------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Tiniest of Particles Pokes Big Hole in Physics Theory
China and India discuss nuclear buildup
Australia's N-bomb plan
Abraham Says Billions Needed for Weapons Plants
Ill Gulf vets contaminated partners, report suggests
Gulf War vet's widow stuns politicians with tales of neglect
Armor Piercing Incendiary [DU] 30mm Ammunition
Powell to NATO
Bush Takes First Step to Shrink Arsenal of Nuclear Warheads
Bush to Review U.S. Nuclear Arsenal
Bush set to review U.S. nuclear arsenal for possible cuts
Bush Under Pressure to Boost Defense Spending
Bush aims for nuclear cuts Campaign pledge
Bush to order review of U.S. nuclear arsenal
Nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan
Report Faults Oversight in National Lab Studies

MILITARY
A Poor Sale
In Unruly Colombia, a Mother Hopes for Missing Son's Return
Four in Bangkok Charged in New Jersey Heroin Seizure
U.N. Drug Chief, Under Attack, Says He's Cast as the Outsider
Police in Eminem Drugs Video Probe
Sanctions That Misfire
Koreas agree on historic project
Disaster predicted on Guinea relief
U.S. PROPOSES SEARCH OF 2 CRASH SITES
SA-18s to North Korea
Pentagon Study May Bring Big Shake-Up
Barr would restore U.S. license to kill
U.S. Sub Hits Boat Off Honolulu
Sub in Crash in Fleets' Backbone

OTHER
Energy Bill Focuses on Domestic Production
Russia Vows to Start Destroying Chemical Arms
Pipeline Safety Bill Approved by Senate
McCall Faults Pataki's Record on Cleanup of Toxic Waste
Gastronomes Have a Beef With a Renouncing Chef
Court Blocks a Water Plant in Bronx Park
HORSESHOE-CRAB REFUGE
Saving Connecticut
Working with the enemy to feed the world
W.T.O. SETS DATE FOR MEETING
Man Says Suffolk Patrolman Made Him Undress
Public Lives: Visiting May Be Hazardous. . .
Mediation and the Police
SPY AGENCY REBORN
Special forces spied on crowds during Olympics
TERRORISM RECORD
Bin Laden trial by Islamists proposed

ACTIVISTS
Foreign Media Role Cited in Beijing Immolation
Hong Kong Will Check on Falun Gong
China Said to Punish Unionist
Vietnam Admits to More Unrest Among Minorities in Highlands
MAD COW PROTEST
Students, police clash in Ivorian capital


-------- NUCLEAR

Tiniest of Particles Pokes Big Hole in Physics Theory

February 9, 2001
New York Times
By JAMES GLANZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/09/science/09PHYS.html?printpage=yes

UPTON, N.Y., Feb. 8 - New observations of subatomic particles do not appear to fit into the standard theories explaining the matter and forces that shape the universe, scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory reported today.

The unexpected findings, made with a particle accelerator at the laboratory, may be the first glimpse of a previously unseen kind of matter. If the findings are confirmed, the heart of subatomic theory, called the Standard Model, will be "insufficient to describe our universe," said Dr. Thomas B. Kirk, Brookhaven's associate director for high energy and nuclear physics.

Though the results announced today throw cherished ideas into question, particle physicists have been waiting for such a development for years because it opens a door into new worlds of theory and experimentation.

The scientists, from a dozen institutions in Germany, Japan, Russia and the United States, cautioned in interviews and at a news conference here today that there was a slim chance the results were a statistical fluke and that the Standard Model, which has held up for 30 years, would remain unchallenged.

But they said the experiments, which involved painstaking measurements of about a billion rare particles called muons (pronounced MEW-ons), had so far determined with 99 percent probability that the accepted theory had been breached. They said they were already gathering and analyzing more data that could eliminate the one chance in a hundred that their results were a fluke.

Muons are subatomic cousins of electrons. In the experiments described today, physicists measured muons' responses to magnetic fields. The results showed a large departure from predictions, based on the Standard Model, of the way muons wobbled in a powerful magnetic field, Dr. Kirk said.

Dr. Gerald Gabrielse, a professor and chairman of the physics department at Harvard University, called the results "tremendously exciting" because of the possible explanations for the discrepancy.

"It could lead to a whole deeper understanding of how reality is put together," Dr. Gabrielse said. Among the leading possible reasons for the difference, physicists said, would be the existence of previously undetected particles with strange properties affecting the way the muons wobbled, or precessed, in the magnetic field.

In the Brookhaven experiment, called E821, muons created by a particle accelerator known as the Alternating Gradient Synchroton were injected into a powerful magnetic field and the frequency of their wobble was measured precisely.

Physicists have long known that the wobble rate is affected by the properties of space itself. Under the laws of quantum mechanics, which rule the subatomic realm, apparently empty space is actually a sea of what scientists call "virtual particles" that briefly appear and disappear and can interact with muons.

The Standard Model shows scientists how to calculate the effect that all known particles in that sea should have on the wobble frequency; those predicted shifts have been measured and verified with great precision. But the new measurements differ from those predictions, suggesting that previously unknown particles are also lurking in that subatomic sea, said Dr. Lee Roberts, a professor of physics at Boston University who is one of the spokesmen for the experiment.

"This whole experiment is based on measuring the effect of these virtual particles," Dr. Roberts said. "There's a possibility that new particles that haven't been observed could be contributing."

While those particles are not predicted by the Standard Model and have never been seen directly in an experiment, their existence would not surprise theorists. Despite the model's success in explaining decades of experimental data, theorists believe it has logical and aesthetic flaws and that its complicated structure is unlikely to represent natural law at its most fundamental level.

To solve those problems, some physicists have developed a grander and much more speculative theory called supersymmetry. That theory solves many of those problems, by positing the existence of new particles, called supersymmetric partners, for each of the known particles.

Those partners are predicted to be relatively massive for subatomic particles and interact weakly with ordinary matter, making them difficult both to produce and to detect. But their existence could account for the unexplained shift in the wobble frequency, said Dr. William J. Marciano, a theorist at Brookhaven.

"The most natural meaning of this kind of indication," Dr. Marciano said, "would be superymmetry." The observed change in the frequency, he said, "fits supersymmetry like a glove."

Dr. Frank Wilczek, a physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that the new result, though not statistically airtight, did mesh with what he called other indirect suggestions that supersymmetry might be the correct way to extend and shore up the Standard Model.

"It would mean that in describing the world, we would need to add to the equations of the Standard Model," Dr. Wilczek said. "And those additions make the whole thing much prettier, more unified and more beautiful."

If the Brookhaven experiments are an indirect indication that supersymmetric particles exist, then the size of the observed effect suggests that they could be produced and detected directly in a new generation of particle accelerators that will soon begin collecting data, several theorists said.

The first new machine to go into operation will be the upgraded Tevatron accelerator at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, outside Chicago, which will begin collecting data this spring.

"Certainly at the highest energy machines they will look in these energy ranges for these new particles," said Dr. Vernon Hughes, a Yale physicist who is a spokesman for the experiment.

Theorists said that they would also explore other ways of explaining the data, like the possibility that particles believed to be elementary and indivisible are made of smaller entities, and that the structure of space itself may be more complex than mainstream physics assumes.

The new results were presented today at a scientific colloquium by Dr. William M. Morse, a Brookhaven physicist who is a member of the experimental team and its resident spokesman.

The experiments begin when protons, electrically charged particles normally found in atomic nuclei, stream at nearly the speed of light and smash into a piece of nickel.

From the debris created by those collisions, physicists extract bunches containing thousands of muons. The scientists chose muons because, being more massive than electrons, they are more likely to interact with the relatively massive particles predicted by supersymmetry.

To make the measurements, the scientists relied on a quantum-mechanical property, called spin, that is shared by muons and other particles. Though the particles do not really spin, they do share some properties with an ordinary top. If the top's spin axis is not exactly vertical, it wobbles, or precesses, just as the muons do in a strong magnetic field.

The Brookhaven scientists observed precisely the frequency with which the muons wobbled, leading to the results presented today. Dr. Morse said that the team had already made observations of several billion muons, but had finished analyzing the results from only about a billion of them.

By coincidence, Dr. Hughes studied under Isidor I. Rabi, the Nobel Prize winner who uttered a memorable line when the muon was a surprise discovery in the 1930's.

"Who ordered that?" Professor Rabi asked.

When asked for a corresponding reaction to the new finding, Dr. Hughes thought for a moment and said, "The people who do supersymmetry ordered it."

-------

China and India discuss nuclear buildup

Friday, February 9, 2001
Irish Times
By Miriam Donohoe, Asia Correspondent
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/world/2001/0209/wor6.htm

CHINA: China and India had a second round of talks yesterday aimed at reconciling differences between the two countries over nuclear arms build up.

The talks took place on the same day that a senior India defence official said the country planned to build the third version of its intermediate range ballistic missile, Agni.

A deadline has yet to be set for the project.

The official said that Agni III will obviously be of a higher range and have better capabilities than its predecessor.

Nuclear arms have clouded relations between India and China. Talks on the issue were first launched two years after India staged nuclear tests in 1998.

The two sides, which are also at odds over a border dispute, also discussed regional and global security issues at the daylong meeting.

China has repeatedly asked India to freeze and roll back its nuclear and missile development programmes which it says destabilises the subcontinent. India has said its nuclear tests were prompted by regional threat.

A succession of bilateral visits, including one by President K.R. Narayanan of India last year, have helped improve ties frayed by the nuclear tests. The head of the Chinese parliament, Mr Li Peng, was in India last month, the highest-ranking visitor since the tests.

During Mr Li's trip, the two countries agreed to make faster progress in resolving the 40year-old dispute over Himalayan territory, which is considered central to relations.

China holds about 20 per cent of the disputed Himalayan territory of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh.

This comprises a small area which New Delhi says Pakistan ceded illegally and the Aksai Chin area further to the northeast, which India also claims.

-------- australia

Australia's N-bomb plan

09feb01
Australian News Network
By CAMERON STEWART and LOUISE MILLIGAN
http://news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,1692338%255E421,00.html

THE creation of the Snowy Mountains scheme and the Australian National University were part of secret plans by Australia to build an atomic bomb during the 1940s and 50s, according to a controversial book to be released next week.

Australia's Bid For The Atomic Bomb, by University of Newcastle academic Wayne Reynolds, also argues that the Australian government agreed to allow British nuclear tests at Maralinga because it believed they would lead to Australia acquiring the bomb.

The book, based on recently declassified documents in four continents, seeks to debunk the notion that Australia was merely a passive observer of the nuclear race during the Cold War.

It claims that successive Australian governments, from Curtin to Menzies, aggressively pursued the knowledge and technology required to build a bomb, and that Australia's efforts were stymied only by the US, which eventually cut Canberra off from allied assistance.

Reynolds argues that the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme was originally intended to host inland nuclear power stations that could give Australia the capability to build the bomb:

"The Snowy Mountains scheme was never a vast irrigation project, it was undertaken with nuclear power in mind to drive the industrialisation of Australia and provide weapons to neutralise the fear of the time -- the so-called yellow peril."

The book reveals comments made in 1949 by minister for works and housing Nelson Lemmon, who said the Snowy Mountains scheme was "an endeavour to ensure that Australia does not lag in the race to develop atomic power", and that "the power will be used for defence purposes".

Reynolds argues that the decision to establish the ANU and its Research School of Physical Sciences under Marcus Oliphant was driven primarily by a desire that Australia take a leading role in developing atomic energy. Canberra sought to develop this atomic capability in tandem with Britain, although the closeness of the co-operation between them angered the US, which did not want to see the proliferation of atomic secrets, even to close allies such as Australia.

Reynolds argues Menzies's decision in 1955 to allow British testing at Maralinga was made in the full expectation that Australia would get the bomb.

"Far from being the product of his (Menzies's) desire to please Englishmen, Maralinga was justified in terms of long-term assumptions about Australia's major regional role in empire defence," he writes.

The book also claims the decision in 1955 to build a research reactor at Lucas Heights was based largely on the need for Australia to preserve an atomic weapons option.

It reveals archival papers quoting supply minister Howard Beale as saying the plan to build a reactor was aimed at the large-scale production of power and plutonium, and that the commonwealth would retain control in order "to produce plutonium for military purposes".

Reynolds also reveals the British were deeply concerned that the 1954 Petrov affair could compromise nuclear secrets and derail atomic co-operation with Australia. Canberra's attempts to acquire the bomb foundered in 1957, when the US and Britain renewed close atomic co-operation and decided to exclude third parties such as Australia.

Melbourne University arts faculty dean Stuart Macintyre said Reynolds's book was based on substantial archival research. "It goes beyond earlier accounts of Australian strategy during the period and presents a quite different perspective on domestic politics and the literature of Australian intelligence," he said.

-------- business

Abraham Says Billions Needed for Weapons Plants

Friday, February 9, 2001
WASHINGTON IN BRIEF
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46825-2001Feb8?language=printer

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said yesterday that billions of dollars are needed to repair and modernize the nation's nuclear weapons production plants. "The deterioration of existing facilities is a very serious threat," he told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Another major problem, Abraham said, is keeping the Energy Department's skilled but aging workforce. At the Pantex plant in Texas, where nuclear warheads are produced and dismantled, he said, the average employee is well over 50 years old.

Abraham also said the department now estimates it will take 70 years and from $200 billion to $300 billion to clean up nuclear waste from nuclear bomb-making activities dating to the 1950s.

-------- depleted uranium

Ill Gulf vets contaminated partners, report suggests

Friday, February 9, 2001
The Halifax Herald Limited
By Clare Mellor
http://www.herald.ns.ca/cgi-bin/home/loadmain?2001/02/09+208.raw

The widow of a Persian Gulf War veteran has asked a legislative committee if it can authenticate an American study that found depleted uranium in the semen of several Gulf war veterans from the United States.

"If in fact this is true. . . . this has gone from a theory to fact," Sue Riordon of Yarmouth said Thursday during a presentation to an all-party committee on veterans affairs in Halifax.

Her husband, Terry Riordon, became severely ill after serving in the Persian Gulf War. He died from his illness in April 1999.

Testing on his bones by an independent laboratory showed substantial levels of depleted uranium.

Some scientists suspect the radioactive metal, used in U.S. ammunition, plays a role in the mysterious illnesses suffered by veterans who served in the Gulf and Balkan conflicts.

At least one leading scientist in the field has conjectured that depleted uranium, present in seminal fluid, can be transmitted to sexual partners of veterans.

Ms. Riordon has suspected for some time that the chronic pain she now suffers is related to depleted uranium poisoning.

If it is transmitted by sexual intercourse, she says the health implications for women and children in the Maritimes are enormous.

"We are in a navy city. . . . Ten years ago most (Gulf war veterans) were sexually functional. . . . We could be only beginning to see the problems," she told the committee.

She gave the committee a document that was given to her anonymously, which makes reference to the American study. The document says the study found detectable levels of depleted uranium in the semen of five out of 22 U.S. veterans with shrapnel wounds.

The committee passed a motion requesting that the provincial Department of Health find out if the U.S. study is indeed true.

An independent laboratory in St. John's, Nfld., employed by the Uranium Medical Project, has already found depleted uranium in urine samples from a number of Gulf war veterans from Nova Scotia, Ms. Riordon said.

Labs employed by the Canadian Forces which use a different testing method than the St. John's lab have not found any depleted uranium in veterans' urine or hair samples.

--------

'Today I am ashamed'
Gulf War vet's widow stuns politicians with tales of neglect

February 9th, 2001.
Halifax Herald
By Clare Mellorhttp://www.herald.ns.ca/cgi-bin/home/loadmain?2001/02/09+208.raw

Members of a legislature committee were floored Thursday on hearing from a Yarmouth woman about the treatment Persian Gulf War veterans and their families receive from the federal government.

Sue Riordon, widow of Gulf war veteran Terry Riordon, told the committee meeting in Halifax that many sick veterans in Nova Scotia are living on welfare and being denied proper psychological support and home care.

Most Gulf War veterans receiving a federal pension for illness get a maximum $91 a month, she said.

"At times I have been disappointed (in government) . . . but today I am ashamed," said Mary Ann McGrath, Conservative MLA for Halifax Bedford Basin and a member of the all-party committee on veterans affairs.

Terry Riordon suffered for nine years from a debilitating sickness after he served in the Gulf. When he died in April 1999, he was unable to walk or feed or bathe himself.

Ms. Riordon, Atlantic director of the Canadian Peacekeeping Veterans Association, began fighting Ottawa for adequate financial and medical support for her husband years ago.

Now that he's dead, the 45-year-old mother of two continues the fight on behalf of all sick veterans and their families.

She pleaded with the committee Thursday to take a stand and demand the federal government take better care of its veterans.

The province shoulders the main costs of veterans' care through welfare and the health system, Ms. Riordon said.

She said the province spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on medical care for her husband after military physicians failed to help him and wrongly diagnosed him with epilepsy.

"Why can this province not stand up and say enough is enough?

"Will Nova Scotia be the first to take care of the veterans?"

The committee decided Thursday to write the Veterans Affairs Department and demand an explanation. It will also ask veterans affairs and Defence Department officials to appear before it within several weeks to reply to Ms. Riordon's charges. The committee doesn't have power to force anyone to appear.

About 200 Canadian Gulf War veterans receive federal pensions for illness, but Ms. Riordon said she knows of about 200 in Nova Scotia alone who should receive support.

Cape Breton West MLA Russell MacKinnon, whose family was embroiled in a battle with the military a few years ago, said he has empathy for Ms. Riordon.

"The military seems to push all this under the carpet. . . . Clearly we have a major issue here," said the Liberal MLA.

His nephew, Cpl. Neil MacKinnon, died in a training exercise several years ago in CFB Suffield, Alta. The military claimed he was killed by falling on his own grenade, but his family's two-year search for answers revealed he was accidentally shot in the back of the head first.

Ms. Riordon told the committee that the Veterans Affairs Department must begin to employ veterans to help other vets. She said supports are needed to help spouses and children of Gulf War veterans who have to live with illness daily.

She recounted for the committee how she recently spent several hours at a hospital offering support to the wife of one of the veterans. The man had tried to kill himself with an overdose.

"I was the one they called. There is no one else to call."

--------

Armor Piercing Incendiary [DU] 30mm Ammunition

01/09/99
fas.org
API
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/pgu-14.htm

The 30mm x 173 GAU-8/A ammunition was among the most effective ammunition used in Operation Desert Storm with proven performance against all targets, including tanks, armored and light vehicles. The 30mm lightweight family of ammunition was developed to optimize the air-to-ground mission of the U.S. Army AH-64 Apache helicopter. This ammunition family is also compatible with all 30mm x 113 gun systems.

The PGU-14/B API Armor Piercing Incendiary round has a lightweight body which contains a sub-calibre high density penetrator of Depleted Uranium (DU). In addition to its penetrating capability DU is a natural pyrophoric material which enhances the incendiary effects. Depleted uranium results from the enriching of natural uranium for use in nuclear reactors. Natural uranium is a slightly radioactive metal that is present in most rocks and soils as well as in many rivers and sea water. Natural uranium consists primarily of a mixture of two isotopes (forms) of uranium, Uranium-235 (U235) and Uranium-238 (U238), in the proportion of about 0.7 and 99.3 percent, respectively. Nuclear reactors require U235 to produce energy, therefore, the natural uranium has to be enriched to obtain the isotope U235 by removing a large part of the U238. Uranium-238 becomes DU, which is 0.7 times as radioactive as natural uranium. Since DU has a half-life of 4.5 billion years, there is very little decay of those DU materials. When manufactured as 30mm rounds, each DU projectile contains approximately 4,650 grains [0.66 pounds (lbs)] of extruded DU, alloyed with 0.75 weight percent titanium. The projectile is encased in a 0.8 mm-thick aluminum shell as the final DU round.

Sources and Resources

Depleted Uranium (DU) Ammunition

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/du.htm

-------- russia

Powell to NATO

Embassy Row News and dispatches from the diplomatic corridor.
James Morrison
February 9, 2001
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/world/embassy-200129205858.htm

Secretary of State Colin Powell, meanwhile, is planning a visit to Belgium to meet NATO foreign ministers later this month.

Mr. Powell will attend a Feb. 27 special session of the foreign ministers being organized by NATO Secretary-General George Robertson.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher yesterday said the stop at NATO headquarters in Brussels will be added to a wider trip that will take Mr. Powell to the Middle East and the Persian Gulf.

"He looks forward to meeting with as many NATO foreign ministers as can get there on that day," Mr. Boucher said.

Mr. Powell is expected to meet with European Commission President Romano Prodi the next day.

A NATO official told reporters in Brussels, "We're looking forward to seeing him here. It's a signal of his support."

Although no agenda was available, Mr. Powell and his counterparts are likely to discuss U.S. plans for a missile defense system, European plans for a new defense force and NATO's continued presence in the Balkans.

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

Bush Takes First Step to Shrink Arsenal of Nuclear Warheads

February 9, 2001
New York Times
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/09/world/09DEFE.html?pagewanted=all

WASHINGTON, Feb. 8 - President Bush will order a comprehensive review of the nation's nuclear arsenal, a first step toward the unilateral cuts in warheads and missiles that he promised during last year's campaign, senior military and administration officials said today.

Mr. Bush's order - outlined in one of three military-policy directives to be issued by the White House as soon as Friday - will also underscore the administration's commitment to building a defensive missile shield, the officials said.

Less than a week after Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld tried to ease allies' concerns about such a missile system at a conference in Munich, Mr. Bush will order the Pentagon to devise how best to proceed with a shield, given diplomatic, technological and financial difficulties, they said.

The review is intended to move the United States toward what officials said would be a new strategic doctrine, as well as a new approach to arms control that reflects today's world rather than the cold war's superpower standoff.

"You now have to manage the transition from the old world to the new world," a senior administration official said. "And the new world, once we get there, would be one in which defense forces play an important role in keeping the peace, in which you have offensive forces that are properly sized and configured to deal with the new deterrent tasks, rather than the deterrent tasks of 1972."

By issuing the directive, the official said, Mr. Bush will not declare his intention to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which the United States and Soviet Union signed in 1972 to prohibit national missile defenses. The review, however, appears intended to lay the foundation for a decision to do so in parallel with nuclear cutbacks.

"The effort now," the senior official said, "is going to be to get a coherent policy that ties these pieces together so you can talk to allies and to the Russians and to others, conceptually, about the new nuclear environment."

The nation's arsenal as of last year included 7,519 nuclear warheads on missiles, submarines or bombers, compared with Russia's 6,464. But the review is expected to lead to cuts below the 2,000 to 2,500 warheads proposed by the United States and Russia in 1997 as a goal for a third round of strategic arms reduction talks, or Start III.

Significant reductions in the American arsenal could smooth anxieties among opponents about the administration's pursuit of a missile shield. At the same time, they could expose new differences between Mr. Bush and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who were dismayed by Mr. Bush's decision not to propose an immediate infusion into their budget.

Last year, when President Clinton was considering ways to cut nuclear warheads below the Start III proposals, the chiefs publicly warned against it. The Air Force's chief of staff, Gen. Michael E. Ryan, and the Chief of Naval Operations at the time, Adm. Jay L. Johnson, both said they would be "uncomfortable" with an arsenal that low.

The other directives expected this week will outline the administration's intent to conduct a broader review of the armed services, the officials said. One will focus on the military's strategy and structure, something Mr. Bush has said he wanted to see before deciding how much, if any, to add to the Pentagon budget. The other will focus on pay, benefits and other issues affecting the nearly 1.4 million service personnel and their families.

For the broader review, Mr. Rumsfeld has turned to an eminent analyst, Andrew W. Marshall, head of the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment. In an interview tonight, Mr. Marshall said he would present preliminary findings next week. "I've simply been asked to provide my views on strategy," he said.

The review of personnnel issues is being led by Adm. David Jeremiah, retired, who was vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when Gen. Colin L. Powell was chairman.

Mr. Bush first outlined his vision for a strategy that coupled cuts in nuclear warheads with a missile shield during a speech last May, declaring that the nation's security no longer required "a nuclear balance of terror." He also said it was possible to move ahead with defensive missiles and still "defuse confrontation" with Russia, even though President Vladimir V. Putin and others have ardently opposed such a shield. While Mr. Bush did not specify limits on the warheads in the shield, he pledged to seek "the lowest possible number consistent with our national security."

The directive for reviewing the strategy is highly classified, but officials said the president was asking for a review of the nation's strategy, its method of selecting targets, its stockpile, and new and potential threats to the United States and its allies. It is also expected to focus on another of Mr. Bush's campaign promises, to consider whether nuclear weapons can be removed from the highest alert status, at which they are prepared to launch within minutes.

At a hearing today before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said the country's aging weapons- production facilities had deteriorated badly and needed an overhaul.

"The Department of Energy has allowed its nuclear-weapons production plants to degrade over time, leaving a tremendous backlog of deferred maintenance and modernization," he said. "The deterioration of existing facilities is a very serious threat."

The results of the review are expected to provide the broad policy guidelines for a Congressionally mandated "nuclear posture review" that is to be completed this year under the direction of the military, the first such review since 1994.

Bruce G. Blair, a nuclear weapons expert who is president of the Center for Defense Information in Washington, said it was important for the White House to set clear guidelines. Otherwise, he said, military commanders would be unwilling to reduce their reliance on nuclear arms. One official said a report by the National Institute for Public Policy, a Washington research group, provided a broad road map to the administration's approach.

The report, released last month, called for abandoning what its authors called cumbersome arms-control forums with the Russians by moving ahead with unilateral reductions based on a thorough review of nuclear strategy. That view is shared by some Republicans, beginning with Secretary Rumsfeld, who has referred to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty as "ancient history."

"As long as we can meet our strategic requirements, the question of whether the Russian numbers are somewhat higher or somewhat lower is in a sense irrelevant," said Keith B. Payne, the institute's president and director of the study.

Some of those involved in drafting the institute's report have joined the new administration and are expected to help shape strategic policies: Stephen J. Hadley, the deputy national security adviser; Robert Joseph, a national security aide overseeing counterproliferation; Stephen Cambone, a special assistant to Mr. Rumsfeld; and William Schneider Jr., who informally advised Mr. Rumsfeld during the transition.

Another participant, William E. Odom, a former lieutenant general who served as the director of the National Security Agency from 1985 to 1988, said the group generally believed it was possible to reduce the number of warheads without jeopardizing national security.

Although the institute's report does not specify a figure, General Odom said he believed the United States could accomplish any conceivable military mission with as few as 1,000 to 1,500 strategic nuclear warheads and not have to slog through difficult negotiations with the Russians before doing so.

---

Bush to Review U.S. Nuclear Arsenal

Friday February 9
Yahoo Top Stories News
By Charles Aldinger
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010209/ts/arms_bush_dc_3.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush (news - web sites) will order an in-depth review of the U.S. nuclear arsenal as a first step toward making the unilateral weapons cuts he promised during last year's campaign, the White House said on Friday.

Spokesman Ari Fleischer said directives on reviewing U.S. nuclear deterrence, improving the quality of life in the armed services and the structure of the military were at the staff level and would be signed by Bush as early as next week.

The reviews might take until summer to complete, he said.

A defense official said the review could be a step toward a new strategic doctrine.

``We would balance strong defense with a smaller nuclear offense -- unlike the massive number of warheads during the Cold War,'' the official told Reuters.

Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) told reporters that while Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld conducts the nuclear review, it will give Powell time to consult with U.S. allies as well as Russia and China.

He said the discussions would include ``how it all fits into an overall strategic framework that involves offensive nuclear weapons, our nonproliferation efforts and defensive systems, both of theater missile defense nature and national missile defense nature.''

The review comes against a backdrop of Bush's attempt to develop a highly controversial National Missile Defense (news - web sites) (NMD), over bitter objections from Russia and China and questions raised by Washington's European allies.

The United States currently has more than 7,000 nuclear warheads, but the new review could lead to unilateral cuts to as few as 2,500 or 2,000. Officials have said such cuts might make missile defense more palatable to Moscow.

However, senior U.S. military officers have in the past raised strong objections to massive cuts in nuclear missiles so long as Russia retains thousands of long-range and tactical warheads despite the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.

Two Internal Pentagon (news - web sites) Studies

The other two directives to be issued by Bush would detail plans by Rumsfeld for a thorough internal review of the military, including planned weapons programs.

A senior defense official, who asked not to be identified, said one review, being headed by Andrew Marshall, head of the Defense Department's Office of Net Assessment, would cover military strategy and weapons such as the planned F-22 ``stealth'' fighter.

The other review -- of quality of life issues involving troops -- will be overseen by retired Navy Adm. David Jeremiah, former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Rumsfeld, according to the defense official, is speeding up the in-depth internal review of military policy and arms to get a quick grasp of issues and determine how the U.S. military can be restructured to face new threats in the 21st century.

Marshall, one of the Pentagon's most unconventional thinkers, has been ordered to present preliminary results to Rumsfeld as early as next week.

Marshall is a controversial figure in defense circles because of his outspoken criticism of some of the traditional pillars of U.S. defense strategy and procurement policy, according to the Washington Post.

Traditional Weapons Questioned

The Post reported on Friday that Marshall, 79, has questioned the usefulness of the planned F-22 and called the Army's heavy tanks and the Navy's aircraft carriers possible deathtraps that ought to be phased out before they become the horse cavalry of the new century.

Bush promised major improvements in the military during his presidential campaign and plans to visit several military bases next week to outline his ideas for defense.

Administration and defense officials said earlier this week Bush did not currently plan to increase the $310 billion U.S. defense budget drawn up by former President Clinton (news - web sites) for fiscal year 2002.

Bush will not move to change Pentagon spending until the completion and analysis of the new study of U.S. military strategy and weapons is completed.

Bush Plans Review of U.S. Nuclear Arsenal-Official (February 9)

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010209/ts/arms_bush_dc_1.html

----

Bush set to review U.S. nuclear arsenal for possible cuts

Friday, Feb. 9, 2001
San Jose Mercury News
New York Times
BY STEVEN LEE MYERS
http://www0.mercurycenter.com/premium/nation/docs/nuclear09.htm

WASHINGTON -- President Bush will order a comprehensive review of the nation's nuclear arsenal, a step toward the unilateral cuts in warheads and missiles that he promised during his campaign, senior military and administration officials said Thursday.

Bush's order -- outlined in one of three military-policy directives to be issued by the White House as soon as today -- will also underscore the administration's commitment to building a defensive ``missile shield,'' the officials said.

Less than a week after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld tried to ease allies' concerns about such a missile system at a conference in Munich, Germany, Bush will order the Pentagon to devise how best to proceed with a shield, given diplomatic, technological and financial difficulties, they said.

The review is intended to move the United States toward a new strategic doctrine, as well as a new approach to arms control that reflects today's world rather than the Cold War's superpower standoff.

``You now have to manage the transition from the old world to the new world,'' a senior administration official said. ``And the new world, once we get there, would be one in which defense forces play an important role in keeping the peace, in which you have offensive forces that are properly sized and configured to deal with the new deterrent tasks, rather than the deterrent tasks of 1972.''

By issuing the directive, the official said, Bush will not declare his intention to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which the United States and the Soviet Union signed in 1972 to prohibit national missile defenses. The review, however, appears intended to lay the foundation for a decision to do so.

``The effort now,'' the senior official said, ``is going to be to get a coherent policy that ties these pieces together so you can talk to allies and to the Russians and to others, conceptually, about the new nuclear environment.''

The nation's arsenal as of last year included 7,519 nuclear warheads on missiles, submarines or bombers, compared to Russia's 6,464. But the review is expected to lead to cuts below the 2,000 to 2,500 warheads proposed by the United States and Russia in 1997 as a goal for a third round of strategic arms reduction talks, or START 3.

Significant reductions in the U.S. arsenal could smooth anxieties among opponents about the administration's pursuit of a missile shield. At the same time, they could expose new differences between Bush and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who were dismayed by Bush's decision not to propose an immediate infusion into their budget.

Last year, when President Clinton was considering ways to cut nuclear warheads below the START 3 proposals, the chiefs publicly warned against it. The Air Force's chief of staff, Gen. Michael Ryan, and the chief of naval operations at the time, Adm. Jay Johnson, both said they would be ``uncomfortable'' with an arsenal that low.

The other directives expected this week will outline the administration's intent to conduct a broader review of the armed services, the officials said.

One will focus on the military's strategy and structure, something Bush has said he wanted to see before deciding how much, if any, to add to the Pentagon budget. The other will focus on pay, benefits, housing, health care and other issues affecting the nearly 1.4 million service personnel and their families.

Bush first outlined his vision for a strategy that coupled cuts in nuclear warheads with a missile shield during a speech at the National Press Club in Washington in May. Appearing beside Rumsfeld and Colin Powell, now the secretary of state, he declared that the nation's security no longer required ``a nuclear balance of terror.''

He also said it was possible to move ahead with defensive missiles and still ``defuse confrontation'' with Russia, even though President Vladimir Putin and others have ardently opposed such a shield.

---

Bush Under Pressure to Boost Defense Spending

Friday February 9
Yahoo Politics News
By Charles Aldinger
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010209/pl/bush_military_dc_2.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush (news - web sites), who made improvements in the military a centerpiece of his election campaign, is under pressure to spend a lot more money to reshape a ponderous U.S. armed forces for the 21st century.

The White House said this week that apart from an extra $1 billion for a military pay raise to please troops in the next Pentagon (news - web sites) budget, there were no current plans to raise defense spending beyond the $310 billion proposed by former President Clinton (news - web sites) in 2002.

``I have sent the message that I think it's very important for us to not have an early supplemental,'' Bush told reporters on Friday, referring to a possible emergency supplement to the current fiscal year's budget. ``It's important for us to do a top-to-bottom review to review all missions, spending priorities.''

This kind of talk has set off alarm bells among security hawks in Congress and the military Joint Chiefs of Staff, who are already pressing for $8 billion extra in the current year for normal worldwide operations and maintenance of aging weapons.

Bush promised in the campaign to spend about $45 billion extra on defense over the next decade. But many Pentagon officials and military analysts, complaining of a run-down in equipment, training and personnel, say that is not enough if current programs remain on track.

They say that $50 billion to $100 billion will be needed in extra funds annually above the current proposed budget.

Private military experts gave Bush good marks for taking a cautious approach to military spending until he has the results of a broad Pentagon policy review.

But they said that major changes were needed in a superpower force depleted by post-Cold War cuts and which needs a major overhaul to face new challenges in the 21st century.

``Terrorism, cyber-warfare, biological weapons, technology proliferation are here now. Changes in defenses must come in the next few years,'' said Michael Vickers of the private Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington.

``Army mobility is more important than tanks and massed troops, information from space will be a key to victory, unmanned reconnaissance and attack aircraft will be the norm,'' Vickers said.

Nuclear Changes Planned

A senior U.S. official told Reuters on Friday that Bush also planned to order a complete review of the U.S. nuclear arsenal with an eye toward unilaterally cutting the U.S. arsenal from more than 7,000 warheads to as low as 2,000.

That could help pave the way for Bush to proceed with his controversial planned National Missile Defense (news - web sites), but analysts have warned that conventional defense could even be more important than nuclear offense and defense in the new century.

Specialists agreed in interviews that nothing like the 1991 Gulf War (news - web sites) -- fought in open desert with easy Iraqi targets -- would be undertaken again by the United States.

They said that U.S. troops must be increasingly trained for sneak attacks and urban fighting dominated by technology on both sides.

Michael O'Hanlon of the private Brookings Institution, another Washington think tank, praised a broad review begun by new Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld of U.S. military force structure, planning and weapons, including Bush's National Missile Defense (NMD).

``The main thing we have to do here is to guarantee a process of innovation where you don't bankrupt your ability to research and develop new weapons by spending too much on stuff sparked by Cold War thinking,'' O'Hanlon said.

He and others said the United States should build smaller ''Silver Bullet'' numbers of expensive F-22 air-superiority fighters and Joint Strike Fighters (JSF) than now planned in order to preserve technology and save money for research on everything from unmanned combat vehicles to chemical and biological sensors.

RATTLING THE NAVY?

The U.S. military has shrunk to 1.4 million troops from 2.1 million a decade ago, but analysts said size was not as important as maintaining a critical edge in electronic warfare.

Take, for example, the Navy's heavy reliance on a dozen aircraft carrier battle groups to show the U.S. flag and project global power.

A recent strategy study by the budgetary analysis center stressed that it might be much more important in coming years to rely on long-range conventional missiles fired from converted nuclear missile submarines than on aircraft carriers sailing near enemy shores with short-range jets.

That kind of thinking rattles the Navy, which for decades has depended on giant aircraft carriers. But experts say those floating platforms may become increasingly vulnerable to attack from missiles and even future lasers.

Experts also say there is a problem with continuing to develop short-range fighter jets such as the F-22 and the JSF to replace current aircraft. Both the old and new weapons depend on a shrinking number of foreign U.S. bases, especially in Asia.

One very high-profile problem reigns over the debate on U.S. defense strategy and spending:

Even if the administration seeks a slight increase in the $310 billion Pentagon budget proposed by Clinton for next year, where is the more than $60 billion needed for even a basic missile defense coming from in the years ahead?

Experts concede that the huge cost would be borne over a period of time, but say major funding would be needed up front if actual construction and deployment was begun.

Rumsfeld has told the Pentagon's missile defense office in recent weeks to keep moving on research and development of NMD, but the administration has not spelled out where the money would come from if a deployment decision is made.

Earlier Stories

Bush to Hit Road to Push Military Improvements (February 8)

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010208/pl/bush_military_dc_1.html

------

Bush aims for nuclear cuts Campaign pledge

FRIDAY • February 9, 2001
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
http://www.accessatlanta.com/partners/ajc/epaper/editions/friday/news_a348f30f12fef1f40001.html

President reportedly will order a review of the nation's nuclear arsenal --- a step toward unilateral reductions he promised during the presidential race.

Washington --- President Bush will order a comprehensive review of the nation's nuclear arsenal, a first step toward the unilateral cuts in warheads and missiles that he promised during last year's campaign, the New York Times reported today.

Bush's order --- outlined in one of three military-policy directives to be issued by the White House as soon as today --- will also underscore the administration's commitment to building a defensive missile shield, the Times said, citing unidentified "senior military and administration officials."

Less than a week after Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld tried to ease allies' concerns about such a missile system at a conference in Munich, Bush will order the Pentagon to devise how best to proceed with a shield, given diplomatic, technological and financial difficulties, the Times' sources said.

The review is intended to move the United States toward what officials said would be a new strategic doctrine, as well as a new approach to arms control that reflects today's world rather than the Cold War's superpower standoff.

''You now have to manage the transition from the old world to the new world,'' a senior administration official was quoted by the Times. ''And the new world, once we get there, would be one in which defense forces play an important role in keeping the peace, in which you have offensive forces that are properly sized and configured to deal with the new deterrent tasks, rather than the deterrent tasks of 1972.''

By issuing the directive, the official said, Bush will not declare his intention to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which the United States and Soviet Union signed in 1972 to prohibit national missile defenses. The review, however, appears intended to lay the foundation for a decision to do so in parallel with nuclear cutbacks.

''The effort now,'' the senior official said, ''is going to be to get a coherent policy that ties these pieces together so you can talk to allies and to the Russians and to others, conceptually, about the new nuclear environment.''

The nation's arsenal as of last year included 7,519 nuclear warheads on missiles, submarines or bombers, compared with Russia's 6,464. But the review is expected to lead to cuts below the 2,000 to 2,500 warheads proposed by the United States and Russia in 1997 as a goal for a third round of strategic arms reduction talks, or Start 3.

Significant reductions in the U.S. arsenal could smooth anxieties among opponents about the administration's pursuit of a missile shield. At the same time, they could expose new differences between Bush and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who were dismayed by Bush's decision not to propose an immediate infusion into their budget.

---

Bush to order review of U.S. nuclear arsenal
Officials say move shows commitment to defensive shield

Friday, February 9, 2001
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
THE NEW YORK TIMES
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/national/mili09.shtml

WASHINGTON -- President Bush will order a comprehensive review of the nation's nuclear arsenal, a first step toward the unilateral cuts in warheads and missiles that he promised during last year's campaign, senior military and administration officials said yesterday.

Bush's order -- outlined in one of three military-policy directives to be issued by the White House as soon as today -- will also underscore the administration's commitment to building a defensive missile shield, the officials said.

Less than a week after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld tried to ease allies' concerns about such a missile system at a conference in Munich, Bush will order the Pentagon to devise how best to proceed with a shield, given diplomatic, technological and financial difficulties, they said.

The review is intended to move the United States toward what officials said would be a new strategic doctrine, as well as a new approach to arms control that reflects today's world.

"You now have to manage the transition from the old world to the new world," a senior administration official said. "And the new world ... would be one in which defense forces play an important role in keeping the peace, in which you have offensive forces that are properly sized and configured to deal with the new deterrent tasks, rather than the deterrent tasks of 1972."

By issuing the directive, the official said, Bush will not declare his intention to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which the United States and Soviet Union signed in 1972 to prohibit national missile defenses. The review, however, appears intended to lay the foundation for a decision to do so in parallel with nuclear cutbacks.

"The effort now," the senior official said, "is going to be to get a coherent policy that ties these pieces together so you can talk to allies and to the Russians and to others, conceptually, about the new nuclear environment."

The nation's arsenal as of last year included 7,519 nuclear warheads on missiles, submarines or bombers, compared with Russia's 6,464. But the review is expected to lead to cuts below the 2,000 to 2,500 warheads proposed by the United States and Russia in 1997.

Significant reductions in the U.S. arsenal could smooth anxieties among opponents about the administration's pursuit of a missile shield. At the same time, they could expose new differences between Bush and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who were dismayed by Bush's decision not to propose an immediate infusion into their budget.

Other directives expected this week will outline the administration's intent to conduct a broader review of the armed services, the officials said. One will focus on the military's strategy and structure, something Bush has said he wanted to see before deciding how much, if any, to add to the Pentagon budget. The other will focus on pay, benefits, housing, health care and other issues affecting the nearly 1.4 million service personnel.

--------

Nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan

February 9, 2001
Washington Times
Inside the Beltway John McCaslin Political tidbits and other shenanigans from around the nation's capital.
http://www.washtimes.com/national/inbeltway.htm

Newport News Shipbuilding will christen the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) on March 4, with launching of the ship six days later.

Nancy Reagan will serve as the ship's sponsor and crack the traditional bottle of champagne against the hull, honoring an ancient tradition and officially naming the carrier.

The floating Gipper is 1,096 feet long, towers 20 stories above the waterline, displaces approximately 95,000 tons, and will carry 6,000 personnel and 80 aircraft. The ship will be in service for missions around the world for approximately 50 years.

And while former President Reagan won't be on hand for the christening, he was presented with a model of the carrier in 1996 by Newport News Shipbuilding Chairman and CEO Bill Fricks.

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

Report Faults Oversight in National Lab Studies

February 9, 2001
New York Times
National News Briefs
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/09/national/09NATI.html

WASHINGTON, Feb. 8 (AP) - Experiments with lethal viruses and bacteria at eight federal weapons laboratories lacked required oversight and controls, raising concern about potential risk to workers and the public, an Energy Department report made public today warned.

The investigation by the department's inspector general examined a program to develop a response to attacks involving biological agents.

The investigation found that lax procedures for experiments involving anthrax, the plague and botulism raised "the potential for greater risk to workers and possibly others."

The national laboratories and other facilities examined were Brookhaven in New York; the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory; Sandia, in California and New Mexico; Lawrence Livermore and Lawrence Berkeley in California; Oak Ridge in Tennessee; and Los Alamos in New Mexico.

-------- MILITARY

-------- arms sales

A Poor Sale

Friday, February 9, 2001
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46831-2001Feb8?language=printer

THE CHILEAN military is on the verge of striking a senseless weapons deal with the United States that will very likely touch off a wasteful arms race in Latin America. Despite the absence of any plausible threat, Santiago's generals are planning to buy 12 advanced F-16 warplanes from Lockheed Martin, at a total cost of $600 million. If it goes forward, this will be the first sale of U.S. military planes to Latin America since 1981, and the first introduction of such advanced aircraft to the region. Moreover, Chile is seeking missile and electronics systems for the planes that also go far beyond anything possessed by its neighbors.

Almost nothing about the sale makes sense. For Chile, it is not only a poor use of resources -- the planes will cost nearly $3 out of every $100 Chile earns in annual exports -- but a poor use of military resources: The armed forces will have to spend 90 percent of their current procurement budget for a decade to pay off Lockheed Martin. It is an open secret that the country's civilian democratic government does not want to spend money on advanced warplanes. But President Ricardo Lagos is under pressure from a military leadership that ruled the country from 1973 to 1990 and is still not under full civilian control. Though Chile faces no threat from the air, its acquisition of the planes will place pressure on the governments of Brazil and Argentina to buy advanced jets, as well. And the sale will not help the image of the United States in Latin America at a time when it is also making large and controversial -- if more justified -- deliveries of weapons to Colombia.

So why is the sale going forward? Chile's generals want the planes because they believe that the possession of advanced weapons will help preserve the armed forces' prestige, both domestically and in the region. The Clinton administration, meanwhile, lifted a 20-year-old ban on advanced weapons sales to Latin America as a favor to Lockheed, which argued that the Chileans would otherwise buy planes from Sweden or France.

The Bush administration must still give final sanction to the sale and submit it to Congress for review. As the administration prepares to engage Latin America at a major summit meeting in April, it is worth considering whether the deal can be revised in a way that will advance the goals of strengthening democracy and economic integration in the region. A group of 10 Democratic senators proposed this week that the United States offer Chile used F-16s, which would be both less expensive and less threatening to its neighbors, while barring the transfer of advanced missile and avionics systems.

The administration could also restart an initiative launched several years ago by former president Jimmy Carter, who, along with former Costa Rican president Oscar Arias, persuaded 26 Latin American and Caribbean governments to commit themselves to a two-year moratorium on advanced weapons purchases. The hope was that a regional agreement imposing restraints on military modernization could be negotiated during the freeze. But the initiative fell through when one key nation refused to go along: Chile.

-------- colombia

In Unruly Colombia, a Mother Hopes for Missing Son's Return

February 9, 2001
New York Times
By JUAN FORERO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/09/world/09BOGO.html?pagewanted=all

LOS POZOS, Colombia, Feb. 8 - For Fanny Gidalgo, the last three years have been filled with protests, frustration and pain. She dedicated herself to winning freedom for her son, an army soldier held by rebels, but nothing seemed to work.

But early today, Ms. Gidalgo was full of hope after she managed to speak for a brief moment with President Andrés Pastrana, who arrived here in the heart of guerrilla-held territory and held the first day of meetings with the leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Ms. Gidalgo, wearing a picture of her son on her T-shirt, pushed through a throng of reporters and cornered the president, who is here to try to jump-start formal peace talks with the rebels.

Stopping for a moment, Mr. Pastrana assured her that one of the first points he would raise with the rebel leader, Manuel Marulanda, was the need for an exchange of sick rebels held by the government for other ailing soldiers held by the guerrillas.

The FARC, as the rebel group is known, has said in recent weeks that once the sick prisoners have been exchanged, the group would be willing to release 50 or more soldiers and policemen.

"This has filled me with spirit, hope and faith that something big is going to happen," said Ms. Gidalgo, 44, a former lottery worker. "This is an opportunity I couldn't imagine."

If an agreement is announced - and one may emerge on Friday - it would be a victory for the mothers and relatives of 470 soldiers and policemen held by the FARC, some for as long as three and a half years.

Like mothers' movements elsewhere in Latin America that challenged dictatorships, the Colombians have coalesced to put pressure on the government.

Since the group formed in 1998, it has held candlelight vigils outside Congress. The mothers have chained themselves to the iron gates of the presidential palace. They have held marches and occupied a Bogotá church for 57 days. They even ventured deep into rebel-held territory to plead with guerrilla leaders.

Yet, for most of them, the last three years have been full of anguish, with little sign of a possible mass liberation.

"For me this has been a nightmare that I live day after day," said Belén Tunjacipa, 53. Two of her sons, Enrique and Hebert Torres, have been imprisoned since 1998.

"There's not a moment that I'm not thinking of them," she said. "And it makes me feel like I have the world on my shoulders."

Recent weeks were especially anxious because of the sense that Mr. Pastrana's battered peace effort was on its last legs, with all-out war a possibility. Many in Colombia felt that if the effort collapsed, the army would start an offensive to retake territory that the government ceded to the rebels in 1998 as an inducement to pursue negotiations.

And the mothers reasoned that an attack would endanger their sons, who are held in jungle camps, some of which the government says are in the demilitarized zone.

The mothers believed that the government should have pursued a rebel proposal made last year calling for an exchange of the servicemen for about 350 rebels in government hands. The Pastrana administration, which views the holding of its servicemen as kidnappings, rejected the overture. "This would foment the kidnapping of more police and soldiers," Luis Fernando Ramírez, the defense minister, said in a recent interview. "It would prove to them that taking soldiers and policemen is worthwhile."

He added, "With every guerrilla who is captured, they would kidnap another policeman, and so in six months we would be talking again about an exchange of 100 people or more."

To the mothers, that argument rang hollow.

They believe that the government places a priority on securing the release of those hostages who are wealthy. They note that the conscripts and volunteers who make up Colombia's army are young men from poor families, soldiers who could not afford to buy their way out of mandatory service, as is possible here.

"Our sons and husbands are from the humble classes," said Marleny Orjuela Manjarres, president of the mothers' group. "And in this country, there's a difference of social standing. Here, there's more value placed on people with lots of money."

The prisoners suffer from malaria, intestinal disorders and other ailments, said Ms. Orjuela Manjarres, who, with another member of the group, visited five camps last year after pressing the FARC to let her in. She estimated that 275 servicemen were held in the five camps.

The men are adequately fed, she said, and the FARC has carved soccer fields out of the jungle so they can exercise.

"In all the other jails of the world, the prisoners have rights to visits by their loved ones," said Ms. Orjuela Manjarres, whose cousin is being held. "Ours don't, and for us that's very painful."

A video taken by a Colombian journalist who accompanied Ms. Orjuela Manjarres showed that the camps were surrounded by barbed wire strung from post to post. The prisoners, wearing tatters of their drab- green uniforms, slept in bunks.

The servicemen spend much of their day writing letters or journals or making handicrafts, which Ms. Orjuela Manjarres has delivered after her two trips. To reach the camps, she said, requires five days of travel by jeep, foot and boat.

For the mothers and other relatives, meanwhile, the letters or handicrafts from their sons and brothers are treasured.

At Ms. Tunjacipa's home, she has piles of letters and handicrafts that Enrique and Hebert have made for her. There is also a special note from them that reads, "The luster from the stars will light the path, and the luster from your love will give me life."

-------- drug war

Four in Bangkok Charged in New Jersey Heroin Seizure

February 9, 2001
New York Times
By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/09/nyregion/09HERO.html

Federal authorities said yesterday that they had seized 126 pounds of heroin hidden in bales of cotton towels on a container ship docked in Elizabeth, N.J., and announced charges in the case against four people tied to a Burmese warlord who has long been a dominant force in the Southeast Asian heroin trade.

The four, who were arrested by Royal Thai Police in Bangkok on Jan. 19, include a wife of the warlord, Khun Sa. Officials said they were being held in Bangkok pending an extradition request, and were charged with conspiracy and importing heroin in an indictment that federal prosecutors filed yesterday in United States District Court in Brooklyn. The heroin was seized last month.

The prosecutors and officials from the federal Drug Enforcement Administration said the charges, coming 10 days after the arrest in Thailand of one of Khun Sa's key lieutenants, represented a significant blow to his organization, which they say has long dominated heroin production and trafficking in the region.

"Definitely the organization is crumbling, but we feel they are still very powerful in Burma, where he is still operating," said Felix Jimenez, the special agent in charge of the drug agency's New York office.

The indictment stems from a nine- month operation in which an undercover D.E.A. agent won the trust of the four suspects and convinced them that he was a major figure in New York's Chinese underworld, law enforcement officials said.

The agent, who speaks Mandarin and the Yunnanese dialect, met with the suspects in Thailand in June and October and, after returning to New York in the fall, kept in almost daily telephone contact with them, one official said. He played his role so well, the official said, and they were so keen on making him their wholesale distributor, that they provided the heroin on consignment, an extremely rare move in Asian drug deals.

The heroin, from the mountains of Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, was shipped from the capital, Yangon, officials said. It arrived on the container ship Cho Yang Phoenix in Port Newark in Elizabeth on Jan. 11 and was seized after D.E.A. and Customs Service agents searched the ship, court papers said. The heroin was found secreted in 12 bales of cotton towels.

Mr. Jimenez said the case was also significant because the heroin trade in New York, and in the rest of the United States, had become dominated by Colombian and Mexican heroin, rather than the purer so-called China shite from Southeast Asia that dominated in the 1980's and early 1990's. The market changed when Colombian traffickers, who had glutted the United States with cocaine, began producing cheaper heroin and flooded the United States with it.

The case underscored the efforts of traffickers in Southeast Asian heroin to win back a piece of the market, officials said, and revealed new trafficking patterns and routes that could provide investigators with a road map for future cases. It was investigated by a special drug agency unit called Group 41, which focuses exclusively on Asian heroin traffickers.

Prosecutors and D.E.A. officials identified the woman who they said is one of Khun Sa's wives as Hiu-Lan Peng. They said the woman was also known as Ms. Hung and was in her 50's, though they could provide no exact age or address for her. The officials said that the warlord, because of his power and standing, had many wives, and that Hiu-Lan Peng was known as one of the "minor wives," although some press reports in Thailand at the time of her arrest described her as an ex-wife.

The other woman charged in the case, Tzen Shiung Lee, is in her late 20's, officials said. The two men charged in the case are An-Hui Tso of Mandaly, Myanmar, who one official said operates a textile factory there, and Guo Xing Sae Chen of Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Officials from the drug agency said the wholesale value of the heroin seized was about $7.3 million.

Khun Sa, whose army long dominated the region's heroin trade under the guise of fighting for self-determination for the insurgent Shan tribal group, surrendered to government forces in 1996 and has been living under house arrest in Yangon, officials said.

But the D.E.A. and federal prosecutors contend that he is still a dominant force in the region, using family members and associates to control the flow of heroin from the lush Golden Triangle formed by Myanmar, Thailand and China. In the remote and rugged mountains there, the opium crop that is later refined into heroin has long been the staple that finances the daily needs of the fiercely independent hill tribes.

Myanmar is the world's second- largest source of illicit opium and heroin after Afghanistan, according to the State Department's 1999 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report. The report, the most recent available, said that largely due to drought, opium cultivation and production in Myanmar had declined significantly for the third consecutive year.

---

U.N. Drug Chief, Under Attack, Says He's Cast as the Outsider

February 9, 2001
New York Times
By BARBARA CROSSETTE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/09/world/09DRUG.html

UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 8 - The head of the United Nations drug- control and crime-prevention programs has come under attack from a former senior aide and an assortment of diplomats who say he has mismanaged his agency and is destroying its morale.

The official, Under Secretary General Pino Arlacchi, says he is not surprised by the accusations because he has shaken up the Office of Drug Control and Crime Prevention, which is based in Vienna. His case, he said, is an example of what happens when an outsider challenges an international bureaucracy.

A team of inspectors from the United Nations is in Vienna this week to examine the administration of his office. Mr. Arlacchi, a sociologist who played a leading role in the fight against the Sicilian Mafia a decade ago and remains under a death threat in Italy, said he had also made enemies abroad because of his drives against narcotics, human trafficking and offshore banking.

"I have struck at very powerful and diversified interests all around the world," Mr. Arlacchi said in interviews here this week. He said his work against coca production in Bolivia, heroin trading on the Tajikistan border with Afghanistan and opium-poppy growing in Afghanistan, as well as new international anticrime measures adopted late last year at a conference in Palermo, add up to "a slap in the face of organized crime worldwide."

"All these things put together create a picture of something unusual, particularly coming from the United Nations," he said. "Of course, you pay a price for that."

In the organization, he said, another set of problems arose from "changing the traditional bureaucratic culture." He said he had told Secretary General Kofi Annan, who appointed him in 1997, that he had no intention of being just another bureaucrat. Mr. Arlacchi's first term is to end early next year. Until the crisis over his management erupted, he had been widely expected to receive a second term easily, and there are no signs now that he will not.

Mr. Arlacchi's critics say that rather than just shaking up an agency, he has forced into "exile" some of its best officers, leading a few to quit. He has been accused of never consulting his professional staff, but instead surrounding himself with a secretive group of loyalists.

His critics also say he has made too many unrealistic promises to nations around the world about programs to combat the drug trade and other international crimes. But critics acknowledge that unfulfilled pledges are often a result of governments' unwillingness to give him adequate money to do the work.

A long-simmering campaign against Mr. Arlacchi's leadership recently took more serious shape in a lengthy letter sent to him by Michael v. d. Schulenburg, who until late last year was director of the agency's division for operations and analysis.

In Italy, opponents of Mr. Arlacchi, a leftist former Italian senator, have joined a campaign to have him removed. The Italian Radical Party posted Mr. Schulenburg's letter on its Web site, www.radicalparty.org. Supporters of Mr. Arlacchi say the party, which supports legalizing narcotics, has long been a critic.

In his letter, Mr. Schulenburg, a German, said he joined the drug agency 20 months ago with enthusiasm. "Today," he wrote, "I see an organization that has increased its international visibility while at the same time is crumbling under the weight of promises that it is unable to meet under a management style that has demoralized, intimidated and paralyzed its staff."

---

Police in Eminem Drugs Video Probe

Friday February 9
Yahoo News
By Paul Majendie
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010209/re/people_eminem_dc_9.html

LONDON (Reuters) - Police on Friday studied videotapes of bad boy rapper Eminem (news - web sites)'s debut British concert to see if he incited teenage fans to take drugs.

Eminem has caused a storm of protest with his act, appearing on stage with a chainsaw and simulating his own death in an electric chair.

Asked about reports that he had also urged the audience to take Ecstasy tablets, Chief Inspector Steve White told Reuters: ''We are particularly looking to see if he was inciting people to take drugs.

The controversial American star's concert was a sell-out in the northern city of Manchester on Thursday night with more than 15,000 fans attending.

``We had people inside watching the act. We have seized the videotape the arena used to record the act,'' he said.

Asked if Eminem would be taken in for questioning, White said: ``Not at this stage.''

Controversy follows Eminem wherever he goes -- both on and off stage -- and his shock value has assured multi-million album sales and packed concert halls. The 28-year-old Detroit rapper's checkered family life constantly makes headlines.

First his mum, then his dad and now his granny all want to kiss and make up with the poor boy rapper whose rise to superstardom became a real life soap opera.

``I would like to stop this war between us because life is too short,'' Eminem's grandmother Betty said on Friday.

Reconciliation is certainly in the air. His mother may drop a $10 million lawsuit against Eminem and his father now says he wants to get to know the son he walked out on as a baby.

Eminem, accused of being a homophobe and misogynist whose lyrics are dripping with hate, was met by 100 demonstrators when he kicked off his British tour. ``Stop the bigotry, stop the hate,'' they chanted.

His grandmother insisted that rap's white shock trooper is ''a very kind, loving and caring father.''

She told BBC radio: ``Everywhere he goes -- to a McDonald's drive-in to give his daughter a sandwich or shopping with his family -- there is always somebody coming up to him, wanting an autograph...He has no life anymore.''

His grandmother wanted the family to bury its differences. ''It is heartbreaking. He is my first grandchild. I was there when he opened his eyes. I love that boy,'' she said.

``Eminem was not given a gold spoon or a silver spoon when he was born. His mother had a one-room apartment. He had no father in his life. He tried to write to his father many, many times. The letters were always returned.''

His father -- Marshall Mathers II -- now wants to extend a belated hand of friendship to his son.

``I desperately want to meet my son and tell him that I love him,'' he told Britain's Mirror tabloid from his home in San Diego, California. ``I'm not interested in his money. I just want to talk to him.''

The plea followed a peace offering from Eminem's mother Debbie -- on Thursday she said she might consider dropping a $10 million lawsuit against her son.

In one of his controversial songs, he sings: ``My mom smokes more dope than I do.''

-------- iraq

Sanctions That Misfire

February 9, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/09/opinion/L09IRA.html

o the Editor:

"The War Saddam Won," Thomas L. Friedman's Feb. 6 column about the sanctions against Iraq, is also an explanation of why the United States embargo against Cuba should be lifted. Such sanctions make no sense in either country, and only the people we supposedly want to help are suffering. TOM MILLER Oakland, Calif., Feb. 6, 2001

-------- korea

Koreas agree on historic project
By Sang-hun Choe

February 9, 2001
Washington Times
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-200129211850.htm

SEOUL - The militaries of North and South Korea agreed to their first-ever joint peace project yesterday - reconnecting a cross-border railway severed by the Korean War half a century ago.

The 41-point agreement, which also agreed on setting up the first-ever hot line between the two militaries, marked another milestone in thawing relations between the two once-hostile countries since a summit of their leaders in June.

The two militaries had never worked together for a peaceful purpose since they fought the bloody 1950-53 Korean War. The war ended without a peace treaty, and the two sides technically remain at war.

For five decades, the two militaries have faced off across the 2 and 1/2-mile-wide Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ, which is strewn with minefields and guarded by barbed wire and nearly 2 million troops on both sides.

"By resolving all related military issues, South and North have laid the most important foundation for the railway project," said a statement from Seoul's Defense Ministry.

If reconnected, the railway will become the first direct land transport link between the two Koreas since their war. It will connect Seoul and Pyongyang, the two Korean capitals, and continue to Sinuiju, a major city on the North's border with China.

After reports of the agreement, reached at a border crossing, South Korean officials said they were hopeful that mine clearing will begin in March and that the rail line could be reconnected by the fall, as scheduled.

Also yesterday in Pyongyang, economic officials of the two Koreas opened three days of talks on measures to help ease the communist North's chronic energy shortages.

North Korea asked South Korea in December to provide 500,000 kilowatts of electricity. South Korea said it would consider the request after a joint survey of the North's energy shortages.

North Korea has dozens of power plants capable of generating 7.3 million kilowatts of electricity but can produce only 2 million kilowatts because of outdated facilities and fuel shortages, according to South Korean figures.

The two militaries also agreed:

• A 250-yard-wide corridor will be created across the DMZ to build the railway and a parallel four-lane highway.

• Each side is responsible for clearing mines in its sector of the corridor.

• No military installations can be built inside the corridor except one guard post each in their sectors.

• Mine clearing should be started on both sides of the border simultaneously after one week's notice.

• Both sides should strictly observe the 9 a.m.-5 p.m. daily mine-clearing hours. When mines are cleared within a short distance from each side, the work should be done alternately on weekdays.

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

Disaster predicted on Guinea relief

February 9, 2001
Washington Times
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-200129204356.htm

NEW YORK - A U.N. relief official warned yesterday that, lacking protection from armed rebels, efforts to feed and shelter about 200,000 refugees trapped in Guinea's rain forests would collapse.

"Without a secure environment, this humanitarian operation is in danger of collapsing," said Soren Jessen-Petersen, assistant high commissioner for refugees. "Without humanitarian organizations around, without access to people in need, without access to food and medicines, the consequences could be very catastrophic."

The West African nation shelters about 350,000 refugees from Sierra Leone and another 125,000 from Liberia.

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

U.S. PROPOSES SEARCH OF 2 CRASH SITES

February 9, 2001
New York Times
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/09/world/09BRIE.html?pagewanted=all

TIBET: The United States said it would ask China to permit a search of the sites of two aircraft crashes in Tibet, seeking the remains of American airmen lost in World War II. The Pentagon said Beijing provided new information about the sites, both in the Himalayas, last month. Officials said one site had been linked to a 1944 crash of a C-46 transport flying to Sookarating, India, from Kunming, China, but said little was known about the other site. The C-46 crew of four is still listed as missing.

--------

SA-18s to North Korea

February 9, 2001
Washington Times
Inside the Ring - Notes from the Pentagon
Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough,
http://www.washtimes.com/national/inring-200129204924.htm

Russia is selling advanced surface-to-air missiles to North Korea, according to U.S. intelligence officials.

The North Koreans are negotiating to buy Moscow's most advanced shoulder-fired missile, the SA-18, we are told. Pyongyang wants as many as 3,000 SA-18s to plug vulnerabilities in its air defenses.

The North Korean military knows South Korea and the United States will rely on attacks by overwhelming numbers of warplanes against North Korea should conflict break out.

North Korea's strategy calls for massive forward-deployed artillery, rocket and ballistic missile attacks in the early stage of a military offensive. This is because the North's ability to sustain a conflict is limited to about a week of fighting, before it runs out of weaponry.

The SA-18s would be a new air defense capability. The North's current surface-to-air missile forces consist of fixed SA-2s, SA-3s and SA-5s. It's current shoulder-fired missiles include thousands of older SA-7s.

The SA-18 is similar in design to the U.S. Stinger anti-aircraft missile that homes in on targets using an infrared tracking system. The SA-18, also known in the Pentagon as the "Stinger-ski," has a similar infrared tracker and range of about three miles.

China Inc.

Congress in 1999 passed a law requiring the Clinton administration to identify all businesses in the United States connected to China's military and government. The administration refused, claiming Beijing ordered its military in July 1998 to divest all businesses - ranging from hotels to transnational corporations.

U.S. intelligence officials now tell us the FBI has compiled a list of more than 3,000 Chinese government-linked businesses operating in the United States. The FBI's counterspies say at least 300 of the Chinese entities not only fund Beijing's military but are used to provide cover for intelligence officers or intelligence-gathering activities.

The businesses are believed to be involved in China's massive covert and overt program of acquiring technology that has both commercial and military applications.

Bush report card

We contacted a number of officers this week, asking reaction to their new commander in chief's decision not to seek emergency funding to fix readiness woes and to put off big budget increases pending a strategy study.

The reaction was mixed.

"It's not a betrayal. It is thoughtful," said one officer. "The military needs restructuring. Why not do a review then decide? [President] Bush believes in leap-ahead technology. It would be a waste to spend billions on incremental fixes."

But another officer said the Bush approach has become a hot topic in his unit.

"There's not a feeling of betrayal, but rather, a concern that perhaps the president doesn't really know how fragile many of the military's programs are. For example, there isn't a soldier in the Army that hasn't waited with bated breath for Bush to be the new president, so that he would pump money into our eroded infrastructure, for which maintenance was deferred to pay for near-term readiness."

A helicopter pilot said, "I don't know anyone who's really upset with that right now. I think most everyone I know is so happy to be rid of Clinton it really doesn't matter right now. Change doesn't happen overnight, so I think/hope he will get around to some of the changes he promised in due course. Anyway, I am willing to wait and see before I get too upset about anything Mr. Bush is doing right now."

Muffled guns

We're collecting "horror stories" from soldiers who say they cannot obtain ammunition for firing-range practice. The stories come in reaction to The Washington Times story that the Army, according to an internal memo, has a "critical . . . worldwide shortage" of 9 mm ammunition for the Beretta pistol. Fort Hood, Texas, has canceled range firings except for military police and those about to deploy overseas.

"My detachment frequently cannot obtain 9 mm that we need to train and qualify before deploying overseas where a 9 mm pistol is the primary means of personal protection," said one officer.

"There is a committee that meets to decide what ammo needs to be carefully managed. For example, .50-caliber ammo is short because we sent millions of rounds to Colombia. There aren't millions of rounds of .50-caliber just lying around so the stuff they got came out of Army accounts. Because of this, .50-caliber made the list."

Another officer said that a colleague who missed range firings had to purchase 9 mm ammo from Wal-Mart. A 50-cartridge box sells there for about $7. The soldier then had to find range time with another unit.

"I don't know if they screwed up their ammo forecasts so badly or some other reason, but we've got no bullets for our pistols at this time," he said.

Said a House defense aide, "Let's assume the military gets a modest [20 percent] quantity discount from the civilian price for its ammo purchases. If the $295,000 spent on former Defense Secretary [William S.] Cohen's Hollywood junket had been diverted to better use, the Army could have bought about 3 million rounds of 9 mm ammo."

Intercepts

• The Pentagon is continuing to move U.S. military forces closer to China, should the balloon ever go up in a conflict with Taiwan. The Navy announced it will station three attack submarines at Guam beginning next year to "provide a clear advantage for crisis response and engagement opportunities," said Navy Lt. Dave Werner, a spokesman for the Pacific submarine force. China's government protested the Air Force's storage of air-launched cruise missiles on Guam in August after the transfer was reported in Inside the Ring.

• Aggressive Russian spying continues. Government national security officials said one Russian agent of the Federal Security Service, Moscow's successor to the KGB, was particularly annoying in his efforts to recruit American officials as spies. The Russian Embassy was notified recently that the SVR officer was quietly put on notice to stop or face expulsion.

• A General Accounting Office (GAO) report on the Marines' V-22 Osprey is dampening support for the plane-helicopter hybrid on Capitol Hill, defense aides say.

Some of the more troubling findings are that the Corps has reduced performance goals. The distance needed for land-based takeoffs has been increased from 500 feet to 3,000 feet. And the onboard oxygen supply was reduced from seven stations to only four. Even more troubling, the GAO says the Osprey is too small to carry 24 Marines, as the Corps claims. The limit: 18.

• Beijing quietly signaled the Bush administration recently that it would not approve of its first choice for U.S. ambassador to China: Jon Huntsman, Utah businessman and former ambassador. The action has troubled some administration officials over the fact that China was given a veto of an ambassadorial appointment.

David Shambaugh, a pro-China academic well known to readers of this column, seemed to support Beijing's position. He recently asked in an e-mail to the semisecret list known as Chinasec if the United States is "on a dangerous drift in the wrong direction if we appoint a 41-year-old Mormon philanthropist from Texas to represent our nation in China."

Word now is that Sandy Randt, a friend and Yale classmate of President Bush who once worked in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing as a commercial officer, is a leading contender. Mr. Randt is a businessman who sold Chinese company stocks in Hong Kong.

----

Pentagon Study May Bring Big Shake-Up

Friday, February 9, 2001
Washington Post
By Thomas E. Ricks
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46423-2001Feb8?language=printer

The Bush administration has asked one of the Pentagon's most unconventional thinkers to conduct a far-reaching review of the U.S. military, in the clearest indication yet that senior officials intend to shake up the nation's armed forces and the weapons they use.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has tapped Andrew W. Marshall, head of the Pentagon's internal think tank, and has asked him to report back his preliminary recommendations by the end of next week, sources said.

Although he is little known to the public, Marshall is a controversial figure in defense circles for his outspoken criticism of some of the traditional pillars of U.S. strategy and procurement policy. He has questioned the usefulness of the new F-22 fighter, the crown jewel of the Air Force's acquisition program, and has called the Army's heavy tanks and the Navy's aircraft carriers possible deathtraps that ought to be phased out before they prove to be the horse cavalry of the 21st century.

Whether or not these conclusions will be part of his final report, Marshall has a long and close association with Rumsfeld, and his appointment was viewed by senior Pentagon officials as the second clear sign in the past week that the new defense secretary plans to make a dramatic impact on the military. President Bush pledged during his election campaign to improve the quality of the armed forces, and aides said he plans to spend most of next week visiting military bases and laying out his ideas.

Yet Bush stunned some senior commanders this week by deciding not to seek an immediate increase in the defense budget. Before proposing new funding, Rumsfeld informed the top brass on Tuesday, the administration wants a fundamental review of the U.S. military's strategy, structure and missions.

Pentagon officials said yesterday that Rumsfeld has an understanding -- though not quite a promise -- that, once the study is finished, the White House will support as big an increase in the defense budget as he deems necessary.

The review is on an extraordinarily fast track. Rumsfeld gave Marshall the assignment on Tuesday. Marshall is to wind up the review by the middle of March.

Bush said on Monday that the goal is to set a "long-range vision for the military." According to Pentagon insiders, Marshall's orders are to undertake a broad analysis of America's likely adversaries, the nature of future wars, how many conflicts the United States should be prepared to fight at once and what forces it will need to do so. The answers to those questions could dramatically affect the size of the military and the weaponry it buys.

The services' opposition to Marshall's recommendations are "likely to be fierce," predicted one person involved in the review.

But Marshall holds two aces: He has a decades-long relationship with Rumsfeld. And the Bush campaign's defense stance, laid out in a speech at the Citadel in South Carolina in September 1999, relied heavily on ideas nurtured by Marshall over the years.

All but unknown outside national security circles, the publicity-shy Marshall is something of a legend within that world, both for his longevity and for his far-reaching network of acolytes across the government, academia and the defense industry. At 79, he is said to be the only current Pentagon official who participated in the entire Cold War, beginning in 1949 as a nuclear strategist for the Rand Corp., then moving to the Pentagon as a civilian official in 1973. He has been kept in his current job by every president since Richard M. Nixon.

Despite his age and experience, Marshall's views are hardly conservative. In recent years, he has gained a reputation as a radical reformer and has antagonized many top officers by arguing that:

• The military is too focused on Europe and not enough on Asia, and needs to shift its geographical and spending priorities.

• The Air Force's new F-22 fighter has too short a range to be of much use in the 21st century, when the military may not have bases near its adversaries.

• As Third World nations acquire cruise missiles and other precision weapons, the Army's heavy tanks and the Navy's aircraft carriers are becoming sitting ducks.

Since the end of the Cold War, Marshall has focused heavily on the rise of China, sponsoring war games that look at possible U.S.-Chinese confrontations and provoking critics to say that he is looking for a new enemy to replace the Soviet Union.

"Most U.S. military assets are in Europe where there are no foreseeable conflicts threatening vital U.S. interests. . . . The threats are in Asia," one of Marshall's closely held studies concluded in 1999. It also argued that, by 2025, India will be more important than Russia in U.S. foreign policy.

The sort of military that Marshall has advocated would look far different from today's, but it would not necessarily be larger. Each of the armed services would have to be able to move troops quickly over long distances and carry its own fuel and supplies, without many overseas bases.

Marshall's future Air Force might emphasize missiles, missile defenses and long-range bombers -- which the Air Force is not currently buying. A Navy reshaped by Marshall's views might radically cut its fleet of surface ships and be built around submarines and "arsenal ships," basically barges loaded with land-attack missiles. And the Army might be split into a small, fast-moving combat force and a larger, lower-tech peacekeeping and small-war force.

As part of Marshall's review, the Pentagon is also expected to scrutinize the nuclear balance, looking at both offensive missiles and defenses against missiles.

Marshall spent most of his career thinking about nuclear conflict. When he joined Rand in 1949, atomic warfare was the central issue. In the early 1980s, he pointed to demographic and environmental indications that the Soviet Union was drifting into crisis.

Worrying that a collapsing Soviet Union might lash out, Marshall became an advocate of updating U.S. nuclear defenses. In part because of his fears, about $9 billion was spent during the 1980s to strengthen the bunkers for U.S. leaders and to build new mobile communications vans for them.

He did not get as much top-level attention during the Clinton era. President Bill Clinton's first defense secretary, Les Aspin, never spoke to him. At the same time, Marshall antagonized the services by distributing a paper that described their arsenals of tanks, ships and airplanes as a "millstone" preventing the military from moving out of the Industrial Age and into the Information Age.

The next defense secretary, William Perry, was more sympathetic but was distracted by Bosnia, Haiti and other operations. William S. Cohen all but ignored Marshall, at one point trying to move him out of the Pentagon in a cost-cutting move.

But Bush's defense advisers, particularly former Pentagon official Richard Armitage, liked Marshall's ideas. Many of the themes Marshall developed during the 1990s were reflected in Bush's speech at the Citadel, largely written by Armitage and John Hillen, a Wall Street executive and former Army officer.

"Today, our military is still more organized for Cold War threats than for the challenges of a new century -- for industrial age operations, rather than for information age battles," Bush said then. It was a line that could have been taken from any number of reports produced by Marshall's office, formally known as "the Adviser to the Secretary of Defense for Net Assessment."

Bush went on to argue that the time for incremental change was over. To ensure that the Pentagon would make hard decisions, he pledged that, upon becoming president, "I will begin an immediate, comprehensive review of our military -- the structure of its forces, the state of its strategy, the priorities of procurement."

Bush's advisers were even more pointed. "If the Republicans come in, things aren't going back to the old way" at the Pentagon, Armitage said last summer. "We're going to get into the 21st century whether they like it or not."

---

Barr would restore U.S. license to kill

February 9, 2001
Washington Times
By Tom Carter
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-200129212114.htm

Moammar, Saddam, Fidel: Watch your backs.

Rep. Bob Barr, Georgia Republican, has introduced legislation that would restore the president's license to order a hit on a foreign leader, if that individual were deemed a threat to U.S. personnel or national security.

"The United States already takes actions clearly designed to remove foreign leaders. In the 1980s, we took actions clearly designed to remove [Libyan President] Moammar Gadhafi," said Mr. Barr, in his office yesterday.

"People may pretend that we don't do these things, but these are precisely the type of actions that we sometimes take. It is better policy to be more honest and recognize the president does and should have this authority."

Most observers say that Congress is unlikely to do much with Mr. Barr's bill.

"The House leadership from both parties will be very reluctant to step into a debate that so clearly involves the separation of powers and what is clearly a matter of presidential decision-making," said a senior Republican staff member who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Called the Terrorist Elimination Act of 2001, the bill would nullify several executive orders that prohibit political assassinations by U.S. employees.

So far the bill has no co-sponsors and Mr. Barr said that he had "no idea" if the legislation would win approval.

"I've introduced it this year, just like I did last year, because these executive orders arbitrarily limit the options available to the president when dealing with terrorists," he said.

President Ford first signed an executive order on Feb. 18, 1976, which contained a clause prohibiting employees of the U.S. government from political assassinations.

"No employee of the United States government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in political assassination," reads the "Prohibition of Assassination" section of Executive Order 11905.

President Reagan added clauses to tighten the restrictions and to clarify that the restrictions also pertained to the intelligence community.

Mr. Barr said he had no specific foreign leader in mind when writing the bill. The measure has been referred to the International Relations Committee.

The president has the authority to rescind the executive orders of his predecessors without any act of Congress, Mr. Barr noted. And he said he has written to President Bush urging him to do so.

"Executive orders currently prohibit our military from deliberately removing a terrorist leader. . . . I respectfully request that you rescind" the specific sections that "limit the United States from dealing with international terrorist threats," said the Jan. 31 letter.

But if he is unwilling to do so, Mr. Barr said, Congress should do it for him as a matter of principle.

Neither the White House nor the House International Relations Committee had comment yesterday.

Official U.S. attempts to shorten a political leader's career were not unknown in the past. President Kennedy ordered assassination attempts on Cuban President Fidel Castro, employing failed hit squads and poisoned cigars.

Since Mr. Ford's order, and the subsequent provisions to tighten the restrictions, presidents have had to resort to less-direct methods, like aerial bombing raids, in hopes the collateral damage might eliminate hostile leaders.

-------

U.S. Sub Hits Boat Off Honolulu

February 9, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Submarine-Collision.html

HONOLULU -- A Navy submarine collided with a Japanese fishing boat nine miles off Honolulu Harbor on Friday, and nine people were missing after the boat sank.

Twenty-six survivors huddled in three life rafts and were brought ashore by the Coast Guard. Navy and Coast Guard vessels were searching for the missing people.

The USS Greeneville was on routine patrol south of Oahu when it surfaced about 1:45 p.m. and its stern collided with the fishing boat, said Lt. Cmdr. Jane Campbell, spokeswoman for Commander Navy Base, Pearl Harbor.

The submarine was not damaged, Navy spokeswoman Lt. Cmdr. Cate Mueller, said in Washington. She said the Navy has begun an investigation.

Coast Guard Petty Officer Chris Johnson said the boat sank quickly. The survivors were rescued by a 41-foot Coast Guard utility boat and a smaller Coast Guard rubber inflatable, he said.

The survivors were taken to the Coast Guard station at Honolulu Harbor's Sand Island. Some walked off on their own; others were carried on stretchers and covered in blankets.

Coast Guard spokesman Lt. Greg Fondan said none appeared to be seriously injured. A wounded shoulder appeared to be the worst injury, he said.

Twelve survivors were taken to local hospitals for treatment of minor injuries while 14 were cared for at the Coast Guard base, including showers to wash off diesel fuel, he said.

Petty Officer Thomas Kron, who was on the Coast Guard patrol boat, said the survivors, who huddled in three life rafts, were wet and soaked with diesel fuel.

``They seemed like they were in shock. They were fatigued by the time we got there. Some of them were sea sick and some of them were glad to see us,'' he said.

The seas were three to four feet and choppy with a six-foot swell. The water was covered by a sheen of diesel fuel and was full of debris from the sunken vessel, he said.

It was not immediately known how many crew were aboard the Greeneville, a Pearl Harbor-based nuclear-powered attack submarine.

It was was remaining on scene to help in the search for survivors, Campbell said.

In Washington, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said President Bush was told about the incident.

The Coast Guard identified the boat as the Ehime Maru, a 180-foot boat from a vocational fisheries high school in southwestern Japan.

Public television NHK in Japan said there were 20 crew members, plus two teachers and 13 students from the Uwajima Fisheries High School in the southwestern Japanese prefecture of Ehime.

Telephone calls by The Associated Press to the Japanese Maritime Safety Agency went unanswered.

The Greeneville was commissioned in February 1996. The Los Angeles-class sub is 360 feet long, has a diameter of 33 feet and displaces 6,900 tons submerged. It is equipped with Tomahawk cruise missiles.

The crash is the second major mishap involving a Navy vessel near Hawaii in seven months. In July, the USS Denver, a 570-foot amphibious transport dock ship, was preparing to receive fuel from the USNS Yukon, a Military Sealift Command oiler, about 180 miles west of Oahu when the two vessels collided.

No one was injured, but the 677-foot Yukon sustained heavy damage to its right side and the Denver had a 25-foot-deep gash in its bow.

A Navy investigation reportedly found the captain and first officer of the Denver should have realized they were on course to hit the Yukon.

----

Sub in Crash in Fleets' Backbone

February 9, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Greeneville.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. submarine that collided Friday with a commercial boat near Honululu Harbor is a nuclear-powered attack submarine armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles.

The USS Greeneville is a Los Angeles class submarine, which the Navy considers the backbone of its submarine force.

The Greeneville was the 61st of 62 Los Angeles-class submarines authorized for construction by Congress.

The boat is equipped with the Tomahawk cruise missile system for land attack and strike capability.

Greeneville is 360 feet long and 33 feet wide.

The boat was reported to carry a crew of 16 officers and 126 crew. Cmdr. Scott Waddle, of Austin, Texas, is the submarine's commanding officer.

Greeneville honors a town in northeast Tennessee that is named for Revolutionary War Gen. Nathanael Greene.


-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

Energy Bill Focuses on Domestic Production

Friday, February 9, 2001
Washington Post
By Eric Pianin and Peter Behr
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46971-2001Feb8?language=printer

Opening a debate over energy policy, the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will unveil legislation next week to dramatically boost domestic energy production and permit oil and gas drilling in an Alaska wildlife refuge.

The bill, authored by Sen. Frank H. Murkowski (R-Alaska), contains many of President Bush's policy goals as well as billions of dollars of tax breaks and incentives for energy exploration and conservation that are not part of the tax bill Bush sent to Congress yesterday.

It will focus on increasing funding for "clean coal" technology, revitalizing the nuclear power industry and finding new sources of oil and natural gas -- including a proposal opposed by environmentalists and many members of Congress for drilling in the Arctic wildlife refuge.

The Murkowski legislation will be the opening salvo in what promises to be a major debate this year pitting those who favor increasing domestic energy production and others who fear it will come at the expense of environmental protection.

The debate is being spurred by California's power shortages and growing concern among Republicans and Democrats that the country is headed toward an energy crisis. During the campaign, Bush charged that the Clinton administration had failed to develop a comprehensive energy policy to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

While members of both parties agree something must be done, Democrats and environmental groups say that Bush and the Republicans are putting too much emphasis on oil and gas production at the expense of conservation and development of alternative fuels.

Murkowski said this week he discussed his proposal with Vice President Cheney, head of a presidential task force on energy, and that there was general agreement "we have an energy crisis in this country" that necessitates increased domestic production.

The bill likely will be merged with the broad energy proposals being discussed by the White House task force. That plan should be ready in six to eight weeks, Cheney told senators recently.

"This isn't going to be the bill that ultimately will be debated on the floor," Murkowski said. "It's designed to initiate the discussion."

Murkowski added: "What we intend to do is concentrate on increasing the supply of conventional energy -- clean coal, nuclear, gas and oil. We want to see an expanded use of alternative fuels and renewables. But we don't think we can conserve our way out of an energy crisis."

Philip E. Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, complained that Murkowski and the Bush administration are trying to "drill their way" out of the energy crisis, when a more balanced approach is required that includes incentives for energy conservation and development of cleaner-burning energy sources.

The Natural Resources Defense Council released a national energy proposal this week that calls for increased reliance on natural gas and development of alternative energy sources, while reducing dependence on oil and coal.

Democrats say they have no immediate plans for countering Murkowski's bill and instead will offer a series of short-term solutions for coping with the nation's energy needs. Those include expanding the availability of federal heating and air conditioning assistance to low-income families and some businesses.

"Frankly, [the Murkowski bill] tries to deal with so many different aspects of the energy situation that it's hard to get your arms around it," said Sen. Jeff Bingaman (N.M.), the ranking Democrat on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. "We would need some real serious studies to see which of the proposals contained in this bill really merit serious consideration."

Environmental leaders said that proposals for drilling in the Alaska wildlife refuge would do nothing to address the short-term problems of rising gasoline and home heating prices and would have only a minor impact on reducing U.S. dependence on foreign oil. The U.S. Geological Survey concluded that the area likely holds about 3.2 billion barrels of economically recoverable oil, or less than what the nation uses in six months.

In addition to the soaring wholesale fuel prices in California, natural gas wellhead prices around the country have been three to four times above year-ago levels for most of the winter and may remain high entering next winter.

Gasoline supplies going into the summer travel season will be below normal, the Energy Information Administration projects, threatening a repeat of last year's gyrating pump prices.

Many Democrats in Congress and some Republican governors in the Northwest are calling for price caps to limit electricity prices and restrict record profits flowing to energy companies.

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.), who chairs the House Energy and Commerce energy and air quality subcommittee, told reporters yesterday he will oppose any move to control energy prices. "I won't vote for it," he said.

-------- chemical weapons

Russia Vows to Start Destroying Chemical Arms

February 9, 2001
New York Times
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/09/world/09WEAP.html

MOSCOW, Feb. 8 - Russia pledged this week that it would finally begin destroying 40,000 tons of lethal chemical weapons - the largest stockpile in the world - this summer, Western officials said.

In meetings with José Bustani, who heads the secretariat that enforces the Chemical Weapons Convention signed by 130 countries, Zinovy Pak, director of the Russian Munitions Agency, said funds for the destruction of chemical arms had been increased sixfold this year to $105 million. A plan to begin operating the first of three destruction plants will be presented to President Vladimir V. Putin next month.

The first plant is nearing completion at Gorny, 660 miles southeast of Moscow. American assistance to construct a second plant at Shchuchye, 1,100 miles southeast of Moscow, remains frozen.

Mr. Pak told Mr. Bustani that under the plan, former Russian chemical warfare troops would begin to drill holes into 400 tons of nerve gas shells and neutralize their contents using equipment once intended to destroy leaking shells in combat conditions.

"The world has grounds to doubt that Russia will cope with the obligations to eliminate chemical weapons that it undertook in 1993," Mr. Pak told reporters after meeting Mr. Bustani on Tuesday. "Unfortunately, Russia failed to accomplish first-stage tasks that envisaged elimination of one percent of the chemical weapons stocks - 400 tons - by the end of 2000."

The United States and other Western nations had been assisting Russia's preparations to destroy its chemical arms, but Congress froze money for the project after Moscow missed its deadline. The funds, up to $50 million a year, can be restored if Moscow puts in place a well-financed program.

The United States has already destroyed about 15 percent of its chemical weapons stockpile.

-------- environment

Pipeline Safety Bill Approved by Senate

February 9, 2001
New York Times
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/09/politics/09PIPE.html?printpage=yes

WASHINGTON, Feb. 8 - The nation's aging network of oil and natural gas pipelines would come under new inspection standards and operators would be subject to higher fines under legislation the Senate unanimously passed today.

The bill would require operators to inspect pipelines every five years, although the Transportation Department's inspector general would have some discretion to lift the mandate.

It expands state oversight of hazardous liquid and natural gas pipelines, increases outlays for safety by $13 billion over several years and improves whistle-blower protections.

Lois Epstein, a senior engineer for the group Environmental Defense, characterized the bill as a "very small step" in the right direction.

The legislation comes in response to a June 1999 pipeline explosion in Bellingham, Wash., that released 250,000 gallons of gasoline into a creek and killed three people, and a blast two months later near a campground at Carlsbad, N.M., in which a dozen people were killed.

---

McCall Faults Pataki's Record on Cleanup of Toxic Waste

February 9, 2001
New York Times
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/09/nyregion/09MCCA.html?printpage=yes

ALBANY, Feb. 8 - The state comptroller criticized the Pataki administration today for its handling of toxic waste sites, issuing an audit that said, among other things, that the cleanup of at least 30 sites did not meet the standards for protecting public health.

The criticism comes as the state's Superfund program, which oversees cleanup of toxic waste sites, is running out of money and the Legislature is considering several proposals not only to finance it but also to overhaul its operations. Gov. George E. Pataki has proposed financing the program with $138 million a year and lowering cleanup standards at sites to be used solely for industrial or commercial purposes.

The comptroller, H. Carl McCall, a Democrat who plans to seek the nomination to challenge Mr. Pataki in the next election, said the administration was asking the Legislature to lower standards at a time when state environmental officials seemed unable to provide a clear picture of cleanup operations across the state.

"There have been proposals to weaken cleanup standards," Mr. McCall said. "But we can't lower the standards and then just claim a Superfund site is clean. "

Mr. McCall's audit found that since 1979, when the state program was established, cleanup had been completed at 388 of the 1,024 contaminated sites on the state's registry.

Of those sites, 167 were clean enough to be taken off the list, though only two met the goal of being as clean as they were before being polluted, the audit said. New businesses have been built on about two-thirds of the sites that were taken off the list, the auditors found.

Of the 221 treated sites still on the list, the auditors found that 30 still did not meet the state's minimum standards for protecting public health. At five other sites, state workers had failed to meet their own cleanup goals. For 141 sites, the records of the state's Department of Environmental Conservation did not show whether the state's cleanup goals were met.

"It's not news that the Superfund is broke," Mr. McCall said. "We've been warning for years that was coming. But what is disappointing is the lack of progress."

Mr. McCall's auditors called on state environmental officials to develop a better system for tracking the progress of cleanups and for reporting the results to the Legislature and local communities.

A spokeswoman for the conservation department, Jennifer Post, said the audit was riddled with inaccuracies. She said the auditors had misunderstood how the state manages toxic waste sites. Many remain on the registry after the cleanup work has stopped, she said. For instance, experts continue to monitor a landfill for years after it has been capped and sealed. At other sites, the state may continue pumping out ground water and treating it, long after the work has been done. Those remain on the registry as well.

"The specifics of this audit show the comptroller has a complete lack of understanding of how remedial programs work," she said.

Environmentalists, though, said the audit was troubling on several levels. The failure to meet minimum standards for public health at 30 sites raised questions about how well the cleanup operations were being conducted, they said.

In addition, the auditors found that county courthouses often have no record of deed restrictions, which would keep houses, schools or apartments from being built on sites that could not be completely cleaned. Environmentalists seized on the absence of the restrictions as a sign that Mr. Pataki's proposal for lower standards for commercial property would not work. He has argued that such deed restrictions could be used to reserve certain sites for commercial property.

But some environmentalists do not agree.

"We shouldn't make it easier to use deed restrictions, but use them less," said Michael Livermore, an environmental advocate with the New York Public Interest Research Group. "The governor's policy on this is totally wrongheaded."

Some environmentalists and Democratic legislators said it appeared that the administration, rather than devoting more resources to cleaning up pollution, was trying to fix the problems by lowering the standards.

"Rather than making the program do what it's supposed to do, they are trying to change the program so they don't have to do it," Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky, the chairman of the Assembly's environmental committee, said. "It's like complaining the trains run late and then making the trains run on time by extending the arrival times."

---

Gastronomes Have a Beef With a Renouncing Chef

February 9, 2001
New York Times
Paris Journal
By MARLISE SIMONS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/09/world/09PARI.html?pagewanted=all

PARIS, Feb. 8 - When life in the French kitchen was still normal, before mad cow disease appeared, the chef at Arpège would singe the choicest T-bones and bathe his fattened goose livers in a mixture of caramel and raspberry.

The chef, Alain Passard, called himself a rôtissier, a man who confronted lamb, steak and duck with open flames. His inventions gained the admiration of his colleagues as well as three stars in the Michelin guide, the ultimate accolade.

So it was all the more startling when Mr. Passard recently announced that he had - even foie gras. He declared that from now on, he would devote himself to vegetables.

"I want to show that French cuisine based on vegetables is possible," said Mr. Passard, in a statement quickly taken as blasphemy. "I'm rethinking everything because of the turn our food is taking. French cooking is modeled on meat, but I have given up eating meat, so I don't want to go on cooking it."

In a country where vegetarians are few and considered rather abnormal, his leap across the food barrier has become the gastronomic talk of the moment. The media have examined it with attention usually reserved for political scandal.

By now, most French people have learned that cows suspected of having the brain-wasting disease must be put to death and that the animals, naturally herbivores, may have been infected by a diet of contaminated bone meal. French consumers have heard that there is more salmonella in today's chickens and that feed used on fish farms might be laced with hormones or dioxins.

But there is still respect for tradition. And this means that every civilized meal should include fish, fowl or beast. The arrival of "le fast food" from overseas was already a blow. But now that such pillars as "le steak" are under attack from one of France's own cardinals of food, even blasé Parisians are demanding explanations. Some have berated Mr. Passard as if he were a warmonger.

"Surely you are offending your colleagues who are still cooking meat," said a caller, interrupting an interview in the chef's crowded office.

Moments later, a radio reporter called, asking, "Is this not an act of blatant opportunism at a time when French farmers and butchers are suffering?"

Mr. Passard, a soft-spoken man of 43, less of a prima donna than some of his culinary brethren, said he had mulled over his decision for some time and had been phasing out meat because he was bored. "I've gone as far as I can go in this cuisine," he said. "It's difficult to be creative with meat."

He admitted that mad cow had influenced him. "We humans have caused a problem turning a grass- eating ruminant into a carnivore," he said. "I myself feel like chewing something that is fresh and tender."

No other top chef has gone quite as far as Mr. Passard, but as the appetite for red meat has fallen in France, other restaurants have expanded their fish and fowl dishes and gone out of their way to reassure clients that their supplies come from healthy cattle.

The Michelin guide, the culinary bible, is noting other changes. "We see a comeback of rustic vegetables," said Jean-Frédéric Douroux, a spokesman. He cited rutabaga, pumpkin and tuber artichoke along with salsify, a fleshy root, and spelt, a wheat variety. These all used to be out of fashion, Mr. Douroux said.

"Some were used as substitutes for other vegetables during the war, so maybe they had left bad memories."

What about vegetarian cooking? Mr. Douroux was asked. "We don't think there's more, but it is improving," he said, hesitating, and then revealed, "We will include a few more vegetarian restaurants in our guide."

Food writers see the return to tubers, squashes and chards as a search for wholesomeness from the land - for a kind of stability in a shifting world.

Rough, fermented country bread is now in demand even in chic patisseries. "The French soul is still connected to the countryside, and people are looking there for reassurance," said Mort Rosenblum, author of a new culinary travelogue, "A Goose in Toulouse."

Still, the countryside is some way from Mr. Passard's chic Parisian restaurant on the rue de Grenelle.

Paul Bocuse, one of France's most famous chefs, showed mixed feelings about Mr. Passard's total embrace of vegetables. "Perhaps he can succeed - that boy certainly has a lot of talent," said Mr. Bocuse, who is 75. "We'll talk in a year and see if he has convinced people."

Mr. Bocuse, who is based in Lyon, the heart of carnivorous France, said that because of health concerns he had removed organ meats like brains, kidneys and sweetbreads from the menu, but that he was still serving beef filet and calves' liver.

"I've seen a lot of changes in my time," Mr. Bocuse said. "But what's going on now with the cattle is a catastrophe. Even scientists don't agree on what to do."

But the big question now, as he put it, is: can one charge the usual price for a meal of mainly vegetables?

Mr. Passard's three-star establishment is of course no conventional veggie place with heaps of rice and lentils. Lunch costs around $100, and a 10-course dinner close to $200. Invariably full, Arpège has a two-week waiting list.

"No, prices will not change," said Mr. Passard, explaining that he uses costly ingredients like white and black truffles, the best mushrooms, aged balsamic vinegars. Vegetables are labor-intensive, he said. For a chunk of veal or lamb, a few minutes less or more may not make the difference. "But with a leek you can ruin the texture or the flavor in a few seconds."

Long before he shocked Paris gastronomes, Mr. Passard was admired for his experimentation. On a recent day he was doing just that at his stove, gleefully folding ripe pear into sautéed yellow onion and sprinkling on a dash of homemade verbena oil.

"Since I started to rethink my cooking," he said, "I've found a multitude of choices. Vegetables are much more colorful, more perfumed, more luminous." He uses the flavor of flowers, like nasturtium and pansies, and says he likes borage "because it tastes like oysters." He is perfecting a pastry shell with a filling of parsley and black truffles.

As the experiments go on, some are already on the menu: poached egg in maple syrup; celeriac with baked chestnut; whipped avocado on smoked herring eggs perfumed with pistachio oil. There will be a few nonplant exceptions like morsels of squab and, when available, a limited choice of seafood like carpaccio of cured lobster.

Other cultures, the chef concedes, appreciate the art of vegetable cooking, but "in France we still have to invent it."

Will he use a wok? No, that's far too aggressive, he said.

What about steaming?

"Horrors," he replied, declaring that steam can ruin color and perfume, and leave things overcooked. "We will do gentle, slow simmering and liaise with a little butter."

"People say I'm crazy," he went on, now picking up a new candidate for a tryout, a branch of lemony geranium leaves.

---

Court Blocks a Water Plant in Bronx Park

February 9, 2001
New York Times
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/09/nyregion/09WATE.html?pagewanted=all

ALBANY, Feb. 8 - New York City cannot build a water treatment plant in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx without approval from the State Legislature, the state's highest court ruled today, raising questions about how the city will comply with a federal mandate to clean its drinking water.

The proposed $680 million plant was the Giuliani administration's answer to an Environmental Protection Agency order to begin filtering and chemically treating part of the city's water supply. But today's unanimous ruling by the Court of Appeals almost certainly killed the project, state officials and community leaders said, because the Legislature is highly unlikely to give its approval.

The decision could delay construction of a plant by years as the city casts about for a new location. It also means that the city will become liable for millions of dollars in fines for missing deadlines under an agreement with the federal government.

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said he would ask the Court of Appeals to reconsider its ruling, and would ask the federal government to reconsider its position that water treatment is needed. He also raised the possibility of an appeal to the United States Supreme Court.

"The decision of the court was totally incomprehensible," Mr. Giuliani said. "It is going to say, `In the future, don't make things parkland, because it removes your options in a complex and difficult city.' "

By longstanding tradition, the Legislature almost never approves the use of parks for other purposes unless the legislators who represent the site give their consent. The proposed plant, which would occupy 23 acres in the Mosholu Golf Course, lies in the districts of Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, a Democrat, and State Senator Guy J. Velella, a Republican. Both men oppose the project, as do nearly all Bronx lawmakers.

"I'm almost sure this project is dead," Mr. Dinowitz said. "This is a huge victory, not only for this community but for the whole state, because the court said a local government can't just grab parkland for its own purposes."

Assemblyman Jeffrey Klein, a Democrat whose district borders the park, said, "No one in the Legislature is going to give their permission, Democrats or Republicans."

The court's decision revives a bruising, long-running political fight over where, and whether, to build the plant. Mr. Giuliani at first tried to situate it at the Jerome Park Reservoir in the Bronx, sparking much opposition from the surrounding neighborhood and elected officials, which forced the mayor to retreat. He said today that he might try to revert to that plan, though opponents say it would have the same legal problems as the Van Cortlandt site.

The plan to put the plant in the golf course has met with nearly as much protest as the Jerome Park proposal.

"This would have been a huge industrial facility in a residential neighborhood, no matter how they tried to disguise it as something else," said Margaret M. Groarke, one of the leaders of community opposition to the plant.

Opponents said fumes from the plant could pose a health hazard - a contention the city disputed - to a community that has one of the highest asthma rates in the nation.

The plant would have treated water from the Croton watershed, a region of streams and city-owned reservoirs in Westchester, Dutchess and Putnam Counties. The Croton system supplies about 10 percent of the city's water during normal times, but as much as 30 percent during droughts, when reservoirs in the city's much larger Catskills watershed run low.

Some environmentalists and Bronx neighborhood groups have argued for years that treatment is not needed for the Croton watershed. The water does not violate federal health standards, though the E.P.A. has said it might in the future.

Opponents of the plant say the city could keep the Croton watershed clean by buying property around reservoirs to prevent development and the runoff it brings, and by improving local sewage treatment plants in the region to prevent contamination of the water. The city has successfully used that strategy to avoid a water treatment mandate in its more sparsely developed Catskills watershed.

"It's a bad idea to clean up something rather than keeping it clean in the first place," said Dart Westphal, a board member of Friends of Van Cortlandt Park, one of the plaintiffs in the case decided today.

The E.P.A. concluded in the early 1990's that because of harmful bacteria, water from the Croton system would not meet health standards in years to come. In 1997, the agency, later joined by the state, sued to force the city to adhere to a timetable for building a treatment plant.

To settle the case, the city agreed to an elaborate schedule, with fines for failure to meet a long list of deadlines, including a July 31, 1999, date for formally choosing a site and asking the Legislature for permission, if necessary, to use that site.

A few days before that deadline, the City Council, at the mayor's urging - and over the heated opposition of Bronx representatives - approved the Van Cortlandt Park plan. Many Council members who voted in favor were reluctant, but said they had little choice in the face of the settlement with the E.P.A.

But the city never sought legislative approval for use of the park. Today's court ruling means that the city becomes liable for fines retroactive to that mid-1999 date, a total that state officials put at more than $5 million, and mounting by $5,000 per day. The mayor said that in fact, the figure is climbing by $25,000 daily.

City officials noted that the plant would take up a tiny fraction of a park that, at 1,146 acres, is more than one-third larger than Central Park.

The city's plan was to build an earth mound more than 30 feet high around the 23-acre plant and over the top of it. That way, the Giuliani administration argued, no state approval was needed because the plant would be under the golf course, and there would be no net reduction in park acreage after the five-year construction period was over.

"Covering it with a layer of dirt doesn't make it underground," Mr. Dinowitz said. "It would rise as high as the Jerome Avenue El."

Attorney General Eliot L. Spitzer and a large group of state legislators have been warning the city that its interpretation of the law is wrong. Mr. Spitzer, who supported construction of a filtration plant, said: "We were involved to defend a principle that is critical to the preservation of parklands across New York State. We just want the city to follow the law."

Several New York City community groups and advocates, along with New York State, sued the city to require legislative approval. A federal judge sided with the city, but the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Manhattan concluded that because a question of state law was involved, the state's highest court should be asked to decide it. A state high court's ruling on a matter of state law is usually final, and is rarely subject to challenge by the federal courts.

"Legislative approval is required when there is a substantial intrusion on parkland for nonpark purposes," Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye wrote for the Court of Appeals, "regardless of whether the parkland is ultimately to be restored."

She also noted "that an appreciable area of the park will be closed for more than five years, and that some future uses of the land will be inhibited by the presence of the underground structure."

---

HORSESHOE-CRAB REFUGE

February 9, 2001
New York Times
Metro Briefs
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/09/nyregion/09MBRF.html?pagewanted=all

OCEAN CITY: The Bush administration approved new rules this week that essentially create a vast refuge for horseshoe crabs off the coast of New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland. Despite protests from commercial fishermen, who use the crabs for bait, the National Marine Fisheries Service is banning harvesting of the crabs, effective March 7. Fines of $100,000 could be imposed for taking crabs in a 1,500-square-mile area stretching from Ocean City, N.J., to an area just north of Ocean City, Md. Environmentalists and state officials say eggs laid by horseshoe crabs are critical nourishment for migrating birds. Andrew Jacobs (NYT)

--------

Saving Connecticut

February 9, 2001
Washington Times
Inside the Beltway John McCaslin Political tidbits and other shenanigans from around the nation's capital.
http://www.washtimes.com/national/inbeltway.htm

It's worth repeating the reaction of Sen. Craig Thomas, Wyoming Republican, after the "Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act" was introduced in the House of Representatives this week.

"Thanks, but no thanks," said Mr. Thomas. "This is the same misguided legislation that has gone nowhere for several years and faces the same certain fate this Congress. It is a particularly naive notion perpetuated by Easterners that simply turning over a majority of the West to the federal government is good for the communities that live and work there or even good for the environment.

"I'm nearly spurred to introduce my own bill: the 'Most of Connecticut and All New York Ecosystem Protection Act.' It would lock up all the private and public lands in both states and put everyone out of work. But of course, I won't because - like this bill - the idea is ludicrous."

-------- genetics

Working with the enemy to feed the world

February 9, 2001
San Francisco Business Times
Richard Bensinger
http://sanfrancisco.bcentral.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2001/02/12/editorial2.html

Workers in union organizing campaigns often have to face the most unprincipled and vicious employer attacks, including personal threats, plant closings and layoffs. As a union organizer, I have been met with the most ruthless opposition from corporate America. You might guess that I don't trust many business leaders.

But I am also a pragmatist. I know that in order for us to effect change on a global scale, we often must set aside politics and prejudice. We must work with people and corporations we would otherwise be fighting. Which is why I am so concerned about the raging controversy over the development of genetically modified foods -- foods that may hold the promise to reduce world hunger.

There are legitimate fears and concerns about the recent dramatic advances in biotechnology. I am the last person to take on faith the self-administered "research" of the multi-national corporations that are developing and selling genetically modified crops for handsome profits. I don't know enough about the issue of genetically modified foods to say they are a panacea. And I know we can't reduce world hunger by increasing food production through biotechnology without first addressing the complicated political issues within countries that have to do with the distribution of wealth and justice of societies.

But ripping down field trials of genetically modified crops makes no sense. They hold the promise of preventing starvation in Third World countries.

The catalyst for much of this campaign against biotechnology research is a growing anti-corporate sentiment. Ironically, this crusade against genetically modified foods is being funded by huge corporations that stand to make tremendous profits if they can turn the public against this new technology.

Whole Foods Markets, which owns several organic businesses, including Fresh Fields, was labeled by Time magazine as "a billion-dollar juggernaut." It is also one of the leading supporters of the fear-marketing campaign against genetically modified foods. (Full disclosure: Whole Foods founder John Mackey was quoted in Forbes magazine calling unions "parasites.")

The reason for the funding is simple. An organic food marketing consultant recently said, "The potential to develop the organic market would be limited if consumers are satisfied with food safety and the furor over genetic modification dies down." Translation: Fear sells.

The problem is that Whole Foods and other organic giants stand to gain a financial windfall from the furor over genetic modification that is being generated by activist organizations that these organic companies are funding.

Don't get me wrong; I have no problem with organic foods. I actually buy organic food. But in their effort to increase sales by frightening people about modern food technology, these organic food giants threaten the lives of the poorest among us -- the people who are most in need worldwide.

People like myself are easily convinced of the evils of behemoth corporations. We hear corporate names like "Monsanto" and "Novartis" and our immediate reaction is to fight. But these businesses do develop products that have the potential to feed millions of hungry people.

The lifesaving potential alone should convince us to stand aside and let the research continue. We simply cannot allow ourselves to be led astray by "fear marketing" campaigns designed to increase sales and profits.

Rich countries vs. poor

I am not alone in my concerns. Former U.S. Senator and presidential candidate George McGovern is more than the proud embodiment of the Left. He is also currently the American Ambassador to the U.S. Mission of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, Italy.

He, too, has objected to the campaign against the biotechnology that may hold the key to saving lives. In his just published book, "The Third Freedom -- Ending Hunger In Our Time," Sen. McGovern writes, "It is probably true that affluent countries can afford to reject scientific agriculture and pay more for foods produced by the so-called natural methods. But the 800 million poor, chronically hungry people of Asia, Africa and Latin America cannot afford such foods.

"If further efforts to bring the advantages of science to developing countries are thwarted by ill-advised critics, millions of poor people will pay a painful price -- perhaps the ultimate sacrifice, of life itself."

I also understand that the motives of the corporations and their stockholders who profit from modern foods are not to end world hunger. That doesn't matter. Not if you are hungry.

Richard Bensinger, former organizing director for the AFL-CIO, is a consultant on union organizing, living in Virginia.

-------- imf / world bank

W.T.O. SETS DATE FOR MEETING

February 9, 2001
New York Times
World Business Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/09/business/09FOBR.html

The World Trade Organization sets Nov. 9-13 as the dates for its next top-level meeting, to be held in Doha, the capital of the Persian Gulf state of Qatar. Human rights advocates protested the setting on the ground that Qatar curbs political expression, but no other country formally offered to be host to the biennial gathering. The European Union, among other members of 140-country organization, are pushing to revive a new round of global trade talks. Elizabeth Olson (NYT)

-------- police

Man Says Suffolk Patrolman Made Him Undress

February 9, 2001
New York Times
By AL BAKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/09/nyregion/09COP.html

GARDEN CITY, N.Y., Feb. 8 - A Suffolk County resident has come forward as the first man to report that a county highway patrolman forced him to undress during a traffic stop, a charge that comes shortly after several women made similar accusations.

The man, Anthony J. Luciano, pleaded guilty to drunken-driving charges filed after he was stopped a year ago. But his lawyer said today that Mr. Luciano had not complained to the authorities about the officer because everyone else he told - including his former lawyer - thought his story was so outrageous that it was hard to believe.

"People laughed at him," said Mr. Luciano's current lawyer, Bernard A. Nathan. "They really didn't believe him. What makes it different now is that a number of people have come forward, and their stories are very similar to his, even though he is a guy and they are girls."

Last month, several women reported that a patrolman, whom the police later identified as Officer Frank Wright, had made them undress or had mistreated them during traffic stops. The Suffolk police started checking all the arrests made by Officer Wright and contacting those arrested to ask whether similar incidents had happened to them, according to Mr. Nathan.

On Jan. 4, they called Mr. Luciano, who had spent four months in the county jail on the drunken-driving charges. His story was first reported Wednesday on News 12 Long Island, a cable news channel, after a friend of his family called the station, his lawyer said.

Suffolk police officials confirmed today that Officer Wright had arrested Mr. Luciano. They said the Internal Affairs Bureau was investigating the case. "We take the allegations seriously," said Officer Mark Ryan, a police spokesman.

Officer Wright, 34, has been suspended without pay. A grand jury is set to hear evidence in the case this month. His lawyer, William Keahon, has said the officer is "totally innocent of any misconduct."

Mr. Nathan said he planned to file a federal civil rights lawsuit against Officer Wright, the county and its Police Department.

He said Mr. Luciano, 36, of Shirley was driving home alone on Sunrise Highway about 10:30 p.m. last Feb. 15 after having dinner and a few beers at a restaurant in East Islip when Officer Wright stopped him near Exit 56 for weaving in the eastbound lanes.

The officer administered a series of sobriety tests and a Breathalyzer test, which indicated that his blood-alcohol level was 0.12 percent - higher than the 0.10 percent legal limit, Mr. Nathan said.

He said the officer told Mr. Luciano that he would teach him a lesson and ordered him to strip to his shorts and walk home.

Mr. Luciano, who declined to comment today, said in a videotaped interview on News 12 Long Island that he had been shocked. "I didn't know what the heck he was doing," he said. "I felt embarrassed. I was cold."

Just as he got his pants down to his shoes, another police car pulled up, and Officer Wright told Mr. Luciano to pull his pants back up because he was going to be arrested, Mr. Nathan said. In the police car, Mr. Nathan said, Officer Wright explained that he often forced drunken drivers to undress and walk home to avoid doing the hours of paperwork required for an arrest.

Mr. Luciano said in the taped interview: "He got mad that the other officer pulled up to the side and he couldn't do what he wanted to do. He explained to me that he does this to a lot of people. I didn't know he did it to girls. I figured he was only doing it to guys."

Julianna Rubio, one of the women who has accused Officer Wright of forcing her to strip to avoid arrest, said that when she was pulled over on Dec. 27, the officer told her, "`If you were a guy, I would make you take off your clothes and walk home to teach you a lesson.'"

Mr. Luciano, a father of three who works for a company that washes building exteriors, had already pleaded guilty to drunken-driving charges in 1998. Mr. Nathan said that after Mr. Luciano's arrest a year ago, his lawyer at the time told him that it would be no use filing charges against Officer Wright because it would pit his word against the officer's, and he would lose.

"If I was his attorney at that time, I would have told him there is no way you are going to win," Mr. Nathan said. Mr. Nathan said Mr. Luciano had also told his wife and friends about the incident but "it was just too difficult to believe that a police officer would act in this way."

He said that when the police called on Jan. 4, Mr. Luciano's wife, Ruth, answered and knew exactly what they wanted.

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Public Lives: Visiting May Be Hazardous. . .

February 9, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/09/nyregion/09PUBL.html

To a watchful police officer, it may have looked suspicious. But RONNIE SPECTOR and her husband, JONATHAN GREENFIELD, say they were merely taking their two teenage sons for a brief visit to Ms. Spector's girlhood home in Harlem. Mr. Greenfield waited in their car. Soon after they drove off, a car stopped in front of them and three men with guns got out. "I thought I was dead; I'll put it that way," Ms. Spector said yesterday. "Me and my whole family."

Trying to escape what he says he thought was a carjacking, Mr. Greenfield stepped on the gas, and after a harrowing high-speed chase, two cars forced them to a stop and boxed them in on the Henry Hudson Parkway. One man punched Mr. Greenfield, he said, while the two boys huddled in the back seat.

It was not until the men, who Ms. Spector said told her they were undercover police officers chasing two homicide suspects, learned that they had stopped a famous recording star that they let the family go, without searching the car, Ms. Spector said.

"That's the insult," she said, adding that an ordinary person might not have been so lucky.

Mr. Greenfield said he reported the incident to the Internal Affairs Bureau but had not had any response.

Thomas Antenen, a spokesman for the Police Department, said that because Mr. Greenfield had sustained a cut lip but no serious injury, the matter had been referred to the Civilian Complaint Review Board.

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Mediation and the Police

February 9, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/09/opinion/L09POL.html

To the Editor:

Re "Monitoring New York's Police" (editorial, Feb. 2):

It is to be hoped that Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's proposal to allow the Civilian Complaint Review Board to prosecute cases against police officers will overcome the misperception of the board's ineffectiveness.

In this regard, it is worth mentioning the board's outstanding mediation program. In cases not involving injury, the complainant and the police officer, with the help of two civilian mediators, talk out their disagreement and their feelings about the incident that gave rise to the complaint.

In almost 100 such mediations, most of the time both parties shook hands and called the process "successful" in a written agreement. The allegations are then removed from the police officer's record. The process has likely helped the officer's community relations skills.

MEL P. BARKAN New York, Feb. 7, 2001 The writer was chairman, Civilian Complaint Review Board, 1996-98.

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SPY AGENCY REBORN

February 9, 2001
New York Times
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/09/world/09BRIE.html?pagewanted=all

PERU: The transition government reactivated the National Intelligence Service, the agency once led by the former spy chief Vladimiro Montesinos, which was disbanded by former President Alberto K. Fujimori. "In reality," said Prime Minister Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, the agency "serves an essential mission." Clifford Krauss (NYT)

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Special forces spied on crowds during Olympics

February 9, 2001

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) _ The government admitted Thursday that troops from an elite Australian special forces unit spied on crowds at the Sydney Olympics _ and that the Cabinet did not initially know about it.

The embarrassing admission followed revelations in the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper that crack troops of the Special Air Service (SAS) regiment were assigned to 15 undercover intelligence teams that mingled with crowds at the Olympics last September on security duties, an apparent violation of defense regulations.

The newspaper cited confidential Defense Department documents which said the teams should, ``conduct activities such as maintaining a discreet presence within the general public at key venues to report activities which may cause a chance in the security situation.''

The Herald reported that then-Defense Minister John Moore did not know about the undercover operation until a senior officer found out about it and told a Cabinet official.

The government's National Security Committee met during the games and allowed the covert surveillance to continue.

Late Thursday, the government admitted it had not approved the deployment until midway through the games.

``Ministerial approval was not sought beforehand because of an oversight and it should have been,'' a government spokesman said on customary condition of anonymity.

``Once the matter was brought to the government's attention approval for this support was given and ended at the conclusion of the games.''

Earlier, Defense Department spokesman Colin Blair dismissed claims that the minister's office was not aware of the operations, saying it was all made public last year.

Defense chief Adm. Chris Barrie issued a statement in September saying his department was contributing over 4,000 defense and civilian staff to work on the games in ``Operation Gold,'' including in ``information collection'' and analysis.

Opposition defense spokesman Stephen Martin said Prime Minister John Howard and new Defense Minister Peter Reith must explain the deployment.

``There is no doubt that Adm. Barrie I'm sure was acting in the best interests of all Australians and our international visitors here for the Olympics,'' Martin said.

``But there are rules, rules of engagement and rules about the use of Australian troops. Clearly this government was kept in the dark and we need an explanation as to why that was allowed to happen,'' he said.

Under Australia's Defense Act, troops can be used to help police in normal duties, but they must wear uniforms and should only be deployed where there is ``no likelihood'' they will have to use force.

The government spokesman played down the troops' role.

``They were not armed and they had no more rights than an ordinary citizen,'' he said. ``Essentially they were walking around keeping an eye out for trouble spots.''

But Green Party Sen. Bob Brown slammed the troops' use.

``This is just not on,'' Brown said. ``It is an encouragement to the military to increase its intervention in civil matters.''

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TERRORISM RECORD

February 9, 2001
New York Times
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/09/world/09BRIE.html?pagewanted=all

SRI LANKA: The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the ethnic separatist group, lead the world in suicide bombings, having conducted 168 of the 271 such bombings in the past two decades, according to Rohan Gunaratne, a terrorism specialist reporting in Jane's Intelligence Review. Celia W. Dugger (NYT)

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Bin Laden trial by Islamists proposed

February 9, 2001
Washington Times
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-200129204356.htm

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Afghanistan's Taleban rulers are prepared to allow Osama bin Laden - sought by the United States on terrorism charges - to be tried by Islamic clerics, perhaps in a third country, Pakistan's interior minister said yesterday.

The Taleban move was its latest attempt to try to appease the United Nations, which has imposed sanctions on Afghanistan's rulers to press demands that they hand over bin Laden for trial in the United States or a third country.

The United States accuses bin Laden of masterminding the bombing of its embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. He is also a suspect in last year's bombing of the USS Cole, in which 17 American sailors were killed.

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Foreign Media Role Cited in Beijing Immolation

February 9, 2001
New York Times
By ERIK ECKHOLM
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/09/world/09GONG.html

BEIJING, Friday, Feb. 9 - At least two official newspapers have carried articles saying that Western news agencies knew in advance about plans by apparent Falun Gong believers to set themselves on fire last month, and that some foreign journalists could face homicide charges for helping in a suicide.

The news agencies deny having prior knowledge of the incident in Tiananmen Square on Jan. 23. Two of the three accused organizations say they did not have reporters or photographers in the square at the time, let alone the several news people whom the articles say were detained by the police. The agencies say they have not been notified of any criminal investigation.

The Foreign Ministry said on Thursday and the cabinet's information office confirmed this morning that just two journalists from one news organization, CNN, had been detained "for violating relevant rules." Both said they were unaware of a criminal investigation.

Still, China's newspapers do not usually print articles on sensitive topics without high-level approval, suggesting that at least some officials may be trying to discredit foreign journalists and their reports on the banned Falun Gong movement.

Asked whether the Beijing police were in fact considering criminal charges against foreign journalists, the city government said it needed more time to reply.

The articles repeat, almost verbatim, accusations that first appeared on Sunday in Sing Tao Daily, a newspaper in Hong Kong, where the press often prints rumors about the mainland. They gained credence when the article was reprinted on Tuesday in Reference News, a popular Chinese paper that reprints foreign press reports compiled by the New China News Agency, an arm of the Communist Party Propaganda Department.

On Wednesday, the Guangzhou- based Yangcheng Evening News carried an almost identical article. The articles have also appeared on Chinese Internet sites.

A Chinese journalist said the agency, which plays a supervisory role over sensitive news in newspapers here, had given a green light for repeating the accusations.

The Yangcheng Evening News asserted that the police had detained six or seven journalists from CNN, The Associated Press and Agence France-Press in the square during the incident, which left one person dead and four others badly burned.

The article, citing the police, said, "Several foreign reporters were detained at the scene, and after investigations, they have evidence that the reporters knew beforehand that the Falun Gong followers would carry out an extreme act on Tiananmen Square. If it is established that they directly participated in the plan, then they can be pursued for criminal responsibility under the crime of homicide."

CNN executives said that by chance a producer and a cameraman were on the square at the time of the incident, on the eve of the Lunar New Year. The chief news executive of CNN, Eason Jordan, said in a telephone interview, "Falun Gong protests are not unusual on national holidays, and we thought it would be smart to check the square periodically in that period."

The CNN crew members said they were at least 60 yards away when they saw flames and then smoke, as the police sprayed a man with fire extinguishers. The crew had filmed from a distance for less than a minute, when they were spotted by the police and detained, and a videotape was confiscated. They were released later that afternoon.

The A.P. and A.F.P. said they had no one on the scene.

Apart from misstating the number of detained journalists, the articles assert that the journalists were pre- positioned near the site of the attempted suicides and that CNN had close-up film that was subsequently used in a special report on the incident on Chinese television.

The CNN crew members say they were already in detention when four people set themselves on fire, moments after the first one lighted himself. The crew members said they did not think that their confiscated tape was included in the television special, which used film from numerous stationary security cameras, as well as cameras carried by officers at the square.

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Hong Kong Will Check on Falun Gong

February 9, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/09/world/09HONG.html

HONG KONG, Feb. 8 - Echoing the position of the Chinese government, Hong Kong's top official said today that he was shocked by television images of what Beijing says were members of the Falun Gong spiritual group setting themselves on fire in Tiananmen Square.

The chief executive, Tung Chee- hwa, said Hong Kong would more closely monitor the group, which is outlawed in China but remains legal in this former British colony. Yet Mr. Tung stopped short of threatening to strip Falun Gong's legal status here, even though, he said, it bore "some characteristics of an evil cult."

"I was shocked by the incident," Mr. Tung told legislators. "We should also be aware that certain developed countries have been affected by cults. Some members of these cults undertake irrational behavior."

Mr. Tung's comments were closely scrutinized because he has not spoken publicly about Falun Gong since the movement held a conference here last month. That meeting included protests against China's treatment of Falun Gong and drew an angry response from mainland officials.

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China Said to Punish Unionist

February 9, 2001
New York Times
By ERIK ECKHOLM
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/09/world/09CHIN.html

BEIJING, Feb. 8 - A silk-factory worker who was forcibly placed in psychiatric care in December after he tried to organize an independent union has protested detention with a hunger strike, according to a human rights group abroad. As a result, he has been forcibly drugged and subjected to electroshock, the group said today.

The labor organizer, Cao Maobing, 47, began a hunger strike in late January, according to Human Rights in China, which is based in New York. But he was then drugged and given the shock therapy, the group said.

The director of the hospital where Mr. Cao is held says an intensive examination determined that he suffers from "paranoid psychosis." But Mr. Cao's friends and relatives insist he is not mentally ill, and the rights group called for an independent inquiry into his health.

Mr. Cao had been an eloquent spokesman for several hundred angry workers at the Funing County Silk Mill in Jiangsu Province, which has laid off many employees but has failed to pay required stipends and pensions. The workers accused factory managers of corruption and said that because the government- controlled union was not speaking out, they wanted to form their own group.

Last December, one day after he spoke with reporters from The New York Times and The Washington Post about the conflict, Mr. Cao was taken by the police to the No. 4 Psychiatric Hospital in Yancheng. He is still there, according to friends.

Reached by telephone today, the hospital director, Li Hu, said: "We handled Mr. Cao's case with great care. In the second half of January, 17 experts were able to identify a group of symptoms that led to the same conclusion we reached in 1998: Mr. Cao suffers paranoid psychosis."

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Vietnam Admits to More Unrest Among Minorities in Highlands

February 9, 2001
New York Times
By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/09/world/09VIET.html

HANOI, Vietnam, Feb. 8 - Vietnam's authorities acknowledged today that a wave of unrest in the Central Highlands had been more extensive than they had previously admitted, leading to several injuries and 20 arrests.

A Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Phan Thuy Thanh, told foreign reporters today that protesters had destroyed public buildings, including schools, in Buon Ma Thuot, a provincial capital, on Tuesday, prompting the wave of arrests.

Previously, the authorities had acknowledged the occurrence of a single demonstration on Jan. 29 in Pleiku, a neighboring provincial capital, despite persistent reports of unrest among ethnic minorities throughout the Central Highlands.

Protesters had gathered outside the Buon Ma Thuot city hall after receiving "some bad information" about the events in Pleiku, she said. They "behaved provocatively and caused social instability," she added, saying they remained in custody this evening.

Security personnel were among the injured, she said.

Among reasons for the protests were "evil elements abusing religion" and "complaints about the land," she said, acknowledging the central grievance behind the protests cited by witnesses.

The spokeswoman would not specify which religion was being abused in the protests, nor would she identify the ethnic group of those arrested.

Residents of the region say members of outlawed Protestant churches, which have a large following among the ethnic minorities, have joined the protests in large numbers out of anger over the confiscation of their churches and the breakup of religious services.

Asked why soldiers rather than tourists were now roaming the region's leading tourist attraction, the Yak Don National Park, the spokeswoman said, "The local authorities are doing what is necessary to bring back order." And she added, "I think we can say at this moment that the situation is back to normal."

Later today, government television broadcast its first statement on the unrest, saying that small-scale protests had begun in Buon Ma Thuot as early as Feb. 3, with minority protesters blocking traffic and keeping their children home from school. "Extremist elements" had stirred up the demonstrators by sowing "disunity among ethnic groups," the statement said. The crowds then started vandalizing public buildings belonging to village, commune and district authorities, causing unspecified damage and disturbing social stability, it said.

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MAD COW PROTEST

February 9, 2001
New York Times
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/09/world/09BRIE.html?pagewanted=all

SPAIN: Some 5,000 farmers, some with cows, halted traffic in Madrid by marching through the city center demanding compensation for the mad cow disease crisis, which they say has cost more than $1 billion. In Barcelona, butchers closed their shops and demonstrated to demand that the government better inform consumers, who are shying away from beef and veal for fear of the disease. Emma Daly (NYT)

INDONESIA: PRO-WAHID PROTESTS

Tens of thousands of people staged violent protests in three cities to support President Abdurrahman Wahid against attempts by Parliament to impeach him. Some protesters attacked offices of Golkar, once the party of former President Suharto. In two cities the police fired shots to contain the crowds. Today President Wahid plans to visit East Java, his party's heartland and center of the protests. Seth Mydans (NYT)

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Students, police clash in Ivorian capital

February 9, 2001
Washington Times
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-200129204356.htm

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast -Clashes between demonstrating students and police officers continued for the second day here yesterday, with several students arrested and one reportedly shot and wounded, a student leader told Agence France-Presse.

Denis Xavier Houphouet said student Lakoun Kone was "shot and wounded" while another student leader, Jean-Marie Abe, was badly beaten on Thursday.

"More than a dozen students were arrested by the Marcory police and taken to an unknown location," he added. But an officer at the station in the Marcory district of Abidjan dismissed the students' version of events.

Rapper draws protests outside English concert

MANCHESTER, England -About 100 protesters gathered yesterday outside a concert by Eminem, shouting for the American rap star to "stop the bigotry, stop the hate."

Eminem's arrival in Britain was a hot topic on television news programs and talk shows because of violent lyrics about homosexuals and women on his Grammy-nominated album "The Marshall Mathers LP."

Homosexual-rights activists and feminist groups expressed their displeasure with the 28-year-old rapper's songs by demonstrating outside the sold-out Manchester Arena, the site of his first of three British shows.

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