1999 Rand Corp. review of scientific literature on uranium found no studies indicating adverse health effects on humans from exposure to or ingestion of uranium compounds. Rand, which analyzes national security issues for the Pentagon, recommended more research, because the use of depleted uranium munitions is expected to grow.
On the Net: Pentagon studies on depleted uranium: http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/
---
Scare - Mongering Suspected As Uranium Fears Revive
Reuters
January 5, 2001 Filed at 10:35 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/health/science-health-balkan.html
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission on Friday denied that its president Romano Prodi recklessly stoked a fresh scare over the alleged health risks of U.S. depleted uranium munitions with alarmist demands for ``the truth.''
Prodi told Italian radio on Thursday that the weapons should be abolished if they posed even minimal risk, adding: ``Even if this risk was not there I don't like the idea of using these particular weapons.
``I want the truth to be ascertained,'' Prodi said, apparently overlooking a large volume of scientific evidence amassed since charges first surfaced following the 1991 Gulf War, most of which says no link to cancer has been proved.
EU and NATO diplomatic sources suggested former Italian premier Prodi was trying to support Prime Minister Gillian Amato, who is under pressure from left-wing allies to probe charges that NATO's use of the rounds in 1999 war caused so-called ``Balkan syndrome'' and six leukemia deaths in Italy.
Prodi's spokesman, Jonathan Faull, said his boss was right to speak out, that the Commission was entitled to be concerned, and that the EU's 15 member states would also support it.
``The president did not say anything untoward. He made his comments at the right moment,'' he said.
``In case people might be thinking that this is not necessarily the European Union's business, we have a well-established policy in the Balkan region,'' Faull added, citing Europe's prime role in environmental cleanup and reconstruction, and the health of its own workers.
SCARE-MONGERING
A NATO source said Italy had asked NATO Secretary General George Robertson for more information on the issue on December 22, but recent statements in the Italian media had unleashed ''hysteria.''
A NATO diplomat said there was a feeling Prodi was playing to a pacifist gallery ``but it probably went down well at home.''
The ``DU'' ammunition is the United States' best armor- piercing round and would likely be needed by EU forces should their proposed Rapid Reaction Corps have to undertake combat operations in any future crisis-management mission.
Despite the lack of scientific evidence that its debris is life-threatening, some military analysts say the ammunition has become the target of such an obsessive international campaign that it is now more of a political liability than it is worth.
A number of European allies have joined Italy's call for more investigation of a possible link between DU ammunition and cases of cancer among Balkan peacekeeping troops.
Officials speaking off the record say ministers asked about such fears could hardly answer that they were not concerned.
But the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Greece, Turkey, Canada, Norway, Spain, Finland and the International Committee of the Red Cross report no evidence of any link.
BALKAN STAMPEDE
Putting his finger on what NATO and EU security sources said was a genuine risk, Kosovo moderate leader Ibrahim Rugova said he feared irresponsible claims could lead to a stampede of peacekeeping and international agency staff from the province.
According to a U.S. official fact-sheet, concerned European allies can offer nationals who may have been exposed to DU debris a simple test, consisting of a questionnaire to determine the likelihood of exposure and a 24-hour urine test.
A negative urine result ``means that the level of uranium now in your body is no higher than would be expected from normal intake from natural sources (food, water, air)'' it says.
One frequently-quoted anti-DU campaigner, Briton Roger Coghill, predicted 10,000 deaths in Kosovo from DU contamination, a warning repeated by the Italian campaign but rubbished by experts.
In the latest issue of the authoritative Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, analyst William Arkin said Coghill's forecast early on in the 78-day-long air war was made without knowing ''whether NATO had fired one or one hundred thousand DU rounds.
``In the DU world, for every crackpot haunted by radiation, there is a craven and unsympathetic commander or bureaucrat,'' Arkin wrote. ``The war in Yugoslavia proved again that whenever and wherever DU appears, it is a political headache.''
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NATO denies uranium-tipped weapons made soldiers sick
CBC NEWS
Fri Jan 5
http://cbc.ca/cgi-bin/templates/view.cgi?/news/2001/01/05/balkans010105
THE HAGUE - The official NATO position on the dangers of depleted uranium remains the same despite complaints from several countries: there is no danger.
But not everyone in the alliance is so sure, and even countries who agree with the official line are screening their veterans of the Balkan conflicts.
NATO says the uranium-tipped rounds used during NATO action in Yugoslavia and Bosnia aren't making soldiers who served there sick.
But on Thursday, the Netherlands became the latest country to begin an investigation after two soldiers died of leukemia.
At least 12 soldiers, including four French and six Italian servicemen, have died of leukemia that some say may be related to NATO's use of ammunition containing depleted uranium. Spain, Portugal, Turkey and Finland are all screening their Balkans veterans.
Most of the uranium was in armour-piercing shells used by American A-10 planes, which are used to attack tanks.
INDEPTH: Silver Bullet: Depleted Uranium
http://www.tv.cbc.ca/national/pgminfo/du/index.html
Italy wants NATO to provide a map showing everywhere the ordnance was used.
France and Britain have the weapons, but didn't use them in the Balkans.
U.S. veterans' groups say depleted uranium is partially responsible for so-called Gulf War syndrome, something the Pentagon has called "unlikely." Documents show that U.S. forces fired about 944,000 rounds in Iraq and Kuwait.
NATO will have top-level discussions on the issue on Saturday, the Italian Foreign Ministry said. NATO ambassadors are also expected to discuss it at their regular meeting on Jan. 10.
A UN team is doing a study on the syndrome following a trip to Kosovo in November. It's expected to report its findings in February.
Canada's Department of Defence said there has been no increase in incidents of cancer among vets tested so far.
In February, the government began a voluntary screening program. It's tested 90 Gulf War vets and 11 Balkans vets so far. Levels of depleted uranium were consistent with the general population.
Spain also said its preliminary results showed normal levels.
---
UN Tests Shows Kosovo Sites Radioactive-Report
Yahoo News
Science News
Friday January 5 12:10
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010105/sc/balkans_un_dc_1.html
BERLIN (Reuters) - Tests conducted by the United Nations (news - web sites) Environmental Program on sites in Kosovo struck by NATO (news - web sites) ammunition with depleted uranium have found evidence of significant radioactivity, a German newspaper said on Friday.
Germany's TAZ daily said the UNEP tests had found that eight of 11 sites a U.N. team had tested in November were in part ``considerably contaminated.''
Uranium dust as well as unexploded munitions had been discovered, the paper said in an advance release of a story due for publication on Saturday. The paper said it had obtained a copy of an interim UNEP report dated December 29, 2000.
NATO has come under increasing pressure from several European governments over claims that depleted uranium used in NATO weapons had caused death or illness among Balkan peacekeepers, dubbed ``Balkans Syndrome.''
The condition came under the spotlight after reports that six Italian soldiers who served in the former Yugoslavia had developed leukemia and died after exposure to spent ammunition.
A U.N. report in May warned that much of Kosovo's water could be so contaminated as to be unfit to drink, and that a clean-up of the province could cost billions of dollars. It warned U.N. staff not to approach any target which might have been hit by a depleted uranium weapon.
U.S. attack jets fired some 31,000 rounds of depleted uranium ammunition against Serbian targets during NATO's 1999 campaign to drive the Yugoslav army out of Kosovo. Some 10,000 rounds were also fired in neighboring Bosnia in 1994-5.
The 11 sites the UNEP tested were among 112 in Kosovo hit by weapons containing depleted uranium according to a NATO map. The UNEP considers that the 11 sites tested are representative of all 112 and wants them all cordoned off, the paper said.
The UNEP report also recommended that health checks should be carried out at least on residents of the immediate area, the paper said.
Depleted uranium is used in the tips of missiles, shells and bullets to increase their ability to penetrate armor and can be pulverized on impact into a toxic radioactive dust, defense experts say.
---
Radiation found at Kosovo bomb sites
CNN
January 5, 2001
http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/01/05/nato.troops.02/index.html
UNITED NATIONS -- Evidence of radioactivity at eight Kosovo sites bombed with NATO depleted nuclear ammunition has been found by a United Nations' team.
The results from 11 tests released on Friday in a preliminary report for the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) add weight to concerns that the NATO weapons could have caused illness among peacekeeping troops.
NATO has come under pressure from several European governments over so-called "Balkans syndrome" after six Italian soldiers who served in Kosovo and Bosnia died of leukaemia.
On Friday, the European Commission stood by warnings from its president, Romano Prodi, about the potential dangers of uranium-tipped shells amid competing claims about the health risks to troops using the controversial ammunition.
"We want the whole truth to be known," Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Guterres said Friday. "This is something that must also be done at an international level."
The U.S. Defense Department said it had no plans to suspend use of the tank-piercing shells but would co-operate with any NATO study into mystery illnesses.
The discovery of radioactivity at the sites tested by the U.N. was the first results of testing still underway at laboratories in Sweden, Switzerland, Italy, Britain and Austria by UNEP.
"The final results will only be known when the UNEP report is published in 2001, but there is enough preliminary evidence to call for precautions when dealing with used depleted uranium or with sites where such ammunition might be present," spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
A U.N. report in May had warned that much of Kosovo's water could be so contaminated as to be unfit to drink, and that a clean-up of the province could cost billions of dollars.
It warned U.N. staff not to approach any target that might have been hit by a depleted uranium weapon.
The 11 sites tested by the UNEP team were among 112 in Kosovo hit by weapons containing depleted uranium according to a NATO map.
The UNEP report also recommended that health checks be carried out on residents of the immediate area.
Chorus of concern
On Friday, Russia added its voice to a growing chorus of European concern over the weapons saying it was in favour of international investigations into the issue.
"The problem of the consequences of NATO's use of depleted uranium ammunition is real and apparently needs to be evaluated by international experts," Russia's Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko told Ekho Moskvy radio.
Moscow has sent 3,000 peacekeepers to Kosovo but fiercely opposed NATO's 1999 bombing campaign to drive Serb forces out of Kosovo.
Russian peacekeepers are also deployed in Bosnia, where U.S. warplanes used depleted uranium weapons against Serbian armour in the mid-1990s.
France confirmed on Thursday that four of its soldiers had contracted leukaemia after working in the Balkans.
France has joined several countries backing Italy's call for NATO to examine the claims, and Portugal has now begun testing 10,000 military and civilian personnel who had served in the Balkans.
"The Italian request is justified," French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said, adding that France would "provide its partners with all the information they needed."
NATO said the Italian request would be examined by the North Atlantic Council next Tuesday.
NATO's Secretary-General Lord Robertson told Italy the alliance will discuss more open and effective ways of exchanging information on health risks in conflict areas, Italy's defence ministry said on Friday.
On Friday, Italian Under Secretary of Defense Marco Minniti visited Kosovo to reassure troops that it is doing everything possible to investigate the claims.
The deputy head of Germany's Radiation Safety Committee, has now backed a ban on the use of depleted uranium in peacekeeping operations.
"It is high time to demand a stop to these tank-penetrating weapons, because they hurt not only soldiers but also a large bulk of the population," Wolfgang Koehnlein said.
Norway's military said on Friday it will send letters asking soldiers who served in the Balkans to report any illness that could be related to depleted uranium ammunition.
In Athens, about 500 protesters marched to demand the return of Greek troops from Bosnia and Kosovo due to the health concerns.
Britain said it had no evidence NATO's use of the munitions adversely affected British peacekeepers in the Balkans and had no plans to screen soldiers who served in Kosovo and Bosnia.
Turkey and Yugoslavia found no cases of radiation exposure among their troops, and the International Committee of the Red Cross disclosed that tests on over 30 staff deployed during the 1999 Kosovo war showed no traces of depleted uranium.
U.S. attack jets fired some 31,000 rounds of depleted uranium ammunition against Serbian targets during NATO's 1999 campaign to drive the Yugoslav army out of Kosovo.
Some 10,000 rounds were also fired in neighbouring Bosnia in 1994-5.
---
NATO urged to probe 'Balkans sickness'
CNN
January 5, 2001
http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/01/05/nato.troops/index.html
LONDON, England -- European countries are stepping up pressure on NATO to investigate a high rate of cancer deaths and illnesses among soldiers who served in the Bosnian and Kosovo conflicts.
http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/maps/england.london.jpg
Members of the military alliance are concerned that depleted uranium used in missiles, shells and bullets could have caused sickness to soldiers during those wars.
The concern swept across Europe after six Italian NATO veterans died of leukaemia, sparking allegations from relatives that the ammunition caused so-called "Balkan syndrome."
Italy, Belgium, France, and Portugal are demanding more information about the controversial type of ammunition used by NATO forces in the Balkans.
The United States military has been facing similar complaints from its soldiers from the 1991 Gulf War.
But the U.S. Defense Department has denied that weapons containing depleted uranium present a health risk to peacekeepers in the Balkans.
Pentagon spokesman Ken Bacon said research carried out on U.S. service personnel after the Gulf War failed to produce a link.
Bacon said: "We have studied depleted uranium at considerable length over the years because of assertions it might contribute to Gulf War illnesses.
"We have not been able to find any connection to exposure to depleted uranium and the constellation of illnesses or symptoms included in Gulf War syndrome."
Britain's Ministry of Defence also said it had no evidence that the weapons had any adverse effect on British peacekeepers and that it had no plans to screen its soldiers.
But the ministry said it would investigate the case of former army engineer Kevin Rudland who said that his contact with depleted uranium dust in Bosnia had caused hair loss, chronic fatigue and severe bowel problems.
France is the latest European country to announce it was setting up an inquiry. It says four of its soldiers who served in the Balkans are being treated for leukaemia.
The United Nations last year sent a team of experts to Kosovo, where depleted uranium munitions were fired by U.S. Air Force A-10 aircraft in missions against Serb armoured vehicles.
Bacon said the team took soil and water samples that are now being evaluated by five laboratories. The results are expected this spring, he said.
On Thursday, a spokesman for the European Union said the 15-nation group would conduct an inquiry, and Bacon said the issue was expected to be raised by European allies at a NATO meeting next week.
Leukaemia concerns
Last week, Italy began investigating possible links between depleted uranium munitions and about 30 cases of serious illness among soldiers who served in Kosovo and Bosnia.
Bacon said 31,000 rounds of depleted uranium munitions were fired by American aircraft during the 1999 war in Kosovo.
In U.S.-led NATO airstrikes against Bosnia in 1994 and 1995, about 10,800 rounds were fired around Sarajevo, he said.
Bacon said "a logical starting point" for addressing concerns would be a study that would determine if there was an unusually high incidence of leukaemia among soldiers who had served in either Bosnia or Kosovo.
Turkey's armed forces said on Friday that they had found no cases of radiation exposure from depleted uranium munitions among troops who served in NATO peacekeeping forces in Kosovo.
Uranium is best known in its enriched form, which is used for nuclear power plant fuel and in nuclear weapons. A byproduct of the enrichment process is depleted uranium which, as its name implies, is depleted of much of its radioactivity.
Because depleted uranium is dense, it is an effective penetrator of conventional tank armour.
When a depleted uranium round strikes armour or burns, it produces uranium dusts or aerosol particles, which can be inhaled.
Shaun Rusling, Chairman of the UK Gulf Veterans and Families Association, told CNN the symptoms of the associated sickness are neurological and psychological dysfunction, chronic fatigue, irritable bowel, short and long term memory loss and headaches.
"I feel very sorry for the Italian families who are wondering why their young, fit, healthy sons have died through doing the job of peacekeeping, " he added.
---
UNEP samples from depleted uranium sites in Kosovo now being analysed in five laboratories
United Nations Environment Programme
01/05/00
http://www.unep.ch/balkans/press/press010105.html
Geneva, 5 January 2001 - Rigorous analyses of depleted uranium (DU) samples collected by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) during its 5 - 17 November 2000 field assessment mission to Kosovo are now underway in five European laboratories in an effort to determine whether the use of DU during the Balkans conflict may pose any risks to human health or the environment.
The UNEP field mission visited 11 of the 112 sites that were identified as being targeted by ordnance containing depleted uranium, including five in the Italian sector (MNB (W)) and six in the German sector (MNB (S)). The work was carried out in close cooperation with the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) and the NATO Kosovo Force (KFOR), which assisted with logistics, accommodation, transport and security.
The UNEP team, consisting of 14 scientists from several countries, collected soil, water, and vegetation samples and conducted smear tests on buildings, destroyed army vehicles, and DU penetrators. Remnants of DU ammunition were found at eight sites. Altogether, 340 samples are being analyzed, including 247 soil samples, 45 water samples, 30 vegetation samples, 10 smear tests, five sabots, two penetrators, and one penetrator fragment. (Penetrators and sabots are specialized parts of ordnance.)
"When we finalized the Balkans Task Force report on the environmental effects of the Kosovo conflict last year, there was insufficient data available to address the issue of depleted uranium," said Klaus Toepfer, UNEP's Executive Director.
"In response to a request from UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and UNEP, NATO provided us in mid-2000 with the exact coordinates of the target sites, enabling our team to make proper measurements of DU sites in Kosovo," he said.
"UNEP's aim is to determine whether the use of DU during the conflict may pose health or environmental risks - either now or in the future," concluded Mr. Toepfer.
The samples are being analyzed for both radioactivity and toxicity by the Swedish Radiation Protection Institute (SSI) in Stockholm; AC Laboratorium-Spiez in Switzerland; Bristol University's Department of Earth Sciences in the UK; the International Atomic Energy Agency Laboratories (IAEA) in Seibersdorf, Austria; and the Italian National Environmental Protection Agency (ANPA) in Rome, Italy. The assessment work on depleted uranium has been financed by the Government of Switzerland.
The results of the tests will be ready in early March 2001, when UNEP will publish a full report of its findings.
In addition, UNEP has been in contact with authorities in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in order to plan a similar field mission to Serbia and Montenegro, where a number of the 112 NATO-identified DU sites are located. This mission is being planned for the coming spring.
UNEP recommends precautionary action
"Out of the 11 sites visited, the team found three sites with no signs of higher radioactivity, nor any remnants of DU ammunition. At eight sites, the team found either slightly higher amounts of Beta-radiation immediately at or around the holes left by DU ammunition, or pieces and remnants of ammunition, such as sabots and penetrators," said Pekka Haavisto, chairman of the UNEP DU Assessment Team and former Environment Minister of Finland.
"For the UNEP team it was surprising to find remnants of DU ammunition just lying on the ground, one-and-a-half years after the conflict," Mr. Haavisto noted. "Also, the ground directly beneath the DU ammunition was slightly contaminated. For this reason, we paid special attention to the risks that uranium toxicity might pose to the ground waters around the sites."
Although the final conclusions of the scientific assessment can only be made after the laboratory results are available, the UNEP team believes that its preliminary findings call for precautions to be taken when dealing with penetrators and sabots found at the identified sites and near other locations where such ammunition might be present.
A number of such precautionary recommendations are spelled out in the Depleted Uranium Desk Assessment, published in October 1999. The final report due in March 2001 will contain more detailed recommendations.
Note to journalists: For more information, please contact UNEP Spokesperson Mr. Tore Brevik at 00254-2-623292, email: tore.brevik@unep.org; the Chairman of the UNEP Depleted Uranium Assessment Team, Mr. Pekka Haavisto, at +358-40-588 4720 or pekka.haavisto@upi-fiia.fi; Henrik Slotte, UNEP Balkans Unit, at +41-22-9178598 or henrik.slotte@unep.ch; or Michael Williams at +41-22-9178242 or Michael.williams@unep.ch
See also http://balkans.unep.ch.
Copyright 2000-2001 - UNEP Balkans United Nations Environment Programme - UNEP tél: +4122 917 86 16 fax: +4122 917 80 64 email & contact http://www.unep.ch/balkans/contact.html
---
STOP NATO: ¡NO PASARAN!
Independent: Anything [STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
Fri, 05 Jan 2001 12:37:25 -0800
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK
"In Paris, Alain Richard, the Defence Minister, has asked for tests to determine whether the soldiers were exposed to anything that might have caused the illness " <end quote>
Anything?
* U.S. recognised limits for radiation exposure are 10-15 TIMES HIGHER than UN recognised limits for general population (50 mSV vs. 3-5mSV per year)
* U.S. population is allowed 2 TIMES HIGHER radiation exposure than UN recognised limits for radiation workers [50 mSV vs. 21mSv(1mSV natural,20mSV man-caused) per year]
http://balkans.unep.ch/_files/du_final_report.pdf see 2.2 U.S. NUclear Regulatory Commission http://www.nrc.gov/NRC/RG/
NATO may claim, by using U.S. limits, that radiation exposure in Kosovo is normal, even if 10-50 TIMES HIGHER than natural. (Kosovo is mostly rural without man-made radiation emiters)
ANYTHING may be Plutonium or other radioactive/toxic substance in alloy used for ammunition / cruise missile ballasts/incendiary devices http://www.ngwrc.org/news/content/SatDec180800001999.asp
DU - Red herring or red alert?
--------
FRANCE REVEALS THAT BALKAN SYNDROME IS AFFECTING SOLDIERS
THE INDEPENDENT
By Stephen Castle in Brussels
5 January 2001
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/World/Europe/2001-01/france050101.shtml
The European Union promised to take action over Nato's use of depleted-uranium munitions in the Balkans yesterday, as Paris revealed that four French soldiers who served in the region were being treated for leukaemia.
Depleted-uranium munitions should be banned even if there was "minimal risk", said Romano Prodi, the European Commission president, amid mounting international pressure on Nato to investigate the "Balkan Syndrome".
Sweden, which holds the EU presidency, backed calls for a new medical working group on the subject and promised a discussion on the issue on 9 January. Bjorn von Sydow, the Swedish Defence Minister, said: "It is important that we act."
In Paris, Alain Richard, the Defence Minister, has asked for tests to determine whether the soldiers were exposed to anything that might have caused the illness. He backed calls for the alliance to discuss the issue next week.
Mr Prodi intervened after concern grew in Italy, where there have been 30 cases of serious illness involving soldiers who served in Bosnia and Kosovo, 12 of whom developed cancer. Six of the Italian servicemen are said to have died of leukaemia.
Mr Prodi said in a radio interview that he wanted "the truth to be ascertained, not only concerning the soldiers, but also for the people who lived near them, the population".
He said: "It is clear that if there is even a minimal risk, these arms must be abolished. And even if this risk was not there, I don't like the idea of using these particular weapons." Mr Prodi proposed "immediate contacts with the governments of Bosnia and Serbia to discuss pollution and the problems linked to depleted uranium".
Although the EU's jurisdiction is limited, it may have powers in environmental or health and safety areas under which it can act, particularly if some of the ammunition was made in the EU.
Greece said yesterday that it would screen more than 1,000 of its soldiers stationed in Kosovo for side-effects from exposure to depleted uranium ammunition.
So far, Spain, Portugal, Turkey and Finland have said they will screen their Kosovo veterans, and Bulgaria is also to monitor the health of its small detachment in the province. In Britain, the Ministry of Defence said it would monitor developments closely. The Pentagon said it was aware of the worries being raised by some of America's allies.
Nato insists there is no evidence of a link between the munitions and cancer. Its spokesman, Mark Laity, said: "The Italians have, very properly and in response to public concern, launched a public inquiry, and Nato is assisting them in every way it can."
Nato has pledged to help with a request from Italy for more information on the use of depleted uranium.
There is also growing support for calls by Italy for a new mechanism to exchange scientific and medical information, and possible health issues, among the 19 Nato member countries. The Italians will press for such a mechanism at a political committee and at an informal meeting of Nato ambassadors on Tuesday.
--------
Pentagon: no risk from depleted uranium
`NO DIRECT LINK' FOUND TO ILLNESS FROM PARTS OF WEAPONS LEFT IN BALKANS
San Jose Mercury News
Published Friday, Jan. 5, 2001, in the San Jose Mercury News
BY ROBERT BURNS
Associated Press
http://www0.mercurycenter.com/premium/world/docs/uranium05.htm
WASHINGTON -- Amid a rising chorus of European concern, the Pentagon on Thursday denied there is a health hazard to U.S. or allied peacekeepers in the Balkans from remnants of U.S. weapons containing depleted uranium.
``We have not found any link between illnesses and exposure to depleted uranium,'' said Kenneth Bacon, chief press officer for Defense Secretary William Cohen. ``We're pretty confident of what we've said, which is we have found no direct link.''
The Pentagon has been investigating the issue since the 1991 Persian Gulf War, when bullets and cannon shells made of depleted uranium were used in combat for the first time.
The United Nations last year sent a team of experts to Kosovo, where depleted-uranium munitions were fired by Air Force A-10 aircraft in missions against Serb armored vehicles. Bacon said the team took soil and water samples that are now being evaluated by five laboratories. The results are expected in spring, he said.
In several European countries, questions are being raised about whether depleted-uranium exposure may pose a cancer risk.
Thursday, a European Union official said the 15-nation group would conduct an inquiry, and Bacon said the issue is expected to be raised by European allies at a NATO meeting next week. Last week, Italy began investigating possible links between depleted-uranium munitions and about 30 cases of serious illness among soldiers who served in Kosovo and Bosnia.
Uranium is best known in its enriched form, which is used for nuclear power plant fuel and in nuclear weapons. A byproduct of the enrichment process is depleted uranium, which, as its name implies, is depleted of much of its radioactivity. Because depleted uranium is extremely dense, it is an unusually effective penetrator of conventional tank armor.
Bacon said 31,000 rounds of depleted uranium munitions were fired by U.S. aircraft during the 1999 war in Kosovo. In U.S.-led NATO air strikes against Bosnia in 1994 and 1995, about 10,800 rounds were fired around Sarajevo, he said.
Questions about possible health risks have persisted, particularly among some veterans groups, since shortly after the gulf war.
Some in Europe have raised the possibility that exposure to depleted uranium could cause cancers such as leukemia.
Noting this, Bacon said ``a logical starting point'' for addressing that concern would be an epidemiological study that would determine whether there is an unusually high incidence of leukemia among soldiers who have served in either Bosnia or Kosovo.
``That's something that could be done by European allies, it could be done by us, but it hasn't been done yet,'' Bacon said.
-------
ARMY: NATO FIRED 50,000 PROJECTILES WITH DEPLETED URANIUM
January 5, 2001
BELGRADE
AIM News mailto:admin@aim.ac.yu
NATO reported firing 31,000 projectiles with depleted uranium in Yugoslavia, while we estimate the number to be as high as 50,000 and more, the head of the Bureau for Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Defense, Col. Milan Zaric, said on Jan. 4.
Col. Zaric told BETA that the majority of the projectiles had been dropped around the border between Kosovo and Albania where German and Italian units were stationed, but that the regions around Urosevac, Gnjilane, Podujevo, Stimlje, Glogovac, Orahovac and Blac had also been targeted.
He went on to say that two zones around Presevo, one near Bujanovac and the other near Vranje, had been contaminated in Serbia proper and that the Lustica peninsula had been contaminated in Montenegro.
Zaric said measures were being taken to mark out the regions, some had been sealed off, and that several hundred people living near these regions had been medically examined, but that no effects were registered. Zaric also said that cruise missiles could be fitted with uranium, which was why facilities that had been hit by these missiles were being probed, but that "no evidence of depleted uranium had been revealed." "The army headquarters building was checked five or six times, but we still fear that it is contaminated, which would lend new dimensions to this issue, given that the regions are densely populated and that the effects would be devastating," Zaric said.
-------- india / pakistan
Extremists attract students
Washington Times
January 5, 2001
Arslan Malik
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-column-200115195644.htm
Located in the northwestern Pakistani town of Akora Khattak is an Islamic seminary which boasts among its alumni virtually the entire leadership of the Taliban, the oppressive Islamist group that controls most of neighboring Afghanistan. The seminary, run by former Pakistani Senator Sami-ul-Haq, currently has about 3,000 young male students from Pakistan and elsewhere who are being indoctrinated with a militant version of extremist Islam that incites them to take up jihad, Islamic holy war against non-Muslims.
Although it stands apart for its notable alumni, the seminary at Akora Khattak is just one example of the thousands of seminaries, referred to as madrassas, that have burgeoned all over Pakistan in the last few decades. Many of these madrassas, in preparation for jihad, are either arming the students themselves or graduating them to militarized training camps. More disturbingly, a symbiosis has developed between these seminaries and Pakistan's rulers which is a threat to regional as well as international security. Since radical Islam is of vital concern to the U.S. national interest, American policy-makers should focus their efforts on containing these madrassas.
Until the 1970s, there were less than 1,000 madrassas in Pakistan and they were dedicated primarily to the formal instruction of Islamic theology. The decade-long Soviet occupation of Afghanistan starting in 1979 changed this as U.S. policy-makers and their Pakistani allies, convinced that a religious opposition would be well-suited to fight the "godless communists," set out to use the seminaries as prep schools for anti-Soviet insurgents. With arms from the United States, support from the Inter-Services Intelligence(ISI), the Pakistani intelligence agency, and funding from Islamist sources abroad, the madrassas evolved into indoctrination and guerrilla training camps. In no time, they sprang up throughout the country. By 1988 there were 2,891 madrassas in Pakistan.
Despite the Soviet pullout a year later and the end of U.S. involvement, the madrassas have continued to expand over the last decade. According to a recent issue of the Pakistani newspaper Ausaf, over 6,000 madrassas exist in Pakistan today, each producing hundreds of battle-ready alumni yearly. The primary reason that madrassas have continued to grow is their support by successive Pakistani governments, including the present one under General Pervaiz Musharraf. Although a few government officials are sympathetic towards the madrassas because of their religious views, many see them more practically as rendering the country a host of services.
Indeed, the madrassas do the government a favor by functioning as social welfare institutions that house and feed many of the restless youths that would otherwise not be provided for in the poverty-stricken country. This is a surefire way of creating a cadre of people loyal to the madrassas, intent on bringing Islamist rule, like that in Afghanistan, to Pakistan - a dangerous prospect for the world's latest nuclear power.
The government also supports the madrassas because they help it fight archenemy India. Seminarians, in many cases, form the bulk of extremist religious organizations, such as the Lashkar-e-Tayebba, that alongside separatists are combating Indian forces in Kashmir. This further provokes India and keeps the two regional nuclear powers precariously close to the specter of war.
The seminarians also aid Pakistan in retaining leverage over Afghanistan by constantly filling Taliban ranks - and thus in turn bolstering the repressive regime. For instance, 200 seminarians joined the Taliban just last year.
During his trip to South Asia in March, President Clinton, in alluding to Islamic extremists, urged Pakistan "to intensify its efforts to defeat those who inflict terror." In recent months the government there has made apparent strides towards clamping down on madrassas by ordering their registration and calling for a standardized curriculum free of jihad indoctrination. However, given the government's vested interest, any such efforts are unlikely to be serious.
Containing the madrassas is left to U.S. policy-makers who remain concerned with both security in South Asia as well as the Taliban menace. Because an armed or political confrontation with the seminaries is certain to incite a militant backlash, the ideal way to handle them would be to deprive them of their funding which primarily comes from abroad. For instance, it is widely known that various interests within Saudi Arabia are filling the coffers of these madrassas with the goal of influencing them with their rigid brand of Islam, referred to as Wahabbism. In this case, the United States should try to work with its Saudi allies in reining in all such backers.
This would be a significant step in curbing the problem of Islamic extremism, especially given the fact that in recent years hundreds of students have been coming to these madrassas from as far away as Chechnya and the Philippines with the promise of fomenting trouble outside South Asia as well.
The rising threat of these Pakistani seminaries is in part due to myopic U.S. policy-makers who helped militarize them in the Cold War's last chapter. It is now up to the successors of those policy-makers to restrain these seminaries. Otherwise, these madrassas are certain to forge a vast and cohesive network of extremists trained to wreak terror internationally that is unparalleled - a grim prospect for the free world.
Arslan Malik is a writer, living in New York.
--------
Pak. to test new missile in March
The Hindu
Friday, January 05, 2001
By B. Muralidhar Reddy
http://www.indiaserver.com/thehindu/2001/01/05/stories/03050005.htm
ISLAMABAD, JAN. 4. Pakistan is to test a ballistic missile, `Haider- 1', with a range of 300 km in the first week of March.
The Pakistani news agency, Online, has reported that the missile will be on display at the joint services parade on Pakistan Day on March 23.
It is capable of carrying nuclear warheads and its accuracy is claimed to be 100 per cent as compared to the Shaheen missile, the report said. Some of the major cities of India are within its range.
The missile was manufactured completely with indigenous resources, skills and technology, the agency said. After the test, Pakistan will join the list of countries which possess the capability to make ballistic missiles with indigenous expertise.
Quoting official sources, the agency said that with certain modifications, the range of `Haider-1' could be increased and that its storage would be easy. Solid fuel instead of liquid fuel would be used in the missile.
---
One killed as missile fires accidentally
The Hindu
Friday, January 05, 2001
By V.Geetanath
http://www.indiaserver.com/thehindu/2001/01/05/stories/01050006.htm
HYDERABAD, JAN. 4. A senior technical assistant was killed when a missile was accidentally fired during a demonstration inside the Bharat Dynamics Limited (BDL) premises in Kanchanbagh here today. The Defence Secretary, Mr. Yogendra Narain, had a lucky escape.
The accidental missile launch around noon sent shockwaves among residents of neighbouring localities and forced the BDL authorities to order evacuation of all its employees from the premises. The anti-tank missile rammed into Mr. K. Narasimha Chary's body, killing him on the spot, then nose-dived into the ground forming a crater and caught fire. Five others, including the BDL's General Manager, G. Prabhakar Rao, were hospitalised with minor injuries.
According to sources, the Defence Secretary and other senior officials were going round the assembly unit of the `Milan' short-range missile when it was accidentally fired. The three-feet-high missile with a range of two kilometres is believed to be capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. The BDL unit at Kanchanbagh is said to be storing more than 500 short-range missiles on its premises.
On who was responsible for the accidental launch, neither police nor the BDL was forthcoming. It is learnt that while the demonstration was going on, one of the officials ``accidentally'' pushed a button or a switch launching the missile. However, this account had no official confirmation.
The technical assistant, Mr. Chary, standing in the missile's flight path, bore the brunt. Another employee, Mr. Rajeev Saxena, sustained splinter injuries on his hand. Others injured were: Messrs. Sunderraj (public relations wing), Challa Rao (non-executive technical assistant), Yadagiri Reddy (non-executive technical assistant), besides the general manager. Police said the building was completely gutted as a rubber matting in the hall, which was to absorb the static electricity from those entering the hall, also caught fire. The BDL fire-engines immediately swung into action for over two hours.
The city police registered cases of death under suspicious circumstances under 174 of Cr.P.C and fire accident.
-------- russia
COLUMN: A Baltic missile crisis
Excite News
Updated 12:00 PM ET January 5, 2001
By Dan Pollock The Dartmouth Dartmouth College
http://news.excite.com/news/uw/010105/university-8
(U-WIRE) HANOVER, N.H. -- Does this scenario sound familiar? A young, inexperienced president is elected to office with a slim electoral majority and faces grave doubts about his abilities from leaders both at home and abroad. A Russian leader, concerned with the United States' expanding power, decides to test the new president's resolve by making a surprise transfer of nuclear weapons. This was the series of events that led to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Nikita Khruschev, the Soviet premier at the time, decided to give Cuban dictator Fidel Castro nuclear missiles because he thought the newly elected president, John F. Kennedy, was diplomatically incompetent. Russian missiles and weak leadership brought our country to the brink of nuclear war with the Soviet Union. And yet, a frighteningly similar chain of events has just taken place in Eastern Europe.
For the first time since the break up of the Soviet Union, Russian tactical nuclear weapons (short-range, nuclear-tipped armaments) were deployed in Kaliningrad, Russia's westernmost territory on the Baltic Sea. Kaliningrad, which borders Poland (a member of NATO since 1999) to the north, is still a part of Russia despite the fact that the countries of Lithuania, Latvia and Belarus separate it from the Russian mainland. The redeployment, which began in June, was first reported by a U.S. military intelligence bulletin. Although Russia has denied the existence of any nuclear weapons, the Times of London confirmed that senior U.S. officials indicated that nuclear weapons had been moved. The exact type of nuclear weapons that were moved is still unknown, but the military report speculated that the warheads were going to be used in conjunction with new short-range Russian missiles. With a range of only about 180 miles, the missiles in Kaliningrad are too far east to threaten western European countries like Germany or Austria, but could easily be employed against neighboring eastern European countries such as Poland, Lithuania or Latvia.
During the campaign, President-elect George W. Bush hinted that he would support the eventual inclusion of Baltic states, such as Lithuania and Latvia, into NATO. Therefore, the decision by Russian President Vladmir Putin to re-deploy the nuclear weapons could be seen as an attempt to threaten Bush against such an expansion of NATO. The real question is how the president-elect and his so-called foreign policy "all-stars" like Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld will react to Putin's new aggressiveness. In a November 1999 speech, Bush stated that "Russia does have interests with its newly independent neighbors. But those interests must be expressed in commerce and diplomacy -- not coercion and domination." One could certainly interpret this type of buildup of nuclear weapons as a type of not-so-subtle coercion.
Perhaps a more aggressive Russia was an inevitable product of Bush's defense proposals. Putin sees Bush's proposed National Missile Defense (NMD) system as a major threat to Russia's nuclear deterrent. Bush and his advisors claim the still-theoretical NMD system would only be used to defend against surprise attacks from terrorists or rogue nations like Iran or North Korea. But Russians believe the system would protect the U.S. from anything short of a massive nuclear attack, and would force the Russians to increase their nuclear stockpiles at a time when the country is teetering on the edge of economic chaos.
Putin's actions may, however, be a bit premature considering the fact that a working missile defense system has been under consideration since the Johnson administration, yet has never been perfected technologically. Apparently, Bush did such a good job of convincing people that the fictitious missile defense system could work, he even spooked the Russians. If an overly aggressive Russia does turn out to be Bush's first major foreign policy crisis, he would be wise to take a brief history refresher course. Back in 1962, Kennedy chose to pursue a non-violent naval blockade in response to the Soviet missile presence in Cuba, rather than the more offensive responses suggested by most of his advisors. Although Bush might see himself as another Reagan, this situation calls for Kennedy-like tactics. Let's just hope Bush can cool things down in Eastern Europe before we revert to what things were like in 1981, or God forbid, 1962.
---
Russia Calls Reports It Moved Nuclear Arms to Baltic a 'Dangerous Joke'
San Francisco Chronicle
Friday, January 5, 2001
John Daniszewski, Los Angeles Times
mailto:feedback@sfgate.com
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/01/05/MN148461.DTL
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis/web/vortex/display?slug=nonukes05&date=20010105
Russia stepped up its denials yesterday that its military forces have in recent years quietly transferred tactical nuclear weapons back into Moscow's westernmost outpost, on the Baltic Sea.
"Dishonest sources of information" and "various secret intelligence services" are behind the reports that Moscow has moved short-range weapons to the enclave of Kaliningrad, said Capt. Anatoly Lobsky, head of the news center of the Russian Baltic Fleet. The reports were first published yesterday in the Washington Times.
Later yesterday, U.S. sources were quoted by news services as confirming "indications of movement" of Russian nuclear weapons to a Kaliningrad naval base.
If short-range nuclear weapons were stored there, they could pose an immediate threat to Poland -- a member of NATO -- and the Baltic countries that regained their independence after the Soviet collapse.
But such a move would have little impact on the overall strategic balance between the United States and Russia. Despite arms control agreements, both countries have retained more than enough long-range nuclear weapons to destroy each other.
Polish Defense Minister Bronislaw Komorowski called yesterday for international inspectors to verify that Moscow had not deployed nuclear weapons. "Poland needs to monitor the situation in Kaliningrad on a day-to-day basis and it is doing that," he said.
Lobsky called the anonymous reports gamesmanship and said their intent was to test Russian public opinion at a sensitive time when the Baltic states -- Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia -- are getting ready to join the Council of Europe and are pressing for admittance to NATO.
Vladimir Yegorov, former commander of the powerful Baltic Fleet and the newly elected governor of the Kaliningrad region, was even more derisive.
"If it were April Fool's Day, I would certainly appreciate the joke. But it is early January, and therefore it is a too dangerous joke," he said. "I can say that there are no nuclear weapons on the Baltic Fleet."
Yegorov said Kaliningrad's nuclear-free status was intact: "No one has infringed on this situation or plans to," he told RIA news agency.
But some Russian military analysts were not so sure that the reports could be easily discounted.
"It would clearly be a wise strategic move to deploy tactical weapons in the Kaliningrad region," reasoned Alexander Zhilin, a Moscow-based military analyst.
"It creates better opportunities for causing the so-called irreparable damage to enemy troops and dealing pre-emptive strikes, which raises the level of national security."
Zhilin said the decision might be linked to the character of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"He has already demonstrated to the world that he is a resolute man, that he cares about raising the level of Russia's national security, but there is still no telling whether he is prepared to take it a step further," he said. On the other hand, Zhilin said it was possible that the story had been put out by those who hope to foster more public support in the United States for the proposed anti-missile defense shield, which is opposed by Russia.
Hundreds of tactical, sometimes called battlefield, nuclear weapons were stationed by the former Soviet Union on the territory of its Eastern European allies during the Cold War, ready for war with NATO.
But after the collapse of the Soviet Union a decade ago, such weapons were supposed to be withdrawn into central areas of Russia.
Kaliningrad is an isolated Russian enclave bordered by Poland, Lithuania and the Baltic Sea.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Clinton gets nuke test ban report
InfoBeat News
Afternoon Edition - 1/5/2001
By LEIGH STROPE Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405686691
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Clinton on Friday urged the Senate to place the nuclear test ban treaty high on its agenda after receiving a report concluding that without it, the United States would be less effective in halting the spread of nuclear weapons.
Clinton met for a half-hour with retired Gen. John Shalikashvili, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whom Clinton asked to review the comprehensive test ban treaty after Senate Republicans rejected it in 1999.
In a statement, Clinton said the recommendations in Shalikashvili's report make a persuasive argument that the benefits the United States would reap from the treaty, in terms of national security, ``outweigh any perceived disadvantages.''
``I urge Congress and the incoming Bush administration to act on them. I also hope the Senate will take up the treaty at an early date,'' Clinton said.
Shalikashvili told reporters there are three areas in which the United States could ``take positive steps now'' to strengthen its position under the treaty: stewardship of the nuclear stockpile, verifying nuclear testing elsewhere in the world and developing an ``overarching strategy'' on nuclear weapons development.
``The treaty has, in fact, an important part in an overall strategy,'' Shalikashvili said. ``It is one of the tools we ought to consider in our toolbox that would help us deal with what, after all, is one of the recognized, important dangers to our nuclear security.''
President-elect Bush has opposed the pact, saying it was unenforceable, though his top advisers have been divided. Secretary of State-designate Colin Powell, himself a former Joint Chiefs chairman, supported it while Bush's pick for defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, has said he is against it.
Excerpts from Shalikashvili's report, obtained by The Associated Press, recommend measures to build support for the treaty, including greater efforts to maintain the United States' nuclear arsenal and a joint review by the Senate and administration every 10 years.
The report also recommends appointing a deputy national security adviser for nonproliferation, who would have authority to coordinate and oversee policy in that area. And it made a pair of suggestions for the incoming Bush administration: Review issues related to the test ban treaty ``at the highest level'' while making a sustained effort to address senators' questions, and leave the U.S. testing moratorium in place ``to demonstrate its commitment to a world without nuclear weapons.''
The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was completed in 1996, but it cannot take effect until it has been approved by the United States and 43 other nations that have nuclear research or power reactors.
Britain, France and Russia have signed and ratified the accord. China has signed the agreement, but has yet to ratify it. North Korea has not signed, and India and Pakistan, which have engaged in a nuclear arms race in South Asia, also have not.
The treaty was defeated by the Senate in 1999.
Supporters have argued that U.S. ratification is essential to persuade other nations to accept the treaty.
``The view of the chairman and the chiefs has been that while there are risks with this treaty, as with most treaties, the advantages in helping the fight against proliferation outweigh the disadvantages,'' Shalikashvili told The New York Times.
------
Bush Team May Undue Late Changes
New York Times
January 5, 2001 Filed at 9:26 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/politics/AP-Bush-Undoing-Clinton.html?pagewanted=all
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -- For now, President-elect Bush can do little but watch as President Clinton orders last-minute changes big and small -- from protecting millions of federal acres to changing the presidential license plates to promote statehood for Washington, D.C.
``He has been a busy beaver,'' Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer said Friday, promising a review of ``each and every one'' of Clinton's orders once Bush takes office. ``We are taking note of them all.''
But while the incoming administration clearly has an eye on undoing some of what Clinton has done, turning back the clock is not always easy -- either politically or procedurally. Some executive orders can be canceled simply by issuing later ones, but new federal rules are hard to undo.
Also, Bush could risk blotting his own ``compassionate conservative'' label by rolling back new environmental or workplace safety rules.
Publicly, the Bush team isn't criticizing Clinton's exercise of his legal and regulatory authority to produce late-term changes.
After all, it is something all outgoing presidents do -- presidents who, in turn, had it done to them while they were waiting to assume power.
``His term ends Jan. 20. President Clinton's staff has made it clear to us that he will remain a vigorous president,'' Fleischer said.
But some advisers privately -- and Bush's allies in Congress publicly -- are fuming.
Rep. Jim Hansen, R-Utah, the new chairman of the House Resources Committee, said new restrictions on road building and logging are among ``the most egregious abuses by the Clinton administration'' and should be undone by Bush and Congress.
On Friday, Clinton acted to finalize that order, putting 58 million acres of federal land off limits to road building and logging. He also signed an executive order to reorganize the nation's counterintelligence efforts.
And he mounted a last-ditch campaign for Senate ratification of a global nuclear test ban treaty -- a pact Bush opposes.
In recent days, Clinton also:
-- Rescinded his own 8-year-old order to prohibit top administration officials from lobbying their former agencies for five years after leaving government.
-- Bypassed the Senate's confirmation process to temporarily put the first black judge onto the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which serves several Southern states. Virginia lawyer Roger Gregory's nomination had been stalled in the Senate.
-- Issued a batch of regulations imposing new workplace safety rules, including one requiring employers to provide ergonomics programs.
-- Ordered a new D.C. license plate with the slogan ``Taxation Without Representation'' affixed to his presidential limousine, protesting Washington's lack of statehood or a vote in Congress.
White House spokesman Jake Siewert defended the Clinton administration's rush of executive orders, recess appointments and executive orders.
``The president is the president until Jan. 20, and he's going to use his executive authority to protect the environment and to do everything he can to protect worker safety and people's safety,'' Siewert said Friday.
The incoming Bush administration is ready to try to tackle some of what it considers the most-provocative Clinton orders and rules.
Gale Norton of Denver, Bush's choice for secretary of the interior and an advocate of oil and gas drilling in areas environmentalists want off limits, says she looks forward to discussing such issues with the Senate at her confirmation hearing.
``The West was concerned about those decisions, in large part, because there was no consultation with the people whose lives were most affected by land withdrawals by the Clinton administration,'' she said in advance of Friday's announcement.
Once a federal regulation is put in place, revoking it is a cumbersome and time-consuming process.
Several lawmakers have said they might try to use a never-invoked 1996 law that authorizes Congress to rescind a regulation within 60 days.
However, the courts have ruled similar devices unconstitutional, including a previous ``legislative veto'' law under which Congress had sought to block regulations from taking effect.
Congress could pass a new law to reverse a specific regulation -- but that, too, could be time consuming and difficult. And, in the case of the anti-logging rule, it could provoke a political tempest.
But the business community is anxious for Bush to try to block some of the Clinton orders. ``It's frustrating to see Clinton do through the backdoor of the White House what he could not do through the legislative process,'' said Bill Miller of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Miller suggested one possibility: that Bush declare a temporary moratorium on all recent regulations when he takes office so they can be studied.
Presidents often leave office with a flurry of executive orders and rule changes. But in Clinton's case, it's been a blizzard.
``It's just the sheer volume,'' said Norman Ornstein, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who specializes in Congress and the presidency. ``But that's Bill Clinton. He's going to squeeze as much out of his presidency as he can.''
---
My '13 Days'
New York Times
January 5, 2001
By BARBARA GAMAREKIAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/05/opinion/05GAMA.html
WASHINGTON -- I too have had a White House sleepover - in the bomb shelter. I was reminded of that night by "13 Days," the new film about the events surrounding the Cuban missile crisis in October, 1962. During the crisis, I was an aide, one of nine people working in the Kennedy White House press office.
I first realized something portentous was going on when, on a presidential trip to Chicago, we abruptly returned to Washington. There were rumbles about the real reason for our change in travel plans, which had been attributed to Mr. Kennedy's having a cold. None of us in the press office were privy to the fact that five days earlier, aerial reconnaissance photographs had revealed Soviet missiles in Cuba. It was not until our preparations for the president's address to the American people a day or two later that lower-eschelon staff people like myself began to recognize the high-wire act the president was engaged in.
There was no formal announcement, but on the ninth day of the crisis, word began to circulate that the status of our nuclear bombers had been ratcheted to Defcon 2. Defcon 5 is peace; Defcon 1 is war. I was handed a small white envelope in which a card instructed me to report "under the North Portico" if evacuation were ordered. That got my attention.
We were already putting in long hours, but it was decided that two of our staff should be on call all night. My boss, Pierre Salinger, the press secretary, and I pulled the first shift. After midnight, Pierre headed for a small hotel across Lafayette Square, while I expected to curl up on the leather sofa in our office. Ours was not the posh West Wing of television fame. The room sported harsh overhead lighting, government-issue furniture and limp, gray-green tie-backs on the windows.
But I was not to sleep on the couch. I was informed there was a bomb shelter. A bomb shelter! A military officer escorted me to the East Wing, where an obscure-looking door turned out to be the door of an elevator. Down and down we traveled. The elevator opened to an austere reception area with a desk. A Marine guard directed me to a room furnished with a half-dozen bunks, all empty.
It was a surreal night. I slept under an army blanket in my clothes. Total darkness enveloped me. Intermittently I would turn on the light to check the time. Suppose dawn came and I didn't know?
The next morning I made a quick trip home to shower and change clothes. One of my housemates was there loading her convertible, heading home to Florida. She calmly explained that she had packed dozens of sheets that could be ripped into bandages to bind up the wounded in case there was mayhem on the road. Sheets for the wounded? I thought she'd lost her mind. We exchanged farewell hugs. I guess each of us was dealing with the possibility of nuclear annihilation in her own way.
On the kitchen counter, my housemate had left me six cans of water- metal was insurance, she said, against radioactive contamination. The morning of day 13, I woke to exhilarating news on the radio: The missiles had been dismantled and withdrawn. I ran downstairs and placed the cans under the sink.
Barbara Gamarekian worked in the White House press office from January 1961 to July 1965.
--------
Report: U.S. should ratify nuclear treaty
USA Today
01/05/01- Updated 01:13 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-01-05-nuclear.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Clinton on Friday urged the Senate to place the nuclear test ban treaty high on its agenda after receiving a report concluding that without it, the United States would be less effective in halting the spread of nuclear weapons.
Clinton met for a half-hour with retired Gen. John Shalikashvili, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whom Clinton asked to review the comprehensive test ban treaty after Senate Republicans rejected it in 1999.
In a statement, Clinton said the recommendations in Shalikashvili's report make a persuasive argument that the benefits the United States would reap from the treaty, in terms of national security, ''outweigh any perceived disadvantages.''
''I urge Congress and the incoming Bush administration to act on them. I also hope the Senate will take up the treaty at an early date,'' Clinton said.
Shalikashvili told reporters there are three areas in which the United States could ''take positive steps now'' to strengthen its position under the treaty: stewardship of the nuclear stockpile, verifying nuclear testing elsewhere in the world and developing an ''overarching strategy'' on nuclear weapons development.
''The treaty has, in fact, an important part in an overall strategy,'' Shalikashvili said. ''It is one of the tools we ought to consider in our toolbox that would help us deal with what, after all, is one of the recognized, important dangers to our nuclear security.''
President-elect Bush has opposed the pact, saying it was unenforceable, though his top advisers have been divided. Secretary of State-designate Colin Powell, himself a former Joint Chiefs chairman, supported it while Bush's pick for defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, has said he is against it.
Excerpts from Shalikashvili's report, obtained by The Associated Press, recommend measures to build support for the treaty, including greater efforts to maintain the United States' nuclear arsenal and a joint review by the Senate and administration every 10 years.
The report also recommends appointing a deputy national security adviser for nonproliferation, who would have authority to coordinate and oversee policy in that area. And it made a pair of suggestions for the incoming Bush administration: Review issues related to the test ban treaty ''at the highest level'' while making a sustained effort to address senators' questions, and leave the U.S. testing moratorium in place ''to demonstrate its commitment to a world without nuclear weapons.''
The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was completed in 1996, but it cannot take effect until it has been approved by the United States and 43 other nations that have nuclear research or power reactors.
Britain, France and Russia have signed and ratified the accord. China has signed the agreement, but has yet to ratify it. North Korea has not signed, and India and Pakistan, which have engaged in a nuclear arms race in South Asia, also have not.
The treaty was defeated by the Senate in 1999.
Supporters have argued that U.S. ratification is essential to persuade other nations to accept the treaty.
''The view of the chairman and the chiefs has been that while there are risks with this treaty, as with most treaties, the advantages in helping the fight against proliferation outweigh the disadvantages,'' Shalikashvili told The New York Times.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- maine
Gunman Said Battled Depression
New York Times
January 5, 2001 Filed at 11:20 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Office-Shooting-Suspect.html
MARSHFIELD, Mass. (AP) -- The parents of the man charged with killing seven co-workers at his computer consulting company say their son has suffered several mental breakdowns, the first while working at a nuclear power plant.
Richard and Rosemary Martinez said Michael M. McDermott was being treated for depression at the time of the deadly shooting.
But they added he was in high spirits on Christmas Day, a day before he allegedly gunned down seven co-workers at the office of Edgewater Technology Inc. McDermott, 42, has been charged with first-degree murder.
``We had the most wonderful Christmas with him,'' Rosemary Martinez, 71, told The Boston Globe in an interview published Friday.
``I cannot comprehend that my son did this,'' said Richard Martinez, 72. ``I think of the seven families who have been so horribly destroyed. We're devastated for these seven families.''
Prosecutors have said McDermott was upset that the company was going to withhold part of his salary to pay back taxes. But his parents said they saw no signs that their son, who legally changed his last name in 1982, was having any kind of financial problems.
McDermott was a bright child and a self-taught computer whiz who could fix anything, his parents said. He worked on a submarine in the Navy, then got a job at Maine Yankee nuclear power plant in Wiscasset, Maine, where he suffered his first mental breakdown.
His parents, who are retired teachers, said he was suicidal at the time after a breakup with a girlfriend, and spent a month in a Massachusetts hospital undergoing treatment for severe depression.
``We have a very bad genetic family history of depression,'' Richard Martinez said.
McDermott was fired from Maine Yankee in 1988, and removed from the premises while a security guard stood by, the plant's former human resources director Bob Lysaght said in an Internet posting Wednesday.
McDermott started at the plant as a control room operator -- a sensitive and responsible position, according to Maine Yankee spokesman Eric Howes. By the time he left he was working as an office support person.
Lysaght didn't say why McDermott was fired, but lamented feeling ``powerless'' to prevent McDermott from being hired elsewhere.
``McDermott was clearly a disturbed guy even then,'' he wrote.
McDermott was later hospitalized two more times. When McDermott joined Edgewater in March, he was on medication and was seeing a psychiatrist, according to his lawyer and published reports.
-------- new york
Public Officials Urge That Indian Point Plant Shut Again
New York Times
January 5, 2001
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/05/nyregion/05INDI.html
WHITE PLAINS, Jan. 4 - Calls for Consolidated Edison to shut down its newly restarted Indian Point 2 nuclear plant escalated today, with Senator Charles E. Schumer urging regulators to close the plant again and an environmental group declaring that the plant was out of compliance with federal regulations.
Neither the utility nor the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said there were plans to shut the plant again. But the growing animosity expressed by public officials and environmentalists demonstrated the persistent fears and mistrust surrounding the plant in Buchanan, 35 miles north of Manhattan.
The plant began producing a small amount of electricity Wednesday, with full power expected sometime next week. The plant had been closed since February, when a rupture in a steam generator caused a radioactive leak that officials said posed no public health threat.
Over the weekend and last week, as technicians restarted the plant in a slow, methodical process, it sprang a couple of minor leaks, one of which appeared to be dripping a small amount of radioactive water into a containment tank. Federal regulators and the utility said such leaks were common and well within prescribed norms, and posed no safety or environmental problems.
But today, Andrew J. Spano, the Westchester County executive, and Mr. Schumer faulted Con Edison and the N.R.C. for not providing county officials and the public with a full, timely accounting of the new leaks. They said the utility should "pause" the restart to allow an inspection by an independent panel of industry experts and local officials.
"Until the N.R.C. verifies that Indian Point is in good working condition and will not leak, the doors of this nuclear power plant cannot in good conscience be reopened," Mr. Schumer said at a news conference here. The request follows a similar call by Representative Sue W. Kelly, who said last week that the plant should not be reopened until the N.R.C. completes a planned inspection later this month. She plans to tour the plant Friday.
Mr. Schumer said the utility must confront a perception that it cannot be trusted in light of past accidents at the plant, and criticism from government inspectors that it and the N.R.C. have not diligently monitored the plant.
"You have fear that's rampant here," Mr. Schumer said, "and it seems to me that the N.R.C. and Con Ed are not doing their duty to tamp down that fear by letting people know ahead of time what they plan to do and letting there be comments on it."
Con Edison, in a statement released after the news conference, said it had met with local officials. A spokesman added that the utility planned further meetings.
"The plant continues to operate safely," the statement said. "There is no reason to take the plant off line. As we move toward full powering, we continue to test and monitor the plant's systems."
Mr. Schumer also sent a letter to Richard A. Meserve, the chairman of the N.R.C., urging the commission to shut the plant for an inspection. A spokesman for the commission, which has four inspectors monitoring the plant's restart, said that Mr. Schumer's letter was being reviewed but that the commission did not shut plants unless there was a safety problem.
"We continue to be concerned that there is a misunderstanding of the magnitude of the leakage," said Neil Sheehan, a spokesman for the N.R.C.
Mr. Spano met with Eugene R. McGrath, the chairman of Con Edison, this morning, but did not sound mollified. He said he did not know "whether I believe what they're saying or not, but I'm open to discussion."
At the same time, Public Citizen, an environmental group based in Washington, complained that the N.R.C. had allowed the plant to reopen without conducting a required emergency drill. An N.R.C. spokesman said regulators have confidence that the plant can respond to all emergencies, though its staff is examining whether Indian Point needs to conduct the drill.
-------- us nuc politics
A Tough-Talking, but Self-Effacing, Loyalist Joe Marvin Allbaugh
New York Times
January 5, 2001
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/05/politics/05ALLB.html
WASHINGTON, Jan. 4 - At 6-foot-4 and 280 pounds, with a marine's bristle-cut hair, Joe Allbaugh commands attention by merely walking into a room. His friends call him Big Country and Rock.
Mr. Allbaugh, who is President-elect George W. Bush's choice to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, knows his looks can intimidate. So he often introduces himself as a simple farm boy from Oklahoma, as if uncomfortable in the spotlight and bemused by politicians' fancy way.
Associates say Mr. Allbaugh, who managed Mr. Bush's campaign and is a member of his inner circle, moves easily between the roles of tough-talking enforcer and self-effacing loyalist.
Mr. Bush first reached out to Mr. Allbaugh in 1994 to lend discipline to his campaign for governor.
"During my years as governor, I came to know Joe Allbaugh as an individual with extraordinary management capabilities who can be counted on in times of need," Mr. Bush said today in announcing his selection of Mr. Allbaugh. "I have the utmost confidence in his abilities."
Mr. Allbaugh, 48, declared himself humbled and thrilled. "I am touched by your confidence," he said in a news conference in Austin, Tex. "I can't think of a better place to help out fellow countrymen when they are in time of need."
If confirmed, Mr. Allbaugh will assume control of an agency which, after being sorely tested over the last decade, is now widely seen as a model of responsiveness to the public's needs.
Established by the Carter administration in 1979, FEMA centralized the functions of more than 100 federal agencies involved in emergency and disaster relief, involving everything from floods and earthquakes to nuclear accidents.
But after the agency was slow to respond to a string of disasters, including the Loma Prieta earthquake in the San Francisco Bay area in 1989 and Hurricane Andrew in 1992, its current director, James Lee Witt, set about an overhaul. That effort was so successful that both Mr. Bush and Vice President Al Gore went out of their way to praise FEMA during the campaign. In a debate last October, Mr. Gore seemed so eager to associate himself with Mr. Witt he erroneously claimed to have toured a Texas fire site with him in 1996.
The agency is "absolutely a success story," said John Clizbe, vice president of disaster services at the American Red Cross. Mr. Clizbe said he hoped the new FEMA chief would prove a strong leader, able to nurture relationships across the board, from local leaders to private relief groups.
During the presidential campaign, Mr. Allbaugh took pride in his ability to maneuver around egos and publicity-seekers in a nuts-and-bolts drive to see that Mr. Bush remained on schedule and the bills were paid.
Sometimes, Mr. Allbaugh stepped from behind the scenes and used his drill sergeant bearing to advantage. Although the Bush campaign achieved record donations - nearly $100 million by the end - Mr. Allbaugh demanded frugality and occasionally stalked through a campaign office with a megaphone, barking out calls to cut costs. He later said the gesture was done in good humor.
Joe Allbaugh, who failed to respond to requests for an interview, was raised on a farm north of Oklahoma City in a family that he once said was apolitical. (And by the way, his first name really is just Joe, according to his mother.) He felt the lure of politics early, volunteering at age 12 for the presidential campaign of Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona in 1964.
While studying political science at Oklahoma State University, Mr. Allbaugh worked as an aide to Senator Henry Bellmon, a former Republican governor of Oklahoma, who became something of a mentor. After working on various campaigns, Mr. Allbaugh became regional director in the South for the Republican National Committee. He once boasted that he had helped recruit Frank White, the Republican governor of Arkansas, who defeated Bill Clinton in 1980.
Mr. Allbaugh had served three years as Oklahoma's deputy secretary of transportation, under a Democratic governor, Delmas Ford, when Mr. Bush asked him to run his first campaign for governor. Mr. Allbaugh and the president-elect forged a relationship rooted more in trust than ideology, associates say. Mr. Allbaugh often speaks of his responsibility to protect Mr. Bush and his wife, Laura.
Mr. Bush today praised Mr. Allbaugh as a "loyal, strong friend."
Mr. Allbaugh is twice married. His second wife, Diane, is an Austin lawyer. In 1996, she quit her job as a lobbyist for utility companies after questions were raised about whether her work presented a conflict of interest for Mr. Allbaugh. The couple have three children.
Mr. Allbaugh has recently said he looks forward to ending the vagabond life of a campaign operative, which was, he said, "horrible on families." But as the nation's new disaster chief, his respite may be brief.
------- us nuc waste
Nuclear Proliferation Risk Seen in Plutonium Deal
International Herald Tribune
Friday, January 5, 2001
Matthew L. Wald New York Times Service
http://www.iht.com/cgi-bin/generic.cgi?template=articleprint.tmplh&ArticleId=6383
WASHINGTON A U.S.-Russian disarmament agreement to take 68 tons of plutonium out of nuclear weapons could have an unintended effect of increasing chances of nuclear proliferation, according to a report by an independent researcher.
Arjun Makhijani, a nuclear physicist who has specialized for 20 years in analyzing Energy Department weapons activities, also found that efforts around the world to make plutonium and use it as reactor fuel have cost about $100 billion, and make little economic sense.
But the Energy Department is defending the agreement and its efforts to help the Russians sell the material in Europe as reactor fuel as a major step toward nonproliferation. Once used in reactors, it is harder to use in weapons.
Plutonium is created when uranium is used in reactors. When it is separated from used fuel it can be reused either for reactors or for making bombs. For decades engineers have sought to build "breeders" that in their atomic reactions actually produce more reactor fuel than they consume.
Because of proliferation fears, the United States, in the 1970s, banned the recovery of plutonium from civilian reactor fuel, called reprocessing.
But Japan, France and Britain have invested heavily in reprocessing, and Japan and France are also working on breeders.
The United States has been negotiating with Russia since the mid-90s, and signed an agreement last September saying each side would remove 34 tons of surplus plutonium from its weapons inventory.
The Energy Department is planning to pay the Duke Power Co. to burn some of it in civilian reactors, and will mix the rest with high-level radioactive wastes so it cannot be easily retrieved for weapons use.
The Russians have said they, too, want to use theirs in reactors, but they also say they want then to reprocess the spent fuel, recovering even more plutonium.
Russia would like to build a big breeder reactor and a factory to turn the weapons surplus into plutonium fuel, a mixture of plutonium oxide and uranium oxide called MOx.
But it needs Western money for the fuel plant, estimated to cost $1.7 billion to $2.5 billion.
The United States, while it has abandoned breeder reactors, plans a similar fuel plant in South Carolina.
The executive director of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, Mr. Makhijani is a frequent critic of the Energy Department but he also works closely with them at times.
He recently forced the department to reassess its estimate of the quantity of plutonium and other man made elements spilled into the dirt during weapons making; the department concluded it was too small by a factor of 10.
Another opponent of the agreement is Paul Leventhal, president of the Nuclear Control Institute, a nonprofit organization based here. "What's at issue is," he said, "do you turn the plutonium directly into a waste form, or turn to MOx, then end up with waste, in the form of spent fuel."
-------- MILITARY
-------- arms sales
TODAY'S SIGN THE WORLD IS ENDING
DayTips' Strange News: 01/05/01
Date: Fri, 05 Jan 2001 05:00:32 -0800
Britain reportedly is developing an urban warfare grenade that can be fired through the wall of a building to disable all those inside. The Telegraph of London said the hand-held weapon, which will weigh no more than 22 pounds, would have a maximum range of at least 185 yards. The grenade releases a cloud of flammable gas or vapor, which is then detonated. The resulting shock wave and vacuum pressure destroy the internal organs of anyone within range.
-------- colombia
Colombian envoy flies to rebel enclave
Washington Times
January 5, 2001
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-20011521263.htm
BOGOTA, Colombia - A government envoy flew into a rebel-held southern enclave yesterday on a widely watched mission that could decide the fate of peace negotiations to end Colombia's 36-year conflict.
Presidential peace commissioner Camilo Gomez was investigating charges that rebel guerrillas assassinated a prominent congressman last week. Mr. Gomez was meeting with rebel leaders, including Manuel Marulanda, the aging founder of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
The Dec. 29 assassination of Diego Turbay, who headed a congressional peace committee, has unleashed heated calls for President Andres Pastrana to suspend or alter the course of peace talks with the FARC.
-------- drug war
Departing drug czar cites progress, says more to be done
Washington Times
January 5, 2001
By Cheryl Wetzstein THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-200115233132.htm
Teen drug use is down and funding for drug treatment and research is up, but "a lot remains to be done," drug czar Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey said yesterday during his farewell press briefing at the White House.
Chronic abuse of illegal drugs and alcohol are "the heart and soul" of almost any social, medical, legal or international problem, said Gen. McCaffrey, whom President Clinton appointed director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) in 1996.
"There is no question that we're still looking at a U.S. society in which 6 percent of us, last month, used an illegal drug - 14 million Americans, 52,000 dead a year, $110 billion in damages," he said.
Still, after concerted efforts by his office and other top Clinton administration officials, "I think the numbers are starting to respond," said Gen. McCaffrey, citing decreases in U.S. cocaine use and improvements in local and international law-enforcement strategies.
Gen. McCaffrey leaves the ONDCP today for a job at West Point teaching national security studies.
He plans to remain active in the fight against illegal drug use - "I have to," he told The Washington Times - as well as write a book about the issue.
Mr. Clinton praised Gen. McCaffrey's efforts, saying the latest reports show that the nation is "making real progress" on drug control.
"We must never give up on making our children's futures safe and drug-free," the president said.
Rep. John L. Mica, Florida Republican, also commended Gen. McCaffrey, for his "valiant attempt" to try to "repair the damage of the first four years" of Clinton administration drug policies.
"McCaffrey, given what he inherited, did the best he could, but now whoever takes over has almost an insurmountable task," said Mr. Mica, chairman of the House Government Reform subcommittee on criminal justice, drug policy and human resources.
The congressman said Mr. Clinton's first drug czar, Lee Brown, made unwise changes that brought "a flood of drugs" into the United States.
The drug situation in Colombia is now "so out of control" that it is destabilizing "the entire Central American and South American continents," said Mr. Mica. Domestically, he said, the lower use of marijuana has been "eclipsed" by increases in use of methamphetamines and "club drugs."
Gen. McCaffrey yesterday released several reports, including a new one on drug use in sports.
He cited as achievements:
• Creation of a comprehensive drug-control strategy and a new intelligence-gathering program.
• Creation of 28 "high-intensity drug trafficking area programs," which coordinate local, state and federal law-enforcement efforts.
• Anti-drug budget increases from $13.5 billion in fiscal 1996 to $19.2 billion in fiscal 2000, with more money going to prevention, treatment and research.
• Creation of some 700 drug courts.
• Creation of cooperative strategies with "key drug transit and source countries" such as Colombia, Mexico and Thailand.
Among the retired general's disappointments were the "widespread, explosive increase" in Americans' use of "club drugs" such as "ecstasy" and low recognition for the value of drug treatment.
Regarding his successor, Gen. McCaffrey said he was "very upbeat about the new team," based on his experiences with people associated with President-elect George W. Bush.
"I can't imagine that there isn't widespread unanimity of view that we need to continue working on prevention, education and treatment issues as well as multinational cooperation," he said.
Mr. Mica, however, said he was "very concerned" about the fate of the drug czar post, which he has heard may be downgraded to "less than Cabinet" status.
The new drug czar has to have access to the president and should be someone with a high profile, said Mr. Mica. Otherwise, "we're headed for an incredible disaster."
---
Let Former Addicts Help
New York Times
January 5, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/05/opinion/L05DRU.html
To the Editor:
In looking for new ways to deal with drug-related problems, I hope that Gov. Gary E. Johnson of New Mexico ("Another Prohibition, Another Failure," Op-Ed, Dec. 30) understands the importance of giving the rehabilitated or recovering addict a role to play.
The successful expansion of drug programs will be determined by who staffs them. People with personal experience with addiction are an underused asset and seldom-heard voice. They represent a message of hope that is needed whenever we deal with addiction.
HOWARD JOSEPHER New York, Dec. 30, 2000
-------- india/pakistan
India-Pakistan talks said likely
InfoBeat News
Afternoon Edition - 1/5/2001
By ASHOK SHARMA Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405685537
NEW DELHI, India (AP) - Kashmir's top elected official said Friday he believes that India's cease-fire in the disputed Himalayan province will lead to new talks with Pakistan.
The major gain from the cease-fire, which began Nov. 28, has been the silencing of guns along the disputed border, said Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah of Jammu-Kashmir state.
``I feel the time is coming when negotiations between India and Pakistan will start,'' he told the Foreign Correspondents' Club in New Delhi.
India and Pakistan have fought two wars over control of Kashmir since they won independence from Britain in 1947. Both countries claim the entire Himalayan territory, which has been divided between them since 1948.
Since 1989, an Islamic insurgency in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir, supported by militants from Pakistan, has left 30,000 dead, according to the government. Human rights activists put the number at 60,000.
In recent weeks, both countries have shown a willingness to try to move the peace process forward.
In November, India declared a unilateral cease-fire against the militants on its side of Kashmir. That prompted Pakistan to announce a truce along the disputed border, where tens of thousands of Indian and Pakistani soldiers have faced off for five decades.
Since the cease-fire, Pakistan has withdrawn several hundred soldiers from its side of Kashmir, allowing thousands of villagers uprooted by artillery fire to return to their homes on both sides of the border, Abdullah said. Abdullah's National Conference governs Indian-held Kashmir and is a coalition partner of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's government.
India has encouraged the recent peace initiative by extending the cease-fire for another month, until Jan. 26.
-------- myanmar
UN envoy arrives in Myanmar
InfoBeat News
Afternoon Edition - 1/5/2001
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405686090
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) - U.N. envoy Razali Ismail arrived in Myanmar on Friday on his latest mission to coax the ruling military junta and pro-democracy opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi into talks, officials said.
Razali, a former Malaysian diplomat, is on a five-day visit - his third since his appointment in April - to help end the political stalemate in Myanmar, also known as Burma.
Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party swept the country's general elections in 1990 but was barred from taking power by the military, which has controlled the government since 1962. The military has limited Suu Kyi's freedom since then. Most recently, it has kept her under house arrest since Sept. 22 for twice trying to travel outside the capital on party business.
Razali was received at Yangon airport by deputy Foreign Minister Khin Maung Win, a Foreign Ministry official said on condition of anonymity. He held a ``fruitful'' 45-minute meeting on the current situation in Myanmar with Foreign Minister Win Aung, the official said.
The envoy was due to meet later Friday with Lt. Gen. Khin Nyunt of the State Peace and Development Council, as the military regime is known. He was also expected to meet with Suu Kyi during his visit, the official said.
The current crop of generals, in power for 12 years, has refused to hold talks with Suu Kyi. It maintains that it is only a transitional administration that will eventually hand over power to a constitutional government.
-------- space
Russians order discarding of Mir
InfoBeat News
Afternoon Edition - 1/5/2001
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405685766
MOSCOW (AP) - Russia's prime minister has signed a decree ordering work to begin on a gradual lowering and discarding of the 15-year-old space station Mir, news reports said Friday.
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov ordered Russian space commanders to ensure a ``controlled de-orbiting and sinking'' of the 140-ton space ship in February or March, ITAR-Tass news agency reported, citing Kasyanov's office. The decree also said a special commission will be formed to oversee the work, according to the report.
Kasyanov's decree did not give the exact date for the planned descent, but space officials have said earlier that they would launch a cargo ship to push the Mir down in a controlled manner on Feb. 27-28. It takes two days to reach the station from Earth.
Space experts say they would prefer to send a crew to ensure a trouble-free docking with the cargo ship, but space officials still apparently hope to do the job with an unmanned cargo vessel, to cut costs. Russian Mission Control spokesman Valery Lyndin has said officials may still change their minds and send cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Nikolai Budarin to the station in January.
Officials at Kasyanov's office or mission control centers could not be immediately reached for comment.
Kasyanov's decree comes after the latest in a series of glitches that have affected the Mir, stoking fear that the station could spin out of control and scatter debris over populated areas in a fiery plunge through the atmosphere.
Last week, ground controllers lost radio control with the orbiter, but managed to regain it a day later. Officials blamed the failure on a sudden and unexplained loss of power.
Mir has survived several accidents, including a fire and a near-fatal collision with an unmanned cargo ship in 1997. Its latest crews have spent much of their time trying to fix problems, and experts have warned it was risky to leave Mir uninhabited. The station had only one, 73-day mission last year.
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Russia Plans 29 Space Launches in 2001
New York Times
January 5, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/07/nyregion/07TROO.html
MOSCOW -- Russia plans to launch 29 civilian rockets into space in 2001, carrying both manned space ships and satellites, a Russian space official said Thursday.
Twenty-two rockets will be launched from Russia's Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakstan, said Sergei Dervyashkin, spokesman for Russia's Strategic Rocket Forces, a branch of the military which also controls civilian space launches.
The Baikonur schedule includes a trial launch of a new modification for the Proton heavy-lift booster, the largest rocket currently in use in the world. Two manned Soyuz space capsules will be launched from Baikonur for the international space station in 2001, he said.
Baikonur was the main launch facility of the former Soviet Union and now leased by Russia from its southern neighbor. The remaining seven launches will be carried out from facilities in Russia's Arctic and Far East, Dervyashkin said.
-------- u.n.
Holbrooke lands post in think tank
Washington Times
January 5, 2001
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-20011521263.htm
UNITED NATIONS - Richard C. Holbrooke, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, will join the Council on Foreign Relations and write about the relationship between Washington and the world body, his office announced yesterday.
Mr. Holbrooke, who was expected to be secretary of state had Vice President Al Gore won the presidential election, will serve as a scholar-in-residence to work on foreign policy issues at the New York-based think tank.
-------- u.s.
Japan cops seek US Marine probe
InfoBeat News
Afternoon Edition - 1/5/2001
By MARI YAMAGUCHI Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405686080
TOKYO (AP) - Japanese police have asked prosecutors to open an investigation into three U.S. Marines suspected of molesting two junior high school girls in southern Japan last year, police said Friday.
The Marines, whose names and hometowns were withheld by police, are crew members of the USS Essex stationed at Sasebo, about 610 miles southwest of Tokyo.
Relatives of the teen-age girls asked authorities not to disclose details of the alleged sexual assaults, police said.
An operator at the Sasebo base said no one was available to comment late Friday.
Earlier in the day, the U.S. military lifted a late-night drinking ban on all troops in Okinawa, a rule imposed five months ago to curb rowdiness and prevent crime.
The ban and a late-night curfew were ordered in August to calm a community backlash on Japan's southern islands after misbehavior by American troops stationed there. After Friday, U.S. troops will once again be able to buy liquor between midnight and 5 a.m., Marines spokesman Capt. Douglas Powell said.
The ban was ended after a committee of U.S. military officers and Okinawan officials agreed to steps that they hope will end problems with drunken troops, Powell said.
Bars and nightclubs will now ask U.S. personnel to show identification that proves they are of legal drinking age before serving liquor. The drinking age in Japan is 20, but bar operators seldom verify a person's age.
About 47,000 U.S. military service people are stationed in Japan, nearly two-thirds of them in Okinawa, 1,000 miles southwest of Tokyo.
Okinawans have long complained about crimes linked to the U.S. bases. In July, a 19-year-old Marine was arrested on charges of indecency and unlawful entry after he walked into an unlocked apartment in Okinawa City, crawled into the bed of a 14-year-old girl and fondled her. He admitted to the charges and was found guilty.
The following week, Okinawa police arrested a 21-year-old Air Force sergeant for driving through a red light in the city of Naha, striking and injuring a civilian and then fleeing. He was fined.
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
Manatee Settlement Fair To Boaters, Industry
Protections Improved and Boating Access to Be Maintained, But Concerns Remain
Yahoo News
Friday January 5, 6:31 pm Eastern Time
Press Release
National Marine Manufacturers Association
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/010105/dc_nmma_se.html
WASHINGTON, Jan. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- Members of the Florida and national boating industries are reporting that settlement of a lawsuit on January 4 against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service centered on protection of the manatee will serve the interests of marine mammals, boat owners and marina operators. Groups signing the agreement are the Save the Manatee Club and 17 other conservation organizations, U.S. Army Corps, U.S. Department of the Interior's Fish & Wildlife Service, and industry intervenors including the Association of Florida Community Developers, National Marine Manufacturers Association (NMMA), Marine Industries Association of Florida (MIAF), and the Marina Operators Association of America (MOAA).
``Protection of the manatee in conjunction with the guarantee of access to recreational boating and fishing waters is paramount,'' states NMMA's Vice President of Government Relations Mick Blackistone. ``However, the route to success will require incredible coordination between federal and state agencies. We intend to maintain a careful watch over the way details of the settlement develop and will work to keep a balance of fairness in place for boat owners and the $10.2 billion industry which supports their on-water activities.''
The recreational boating industry has been an early proponent and continuing advocate for manatee protection through self regulation, improvements in boating technology, legislative and regulatory efforts and public education. Blackistone adds that, ``The vast majority of boat operators are responsible citizens and ambassadors for on-water conservation.'' He notes many of the protections for manatees identified in the settlement have been advocated by the boating industry. These include reasonable manatee-related speed limits, effective signage and protective zones, overtime pay for on-water enforcement of boating laws including those addressing manatee issues, increased enforcement and fines for violators, and a plan to increase boat registration fees dedicated to manatee protection.
State boating trade representatives are supportive of the agreement. John Sprague, President of the MIAF, states, ``We're pleased that we could participate in this process and glad that the settlement has been signed. But we also leave the settlement table with concerns.'' Sprague points to unresolved issues including a large backlog of outstanding marina permits, the need for accurate manatee counts, how the issue of ``incidental take'' under the Endangered Species Act will evolve over the coming years, and the process for finalization of the Manatee Recovery Plan.
MOAA's Executive Director, Jim Frye, also pleased the litigation is resolved, adds that the marina industry is concerned with the Fish and Wildlife Service's proposal for sanctuary enforcement bans and an up to $500 per new slip fee in high risk counties to pay for increased enforcement efforts. Frye states, ``We support increased enforcement of speed zones, but disagree that funding such activity should be on the marina owner. We will encourage alternative funding sources, such as boater registration fees, to offset marina owners' obligations.''
Additionally, the industry believes work should continue to develop a promising audible device for boats which would warn manatees to stay out of harms way and on proposals for electronic tagging of manatees.
Blackistone summarizes, ``We intend to help facilitate this agreement by partnering with Floridians to protect the manatee and guarantee enjoyable boating opportunities for the 800,000 boat owners in the state.''
*/SOURCE: National Marine Manufacturers Association
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Clinton forest rule draws heat
A hiker stands on log steps at the Misty Fiords National Monument in Alaska's Tongass National Forest. The park is part of 58.5 million acres slated for protection from road development and logging. Environmentalists are applauding President Clinton's forest rule, but Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, is among the powerful opponents
MSNBC
01/01/05
Bob Kur MSNBC STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS
http://www.msnbc.com/news/511867.asp
WASHINGTON, Jan. 5 - In the largest change in land status in U.S. history, President Bill Clinton on Friday approved a new regulation that eventually puts nearly 60 million acres of U.S. forest off limits to road construction, logging and oil drilling. Clinton first announced the proposal more than a year ago, giving environmentalists and industry plenty of time to prepare for the court and congressional battles that are sure to follow.
PRESIDENT-elect George W. Bush took note as well. "It is the president's prerogative to do as he sees fit," Bush transition spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters Friday without specifically mentioning the road ban. "We will not comment on some of these last-minute executive orders that he is pursuing."
Still, he added: "We will review each and every one of them. We are taking note of them."
Moreover, Gail Norton, Bush Interior Department nominee and a Denver lawyer, was quick to criticize the rule. "The West was concerned about those decisions, in large part, because there was no consultation with the people whose lives were most affected by land withdrawals by the Clinton administration," she claimed in advance of Friday's announcement.
DATES BACK TO 1999
Under the new regulation, road construction and repairs and timber harvest would be banned in undeveloped areas, unless necessary for environmental reasons or to reduce the risk of wildfires. Commercial timber contracts already in the government pipeline will be allowed to go through. In some cases that could amount to continued logging for another six to seven years at today's harvesting rates.
"Sometimes progress comes by expanding frontiers. But sometimes, it's measured by preserving frontiers for our children," Clinton said. "Today, we preserve the final frontiers of America's forests for our children."
Clinton first announced the plan in October 1999, and the final rule is similar to a draft proposal that the U.S. Forest Service published in November.
Some 58.5 million acres in 38 states, nearly one-third of all national forests, are covered.
Included immediately in the road ban are federal lands like Pagoda Peak in Colorado, the American Rivers' North Fork in California, and the South Quinault Ridge in Washington state. In 2004, Alaska's Tongass National Forest will be added to the list.
CHALLENGING THE RULE
But at least three paths exist for opponents to block or at least sidetrack the rule:
Bush could instruct the U.S. Forest Service to ignore or delay implementation. During the campaign, he vowed to review Clinton administration land policies.
Court battles are certain, given what logging and mining interests have said and the billions of dollars in natural resources locked up by the road ban.
Congress might use a never-invoked 1996 law that allows lawmakers to rescind a regulation within 60 days.
Still, any path would be a long one. Should Bush want to rescind the rule, the Forest Service would have to go through the same lengthy public reviews the Clinton administration went through. Should he try to ignore it, environmentalists would sue. Court battles will include inevitable appeals, and Democratic lawmakers have vowed to fight to protect the rule in Congress. Moreover, courts have ruled devices similar to the 1996 law unconstitutional, including a previous "legislative veto" law under which Congress had sought to block regulations from taking effect.
THOSE IN FAVOR
Environmental groups had eagerly awaited the final rule.
"This is a significant victory," said Tiernan Sittenfeld, spokeswoman for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. "We are glad to see the Clinton administration has responded to the overwhelming public mandate in protecting our national forests."
Echoed Michael Francis of the Wilderness Society: "What we will have is for our children and for our grandchildren a heritage of wild forest lands that will be available for centuries."
Environmentalists, like the Clinton administration, argue that the logging industry won't be hit hard by the rule since the federal lands covered by the ban account for only a small percentage of all timber taken from government-owned land.
THOSE AGAINST
But critics argue that Clinton is simply looking for a presidential legacy. The road ban will increase wildfire risks, cost jobs, hurt local economies, and block oil and natural gas drilling, they argue. Energy companies have already been complaining that they are blocked on too many federal lands in the western United States.
"We've got a crisis here, an energy crisis. So we have to make sure these lands are available for exploration," said Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska.
Murkowski, who chairs the Senate Energy Committee, said the land involved could hold as much as 23 trillion cubic feet of natural gas - roughly the equivalent of one year's supply for the United States.
Utah Republican Rep. James Hansen, who took over as head of the House Resources Committee in the new Congress, wrote a letter of appeal to Bush last week calling some of Clinton's environmental polices "misguided" and "absurd."
Hansen said such policies - including the ban on roads and logging - should be reviewed by the new administration.
Bush, a former Texas oilman, is widely expected to be more sympathetic to business interests, which contend the Clinton administration imposed too many cumbersome, costly and unnecessary environmental regulations.
"Any assistance the new administration can provide in stopping the implementation of these initiatives would be greatly appreciated by many members of Congress, states and citizens," Hansen wrote.
Specifically, Hansen criticized Clinton for creating new national monuments from federal lands without public input and over the objections of local and federal officials.
Hansen told Reuters he had spoken with Vice President-elect Dick Cheney on "how to deal" with the millions of acres of land designated as national monuments by the Clinton administration which the lawmaker said circumvented the public and legislative process. He did not elaborate further on his talks with Cheney.
Hansen also raised concerns about other Clinton environmental regulations, including:
Interior Department rules that restrict recreational snowmobiling in national parks such as Yellowstone.
National Park Service rules that restrict air tours of the national parks, most notably the Grand Canyon.
Minerals Management Service rules that require energy firms to pay federal royalties on their oil discoveries based on market prices, not internal prices posted by the companies.
'OPEN SEASON ON ENVIRONMENT'
Environmental groups pointed to Hansen's letter as a sign that the new Bush administration may implement policies that they say would harm the nation's air, water and land.
"It seems like it's going to be open season on the environment," said Friends of the Earth spokesman Mark Helm, referring to Hansen's letter. The group is worried Bush may issue a moratorium on implementing several long-pending environmental rules the Clinton administration has hurried to finalize in recent weeks.
In addition to the forest road ban to be announced Friday, these include stricter energy efficiency standards for appliances and a new EPA rule to force a 95 percent cut in the amount of sulfur emissions in diesel fuel, an action likely to be challenged in court.
Green groups generally support Bush's nomination of Christine Todd Whitman, a New Jersey Republican, to head the Environmental Protection Agency. But the groups are preparing to fight Bush's appointments of Gale Norton as interior secretary and former Michigan senator Spencer Abraham as energy secretary.
Norton and Abraham have helped lead efforts to allow drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a controversial idea that is the centerpiece of Bush's national energy policy.
The Alaska Wilderness League said on Thursday that Senate approval of Norton and Abraham would leave the wildlife refugee "defenseless against a firing squad of oil drillers."
Abraham also co-sponsored legislation in the Senate to abolish the Energy Department. Norton worked as a lawyer at the Interior Department in the mid-1980s when it was headed by then-controversial Interior secretary James Watt.
Clinton still fighting for legacy
NBC's Bob Kur, MSNBC.com's Miguel Llanos and The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
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Clinton's Forest 'Legacy' Unlikely to Be Reversed by Bush Allies
Although many legislators, particularly in the west, are up in arms over the president's executive order, experts say there's not much they can do about it.
Time Magazine
Friday, January 5, 2001
BY JESSICA REAVES
mailto:jreaves@pathfinder.com
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,93816,00.html
Take that, Gale Norton!
Norton, Bush's controversial nominee for Secretary of the Interior, has a reputation that makes environmentalists and land conservationists very nervous. And while her confirmation to the post is far from certain, President Clinton is already sending her a not-so-subtle message: Keep your hands off public lands.
On Friday, with a nod to the influence of Teddy Roosevelt, John Muir and Al Gore, Clinton signed an executive order protecting one-third of U.S. forestland from logging and road construction. The order, which affects 58 million acres in 39 states, is the most aggressive protection act since Jimmy Carter designated huge swaths of Alaskan wilderness off-limits to developers. Environmental lobbyists, already pleased with Clinton's record of land protection, are thrilled by his latest move. "This is a great moment in history," Ken Rait, director of the Heritage Forest Campaign, told the New York Times. "It's something for which our children will express gratitude."
There are, of course, vehement objections to the far-reaching order, which many see as the president trying to hijack the legacy created by Teddy Roosevelt's use of similar executive orders at the turn of the century. Others accuse the president of last-gasp politicking in an attempt to boost his own profile on way or another - if the floundering Mideast peace talks won't give cement his legacy, critics gripe, perhaps he thinks this move will.
Legislators representing Western states have already begun rumbling about congressional action to overturn Clinton's action - although a reversal would require complex and time-consuming machinations and would undoubtedly run into violent and public opposition from environmental organizations. Press reps for President-elect Bush, who expressed opposition to a similar proposal during this year's campaign, would only say that he will carefully evaluate each of his predecessor's presidential orders. Spokesman Ari Fleischer took this veiled swipe at Clinton on Friday: "We will not comment on some of these last-minute executive orders that he is pursuing."
But according to Craig Allin, professor of political science at Iowa's Cornell College and an expert in public land management, this particular action could remain unscathed at the federal level. "The situation that will confront the new congress and new President, should they choose to fight this order, is difficult. The deed is done, and undoing it would require extensive and complicated processes involving scientific studies and garnering public opinion," says Allin. "You'd have to be pretty committed to that. I'm sure this protection action is something Bush wouldn't have undertaken on his own, but I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't reverse it."
Others who oppose Clinton's actions are not quite as interested in diplomatic equivocation. "Idaho will sue," governor Dirk Kempthorne told the Times, calling the order "an absolutely flawed piece of public policy that has stiffed the states." Kempthorne, along with representatives of the energy and timber industries, claims the order would strangle domestic resources and jobs, and would necessitate costly importation of critical energy and building supplies.
But while there are certainly legal avenues of protest available to Kempthorne, says Allin, the governor is fighting an uphill battle - historically, such arguments don't hold much water. "The state would need to show there were procedural problems in the process - and the process is complicated." The Clinton administration undoubtedly made every effort to safeguard against a legal challenge, adds Allin. "Generally, states and counties who've tried to assert independent authority against this kind of federal government management almost always lose in the courts."
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Forest rules to curb logging, roads
Denver Post
Jan. 5, 2001
By Theo Stein Denver Post Environment Writer
http://www.denverpost.com/news/news0105i.htm
In a historic environmental decision, President Clinton today will ban commercial logging, mining, and oil and gas development on 59 million acres of federal land, including 4.3 million acres in Colorado.
Clinton will sign an order setting tough new rules - including a prohibition on new road construction - on one-third of all federal forests.
The outlines of the proposal had long been known. But the order, coming 15 days before the inauguration of his successor, proved breathtaking to both supporters and opponents.
Environmentalists said the decision would enshrine Clinton alongside Jimmy Carter and Teddy Roosevelt in the pantheon of national conservation heroes. Republicans complained of a last-minute strike by a lame duck against the new administration's pro-logging and energy agenda.
The new rules would virtually end commercial logging and road-building on 58.9 million acres, allowing timber harvests only to protect the habitat of endangered species or for fire suppression. Some planned Colorado timber sales, such as the Sheep Flats on Grand Mesa and the Zephyr sale in the Routt National Forest, may have to be shelved.
Several Western Republicans, including Alaska Sen. Frank Murkowski and Idaho Sen. Larry Craig, already plan hearings to overturn the policy. Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne, also a Republican, has signaled that his state will sue to reverse the decision.
"This is just another example of the Clinton administration bypassing local and state officials," said Dick Wadhams, spokesman for Colorado Gov. Bill Owens. "It's just another heavy-handed federal action."
A spokeswoman for President-elect George W. Bush said only that he would take a hard look at Clinton's executive orders and new rules.
Charles Wilkinson, a widely respected professor of environmental law at the University of Colorado, said opponents have wrongly portrayed the roadless initiative as wildly unpopular in the West.
"That just isn't the case," he said. "There are a great many people out here of all parties . . . who find the national forest lands to be some of the most glorious terrain in the world, and they want to protect it. The idea that this is "a war on the West' is greatly overstated.
"The roadless policy is without question one of the major public lands initiatives in generations," he said. "It's very popular with the American people, and it's unclear whether a new administration can, in real-world terms, overturn it." Others were more blunt.
"If the Bush administration takes this on, it will be a kamikaze mission," said Ted Zukoski, an attorney with the Land and Water Fund of the Rockies. "This is a tremendous victory for open space, pure water, clean air and wildlife," he added. "Colorado is losing 90,000 acres of open space a year, and virtually nothing is being done about it. So it's a breath of fresh air to see the Forest Service moving forward with a proposal to protect some of this open space that we value so tremendously." But critics are not likely to go away without a fight.
"This entire administration has sought to kick the public off public land," said Chris Changery, a spokesman for Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo. "Now they're treating public lands like their office: clean it out, turn out the lights, and lock the door."
An oil industry representative said the new rules would make it difficult for the industry to operate and suggested environmentalists are being shortsighted.
"The environmental position for the last few years has been to expand the use of natural gas but to restrict the exploration and development of sources," said Greg Schnacke of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association. "Today we have a problem supplying enough natural gas. These types of actions by the federal government aren't going to help."
Greg Walcher, director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, predicted the ban will deter future public participation in major federal decisions. Supporters noted the plan generated more than 1.5 million largely supportive public comments, far more than any other proposed federal rule.
The debate promises to become "the first major environmental battle of the 107th Congress," said Mike Anderson a resource analyst with the Wilderness Society.
Even if Bush is unable or unwilling to overturn the rule, his administration will have significant leeway in how the rules are implemented, giving him profound influence in how the 191 million acres of Forest Service land nationwide is managed.
"I think the new administration will review it, and rather than try to repeal it outright, they may try to find ways to modify it at the edges," said Wilkinson. "A lot of the final decision-making gets made at the level of the national forests."
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U.S. forests to close 10,000 miles of roads
Denver Post
Jan. 5, 2001
By Theo Stein Denver Post Environment Writer
mailto:tstein@denverpost.com
http://www.denverpost.com/news/news0105j.htm
More than 10,000 miles of dangerous or unneeded roads may be decommissioned throughout the national forest system under rules quietly released by the Clinton administration Thursday.
Lost in the furor over the president's controversial roadless initiative, which Clinton is expected to formally announce today, the complementary road management policy charts a major shift in the U.S. Forest Service's attitude toward its unruly 380,000-mile road network.
Instead of building new roads, the agency will focus on its $8.4 billion backlog in maintenance and reconstruction for approved roads. The new rules require local forest managers to develop a transportation plan that identifies the smallest possible road network that allows for public access and resource management.
In addition, land managers will be required to wipe out illegal or badly deteriorated roads that bleed sediments into streams or present a public safety hazard. And in a symbolic change, the rules will strike the word "development" from road and trail descriptions to emphasize the new direction.
The rules go into effect in 15 days, but a complete ban on the building of new roads has been in effect since 1999 under the interim rules.
"Our overriding objective is to work with local community and interested people to provide a forest road system that best serves the management objectives and public uses of national forests and grasslands while protecting the health of our watersheds," said Mike Dombeck, the Forest Service chief.
About 95,000 miles of forest service roads serve passenger cars and about 190,000 miles are maintained for high-clearance vehicles. But forest inventories have identified 60,000 miles of unclassified roads, including temporary roads that weren't built to accommodate recreational use. Inventories required by the new rules are expected to reveal thousands of additional roads that aren't on the books.
In Colorado, forest service officials estimate that 600 to 1,000 miles of unofficial, usercreated roads and trails mark the Routt National Forest. Another 500 miles of unapproved routes cross the White River National Forest, they say.
In contrast to the roadless initiative, which produced over 1 million comments, the road maintenance rules elicited 5,900 responses, the vast majority from the Rockies and far western states.
Critics voiced concerns over a lack of public involvement, about the potential for uneven decision-making by local managers, and charged that not building new roads could lead to the expansion of roadless reserves.
Off-road advocacies were unavailable for comment late Thursday, but Sierra Club policy analyst Mike Anderson cheered the announcement.
"While the rule doesn't immediately close roads, or prohibit roads from being built anywhere it clearly does send the signal that the Forest Service needs to begin to reduce its road system significantly, for both environmental and economic reasons," Anderson said. "The focus now will be on fixing the existing road system. They'll be building new roads now only when they really need them."
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Clinton to Add Protection For Forests
Roads, logging limited on 58 million acres
San Francisco Chronicle
Friday, January 5, 2001
Glen Martin, Louis Freedberg, Chronicle Staff Writers
mailto:glenmartin@sfchronicle.com
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/01/05/MN34119.DTL
The final forest plan is the most dramatic in a series of environmental initiatives that Clinton is trying to finish before he leaves office in two weeks. The plan covers more than 58 million acres in 39 states, including 4 million acres in California.
Environmental groups hailed the decision as a fundamental shift in the nation's approach to managing vast tracts of pristine wilderness. "This is a milestone in the history of the national forests," said Jay Watson, western regional director for the Wilderness Society.
But this plan and the Clinton administration's other environmental initiatives face heavy opposition from Western politicians, and a major battle may ensue in Congress if, as expected, GOP members try to overturn them.
During his campaign, President-elect Bush promised to review Clinton administration land-management policies. He aligned himself with the forest plan's critics in Western states who said it would hurt rural communities and the logging, energy, mining and ranching industries.
Bush has not said whether he will try to overturn the action. A Bush spokeswoman, Juleanna Glover, said last night: "We will be taking a look at all of President Clinton's executive orders and his rule-making history after Jan. 20, and that is all I'm going to say."
A senior administration official said the plan fulfills a long-term commitment made by Clinton.
"This is the culmination of a very long, very public process, a result of 600 public meetings and 1 million public comments," the official said. "The president ordered the U.S. Forest Service to develop these rules in October 1999. He pledged to protect these lands, and this action fulfills that commitment."
Under the plan, the official said, 58.5 million acres of roadless woodland will be protected from most kinds of development. Road building will be banned,
and logging, oil and gas drilling, mining and grazing will be severely restricted.
All logging that takes place in the protected areas must be done to "enhance or preserve" forest ecology, the official said. The amount of acreage totals almost one-third of the 192 million acres of land administered by the U. S. Forest Service.
In California, 4.4 million of the 20.7 million acres of national forest will be protected. Affected areas in the state include the Los Padres, Angeles,
Mendocino, Tahoe, Sequoia and Lassen national forests.
The plan also includes large tracts of the Tongass National Forest in Alaska -- a vast temperate rain forest that contains some of the largest old- growth conifer forests left in North America. In earlier drafts of the plan, the Tongass was exempted from controls.
The plan will go into effect immediately, though it is expected that current logging contracts will be honored; in the Tongass, logging may continue for more than five years, according to administration sources.
Watson, the Wilderness Society official, said he could live with the temporary logging in the Tongass "because (the plan) provides protection to all the pristine areas left in the national forests. It is a tectonic shift in policy."
Watson said the plan will have far-reaching effects in California. "It will protect the last and best wildlife habitat left in the state," he said. "It will ensure that the naturally intact land that still exists in California on the national forests remains intact."
But forestry industry representatives excoriated the plan, claiming it will ultimately harm rather than help national forests.
"It was made in the 11th hour by an administration that has objectives that are not in the interests of either the forests or the people who use the forests," said David A. Bischel, president of the California Forestry Association, which represents the wood products industry.
"The greatest threat facing our forests today is catastrophic wildfire," Bischel said. "We lost 7 million acres of forestland to wildfire this year alone. And this plan does nothing to address that threat."
Roads, said Bischel, allow firefighters to combat wildfire and also provide access for "fuel reduction" programs that reduce fire danger by burning off accumulated litter and thinning closely spaced trees.
Bischel cited the Quincy Library Group plan, a forestry initiative developed by small Sierra communities that emphasizes selective logging to reduce fire danger, as a better approach. The Quincy plan is championed by several prominent lawmakers, including California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat.
The Quincy plan "takes local input into account, and local input is what's missing from the (Clinton) plan," said Bischel.
Although Clinton's roadless plan is opposed by Bush, Watson said there isn't much Bush can do to stop it.
"The incoming administration can't unilaterally overturn this policy," Watson said. "They'd have to go through an entirely new environmental review process, and that would take years."
Congress, however, is another matter. "They could pass a law setting the policy aside," said Watson.
The forest plan is just the latest last-minute environmental initiative to anger Western Republicans. Another was Clinton's recent declaration of millions of acres of federal land in the West as protected national monuments.
In a letter sent last week to Bush and Vice President-elect Dick Cheney, Rep. Jim Hansen, R-Utah, wrote that the plan is "one of the most egregious abuses by the Clinton administration," and he urged the new administration to help overturn it.
Clinton administration officials scoffed at such contentions.
One, referring to past GOP attempts to undermine environmental protections, said it was "somewhat ironic to hear such claims from the very interests who have worked so hard . . . to sneak in environmental riders into appropriations bills that would erode existing protections without any public debate or scrutiny whatsoever."
Watson said he expects an acrimonious fight in Congress over the plan.
"It's a battle we intend to win," Watson said.
Chronicle news services contributed to this report. / E-mail Glen Martin at glenmartin@sfchronicle.com and Louis Freedberg at lfreedberg@sfchronicle.com.
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Clinton moves to protect forests
InfoBeat News
Afternoon Edition - 1/5/2001
By H. JOSEF HEBERT
Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405686884
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Clinton is declaring nearly a third of the country's federal forest land off limits to most logging, but some Republicans already are urging President-elect Bush to scuttle the plan.
The president, who was announcing the massive forest protection plan Friday, is determined to establish a legacy for protecting public lands as he completes the final weeks of his presidency.
In recent months he has proclaimed a number of new national monuments to further protect federal lands and is expected to designate several more before leaving office Jan. 20. But his forest protection rules, covering nearly 60 million acres of roadless forest lands in 38 states, have been even more controversial.
``The president pledged more than a year ago to protect these places, and this action fulfills that commitment,'' White House spokesman Elliott Diringer said. ``It restores balance to our national forests and ensures strong protection of these extraordinary lands for future generations.''
But the forest plan, largely intact from a proposal unveiled in November, has come under intense attack from mostly Republican Western lawmakers, and from energy, timber and mining industries as being too restrictive.
Last week, Rep. Jim Hansen, R-Utah, the new chairman of the House Resources Committee, urged Bush to work with Congress to roll back the expected forest regulation.
In a letter to Bush and Vice President-elect Dick Cheney, Hansen called the ban on road building and the logging restrictions ``one of the most egregious abuses by the Clinton administration.''
Hansen also outlined other Clinton-era environmental actions that ought to be overturned _ from banning snowmobiles in parks to the president's string of monument designations.
Under the forest plan, the Forest Service will ban road building in 58.5 million acres of federal forests where no roads currently exist, including 9.3 million acres in the Tongass National Forest in Alaska.
The regulations also will limit future logging in those areas to only activities that ``restore and preserve'' the forest, although commercial timber contracts already in the government pipeline will be allowed to go through. In some cases that could amount to continued logging for another six to seven years at today's harvesting rates, officials acknowledged.
Some environmentalists had wanted the timber sales stopped immediately. Still, environmentalists applauded Clinton's decision, while at the same time voicing concern that Bush may blunt its implementation or work with its opponents in Congress to reverse it.
Any efforts to overturn it ``would come with a great deal of political liability for Bush. This has huge public support,'' maintained Kenneth Rait of the Heritage Forest Campaign, an Oregon-based environmental group.
Despite an outcry from some Western lawmakers, Clinton has all along been determined to complete the forest plan before he leaves office. One senior adviser characterized it as largely a question of leaving an environmental legacy.
The vast majority of roadless federal forests are in the West, including parts of Idaho's Bitterroot range and Alaska's Tongass, viewed by environmentalists as North America's rain forest. Smaller sections are scattered across the country from Florida's Apalachicola National Forest and Virginia's George Washington National Forest to New Hampshire's White Mountains.
Clinton advisers have argued that the impact on the timber industry would be minimal because the roadless areas _ although 31 percent of all federal forests _ account for only a small percentage of all timber taken from government-owned land.
Still, Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, called the plan ``fatally flawed'' and predicted it likely will be overturned by the courts. He has complained that the road-building restrictions would prevent the development of large reserves of natural gas, especially in the intermountain West. Timber, mining and energy industries already have threatened lawsuits against the forest plan.
Another of the plan's most vocal critics, Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, has promised ``to leave no stone unturned'' to find a way to block the Clinton regulation. Several senators have said they will use a never-been-invoked 1996 law that allows Congress to rescind a regulation within 60 days.
But rescinding the regulation may not be easy.
A coalition of Democrats and moderate Republicans increasingly has opposed road-building in federal forests, said Rep. George Miller, D-Calif. As to those who want to overturn Clinton's plan, ``they better bring their lunch to that fight'' because it will be intense, said Miller.
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Road Ban Set for One-Third of U.S. Forests
New York Times
January 5, 2001
By DOUGLAS JEHL
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/05/politics/05ROAD.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON, Jan. 4 - In the biggest land conservation act in decades, President Clinton will approve an order on Friday putting nearly a third of the national forest land permanently off limits to road building and logging.
The move, covering more than 58 million acres in 39 states, is to be cast by the White House as a capstone in the president's efforts to protect public lands from development. It would effectively prohibit not only commercial logging but also oil and gas development across an area larger than the nation's current national parks. And while not specifically banned, off-road vehicle activity would probably be severely limited in the roadless areas because of their inaccessibility.
The president's order, a strengthened version of an October 1999 administration proposal, is likely to set off furious challenges from Western states and Republican lawmakers who have called the plan hasty and irresponsible.
Among those who plan to head almost immediately to federal court to try to block the sweeping effort is the governor of Idaho, who with other Westerners has denounced the action as an unwise intrusion into land-use decisions better made at a local level.
In the presidential campaign, President-elect George W. Bush aligned himself with the plan's critics, on the ground that it paid too little heed to Western concerns about the impact on the local timber industries and other enterprises.
But Mr. Bush has not said whether he will seek to overturn the action, a step that could be accomplished only through cumbersome new rule-making proceedings or action by Congress.
A Bush spokeswoman, Juleanna Glover Weiss, said tonight, "We will be taking a look at all of President Clinton's executive orders and his rule-making history after Jan. 20, and that is all I'm going to say."
Mr. Clinton is expected to portray the forest-protection plan as a bold answer to a pressing national need "to protect all this before it's too late."
Not since the presidency of Jimmy Carter, when much of Alaska was designated as wilderness area, has so much federal land been set aside for additional safeguards. Environmentalists hailed the order as rivaling only the steps taken by President Theodore Roosevelt in laying the foundation for today's national forest system.
"This is a great moment in history, and it is something for which our children will express gratitude," said Ken Rait, who as director of the Heritage Forests Campaign was a leader among those lobbying the administration for the move.
In putting the new protections in place, Mr. Clinton chose to bypass Congress, because of stiff opposition there, and to rely instead on administrative powers that allow considerable latitude in drafting federal rules. But his opponents, led by Gov. Dirk Kempthorne of Idaho, said they intended to argue in their legal challenge that the process was both flawed and politically driven and that it should be reversed.
"Idaho will sue," Governor Kempthorne said in a telephone interview tonight. He called the action an example of "absolutely flawed public policy that has stiffed the states."
A top aide to Senator Larry Craig, Republican of Idaho, said tonight that Congressional Republicans had not decided whether to try to overturn the new rule, but he predicted that the legal fight would succeed.
"This is the Clinton administration trying to beat the clock," the aide said, "and its credibility is going to suffer when it comes to judicial review."
A previous effort to grant permanent protection to roadless areas in the national forests was blocked by court order, during the Carter administration, more than 20 years ago, on the ground that the rule-making process did not meet the standards of federal law. But a senior administration official who outlined Mr. Clinton's plan in a telephone interview today said he was confident that the Clinton administration's much more painstaking effort would withstand any legal or legislative challenge.
"This is very much in the national interest, and the public overwhelmingly supports it," the official said, noting that the vast majority of the more than 1.5 million people who expressed their views to the administration during a public comment period last spring favored the plan to increase forest protection.
With its unveiling in the final three months of Mr. Clinton's presidency, the road ban joins a lengthening list of last-minute White House rule-making in the environmental arena that has been shaped to withstand any challenge by Mr. Bush. But proponents of the plan said they remained concerned that even if the new president and Congress did not mount a head-on challenge, they might still undermine the rules by choosing not to enforce them.
"This is truly a landmark," said Nathaniel Lawrence, a senior lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council. "But I think the other shoe has yet to drop in terms of whether Congress heeds the popularity of this, and also whether the incoming Bush administration tries to gut it through lax administration and creative implementation."
Among the loudest opponents of the plan have been representatives of the timber and energy industries, who argue that it would deny them access to resources that the nation might otherwise need to import. At a time when natural gas shortages have sent prices soaring, industry has argued that large gas reservoirs might lie beneath roadless area and that it would be particularly unwise to do anything that might limit future supplies. But administration officials said their own studies found that no more than 2 percent of the nation's untapped natural gas reserves were in those national forest areas that would be off limits to roads. The final plan approved by Mr. Clinton will be put into law in the form of a final rule to be signed by Dan Glickman, who as agriculture secretary oversees the national forests. The setting for the announcement will be the National Arboretum in Washington, and those who will attend include Mike Dombeck, who as the Forest Service chief was among the main architects of the plan.
The forest-protection plan covers all of the remaining national forest land that has not already either been developed or granted permanent protection as a wilderness area.
The move goes well beyond a draft blueprint laid out by the administration last spring, which would have covered about 40 million acres of forest land, and it is even more restrictive than a final Forest Service plan released in November. The Tongass National Forest in Alaska, the nation's largest and one that in some versions would have been exempted from the roadbuilding ban, is included in the final plan, although timber sales already concluded will be honored.
In general, under the plan, the only logging permitted in the roadless areas would be for habitat restoration and fire prevention. Even then, a senior administration official said, the new rules make clear that only small trees - the ones most prone to fire and least valuable - could be cut.
"We want to make sure that this doesn't become a loophole for future logging," the official said.
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Republicans, Trade Groups Balk at Road Ban in Forests
Yahoo News
Politics News
Friday January 5 6:26 PM ET
By Christopher Doering
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010105/pl/environment_forest_dc_3.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Western lawmakers and businesses vowed on Friday to go to court to overturn President Clinton (news - web sites)'s ban on road construction and timber harvesting in vast stretches of national forests.
The administration's new restrictions, announced just 15 days before Clinton leaves office, were expected to trigger a lengthy battle over the future of nearly 60 million acres of pristine woodlands viewed as rich in oil and lumber by business interests.
The final plan issued by the U.S. Forest Service would restrict road construction and repairs and the removal of natural resources such as oil and lumber in 58.5 million acres of national forests, unless it was necessary for environmental reasons or to reduce the risk of wildfires.
``The Forest Service has misled not only its own agency, but misled the public'' in releasing this study, Sen. Frank Murkowski, an Alaskan Republican whose state would be affected by the proposed regulation, told reporters on Friday.
``In light of the numerous, legal violations committed in the development of the rule, I am quite confident that it will be overturned by the court,'' he added.
Murkowski, who heads the Senate Energy committee, also opposes closing the land to development because the forestland could hold as much as 23 trillion cubic feet of natural gas -- roughly the equivalent of one year's supply for the United States.
The Forest Service could soon find itself again in federal court.
Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne, a Republican, was also expected to file a federal lawsuit this year. A lawsuit initially brought by Kempthorne was dismissed last spring because the Forest Service had not yet issued its study.
Critics argue the Forest Service's process was flawed because it did not give enough time and information to the public to comment on its findings.
Meanwhile, environmental groups praised the announcement as a victory to preserve unspoiled forests for future generations. The roadless areas will protect endangered species and cap the environment from ``irreversible'' damage, they say.
``This decision does no more than maintain the roadless quality of those forests that are not already being extensively logged and is expected to have a minimal impact of the timbering industry,'' Mark Van Putten, president of the National Wildlife Federation said in a statement.
But timber groups argued that prohibiting harvesting would result in uncontrollable forest growth and could result in more wildfires, hurt local economies and cost jobs.
They argue that Clinton has succumbed to pressure from environmentalists without analyzing the potential risks to the unharvested forest land.
Clinton's ``objective is to satisfy radical environmentalists rather than taking the scientific approach to managing one of the greatest natural resources in this nation,'' said Paul Houghland, executive manager for the National Hardwood Association, which represents more than 1,700 producers and users of hardwood lumber.
``We would support (legal) action and working with Congress to make certain those lands stay open,'' he added.
The American Forest & Paper Association, which represents 250 timber companies in the United States, called Clinton's order ``disastrous.''
``Any incoming administration should look at these kinds of midnight decisions, and we hope the Bush administration reverses it,'' said Michael Klein, a spokesman for the forest and paper group.
The Forest Service decision to restrict the wilderness areas came after more than 600 public meetings throughout the nation. The agency also collected nearly 1.6 million letters and faxes from the public, the largest outpouring of comments on a federal environmental measure.
George Frampton, chairman of the White House Council, said the rule signed on Friday would take effect in 60 days.
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Clinton's 'Environmental Legacy' Leaves Behind Legacy of Energy Problems According to the National Mining Association
Roadless Proposal Denies Access to Known Energy Resources
Yahoo News
Friday January 5, 4:40 pm Eastern Time
Press Release
National Mining Association
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/010105/dc_nma_cli.html
WASHINGTON, Jan. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- In a rush to implement yet another midnight regulation, the Clinton administration is turning a cold shoulder to our nation's impending energy crisis, while destroying the jobs and the economies that support America's rural western communities. The administration's roadless proposal calls for nearly a third of all the forest land owned by the federal government to be designated ``off limits'' to road building, economic development and public access.
``At a time when America needs it most, this administration is denying access to billions of tons of low-sulfur coal and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas,'' said NMA President and Chief Executive Officer Jack N. Gerard. ``The American people will pay a huge a price for this Administration's so-called 'environmental legacy'.''
The measure reportedly will prohibit recovery of known high-quality coal reserves in Colorado and Utah. The agency's own Environmental Impact Statement reports that this rule could cause a shortage of coal over the next 20-30 years. Currently, over 57 percent of America's electricity is generated from coal.
``The president is making decisions that will further exacerbate our energy shortages,'' said Gerard. ``This ill-conceived proposal brings to mind the 1996 creation of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah, where 62 billion tons of high-quality coal reserves could have generated as much as $1.1 billion in state revenue.''
The NMA, along with other industry groups, the Western Governors' Association, and members of Congress, maintains that roadless rule exceeds all legal authority. ``Unfortunately, the administration bowed down to special- interest environmental groups and wrote this rule behind closed doors,'' said Gerard.
The latest roadless plan, which will affect 38 states, denies the public access to nearly 59 million acres of its land -- the largest withdrawal directive in history.
``Despite the countless environmental laws already in place, this directive prohibits recovery of energy resources in these areas and will shut down many industry operations, costing America hundreds of million of dollars in economic benefit and thousands of high-paying jobs,'' explained Gerard. According to the Small Business Administration, the potential economic impact on small businesses and small communities could be ``devastating.''
The NMA points out that the impacts from this new rule on the mining industry will be detrimental:
* millions of tons of low sulfur coal will be inaccessible; * existing coal operations will be forced to shut-down, resulting in a 40 percent reduction in coal production in Colorado and Utah alone; * hundreds of millions dollars in mining company payroll, taxes, and reclamation fees will be lost; * over 2.5 billion tons of phosphate reserves will be in accessible; * exploration for and development of gold, silver, copper and other minerals will be prohibited, forcing America to import these necessary minerals from overseas.
``The mining industry is deeply committed to preserving our environment and feels the current environmental laws in place fulfill that purpose,'' said Gerard. ``But the administration broke every rule in the book with this land-grab, which denies access to public lands for recreation, wildfire prevention, insect and forest disease control, and necessary, responsible resource management and development such as mining.''
The U.S. mining industry produces coal, metals, building materials, and many other essential minerals that define the daily lives of 267 million Americans. The mining industry generates over $500 billion in total economic benefit each year and helps to sustain nearly 5 million U.S. jobs.
SOURCE: National Mining Association
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Babbitt Advises Clinton on Refuge
Yahoo News
Friday January 5 3:01 AM ET
By H. JOSEF HEBERT, Associated Press Writer
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010105/pl/arctic_refuge_2.html
WASHINGTON (AP) - Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt says declaring the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge a national monument to keep away oil developers would be a ``meaningless gesture'' and he has urged President Clinton (news - web sites) against doing so.
The protection of the arctic refuge in far northeastern Alaska has gained renewed urgency among environmentalists since President-elect Bush has targeted oil development in the refuge as a central part of his long-term energy plan.
Environmental groups have been lobbying the White House to try to get Clinton to declare the refuge a national monument, arguing that would head off attempts by Congress to open the refuge's coastal plain to oil and gas drilling.
But Babbitt in an interview Thursday with The Associated Press said he has recommended to the president that no such designation be considered for the arctic refuge, known commonly as ANWR.
``Monument designation doesn't add anything, absolutely nothing,'' said Babbitt during a conversation in his Interior Department office. ``It's a meaningless gesture. It adds no protection that isn't already there.''
Babbitt emphasized that he is ``passionately opposed to drilling'' in the refuge which he frequently has compared to the African Serengeti because of its abundance of migrating birds, polar bears, musk oxen, porcupine caribou, grizzly bears and other wildlife.
The 1.5 mile long coastal plain of the refuge also is believed to have large oil reserves and Bush has said repeatedly that the oil can be developed while protecting the environment. Environmentalists, as well as Babbitt, dispute that.
Babbitt's successor at Interior, former Colorado Attorney General Gale Norton, has made clear her support for drilling in the refuge as has Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) and incoming Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham.
Last November, about 250 scientists urged Clinton to impose some additional safeguards to prevent drilling in the refuge. On Thursday, the Alaska Wilderness League said Bush's selection of Norton and Abraham ``leaves the refuge defenseless against a firing squad of oil drillers.''
But Babbitt said ANWR already is protected because it would require congressional action to open the refuge to oil development and that any such move would be strongly contested.
``We'll fight it. I guarantee you,'' he said.
Asked if a monument designation might make it more difficult for Congress to open the refuge to development, Babbitt said, ``No. I don't think so.''
Using the authority of the 1906 Antiquities Act, Clinton by executive order has created a dozen federal monuments this year, almost all of them on Babbitt's recommendation. Several years ago he angered Utah's governor and its congressmen by unilaterally creating the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah.
Monument designation provides increased protection against development. In the case of ANWR such protection already is written into law.
Babbitt said using the Antiquities Act to try to protect the Arctic refuge would be a mistake and could jeopardize the 1906 law itself.
``It raises the stakes,'' said Babbitt. ``It raises the issue of misuse of the act, or at least inappropriate use of the act.''
Babbitt said he has had ``a number of discussions'' with the president on the this subject and recommended against any monument designation for the refuge. The White House also on several occasions has said such a move might be ``counterproductive.''
Clinton in a recent interview on the Discovery Channel also expressed skepticism - though not ruling it out altogether - that such a tactic would be beneficial.
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NCPA Seeks to Join Lawsuit Challenging Secretary Babbitt's Trinity River Decision
Yahoo News
Friday January 5, 7:49 pm Eastern Time
Press Release
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/010105/ca_no_cali.html
SACRAMENTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 5, 2001--The Northern California Power Agency (NCPA) today asked to join a lawsuit filed in response to the Department of the Interior's recently announced ``Record of Decision'' (ROD) on Mainstem Trinity River Flows. The ROD calls for a significant change in the amount of water released down the Sacramento and Trinity Rivers. NCPA, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District and San Luis and Delta/Mendota Water Authorities seek to intervene in the lawsuit originally filed in federal court in Fresno by the Westlands Water District.
``We contacted the Department of Interior on numerous occasions prior to the Secretary's decision to express our concerns and to explain our proposal to restore the fisheries without sacrificing the other, crucial resource interests, but they simply weren't interested in listening,'' said John Fistolera, a spokesperson for the NCPA. ``However, due to the seriousness of these concerns, we felt it necessary to raise them again. And at this late date, a lawsuit appeared to be our only recourse.''
The lawsuit addresses a number of issues related to the ROD, not the least of which is its potentially ``devastating'' affect on California's current electric reliability crisis.
``The ROD could eliminate as much as 324 megawatts of clean, hydro-electric generation -- enough to power 324,000 homes -- during one of California's most serious electric shortages,'' said Fistolera. ``And this isn't just bad for Northern California -- it jeopardizes system reliability throughout the western United States.''
The lawsuit also alleges that the ROD was based on ``bad science'' -- including conclusions based on false assumptions, ambiguous objectives and the failure to consider a number of reasonable, non-flow based alternatives.
``Our hope in joining this lawsuit is to ensure that all sides have the opportunity to be heard and considered on this important issue -- before the federal government implements a decision that Californians will soon regret,'' said Fistolera.
Contact:
Northern California Power Agency (NCPA) John Fistolera, 916/213-6945
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Too Hot to Handle
New York Times
January 5, 2001
By BILL McKIBBEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/05/opinion/05MCKI.html
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Bill Clinton came into office pledging to take action against global warming. His vice president was the world's most knowledgeable politician on the subject. The two served in a time of unparalleled prosperity. But Mr. Clinton and Al Gore leave having accomplished nothing, simply because global warming was too politically painful to address head-on. The coda to their failure was last month's bumbling of the Kyoto Accord talks, when America's unwillingness to cut fuel use meaningfully drove the rest of the world away from the bargaining table.
Now George W. Bush takes office. His party platform calls for more research into the issue; he has waffled on it. His choice for energy secretary, Spencer Abraham, is a Michigan senator who worked hard to protect Detroit from stricter fuel-efficiency standards. And his nominee for chief of the Environmental Protection Agency, Gov. Christie Whitman of New Jersey, muddled the science of climate change with the chemistry of the ozone hole in an interview last week. (They are separate problems; the second was addressed by the Reagan administration's ending of chlorofluorocarbon production.)
We environmentalists have somehow failed to communicate that no more pressing danger faces the planet than global warming. And so perhaps it makes sense to offer just the briefest of primers, one more stab at saying what is happening in the atmosphere of our planet.
In the simplest terms, the sky is filling with carbon dioxide. As we burn fossil fuels, we emit this gas; it is not pollution in the normal sense since it doesn't choke us or make us sick. But its molecular structure traps heat near the planet that would otherwise radiate out to space. The latest scientific consensus, leaked from the International Panel on Climate Change last fall, is that Earth will heat by three to six degrees Fahrenheit in this century, making it far warmer than at any point in human history. The panel's worst-case projection is a jump of 11 degrees, taking us deep into the realm of science fiction. Both projections are much higher than the 1995 numbers.
Even the lower projection carries ominous implications for anyone living near sea level, for anyone in the path of storms and for great swaths of the rest of creation. We are talking about the de-creation of the sweet planet we were born onto.
The only way to slow the warming is to reduce our use of fossil fuel - especially we Americans, who use five times more per capita than the average earthling. The American negotiators who undermined the Kyoto treaty talks were big on the idea of responding to the warming by planting trees. Trees do absorb carbon dioxide, but not enough. And the latest research makes it plain that as forests heat up, too, and organic decay accelerates, these supposed "carbon sinks" will turn into carbon sources. A late fall article in the journal Nature estimated that by the century's end carbon pouring from forests could add two degrees to the panel's global warming totals.
Yet no American politician can bear to do anything to restrict our piggish use of coal and gas and oil - not to raise energy prices or legislate against the plague of gas-guzzling SUV's. During the campaign, Mr. Gore even demanded that the Strategic Petroleum Reserve be opened to keep fuel prices down.
No wonder Americans produce 12 percent more carbon dioxide annually than they did when Mr. Clinton took office, according to Energy Department figures. Figures released in October by the department show that Americans used 1.3 percent more fossil fuel in 1999 than in 1998. So much for "voluntary measures."
One plausible reading of the new scientific data is that we've waited too long already. Ice is melting in the Arctic and in our glaciers at a galloping pace. Coral reefs are bleaching to extinction in warmer water. We may have set in motion forces deeper than we may be able to deal with. So environmentalists have no choice but to press harder - to make the case that this is the most morally compelling issue of our time. Because even if we swallow our fear to approach the problem optimistically, one thing is certain. We don't have another decade or another administration to waste.
Bill McKibben is a fellow at Harvard's Center for the Study of Values in Public Life and author of ``Long Distance: A Year of Living Strenuously.''
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Terrific News in Mexico City: Air Is Sometimes Breathable
New York Times
January 5, 2001
By TIM WEINER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/05/world/05MEXI.html?pagewanted=all
MEXICO CITY, Jan. 4 - The atmosphere is infamous here. For decades it has been a danger to the millions inhaling it. But now something new is in the air.
It seems to be getting fresher - or at least less foul. This would be quite a change: in 1992, the United Nations called Mexico City's air the world's worst.
"That's no longer true," said Dr. Mario J. Molina, a Mexico City native leading the most intensive study of the problem yet undertaken. Dr. Molina, a chemistry professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1995 for showing 20 years earlier that chlorofluorocarbons, then widely used in aerosols, refrigerators and air conditioners, were depleting the ozone layer.
"There are data that suggest that the air may be improving," said Dr. Molina. Indeed, there has been no smog alert for 15 months. Lead, carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide in the air are down.
Other pollution levels are still often unacceptably high, but on many days, especially weekends, the air is sometimes clear enough to breathe with pleasure - this in a place where it contributed to the deaths of hundreds of people in one terrible week four years ago.
"You would have expected pollution levels to increase if you look at the increased number of cars, people and economic activity in the past three years," Dr. Molina said.
They have not. While fair winds and cleansing rains may take some credit, so do increasingly stringent environmental rules, which call for cleaner fuels, catalytic converters on cars, emissions tests and rules on industry.
The air has tested the limits of human endurance. The air quality index runs from zero to 500, zero representing the Garden of Eden, and 300 or more representing hell on earth. Below 100 is officially satisfactory, 101 to 200 is unsatisfactory, and anything higher is dangerous - and a potential threat to life. In the mid-1990's, it exceeded 100 about 9 days out of 10; simply breathing was like smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. Sometimes it went off the charts: once, in 1996, it spiked at 394. There are good days and bad days, and the pollution level still often exceeds 100. But on Wednesday, in the heart of Mexico City, it peaked at 69, with a low of 9. Levels of sulfur dioxode, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and particulates were all 40 or less. And winter is normally the worst time of year for air pollution.
Mexico City still rates as one of the planet's more toxic places, along with Beijing, New Delhi, Jakarta, Bangkok, Tehran and other mega cities with too many people, too many cars, too many polluting industries and too few coordinated efforts to clear the air.
This is where Dr. Molina and his wife, Dr. Luisa T. Molina, a research scientist at M.I.T., come in. They are leading the Mexico City Case Study, part of a program at M.I.T. for exploring the problems of megacities in the developing world. With close to $2 million from M.I.T., the National Science Foundation and the Mexican government, they have brought together scores of government officials, scientists, engineers, economists and other experts to figure out how to cut the smog.
No mad scientist could think up a better machine for creating air pollution than this capital of nearly 20 million people. It sits in a bowl 7,400 feet above sea level, ringed by mountains, under a tropical sun - a petri dish for brewing and trapping bad air. The miasma spews from three million cars, buses and trucks, and from thousands of dirty companies and dump sites. They fill the air with toxic chemicals and tiny particles of everything from heavy metals to human waste.
Mexico's leaders spent most of the 1970's and 1980's ignoring the pollution. The Institutional Revolutionary Party, which until last year had enjoyed a monopoly on power for decades, had little incentive to be accountable to the public, to listen to scientists or to press for changes, especially ones that could thwart economic development.
This attitude filtered down to the public in the form of fatalism, a disbelief that anything but a strong wind could clear the air. Pemex, the national oil company, which produces much of Mexico's gasoline, also spent years "sort of denying the problem," Mario Molina said. "There were statements that there was no pollution problem."
Not until 1995 did federal health authorities state clearly that the air was unhealthy. That year, the World Bank financed a study suggesting that high ozone levels alone were responsible for as many as 1,000 premature deaths and 35,000 hospitalizations for respiratory diseases each year in Mexico City. Those numbers appeared conservative when, in November 1996, a five-day smog emergency sent 400,000 people to hospitals and contributed to the deaths of 300 or more, according to city officials.
So what has gone right?
The gasoline is cleaner than it was a few years ago. Pemex took the lead out, upgraded its refineries, and since 1996 has quadrupled its gas imports from the United States. That cleaner fuel from the United States accounts for as much as a quarter of the gasoline burned in Mexico today.
New cars have catalytic converters, which reduce carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxide. Some large industries have become cleaner or moved away from Mexico City. A hulking oil refinery within the city limits was closed in the face of political pressure from labor unions.
F. Sherwood Rowland, one of two other scientists who shared the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Dr. Molina, demonstrated that same year that leaks of liquefied petroleum gas, or L.P.G., used for cooking and heating in almost every home in Mexico City, were a major factor in the poisoning of the air.
People burn more than two million tons of L.P.G. a year in Mexico City - 70,000 barrels a day. Pemex reformulated the bottled fuel, removing butylene, a volatile and environmentally harmful ingredient, but the gas still leaks from millions of poorly maintained pipes and tubes, and it represents perhaps 15 percent of the air pollution in Mexico City, the Molinas say.
Then in 1997 the first popularly elected municipal government took power in Mexico City. Its left-of-center leaders were more amenable to stiffer environmental regulations, the Molinas say.
The Mexico City study, which will continue for another two years, suggests that "new technology exists that is clean enough to solve the problem to a significant extent," Mario Molina said. "But it's expensive. The main one would be clean cars, buses, trucks - I'm just talking about plain standard internal combustion engines. Then, the next set of changes are harder: repairing leaks of L.P.G. in peoples' homes, replacing pilot lights, the use of solvents in small industries and homes. For industries, you need clean furnaces, to remove nitrogen oxide and other pollutants."
Things had gotten so bad in Mexico City that some scientists seriously proposed blowing a hole in the mountains on one side of the capital and setting up giant fans on the other to push away the smog. Dr. Molina suggests that with clear-air regulations - and cleaner government to enforce them - such desperate measures may not be necessary.
Thirty years ago, the air in Los Angeles was worse than it is in Mexico City today, Dr. Molina says. "Mexico City's air can improve as much as Los Angeles's did, and in a shorter time," he said. "That's a goal that can be achieved."
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Cabinet Selections Over, Transition Now Focuses on Those Important No. 2's
New York Times
January 5, 2001
By ERIC SCHMITT
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/05/politics/05DEPU.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON, Jan. 4 - Secretary of State-designate Colin L. Powell wants a deputy who will manage the diplomatic bureaucracy but will leave policy-making largely to him.
Secretary of Treasury-designate Paul H. O'Neill is a seasoned corporate executive but needs a top understudy with Wall Street experience.
Secretary of Defense-designate Donald H. Rumsfeld seeks someone to manage the daily workings of the Pentagon's $309 billion operation.
Now that President-elect George W. Bush has picked his cabinet, the Bush team is focused on the people who will run the departments day to day: the deputies and their subordinates.
In interviews today, Vice President-elect Dick Cheney and Clay Johnson, the top two Bush transition officials, said that cabinet members would play a major role in the selection of their deputies and other top aides - like spokesmen, general counsel and congressional liaison.
But they also described the process of making sub-cabinet appointments as a joint effort with Bush officials, mixing and matching personnel to get the right blend of personal chemistry, expertise, diversity and loyalty to form a team that can win approval from the Senate. More than 1,500 presidential appointees require Senate confirmation.
"We're going to do this with each other, not to each other," said Mr. Johnson, who was Mr. Bush's chief of staff when he was governor of Texas.
Bush officials expressed confidence that most cabinet choices would be sworn in on or shortly after Inauguration Day. But the pace of filling the top jobs of the federal bureaucracy will vary from agency to agency in the next two to three weeks.
"Rumsfeld, Powell, Paul O`Neill, these are people who know the ropes," Mr. Cheney said. "They've been around before and can hit the ground running. They know what they need, and they're out there getting it."
The names in play for No. 2 jobs include Paul D. Wolfowitz and Sean O'Keefe, two former Pentagon officials, at the Department of Defense; Robert B. Zoellick, a former State and Treasury department official, and William McDonough, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, at Treasury; and Edward P. Djerejian, a former ambassador to Syria and Israel, at State.
Not surprisingly, Mr. Bush is looking at some possible appointees who share his Texas roots. A leading candidate for Secretary of the Navy, for example, is Roger Staubach, the former Dallas Cowboys quarterback who graduated from Annapolis and served four years in the Navy..
While campaign contributions will get a candidate noticed, they will not guarantee a job in the Bush administration, Mr. Cheney said.
"If someone's been a major supporter - whether as a volunteer, state chairman, or fund-raiser - those are all considerations," he said. "It doesn't mean they're going to get a job, but it certainly is an indication of their interest and commitment to the success of the enterprise."
Mr. Cheney played a major role in selecting the cabinet, and will continue to have a say in the remaining significant unfilled positions, like the director of central intelligence and the United States ambassador to the United Nations. Mr. Cheney joined a conference call among top Bush aides this afternoon to discuss filling a vacancy at the Securities and Exchange Commission.
But the task of filling the sub- cabinet will fall largely to Mr. Johnson, who described the selection process this way:
"It's identifying what kind of person we are looking for; what's the universe of names to consider for each position; and who best matches up to the specifications and who best fits with everyone else, personality- wise and style-wise.
"It's not a beauty contest, it's not who writes the most letters or gave the most money," he added. "We get concurrence with the cabinet secretaries on those jobs, and then start reviewing with them their suggestions and our suggestions."
The selection for a department's top job can make all the difference in the choice of deputies. When Daniel R. Coats, the former senator of Indiana, appeared to be the front-runner to become secretary of defense, Richard Armitage, a former State Department official, seemed to have a lock on the No. 2 job.
But Mr. Rumsfeld's selection hurt the chances of Mr. Armitage, who is a friend of General Powell. While it's nothing personal, Republican officials said, Mr. Rumsfeld would probably want to pick someone seen as his choice.
Friends said that Mr. Armitage would not likely take a top job at State because he did not want to risk letting work interfere with his friendship with General Powell. One person close to the transition said that the State Department deputy would be "someone the building will be very comfortable with," suggesting a former foreign service officer like Mr. Djerejian.
Mr. Bush also has more than 60 vacancies in the federal courts awaiting him when he takes office. Bush transition people, starting to contemplate these vacancies, are referring to a remarkable document: the list of judicial candidates left without a confirmation at the end of the last Bush administration.
When President George Bush left office in January 1993, about 50 of his nominees before the Senate Judiciary Committee were left without hope of getting confirmed to the bench. Now they might get another chance.
Such candidates include John Roberts, who worked in the office of solicitor general in the Bush administration and had been nominated for the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, and Maureen Mahoney, a lawyer who had been nominated for a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Va.
The names of several former and current senior environmental officials from big states are circulating as potential nominees for key positions in that area, according to people advising the transition.
Among them are Mary Gade, the former top environmental officer in Illinois; David Struhs, the current top environmental officer in Florida; James Seif, the current top environmental officer in Pennsylvania, and Douglas Wheeler, the former top environmental officer in California.
Environmentalists have expressed concern about some names circulating for director of the National Marine Fisheries Service. They include Rodney H. Moore, executive director of the West Coast Seafood Processors Association and a former aide to Representative Don Young, Republican of Alaska, and Trevor McCabe, executive director of the At-Sea Processors Association, the lobby for the Bering Sea fleet, which fought new rules to protect sea lions. He is a former aide to Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska.
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Something Green in the Garbage Smells Nice
New York Times
January 5, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/05/nyregion/05TREE.html
New Yorkers had barely recovered from their New Year's hangovers when trees began to fall on sidewalks all over the city.
It was not high winds that caused a forest's worth of toppled trees to suddenly cover the floor of the concrete jungle. The trees are the ghosts of Christmas just past. And they are waiting outside in the cold to give life to others.
Since 1989, the city has been determined to recycle Christmas trees into mulch rather than let them fill its landfill. On Tuesday, sanitation trucks began picking up trees left on the sidewalks. They will continue to do so until Jan. 20.
It's a lot of lumber. Last year, a quarter of a million trees were collected and turned into compost for city parks.
Before the trees are put out on the curb, the Sanitation Department says, lights, ornaments and other decorations should be removed. (Tinsel does not make good plant food.) And the trees should not be put in plastic bags. (Plants are not keen on plastic either.)
Many New Yorkers are happy to know that their trees will have a second life helping other living things. Garbage collectors are happy, too. One, Joseph Mussi, who was picking up trees yesterday on West End Avenue in Manhattan, suggested that they were a lot nicer than his usual haul. "I don't mind the trees," he said. "They have a good smell."
And for Mr. Mussi, the annual tree-collecting ritual marks life's milestones. "That smell," he said, "is as good as telling you that 2001 is in."
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PCB Study Stays Neutral on Dredging Plan
New York Times
January 5, 2001
By KIRK JOHNSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/05/nyregion/05DRED.html
A long-awaited study released yesterday by the National Academy of Sciences about PCB pollution and the various strategies for cleaning it up does not endorse a plan by the federal Environmental Protection Agency to dredge the Hudson River.
But neither does it reject the proposal.
The study's summary - the full text will not be issued for several months - goes out of its way to say that it will provide no final answers to a question that has become a high-stakes issue among competing political, economic and environmental interests in New York: what is to be done with the river?
"Many readers expect this report to recommend remediation options," the report says. "However, the committee strongly believes that making such recommendations is not appropriate" because the study focused on how to make cleanup decisions in general rather than on any specific case.
But in the politicized debate over the river that has erupted since the E.P.A. announced its nearly half-billion-dollar dredging plan in December, even playing the subject down the middle could give both sides new ammunition.
The study flatly states, for example, that PCB's are a dangerous and potent long-term poison in the environment. That rejects arguments by General Electric, which discharged the PCB's into river from its factories for 30 years until the mid-1970's, and has contended ever since that the danger is exaggerated.
But the study also says that dredging and other so-called active remediation plans are potentially dangerous, too, because no method or technology can eliminate the possibility that some dredged-up pollution could leak back into the water.
That part of the study raises questions about the E.P.A.'s position: that advances in dredging have all but eliminated the risk that stirred up PCB's could recontaminate the river or nearby soil where the dredging is proposed to take place.
PCB's, or polychlorinated biphenyls, were used for decades in the manufacture of electrical conductors and other insulating products, but the chemicals - in an oily liquid form that tended to leak through cracks in old cement factory floors - were also often hard to contain. PCB's were later linked to cancer in humans and liver damage and other problems in wildlife, and were banned in 1977.
But by then G.E. had spilled or dumped an estimated 1.1 million pounds or more of PCB's into the river about 40 miles north of Albany.
The company has spent millions of dollars on its own scientific studies of the river, and has argued that the PCB's are being naturally buried by river silt and should be left where they lie.
A spokesman for the E.P.A., Dr. Peter Grevatt, said he believed that the science academy's careful language about how cleanup decisions should be made - especially that each polluted site is unique and that generalizations are hazardous - provided a vindication of what he said was the agency's careful decision-making process on the Hudson.
"We feel like it provides a mandate for the approach we have taken," said Dr. Grevatt, the senior science adviser for the agency's waste cleanup program.
A spokesman for General Electric, Stephen D. Ramsey, said he thought the report vindicated G.E.'s position just as thoroughly.
"I would hope that this would cause a fresh breath of common sense and logic to be infused into this process," Mr. Ramsey said.
---
Reindeer farmers seek federal aid
InfoBeat News
Afternoon Edition - 1/5/2001
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405686612
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - Reindeer farmers have seen thousands of their animals run off with wild caribou herds, prompting state officials to seek federal disaster money.
The Western Arctic caribou herd, which has grown to more than 400,000 animals, is spreading across the Seward Peninsula, encroaching on herders' lands where reindeer graze freely. Herders say once the reindeer mix with their wild cousins, they don't come back.
About 3,000 reindeer may have joined the caribou herd over the past decade, officials said. That may leave as few as 9,000 reindeer on the peninsula, compared with nearly 25,000 a decade ago, said wildlife biologist Greg Finstad, who manages the reindeer research program at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
``We can't lose very many more,'' Finstad told the Anchorage Daily News. ``We're not talking about losing a viable industry. We're just trying to salvage seed stock.''
``It's a very difficult time,'' said Rose Fosdick, program director for a group that represents herders on the peninsula. The peninsula stretches into the Bering Strait on Alaska's western coast.
Six of the association's 20 members have lost their entire herds over the past decade, and another two may not have enough animals left to stay in business, Fosdick said. Reindeer herders sell the meat as well as the antlers, which some cultures use to make aphrodisiacs and tonics.
Herders on the Seward Peninsula have received about $300,000 over the past two years to help cover the loss of their reindeer and grazing land. But a change in federal law means they need a disaster declaration before they can get more.
The herders will likely get about $100,000 this year if the declaration is approved, federal agriculture officials said.
The Western Arctic caribou herd had been growing for years from a low of around 75,000 in 1976 to more than 400,000 by 1990, according to state statistics.
During the same period, the caribou began ranging westward across the peninsula, said John Coady of the state Department of Fish and Game. The migration brought them into contact with the reindeer.
The herders have struggled to keep their stock from mixing with the wild caribou, but that has proven difficult, Fosdick said.
Three times a week and sometimes more, the herders get updates on caribou movement, provided from animals fitted with satellite and radio collars. Even then, it can be hard to get their animals out of the herd's way in time.
Once the reindeer have taken up with the caribou there's no way to get them back, Fosdick said. They look nearly identical and become wilder once they've joined the caribou.
---
Floyd Norris: To Fix the Electricity Mess, More Power Plants Are Needed
New York Times
January 5, 2001
By FLOYD NORRIS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/05/business/05NORR.html
During the campaign, President-elect George W. Bush complained that the Clinton administration had no energy policy. He had a point.
Unfortunately, Mr. Bush concentrated his fire on the highly contentious issue of whether to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil drillers. Whatever the merits of drilling there, it will be years before the refuge produces usable amounts of oil and natural gas.
The more immediate challenge for former Senator Spencer Abraham, the energy secretary-designate, will be to do something about the electricity mess this country is in. The most valuable thing the Bush team could do is to clarify the issues, and then force action.
The issue is not whether markets work, as some would have it, and is only partly related to how badly deregulation was handled in many states, particularly California but also New York, where a hot summer could be disastrous.
The issue is a simple one: there is not enough electricity being produced, and in some areas there are not enough transmission lines to get power to where it is needed.
Talk about getting government out of the way, or about the wonders of markets, or of the need to relax regulation, is not what is needed. Instead, someone needs to take the lead in ensuring that enough generating capacity is built, and quickly.
In the old regulated days, it was the responsibility of the local electric utility to assure that enough power was provided. Plants had to be built, whatever the hurdles.
Over time, the hurdles grew higher. There were environmental concerns. The antinuclear movement stopped new nuclear plants from being built. Towns viewed plants as eyesores.
When deregulation became the fad, many states decided to get the local utility out of the generating business. Instead, they said, the market would provide power.
But the market is not being allowed to do that job. In New York State, demand is up 12.2 percent since 1993, while generating capacity is up 2.6 percent. There are proposals for 60 new generating plants, with a total capacity roughly equal to the current use in the state. If all those plants were to be built, there would be a glut of capacity.
That won't happen. Each proposed plant has local opponents and there appears to be no sense of urgency. Just one of those plants has made it through the state bureaucracy, and that one faces delays in getting federal permits. There is a need for small new plants this summer in New York City, but it is not clear if the state agency trying to build them will succeed in overcoming local opposition.
The situation is not as bad in some other states, but in many places the new market-based system has not produced the needed power. With shortages of generating capacity, those who own the plants are getting rich. The customers - and the economy - will be the losers. In California, where authorities are reluctant to let utilities pass on the costs, utility bankruptcies are possible.
In sum, we now have the worst of all worlds. The market is not allowed to provide an adequate supply of electricity, but those who have power plants can earn big profits by charging prices that reflect the shortage.
A reliable, reasonably priced supply of electricity is critical to the functioning of a modern economy, and there are few more important tasks for government than ensuring that such elemental infrastructure is available. It should be the top priority of the new energy secretary to get needed power plants built as rapidly as possible.
-------- imf / world bank
International Kangaroo Court
Washington Times
EDITORIAL • January 5, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-house-200115182659.htm
The creation of an international criminal court has an archetypal, good-versus-evil appeal. The idea that a centralized, global body could save the world's huddled masses from the ravages of genocidal despots and other types of war crimes is vastly attractive.
Unfortunately, upon closer inspection, it becomes apparent that the international treaty which the President Bill Clinton recently directed the United States to sign is flawed in both the details and overarching mission. Indeed, the creation of an international court will generate the same kind of problems caused by other multilateral institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF). With these drawbacks in mind, it seems history and experience would dictate a gradual reduction in the role of global organizations, rather than the creation of new one.
Many policy-makers and economists have highlighted the "moral hazard" that institutions such as the IMF propagate. The IMF creates moral hazard when it bails out investors who make risky bets, at handsome returns, at the expense of taxpayers around the world. Rather than rescue the wealthy creditors who benefit from IMF bailouts, countries should address the root causes of financial crises.
An international court will surely generate a similar judicial and institutional moral hazard. Indeed, infringing on countries' sovereignty inevitably comes at a price. Although it has a paternalist, almost colonial, appeal, the court could act as a disincentive for developing countries to address the shortcomings of their laws and their execution.
Already, judicial reform is tricky, since it is often blocked by an entrenched and powerful elite that profits from corruption in the courts. If countries can rely on an international court to right terrible wrongs, policy-makers will be less pressed to tackle the arduous process of judicial reform. This would be profoundly troubling, since countries must attack the legal and other conditions which give way to genocide and war crimes - rather than put individuals on trial after hundreds or thousands have already been killed.
Paradoxically, the international court also turns back the clock on due process, by U.S. standards. For example, individuals could be tried for the same crime again and again, since the court doesn't give protection against double jeopardy. Defendants may never face their accusers and the court reserves the right to keep secret the identity of witnesses. An entire trial could be held behind closed doors. Furthermore, there are no limits on how long an individual may be held before he is tried. And rather than a jury, defendants are evaluated by a panel of appointed judges, who will surely advance the political priorities of their countries.
So critics aren't too far off when they label this institution a kangaroo court. Unsurprisingly, Mr. Clinton, in his signature "play along, get along" approach to foreign policy, signed onto the court by a Dec. 31, 2000, deadline, despite its glaring flaws. But if this court had been functioning in August 1998, when Mr. Clinton ordered the bombing of a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan the same day Monica Lewinsky testified before a grand jury, the president could well have felt very differently about the jurisdiction of this court.
-------- police
Second L.I. Woman Says an Officer Made Her Strip
New York Times
January 5, 2001
By TINA KELLEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/05/nyregion/05NAKE.html
A second Long Island woman has complained that a Suffolk County police officer made her strip in front of him to avoid a drunken-driving charge.
The woman, Julianna Rubio, 19, of Ridge, filed court papers on Wednesday claiming that an officer accused her of driving while intoxicated on Dec. 27. She said he told her that she would never attain her dream of becoming a probation officer if she were to be arrested, and made her stand outside his patrol car in the cold, wearing only her socks, according to the papers.
Her allegations are similar to those of Angelina Torres, 27, of Mastic Beach, who filed court papers Tuesday saying that an officer stopped her early New Year's Day, made her strip to her underpants and high heels and forced her to walk four blocks.
The Suffolk County Police Department is treating both cases seriously, said Lt. William Rohrer, a spokesman. He said the officer who stopped Ms. Torres, Frank Wright, has been removed from patrol work during the investigation. He said investigators were trying to determine whether Officer Wright is the officer Ms. Rubio is accusing.
The county's chief of police, Phil Robilotto, said investigators were also trying to interview a woman who reported that a Suffolk officer stopped her and tried to "go through the same line of approach" two and a half years ago.
Ms. Rubio was stopped about 4:30 a.m. on Dec. 27 for driving without her headlights on the Long Island Expressway in Huntington, according to court papers filed with the Suffolk County attorney's office. By filing the papers, Ms. Rubio indicated her intent to sue.
She said the officer gave her two sobriety tests, one of which she passed and one of which he told her she had failed. She said he then handcuffed her, drove her in his cruiser to a parking lot near Farmingdale and told her to either take off her clothes or go to the station to be arrested.
She stood outside his patrol car, naked except for her socks, for 10 minutes, while he shined his flashlight on her while remaining in his car, according to the court papers. He then told her to get dressed, handcuffed her and drove her back to her car, the papers said. Ms. Rubio could not be reached for comment.
Officer Wright has been a member of the county Police Department for nine years, and before that he was a New York City police officer, Lieutenant Rohrer said.
There were four complaints against Officer Wright in his file, but three were found to be unsubstantiated, and he was exonerated on the fourth, Lieutenant Rohrer said. The complaints were "nothing in the realm of what this allegation is about," he added.
Officer Wright has said he stopped Ms. Torres and drove her near her home, Lieutenant Rohrer said. He also told investigators that at some point she removed her clothes, Lieutenant Rohrer added.
The lawyer for Ms. Rubio and Ms. Torres, Gary Gramer of Lake Grove, said a woman, a California resident, spoke to him yesterday, saying that a Long Island highway patrol officer had handcuffed her, driven her around for an hour and taken her to a secluded place, where he pulled back her pants and made her prove she was not hiding drugs in her bra.
The officer then left the woman at a diner, without her shoes, and told her to have a cup of coffee and forget about the whole incident, Mr. Gramer said. He said the police had talked her out of filing a complaint.
"The hint of a betrayal of trust that's bestowed upon us is of concern," Lieutenant Rohrer said. "I know the commissioner is saying that if the results of the investigation warrant it, he will consider discussing the results with the district attorney."
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After Criticism of Street Frisk Records, Police Expand Report Form
New York Times
January 5, 2001
By KEVIN FLYNN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/05/nyregion/05FRIS.html
As part of what it described as an effort to advance community relations, the Police Department began using new forms yesterday that require officers to provide more detailed explanations for the decision to stop and search a citizen on the street.
The new two-sided form replaced a single-sided form that officers had used for more than a decade to establish a formal record of the time, place and precise reason for stopping and searching someone they believed to be acting suspiciously.
These encounters, known as stop-and-frisks, became controversial after the 1999 shooting death of Amadou Diallo by officers seeking to question him. Several subsequent investigations, including one by Attorney General Eliot L. Spitzer and a second by federal prosecutors in Manhattan, have concluded that many officers unfairly single out black and Hispanic residents during these encounters, a finding that police officials have dismissed as flawed.
Nonetheless, the department redesigned its Stop and Frisk Report form in ways that officials said would help officers better establish the rationale they had for stopping someone. For example, the new form prompts officers to tell the person why he was stopped or requires them to report why they could not provide such an explanation.
Police Commissioner Bernard B. Kerik said the changes would help avoid the anger that often arises when people do not understand why they are being stopped, and wrongly conclude the reason was capricious or discriminatory. "It makes it less confrontational if you explain to that person why they were stopped," he said.
The new form, first reported yesterday by The Daily News, requires officers to provide a dozen new pieces of information, like the demeanor of the person after being stopped. But the critical change is in the area where officers are required to list the reason they stopped a person for questioning.
Under the old system, officers described the reason in their own words. Sometimes, the information was incomplete or the handwriting illegible, officials said. The new form lists the possible reasons for stopping someone as part of a checklist that includes factors like "suspicious bulge" and "fits description."
In another checklist, the officer is asked to note whether the suspicion was based on personal observations, a radio report or a citizen's description of a crime. And in a third new area, the form asks the officer to check off any "environmental factors" that contributed to the decision, like nearby blood stains or a ringing alarm.
City officials said the checklist format would make it easier to tabulate the data and would reduce the amount of paperwork for officers. "Remember, a police officer is very, very busy," Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said, "so if you have a report that is easier to file, you will get a lot more information."
According to police statistics, 104,000 people were stopped in 1999, a 25 percent drop from the previous year. The decline appeared to continue last year, when, during the first six months, officers filed only 35,555 reports.
But Donna Lieberman, interim director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said the statistics could be misleading. Many officers, she said, do not bother to file any form after stopping citizens. Indeed, in a preliminary finding last year, the Civilian Complaint Review Board determined that many officers routinely failed to fill out the forms.
Ms. Lieberman said that even if the new form was an improvement, "it is going to take more than a change of forms to solve the problems."
"What is required," she said, "is a sea change in the culture so that officers, from the commissioner down to police officers, know that they will be held accountable for the degree to which they protect the rights of citizens."
Mr. Kerik said the improvements were more extensive than simply changing the form. He said the department had increased training and was telling officers during precinct roll calls of the importance of explaining to citizens why they were stopped. And the department will be able to audit the process better, he said, because a new section asks those stopped to list their telephone numbers so supervisors can call them later.
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F.B.I. Director Will Stay On, Government Officials Say
New York Times
January 5, 2001
By DAVID JOHNSTON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/05/politics/05FREE.html
WASHINGTON, Jan. 4 - Louis J. Freeh has agreed to stay on as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation at the request of President-elect George W. Bush's camp, government officials said today.
While several law enforcement officials said Mr. Freeh would remain, a spokesman for Mr. Bush said no one from the president-elect's staff had contacted the director.
Attorney General Janet Reno, speaking at her weekly news conference, said, "I know that they've asked him to stay."
But Dan Bartlett, a spokesman for Mr. Bush, said, "There is nobody I'm aware of from the Bush organization who has spoken with Mr. Freeh."
Later, another spokesman for Mr. Bush, Ari Fleischer, seemed to say that Mr. Freeh would stay on.
"We never have been looking for an F.B.I. director," Mr. Fleischer said in a meeting with reporters. "Our nation has an F.B.I. director."
Mr. Freeh, appointed by President Clinton in 1993, has long talked with associates about stepping down this year, before completing his 10-year term as director, which expires in 2003. But his decision to remain did not mean that he would serve to the end of his term, the officials said.
In addition, law enforcement officials said they were confident that Mr. Freeh had been asked to postpone his resignation and had agreed to stay, although it was not clear who had contacted Mr. Freeh.
Mr. Freeh, 50, has six children and has for years considered leaving government for higher-paying private legal work. But with Mr. Bush's victory, officials close to Mr. Freeh had said they believed it was likely that he would be asked to stay on.
Mr. Freeh has often seemed eager to distance himself from the Democratic president who appointed him. Although he was appointed by Mr. Clinton, Mr. Freeh has closer ties to Republicans who have been his patrons over the years.
Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York, when he was United States attorney, made Mr. Freeh a top prosecutor. Richard Thornburgh as attorney general under President George Bush picked Mr. Freeh to lead the prosecution of mail bombing killings of a federal appeals judge and a civil rights lawyer. And President Bush appointed Mr. Freeh to be a federal judge.
During his early years as F.B.I. director, Mr. Freeh was often mentioned by presidential aides as one of Mr. Clinton's best appointments. But the cordial relations were soon frayed by tensions between the White House and the F.B.I.
Mr. Freeh angered White House aides by repeatedly urging Ms. Reno to appoint an independent counsel to investigate Mr. Clinton, Vice President Al Gore and other Democrats for possible fund-raising improprieties in the 1996 presidential campaign.
And Mr. Freeh irritated White House officials by his praise for the work of Kenneth W. Starr, the Whitewater prosecutor, who investigated Mr. Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky, a step, among others, that raised Mr. Freeh's standing in the Bush camp.
---
A Way to Fight Crime
New York Times
January 5, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/05/opinion/L05POL.html
To the Editor:
Re "3 Police Commanders in Bronx Are Replaced as Crime Rises" (news article, Dec. 31):
What a thrill to see Police Commissioner Bernard B. Kerik going beyond lip service to emphasize community relations. He said as much when he explained why he placed Capt. Raymond Rooney in command of one of the Bronx precincts. "Rooney's crime numbers are O.K., but he has phenomenal outreach," Mr. Kerik said, adding, "The community leaders love him."
What this means is that Mr. Kerik doesn't rely on crime statistics alone. He's watching for commanders who also know how to stay in touch with the community. Now, if you really want to improve police-community relations, that's one sure way to do it.
JUDITH L. KOMAKI New York, Jan. 2, 2001
The writer is a professor of psychology at Baruch College and the CUNY Graduate Center.
-------- spying
Romania spy chief resigns
InfoBeat News
Afternoon Edition - 1/5/2001
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405686263
BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) - The head of Romania's foreign intelligence service has resigned at the request of the country's new president, the government confirmed Friday.
The Evenimentul Zilei newspaper had reported that President Ion Iliescu demanded Catalin Harnagea's resignation during a secret meeting in late December.
Harnagea, a former journalist, was appointed by ex-President Emil Constantinescu in 1997 with a mandate to reform Romania's foreign intelligence service along Western lines. The office is responsible for coordinating Romania's espionage activities abroad.
No official reason has been given for the resignation, but critics have alleged that Harnagea lacked the experience for the job and that Romania's domestic and foreign spy services were run by subordinates guided by the communist tenets of the past. The former communist secret police, the Securitate, spread mistrust and suspicion among Romanians with an estimated 250,000 informers.
It is not known whether a replacement for Harnagea will be named. The agency is currently being run by his deputy, Gen. Gheorghe Rotaru.
---
Clinton creates secrets panel
InfoBeat News
Afternoon Edition - 1/5/2001
By ROBERT BURNS AP Military Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405686751
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Clinton has signed an order creating a national counterintelligence executive to oversee the government's efforts to protect its most vital national security secrets, administration officials said Friday.
The new counterintelligence executive will have a four-member board composed of the director of the FBI, the deputy secretary of defense, the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency and a Justice Department representative.
White House spokesman Jake Siewert said Clinton took the action to help adapt U.S. counterintelligence efforts to a post-Cold War era ``in which danger could come just as easily from a laptop (computer) and not the traditional cloak-and-dagger spies.''
``The old system was designed to counter intelligence threats that came from our adversaries in the Cold War,'' Siewert said. ``Now you're in a new era where those threats are not quite as centrally localized, and you need a more integrated system.''
Siewert said although the incoming Bush administration could reverse Clinton's decision, that looks doubtful since it is strongly supported by the CIA, FBI, Defense Department and other agencies involved in counterintelligence matters. He said national security adviser Sandy Berger had briefed his anticipated successor, Condoleezza Rice.
``They can undo it, but this is not a partisan issue,'' Siewert said.
The organization will reside at CIA headquarters and will replace the CIA's National Counterintelligence Center, according to an administration official who discussed the matter in advance of the White House announcement. The center was created in 1994 after the arrest of Aldrich Ames, a longtime CIA officer convicted of spying for the former Soviet Union.
Clinton's order was first reported in Friday's editions of The New York Times and The Washington Post.
The existing counterintelligence center at CIA focuses on known, suspected or potential intelligence losses. The new organization will take a broader, more forward-looking approach to determining which national secrets are most vital, which are of greatest interest to foreign governments and how U.S. agencies can cooperate to protect them.
Siewert said he believed it was unlikely Clinton would name the counterintelligence executive before he leaves office Jan. 20.
Prior to the Ames case, which was one of the worst intelligence disasters in CIA history, the FBI and other government agencies had their own counterintelligence operations but there was no central government-wide office in charge of protecting secrets.
On the Net: the National Counterintelligence Center at http://www.nacic.gov
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Clinton Creates Post to Protect Nation's Secrets
New York Times
January 5, 2001
By JAMES RISEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/05/politics/05INTE.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON, Jan. 4 - President Clinton has issued an order reorganizing the government's counterintelligence efforts, creating a new czar with a broad mandate to identify potential security threats and vulnerabilities, administration officials said today.
The directive, signed in the waning days of Mr. Clinton's administration, creates a National Counterintelligence Executive charged with bringing a forward-looking, post-cold-war mentality to counterintelligence. Officials say the post is designed as the counterintelligence equivalent to the nation's drug czar.
The executive's central task will be to try to determine which secrets held by the government or the private sector are so valuable that they need to be protected from the nation's adversaries. The czar will also try to assess which secrets are of special interest to other nations, and then bring together the F.B.I., C.I.A. and other agencies to determine whether those countries are making efforts to obtain them.
A spokesman for the Bush transition team referred all questions about the plan to the White House and declined to say whether transition officials had been consulted. Once in office, Mr. Bush could decide to change the plan without Congressional approval.
But the reorganization and the newly created post have the strong backing of F.B.I. Director Louis J. Freeh, who is staying in his post into the Bush administration, and Central Intelligence Director George J. Tenet, whose tenure also may overlap.
Administration officials and others familiar with the plan say that the czar will not be in charge of managing individual spy cases and that the Federal Bureau of Investigation will retain its lead role in counterespionage investigations. The C.I.A. will also retain its own counterintelligence center, which conducts investigations within the agency.
But officials said that the new office of the counterintelligence executive would replace the existing National Counterintelligence Center, which was created after the 1994 arrest of Aldrich Ames, the C.I.A. officer who pleaded guilty to spying for Moscow for nine years.
On paper, the existing agency also had a broad mandate to coordinate government efforts to identify counterintelligence threats, but several officials said that it had failed to live up to that role. Some critics in the government say that the counterintelligence center never had the stature or influence to command cooperation between government agencies.
The Clinton administration may name a counterintelligence czar before the president leaves office, officials said today. Although it unclear whether the administration had consulted the transition team, Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the leading Republican on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, has been generally supportive of the reorganization effort, a Shelby aide said.
The counterintelligence overhaul comes in the wake of the furor over the government's handling of the case of Wen Ho Lee, the scientist fired from his job at Los Alamos National Laboratory and charged with mishandling classified information. Although he pleaded guilty to one count related to downloading and copying nuclear data from Los Alamos, other charges were dropped. Officials say that Mr. Freeh advocated the reorganization in response to the flaws in the way that case was handled.
"This should solve a lot of the shortcomings we have in the present environment," said one senior law enforcement official.
Officials say that the key to the reorganization will be that the leading counterintelligence official in the government would no longer be simply responding to an investigation of an individual spy case, but would rather be focused on broad efforts to determine what secrets might be most tantalizing to other countries. Those secrets could be at the Pentagon or at a high-tech corporation, and the czar will be able to go to the F.B.I., C.I.A. and other agencies and begin to develop plans to make sure those secrets are secure before any spies have gotten to them.
The czar's job will be to "identify the universe of stuff that it would be unthinkable if we lost," one official said.
"This job is to figure out what must be protected. The person in this job, I would think, would spend the first year going around to everybody in the government and business asking what people believe we absolutely have to protect, and then coming up with a judgment about what really are the nation's crown jewels, as opposed to just costume jewelry. Part of the disconnect we have today in the government is that we don't even know what it is that it's unthinkable for us to lose as a nation."
The reorganization plan has support among intelligence policy experts on Capitol Hill, many of whom say the government is usually on the defensive, simply reacting to the latest spy case. The government has "been spending an inordinate amount of time looking in the rear view mirror," said Senator Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat and member of the Senate intelligence committee who has been pushing for a counterintelligence reorganization. As a result, "we didn't look to see what was coming at us in the future."
Several officials acknowledged that it was still too early to determine whether the czar will have the clout to manage such a sweeping change in the way counterintelligence is managed. That clout will be largely determined by the executive's relations with his office's four- member board, composed of the F.B.I. director, the deputy director of Central Intelligence, the deputy secretary of defense, and a representative of the Attorney General. The czar will also report directly to the deputies committee at the National Security Council and will have access to all secrets related to counterintelligence cases, officials said.
The power of the czar "is going to depend on who they put in the job," said one Republican congressional aide.
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F.B.I. Raids Brooklyn Office of Kahane Followers
New York Times
January 5, 2001
By DEAN E. MURPHY
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/05/nyregion/05KAHA.html?pagewanted=all
The authorities raided a Brooklyn community center yesterday run by followers of Rabbi Meir David Kahane, the Israeli politician assassinated in 1990, whose movements are designated as foreign terrorist groups by the State Department.
Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, joined by the New York City police, hauled away several computers and reams of written materials from the Hatikva Jewish Identity Center on Coney Island Avenue in Flatbush. For the last year and a half, the center has served as the New York headquarters of the Kahane movement, which had been led by the rabbi's son, Binyamin Kahane, until he was killed last weekend in the West Bank.
Leon Kryzhanovsky, a Kahane supporter who tallied the confiscated items as they were loaded into a tractor-trailer, said 6 computers were taken, as well as a filing cabinet, 84 sealed boxes, 6 milk crates and 4 sets of protest signs, including one that criticized Hillary Rodham Clinton's views on the Middle East.
Included in the boxes, Kahane officials said, was a large inventory of books and other writings by Rabbi Kahane, as well as videotapes of speeches by the rabbi and his son.
Those materials, and other Kahane goods, including jewelry and posters, had been offered for sale on kahane.org, a Web site run by the center and its supporters. The site, and its mirror site, kahane.net, were apparently not a target of the F.B.I. since they continued uninterrupted throughout the day, even offering news and commentary about the raid as it was unfolding.
Joseph A. Valiquette, a spokesman for the bureau's office in New York, said there were no arrests and no criminal charges associated with the raid, which began shortly after 9 a.m. and ended about six hours later. He said the agents were executing a federal search warrant as part of an investigation, but he would not elaborate.
"The court papers that support that search warrant are under seal, which prevents any further discussion about what the nature of the investigation might be," Mr. Valiquette said. "What is sealed is the underlying affidavit which lays out the probable cause."
Michael Guzofsky, director of the Hatikva center and a leader of the Kahane movement in Brooklyn, said the agents were looking for information that might link the Kahane activities in Brooklyn to Kach and Kahane Chai, the two political organizations that have been designated as foreign terrorist groups since 1995 by the United States. The designations make it a crime for Americans to financially support the two organizations or a half-dozen or so other groups identified by the State Department as fronts for Kach and Kahane Chai, which means Kahane Lives.
Mr. Guzofsky, who had been a leader of Kahane Chai until the State Department designation, offered no apologies for the Brooklyn center's loyalty to the anti-Arab philosophy of Rabbi Kahane. But speaking to reporters in the bitter cold as F.B.I. agents scurried behind him, Mr. Guzofsky said the Kahane movement was a nonviolent effort aimed at promoting the teachings of Rabbi Kahane. He said the followers in Brooklyn had no association with the groups designated as terrorists.
"All we do is preach the truth," Mr. Guzofsky said. "Terrorism is bombs. It's bullets. It's not words."
At the core of Rabbi Kahane's teachings is the belief that Arabs should not be allowed to live in Israel because they pose a permanent threat to Jews. The rabbi was banned from elective politics in Israel before he was assassinated in a Manhattan hotel in 1990. Several years later, his party, Kach, and the party of his son, Kahane Chai, were outlawed in Israel as terrorist organizations.
The Kahane followers in Brooklyn operate from a building in the heart of a multiethnic community, which includes a strong Muslim presence. Across the street from the Hatikva center is the Makki Mosque, a building with a pink marble front and the inscription, "There is no God but Allah."
Next door to the center is the All Asian Grocery, which features stickers on the front windows bearing the words "Muslims for Hillary" and "I love Kashmir."
Several Muslims living or working in the neighborhood, including some who worship at the Makki Mosque, said the Kahane people have coexisted without incident in the neighborhood.
"I pass here all of the time and there has never been a problem," said Mohammed Chudhury, a Muslim from Pakistan who lives on the same block as the center. "The only incident I can remember here involved an argument with a guy who parked his car here and was in the way."
The Hatikva center, which is located behind a mortgage bank in a former martial arts studio, offers a range of courses, including language training in Hebrew and instruction in self-defense techniques. A small second floor serves as an office for kahane.org and as the stockroom for the merchandise for sale online.
Mr. Guzofsky said about 300 people regularly used the center, which, he said, grew out of a concept espoused in the teachings of Rabbi Kahane. At its root, he said, yesterday's raid was an attack on the rights of Jews everywhere to meet and speak freely.
"This should be a wake-up call to American Jews," he said.
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German Official Denies Accusation
Associated Press
January 5, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Germany-Fischer.html
BERLIN (AP) -- Under fire for his past as a left-wing radical, Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer on Friday denied kicking and beating a police officer on the ground during a 1973 demonstration.
Opposition conservatives have called for Fischer's resignation after Stern magazine on Thursday published pictures of him and other militants scuffling with a police officer in Frankfurt.
The police officer, Rainer Marx, said he held nothing against Fischer and didn't know the future politician was at the protest until this week. But Marx, 48, said he would welcome a personal apology from Fischer.
Stern said one photograph shows Fischer, wearing a helmet, beating the officer; another seems to show him raising his foot as the officer goes down.
Fischer, who is also Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's deputy, has apologized for assaulting the officer. But in an interview Friday in the Tagesspiegel newspaper, he insisted he had never beaten or kicked any police officer lying on the ground.
Asked whether there could be such photos of him, Fischer said: ``No. But pictures could turn up where Joschka Fischer lies on the floor and is beaten up by four policemen. I can show you those.''
Fischer, 52, has admitted throwing stones and battling with police in the 1970s, but insists he realized that using violence was a ``big mistake'' when some fellow radicals drifted into terrorism.
Marx said at a Frankfurt news conference he wasn't completely sure that it was him pictured in the magazine photographs. He also couldn't be certain that Fischer had hit him.
``I cannot confirm that I was beaten by Mr. Fischer,'' Marx said. ``Everyone has his sins of youth.''
Fischer's well-known past as a leftist student is attracting interest again ahead of his scheduled Jan. 16 testimony at the trial of a former fellow militant charged with murder in a 1975 attack on an OPEC ministers' meeting.
Conservative leader Angela Merkel on Friday urged Fischer's environmentalist Greens party to make a statement distancing itself from violence, including efforts to block shipments of nuclear waste.
---
Beijing, Falun Gong trade barbs
InfoBeat News
Afternoon Edition - 1/5/2001
By MARTIN FACKLER Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405685911
BEIJING (AP) - China on Friday accused the outlawed Falun Gong sect of growing more ``disruptive'' in its protests, days after its leader made a rare appeal to followers to escalate their struggle against Beijing.
An article in several state-run newspapers blamed Falun Gong leader Li Hongzhi for inciting members to extreme acts that upset public order and provoked clashes with police.
``Recently, Falun Gong has become more and more disruptive and noisy, fully displaying Falun Gong's true nature as an evil cult,'' the article said.
``Some extreme elements of Falun Gong have even gone so far as to try to commit suicide on Tiananmen Square, to try to make a big impact and soil the image of the motherland,'' the article said.
It also accused the spiritual group of resorting to novel methods to spread its ``illegal propaganda,'' saying police seized 16 pigeons that sect members had intended to release on Tiananmen Square.
A Falun Gong organizer in Hong Kong denied that the group's rallies were subversive or designed to provoke the government. The group is protesting a crackdown in which numerous followers have died in custody, Kan Hung-cheung said.
``If they didn't repress us, there would be no need for us to stand up and tell the truth,'' Kan said Friday. ``As the suppressions were so brutal and inhumane, we have to tell the world.''
Beijing has been alarmed by Falun Gong's ability to stage protests in Tiananmen Square - China's most politically symbolic public monument - despite an 18-month crackdown.
If anything, the group appears to have stepped up protests, which have taken place almost daily on the square in central Beijing where Mao Zedong declared the founding of the People's Republic in 1949.
One of the largest demonstrations, with hundreds of arrests, took place Oct. 1, the 51st anniversary of Mao's declaration. Most involve no more than a dozen protesters who unfurl banners and chant slogans.
The government has responded by stationing busloads of plainclothes and uniformed police in the square almost around the clock. Violence is common, with protesters often bloodied in full view of crowds before being dragged away.
Beijing also lashed out this week at Kan, accusing him in an editorial carried by state-run Xinhua News Agency of ``nciting troubles and creating chaos'' during Jiang Zemin's visit to Macau.
A message posted on New Year's Day on the group's Web site and attributed to sect leader Li condemned such behavior by authorities as ``going beyond the limits of Forbearance,'' one of the group's central principles.
``The way the evil are currently performing shows that they are already utterly inhuman and completely without righteous thoughts,'' the message said. Li, a former government clerk who lives in the United States, has remained silent for long periods during the crackdown.
``Such evil's persecution ... can thus no longer be tolerated,'' the message warned.
China outlawed Falun Gong in July 1999, calling the spiritual movement an evil cult to blame for the deaths of more than 1,500 members. The Communist Party apparently saw the group's size and organization as a threat to its monopoly on power.
Falun Gong attracted tens of millions of followers in the 1990s with its blend of meditative exercises and spiritual teachings.
Rights groups say police have detained as many as 10,000 followers in the crackdown. Most have been held only briefly, but more than 150 organizers have been given prison terms of up to 18 years.
Rights groups say at least 92 sect members have died in police custody, including four last month.
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Banned Chinese Sect Is Spurred On by Exiled Leader
New York Times
January 5, 2001
By CRAIG S. SMITH
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/05/world/05CHIN.html?pagewanted=all
SHANGHAI, Jan. 4 - Civil disobedience by the Chinese spiritual movement Falun Gong shows no sign of slowing in the New Year and may be ratcheting up to a new level.
In a New Year's Day message to followers, posted on the group's official Web site (www.clearwisdom. net), the movement's exiled founder, Li Hongzhi, warned that Falun Gong followers facing persecution could rightfully "go beyond the limits of forbearance." Forbearance is one of the principal virtues promoted by his discipline.
"If the evil has already reached the point where it is unsavable and unkeepable, various measures at different levels can be used to stop it and eradicate it," he said, writing from the United States, where he now lives.
That suggests that 2001 will be a year of increased activity among the core of true believers in China who are not in detention or under strict police supervision. The number of those followers is impossible to estimate.
Chinese authorities say it is under two million - far fewer than the 20 million estimated by one government agency to be practicing the discipline at the height of its popularity in the late 1990's. Mr. Li, meanwhile, continues to claim 100 million adherents worldwide, most of them in China.
China's efforts to crush the movement have reduced its numbers, but have also hardened the resolve of those who remain loyal to Mr. Li.
Hundreds of Falun Gong followers staged scattered protests in Tiananmen Square this week, their brief attempts to unfurl banners quickly overwhelmed by the huge plainclothes police force that China fields on the square during holidays and significant anniversaries of the 18- month campaign to suppress the group.
Witnesses reported that one man was beaten on Monday until his head and the surrounding ground were splattered with blood. And a Hong Kong-based human rights group reported that in December four adherents had died in confrontations with the police or while in custody.
Mr. Li, a former government grain clerk from northeastern China, founded Falun Gong in the early 1990's as one of many exercise regimes that developed at the time based on the traditional Chinese practice of qigong, exercises intended to channel the body's vital energy, or qi, to various ends. Mr. Li went further than other self-styled qigong masters by marrying his exercises to an encompassing cosmology loosely based on Buddhist and Taoist tenets.
His promise of salvation from a morally degenerating world struck a chord with many Chinese, particularly those who felt spiritually bereft as China effectively abandoned Marxism and Maoism as moral guides amid the growing materialism of the 1990's.
But Mr. Li's growing popularity, as well as the mystical mix of his belief system - he teaches that Falun Gong is the original law of the universe and that faithful followers attain supernatural powers - drew increasing criticism from the Communist Party. He left China for the United States in 1998 under pressure from the government.
Whether Mr. Li's New Year message advocates more militant action than the group's remarkably passive behavior to date is not clear. While his calls to "defend the Fa," or Great Law of Falun Gong, have kept adherents streaming into Tiananmen Square, his doctrine of forbearance has prevented most from resisting the beatings and detention that they invariably receive there.
But his followers' activism has risen over the past six months as Mr. Li's appeals have grown increasingly urgent, even politicized. In September, Falun Gong's official Web site began attacking President Jiang Zemin as the man personally responsible for Falun Gong's persecution, calling him "the highest representative of the evil force in the human world."
In the past few weeks, students at Beijing University, traditionally the wellhead of political activism in China, have found Falun Gong fliers left on their dormitory doors or bicycles.
And Falun Gong followers outside China have grown increasingly sophisticated in getting Mr. Li's messages to followers inside, frequently changing the address of its official Web site to circumvent China's Internet censors.
Despite efforts to block Falun Gong Web sites in China, the English-language version of the group's official site - carrying Mr. Li's New Year's message - can currently be seen by Internet subscribers in China.
And the Hong Kong government has granted permission to group members there to hold a regional convention on Jan. 14 - something that is certain to provoke Beijing.
The group has even sponsored a letter-writing campaign to nominate Mr. Li for the Nobel Peace Prize. John F. Kutolowski, an associate professor of history at the State University College at Brockport, N.Y., and the father of a Falun Gong follower in the United States, has written to academics at many American universities asking them to join him in nominating Mr. Li for the prize.
Mr. Kutolowski declined to comment on the letter-writing campaign, saying only that it was a private initiative and that he was not among those people asked by the Nobel Committee to nominate candidates for the prize.
Mr. Li, meanwhile, has begun speaking in increasingly apocalyptic terms. He has said the current struggles in China are leading to an apparently transcendent event that he calls the Consummation, in which his disciples will "leave" and "all bad people will be destroyed by gods." Those who are left will pay for their past sins with "horrible suffering," he has said.
China has responded to Mr. Li's shift in tone by declaring late last year that Falun Gong had become a reactionary political force bent on subverting China's socialist system. Known dissidents in Shanghai have been warned to steer clear of any contact with Falun Gong followers or face immediate detention.
And last week the standing committee of China's Parliament approved new rules defining illegal uses of the Internet that singled out its use "to organize evil religious cults" or "for communications between cult members" as among the most egregious offenses. The Chinese government has officially defined Falun Gong as an evil cult.
The implication is that Beijing is worried that as Falun Gong metamorphoses into a more political movement it could knit together an alliance of dissident networks around the country.
The government has tried to discredit Mr. Li by using his words against him. A New China News Agency report last week said that a dozen followers in China had committed mass suicide to attain Consummation and that dozens more had been prevented from doing so by the police.
The report could not immediately be verified, but Mr. Li has in the past spoken out against suicide as a means of reaching salvation.
Mr. Li, though, does express growing impatience with the suppression of his movement in China and has suggested that followers confronting China's police are among the closest to reaching the group's ultimate spiritual goal.
"The present performance of the evil shows that they are already utterly inhuman and completely without righteous thoughts," Mr. Li said in his message posted on the Internet on Monday. "So such evil's persecution of the Fa can no longer be tolerated."
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Book Says Tiananmen Sparked Bitter Debate in China
Reuters
January 5, 2001 Filed at 11:12 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-china-t.html
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Reformist members of the Chinese Communist Party have smuggled out secret transcripts of the leadership debate over crushing the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, according to a book released on Friday in which the documents are published.
``The Tiananmen Papers'', published by Public Affairs Books of New York, said the late senior leader Deng Xiaoping, whose ''open-door'' policy led to massive changes in China's economy, believed the situation was so serious that it could result in his own house arrest.
U.S.-based China-watchers involved in the project said the transcripts, including minutes of meetings and other documents from the spring of 1989, confirmed that hard-liners held sway over reformers in the decision to send in the Red Army to end the demonstrations, thereby changing China's political course.
According to the transcripts, one month into the protests Deng told other Chinese leaders: ``Anarchy gets worse every day. If this continues WE could even end up under house arrest.''
In June 1989, the Chinese leadership ordered troops and tanks to crush the months-long pro-democracy rallies, killing hundreds, possibly thousands, of unarmed demonstrators.
Although analysts have always suspected a rift between reformers and hard-liners in the upper echelons of the Communist Party over Tiananmen, the transcripts -- if authentic -- would for the first time reveal the decision-making process in their own words.
The transcripts were compiled by secretaries who took notes during leadership meetings in April, May and June of 1989.
The book, subtitled ``The Chinese Leadership's Decision to Use Force Against Their Own People -- In Their Own Words'', was compiled under the pseudonym Zhang Liang and edited by Andrew Nathan, professor of political science at New York's Columbia University, and Perry Link, professor of Chinese at Princeton University in New Jersey.
Orville Schell, another China scholar who is dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, wrote an afterword on the authentication of the documents.
``It took months before we felt sufficiently comfortable to attach our names to them (the papers),'' Schell wrote.
``If the process began with a certain innate skepticism, it slowly generated an increasing level of trust, so that we ultimately concluded that the Tiananmen Papers were largely credible.
``However, it must be emphasized again that we still have no basis for proclaiming their authenticity with absolute authority.''
Nathan said in an introduction that the transcripts contain ''an internal coherence, richness and human believability that would be almost impossible to fake.''
He wrote that the book's publication was likely to damage the careers of China's two top leaders, President Jiang Zemin and Li Peng, second-ranking member of the Party hierarchy. The support of both men for forcibly ending the protests benefited their political careers.
In a commentary in the January/February edition of Foreign Affairs magazine, Nathan wrote that the material was smuggled out by a sympathizer of Communist Party members who were seeking a resumption of political reform.
``They believe that challenging the official picture of Tiananmen as a legitimate suppression of a violent anti-government riot will help unfreeze the political process,'' Nathan said.
In a CBS News ``60 Minutes'' TV program to be broadcast Sunday, James Lilley, who was U.S. Ambassador to China at the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre, said he had read the transcripts.
``Deng was persuaded by his inner circle that this (the mass protest) was directed against him,'' Lilley said. ``And these people were telling Deng, 'Don't you know how we seized power? A single spark lights a prairie fire. It just takes off'.''
A senior Chinese civil servant, who asked not to be identified and had his voice altered and image blacked out for an appearance on ``60 Minutes,'' took the transcripts to Nathan.
``The degree of the risk that I've undertaken is hard probably for Westerners to understand,'' the unidentified man told ``60 Minutes.''
The man, who described himself as remaining loyal to the Communist Party and wanted to return to China, said he hoped the release of the transcripts would discredit the hard-liners in the Chinese Communist Party leadership.
``At the time of the events... I saw a split in the top leadership,'' the man said. ``Yet there's been no way to raise the question and to bring it out and I want through this publication to try to open up this question in China.''
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