------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Asia-Pacific Fears Arms Race From Bush Policies
Russian Leader Sends Letter to Bush
Putin Urges Wider U.S.-Russian Cooperation
ESSAY NATO or ERRF?
Bush Urges Putin To Talk to Rebels
Powell lectures China on human rights issues
U.N. Officials in Bosnia to Discuss Uranium Study
NATO: 50 Countries See No Depleted Uranium Illness
Nato ready to use DU again in Kosovo
Germany's Trittin halts planned nuke waste shipments
India to Introduce Nuclear - Capable Missile Soon
No charge
Nuclear Inspectors Praise Iraq
RUSSIA THREATENS TO TAKE ARMS RACE TO SPACE
Plutonium linked to plants
Lab managed by UC system cited as contract under suspicion
Environmentalist on the inside
MILLSTONE SALE APPROVED
Lab managed by UC system cited as contract under suspicion
Violations at LANL Alleged
PLAN TO SAVE PIKETON PLANT PUT ON HOLD

MILITARY
Colombia Adds Troops at Rebel Zone as Deadline Nears
Colombia urges rebels to return to talks
Reforming Drug Laws
Iraq says warplane was hit by missile
Efficient nuclear fuel
Liberia Moves to Ward Off U.N. Embargo
World Needs to Add 500 Million Jobs in 10 Years
MONGOLIA: U.N. AID PLEA
GLOBAL ECONOMY
Lockheed Martin Profit Drops
Defense Dept. Takes Over Marine Inquiry Into Osprey Records
Stripped bare

OTHER
Brazil Aide Pledges Care in Amazon Plans
Oil Industry Seeks Softening of Clinton Clean-Air Rules
Galápagos Islands Face New Peril as More Oil Spills From Tanker
Tanker Captain Takes Blame for Oil Spill
Tanker captain, crewmen arrested after fuel spill
Workers Say Chemicals Used in Mosquito Spraying Made Them Ill
GLOBAL WARMING PLEA
Where's the science?
Biotechnology Food: From the Lab to a Debacle
IN AMERICA Police Predators

ACTIVISTS
If Protesters Can't Take to the Streets
Davos Forum Is Braced for Round of Protests
Workers stage Europe-wide protest against GM
Davos summit opens amid protest fears
Inauguration in dollars and cents


-------- NUCLEAR

Asia-Pacific Fears Arms Race From Bush Policies Toward China

Thursday, January 25, 2001
International Herald Tribune
Michael Richardson
http://www.iht.com/articles/8582.htm

SINGAPORE China's angst about U.S. policy toward Asia under the Bush administration has been signaled loudly and clearly: Beijing worries that Washington will harden its approach to China and press ahead with development of a missile defense shield while strengthening military ties with both Taiwan and Japan.

Less well known, and perhaps less predictable, are the private concerns of U.S. allies and friends in the Asia-Pacific region.

They fear that American policy will so antagonize China that it triggers a new nuclear arms race in the region, causes instability that stymies economic growth and investment, and forces countries in the region to choose sides in the feuding between Washington and Beijing.

"Whenever the U.S. and China have tensions, the rest of the region has to bear the brunt of it," said Melina Nathan, associate research fellow at the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies in Singapore.

The Japanese foreign minister, Yohei Kono, plans to meet with Secretary of State Colin Powell in Washington on Friday. It is a meeting that underscores the Bush administration's commitment to base Asia policy more firmly on the long-standing alliances and close security ties that the United States has with countries in the region, particularly Japan, South Korea and Australia.

Appearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week, Mr. Powell described China as "a competitor and a potential regional rival but also a trading partner," depictions that contrasted with Bill Clinton's reference to China as a "strategic partner" when he was the president.

"But," Mr. Powell added, "China is not an enemy and our challenge is to keep it that way."

He also said Japan, South Korea and Australia "and other allies and friends in the region have a stake in this process of nurturing a constructive relationship, and we will want to work with them in responding to a new and dynamic China."

Although Mr. Powell's remarks sounded positive, some Asian officials said they were concerned that the emphatic importance being given to Taiwan and missile defense by the Bush administration could override other strands of U.S. policy toward Asia.

"Taiwan is a visceral issue for China," a Southeast Asian official said. "And if the U.S. deploys theater missile defenses to protect its allies and forces in the Western Pacific, China is sure to increase its rather modest nuclear arsenal so that it won't be neutralized. This will prompt India, Pakistan and perhaps other Asian countries to follow. We'll have a new nuclear arms race."

Beijing regards Taiwan as a rebel province that must eventually unify with the mainland, by force if necessary.

Mr. Powell reiterated the long-standing U.S. commitment to the "one China" principle demanded by Beijing. But he said there must be a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan problem, one that was acceptable to people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.

"This is one of the fundamentals that we feel strongly about and that all should be absolutely clear about," he added.

Mr. Powell also promised that the administration under President George W. Bush would provide for Taiwan's defense needs.

In April, under pressure from Beijing, Washington deferred a decision to sell Taiwan four destroyers equipped with the Aegis battle management system, an array of radars and computers capable of simultaneously tracking over 100 targets on land, in the air and at sea.

Taiwanese officials have said that they will renew their requests for the Aegis destroyers and other advanced weapons and indicated that they expect such requests to receive a more sympathetic hearing from the Bush administration in April.

Although the United States has said a national missile defense system would be designed to protect U.S. territory from attacks by so-called rogue nations, Beijing has steadfastly opposed such a system on the ground that even a limited U.S. missile shield would neutralize China's small nuclear arsenal.

Zhu Bangzao, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said recently that Beijing was equally concerned about the planned U.S. deployment of theater, or regional, missile defenses in Asia.

Such deployment, Beijing said, could be used to protect Taiwan as well as Japan and South Korea, two countries that are home to most of the 100,000 American troops stationed in the Western Pacific.

Mr. Powell appeared to leave such an option open, saying:

"While conventional weapons constitute the primary threat to our men and women in uniform, they are also vulnerable to weapons of mass destruction delivered by missiles, as are the militaries and civilian populations of our allies and friends. Theater missile defense is therefore an important requirement of U.S. forces. President Bush has made it quite clear that he is committed to deploying an effective missile defense using the best technology at the earliest possible date."

Asked how Australia could avoid being dragged into a U.S.-China dispute over missile defense, the Australian foreign minister, Alexander Downer, sought to draw a distinction between the national and regional systems being proposed by the Bush administration.

Mr. Downer also suggested that the deployment of missile defenses was technically difficult and a long way off.

"We've said we understand the argument they're making about the need to defend the United States from attacks by rogue states," he said. "But there is a long way to go in terms of the evolution of this issue, and we'll be talking with the Bush administration about it.

Mr. Downer added: I think, frankly, they'll be looking at material they wouldn't have had access to up until now. There are a lot of complex issues which need to be worked through."

---

Russian Leader Sends Letter to Bush

January 25, 2001
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Russia-US.html

MOSCOW (AP) -- President Vladimir Putin has sent a letter to President Bush offering proposals on how to improve ties between Russia and America and congratulating him on his inauguration, the Kremlin said.

``Vladimir Putin has confirmed the readiness to continue the course for deepening U.S.-Russian cooperation and joint search for answers to serious challenges faced by us and the entire world community in the 21st century,'' the Kremlin said in an official statement Wednesday.

The statement said that Putin proposed a new approach to bilateral relations in the letter, stressing upcoming summits and high-level contacts, but didn't elaborate.

``The last years of the twentieth century have again clearly shown that when Russia and the United States are acting jointly or on parallel courses, they can find solutions in the interests of peace and global stability,'' the statement quoted Putin as saying.

Putin voiced hope that the ``equal and mutually advantageous relations between Russia and the United States would see further concrete development for the benefit of their peoples and the entire world community,'' the statement concluded.

While the Kremlin has voiced hope for better relations with the United States under the Bush administration, analysts have warned that Moscow and Washington are on a collision course over the U.S. plan to deploy a missile defense system, and over Russia's ties with nations such as Iran and Iraq.

Setting a stern tone with the Kremlin in one of its first foreign policy statements Wednesday, Bush's administration urged Putin to start peace talks with rebels in the breakaway republic of Chechnya. The demand was certain to irritate the Kremlin, which considers the 16-month war in Chechnya its domestic matter and bristles at Western criticism of it.

Meanwhile, Russia's prime minister appointed a temporary replacement for a former top Kremlin aide arrested in New York last week on corruption charges, news reports said Thursday.

Pavel Borodin, a former Kremlin property manager, was serving as head of the loose union between Russia and Belarus when he was seized on a Swiss warrant.

Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov on Wednesday appointed Igor Selivanov to temporarily fill the union post, the Russian daily Kommersant reported. Selivanov had previously worked as a financial official in the union's government, Russian press reports said.

Belarusian officials sharply protested the appointment of a replacement for Borodin, saying Kasyanov had exceeded his authority, the Interfax news agency reported. But Kommersant said it is Russia's prerogative to appoint the union head without consulting Belarus.

---

In Letter to Bush, Putin Urges Wider U.S.-Russian Cooperation

January 25, 2001
New York Times
By MICHAEL WINES
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/25/world/25RUSS.html

MOSCOW, Jan. 24 - President Vladimir V. Putin sent a letter to President Bush this week proposing broader Russian-American cooperation and setting out the major issues on which he believes the two countries can cooperate, the Kremlin's news service said today.

Mr. Putin sent the letter on Tuesday, along with a second note to former President Bill Clinton expressing gratitude for his "constructive and well-meaning approach" to Russian-American relations, a Kremlin spokesman said.

Mr. Putin's letter to Mr. Bush, the Kremlin said, "confirmed his readiness to work towards broadening interaction between Russia and the United States, and for a joint search for responses to 21st-century challenges both to Russia and to the international community."

"When Russia and the U.S. act jointly or on parallel tracks," the letter stated, "decisions meeting the interests of peace and international stability may be reached."

The White House acknowledged today that it had received the letter but made no comment about its contents. Mr. Putin and Mr. Bush have not yet spoken by telephone, but officials say they expect an initial conversation to take place soon.

The Bush administration did, however, make tough remarks today about Russia's campaign against separatists in Chechnya, calling for a political settlement to the conflict. It also said it had credible reports of Russian abuses of civilians.

Echoing the position of the Clinton administration, the State Department's spokesman, Richard Boucher, said, "We continue to believe that the only way to bring about lasting peace and stability in the region is to begin a dialogue that will lead to a political settlement."

Mr. Putin's letter also offered an agenda for future high-level contacts between the two nations. But a spokesman refused to disclose the full specifics of the letter, which addresses a relationship that has grown almost frosty in the last two years and could cool even further now that the White House has changed hands.

Whether Russia was offering serious proposals to jump-start a stalled relationship or merely conveying rote congratulations to a new world leader was not clear from the limited texts made available here.

Both diplomatic relations and the average Russian's regard for the United States have markedly sagged since the American-led NATO alliance launched an air war against Russia's closest European ally, Yugoslavia, in early 1999.

Under Mr. Putin, Russia has pursued new alliances with China and India to offset what it calls an American-run "unipolar world," and rekindled old friendships with anti-American states like Iraq and Cuba.

He has nevertheless stressed that Russia wants warm relations with the United States. For his part, however, Mr. Bush has signaled that he will pay even less heed to Russian foreign-policy concerns than did the Clinton administration, which ignored Moscow's protests against expanding NATO and waging war against Yugoslavia.

Mr. Bush has all but committed the United States to building a limited antimissile defense system that both Russia and China call a threat to their security and the spark that would ignite a nuclear arms race.

In Moscow this week, Russian military experts suggested that the Kremlin could respond to such a system by upgrading and expanding its nuclear force with new multiple- warhead missiles, the better to counter what one called "the enemy."

---

ESSAY NATO or ERRF?

January 25, 2001
New York Times
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/25/opinion/25SAFI.html

LONDON - Believers in a united European superpower have taken their vision beyond the realm of economic union. Led by French chauvinists and Brussels bureaucrats, they now espouse a military alliance without the United States, called the European Rapid Reaction Force - ERRF, barkingly pronounced erf!

The non-American force would not supplant the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the go-it-alone crowd in Europe insists. With the old Soviet threat gone, erf! would "rebalance" the Atlantic Alliance by taking regional responsibility for strictly local interventions.

This Euro-isolationism delights American isolationists. What are we doing in the Balkans anyway? our America-firsters ask. Let Europeans take care of Europe; Lafayette, we are outta here.

One European leader not yet in power is resisting this slow dissolution of the alliance. In a Churchillian speech defending the U.S.-European strategic relationship, William Hague, the Conservative challenger to Tony Blair's "third way" government of Britain, said: "Conservatives wanted cooperation inside NATO, to strengthen NATO. What we are getting is duplication outside NATO, to weaken NATO."

President Bush inherits a wishy- washy U.S. response to Euro-isolationism. Bill Clinton's "three D's" accepted erf! provided it did not decouple Europe from NATO, did not duplicate forces, and did not discriminate against Turkey, the NATO member outside the European Union. That was strategic sophistry: erf! is designed to do all three.

Pollsters here give the bold, bald Hague no chance of ousting Labor in elections this spring. Despite the resignation of Blair's chief political guru yesterday after a passport-influencing episode was revealed, the most that the small rightist minority is said to hope for is a gain of 80 seats in the lopsided Parliament.

The agile Blair, Clinton's buddy, is now pulling out all the stops to get a pre-election photo op with Bush. Because meddling in the elections of democratic allies is not good policy, I hope our new president prudently waits to make a post-election date to reassert our special relationship with whomever the British choose as their prime minister.

That's also because Hague understands America's need for a missile defense against rogue-state blackmail. Although Blair, like many Europeans, nibbles his nails about an American shield lest it be seen as an invitation to a new arms race, Hague says, "I believe Britain should cooperate with the United States to the best of our ability as it develops and builds its weapons shield."

How? In Fylingdales, among the black-faced sheep of northern Yorkshire, sits a radar station built by the U.S. If expanded, it could well become an outpost much needed to track missiles on their way to North America and to plot their interception.

The Fylingdales upgrade is resisted because any nation that cooperates with U.S. missile defense might itself become a terrorist target. For that reason, Hague wishes that the Bush administration would go beyond "a purely national missile shield." Instead, "the aim should surely be a global defense shield to which Britain could contribute its early warning radars as well as much-needed political and diplomatic support."

This revives the original idea behind NATO. American power - including the nuclear umbrella - was extended across the Atlantic to protect our European allies, as their forces joined in mutual defense. In planning to cope with the threat sure to come from Iraq, Iran or some well-financed terrorist group, an American-built missile defense system should again be assisted by, and in return protect, our allies.

Therefore, we should not limit ourselves to N.M.D., a national missile defense. We should test and deploy an A.M.D., an allied missile defense, extending its reach to allies endangered by blackmailers with deliverable weapons of mass destruction.

That will be costly; only the superpower can afford it. Tests will fail and fail and ultimately succeed; only the superpower's technology can achieve it.

The same idea that protected the free world from Communist domination for a half-century can protect the world from future terrorist intimidation. That idea is not erf! or multi- isolationism or a go-it-alone shield. It is the idea of collective security exemplified by NATO and led, as before, by a powerfully safe America.

---

Bush Urges Putin To Talk to Rebels

January 25, 2001
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-US-Russia.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- In a clear message to Moscow in one of its first foreign policy pronouncements, the Bush administration is urging negotiations with rebels in Chechnya as the only way to end the 16-month conflict.

The message was coupled Wednesday with open skepticism that President Vladimir Putin's announcement of a reduction of Russian troops in Chechnya had any real meaning.

``We've seen announcements of troop withdrawals from Chechnya before, but frankly, Russia's presence in Chechnya remains massive,'' State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said. ``The fighting has continued, and there are continuing credible reports of humanitarian abuses against the civilian population by Russian troops.''

Russia considers the conflict in rebellious Chechnya a domestic matter. The Kremlin also is likely to be irritated by the Bush administration's plan to go ahead with a national missile defense despite a ban contained in a 1972 treaty.

Talks on a political settlement in Chechnya are the only way to bring peace and stability to the region, Boucher said. He also urged Russia to take steps to deal with social and economic problems in Chechnya.

Russian troops moved into Chechnya in September 1999 following rebel attacks on Dagestan and apartment bombings in Moscow and other Russian cities that were blamed on the insurgents.

This week, Putin signed a troop reduction plan and turned over command of the war to Russia's chief security agency, saying a new strategy was needed to secure control of Chechnya.

Boucher said ``it remains to be seen whether this announcement represents a change in Russian strategy that could resolve the stalemate in Chechnya.''

In any event, he said, ``it doesn't preclude the need for a political settlement.''

Asked if the Bush administration agreed with the Clinton administration that Chechnya should remain part of Russia, Boucher said, ``We have not changed our view of the status of Chechnya in any way.''

In the meantime, a panel advising the Energy Department issued a report that urged Bush to appoint a high-level official at the White House to oversee U.S. efforts to help safeguard nuclear stockpiles in Russia and to stem the spread of nuclear technology.

``It is going to take someone who is at a high level to make sure this issue is not lost among other national security issues,'' Lloyd Cutler, a former White House counsel who served on the panel, said at a news conference.

``The most urgent unmet national security threat to the United States today is the danger that weapons of mass destruction or weapons-usable material in Russia could be stolen or sold to terrorists or hostile nation states and used against American troops abroad or citizens at home,'' the report found.

---

Powell lectures China on human rights issues

January 25, 2001
WASHINGTON TIMES
By David R. Sands
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-200112522518.htm

Secretary of State Colin Powell yesterday warned China that the Bush administration will raise Beijing's poor record on human rights and do it "frankly."

In a half-hour meeting with departing Chinese Ambassador Li Zhaoxing, Mr. Powell "made clear that we would raise human rights issues and we would raise them frankly," department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

"Frank" is often used as a diplomatic euphemism for "forceful."

Mr. Powell told the Chinese ambassador that the United States believes that "China needed to follow the rule of law, that China needed to be . . . exposed to the powerful forces of free-enterprise systems and democracy," Mr. Boucher said.

The secretary's assertions followed a day after five devotees of the Falun Gong spiritual movement set themselves on fire in Tiananmen Square to protest the Chinese government's crackdown on the group's religious activities. One protester died in the incident, timed for the eve of the celebrations of the Chinese New Year.

Chinese security forces ringed the huge square in central Beijing yesterday to prevent more demonstrations by the Falun Gong, banned by the government in July 1999 as an "evil cult" bent on overthrowing the Communist regime. Falun Gong followers practice meditation and deep-breathing exercises, which they say improve their health and sense of well-being.

Tuesday's protest was not mentioned in China's tightly controlled press.

Mr. Boucher said Mr. Powell urged China to practice "tolerance and the rule of law." The meeting, the first Mr. Powell has had with any foreign envoy, was scheduled because Mr. Li is returning home to take a senior post at the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

The meeting touched on a number of topics, including U.S. policy on Taiwan and the proposed U.S. missile-defense system, which President Bush supports and the Chinese have sharply criticized.

Mr. Powell repeated the past U.S. commitment to the three U.S.-China communiques concluded in 1972, 1978 and 1982. The communiques are not treaties and must be reaffirmed or rejected each time a new administration comes into office. They are the basis for U.S. policy toward China.

An administration defense official said committing the United States to the 1982 communique undercuts Pentagon efforts to review U.S. policy on arms sales to Taiwan. That agreement sets out U.S. intentions to reduce arms sales to Taiwan. In his successful presidential campaign, Mr. Bush promised to do more to help Taiwan defend itself against attack from the mainland.

Mr. Boucher said Mr. Powell and Mr. Li did not discuss the Falun Gong demonstration, but the secretary did express U.S. unhappiness with the official campaign in China against the Falun Gong.

"We call on China to release all those detained or imprisoned for peacefully exercising their internationally recognized rights to freedom of religion, freedom of belief and freedom of conscience," Mr. Boucher said.

The Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy estimates that 20,000 Falun Gong adherents have been detained by the government and 59 have died in police custody.

Falun Gong founder Li Hongzhi lives in exile in the United States and recently urged his followers to take a more aggressive defense against the official crackdown.

Separately, the European Union made public on Monday its own condemnation of Beijing's human rights record. EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels approved a statement saying they "remain much concerned at the lack of progress in a number of areas."

This includes concerns about "continuing widespread restrictions on freedom of assembly, expression and association, the violations of freedom of religion and belief, the situations of minorities, including in Tibet, and the frequent and extensive recourse to the death penalty," according to a statement issued by the Swedish government, the current president of the EU.

Beijing has denounced Western criticism on human rights and Tibet as an interference in its internal affairs. Critics of the Chinese government are pushing hard for a resolution critical of China's record at the U.N. Human Rights Commission meeting in Geneva this spring.

Beijing has lately shown itself even more sensitive to outside criticism of its human rights record as it prepares a bid to host the 2008 Summer Olympics, regarded as a top priority by China's leaders.

Mr. Boucher said the timing of yesterday's meeting so early in Mr. Powell's tenure was dictated by the fact that Mr. Li had been called home to take a Foreign Ministry post. "The timing of this particular meeting was dictated by Ambassador Li's departure, rather than by any sort of strategic plan," he said.

• Bill Gertz contributed to this article, which is based in part on wire service reports.

-------- canada

Cameco increases uranium reserves at McArthur mine

January 25, 2001
Excite News
http://news.excite.com/news/r/010125/17/minerals-cameco?printstory=1

TORONTO (Reuters) - Cameco Corp., the world's largest uranium supplier, Thursday increased the reserves at its McArthur River mine in northern Saskatchewan, by 50 percent.

The Canadian firm said its share of proven and probable reserves would rise to 275 million pounds at 21 percent uranium, from 178 million pounds at an average grade of 17 percent.

Total reserves at the mine are estimated at 394.5 million pounds, compared with 1999 levels of 255.2 million pounds, including the share of its joint venture partner Cogema Resources Inc.

"This substantial increase in McArthur River reserves reinforced Cameco's already strong asset base and builds on our position as a world leader in the uranium business," Bernard Michel, Cameco's chairman and chief executive said in a statement.

"These additional reserves will extend the life of the operation providing even more long-term security to our customers and shareholders," it added.

The McArthur mine, 70 percent owned by Cameco, produced in excess of 11 million pounds of uranium in 2000 and is on track to increase output by 18 million pounds in 2002. The mine is 620 km (400 miles) north of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, where Cameco is based.

Its uranium products are used to generate electricity in nuclear plants. Cameco stock closed up 25 Canadian cents at C$25.75 on the Toronto Stock Exchange Thursday.


-------- depleted uranium

U.N. Officials in Bosnia to Discuss Uranium Study

January 25, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-health-.html

SARAJEVO (Reuters) - Top United Nations environmental officials arrived in Sarajevo Thursday to discuss prospects for an investigation of sites in Bosnia hit by depleted uraniummunitions during NATO air action in 1995.

The leader of the Balkans Task Force of the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP), Pekka Haavisto, and another official met U.N. Bosnia envoy Jacques Klein to discuss their future activities in Bosnia, U.N. spokesman told Reuters.

UNEP, which has been looking at sites in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo to analyze possible health risks from radiation, announced earlier this month that it wanted to expand its mission to Bosnia as well.

Even though NATO and the United States insist there is no evidence of a link between the use of DU weapons and cases of leukemia in troops that have served in the Balkans, UNEP has urged wider uranium studies in the region.

``We do expect the team to conduct the work,'' U.N. spokesman Douglas Coffman said, adding that the investigation was not expected to kick off for several more months.

``The U.N. Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina is offering full assistance to any future work of UNEP in this country,'' Coffman said.

A spokesman for UNEP in Geneva confirmed a Bosnia mission was possible in spring, but added it was still not decided. ``We can't do it in winter because of snow, so it couldn't be before May,'' Michael Williams told Reuters.

Williams said Haavisto was scheduled to visit Belgrade on Friday to discuss with Yugoslav officials ``a handful of sites over the border from Kosovo'' ahead of a mission to the rest of Serbia, which he said seemed likely to begin around May.

Haavisto said earlier his team has collected samples at 11 sites in Kosovo. Pieces of DU ammunition and evidence of beta-radiation were found at eight. Results of analyzes are due in early March.

NATO said Wednesday a committee of 50 nations it set up two weeks ago had found no evidence so far to support claims that depleted uranium munitions can cause cancer.

---

NATO: 50 Countries See No Depleted Uranium Illness

January 25, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/health/health-uranium-nato.html
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/science/science-balkans-nato-.html
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-balkans.html
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newslink/weekly/newsnat-25jan2001-26.htm

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A committee of 50 nations hastily set up by NATO two weeks ago has found no evidence so far to support claims that depleted uranium (DU) munitions can cause cancer, NATO says.

Soldiers who served as peacekeepers in the NATO-led missions in Bosnia and Kosovo--where US aircraft fired some 40,000 DU shells--were no sicker than those who had not, committee chairman Daniel Speckhard told a news conference.

NATO spokesman Mark Laity said Wednesday that it was ``quite possible'' that tiny traces of highly radioactive plutonium and uranium 236 would turn up in Balkans soil samples now being taken or analyzed by international experts.

``We're not predicting it...we will not be surprised, neither will we be worried,'' he said, stressing that scientific evidence showed the traces were too small to ``add in any way to the existing low-level health risk.''

RISK OF POLITICAL HEART ATTACK

The toxic chemical effects of DU, a heavy metal used for its armor-piercing capability, could cause kidney problems if its dust were ingested in sufficient quantities.

The mere mention of plutonium contamination, however, can trigger political heart attacks among some of Europe's most environmentally sensitive governments.

On Tuesday, in a bid to help European allies allay public fears, a Pentagon spokesman said plutonium traces got into DU rounds made 30 years ago because of contaminated equipment at a nuclear plant, but amounts were incredibly small and harmless.

Plutonium and U-236 would still be in America's DU munitions today, he said, because no new stocks were made since the 1970s.

In Athens, NATO's supreme commander Europe, US Air Force General Joseph Ralston, said he would not hesitate to authorize firing DU rounds ``tonight,'' in the unlikely event that peacekeepers or civilians in Kosovo faced a tank attack.

NATO says there is simply no evidence that DU's weak radioactivity can cause cancer. That is questioned by some recent studies that suggest ingested DU emits alpha radiation that can cause significant damage to cells.

``To date, no nation has found evidence of an increase in the incidence of illness among peacekeepers in the Balkans compared with the incidence of illness among armed forces not serving in the Balkans,'' Speckhard said.

``None of the nations reported finding a health link between health complaints of personnel employed in the Balkans and depleted uranium munitions,'' he added.

Tuesday's meeting of the committee reinforced the report issued last week by NATO's top military medical officers showing no link to cancer, but the committee would continue meeting weekly as ``scores'' of studies--national and multilateral--were carried out.

EVERYONE'S TESTING

Speckhard said more than a dozen nations had tested their soldiers or sent teams to the region since the DU scare erupted shortly after Christmas. ``To date, based on preliminary findings, there has been no indication of increased levels of radioactivity at any of the sites tested,'' he said.

Countries on the DU committee include the 19 NATO members and some 30 partners, most of which have deployed troops in the Balkans missions.

Laity said NATO posted a detailed map on its Web site (www.nato.int) showing the target sites in Bosnia and Kosovo where DU munitions had been fired. The alliance was determined to provide ``maximum transparency and openness,'' he said.

-------

Nato ready to use DU again in Kosovo

By Michael Smith, Defence Correspondent
25/01/2001
http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/01/25/wuran25.xml

NATO's senior military commander insisted yesterday that his troops would use depleted uranium ammunition in Kosovo if they came under attack, despite a campaign to brand it dangerous.

General Joseph Ralston, Supreme Allied Commander Europe, said: "I have a responsibility to protect the soldiers in Kosovo." Although Nato had no need at present to use depleted uranium because there was no fighting, senior officers were willing to order its use, he said. "In the unlikely event that Kfor soldiers or citizens were attacked tonight by a tank, I would be irresponsible not to use depleted uranium."

His comments came after a meeting with George Papandreou, the Greek Foreign Minister, in Athens. Greece is among a number of European countries concerned about possible health risks from DU ammunition and has allowed some of its troops to pull out of Nato's Kosovo force. Nato admitted that it would not be surprised if traces of highly radioactive plutonium and uranium 236 were found in Kosovan soil, but said it did not see that as a cause for concern.

A spokesman said: "We're not predicting it but we would not be surprised. Neither would we be worried." The traces would be too small to "add in any way to the existing low-level health risk". He said a committee of 50 nations hastily set up by the alliance two weeks ago had found no evidence to support claims that the ammunition, which Nato says is the most efficient means of penetrating modern tank armour, could cause cancer.

America admitted that the DU rounds in use by its A10 tankbuster aircraft still contained dirty depleted uranium, tarnished by traces of plutonium introduced during the manufacturing process. The Pentagon said the batches of depleted uranium used in US rounds had come from two American factories which were reprocessing spent nuclear fuel.

A spokesman said: "In these plants we found elements in the equipment itself that would have produced these trace elements in the depleted uranium as it was processed through those plants." The plutonium and other trace elements would still be in the ammunition because America had not made any new DU ammunition since then, he said.

But he insisted that there was no risk. He said: "If you would inhale one-millionth of an ounce of depleted uranium that contained levels of plutonium found in our studies, this would result in you inhaling 1/23rd of a quadrillionth of a gramme of plutonium. We have seen nothing in our studies that would indicate that this has more than an insignificant amount of impact on either personal health or the environment."

------- germany

Germany's Trittin halts planned nuke waste shipments

January 25, 2001
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9607

BERLIN - German Environment Minister Juergen Trittin ordered a halt on Tuesday to the planned resumption of the transport of nuclear waste from a power plant to an interim storage site in the western German town of Ahaus.

Trittin told the state government in Baden-Wuerttemberg, where the plant is located in Neckarwestheim, not to allow the shipments to resume as there was no urgent need for the waste to be moved. The plant is owned by utility EnBW.

Trittin - a leading member of the ecologist Green party, which has fought nuclear waste transport for years - said there was still enough storage room for the waste at the plant.

He accused the state authorities of trying to undermine a deal on phasing out nuclear power by allowing transportation at facilities which did not urgently require it. "I will not allow the use of the law for phasing out nuclear energy to be used for political ends," Trittin said in a statement.

EnBW confirmed it had received ministry approval for delaying the controversial Castor container transport from the plant until after routine work in April.

"Mr Trittin's order was not to stop the transport, but rather to stop it while there is still storage space at the plant," EnBW spokesman Klaus Wertel told Reuters.

"Whether transport resumes after our revision work at the plant in April depends on getting official approval in February to build an on-site facility for future storage (of Castor containers)," he added.

A ban on the transport of nuclear waste was imposed in 1998 after a safety scare over radiation leaks from containers used during transport.

The transportation ban was lifted in May last year after the German nuclear industry agreed to gradually phase out atomic energy by the mid-2020s in a deal Trittin helped broker. Under the terms of the deal, waste can only transported if on-site storage facilities are full.

The transport to Ahaus, due to take place in the first half of March, would have been one of the first since the ban was lifted.

Anti-nuclear protestors, who cite safety risks, demonstrated on Sunday about the planned resumption of waste transports.

They plan to disrupt waste transports in order to force operators to pull out of nuclear power production sooner. Such protests have frequently led to clashes with police in the past.

The resumption of the waste transports is bound to be politically sensitive for the Greens who have been junior coalition partners to Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats since the autumn 1998 election.

Nuclear waste has also been building up in Germany because the French reprocessing plant at La Hague has for some time refused to take any more German fuel until it can send reprocessed waste back to Germany for permanent storage.

Shipments of reprocessed waste from La Hague to Gorleben in Germany are planned to be resumed in March or April.

-------- india / pakistan

India to Introduce Nuclear - Capable Missile Soon

January 25, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-india-m.html

BANGALORE, India (Reuters) - India's armed forces plans to introduce the long-range version of the nuclear-capable Agni missile into its arsenal later this year, a senior federal official said on Thursday.

``The operational configuration of Agni II has been proven. It will be inducted sometime this year,'' V.K. Atre, scientific adviser to India's defense minister, told reporters.

Atre declined to give more details.

The intermediate-range Agni ballistic missile was successfully tested for the second time last week and is seen as a key element of India's plan to build a credible minimum nuclear deterrent.

However, some analysts say India needs to test the missile many more times before it can be introduced.

The missile, an upgraded version of the original Agni, has a two-stage, all-solid motor with a 2,000-km (1,250-mile) range.

Agni II's first test was held in April 1999, prompting tests within days by Pakistan of its medium-range Ghauri II missile.

Agni, named after a Hindu fire god, is seen as a potential deterrent to India's nuclear-armed neighbors China and Pakistan. It is part of a wide-ranging missile development program.

Defense experts say the missile can carry nuclear warheads and strike targets deep within China and Pakistan.

---

No charge

Thursday, January 25, 2001
The Hindu
Question corner
http://www.indiaserver.com/thehindu/2001/01/25/stories/08250004.htm

QUESTION: Why is it that neutrons have no charge?

K. Ananthanarayanan, Kanyakumari, T.N

ANSWER: The atomic mass is concentrated in the nucleus, the electrons going round it contributing very little to the mass of the nucleus. The positive charge on the nucleus equals the charge on the electron. All nuclei other than hydrogen are made of protons which were brought together against the Columbian force of repulsion at very high temperatures. The formation of nuclei in nature suggests the presence of a strong force which is charge independent. The mass of all nuclei is found to be approximately twice the number of charge on the nucleus except in very heavy nuclei like uranium where it is about 2.6 times the charge. As the charge on the nucleus is equal to the number of electrons, there should be twice as much matter in the nucleus as is needed to explain the charge. It is possible only if the nucleus is made of particles with no charge but mass nearly equal to that of a proton.

In 1932, James Chadwick observed that when beryllium was bombarded by alpha particles radiation which were neutral in charge were emitted. He repeated the experiment with different materials to establish the fact that the mass of the particle was about 1 mass unit and charge to be neutral. In 1935 Chadwick was given the Nobel Prize in Physics for this great discovery, seeing the missing part of the nucleus!

Usha P. Desai, Chennai

-------- iraq

Nuclear Inspectors Praise Iraq

January 25, 2001
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq-UN.html

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- U.N. nuclear experts praised Iraq for cooperating with an inspection completed Wednesday, but refused to say whether they had found any evidence Iraq was restarting banned weapons programs.

The visit came as Iraq prepared to sit down with the United Nations to determine whether broader monitoring of its nuclear and other weapons programs could resume, and as the new U.S. administration made clear it will take a hard line on Iraq.

Iraq also said Wednesday that it would welcome a U.N. team to work out how to spend $530 million authorized by the United Nations for use in rebuilding the country's ailing oil industry.

Under the U.N. oil-for-food program, Iraq can sell its oil but its proceeds, monitored by the United Nations, must go for humanitarian needs and other specific uses. Iraq is under sanctions that can only be lifted once U.N. inspectors confirm it has ended its programs to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

Almost all of those inspections have been halted since 1998, when the U.N. inspection team pulled out of Iraq ahead of U.S.-British bombings. It has not been allowed back since.

The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, however, has continued its inspections focusing on Iraq's nuclear capabilities, although they are very limited in scope, said spokesman David Kyd. Such visits did not meet the requirements for U.N. inspections, he said.

Ahmed Abu Zahra, head of the four-man IAEA team, said that in its latest visit, ``everything went well, we found good cooperation from our counterparts in Iraq and from the Iraqi Atomic Energy Organization.''

But he refused to comment when asked whether the group had found evidence Iraq was rehabilitating its nuclear weapons facilities.

Abu Zahra said the team had inspected and measured nuclear material containing low enriched, natural and depleted uranium. He said the data collected would be further analyzed and the results made public later.

In talks with the United Nations scheduled to begin Feb. 26, Iraq is hoping to move toward ending the sanctions, while the United Nations will push for the return of weapons inspectors. Iraq has demanded that sanctions be lifted immediately, saying it has rid itself of its weapons of mass destruction.

U.S. intelligence reports suggest that Iraq has been rebuilding plants capable of producing chemical or biological weapons -- a claim Iraq denied Tuesday, calling it the ``first lie'' of the newly-inaugurated administration of President Bush.

Iraqi Oil Minister Amer Mohammed Rashid said U.N. experts would arrive in mid-February to discuss plans on boosting Iraq's oil exports with the $530 million authorized by the U.N. Security Council in December.

Rashid said Baghdad wants rebuild a pipeline though Syria and build a new one through Jordan.

Iraq exports its oil from two terminals approved by the United Nations: the southern terminal of Mina al-Bakr on the Persian Gulf and Turkey's Ceyhan terminal on the Mediterranean.

Iraq has begun work on its side of a pipeline to Jordan's Red Sea port of Aqaba, but the Jordanians have yet to start building their side of the pipeline. A pipeline through Syria to a Lebanese port on the Mediterranean lays idle.

-------- russia

RUSSIA THREATENS TO TAKE ARMS RACE TO SPACE

Thursday, January 25, 2001
THE TIMES (UK)

The prospect of a space-based arms race moved closer than ever yesterday with a report that Russia will double its defence spending over the next ten years if Washington carries out its threat to build a "son of Star Wars" missile defence shield. Russia will earmark up to 5 per cent of its gross domestic product for the next ten years - equivalent to £90 billion at current rates. It will ensure that its missiles will be able to pierce any National Missile Defence system (NMD) that the US builds, according to the Strana.ru website, which is run by a political adviser to President Putin.

The sums are insignificant next to the US defence budget of $310 billion (£212 billion) for this year alone but for Russia that would represent a return to military spending levels not seen since the Cold War.

It would also be large enough to fund new missile technologies and costly troop demobilisation that President Putin has already demanded.

Russia's defence budget for 2001 is only £5.2 billion but that is likely to rise. According to the Strana.ru report, the provision for increased spending is part of the ten-year plan for reforming the armed forces that was reportedly signed by Mr Putin last week.

The two most practical ways to penetrate the massive missile defence system of the kind promised by Donald Rumsfield, the new US Defence Secretary, are to equip Russia's latest Topol M long-range missiles with multiple warheads or build a new family of intercontinental weapons to replace its existing SS-18 Satan rockets, experts said.

Both options would violate the Start II arms control agreement but Russia has threatened to tear up the treaty if the US proceeds with NMD.

Mr Rumsfield faces stiff Congressional opposition to the NMD plan that has not yet been shown to be effective. Talk of a new generation of radar-piercing Russian rockets could kill the plan altogether.

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

Plutonium linked to plants

January 25, 2001
Chicago Sun-Times
News
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/combo25.html

The Pentagon has tracked traces of plutonium in U.S. ammunition used in Kosovo to contaminated equipment at plants in Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee. Officials said there was no danger to soldiers. Plutonium is one of the deadliest substances known, but so little tainted the depleted uranium used to make armor-piercing bullets that officials say they are not worried about extra health or environmental concerns for the troops from the United States and other countries involved in Kosovo.

-------- california

Lab managed by UC system cited as contract under suspicion

ET January 25, 2001
Excite News
Daily Bruin
By Benjamin Parke
U. California-Los Angeles
http://news.excite.com/news/uw/010125/university-176

(U-WIRE) LOS ANGELES -- The Department of Energy announced Wednesday that it has cited the University of California-managed Los Alamos National Laboratory for safety violations. Meanwhile, the legality of UC's new contract to manage it and other national labs has been questioned by the chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

Several safety violations at the lab were cited by the Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration. In one such incident in March of last year, eight workers at Los Alamos were exposed to plutonium -- one of them at five times the annual regulatory limit.

None of the workers have so far experienced health problems related to the incident, and the ones with the most exposure were given immediate treatment.

The university has until Feb. 19 to respond to the Energy Department's action before it becomes final. In a statement, Los Alamos Laboratory Director John Browne said safety deficiencies would be corrected.

"We must continue to learn from our experiences and improve our operations," Browne said. "We have a moral imperative to protect the health and safety of our employees and our neighbors."

The Energy Department announcement came just two days after the chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce sent letters to the department and to UC President Richard Atkinson requesting all records relating to the contract signed by the two parties last week.

Minutes after it was given approval Jan. 18 by the UC Board of Regents, the contract was signed just outside the room where the board was meeting. UC President Atkinson said afterwards that although it was signed just before the Bush administration was coming in, the contract had bipartisan support.

In his letter to National Nuclear Security Administrator John Gordon, Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., expressed his "severe disappointment" that a request he had made for a delay in the signing was not heeded.

"Instead, in the last remaining days of the Clinton administration, you seemed intent on binding the new administration -- and this country -- to a flawed contract that may jeopardize our national security," Tauzin wrote.

He added that the action may not have even been legal, given a requirement to report to Congress at least 60 days prior to a contract that is not submitted to competitive bidding.

Floyd Thomas, communications director for the National Nuclear Security Administration, said nothing irregular happened.

"The department contends that they did give Congress that information," Thomas said.

A spokesman for Tauzin's committee, Ken Johnson, said its members want an opportunity to review the contract.

"We expect both DOE and UC officials to cooperate fully," Johnson said. "Otherwise, they can expect to be sitting at a table with their right hands in the air."

UC spokesman Jeff Garberson said the university is complying with Tauzin's request for records. He said Atkinson's assertion last week that the contract enjoyed bipartisan support remains true.

"I've been with either the university or the labs for 30 years, and I can't remember a time that there haven't been both supporters and critics," Garberson said.

-------- colorado

Environmentalist on the inside

January 25, 2001
Washington Times
George Radanovich
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-column-2001125232433.htm

Over in the "other Body" (the Senate), Colin Powell is facing relatively easy scrutiny for secretary of state, John Ashcroft is confronting intensely partisan questioning in his quest for attorney general and Tommy Thompson clearly controls the issues in his Health and Human Services bid. Gale Norton, President George W. Bush's nominee for the position of secretary of interior, has faced aggressive opposition from national environmental lobbies.

She deserves the grassroots support of environmental stewards from throughout the country for her distinguished career of public service to the land, the people of her state, and of the nation as a whole.

The current electrical power crisis in California, where my constituents face blackouts, is a perfect parallel to the battle fought by Gale Norton in her hearings for the interior post. I have had the honor to visit Yerevan, Armenia, where the president of that former Soviet nation proudly announced to me that they no longer had blackouts "to show that we are not a Third World country." What is California?

Gale Norton's commitment to working on federal land issues and the environment has spanned more than 20 years. Most recently, she served as attorney general for the state of Colorado for eight years. Her record in Colorado clearly demonstrates that she is a champion of the rights of individuals and of the environment. She was closely involved in 12 major environmental cleanup projects, including cleaning the Rocky Mountain Arsenal and the Rocky Flats Nuclear facility of toxic and hazardous materials. And, she worked to ensure that the state's interests and laws, not the federal government's overreaching demands, were a major consideration in each of the projects she enforced.

She has been an influential voice for reasonable solutions to complex problems. She is known to promote innovation, collaborative solutions and partnerships. She is clearly of the same cut of cloth as Mr. Bush, a "uniter, not a divider."

She has come under fire from national environmental lobbyists and organizations that are rarely part of any solutions. These are the same national environmental groups that recently scared-off the City of San Jose, Ca. from approving the development of a new natural gas-fired power plant to address the growing demands for power in the Silicon Valley. These are the national environmental groups that have so restricted timber sales that several co-generation biomass power plants are sitting idle. These are the national environmental groups that want to tear down the Snake River dams that contribute enough power to the overtaxed Western power grid to serve 1.5 million people.

These are not your neighbors and friends. These national environmental fund-raising groups, such as the Sierra Club, the League of Conservation Voters, and the National Resources Defense Council, use their national lists to stir up opposition to anyone who addresses the growing demands for infrastructure throughout the West. These are the groups who have tied up some 33 percent of the U.S. land mass in public lands, and then have worked systematically to keep the citizens who own those lands from enjoying them.

It is worse in the West, where more than two-thirds of our national forest land has been set-aside as "roadless" and where as much as 92 percent of a state can be under federal jurisdiction. When local environmentalists, who are the people that really work with and understand the land, are involved in environmental decision-making, they tend to be pragmatic, reasonable and to balance the needs of communities and people with the needs of the environment. The Quincy Library Group's local solution to the Plumas National Forest harvesting plan is an excellent example of local environmentalism. Gale Norton is this type of "local" environmentalist. I am proud that I am, also. Of course, the national lobbies oppose such local - read uncontrolled -solutions.

With George W. Bush providing leadership, and Gale Norton providing the administrative and legal assistance, maybe California can find its way out of the excess influence of the national environmental lobby and, working with local citizens and stewards, help to solve our critical power shortfall. Then California, like Armenia, will no longer act like a Third World country.

I urge my friends in the "other Body" to quickly confirm Gale Norton as secretary of the interior.

Rep. George Radanovich represents the 19th District of California. He is chairman of the Western Caucus, and a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and the Resources Committee.

-------- connecticut

MILLSTONE SALE APPROVED

January 25, 2001
New York Times
Metro Business Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/25/nyregion/25BBRF.html

The Connecticut Department of Public Utility Control yesterday approved the $1.3 billion purchase of two of the three Millstone nuclear power plants in Waterford by Dominion Resources of Virginia. The Connecticut Light and Power Company, a subsidiary of Northeast Utilities, and the United Illuminating Company are selling all of Millstone 2 and more than 90 percent of Millstone 3, in which some minority owners are retaining stakes. The purchase remains subject to approval by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Millstone 1, shut in 1995 because of operating problems, is being decommissioned. Joseph P. Fried (NYT)

-------- new mexico

Lab managed by UC system cited as contract under suspicion

January 25, 2001
Excite News
By Benjamin Parke Daily Bruin U. California-Los Angeles
http://news.excite.com/news/uw/010125/tech-176
http://news.excite.com/news/uw/010125/politics-176

(U-WIRE) LOS ANGELES -- The Department of Energy announced Wednesday that it has cited the University of California-managed Los Alamos National Laboratory for safety violations. Meanwhile, the legality of UC's new contract to manage it and other national labs has been questioned by the chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

Several safety violations at the lab were cited by the Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration. In one such incident in March of last year, eight workers at Los Alamos were exposed to plutonium -- one of them at five times the annual regulatory limit.

None of the workers have so far experienced health problems related to the incident, and the ones with the most exposure were given immediate treatment.

The university has until Feb. 19 to respond to the Energy Department's action before it becomes final. In a statement, Los Alamos Laboratory Director John Browne said safety deficiencies would be corrected.

"We must continue to learn from our experiences and improve our operations," Browne said. "We have a moral imperative to protect the health and safety of our employees and our neighbors."

The Energy Department announcement came just two days after the chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce sent letters to the department and to UC President Richard Atkinson requesting all records relating to the contract signed by the two parties last week.

Minutes after it was given approval Jan. 18 by the UC Board of Regents, the contract was signed just outside the room where the board was meeting. UC President Atkinson said afterwards that although it was signed just before the Bush administration was coming in, the contract had bipartisan support.

In his letter to National Nuclear Security Administrator John Gordon, Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., expressed his "severe disappointment" that a request he had made for a delay in the signing was not heeded.

"Instead, in the last remaining days of the Clinton administration, you seemed intent on binding the new administration -- and this country -- to a flawed contract that may jeopardize our national security," Tauzin wrote.

He added that the action may not have even been legal, given a requirement to report to Congress at least 60 days prior to a contract that is not submitted to competitive bidding.

Floyd Thomas, communications director for the National Nuclear Security Administration, said nothing irregular happened.

"The department contends that they did give Congress that information," Thomas said.

A spokesman for Tauzin's committee, Ken Johnson, said its members want an opportunity to review the contract.

"We expect both DOE and UC officials to cooperate fully," Johnson said. "Otherwise, they can expect to be sitting at a table with their right hands in the air."

UC spokesman Jeff Garberson said the university is complying with Tauzin's request for records. He said Atkinson's assertion last week that the contract enjoyed bipartisan support remains true.

"I've been with either the university or the labs for 30 years, and I can't remember a time that there haven't been both supporters and critics," Garberson said.

---

Violations at LANL Alleged

Thursday, January 25, 2001
Albuquerque Journal
By Jennifer McKee
http://www.abqjournal.com/news/234258news01-25-01.htm

Los Alamos National Laboratory broke federal nuclear laws in the last two years with a string of worker accidents and near-misses, including one that left a worker so heavily dosed by plutonium he can never work with radioactive materials again, according to the head of the nation's nuclear security administration.

John Gordon, administrator for the National Nuclear Security Administration, the Department of Energy branch that manages the nation's nuclear defense machine, issued a preliminary notice Wednesday saying the lab broke the law with a series of five accidents and slip-ups between 1998 and 2000.

The University of California, which manages the lab for the DOE, now has 30 days to respond to the allegations. If the preliminary notice becomes official, the university will face $605,000 in fines. Because the university is a nonprofit, it will not pay any actual money, but will face "phantom fines" instead.

"Our institution will take the necessary steps to correct safety deficiencies," Los Alamos lab director John Browne said in a prepared statement Wednesday. "We have a moral imperative to protect the health and safety of our employees and our neighbors."

A DOE team began investigating the lab last fall for several problems - all covered under federal laws outlining nuclear worker safety.

In the most serious accident, a worker, who has not been publicly named, was helping to close down a plutonium lab for the weekend last March, said lab spokesman James Rickman. Workers handle the radioactive metal only through gloveboxes - special, reinforced containers with gloves screwed to their sides so workers can manipulate the metal without actually touching it. The boxes are filled with argon gas to prevent plutonium from being exposed to air, which sometimes causes it to burst into flames.

Another technician noticed that argon wasn't flowing normally into the box. The first worker tried fixing the problem by jiggling the tube that feeds argon into the glovebox. The fixture was installed improperly, Rickman said, and the tube accidentally broke open in the worker's hand. He and seven other employees suffered plutonium contamination, some by inhaling it and others by absorbing it through their skin. The worker closest to the tube took several times the regulatory limit for contamination, Rickman said, and will never work with radioactive materials again.

All the workers were treated immediately and returned to work shortly after the accident, Rickman said.

Gordon announced the violations Wednesday, four weeks after DOE investigators concluded their probe and turned their findings over to Gordon's office. The administrator drew sharp criticism from both Congress and activists for waiting more than a month to issue any fines or announce the violation.

Billy Tauzin, the Louisiana Republican who chairs the House Commerce Committee, demanded all the records behind the investigation this week and castigated Gordon for dragging his feet on punishment.

"We're pleased some action has been taken," Pete Sheffield, a committee spokesman, said Wednesday. "The question is, why did it take so long?"

Santa Fe activist Jay Coghlan of Nuclear Watch of Northern New Mexico also questioned Gordon's timing. Gordon waited until after the DOE had signed a recent contract with the University of California that extended the UC's management for another five years before announcing the investigation's results.

"It's tantamount to a coverup," Coghlan said. "The lab folks know very well that it would be a very sensitive item to come up while (contract) negotiations were going on."

Gordon spokesman Floyd Thomas dismissed such comments, saying his agency is a complicated bureaucracy that does nothing very quickly.

"Fourteen people have to sign off on the investigation before it goes to Gordon," he said.

Combine that with the holidays and you've got a time-consuming process, he said.

Although the university faces no actual monetary punishment, UC spokesman Jeff Garberson said the institution takes the matter seriously.

"It causes us all to pay attention," he said. "It is a reminder of the importance of doing the job well."

Fortunately, none of the workers injured should suffer much from the contamination, said Mike Fox, a scientist at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, member of the American Nuclear Society and former head of a plutonium lab.

Plutonium can only hurt you if the particles you breathe in are just the right size and just the right kind of plutonium, Fox said. Even then, people have taken in much more contamination than the injured Los Alamos worker and suffered no problems. The government has purposely set plutonium contamination standards very low to encourage nuclear workers to handle the metal safely.

"Given the experience of other people, (the worker) is going to be kept busy with monitoring; but our experience shows the guy has a long life to live," he said.

The worker was removed from his old job because he has taken in more plutonium than federal law allows, Rickman said, not because he was sickened by the plutonium.

The other accidents, although not as serious as the plutonium contamination, include the widespread improper installation of fittings on gloveboxes and an accident in which a worker tried to fix a broken glovebox and ended up getting a dose of radioactivity.

-------- ohio

PLAN TO SAVE PIKETON PLANT PUT ON HOLD

The Columbus Dispatch
Thursday, January 25, 2001
By Jonathan Riskind Dispatch Washington Bureau Chief

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration has put a hold on the $630 million plan to keep southern Ohio's uranium-enrichment plant on standby after it is closed in June.

The Department of Energy's decision to suspend the initiative doesn't mean it won't happen after a review.

"We know about the issue. It's a priority, and we're working on it expeditiously,'' said Joe Davis, an Energy Department spokesman. "We're going to make sure we get this thing done.''

But for now the holdup raises uncertainty about the plan's fate. It is designed to save at least 1,200 jobs at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, Ohio, and safeguard the country's domestic uranium-enrichment supply.

In one of the agency's final acts under former Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson, a $161 million first installment was released Friday. That money was frozen Monday, though, according to an Energy Department memo obtained yesterday by The Dispatch.

"Pending review of this program activity by Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham, the Oak Ridge Operations Office should suspend the commitment of funds'' to the program, according to the memo by William D. Magwood IV, director of the department's office of nuclear energy, science and technology.

Richardson unveiled the program Oct. 6 in front of cheering workers at the Piketon plant.

That plant is being closed by USEC, a private federal corporation formerly known as the U.S. Enrichment Corp. The closing would leave the country with a single enrichment plant in Paducah, Ky., which also is operated by USEC.

Richardson, Rep. Ted Strickland, D-Lucasville, Gov. Bob Taft and others had advocated keeping the Piketon plant on standby so the country wouldn't have to rely on just one plant for nuclear fuel.

The plan to keep Piketon on standby was announced in the final weeks of the presidential campaign. Shortly before the announcement, Taft made public a letter from George W. Bush that criticized the Clinton administration for allowing the closure of the plant without ensuring a reliable domestic enrichment supply.

"If I am elected president, my administration will aggressively explore how the work force and facilities at the Piketon site can continue to serve our national interest,'' Bush said in the letter, dated Oct. 4.

After the Richardson announcement, Lee Johnson, then Taft's development director, gave assurances that a Bush administration would honor the commitment made by the Clinton administration.

"We don't want you to have any more sleepless nights,'' Johnson said. "We will work together, and this will happen.''

The suspension of the program comes on the heels of an opinion issued Friday by the General Accounting Office -- an independent agency that investigates issues at the behest of Congress -- that the $630 million was being used improperly.

The money can be used for "expenses of privatization,'' the GAO said, but that doesn't cover Richardson's plan.

The opinion does not carry the force of law.

Strickland said he is confident the Bush administration will find that the money can be used as Richardson intended.

"The only way this program can be killed is if the new administration -- and primarily the new president -- chooses not to proceed,'' Strickland said. "So I believe that we're going to be OK here.''

Sen. George V. Voinovich, R-Ohio, isn't surprised about the review, said spokesman Scott Milburn.

But Voinovich is urging the Bush administration not to hold things up too long.

Voinovich "hopes we move forward quickly and do as much as we can while being sensitive to the issues the GAO report raised,'' Milburn said. "It is heartening that President Bush understands this and has made a commitment to helping as he did on the campaign.''

Dave Celona, Taft's executive assistant for business and industry, said that although the governor is "concerned about recent events,'' he knows that the incoming administration needs to get its feet on the ground and resolve any potential conflicts about the plan.

Taft will be in Washington on Friday and might see Bush, Celona said. If that happens, Taft will "look for every opportunity to discuss this issue'' with the president, Celona said.

Caption: Ex-Energy Secretary Bill Richardson vowed to keep the plant open.

-------- MILITARY

-------- colombia

Colombia Adds Troops at Rebel Zone as Deadline Nears

January 25, 2001
New York Times
By JUAN FORERO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/25/world/25COLO.html

BOGOTÁ, Colombia, Jan. 24 - The government has rushed hundreds of troops to an area just outside a huge rebel-held territory, as prospects of resuming peace talks by a Jan. 31 deadline border on collapse.

President Andrés Pastrana, who is traveling in Europe this week, declared that he still held out hope of resuming negotiations, which the rebels froze in November.

His other option, however, is to try to take back the land, a territory in the south as big as Switzerland, that his administration ceded in November 1998.

Mr. Pastrana is cutting short his trip and plans to return on Saturday to deal with the crisis. Concerns about the crumbling peace prospects have hurt the peso, which traded this week at a record low against the dollar.

The leader of the 17,000-member Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, Manuel Marulanda, has refused to budge despite the efforts by the top government negotiator, Camilo Gómez, that are widely described as intense.

Both sides have held sputtering talks about how and when to conduct formal talks.

For two months, the rebels have insisted that they will not resume the talks unless the government first controls an outlaw army of paramilitary gunmen, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia. That group opposes the rebels.

Human rights groups accuse the paramilitary force of having ties to the military. The Pastrana administration has said the army and the police have indeed been focusing on paramilitary members, arresting and killing fighters in death squads.

The troops are being dispatched a week before Mr. Pastrana has to decide whether to take back the 16,000 square miles of jungles and ranches under rebel control.

The police and soldiers were pulled out of the zone, in the hope of creating a dialogue. But the talks have repeatedly stalled, and Mr. Pastrana has extended the time limit on the rebels' use of the zone six times, the latest on Dec. 6.

Many people here say the zone has merely served to let the rebels fortify themselves. Indeed, the government has accused the rebel force, the FARC, of using the land as a site to hold kidnap victims, to recruit child guerrillas, to cultivate coca to buy arms and to organize attacks on other regions.

Today and on Tuesday, C-130 transport planes flew in more than 600 reinforcements to the region, troops that could be positioned in an arc from the northeast to the southeast of the zone, said an American Congressional aide who is familiar with the Colombian military.

The reinforcements, which add to the 2,500 troops already stationed outside the zone, are seen by some in Colombia as a sign that the government has grown weary with the rebels and may retake the territory when the expiration arrives.

But others knowledgeable about the conflict said wresting the zone from the battle-hardened force would be difficult, at the least. The Congressional aide, who has studied the military, said he believed that the army was not ready to engage the rebels in a large-scale operation.

An expert on the government and the military said he did not see what choice Mr. Pastrana had if the insurgents remained recalcitrant. The expert, Armando Borrero, who was the national security adviser under Mr. Pastrana's predecessor, Ernesto Samper, said he believed that the army might try a limited objective like taking over the center of the five towns in the zone.

"How can you justify the clearance zone if there's nothing to show for it?" Mr. Borrero asked. "I don't see any other way. His hands are tied. The political costs would be enormous if he extends the zone."

Although under enormous pressure to act, Mr. Pastrana could still save the peace effort, using military muscle to apply pressure on the rebels, said Michael Shifter, an expert on Colombia at the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington. "I don't think there's a contradiction between a stronger military force and pursuing the peace process."

Mr. Pastrana knows all too well, experts said, that any military offensive aimed at retaking the zone would carry a high cost for a leader who has staked his presidency on bringing peace. Indeed, Mr. Marulanda, the rebel leader, has said ending the demilitarized zone would obliterate the chance at holding talks.

"If the status ends, where are we going to hold talks?" Mr. Marulanda asked this week. "In that case, everything ends."

---

Colombia urges rebels to return to talks

January 25, 2001
Washington Times
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-200112521430.htm

BOGOTA, Colombia, - Colombian President Andres Pastrana yesterday urged leftist rebels to return to peace talks as troops mustered near a guerrilla safe haven days before a deadline that could mean war or peace.

Mr. Pastrana must decide by Jan. 31 whether to allow the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) to remain in an area the size of Switzerland that he granted the rebels two years ago to start talks to end a 36-year old civil war. He has renewed the FARC's control of the area six times in the past.

Growing public impatience with the peace process has put Mr. Pastrana under pressure to get tough with Colombia's largest rebel guerrilla force.

-------- drug war

Reforming Drug Laws

January 25, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/25/opinion/L25DRU.html

To the Editor:

"Signs of a Drug War Thaw" (news article, Jan. 21) notes that harsh drug law penalties are now being relaxed because there is less crime and, as a result, less fear of crime.

At least as important in prompting drug law reform has been mounting evidence that compared with prison, treatment is a far more effective and far less expensive means of reducing drug-related crime. In New York, nonviolent offenders who complete treatment are twice as likely to stay out of trouble than nonviolent offenders sent to prison.

Drug law reform is long overdue. No one should be punished for using drugs. But society should reserve the right to punish nonviolent offenders whose drug use persists, who refuse treatment or who refuse to comply with the demands of treatment.

MITCHELL S. ROSENTHAL, M.D. President, Phoenix House New York, Jan. 23, 2001

-------- iraq

Iraq says warplane was hit by missile

January 25, 2001
Washington Times
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-200112521430.htm

BAGHDAD - Iraq said its anti-aircraft missile defenses had hit one of a group of Western warplanes yesterday as they patrolled a no-fly zone over northern Iraq.

But the U.S. European Command said in a statement issued from Germany that no U.S. or British jets were hit, adding that all aircraft returned safely to Turkey after attacking Iraqi air-defense targets in the zone.

-------- space

Efficient nuclear fuel

Thursday, January 25, 2001
The Hindu
http://www.indiaserver.com/thehindu/2001/01/25/stories/08250003.htm

SCIENTISTS AT Ben-Gurion University of the Negev have shown that an unusual nuclear fuel could speed space vehicles from Earth to Mars in as little as two weeks. Standard chemical propulsion used in existing spacecraft currently takes from between eight to ten months to make the same trip. These calculations were reported in Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research by Prof. Yigal Ronen, of BGU's Department of Nuclear Engineering and graduate student Eugene Shwagerous.

The researchers demonstrate that the fairly rare nuclear material americium-242m (Am-242m) can maintain sustained nuclear fission as an extremely thin metallic film, less than a thousandth of a millimeter thick. In this form, the extremely high-energy, high- temperature fission products can escape the fuel elements and be used for propulsion in space. Obtaining fission-fragments is not possible with the better-known uranium- 235 and plutonium-239 nuclear fuels: they require large fuel rods, which absorb fission products.

Ronen became interested in nuclear reactors for space vehicles some 15 years ago at a conference dedicated to this subject. Speaker-after- speaker stressed that whatever the approach, the mass (weight) of the reactor had to be as light as possible for efficient space travel. At a more recent meeting, Carlo Rubbia of CERN (Nobel Laureate in Physics, 1984) brought up the novel concept of utilizing the highly energetic fragments produced by nuclear fission to heat a gas; the extremely high temperatures produced would enable faster interplanetary travel.

To meet the challenge of a light nuclear reactor, Ronen examined one element of reactor design, the nuclear fuel itself. He found at the time that of the known fission fuels, Am-242m is the front-runner, requiring only 1 percent of the mass (or weight) of uranium or plutonium to reach its critical state.

The recent study examined various theoretical structures for positioning Am-242m metal and control materials for space reactors. He determined that this fuel could indeed sustain fission in the form of thin films that release high-energy fission products. Moreover, he showed how these fission products could be used themselves as a propellant, or to heat a gas for propulsion, or to fuel a special generator that produces electricity.

"There are still many hurtles to overcome before americium-242m can be used in space," Ronen says. "There is the problem of producing the fuel in large enough quantities from plutonium-241 and americium-241, which requires several steps and is expensive. But the material is already available in fairly small amounts. In addition, actual reactor design, refueling, heat removal, and safety provisions for manned vehicles have not yet been examined.

-------- u.n.

Liberia Moves to Ward Off U.N. Embargo

January 25, 2001
New York Times
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/25/world/25DIAM.html?printpage=yes

UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 24 - Facing the threat of sanctions for diamond and arms trafficking with Sierra Leone's rebels, Liberia today invited the United Nations to monitor its airports and borders and to oversee diamond exports.

Foreign Minister Monie R. Captan said Liberia had already grounded all Liberian-registered aircraft, announced a policy of disengagement from Sierra Leone and asked all Sierra Leone's rebels to leave Liberia immediately.

Mr. Captan said Liberia is ready to cooperate with the Security Council to head off a threatened arms embargo and ban on its diamond exports.

The United Nations has banned diamond exports by rebels in Sierra Leone and Angola in a bid to curb their ability to finance two of Africa's most brutal conflicts.

But a recent report by a United Nations panel said President Charles Taylor of Liberia and a small coterie of officials and businessmen controlled a covert operation to violate the ban on arms and diamond dealings with Sierra Leone's rebels. The report accused Mr. Taylor of fueling the nine-year civil war in Sierra Leone, and called for an embargo on all diamonds from Liberia until it demonstrates that it is no longer involved in arms and gems trafficking with the rebels.

---

World Needs to Add 500 Million Jobs in 10 Years, U.N. Report Says

January 25, 2001
New York Times
By CHRISTOPHER S. WREN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/25/world/25NATI.html

UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 24 - With one-third of the world's work force unemployed or underemployed, at least 500 million new jobs will be needed over the next 10 years to accommodate new arrivals in the job market and help reduce global unemployment by half, an international labor group says in a new report.

The International Labor Office, the headquarters of the International Labor Organization, a United Nations affiliate, issued the report on Tuesday, saying sweeping advances in information technology and communications offer the most promising solution for creating work.

Still, its World Employment Report 2001 warned that "the global employment situation remains deeply flawed," because inequalities in access to technology and education are leaving many developing countries behind the industrialized world.

"Growth cannot in itself be expected to ensure that the needed 500 million jobs are of sufficient quality to bring all the world's workers closer to the enjoyment of decent work," the report said. "To achieve this requires much greater attention to core labor market issues, including investments in human capital, overcoming discrimination and making employment a central goal of economic policy."

To cross the so-called digital divide of the computer age, the report said, governments of developing countries will have to consider policies that would make the new technologies available to their people and equip them with the necessary education and skills.

"A passive policy stance that leaves to markets alone the direction of change will reinforce divides," the report said.

Duncan Campbell, an economist in the organization's employment strategy department and the senior editor of the report, said: "There are clear positive potentials from these technologies. There are clear opportunities for good. But there are also concerns and worries."

"No country has succeeded economically without well-educated people," Mr. Campbell added, speaking by telephone from the agency headquarters in Geneva. "We really view education as being the key source of the divide."

The report estimated that fully one-third of the three billion potential workers in the world were "unemployed, underemployed in terms of seeking more work or earn less than is needed to keep their families out of poverty," a subsistence wage level reckoned at $1 a day.

Of those, 160 million are visibly jobless, which, the report said, was 20 million more than at the peak of the Asian financial crisis in 1998, because Asia's population kept growing during the economic downturn.

It further estimated that at least 460 million new young job seekers, two-thirds of them Asian, would join the global work force by 2010.

But the AIDS pandemic that is sweeping sub-Saharan Africa is widely expected to reduce the number of job seekers there, with losses disproportionately high among professional and other skilled workers.

Although more workers in the United States and other industrialized countries are finding jobs, the report said, unemployment has risen in Latin America and the Caribbean, and it remains high in Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa. In China, the problem has apparently become more visible.

The new technologies, the report added, have the potential to improve women's opportunities. It said women held 27 percent of professional jobs in India's thriving software industry.

---

January 25, 2001
New York Times
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/25/world/25BRIE.html?pagewanted=all

MONGOLIA: U.N. AID PLEA The United Nations is appealing for further aid to assist Mongolia through a harsh winter that has already killed 500,000 head of livestock and seems likely to kill several million more. Carolyn McAskie, the United Nations emergency relief coordinator, who just returned from Mongolia, said heavy snows, ice and sub-zero temperatures, after a drought last summer, have created the worst natural disaster there in 50 years. Christopher S. Wren

---

GLOBAL ECONOMY

January 25, 2001
New York Times
World Business Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/25/business/25FOBR.html

GLOBAL JOBLESS REPORT

A United Nations employment survey found that 160 million people are jobless, 20 million more than before Asia's 1997 financial crisis. Growth in labor supply and loss of jobs from restructuring are the causes, said authors of the study, the World Employment Report 2001. The technology revolution has not reached many parts of the world, leaving an estimated 1 billion, or one-third of the world's work force, unemployed or underemployed, the International Labor Organization said in the report, which is published every two years. Elizabeth Olson (NYT)

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

Lockheed Martin Profit Drops

January 25, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/business/business-lockheedmart.html

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT.N), the world's largest defense contractor, on Thursday reported sharply lower fourth-quarter profits but beat Wall Street forecasts as sales from its systems integration, space systems and aeronautics businesses increased.

Maryland-based Lockheed, maker of the F-16 fighter jet, also raised its growth estimate for 2001 earnings, targeting 25 to 30 percent improvement from 2000 levels, before unusual items. That is up from earlier guidance of 20 percent growth.

For the fourth quarter, Lockheed posted net earnings of $89 million, or 21 cents per share, down 70 percent from the $293 million, or 76 cents per share, a year earlier.

Excluding unusual and one-time items, operating income was 38 cents a share, versus 59 cents in the same period of 1999. Analysts had expected operating earnings of 36 cents per share, according to First Call/Thomson Financial, which tracks estimates.

Net sales rose to $7.6 billion from $7.0 billion a year earlier. Sales would have increased by 10 percent but for the effects of acquisitions and divestitures, the company said.

In morning trade on the New York Stock Exchange, Lockheed shares gained 7 percent after the results, up $2.28 at $34.28. The stock's 52-week range is $16.50 to $37.11. Its record high is $56.75, set in 1998.

EXCEEDED GOALS

Lockheed's fourth-quarter bottom line included the impact of the aerospace electronics systems divestiture, a debt tender offer and a charge associated with an investment.

``We are delighted with the accomplishments that Lockheed Martin achieved in 2000,'' Vance Coffman, chairman and chief executive, said in a prepared statement. ``We exceeded all financial goals set for 2000, including achieving record orders and backlog, record free cash flow generation, substantial debt reduction, and the receipt of fair value for our divestitures.''

For the full year, Lockheed posted a net loss of $1.29 per share versus a profit of 99 cents in 1999. Excluding unusual items, the company earned $1.07 per share for 2000, compared with $1.50 in 1999.

The company generated free cash flow of $265 million in the fourth quarter and a record $1.8 billion for the full year. Lockheed said it expects to generate at least $800 million of free cash flow in 2001, and $1.8 billion for 2001 and 2002 combined.

Net debt fell by about $3.0 billion in 2000 and backlog at year-end totaled $56.4 billion, up from $45.9 billion a year earlier. Lockheed closed the year with $9.96 billion in total long-term debt, down from $11.48 billion a year earlier.

SEGMENT RESULTS

Sales from Lockheed's systems integration, space systems, aeronautics and global telecommunications segments rose in the fourth quarter, while technology services showed a decline.

The systems integration business posted a 10 percent increase in sales, with results from the naval electronic and surveillance systems product line driven by higher volume on land surveillance systems contracts and increased activity on the new attack submarine program.

Increases in the segment's missiles and air defense product line were due to higher volume on some tactical missile programs, which helped offset declines in volume on some fire-control and sensor contracts.

The space systems segment saw a 12 percent gain in sales for the quarter, primarily due to commercial space activities, which outweighed declines in military, civil and classified satellite activities. Still, the group's sales results for the full year fell 1 percent.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) F-16 contract helped bolster sales for Lockheed's aeronautics segment in the fourth quarter, offsetting anticipated reductions in scheduled deliveries on other F-16 fighter aircraft programs. The segment's sales decline for the year was attributed to those anticipated delivery declines, the company said.

GUIDANCE GOING FORWARD

Lockheed said it expects earnings to grow 25 to 30 percent for 2001, up from previous guidance of 20 percent.

The increase reflects lower interest expense, a lower effective tax rate of 40 percent, and an assumed smaller decline in retirement plan income than projected previously, the company said.

Lockheed's stock has outperformed the broader market by more than 50 percent over the last year, as have the stocks of many of its defense industry peers. Relative to rivals, Lockheed shares have more closely tracked the Standard & Poor's aerospace and defense index, outperforming by about 10 percent.

---

Defense Dept. Takes Over Marine Inquiry Into Osprey Records

January 25, 2001
New York Times
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/25/national/25OSPR.html

WASHINGTON, Jan. 24 - The Department of Defense inspector general took control today of the investigation into accusations of falsified maintenance records for the Marine Corps' V-22 Osprey aircraft program, raising the possibility that the inquiry would be broadened to include high-ranking Marine officials.

The announcement by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld came less than one week after the Marine Corps began investigating whether the commanding officer of its only V- 22 squadron had ordered subordinates to cover up problems in the program. The innovative aircraft has been plagued by production delays and crashes that have killed 23 marines in the past year.

Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, a Pentagon spokesman, said the Department of Defense inspector general typically assumed control of investigations when there was evidence that wrongdoing might extend above the rank of rear admiral or one-star general.

But Admiral Quigley and Marine officials said they knew of no evidence suggesting that the misconduct extended above the V-22 squadron commander, Lt. Col. Odin F. Leberman. Pentagon officials say Colonel Leberman has acknowledged falsifying records; he has been relieved of his command and transferred to Camp Lejeune, N.C.

The Marine Corps asserted that the Marine Corps commandant, Gen. James L. Jones, independently asked Mr. Rumsfeld this morning to have the Department of Defense inspector general take over the investigation to dispel even the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Still, a senior senator said today that he had heard that Marine officials above Colonel Leberman might have been implicated in the wrongdoing.

"Recently I have heard that it may well have" gone above Colonel Leberman, the senator, Carl Levin of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in an interview.

Mr. Levin and Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican who is chairman of the Armed Services Committee, sent a letter today to Mr. Rumsfeld urging him to appoint an independent panel to investigate the charges of falsified records. Both senators said that they were satisfied to have the Department of Defense inspector general conduct that inquiry.

In their letter, the two senators threatened to block financing of the Osprey program unless "the Defense Department has restored confidence in the integrity of the V-22 program and the people managing it."

A second panel, created late last year by Mr. Rumsfeld's predecessor, William S. Cohen, is reviewing the entire V-22 program.

The Osprey, a tilt-rotor aircraft, takes off and lands like a helicopter, but flies like a propeller plane. The Marine Corps wants to buy a total of 360 of the aircraft, at a total cost of over $30 billion, to replace its fleet of Vietnam-era transport helicopters.

Although the Pentagon has postponed a decision on whether to begin full production of the Osprey, the Marine Corps is still scheduled to receive 20 more V-22's in the coming two years.

The investigation into Colonel Leberman began when the Navy received an anonymous letter two weeks ago from someone claiming to be a Marine mechanic who asserted that efforts to falsify maintenance and performance reports had been "going on for over two years."

Marine officials contend that there is no link between the the two crashes last year and the maintenance records that are said to have been falsified.

---

Stripped bare

January 25, 2001
Washington Times
Inside the Beltway John McCaslin Political tidbits and other shenanigans from around the nation's capital.
http://www.washtimes.com/national/inbeltway.htm

The curators were warned to count the silver when the Clintons left the White House, and the Air Force, as it turns out, should have listened, too. Now that Bill Clinton is gone - after the longest goodbye anyone remembers - an Air Force steward tells us about the former president's "official" farewell flight to New York on Inaugural Day.

The presidential plane was "stripped bare."

Since Air Force One is the plane only of the president, the designation of the Boeing 747 was changed from Air Force One to "Special Air Mission" and by the time Mr. Clinton boarded he was no longer the president.

As a courtesy of President Bush, the plane was nevertheless equipped with all the presidential amenities Mr. Clinton had grown accustomed to during his two terms in office.

But not for long. Missing from the plane on arrival in New York, Inside the Beltway is told, was all the porcelain china, silverware, salt and pepper shakers, blankets and pillow cases - most of it bearing the presidential seal.

What most astonished the military steward was that even a cache of Colgate toothpaste, not stamped with the presidential seal, was snatched from a compartment beneath the presidential plane's sink. (The good news, we suppose, is that there was no halitosis on the return flight to Washington.)

-------- OTHER

-------- environment

Brazil Aide Pledges Care in Amazon Plans

January 25, 2001
New York Times
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/25/world/25BRAZ.html?printpage=yes

BRASÍLIA, Jan. 24 - In a move intended to meet environmentalists' concerns, Brazil said today that it would assess the impact of an economic development plan on the Amazon. Some scientists have warned that up to 42 percent of the Amazon rain forest could be destroyed by the project.

João Paulo Silveira, the development ministry official in charge of the $40 billion plan, said the government would study the probable environmental impact of all projects envisaged. The study, to be carried out over 12 months, is expected to cost $400,000. He promised that if environmental damage is feared, projects will be altered.

The Amazon, a forest area seven times the size of France, is home to up to 30 percent of the planet's animal and plant life. It already loses 4.7 million acres, an area the size of Rhode Island, each year to loggers and other destruction, a recent article in Science magazine said.

But Mr. Silveira said the Science article had "no technical foundations." He said its projections were faulty because it did not consider recent developments like much more stringent environmental laws than in the 1980's.

------

Oil Industry Seeks Softening of Clinton Clean-Air Rules

January 25, 2001
New York Times
By DOUGLAS JEHL
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/25/politics/25DIES.html

WASHINGTON, Jan. 24 - The oil industry has begun a major campaign for changes in the strict clean-air standards for buses and big trucks that were ordered late last year by the Clinton administration.

Industry representatives are urging the Bush administration, Congress and the federal courts to revise the rules, which refiners say could lead to shortages and price increases for diesel fuel when the guidelines begin to take effect in 2006.

The issue could provide an early test of willingness by the Bush administration and the Congress to challenge what critics have portrayed as hasty and misguided decisions by the Clinton administration on environmental policy.

The new standards, which would affect the heaviest polluters on American roads, were portrayed by the Clinton administration and its allies as the most important clean-air advances in a generation.

In expressing dissent, oil industry representatives have emphasized their support for measures aimed at reducing pollution from buses and trucks. But they say the new rules go too far and would impose unnecessary and potentially disruptive requirements on refiners.

The National Petrochemical Refiners Association, which represents virtually all American refiners, plans to challenge the new rules in federal court as part of a broader bid to explore "basically every avenue for revision," Bob Slaughter, the group's general counsel, said.

"We would hope that the new administration would be more interested in balancing energy supply and environmental concerns, because it's possible to strike a better balance," Mr. Slaughter said.

In recent months, the oil industry has said repeatedly that it could accept new standards that would require as much as a 90 percent reduction in the sulfur content of the diesel fuel used by the buses and big rigs. But it has opposed the Clinton measure, which would require a 98 percent reduction, on grounds that the further cuts were environmentally unnecessary and could put some refiners out of business.

A study conducted last year for the industry found that the Clinton standards could lead to a 12 percent shortfall in the supply of diesel, the main fuel for the transportation industry. That study said the cost could go up more than 15 cents a gallon.

A spokesman for ExxonMobil, Jeanne Moore, said today that the company had joined others in endorsing the more moderate plan because it would "provide virtually the same environmental benefits as the E.P.A.'s more severe rule but at a lower cost to consumers, and without placing diesel fuel supply at risk."

But in its own analysis, the Environmental Protection Agency concluded that shortages and price surges were unlikely, even with the steeper reduction in diesel content. It said the cost of the regulations would increase diesel fuel prices by only about three to five cents a gallon, while bringing far greater health benefits.

The Clinton White House upheld those findings as part of the administrative process that preceded its announcement of the new standards in December. The Bush administration could amend the diesel rules only by restarting the time-consuming procedure that produced the new standards.

But Congress could overturn the measure by a majority vote if it acts before March 17, and at least one senator, James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, has indicated that he might press for just such an action.

At least two major oil refiners, British Petroleum and Tosco, have broken ranks within the industry by supporting the Clinton administration rules.

The American Petroleum Institute, the industry's main trade group, has listed the issue as one of its major concerns, but a senior official said today that the group had not decided whether to join any formal challenge. "Frankly, we are looking at all of options on how to deal with it," the official, Edward H. Murphy, said. "We are supportive of the basic objectives, so we don't want to take action that would interfere with the environmental benefits."

---

Galápagos Islands Face New Peril as More Oil Spills From Tanker

January 25, 2001
New York Times
By LARRY ROHTER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/25/science/25GALA.html

PUERTO BAQUERIZO MORENO, Galápagos Islands, Jan. 24 - High tides and heavy winds today forced the suspension of efforts to recover diesel and bunker fuel leaking from a grounded tanker that has already spilled more than 150,000 gallons into pristine waters teeming with some of the world's most unusual marine and bird species.

A new oil slick that resulted has already killed off fish and marine organisms and plants in the area around the ship. More ominously, officials here said, the new spill threatens to drift toward neighboring islands that have large populations of sea lions, marine iguanas and blue-footed boobies.

Despite the pounding surf, cleanup and animal-rescue efforts by Ecuador, which has governed the archipelago since the middle of the last century, were continuing. About 100 employees of the Galápagos National Park have been joined by scientists from the Charles Darwin Research Station, local fishermen, volunteers and a United States Coast Guard team.

"Given the circumstances, they have been doing a fantastic job," said Capt. Edwin Stanton, the commander of the Coast Guard unit, which arrived here on San Cristóbal Island on Sunday at the request of the government. "What they lack in equipment and infrastructure, they are making up for in innovation and sheer effort."

The environmental peril in the Galápagos Islands, designated a world heritage site by the United Nations because of the unusual wildlife, began Jan. 16 when a tanker loaded with 243,000 gallons of fuel went aground on a reef as it was preparing to dock. Rescue teams were able to remove some of the oil, but on Friday night the hull cracked and the fuel began leaking into the Pacific Ocean.

Fernando Espinoza, secretary general of the Charles Darwin Foundation, said the main spill, now dispersed over more than 775 square miles, had already reached Santa Cruz, which is about 50 miles northwest of here and is the most populated island. Today, residents there were busy trying to remove oil from the shores of Tortuga Bay, a popular beach, and the harbor at Puerto Ayora, the main settlement.

Scientists and government officials said the original spill was widely dispersed, and in many areas was merely a sheen. That has helped speed evaporation and reduced the chance of extensive permanent damage to the delicate environment, which inspired Darwin to develop the theory of natural selection when he visited here in 1835.

Eliécer Cruz, director of the national park, said that because of unpredictable and shifting winds and currents, it was too early to determine where the new, much smaller slick from today's spill might be heading. But he expressed concern at signs that it could be headed south, toward islands with large populations of rare animals, including Española, the sole nesting place of the waved albatross.

This afternoon the stricken tanker, the Jessica, could still be seen listing at a 50-degree angle about 500 yards offshore. "The vessel took a severe pounding Tuesday and today," Captain Stanton said. "We could hear the bulkheads popping."

Ecuadorean Navy officials said that they would try to right the vessel on Thursday in an effort to halt the leakage. But the navy has only three small tugboats here, and whether they will have the strength required is not clear.

[Assessment of responsibility for the spill is just beginning, and today Vice Adm. Gonzalo Vega of the merchant marine announced the arrest of the Jessica's captain, Tarquino Arévalo, and 13 crewmen, who were ordered confined to a military base on San Cristóbal pending formal charges, The Associated Press reported.]

Local fishermen, who have been fighting with the government about quotas for lobster and sea-cucumber catches, have been using buckets to skim oil from the surface.

"We are the ones who are most affected by this tragedy, and we don't want to be blamed for any dropoff in the fish population," said Franklin Zavala, president of the local fishermen's cooperative.

Conspicuously absent from the cleanup efforts, however, was the Galápagos Explorer, the tourist cruise ship that had been scheduled to receive much of the leaked fuel.

"There has been no offer from the owners to help, even though other tourism companies have offered their vessels as floating dormitories for our recovery teams or are raising money for relief efforts," Mr. Cruz said.

---

Tanker Captain Takes Blame for Oil Spill

January 25, 2001
New York Times
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/world/ecuador-galapagos.html?pagewanted=all

PUERTO BAQUERIZO MORENO, Ecuador, Jan 25 (Reuters) - The Ecuadorean captain whose tanker ran aground on the Galapagos islands tearfully took the blame on Thursday for an oil spill threatening the pristine ecosystem of British naturalist Charles Darwin's ``enchanted isles.''

Tarquino Arevalo, captain of the Ecuadorean-registered Jessica which last week fouled the Galapagos waters with oil after colliding with rocks, told Reuters he had misjudged his entry into the prophetically named Shipwreck Bay outside the tiny harbor of San Cristobal island.

``The truth is I didn't even know the rock was there. It was over-confidence on my part, I am completely to blame,'' the 58-year-old sailor said in an interview. ``I didn't do it on purpose. This has nothing to do with my crew, it was my fault, not theirs,'' he added.

The Galapagos are home to iguanas, flightless cormorants, sea lions and the famous Galapagos giant tortoises. The only known damage so far to wildlife has been four dead pelicans and some animals and birds tainted with oil.

Harbor Master Peter Vallejo told Reuters that Arevalo, who slept on board for four days after the accident and needed hospital treatment for a gash on his forehead and dehydration, had not been arrested but would be interviewed with his crew.

``He will have to be judged once the investigation is over. He has to remain at the disposition of the Harbor Master's office but he is not under arrest,'' said Vallejo as a justice ministry official decided whether to prosecute him on charges of environmental damage -- a crime in the Galapagos.

The Galapagos, administered by Ecuador, lie 600 miles off the coast in the southern Pacific Ocean. The Galapagos National Park preserves the creatures and their natural habitat, where they have evolved for thousands of years in isolation and with little human intervention.

TEARS IN HIS EYES

Arevalo, who had tears in his eyes as he spoke, pleaded for his dozen crew to be set free after giving statements. Arevalo, previously a Navy officer based in the Galapagos, could face a jail term of four to five years if charged, local police said.

In the ocean off the ramshackle town of Puerto Baquerizo Moreno, Navy ships were trying to attach cables to the stricken vessel, which was lying on its side amid rocks.

Attempts to right the Jessica have been delayed by strong swells but the U.S. Coast Guard, aiding efforts to save the ecosystem from more slicks and refloat the ship, was due to try to suck out about 10,000 gallons (45,500 liters) left inside.

A spokesman for the Coast Guard said swells made conditions ``very treacherous'' but the Coast Guard would use its expertise ``anywhere we can assist.'' Assessing damage to the environment, he said there had been ``minimal shoreline impact.''

So far ocean currents have taken most of the diesel and bunker fuel, used to power tour boats, away from the islands which are home to marine and bird life that inspired British naturalist Darwin to devise his theory of evolution.

A thin slick of diesel had spread as far as Santa Cruz Island, about 40 miles from the Jessica, while much of the bunker oil was floating six to 10 miles from the port. Seen from above, the Pacific was streaked with oily rainbows but the stain had largely broken up, with patches of pale blue from chemical agents sprayed from converted fishing boats.

About two-thirds of the cargo of 240,000 gallons (1.1 million liters) spilled into the ocean and 70,000 gallons (295,500 liters) has been removed safely from the ship, which is owned by the Guayaquil-based company Acotramar.

EXOTIC COASTS ESCAPE SERIOUS POLLUTION

Galapagos National Park Director Eliecer Cruz said oil had contaminated a 500-metre (yard) stretch of beach on Sante Fe island, but that otherwise the exotic coasts of the volcanic island cluster had largely escaped pollution.

Some 30 sea lions and several pelicans, giant tortoises and colorful blue-footed boobie birds had been affected and moved to centers to be cleaned up by teams of conservationists, who have flown in from around the world to help.

However, sea lions continued to bask on the shores of the islands Darwin dubbed ``enchanted'' when he arrived in 1835. Conservationists were optimistic that the islands' species would not suffer major long-term damage.

``We have been very lucky with the conditions. Much of the fuel has either evaporated or washed out to sea but there is still the danger of another spill and some animals are going to die,'' Dr Fernando Espinosa of the Charles Darwin Foundation ecology center said.

But local fishermen, who have been scooping up the oil by hand with small plastic buckets, fear their livelihoods and tourism on the island are in peril, and accuse the government of failing to act swiftly to contain the spill.

As foreign governments sent the impoverished Andean nation of Ecuador money to help fight the spill, ecologists from all over the world clamored for stronger protection for the Galapagos.

---

Tanker captain, crewmen arrested after fuel spill

01/25/2001
USA Today
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001-01-24-galapagos.htm
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-200112521430.htm

PUERTO BAQUERIZO, Galapagos Islands (AP) - As rangers worked Wednesday to net wildlife stained and dazed by an oil spill, authorities arrested the captain of the leaking tanker and pledged stronger protections for these islands renowned for their unique animals and birds. Capt. Tarquino Arevalo and 13 crewmen from the tanker Jessica were ordered confined to a military base on San Cristobal island pending formal charges, Merchant Marines Vice Adm. Gonzalo Vega said Wednesday.

The captain and the tanker's owners could face two to four years in prison if convicted of negligence or crimes against the environment. Ecuadorean Environment Minister Rodolfo Rendon said he was pushing to have them all jailed pending the investigation.

The arrests come eight days after the Jessica ran aground off San Cristobal Island, one of the Galapagos chain. Over the days that followed, the ship leaked at least 185,000 gallons of diesel fuel into this fragile ecosystem, one populated by species found nowhere else in the world and an inspiration for Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

The ship ran aground after a signal buoy was mistaken for a lighthouse, said Capt. Ramiro Morejon, chief of control and marine monitoring for Galapagos National Park. He blamed human error.

Only one pelican and two seagulls are known to have died. But dozens of other birds and marine animals - sea lions, seagulls, blue-footed boobies and albatrosses - also have been affected, officials at the Galapagos' sprawling wildlife park said.

And while scientists here say the spill could have been much worse, the long-term environmental damage to the islands 600 miles off the mainland remains unclear.

"We are trying at all costs to prevent the fuel from reaching land," said biologist Harry Reyes, who helped set up a perimeter of buoys around the spill.

One environmental workers said Wednesday that the spill was under control.

"We were very worried at first, but what has happened is not so grave," Carlos Valle, the Galapagos coordinator for the World Wildlife Fund, told The Associated Press.

Treading carefully over fuel-slicked rocks on Wednesday, park ranger Navil Segovia approached one pelican, sluggish and stained black with diesel fuel.

He netted the bird, then carefully embraced it around its chest, its wings folded in. The pelican was then loaded onto a vehicle and taken to a control center, where it will be cleaned before being released.

"It wasn't difficult to catch because it was dazed," Segovia said.

About 200 volunteers, park rangers and environmental experts searched for affected wildlife along the shores of San Cristobal and Santa Fe Island, 37 miles to the west, home to large colonies of sea lions and marine iguanas. Four sea lion cubs were cleaned and released Wednesday, said park director Eliecer Cruz.

Some conservationists fear the fuel will sink to the ocean floor, destroying algae vital to the food chain and threatening marine iguanas, sharks, birds that feed off fish and other species.

Conservationists worldwide demanded that Ecuador take greater steps to protect the Galapagos. And Rendon said the country is doing so: He said new legislation is being written to require special permission and insurance for all vessels entering the Galapagos with more than 10 gallons of fuel aboard.

Shipping authorities have confirmed that the Jessica was not insured for environmental contamination, he said. International shipping rules require such insurance for vessels carrying 2,000 tons of fuel, while the Jessica had only 300 tons aboard, Galapagos park officials said.

"We are writing up the regulations to establish what fuels can enter the Galapagos, and moreover, that the minimum amount possible is used," Rendon said.

The 28-year-old tanker Jessica regularly transported diesel and bunker, a heavy fuel used by tour boats, from the mainland into the Galapagos, Ecuador's main tourist attraction. It was carrying a cargo of some 234,000 gallons of fuel when it hit bottom 550 yards off San Cristobal, the easternmost island in the archipelago.

Thousands of gallons were safely removed from the tanker after it hit, but much more spilled into the water. Authorities had suspended oil recovery operations and were waiting out rough tides when the last of the ship's cargo - an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 gallons of fuel - spilled out late Tuesday, apparently after pounding surf tore new ruptures in the hull.

---

Workers Say Chemicals Used in Mosquito Spraying Made Them Ill

January 25, 2001
New York Times
By SUSAN SAULNY
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/25/nyregion/25SPRA.html

Five workers who sprayed pesticides for a city contractor last summer to kill mosquitoes carrying the West Nile virus have filed a complaint with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, contending that improper training and prolonged exposure to the chemicals made them sick.

In an affidavit, the men detailed how they were repeatedly saturated with the pesticide Anvil during their nightly spraying shifts, while driving or riding without protective clothing on the backs of trucks. The former sprayers and truck drivers also said they handled and loaded pesticides without training or supervision, contrary to state and federal regulations. Their claims were first reported yesterday by The Daily News.

The men's symptoms included dizziness, difficulty in breathing, headaches, diarrhea, joint pain and shakiness, said Joel Kupferman, the executive director of the New York Environmental Law and Justice Project, which is representing them in making the claim.

"All they said was that it was completely harmless," said Leslie Rouff, a diamond setter from Crown Heights who took a job as a sprayer because he was out of work. "We didn't get briefed, except about what the chemical does to the mosquito."

In a statement released yesterday, Clarke Mosquito Control Products, the Illinois company hired by the city, denied any negligence or wrongdoing.

The sprayers and drivers "received a state-mandated core course explaining pesticides in general and on-the-job training on their specific positions, including safety measures, during their first week of work," said Laura McGowan, a spokeswoman. "In addition, employees reviewed safety measures through training videos and classroom time."

But Samuel Gowerie, 46, a former sprayer who lives in Brooklyn, said he received "nothing of the sort."

And Kent Smith of the Bronx said that after he filled out an application to operate a spraying truck and had his license approved, he was on a route that same day, without a supervisor.

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, which regulates municipal pesticide use, requires 40 hours of on-the-job training for seasonal workers under the direct supervision of a certified applicator, as well as eight hours of core training, said Peter Constantakes, a department spokesman. Protective clothing was not required with the use of Anvil, however.

Still, the applicators said they should have been better protected.

"We didn't get training or outfits or anything," Mr. Gowerie said. "They just sent us out to spray and after the very first day I noticed my skin itching and some other things, but I just thought it was because I was tired from working the night shift."

Mr. Gowerie said he did not see a doctor then because he was not covered by medical insurance and did not have enough money to pay a doctor on his own. His worries now focus on the long-term effects of exposure - effects that experts say are not fully known. "I don't feel good about all this," he said. "It's left me very nervous and shaky. I'm just hoping for the best."

A sixth person, a city worker who was inadvertently caught in pesticide mist while working for the Department of Transportation, is also working with Mr. Kupferman to receive compensation for what he says are pesticide-related symptoms.

"The long-term effects are still up for grabs," said Dr. Irwin M. Berlin, chief of pulmonary medicine at Trinitas Hospital in Elizabeth, N.J. "But there are some studies that suggest alterations of the immune system and malignancies."

Mr. Constantakes said the Department of Environmental Conservation is taking all the complaints seriously. "We hope to find out if there was a problem," he said. "And if there was a problem, we'll take corrective action."

The label for Anvil states that the pesticide is "harmful if absorbed through the skin; avoid contact with skin, eyes or clothing."

The product is known to be "highly effective and widely used," in addition to being "among the safest of insecticides," according to Dr. Andrew Spielman, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health. "If Anvil turns out to be a problem," he said, "we'll have to think about it very carefully."

Since the spraying began last year, the State Department of Health has received 14 reports from doctors who believe their patients may have suffered sickness as a result of pesticides, according to Kristine Smith, a department spokeswoman.

---

GLOBAL WARMING PLEA

January 25, 2001
New York Times
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/25/world/25BRIE.html?pagewanted=all

NETHERLANDS: The Bush administration has requested a two-month postponement of the next round of international talks aimed at completing a treaty to fight global warming, a State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, said. The request was made to Jan Pronk, the Dutch environment minister, who is president of the talks, Mr. Boucher said. According to Agence France-Presse, a Pronk spokeswoman said he viewed the request as a "positive sign." The spokeswoman said Washington asked for the delay "to better prepare" for the talks, which were scheduled for May. Andrew C. Revkin (NYT)

---

Where's the science?

January 25, 2001
Washington Times
EDITORIAL
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-house-2001125231658.htm

When the last round of "global warming" talks collapsed some two months ago, knowledgeable observers knew it was not the end by any means. The fact that negotiators were unable to hammer out an agreement that would have bound the United States to massive reductions of so-called "greenhouse" gasses only meant that more aggressive public relations work was needed. Outside of the hothouse environment of leftist political circles, most people remained properly skeptical of alarmist declarations - all of them based not an actual science but hypothetical computer models - that the planet is in for massive climate fluctuations as a result of human activity. This has made it difficult for the various interests angling to get the United States to agree to the enforcement mechanisms proposed by the authors of the so-called Kyoto Protocol - the formal name of the U.N.-brokered "global warming" treaty. The Kyoto Protocol has not been submitted to the Senate for ratification - where it would almost certainly be rejected. Nonetheless, global warming tub-thumpers are putting the public relations machine into high gear. At "global warming" conference in Shanghai recently released a "report" that claims the Earth's average temperature could rise by as much as 10.4 degrees over the next 100 years - causing massive flooding and violent changes in weather patterns. This new estimate is 60 percent higher than the previous estimate of 6.3 degrees by the year 2100 - which was itself a revision of an earlier estimate that had the actual rate and amount of warming pegged even lower.

Each new pronunciamento issuing forth from the heavily politicized offices of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is more apocalyptic than the last. The findings of the most recent report should "sound alarm bells in every national capital and in every local community. We should start preparing ourselves," warned a perfervid Klaus Topfler - who is head of the U.N. Environmental Program.

But the increasingly strident cries from the IPCC do not change one critical fact: All the dire predictions are based on highly suspect computer models and hypotheses. As global warming contrarian Fred Singer, former director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service and professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia points out, the computer models do not conform to the hard data collected by orbiting satellites or taken at ground stations. Mr. Singer, who dismisses the IPCC report as a "political document," states further that the instrument data collected over the past 60 years reveals virtually no warming. This is a critical point - because the Kyoto Protocol is premised on the notion of human-caused increases in global temperature via industrial activity. But the warming trend noted by scientists occurred almost entirely prior to the 1950s, or well before worldwide industrialization. If human activity, such as the burning of fossil fuels, is causing global temperatures to rise, then the warming trend should have rapidly surged upwards after World War II. It has not. Ergo, global warming theory is suspect.

Average world temperatures may, in fact, be rising. But it's a giant leap to connect that fact with human agency, as the IPCC report and the bureaucrats responsible for it are attempting to do. The Earth's climate is not static and changes fairly frequently - with no help from humanity. Many climate scientists believe we are emerging from a "Little Ice Age" and that the planet is returning to its more normal, warmer state. But the point is no one really knows for sure what's happening, or why.

Before the United States buys into a costly international agreement that could force massive economic dislocations - and cutting back total output of carbon dioxide to 10 percent below 1990 levels would certainly accomplish that - it's not unreasonable to demand a solid scientific basis for such a precipitous move. Politicized computer models and hysterical rants from the IPCC based on the faulty data spewed out by those models is simply insufficient.

-------- genetics

Biotechnology Food: From the Lab to a Debacle

January 25, 2001
New York Times
By KURT EICHENWALD, GINA KOLATA and MELODY PETERSEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/25/business/25FOOD.html?pagewanted=all

The following article was reported by Kurt Eichenwald, Gina Kolata and Melody Petersen and was written by Mr. Eichenwald.

In late 1986, four executives of the Monsanto Company, the leader in agricultural biotechnology, paid a visit to Vice President George Bush at the White House to make an unusual pitch.

Although the Reagan administration had been championing deregulation across multiple industries, Monsanto had a different idea: the company wanted its new technology, genetically modified food, to be governed by rules issued in Washington - and wanted the White House to champion the idea.

"There were no products at the time," Leonard Guarraia, a former Monsanto executive who attended the Bush meeting, recalled in a recent interview. "But we bugged him for regulation. We told him that we have to be regulated."

Government guidelines, the executives reasoned, would reassure a public that was growing skittish about the safety of this radical new science. Without such controls, they feared, consumers might become so wary they could doom the multibillion-dollar gamble that the industry was taking in its efforts to redesign plants using genes from other organisms - including other species.

In the weeks and months that followed, the White House complied, working behind the scenes to help Monsanto - long a political power with deep connections in Washington - get the regulations that it wanted.

It was an outcome that would be repeated, again and again, through three administrations. What Monsanto wished for from Washington, Monsanto - and, by extension, the biotechnology industry - got. If the company's strategy demanded regulations, rules favored by theindustry were adopted. And when the company abruptly decided that it needed to throw off the regulations and speed its foods to market, the White House quickly ushered through an unusually generous policy of self-policing.

Even longtime Washington hands said that the control this nascent industry exerted over its own regulatory destiny - through the Environmental Protection Agency, the Agriculture Department and ultimately the Food and Drug Administration - was astonishing.

"In this area, the U.S. government agencies have done exactly what big agribusiness has asked them to do and told them to do," said Dr. Henry Miller, a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution, who was responsible for biotechnology issues at the Food and Drug Administration from 1979 to 1994.

The outcome, at least according to some fans of the technology? "Food biotech is dead," Dr. Miller said. "The potential now is an infinitesimal fraction of what most observers had hoped it would be."

While the verdict is surely premature, the industry is in crisis. Genetically modified ingredients may be in more than half of America's grocery products. But worldwide protest has been galvanized. The European markets have banned the products and some American food producers are backing away. A recent discovery that certain taco shells manufactured by Kraft contained Starlink, a modified corn classified as unfit for human consumption, prompted a sweeping recall and did grave harm to the idea that self-regulation was sufficient. The mighty Monsanto has merged with a pharmaceutical company.

How could an industry so successful in controlling its own regulations end up in such disarray?

The answer - pieced together from confidential industry records, court documents and government filings, as well as interviews with current and former officials of industry, government and organizations opposing the use of bioengineering in food - provides a stunning example of how management, with a few miscalculations, can steer an industry headlong into disaster.

For many years, senior executives at Monsanto, the industry's undisputed leader, believed that they faced enormous obstacles from environmental and consumer groups opposed to the new technology. Rather than fight them, the original Monsanto strategy was to bring in opponents as consultants, hoping their participation would ease the foods' passage from the laboratory to the shopping cart.

"We thought it was at least a decade-long job, to take our efforts and present them to environmental groups and the general public, and gradually win support for this," said Earle Harbison Jr., the president and chief operating officer at Monsanto during the late 1980's.

But come the early 1990's, the strategy changed. A new management team took over at Monsanto, one confident that worries about the new technology had been thoroughly disproved by science. The go-slow approach was shelved in favor of a strategy to erase regulatory barriers and shove past the naysayers. The switch invigorated the opponents of biotechnology and ultimately dismayed the industry's allies - the farmers, agricultural universities and food companies.

"Somewhere along the line, Monsanto specifically and the industry in general lost the recipe of how we presented our story," said Will Carpenter, the head of the company's biotechnology strategy group until 1991. "When you put together arrogance and incompetence, you've got an unbeatable combination. You can get blown up in any direction. And they were."

Biology Debate
New Microbes Bring New Fears

In the summer of 1970, Janet E. Mertz was working at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, picking up tips on animal viruses from Dr. Robert Pollack, a professor at the private research center on Long Island and a master in the field. One day she began to explain to Dr. Pollack the experiment she was planning when she returned to her graduate studies in the fall at Stanford University with her adviser, Dr. Paul Berg. They were preparing to take genes from a monkey virus and put them into a commonly used strain of bacteria, E. coli, as part of an effort to figure out the purposes of different parts of a gene.

Dr. Pollack was horrified. The virus she planned to use contained genes that could cause cancer in rodents, he reminded her. Strains of E. coli live in human intestines. What if the viral genes created a cancer- causing microbe that could be spread from person to person - the way unmodified E. coli can. Dr. Pollack wanted Ms. Mertz's project halted immediately.

"I said to Janet, `There's a human experiment I don't want to be part of,' " Dr. Pollack said in a recent interview.

The resulting transcontinental shouting match between Dr. Pollack and Dr. Berg set off a debate among biologists around the world as they contemplated questions that seemed lifted from science fiction. Were genetically modified bacteria superbugs? Would they be more powerful than naturally occurring bacteria? Would scientists who wanted to study them have to move their research to the sort of secure labs used to study diseases like the black plague?

"The notion of being able to move genes between species was an alarming thought," said Alexander Capron, a professor of law and medicine at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. "People talked about there being species barriers - you're reorganizing nature in some way."

As researchers joined in the debate, they came to the conclusion that strict controls were needed on such experiments until scientists understood the implications. In 1975, the elite of the field gathered at the Asilomar conference center in Pacific Grove, Calif. There, they recommended that all molecular biologists refrain from doing certain research and abide by stringent regulations for other experiments. To monitor themselves, they set up a committee at the National Institutes of Health to review and approve all research projects.

It took just a few years - and hundreds of experiments - before the most urgent questions had their answers. Over and over again, scientists created bacteria with all manner of added or deleted genes and then mixed them with naturally occurring bacteria.

But rather than creating superbugs, the scientists found themselves struggling to keep the engineered bacteria from dying as the more robust naturally occurring bacteria crowded them out.

It turned out that adding almost any gene to bacteria cells only weakened them. They needed coddling in the laboratory to survive. And the E. coli that Ms. Mertz had wanted to use were among the feeblest of all.

By the mid-1980's, the Institutes of Health lifted its restrictions. Even scientists like Dr. Pollack, who sounded the initial alarm, were satisfied that the experiments were safe.

"The answer came out very clearly," he said. "Putting new genes into bacteria did not have the unintended consequence of making the bacteria dangerous."

That decision echoed through industry like the sound of a starter's pistol. First out of the gate were the pharmaceutical companies, with a rapid series of experiments on how the new science could be used in medicines. Hundreds of drugs went into development, including human insulin for diabetes, Activase for the treatment of heart attacks, Epogen for renal disease and the hepatitis B vaccine.

"It's been huge," said Dr. David Golde, physician in chief at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. "It has changed human health."

The success that modifying living organisms would bring the pharmaceutical industry quickly attracted attention from some of the nation's largest agricultural companies, eager to extend their staid businesses into an arena that Wall Street had endowed with such glamour.

Reaching Out
Monsanto Takes a Soft Approach

In June 1986, Mr. Harbison took control of Monsanto's push into biotechnology, a project snared in mystery and infighting. A 19-year veteran of Monsanto who had recently become its president and chief operating officer, he formed a committee to lead the charge.

"There is little more important than this task in our corporation at this time," Mr. Harbison wrote to the 13 executives selected for the assignment.

"We recognized early on," Mr. Harbison said in a recent interview, "that while developing lifesaving drugs might be greeted with fanfare, monkeying around with plants and food would be greeted with skepticism." And so Mr. Harbison drafted a plan to reach out to affected groups - from environmentalists to farmers - to win their support.

That same month, the company's lobbying effort for regulation began to show its first signs of success. The Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration were given authority over different aspects of the business, from field testing of new ideas to the review of new foods.

In an administration committed to deregulation, the heads of some agencies had been opposed to new rules. At an early meeting, William Ruckelshaus, then the head of the E.P.A., expressed skepticism that his agency should play any role in regulating field testing, according to people who attended. That was overcome only when Monsanto executives raised the specter of Congressional hearings about the use of biotechnology to create crops that contain their own pesticides, these people said.

By fall, Monsanto's strategy committee was developing a plan for introducing biotechnology to the public. A copy of a working draft, dated Oct. 13, 1986, listed what the committee considered the major challenges: organized opposition among environmental groups, political opportunism by elected officials and lack of knowledge among reporters about biotechnology.

It also highlighted more complex issues, including ethical questions about "tinkering with the human gene pool" and the lack of economic incentives to transfer the technology to the third world, where it would probably do the most good.

To solve political problems, the document suggested engaging elected officials and regulators around the world, "creating support for biotechnology at the highest U.S. policy levels," and working to gain endorsements for the technology in the presidential platforms of both the Republican and Democratic Parties in the 1988 election.

To deal with opponents, the document said, "Active outreach will encourage public interest, consumer and environmental groups to develop supportive positions on biotechnology, and serve as regular advisers to Monsanto."

Former Monsanto executives said that while they felt confident of the new food's overall safety, they also recognized that bioengineering raised concerns about possible allergens, unknown toxins or environmental effects. Beyond that, there was a reasonable philosophical anxiety about human manipulation of nature.

"If this business was going to work, one of the things we had to do was engage in a dialogue with all of the stakeholders, including the consumer groups and the more rational environmental organizations," said Mr. Carpenter, who headed the biotechnology strategy group. "It wasn't Nobel Prize thinking."

A Blunder
Decision on Milk Causes a Furor

Even as Monsanto was assembling its outreach strategy, other documents show that it was making strides toward what former executives now acknowledge was a major strategic blunder. The company was preparing to introduce to farmers the first product from its biotechnology program: a growth hormone produced in genetically altered bacteria. Some on the strategy committee pushed for marketing a porcine hormone that would produce leaner and bigger hogs.

But, simply because the product was further along in development, the company decided to go forward with a bovine growth hormone, which improves milk production in cows - despite vociferous objections of executives who feared that tinkering with a product consumed by children would ignite a national outcry.

"It was not a wise choice to go out with that product first," Mr. Harbison acknowledged. "It was a mistake."

Scientists who watched the events remain stunned by Monsanto's decisions.

"I don't think they really thought through the whole darn thing," Dr. Virginia Walbot, a professor of biological sciences at Stanford University, said of Monsanto's decision to market products that benefited farmers rather than general consumers. "The way Thomas Edison demonstrated how great electricity was was by providing lights for the first nighttime baseball game. People were in awe. What if he had decided to demonstrate the electric chair instead? And what if his second product had been the electric cattle prod? Would we have electricity today?"

The decision touched off a furor. Jeremy Rifkin, director of the Foundation on Economic Trends, an opponent of biotechnology, joined with family-farm groups worried about price declines and other organizations in a national campaign to keep the Monsanto hormone out of the marketplace. Some supermarket chains shunned the idea; several dairy states moved to ban it. The first step toward the shopping cart brought only bad news.

One year later, in 1987, the E.P.A. agreed to allow another company, Advanced Genetic Sciences, to test bioengineered bacteria meant to make plants resistant to frost. But under the agency's guidelines, it had to declare the so-called ice-minus bacteria a new pesticide - classifying frost as the pest.

On April 28 and May 28, strawberry and potato plants were sprayed in two California cities. Photographs of scientists in regulation protective gear - spacesuits with respirators - were broadcast around the world, generating widespread alarm.

"It was surreal," said Dr. Steven Lindow, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, who helped develop the bacteria.

For the executives at Monsanto, these troubling experiences reinforced their commitment to the strategy of inclusion and persuasion.

The most complex challenge came in Europe, where there was deep distrust of the new foods, particularly among politically powerful farmers. Faced with such resistance, Mr. Harbison said Monsanto began subtly shifting its attention from the lucrative European market to Asia and Africa. The hope was that the economic realities of a global agricultural marketplace would eventually push Europe toward a more conciliatory attitude.

But by the early 1990's, company executives said, everything would change. Mr. Harbison retired. Soon, Monsanto's strategy for biotechnology was being overseen by Robert Shapiro, the former head of Monsanto's Nutrasweet unit, who in 1990 had been named head of the agricultural division.

In no time, former executives said, the strategy inside the company began to change. Mr. Shapiro demonstrated a devout sense of mission about his new responsibilities, these executives said. He repeatedly expressed his belief that Monsanto could help change the world by championing bioengineered agriculture, while simultaneously turning in stellar financial results.

Eager to get going, he shelved the go-slow strategy of consultation and review. Monsanto would now use its influence in Washington to push through a new approach.

Mr. Carpenter, the former head of the company's biotechnology strategy group, recalled going to a meeting with Mr. Shapiro, and cautioning that it seemed risky to tamper with a strategic approach that had worked well for the company in the past. But, he said, Mr. Shapiro dismissed his concerns.

"Shapiro ignored the stakeholders and almost insulted them and proceeded to spend all of his political coin trying to deal directly with the government on a political basis rather than an open basis," Mr. Carpenter said.

Mr. Shapiro, now the nonexecutive chairman of the Pharmacia Corporation, which Monsanto merged with last year, declined to comment. But in an essay published earlier this year by Washington University in St. Louis, he acknowledged that Monsanto had suffered from some of the very faults cited now by critics. `We've learned that there is often a very fine line between scientific confidence on the one hand and corporate arrogance on the other," he wrote. "It was natural for us to see this as a scientific issue. We didn't listen very well to people who insisted that there were relevant ethical, religious, cultural, social and economic issues as well."

Turning Point
Objections by Scientists

On May 26, 1992, the vice president, Dan Quayle, proclaimed the Bush administration's new policy on bioengineered food.

"The reforms we announce today will speed up and simplify the process of bringing better agricultural products, developed through biotech, to consumers, food processors and farmers," Mr. Quayle told a crowd of executives and reporters in the Indian Treaty Room of the Old Executive Office Building. "We will ensure that biotech products will receive the same oversight as other products, instead of being hampered by unnecessary regulation."

With dozens of new grocery products waiting in the wings, the new policy strictly limited the regulatory reach of the F.D.A, which had oversight responsibility for foods headed to market.

The announcement - a salvo in the Bush administration's "regulatory relief" program - was in lock step with the new position of industry that science had proved safety concerns to be baseless.

"We will not compromise safety one bit," Mr. Quayle told his audience.

In the F.D.A.'s nearby offices, not everyone was so sure.

Among them was Dr. Louis J. Pribyl, one of 17 government scientists working on a policy for genetically engineered food. Dr. Pribyl knew from studies that toxins could be unintentionally created when new genes were introduced into a plant's cells. But under the new edict, the government was dismissing that risk and any other possible risk as no different from those of conventionally derived food. That meant biotechnology companies would not need government approval to sell the foods they were developing.

"This is the industry's pet idea, namely that there are no unintended effects that will raise the F.D.A.'s level of concern," Dr. Pribyl wrote in a fiery memo to the F.D.A. scientist overseeing the policy's development. "But time and time again, there is no data to back up their contention."

Dr. Pribyl, a microbiologist, was not alone at the agency. Dr. Gerald Guest, director of the center of veterinary medicine, wrote that he and other scientists at the center had concluded there was "ample scientific justification" to require tests and a government review of each genetically engineered food before it was sold.

Three toxicologists wrote, "The possibility of unexpected, accidental changes in genetically engineered plants justifies a limited traditional toxicological study."

The scientists were displaying precisely the concerns that Monsanto executives from the 1980's had anticipated - and indeed had considered reasonable. But now, rather than trying to address those concerns, Monsanto, the industry and official Washington were dismissing them as the insignificant worries of the uninformed. Under the final F.D.A. policy that the White House helped usher in, the new foods would be tested only if companies did it. Labeling was ruled out as potentially misleading to the consumer, since it might suggest that there was reason for concern.

"Monsanto forgot who their client was," said Thomas N. Urban, retired chairman and chief executive of Pioneer Hi-Bred International, a seed company. "If they had realized their client was the final consumer they should have embraced labeling. They should have said, `We're for it.' They should have said, `We insist that food be labeled.' They should have said, `I'm the consumer's friend here.' There was some risk. But the risk was a hell of a lot less."

Even some who presumably benefited directly from the new policy remain surprised that it was adopted. "How could you argue against labeling?" said Roger Salquist, the former chief executive of Calgene, whose Flavr Savr tomato, engineered for slower spoilage, was the first fruit of biotechnology to reach the grocery store. "The public trust has not been nurtured," he added.

In fact, the F.D.A. policy was just what the small band of activists opposed to biotechnology needed to rally powerful global support to their cause.

"That was the turning point," said Jeremy Rifkin, the author and activist who in 1992 had already spent more than a decade trying to stop biotechnology experiments. Immediately after Vice President Quayle announced the F.D.A.'s new policy, Mr. Rifkin began calling for a global moratorium on biotechnology as part of an effort that he and others named the "pure food campaign."

He quickly began spreading the word to small activist groups around the world that the United States had decided to let the biotechnology industry put the foods on store shelves without tests or labels. Mr. Rifkin said that he got support from dozens of small farming, consumer and animal rights groups in more than 30 countries. In Europe, these small groups helped turn the public against genetically altered foods, tearing up farm fields and holding protests before television cameras.

If the F.D.A. had required tests and labels, Mr. Rifkin said, "it would have been more difficult for us to mobilize the opposition."

Today, the handful of nonprofit groups that joined Mr. Rifkin's in lobbying the F.D.A. for stronger regulation in 1992 have multiplied to 54. Those groups, including the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Public Citizen and the Humane Society of the United States, signed a petition this spring demanding that the government take genetically engineered foods off the market until they are tested and labeled.

"There is absolutely no question that the voluntary nature of the policy was unacceptable to many," said Andrew Kimbrell, one of the early activists to oppose biotechnology and now the executive director of the Center for Food Safety, which filed the petition.

The F.D.A. policy has also helped organizations like Mr. Kimbrell's raise money. In late 1998 groups opposed to biotechnology approached the hundreds of foundations that give regularly to environmental causes and told them about the government's decision to let the companies regulate themselves. Since then, the foundations have given the groups several million dollars out of concern over the policy, said Christina Desser, a lawyer in San Francisco involved in the fund-raising effort.

There was also an about-face in the approach to dealing with overseas markets. As the Clinton administration came to Washington, Monsanto maintained its close ties to policy makers - particularly to trade negotiators. For example, Mr. Shapiro was friends with Mickey Kantor, the United States trade negotiator who would eventually be named a Monsanto director.

Confrontation in trade negotiations became the order of the day. Senior administration officials publicly disparaged the concerns of European consumers as the products of conservative minds unfamiliar with the science.

"You can't put a gun to their head," Mr. Harbison said of the toughened trade strategy with Europe. "It just won't sell."

And it didn't. Protests erupted in Europe, and genetically modified foods became the rallying point of a vast political opposition. Exports of the foods slowed to a stop. With a vocal and powerful opposition growing in both Europe and America, the perceived promise of biotechnology foods began to slip away.

By the end of the decade, the magnitude of Monsanto's error in abandoning its slow, velvet-glove strategy of the 1980's was apparent. Mr. Shapiro himself acknowledged as much. In the fall of 1999, he appeared at a conference sponsored by Greenpeace, the environmental group and major biotechnology critic.

There, while declaring his faith in biotechnology, Mr. Shapiro acknowledged that his company was guilty of "condescension or indeed arrogance" in its efforts to promote the new foods. But it was too late for a recovery. Soon after that speech, with the company's stock price in the doldrums because of its struggles with agricultural biotechnology, Monsanto itself ended its existence as an independent company. It was taken over by Pharmacia, a New Jersey drug company.

In recent months, biotechnology has been struggling with the consequences of its blunders. Leading food companies like Frito-Lay and Gerber have said they will avoid certain bioengineered food. And grain companies like Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill have asked farmers to separate their genetically modified foods from their traditional ones. That, in turn, creates complex, costly and - as the Starlink fiasco shows - at times flawed logistical requirements for farmers.

Efforts have been made by industry and government to assuage public concerns - although critics of the technology maintain that the attempts do not go far enough. Last week, the F.D.A. announced proposed rule changes requiring the submission of certain information that used to be provided voluntarily. But even supporters of the rule change say that it will make little practical difference in the way the business works, since companies have universally submitted all such information in the past, even under the voluntary standard.

And the industry itself has started down a new path, with a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign promoting genetically engineered foods as safe products that provide enormous benefits to populations around the world - an effort that some food industry officials say has come 10 years too late.

"For the price of what it would have cost to market a new breakfast cereal, the biotech industry probably could have saved itself a lot of the struggle that it is going through today," said Gene Grabowski, a spokesman with the Grocery Manufacturers of America, a trade group.

And in recent weeks, Monsanto itself has announced plans to chart a new course - one with striking similarity to the course abandoned in 1992 - reviving its outside consultations with environmental, consumer and other groups with concerns or interest in the technology.

For the corporate veterans who set the original strategy, this is scant solace. A dream they had worked so hard to achieve had, at the very least, been set back by years.

"You can't imagine how I have bled over this," said Mr. Carpenter, the former head of biotechnology strategy for Monsanto. "They lost the battle for the public trust."

-------- police

IN AMERICA Police Predators

January 25, 2001
New York Times
By BOB HERBERT
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/25/opinion/25HERB.html

There were many clues that the Police Department in upstate Wallkill, N.Y., had a problem. One was the widely reported discovery of the police chief, James Coscette, having sex with a woman in the back seat of a police vehicle.

That was deftly characterized in an official report as "the chief's dalliance."

And then there was the harassment, intimidation and outright coercion of women by Wallkill cops, both on and off duty. Predatory behavior was the rule.

Last spring a 23-year-old woman driving alone was stopped and arrested for drunken driving. "In fact," according to court papers filed by State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, "she was not intoxicated." A videotape of the stop showed that the woman had "passed the field sobriety test."

Nevertheless, she was taken into custody. The following week the arresting officer approached the woman and suggested he could get the charges dropped if she would go out with him. The woman declined. A judge later dismissed the charges.

In another case, a cop who had arrested a woman on a petty larceny charge ordered her into a holding cell and told her to take her pants down so he could search for contraband. The woman, frightened, complied. Later the officer told the woman that he would try to have the charges reduced if she would meet with him privately.

The Wallkill cops even had a special vehicle, known as the "stealth car," that was used for following women drivers. The front of the car had no markings to indicate that it was a police vehicle. Late one night a cop in the stealth car followed an 18- year-old woman as she was driving home from her job at a movie theater. On a particularly dark, almost deserted road, the officer began flashing his headlights.

"Not seeing any police marks on the car, she became afraid for her safety and continued driving," the court papers said. The woman pulled into the driveway of her parents' home and began blowing the horn. By the time her mother came out of the house, the driver was crying. When the mother attempted to comfort her daughter, the cop pulled his gun, cursed, and told her to stay back.

The teenage driver was arrested and taken to jail, where she was held for a couple of hours and then released on $500 bail.

Wallkill is an Orange County town of about 25,000, and for the past few years its residents have had to put up with a variety of torments from the 25-member police force. Teenage girls employed at a local food store took to hiding in a back room because of the repeated pawing and suggestive comments of an on-duty, uniformed police officer. When the town's voluntary civilian Police Commission conducted an investigation of the department (prompted by complaints about its crime-fighting ineptitude), the members of the commission found themselves and their families being harassed by the police.

The commission's investigation showed what was already widely known - the Wallkill cops were out of control. "There is no sense of responsible leadership in the Police Department," the commission said in a report released last summer.

Eventually the Police Commission recommended that the Police Department be dismantled. The Town Board, protective of the police, disagreed. It abolished the commission.

Attorney General Spitzer, responding to the continued insanity, filed a federal lawsuit against the town of Wallkill last week, charging that it had failed to rein in its lawless Police Department. The suit asks the court to impose a series of reforms on the police and to appoint a federal monitor to oversee the department.

"This was a breakdown at many different levels," Mr. Spitzer said. "We want the proper governing structure to be put back in place."

Mr. Spitzer's suit is a civil action. I asked the Orange County district attorney, Francis D. Phillips, whether criminal charges would be pursued - for false arrest and sexual misconduct, among other things.

Mr. Phillips sounded reluctant to follow that route. He said he wouldn't know "for sure" until he meets next week with Mr. Spitzer's office.

We'll see if yet another public official, sworn to uphold the law, chooses to avert his eyes to outrageous police behavior.

-------- activists

If Protesters Can't Take to the Streets,
They Can Go to the Mountain

January 25, 2001
New York Times
By LISA GUERNSEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/25/technology/25DAVO.html

EVERY year at about this time, world leaders gather at a Swiss resort for the World Economic Forum, an event that usually produces images of prime ministers giving speeches and, at times, protesters railing against them.

As this year's forum opens today, those who tune into the event may come away with another image: that of laser-beamed messages - of no more than 160 characters, each character about 15 yards high - scrolling up the snow-covered mountainside overlooking the resort, Davos.

The messages are part of Hello Mr. President, an Internet art project that is designed to collect the electronic musings of anyone, anywhere in the world, and project them out of the window of a nearby apartment and onto Bolgen Mountain.

People may send in their messages over the Internet, by visiting www.hellomrpresident.com. Or they can send them using the short-messaging system on their cell phones.

Johannes Gees, a Swiss artist, is leading the $50,000 project, which is being sponsored by SwissInfo.org, an online portal for multilingual news.

"It's like demonstrating in remote mode," Mr. Gees said.

This is his second foray into Internet art. His first was an ever-growing quilt of images stitched together from photographs and computer graphics that people have posted on www.communimage.com.

With the Davos project, Mr. Gees said he was hoping to have some fun with technology and art while trying to open a less antagonistic channel of communication between protesters and world leaders.

Protests are expected in the wake of the upheaval last year during the World Trade Organization's meeting in Seattle. Last week, the State Department issued a notice discouraging Americans from visiting Davos until the world meeting has concluded.

It is not, Mr. Gees said, that he imagines that the problems of the world will be solved with this unusual communication medium.

"Definitely not," he said. "I'm not naïve."

But he added that he can imagine the project's conjuring a dialogue something like this: A worker in Mexico might hear about the project and decide to send a message from a local Internet cafe. About 10 seconds later, the words could be beamed onto the mountain's base. A corporate executive or Mexican official might see that message from the balcony of a nearby hotel and send a response using a cell phone.

For those who want to watch the laser show, a photograph of the mountainside will be updated continuously on the Web site until the forum ends on Jan. 29.

Messages must be sent in English, French, German, Italian or Spanish, Mr. Gees said, and will be reproduced in the language sent.

The team, he said, will try to post a wide range of political viewpoints but will exclude those that contain racist or profane language.

The messages will be shown from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. in Switzerland (or midafternoon in the United States).

Mr. Gees has also decided to accept messages only during those hours. That is the best way, he said, to ensure that the statements that come over the Internet are interesting and meaningful.

"I want people to think about what they are going to say," he said, "and not just sit at their computer and send something and then forget about it."

---

Davos Forum Is Braced for Round of Protests

January 25, 2001
New York Times
By ELIZABETH OLSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/25/business/25DAVO.html

GENEVA, Jan. 24 - The World Economic Forum, the annual gathering of heads of state, senior political figures and business leaders, is opening on Thursday in Davos, the secluded ski resort in eastern Switzerland. And the threat of disruptions hangs in the Alpine air, as antiglobalization protesters promise to take their competing world vision to the streets.

In contrast to last year, when President Clinton spoke, no senior figures in the Bush administration are to attend the forum, though the advance roster includes the secretary of state of Florida, Katherine Harris, fresh from appearing before a federal commission reviewing her stewardship of the state's election process, as well as Gov. George E. Pataki of New York and other governors.

In all, about 3,200 guests are expected for the 315 speeches, round tables and seminars exploring this year's themes of sustaining world economic growth and bridging divisions between haves and have-nots.

Five minutes away at a clinic for asthma patients, a counterconference, Public Eye on Davos, is also set. It has been convened by a coalition of nongovernment organizations, including Friends of the Earth, and is to involve some of the participants attending the forum.

And a large number of antiglobalization protesters are expected to converge on Davos, too, despite its remote location. Local courts have rebuffed efforts to forbid protests entirely, so the police are bracing for an onslaught and planning to deploy 600 officers from all parts of Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

Anti-WTO Coordination, a group based in Bern that is planning a demonstration on Saturday, has rejected the idea of dialogue or cooperation with the forum, even after last year's clashes on the streets of Davos in which shops and vehicles were damaged. "The violence comes from the W.E.F. and its guests and their dangerous policies, such as sweatshops in Mexico and building dams," said Simone Brunner, a spokesman for the group. "We don't want to improve them; we want to stop them."

Organizers of the forum dismissed the threats. "It's like bees to honey," said the forum's managing director, Claude Smadja. "Every high-profile international event attracts activists and professional troublemakers of all kinds."

Nonetheless, the organizers are treading cautiously.

The forum underwent a shake-up last year, reorganizing to try to translate talk into action through initiatives like a council on corporate governance in Russia, start-up aid for a Balkan customs union and youth job programs in the Middle East, all of which will be discussed this year.

To its critics, these claims for an expanded role - made, they say, by nonelected, unaccountable people operating behind closed doors - are troublesome, particularly because the forum has been controlled almost completely for three decades by one man, Klaus Schwab, a Swiss business professor. "The forum is trying to privatize decision-making processes to allow business interests to affect public priorities," said Jolanda Piniel, a spokeswoman for Public Eye on Davos.

Responding to such criticism, the forum has this year invited delegates from unions and an array of nongovernment organizations. But Davos enthusiasts say the criticisms miss the point of the forum. Dr. Peter Piot, executive director of the United Nations program on AIDS, said the forum had helped his program "identify and begin working with potential partners from the corporate sector" at a time when corporations were slow to grapple with H.I.V.

The forum will also seek to expand its audience this year by offering live Internet broadcasts of selected sessions and news conferences, along with edited session transcripts and other materials on its Web site, www.weforum.org. The counterconference's site is www.davos2001.ch.

---

Workers stage Europe-wide protest against GM

01/25/2001
USA Today
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001-01-25-auto.htm

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) - European autoworkers staged protests against General Motors on Thursday, denouncing the U.S. automaker's plans to slash up to 5,000 jobs throughout the region in a restructuring.

Nearly 4,000 workers rallied outside a factory run by GM subsidiary Adam Opel AG in Ruesselsheim, outside Frankfurt, police said. Demonstrations were also planned in Britain, where the world's biggest automaker cut jobs at its Vauxhall Motors subsidiary.

GM spokesman Ulrich Weber said factories in Antwerp, Belgium and Zaragoza, Spain could also be hit by protests.

"We hope they won't interrupt production, but we could lose a few cars in some plants," Weber said from Zurich, Switzerland.

Guenter Lorenz, spokesman for Germany's IG Metall union, said it was important for European workers to show solidarity with the employees targeted for layoffs, and said workers at all European GM facilities were encouraged to lay down their tools.

"Any plant in Europe could itself be the next one affected," Lorenz said.

The job cuts announced last month are aimed at paring down excess production capacity in Europe.

The cuts will cost 2,000 jobs at Vauxhall's factory in Luton just north of London. GM also will eliminate 3,000 jobs elsewhere in Europe, including some 1,700 at Opel. It will make those additional cuts by reducing its salaried management and administrative staff by 10% across the board.

GM, which employs 90,000 people in Europe, expects to eliminate the jobs within the next 17 months.

Vauxhall acknowledged that the decision to stop building passenger cars at Luton stemmed in part from the strength of the British pound. The strong pound makes it more difficult for Vauxhall to compete in continental Europe against cars that are priced in comparatively cheap euros, the currency used by 12 of the 15 European Union nations. Britain, an EU member, has declined to join the common currency.

GM is the latest carmaker to restructure or curtail operations in Europe.

Ford Motor Co. plans to stop building cars altogether at its plant in Dagenham, East London. Toyota Motor Corp. is trying to minimize its currency risk by telling some British suppliers to do their accounting in euros instead of pounds, and Honda Motor Co. is to start building sports utility vehicles for export to the United States, where the dollar has been more stable against the pound.

Germany's BMW also gave up on its losing investment in the Rover group and sold the car business to a British consortium in May, blaming the strength of the pound.

---

Davos summit opens amid protest fears

January 25, 2001
Washington Times
By Andrew Borowiec
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-200112522911.htm

GENEVA - Protected by coils of barbed wire and Swiss troops, the world's leading economists today begin a verbal marathon to reconcile globalization with the demands of developing nations.

Fearing demonstrations similar to those which last year paralyzed a summit meeting on the same theme in Seattle, the Swiss authorities took unprecedented security measures to protect the 31st annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in the alpine resort of Davos.

The 12-man Davos police force was bolstered by police units from nearby areas and by 900 government troops. Authorities refused entry to an estimated 300 people who planned to join protests.

Ruth Metzler, Swiss federal minister in charge of police and security, said that the government feared bomb attacks and other terrorist action, but that the troops would not be used "to confront civilians."

The Bush administration is not sending an official delegation and the State Department cautioned American participants of the possibility of terrorist attacks.

The list of prominent participants is long, including some 20 heads of state; Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat; Thilo Bode, president of Greenpeace International; and religious leaders.

Globalization and its different phases, the future of the Balkans and the expansion of the European Union and its impact are among subjects to be discussed over six days at an estimated 60 seminars.

The meetings begin tonight with an address by Moritz Leuenberger, president of the Swiss Confederation, who hailed the meeting as a "real blessing" likely to set the stage for next year's economic development and cooperation between the developed and developing nations.

Through newspaper ads in Europe, the organizers appealed to participants to disregard possible protests and instead to concentrate on the essence of the discussions.

The World Economic Forum was founded in 1972 by Klaus Schwab and has since become a major institution, capable of influencing -or reversing - economic trends.

Mr. Schwab admitted that "globalization has produced a backlash that has stirred protests at gatherings of international institutions around the world."

Disregarding the threats and warnings from officials as well as various fringe groups, congress participants have filled the 82 hotels and inns of Davos, a mountain town of 12,000 perching at 4,500 feet amid snowcapped alpine peaks.

The congress is to end with an appeal for harmony between religion and big business.

---

Inauguration in dollars and cents

January 25, 2001
Washington Times
EDITORIAL
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-house-200112523207.htm

In a few days, the nation's capital will be its old self. D.C. and federal crews have worked as fast as they could to dismantle the bleachers and viewing stands, remove the portable potties and trash, the fencing and other security accouterments erected for the inaugural festivities. As you know these things take time and money. Yet D.C. taxpayers are expected to pay more than their share.

Officials have yet to tally precisely how much the festivities cost the federal and local governments. To be sure, though, everyone pitched in. About 1,600 public safety officers from Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania supplemented the District's Metropolitan Police Department, which, in turn, followed the U.S. Secret Service's lead for heightened security related to all things presidential. D.C. police also maintained a visible presence during routine neighborhood patrols.

The costs, so far, are staggering. D.C. police overtime costs are estimated at $3 million, yet Congress appropriated $2.3 million. The District owes other state agencies about $900,000. Peter LaPorte, director of the D.C. Emergency Management Agency, says preliminary calculations show the District spent more than $8 million. That figure includes public works crews, which had to follow their trash collection routines as well as special inaugural details, and snow crews, who had to make sure the streets were clear after the snow - and ambulance crews and firefighters. (Surely you saw the firefighters, decked in their finest and working overtime, maintaining crowd safety at the many balls?)

All things being equal, the money was well-spent. The District had planned to spend about $6 million on the extra security, special stagings and the cleanup. So this really and truly involves simple arithmetic. Six million minus $8 million equals . . . well, now you get the picture.

D.C. taxpayers have been in similar predicaments because of special national events. In April, for example, the city spent more than $8 million on overtime, equipment and planning for the massive World Bank/International Monetary Fund protests. The feds reimbursed the city $4.5 million. Now the city stands to lose another $2 million on the inauguration. Two million plus $3.5 million equals nearly $5.5 million.

Fortunately, presidential inaugurations are quadrennial affairs. However, the nation's capital regularly draws huge protests, rallies and celebrations - and the city's public safety personnel have always stood at the ready and rarely disappointed. Those circumstances make it easier for the city's congressional delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton, to request supplemental funding. Mrs. Norton plans to introduce legislation that would mandate an annual federal reimbursement to D.C. police for handling national events. Such legislation doesn't sound unreasonable unless it involves a predetermined dollar figure.

The long and short of the issue, then, is not an unwillingness on the part of D.C. taxpayers to help pay the price for living in the nation's capital. It seems appropriate that the federal government allot special consideration to the District for these special burdens.

------- Onelist (submissions from subscribers)