------- Index of Articles
NUCLEAR
Poland Wants Help With Nukes Check
Putin Takes Up Debt and Defenses With German Chief
Balkan syndrome probe begins
Health alert over uranium shells fired on UK ranges
Thousands of uranium shells fired on UK soil
NATO ATTACKS LEAVE RADIATION FEARS IN WAKE
Yugoslavia Tries to Dispel Radiation Fears
Portuguese Probe Kosovo Depleted Uranium Sites
Uranium Ammunition Used in Britain
NATO Warned of Uranium Danger
DU manufacturer
DU (U-238) and its effects on humans
SIRI-US and DU
LEUKEMIA OUTBREAK AMONG TROOPS CAUSES TURMOIL IN NATO
Allies 'told in 1991 of uranium cancer risks'
Putin Dismisses U.S. Reports That Russia Shipped Nuclear Weapons
Putin dismisses Baltic nuclear report as rubbish
Ratify, but Review
Stuck Away in a Lonely Outpost With an Awesome Responsibility
Tennessee
The Freshman: Starring Hillary Rodham Clinton
Bush Gathers G.O.P. Governors to Discuss Taxes and Education
World Has Changed for New Bush Team
MILITARY
Key Colombian Oil Pipeline Out After Rebel Sabotage
Aerial Attack Killing More Than Coca
Rastafarians in St. Lucia worship separately
Drug Paraphernalia Found on UK Harry Potter Set
USS Cole Captain, Crew May Not Be Punished
OTHER
SDA Releases Guidelines for Organic Produce
The Death of a River Looms Over Choice for Interior Post
Dueling Power Centers
States
Did a plane crash in New York City?
Louisiana
Clinton Creates Spycatcher Board
U.S. embassy in Rome to reopen Tuesday
U.S. Embassy in Rome to Stay Shut, Review Security
ACTIVISTS
Thousands March for Peace in Nepal
-------- NUCLEAR
Poland Wants Help With Nukes Check
Associated Press
January 7, 2001 Filed at 1:14 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Poland-Russia.html
WARSAW, Poland (AP) -- Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski said Sunday he counts on Moscow's cooperation in having international inspectors examine whether Russia deployed nuclear weapons in the Kaliningrad enclave between Poland and Lithuania.
``In order to check the facts, to be sure, we count on international inspection in cooperation with Russia,'' Kwasniewski, an ex-communist, said on state Radio Three. ``It is nothing extraordinary, such inspections are carried out regularly in various parts of the world.''
The reports of the weapons first appeared in The Washington Times on Wednesday. Later, senior U.S. administration officials told The Associated Press there had been indications of possible nuclear weapons movement to a naval base in Kaliningrad, the home of Russia's Baltic Fleet.
Russian President Vladimir Putin called the reports ``rubbish'' Saturday.
But Kwasniewski, Poland's most popular politician, said it would be a ``great detriment to the confidence placed in Russia'' if it turned out that such moves were taking place without notification to partners in NATO.
Kwasniewski said it is ``public knowledge'' that there is one missile brigade in Kaliningrad and it ``surely has some armaments.''
``The point is whether there is additional deployment of arms, meaning the use of the existing infrastructure to launch the missiles using new warheads,'' he said.
Defense ministers of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia visiting Poland expressed surprise Sunday about the reports of nuclear weapons deployment in Kaliningrad.
There is ``no need'' for Russia to deploy nuclear weapons in the region, because the ``Baltic Sea region and all countries around it are friendly nations,'' Latvian Defense Minister Gritis Valdis Kristovskis told Polish state news agency PAP.
He said Latvia will ask for international inspection in Kaliningrad if the reports are confirmed.
Lithuanian Defense Minister Linas Antanas Linkevicius said it would be ``justified'' to send an international team of experts to Kaliningrad.
The ministers, taking part in a seminar on the Baltic states progress in joining NATO in the southern Polish town of Krakow, said they didn't think the reports would obstruct their efforts to join the alliance, but could instead accelerate them.
---
Putin Takes Up Debt and Defenses With German Chief
New York Times
January 7, 2001
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/07/world/07RUSS.html?pagewanted=all
MOSCOW, Jan. 6 - How Europe reacts to George W. Bush's plans for a national missile defense shield and whether Russia defaults on its Soviet-era debt were the main questions taken up here today as President Vladimir V. Putin held his first summit meeting of the new year with the German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder.
The two leaders were also expected to touch on issues relating to NATO's eastward expansion, the instability in Kosovo and perhaps even German restitution for cultural treasures looted by the Nazis. But they are likely to dwell on Russia's debt and the security policies of the incoming Bush administration.
Germany is Russia's biggest creditor, holding about $20 billion of the $48 billion Soviet-era debt to the so- called Paris Club of creditor nations.
At the same time, the meeting is a cozy visit of the leaders and their wives, including a Kremlin banquet, a ballet performance of "Giselle" at the Bolshoi Theater and a celebration of Orthodox Christmas Eve at the Christ the Savior Cathedral.
The meeting reflects the close ties between Germany and Russia and the frenetic pace of diplomacy pursued in recent months by Mr. Putin - a fluent German speaker and former K.G.B. spy in East Germany. A year after he assumed the presidency with the resignation of Boris N. Yeltsin, Mr. Putin is still struggling to revive the economy, rebuild markets abroad, rationalize - or dominate, in the view of his critics - Moscow's relations with former Soviet states that still depend on Moscow for trade or energy, and carve out a role that balances the American power by strengthening Moscow's ties with Europe.
On the security front, the Russian leader demonstrated in Canada last month that Moscow is seeking to line up Western allies against what Russia fears could be a precipitous decision by the United States to pursue national missile defenses.
Mr. Bush and his national security team advocate the defenses; Russia opposes them, saying they would destabilize the global nuclear balance.
Prime Minister Jean Chrétien of Canada, meeting Dec. 18 with Mr. Putin in Ottawa, said that "the stability which exists now" should not be "undermined by this plan put forward by the Americans" for missile defenses against rogue nations. His statement was regarded as a diplomatic victory for the Kremlin, though it had no discernible effect on Mr. Bush's determination to proceed.
In a joint statement, Mr. Chrétien and Mr. Putin referred to the Antiballistic Missile Treaty of 1972 as "a cornerstone of strategic stability," and Mr. Putin is likely to urge Mr. Schröder to endorse that view.
Mr. Putin would also like the German leader's support for Moscow's idea for a cooperative and mobile missile defense system that could be used to quarantine any aggressor nation and shoot down rogue missiles before they reach space.
Such a system could not be used as a national shield by one power, a prohibition enshrined in the 1972 treaty.
Mr. Putin has argued that an American decision to tear up the 1972 treaty would void 30 years of interconnected arms control agreements and reignite a costly and dangerous arms race.
Mr. Schröder and a number of German political figures have also expressed concerns about the impact of an American missile defense system on Europe's exposure to future nuclear threats. They wonder whether a unilateral decision by the United States to proceed would unhinge the strategic balance that has made arms control possible and nurtured nonproliferation efforts.
But Europeans are also concerned about Russia's unilateral treatment of some of its newly independent neighbors. This week Georgia's government announced that on New Year's Day, Russia cut off natural gas supplies to the main electric power station in the capital Tbilisi, threatening to plunge the country into the cold.
It seemed that Mr. Putin had taken off the gloves, as he had on earlier occasions with Ukraine, which depends on Russian gas supplies and industrial cooperation. In the case of Georgia, which borders Chechnya, Moscow accuses it of aiding or harboring Chechen rebels fighting the Russian Army.
In Washington, the State Department accused Russia of brutish treatment of its neighbor, and Georgia's president, Eduard Shevardnadze, made a direct appeal by letter to Mr. Putin.
After three days Moscow relented, putting Georgia's gas supplies, however, under tighter control of an affiliate of the Russian government monopoly, Gazprom. The gas squeeze followed the decision in December to close Russia's borders to tens of thousands of Georgians who work or trade in Russia and who had traveled back and forth without visa restrictions. In an unsubtle bit of wedge diplomacy, Moscow eased visa restrictions for residents of Georgia's most restive provinces, Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Although Germany pursues a patient strategy that recognizes many of the post-cold-war complexities of the former Soviet empire, Mr. Putin has not achieved the level of warm relations that characterized Mr. Yeltsin's dealing with former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, and this visit is surely an attempt to fortify what is for Mr. Putin a critical relationship.
For this reason, it was surprising that Russia preceded Mr. Schröder's arrival by announcing on Thursday that although it owes $3.4 billion in payments on the Soviet debt this year, it did not plan to pay $1.5 billion that it owes to the Paris Club nations in the first quarter. A Finance Ministry official said Moscow had budgeted only $1.24 billion for all foreign debt payments in 2001.
Germany was swift to criticize the Russian gambit, and to insist firmly that Russia is expected to meet its obligations in full.
Following meetings in December between the Russian prime minister, Mikhail Kasyanov, and Mr. Schröder, Mr. Putin seems to have pinned his hopes on a plan whereby Germany would accept equity shares in Russian industries in lieu of debt repayment.
On Dec. 26, Mr. Putin said he had come up with additional ideas along this line, and argued the merits of foreign intervention in Russian industries. German officials then began to play down Mr. Schröder's offer, saying the debt-for-shares swap was meant to apply only to a small portion of the total debt.
-------- depleted uranium
Balkan syndrome probe begins
A Portuguese team is conducting the investigation
BBC News
Sunday, 7 January, 2001, 16:54 GMT
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_1104000/1104087.stm
A scientific team from Portugal has begun examining sites in Kosovo, where Nato's use of bombs tipped with depleted uranium is alleged to have caused contamination and led to illness and deaths among soldiers serving there.
Concern has grown in the past week among European countries whose soldiers have served in the Balkans.
Sixteen former peacekeepers from six different countries have already died of leukemia, in what has become known as Balkan war syndrome.
This has been blamed on the depleted uranium (DU) used in the manufacture of Nato missiles - but Nato itself insists there is no risk of contamination.
Pressure on Nato
The four-strong team visited the Klina area, in western Kosovo - where Portuguese peacekeepers operate - measuring radioactivity and taking soil samples.
The investigation comes as pressure grows on Nato from European governments over the use of depleted uranium during the conflicts in Bosnia Hercegovina and Kosovo.
DU is used on the tips or in the core of missiles, as this makes them better able to penetrate armoured vehicles.
The Portuguese Prime Minister, Antonio Guterres, said on Saturday he could no longer "be completely confident" in Nato assurances, while Poland has announced plans to carry out medical tests to all its soldiers in Kosovo.
Reports from Spain say at least eight cases of cancer have been reported among Spanish personnel deployed in Kosovo and Bosnia Hercegovina.
The European Union's political and security committee is expected to debate the issue in Brussels on Tuesday.
Click here to see where concerns have been reported
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_1104000/1104087.stm#dang
On Friday, Portugal began tests on 10,000 soldiers and civilians who have served in the Balkans.
Poland has announced that more than 600 of its troops in Kosovo will undergo tests, which will involve taking samples from blood and hair as well as from water and soil where troops are stationed.
The British Government is resisting calls to carry out similar tests.
Scientists who visited 11 out of 112 sites in Kosovo bombed by Nato said on Friday they had found either remnants of depleted uranium or evidence of increased radioactivity around the impact points left by the raids.
But the World Health Organisation (WHO) says it has found no evidence of increased leukaemia in Kosovo since the 1998 bombardment.
---
Health alert over uranium shells fired on UK ranges
The Telegraph
Sunday 7 January 2001
By Macer Hall and Christina Lamb
http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/et?ac=004116959527408&rtmo=Vkxw45wx&atmo=rrrrrrrq&pg=/et/01/1/7/nuran07.html
DEPLETED uranium ammunition linked to serious illness among Gulf war and Balkans veterans has been routinely used at training ranges in Britain, The Telegraph has learned.
Last night the Ministry of Defence was urged to investigate the levels of radioactive contamination at a number of live firing areas following concern that the health of military personnel and local civilians could be at risk.
The revelation comes amid growing pressure on the Government to screen troops who served in the Balkans after a number of European soldiers stationed in Kosovo and Bosnia died of leukaemia, as revealed by The Telegraph last week.
Shells fired by the United States' A10 "tankbusting" aircraft are tipped with depleted uranium. Similar weapons are in the armoury of Britain's Challenger tanks. Depleted uranium is only mildly radioactive but on impact it burns off in a spray of fine dust which some scientists believe can cause cancer. Nato and the US has denied any risk.
Last night, the MoD admitted that it had tested DU weapons at two ranges, at Eskmeals, Cumbria, and the Solway Firth in Scotland, over the past 10 years. They have also been fired at a tank testing range at Lulworth, Dorset, a senior Army officer told The Telegraph.
Britain is increasingly isolated as its Nato allies have begun screening soldiers who served in the Balkans and demanding an international investigation into so-called "Balkan syndrome".
The Italian National Observatory for the Protection of Military Personnel said yesterday that it had found a direct connection between the deaths of six soldiers who served in the Balkans and Nato's use of DU ammunition, the first official study to do so. American A10 aircraft fired 31,000 DU rounds during Nato's campaign to eject the Yugoslav army from Kosovo in 1999. Another 10,000 were fired in Bosnia in 1994-5.
A team of United Nations scientists visited 11 out of 112 Nato bombing sites in Kosovo and found radiation at eight of them as well as parts of DU shells lying around in villages where they could be picked up by children. The number of deaths of soldiers has caused outrage across Europe, with ministers claiming that they were not fully informed of the risks by Nato officials before agreeing to take part in the Kosovo campaign. This could threaten future participation.
In addition to the six Italians who have died of leukaemia, another 30 are ill. Belgium has had five deaths, Portugal two, Spain two, and France and Holland have several seriously ill. Romano Prodi, the president of the European Commission, has suggested that the weapons be banned.
The MoD said that it knew of no cases of leukaemia linked to contact with DU ammunition and had no plans to screen soldiers. It said that out of the 50,000 who served in the Balkans, there was a statistical chance of six or seven contracting leukaemia and there was no evidence of more than the average number of illnesses.
A spokesman said test firing "is a lawful activity and international obligations are fulfilled by doing so".
---
Thousands of uranium shells fired on UK soil
The Telegraph
Sunday 7 January 2001
By Macer Hall, Christina Lamb, David Bamber and Lorraine Fraser
http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/et?ac=004116959527408&rtmo=fslaNfMs&atmo=rrrrrrrq&pg=/et/01/1/7/nuran107.html
THE map on the right shows firing ranges in Britain where depleted uranium ammunition has been used in tests and training. Thousands of shells, designed to pierce the toughest armour, have been fired at Eskmeals, Cumbria, in the Solway Firth and at Lulworth, Dorset.
The Ministry of Defence says that regular tests for radioactivity are carried out at its ranges and show "no significant health risk". Last night, however, there were calls for an investigation into the potential dangers to civilians and service personnel amid fears that towns and villages near ranges could be at risk, along with members of the public who had access to them when they are not in use.
The National Gulf War Veterans' Association, which campaigns for servicemen who claim to have contracted illnesses in the conflict, said the testing of depleted uranium weapons in Britain was a serious health risk. Terry Gooding, an association spokesman, said: "Depleted uranium is not just an issue for servicemen; it is a matter for civilians as well. It being tested virtually on people's doorsteps."
Use of depleted uranium weapons is far more widespread in the American armed forces than in Britain's, although the Army's Challenger tank can use them. More than 100 American A10 "tankbuster" aircraft, which fired the 30mm shells that are at the centre of health fears, were based in Britain until the early 1990s. The US Air Force denies training with the ammunition in Britain.
Peter Kilfoyle, a former Labour defence minister, said: "I would loathe to think that depleted uranium shells are being used in the British countryside. We urgently need more research into their effects and it would be wrong to continue using them in Britain until we are sure they are safe." Paul Keetch, the Liberal Democrat defence spokesman, said: "The MoD should be investigating both the use of depleted uranium shells overseas and on training ranges in the UK. We don't know how big the risk is. That's why we need the research done."
MoD records show that 1,421 depleted uranium shells have been fired from the Kirkcudbright range into the Solway Firth since 1995. Alasdair Morgan, Scottish National Party MP for Galloway and Upper Nithsdale, said: "The shelling should stop and those shells already fired should be removed."
A spokesman for the National Radiological Protection Board, which monitors potential dangers, said there was no risk from unexploded weapons, although dust from detonated munitions could be a problem. He said: "If it is true that depleted uranium weapons have been used, suitable precautions are required to protect service personnel or the public. Aid workers and service personnel going to Kosovo should take precautions, and that would certainly apply if the weapons had been used in the UK."
Soldiers in the field are advised to wear protection such as masks when handling the remains of vehicles and equipment destroyed by depleted uranium weapons. According to the NRPB, depleted uranium can be hazardous in two ways - it is a toxic chemical and it is radioactive. Soluble forms can be absorbed through breathing or ingestion and this can cause kidney problems as the metal accumulates. In areas contaminated by insoluble uranium, the risk comes from disturbing the contamination and inhaling the dust that can be deposited in the lungs and "over a long period could be a contributory cause of lung cancer".
Dr John Harrison, an adviser to Nato on radiation medicine, said the major risk from depleted uranium was its effects on the kidneys. He said: "The actual amount of radiation in depleted uranium is quite small. That is why it is used in a whole variety of things: as shielding in X-ray machines, as ballast in aircraft, and as heavy weight in yacht keels.".
Last night, it emerged that defence ministers will be called before a Commons committee to explain what they are doing about the effects of depleted uranium. Bruce George, Labour chairman of the defence select committee, said: "The MoD has got to come up with a statement to reassure servicemen and their families. The Government has got to say what its analysis of the situation is, what it is doing and what it proposes to do."
---
NATO ATTACKS LEAVE RADIATION FEARS IN WAKE
Chicago Tribune
January 7, 2001
From Tribune News Services
http://chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/article/0,2669,SAV-0101070465,FF.html
BELGRADE, YUGOSLAVIA -- Amid a health scare triggered by NATO's use of depleted uranium in the Balkans, Yugoslav officials tried Saturday to allay fears that the substance could be harmful to residents, while other countries urged sick soldiers who served in the region to be screened for radiation exposure.
UN scientists who visited 11 areas struck by NATO munitions in Kosovo confirmed Friday that they found signs of radioactivity at eight of the sites. Depleted uranium, which increases penetration of ammunition, carries two threats: radiation and chemical poisoning.
The UN Environment Program collected soil, water and vegetation samples and tested buildings and destroyed vehicles.
Some of the soil was "slightly contaminated," the UN said, adding that it was still trying to determine whether there were health or environmental risks.
Jovan Djukanovic, a Serbian government spokesman in the town of Bujanovac, one of the sites targeted, said contaminated locations in southern Serbia had been sealed off.
Dr. Erik Schouten, head of the World Health Organization in southern Serbia, also sought to calm fears heightened by local media coverage.
Schouten said that based on preliminary tests of leukemia patients in Kosovo, "We cannot conclude that the number of leukemia cases is increasing."
So far, there is no conclusive link between the uranium and sick soldiers.
---
Yugoslavia Tries to Dispel Radiation Fears
Europe: The World Health Organization says initial tests find no rise in leukemia cases in Kosovo.
Los Angeles Times
Sunday, January 7, 2001
From Times Wire Services
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/20010107/t000001826.html
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia--Amid a health scare triggered by NATO's use of munitions containing depleted uranium, Yugoslav officials tried Saturday to allay fears that the substance could be harmful to residents, while a World Health Organization official said there had been no increase in leukemia cases in Kosovo.
U.N. scientists who visited 11 areas struck by NATO munitions in Kosovo, a province of Serbia, Yugoslavia's main republic, have confirmed they found signs of radioactivity at eight of the sites. Depleted uranium, which increases penetration of ammunition, carries threats of radiation and chemical poisoning.
The United Nations Environment Program collected soil, water and vegetation samples and conducted tests on buildings and destroyed vehicles. Some of the soil was "slightly contaminated," the agency said.
However, "there is no danger of radiation unless a person finds himself on the very spot hit with the depleted uranium or holds such ammunition in his bare hands," said Jovan Djukanovic, a Serbian government spokesman in the town of Bujanovac.
He said contaminated locations in southern Serbia had been sealed off. Dr. Erik Schouten, WHO regional director in southern Serbia, also sought to calm fears heightened by local media coverage. He said that, based on preliminary tests in Kosovo, "we cannot conclude that the number of leukemia cases is increasing." However, he said the assessment was not complete.
After the death from leukemia of a sixth Italian soldier who served with North Atlantic Treaty Organization peacekeeping forces in the former Yugoslav federation was made public last week--bringing the total European deaths to 16--the Italian government demanded a full accounting from the U.S-led alliance.
A U.N. statement said WHO and the U.N. mission in Kosovo had been aware of depleted uranium in Kosovo since NATO's 11-week bombing campaign in 1999.
------
Portuguese Probe Kosovo Depleted Uranium Sites
Reuters
January 7, 2001 Filed at 2:10 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/health/science-health-balkan.html
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-health-.html
KLINA, Yugoslavia (Reuters) - A scientific team from Portugal arrived in Kosovo Saturday to examine depleted uranium sites suspected of causing ``Balkan Syndrome'' illness among soldiers who have served in the province.
A crew of four from the Department of Radioactivity Protection went immediately to the Klina area in western Kosovo with Portuguese peacekeepers who work in the region.
There, the team checked the ground for radiation with Geiger counter-style machines and took soil samples in plastic bags.
``So far we have not found meaningful contamination, but the work is still far from the end,'' Fernando Carvalho, team leader, told Reuters Television.
``We are monitoring the contamination of the environment from radioactivity due to the use of depleted uranium bomb shells.''
NATO has come under increasing pressure from several European countries in the last week over claims depleted uranium used in its weapons had caused death or illness among Balkan peacekeepers -- the so-called ``Balkan Syndrome.''
Portuguese Kosovo veteran Hugo Paulino died in March last year from a type of encephalitis, or inflammation of the brain, which his father has since maintained was brought on by exposure to depleted uranium.
Portugal's armed forces say there was no connection between Paulino's death and his serving in Kosovo.
Another soldier, Rui Miguel Alpalhao, has contracted leukemia since returning from Kosovo, but told Reuters he was unsure if his illness was linked to exposure to debris from spent munitions containing uranium.
In Lisbon, Prime Minister Antonio Guterres said Sunday Portuguese troops would continue their peacekeeping missions in Kosovo unless investigations showed their health to be at risk.
``I think any hasty action right now would be very negative,'' Guterres told TSF radio. ``We continue with our initial action. We trust in the sense of responsibility of the armed forces.
``But, evidently, we will know how to act in their defense if and when that may be necessary,'' he added.
Several destroyed Serb Army tanks remain in the area around Klina, left behind when Serb forces left Kosovo in June 1999.
The tanks were apparently hit by depleted uranium shells fired by NATO aircraft during the alliance bombing campaign against Yugoslav forces in the spring of 1999.
NATO says the ammunition, which it also used in bombing campaigns against Serb forces in Bosnia in 1994-5, posed a ''negligible hazard.''
---
Uranium Ammunition Used in Britain
Associated Press
January 7, 2001 Filed at 7:10 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Britain-Depleted-Uranium.html
LONDON (AP) -- Uranium-tipped ammunition at the center of a health scare among NATO nations has been in use at two British firing ranges for more than 10 years, the Defense Ministry has acknowledged.
The ministry said late Saturday that depleted-uranium ammunition fired at ranges in northern England and Scotland since 1990 did not pose a significant health risk.
But amid rising concern that NATO's use of the armor-piercing weapons in the Balkans irradiated land and possibly harmed its own ground troops, one influential lawmaker called for an investigation.
``If it is shown that depleted uranium causes an increase in cancers, then we have got to look at alternative weapon systems and at precautions which could be taken to protect our troops, as well as at how we can clean up the areas where the shells were used,'' said Bruce George, chairman of the Commons Defense Committee.
United Nations scientists who visited 11 areas struck by NATO munitions in Kosovo confirmed Friday they found signs of radioactivity at eight of the sites. They had yet to determine whether there were any health or environmental risks.
Italy is investigating 30 cases of illness involving soldiers who served in Kosovo, 12 of whom developed cancer. Five of those have died of leukemia.
Portugal has urged soldiers who had served in the Balkans and were exhibiting certain symptoms to report for radiation screening. Poland and Spain are also conducting tests on troops who had served, or are still serving, in the region.
So far, there is no conclusive link between the depleted uranium and sick soldiers.
The British defense ministry responded to a report in The Sunday Telegraph that claims uranium weapons are routinely fired at British ranges. The ammunition is used by U.S.-made A10 aircraft and Britain's Challenger tanks, the report said.
A ministry spokeswoman said use of the weapons at ranges at Eskmeals in northern England and Solway Firth in Scotland has been monitored by health officials, who found no evidence of risk to troops, civilians or wildlife.
In 1999 the U.S. military accidentally fired depleted uranium ammunition at a range on Vieques island in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico -- a violation of U.S. federal law.
Activists in Vieques say six decades of U.S. military exercises on the 20-mile-long island have harmed the environment and threatened their health -- charges the military denies.
------
NATO Warned of Uranium Danger
Associated Press
January 7, 2001 Filed at 8:19 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-NATO-Uranium.html
BERLIN (AP) -- NATO warned countries with armies and aid workers in the Balkans about the possible dangers of depleted uranium ammunition, the German Defense Ministry said Sunday, an issue which has recently sparked concern as a possible cause of serious illnesses in soldiers who served there.
The ministry confirmed that it received a warning in July 1999 of the risks from the ordnance, used by the United States during air campaigns across Yugoslavia for its armor-piercing qualities.
According to an internal Defense Ministry document obtained by the Berliner Morgenpost newspaper and dated July 16, 1999, NATO had warned soldiers and aid workers that month of a ``possible toxic threat'' and advised them to take ``preventative measures.''
The ministry has previously said it began health checks on soldiers who had come into possible contact with the depleted uranium ammunition that same month -- as U.N. peacekeeping forces were still entering Yugoslavia's Kosovo province after NATO's 78-day bombing campaign.
Despite that, the document said NATO planned no further steps, according to the newspaper. The Defense Ministry said it immediately responded with orders for soldiers on how to behave in areas that were targeted with depleted uranium.
The renewed concerns over depleted uranium arose in December after Italy announced an investigation into 30 sick soldiers who served in the region. Twelve have cancer and five have died of leukemia.
Since then, numerous other countries with troops in the Balkans have launched testing programs.
The United States has denied there are any health risks from the ammunition.
German Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping also repeated the ministry's assertion that the ammunition poses no danger. He is to present a report to parliament on the issue this month.
``All the facts should be on the table -- but only facts,'' he told the Bild newspaper in an article to be published Monday.
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, on a visit to Russia, said the questions were serious ones and would be investigated.
``It is in our interests to see any danger to our own soldiers and those of our partners to be ruled out,'' he said. ``We want to have a clear picture first of what happened.''
President Vladimir Putin of Russia, which had opposed the NATO bombing, on Sunday called the use of force in Yugoslavia ``impermissible'' and said investigations would have to determine ``why such weapons were used and with what results.''
Across Europe, the calls continued for a more thorough look into the possible effects.
``If it is shown that depleted uranium causes an increase in cancers, then we have got to look at alternative weapon systems and at precautions which could be taken to protect our troops, as well as at how we can clean up the areas where the shells were used,'' said Bruce George, chairman of the Defense Committee in Britain's House of Commons.
The British Defense Ministry acknowledged late Saturday that depleted uranium has been used at two firing ranges within Britain for more than 10 years, but said there was no evidence it posed a significant health or environmental risk.
Meanwhile, the head of the U.N. Environment Program criticized NATO for not being more forthcoming about where it used the ammunition. Klaus Toepfer told the Berliner Zeitung in an article to be published Monday that the alliance had taken the stance ``that investigation at these locations wasn't necessary anymore. That is very clearly not correct.''
UNEP has visited 11 of 112 sites in Kosovo identified by NATO as having been targeted with ordnance containing depleted uranium, and found higher radiation levels in eight locations. Final results are expected in March.
Toepfer said similar investigations should be done in Bosnia and Serbia, and that it was NATO's responsibility to dispose of the ammunition.
In Greece, the scare has rekindled public opposition to NATO's intervention in the Balkans -- sentiment that spurred daily and sometimes violent street protests during the bombing.
Defense Minister Akis Tsochadzopoulos rejected calls to withdraw the country's 1,500 peacekeepers, saying Sunday that ``the soldiers did not go there on an excursion, they went to help bring stability to the region.''
Greece's military is planning to screen up to 4,000 current and former peacekeepers and has confirmed that a sergeant who served in Bosnia has leukemia.
Swiss authorities also said Sunday they would screen 900 soldiers who served in the Balkans for signs of radiation poisoning.
Meanwhile, Polish and Bulgarian officials said Sunday that tests so far on troops serving in Kosovo had shown no negative effects from the ammunition.
--------
DU manufacturer
From: "mitzi" <upthesun@cshore.com>
Sun, 7 Jan 2001 19:44:59 -0000
Here is a website of one of the producers of depleted uranium weapons.
http://www.starmet.com/products.htm
(People should spread the word on this company and about this page. We should all contact this company and let them know how we feel about depleted uranium, and the fact that it will kill many innocent people if it is continued to be used by various militaries. Guin.)
Starmet
Innovators of Advanced Metal Products
http://www.starmet.com/products.htm
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By operating the only fully integrated depleted uranium facility in North America, we are able to produce a wide range of uranium products for the energy, nuclear medicine, defense and aerospace industries.
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Depleted Uranium (DU) is a low cost material that is readily available. DU's high density properties (65% denser than lead) provide useful solutions in radiation shielding and aircraft counterweights. DU is also a highly effective material for military armor and anti-armor applications. Customer needs for uranium and related materials are served by utilizing our patented technologies.
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---
DU (U-238) and its effects on humans
Norman & Karen Cohen <norco@bellatlantic.net>
Sun, 07 Jan 2001 22:25:03 -0500
fyi norm
Coalition for Peace and Justice and the UNPLUG Salem Campaign; 321 Barr Ave., Linwood, NJ 08221; 609-601-8537 or 609-601-8583 (8583: fax, answer machine); norco@bellatlantic.net;
UNPLUG SALEM WEBSITE: http://www.unplugsalem.org/
COALITION FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE WEBSITE: http:/www.coalitionforpeaceandjustice.org
The Coalition for Peace and Justice is a chapter of Peace Action.
"First they ignore you; Then they laugh at you; Then they fight you; Then you win. (Gandhi)
"Why walk when you can fly?" (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
From: Andreas
The site below is one of the best I know about depleted uranium and its effects on humans. Read the personal stories, see the pictures. It is all real. I met Mr. Akira Tashiro a few weeks ago at my house. He is to be trusted. His awards in Japan and the newspaper he works for, speak of his work and character.
http://www.chugoku-np.co.jp/abom/uran/index_e.html
---
SIRI-US and DU
From: kevcross@webtv.net
Sun, 07 Jan 2001 18:18:50 -0800
OBJECTION: I did attack DU propaganda (more coming, folks), but I was not aware of Ben's compilation, did not search for the sites and did not forward the URLs to Ben. So please, Ben, do not associate your piece with my name.
The fact is that when in an exchange of e-mails a few days ago I insisted Ben check scientific references from the CADU conference in Manchester, Ben refused to pursue them, called me a "hysteric" and severed the correspondence. What kind of objectivism is that? I find Ben's selection a bit skimpy, as "alleged" DU cases cover more types of fatal illness than leukemia.
I do not understand why would a director of a strategic issues institute want to go into analysis of a medical scientific subject. I take my info from anti-DU scientists, thank you, and I do trust them, for I know of no case of felony among them. Some of them paid with their health and personal safety for standing on the side of truth. That suffices for me.
Your argument at the end of the e-mail looks naive. Just because benzene could cause leukemia and so could DU, but DU is not admittedly a cause, maybe NATO was spraying Kosovo with deadly benzene but told us it was 10 t of benign DU? Whom do you work for, Ben? Why this e-mail after you cut yourself off? Do you need to "prove" you are right for your ego or you have to prove it for your clients?
Sorry, Ben I go with present European "hysteria", noting that Iraqi "hysteria" is hushed up, and Bosnian data has not seen the daylight yet, as if that new pro-NATO country was even more "backward" than Iraq. I'd rather see your institute try to answer strategic questions:
0. Why has Pentagon been lying, twisting the truth, suppressing info, manipulating inquiries ever since the issue of DU entered public arena, but not before?
1. Why is emphasis on NATO and UN soldiers from Bosnia and Kosovo and not on the local population?
2. Why is UN investigating again? They already investigated after NATO admitted the use of over 10 t of DU in Kosovo and found no risk to local population. Why would the best equipped teams miss equipment for alfa particle detection? Could it not be flown in by a courier? How come half-amateur Patricia Axelrod could rig up such equipment and measure radioactivity at Tomahawk craters in beograd, but the best equipped UN teams could not, although they examined Novi Sad devastation with every probe possible under the sun.
3. Why were some NATO and UN troops and workers safeguarded (sort of) against DU but not the local population?
4. Why are soldiers with apparent DU-related illness appearing on TV of countries whose military spokespersons just a few days ago assured the public from the same TV screens that there was no problem. Why would Portugal top statesman become frustrated with the military and launch his own investigation?
5. Why do the military of some countries say that they categorically know there is no problem with DU illness? They state next minute they did not test anybody because DU is so safe that examinations are not necessary? Other dispatches say the same military suppressed medical evidence when DU-related illness was detected.
6. Why are military teams going to Kosovo to investigate? Since when criminals are allowed to investigate their own crimes? A momentum from the ICTFY in the Hague; a new type of NATO warfare - legalistic?
7. Why has no mainstream media dispatch shown deformed babies from Iraq areas contaminated with DU. Because they were born after Pentagon vaccinated them with anthrax? Or because their mothers were smoked in the desert in the burning oil wells?
8. Why Dr. Rokke's 50 men are largely ill with DU-induced symptoms or dead, even though they were not vaccinated and did not breathe the oil well smoke? The only one who does not have any symptoms wore complete special protective clothing in the Gulf.
9. The fire at DU depot at US base in the Gulf consumed benzene and not DU?
10. If the DU was so benign, why the special decontamination of US tanks hit by firendly fire, preparation for overseas shipment and disposal at US nuclear waste depots deep in the ground?
Anyone cares to argue with Ben?
Piotr Bein
At 07:38 PM 07/01/01 EST, BenWorks@aol.com wrote:
I have spent the last fourteen days or so assembling, reviewing and compiling the attached internet bibliography of DU-GWI related websites and reports from credible sources on both sides of the issue. Piotr Bein contributed to this effort, both by vigorously attacking the alleged DU coverup and by searching for some of the sites included.
This compilation is comprehensive, but not exhaustive, even if you follow the URLs to their rosters of additional information. Still, it contains the sites that are most credible, most incredible and those most often cited.
New articles are not included in this compilation, though I shall try to add the websites for major newspapers reporting on the issue.
While assembling this product, I have paused to read and carefully consider the evidence.
Most important is a private sector oncology site (science of cancer) on lukemia Oncologychannel.com -- Leukemia Website: http://www.oncologychannel.com Overview: http://www.oncologychannel.com/leukemias/ Causes: http://www.oncologychannel.com/leukemias/causes.shtml Symptoms: http://www.oncologychannel.com/leukemias/symptoms.shtml
DU will not explain the Portuguese, Italian or other Leukemia cases. Other toxic exposures such as benzene, could. In extremes, DU may cause kidney disease.
The real problem to consider is the "cocktail" of multiple toxic exposures and careless haste in administering vaccines, etc.
Benjamin Works Trustee: Soldiers for the Truth www.sftt.org
Director The Strategic Issues Research Institute--SIRIUS www.siri-us.com
--------
LEUKEMIA OUTBREAK AMONG TROOPS CAUSES TURMOIL IN NATO
RAMSEY CLARK DEMANDS BAN ON DEPLETED URANIUM
Sun, 7 Jan 2001 16:07:03 -0500
From: iacenter@iacenter.org
To: "Depleted Uranium" <iacenter@iacenter.org>
International Action Center 39 West 14th St., #206, NY, NY 10011 212-633-6646 Fax: 212-633-2889 iacenter@iacenter.org www.iacenter.org Ramsey Clark, Chairperson
January 7, 2001
For Immediate release Press Contact: Deirdre Sinnott
Deaths from leukemia of Italian, Belgian, Spanish, Portuguese and other NATO troops occupying Bosnia or Kosovo and other illnesses have aroused a storm of popular anger and concern about dangers to NATO troops stationed in the region from the residue of depleted-uranium weapons.
By Jan. 6, French, Belgian, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and other governments had demanded that NATO identify the areas hit in Bosnia and Kosovo by DU shells and to clarify the dangers.
Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who is a founder of the International Action Center, has long been an opponent of DU weapons. On Jan. 6th he once again raised his call for a ban of the use of these weapons that he first raised in 1996. [attached to this news release] Since then conferences in Baghdad, Iraq, in 1999 and Gijon, Spain in 2000 have also demanded a ban on DU use.
"This new outbreak of leukemia among European soldiers has reinforced what we said before," said Clark from New York on Jan. 6. "Is it acceptable by any human standards that we would permit one shell of depleted uranium to be manufactured, to be stored, to be used? No! Stop it now!"
Clark is leaving January 12, 2001 for the fourth trip large delegation to Iraq the IAC has organized to challenge sanctions against that country. He said that "along with investigating the dangers to NATO soldiers and guarding their health, the Pentagon should be responsible for the damage caused in Iraq and in Yugoslavia by these weapons and should clean them up."
DU is the waste residue made from the uranium enrichment process. This radioactive and toxic substance, 1.7 times as dense as lead, is used to make shells that penetrate steel armor.
Many people, including physicists and physicians, believe that uranium-oxide dust inhaled or ingested by troops in the Gulf War is the cause, or a contributing cause, of the "Gulf-War Syndrome". Of the approximately 697,000 U.S. troops stationed in the Gulf during the war, over 100,000 veterans are now chronically ill. Cancer rates in southern Iraq have increased dramatically. For example ovarian cancer in women has increased by sixteen fold.
The Pentagon used DU in large amounts in Iraq in 1991, in Bosnia in 1995 and in Kosovo in 1999.
In Iraq the U.S. Airforce A-10 aircraft fired approximately 940,000 30mm rounds. In addition 14,000 large caliber DU tank rounds of 105mm were fired. By the end of the war over 600,000 pounds of uranium from spent rounds lay scattered across Iraq and Kuwait.
In Yugoslavia the current number of rounds that the U.S. government admits to firing are 31,000. The UN announced on January 5 the it had found evidence of radioactivity at 8 of the 11 sites tested in Kosovo. The 11 sites tested were among 112 sites in Kosovo hit by DU rounds. A United Nations report in May, 2000 warned that Kosovo's water could be so contaminated as to be unfit to drink.
The number of targets hit by DU rounds through out the rest of Yugoslavia was not reported. About 10,000 rounds were fired by U.S. NATO forces in Bosnia in 1994-95.
When Italian soldier Rinaldo Colombo died last September of leukemia, it brought the total of Italian soldiers believed to have died from "Balkans Syndrome" to five. By January nine cases of leukemia had been reported.
In Belgium, five cases of cancer have been diagnosed in soldiers who were on duty in the Balkans. In Spain, two soldiers have also been affected. One died in October. Portuguese Corporal Hugo Paulino arrived home in Lisbon from Kosovo in mid-February complaining of headaches and feeling sick. He died on March 9 in the military hospital. According to his father, Luis Paulino, medical examinations revealed neither meningitis nor encephalitis. His father is certain "it was depleted uranium that killed him."
Investigations begin
The Spanish government has launched a study of the health of the 32,000 Spanish soldiers who have been in the Balkans. The Portuguese government will examine 900 of its country's troops.
Belgian Defense Minister Andre Flahaut wrote a letter Dec. 29 to Bjorn von Sydow, the defense minister of Sweden. That country takes over the European Union presidency Jan. 1. The letter called on EU defense ministers to discuss health problems suffered by troops stationed in Bosnia or Kosovo.
In mid-December the Italian government launched an inquiry into why some of their military personnel have recently died of leukemia. Defense Minister Sergio Mattarella had affirmed that "10,800 depleted uranium projectiles were fired by American aircraft" on Bosnia between 1994 and 1995. Without naming them explicitly, Mattarella accused the U.S. military officials of hiding information about DU from allies.
John Catalinotto, a co-editor with Sara Flounders of the book the International Action Center published on this topic, "Metal of Dishonor: Depleted Uranium", commented on the new discovery of illness among European troops. The IAC also distributes a video with the same name, produced by the Peoples Video Network.
Catalinotto said, "It's true the Pentagon avoids publicizing details of its use of DU weapons and has covered up the extent of DU use. That has been its policy from the beginning. At the same time there are all sorts of warnings in studies by the U.S. Army admitting that DU is dangerous.
"Still," he added, there can be no doubt the NATO militaries knew the U.S. was using depleted-uranium shells, which are the usual U.S. anti-tank weapon. In Metal of Dishonor and in news releases in April 1999 we exposed DU's use in Bosnia and warned of its use in Kosovo. And during the 1999 war the media prodded Pentagon spokespeople to admit publicly that U.S. A-10 planes were firing DU shells.
"But the European population is furious that its youth are being exposed to dangers. With the European governments, there's another story. They knowingly took part in a dirty war of aggression against Yugoslavia. They hoped to get some of the spoils.
"Now only Washington, Berlin and London are getting spoils," said Catalinotto, "while Italian and Portuguese troops are patrolling DU-polluted areas of Kosovo. And now [George W.] Bush says he wants to pull troops out. There's a saying that 'When thieves fall out, honest people learn the truth.' There is an opportunity to learn the truth about DU right now."
Sara Flounders, a director of the International Action Center described the work of the DU Education Project based at the IAC. "The DU Education Project first helped to raise international awareness of the consequences of the Pentagon's use of radioactive weapons in Iraq. We were the first group to warn that the same weapons were being used in Bosnia in 1995 and in the 78 day bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. We contacted anti-U.S. base movements in several countries and helped to expose the test firing and storage of DU munitions in Okinawa, Japan, in South Korea, in Vieques, Puerto Rico and the Israeli use of U.S. supplied, DU-armored tanks in the West Bank and Gaza."
"In every country the U.S. government has first denied and then stonewalled any discussion of the impact of radioactive weapons. There is a total disregard for the consequences for their own soldiers and for the population of the occupied country. Only an aroused mass movement has dragged the truth out."
[Metal of Dishonor: Depleted Uranium, both book and video, can be purchased through www.leftbooks.com]
An International Appeal to Ban the Use of Depleted Uranium Weapons (First circulated in 1996)
Depleted-uranium weapons are an unacceptable threat to life, a violation of international law and an assault on human dignity. To safeguard the future of humanity, we call for an unconditional international ban forbidding research, manufacture, testing, transportation, possession and use of DU for military purposes. In addition, we call for the immediate isolation and containment of all DU weapons and waste, the reclassification of DU as a radioactive and hazardous substance, the cleanup of existing DU-contaminated areas, comprehensive efforts to prevent human exposure and medical care for those who have been exposed.
During the Gulf War, munitions and armor made with depleted uranium were used for the first time in a military action. Iraq and northern Kuwait were a virtual testing range for depleted-uranium weapons. Over 940,000 30-millimeter uranium tipped bullets and "more than 14,000 large caliber DU rounds were consumed during Operation Desert Storm/Desert Shield." (U.S. Army Environmental Policy Institute) These weapons were used throughout Iraq with no concern for the health and environmental consequences of their use. Between 300 and 800 tons of DU particles and dust have been scattered over the ground and the water in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. As a result, hundreds of thousands of people, both civilians and soldiers, have suffered the effects of exposure to these radioactive weapons.
Of the 697,000 U.S. troops who server in the Gulf, over 90,000 have reported medical problems. Symptoms include respiratory, liver and kidney dysfunction, memory loss, headaches, fever, low blood pressure. There are birth defects among their newborn children. DU is la leading suspect for a portion of these ailments. The effects on the population living in Iraq are far greater. Under pressure, the Pentagon has been forced to acknowledge Gulf War Syndrome, but they are still stonewalling any connection to DU.
Communities near DU weapons plants, testing facilities, bases and arsenals have also been exposed to this radioactive material which has a half-life of 4.4 billion years. DU-weapons are deployed with U.S. troops in Bosnia. The spreading toxicity of depleted uranium threatens life everywhere.
DU weapons are not conventional weapons. They are highly toxic, radioactive weapons. All international law on warfare has attempted to limit violence to combatants and to prevent the use of cruel and unfocused weapons. International agreements and conventions have tried to protect civilians and non-combatants from the scourge of war and to outlaw the destruction of the environment and the food supply in order to safeguard life on earth.
Consequently, DU weapons violate international law because of their inherent cruelty and unconfined death-dealing effect. They threaten civilian populations now and for generations to come. These are precisely the weapons and uses prohibited by international law for more than a century including the Geneva Conventions and their Protocols Additional of 1977.
-------
Allies 'told in 1991 of uranium cancer risks'
Leaked documents back cover-up claim.
Jan 7 2001
by Felicity Arbuthnott and Neil Mackay
http://www.sundayherald.com/news/newsi.hts?section=News&story_id=13592
THE Pentagon scientist who briefed Britain and America on the lethal health risks to Western troops of using depleted-uranium (DU) shells claims he warned the allied powers as far back as 1991 that the explosives could cause cancer, mental illness and birth defects.
Professor Doug Rokke, ex- director of the Pentagon's Depleted-Uranium Project, says the USA and UK have covered up the hazards , despite the rising death toll among allied troops who fought in the Gulf from illnesses linked to DU exposure, including Gulf War syndrome. The UN Environment Programme has also found traces of radiation at eight sites in Kosovo hit by Nato DU shells.
The Sunday Herald has been passed a restricted MoD document dated February 25, 1991 - four days before the Gulf War ceasefire. It states that full protective clothing and respirators should be worn when close to DU shells and that human remains exposed to DU should be hosed down before disposal.
The document - coded 25/22/40/2 - says inhalation or ingestion of particles from shells is a health risk and exposure should be treated as "exposure to lead oxide". DU dust on food would result in contamination.
Rokke , a former professor of environmental science at Jacksonville University, was tasked by the US department of defence with organising the DU clean-up of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait after the Gulf War.
Rokke, a former US army colonel , also briefed the Commons Defence Select Committee on the risks of DU in 1999.
"Since 1991, numerous US department of defence reports have stated that the consequences of DU were unknown," he said. "That is a lie. They were told. They were warned."
Rokke gave military personnel briefings on the hazards of DU shells . "I can confirm that medical and tactical commanders knew all the hazards," he said.
In Saudi Arabia, Rokke and his men buried vehicles and contaminated body parts and shipped other equipment back to a nuclear decontamination facility in the US. At least 10 men died. The only man in the 50-strong team not to fall ill wore full radioactive protective clothing.
Rokke suffers reactive airway disease, neurological damage and kidney problems. "DU is the stuff of nightmares," he said. "It is toxic, radioactive and pollutes for 4500 million years. It causes lymphoma , neuro-psychotic disorders and short-term memory damage. In semen, it causes birth defects and trashes the immune system.
"The United States and British military personnel, as part of Nato, wilfully disregarded health and safety and the environment by their use of DU, resulting in severe health effects, including death. I and my colleagues warned the US and British officials that this would occur. They disregarded our warnings because to admit any correlation between exposure and health effects would make them liable for their actions wherever these weapons have been used ."
The Sunday Herald has seen a memo from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico , dated March 1, 1991. It is from a Lieutenant-Colonel M V Ziehman to a Major Larson. Headed "The Effectiveness of Depleted Uranium Penetrators", it reads: "There has been, and continues to be, a concern regarding the impact of DU on the environment. If no-one makes the case for the effectiveness of DU on the battlefields, DU rounds may become politically unacceptable and be deleted from the arsenal."
A document from the US defence nuclear agency from 1992 described DU particles as a "serious health threat".
Rokke says field measurements of DU in Iraq were around 200 millirads an hour. The US has designated a year's safety limit of just 100 millirads.
Shaun Rusling of the Gulf War Veterans' and Families' Association said 521 British servicemen have died of Gulf War syndrome to date. Bruce George, Labour chairman of the Commons defence committee, said yesterday that an MoD investigation was a matter of urgency. The committee meets on January 10, and is expected to call on defence secretary Geoff Hoon to give evidence . However, an MoD spokesman said last night: "We are unaware of anything that shows depleted uranium has caused any ill health or death."
-------- russia
Putin Dismisses U.S. Reports That Russia Shipped Nuclear Weapons for Baltic Fleet
New York Times
January 7, 2001
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/07/world/07PUTI.html
MOSCOW, Jan. 6 - President Vladimir V. Putin today described as "rubbish" American intelligence reports that the Russian military had moved tactical nuclear weapons into a storage depot that serves the Baltic Fleet in Kaliningrad.
Taking a walk around Red Square this evening with the German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, Mr. Putin was asked about the reports, which were emanating this week from Washington, and, speaking in German, he responded, "That's rubbish."
The mysterious movement of an undetermined number of tactical nuclear weapons - those fired on short-range missiles on land or at sea - was initially reported by The Washington Times and was subsequently confirmed by Clinton administration officials.
Those officials said they had registered no protest with Moscow, though a State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, said the issue was one "we want to discuss with them.
"It's something that we follow carefully," he added.
American officials said the storage of tactical weapons in Kaliningrad did not violate any agreements with Russia, and Pentagon officials said they were unsure of the military significance of the movement. Russia had pledged to keep the Baltic Sea region free of nuclear weapons, and so the reports seemed to undermine the Kremlin's credibility.
Kaliningrad, which before World War II was the Prussian university town of Königsberg, lies on the Baltic Sea between Poland and Lithuania on a sliver of land not connected to the rest of Russia.
The commander of the Baltic Sea fleet, Adm. Vladimir Yegorov, recently ran successfully for governor of Kaliningrad with Mr. Putin's support.
The new governor, who for the moment retains his post as fleet commander, called the American reports "a New Year's joke" and said the Baltic region would remain a nuclear-free zone. "Nobody has ever disturbed - and nobody is going to disturb - this state of affairs," he added.
A Foreign Ministry spokesman, Alexander Yakovenko, said on Russian television today that "none of the Baltic Fleet's naval, air force or land facilities located in the Kaliningrad region has ever had any tactical nuclear weapons."
That statement was certainly questionable, as the Baltic Fleet comprised a number of surface warships and submarines that were deployed with nuclear weapons during the cold war.
However, in a nonbinding set of agreements with the Bush administration in 1991, Russia is believed to have withdrawn tactical nuclear weapons from all of its warships, including those in the Baltic Fleet.
Still, any change in the status of Russian armed forces attracts attention, as did training exercises for Russian strategic bombers this winter, and the naval exercises last summer in which the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk sank.
--------
Putin dismisses Baltic nuclear report as rubbish
Environmental News Network
Sunday, January 7, 2001
http://www.enn.com/news/wire-stories/2001/01/01072001/reu_putin_41221.asp
Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed as rubbish on Saturday U.S. comments that the Kremlin had stationed tactical nuclear weapons in its Baltic enclave Kaliningrad.
The Foreign Ministry also issued a denial through spokesman Alexander Yakovenko, who was quoted by local news agencies as saying there had been no tactical nuclear weapons deployed in Kaliningrad, which lies between Poland and Lithuania.
Putin, responding in German to a question about the alleged deployment of the missiles, was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying: "That's rubbish."
Putin, fluent in German, was speaking during a private visit to Moscow by German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who arrived in the Russian capital earlier on Saturday to celebrate the Orthodox Christmas.
A U.S. official said in Washington on Wednesday there had been "some movement of tactical nuclear weapons into Kaliningrad."
The U.S. comment, made after the story broke in the Washington Times newspaper, sent a shudder through Kaliningrad's Baltic neighbors and prompted regional politicians and analysts to warn of a return to the tense days of the Cold War.
But on Thursday Kaliningrad governor Vladimir Yegorov dismissed the Washington Times report as a "dangerous joke."
RIA news agency quoted foreign ministry spokesman Yakovenko as saying: "There have been no tactical nuclear weapons (deployed in Kaliningrad) on naval objects, including at sea, on land and on the air force, and none have been taken there."
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Ratify, but Review
New York Times
January 7, 2001
By HAROLD BROWN, MELVIN R. LAIRD and WILLIAM J. PERRY
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/07/opinion/07LAIR.html
WASHINGTON - Much media attention has been focused on cabinet selections and partisan politics. But it has become clear that any legislative success in the 107th Congress will require a coalition of centrists from both sides of the aisle.
Nowhere is bipartisan cooperation more important than in the realm of national security. The new Congress must identify issues on which bipartisan agreement is possible. The spread of weapons of mass destruction is one such issue. Seeking a bipartisan approach to nuclear nonproliferation should be among the principal goals of the next administration and Congress.
Historically, nonproliferation measures have enjoyed strong support from both sides of the aisle; we need to reinvigorate that support. A good way to start would be to consider the recommendations in the report issued by Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, special adviser to the president and the secretary of state for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. General Shalikashvili concludes that, with proper programs in place, the treaty will improve United States security and will not, as some have suggested, jeopardize nuclear deterrence.
In the debate preceding its October 1999 vote on the test ban treaty, the Senate was presented with compelling but conflicting statements on the nonproliferation benefits of the treaty and questions regarding its impact on the long-term safety and reliability - and hence deterrence value - of our nuclear arsenal. But the truncated debate meant there were no adequate answers given on these issues.
As a result, shortly before the vote, 62 senators signed a letter to Senators Trent Lott and Tom Daschle urging that final consideration of the treaty be put off until the next Congress. A clear, bipartisan majority, with a wide range of individual views on ratification, deemed this issue sufficiently important to delay a vote until cooler heads - and more thorough consideration - could prevail. This treaty is too important for the vote of the last Congress to be the final word.
Now General Shalikashvili proposes in his report to the president 16 recommendations and reservations that we believe deserve careful consideration by the Bush administration. For example, he urges increased support for nonproliferation- related intelligence resources and improved global test monitoring capabilities. He also proposes a number of steps to improve our nation's ability to maintain our nuclear arsenal without nuclear tests and advocates a renewed commitment to a comprehensive, bipartisan nonproliferation agenda.
Most importantly, General Shalikashvili recommends that the new administration propose periodic joint reviews - conducted with the Senate - of the treaty's impact on national security after the pact is put in place.
In our view, a periodic review of the treaty is the best way to address the Senate's concerns about whether the safety and reliability of the nuclear arsenal could be assured with absolute certainty beyond 10 years. Such a review could begin nine years after ratification, and could be repeated at regular intervals. The periodic review should allay fears that the treaty may in the long term do harm to American security and that of our allies. If a review cannot give satisfactory assurances that the nuclear arsenal remained safe and reliable, the treaty would be set aside until such assurances can be provided.
The fact is that the suspension of nuclear tests instituted by President George Bush and Congress in 1992 will remain in place for many years to come. There are advantages to the United States in our international relations in ratifying the test ban treaty. The treaty is an important element of the global nonproliferation regime and crucial to American leadership of those efforts. The review proposal, coupled with other steps recommended by General Shalikashvili provides appropriate insurance that America can preserve the advantage of our nuclear arsenal while limiting further development of offensive nuclear weaponry.
Advancing nuclear nonproliferation is a bipartisan goal worth pursuing. Success in ratifying the test ban treaty would be a first step toward bipartisan cooperation on other crucial matters of national security.
Harold Brown was defense secretary from 1977 to 1981; Melvin R. Laird, who was a congressman for nine terms, was defense secretary from 1969 to 1973; William J. Perry was defense secretary from 1994 to 1997.
--------
Stuck Away in a Lonely Outpost With an Awesome Responsibility
Salt Lake Tribune
Sunday, January 7, 2001
BY JOHN DIEDRICH KNIGHT RIDDER NEWS SERVICE
http://www.sltrib.com/01072001/nation_w/60629.htm
NEW RAYMER, Colo. -- Air Force Lt. Joe Roth's office is 75 feet underground, a cramped capsule nested in another capsule that the 27-year-old officer likens to "a yolk inside an egg."
Drivers passing by might not even notice this bunker and the house above it on a barren field in Weld County. But below the farmland formerly used for wheat is a control center where Roth monitors some of the most powerful weapons in the world -- U.S. intercontinental ballistic missiles. He and his partner, Capt. J.D. Moore, can unleash their fury in minutes, if so ordered by the president.
The 10 Minuteman III nuclear missiles they watch can carry three warheads, each with up to 15 times the explosive power of the Hiroshima bomb.
"It's an awesome responsibility," Roth said.
"If things got so perilous, our responsibility would be to do that job."
With 10 years since the Soviet Union's collapse, assurances by President Clinton that nuclear missiles are no longer aimed at us and headlines proclaiming U.S. missile silos are being destroyed, many Americans might assume nuclear weapons have been scrapped or at least taken off alert.
They would be wrong.
It is true that U.S. and Russian missiles are aimed at the ocean. But they can be redirected in seconds to land-based targets.
The United States has cut its intercontinental ballistic missile arsenal nearly in half, yet 550 missiles with up to 2,000 warheads still stand ready for launch from silos in five northern Plains states. Forty-nine Minuteman missiles are in northeastern Colorado alone.
The United States maintains two types of missiles -- 10-warhead Peacekeepers and three-warhead Minutemen -- and the nation spends about $380 million a year to keep them on alert.
Post-Cold War cuts of nuclear missiles are still progressing. The United States and Russia are considering a treaty that would eliminate America's 50 Peacekeeper missiles and cut the number of warheads in the Minuteman III from three to one. In fact, workers at Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyo., are already removing warheads from the Minuteman IIIs, officials said.
As of two weeks ago, 111 of the 150 Minuteman IIIs under Warren's control, including those in Colorado, had been converted to single warheads.
It may sound as if drastic cuts are being made, but the Pentagon isn't scrapping its missile force. Far from it. The military, in fact, is spending $2.35 billion to give the Minuteman III the biggest makeover in two decades. The United States might have fewer missiles, but the ones that remain will be better.
Critics blast the idea of keeping missiles on what they call "hair-trigger alert," because the Soviet threat is gone. They fear decisions would have to be made so quickly that a mistaken launch is possible.
"It is going to war by checklist. There is no scope for rational thought and deliberate leadership," said Bruce Blair, a former missileer who is a nuclear expert at the Center for Defense Information, a Washington, D.C., think tank.
Air Force officials, however, say the system is full of safeguards, but the missiles must be kept on alert to deter other countries from attacking the United States. Russia, for instance, still has missiles on alert.
"Who is to say in 10 years that we won't be in a situation where we need this system?" said Lt. Col. Matt Durham, with Colorado Springs-based Air Force Space Command, which is responsible for the missiles' readiness. So until ordered to do otherwise, Roth, Moore and other missileers will stand watch over America's nuclear missiles, every minute of every day, just as their predecessors have done for more than 40 years.
Inside a locked safe just a few feet away from where they sit is a key that could launch the missiles and change the world.
No nuclear missile has ever been fired except for testing, and the men and women on alert in Colorado and elsewhere say they hope one is never fired in anger.
But if ordered, they say they are ready to punch in the codes, unlock the key, put it in the console and turn all switches to "launch."
"If it came down to that, I am sure we would have justification for what we were doing," Moore said.
"I would have done what I have decided is right."
The first missileers, dressed in white jumpsuits and facing a menacing Soviet presence, went on alert in 1960 when the United States activated a squadron of Atlas intercontinental ballistic missiles at Warren. The Minuteman system developed a short time later.
Today, missileer duty remains much the same.
Roth and Moore are on missile alert about eight times a month. Each time, the pair drives the 100 miles from Warren to their post: a remote ranch house surrounded by a high barbed-wire fence with armed Air Force guards.
Roth and Moore said they became missileers because they believed their duty was keeping the United States safe.
"I am doing what is right for me and right for my country," said Moore, a 28-year-old San Diego native who worked his first alert of a four-year tour in August.
Previously, he was in a satellite unit at Schriever Air Force Base east of Colorado Springs.
His new job requires he comply with strict rules. Moore, Roth and other missileers can only take medicines approved by Air Force doctors, making some cough syrups, cold formulas and herbal products off-limits, even when they are on vacation.
They are automatically taken off missileer duty if they go under the care of a civilian doctor. A death in the family, divorce or just a bad attitude also could lead to being yanked.
"Any dip in reliability is enough not to send someone to the missile field," said Lt. Col. Ed Fienga, Roth and Moore's com- mander.
"It's an unwritten contract with the American people that we will put only reliable people in charge of nuclear weapons and check that reliability every day."
Above the bunker where Moore and Roth serve their alert, security forces, a chef and facility manager live and work from a house with television, a pool table and couches.
But with Air Force pictures and commanders' photos on the wall, it doesn't feel quite like home.
As they started an alert earlier this month, Moore and Roth flashed identification to the guards outside the house, said hello to those on duty above ground and then rode a cagelike elevator down to the control center, where they were to begin a 24-hour shift.
On its way down, their elevator passed a mural of a bloodthirsty beast with bright teeth, glow-in-the-dark eyes and a missile launch key in one claw.
After the short ride down, the men passed through two 8-ton doors before getting to the capsule that would be their home and office for the next day.
The work capsule hangs on chains from another capsule and is on hydraulic shocks to protect it in case of nuclear attack or earthquake. Crews call it the "Tylenol capsule."
The first order of business during alerts is to take over from the departing crew. Roth, who has logged 150 alerts in two years, laughed when he recalled how in the movie "War Games," the departing missile crews high-fived the incoming officers and tossed them the launch keys.
Reality is a lot more detailed and time-consuming: The crew going off-duty needs to bring its counterparts up to speed on what happened in the past 24 hours. That includes everything from missile maintenance glitches to alerts triggered by the silos' security systems, which are sensitive enough to be tripped by a rabbit, a tumbleweed or the plains' persistent winds.
The silos also have underground sensors, which can detect earthquakes 1,000 miles away.
After a half-hour or so, the other crew was gone, and Roth and Moore settled in and began studying the computer screens before them, which showed the status of 10 Minuteman III missiles under their watch.
An hour or so into an alert, crews typically change into comfortable clothes -- sweatpants, T-shirts and athletic shoes.
For the next six hours, one "racks" out in a bed on the far end of the capsule, behind a curtain, while the other keeps watch on the computer screens. Then they switch places.
Besides monitoring missiles, the person left awake can read, study work or school books or watch satellite TV or a video.
The capsules look very much as they did when they were first built, with a few exceptions: Carpet covers the metal floor, the ashtrays are gone and some of the crew members are women. The televisions and beds are new, too.
Years ago, crews worked eight-hour shifts, sleeping in the house above ground during the time they were off.
Moore and Roth remembered their first alert as daunting, given all the procedures.
But soon the drill became routine, which worries them.
"Sometimes not much happens and you get complacent, like 'I've seen that 100 times.' That's a problem," Moore said.
"If you don't keep focused on where you are sitting and what you are sitting in front of, with the hum overhead you might get lulled into a relaxed state, and then something happens and your adrenaline shoots up."
Commanders want to make the shift bearable but don't want to allow too many niceties. For instance, there is no Internet connection.
"It's true we don't launch a missile every day and we want to give our crews things to do, but it's a fine line," Fienga said. "We don't want to build in distractions."
Roth and Moore said they rarely think about whether they could launch missiles. Mostly their job is focused on the day-to-day tasks of monitoring them.
But the question came up for Moore.
"Initially, I had reservations and doubts about whether I would be capable" of launching, he said, worried a mistake could be made.
But after several months of missileer training, he developed faith in a system he and the others now see as airtight against accidental launch.
"I can tell my mother and grandmother back home, 'Don't worry, it's going to happen the right way. There isn't going to be a mistake,' " he said.
That's reassuring to residents in New Raymer --population 120 -- who have lived with the missiles for four decades. These days, the missiles draw little attention.
Karen Kester, a New Raymer native who owns the Pawnee Station Restaurant, recalled that a man once stopped on the road a few hundred yards from a silo to make a cell phone call. He looked up to find security forces standing by his car window, guns drawn. He had stopped too close to the silo for Air Force comfort.
"It's kind of scary," said Jenny Templeton, who works for Kester. "You just know to stay away."
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- tennessee
USA Today
01/01/07
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm
Tennessee
Knoxville - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is investigating whether contract employees worked on Tennessee Valley Authority nuclear plants without proper security clearance. TVA's inspector general reported a contractor hired to screen outside workers may have falsified security data. An NRC spokesman said only that five employees of a contractor may have been granted "inappropriate access".
-------- us nuc politics
THE NATION
The Freshman: Starring Hillary Rodham Clinton
New York Times
January 7, 2001
By ALISON MITCHELL
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/07/weekinreview/07MITC.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON -- If anyone thought that Hillary Rodham Clinton, first lady, bête noire of the right and now New York's favorite adopted daughter, might blend into the woodwork as just another freshman senator, the opening day of Congress ended that fantasy.
During the hourlong swearing-in ceremony last week, the entire center of gravity in the ornate Senate chamber shifted to the last row of desks, where Mrs. Clinton, in a vivid aqua pants suit, sat nonchalantly whispering like a veteran with Senator John Breaux, the deal-making Louisiana Democrat.
In a classic Washington tableau of power-worship, hypocrisy and redemption, the Senate took on the look of a receiving line, as a parade of senators came to welcome Mrs. Clinton, air-kissing, back-patting and handshaking, including numerous Republicans who voted just two years ago to convict her husband on impeachment charges. The culmination was an embrace from the 98- year-old South Carolina Republican Strom Thurmond in all his incorrigible glory.
Yes, there have been Senate celebrities before: Bill Bradley, the Rhodes scholar who played for the Knicks; John Glenn, the modest astronaut. But Mrs. Clinton is a phenom the likes of which the staid Senate has rarely if ever seen, no matter how often she protests that she just wants to buckle down and deliver for New York.
She is the most admired woman in America, according to a recent Gallup poll, beating out Oprah. She is a figure of international stature, who once lectured China about human rights. Her friends and enemies are legion - including a phalanx of professional Hillary-haters who were happily returned to cable television the moment she was sworn in.
Perhaps the only comparable figure to grace the Senate, said Michael Beschloss, the presidential historian, was that other carpetbagger New York embraced as its own, Robert F. Kennedy, the brother of the martyred president.
From the moment Mr. Kennedy entered the Senate it was widely assumed that he would seek the presidency. In those days, a freshman might wait years before daring to give a major speech, but Mr. Kennedy waited only until the summer. He spoke on nuclear weapons and infuriated President Lyndon B. Johnson, who saw the address as a jab in his direction.
"In Kennedy's case he knew he was never going to be a member of the club," said Mr. Beschloss, "and rather than beginning in that Uriah Heepish way, he went to the Senate as Robert Kennedy, future president, who made no bones about that. It was basically a question of what year it would be."
By contrast, Mrs. Clinton's supporters say she very much wants to be a good club member, that finally having elected power of her own, she wants to learn how to use it and become an effective lawmaker.
"My gut is she'll handle it pretty well because she's smart," said Senator Christopher Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat. "Smart is understanding that people are waiting here for any false move to jump all over her. Smart is knowing that this is 100 egos and everybody's an equal here."
Yet even on Day 1 there were signs of the difficulties Mrs. Clinton will face. Senator Tim Hutchinson, a Republican from Arkansas (and brother of one of the House impeachment managers), sounded a tad exasperated when he said to a television reporter, "She's still going to have one vote no matter how she leads the evening news, but she'll be respected by her colleagues and receive a warm reception." A Democratic staffer, asked what Mrs. Clinton needed to do to fit in, said, "Stop wearing aqua suits." The color set her off like a neon beacon in a sea of muted tones.
Still, Mrs. Clinton's first day on the job was positively sweet compared to the vitriol she's weathered over the past eight years. Remember the glee with which Republicans fell upon her health-care plan, or her appearance before a Ken Starr grand jury? And could anything possibly have been be more difficult than the Monica matter?
The question is what all that past is prologue to. Mrs. Clinton's new home state provides several distinct models of how to be a senator. She could prove her New York bona fides by outdoing the former Republican senator Alfonse D'Amato in becoming Senator Pothole and providing constituent service with a vengeance. Or she could follow in the footsteps of Daniel Patrick Moynihan as a policy intellectual.
Some of Mrs. Clinton's friends suggest that the most apt model for her is the current Senator Kennedy, who across a long career discovered that his real home was in the Senate, not the White House. He became a master legislator, even as his liberal politics made him - prior to Mrs. Clinton's arrival - the Democrat Republicans most liked to use to raise money.
Mrs. Clinton's sheer visibility, the interests of her prominent state, plus her deeply held views on matters like education, health care and child care will inevitably bring her to swordpoint with the incoming administration. Few politicians expect her to rush into that encounter.
But after years of having to conform to the norms of Arkansas, years of wearing the straitjacket of first lady, Mrs. Clinton now has a more Democratic, more liberal, more worldly New York power base. And one friend suggests that her new constituency will prove politically liberating. "The fact that she's elected from New York gives her a lot of freedom that she didn't have before," he said.
Over time, Mrs. Clinton might well become a powerful opposition force, with a large national constituency and media access excelled only by the president himself.
"A year down the road, if she has firmly established herself as a senator who can get things done and not just as a celebrity," said Bill Dal Col, campaign manager for Rick Lazio, Mrs. Clinton's opponent in the Senate race, "then she'll be something that has to be dealt with, dealt with not only as a representative of a liberal agenda, but as a visual symbol of a prior administration."
Even on her first day in office, Mrs. Clinton was making clear just how broad her purview may be. Harking back to her husband's 1992 campaign, she told throngs of supporters in the Mayflower hotel: "We're starting a new year; we're starting a new Congress; we're starting a new administration. But what really counts is our commitment to the fundamental values of our country and to putting people first, which I still believe is the best political slogan for anybody in American politics."
---
Bush Gathers G.O.P. Governors to Discuss Taxes and Education
New York Times
January 7, 2001
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/07/politics/07BUSH.html
AUSTIN, Tex., Jan. 6 - President-elect George W. Bush met today with Republican governors, thanking them for their help during the campaign and signaling his desire to keep them involved with his efforts on issues like education.
On the day that Congress certified his Electoral College victory, Mr. Bush brought 19 governors to his ranch near Crawford, Tex., for a tour and working barbecue lunch. In brief remarks to reporters, he again stressed the need for a tax cut to help offset the slowing of the economy.
Mr. Bush and his aides said they were considering whether to rework their tax cut proposal so that it could put money back into people's pockets this year. As originally drafted, Mr. Bush's plan would not take effect until next year.
"I hear a lot of concern from the business community, the high-tech community and the small-business community," Mr. Bush said, adding that he was also concerned about high levels of consumer debt. "People are worried about the economy, and I will decide whether or not to accelerate the tax relief package after I get sworn in."
Mr. Bush and the governors covered topics including environmental regulation, but the focus seemed to be mainly on education.
"I asked the governors to help me work with members on both sides of the aisle to pass an education reform package that will include more flexibility for states," Mr. Bush said.
There is some common ground between the parties on all of the issues at the top of Mr. Bush's agenda. But there is also considerable risk that progress could be thwarted by deep divisions over aspects of the issues.
On education, there is bipartisan consensus about providing more federal money to states and streamlining some of the bureaucratic requirements Washington places on state and local authorities. But most Democrats adamantly oppose Mr. Bush's call to allow parents of students in failing public school districts to put their share of federal funding toward private school tuition.
Similarly, while Democrats are open to supporting a limited missile defense system, they are skeptical about the costs and technical feasibility of the bigger shield Mr. Bush has in mind. And while Democrats have become increasingly open to tax cuts, they continue to press for reductions that are more limited and more directed at low- and moderate-income people than the plan Mr. Bush has proposed.
In two days of meetings earlier this week, Mr. Bush discussed the economy, tax cuts, technology and education with corporate executives and economists. On Monday he is scheduled to meet here with Vice President-elect Dick Cheney, his choice for defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, and members of Congress to discuss military issues.
Mr. Bush has also been busy packing. Moving vans are scheduled to arrive next week at the governor's mansion here to transport his family's goods to the White House.
---
World Has Changed for New Bush Team
Associated Press
January 7, 2001 Filed at 1:08 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/politics/AP-Bush-New-World.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Koreas are talking to each other. Washington speaks of its ``partnership'' with Belgrade less than two years after bombing it. Cyberspace, capable of little more than juvenile delinquency a decade ago, now is feared as a terrorist vehicle.
In many ways, it is a new world for the old crowd of Republican foreign policy practitioners coming back into office.
They are taking a formal look at that world on Monday, gathering in Austin, Texas, with President-elect Bush and members of Congress to discuss his plans to strengthen the military and promote a national missile defense program.
The last time Donald Rumsfeld was defense secretary, America was muddling through the dispiriting aftermath of the Vietnam War, not to mention Watergate, and preoccupied still with communist containment. Now Hanoi has welcomed a U.S. president's visit.
Although a much newer face in government, Condoleezza Rice, Bush's incoming national security adviser, made her name as a Soviet expert in the Soviet Union's final years.
Vice President-elect Cheney and Colin Powell, nominated as secretary of state, were steeped in Cold War doctrine, too. Theirs was a world of the evil empire, an unknowable China and Sandinistas, capped by war against Iraq.
As commander of 75,000 U.S. soldiers in Germany in the mid-1980s, Powell kept a photo on his desk of the Soviet general leading a larger opposing force an hour's drive away -- a constant reminder of the man he would battle if a misstep turned the superpower struggle into a war.
``The discipline of the Cold War era in which you had to husband your resources for the big one, that's what's changed,'' says Gideon Rose, a national security official in the first Clinton administration. ``These are people who grew up in a world of severely constrained resources -- and one false step and you can blow up the entire world.
``The chief difference some of these people might find is that they don't have to look over their shoulder as much as they once did.''
The Bush team has acknowledged that much is different, even if Iraq's Saddam Hussein is still around.
Powell said ``the old world map as we knew it of a red side and a blue side, that competed for something called the Third World, is gone.''
``We are in a new national security environment,'' Rumsfeld said when Bush nominated him to reprise the Pentagon role he held under President Ford. ``We do need to be arranged to deal with the new threats, not the old ones.''
Although out of government for a quarter century, Rumsfeld is very much a man of the moment, as far as Bush is concerned.
Rumsfeld led national commissions that examined the risk of missile attack on the United and threats to U.S. satellites. Information warfare also is high on his list of concerns.
His group's 1998 report told Congress that North Korea and Iran could field a missile capable of striking U.S. territory within five years; his report on military assets in space is expected this month.
Talk of globalization was just stirring when Powell, Cheney and Rice were last in government. Economic integration, spurred in part by trade agreements pushed by Bush's father and then President Clinton, has proceeded apace. Now it is a given that when markets sneeze in one part of the world, markets elsewhere wipe their noses, too.
The officials coming from President Bush's administration into his son's were in on the earliest months of the Soviet Union's disintegration.
They were out before the implications were close to being fully formed.
``With the end of the Cold War, there was a brief period of wondering what will happen next,'' says Rose, managing editor of the journal Foreign Affairs. ``Now it's pretty clear what has happened next -- continued U.S. hegemony for the foreseeable future.''
Yet this is a national security team expected to be more reluctant than the Clinton administration to get involved in crises not strongly tied to U.S. strategic interests.
``A lot more focus on regional coalitions,'' says Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, ticking off what he expects to see in foreign policy.
``Less interest in generic peacemaking. More concentration on trade. Somewhat less focus on human rights. A lot more emphasis on pragmatism.''
-------- MILITARY
-------- colombia
Key Colombian Oil Pipeline Out After Rebel Sabotage
Yahoo News
World News
Sunday January 7 1:25 PM ET http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010107/wl/colombia_pipeline_dc_1.html
BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombia's second-largest crude oil export pipeline, crippled nearly 100 times last year by leftist rebels, was out of action again after the first attack of 2001, state oil firm Ecopetrol said on Sunday.
A spokesman told Reuters the pipeline was hit by dynamite at 4 p.m. on Saturday some 53 miles west of the Cano Limon oil field near the Venezuelan border.
Cano Limon is operated by U.S.-based Occidental Petroleum Corp .
The spokesman had no details of levels of reserves or for how long the 220,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) capacity duct would be out of action. Repairs in the past have taken between several days to several weeks.
The spokesman blamed National Liberation Army (ELN) rebels, believed to have been behind most of at least 97 recorded attacks on the pipeline last year, for the sabotage.
The 485-mile oil duct, in the northeastern province of Arauca -- a leftist guerrilla stronghold -- has long been a target of sabotage by the two main rebel groups in Colombia's four-decades-old conflict.
They bomb it to protest what they see as foreign corporate dominance of Colombia's oil industry.
The ELN is fighting the larger Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and far-right paramilitary gangs in a conflict that has claimed 35,000 civilian lives and displaced 2 million people since 1990.
Continued sabotage of the pipeline has cost the government and Occidental hundreds of millions of dollars and caused large-scale environmental pollution, industry sources say.
The Cano Limon pipeline began operation in 1986. Oil is Colombia's largest export earner.
--------
Aerial Attack Killing More Than Coca
Washington Post
Sunday, January 7, 2001; Page A01
By Scott Wilson Washington Post Foreign Service
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/world/A24885-2001Jan5.html
LA HORMIGA, Colombia -- Colombia's mammoth anti-drug campaign, backed by more than $1 billion of U.S. military and social development aid, has entered a new punitive phase of aerial spraying that is killing fields of coca as well as the legal crops of farmers here in the country's most bountiful drug-growing region. Using U.S. and European satellite photographs to pick targets, Colombian army and police aircraft have begun spraying herbicides on small farms in western Putumayo, the southern province that accounts for more than half the country's coca production.
The flights, paid for by the U.S.-backed anti-drug campaign called Plan Colombia, have occurred almost daily over several farming communities since Dec. 22 and have wilted hundreds of acres of coca, the key ingredient in cocaine, and legal crops, which often are planted alongside coca. Local people say the chemicals have sometimes fallen on towns and farmhouses, causing people to suffer fevers. They also blame the spraying for the deaths of some cows and fish.
"Those without coca are more affected than those with it," said Hilberto Soto Vargas, a local farmer whose banana grove was fumigated even though, by his account, he pulled up his coca plants two years ago when he became a member of a Pentecostal church. "All of this is dying now," he said, pointing to his fields. "All of it."
Colombia accounts for 80 percent to 90 percent of the world's cocaine production and a growing share of its heroin. The fumigation in Putumayo marks a bold new escalation of Plan Colombia, a U.S.-backed $7.5 billion campaign to cut Colombian drug production by half in six years, by 2005.
Until recently, spraying focused almost entirely on remote industrial-sized coca and poppy plantations that grow most of Colombia's drugs. Officials claim it has denuded roughly 125,000 acres of drug fields. Now the planes are targeting more populous farming areas like this one, where coca is seen by many poor villagers as a legitimate cash crop and is often grown side by side with corn, yucca, pineapple and livestock. Often it shares a plot next to the farmer's tin-roofed shack.
The new approach is designed in part to punish several coca-rich communities that have refused to join a U.S.-backed program that pays farmers to uproot illegal crops and replace them with legal ones. Some of the communities declined to join because of threats from leftist guerrillas who profit from the drug trade.
In La Hormiga, a town 30 miles west of Putumayo's commercial center of Puerto Asis, town officials and residents say the fumigation has been devastating. In interviews, dozens of farmers said that the spray, delivered by small planes escorted by armed helicopters, has killed hundreds of acres of food crops, scores of cattle and hundreds of fish that washed up on the banks of the Guamuez River. On several occasions, several witnesses said, the aircraft dropped herbicide within the town itself.
U.S. drug control policy director Barry R. McCaffrey has said repeatedly that the herbicide, Roundup, produced by Monsanto Co., is harmless to humans and animals -- he called it "totally safe" during a November visit to Colombia.
However, in the United States it is sold with warning labels advising users to "not apply this product in a way that will contact workers or other persons, either directly or through drift." The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says glyphosate-based products such as Roundup should be handled with caution and could cause vomiting, swelling of the lungs, pneumonia, mental confusion and tissue damage.
Several farmers here said they have experienced fever-like symptoms since being sprayed, but local doctors report only one hospitalization for chemical poisoning. Mayor Flover Edmundo Meza, whose own farm was fumigated last week, predicts widespread hunger throughout the municipality of 35,000 people because of crop damage. The loss could result in thousands of families leaving their farms, he said.
"Our intention is to eliminate these crops -- voluntarily -- and avoid these damages, but the government is not listening to us," said Meza, who took office Jan. 1. "People will not be able to eat, and we don't have the resources to address this. We are asking the government to stop at once."
The U.S. Congress has pledged $1.3 billion over the next two years to Plan Colombia, most going toward such military hardware as the helicopters used in the fumigation missions. The U.S. contribution also includes money to build small businesses, health clinics, schools and roads that Colombian officials hope will help end two decades of coca cultivation in Putumayo.
European nations have chipped in more than $200 million for social programs, but have roundly condemned the fumigation strategy. However, that approach is backed with enthusiasm by the United States; some U.S. officials in Colombia proudly display photos of denuded coca and poppy fields on their office walls.
About $81 million of the U.S. aid is available for the plan's alternative development program, which through subsidies and small loans seeks to coax farmers to abandon coca crops for legal ones. Of that sum, $30 million is marked for eradication programs that farmers must join if they are to avoid fumigation.
In December, more than 500 families signed up for crop substitution programs in Puerto Asis, an area largely protected from guerrilla forces by privately funded paramilitary groups and a nearby army base.
But not a single farmer in La Hormiga or in the neighboring municipality of San Miguel signed on to the plan when it was presented here late last summer. Gonzalo de Francisco, President Andres Pastrana's point man for Plan Colombia, said the communities understood the consequences but might have been frightened off by pressure from guerrilla forces.
De Francisco said the towns, which sent his office petitions pleading for an end to the fumigation six days after it began, will be offered another chance to sign the pacts in coming weeks. In the meantime, the spraying will continue.
"Obviously, we take these reports [of harm from spraying] seriously and we are trying to get the best information we can so we can analyze the situation correctly," de Francisco said. Fumigation is not perfect, he said, and everyone would be better off if the villagers agreed to join the programs to end coca cultivation.
The central government in Bogota argues that the spraying is necessary because as much as one-third of Colombia's coca comes from small farms like the ones here. An estimated 66,000 acres of coca are under cultivation in the municipality of Valle de Guamuez, of which La Hormiga is the capital. That is almost double the acreage of food crops and accounts for a large fraction of the province's total coca production, which has been increasing.
But a recent tour of the area suggested there is no way to fumigate from the air without harming legal agriculture as well as drug crops.
"That is the thing that hurt me," said Rosa Elvira Zambrano, a 71-year-old widow, pointing to her neighbor's four-acre coca field, which lies across a barbed-wire fence from her withering grove of banana trees and yucca. Zambrano, who has lived on a seven-acre farm inside La Hormiga's city limits for 25 years, grows food and raises chickens to support her daughter, also a widow, and three grandchildren.
On the morning of Dec. 22, she said, a group of planes and helicopters passed over her farm three times, spraying herbicide on her crops while mostly missing her neighbor's coca. "It's the government that has ruined all this," she said. "How will I eat?"
More than a dozen farmers said the aircraft appear to be spraying from high altitudes, perhaps for fear of guerrilla ground fire. The result, they say, has been indiscriminate fumigation. A reporter's inspection of fields in the area suggested that food crops have been hit at least as hard as coca.
Ismael Acosta, a 46-year-old father of five, cultivates an acre and a half of coca on his farm along the banks of the Guamuez River. He said that at noon last Wednesday, more than 10 aircraft passed over his farm, most of which is planted with corn and yucca, a common crop grown for its roots. One day later, his corn patch had turned brown and his yucca was losing leaves. A few yards away, his coca patch showed signs of yellowing.
In Puerto Asis, meanwhile, about 550 farmers are beginning a social experiment meant to end fear of fumigation. Last month, two-thirds of them signed agreements with the government to receive $1,000 payments if they pulled up their coca plants within a year. The other third, who don't grow coca, received pledges of the same subsidy as a reward for staying out of the drug business.
The farmers can keep the money or use it to buy farming supplies to get a new start with legal crops. The sum would be enough to pay for two milk cows, 50 chickens, an acre of banana trees and more.
More important, the agreements authorize the farmers to apply to a local nonprofit foundation for small-business loans from a pool of U.S. and European aid. Farmers are to get seats on the foundation's board and the chance to pitch ideas for putting such enterprises as cattle ranches and fish farms on former coca fields.
Fernando Bautista is a butcher who helps run his cousin's 15-acre coca farm along the placid Putumayo River near Santa Ana. Bautista has lost three brothers to drug-trade murders; now he says he wants to give his two daughters another way of life by starting a dairy farm with government help.
He and his cousin, Ramiro Garcia, have joined with 20 other coca farmers to pitch the idea. They plan to pool their $1,000 government payments, then seek a loan to purchase 10 cows each, build stables and buy tank trucks.
But the economics must make sense for Garcia to give up the $6,000 in annual profit he has been getting from the 35 pounds of coca paste that his farm produces each year.
Along the edge of his field stands a warning: a small patch of brilliant green plants resembling clover -- infant coca bushes, enough to plant 25 acres.
"If the government helps us, I will sell them or just pull them up," Garcia said. "If not, I'll plant them."
-------- drug war
Rastafarians in St. Lucia worship separately
USA Today
01/07/01
Andres Leighton, AP
http://usatoday.com/news/nphoto.htm
Rastaman Lightning smokes a marijuana joint at the southern town of Vieux Fort, Saint Lucia, during the celebration of what Rastafrians call Ethiopian Christmas.
VIEUX FORT, St. Lucia (AP) - Roman Catholics lined up for Holy Communion while Rastafarians smoked marijuana in separate worship Sunday, both groups urging peace and tolerance in St. Lucia one week after two men claiming to be Rastas killed a nun and attacked worshippers during Mass.
To the beat of African drums, dozens of Rastafarians gathered at a small camp of wooden shelters in the town of Vieux Fort, on the Caribbean island's southern tip, to celebrate what they call Ethiopian Christmas, recognizing the birth of Christ according to a non-European calendar.
''We're a peaceful gathering,'' said Ras Imani, a man with a graying beard who described himself as a Rasta priest. ''We all sing and chant and dance, and praise Haile Selassie the most high.''
| Rastafarians worship Haile Selassie, the late Ethiopian emperor, as a manifestation of God. But despite differences with Christians over theology, Imani said true Rastafarians wouldn't beat worshippers or set them on fire, as two men allegedly did in the Dec. 31 attack.
The two suspects arrested allegedly told police they were Rasta ''prophets'' on a mission to combat corruption in the Roman Catholic Church, heightening tensions between the Roman Catholic majority and Rastafarians on this tiny island of 156,000 people.
But the Rastafarians have denounced the violence, saying it violates their belief in peaceful coexistence.
''Humanity must love one another, for we are the same people,'' Imani said, while other men with dreadlocks lay in hammocks nearby, chatting and smoking fat joints.
One of the central tenets of Rastafarianism - which emerged in Jamaica in the 1930s out of anger among blacks over colonial powers' oppression - is that marijuana encourages the calm necessary for religious meditation. One man at the Rastafarian tabernacle, Yeakin Alban Herman, likened marijuana to a radio.
''When you smoke marijuana, you tune into the most high,'' he said.
Across the island in the port city of Castries, more than 500 people attended Sunday Mass in the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, where the attack occurred.
One parishioner, 25-year-old David McLennon, asked the worshippers to remember in their prayers the slain Irish nun, Sister Theresa Egan, who was buried Saturday, and the 13 people injured. McLennon urged the Catholics to forgive.
''We have every right to be angry, but we are Christian people,'' he said. ''We must not allow our anger to lead us to sin.''
---
Drug Paraphernalia Found on UK Harry Potter Set
Yahoo News
Entertainment News
Sunday January 7 3:33 PM ET
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010107/re/leisure_harrypotter_dc_1.html
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Warner Bros. Pictures confirmed on Sunday that drug paraphernalia was found at the movie studio outside of London that is housing the production team for ``Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.''
The company, a unit of Time Warner Inc., said in a statement that it immediately advised law enforcement authorities of its findings at Leavesden Studios, which had been closed for the holidays since Dec. 24.
Warner Bros. said the items in question were not found on, or near, any of the sets in use by the production of the movie, which is based on the first book in J.K. Rowling (news - web sites)'s popular series about the schoolboy wizard.
The company also said no actual drugs were found on the premises and no direct link between the ``Harry Potter (news - web sites)'' production and the evidence in question has been established.
``Warner Bros. Pictures will continue to work closely with the production to ensure that the highest level of security is enforced on the set and at the production facility,'' a spokesperson for the company said.
``Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone'' is scheduled to complete principal photography at Leavesden in March, and will be released by Warner Bros. Pictures in the United States and United Kingdom in November 2001.
-------- u.s.
USS Cole Captain, Crew May Not Be Punished
Yahoo News
Top Stories News
Sunday January 7 10:22 AM ET
By Charles Aldinger
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010107/ts/yemen_cole_dc_6.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The admiral overseeing a Navy investigation of the actions of the captain and crew of the U.S. destroyer Cole when it was bombed in Yemen harbor has recommended that no one should be punished despite security lapses on the ship, defense officials said on Sunday.
But they stressed that the recommendation of Adm. Robert Natter, commander of the Atlantic Fleet, could be overturned by the chief of naval operations and navy secretary before the investigation report is released within days.
The officials, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters that Natter rejected the findings of a lower-ranking officer that the apparent Oct. 12 suicide bombing from a small boat might have been prevented or minimized.
Seventeen U.S. sailors died in the attack -- apparently carried out by anti-Western guerrillas -- when the Cole was ripped open by a blast from an explosives-laden small boat that drew up next to the hull of the warship as it took on fuel in mid-harbor.
The lower-ranking officer's report concluded that the ship's captain and crew failed to follow the Cole's own security procedures on the morning of the attack.
At the time of the blast, the Cole was in what is known as ''Threat Condition Bravo,'' which requires guards on deck to keep small boats away and mount a close watch for possible attacks during a refueling operation. Navy and Pentagon (news - web sites) officials have praised Commander Kirk Lippold, the ship's captain, and some 300 other crew members for saving the ship from sinking.
Natter sent the report on the investigation of actions aboard the ship from Atlantic Fleet headquarters in Norfolk, Virginia, in recent days to Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Vernon Clark and Navy Secretary Richard Danzig at the Pentagon.
``Very, Very Difficult''
``This is very, very difficult,'' one of the defense officials said on Sunday, confirming Natter's recommendation, which was first reported by the Baltimore Sun.
``That is why the Navy justice system is in the hands of line officers and not in the hands of lawyers and judges, especially in this case,'' one official said. ``They (line officers) have been there and can ask: Were the actions they (the Cole's captain and crew) took that day, however imperfect, in the normal course of good work?''
``If the performance didn't show a lack of devotion to duty even if it wasn't perfect -- and wouldn't have mattered anyway -- does it warrant punishment?,'' the official added.
A senior defense official told Reuters on Saturday that Defense Secretary William Cohen planned to order a new Pentagon review to determine if U.S. commanders in the Gulf region should be held accountable for any security lapses in the bombing of the Cole.
The separate Navy investigation was limited to the actions aboard the Cole at the time of the blast, and the official stressed Cohen had not reached any conclusion on accountability in the attack.
Cohen will release the results of a separate, completed department probe this week that he ordered to determine if security should be tightened for U.S. forces moving around the globe.
Tighter U.S. Military Security Worldwide
That probe by a commission headed by retired Navy Adm. Harold Gehman and retired Army Gen. William Crouch found that there were key U.S. security shortcomings in the Gulf region before the attack and will call for improvements in the region and worldwide.
But ``he (Cohen) is going to find a way to ask the question if there is accountability in the chain of command beyond the ship,'' the official told Reuters on Saturday, adding that he expected an announcement by Cohen when the report on new security measures for American forces in transit is released.
Navy officials have questioned whether U.S. intelligence could have provided a specific threat warning on Aden, which would have prompted the Cole to go to a higher state of alert than ``Threat Condition Bravo'' -- the second highest of four alert levels -- as it entered the harbor.
The senior defense official told Reuters on Saturday that Cohen felt that perhaps a further review of the separate Pentagon commission report could determine whether any security blame should rest on the chain of command in the Gulf, including Navy and intelligence officers.
Yemeni and U.S. officials suspect that hundreds of pounds (kg) of explosives were used in the attack.
The United States has said exiled Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden, whom it accuses of masterminding attacks on two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998, may have been behind the bombing. He has denied responsibility.
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
SDA Releases Guidelines for Organic Produce
NewsMax
Sunday, Jan. 7, 2001
NewsMax.com Wires
http://www.newsmax.com/cgi-bin/printer_friendly.pl
Consumers and farmers will soon have a new, clearly defined tool to determine what food is grown organically. After a decade of public and industry input and review, the United States Department of Agriculture issued the first national standards for certifying organic produce in December. Prompted by industry demands for consistency, the USDA deemed the new program a marketing tool to inform American consumers and foreign importers what U.S. organic produce standards are.
"It means there is an impartial third party that is certifying that a farmer or processing plant has set up organic production systems without synthetic chemicals, using as much as possible naturally occurring organisms, crop rotation, water quality management, and farming in an environmentally friendly manner," said Ray Green, organic program manager for the California Department of Food and Agriculture.
Green said consumers also should be aware what the new standards do not mean. "To make the statement that organic food is better or safer for you is a false statement," he said. "Food safety and food nutritional quality are the same whether you are growing in an organic or nonorganic manner.
"Generally, when you vote with your organic dollar, you are voting for a safer, cleaner environment," Green said.
Driven largely by the environmental movement, organic farming has really taken off in the last decade. Green said the state's organic industry has been growing at least 20 percent annually for the past seven years. But it still has a ways to go. Green said currently only about 2 percent of California's farms are organic.
San Luis Obispo County has about 60 organic growers, or 2.5 percent of all growers, registered with the county's Department of Agriculture, said Robert Lilley, assistant agricultural commissioner. Lilley said the county agricultural department does not certify growers, but oversees the independent certifying groups. Templeton farmers Bob and Thea Haussler have been growing crops organically for nine years on their 43-acre ranch.
"We wanted to get away from all the pesticides and herbicides," Bob Haussler said. "We observed what they do to farm animals and rodents. The thought of ingesting those same poisons was something we wanted to get away from."
The Hausslers grow 73 varieties of fruits, nuts and vegetables - all organic - and sell them at county farmers' markets and a few restaurants and grocery stores. They also ship almonds and walnuts to Europe, where more organically aware consumers are willing to pay higher prices than Americans, Haussler said.
In fact, foreign resistance to buying American organic products was one of the major concerns propelling the establishment of national organic standards, said organic farmer Barbara Spencer. Spencer and her husband, Bill, own the 10-acre Windrose Farms in Paso Robles. A self-described "organic fanatic," Spencer said they got into organic farming in 1993 because she is chemically sensitive. Since then, she said, their interest has grown to embrace philosophical, political and environmental aspects of organic farming.
Spencer said even though the new standards are not as strict as she might like, she still thinks they are a good thing. "We are so much better off having them than not having them," she said.
That also seems to be the reaction of most agricultural groups affected by the standards. They have been endorsed by the California Certified Organic Farmers, a nonprofit organic producers' organization, that does organic certifications for the county.
Set to go into effect in February, the standards will not be implemented fully for another 18 months, to allow time for organic certifying agencies to be trained and designated.
Certification is entirely voluntary and is only required if products are to carry the USDA-approved seal. To obtain USDA certification, growers and processors must submit to annual reviews by third-party certified inspectors, to ensure they meet the organic requirements.
Advt. -- agree with this? -- let the new Agriculture Secretary and other Senators and Congressmen know how you feel -- send an Urgent PriortiyGram CLICK HERE
---
The Death of a River Looms Over Choice for Interior Post
New York Times
January 7, 2001
By TIMOTHY EGAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/07/politics/07NORT.html?pagewanted=all
Eight years ago, Ignacio Rodriguez took his grandson out for an afternoon of fishing near his house on the Alamosa River in the foothills of the San Juan Mountains in southwest Colorado. The river that runs through the valley was his longtime neighbor, but on this day, he said, it was a stranger.
"The rocks were red and the river had some greenish tinge to it," Mr. Rodriguez said in a telephone interview last week. "The fish were all belly up. Rainbow trout and German browns - all dead. It was sickening."
Mr. Rodriguez was one of many witnesses to what state officials have called the worst environmental disaster in Colorado, a spill of cyanide and acidic water from a gold-mining operation that killed virtually every living thing in a 17-mile stretch of the Alamosa River, though causing no human injuries.
The company responsible for the leakage, the Summitville Consolidated Mining Corporation, declared bankruptcy, and its major officers fled the country, leaving taxpayers with a cleanup bill that is approaching $150 million.
It may take decades before clean water runs year-round through the Alamosa. But the account of what happened in the little valley in a remote corner of Colorado nearly a decade ago is emerging, both sides say, as a central exhibit in the testing of the political philosophy of Gale A. Norton, President-elect George W. Bush's choice for secretary of the interior.
Ms. Norton, 46, was the attorney general in Colorado when the Alamosa was sterilized with waste from the Summitville mine, and it was under her that many of the legal proceedings against the mine were initiated. Even Ms. Norton's political opponents in Colorado say that her office did a commendable job in trying to get compensation for the damage, though they criticize her for not pressing criminal charges.
But it is not Ms. Norton's conduct as the state's chief legal officer that is being debated in connection with the Summitville mine. Rather, it is her philosophy. Ms. Norton, like Mr. Bush, has long advocated allowing the mining, timber and oil industries more leeway to police themselves. Their argument is that if businesses are given incentives, like immunity from fines and prosecution, for reporting and cleaning up their own pollution, most will do the right thing - a so-called self-audit.
Ms. Norton has also been a consistent advocate of states' rights and minimal federal interference. But in the Summitville case, it was the federal government that stepped in, acting on an emergency basis after the poisoning of the river to avert an even larger disaster, and later winning felony criminal convictions against many of the corporate owners of the mine. The state welcomed the federal intervention.
"The whole problem with Summitville goes back to the essential trust that the state put in that mining company," said Larry MacDonnell, former director of the Natural Resources Law Center at the University of Colorado. "Summitville is a poster child for the inadequacy of that kind of philosophy."
Regulation was so lax, and state laws so weak - both were strengthened after the mine disaster - that Summitville is seen by members of both parties in Colorado as a lesson for the vigilance that government needs to keep over potential polluters.
Ms. Norton, like other cabinet choices, could not comment on past official actions pending her confirmation hearing.
But five years ago, when she was asked about how her philosophy of giving polluters incentives to come forth squared with the Summitville case, she said, "This was an unusual case, a situation where the individual in question knew about continued environmental problems and continued with operations in spite of that."
In her writings and speeches, Ms. Norton has preached a new kind of environmentalism, less dependent on federal policing, for example, "We need to give good businesses the incentive and the tools to be good environmental citizens."
The death of the Alamosa River affected Ms. Norton deeply, said people who worked with her when she was attorney general from 1990 to 1998.
"Summitville to her was a disaster of huge magnitude," said Tim Tymkovich, who served as solicitor general for Ms. Norton. "Gale's philosophy would be not to let polluters off the hook," he said, but to give industries a chance to comply with regulations before acting to enforce them.
Supporters of Ms. Norton expect her to bring big changes to managing the more than 500 million acres of public land, from national parks to wildlife refuges, and to regulating the thousands of mines operating on federal property. As a protégée of James G. Watt, who angered environmental groups as Ronald Reagan's interior secretary, and as a onetime delegate to the Libertarian Party presidential convention, Ms. Norton has advocated free-market approaches to solving environmental problems.
But even Ms. Norton's staunchest allies say the Summitville disaster points to the limitations of the free- market, hands-off approach.
"Self-auditing without the potential to bring down the hammer will not work," said Terry L. Anderson, who is a member of the Bush transition team on the interior, and is director of the Political Economy Research Center, a free-market environmental research group in Bozeman, Mont. Mr. Anderson suggested Ms. Norton to Mr. Bush for the interior post.
"What Gale Norton will bring is reform, but not revolution," Mr. Anderson said. "To think that she will come in and let the polluters off the hook if they only agree to 'fess up is dead wrong."
But people who live in the valley that lost all aquatic life to a mine that was, according to court documents, poorly regulated, say they fear that Ms. Norton will bring a philosophy to the office that only invites more Summitvilles.
"You should not let the coyotes guard the sheep pens," Mr. Rodriguez said.
Dr. Colin Henderson, a physician who lives near the Alamosa River, said: "The philosophy at the time this river was killed was to let industry police itself. You had a river where people used to catch fish, that people used to camp next to, where people used to rely on it for good irrigation water for their crops. And now it's been killed."
As interior secretary, Ms. Norton would have broad discretion over thousands of mines on public land. Under a 1872 mining law, companies or individuals are able to buy the public land on which they make their mining claim for only $2.50 an acre, a condition that the departing interior secretary, Bruce Babbitt, has ridiculed as a giveaway of epic proportions. Mr. Babbitt has enlarged the regulatory power of the interior secretary, using his office to deny permits to mines that are considered a threat to environmental or cultural treasures owned by all Americans.
"Babbitt could not get the Congress to reform the mining laws, but he has essentially reformed them himself through administrative actions," said David Getches, an environmental law professor at the University of Colorado. "Gale Norton will inherit that legacy of discretion. And she can use it either way."
Most months, the Alamosa River is a slight stream that falls steeply from headwaters at 12,000 feet in the high cradle of the San Juan Mountains. It drains into a valley of hay farmers, ranchers, urban exiles and others who live in one of the driest of the high valleys of Colorado, before it slows to a trickle and breaks into small creeks. The valley is sparsely populated, and so far the biggest complaint of farmers has been that the acidic water has corroded their irrigation equipment. Many residents have stopped using the water on their vegetable gardens.
People have been mining gold in the mountains above the valley for more than century, but it was not until the late 1980's that a new method was used. At Summitville, the method involved crushing millions of tons of rocks and heaping them into giant piles, then soaking them with a cyanide solution that leached the gold from the rocks. The mine was operated for about five years, until 1992, by Summitville, whose major shareholders were in Canada. At the time, the mine was leaching gold with cyanide, Colorado was in a deep recession and its Legislature cut back on enforcement and regulation of mining operations.
The mine was supposed to be supervised by the state, but from the very beginning, according to court documents, the plastic linings of containment ponds that held the stew of toxic waste were not properly installed - and the state never caught the problem. The linings were breached, sending poisons into the river. At the same time the mine became a money pit of financial losses.
In late 1992, just as the toxic waste water was filled to the brim and threatening a heavy spill into the valley, Summitville declared bankruptcy and shut down operations, and its officers fled. It was left to the Environmental Protection Agency, using company workers familiar with the operation, to keep the toxins at bay. It is a continuing operation that federal officials say could go on for two more decades.
"The river was killed for 17 miles, but it would have been a heck of a lot worse if the feds had not stepped in," said Roger Flynn, who served on the governor's Summitville task force and is the director of Western Mining Action Project, an environmental group in Denver.
"At the time, our regulatory agencies had been gutted," Mr. Flynn said. "So we gave this mine the benefit of the doubt - laissez-faire, hands-off, the company says everything is fine - and look what happened."
Several corporate leaders of the mine were indicted by a federal grand jury and pleaded guilty to numerous felonies, including failure to disclose discharge of toxic waste. The state civil suits against the mine operators were begun in 1996, with Ms. Norton's office joining the federal government in seeking repayment for the millions of dollars spent by the public to control the waste and clean up the mine.
But the state was criticized for its role. "Kudos to federal prosecutors for pressing criminal charges in the Summitville Mine disaster," The Denver Post said in an editorial in 1995. "Nonetheless, it's a shame that Colorado must rely on the feds to pursue the case."
Ms. Norton's wanted to pursue state criminal charges, Mr. Tymkovich said, but was unable to do so because of technical problems with other state agencies, and because the statute of limitations had expired by the time state criminal investigators were on the case.
Just two weeks ago, the new attorney general of Colorado, a Democrat, Ken Salazar, announced that his office had reached a settlement with one of the principal shareholders in the mine, Robert Friedland, a Canadian businessman based in Singapore, who agreed to pay more than $27 million over the next 10 years to help pay for the cleanup. The state is still trying to get money from five corporations that were involved in the mine, dating to the middle of the last century.
Ms. Norton vigorously pursued the owners of the mine, the state lawyers involved in the case said. "The legal work that Gale did laid the groundwork for the settlement that Ken Salazar was able to obtain," said Mr. Tymkovich, the solicitor general under Ms. Norton.
In years where there is little snow runoff from the mountains, the Alamosa River bears a faint resemblance to its old self, a river that held numerous trout, say residents of the valley in the shadow of the San Juan Mountains. But in years of heavy rain or snow, the toxins still tumble down into the drainage and the river, reigniting the anger of people who live there.
"I grew up in this valley," said Cindy Medina, a resident. "I used to camp near that mine and went tubing in the river with other kids. Now we have to live with one of the largest mining disasters in the United States. To say the least, we don't believe in self-auditing."
---
Dueling Power Centers
New York Times
January 7, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/07/opinion/07SUN1.html
You know you are in the rosy glow of transition time when a new presidential team hits Washington and starts boasting about how it will not permit the sort of bitter infighting that has afflicted every modern administration. We wish the members of President-elect George W. Bush's team well on this score. It is about time harmony broke out in the Republican Party. But from Mr. Bush's final cabinet and senior White House staff choices, it is possible to define three power clusters, and it is also possible see how these groups might have very different ideas about how best to serve Mr. Bush's interests.
The president-elect has assembled a White House staff of fiercely political, loyal and protective aides. He has sprinkled the cabinet with a team of hard-edged ideologues on the environment and social issues. Then there is a wedge of powerful personalities occupying the jobs of vice president, secretary of state and secretary of defense.
Mr. Bush joked to reporters last week that the "Texas Iron Triangle" he had in Austin had now moved to Washington. But the earlier precedent for the new White House managerial structure is Ronald Reagan's famous "troika" of Jim Baker, Mike Deaver and Ed Meese. Mr. Bush has picked Andrew Card to be his chief of staff, Karen Hughes to handle communications and the schedule, and Karl Rove as the political enforcer.
In political terms, these three will be primarily concerned with building Mr. Bush's personal popularity, positioning the G.O.P. for the mid-term elections and laying the groundwork for a 2004 re-election campaign. One of the first decisions for the Card-Hughes-Rove triumvirate will be how much running room to allow the cabinet ideologues. For while their boss campaigned as a uniter, not a divider, he has put some very divisive figures in his cabinet in those areas where voters are most concerned about the conservative agenda. We are thinking of the group consisting of Attorney General-designate John Ashcroft, Labor Secretary-designate Linda Chavez, Interior Secretary-designate Gale Norton and Energy Secretary-designate Spencer Abraham. Turning those four loose on abortion rights, affirmative action, the environment and energy policy could alienate the suburban moderates who put Mr. Bush in office and dash his hopes of expanding his minority vote in the future.
This dilemma is not a new one for Republican White Houses. In the Reagan years, there were constant battles between so-called pragmatists led by Mr. Baker and conservatives led by Mr. Meese and Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger. And as the historian David Greenberg points out, the last time that Republicans were in control of the White House and the Congress, President Dwight Eisenhower had similar difficulties. Ike, he notes, promoted business-friendly tax cuts for the moderates but tangled constantly with people like Senators Joseph McCarthy and Robert Taft on his right flank.
What may set the Bush administration apart from these earlier Republican regimes is the last, most unusual and potentially most potent of its three power clusters. This G.O.P. version of the wise men consists of Vice President-elect Dick Cheney, Gen. Colin Powell at the State Department and Donald Rumsfeld at Defense. While untested as a diplomat, General Powell has a superstar reputation that almost overshadows his president in much the way that Henry Kissinger threatened to overshadow President Gerald Ford. Moreover, General Powell has strong views in the domestic sphere, favoring affirmative action and abortion rights in an administration not friendly to either idea. We will be watching this year's budget battles to see how he reacts if Congress tries to cut family planning assistance from the State Department, a favorite cause of the Republican right in years past.
As formidable as the general may become, Mr. Rumsfeld is not likely to be pushed around by him. Mr. Rumsfeld has battled and won against Mr. Kissinger, after all. As for Mr. Cheney, the vice president-elect has clearly emerged as this administration's prime minister, as The Economist put it. Mr. Cheney is a conservative, but not a suicidal one. The first test is likely to be taxes. Right now there is a blur of voices coming out of the Bush operations in Washington and Austin, with some hanging tough on a giant tax cut for the wealthy and others suggesting that the new president will be ready to deal fairly quickly on the package's size and shape. Mr. Cheney is the member of the team likely to provide his boss the most experienced perspective on what will fly on Capitol Hill.
But Mr. Bush, no matter how many advisory groups he assembles, will still have to decide whether he is a moderate or militant conservative on taxes, social policy and the environment. That means the bickering that worries the president- elect so much when it happens between the parties could break out among his own advisers. It's happened before with Republicans in Mr. Bush's new neighborhood.
---
USA Today
01/01/07
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm
Alaska
Anchorage - State officials are seeking federal disaster money for more than a dozen reindeer farmers on the Seward Peninsula whose animals are running off with local caribou. The Western Arctic caribou herd has grown to more than 400,000 animals. Herders say once reindeer mix with their wild cousins, they don't come back.
Iowa
Des Moines - Bottle bill advocates want the state's bottle deposit law expanded to cover juices, water and sports drinks not on the market when the law was enacted. They also support doubling the handling fee paid to grocery stores and redemption centers. Currently, consumers pay a 5-cent deposit on soft drink and beer containers, which they get back if they return the container.
Montana
Helena - A federal judge threw out a suit challenging part of a 1985 law giving state residents the right to use the state's rivers and streams for recreation. U.S. District Judge Charles C. Lovell ruled that landowners waited too long to contest the law. The owners say that public recreational use of rivers and streams between the high-water marks violates their private property rights.
Nebraska
Lincoln - Farmers are facing high costs of fertilizer made with natural gas. They need nitrogen fertilizer for their spring planting. Natural gas is the main ingredient in anhydrous ammonia, the most popular form of nitrogen fertilizer. A ton of anhydrous ammonia costs as much as $350 this year, about double last year's price, agricultural experts say.
North Carolina
Swan Quarter - Eighteen fishermen suing the state say a ban on flounder nets to protect sea turtles illegally hurts their income. The lawsuit seeks at least $10,000 in damages and a court order allowing the fishermen to continue setting nets around Ocracoke Island this fall. They say turtle deaths are caused by deep-water nets, not the ones they use in shallow water.
Ohio
Columbus - A farming expert in water quality and manure issues will oversee the state's large livestock farms. The agriculture department hired Kevin Elder, 47, from the natural resources department after it took over authority for megafarms from environmental regulators. Agriculture says its rules will be tougher; critics worry the department is too close to farmers.
Washington
Olympia - Three pods of killer whales that usually go their separate way between Puget Sound and Canadian waters have united. More than 70 of the black and white orcas have been seen together in Puget Sound since December, breaching, tail-slapping and diving. Whale experts say the pods apparently came together to chase chum salmon.
---
Did a plane crash in New York City?
USA Today
01/07/01- Updated 01:19 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/ndssun02.htm
NEW YORK (AP) - A small plane reported to have crashed into the Hudson River was actually just flying low on a government wildlife survey, and its pilot was alive and well and still on the job Sunday, aviation officials said.
Police rushed divers to the river Friday after two witnesses crossing the high George Washington Bridge reported seeing a single-engine, high-wing aircraft with a blue stripe plunge into the water near the span. The search was expanded down river into New York Harbor, but no debris was ever found.
The plane belongs to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and at the time the witnesses thought they saw a crash the pilot was flying at about 100 feet above the water, said Jim Peters, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration.
The pilot was ''on a special project, making duck observations. He was looking for ducks, then he flew off,'' Peters said. ''Thank you for not laughing.''
He said the pilot contacted an FAA flight service station in Burlington, Vt., on Sunday and was told of an FAA alert apparently referring to his plane.
Peters said the pilot, whose name he did not release, was in upstate New York continuing his wildlife observation mission near the Vermont state line.
-------- police
USA Today
01/01/07
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm
Louisiana
Lafayette - A former Lafayette police detective who pleaded guilty in 1999 to six rapes will appeal his convictions. Randy Comeaux was sentenced to six life terms in prison. Lawyer David Willard said he will seek to overturn the convictions because of errors in the criminal proceedings. He declined to describe the errors.
Pennsylvania
Steelton - Police issued nearly 400 tickets Tuesday night for parking against traffic or not parking within 12 inches of the curb as required by state law, but Mayor George Hartwick is granting everyone a pardon. Hartwick suggests the ticket blitz was retaliation over recent contract negotiations.
-------- spying
Clinton Creates Spycatcher Board
Sunday, Jan. 7, 2001
NewsMax.com Wires
http://www.newsmax.com/cgi-bin/printer_friendly.pl
WASHINGTON - President Clinton ordered the creation of a special counterintelligence board made up of high-ranking officials from the CIA, the Pentagon and the FBI, the White House said Friday. The board will be headed by a presidential appointee who will serve as a counterintelligence "czar."
"There will be a new counterintelligence executive," said White House spokesman Jake Siewert. "There will also be a board. But the idea, primarily, is to create a process through which agencies that are charged with the responsibilities for counterintelligence - primarily the CIA, the Department of Defense and the FBI - can work together in a way that's more coordinated and looks at new threats."
Siewert said the new counterintelligence body is needed because emerging technology has reshaped espionage.
"A threat today can easily come from a laptop as it could from an old cloak-and-dagger spy," Siewert said. "We need a counterintelligence capability that matches that new globalized reality."
The new counterintelligence body joins other interagency policy-making boards like the National Security Council and the National Economic Council, which often act in close concert with the White House to a degree that edges the member agencies out of decision making.
Though Clinton ordered the board into being, President-elect Bush is to appoint its chief after he takes office Jan. 20.
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U.S. embassy in Rome to reopen Tuesday
USA Today
01/07/01- Updated 10:39 AM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/world/nwssun02.htm
ROME (AP) - The U.S. embassy, abruptly closed Friday because of a terrorist threat, is unlikely to reopen before Tuesday, an embassy spokesman said.
U.S. officials in Rome and Washington refused to discuss the nature of the threat, but Italian state television and other Italian media said the embassy was warned that a team of three Algerians, including a suicide bomber, planned to attack the embassy on Friday.
The reports linked the attackers to Osama bin Laden, the Saudi millionaire believed responsible for financing a network of Islamic terrorists.
Bin Laden is blamed for the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people, and for the suicide bombing of an American warship in Yemen in October. The attack on the USS Cole killed 17 sailors and wounded 39.
American intelligence had suggested before Christmas that bin Laden was planning to hit U.S. targets worldwide at the beginning of the year, and U.S. bases were put on high alert.
An announcement on when the embassy in Rome would reopen was expected late Sunday. The embassy, which employs about 300 people, is in the heart of the city on the Via Veneto, a winding, graceful street once synonymous with ''la dolce vita,'' or the sweet life, the glitzy 1960s era of nightclubs and cafes crowded with movie stars.
Later, when the area's many embassies, airlines and cafes made it a favorite target for Middle Eastern terrorists, it became known as the ''triangle of death.'' More than a dozen attacks took place there between 1979 and 1989.
Among them were rocket and car bomb attacks on the embassy itself in 1987. No one was killed in those attacks, but a year later, five people died in the car bombing of a club for U.S. military in Naples.
In addition to closing the embassy on Friday, the State Department cautioned American citizens abroad to be on alert for terrorist attacks.
Security was also stepped up at Rome's international airport, where flights to the Middle East and the United States got extra scrutiny, and at U.S. consulates and U.S. and NATO military bases throughout Italy.
Despite the scare, there were no obvious signs of extra security at the embassy Sunday and a U.S. congressional delegation was expected in Rome Monday for an audience with Pope John Paul II.
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U.S. Embassy in Rome to Stay Shut, Review Security
Yahoo News
Top Stories News
Sunday January 7 3:05 PM ET
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010107/ts/italy_us_dc_1.html
ROME (Reuters) - The U.S. embassy in Rome will stay shut Monday morning, three days after staff were evacuated because of a security alert, an embassy spokesman said on Sunday.
``We will meet again tomorrow (Monday) morning to evaluate the information we have,'' the spokesman told Reuters.
``It is possible we could open tomorrow afternoon or on Tuesday or Wednesday. We have no definite time,'' he added.
Staff were told to leave Friday morning after what a source called a ``very specific threat.'' A U.S. official said ``there was an indication of a potential terrorist attack.''
Security was stepped up at U.S. bases and consulates around Italy, but only the offices in Rome were closed.
``We were and are concerned about the threats, not only to our embassy but to our various installations in Italy,'' Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (news - web sites) told CNN, adding she would talk to her Italian counterpart Lamberto Dini later Sunday.
Security sources said the threat was centered in Rome and was believed to be directed against a person and not necessarily the embassy complex on the capital's sweeping Via Veneto.
Most media attention has focused on Middle East groups and especially on Osama bin Laden, one of the United States' most wanted guerrillas.
Sunday, Italian newspapers reported that the Rome attack would have been carried out by a commando group of between three and five men working for bin Laden.
Without quoting sources, they said one man would have been a suicide bomber, walking into the embassy complex strapped with explosives -- a scenario reminiscent of last October's apparent suicide mission against the USS Cole destroyer in Yemen which killed 17 sailors and blew a house-sized hole in the ship.
During the 1970s and early 1980s, Rome was the target of a spate of guerrilla attacks by Italian and Middle Eastern groups.
One of the bloodiest attacks by a Palestinian group took place on December 27, 1985, when a commando opened fire with guns and grenades on passengers at Rome airport.
Sixteen people, including three guerrillas, were killed.
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Thousands March for Peace in Nepal
Yahoo News
World News
Sunday January 7 11:23 AM ET
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010107/wl/nepal_india_dc_1.html
KATHMANDU, Nepal (Reuters) - Thousands of people staged peace rallies in Nepal's capital Kathmandu Sunday following violent protests in which five people died last month over alleged anti-Nepalese slurs by an Indian film star.
Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala and opposition leader Madhav Kumar Nepal led a multi-ethnic march through the streets and narrow alleys of the temple-studded city demanding harmony among different communities.
The rally was the biggest of a series of gatherings in recent days that have sought to calm tension following violence triggered by alleged remarks by movie star Hrithik Roshan that he did not like Nepalis or their Himalayan kingdom.
Roshan has denied making any such comments.
Participants in other Kathmandu peace rallies including businessmen and political activists called Sunday for goodwill and harmony among people from different ethnic groups.
``Tolerance and brotherhood between different communities are our basic characters,'' read one banner. A similar, smaller rally was held Thursday.
In last month's violence, extensive damage to property was reported after angry protesters attacked businesses and shops owned by Indians or Nepali nationals of Indian origin.
Protests were also organized along Nepal's southern plains bordering India where most of the residents are Hindi speaking Nepalis.
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