------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Putin to Meet Leaders of 2 'Rogue' Nations
India, China to discuss nuclear differences
NATO Is 'an Essential Forum' for the Missile-Defense Debate
Bush Can't Afford to Ignore Missile Defense, Envoys Tell Europeans
U.S. Offers Aid on Missile Defense
Canada Forges Diplomatic Ties with North Korea
Europe warms to missile defense
Government Reimburses Nuclear Weapons Contractors for Legal Bills
Chretien, Bush Strike Up the Bond
Top Chinese Official to Make U.S. Trip in March
MORE THAN DEPLETED URANIUM?
"Clearly, Gulf War veterans are suffering,";
North Korea's energy woes probed
The Missile Offensive
Russia issues missile defence warning
U.S. strategy to isolate China on NMD
NATO Is 'an Essential Forum' for the Missile-Defense Debate
Ivanov worried by U.S. shield
Russia: U.S. missile shield doomed
Russia Urges Alternative to U.S. Missile Shield
Russia Says U.S. Antimissile Plan Means an Arms Race
Russia Dismisses U.S. Missile Plan
The Indecisive President
Nuke plant talks bog down in Taiwan
Missile Defense Test Planned
Pentagon moving ahead on missile shield
Biden: Missile defense could spark arms race
Defense Veteran Chosen as No. 2 at Pentagon
URANIUM AND YOU
Energy Demand to Slow Along with Economy
GOP Senators To Pitch Energy Bill
Key Hanford cleanup late

MILITARY
Experts say cover-up protected Hirohito
Who's Defending Rockefeller Drug Laws? The Prosecutors
Indiana
FOREIGN AFFAIRS The War Saddam Won
U.N.: Leaders must tackle poverty
Likely remains of U.S. soldier repatriated

OTHER
Ill wind blows some good, boosts UK windpower
Arsenic Problem
Supplements raise mad cow concerns
Aquarium workers ate rare turtle
EIA Kicks Off National Initiative to Reuse and Recycle Used Electronics
Rare Salt - Water Camel May Be Separate Species
Bush delays new forest regulations By Audrey Hudson
Biotech Food
Iowa farmers sue over biotech corn
We are not amused
House panel to investigate allegations of Rich spying
The Embassy Bombings Trial
Embassy Bombing Trial Witness Recounts Birth of Terror Group
First witness testifies in embassy bombing trial
Trial starts for four in blasts at embassies

Activists
Protesters Want Urkaine President Out
PETA: Set 'Wally Gator' free
Mexican students protest
Urgent letter on Ecuador
Protest against adjustment escalates in Ecuador
Protesters nearly drown out WTO press conference
Fair Trade Advocacy Internships Available
People's Summit on Globalization


-------- NUCLEAR

Putin to Meet Leaders of 2 'Rogue' Nations
Campaign Aimed at U.S. Missile Defense Plan

Tuesday, February 6, 2001
International Herald Tribune
New York Times Service
Patrick E. Tyler
http://www.iht.com/articles/9803.htm

MOSCOW President Vladimir Putin plans to play host to the presidents of North Korea and Iran in Moscow this spring, Russian officials say, as part of his campaign to demonstrate to Western leaders that diplomacy and arms control may go a long way toward eliminating the ballistic missile threat that is driving the Bush administration to develop an anti-missile system.

After a weekend in which senior Bush administration officials made a series of appearances on television and at a European security conference in Munich to reaffirm their intention to press forward with testing and deployment of an anti-missile system, Russia responded Monday with a warning that it was prepared along with other nations - China presumably among them - to resort to an arms race to ensure that its own strategic deterrent force would not be weakened.

And Mr. Putin, by signaling his plans to meet the leaders of two of the three "rogue" nations that most concern Washington, is positioning Russia to play a constructive, if also self-interested, role in addressing the post-Cold War security issues on which the Bush administration has centered its national security strategy.

At the same time, Mr. Putin is playing on the deep skepticism in Europe over Washington's determination to rearrange the strategic landscape. The deployment of a missile shield would violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Russia is promoting its own proposal to make further deep cuts in the nuclear arsenals while cooperating with Europe and the United States to develop regional missile defenses that could be brought to bear against threatening nations.

The Russian campaign will play out over several months in advance of the summit meeting of leaders from the largest industrial countries, who will convene in July in Genoa, where Mr. Bush will make a diplomatic debut.

The Iranian president, Mohammed Khatami, is due in Moscow next month for discussions on trade and military cooperation. Mr. Putin notified the Clinton administration last autumn that Russia would not adhere to a private agreement made with Al Gore when he was vice president to end conventional arms sales to Teheran, which is rebuilding its military in the face of a resurgent Iraq. But Iran's secretive ballistic missile program, which has received help from Russian scientists, and Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program are of greatest concern to Washington.

After Mr. Khatami's visit in March, the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, plans to arrive in Moscow in late April, diplomats have said. Mr. Putin made a surprise visit to the North Korean capital last summer and opened negotiations to persuade Mr. Kim to give up his quest to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile that could threaten Japan and the United States. Mr. Kim has offered to forgo further ballistic-missile development in return for Western assistance in launching civilian satellites.

It remains to be seen whether the negotiations will result in a concrete reduction of ballistic-missile threats. But speaking in Munich on Sunday, Mr. Putin's national security assistant, Sergei Ivanov, said:

"Restraining the so-called rogue nations - to use the American terminology - may be carried out more effectively from the standpoint of both cost and effectiveness by means of a common political effort. The situation in North Korea is the obvious example, which a year ago seemed much worse than it does today."

Mr. Ivanov's remarks followed those on Saturday by the U.S. defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, who sought to allay European concerns by offering to help extend any anti-missile shield to Europe. Mr. Rumsfeld also pledged that the Bush administration would undertake extensive consultations with its allies and with Russia before taking any decision to pull out of the 1972 Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty, which bans national missile defenses.

Though Mr. Rumsfeld seemed satisfied that he had given European leaders a reasoned set of arguments that the United States was seeking no advantage in pursuing missile defenses and that Washington was determined to be a master of its own security, a number of senior congressional Republican worried aloud on the return flight to Washington that the United States had isolated itself while driving Europe and Russia closer together.

As Mr. Putin was preparing his diplomatic moves, the Russian defense minister, Igor Sergeyev, made a number of pointed comments Monday on the military implications of the Bush administration's planning.

Marshal Sergeyev, the former commander of Russia's strategic rocket forces labeled the American anti-missile proposal "son of 'Star Wars.'" Marshal Sergeyev also predicted, in remarks to the Swedish defense minister, Bjorn von Sydow, that the Bush administration would not be able to persuade most Western nations to abandon "the entire system of agreements which has led to strategic stability in the world" and to support American actions that would cause "those agreements to be scrapped."

Russia has asserted that if the United States withdraws from the 1972 treaty that bans nationwide anti-missile defenses, all of the strategic arms accords negotiated over the past 30 years would be invalid because they were based on the common principle of prohibiting an arms race in defensive weapons.

Marshal Sergeyev indicated that Russia in the meantime was making contingency plans to respond, not with a new missile buildup, which it cannot afford, but with "asymmetrical" technologies that would penetrate any missile shield.

"A lot of money was invested in those programs," he told the Interfax news agency, before they were abandoned at the end of the Cold War, "but we still have them and can take them up again."

Though American officials have repeatedly asserted that an anti-missile of 100 interceptors would not be initially directed at or effective against Russia's large arsenal of 3,000 or more strategic delivery systems, the Russian military establishment continues to express doubt that any American anti-missile shield would remain a limited system.

But Konstantin Cherevkov, a senior missile scientist at the Russian Space Academy, said last week in a newspaper commentary that "Russia considers the American position deceptive."

"There is reason to believe that the fielding of national anti-ballistic missile infrastructure would allow for a subsequent increase in its capabilities, to a level that would fully block our retaliatory capability," Mr. Cherevkov said.

---

India, China to discuss nuclear differences

Tuesday, February 06, 2001
The Hindu
By C. Raja Mohan
http://www.indiaserver.com/thehindu/2001/02/06/stories/0206000a.htm

NEW DELHI, FEB. 5. Senior officials from India and China will discuss here this week a wide range of international and regional security issues, including differences over nuclear non- proliferation and global arms control.

With Sino-Indian relations on the upswing, the big question is whether New Delhi and Beijing will try and find a way to manage their nuclear divergence better, which has cast a shadow on their ties.

India and China, however, share some positions on global disarmament, for example their commitment to total elimination of nuclear weapons. But the differences are quite sharp on most other issues.

India remains deeply troubled over what it sees as ``continuing Chinese nuclear and missile cooperation with Pakistan''. China either blandly denies it or insists that its nuclear and missile cooperation with Pakistan is in tune with its international legal obligations.

Beijing's attitude towards Indian nuclear and missile programmes is another matter of concern for New Delhi. Unlike the other major powers, China has been somewhat reluctant in giving up its formal emphasis on a rollback of India's nuclear and missile capabilities.

The two countries are also expected to exchange views on the plans of the new U.S. administration to press ahead with building defences against missiles. China is leading an international campaign against the plans, and could be looking for India's support on this issue.

India may, however, find it difficult to completely separate its concerns about Chinese proliferation of missiles in its neighbourhood and the emerging prospects for the deployment of missile defences in the region.

While India and China might be some distance away from thinking about cooperation on global arms control, a frank and candid exchange of views, diplomatic observers here say, would at least lead to a better appreciation of each other's nuclear concerns.

Mr. Wan Yi, Assistant Minister in the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is arriving here later this week for the second round of security dialogue.

The Indian delegation will be led by Mr. T.C.A. Rangachari, Additional Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs. Other senior officials dealing with disarmament issues will also join the Indian delegation.

India and China agreed to discuss their mutual nuclear concerns at the official level when the External Affairs Minister, Mr. Jaswant Singh, travelled to Beijing in June 1999.

The first round of the dialogue was held in early 2000 in Beijing. When the Chinese Foreign Minister, Mr. Tang Jiaxuan, came here last July, the two sides decided that the talks should be elevated to the level of additional secretaries.

---

NATO Is 'an Essential Forum' for the Missile-Defense Debate

Tuesday, February 6, 2001
International Herald Tribune
Joseph Fitchett IHT
http://www.iht.com/articles/9799.htm

NATO's top civilian official, Secretary-General George Robertson, will be deeply involved in consultations among Washington and the European capitals in the alliance about U.S. plans to deploy a missile defense system designed to intercept a small number of incoming ballistic missiles. He spoke to Joseph Fitchett of the International Herald Tribune about the changing political climate surrounding the proposal.

Q: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced U.S. intentions without a lot of details but with a lot of determination in a speech last weekend in Munich. Do you think it changed other nations' reluctance to get to grips with the issue?

A: Indeed, it did. Now the European allies have to accept that the Americans really intend to go ahead. Of course, the Bush team has redefined the program, much more ambitiously.

The new goal would offer some protection not just to the United States but to allies if they want it and to deployed forces as well. It might be based on ships as well as on land. That will require quite a lot of thinking to work out. Now that the question of "whether" it's going to happen has been settled, I want an engagement inside NATO between the Americans and the other allies about the "how" and the "when."

Q: Is NATO the right institution to discuss missile defense?

A: It's an essential forum. It's where the allies are, and it's the first port of call for the U.S. administration. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld made it clear to me that NATO remains that for the new Bush administration. Keeping the allies abreast of U.S. thinking is an absolute priority, so I expect that engagement to start at the earliest possible opportunity.

Q: Do you feel that the Bush administration's approach can overcome opposition to missile defense that has been vehement among allied leaders and some sections of public opinion in Europe?

A: For that, we'll have to see what precisely is on offer. There's an assumption that Europeans are opposed to missile defense. But all the European publics have been told so far is that missile defense could destroy a foundation stone of arms control by ending a treaty [the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty between Washington and Moscow in 1972].

The way it took off in America and Congress was that people were told that there's a threat from the proliferation of ballistic missiles with mass-destruction warheads and that, yes, there's something we can do about it. So do it, people said. European publics have not really heard that yet.

But European leaders are starting to acknowledge that there is a new threat. And when you look around, most of the states or entities that might use a few nuclear missiles are a lot closer to Europe than they are to the United States of America. But that point is not being made yet in Europe, not even in the press, so it hasn't reached public opinion. The real debate hasn't taken off yet in Europe.

The interesting point is that there is now a recognition by leaders - American, European and even Russian - that there is a new threat from the proliferation of ballistic missiles that has got to be dealt with. The Americans have said how they're going to deal with it. The Europeans are being offered a chance to share in that.

Q: The Russians have been vehemently opposed to U.S. moves that would end the curbs on missile defense imposed by the ABM Treaty. But Mr. Rumsfeld hinted in Senate testimony that Moscow might be interested in a deal. What's your analysis?

A: The Russians still have an official message, like a headline: no missile defense, no change to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. But when you look closely, the Russians are also saying that they are going to produce a program for European missile defense. Now they've even starting to talk about ideas of boost phase interception to destroy missiles as they lift off. I'm not sure how that could be compatible with the ABM Treaty.

We'll have to see when the actual details of their proposal are put on the table and they come to the consultative NATO-Russia council. As you see, all these security questions eventually end up in NATO's lap.

---

Bush Can't Afford to Ignore Missile Defense, Envoys Tell Europeans

Tuesday, February 6, 2001
International Herald Tribune
Joseph Fitchett
http://www.iht.com/articles/9751.htm

MUNICH Henry Kissinger put it starkly to his European audience here last weekend: No American president can neglect an alternative to using nuclear weapons against a small nation poised to launch a ballistic missile at the United States.

The alternative, he said, is missile defense, whose technologies for intercepting incoming missiles promise now to be able to offer some protection against limited nuclear attacks.

The former secretary of state's plea was perhaps the most emotional in a weekend that represented the Bush administration's first real effort to sell Europe on its plan for an expensive system to defend against missile attacks.

When Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld later argued that it was "a moral issue" for the United States to try to build a missile defense system, even the skeptical Europeans, who were numerous among the defense ministers and experts at the Munich Conference on International Security, understood that the new administration will not easily be swayed from the controversial plan.

Realists on the European side are already talking about trade-offs - such as American support for a stronger European defense role - in exchange for their acquiescence in a missile-defense program they vehemently oppose but are beginning to suspect is inevitable.

In urging allies to rethink their own objections to the Bush administration's decision to build a shield against limited nuclear attacks, Mr. Kissinger said that "total vulnerability should not be the price the United States is asked to pay" for trans-Atlantic solidarity.

Evoking his own feelings from the years in office when he often reviewed the devastating casualty figure from a nuclear strike, Mr. Kissinger said that no American leader, aware of the potential of emerging defensive technologies, could accept a situation in which "extinction of civilized life is one's only strategy" when faced with even a small nuclear attack.

The thrust of these presentations, backed by similar pleas from U.S. senators of both parties, was that the post Cold War world must change the old rules of deterrence, notably the theory of mutual assured destruction, in trying to cope with the most alarming current threats.

Those doctrines, and the arms control apparatus accompanying them, were credited with preventing a nuclear strike between the superpowers. But they are no longer adequate, U.S. officials say, in an era when the threat is liable to come from a suicidally reckless foe, perhaps a defeated leader ready to lash out with a nuclear weapon regardless of whether it would expose his country to annihilating retaliation.

The Bush administration's commitment to defensive technologies stems from a view that new research, unfettered by previous restrictions designed to respect arms control treaties, will enable the United States to protect itself - and its allies - from being attacked or intimidated by a country or terrorist group with a handful of long range missiles and nuclear warheads.

Mr. Rumsfeld is personally committed to missile defense: He headed a high level U.S. commission three years ago that shook up American views that rogue states were a remote nuclear threat. The commission's view, that a rogue state could catch the West off guard in this decade, started a groundswell of support in Congress for missile defense on the grounds that the threat effectively exists now.

"No U.S. president can responsibly say that his defense policy is calculated and designed to leave the American people undefended against threats that are known to exist," he said in Munich.

In resisting programs designed to intercept incoming missiles, critics have often argued that no system will ever be impenetrable. But Mr. Rumsfeld put the argument the other way: From a presidential viewpoint, he said, "a system of defense need not be perfect; but the American people must not be left completely defenseless."

He evoked the dilemma of a U.S. leader in a crisis and facing a few hostile nuclear missiles beyond the reach of ground troops. "He would be in a position where he had no choice but preemption," Mr. Rumsfeld said.

In other words, a nuclear strike could be brought on by American weakness in failing to develop anti-missile defenses. If there was at least some protection for American cities and for American forces in combat theaters, he suggested, U.S. leaders would have more room for maneuver short of a nuclear strike.

U.S. weakness in the face of even small nuclear threats, he said, could incite other countries to be recklessly aggressive and might fuel weakness in Washington. "When you're vulnerable, you're inclined to withdrawal, acquiescence," Mr. Rumsfeld said.

The European allies have shunned the subject of missile defense as an expensive new challenge and one that could shake up the scaffolding of arms curbs based on the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

By barring effective anti-missile defenses, the treaty encouraged Washington and Moscow to limit and finally start reducing their offensive arsenals because each side was confident that its rival remained vulnerable to attack.

The Bush administration has no intention of abandoning nuclear deterrence as a protection for the United States and for its allies, officials said in Munich.

Even if Washington and Moscow ultimately agree to cut their long-range arsenals down to 1,500 nuclear warheads, they said, it would leave Russia with more than enough missiles to be confident of overcoming any foreseeable U.S. defense.

A formula for accommodation with China looks more difficult because Beijing's nuclear intercontinental arsenal contains only a few hundred warheads.

But the problem may be susceptible to a political solution because Chinese leaders' main concern is to ensure that any missile shield is not used to promote independence for Taiwan, experts said in Munich.

---

U.S. Offers Aid on Missile Defense
Rumsfeld hopes to build support by helping allies

Sunday, February 4, 2001
San Francisco Chronicle
New York Times
Michael R. Gordon,
mailto:feedback@sfgate.com
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/02/04/MN157276.DTL

Munich -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld tried yesterday to defuse opposition to the Bush administration's anti-missile plans by offering to help European nations and other allies to deploy missile defenses.

But while Rumsfeld assured European allies that the United States would consult with them on its anti-missile plan, he did not address in any detail one of the Europeans' principal concerns: how an anti-missile defense can be reconciled with strategic arms control and a productive relationship with Russia.

"The United States intends to develop and deploy a missile defense designed to defend our people and forces against a limited ballistic missile attack, and is prepared to assist friends and allies threatened by missile attack to deploy such defenses," Rumsfeld said in a speech to an annual conference of top political officials and defense specialists.

He underscored that President Bush was determined to proceed with an anti- missile defense of U.S. territory even if it could not overcome the objections from the Russians, Chinese and Europeans. He described a missile defense as nothing less than a moral imperative.

Missile defense was hardly the only sensitive issue yesterday. The Bush administration has reacted warily to the European Union's move to develop a 60, 000-strong rapid reaction force by 2003. While not opposing the initiative, Rumsfeld was clearly skeptical, and stressed the need for great care to ensure that the EU does not detract from NATO.

Bush's fatigue with the Balkan peacekeeping mission also remains a continuing source of anxiety in Europe. Rumsfeld said little on the subject yesterday, saying that the matter was under review at the White House.

The United States and Europe also have to decide how to proceed with NATO expansion, a topic that greatly worries the Russians.

But as European leaders have challenged the missile plan in recent weeks, the issue has come to the fore. The main European concern is that deployment of an anti-missile shield will undermine the framework of nuclear arms control and spoil relations with Russia.

As French President Jacques Chirac put it last month, a U.S. missile defense "cannot fail to relaunch the arms race in the world."

Russia has sought to stoke European fears, warning that it may abandon strategic U.S.-Russian arms constraints if the Bush administration abandons the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and deploys an anti-missile system.

The head of the Russian Security Council, Sergei Ivanov, is due to address the conference today, raising the specter of a U.S.-Russian tussle for European opinion.

In his attempts to sway European opinion, Rumsfeld presented several arguments. He insisted that anti-missile defenses could be reconciled with arms control, shying away from comments he made in congressional hearings that the ABM treaty was an anachronism.

He also sought to turn long-standing European concerns about U.S. isolationism or military intervention into arguments for missile defenses.

Without a missile shield, he suggested, future U.S. leaders might turn isolationist in a crisis and shrink from confronting a missile-wielding Third World aggressor. Alternatively, he warned, a U.S. leader might be forced to carry out a pre-emptive strike against a rogue nation.

"A system of defense need not be perfect; but the American people must not be left completely defenseless," Rumsfeld said. "It is not so much a technical question as a matter of a president's constitutional responsibility. Indeed, it is, in many respects, a moral issue."

Rumsfeld's case was helped by Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., who told the meeting that there was a general consensus in Washington that some sort of missile defense should be deployed.

"The question from an American point of view is not whether we will have a national missile defense, but when and how," Lieberman said. "This is not a technologically feasible program now. We are some years away."

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger also joined the call for missile defenses, adding to the sense of inevitability.

The European response to Rumsfeld's proposal was respectful, if restrained. German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer appeared to speak for most of his fellow European foreign ministers when he said that European nations were glad that the new administration in Washington wanted to consult them on the anti- missile plan, but that a missile program must not come at the expense of arms control. That is a difficult balancing act that neither the Americans nor the Europeans were prepared to discuss in detail.

Rumsfeld, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, has been in office for two weeks. The rest of the Bush administration is also still in its infancy.

Still, Rumsfeld's offer to help the Europeans and other allies deploy defenses raised a number of tricky questions.

The administration has yet to explain which land-based, sea-based or space- based systems it would use. As a result, it is impossible to say how long it would take to develop a system, what it would cost or to what extent it would require modification of the ABM treaty.

---

Canada Forges Diplomatic Ties with North Korea

February 6, 2001
Reuters
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-canada-.html

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada said Tuesday it had established diplomatic relations with North Korea, the isolated impoverished Stalinist state that is slowly opening up to the outside world.

Canada becomes the fourth member of the Group of Eight powerful nations -- after Russia, Italy and Britain -- to fully recognize the heavily-armed state of 22 million people, which the West fears still has the potential to destabilize large parts of the Far East.

``The situation has changed there and we have come to the conclusion that dialogue is better than isolation,'' Prime Minister Jean Chretien told reporters.

Foreign Minister John Manley said that Canada believed forging closer relations with Pyongyang was the best way to contribute to security, non-proliferation and humanitarian challenges in the region.

``Establishing diplomatic relations will create formal channels through which Canada and North Korea can further enhance communications and cooperation and develop a closer understanding of each other,'' Manley said in a statement.

In the last two months Britain and the Netherlands have established diplomatic relations with North Korea. Two weeks ago the German cabinet approved plans to move forward with cementing diplomatic ties with Pyongyang.

A senior Canadian official said Ottawa supported South Korean President Kim Dae-jung's ``sunshine policy'' of engagement with North Korea. ``We want to help the South Korean sunshine policy. We think we have a small role to play. I certainly think Canada has a role to help the North Korean government and officials along in internationalizing themselves,'' he told Reuters.

Britain said in December that engagement and not estrangement was the best policy toward the Stalinist country, which until recently was branded by the West as a pariah for its isolationism and aggressive nuclear proliferation policies.

The United States is currently trying to reach agreement with North Korea under which Pyongyang would stop producing and selling ballistic missiles in exchange for foreign help in launching satellites.

POLITICAL EXCHANGES

The Canadian official said Ottawa and North Korea, which need to agree on the number of diplomats in each country, were unlikely to open embassies within the next year or so.

``We're not going to open an embassy in Pyongyang for political reasons. We're going to open an embassy -- and it would be a small one -- when there's enough business going back and forth,'' the official said.

He said such business would include political exchanges, visits by non-governmental organizations, Canadian aid programs and commercial business.

``The ball is to some extent in the North Korean court. If they're very forthcoming and allow us access and everything else -- which of course we've insisted upon -- it moves the (ball) forward and makes it easier.''

Manley told reporters that until Ottawa opened an embassy in Pyongyang, Canada's ambassador to Beijing would handle diplomatic relations with North Korea. The closest official North Korean representation to Ottawa is in New York.

Manley said that since 1997 Ottawa had donated approximately C$30 million ($20 million) in humanitarian aid to North Korea through the United Nations World Food Program and Canadian aid organizations.

The Canadian official said Ottawa might be able to increase its aid to North Korea, which has been badly hit by drought and natural disasters over the last few years.

------

Europe warms to missile defense

February 6, 2001
Washington Times
By David R. Sands
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-200126213247.htm

The Bush administration's missile defense plan may not prove as tough a sell in Europe as expected.

While China and Russia remain staunchly opposed to the idea, cracks in the once-solid skepticism of NATO's European allies have been widening noticeably since President Bush took office.

Javier Solana, the former NATO secretary-general who now sets security policy for the European Union, told reporters in Washington yesterday that the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty - which forbids the kind of system Mr. Bush says he is determined to build - "is not the Bible."

"For us Europeans, what we would like is for the major powers to [reach a deal] by consensus if possible," he said.

But he added that the United States has the "right to deploy" such a system if it concludes it will enhance its national security.

And Lord George Robertson, Mr. Solana's successor as head of NATO, told a news conference in Brussels yesterday that "there has to be an acceptance [among U.S. allies] that the decision on missile defense was made in the U.S. presidential election."

Analysts said the Bush administration deserves credit in its first weeks for skillfully changing the debate over national missile defense (NMD), promising closer consultation with allies over the effect of the system while leaving no doubt that the United States is moving ahead with testing and deployment.

"I don't think the Clinton administration really took a proactive role in pushing missile defense," said W. Bruce Weinrod, a senior Pentagon official under President George Bush in the early 1990s. "They either didn't explain the idea or explained it in a halfhearted way."

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, in his first visit to Europe since taking over at the Pentagon, left little doubt in an address in Munich on Saturday that a U.S. missile defense system would be built, whatever the international repercussions.

Mr. Rumsfeld also argued that the United States' NMD concept was defensive and would strengthen trans-Atlantic ties.

"The Bush people have been doing a very good job of making missile defense seem inevitable to the Europeans," said Clay Clemens, an analyst on European politics at the College of William and Mary.

"The attitude right now is a lot less than enthusiasm but a fair deal more than resignation, and that's a shift," he said.

Kim Holmes, a foreign policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, said he found during a recent European tour that opposition from officials and analysts in Europe weakened appreciably when the "national" was dropped from NMD discussions.

"If it's pitched as a system that doesn't leave the allies out, they tend to like it a lot more," he said.

He also said the Bush administration's evident determination to proceed had robbed critics of a crucial debating point.

"You immediately jump past the whole issue of deployment, where the Russians and Chinese will try anything to delay the process or create problems," he said.

Already, the opposition Conservatives in Britain and the Christian Social Union in Germany have come out in support of the U.S. missile defense plan, particularly if the proposed shield can be extended to Europe.

Although neither party appears poised to take power, the fact that they have been able to embrace the U.S. idea demonstrates the changing nature of the debate in Europe, Mr. Clemens said.

The endorsement by Britain's Conservatives has put the Labor government of Prime Minister Tony Blair in a bind, with national elections widely expected this spring.

Mr. Blair and Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, who visits Washington this week, have been forced to reconcile widespread European doubts about the idea with their desire to preserve Britain's "special relationship" with the United States as a new, conservative administration takes power here.

Friedbert Pfluger, who chairs the European policy committee for Germany's center-right Christian Democratic Party, said the Bush administration had been much more open in discussing missile defense concepts than its predecessor.

"The whole spirit of the discussion is much more sensitive in tone and spirit to European concerns compared to a year ago," said Mr. Pfluger, whose party also recently said it was willing to consider the NMD idea on its merits.

The NMD debate in Europe has shifted so quickly that American critics accuse the Bush administration of trying to create a false impression that the battle is over.

"Once again, proponents of missile defense are putting the cart before the horse," said John Isaacs, president of the anti-NMD Council for a Livable World.

"Rumsfeld is trying to give the illusion that deployment is inevitable, when there is no workable technology ready for development," he said.

It remains true that no Western European leader has enthusiastically endorsed the U.S. missile defense plan. Mr. Pfluger said that public sentiment in Europe is largely skeptical of the plan and that most people in Germany aren't ready to abandon the ABM Treaty and other Cold War barriers to missile defenses.

"But we have to be open to the idea of escaping the world of deterrence," he said. "Why should deterrence be forever?"

-------- business

Government Reimburses Nuclear Weapons Contractors for Legal Bills

February 6, 2001
Associated Press
KATHERINE RIZZO Writer
http://www.statenews.org/news/2001/febuary/ap-020601-02.html

WASHINGTON (AP) - When ailing workers or their survivors sue federal contractors over exposure to deadly chemicals or radioactive material at weapons plants, taxpayers routinely get the company's legal bill.

The arrangement often frustrates those whom former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson liked to call Cold War veterans.

"It's terrible,'' said Corrilla Kelly, the widow of a 27-year veteran of the Fernald uranium processing plant in southwest Ohio. "How do you fight all the money of the government?''

Her late husband, Herbert Kelly, spent eight years trying to get workers compensation for lung cancer he blamed on his workplace. He was challenged at every turn by government-reimbursed lawyers who suggested his illness was caused by cigarettes he had given up 15 years before getting sick.

David Norgard, who worked at Brush Wellman Corp.'s Elmore, Ohio, plant and is suing the beryllium maker, said "it really did hit hard'' to learn the government reimburses the company for legal fees.

"It's very upsetting,'' he said. "I think the company was responsible and the company ought to pay.''

Workers suing Brush contend the company could have done more to protect them from an incurable lung disease blamed on exposure to beryllium, a metal used in nuclear weapons production.

Brush maintains that, through the years, it tried to protect the health of its workers based on what was known at the time. It also said it has helped employees with confirmed Chronic Beryllium Disease get state workers compensation.

"To our knowledge, there is no current or former Brush Wellman employee with confirmed CBD who have not been successful in establishing a workers' compensation claim,'' said Hugh D. Hanes, the company's vice president for government relations.

Some of the workers suing say that's not enough.

Brush spokesman Patrick Carpenter said it was company policy not to discuss litigation, but that it defends lawsuits aggressively and pursues indemnification from the government whenever allowed by its contracts.

For decades, military contracts have allowed companies that handle dangerous or radioactive material to be reimbursed for responding in court or before state workers compensation boards to employees who blame their illnesses on workplace exposure. Taxpayers also pick up the tab for lawyers to fight claims by weapons plant neighbors.

How much the government has reimbursed Brush, other vendors, and the companies that ran its weapons plants during the Cold War era has not been documented.

The Energy Department has no estimate, and because of the transition to the new administration could not make an official available to discuss the issue.

The last time congressional auditors looked at the issue, in 1994, the General Accounting Office found that reimbursing contractors for the cost of litigation - not including the cost of fighting workers compensation claims - was $40 million in fiscal year 1992.

Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by lawyers for some of the workers showed that in just a handful of large cases, including a class action suit against the former operators of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state, the government has paid outside lawyers more than $94 million.

"In a normal lawsuit, the cost of litigation is part of the reasoning that goes into settling,'' said Louise Roselle, a Cincinnati lawyer who represents weapons plant workers and neighbors in lawsuits against the contractors.

"These lawyers have no incentive to settle, and the government doesn't seem to care. We have four cases in this firm that are 10 years old or older. All four involve weapons plants,'' she said. "They could have settled a lot of cases for the money they've already spent.''

"It gives the contractors essentially unlimited resources to fight individual workers,'' agreed David Michaels, the Energy Department's top health official under Richardson.

"But I could make the argument either way. The companies were paid lots of money to do this work, but their specifications were set by the federal government, which assumed a responsibility for what happened,'' he said.

Some of the companies involved in the Manhattan Project, which developed the first atomic bomb, worked for $1 a year but insisted on indemnification from lawsuits.

Subsequent contractors were better paid for the dangerous, secretive work, but also were indemnified.

In recent years, the Energy Department's legal office has reined in reimbursements for fighting workers with illness claims, Michaels said. A new law passed late last year also ordered the government to stop fighting claims from workers with specific illnesses that are easily connected to on-the-job exposure at a weapons plant.

For others, the new law instructs the government to stop fighting the claims if special medical boards rule in the workers' favor. Those boards, have not yet been set up.

-------- canada

Chretien, Bush Strike Up the Bond

Tuesday, February 6, 2001
Washington Post
By DeNeen L. Brown and Dana Milbank

Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien and President Bush emerged from a meeting and dinner at the White House last night pledging friendship and promising to consult each other on issues facing the two countries, including drilling in the Arctic, trade and a proposal to build a ballistic missile shield.

"I assured him that we will consult and keep him abreast of decisions that we make here that will affect Canada and peace in the world," Bush told reporters after the meeting....

"There was a long interchange on energy," said a senior administration official, who asked not to be identified. "They agreed to consult. The president said the missile defense [systems] were in the planning phases. There is a new reality in the world." ...

-------- china

Top Chinese Official to Make U.S. Trip in March

February 6, 2001
Reuters
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/china-usa-visit.html

BEIJING, Feb 6 - China's foreign policy tsar, Qian Qichen, will travel to the United States next month in the first visit by a senior Chinese official under the George W. Bush administration, diplomats said on Tuesday.

The visit by Vice Premier Qian, a foreign affairs veteran who overseas China's policies toward Taiwan, was seen as a key gesture by China in maintaining continuity in bilateral ties after Republican Bush moved into the White House last month.

President Bush is not expected to meet his Chinese counterpart Jiang Zemin until October, when China hosts an informal summit of Asia Pacific leaders in Shanghai.

Hanging over bilateral ties, however, are a host of perennial thorny issues, including Taiwan and human rights, as well as U.S. plans to build an anti-missile shield in the face of strident opposition by China, Russia and others.

In another effort to keep ties on an even keel under the new U.S. administration, U.S. Ambassador Joseph Prueher held talks with Premier Zhu Rongji in Beijing on Tuesday, a day before Prueher was slated to travel to Washington, U.S. diplomats said.

CHINA WANTS TO TALK TAIWAN

China and the United States exchanged words last month, when Beijing rejected fresh U.S. condemnation of its harsh, 18-month-old crackdown on the Falun Gong spiritual movement and said further criticism would harm relations.

But Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi, asked by reporters on Tuesday about Qian's visit, made it clear Taiwan was foremost in Beijing's mind.

``The Taiwan issue is the core issue and the most sensitive question in China-U.S. relations,'' Sun told a news conference.

The spokesman reiterated China's demand that the United States uphold the ``one China'' policy, under which Washington recognises only Beijing's government and shuns official ties with the self-governing island.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has reiterated America's long-standing commitment to the ``one China'' principle, but also underscored U.S. opposition to reunification of Taiwan with the mainland by force.

Powell also promised to provide for Taiwan's defence needs, as Washington has done even after opening diplomatic relations with Beijing in 1979.

The dispatch of Qian to Washington has been welcomed by diplomats because last month he introduced some flexibility to China's tough terms for contacts with Taiwan, which has been separated from the mainland since the end of a civil war in 1949.

In what China billed as a ``major goodwill gesture'' to Taiwan, Qian said any formula could be discussed, including a loose confederation, to reunify mainland China and Taiwan.

SPACE PLANS SLAMMED

Sun also reiterated China's demand that the United States scrap its National Missile Defence (NMD) scheme, which calls for building a shield to protect the United States from missile attack by hostile states, including Iran, Iraq and North Korea.

China has steadfastly opposed the NMD system, fearing that even a limited U.S. missile shield would neutralise its modest strategic arsenal and force it to enter a costly arms race.

Sun also expressed ``deep concern'' over a space war game the U.S. air force conducted last month in Colorado.

``This exercise again makes it clear that the militarisation of outer space is a pressing problem,'' Sun said and urged all powers to avoid an arms race in space.

Chinese media have attacked the space war game, following statements by participants that drills aimed at finding out how to defend U.S. satellites and destroy enemy ones took China as the adversary in a hypothetical conflict in 2017.

-------- depleted uranium

MORE THAN DEPLETED URANIUM?

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2001
Christian Science Monitor
WORLD Today's Story Line:
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2001/02/05/fp6s2-csm.shtml

The possibility that US tank-piercing ammunition used in the Balkans wars contained more than just depleted uranium (DU) has prompted scientists to reexamine their skepticism about health risks to veterans, The Associated Press reports. As the Monitor reported Jan. 18 (see story), European nations are concerned that cancer cases reported by European veterans were linked to DU. Scientists assumed the bullets were made of raw uranium ore. But now the Pentagon says ammo used in the 1999 Kosovo conflict was tainted with traces of plutonium, neptunium, and americium - byproducts of nuclear reactors that are much more radioactive than DU. Last week, NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson said that Balkans peacekeepers have not been shown to suffer health damage from DU ammunition. US officials say the shells contained mere traces of plutonium, not enough to cause harm.

http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2001/01/18/p7s1.htm

---

Some Gulf War Veterans May Suffer from Chemicals at Home
"Clearly, Gulf War veterans are suffering,"

Jul.2000
Eric Sabo, Medical Writer
http://cbshealthwatch.health.aol.com/aolmedscape/p/G_Library/Library_print.asp ?RecID=217578&Channel=nan&ContentType=Library

Nearly a decade after US troops went to battle against Iraq, many Gulf War veterans still complain of strange aches and pains, fatigue, bouts of dizziness, and memory problems. Though some experts doubt that these symptoms are the result of the Gulf War, there is a continuing worldwide debate over what's causing this mysterious disorder.

The symptoms of MCS may be real, but the causes are not so apparent.

Investigators from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas recently found that some Gulf War veterans may have suffered damage to parts of the brain that control coordination and balance. They say this may be the consequence of exposure to low levels of nerve gas, and of the pyridostigmine bromide pills soldiers took to protect themselves from it. Other possible explanations for Gulf War syndrome include smoke from oil well fires, contaminated sand, extreme weather conditions, depleted uranium, pesticides, infectious diseases, and stress.

But the cluster of ailments that plague Gulf War veterans are very similar to the symptoms of another little-understood illness: multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS).

Instead of nerve gas drugs, however, those with MCS say that their troubles lie with common chemicals and household items. A whiff of hairspray, laundry detergent, even deodorant can leave chemically sensitive people just as sick as those who served in the Gulf War.

War Hits Home

These striking similarities have prompted suggestions that Gulf War syndrome is really just a battle-hardened version of MCS, which some see as a psychological problem rather than a physical one. A new study finds that some Gulf War vets are highly sensitive to chemicals that most people can tolerate and that their reactions could stem from imaginary causes. These findings, published recently in the Archives of Internal Medicine, do not discount that Gulf War syndrome exists, but they do help identify a group of soldiers who react to smells that exist in both war and peacetime.

"This study doesn't explain Gulf War syndrome more than any others do," says Donald Black, lead researcher and a psychiatrist at the University of Iowa College of Medicine. "Their illness is still a mystery, but we're exploring a concept so that we can identify people and study them."

Further Mystery

The discovery that some veterans potentially suffer from MCS does not do much for hope of an explanation. Medical organizations including the American Medical Association do not consider multiple chemical sensitivity a bona fide disease because there is no hard proof that common household items lead to physical ailments. The symptoms may be real, but the causes are not so apparent.

"One of the typical complaints is anxiety when they smell a prominent odor," says Dr. Black. "Many are probably odor phobic."

"Clearly, Gulf War veterans are suffering," says Dr. Bradley Doebbeling of the University of Iowa, who also worked on the study. "The $100,000 question is: 'What from?'"

The Iowa team interviewed more than 3,600 National Guard Reserves who either served in Iraq or were stationed in the United States during the Gulf War. They surveyed the soldiers about their physical and mental health. Compared to troops who remained in the United States, Gulf War veterans were more than twice as likely to report MCS symptoms like strong aversions to vehicle exhaust,cosmetics, or smog. Many chemically sensitive vets also said they were treated for psychological problems before the war, which may help explain their unusual reactions to generally tolerable chemicals.

"One of the typical complaints is anxiety when they smell a prominent odor," says Dr. Black. "Many are probably odor phobic."

Emotional Problems: Common (I Wonder Why)??

Other research suggests that nearly half of people with MCS also suffer from some form of mental illness. MCS can affect how patients respond to common chemicals. A smell that is fine for some is a potential threat to people with MCS. When Canadian researchers had people with chemical sensitivities inhale different combinations of oxygen and carbon dioxide, 50-90% experienced panic attacks. In contrast, only 5% of the healthy volunteers responded as dramatically to the same breathing tests.

This doesn't mean that people with MCS suffer from some phantom illness. Anxiety and depression are very real conditions and treating these problems, some suggest, may help relieve the symptoms linked to chemical exposure. "If they are depressed, we know how to treat that," says Dr. Black. "Part of problem is that there are a group of doctors going around and telling people they need to withdraw and not expose themselves to these dangerous chemicals, which in my view just promotes illness behavior."

Lawyer Diagnosis

Not everyone agrees that MCS is a mental disorder: Many patients go to extraordinary lengths to avoid contact with chemicals. One study found that 97% of those with chemical sensitivities had stopped activities outside their home and more than 60% even cut back on spending time with their family. Although MCS is not a medically recognized illness, the federal government prevents employers from discriminating against chemically sensitive workers on a case-by-case basis. Hundreds of MCS patients have filed suit against companies for not accommodating their alleged chemical ailments. "Multiple chemical sensitivity may become a disease by a legal fiat," notes Dr. Roy Dehart of the University of Oklahoma.

Whether MCS is caused by something in the air or in the mind, experts say that chemical sensitivity can be as disabling as any other disease. Gulf War veterans who suffer these same disturbing symptoms may find that the answer to their problem is closer to home.

"There is no simple answer to Gulf War illness," said Dr. Claudia Miller of the University of Texas at San Antonio in recent congressional hearings. "But if we concentrate less on the original toxicants and more on the underlying disease mechanism, I believe we can make progress in understanding why these people are sick and what we can do to help them."

--

Some Gulf War Veterans May Suffer from Chemicals at Home

Just a note: the medical diagnosis of MCS is provable with appropriate testing and improvable with appropriate treatments. It is, however, an inconvenient and has the potential of being a devastating diagnosis (because the cause and effects are provable) for the chemical, pharmaceutical and government (DOD) industries. Has been provable for quite a few years. However, them that controls the big bucks controls the medical research, the media and the medical industry. The chemicals we have been told for years are 'good' for us have been poisoning us and our government, if one researches it, is the main 'allower' of this to happen - we were sold out to big money. Vaccines are NOT safe or effective yet the vaccine industry is protected from law suit by congressional action, which also allows them to not do studies on the effectiveness or long term effects (if you count 3 weeks as long term). Mercury is an extremely toxic metal and disintegrates into the body via, main source, DENTAL fillings. Fact. ADA holds the patent on this poison. Flourides and chlorine are TOXINS added to our everyday uses and 'forced' on us by paid off congressmen and industrial giants looking for a 'profitable' way to discard industrial waste. Convenience, crap foods are taking over the grocery and the meals kids get at school, devoid of nutrition and high in pesticides. Soda and junk food sold in schools because the schools get $ to allow them there (specific brands priority). DU is toxic and radioactive, along with other radioactive metals yet DOE 'reclassifies' them and releases them for use (incorporation) into multiple productrs distributed all over (not kept track of so no 'trail' of illness/death). Solution to pollution is dilution, guys. CFIDS is the fastest growing illness in the US and the world. It sure appears to me that MCS follows CFIDS. Chemical cause, doesn't make sense to have a 'chemical' cure. Especially when this is proven. Scientific research designed to produce facts takes a back seat to industry/government desires when it comes to cause and liability.

Laura

--

Comments:

I have no doubts the odor phobia exists, same things happen around OR from too much fluorides exposures. Allergies also.

The mystery ills are fabricated, there are direct links to toxic exposures and harm to the immune system. Chemical toxics added onto the persistent ones causing more of the ills can literally be felt as these toxics temporarily affect the immune cells performance.

With snake bites the first area to be highly affected is the lymph system, same with other toxics as well.

-------- korea

North Korea's energy woes probed

Saturday, February 3, 2001
Environmental News Network
By Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/wire-stories/2001/02/02032001/ap_korea_41804.asp

North Korea has agreed to open itself up to South Korean officials who will inspect its power industry before deciding whether to provide surplus electricity to the energy-starved communist nation, the Seoul government said Saturday.

Like food shortages, energy shortfalls in North Korea are severe. Power failures are common even in Pyongyang, the North's capital, and travelers have reported seeing public buildings and homes without heating and electricity during the country's frigid winter.

North Korea requested 500,000 kilowatts of electricity from South Korea in late December when they held high-level talks in Pyongyang dealing exclusively with economic cooperation. The meeting was an outgrowth of last June's historic summit in which the leaders of the two Koreas agreed to work together toward reconciliation.

The South has said it will consider the North's electricity request only after a joint survey of its energy shortages. The two Koreas exchanged agreements Saturday calling for the unprecedented joint field survey to begin within the month.

South Korean officials say most of the North's aging Russian-made power plants can now produce 2 million kilowatts a year, about a third of their original capacity.

In 1994, North Korea agreed to freeze its nuclear program. In return, the United States, Japan and South Korea are building two modern reactors in a rural village in the northeastern part of North Korea.

The light-water reactors will replace Soviet-designed graphite-moderated reactors, which experts say produce greater amounts of weapons-grade plutonium. Completion of the first reactor had been scheduled for 2003, but delays have pushed the date back several years.

Separate talks on other projects key to rapprochement on the divided Korean peninsula - building a cross-border railroad and highway, an industrial park in the North and a dam near the border - will begin either in February or March, Seoul's Unification Ministry said in a news release.

Besides economic exchanges, the two Koreas also are promoting humanitarian projects such as temporary reunions of families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War. They will hold another round of such reunions for 100 separated family members from each side Feb. 26-28, the third since the June summit.

In the months since the June summit, the two Koreas have made more progress toward reconciliation than in the five decades since they were divided in 1945.

The Korean War ended without a peace treaty, and the border between North and South Korea remains closed, with about a million troops standing guard on each side.

Meanwhile, North Korea on Saturday accused Japan of stockpiling nuclear fuel to make atomic bombs.

Japanese officials say fuel rods produced by the Belgian company Belgonucleaire from plutonium reprocessed by France's state-owned nuclear group Cogema and shipped from France to Japan will be used to generate energy at a Japanese nuclear power plant.

But North Korea claimed in the state-run newspaper Minju Joson that Japan intends to use the fuel to build atomic weapons. The article was carried by the North's official foreign news outlet, KCNA, monitored in Seoul.

-------- missle defense

The Missile Offensive

Tuesday, February 6, 2001
International Herald Tribune
THE WASHINGTON POST
http://www.iht.com/articles/9836.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A30996-2001Feb5?language=printer

THE BUSH administration appears to have concluded that the best defense of security initiatives opposed by U.S. allies is a good offense. Over the weekend Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld insisted to a conference of skeptical NATO officials in Munich that the development and deployment of a ballistic missile defense system was nothing less than a moral imperative, "not so much a technical question as a matter of the president's constitutional responsibility." The United States, he said, is prepared to consult with Europe; but the Europeans need to get over their Cold War-era worries about an arms race or Russia and accept that America's defense needs have changed.

There is a strategy behind these statements. By creating a sense that missile defense is inevitable, the administration hopes to defuse a potentially divisive debate within NATO before it can get hot. That would have the added benefit of neutralizing an emerging Russian strategy of fomenting European opposition, and encourage Moscow to seriously negotiate the modification or scrapping of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, perhaps in conjunction with strategic nuclear arms reductions.

Still, it is striking how little seemed to lie behind Mr. Rumsfeld's opening gambit. On the plane to Munich, he conceded that he was not prepared to talk about any specifics of the missile defense initiative, and said that he had had only one meeting on it so far as defense secretary. Mr. Bush and his advisers have yet to spell out what sort of defense system they favor, and there seem to be sharply divided opinions about it within the Republican Party. Some want to proceed with the limited 100-interceptor system pursued by the Clinton administration, even though it has failed two out of three flight tests so far; other experts, including some close to Mr. Rumsfeld, back a sea-based system, a space-based system or some combination of all three. Only one thing seems certain so far: The Bush administration's first budget will contain nothing close to the massive spending increases that would be required to put any of the missile defense projects on the fast track.

Deferring any big spending or firm decision on missile defense until a thorough review can be conducted, and a workable technology found, seems a wise course. But it's worth noting the gap between that necessary process and the aggressive diplomatic posturing. Perhaps the new administration will succeed in convincing the world that a U.S. missile defense is inevitable if it declares it loudly and from the beginning. But as the Munich conference showed, Mr. Bush has much else to discuss with the Europeans, including the proposal for a European defense force separate from NATO and future deployments -- or withdrawals -- of American troops in the Balkans. The risk is that instead of resolving these difficult and pressing questions, Mr. Bush's relations with Europe will be shaped in their opening months by debate over a weapons system that has not yet been chosen, proven or paid for, and that, even in the best of circumstances, won't materialize for years.

--------

Russia issues missile defence warning

February 6, 2001
CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/02/06/russia.missiles/index.html

MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) -- A proposed U.S. scheme to develop a system to destroy missiles in flight would be ineffective against Russian technology, Russia's defence minister has warned.

Igor Sergeyev said old Soviet technologies developed in the 1980s to oppose Ronald Reagan's Star Wars plan could easily pierce the proposed U.S. National Missile Defense (NMD) system.

The minister added: "We had three mighty programmes to asymmetrically counteract U.S. missile defences during Reagan's Star Wars. We still have them and can take them up again."

He said that the Soviet Union had spent enough money on the programmes to take them beyond the stage of research and development at the moment when they were halted.

Sergeyev warning follows a threat by a leading Russian security official that U.S. plans to deploy an anti-missile system would lead to a new arms race.

Sergei Ivanov, secretary of Russia's security council, said the plan would undermine world stability, and he offered Washington talks on substantial arms cuts if it abandoned the scheme.

Russia also says developing the NMD system would effectively rip up the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which was designed to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

"The destruction of the treaty will result in the annihilation of the whole structure of strategic stability and create prerequisites for a new arms race," Ivanov said.

Defence and security officials from Europe and Asia also expressed concern at Washington's plan to press ahead with its missile system.

At a conference in Munich on Sunday, they said it could spur a new international arms competition and scuttle existing accords such as the ABM Treaty.

Sergeyev said U.S. faith in its defence concept was misplaced. "The Americans may regard these systems as unique, but we do not share their opinion," he said.

"These are really complex technologies, but complex technologies, as a rule, are not reliable."

Sergeyev added that the Russian military could offer its U.S. counterparts proof that missile defence "wouldn't give absolute confidence in its inviolability."

"On the contrary, it will trigger a new spiral in the arms race and ruin the existing system of arms control," Sergeyev said.

Moscow has fiercely opposed U.S. proposals to modify the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to allow for the deployment of NMD which U.S. officials say is needed to guard against threats from countries such as North Korea and Iraq.

The new U.S. Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, has stressed the missile defence plan is being developed in the interest of global security.

--------

U.S. strategy to isolate China on NMD

Tuesday, February 06, 2001
The Hindu
By F.J. Khergamvala
http://www.indiaserver.com/thehindu/2001/02/06/stories/0306000b.htm

TOKYO, FEB. 5. To all intents and purposes, the U.S. has conveyed to China that it should get used to the idea that the U.S. will deploy a missile defence system, but specific objections from Beijing will be dealt with in a bilateral arrangement.

Strategically, the U.S. will divide and rule the missile defence arrangement of a scheme yet to be proven technologically and financially viable.

This is the sub-text of two very recent events. One, the just concluded European security meeting in Munich and addressed by the U.S. Defence Secretary, Mr. Donald H. Rumsfeld.

Next, as reported by The New York Times, a visit to China last week by a group of unofficial U.S. experts to discuss the matter with China. Beijing made available not just its academia to the visiting group, but its officials too.

The agenda: to extort transparency out of the Chinese on their arsenal, to reach an understanding about the size of a U.S. missile defence shield and, though unstated, to assure Beijing that a shield over Taiwan will not be sufficient to encourage secessionist elements on the island to go too far.

At the meeting in Munich, Mr. Rumsfeld addressed some of Russia's concerns, shared fully by major European powers, notably France and Germany.

Apparently, without talking one on one with Moscow, he thought it premature to address how the intent to deploy the theatre missile defence (TMD) within a newly structured nuclear relationship and the West's relationship with Russia.

At no stage did Mr. Rumsfeld home in on China's objections to missile defence. The Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972, which Mr. Rumsfeld explicitly stated was dated, due to a whole lot of reasons, is a bilateral treaty.

It has little or nothing to do with China. The overall strategy now appears to be to create a wedge between Russia and Europe, within Europe and between Russia and China. The East Asia aspect will be taken care of by dealing with China bilaterally. Russia and China are drafting a strategic partnership treaty document.

One of its fringe purposes, according to analysts, is to try and prevent Russia from doing a deal with the U.S. on missile defence. Incidentally, quite notably, for the first time a top U.S. official and his delegation dropped the term ``national'' from the term national missile defence, thus definitively broadening its scope to a global level, with the emphasis on protecting U.S. forces deployed globally and allies.

This brings the China concern into sharper focus and it could not be lost on Beijing that its own position on bilateral negotiations with the new U.S. administration will be conditioned by at least five factors.

The ability to withstand and expend resources on an arms race with the U.S.; its penchant for doing bilateral deals instead of subscribing to international arms treaties has left it without a buffer unlike the old ABM which the Russians are sheltered by; China's ability to join forces with Russia; the effectiveness of its so-called Pakistan-Iran card and most vital, the Taiwan factor.

China is probably under no illusion on two other counts. That, despite its apparent silence, Japan is the U.S.'s foremost partner in one leg of the triad, namely the sea based TMD.

Japan is already spending money into the LEAP or Light Exo- atmospheric Project, eventually to be mounted on Japan's Aegis class vessels. Next, that everybody knows a TMD will be deployed in East Asia, ostensibly and at the very least to provide the outer concentric to defend the 100,000 U.S. forces in the region, in Japan, in South Korea and aboard vessels. Conversely, everybody knows that despite China's objections, Beijing itself is going ahead with increasing its own mobile nuclear forces.

China's Vice-Premier, the foreign policy czar, Mr. Qian Qichen heads to the U.S. next month with the apparent purpose of influencing a U.S. decision in April on Taiwan's annual arms purchase request. This is obliquely connected to the TMD. Mr. Qian's primary effort is to coax the Bush administration to follow its predecessor in denying Taiwan the Arleigh-Burke class vessels bearing the Aegis equipped battle-management systems. It is only on an Aegis equipped vessel can a sea based missile interceptor complex be deployed. Anyhow, the new arms race is on. It will take a lot of resistance for India and Pakistan not to join, or a lot of money as entry fee.

---

NATO Is 'an Essential Forum' for the Missile-Defense Debate

Tuesday, February 6, 2001
International Herald Tribune
Joseph Fitchett IHT
http://www.iht.com/articles/9799.htm

NATO's top civilian official, Secretary-General George Robertson, will be deeply involved in consultations among Washington and the European capitals in the alliance about U.S. plans to deploy a missile defense system designed to intercept a small number of incoming ballistic missiles. He spoke to Joseph Fitchett of the International Herald Tribune about the changing political climate surrounding the proposal.

Q: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced U.S. intentions without a lot of details but with a lot of determination in a speech last weekend in Munich. Do you think it changed other nations' reluctance to get to grips with the issue?

A: Indeed, it did. Now the European allies have to accept that the Americans really intend to go ahead. Of course, the Bush team has redefined the program, much more ambitiously.

The new goal would offer some protection not just to the United States but to allies if they want it and to deployed forces as well. It might be based on ships as well as on land. That will require quite a lot of thinking to work out. Now that the question of "whether" it's going to happen has been settled, I want an engagement inside NATO between the Americans and the other allies about the "how" and the "when."

Q: Is NATO the right institution to discuss missile defense?

A: It's an essential forum. It's where the allies are, and it's the first port of call for the U.S. administration. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld made it clear to me that NATO remains that for the new Bush administration. Keeping the allies abreast of U.S. thinking is an absolute priority, so I expect that engagement to start at the earliest possible opportunity.

Q: Do you feel that the Bush administration's approach can overcome opposition to missile defense that has been vehement among allied leaders and some sections of public opinion in Europe?

A: For that, we'll have to see what precisely is on offer. There's an assumption that Europeans are opposed to missile defense. But all the European publics have been told so far is that missile defense could destroy a foundation stone of arms control by ending a treaty [the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty between Washington and Moscow in 1972].

The way it took off in America and Congress was that people were told that there's a threat from the proliferation of ballistic missiles with mass-destruction warheads and that, yes, there's something we can do about it. So do it, people said. European publics have not really heard that yet.

But European leaders are starting to acknowledge that there is a new threat. And when you look around, most of the states or entities that might use a few nuclear missiles are a lot closer to Europe than they are to the United States of America. But that point is not being made yet in Europe, not even in the press, so it hasn't reached public opinion. The real debate hasn't taken off yet in Europe.

The interesting point is that there is now a recognition by leaders - American, European and even Russian - that there is a new threat from the proliferation of ballistic missiles that has got to be dealt with. The Americans have said how they're going to deal with it. The Europeans are being offered a chance to share in that.

Q: The Russians have been vehemently opposed to U.S. moves that would end the curbs on missile defense imposed by the ABM Treaty. But Mr. Rumsfeld hinted in Senate testimony that Moscow might be interested in a deal. What's your analysis?

A: The Russians still have an official message, like a headline: no missile defense, no change to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. But when you look closely, the Russians are also saying that they are going to produce a program for European missile defense. Now they've even starting to talk about ideas of boost phase interception to destroy missiles as they lift off. I'm not sure how that could be compatible with the ABM Treaty.

We'll have to see when the actual details of their proposal are put on the table and they come to the consultative NATO-Russia council. As you see, all these security questions eventually end up in NATO's lap.

-------- russia

Ivanov worried by U.S. shield

February 1, 2001
CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/02/01/geneva.shield/index.html

GENEVA, Switzerland (Reuters) -- Russia's foreign minister has called for "active dialogue" with the U.S. over its proposed National Missile Defense (NMD) programme.

Speaking a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin and the new U.S. President George Bush had their first telephone conversation, Igor Ivanov suggested a set of fresh measures which he said would preserve their Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty.

Measures to dispel perceived "new missile threats" would include setting up the agreed joint U.S.-Russian Missile Launch Data Exchange Centre and international cooperation regarding theatre missile defence systems, Moscow's top diplomat said on Thursday.

Following his speech to the United Nations Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, Ivanov headed for Berne for talks with his Swiss counterpart, Joseph Deiss.

Those talks were expected to include the politically explosive case of former Kremlin aide Pavel Borodin, held in New York last month on a Swiss arrest warrant for suspected money laundering in connection with refurbishment of the Kremlin.

Bush favours constructing the shield --- at an estimated cost of $60 billion -- to protect America from so-called rogue states, such as Iran, Iraq and North Korea, but the 1972 ABM pact bans such systems.

"We think it necessary that an active and meaningful dialogue on this topic be resumed with the new U.S. administration as soon as possible," Ivanov declared.

Stability concerns

Quoting Roman philosopher-statesman Lucius Seneca, he said: "Some medicines are more dangerous than diseases themselves."

Ivanov added: "As an alternative to a national missile defence system we propose a whole package of constructive political and diplomatic measures. Their aim is to dispel concerns -- not only by the United States -- about the so-called 'new missile threats' while preserving the ABM Treaty."

Ivanov reiterated Russia's call to negotiate with the United States on a START-III pact to cut their arsenals of strategic nuclear warheads to 1,500 each, instead of 2,000-2,500 each. "We are ready subsequently to consider even lower levels," he added.

The U.N. body's 66 member states include the five official nuclear powers (Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States) and nuclear-capable India and Pakistan.

Russia, China and Pakistan have strongly criticised the proposed U.S. missile shield which they say would violate ABM and upset global strategic stability.

Ivanov called on the Geneva talks -- mired in a stalemate for four years -- to launch negotiations to ban an arms race in outer space and also to ban production of nuclear bomb-making fissile materials (plutonium and highly enriched uranium).

"It is high time that a reliable international legal 'safety net' be created in this respect. Efforts and resources of our space agencies should be aimed at peaceful, including commercial, cooperation," Russia's foreign minister said.

In a speech, British envoy Ian Soutar called the fissile talks "an essential step" in nuclear disarmament, but said the time was not ripe for full-fledged negotiations on outer space.

---

Russia: U.S. missile shield doomed

February 2, 2001
CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/02/02/defence.us/index.html

GENEVA, Switzerland -- Russia has urged U.S. President George Bush to ditch plans for a missile defence system, warning he is embarking on a go-it-alone policy that is "doomed to failure".

The comments, from Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, came as U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld prepared to discuss the controversial proposals on a visit to Europe on Saturday.

Ivanov -- speaking at a meeting of the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva -- said it was "illusory" for "even the most powerful" country to think it could independently create "isolated islets of well-being and stability in today's world."

Instead he said every country should stick to "painstaking disarmament negotiations" and outlined alternative steps to reduce the threat of nuclear war.

Moscow's proposals would preserve the 1972 U.S.-Soviet Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which prohibits nationwide missile defences.

During the presidential campaign, Bush pledged to make a National Missile Defense shield (NMD) a priority, even if it meant abandoning the ABM Treaty.

Rumsfeld, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, has already called the treaty "ancient history."

He will become the first top official in Bush's administration to discuss defence with European allies when he addresses the annual Munich Conference on Security Policy, in Germany.

A day of meetings with analysts and security leaders -- including the British, German and French defence ministers -- could set the tone for cross-Atlantic security ties under Bush.

"It underscores for him (Rumsfeld) the importance of NATO, of Europe," said a senior U.S. official.

Support for NATO

Nuclear arms control is just one area of concern for members of NATO and other European allies of the U.S..

They are also worried that about 10,000 U.S. Army peacekeepers might be quickly pulled out of Kosovo and Bosnia because of administration concern that the mission is stretching America's post-Cold War military.

"Those people are going to read carefully what (Rumsfeld) says about three issues in a potential minefield: missile defence, peacekeeping and the European defence initiative," said Robert Hunter, another former U.S. ambassador to NATO.

Rumsfeld told his first news conference at the Pentagon last week that he and Bush strongly supported NATO but the president was determined to proceed with the NMD plan to protect both the U.S. and its allies.

"We want assurances that there will not be any charging ahead on NMD without full consultation and no premature disengagement from the Balkans," one European Union diplomat said.

"The Germans especially feel that it's important to get these kinds of assurances," added the diplomat, who asked not to be identified.

A third critical issue expected to be raised at the Munich meeting is European defence improvement and Washington's insistence that a rapid-reaction military force being formed by the European Union should not weaken the NATO military alliance.

Former Defense Secretary William Cohen said repeatedly that Washington had no problem with the European force but that planning for any separate military operations must be carried out under the auspices of NATO.

---

Russia Urges Alternative to U.S. Missile Shield

Friday, February 2, 2001
International Herald Tribune
Elizabeth Olson
http://www.iht.com/articles/9477.htm

GENEVA Pressing a campaign against plans by the Bush administration to build a national missile defense, the Russian foreign minister, Igor Ivanov, urged the other nuclear powers Thursday to work together to find an alternative.

Mr. Ivanov made his case to the United Nations Conference on Disarmament, a 66-nation negotiating forum on arms control based in Geneva, one day after President George W. Bush called the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.

But whether the two presidents discussed the issue of national missile defense has not been disclosed.

The 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty bars such a system, which the Bush administration says it wants to build to protect the United States against attacks by so-called rogue nations.

In his remarks, Mr. Ivanov laid out Russian proposals to preserve the treaty, such as establishing a joint center in Moscow to exchange missile-launch data and "a broad international cooperation, open to all states, in the area of theater missile defense."

After his speech, Mr. Ivanov left for Bern, where he was expected to request the dismissal of the case against Pavel Borodin, a Russian official who is being held in New York on a Swiss arrest warrant for allegedly taking tens of millions of dollars in kickbacks from two Swiss companies that renovated Kremlin buildings.

Mr. Putin raised Mr. Borodin's situation in his telephone conversation with Mr. Bush, expressing hope for a solution to the politically sensitive case.

Mr. Borodin, who headed the Kremlin's property-management office under Boris Yeltsin when he was the president, is being held by the United States while Swiss officials prepare to extradite him to Geneva for questioning.

Swiss officials have been resisting efforts to free Mr. Borodin.

------

Russia Says U.S. Antimissile Plan Means an Arms Race

February 6, 2001
New York Times
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/06/world/06RUSS.html?pagewanted=all
http://www.herald.com/content/today/news/national/digdocs/086684.htm

MOSCOW, Feb. 5 - Two days after American officials told their European counterparts that the United States intended to go ahead and develop a national missile shield - but only after extensive consultations - Russia responded today with a sober warning that it is ready to resort to a new arms race to ensure that its strategic rocket forces will not be undermined.

At the same time, President Vladimir V. Putin was said to be preparing a diplomatic offensive to meet the leaders of two of the so-called rogue nations whose ballistic missiles are of greatest concern to Washington.

President Mohammad Khatami of Iran is expected in Moscow next month for discussions about trade and military cooperation, and diplomats here and in Tehran said the two leaders would discuss ways to control the spread of ballistic missile technology. The United States has expressed longstanding concerns about Russian assistance to Iran's ballistic missile program.

Then, in late April, diplomats said, the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, is expected to come to Moscow, which would be his longest-distance diplomatic visit to date. Mr. Putin made a surprise visit to the North Korean capital last summer and opened negotiations to persuade Mr. Kim to give up his quest to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile that could threaten Japan and the United States.

Mr. Kim has offered to forgo further ballistic missile development in return for Western assistance in launching civilian satellites, but his statements have yet to be set down in any binding accord.

As Mr. Putin was preparing his diplomatic moves, Defense Minister Igor D. Sergeyev said today that Russia was making contingency plans to respond to the Bush administration's antimissile plans. He said Russia was not planning a new missile buildup, which it cannot afford, but "asymmetrical" technologies that would penetrate any missile shield.

"We had three mighty programs to counteract asymmetrically the national missile defense systems of the United States during the period of Reagan's Star Wars," he said.

He told the Interfax news agency that "a lot of money was invested in those programs" before they were abandoned at the end of the cold war. "But we still have them," he added, "and can take them up again."

Marshal Sergeyev, the former commander of Russian strategic rocket forces, labeled the American antimissile proposal "son of Star Wars," and predicted, in remarks to the visiting Swedish defense minister, Bjorn von Sydow, that the Bush administration would not be able to persuade its allies to abandon "the entire system of agreements, which has led to strategic stability in the world" and to support American actions that would cause "those agreements to be scrapped."

The defense minister's statements and Mr. Putin's diplomacy were another effort by Russia to play on the deep skepticism that already exists in Europe over the United States' determination to rearrange the strategic landscape. An American national missile shield would violate the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, which the Bush administration wants to amend and which Moscow now calls the "cornerstone of strategic stability."

Russia is promoting its own proposal to make further deep cuts in the nuclear arsenals, while cooperating with Europe and the United States to develop regional missile defenses that could be brought to bear against threatening states.

By signaling his plans to meet the leaders of two of the three nations about which Washington is most concerned, Mr. Putin was positioning himself to play a self-interested role in trying to address the post-cold- war security concerns on which the Bush administration has centered its national security strategy. Russia's diplomatic campaign will play out over several months in advance of the meeting of leaders of the largest industrial countries, in July in Genoa, where Mr. Bush will make a diplomatic debut.

Speaking in Munich on Sunday, Mr. Putin's national security assistant, Sergei B. Ivanov, argued that "restraining the so-called rogue nations - to use the American terminology - may be carried out more effectively from the standpoint of both cost and effectiveness by means of a common political effort." He added, "The situation in North Korean is the obvious example, which a year ago seemed much worse than it does today."

Mr. Ivanov's remarks followed those on Saturday by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who sought to allay European concerns by offering to help extend any antimissile shield to Europe. He also pledged that the Bush administration would undertake extensive consultations with its allies and with Russia before making any decision to pull out of the 1972 treaty.

Though Mr. Rumsfeld seemed satisfied that he had given European leaders a reasoned set of arguments that the United States is seeking no advantage in pursuing missile defenses and that it is determined to be the master of its own security, a number of senior Republican members of Congress worried aloud on the return flight to Washington that the United States was isolating itself while driving Europe and Russia closer together.

In Washington today, the former NATO secretary general, Javier Solana, who is now the foreign policy chief of the European Union, said that while the United States had the "right to deploy" an antimissile shield, doing so "has consequences that go far beyond" putting such a system in place.

Before meeting Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser to President Bush, Mr. Solana told reporters, "We have to start talking, and I hope whatever is done is beneficial to the alliance and to the stability of the world."

Russia has asserted that if the United States ultimately withdraws from the 1972 treaty, all of the strategic arms accords negotiated over the last 30 years will become invalid because they are based on the common principle of prohibiting an arms race in defensive weapons. American officials have repeatedly asserted that an antimissile system of 100 interceptors initially would not be directed at or effective against Russia's arsenal of 3,000 or more strategic delivery systems. But the Russian military establishment continues to express doubt that any American antimissile shield would remain a limited system.

Konstantin V. Cherevkov, a senior missile scientist at the Russian Space Academy, wrote last week in a newspaper commentary that "Russia considers the American position deceptive."

"There is reason to believe that the fielding of national antiballistic missile infrastructure would allow for a subsequent increase in its capabilities, to a level that would fully block our retaliatory capability," he wrote. ---

-----

Russia Dismisses U.S. Missile Plan

February 6, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Russia-US-ABM.html
http://us.f23.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login?.rand=1mmucj88me9jj

MOSCOW (AP) -- Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev dismissed a proposed U.S. national missile defense as ineffective, saying that it could easily be defeated by the old Soviet technologies developed in the 1980s to oppose Ronald Reagan's Star Wars plan.

``We had three mighty programs to asymmetrically counteract U.S. national missile defenses during Reagan's 'Star Wars,''' Sergeyev was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.

He didn't give details, but said that the Soviet Union had spent enough money on the programs to take them beyond the stage of research and development at the moment when they were halted.

``We still have them and can take them up again,'' Sergeyev said Monday.

Such methods could include adding more warheads to Russia's new single-warhead Topol-M missile or use of decoy warheads to confuse defenders.

Sergeyev said U.S. faith in its defense concept was misplaced.

``The Americans may regard these systems as unique, but we do not share their opinion,'' he said. ``These are really complex technologies, but complex technologies, as a rule, are not reliable.''

Sergeyev added that the Russian military could offer its U.S. counterparts proof that missile defense ``wouldn't give absolute confidence in its inviolability.''

``On the contrary, it will trigger a new spiral in the arms race and ruin the existing system of arms control,'' Sergeyev said.

China on Tuesday also criticized the systems as a threat to international stability and arms control efforts. Expressing China's ``serious concern,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi warned that missile defenses ``will have a far-reaching and extensive negative impact on the global and regional strategic balance and stability.''

Such systems ``go against the trend of the times and be detrimental to international disarmament and arms control efforts,'' Sun said at a twice-weekly media briefing in Beijing.

Moscow and China are the leading critics of U.S. proposals to modify the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to allow for the deployment of a nationwide defense. U.S. officials say one is needed against threat from countries such as North Korea and Iraq.

Beijing worries that system could blunt its limited nuclear deterrent. It also fears a more limited theater missile defense for U.S. allies in East Asia could frustrate China's attempts to bring Taiwan under its control.

President Vladimir Putin has told the new U.S. administration that Moscow expects the United States to abide by the ABM treaty.

U.S. officials have dismissed the objections. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Saturday that calling the proposed modifications a threat to arms control was ``off the mark.''

Rumsfeld insisted that the U.S. system would be too limited in scope to devalue the deterrent value of Russia's arsenal, which includes thousands of nuclear weapons.

--------

The Indecisive President

Tuesday, February 6, 2001
By Masha Lipman,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A30979-2001Feb5?language=printer

MOSCOW -- Russian President Vladimir Putin is generally regarded in the West as a strong leader, determined to manage his country with a firm hand. That seems to be a principal consideration in U.S. policy toward Russia: whether he is too strong -- a virtual autocrat.

But at the end of Putin's first year in power, there's another way of looking at his regime. It is, I believe, characterized less by authoritarianism than by a profound and harmful indecisiveness.

Putin walks and talks confidently enough, to be sure, and he has built up unprecedented public approval. He is so popular (76 percent trust him, according to the most recent poll) that no political party would take the risk of calling itself the opposition. He has made the powerful business tycoons compliant and the unruly governors obsequious. He has gone a long way toward destroying the independent media company Media-Most. This does indeed make him look authoritarian.

But does Putin have any idea of what he wants to do with the immense power he has accumulated -- of how he wants Russia to evolve? Instead of exercising his will to make up for lost time and speed badly needed reforms, Putin has avoided making decisions; he ducks the hard choices.

In the meantime, elements in the Russian establishment jockey for power. Among the top military brass, for example, the conflict between the defense minister and the chief of the general staff has gone on for months. Their argument is over strategic missiles vs. conventional weapons.

For a while it seemed that Putin would fire one or the other of the combatants -- military reform was ostensibly among his primary goals. Yet he invariably pretends there is no conflict and refuses to take sides.

Meanwhile, on Putin's liberal economic team, an impassioned battle over the strategy for economic reform rages in broad daylight. Veteran reformer Anatoly Chubais quarrels with the president's economic adviser, Andrei Illarionov, over restructuring the electric energy monopoly. In December they got into a TV debate so emotional that the anchorman had to get up from his seat and spend a good 10 minutes trying unsuccessfully to pacify them.

This may have made for good television but it did nothing to clarify the government's goals in reforming its gigantic electric company, or to tell people just who has the ultimate authority in making such decisions. President Putin sat out the whole thing.

Last month Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov announced that Russia would not make a debt payment due in January to the Paris Club of creditor countries. Illarionov responded with vehement public criticism. Putin made a general statement that debts should be paid, but not at the expense of the government's social obligations. He did not say how these two demands might be reconciled or when the Paris Club could expect to receive its money.

In an even more striking example of indecision, Putin recently withdrew from the Duma amendments to the Russian criminal procedure law aimed at strengthening human rights -- amendments that he himself had introduced. It is believed he pulled them back after meeting with the chief prosecutor and the head of the state security service.

The Kremlin staff itself is divided into two camps, one made up of former aides to Boris Yeltsin, the other of Putin's former colleagues from the Leningrad KGB. After a year in office Putin has not fully opted for one or the other camp in many spheres of government. He did fire his energy minister yesterday, but he almost never expresses his preferences in the various struggles going on around him. He thus drives all conflicting parties to believe he is on their side. All of them pledge allegiance to the president, but in the meantime use secret levers and roundabout ways to pursue their own goals.

Putin's vacillation proved fatal during the Kursk submarine disaster, when he failed to quickly accept proffered foreign aid. Afterward he pretended not to have noticed that his top military commanders had either been unaware of the state of their own rescue equipment or had lied to their commander in chief. They got away with their misinformation and, seeking not to be held responsible for the deaths of 119 sailors, claimed without evidence that the tragedy was the result of a collision with a NATO submarine. Putin chose not to comment.

There are different theories about the causes of Putin's indecision. He may cherish the seeming consensus, for in spite of all the overt disputes and covert conflicts, prominent political figures stop short of criticizing the president. Or it may be that on many issues Putin genuinely doesn't know whose side he is on.

Whatever the causes, Putin's irresolution is damaging for Russia. As each group seeks to turn things its own way, the country's unmanageability grows. Concerns about Putin's KGB instincts have risen over the past year, but in fact he hardly looks like a Russian Pinochet. He has not displayed a taste for that dictator's bloody methods, nor does he have the clarity of purpose or will to implement them. In today's Russia the danger of disorder and government inefficiency is more imminent than the threat of authoritarianism.

The writer is deputy editor of Itogi magazine, which is owned by Media-Most.

-------- taiwan

Nuke plant talks bog down in Taiwan

2/6/2001
InfoBeat News
http://us.f23.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login?.rand=1mmucj88me9jj

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) - Negotiations over resuming construction of a nuclear plant became bogged down Tuesday as powerful opposition lawmakers insisted that the government restart the project before talks continue.

The feud over the plant, which the government wanted to scrap, had appeared to be close to a settlement.

Officials sent a new proposal to the opposition on Tuesday morning, offering to reinstate the $5.4 billion project with conditions. But hours later, the opposition complained that the proposal failed to say that the government was following a resolution the legislature passed demanding that construction begin immediately on the plant, one-third complete.

The government's proposal also said that lawmakers chosen in year-end elections should be able to decide whether new funds could be spent to complete the project. This would effectively give lawmakers the power to cancel the plant.

But opposition lawmakers have insisted that once the project is reinstated, it must be completed to avoid wasting more of taxpayers' money.

-------- u.s. nuc weapons

Missile Defense Test Planned

February 6, 2001
New York Times
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Missile-Defense.html
http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/02/06/missile.defense.ap/index.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- While President Bush's national security team ponders missile defense options, the Pentagon office in charge of the project may have a first test of a critical new component as early as next month, officials said Tuesday.

The Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization also is planning another attempt to shoot down a mock nuclear missile in space, probably in May or June, using the same technologies that produced a spectacular failure last July, the officials said. Two of the last three attempted missile intercepts failed.

Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. Craig Quigley said Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has met three times with Ronald Kadish, the Air Force general who runs the missile defense office. Rumsfeld gave Kadish no indication he should change direction. ``His guidance to Gen. Kadish is, `press on,''' Quigley said.

Aside from the technical issues yet to be resolved, Russian and Chinese officials offered reminders Tuesday that whatever the design of a U.S. national missile defense, it will be controversial.

In Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi warned that American missile defense ``will have a far-reaching and extensive negative impact on the global and regional strategic balance and stability.''

In Moscow, Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev asserted that a U.S. missile defense could easily be defeated by technologies the former Soviet Union developed in the 1980s in response to President Reagan's Star Wars plan that was a more ambitious attempt to defend against all-out missile attacks.

``We had three mighty programs to asymmetrically counteract U.S. national missile defenses during Reagan's 'Star Wars,''' Sergeyev was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency. He gave no details. Although the programs were halted, ``We still have them and can take them up again,'' he said.

At a European security conference in Germany last Saturday, Rumsfeld said President Bush intends to deploy a national missile defense. But first Rumsfeld is reviewing the status of the project the Bush administration inherited from the Clinton administration and is considering how to fulfill Bush's pledge to provide a missile shield that would cover not only the United States but also its allies.

Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., said Tuesday he believes the administration must clarify what kind of missile defense it wants, so Congress can assess it. ``We are talking about trillions of dollars difference,'' depending on how expansive it is, he said.

Among the administration's options are to supplement a ground-based missile defense system -- as is currently in testing -- with a sea-based system which could provide wider coverage but will take longer to deploy. The ground-based system, as foreseen by the Clinton administration, would protect all 50 U.S. states against a small-scale attack by missiles with relatively unsophisticated decoys.

Bush has indicated he wants a more robust system, although that raises technical, political and financial questions. Rumsfeld hinted that decisions on how to proceed are unlikely for at least several weeks.

In the meantime, Kadish's office is preparing for the first flight test of a prototype for the rocket boosters that would be based in Alaska and would carry aloft the warhead-busting ``kill vehicle,'' which is designed to find its missile target in space and destroy the target by slamming into it at high speed.

Together, the rocket booster and the kill vehicle form the ``weapon'' in a missile defense system.

Up to now the Pentagon has been using an older booster as a stand-in for the one being developed by Alliant Techsystems and Orbus. In last July's intercept attempt, the booster failed to send the required electronic signal to make the kill vehicle separate from the booster. So the kill vehicle's ability to perform the crucial final tasks -- finding its target and maneuvering into its path -- could not be tested.

Last September, Kadish told Congress that delays in producing the new booster ``threaten to be that major problem that could significantly impede'' progress toward a deployable missile defense.

In a test tentatively set for March or April, the prototype booster is to be launched westward from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., into the Pacific Ocean. It will not attempt to intercept a missile.

Another such test is planned for summer, and by early next year the Pentagon hopes to launch the new booster from the Army's Kwajalein missile range in the central Pacific eastward toward the U.S. West Coast -- a trajectory that would give project engineers a better assessment of the effects of the Earth's rotation on the flights of both the interceptor missile and the missile used as the target.

---

Pentagon moving ahead on missile shield

02/06/2001
USA Today
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-02-06-missile2.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - While President Bush's national security team ponders missile defense options, the Pentagon office in charge of the project may have a first test of a critical new component as early as next month, officials said Tuesday. The Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization also is planning another attempt to shoot down a mock nuclear missile in space, probably in May or June, using the same technologies that produced a spectacular failure last July, the officials said. Two of the last three attempted missile intercepts failed. The officials, speaking on condition they not be identified, said test preparations are going ahead in the absence of orders to the contrary from Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

Rumsfeld has been briefed in recent days by Ronald Kadish, the Air Force general who runs the missile defense project office.

Aside from the technical issues yet to be resolved, Russian and Chinese officials offered reminders Tuesday that whatever the design of a U.S. national missile defense, it will be controversial.

In Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi warned that American missile defense "will have a far-reaching and extensive negative impact on the global and regional strategic balance and stability."

In Moscow, Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev asserted that a U.S. missile defense could easily be defeated by technologies the former Soviet Union developed in the 1980s in response to President Reagan's Star Wars plan that was a more ambitious attempt to defend against all-out missile attacks.

"We had three mighty programs to asymmetrically counteract U.S. national missile defenses during Reagan's 'Star Wars,"' Sergeyev was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency. He gave no details. Although the programs were halted, "We still have them and can take them up again," he said.

At a European security conference in Germany last Saturday, Rumsfeld said President Bush intends to deploy a national missile defense. But first Rumsfeld is reviewing the status of the project the Bush administration inherited from the Clinton administration and is considering how to fulfill Bush's pledge to provide a missile shield that would cover not only the United States but also its allies.

Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., said Tuesday he believes the administration must clarify what kind of missile defense it wants, so Congress can assess it. "We are talking about trillions of dollars difference," depending on how expansive it is, he said.

Among the administration's options are to supplement a ground-based missile defense system - as is currently in testing - with a sea-based system which could provide wider coverage but will take longer to deploy. The ground-based system, as foreseen by the Clinton administration, would protect all 50 U.S. states against a small-scale attack by missiles with relatively unsophisticated decoys.

Bush has indicated he wants a more robust system, although that raises technical, political and financial questions. Rumsfeld hinted that decisions on how to proceed are unlikely for at least several weeks.

In the meantime, Kadish's office is preparing for the first flight test of a prototype for the rocket boosters that would be based in Alaska and would carry aloft the warhead-busting "kill vehicle," which is designed to find its missile target in space and destroy the target by slamming into it at high speed.

Together, the rocket booster and the kill vehicle form the "weapon" in a missile defense system.

Up to now the Pentagon has been using an older booster as a stand-in for the one being developed by Alliant Techsystems and Orbus. In last July's intercept attempt, the booster failed to send the required electronic signal to make the kill vehicle separate from the booster. So the kill vehicle's ability to perform the crucial final tasks - finding its target and maneuvering into its path - could not be tested.

Last September, Kadish told Congress that delays in producing the new booster "threaten to be that major problem that could significantly impede" progress toward a deployable missile defense.

In a test tentatively set for March or April, the prototype booster is to be launched westward from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., into the Pacific Ocean. It will not attempt to intercept a missile.

Another such test is planned for summer, and by early next year the Pentagon hopes to launch the new booster from the Army's Kwajalein missile range in the central Pacific eastward toward the U.S. West Coast - a trajectory that would give project engineers a better assessment of the effects of the Earth's rotation on the flights of both the interceptor missile and the missile used as the target.

---

Biden: Missile defense could spark arms race

02/06/2001
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-02-06-missile.htm
http://us.f23.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login?.rand=1mmucj88me9jj
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Europe-Defense.html?pagewanted=all

WASHINGTON (AP) - A senior Senate Democrat predicted Tuesday that China will make a "gigantic leap" in its arsenal of long-range nuclear weapons if the Bush administration goes ahead with a missile defense program.

Sen. Joseph R. Biden of Delaware said that in a chain reaction, India would respond with its own nuclear buildup, causing Pakistan, in turn, to do the same, while Japan "will go nuclear."

"That doesn't make one feel better," Biden said at a Capitol Hill news conference. And, he asked rhetorically, "Do you think the Soviets are going to give up their SS-18 missiles?" referring to a provision of the 1992 START II agreement with the United States.

Biden, senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he could support a limited U.S. missile defense, coupled with a deep cutback in the U.S. arsenal. But President Bush and his top advisers have spread confusion by delaying a decision on the kind of program they would undertake, he said.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell are talking about different programs, Biden said. "The administration has to decide what they want to do."

The options include a national missile defense, a limited one, and a defense against accidental launches by another country, Biden said. "We are talking about trillions of dollars difference.

"The train has not yet left the station," Biden said of the debate he hopes to encourage in the United States, where, he said, most are uninformed about the cost and potential risk of the Bush administration policy.

Even so, the European Union's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, and NATO's secretary-general, Lord Robertson, acknowledged Monday the United States cannot be deterred from deploying a national missile defense despite misgivings among the allies and Russia.

"The United States has the right to deploy," Solana said before meetings with Powell and Condoleezza Rice, Bush's national security assistant.

Were there any doubt, Powell told Solana that "we intend to move forward" on the program, according to State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.

And in Brussels, Belgium, where NATO has its headquarters, Robertson said Europe must bow to the inevitability of U.S. deployment of an anti-missile defense system. What's more, Robertson denied there are any divisions in the alliance on the issue.

"I think people wanted to find a split between America and Europe on the issue of missile defense," Robertson said after meeting with the European Union's political and security committee.

"The United States has made it clear that it intends to deploy some effective missile defense system and there has to be an acceptance that that was the decision made in the election campaign and we should treat it seriously and with respect," the former British defense minister said.

On an equally touchy issue, Europe's determination to create its own military corps to respond to crises, Solana was unyielding. He said the principle was established a decade ago when Bush's father was president and reaffirmed several times at summits in the Clinton years.

"We don't have to create a fuss about something that is not new," he said over breakfast in a hotel near the White House.

Later, Boucher said, "We just haven't reached full agreement within NATO and between NATO and the European Union on how some of these mechanisms should work."

Boucher said Powell wanted to know whether the force would be a complement to NATO and whether the Europeans would pay for it. He said Powell wanted to make sure "that we not try to duplicate the capabilities of NATO."

The two troublesome issues were aired at a two-day conference in Munich, Germany, last weekend amid signs the United States and its allies were being driven apart.

"These are very manageable problems," Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., said after the Conference on Security Policy. "We ought to relax and talk it through."

Other observers were not so sanguine even though Rumsfeld offered to help the Europeans with a missile defense while the Bush administration proceeds with trying to erect a shield against what it says are potential threats from North Korea, Iran and Iraq.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's national security assistant, Sergei B. Ivanov, said a vast missile defense program would undermine international stability and touch off an arms race, including one in outer space. Europeans also have been critical.

Solana, taking a softer tone, said Monday the Europeans want to get involved in a dialogue with the Bush administration about the program. And, in a conciliatory gesture, the Spanish diplomat said the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which prohibited a national missile defense, was between the United States and the Soviet Union, not Europe, and was revised in 1974. "It's not a Bible," he said.

Indeed, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Bush "intends to pursue that matter in consultation with our allies. He believes it's a very effective way to protect America and our allies."

Powell indicated at his Senate confirmation hearing last month that the administration would approach Russia about changing the treaty to fit U.S. plans and would consider reducing the U.S. arsenal of offensive nuclear weapons.

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Defense Veteran Chosen as No. 2 at Pentagon

February 6, 2001
New York Times
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/06/politics/06DEFE.html

WASHINGTON, Feb. 5 - Paul D. Wolfowitz found himself at the center of a political firestorm eight years ago when as under secretary of defense for policy he drafted a document calling on the United States to use its military might as the lone superpower to prevent the rise of strategic competitors.

Foreign capitals denounced the notion, and the first Bush administration quietly excised it from its post- cold-war strategy, but the episode cemented Dr. Wolfowitz's reputation as a conservative intellectual known for hawkish views on everything from Russia to Iraq to national missile defense.

Today, President Bush announced that he intended to return Dr. Wolfowitz to the Pentagon, this time as deputy secretary of defense, responsible for managing the Pentagon's sprawling bureaucracy and, perhaps more than his predecessors, involving himself in foreign policy. Dr. Wolfowitz's nomination requires Senate confirmation.

"Wolfowitz will be stronger from a policy point of view than many of his predecessors," said Lawrence J. Korb, vice president of the Council on Foreign Relations and former assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration. "He's very close to the vice president and the president. A lot of people who've had that job have never met the president before."

Dr. Wolfowitz, now 57, rejoins a cadre of senior national security officials returning to office after eight years in political exile.

As under secretary of defense for policy from 1989 to 1993 - essentially the Pentagon's third-ranking position - he worked closely with Dick Cheney, now the vice president, and Gen. Colin L. Powell, now secretary of state. Dr. Wolfowitz was particularly instrumental during the Persian Gulf war, bolstering Mr. Cheney's case for an aggressive response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and managing sensitive diplomacy with key allies like Israel.

Dr. Wolfowitz has also over the years worked closely with his new boss, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld. When Mr. Rumsfeld took over Senator Bob Dole's flailing presidential campaign in 1996, he tapped Dr. Wolfowitz as the campaign's foreign policy adviser - a role he reprised last year as one of "the Vulcans," Mr. Bush's closest advisers in that field.

He also served as a member of the Rumsfeld Commission, the panel that in 1998 warned that the United States was increasingly vulnerable to attack by long-range ballistic missiles from countries like North Korea, Iran and Iraq. The commission's report became one of the most influential documents in American military planning.

Dr. Wolfowitz had himself been a candidate for the top job at the Pentagon, as well as that at the Central Intelligence Agency. However, some in the Bush transition team questioned whether his intellectual rigor and academic approach would prove ineffective in reining in the Pentagon's bureaucracy - an important part of the deputy's job.

There is no question, however, that he brings considerable experience to the job. Mr. Korb referred to Dr. Wolfowitz as "the most qualified person nominated to be No. 2 at the Pentagon."

Born in Brooklyn and raised in Ithaca, N.Y., Dr. Wolfowitz studied mathematics and chemistry at Cornell University and later earned a master's degree and a doctorate from the University of Chicago in political science and economics.

From 1973 to 1977, he worked in the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, serving for a time as a special assistant during the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, or SALT. He later served as an assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs and as ambassador to Indonesia during the Reagan administration before joining the first Bush administration.

Dr. Wolfowitz became dean of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in 1994.

He is known for sharp, hawkish views. In 1998, he told a Senate committee that the United States should arm opponents of Saddam Hussein and provide air cover, if necessary, as they liberated the country. "Anti-tank weapons, in particular, could have a powerful equalizing effect," he said at the time.

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URANIUM AND YOU

01/02/06
tompaine.com
http://www.tompaine.com/print.php3?id=1863

How Many Birth Defects and Cancers Should Be Allowed in the Name of National Security? Arjun Makhijani is president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Takoma Park, Maryland.

It's no secret that nuclear weapon states have harmed many people, and particularly weapons production workers, in the name of national security. But how this slow attack on health and the environment was carried out is still largely unknown and little understood. Through extensive research during the last two decades, a picture of the damage has begun to emerge from the fog of denial and propaganda in only one nuclear weapon state -- the United States.

That picture is far from reassuring: The government and its contractors deliberately emphasized production at the expense of health, routinely violating health and safety regulations, deliberately misleading workers so as not to arouse concerns or give hazardous duty pay when both were clearly warranted.

Sloppy, incompetent science was a routine part of this dismal picture. The Department of Energy has admitted that, until 1989, no effort was made to calculate workers' internal radiation doses -- even though many were inhaling and ingesting radioactive materials. IEER's work on data from the Fernald plant near Cincinnati, Ohio, where uranium for plutonium production reactors was processed, showed that in the 1950s and early 1960s, most workers were in fact overexposed due to uranium inhalation. Many probably also suffered kidney damage due to the toxicity of uranium as a heavy metal. Yet officials reassured them that they were not being harmed.

As such information has become public, workers and their advocates have demanded justice. The United States recently passed legislation giving most injured radiation workers the right to apply for compensation and medical treatment.

T