------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Bin Laden Case Latest Example Of Terrorism On Trial
U.S. offers apologies in Japanese boat collision
Germany's Fischer Meets Putin to End Moscow Visit
German Minister Visits Moscow
Presidents of Russia and Ukraine Sign Agreements
Adventure Gone Awry Divides Close Cousins in Japan
Clues Sought in Sub Accident; Some Japanese Fault Rescue
Japan PM Mori Under Fresh Attack Over Sub Accident
Russia and Ukraine in Energy Deal
Sub collision puts Japan in delicate position
Japan's prime minister berated for his golfing gaffe
U.S. will 'do the right thing' in ship-submarine collision
Secret War Room Opened to Public
Team Arrives at Nuclear Plant
North Korea continues military buildup
Missile defense still a pie in the sky
Russia Says Leave ABM Treaty Alone,
Missile defense wasteful
Is This Shield Necessary?
Russia 'Constructive' on U.S. Missile Plan
'A moral issue'
Downwinders Battle to Cash IOUs
POWER PLANT PLAN CRITICIZED

MILITARY
ANC used tourism to smuggle arms
Burmese fighting spills into Thailand
Thais drive out Myanmar troops
Rebels may reduce use of missiles
California Lacks Resources for Law on Drug Offenders
CRIME TIPS PROGRAM FALTERS
New book connects IBM to Nazis
Crew Tears the Wrapping Off Space Lab
Atlantis astronauts begin second spacewalk
Spacecraft lands on asteroid
Crew attaches space docking port
U.N. Official Calls for a Safety Zone for Refugees in Guinea
Bush Pledges Military Funds to Improve Quality of Life
Bush boosting military morale with pay raises

OTHER
States
Mr. Card's Dangerous Memo
Eat Your Vegetables
After a Landfill Closes
Norton: Administration must make case for drilling
Hawaii
Not all species are equal
Whales beach themselves in Japan
MAJORITY OPPOSE PROFILING
Illinois
Terrorism Act Draws Mixed Reviews
Time-Tested Defense Expected as Terrorism Witness Returns

ACTIVISTS
Anti - Nuclear Protesters Arrested
Croatian Rally Protests U.N. and Demands Early Elections
Ukraine Rally Calls on Chief to Step Down
Arkansas
PETA pressure goes all out
Protest democracy
Protesters demand president's ouster
Funeral held for Filipino activist

-
------- NUCLEAR

U.S.: Bin Laden Case Latest Example Of Terrorism On Trial

12 February 2001
Radio Free Europe
By Robert McMahon
http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/2001/02/12022001125053.asp

Witnesses have begun to testify in a trial that U.S. prosecutors hope will prove the existence of a network of terrorists intent on attacking American targets. The start of this trial closely followed the completion of another uncommon proceeding -- the Lockerbie bombing case -- in which a Scottish court convicted a Libyan intelligence officer in a terror attack. RFE/RL correspondent Robert McMahon looks at this new judicial approach to fighting terrorism.

New York, 12 February 2001 (RFE/RL) -- A courtroom in New York has begun hearing testimony about the inner workings of a notorious terrorist network.

A U.S. government witness, Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl, at hearings last week, told of how suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden organized his al Qaeda group after declaring a religious war against the United States in the early 1990s. Al-Fadl testified that bin Laden set up training sites to instruct operatives how to use explosives. He mentioned at least one attempt to purchase uranium, which is used to make nuclear weapons.

U.S. prosecutors hope al-Fadl's testimony will help convince a federal jury to convict four bin Laden associates of the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa. Bin Laden and 12 other suspects in the case remain at large.

Like the recent Lockerbie trial in the Netherlands, the case is being followed closely by legal scholars and foreign policy experts to see where the evidence leads. There are some, like Edward Luttwak of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who say the Lockerbie case proved the futility of responding to terrorism with ordinary criminal justice procedures.

Luttwak wrote in the Los Angeles Times last week that the resources used to mount a legal case would have been better employed in pursuing intelligence about the workings of a suspected terrorist like bin Laden.

But in interviews with RFE/RL, a number of other international policy experts strongly supported the enhanced role of the courts in fighting terrorism.

Jessica Stern is a lecturer at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. She is writing a book about terrorism inspired by religious belief. She said a legal proceeding against someone like bin Laden can be a very effective way of gathering intelligence.

"I think the bottom line is that sanctions, diplomatic approaches, military approaches and using the courts are all important. Each has strengths and weaknesses. Using the courts, it turns out we learn all kinds of things about terrorist groups that we might not otherwise know."

In the Lockerbie case, a Libyan intelligence officer was found guilty in the bombing of a passenger jet in 1988. The conviction was based on evidence that placed the suspect in Malta at a time when an explosive device was planted in a suitcase. A second Libyan suspect was found not guilty for lack of evidence.

Before the bin Laden case, U.S. prosecutors gained the conviction of Islamic militants connected with the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City and with a failed plot to blow up the United Nations and other New York sites.

Such cases serve as a more valid approach to unmasking terrorists because they are committed to testing theories out in the open, says David Malone, a former Canadian diplomat and president of the International Peace Academy, a non-governmental organization based in New York. Malone says a well-constructed court case against suspected terrorists can be more fair and effective than, for example, a strike by a cruise missile.

"As long as terrorism was dealt with only by intelligence services in shadow more than in light, it was extremely difficult for the public, the media, even many in government unrelated to intelligence to know what was actually going on. We're all finding out a great deal more about it now."

Malone says if the international community, for example, wants to convince the population of Afghanistan that bin Laden is a terrorist, the best way to do this is through fair judicial processes.

For the time being, the major powers are intent on using multiple weapons to undermine terrorism. The UN Security Council recently toughened sanctions against Afghanistan's ruling Taliban regime to force it to turn over bin Laden for extradition.

The council has stressed that the sanctions are targeted at the Taliban leadership. But, as in the case of Iraq, under sanctions for 10 years now, there is widespread concern that such measures have a greater impact on civilians than on the ruling elite believed to be sponsoring terrorism.

And for those terrorists operating beyond state control, sanctions are less effective.

Ruth Wedgwood, an expert on international law at the Council on Foreign Relations, says a legal proceeding can help to expose and weaken terrorist networks.

"What terrorist networks thrive on is an attempt to secure political support and insofar as the careful proof and the lingering attention of a trial can help to horrify the world community at the tactics terrorist networks use, it's very useful as kind of a rallying point to undermine their legitimacy."

Wedgwood says there is growing intolerance among UN members for terrorist crimes, even those once seen as justified because they were politically motivated. She points to two recent UN conventions, in 1997 and 1999, that say terrorist bombing and financing of terrorism should be forbidden by all UN members.

Such international consensus will be crucial to combat what experts say is the shift from state-sponsored terrorism to groups operating on a lower level. The director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, George Tenet, told a U.S. Senate Committee last week that terrorists are becoming more technically sophisticated and harder to trace.

"The threat from terrorism is real, it is immediate, and it is evolving. State-sponsored terrorism appears to have declined over the past five years, but transnational groups -- with decentralized leadership that makes them harder to identify and disrupt -- are emerging. We are seeing fewer centrally controlled operations, and more acts initiated and executed at lower levels."

But legal experts like Wedgwood are hopeful of what a trial against terrorists can accomplish. Wedgwood said the presentation of evidence in the bin Laden case, for example, has so far gone much smoother than the Lockerbie case at the same stage.

"One would never have supposed three years ago that you would have this kind of inside testimony by folks that were formerly adherents but who had left the cult of terror."

As some experts suggest, perhaps not the blunt instruments of sanctions or military force but the widely admired Western standards of justice will in the end prove most effective against terrorists.

---

U.S. offers apologies in Japanese boat collision

02/12/2001
USA Today
By Andrea Stone
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-02-11-collision.htm

WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Sunday called a Navy submarine's collision with a Japanese fishing boat off the Hawaiian coast "a terrible tragedy" and promised that the United States would "do the proper thing" to help the victims and their families.

Secretary of State Colin Powell apologized to Japan on behalf of President Bush.

"We are doing everything we can to express regret and make sure this doesn't affect the very strong relationship we have with Japan," the secretary of State said on CNN's Late Edition.

Investigators are looking into why the USS Greeneville, a 362-foot nuclear attack submarine, smashed into the 191-foot Ehime Maru while practicing an emergency surfacing maneuver 20 miles southeast of Pearl Harbor on Friday. The trawler sank within 10 minutes in 1,800 feet of water.

The Coast Guard was continuing to search over a 300-mile area for survivors from the 499-ton trawler, which carried 35 people. Nine people were still missing, including three crewmen, two teachers and four high-school students.

Relatives of those missing asked U.S. officials on Sunday to raise the wreck. The Navy says it can but does not yet have equipment in place to do so.

"We're doing everything humanly possible to find the remaining participants," Rumsfeld said on ABC's This Week.

The Navy has reassigned the Greeneville's commanding officer, Cmdr. Scott Waddle, pending the results of an investigation. The submarine, which suffered minor damage to its "skin," is back in port at Pearl Harbor.

Investigators from the Navy and the National Transportation Safety Board are expected to look at whether the submarine should have been training farther off shore, Rumsfeld said. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Dave Werner, a Pacific submarine fleet spokesman, said the Greeneville was in an approved training area.

The investigation is expected to focus on whether the submarine followed well-established procedures to avoid collisions when surfacing. Under those rules, submarines are supposed to use sonar for an acoustic check and periscopes for a visual sweep of the surface in all directions before emerging. In the case of an emergency surfacing exercise, they are to dive quickly and return to the surface quickly to safeguard against other vessels wandering nearby in the interim.

Moderate seas with waves of two to four feet were reported at the time of the collision. A former Navy surface ship commander said that even moderate swells and troughs could have hidden the trawler if the submarine's periscope wasn't extended high enough. The officer also noted that choppy seas create noise that can muffle a vessel's sound on sonar.

The probe also will consider whether 16 business people on board the Greeneville as guests might have distracted the crew. The Navy, citing privacy concerns, would not release the guests' names.

The Navy routinely allows local dignitaries, members of Congress, journalists and others on board to observe operations as part of its public outreach program. A USA TODAY reporter was allowed to stand in the control room of the attack submarine USS Miami last year during an emergency surfacing maneuver off Florida .

In 1990, the NTSB cited a failure to use sonar detectors effectively aboard the attack submarine USS Houston for an incident that led to the sinking of the tug Barcona off the coast of Southern California. One tug crewmember died in the accident, which was also blamed on the submarine's officer in charge for failing to recognize the tug's towing lights.

---

Germany's Fischer Meets Putin to End Moscow Visit

February 12, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-russia-.html

MOSCOW (Reuters) - German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer ends a visit to Russia on Tuesday by meeting President Vladimir Putin and a top Kremlin policy maker, with arms control and NATO's expansion likely to be on the agenda.

U.S. plans to deploy a missile defense were a key part of his talks on Monday with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and he praised Moscow's constructive approach to an issue which has also worried China and European nations.

The arms control theme was also likely to be raised with Putin, who has proposed a so far vague alternative to the U.S. plans, involving cooperation with NATO and western Europe.

Fischer was also to meet the Secretary of the Security Council, Sergei Ivanov, an influential Putin aide who has increased his say in the shaping of foreign and security policy.

``The topic of NATO's expansion will be discussed further. It will, by the way, be discussed during my talks with the foreign minister of Germany, Joschka Fischer,'' Ivanov told state-owned RTR television.

``We have a constant dialogue on this issue with European nations,'' he added, noting that this week he would also meet EU foreign affairs supremo Javier Solana and NATO Secretary-General George Robertson next week.

Russia has opposed the eastwards expansion of the military alliance and is particularly against the idea of NATO taking in countries which border it, such as the Baltic states.

Ivanov said Russia was ready to deal with NATO as part of the global security framework, but did not want the alliance to dominate world decision-making.

Ivanov also said that European nations were worried about the U.S. plans to build a missile defense shield, realizing that such a project would destroy strategic stability.

Fischer has already jumped into the arms control theme, saying after talks with Ivanov that Russia's constructive approach was positive for improving international relations.

He said it would make it easier ``to create an atmosphere of cooperation, avoid confrontation and resolve this issue.''

Fischer, due to visit Washington next week, said Russia and the United States needed no intermediaries.

INTERNATIONAL STABILITY AT STAKE

Foreign Minister Ivanov had said Russia would ``act constructively in talks on strategic weapons and missile defense systems in the interests of preserving and strengthening international stability.''

But a top military officer pledged new opposition to the scheme, which Moscow says would alter what it sees as the base of decades of disarmament, the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile pact.

``Even a minimal modernization of ABM emasculates it and destroys the system ensuring the balance of strategic weapons,'' the first deputy chief of staff, Lieut-Gen. Valery Manilov, told Itar-Tass news agency.

Russia is backed by China in opposing the plan which Washington says is intended to guard against strikes by ``rogue states'' like North Korea, Iran and Iraq. Moscow says it is the shield's prime target while Germany and other European states have voiced reservations about whether it can even be deployed.

The subject of foreign debt has also been discussed by Germany and Russia recently. In Berlin, Russian Economics and Trade Minister German Gref pledged Russia would meet its foreign debt obligations to ensure ``a civilized relationship between Russia and its creditors."

---

German Minister Visits Moscow

February 12, 2001
New York Times
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Russia-Germany.html

MOSCOW (AP) -- Despite Moscow's sharp rhetoric, Russia will eventually reconcile itself to U.S. intentions to build a national missile defense system, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer predicted Monday.

Russia has steadfastly maintained that the U.S. project is a threat to international stability because it violates the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, which prohibits anti-missile systems that defend an entire nation. Germany also opposes the U.S. proposal.

``In the end, the Russians are going to accept it,'' Fischer, in Moscow for a two-day visit, told reporters. He added that Washington would have a harder time with China, which could decide to build up its arsenal in response to missile defense plans.

Washington has long tried to assure Moscow that the missile shield could not guard against Russia's huge nuclear arsenal but was designed only to protect against possible smaller-scale attacks by so-called rogue nations. Russia has rejected the argument.

British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said Monday the United States should hold talks with Russia on widening the ABM treaty before going forward with a national missile defense system.

Germany also has shown support to Russia on another sensitive defense issue -- NATO's eastward expansion. Moscow is worried that the Western alliance is getting too close to Russia's borders, and Berlin has cautioned against expanding NATO too quickly.

Yet Fischer noted a ``very positive development'' in Russian-NATO relations in recent weeks, adding that Moscow may be more amenable than it sounds.

``The (Russian) comments are sometimes a bit harsh, but it all depends on the climate,'' Fischer said. ``The climate is good; there's a difference between statements and climate.''

Fischer also said he did not see Germany as a mediator between Russia and the United States on security issues, and said the countries were capable of negotiating directly. ``Germany does not have the role of go-between for Washington and Moscow,'' he said.

Fischer met Monday afternoon with Gennady Seleznyov, the speaker of the lower house of parliament, and with Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov.

He was expected to express concern over Russia's nuclear cooperation with Iran. Last week in Berlin, he issued a warning to Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi against any attempt to use Russian technology to build nuclear weapons.

Russia has signed a deal to build a nuclear reactor at Iran's Bushehr power plant, drawing strong U.S. objections over fears that the technology could be used to develop nuclear arms. Moscow and Tehran maintain the plant can be used only for civilian purposes.

Fischer did not comment on the Iran deal after the meeting with Ivanov.

On Tuesday, Fischer was scheduled to meet with President Vladimir Putin, who perfected his German serving as a KGB agent in East Germany. Putin's friendship with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has given a boost to Russian-German ties over the past year.

---

Presidents of Russia and Ukraine Sign Agreements

February 12, 2001
New York Times
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/12/world/12CND-UKRAINE.html

KIEV, Ukraine, Feb. 12 - The presidents of Russia and Ukraine signed a series of agreements today to expand their cooperation in the civilian space and aviation fields in a meeting that symbolically demonstrated the close industrial ties between the two former Soviet republics.

The meeting of Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and Leonid D. Kuchma of Ukraine took place as Mr. Kuchma faced a rising domestic political revolt over a scandal involving the disappearance of a muckraking journalist and the release of recordings suggesting that the president may have been involved in ordering the journalist's abduction.

The well-publicized meeting was significant also for the Russian leader, who has been seeking to strengthen economic and political cooperation with Ukraine in a manner that might slow the pace of Ukraine's strategic alignment with NATO, where it has joined a "partnership for peace" program.

Meeting in the southeastern city of Dnepropetrovsk, where Mr. Kuchma once ran the country's largest enterprise for constructing nuclear missiles in the Soviet era, the two presidents also agreed to reconnect their electric power grids in a move that experts said would further integrate the energy markets of Russia and Ukraine. They pledged to develop the Antonov-70 airliner for the commercial market as "the most promising, top-priority program in cooperation between Ukraine and Russia in the field of aircraft construction," a joint statement said.

On Sunday, up to 5,000 demonstrators occupied the central square in Kiev chanting "Kuchma out" and calling for early presidential elections over a scandal that has turned much of parliament against the president; alarmed Ukraine's Western supporters, and threatened a prolonged political stalemate here. Mr. Putin avoided the subject of the domestic turmoil in Ukraine, but was nonetheless pleased to strengthen ties with the country.

Touring his old missile factory with Mr. Putin at his side, a smiling Mr. Kuchma said today, "We didn't talk about politics, honestly."There was a signing ceremony in front of a huge civilian booster rocket at the Yushmash plant, and Mr. Kuchma characterized the signing of the document connecting Russian and Ukrainian power grids as "a colossal step" in the energy field that would help overcome the frequent disputes between Moscow and Kiev over Ukraine's acknowledged history of siphoning natural gas illegally from Russian pipelines that cross its territory on the way to Europe.

Mr. Putin emphasized that his visit was not timed to profit from Mr. Kuchma's domestic troubles. "Our meeting today was a planned one and we fulfilled promises we gave to our industrialists and business people at a meeting in December last year in Moscow."

He said the talks were "positive and fruitful" and added that aerospace cooperation to link production lines that build boosters for commercial satellite launches would yield $6 billion in new revenues for Russia and Ukraine.

The two leaders also signed agreements that would allow Russian companies to participate in the destruction of booster rockets that once were tipped with Soviet nuclear warheads. At the time of the Soviet collapse and Ukraine's declaration of independence in August 1991, the country was home to the world's third-largest nuclear arsenal, including 176 intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Though all of Ukraine's nuclear weapons were subsequently moved to Russia, the booster rockets remained. Ukraine has received more than $2 billion in American aid over the last decade, most of it dedicated to disarmament tasks.

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Adventure Gone Awry Divides Close Cousins in Japan

February 12, 2001
New York Times
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/12/world/12FAMI.html

UWAJIMA, Japan, Feb. 11 - Katsuya Nomoto and Choichiro Yokoyama were not just cousins. They had been inseparable friends since childhood, playing the same sports, living as neighbors, sharing buddies and pursuing the same careers.

Both 17, they were enrolled at the Uwajima Fisheries High School and were thrilled to be sharing an ocean adventure when they set off on Jan. 10 for a training cruise off Hawaii aboard the Ehime Maru, a 190-foot vessel belonging to the school.

But when the United States Coast Guard pulled in the last known survivors from the collision on Friday between the teenagers' boat and the Greeneville, a nuclear-powered submarine belonging to the United States Navy, only Mr. Yokoyama was listed among the rescued.

Consternation hung heavily in the youths' neighborhood today, where clusters of small houses with tile roofs are strung along a bay like the prized pearls that are cultivated here. For those who knew the youths, the collision that left nine people missing was disaster enough, but the separation of the inseparable cousins was doubly difficult to bear.

The Japanese government rushed relatives of the victims to Hawaii today, including Mr. Nomoto's parents, but Mr. Yokoyama's parents said they had decided to remain shuttered in their home, unable to show their joy at their son's survival.

"They wanted to remain humble," said Satomi Nomoto, an aunt, who was carrying a pail of clams to prepare for her grieving relatives. "Right now they feel so sick that they can't leave the house."

"My husband is a Nomoto," the aunt said, "and I am related to the Yokoyamas." She started to cry as she turned to go up the alley toward her clapboard house. "From preschool to high school these boys were the closest of friends," she continued. "This is all so sad. It is difficult to know where to begin sorting one's feelings out."

Down the street, past a small marina where just about every family here keeps a modest fishing boat, a 77-year-old man remembered Katsuya Nomoto. "I would always see him washing his father's car at night," the man, Saiyoshi Nakahama, recalled. "His father works at a fishery, cultivating red snapper, and it is difficult work. But no matter how late he came home, Katsuya would wash his car. What a boy."

Nestled between forested mountains and the cobalt sea, on the Pacific coast, Uwajima is about as out- of-the-way a place as can be found on one of Japan's most remote main islands. The people here pride themselves on their ruggedness and self- sufficiency, clinging to ancient local traditions like Japanese bullfighting and making their living almost exclusively from the sea.

There is never much news here, residents say, never mind disaster. The last time the town saw reporters from the national television networks and major newspapers was 13 years ago, when the 213-student Fisheries High School had just won the national baseball championship.

"I feel a deep sympathy with the victims over this," said Michiaki Hatano, 30, a graduate. "I heard the ship was renovated just five years ago. It was the school's most modern ship, so I imagine it must have been a very violent collision.

"I can't imagine why the submarine didn't detect it before surfacing, and I am frustrated by the lack of an explanation."

Expressions of frustration like these were common throughout the town today, with many biting their lips and saying they would decide what to make of the incident after the American and Japanese governments had provided more details.

"We don't want to express our feelings about the accident yet, because we still don't know the cause," said Kazumitsu Joko, the school's vice principal. "Until then, I want to be really careful about what I say."

Others, however, showed anger, some of it directed at Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, who was playing golf when he was informed of the collision. Mr. Mori was widely reported to have asked journalists why they were disturbing him with the news. Today, those purported comments earned him the ire of editorial writers, who attacked his seeming indifference in front-page columns.

Mr. Mori, who established a crisis response team on Saturday, spent much of today explaining that he had not wanted to rush into the picture for fear of creating confusion during the rescue effort.

At the high school, models of its fleet of four fishing and oceanography ships, including the sunken Ehime Maru, line the entrance. The school has served as a clearinghouse for information since the accident. But with new information in painfully short supply today, for many there was little to do but vent emotions.

"I heard that the Americans on the submarine did not try to rescue people right after the accident," said Hirohisa Ishibashi, Uwajima's mayor. "They said the waves were so high that they couldn't open the hatch. But I think they should have tried, even if there was a risk. This is the true feeling of the people of Uwajima."

---

Clues Sought in Sub Accident; Some Japanese Fault Rescue

February 12, 2001
New York Times
By DOUGLAS JEHL
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/12/national/12HAWA.html?pagewanted=all

WASHINGTON, Feb. 11 - In parallel efforts to untangle Friday's naval accident off the coast of Hawaii, Navy and civilian investigators spent today debriefing crew members and reviewing logs from the Navy submarine that surfaced abruptly as part of a drill and caused the sinking of a Japanese fishing vessel.

A search by Coast Guard and Navy vessels was continuing for the nine Japanese, including four high school students, who were not among the 26 crew members and teenage students plucked from the sea. But as nightfall approached in Hawaii, the dwindling hopes for more rescues were reflected in comments by senior Bush administration officials, who called the incident a tragedy.

A central question in the two investigations, Navy and civilian officials said, would be how or indeed whether the crew of the 360-foot submarine, the Greeneville, could have failed to detect the presence overhead of the 190-foot Japanese vessel, the Ehime Maru, before surging to the surface in a breaching maneuver known as an emergency main-ballast blow.

After the Greeneville returned to its home port, Pearl Harbor, on Saturday, its skipper, Lt. Cmdr. Scott Waddle, was relieved of his post pending the results of the inquiry.

As members of the Japanese crew and their relatives have begun to talk with reporters in Hawaii, some have also asked why the American submariners did not join directly in rescue efforts, particularly in the half-hour just after the sinking, before Coast Guard ships and aircraft arrived.

Adm. Thomas Fargo, commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet, said at a Navy news conference in Honolulu that choppy seas, with waves of three to four feet and a six-foot swell, had made it too dangerous for the Greeneville crew to open hatches and take survivors on board.

But the captain of the Japanese ship, Hisao Onishi, speaking in Japanese, told reporters separately that the waves had not been big enough to toss seawater into lifeboats. The Japanese captain spoke of his frustration at what had happened after the submarine's surfacing swamped his vessel and sent it to the bottom of the sea, going down "without tilting, almost straight down."

"They lowered a rope ladder from the conning tower," Captain Onishi said in an Associated Press report, "but none of our crew members were rescued by the submarine."

"They were just looking until the Coast Guard arrived," Captain Onishi said.

The first Coast Guard helicopters arrived on the scene about 30 minutes after the incident, but the first rescues were not made until about 15 minutes later, after the first ships arrived, said Lt. Greg Fondran, a Coast Guard spokesman.

A team from the National Transportation Safety Board, which arrived in Hawaii on Saturday, was taking the lead in the investigation because it involved a civilian vessel in American waters. But the Navy was continuing its own investigation, which Navy officials said could result in discipline of the commander and crew if they were found not to have followed the strict safety procedures meant to prevent such disasters. Under those procedures, a submarine conducting an emergency surfacing drill would first rise to a periscope depth of about 45 feet and search surrounding waters both visually by periscope and acoustically, with a passive sonar device. The submarine would then descend only briefly, usually for no more than 10 to 15 minutes, so that its rapid return to the surface could be completed before any undetected vessel could move into its path, a senior Navy official said today.

A periscope search should have allowed the spotting of any vessel within about six to eight miles, far enough away that only craft far speedier than the Japanese fishing boat could have closed within range in the time usually allotted for the descent and emergency resurfacing.

In a telephone interview, the senior Navy official said he found it hard to explain how the incident could have occurred if the normal procedures had been followed. But he said that the most likely explanation could have been that officers responsible for conducting the periscope search somehow failed to see the Japanese vessel, either because of the choppy seas or because some obstacle was in the way. "By and large, submariners are conservative people," the official said. "You don't see someone on the horizon and then try to beat him to someplace on the surface."

In addition to the submarine's crew, which usually includes 133 members, those aboard the vessel at the time of the collision included 15 civilians and a senior Navy officer, Capt. Bob Brundhuber, chief of staff of the Pacific Submarine Force, who Navy officials said was acting as the civilians' escort.

The Navy has declined to identify the civilians aboard, citing their privacy concerns. But it is not unusual for the Navy, as part of its community relations efforts, to invite local business leaders and other civilians to observe submarine training exercises, particularly on day trips like the one that had been scheduled for Friday, just nine miles south of Diamond Head, near Honolulu, on Oahu.

The Greeneville stayed at the scene overnight and returned to port under its own power on Saturday morning, Admiral Fargo said at Saturday's news conference in Hawaii. The rudder and port side showed scrapes from the collision, Admiral Fargo said, but Navy officials said the damage was not significant enough to prevent the vessel from operating normally.

The Navy investigation is being led by Rear Adm. Charles Griffiths Jr., a submarine group commander. In the safety board inquiry, the chief investigator is Jim Schaefer, with John Hammerschmidt, a member of the safety board, assigned to act as the principal spokesman.

The American officials who have already apologized to Japan on behalf of President Bush include Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who both described the incident as a tragedy in television interviews.

"We're very, very sorry it happened," General Powell said in an interview on the CBS program "Face the Nation" today. In a separate interview, on CNN, General Powell said, "We will do everything we can to find out what happened and present that information to the public."

The four missing Japanese teenagers were among 13 high school students who had embarked on the trawler voyage on Jan. 10 to learn commercial fishing. The others missing are two teachers and three crew members of the vessel Ehime Maru.

Some relatives of the missing arrived in Honolulu today to monitor the rescue efforts from a closer vantage point. They were scheduled to meet with Coast Guard officials for an update on a rescue effort that has already spanned an ocean area more than three times the size of Rhode Island.

With ocean temperatures of about 77 degrees, and the seas now relatively calm, searchers have held out hope that the missing people could still be alive, even days after the incident. On Saturday, Coast Guard officials in Hawaii said the search would continue for at least another 48 hours.

But in interviews since they were rescued, some survivors have said they now believe that most or all of those missing were deep below the deck of the trawler just before the submarine's impact, and may have been unable to escape. Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, The A.P. reported, has lodged a protest with the United States, demanding that the sunken fishing vessel be raised. The survivors have expressed fear that their fellow crew members may now be entombed in the vessel, which is now lying on the Pacific Ocean floor, some 1,800 feet below the surface.

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Japan PM Mori Under Fresh Attack Over Sub Accident

February 12, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-japan-s.html

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's unpopular Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori came under fresh attack on Tuesday for continuing to play golf after hearing that a U.S. nuclear submarine had smashed into and sunk a Japanese trawler packed with students.

Mori's political allies and foes alike criticized his sluggish response to news that the USS Greeneville had surfaced suddenly off the coast of Hawaii, sinking the trawler and probably entombing nine of its 35 crew at the bottom of the sea.

The accident late on Friday came at a tense time for U.S.-Japan ties, frayed after the chief of U.S. military forces on Japan's southern island of Okinawa had to apologize last week for calling his hosts ``nuts'' and ``wimps'' in an internal e-mail.

But both ruling and opposition lawmakers directed their harshest words at Mori's response to the accident, which left nine people missing, four of them 17-year-olds.

``I feel great indignation that the prime minister just kept playing golf,'' Yukio Ubukata, a lawmaker from the main opposition Democratic Party, told a Lower House budget committee.

``The general public will never forgive the prime minister and he should not be allowed to govern the country.''

Mori, who had been playing golf at a country club near Yokohama received word of the accident at around 10:30a.m., but didn't leave for nearby Tokyo until shortly before 1 p.m.

The burly former rugby player's popularity is already at rock bottom due to his reputation for verbal gaffes and a string of scandals -- a fact which is making ruling lawmakers nervous ahead of an election for parliament's Upper House in July.

COALITION PARTNERS ANGRY

Mori's coalition partners in the New Komeito Party were equally harsh about what they said were gaps in his management of the crisis.

``This was an incident involving a nuclear submarine and so was a serious matter for U.S.-Japan relations,'' New Komeito lawmaker Kaneshige Wakamatsu told the same Lower House panel.

``It is truly unfortunate that Prime Minister Mori did not immediately call President (George W.) Bush, who is the leader of the U.S. military, and tell him to make utmost efforts.

``A phone call to President Bush might have been able to save those who suffered,'' Wakamatsu said.

The New Komeito, the number two party in the Liberal Democratic Party-led (LDP) coalition, has been at pains of late to do its best to distance itself from the unpopular prime minister without actually abandoning the ruling camp.

On Sunday, New Komeito chief Takenori Kanzaki told a television talk show: ``I don't know how the prime minister first heard of it, but I think he should have stopped playing golf immediately and returned to his office.''

Instead, Mori kept on playing, a decision he defended by saying it would not have helped to get flustered in a crisis.

But some analysts doubted whether the latest attack on the beleaguered Mori would persuade the LDP to ditch him soon, given the reluctance of others in his party to take over the premiership ahead of a likely thrashing at the polls.

TWO-WAY TIES

Japan's politicians, its public and the families of those on board the trawler when it sank are still waiting for a full explanation of how the accident occurred. Japan has asked that the United States raise the trawler, a feat that could be technically tough given the depths at which it rests.

The incident could hurt the Bush administration's efforts to bolster security ties with Tokyo, especially if it fuels resentment of the 48,000 American troops stationed in Japan.

Both governments have been taking pains to limit the diplomatic fallout.

``The U.S. side has no excuse for having caused the accident, but I believe the attitudes of the president, state secretary and defense secretary, and the tasks being carried out under their instructions, are in good faith,'' Kono told a news conference on Tuesday.

``I am not going to be satisfied with the situation...but at this point in time, I think they are making all-out efforts,'' Kyodo news agency quoted Kono as saying.

Bush on Saturday sent his ``regrets and condolences'' to Tokyo and Secretary of State Colin Powell telephoned Japanese Foreign Minister Yohei Kono to convey his own and Bush's apology.

---

Russia and Ukraine in Energy Deal

February 12, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Ukraine-Russia.html

DNIPROPETROVSK, Ukraine (AP) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin gave support to his embattled Ukrainian counterpart with deals Monday to cut energy costs and create jobs -- but also stoked some Ukrainians' fears that they are slipping back into Russia's fold.

Putin and Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma agreed to reconnect their country's electricity grids, which should ease Ukraine's chronic energy crisis, and reached 14 other agreements securing Russian orders for struggling Ukrainian factories.

The deals were expected to offer Kuchma some relief from a spiraling political crisis that has seen thousands of Ukrainians stage protest after protest in recent weeks.

The unrest was sparked by allegations that Kuchma was linked to the disappearance of an opposition journalist, but has spread to include broader grievances about Kuchma's failure to improve the economy.

The electricity agreement will ``significantly cut the energy costs in the Ukrainian economy,'' Putin said at a news conference in the industrial city of Dnipropetrovsk.

Kuchma hailed the agreement as a ``huge step forward.''

The chief of Russia's power grid monopoly, Anatoly Chubais, said the deal would also help stabilize power supplies in Russian regions bordering Ukraine.

The two countries' electricity grids were built under the Soviet system, divided after the 1991 Soviet collapse, merged, and again severed over Ukraine's debts in 1999.

The other agreements signed Monday, on cooperation in the aerospace sector and other industries, appeared to reflect Putin's drive to rebuild Russia's Soviet-era political and economic primacy in the region.

``Restoration of economic ties answers the vital interests of both Ukraine and Russia,'' Putin said.

Analysts said the agreements signaled a shift of Kuchma's policies toward Russia, after years of trying to cultivate ties with the West -- efforts that won Ukraine huge amounts of U.S. and other Western aid in the 1990s.

Some Western groups have expressed concern about the anti-Kuchma protests and claims that Kuchma was linked to the disappearance of journalist Heorhiy Gongadze. Putin, however, shrugged off the protests.

``Politically, it means first of all that Kuchma is reorienting himself toward Russia,'' said Sergei Markov, a generally pro-Kremlin analyst who heads the independent Politika think-tank in Moscow.

The two presidents' meeting at the Yuzhmash rocket plant, which Kuchma headed in 1986-92, was tinged with Soviet nostalgia. Yuzhmash, a sprawling complex of giant aging hangars, was the world's largest rocket factory during Soviet times, ``making rockets like sausages,'' as Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev once said.

``We love Russia! If we stay together, everything will be fine,'' some workers shouted as Putin and Kuchma walked by.

``We were really pleased by the warm welcome workers at the plant gave us,'' Kuchma said. ``They saw that we signed agreements giving them a future.''

After the Soviet collapse, the plant switched to making civilian booster rockets.

Putin denied suggestions that the two countries might again cooperate in making ballistic missiles. ``Ukraine has become a nuclear-free nation and all Russian nuclear and missile programs are based entirely on our own components,'' he said.

---

Sub collision puts Japan in delicate position

02/12/2001
USA Today
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001-02-12-sub-japan.htm

TOKYO (AP) - With the nine people missing since a U.S. submarine sank a Japanese fishing vessel probably trapped under 1,800 feet of ocean, Japanese asked on Monday how it could have happened, and speculated about the impact on the U.S.-Japan relationship. "Unless the situation is properly handled, there may result a crack in the alliance between Japan and the United States," the conservative Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Japan's largest financial newspaper, warned in an editorial Monday. Read more

The Asahi, a major liberal newspaper, said the accident was "a major blow" to President Bush's attempts to strengthen the alliance, which both sides prize as key to stability in Asia and the Pacific.

Yuko Watanabe of Tokyo was puzzled by Friday's accident, in which the surfacing nuclear-powered submarine the USS Greeneville smashed into the 180-foot (55 meter) Ehime Maru, a Japanese fishing vessel on a training mission off Hawaii. It sank within 10 minutes.

"It must be a simple mistake by someone in charge," Watanabe said. "The submarine should have been equipped with computers, but maybe they relied on them so much that there was a blind spot."

Twenty-six of the 35 people aboard were rescued. The search continued Monday for the rest: four 17-year-old students, two teachers, and three crew members. In Hawaii, the U.S. Coast Guard said the missing might still be in the vessel.

At Uwajima Marine and Fisheries High School, about 675 kilometers (420 miles) southwest of Tokyo, there was to be a half-day counseling session on Tuesday for the approximately 200 students.

"Instead of regular classes, we will explain the incident and ask the students to continue to have faith that the missing will be saved," Vice Principal Kazumitsu Joko said Monday.

Nine rescued students were to return home to Uwajima late on Tuesday, he said.

Questions were raised, meanwhile, about the rescue operation.

Hisao Onishi, captain of the fishing vessel, said Sunday that the survivors had to wait 50 minutes for their rescuers. He and other Japanese said the crew of the sub should have done more to help.

Adm. Thomas Fargo, commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, said waves of three to four feet (90 to 120 centimeters) with a six-foot (1.8-meter) swell made it too dangerous for the Greeneville to open hatches and take survivors aboard.

But Onishi said conditions were calm enough that water did not enter the life rafts.

On a Tokyo street, Masanobu Ajiro, a 50-year-old computer salesman, said the Americans should have done more.

"They didn't throw a life boat, they didn't do anything, even though they should have been trained to do something," Ajiro said.

In a meeting late Sunday with U.S. Ambassador Thomas Foley, Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori echoed those concerns, according to unidentified sources cited by the Kyodo News agency.

"The Japanese people are feeling deep distrust," Kyodo quoted Mori as telling Foley. "The United States claims rescue was difficult because of high waves, but that explanation does not satisfy us."

Foreign ministry officials were not available for comment late in the evening on Monday, a national holiday.

Earlier Monday, Mori spokesman Kazuhiko Koshikawa said the prime minister told Foley that the accident was "very regrettable and unfortunate" and demanded that rescuers use "all available means" to raise the sunken vessel.

Members of the government held an urgent meeting Monday to see what Japan can do to help raise the Ehime Maru, including sending private salvage ships, said Takao Uchiyama, an official in the prime minister's office.

In Hawaii, friends and relatives of the missing urged recovery of the vessel as well.

"We'll certainly want to talk to the Japanese about what they have in mind," Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said on CBS-TV Monday of the demands for a salvage operation.

"There will be a complete and transparent investigation so we will know what happened," she said. "There is no evidence yet that proper procedures were not followed."

While the U.S. military presence in Japan is often a source of tension, most Japanese seemed to see Friday's accident as an isolated one, and there were no protests against the military in general.

Officials here have been careful not to tie the accident to Japan's security links to Washington.

About 47,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Japan under a mutual security treaty, about half of them on the small southern island of Okinawa.

Last week, the top U.S. Marine in Japan was on the front page of most newspapers for calling Okinawan officials "a bunch of wimps" in an e-mail to his staff. He apologized repeatedly.

The United States' quick diplomatic reaction to the submarine accident may have helped keep feelings here muted.

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld called the accident "a terrible tragedy" on Sunday and promised that the United States would "do the proper thing" for the victims and their families.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell added, "We have apologized in every way we know how. ... We are doing everything we can to express regret and make sure this doesn't affect the very strong relationship we have with Japan."

---

Japan's prime minister berated for his golfing gaffe

February 12, 2001
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/world/nobyline-2001212215332.htm

TOKYO (AP) - Critics of Japan's prime minister - and even a leader of his own coalition - are berating him for finishing a round of golf after hearing about the submarine accident from which nine Japanese are missing.

Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori reportedly stayed on the links with old college friends for two hours Saturday after hearing that the USS Greeneville rammed into a Japanese fishing trawler, sending all 35 persons aboard into diesel-soaked seas.

"I think he should have stopped playing golf immediately and returned to his office," said Takenori Kanzaki on a Fuji Television news program. Mr. Kanzaki is leader of the New Komei Party, a part of Mr. Mori's governing coalition.

The national Asahi newspaper reported the golf incident on its front page and quoted Hisao Iwajima, a former Defense Agency official, as saying, "He has no sense of crisis."

Mr. Mori reportedly defended his decision to finish the game.

"It would not get any of us anywhere if I rushed and got all flustered," he was quoted as saying by the Kyodo news agency. Remaining on the golf course, he said, was "the safest course of action."

The unpopular Mr. Mori has become a frequent target of critics since taking office last April. His gaffes - such as comments evoking Japan's militaristic past - have become something of a running joke in the country.

Even regional leaders of his own Liberal Democratic Party have entered the fray recently, making a TV commercial in which an irate housewife screams into a phone: "Things are so bad, I'd be a better prime minister."

The party ordered its branch in northern Miyagi Prefecture to cut out the offending line. The Miyagi officials responded by replacing it with a long censor's beep. ---

-------

U.S. will 'do the right thing' in ship-submarine collision

February 12, 2001
Washington Times
By John Godfrey
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-2001212221551.htm

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld promised yesterday to "do the right thing" for the families of those aboard a Japanese fishing trawler sunk off the Hawaiian coast after a collision with a U.S. Navy submarine.

The incident comes amid growing tension between Japanese civilians and the U.S. military, a situation made worse by early reports that the U.S. submarine captain may have done nothing initially to help rescue the ship's survivors.

Mr. Rumsfeld said it is too early to say exactly what happened but would not rule out reparations to the families of the 35 aboard the Ehime Maru.

"The United States government has brought the families over and it's been putting people up . . . and certainly we will do the proper thing when the facts are fully sorted out," Mr. Rumsfeld said yesterday on "Fox News Sunday."

Japan's Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori yesterday lodged a protest with the United States over the incident, the Associated Press reported.

In a meeting with U.S. Ambassador Thomas Foley, Mr. Mori asked that "all available means" be used to reclaim the Ehime Maru from the ocean bottom, said Kazuhiko Koshikawa, Mr. Mori's spokesman.

The USS Greeneville split the Japanese fishing trawler in two while practicing an emergency surfacing maneuver on Friday, causing the Ehime Maru to sink.

The collision occurred at 1:45 p.m., about nine miles south of Diamond Head, on the southern coast of Oahu, according to Navy officials.

The trawler was in the area to train students from the Uwajima Fisheries High School in southwestern Japan. Twenty-six persons survived the accident, but nine, including four students, remain missing.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, who offered condolences Saturday to Japan on behalf of President Bush, added, "We have apologized in every way we know how. . . . We are doing everything we can to express regret and make sure this doesn't affect the very strong relationship we have with Japan."

There have been several other incidents during the past month that have strained American-Japanese relations: U.S. Lt. Gen. Earl Hailston, the top Marine on Okinawa, Japan, reportedly referred to local officials as "nuts and a bunch of wimps" in an e-mail; a U.S. Navy serviceman was arrested Jan. 14 on suspicion of breaking an Okinawa bar owner's finger during a brawl; and a U.S. Marine was arrested Jan. 9 on accusations that he sneaked up on a 16-year-old girl in Okinawa, lifted her skirt, took photos and molested her.

In response to Friday's accident, U.S. Ambassador to Japan Tom Foley has been in touch with Mr. Mori. He also went to Osaka, Japan, to meet with family members of those on the trawler before they departed for the United States, Mr. Powell said.

Mr. Rumsfeld, who called Japanese Defense Agency Director Saito Toshitsugu on Saturday, said an investigation by the admiral of the Pacific fleet has already begun.

"It clearly was a terrible tragedy and most unfortunate," Mr. Rumsfeld said.

Mr. Rumsfeld said the investigation will try to determine whether the ship should have used active sonar before surfacing and whether it should have been conducting its exercise farther from the coast of Hawaii.

Mr. Rumsfeld refused to speculate yesterday on what happened, "There's certainly no way to know in real time what took place."

Mr. Powell said on CNN's "Late Edition" that the United States "will do everything we can to find out what happened and present that information to the public."

In the meantime, U.S. forces continued to search for the nine missing persons, including three crewmen, two teachers and four high school students.

"We're doing everything humanly possible to try to find the remaining participants on that ship," Mr. Rumsfeld promised.

Five ships - four U.S. and one Japanese - were searching yesterday. In addition, two U.S. planes and two helicopters were scouring the area from above.

Navy spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Herman Phillips said despite the passage of time, rescuers remained optimistic.

"As long as the search and rescue are going on, we are hopeful we will find survivors," he said.

But a Japanese official suggested the nine missing might have been trapped in their sunken vessel.

"According to talks between Captain Hisao Onishi and officials in Hawaii, most of the nine were either at the bottom of the vessel or staying somewhere inside the ship," Kazumitsu Jokou, the vice principal of Uwajima Fishery High School told Agence France-Presse.

Mr. Mori told reporters the search for possible survivors was the top priority, but added: "If they cannot be found on the surface of the sea, we would have to address our worries and see inside the ship."

Mr. Mori said it might be necessary to raise the Japanese trawler that sank in 18,000 feet of water.

• This article is based in part on wire service reports.

-------- britain

Secret War Room Opened to Public

February 12, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Secret-Operations-Room.html

LONDON (AP) -- A secret underground war room used by British commanders to plot the courses of allied and enemy ships during World War II opened to the public on Monday after being shrouded in mystery for half a century.

The Coastal Artillery Operations Room, located in an underground labyrinth more than 100 feet below Dover Castle, was part of a huge network of tunnels carved into the southeastern coastal region's famous white cliffs.

The room, kept classified by the British military until 1986, was used by Sir Bertram Ramsay and his staff in 1940 to organize one of the most dramatic operations in British history -- the Dunkirk evacuation. Some 800 civilian small craft joined navy vessels in the rescue of more than 320,000 British and French soldiers stranded on the beaches of Dunkirk, France under heavy German fire.

Maggy Taylor, a curator at Dover Castle, said she has been piecing together the room's history since she first saw it more than a decade ago. Because much of the war work at Dover Castle was kept secret by the British military, Taylor said pinpointing the exact history of the room has been a challenge.

``The thing is, nobody knew the room was here,'' Taylor said. ``It was a secret until it was declassified in 1986. There were a few mentions of it in the paper or by people, but it was hard to get hold of a lot of information.''

Using photographs found in the archives of the Imperial War Museum and local newspaper in Dover, Taylor and other curators recreated the room complete with an original plotting table, charts and equipment.

The room is the latest in a series of military attractions open to the public along the three-mile tunnel system, which includes a military hospital, bunkers that housed thousands of soldiers and nuclear bomb shelters created during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

Former military staff who worked in the operations room attended Monday's unveiling.

Win Winfield, 79, who mapped ship routes, was one of 27 people who staffed the room in shifts around the clock. Monday was the first time she had seen the room since the war.

``I know there was a war going on, but the camaraderie in the room is something I will never forget,'' said Winfield, who now lives near Canterbury, England. ``We never really knew much of what was going on above us because we were in the room and had a job to do there.'' http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/days-out/places/ExpandedSearchRes ults.asp

-------- czeh republic

Team Arrives at Nuclear Plant

February 12, 2001
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Czech-Temelin.html

PRAGUE, Czech Republic (AP) -- An international inspection team arrived at a troubled nuclear power plant in the Czech Republic on Monday as activists staged a protest rally outside the reactor.

A team of 14 experts, led by officials from the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, were to conduct a three-week inspection of training programs and staffing at the Temelin nuclear power plant.

About 30 Czech activists blocked the main entrance to the plant Monday, the CTK news agency reported. The protest ended after an hour, but activists said ``further and longer actions'' could not be ruled out.

Activists in neighboring Austria said protests of the Soviet-era plant would resume this weekend.

The 2,000-megawatt plant, 30 miles from the Austrian border, has been a source of friction between the countries for the past year. Construction of the Soviet-designed plant began in 1980. The technology was upgraded by the U.S. firm Westinghouse in the 1990s.

The plant was shut down Jan. 18 after a series of malfunctions amid protests from ecological activists. It was due to reopen this week, but plant spokesman Milan Nebesar said it would likely not start up again until next Tuesday because of repair delays.

The inspection visit to Temelin had been planned since mid-2000 and won't focus on any matters related to the plant's technical design, International Atomic Energy Agency spokesman David Kyd said from Vienna.

-------- korea

North Korea continues military buildup

February 12, 2001
WASHINGTON TIMES
By Bill Gertz
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-2001212221413.htm

North Korea is continuing to build up its military forces and has shown few signs of matching diplomatic and military overtures offered by South Korea and the United States, according to U.S. military and intelligence officials.

The Pentagon has no plans to reduce the 37,000 troops based in South Korea until it sees clear signs that the North Korean military is reducing its hair-trigger force posture, said a senior military official.

"I don't see reducing numbers until we get confidence-building measures with the North Koreans," the official said in an interview with The Washington Times. "Until we can get real verifiable confidence-building measures which move them back off the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone), and increase warning time, I don't see changing it."

The official spoke before the signing of a major agreement Thursday between North and South Korea to build a rail line between Seoul and Pyongyang, the North Korean capital. Still, the military official noted, North Korea has refused to match most of the proposals and actions of the South Koreans aimed at reducing tensions.

"The South Koreans have completely cleared the mines off their side [of the DMZ] and are ready to go, and the North Koreans haven't done anything," the official said. "They just finished a set of meetings last week to negotiate the conditions of this passage through the DMZ, but we haven't seen real action there."

North Korea also has rejected a series of steps aimed at reducing tensions, such as communications lines between military command headquarters, an exchange of observers and notification of military exercises.

North Korea on Saturday notified South Korea that it was postponing implementation of Thursday's agreement for "administrative reasons," the Associated Press quoted an official at Seoul's Defense Ministry as saying today.

The railway agreement calls for setting up a limited communications hot line between commanders overseeing construction of a 250-yard-wide corridor through the DMZ where the rail line and four-lane highway will pass.

CIA Director George J. Tenet told a Senate hearing on Wednesday that "the North Korean military appears for now to have halted its near-decade-long slide in military capabilities" and is expanding its short- and medium-range missile arsenal.

Mr. Tenet also said there are few signs of real economic reform.

U.S. officials said projections for grain production in North Korea this year show only one-third of the amount needed to adequately feed the population.

"Pyongyang's declared 'military first' policy requires massive investment in the armed forces," Mr. Tenet said.

Vice Adm. Thomas Wilson, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the same Senate hearing that North Korea is unlikely to reduce its threatening military position because the military is needed to keep the regime in power.

Pentagon officials said mercurial North Korean leader Kim Jong-il is winning the support of his military leaders by using scarce resources to buy new weapons and supplies.

North Korean military leaders remain "deeply suspicious" of any moves toward reconciliation with the South and economic reform, a senior U.S. military official said.

Mr. Kim's recent trip to China fueled speculation of economic reform in North Korea. Mr. Kim plans to set up a special economic zone in part of North Korea, as China did for its move away from communist economics.

However, the country remains unstable because of the closed nature of the system, the senior official said.

The North Korean leader has access to cable television and the Internet, "but he's the only one," he said.

"He personally has an idea about the West, and yet when he turns to pass off ideas, policies to his next echelon, they don't know beans about what's going on," the official said.

"They don't watch the channels, they don't get the papers, they don't get to travel. So you have in many ways an unstable situation in which you have one guy making decisions and one frame of reference, and then you have other people carrying them out with entirely another frame of reference, mostly dominated by the propaganda picture which North Korea has painted over the years."

A Pentagon report made public in September said North Korea's military buildup includes bolstering ground forces with large numbers of artillery rockets and tubes that are deployed in bunkers.

The buildup is focused mainly on bolstering ground forces.

Large numbers of long-range 240 mm multiple-rocket-launcher systems and 170 mm self-propelled guns were fielded recently in areas hardened from attack near the DMZ, the report said.

Officials said the North Koreans also have been building new ballistic missile facilities, purchased some fighter aircraft and deployed more anti-tank barriers and combat posts on military transit routes.

The North Korean military also is dispersing its forces and using more camouflage.

U.S. intelligence agencies also reported that the North Koreans are trying to buy 3,000 advanced SA-18 anti-aircraft missiles to beef up aircraft defenses.

Recently, newer communications and more fuel have boosted North Korean forces, the senior official said. Exercises during the winter training cycle also are more active. Despite cold weather and temperatures of minus-50, "they are out there exercising," the official said.

The U.S. military in South Korea recently completed a new Status of Forces Agreement comparable to arrangements for troops in Japan and Germany.

The military is consolidating the more than 90 military camps and stations in South Korea into a more efficient structure.

"Basically, we've shifted our approach in Korea," the official said. "Until fairly recently, it's been 'we have to fight tonight,' and therefore military requirements are the most important thing."

The new U.S. military approach is that U.S. forces are in South Korea "for the long haul" and thus the military is doing more "smart good-neighbor things" to improve relations, he said.

Robert Manning, an Asian affairs specialist with the Council on Foreign Relations, said North Korea could become the first policy crisis for the Bush administration.

"The problem is that diplomacy is way out front of threat reduction," Mr. Manning said in an interview.

"The threat hasn't lessened at all, and yet the diplomacy and imagery is that this is somehow a new North Korea and [Kim Jong-il] is a charming guy."

The agreement that ended North Korea's nuclear weapons program, the Agreed Framework, is so far behind schedule that Pyongyang this spring could threaten to restart its nuclear arms program, Mr. Manning said. "You could have a serious escalation of the threat," he said.

-------- missile defense

Missile defense still a pie in the sky
Costly plan faces political opposition, uncertain timeline

01/02/12
MSNBC
WASHINGTON POST
By Roberto Suro
http://www.msnbc.com/news/529701.asp?cp1=1

WASHINGTON, Feb. 12 - As the Bush administration takes the first steps toward carrying out its campaign promise of a global missile defense, a stark reality is setting in: Bush's initiative carries heavy upfront costs - budgetary, political and diplomatic - but the benefits to American security and foreign policy lay far off in the future.

'This is not a matter of cranking up assembly lines. It is, in fact, rocket science.'

DURING LAST YEAR'S election campaign, President Bush repeatedly criticized the Clinton administration's missile defense plans as inadequate, and he promised to build a larger, more complex shield. But there is virtually no chance that this expanded system can be in place before Bush leaves the White House, according to Pentagon documents and military experts.

Even a token defense would require three or four years of work, according to the most optimistic assessments of the technological challenges and construction schedules. Realizing Bush's vision of a multilayered system with worldwide reach will take a decade or more, the experts said. Pentagon officials warn that these schedules cannot be accelerated very much, even by infusions of money or exhortations from the commander in chief. "This is not a matter of cranking up assembly lines," said a senior military officer. "It is, in fact, rocket science."

The difficulties of mounting a missile defense have been writ large in the skies above the Pacific, where the Pentagon's most advanced system-a land-based rocket mounted with a "kill vehicle" designed to smash into an enemy warhead-failed two flight tests last year.

After the second botched intercept in July, the testers put in place higher quality standards and inspected every component. As a result of the two failures, the date for the next test has slipped-from last July to November, then to January, then to March. Now it may not take place until June, almost a year late, according to a senior Pentagon official.

If everything goes right from now on, a small-scale version of the interceptor system could be operating by 2006. But that is the option the Clinton administration had proposed and which the Bush campaign derided as too limited. As an alternative, some Bush advisers have proposed to adapt Navy "theater defense" systems being developed to shoot down short- and medium-range missiles.

However, the Navy recently revised timelines for those programs, which would put new, high-speed interceptors aboard cruisers. The Navy had planned to build a hurry-up, stopgap interceptor, the Block I missile, and to equip at least two ships by 2006. But that plan has been scrapped so that the Navy can focus on testing and developing the final version, the Block II missile, a senior defense official said.

By taking what it considers a more prudent tack, the Navy has put off initial deployment of a ship-based shield to 2010 at the earliest, officials said.

ADMINISTRATION'S LOGIC

Despite the long timeline, Bush remains "fully committed" to building a missile defense to deal with an international problem that will not just go away, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said last week. "And that problem is simply that there are nations on Earth who are developing these weapons that can threaten their neighbors and can threaten us, and it would be irresponsible of us not to move forward with technologies that have the possibility of being able to stop these kinds of weapons," Powell said.

The Clinton plan called for interceptors based in Alaska to protect only the United States - not its allies - from a few missiles fired by a rogue state or an accidental launch by a major power. That approach was "flawed" and the product of "failed leadership," Bush said during the campaign.

Bush has not specified what technologies he will employ. Nor has he said whether the system is intended to be shared with Russia and China, or to defend against them. But he argued forcefully during the campaign that U.S. missile defenses must protect not only the 50 states but also "our friends and allies and deployed forces overseas."

Recent statements by Powell and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld indicate that the new administration is worried that unless the European powers, Israel, South Korea, Japan and other allies feel safe from missile attack, they may be unwilling to join in a future U.S.-led military coalition.

Within a few years, the senior officials predict, a relatively weak military power, such as Iran, Iraq or North Korea, could try to blackmail the United States and its allies by assembling a few long-range ballistic missiles.

Decrying Clinton's inattention to this danger, Bush contended during the campaign that the defensive technology is within reach. "There's a lot of inventiveness in our society that is - hasn't been unleashed on this particular subject," he said.

RISING COSTS

In addition to technological problems, however, the White House faces the issue of how to pay for the global shield. It will cost an additional $8 billion to $10 billion a year to start with, according to conservative estimates by missile defense advocates.

The price tag for Clinton's plan was estimated at $60 billion. Bush's bigger shield could cost much more, especially if the United States tries to build a network of radars and interceptors to protect Europe, Israel and perhaps also Russia, or if it develops killer satellites and space-based weapons.

The chiefs of the military services have long insisted that any spending on national missile defense must come on top of the substantial budget increases they are seeking to modernize existing forces. The Bush administration has promised new money only for a military pay raise. Any additional defense spending must wait until Rumsfeld completes a "top-to-bottom" review of U.S. strategy, weapons programs, nuclear forces and military personnel issues, Bush said last week.

Even as it decides how to proceed on the technology and budget fronts, Bush will have to wage a diplomatic offensive as well. Opposition to the president's missile defense goals is virtually unanimous among the European allies as well as in Moscow, where Bush's ideas are viewed as a prescription for a new arms race. China, which sees even a limited shield as a way to defeat its nuclear capabilities, threatens to be first off the starting line, building missiles as fast as the United States can build defenses.

NO APPARENT HASTE

With its early focus on domestic programs and tax cuts, the Bush administration has not hurried to tackle the multiple challenges posed by missile defense. Senior military officers have been ready for weeks to brief the new administration on options for missile defense testing and development. But the generals, admirals and civilian scientists have been left cooling their heels, according to senior defense officials.

And although Bush has said he wants to overcome Russian opposition to U.S. missile defense plans - perhaps by negotiating an agreement that would further reduce both sides' nuclear arsenals - the administration has not announced a schedule for consultations with Moscow.

Last year, the Clinton administration launched intensive consultations with Russia and the European allies in January. The plan was to have some kind of agreement in place by September, when the president was to decide whether to go forward with construction of a new tracking radar on the remote Aleutian island of Shemya. Failure to make any progress on the diplomatic front, along with the two failed intercept tests, caused Clinton to hold back.

The Shemya radar is essential to almost any kind of national missile defense system, and the earliest it could be completed is 2006 if work on the island begins next year, according to the Pentagon. Because all the materials must be shipped by barge from Seattle to be in place for the short summer construction season, Bush will have to make a decision on whether to build on Shemya by November or see the schedule slip by a full year. Getting a global shield up by the end of the decade would require the kind of urgent commitment that went into the development of Polaris submarine - launched nuclear missiles in the early 1960s, when the nation believed that the Soviets were pulling ahead in strategic weapons, according to the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that has been a leading advocate of missile defenses.

Heritage urged Bush to use his inaugural address "to assure Americans and America's allies that he intends to stand by his campaign commitment to field a national missile defense system as soon as technologically possible." But Bush did not mention the subject then, nor has he spoken of it in any detail since. He may say more this week, when he is to visit military bases across the country and discuss his ideas on defense.

In the view of some prominent Republicans, such as Sen. Thad Cochran (Miss.), Bush by now should have set in motion a plan to scrap the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which prohibits any national missile defenses.

"I think [the administration] should give the Russians six months to accept modifications of the ABM treaty, and if they don't agree, we should withdraw from it," said Cochran, who sponsored legislation in 1999 that requires creation of a missile defense system as soon as the technology is available.

But the Bush administration appears reluctant to upset European allies and infuriate Russia years before the United States will have even a rudimentary system in place. During an interview Feb. 4 on ABC's "This Week," Powell said it was possible that the United States might someday have to abrogate the ABM treaty "if it is no longer serving our purposes or if it is not something that we can accommodate our programs within."

But, Powell added, "it's not something that's going to happen tomorrow, and it's not something that's going to happen without full consultation with our friends and allies and full consultation with the Russians. And beyond that, full consultation with other nations that have an interest in this in Asia, Japan, Korea and China."

Bush's selection of Rumsfeld as defense secretary initially heartened missile defense advocates, because Rumsfeld chaired a commission that reported in 1998 that North Korea and Iran could threaten the United States with missile strikes within five years. That report spurred the Cochran legislation and helped persuade President Bill Clinton to take missile defense out of the deep freeze.

Cochran and others who saw Rumsfeld as an embodiment of their hopes expected the new administration to quickly reverse Clinton's decision to put off construction on Shemya. But Rumsfeld has deflected questions about how he expects to proceed. Addressing a conference of European defense officials in Germany recently, he spoke only in general terms about the need for a missile shield.

During a session with reporters on his plane en route, Rumsfeld said he could not discuss his views of missile defense plans because "we are working that through now back home, but we are not yet at that stage."

Professing a degree of ignorance about a field in which he is widely considered an expert policymaker, Rumsfeld added, "I had my first meeting earlier this week. It seems it is all a blur. I am trying to think when that was on the subject. And they are working through some things for me now. We are going to be meeting again. We are not in a position to talk specifics."

COMING TESTS

Perhaps the first decision he will have to make is whether to go forward with the Clinton plan to put 100 land-based interceptors in Alaska starting in 2006. The strategy behind that system is to attack incoming warheads when they have begun to descend on targets. Time is short at that stage of an engagement, and the interceptors must streak into space aboard a high-speed rocket.

Development of the booster has proven more time-consuming and difficult than the Pentagon expected. Behind schedule by almost a year already, the new missile is scheduled to undergo its first two tests in the coming months.

Once the interceptor is in space, it is supposed to find enemy warheads with the help of a tracking radar on land and infrared sensors in a satellite system. Both are still in the prototype stage and have never been tested together.

In the final seconds of flight, the "kill vehicle" is supposed to home in on the warhead with its own infrared sensors, then ram into it. Two intercept tests are scheduled this year. With only one success in the three previous tests, top Pentagon officials worry that they need two consecutive hits to restore the system's credibility.

Even as they try to master long-standing technological challenges, missile defense developers are expanding their testing programs. Critics both in and out of the Pentagon have questioned whether the "kill vehicle" will be able to find the right target amid the flock of decoys that might surround an incoming warhead.

While expressing confidence in their capabilities, the system's developers recently scheduled four additional flight tests with more difficult targets so they can prove that it will work. If the tests go right, deployment will stay on schedule. But any misses could add months of delay, Pentagon officials said.

---

Russia Says Leave ABM Treaty Alone,
Missile Defense Won't Work

12 February 2001
Space.com
By Yuri Karash Moscow Contributing Correspondent http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/missions/russia_abm_010212.html

MOSCOW -- Russia is ready to match any new missile defense technology developed by the United States if the latter violates the terms of 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, according to Russian Defense Minister Marshall Igor Sergeev.

Sergeev also expressed his confidence that "some other countries" will do the same.

"During the so called Reagan 'Star Wars,' Russia developed three powerful programs of 'asymmetric response' to U.S. national anti-missile defense. A lot of money was invested into these programs," Sergeev said. "Then they were 'put on ice,' but they are still here and could be reanimated."

Sergeev made it clear that he does not share concerns expressed by U.S. officials over the possibility terrorists might attack America using missiles.

Moreover, Sergeev said that Russian politicians and military experts don't believe that any new U.S. anti-missile technologies will really be effective in terms of protecting the American homeland from missile attack.

"These are very complicated technologies, but complicated technologies cannot be reliable. Our military specialists are ready to prove to their U.S. colleagues that the existing ways to shield the country against missiles cannot really assure its safety," said Sergeev.

The Defense Minister suggested that a better way to prevent terrorist missile attacks would be to strengthen missile technology transfer through political efforts instead of looking for military options.

Moscow does not seem to be inclined to accept as a trade for ABM amendments, other U.S. risk reduction steps.

According to Russian news wire services, Moscow positively reacted towards President Bush's plan to reduce strategic offensive nuclear arsenals, and is ready to immediately begin negotiations with the U.S. on further reduction of strategic offensive weapons - but will insist the ABM treaty remain intact.

FUTURE SPACE Coming Wednesday - SPACE.com's live coverage of the NEAR mission press conference. Will the craft survive and fly again?

---

Missile defense wasteful

February 12, 2001
Excite News
Daily Forty-Niner California State U.-Long Beach
http://news.excite.com/news/uw/010212/university-93

(U-WIRE) LONG BEACH, Calif. -- In an effort to make Americans feel safe at night, President Bush is making a missile defense system a major factor in his new administration.

The idea of a missile defense system began during the Reagan administration when it was devised as a space-based system that would use lasers to shoot down incoming missiles. This plan proved to be not only technically unfeasible but also illegal, as it violated the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972.

This did not deter the government from trying to develop the system through both the Bush and Clinton administrations, but without success.

As it stands now, the plan calls for a three-part defensive system, based on the ground, in the sea and in space. A full-scale system could cost as much as $240 million, but to date, has not been successfully tested.

The theory behind the system is that a country with nuclear capability, and the number is growing annually, would be reluctant to launch missiles against the United States or its allies with a defensive shield in place. This is ludicrous.

Any nation that would consider launching a ballistic missile would face swift and severe retaliation from the United States' massive nuclear arsenal. That is the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction that kept the United States and the former Soviet Union from attacking each other during the Cold War.

There are myriad other ways that a country could wage a dangerous attack against the United States.

CIA Chief George Tenet listed Osama bin Laden's terrorist network as the greatest security threat to America. The domestic terrorist attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building showed that the world contains more diverse threats than the traditional bogeyman of the Evil Empire of Soviet Russia.

The United States is more vulnerable through our growing dependence on the World Wide Web for communications than from some rouge nation that got a nuclear missile on sale from some international arms dealer. A well-placed virus in some government or business computers would wreak havoc on technologically obsessed Americans.

The main beneficiary of a proposed missile defense system would be the defense contractors that stand to reap billions in government contracts for products that probably will not work.

A strong defense is vital to the well being of a nation's citizens. Rather than throw billions of dollars down a hole in a chase for the mythical "Star Wars" system that will protect us from all perceived evil, the Bush administration should spend more time and effort in improving the overall quality and morale of the armed forces.

---

Is This Shield Necessary?

Tuesday, February 13, 2001
Washington Post
By Samuel R. Berger
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61869-2001Feb12.html

In the first weeks of the Bush administration, national missile defense has risen to the top of the national security agenda. Having wrestled with this issue over the last years of the Clinton administration, I believe it would be a mistake to proceed pell-mell with missile defense deployment as though all legitimate questions about the system had been answered. They have not.

While the United States maintains strength unmatched in the world, the vulnerability of the American people to attack here at home by weapons of mass destruction is greater than ever. Dealing with our vulnerability to chemical, biological and nuclear weapons requires an ambitious, robust, comprehensive strategy.

But 20 years and tens of billions of dollars later, national missile defense is still a question-ridden response to the least likely of the threats posed by these weapons: a long-range ballistic missile launched by an outlaw nation.

President Clinton last year decided to continue research and development of national missile defense, but deferred a decision on deployment. In part, this was based on a judgment that we do not yet know whether it will work reliably. The Bush administration should reject arbitrary deadlines and, as part of Secretary Rumsfeld's laudable defense review, take a fresh look at the overall threat we face.

Without question we need to broaden America's defenses against weapons of mass destruction. But plunging ahead with missile defense deployment before critical questions are answered is looking through the telescope from the wrong end: from the perspective of bureaucratically driven technology rather than that of the greatest vulnerabilities of the American people.

President Reagan's global shield (SDI) has evolved into a more limited system aimed at defeating long-range missiles launched not by a major nuclear rival but by an irrational leader of a hostile nation, particularly North Korea, Iraq or Iran. Its premise is that an aggressive tyrant such as Saddam Hussein is less likely to be deterred than were the leaders of the Soviet Union by the prospect that an attack on us or our friends would provoke devastating retaliation.

It is further suggested that lack of a defense could intimidate U.S. leadership: We might have hesitated to liberate Kuwait if we knew Saddam could have delivered a chemical, biological or nuclear weapon to the United States with a long-range ballistic missile.

But why do we believe Saddam or his malevolent counterparts would be less susceptible to deterrence than Stalin or his successors? Indeed, dictators such as Saddam tend to stay in power so long because of their obsession with self-protection. And is it likely we would not use every means at our disposal to respond to a vital threat to our economic lifeline, even if it meant preemptively taking out any long-range missiles the other side might have?

The fact is that a far greater threat to the American people is the delivery of weapons of mass destruction by means far less sophisticated than an ICBM: a ship, plane or suitcase. The tragedies of the USS Cole and sarin gas in the Tokyo subway show that lethal power does not need to ride on a long-range missile.

We know that we increasingly are the target of a widespread network of anti-American terrorists. We know they are seeking to obtain weapons of mass destruction. If deterrence arguably doesn't work against hostile nations, it is even less so for fanatical terrorists with no clear home address.

The real issue is what is the most cost-effective way to spend an additional 100 billion or more defense dollars to protect this country from the greatest WMD threats. In that broader context, is national missile defense our first priority?

Is it wiser to continue research and development and explore alternative technologies while we invest in substantially intensifying the broad-scale, long-term effort against terrorist enemies? (Such an effort would include increased intelligence resources, heightened border security, even training of local police and public health officials to recognize a deadly biological agent.)

The ultimate question is whether Americans will be more secure with or without a national missile defense. The answer is not self-evident. We can't build the system that is farthest along in development -- a land-based one -- without cooperation from our allies.

Their misgivings derive in significant part from the prospect of abrogating the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia; that could unravel the global arms control and nonproliferation system.

It has been suggested that we could address Europeans' concerns by including them in our missile defense system or helping them build their own. But such an amalgamation would be more capable against Russia and thus more likely to stiffen its resistance to change in the ABM; it could also increase the chance Russia would respond in ways that would reduce strategic stability -- for example by retaining multiple-warhead ICBMs it has agreed to eliminate.

Of course no other country can ever have a veto over decisions we must take to protect our national security. But in making that judgment, we must understand that the basic logic of the ABM has not been repealed -- that if either side has a defensive system the other believes can neutralize its offensive capabilities, mutual deterrence is undermined and the world is a less safe place.

Then there is China. It is suggested that we can work this out with China by at least implicitly giving it a "green light" to build up its ICBM arsenal to levels that would not be threatened by our national missile defense.

This strategy fails to take into account the dynamic it could unleash in Asia: Would China's missile buildup stimulate advocates of nuclear weapons in Japan? How would India view this "separate peace" between the United States and China? What effect would that have on Pakistan and the Koreas?

Will we be more secure as Americans with a missile defense system or less secure? It is not a question that answers itself. But it is a question that requires answers.

The writer was President Clinton's national security adviser.

---

Russia 'Constructive' on U.S. Missile Plan

February 12, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-arms-us.html

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov pledged Monday that Russia would be constructive in talks about U.S. plans for a missile defense shield.

His remarks earned the approval of visiting German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, who expressed happiness with Russia's attitude.

Russia opposes U.S. plans for a missile shield which Washington wants to build to protect itself against ``rogue states.'' Moscow says the shield would be aimed at itself while Germany and other European states have also been skeptical over the plan.

``Russia will act constructively in talks on strategic weapons and missile defense systems in the interests of preserving and strengthening international stability,'' Ivanov told reporters after meeting Fischer.

Fischer had said earlier he would sound out the conflicting Russian and U.S. positions on the missile shield. He told reporters that Washington and Moscow needed no go-betweens to settle the dispute.

Fischer said international stability still rested to a great extent on the United States and Russia.

``We were therefore very happy here to note such a constructive approach...to all aspects of anti-missile defenses,'' Fischer told reporters after meeting Ivanov.

``We believe it is vitally important for all participants in the discussion to adopt such a constructive approach. It will then be easier to create an atmosphere of cooperation, avoid confrontation and resolve this issue.''

The United States has said that it plans to build a missile defense shield to protect itself from possible attack by countries such as Iraq and Iran, which it calls rogue states.

Russia says the system would almost certainly require amendments to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Treaty (ABM), which it upholds as the cornerstone of arms control for decades.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dismisses ABM as an outdated relic of the Cold War era.

Ivanov and Secretary of State Colin Powell are likely to touch on the arms issue during their first meeting, which is expected later this month in either Brussels or Kuwait.

---

'A moral issue'

February 12, 2001
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-house-2001212181659.htm

Barely two weeks in office, Mr. Bush dispatched Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to Germany to attend the Munich Conference on Security Policy. It was the first overseas mission of any member of the Bush cabinet. Mr. Rumsfeld, who served as U.S. ambassador to NATO under President Nixon and later as secretary of defense in the Ford administration, left no doubt about this administration's national-security priorities.

Appearing before a skeptical group of European foreign-policy and defense ministers, Mr. Rumsfeld asserted, "No U.S. president can responsibly say that his defense policy is calculated and designed to leave American people undefended against threats that are known to exist." Indeed, as Mr. Rumsfeld reminded his audience, in this more integrated, post-Cold War world, "[W]eapons and technologies once available only to a few nations are proliferating and becoming pervasive," including among "non-state entities."

"Let there be no doubt," Mr. Rumsfeld told America's allies, "A system of defense need not be perfect," he insisted, "but the American people must not be left completely defenseless." In fact, deploying defenses against missile attacks was less of "a technical question," he declared, than it was "a matter of the president's constitutional responsibility." Indeed, Mr. Rumsfeld rightly argued that missile defense was "a moral issue."

While Mr. Rumsfeld emphatically assured America's European allies that the United States would consult them in what he told them should be "a new opportunity for a collective approach to enhancing security for us all," he was equally emphatic in telling them that they, like the Russians and Chinese, would have no veto power over America's decision. Insisting that the issue should by no means be divisive among NATO allies, Mr. Rumsfeld asserted, "The U.S. has every interest in seeing that our friends and allies, as well as deployed forces, are defended from attack and are not vulnerable to threat or blackmail."

Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman and Republican Sen. John McCain, both of whom attended the conference, reinforced Mr. Rumsfeld's views, telling the European allies that missile defense enjoyed strong bipartisan support in the U.S. Congress. So forceful was Mr. Rumsfeld's performance that Europeans seemed resigned to the missile-defense program's inevitability. Lord Robertson, who serves as NATO's secretary-general, told the Dallas Morning News that "there's a shift in opinion" among Europeans "toward accepting that the U.S. is going [forward]." Since Mr. Bush entered office, Lord Robertson acknowledged, there has been "a growing feeling that it is a question of how and when, rather than whether."

Particularly noteworthy was the assessment of Richard Perle, assistant secretary of defense for international security policy during the Reagan administration, who was indispensable in convincing Europeans in 1983 to accept deployment of U.S. land-based cruise missiles and Pershing 2 ballistic missiles. Mr. Perle told the Dallas Morning News that he was gratified by "the feeble European resistance" to Mr. Rumsfeld's proclamation. Detecting "some qualms and apprehensions," Mr. Perle said that there was "no sense" that the Europeans were "rushing the barricades to stop it." Indeed, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer meekly acknowledged that whether to build a missile-defense system "above all is a national decision for the United States."

Given the otherwise critical European response to the U.S. missile-defense proposal, the security conference in Munich demonstrated what American leadership can do.

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

Downwinders Battle to Cash IOUs

Monday, February 12, 2001
Salt Lake Tribune
BY JUDY FAHYS
http://www.sltrib.com/02122001/utah/70685.htm

Downwinders and their advocates in Congress are redoubling their efforts to get government compensation into the hands of unwitting radiation victims.

Under the 1990 Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), the federal government pledged to help uranium workers, ore transporters, nuclear testing participants and people exposed to downwind fallout from the nation's nuclear testing program. So far, some $266.4 million has been approved to cover 690 claims.

But the program is plagued with trouble, the biggest one being that the U.S. Justice Department has had to send IOUs to 255 people this year because the fund is at least $80 million short.

"Everybody thinks we are getting that money," said Utah downwinder Dave Timothy, "But we are not."

Lawmakers representing some Western states have led the bipartisan fight to finance the program. And, in a letter sent to President Bush earlier this month, Utah Rep. Jim Matheson urged that future funding for this program be made automatic rather than optional from year to year.

"Our government agreed to pay compensation to people who were unfairly exposed to radiation in order to right the wrong that was done to them," said Matheson, who co-signed the Feb. 6 letter with fellow Democrats, Mark Udall of Colorado and Tom Udall of New Mexico. "It just makes sense that we streamline the claims process so that this long ordeal comes to an end."

The lawmakers also asked Bush to move the program from the Justice Department to the U.S. Labor Department, which administers similar funds for certain nuclear-program workers and miners with black lung disease.

Also working on the downwinders case is Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. After unsuccessfully pushing for full funding last year, he recently asked Timothy to draft a proposal to redirect $20 million originally budgeted for administering the program directly to radiation victims.

As with many of those covered by the compensation fund, Timothy's health has been full of havoc. Since age 18, he has undergone surgery eight times for thyroid cancer, a common disease of people exposed to harmful levels of radiation.

Downwinders hope to update the compensation fund to include health care costs and larger lump sum payments. They currently are set to receive lump sums of $50,000, while nuclear-program workers receive up to $100,000 and have their health expenses paid by the government.

"We didn't volunteer," said downwinder Jay Truman, who now lives in Idaho.

"We didn't advise and consent knowing the risks." After more than two decades of fighting to get the federal government to assist the radiation victims, Truman said he is pleased to see momentum gaining in Washington for the cause.

-------- connecticut

POWER PLANT PLAN CRITICIZED

February 12, 2001
New York Times
Metro Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/12/nyregion/12MBRF.html?pagewanted=all

HADDAM: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says crucial information is lacking from a plan submitted in July for cleaning up the defunct Connecticut Yankee nuclear power plant. The plan does not describe the types and level of radioactive contamination, the agency concluded in its recently released review. Kelly Smith, a Connecticut Yankee spokeswoman, said the company would respond to the request for more information. (AP)

-------- MILITARY

-------- arms sales

ANC used tourism to smuggle arms

February 12, 2001
Washington Times
ASSOCIATED PRESS
By Ravi Nessman
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-2001212235556.htm

JOHANNESBURG - Hundreds of backpackers on African safaris during the final days of apartheid were used as unwitting decoys for a massive gun-smuggling ring for South African guerillas.

Members of the African National Congress' military wing set up a fake travel company, Africa Hinterland Safari, in the late 1980s and advertised cut-rate tours down the coast of East Africa into South Africa, according to a documentary aired yesterday.

But the safari truck that carried the tourists had been specially designed with secret compartments to hold limpet mines, machine guns, pistols and thousands of rounds of ammunition.

"The decoy of the people on the truck seemed to be a great deterrent to anybody who wanted to search the truck because they would be inconveniencing a lot of people," said Rodney Wilkinson, a member of the ANC's military wing, in the documentary aired on South Africa's E-TV.

The Africa Hinterland Safari tours began in Nairobi, Kenya, and continued down the east coast of Africa, across the South African border. After dropping off the tourists in Cape Town, the drivers unloaded the weapons, which were delivered to ANC guerrillas.

Between 1986 and 1993, the safari truck entered South Africa 40 times, carrying a ton of weapons each time.

South Africa's apartheid regime ended in 1994, when the country held its first all-race vote and elected ANC leader Nelson Mandela as president.

Many of the travelers on the trucks were young tourists from New Zealand and Australia, chosen because they were self-sufficient, would not ask too many questions and were unlikely to get sick.

The safari's drivers were trained to appear innocuous at border crossings, but also were forced to become good tour guides.

"The passengers who actually went with Africa Hinterland got such a much better deal than most of the other companies, because we were so worried about the business failing because it was the cover," said Mike Harris, a driver for the company, in the documentary.

Some of the smugglers were ambivalent about the operation.

"There were these 15 to 18 innocent young tourists sitting on a powder keg," said Jenny Harris, who worked as a sales representative for the company. "Of course in the end, you say the end justifies the means."

The drivers said they felt the tourists were never in any danger. They would not have gotten in trouble if discovered because they honestly were ignorant of the smuggling. And the explosives were packed very safely.

But one of the chief planners of the operation was not as confident about its safety.

"The big risk wasn't that we would be discovered at the border crossing, the big risk was an accident and an explosion," said Mannie Brown, a member of the ANC's military wing.

Many of the passengers interviewed appeared shocked, but delighted, about their unwitting role in the struggle.

"It's probably one of the best things I did, in hindsight," said passenger Misha Coleman. "If that was a contributing factor to apartheid being overturned, I'm very glad, very glad."

-------- burma/myanmar

Burmese fighting spills into Thailand

February 12, 2001
Washington Times
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-2001212211332.htm

BANGKOK, Thailand - Heavy fighting between Burmese troops and a rebel group spilled into Thailand yesterday, killing two civilians and injuring at least 37 soldiers, the Thai army said.

The fighting erupted in at least three Burmese border areas between Burmese soldiers and the Shan State Army, a guerrilla group fighting for independence for the ethnic Shan minority.

There was no word on casualties from the Burmese side, and the Burmese government would not comment on the fighting.

--------

Thais drive out Myanmar troops

Afternoon Edition - 2/12/2001
InfoBeat News
http://us.f23.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login?.rand=40ul86unq5pep

PANG NOON, Thailand (AP) - Thailand recaptured a hilltop base near its northern border Monday after a prolonged artillery assault drove out Myanmar troops, Thai soldiers said. The Myanmar forces apparently suffered many casualties - bloodstained military uniforms and spent rocket-propelled grenades littered the base at Pang Noon, about a mile inside Thailand.

Capt. Songkarn Nilphan, commander of the unit that recaptured the base after a nine-hour military barrage forced Myanmar soldiers to withdraw, claimed that nearly 100 Myanmar troops were killed.

In the past, Myanmar has disputed that Pang Noon is located in Thailand.

Ethnic insurgents fighting the Myanmar regime have based themselves along the Thai border for decades, but relations between Thailand and Myanmar are generally cordial.

The Thai government summoned the Myanmar ambassador Monday and "strongly protested...blatant acts of violation of Thailand's sovereignty and territorial integrity."

-------- colombia

Rebels may reduce use of missiles

2/12/2001
InfoBeat News
http://us.f23.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login?.rand=40ul86unq5pep

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - Colombian guerrillas turned a household item into a weapon that has flattened small towns and killed hundreds of civilians. But following a peace summit, rebels say they may curtail the use of crude missiles made from propane gas tanks.

The senior military commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, acknowledged in a weekend interview that the missiles - made of hollowed-out propane gas tanks - have killed innocents, destroyed homes and alienated potential supporters. "We have committed errors due to the rudimentary nature of our armaments," Jorge Briceno told Spain's TVE television. As a "unilateral" concession, Briceno said the rebels are studying ways to stop using the homemade mortars in civilian areas.

The announcement followed a summit last week between President Andres Pastrana and FARC leader Manuel Marulanda that revived stalled peace talks, but failed to yield a cease-fire or other accords that would shield civilians from the South American country's 37-year armed conflict. Should the FARC comply with its pledge, it would be the first humanitarian concession by the group in more than two years of negotiations.

-------- drug war

California Lacks Resources for Law on Drug Offenders, Officials Say

February 12, 2001
New York Times
By FOX BUTTERFIELD
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/12/national/12DRUG.html?pagewanted=all

LONG BEACH, Calif. - Sgt. Walt Turley has been on the Long Beach police force for 26 years, long enough to know that many of the drug addicts he arrests wind up back on the streets, and long enough to know that prison sentences alone will never solve the nation's drug problem.

But Sergeant Turley is worried that Proposition 36, a new law that sentences drug offenders to treatment rather than prison, is also in danger of failing when it goes into effect on July 1.

"There isn't enough money for good treatment, and there isn't enough coercion for judges to keep the hammer over addicts without the threat of jail," Sergeant Turley said.

It is a concern shared by the police, judges, prosecutors, probation officers and officials of drug treatment agencies in Long Beach and around California as the state rushes to find ways to carry out the new law, the most sweeping change in its criminal justice system in decades and one that was approved overwhelmingly in November.

It is not that these authorities disagree with the goal of Proposition 36, which is to provide drug treatment instead of prison for first- and second-time offenders who are not charged with other crimes. Overwhelmingly, they agree, treatment can work. But they worry that the law was hastily written, without sufficient money or authority for treatment programs, and they see a cascading number of unintended consequences. Will drug addicts refuse to plead guilty, for example, and take their chances on a trial, because the worst that can happen to them is to be sentenced to treatment? That could cause havoc in the state's courts, where more than 95 percent of drug offenders plead guilty, saving the courts significant time and money.

Moreover, who will make sure the addicts go from the courtrooms to the new treatment centers, and how will they be tested to make sure they are drug free, since there is no money in the new law to address either of these problems?

"Frankly, I think this could work, if it were better funded," said Lael Rubin, special assistant to the Los Angeles County District Attorney and a member of a task force appointed by the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors to find ways to carry out the new law. "We believe in drug treatment, we want it to work," Ms. Rubin said. "But this is our dilemma. We're afraid if this fails, people will want to go back to the lock-them-up days."

Even a number of treatment centers, for whom the new law could prove a bonanza, are skeptical. "The language of Proposition 36 did not define the assessment criteria to determine what kind of treatment an addict needs, or where they will be placed, which are critical issues," said Elizabeth Stanley Salazar, regional director of Phoenix House, a national nonprofit drug treatment agency. "The most significant indicator of success, we know from years of experience, is time in treatment, but the backers of Proposition 36 seem to believe that most people only need outpatient services, or literacy training, when we think they may be hard-core addicts who need long-term residential care, which is much more expensive."

Already, Ms. Rubin and other Los Angeles officials have been to Sacramento to lobby the Legislature for more money to carry out the new law. Unfortunately, the Legislature is focused on only one thing - California's power crisis.

California's prison population exploded to 161,291 at the end of 2000 from roughly 30,000 in 1980, with one- third of those inmates serving time for a drug-related crime, more per capita than in any other state. In the mid-1990's, as California began to spend more on its prisons than on its state college and university system, voters began to question appropriations for prison construction.

Proposition 36 was financed by three businessmen: George Soros, the New York investment billionaire; Peter Lewis, chief executive officer of Progressive Insurance in Cleveland; and John Sperling, the founder and chief executive officer of the University of Phoenix, a network of private educational institutions. Their main argument was that the nation's drug war had failed. And the initiative in California came at a time when voters and politicians in other states, too, were expressing disenchantment with the war on drugs. Last month, Gov. George E. Pataki of New York proposed softening the harsh Rockefeller-era drug laws, allowing shorter prison terms for nonviolent drug offenses and giving judges the discretion to offer treatment instead of incarceration.

Voters in California may also have been influenced by the success of the state's specialized drug courts. Los Angeles County alone has 12 drug courts, in which drug addicts who waive their rights and agree to be sentenced by the courts receive treatment instead of prison time, unless they repeatedly fail or drop out.

Michael Tynan, the supervising judge of drug courts for Los Angeles County, said the addicts he supervises had a success rate of 75 percent. But it is not an easy program. Most of the defendants who agree to enter the program, Judge Tynan said, are hard-core addicts and have already been in prison. At first he puts them in intensive treatment for 12 to 15 hours a day in the Los Angeles jail. After that, they are put on probation for up to five years, with drug tests four times a week, and are required to stay in treatment centers. He can send them back to jail if they fail a test.

"Drug court judges who have experience dealing with addicts believe you need sanctions, the hammer to put these folks back in jail," Judge Tynan said. "Their major problem is not criminality, but drug addiction."

That is why, Judge Tynan said, he is skeptical about how well Proposition 36 will work. After a defendant is sentenced to treatment, a judge will have no more authority over the person. "The lack of a hammer is a real problem," he said.

The supporters of Proposition 36 provided $120 million a year for treatment statewide, estimating that there would be 36,000 addicts who would be eligible. Addicts arrested on other charges - for burglary, robbery, drug sales or possession of a gun - would not be eligible.

But Maria Luna, a former drug court judge who is now chairman of the Los Angeles County task force to carry out Proposition 36, estimates that Los Angeles alone will have 24,000 defendants eligible for treatment. A year of outpatient services for a drug addict comes to $4,000, Judge Luna said, or $96 million alone for the 24,000 new offenders in Los Angeles. Many offenders need more costly inpatient treatment.

In addition, Proposition 36 prohibits using the new money for drug testing, which at $8 a test, four times a week, could cost Los Angeles another $10 million a year.

The new law also does not provide money for additional probation officers, a serious flaw, since probation officers in Los Angeles often have case loads of 1,000 offenders.

There are also questions about where the new treatment services will come from. It can take two years to overcome neighborhood opposition to a new drug treatment center, said Ms. Salazar of Phoenix House.

Sergeant Turley in Long Beach worries about the practical effect of the new law on police officers and citizens. "From the point of view of a street cop," he said, "humping and grinding in his black and white, what happens when he makes a drug arrest, then has to do two hours of paperwork, then has to go to court, only to see the knucklehead right back out of the street because he skipped out on his treatment?"

---

CRIME TIPS PROGRAM FALTERS

February 12, 2001
New York Times
Metro Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/12/nyregion/12MBRF.html?pagewanted=all

HACKENSACK: Some of New Jersey's largest drug arrests have originated with tips from hotel desk clerks. But The Record of Bergen County reported yesterday that the state police hotel squad had not made any arrests based on tips from hotel clerks since new rules put into place in August barred the squad from getting information from hotel registration cards. In 1999, the program was suspended for several months amid charges that clerks were told to identify Hispanic guests. (AP)

-------- germany

New book connects IBM to Nazis

02/12/2001
USA Today
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001-02-12-ibm.htm

BERLIN (AP) - U.S. computer giant IBM has alerted its employees about an upcoming book detailing the company's role in helping Nazis carry out the Holocaust, according to an internal company message.

The book, by Washington-based researcher Edwin Black, is titled IBM and the Holocaust. It claims that punch-card machines built by IBM were a key factor enabling the Nazis to make their killing operations more efficient.

The allegations are also the focus of a lawsuit filed against IBM in Brooklyn federal court in New York. But the company hasn't yet seen either the book or the lawsuit and isn't commenting in detail, Ian Colley, IBM's European spokesman in Paris, said Monday.

"If this book points to new and verifiable information that advances understanding of this tragic era, IBM will examine it and ask that appropriate scholars and historians do the same," the company said in its statement to employees last week.

IBM's German subsidiary during the Nazi era, Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen GmbH, was taken over by the Nazis. A machine made by the company - believed to have been used in the 1933 German census, the year the Nazis took power - is on display at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

The German division, which after the war became IBM Germany, has paid into Germany's government-industry initiative to compensate people forced to work for the Nazis during the war.

Colley said IBM itself has turned over all its information on the company's Nazi-era operations to universities.

"We obviously find anything to do with the Nazi regime abhorrent and will be the first to condemn the activities of anyone who was associated with the Nazi regime," Colley said.

-------- space

Crew Tears the Wrapping Off Space Lab

February 12, 2001
New York Times
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/12/science/12SHUT.html

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Feb. 11 - Two space commanders opened the door today to Destiny, the American-made science laboratory that is the newest and most expensive addition to the International Space Station.

The moment the hatch was raised by the astronauts, William M. Shepherd and Kenneth D. Cockrell, space station Alpha became the largest orbiting outpost ever in terms of habitable volume.

"It looks awesome," Mission Control told Mr. Cockrell. "We hope you guys enjoy your new room on your house."

The house actually belongs to Mr. Shepherd, the commander of space station Alpha, and his two Russian crewmates. In a brief ceremony, Mr. Shepherd signed for the delivery of the $1.4 billion laboratory, which had been installed by the visiting shuttle astronauts on Saturday.

The laboratory is intended to give the orbiting outpost the ability to do cutting-edge science over the next 10 to 15 years.

The Destiny laboratory, 28 feet long and 14 feet wide, was a brilliant white inside. Its shelves and wall compartments were covered with strips of protective cloth that the crew members promptly removed.

On one of the wall covers were a couple hundred signatures of those who had prepared Destiny for flight, along with these words: "Dreams are like stars; you choose them as your guides, and following them, you reach your Destiny."

Marsha S. Ivins, the shuttle crew member who had maneuvered the laboratory into place on Saturday, promised to bring the signed sheet back to Cape Canaveral for display.

The crew installed emergency masks and lights in the laboratory, hooked up the air-circulation system and computers and executed a few somersaults. There was no research equipment to set up; the first experiment is to arrive next month.

On Monday and again on Wednesday, shuttle astronauts Thomas D. Jones and Robert L. Curbeam Jr. will go back outside to install equipment on the exterior of Destiny.

---

Atlantis astronauts begin second spacewalk

02/12/2001
USA Today
http://usatoday.com/news/nation/2001-02-12-shuttle.htm

SPACE CENTER, Houston (AP) - Two shuttle astronauts floated out into space Monday and put a new docking port on the international space station's newly installed science lab. From inside space shuttle Atlantis, astronaut Marsha Ivins used the shuttle's robotic arm to place the docking port at the end of Destiny, space station Alpha's new science laboratory. The port will be where the shuttle docks, or attaches itself, to the station on future missions.

Meanwhile, spacewalkers Thomas Jones and Robert Curbeam Jr. worked to attach various other equipment and fixtures to the exterior of the lab, including the future connection point for the space station's robotic arm - due to be brought up in April. The spacewalk was scheduled to last just more than six hours.

The port had been moved to a temporary location during the mission's first spacewalk on Saturday, to be out of the way when the Destiny $1.4 billion lab, the newest and priciest addition to the station, was attached to Alpha. On Sunday, space commanders opened the door linking Destiny and the rest of the station.

Before the start of the spacewalk, Ivins grabbed the docking port with the robotic arm and then waited for Jones to help her unlatch the port from its temporary location.

At the end of the spacewalk, space station flight controllers were to send Destiny's computers commands to begin spinning four large gyroscopes on Alpha, which will eventually help control attitude, saving station fuel. Testing of the gyroscopes will continue throughout the mission.

If the astronauts had not been able to attach the docking port to Destiny, it would have halted future space station construction until a fix was worked out.

The complex mission has so far proceeded without any major problems.

"I am very pleasantly surprised that it has gone as well as it has," flight director Bob Castle said.

Monday's spacewalk was the second of three scheduled for the mission to mount and outfit Destiny - which is 28 feet long and 14 feet in diameter.

After opening the hatch Sunday, the crews of Atlantis and Alpha installed fire extinguishers and emergency masks and lights in the laboratory. They also hooked up the air-circulation system, cameras and computers. There was no research equipment to set up; the first experiment doesn't arrive until the next shuttle mission in early March.

Destiny's computers and systems will allow NASA to take control of the space station in a month or two. Up until now, the two Russian pieces of Alpha provided the life support and commanding capability.

The lab also gives station commander Bill Shepherd and his two Russian crewmates more room to work in and live. They have been aboard Alpha since Nov. 2. The addition of Destiny makes Alpha the largest orbiting outpost ever in terms of habitable volume.

---

Spacecraft lands on asteroid

02/12/2001
USA Today
http://usatoday.com/news/nation/2001-02-12-asteroid.htm

COLUMBIA, Md. (AP) - The NEAR spacecraft touched down on the barren, rocky surface of Eros, successfully completing history's first landing on an asteroid.

NEAR's landing was confirmed Monday when mission control received a beacon signal from the craft resting on the surface of Eros, some 196 million miles from Earth.

"I am happy to report that the NEAR has touched down," said Robert Farquhar, mission director. "We are still getting signals. It is still transmitting from the surface."

Engineers watching from monitors from Mission Control broke into applause at confirmation of history's first landing of a manmade object on an asteroid.

NEAR flawlessly performed five rocket firings, starting Monday morning, to drop it out of a 15-mile orbit of Eros and slow it toward the surface. Early indications are that Mission control completed its plan to guide NEAR to a feather-like touchdown by slowing its velocity, relative to the surface of the asteroid, to about the speed of a fast walk, 3 to 5 miles an hour.

The landing completes a five-year, 2-billion-mile mission for the robot craft and boosts the technical experience in putting spacecraft on objects with extremely light gravity.

-------

Crew attaches space docking port

2/12/2001
InfoBeat News
http://us.f23.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login?.rand=40ul86unq5pep

SPACE CENTER, Houston (AP) - Space shuttle Atlantis' astronauts on Monday put a docking port in place on the international space station's newly installed science laboratory. In addition, spacewalking astronauts put more finishing touches on the lab.

From inside Atlantis, astronaut Marsha Ivins used the shuttle's robotic arm to place the docking port at the end of Destiny, space station Alpha's new science laboratory. Shuttle commander Kenneth Cockrell sent computer commands to bolt the port onto the lab. The port is where the shuttle will dock on future missions.

Meanwhile, spacewalkers Thomas Jones and Robert Curbeam Jr. worked to attach various other equipment and fixtures to the exterior of the lab, including the future connection point for the space station's robotic arm - due to be brought up in April. The spacewalk was scheduled to last just more than six hours.

The port had been moved to a temporary location during the mission's first spacewalk on Saturday, to be out of the way when the Destiny $1.4 billion lab, the newest and priciest addition to the station, was attached to Alpha.

On Sunday, space commanders opened the door linking Destiny and the rest of the station. If the astronauts had not been able to attach the docking port to Destiny, it would have halted future space station construction until a fix was worked out. The complex mission has so far proceeded without any major problems.

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

U.N. Official Calls for a Safety Zone for Refugees in Guinea

February 12, 2001
New York Times
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/12/world/12GUIN.html

KISSIDOUGOU, Guinea, Feb. 11 - The new chief of refugee services for the United Nations appealed today for a "safe corridor" to enable tens of thousands of refugees to escape fighting in dense rain forests along Guinea's southern borders with Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Ruud Lubbers of The Netherlands, the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, visited two camps near the southwestern Guinean town of Kissidougou, where tens of thousands of Sierra Leonean and Liberian refugees have sought shelter after fleeing fighting along the border.

Many more refugees, however, remain trapped in camps where relief workers have been unable to reach them since September.

One of the world's poorest nations, Guinea has one of Africa's largest refugee populations - including 122,000 Liberians who fled their country's seven-year civil war, which ended in 1996, and 330,000 Sierra Leoneans who have fled almost 10 years of civil war in that country.

Since September, 200,000 of the refugees have been on the move inside Guinea's forests after fighting began on the borders with Liberia and Sierra Leone. About 22,000 Sierra Leoneans have returned home, often to equally dangerous conditions.

It remains unclear who is behind the recent fighting. The forested borders where the three countries meet are traveled by soldiers and dissidents from both Guinea and Liberia, along with pro-government civilian militias. Fighting flares across nationalities, borders and often-shifting loyalties.

Last week, the refugee agency began relocating refugees from the Nyaedou camp near the Liberian border to a new camp at Albadaria, 110 miles to the north. But the effort was interrupted Thursday by fighting. When trucks arrived Friday to resume moving Nyaedou's 34,000 refugees, most took to the road on foot behind the convoy.

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

Bush Pledges Military Funds to Improve Quality of Life

February 12, 2001
New York Times
By DAVID STOUT
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/12/politics/12CND-BUSH.html

WASHINGTON, Feb. 12 -- Declaring himself honored to be in their presence, President Bush visited troops at Fort Stewart, Ga., today and renewed his promise of billions of dollars to improve the quality of life for military people.

"There is no greater duty for the president -- no higher honor -- than to serve as commander in chief," Mr. Bush said in a speech interrupted frequently by applause and cheers.

The President said he would seek an additional $5.7 billion in next year's budget for military people: $3.9 billion for health benefits, $400 million to improve housing, and $1.4 billion for pay raises.

Today's announcement was no surprise, since Mr. Bush had been talking for some time about a military pay raise of the scale he made official at Fort Stewart. But it produced elation among the troops nonetheless.

The timing was important too, since the announcement came even as top commanders in the Pentagon uncertainly await the results of a top-to-bottom review of military spending. Speaking in a brisk breeze, Mr. Bush sought to assure the rank-and-file troops -- "the dogface soldiers," as he termed them -- that he is on their side, just as history is on their side.

"In a world of fast-changing threats, you are our security," Mr. Bush said. "Our nation can never fully repay the debt to you. But we can give you our full support, and my administration will."

Debates over how to apportion military spending (on new weaponry or for the troops, and how much for each) date back to the cold war. Now that the cold war is over and the services are concerned with getting and keeping good people, the quality of life of soldiers, sailors and airmen has taken on new urgency.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a delegation of senators and House members and Mr. Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, accompanied the President on his first such meeting with service people since he took office.

Mr. Bush, a former National Guard pilot, sprinkled his talk to the troops with historical allusions as he pledged to work for a military "where the best and brightest are proud to serve, and proud to stay."

"You are the rock of the Marne," he said, summoning an image from World War I, "and my administration is rock-solid behind you."

---

Bush boosting military morale with pay raises

02/12/2001
USA Today
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-02-12-military.htm

FORT STEWART, Ga. (AP) - - President Bush reassured U.S. troops Monday that he intends to lift military morale, carrying to the field a promise of $5.7 billion in new spending to improve quality of life in the armed services. ''If our military is to attract the best of America, we owe you the best,'' Bush told hundreds of cheering soldiers. Low pay and poor housing are hurting all branches of the military, he said. ''The result is predictable: Frustration is up, morale in some places is difficult to sustain, recruitment is hurt.''

That, Bush said, is not the way "a great nation should reward courage and idealism. It's ungrateful, it's unwise and it's unacceptable."

Bush, touring this big Army base, announced $1.4 billion for pay increases and retention incentives, $3.9 billion to improve military health benefits and $400 million to upgrade housing.

After his first flight as president aboard the Boeing 747 that most Americans identify as Air Force One, the new commander in chief toured this installation outside Savannah.

A band played "Hail to the Chief" as he approached his podium, and hundreds of troops and their families cheered as he and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld reviewed a line of soldiers in head-to-toe camouflage.

Accompanying Bush to the base was a delegation of top administration officials and lawmakers, including national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, five senators and six House members.

Among the senators was Zell Miller of Georgia, the first Democrat to back Bush's attorney general nominee, John Ashcroft, and who signed on as an original co-sponsor of Bush's tax cut plan.

Bush was reviewing the Army base's barracks and troops - his first such meeting with members of the military since he took office Jan. 20.

He repeated during his election campaign his contention that morale in the armed services is on the decline, and he promised to address the factors he said caused it: equipment shortages, poor housing and pay and unfocused, "overextended" missions.

Bush, devoting his fourth week in office to national security, began with a pledge to improve conditions for those who serve.

Bush dispatched Rumsfeld to the Sunday television news shows to spread the message in advance of Monday's trip. Rumsfeld is conducting a "force structure review" of the Pentagon, and the administration will rely on that examination as it sets defense spending priorities.

"I think the focus has to be on quality of life for the people," Rumsfeld said on "Fox News Sunday." "Without the men and women that we're able to attract and retain to man the forces, then we really don't have a national defense, so that has to be the first focus."

Rumsfeld also told ABC's "This Week" that he remains convinced a defense budget increase is necessary.

Monday's visit to Georgia was the first of three trips Bush is making this week to military bases, and the kickoff for a series of events emphasizing his role as a world leader.

He and Rumsfeld head Tuesday to the U.S. Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Va., a training hub. Bush will participate in an electronic battle exercise - part of an appearance emphasizing the need to modernize the military.

Army Gen. Hugh Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is expected to accompany the president and Rumsfeld to Norfolk, home port of the USS Cole, the target of last year's terrorist bombing in Yemen that killed 17 U.S. sailors.

On Wednesday, Bush travels to Yeager Field in Charleston, W.Va., an Air National Guard base. Bush, who served in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War, plans to salute those who serve in the military reserves.

On Thursday, Bush visits the State Department, turning his attention to the diplomatic corps. He caps the week with his first foreign trip, a meeting with Mexican President Vicente Fox at Fox's ranch in central Mexico.

-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

01/02/12
USA Today
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

New Jersey
Newark - Officials in New Jersey and four other states are considering a survey to learn where to place power-generating wind farms. Others involved are Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and True Wind Solutions of Albany, N.Y. True Wind claims it has developed software to chart wind speeds at hundreds of locations at varying altitudes.

-------- environment

Mr. Card's Dangerous Memo

February 12, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/12/opinion/12MON2.html

On Jan. 20, the day George W. Bush was sworn in, the White House chief of staff, Andrew Card, ordered all executive departments to postpone for 60 days the effective date of a wide range of regulations announced by President Bill Clinton in his final days. The purpose of this "review" is to give the administration more time to devise strategies for killing or weakening rules it does not like.

The memo covered dozens of regulations. Those that had not yet become law by virtue of being published in the Federal Register will simply lapse, to be revived only if the new administration wants to revive them. Still in the balance, however, are rules that made it into the Federal Register in time but had not yet taken effect. The Department of Health and Human Services, for example, is reviewing a controversial rule requiring states to pay for certain uncovered Medicaid expenses. But the memo's main targets were rules dealing with the environment.

Three of these are especially vulnerable. One would protect nearly 60 million acres of wild national forest from new road-building and nearly all new logging and oil, gas and mineral development. A second closes a loophole in the Clean Water Act that has allowed the destruction of thousands of acres of valuable wetlands. A third would sharply lower the sulfur content in diesel fuel, reducing air pollution.

The administration can attack along several lines. One is to rescind these rules administratively. But because all three rules, and others of lesser visibility, have already appeared in the Federal Register, the White House would have to follow the same laborious procedures dictated by the Administrative Procedures Act to undo them that Mr. Clinton was obliged to follow to create them. That could take a long time. Contrary to White House assertions that these rules appeared at the 11th hour, all required a year or more of public comment and revision.

A second line of attack might originate in Congress, where members hostile to the rules will be tempted to attach legislative riders to appropriations bills that would overturn the Clinton rules. This would give the administration legislative cover but could also inspire partisan fights at a time when President Bush wants smooth sailing for big-ticket items like tax reduction.

A third approach would be for the administration to encourage industry lawsuits challenging the rules in court. The Justice Department - whose new boss, John Ashcroft, has a long record of hostility to environmental causes - could then negotiate settlements favoring industry and severely weakening the rules. An industry suit is almost certain to be the strategy of choice in the case of a rule banning snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park.

President Bush should think hard before going down any of these roads. Recent history will tell him that politically there is much to lose by trifling with environmental laws. His father suffered from Vice President Dan Quayle's efforts to undermine regulations, and the Republican Party suffered when Newt Gingrich tried to do the same thing in 1995. A memo on these and other strategic blunders would serve the president far better than Mr. Card's.

---

Eat Your Vegetables

February 12, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/12/opinion/L12MAD.html

To the Editor:

You report that the three-star Michelin chef Alain Passard has decided to cook only vegetables (Paris Journal, Feb. 9). It seems to me that there is now a convergence of three trends: a growing recognition of the bond between humans and animals; an increasing awareness of the damage done to the planet; and the mounting danger to our personal health from the consumption of animal products - from mad cow disease to food poisoning to complications from the widespread use of antibiotics in animal feed.

I hope that we will begin to consider the pernicious effects of our unwise eating habits for the sake of our humanity, our ecology and our health.

JOSEPH TURNER Portland, Ore., Feb. 9, 2001

---

After a Landfill Closes

February 12, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/12/opinion/L12FRE.html

To the Editor:

Re "City Begins Its Final Phase in Closing Out Fresh Kills" (news article, Feb. 5):

he closing of the Fresh Kills landfill is both the opportunity and the motivation New York City needs to increase its recycling programs.

It is wonderful that New York City is not expanding Fresh Kills after this year. But it is tragic that the city is seeking a place for the waste in neighboring communities and not pushing for reducing waste or increasing recycling.

JOHN S. QUINN Lindenhurst, N.Y., Feb. 7, 2001

------

Norton: Administration must make case for drilling

02/12/2001
USA Today
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-02-12-drilling.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration will weigh opening some currently off-limits areas of the Rockies to oil and gas drilling as part of a sweeping review of untapped energy resources, Interior Secretary Gale Norton said Monday.

But in an interview with The Associated Press, the former Colorado attorney general acknowledged the administration still needs to make the case for opening Alaska's Arctic Wildlife Refuge to drilling.

"In order to satisfy Congress ... President Bush and I are going to have to establish that energy development can take place in a very environmentally responsible manner," Norton said.

A 1999 study by the National Petroleum Council, an industry advisory group to the government, said about 10% of the country's total reserves of natural gas lay beneath the Rockies but that 40% of the deposits are off-limits to drilling.

In 1997, the U.S. Forest Service banned drilling in areas of the Lewis and Clark National Forest that is part of the Overthrust Belt - a geological formation in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and northern Utah rich in oil and gas deposits.

"We want to ensure that energy production is taking place in those areas where the environment can most tolerate that," Norton said. "One of the areas that would be studied as part of an across-the-board look at energy resources would be the Overthrust Belt."

However, she said she and Bush support current moratoriums on new offshore drilling in California and Florida. "That certainly would continue," she said.

The last time the Interior Department did a formal Environmental Impact Statement on drilling for oil in the Alaska refuge was 1987. Norton said current technologies would have minimal effect on the environment, but she acknowledged new studies may be needed.

"We'll have to look at what environmental studies are going to need to be done. At this point, I don't know exactly which documents will have to be prepared," she said.

A poll conducted for the AP two weeks ago found that 48% opposed exploring for oil in the pristine Alaska refuge, while 43% approve.

Norton said it was "still under discussion exactly what format the proposal would take" on Arctic drilling.

Options under discussion include lifting the ban as part of an energy package Bush plans to submit to Congress next month or trying to attach the measure to a bill that could not be filibustered in the Senate.

Norton linked opening the Arctic refuge directly to soaring natural gas prices around the country and the electricity shortage in California that is being aggravated by the high gas prices.

"In order to ensure that jobs are available, that our dynamic economy continues, that elderly people in California are not having to worry about how to keep their homes warm, we're going to have to examine how to look at Arctic production in an environmentally friendly way," she said.

Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope called that rationale "complete garbage." California relies on oil for about 1% of its electricity and that oil from the Arctic likely would take a decade to get to production and be exported to Japan, he said.

"What they're doing is taking today's headlines and wrapping them around a payoff to the oil industry," Pope said.

In the AP interview, Norton also said:

She plans to travel within the next few months to see the Alaska refuge and the Everglades in Florida, where the Army Corps of Engineers is beginning a $7.8 billion, 25-year project to restore its natural flow. The administration is looking at recommending changes to the Endangered Species Act that would add economic incentives for landowners. "The Endangered Species Act has tended to create confrontation ... all of the wrong incentives. Instead of crippling people who find endangered species, we ought to have a way of helping them, rewarding them and working with them. It may or may not take changes in the law to be able to do that. We'll certainly be looking at what can be done administratively." An energy task force headed by Vice President Dick Cheney has made no decision yet on California's request to expedite permits required by agencies in her department so that new power plants there can be operating by the summer air conditioning season. She and Bush support full federal funding at $900 million a year of a federal-state land buying conservation program. She stopped short of endorsing broader legislation that would commit the government to spending $3 billion a year for 15 years on land conservation efforts. Western Republican senators stopped the bill last year.

Norton said she hopes her legacy will be lending a voice to those affected by federal land decisions.

"The Department of the Interior is often viewed as remote and distant, making decisions that deeply affect people's lives without really understanding the consequences," she said. "I would like to be remembered as a secretary who really brought people together and changed our decision-making focus to one that requires Washington to listen to people throughout the country."

---

01/02/12
USA Today
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Hawaii
Honolulu - A new species of a large lizard has become established on Oahu, state wildlife officials said. A Madagascar giant day gecko was caught in Manoa Valley in late January, near where another was caught in 1996. It means that the species has reproduced and is able to expand its range, said Fred Kraus, the Land Department's alien species coordinator.

Montana

Missoula - The state is taking possession of the Lolo Creek campsite known as Travelers' Rest, a major stop by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark during the Corps of Discovery trip in 1805. The site is being purchased with money from The Conservation Fund, a national non-profit group, and is expected to complement several other Lewis and Clark sites for the bicentennial of the trip.

Nevada

Carson City - Lawmakers will hold hearings this week on childhood leukemia cases in the Fallon area. An Assembly committee is focusing on the 11 leukemia cases linked to the farming area. The normal rate is about three cases per 100,000 people. About 25,000 people live in Churchill County, which includes Fallon.

Washington

Seattle - The U.S. Coast Guard is investigating what caused a tug boat to take on water on the Duwamish River near the Port of Seattle. The vessel was stabilized with the help of a crane barge. Only 20 gallons of fuel got into the waterway, and it was quickly cleaned up, the Coast Guard said.

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Not all species are equal

February 12, 2001
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-house-200121218218.htm

The always endangered ideals of democracy and the currently endangered bald eagle, shortnose sturgeon and dwarf wedge mussel have found new friends at the National Wilderness Institute (NWI), which recently sued several federal agencies on the grounds (or at least waters) that those species would become even more endangered than they already are if construction of the new Woodrow Wilson Bridge continues to go forward.

The new Wilson Bridge could be considered a long-standing budget boondoggle, except that very little of it has actually been built. Not that this newest lawsuit will draw the process any nearer to closure, except perhaps by slowing the workday arrival time of the matrons of the nanny state by jamming them in a regulatory traffic jam of their own making.

Indeed, the NWI is attempting to drive home the point that the selective enforcement of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) has endangered the credibility of the federal government and established roadblocks to development in Western states. Rep. George Radanovich, California Republican and Western Caucus chair, claimed, "It's no wonder the bureaucrats in Washington have ignored our pleas when they can seemingly ignore the law when it affects where they live."

As proof, Mr. Radanovich has pointed to a recent study by the House Resources Committee which revealed vast disparities between Eastern and Western states in the number of areas designated critical habitats, numbers of species proposed as threatened or endangered and even numbers of ESA enforcement officials.

During hearings on the ESA's selective enforcement, California Rep. Ken Calvert pointed out, "If endangered and threatened species are going to be truly protected for future generations, our federal agencies must have credibility and deal in good faith with all citizens."

Despite the pylons of paper that various federal agencies have erected to evade their own environmental regulations, there is little doubt that the construction plan would alter the habitat and behavior of the species living therein. Moreover, the deliberately selective enforcement of the law is tantamount to tyranny, and a blot on the Supreme Court's credo, "Equal Justice Under Law."

The NWI should be lauded for its lawsuit, which will hopefully serve to protect both our endangered species and our endangered ideals.

---

Whales beach themselves in Japan

February 12, 2001
Washington Times
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-2001212211332.htm

TOKYO - Fifty melon-headed whales ran ashore yesterday on a beach near Tokyo, and about 20 died despite efforts by surfers to turn them back to sea.

The whales were among a group of 300 that appeared off the coast of Japan. The whales measured about 8 feet long and weighed about 352 pounds on average, said Akihiro Iwakami, an official of Oarai Aquarium in Ibaraki state.

Twenty-eight of the surviving whales went back to sea. The aquarium took the remaining two.

-------- police

MAJORITY OPPOSE PROFILING

February 12, 2001
New York Times
Metro Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/12/nyregion/12MBRF.html?pagewanted=all

NEWARK: For the first time, a statewide poll shows that a majority of New Jersey residents are very bothered by racial profiling. Fifty-five percent of respondents to a Star-Ledger/Eagleton-Rutgers poll released yesterday said they were bothered "a lot" by the practice of stopping drivers because of race. Two in five residents, including more than 80 percent of blacks, said the state police treated minority drivers worse than white drivers. The poll, based on telephone interviews with 806 New Jersey residents between Jan. 24 and 30, has a margin of error of four percentage points. (AP)

HARTFORD: TROOPER CHIEF CRITICIZED The state troopers' union is questioning the recent deployment of new troopers, aying Arthur L. Spada, the public safety commissioner, appears to be failing to honor his promise to increase patrols in eastern Connecticut. Mr. Spada said two weeks ago that he would increase trooper staffing in eastern Connecticut, which has the lowest number of police officers per capita in the state. Of the 34 recruits who recently graduated, 5 were sent to eastern Connecticut. Mr. Spada said the troopers were needed in Southbury and elsewhere for highway patrols. (AP)

---

01/02/12
USA Today
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Illinois
East St. Louis - While officials in this impoverished city were complaining that they didn't have enough money to hire more police, $642,000 in state and federal grant money sat in a bank account untouched. The city may lose a second grant of $545,000 that could be used to hire more officers because the deadline for drawing from the money expired two months ago, a grant administrator said. Lt. Marion Hubbard blamed the delays in spending the money on procedural details.

Louisiana

New Orleans - A jury found former New Orleans police officer George Lee III guilty of raping four women in 1999. Prosecutors said Lee, 33, used his uniform and gun to intimidate victims. His three previous trials ended in mistrials. Lee faces up to 40 years in prison on each of eight criminal counts that include forcible rape and kidnapping.

Michigan

Westland - A high-speed police chase ended with the death of an 8-year-old boy. The child died when a stolen truck being pursued by police slammed into a pickup in which he was a passenger, police said. The boy died at the scene. Police said the boy's aunt was driving the pickup and suffered minor injuries. Four men involved in truck theft were taken into custody, police said.

-------- terrorism

Terrorism Act Draws Mixed Reviews

February 12, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Britain-Terrorism.html

LONDON (AP) -- Anti-terrorist legislation that comes into force next week is hailed by the government as a powerful weapon against international violence. But opponents say the law will stifle dissent, whether on the Internet or in slogans on a T-shirt.

The Terrorism Act empowers Britain to outlaw groups that commit violence abroad and to crack down on supporters who channel funds and recruits to terrorist organizations.

Potential targets are already reacting sharply.

``It's goodbye to the peace talks'' if Britain bans the Tamil Tigers, London-based spokesman Anton Balasingham was quoted as saying in a Tamil-language newspaper published in Sri Lanka.

Closer to home, an animal rights activist complained that activists who release beagles raised for experiments will have fewer rights than murderers.

Governments have pressed the British to outlaw such organizations as the Tamil Tigers, Hamas and the Kurdistan Workers' Party.

The Home Office won't say which groups will be banned. It plans to issue a list sometime after the Terrorism Act takes effect Feb. 19.

Existing counter-terrorist legislation applies to Northern Ireland and was largely rushed into effect in 1974, after Irish Republican Army pub bombs killed 19 people in Birmingham.

Unlike the United States, Britain does not maintain a list of foreign organizations banned from operating on its soil.

``London has, let's face it, been a base for groups exploiting the freedoms of this country,'' said Paul Wilkinson, director of the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at St. Andrew's University.

Under the new law, said Neil Durkin of Amnesty International, ``the British government may come under intense pressure to 'silence' dissidents based in the U.K.''

Sri Lanka has called on Britain to outlaw the Tamil Tigers, while Egypt has asked it to ban the Islamic Group, responsible for the 1997 attack in Luxor that killed 58 foreign tourists.

Sheik Omar Bakri Mohammed, London-based leader of the militant Al-Muhajiroun, says the legislation will poison the relationship between British Muslims and the government.

``I will support the new law if it is really against terrorist activity,'' said Bakri Mohammed, whose group encourages young Muslim men to join armed struggles abroad. ``But why is raising funds for Israel legal and raising funds for Muslims in Kashmir or Palestine illegal? The people who are going to be affected, besides the Irish, are the Muslims.''

Amnesty International says the law, which passed with all-party support, casts too wide a net. It broadens the definition of terrorism to include religious or ideologically motivated violence and acts, such as disruption of power or computer systems.

It also forbids fund-raising for a banned group, possessing information ``which is likely to be useful to terrorists,'' posting weapons-making instructions on the Internet, wearing a T-shirt promoting a banned group or speaking at a terrorist meeting.

A suspected terrorist may be arrested without a warrant and detained for up to a week without charge.

Amnesty International says the law may contravene the European Convention on Human Rights.

The definition of terrorism was ``vaguely worded and could be extended to include supporters of, for example, animal liberation or anti-nuclear campaigns and others,'' Amnesty said.

Animal liberation militants -- some of whom have resorted to bombing -- fear the government will use the new law to crack down on their protests. Home Secretary Jack Straw, Britain's top law-enforcement official, has called protesters who attacked staff at animal research laboratories ``frankly evil.''

``The government is taking on American hysteria, because it's taking on the American definition of terrorism,'' said Animal Liberation Front spokesman Robin Webb. ``It's a sledgehammer to crack the proverbial nut.''

Webb says existing laws on burglary and criminal damage are adequate to cover the actions of animal liberationists, who have received sentences of up to 18 years in prison.

He said the law ``gives someone who was trying to rescue some beagles fewer rights than someone who has raped and murdered.''

Wilkinson counters that the law's critics are unduly anxious.

``It's quite clear the legislation is not aimed at suppressing protest or dissent. It's aimed at suppressing terrorism,'' he said.

``The right to life is the most basic of human rights, and terrorism is a threat to that.''

---

Time-Tested Defense Expected as Terrorism Witness Returns

February 12, 2001
New York Times
By BENJAMIN WEISER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/12/world/12TERR.html?pagewanted=all

The testimony given by the first witness in the embassy bombings trial last week riveted the courtroom.

Prosecutors called a shadowy figure to the stand who was once a close aide to Osama bin Laden, the man the government believes was the mastermind behind the bombings. The witness, a convicted terrorist named Jamal Ahmed Al-Fadl, gave the jury an insider's look at Mr. bin Laden's world, recounting his support for other jihad groups, his justification for attacks against the United States and his attempt to buy uranium, possibly to make a nuclear weapon.

But when defense lawyers for the four men charged in the bombings conspiracy cross-examine Mr. Al-Fadl, they are likely to rely on time-tested methods used in even the most mundane criminal trials. The cross-examination is to begin tomorrow.

They will try to undermine his credibility and his motives, and to find holes in his account. In short, they will attack him as they would any mob informer.

"You have to attack the story," said Gerald L. Shargel, a defense lawyer who has confronted turncoat witnesses in dozens of conspiracy trials. "It's not enough to discredit the witness. The real skill comes in discrediting the story."

In eliciting testimony from Mr. Al-Fadl over a day and a half last week, prosecutors did their best to prepare for such tactics. Most important, perhaps, they had him explain why, in 1996, he broke with Mr. bin Laden: he had been caught after stealing $110,000 from him.

Mr. Al-Fadl also admitted that he had pleaded guilty to a terrorism charge in a secret proceeding in New York.

Prosecutors also made sure that the jury learned of another aspect of Mr. Al-Fadl's past: he admitted that he had two wives, in different countries, and that he had married the second without telling the first.

Strategically, the government could have opened, as it did in the World Trade Center trial in 1993, with a harrowing account of the crime, telling of the nearly simultaneous attacks on Aug. 7, 1998, on the American Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, that killed 224 people and wounded thousands.

Instead, prosecutors started with Mr. Al-Fadl and an oral history of Al Qaeda, the group led by Mr. bin Laden, and what they called a decade-long global conspiracy to kill Americans - of which the East African attacks were just one part.

"The idea with that kind of witness," said Steven M. Cohen, a former prosecutor in the United States attorney's office in Manhattan who helped supervise the racketeering case against the Latin Kings gang in the mid-1990's, "is you want to take the opportunity to educate the jury and you want them to understand the context into which this is all going to fit.

"There's always something very theatrical about a trial," he added, likening a prosecutor's responsibility to that of a playwright who must make sure that the world he is presenting onstage is familiar to his audience.

"If it isn't, he better explain to that audience very quickly what the world is, or else things that have tremendous significance are going to be lost," Mr. Cohen said.

Defense lawyers have not commented on Mr. Al-Fadl's testimony, but they seem likely to focus their cross-examination on his background as a terrorist who turned to the Americans only as a last-ditch effort to save himself.

They may also seek to exploit some of the questions left unanswered by Mr. Al-Fadl's testimony.

Mr. Al-Fadl said, for example, that he swore bayat, or took the oath of allegiance, to Al Qaeda around 1990. He said he was the third person to sign up.

But he also testified that Al Qaeda was founded by Mr. bin Laden and a group of close associates, some of whom were on a ruling council and ran its committees. Mr. Al-Fadl was not at that level. Defense lawyers may try to show that he exaggerated his own status and was not really a part of Mr. bin Laden's inner circle, making him less like a fraternity brother and more like a fraternity pledge.

The defense, however, may have trouble undercutting an important theme of Mr. Al-Fadl's testimony - that it was not his rank that made him important, but his trusted role. He said he helped manage Mr. bin Laden's payroll, had access to confidential files on Al Qaeda members and was sent on missions by Al Qaeda leaders.

Questions may be raised about the circumstances of Mr. Al-Fadl's approach to the Americans. He said he walked into the visa line of the United States Embassy in an undisclosed country, offering information about Mr. bin Laden to the Americans in return for protection. But he acknowledged that the Americans were not the first officials he had talked to.

"Did you talk to a number of other countries," asked the prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, "about what happened in the Sudan and bin Laden?"

"Yes," Mr. Al-Fadl said.

No details were elicited about what occurred in those conversations, but whether those governments believed him or rejected him might also be at issue.

Of course, with little time to prepare - the defense learned Mr. Al-Fadl's name only on the eve of the trial - the lawyers will have to tread carefully in the cross-examination minefield.

Gregory J. O'Connell, a former assistant United States attorney in Brooklyn who prosecuted leaders of the Luchese, Colombo and Genovese organized-crime families in the late 1980's and early 1990's, said the old rule still applied: don't ask a question you don't know the answer to, unless you're confident that no answer can hurt you.

The government, meanwhile, must anticipate such defense strategies. Mr. O'Connell said, "The prosecutor's role is to defuse the cross by bringing out all the dirty laundry ahead of time, and not leaving it for the defense to reveal."

For example, when Mr. Fitzgerald asked the witness about his first meetings with the Americans, he elicited an admission from Mr. Al-Fadl that he had waited for two days to reveal that he had stolen money from Mr. bin Laden.

He was embarrassed, Mr. Al-Fadl said, but he finally told the Americans after they said, " `If you don't tell us, we're not going to trust you.' "

Mr. Al-Fadl also acknowledged another deceit - that he failed to tell his wife in Sudan that he had married a woman in the United States.

"Did she ever find out?" Mr. Fitzgerald asked.

"Yes," Mr. Al-Fadl replied.

Mr. Fitzgerald tried to clear up any concern for the jury.

He asked: "In Islam, are you allowed to have more than one wife?"

"Yes," Mr. Al-Fadl said, adding that he could have up to four.

-------- activists

Anti - Nuclear Protesters Arrested

February 12, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Britain-Nuclear-Protest.html

HELENSBURGH, Scotland (AP) -- More than 375 people, including three legislators, were arrested Monday as they tried to blockade the base of Britain's four nuclear-armed Trident submarines.

Banging on drums and chanting slogans, about 500 protesters formed human chains in a bid to prevent workers from entering the Faslane base on the River Clyde in western Scotland, police said.

Police used power tools to cut through tubing protesters used to tie themselves together. They also had to dismantle one protester's silver costume depicting a nuclear missile.

A base spokesman said about 200 workers had arrived at the base by boat before the protest began.

Protesters say the submarines' nuclear weapons breach international law because they cannot distinguish between civilian and military targets.

Police said 379 people were arrested. They included George Galloway, a British lawmaker from Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labor Party; Tommy Sheridan, a member of the Scottish parliament; and Caroline Lucas, a member of the European Parliament.

---

Croatian Rally Protests U.N. and Demands Early Elections

February 12, 2001
New York Times
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/12/world/12CROA.html

SPLIT, Croatia, Feb. 11 - Some 100,000 people turned a mass protest today against the investigation of a former general suspected of wartime atrocities into a huge rally against Croatia's year-old democratic government.

By backing a declaration that demanded early elections and a halt to cooperation with the United Nations tribunal examining war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, the crowd - war veterans, pensioners, disaffected youths and some priests and nuns from the influential Roman Catholic church - underscored a building confrontation between the government and the nationalist party that governed for a decade under the late president, Franjo Tudjman.

Protesters were bused from across Croatia to Split, 150 miles south of Zagreb, while three smaller protests were held in other towns. The giant rally followed days of protests by veterans who blocked roads in southern and central Croatia.

Mirko Norac, 33, a former major general, is still at large and has not been formally charged. But the opening last week of an investigation against him in connection with the 1991 massacre of Serbian civilians in the central city of Gospic angered veterans of the 1991 war in Croatia for independence and their supporters.

Under Mr. Tudjman, Croats were represented as victims in the war, and many people resent the new government's attempts to shed light on possible atrocities against Serbs.

Prime Minister Ivica Racan told reporters that the demands voiced at the rally "represent an attack on the government."

[Ivo Sanader, who now heads the party that Mr. Tudjman founded, told the crowd: The government has two options: to step down and call an election or organize its own counter- protest, in which case we shall all go to Zagreb," Reuters reported.]

Many in the crowd held pictures of Norac and banners declaring, "We all are Mirko Norac."

Mirko Condic, the head of one of the veterans' organizations behind the rally, demanded that the government resign.

"By prosecuting Norac, they want to prosecute the Croatian army and the Croatian people," he told the applauding crowd. "Norac can only be tried over our dead bodies."

Mr. Tudjman's party was often accused of condoning war crimes by Croats - a notion that brought the country to the brink of international sanctions. The new government has opened several inquiries into Croatian war crimes in Croatia and neighboring Bosnia.

Mr. Norac was promoted to colonel by Mr. Tudjman in 1992 and to major general in 1995, when Croatian forces recaptured large swaths of territory held by the Serbs since the 1991 war. Many Croats view the young officer as a war hero for his role in defending Gospic, but prosecutors contend that he was responsible for the deaths of some 40 Serbian civilians.

---

Ukraine Rally Calls on Chief to Step Down

February 12, 2001
New York Times
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/12/world/12UKRA.html?pagewanted=all

KIEV, Ukraine, Feb. 11 - Thousands of demonstrators marched through the capital of Ukraine today, the second such outpouring in a week, demanding the resignation of President Leonid D. Kuchma and calling for new presidential elections.

Up to 5,000 people watched as a wreath of black and white ribbons was laid at the entrance of Ukraine's state intelligence service to celebrate the news that Mr. Kuchma had on Saturday fired its top two officers, Leonid Derkach and Veleriy Strogov. The two had been criticized for orchestrating a crackdown on freedom of the press and suppressing Mr. Kuchma's political opponents.

In freezing weather, demonstrators carried candles in the late winter dusk at a vigil in Independence Square that went into the night around a tent encampment they called the "Kuchma-Free Zone."

"Kuchma has no moral right to be head of state and we are ashamed in front of the entire world that we have such a president," said Mayor Vladimir Olyinyk of Cherkassy, addressing a late afternoon rally.

Earlier, a large column of protesters marched through the city center chanting "Kuchma Out" and carrying a Ukrainian flag 60 feet long and placards from a half-dozen political parties that have joined a Forum for National Salvation to work for Mr. Kuchma's impeachment. Other banners said "Ukraine is a police state" and "Kuchma is kaput."

Political parties from socialists on the left to pro-business parties on the right have united in opposition to Mr. Kuchma over the scandal involving the alleged murder of a journalist, Georgy Gongadze, and the release of secret tape recordings made under Mr. Kuchma's office couch.

The recordings, made by a major in Mr. Kuchma's security service, Mykola Melnichenko, who is now in hiding in Europe, suggest that the Ukrainian leader last summer ordered his minister of the interior, Yuri Kravchenko, to "get rid" of the journalist by making it appear that he had been kidnapped.

Mr. Gongadze's headless body was found in a wood 75 miles from Kiev on Nov. 2, but Mr. Kuchma's prosecutor general has refused to open a criminal investigation.

Additional recordings released last month have prompted a new set of allegations that Mr. Kuchma was aware of specific instances of large- scale corruption in the country's notoriously corrupt energy sector.

Today, as the demonstration blocked a mile-long section of the center of the capital, Mr. Kuchma flew 200 miles southeast to Dnipropetrovsk to meet with the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, who was said by aides in Moscow to be gambling that a strong show of support for the embattled Mr. Kuchma will solidify economic and political ties.

Since declaring its independence a decade ago, Ukraine has moved closer to Europe and associated itself with NATO's "partnership for peace" program, while resisting Russian entreaties to form a union like the one that Moscow has forged with neighboring Belarus.

Demonstrators in Dnipropetrovsk tried to organize a rally in sight of Mr. Putin's motorcade route, but security forces dispersed them and arrested a number of others, witnesses said.

Mr. Kuchma was a Soviet-era manager of Ukraine's largest rocket factory in Dnipropetrovsk and the two leaders were expected to sign agreements strengthening industrial cooperation in missile construction for commercial space launches and the destruction of long-range missiles left over from the Soviet arsenal here.

Ahead of his visit, Mr. Putin struck a cautious tone about the demonstrations. Meeting with Ukrainian journalists in Austria, where he was ending a state visit, the Russian leader said, "What is happening there is Ukraine's internal political affair, and it would be improper for us to make any comments on the issue."

"On the whole," he continued, "there is nothing special in that an internal political struggle is under way. I think that is a sign of a normal democratic society," but he added that "it is only important that all these processes go on in accordance with the law."

Over the weekend, Mr. Kuchma gave no reason for removing Mr. Derkach and Mr. Strogov. But it was under their command that Mr. Melnichenko secretly made the digital recordings by placing a microphone under the president's couch. These recordings are now the center of the spreading scandal.

The crowd left a banner today over the wreath in front of Mr. Derkach's former offices with the words "Kaput No. 1," reflecting their hope that Mr. Kuchma and other top aides will also soon be gone.

Among the demonstrators, 21- year-old Aleksandr Danidenko said that he had joined the protest "because I am concerned about what happened to Gongadze.

"To support a government that would do such a thing to one of its own citizens is simply impossible," he said.

Mr. Kuchma initially asserted that the recordings were fakes. But last month, Prosecutor General Mikhailo Potebenko acknowledged publicly that the voice on the recordings was indeed that of Mr. Kuchma, though he asserted that they were edited.

Two prominent political figures, whose voices were captured on the recordings during private talks with Mr. Kuchma, have come forward to say that the tapes are authentic.

Mr. Kuchma defended himself further last week, telling The Financial Times in an interview: "I can swear on the Bible or on the Constitution that I never made such an order to destroy a human being. This is simply absurd. Maybe the name Gongadze came up in conversations, I don't remember. But I give you my honest word, I did not even know this journalist."

---

01/02/12
USA Todey
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Arkansas

Little Rock - Little Rock-based Stephens Group's financial bailout of a British pharmaceutical testing company has drawn the ire of animal rights groups. The activists say they'll hold protests against Stephens' offices until the financial investment company drops Huntingdon Life Sciences as a client. Four years ago, Huntingdon was featured in a British TV documentary that aired secret video footage of employees abusing animals at the company's laboratories. The company says it has changed its practices, but public backlash and organized protests led Huntingdon to the brink of insolvency.

---

PETA pressure goes all out

February 12, 2001
Washington Times
By Gerald Mzejewski
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-2001212214911.htm

NORFOLK - Not far from the crisp lawns and flag-adorned homes of retired naval officers, nestled among the city's ever-present strip malls and steakhouses, there's a parking lot in this old seaport that seems . . . well . . . a little out of step.

"I'm animal friendly," boasts one license plate in the lot. "Keep dolphins free," urges another. Faded "Go Veg," and "Stop animal tests," bumper stickers decorate the rear-ends of other vehicles.

An ancient Volkswagen peace van, straight out of Haight-Ashbury, bedecked with counterculture decals, stands guard outside the building's main entrance.

This is the parking lot for the employees of the headquarters of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the world's largest - and most controversial - animal-rights organization.

Since its founding 20 years ago in the suburbs of Washington, the nonprofit organization, now based in Norfolk, has grown from five activists to a worldwide membership of about 700,000.

With donations, membership dues and catalog sales of everything from T-shirts to humane mousetraps, PETA took in an estimated $17 million in 1999.

From its behind-the-enemy-lines headquarters in Norfolk - located in the same congressional district as the offices of Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition - PETA's agents-provacateurs plot, plan and scheme.

These offices, tucked into a quiet, historic neighborhood along the Elizabeth River, are the front lines in a culture war aimed at persuading Americans and others to quit wearing leather shoes.

To stop taking children to circuses.

To swear off fur.

To, once and for all, forget about drinking milk and, for heaven's sake, put that cheeseburger down.

A holy war? PETA members say it's nothing less. But the media-savvy true-believers in Norfolk aren't above using a slick mix of sex and tacky humor to help the save-the-critters sermons go down.

And over the past year and a half, PETA has taken the don't-be-afraid-to-be-offensive offensive to new heights (or lows, depending on perspective):

• Last year, the group thumbed its nose at the dairy industry and infuriated parents across the country with its cheeky "Got Beer?" campaign, which targeted college students with the straight-faced assertion that beer is healthier than milk.

• In May, a PETA member was arrested and charged with assaulting a Cabinet official after tossing a pie (tofu cream) at Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman during a speech in Washington.

• A Midwestern billboard campaign, featuring a nearly nude model and a string of sausages, angered cattle producers by purporting to link male impotence to beef consumption.

Serious silliness

PETA's public image may be one of irreverence spiced with sarcasm, sex and sophomoric hijinks, but most of the more than 100 employees who staff the offices at 501 Front St. are deadly serious about the cause.

They make the animal-rights case with the earnestness of a born-again Pentecostal preacher.

"It's about trying to reduce suffering on all levels."

"Cows are people, too, and drinking their milk is a denigration of their creaturehood."

"Six million Jews died in concentration camps, but 6 billion broiler chickens will die this year in slaughterhouses."

Above the reception desk at the Norfolk headquarters is a Leonardo da Vinci quote, painted on the wall in letters 6 inches tall: "The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men."

Everyone, it seems, from the spokespeople to the random person in the hall, is on a mission.

The receptionist herself recently stripped for one of the group's notable let's-get-naked-and-call-the-television-stations protests. This one, staged in front of the White House, was an anti-leather rally.

The activism that colors the corridors at PETA can be traced to one person: Ingrid Newkirk, 51, PETA's president and founder.

Born in England, Ms. Newkirk grew up in India, in a New Delhi home filled with ailing people and animals. Her mother volunteered at an orphanage, a home for unwed mothers and a leper colony. She grew fond of the stray animals her family took in.

A turning point came when, as a young person, she grabbed the sticks and whips from men beating cart-cattle in India.

When she eventually emigrated to Maryland, where she once worked as a Montgomery County deputy sheriff, Ms. Newkirk said she was shocked by the state of a Silver Spring, Md., animal shelter where she dropped off stray cats.

"I didn't think there was any cruelty in the West," she said.

PETA was cooked up in Ms. Newkirk's Takoma Park, Md., home in 1980, with a handful of friends planning protests around town.

The term "animal rights," she recalls, didn't even exist.

"Fur was everywhere. There was no issue with leather. There were probably about three or four or five shampoos you could buy, and you had to mail order them special, if you did not want shampoo tested in rabbits' eyes," she said.

Today, PETA is a favorite among celebrities such as Richard Gere, Alicia Silverstone and Pamela Anderson Lee, and Ms. Newkirk and her fellow activists chart the course for an organization with offices in London; Stuttgart, Germany; Rome and Bombay.

This isn't Kansas, Toto

PETA headquarters, on the surface, looks like a typical Friday-casual workplace, the hallways full of bright-eyed young people in khakis and sweaters. But, as the parking lot's bumper stickers attest, this is no typical office.

Visitors realize that when they meet the dogs and cats that roam the building.

Practicing what it preaches, PETA encourages employees to bring their animals (not "pets" -that word denotes ownership and devalues the life of the animal, PETA says) to work, so as not to keep them cooped up alone all day.

Four cats live in the building, providing feline-petting stress relief as they lounge in the various offices.

The PETA dress code forbids clothing with fur or leather, something the activist staff probably wouldn't do anyway. Almost every employee, after all, has donned an outrageous costume at a rally, stripped off his or her clothes at a protest or been arrested for tossing a pie or a bucket of blood.

On a counter in the building's dining room, there's a model jail that doubles as a piggy bank. Employees make donations to help pay co-workers' fines.

The vending machine nearby is stocked with vegan foods such as peanuts, animal crackers and certain chocolate bars. There are no meat products or even milk chocolate, because PETA is against the use of dairy products.

The soda machine is stocked with RC Cola. Pepsi is unwelcome, staffers said, because Pepsi supports bullfighting in some parts of the world.

What the staff wears and eats outside of work is left to their own discretion. "We've never had a problem with it," said spokeswoman Lisa Lange. "It's not even an issue."

The building's microwave is often filled with Chic-ketts (imitation chicken), Tuno (imitation tuna) and vegetarian "beef" chunks. The freezer contains the fake shrimp that PETA folks eagerly hand out at festivals in the Norfolk area.

One floor below is a room where PETA stores brochures, handouts, donation forms and, most importantly, "The PETA Guide to Becoming an Activist." PETA provides everything the beginner needs to start his or her own animal-rights chapter.

One flier offers helpful hints for organizing a protest in the poultry aisle of the local grocery store: "Rent a chicken costume. . . . Send out a news release the day before. . . . Be aware of photographers-make sure the chicken and sign will show clearly in a photo."

Get the word out

How important is the media to PETA?

The framed newspaper pages in the media office - all of which carry stories about the animal rights organization - are an indication. So are the thrice-weekly packets of news articles mentioning PETA that are distributed throughout the building.

Someone is even charged with recording every public mention of PETA, from David Letterman monologues to B-movie dialogue.

PETA's 1999 annual review notes that "our media department booked nearly 1,100 interviews" and "PETA was mentioned in print 7,500 times."

Where the mainstream media end, PETA's own publications -Animal Times and Grrr, a magazine designed for young girls -pick up. The fall edition of Animal Times tells readers "why all cats should be indoor cats," provides vegan recipes and asks members to vote for the "sexiest vegetarian alive."

Under the headline "Gross School Lunch Facts" in the latest issue of Grrr, is a paragraph stating: "Government inspectors recently told reporters that students in 31 states were served chicken nuggets made from birds covered with pus, bruises, tumors or scabs. Want barbecue sauce with that?"

Covert operations

The twisted sense of humor that pervades much of the building stops at the door to the Research and Investigations Department.

Inside, beyond the security keypad, is where PETA Vice President Mary Beth Sweetland heads up the organization's most sensitive work, keeping track of a legion of undercover field workers.

These PETA members, armed with hidden cameras, infiltrate the work forces at slaughterhouses, farms and research facilities to document conditions. The undercover specialists don't make it into the office very often, and their identities are a carefully held secret, even from staffers here.

As a researcher, it is Peter Wood's job to back up the investigators by writing letters to the accused abusers, filing complaints with the appropriate government agencies and, if necessary, rallying activists and getting the media involved.

Sometimes he pressures a medical school into discontinuing its use of animal labs, as East Carolina University School of Medicine did a few years ago.

Other times Mr. Wood may succeed only in getting a little press in a college newspaper. Sometimes he is rebuffed in a very polite letter from a laboratory, a farm or a school.

"I never look at it as a loss," he said between viewings of videos depicting live dog dissections. "You're still getting people to see what happens behind closed doors."

Besides, he said, if a PETA target is slow to change initially, the organization just amps up the pressure.

"That's one of the things we're known for - our tenacity."

PETA's targets no longer routinely dismiss the group. The Foundation for Biomedical Research, for example, released a statement this year warning parents that their children are lured to PETA by anti-fur and anti-meat campaigns, and become "vulnerable to criminal 'direct' action against researchers."

"PETA is extremely active in U.S. schools, aggressively promoting an agenda of misinformation regarding the need for animals in biomedical research," the statement said.

PETA's pressure tactics sometimes spill over into terrorism, according to critics, who cite examples such as the case of Rodney Coronado, an animal-rights advocate jailed for firebombing a Michigan State University lab. Coronado, a member of the radical Animal Liberation Front, received $45,200 from PETA in 1995.

Many PETA leaders believe, to paraphrase the late Barry Goldwater, that extremism in defense of animals' rights is no vice.

Arson, property destruction, burglary and theft are "acceptable crimes" when used for the animal cause, PETA co-founder Alex Pacheco was once quoted as saying.

While PETA's more radical elements lend the movement a revolutionary cachet with some, it is the group's adroit use of celebrities and media-savvy ad campaigns that have fueled PETA's rise.

When news organizations "underplayed," in the minds of PETA leaders, a story last year about a PETA investigation that led to cruelty charges against three North Carolina farm workers, PETA responded by recruiting a celebrity spokesman.

Actor James Cromwell, star of the movie "Babe," which features a talking pig, agreed to narrate a videotape, which is available to the public, that details the investigation and includes graphic footage of the workers beating pigs.

"I really believe that if people knew this was standard practice . . . they would think twice before buying pork chops," Ms. Sweetland said.

Famous faces, shocking images and provocative stunts: the formula that's taken PETA from irrelevance to a potent political and cultural force.

First, make 'em laugh

If Ms. Sweetland's research department is Sunday-school sober, the Campaigns Department is frat-boy funny. Here, amid the full-size chicken and cow suits, the most creative minds at PETA dream up their cultural counteroffensives.

This is where PETA hatched the "Got Prostate Cancer?" campaign.

When a new medical study suggested a link between dairy products and prostate cancer, PETA worked up a plan to get the word out.

Ms. Newkirk's father suffered from prostate cancer, but employees decided a celebrity would be more effective. Someone came up with the idea to use - with or without his consent - New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who had been recently diagnosed with the disease.

While even the mayor's most venomous critics expressed sympathy, PETA posted billboards depicting Mr. Giuliani with a milk mustache and the words, "Got Prostate Cancer?"

Bruce Friedrich, who worked on the campaign, said he sent pictures of the billboards to the mayor ahead of time, but received no response.

They targeted dairy country -Wisconsin, parts of Pennsylvania and California - and soon the media caught wind of an irresistible story.

"We certainly didn't expect it to cause as much controversy as it did," Mr. Friedrich said.

PETA pulled the campaign when companies refused to give them advertising space and the mayor threatened to sue. PETA eventually sent a letter of apology.

"It's tasteless and inappropriate to exploit my illness and also takes advantage of my position as the mayor for advertising purposes," the mayor said at the time.

The stunt, predictably, angered the dairy industry. Debra Wendorf Boyke, spokeswoman for the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board, said studies have shown that "low-fat dairy products . . . reduce the risk of colon cancer." She accused PETA of "misleading the public for their own gain."

Meanwhile, the animal rights organization gave away thousands of "vegetarian starter kits" and scored another free-publicity coup.

"It's rare that we find ourselves on 'The Today Show' and 'CNN Talkback Live' for an hour," said Mr. Friedrich, who fielded many of the media calls.

"I think the end result didn't hurt Giuliani and helped people to know if they're drinking milk, they're doing their body a disservice," he said.

PETA's most impressive feat may have been bringing McDonald's to its knees.

When the British High Court found the fast-food giant guilty of animal abuse in 1997, PETA moved quickly, urging the company to make itself more animal-friendly. Frustrated by the burger giant's resistance to change, PETA lobbed a public relations stinkbomb that finally drove the company to the negotiating table.

Last May, PETA members started handing out "Unhappy Meals," a takeoff on the popular McDonald's "Happy Meals." PETA's mock version featured bloody plastic animals, gory stickers and the "Son of Ron," a cutout of Ronald McDonald wearing a bloodstained yellow suit and carrying a bloodstained knife.

"It generated a huge buzz," said Sean Gifford, a Wisconsin native who worked on the campaign.

PETA planned to hand out 10,000 to children at McDonald's playgrounds, but McDonald's relented after about 500 were distributed. The company agreed to tell suppliers to end the practice of cutting off chicken beaks and double the size of chicken cages, among other changes.

With McDonald's in retreat, PETA has a new target, training its sights now on Burger King (they're calling it "Murder King"). The PETA faithful know they've got a long way to go before they change the beliefs of their neighbors in Norfolk and the millions of other consumers around the world.

But they've had a taste of victory - and they're serving notice to the cattle industry, to farmers, to fast-food restaurants and to anyone who eats a cheeseburger or wears a leather belt:

PETA intends to be in your face.

"Our job is to make sure no one forgets there's an issue," founder Ms. Newkirk said. "If we only talk about what people already care about, we won't move forward."

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Protest democracy

February 12, 2001
Washington Times
Embassy Row James Morrison News and dispatches from the diplomatic corridor.
http://www.washtimes.com/world/embassy-2001212211917.htm

Czech Ambassador Alexandr Vondra was proud to see scenes of striking television journalists and crowds of 100,000 demonstrators supporting them in downtown Prague.

To him, the strikes and protests showed the Czech Republic has truly matured as a democracy tolerant of peaceful demonstrations.

Mr. Vondra described the Jan. 1 protests in the latest edition of the Czech Embassy newsletter as a conflict between journalists for the Czech public television station and a newly appointed board of directors.

The journalists, "perhaps correctly," complained that the new board was attempting to exert political pressure on station programming and threaten its independence, he said.

Twelve years after the fall of communism in 1989, "the Czech Republic is now a parliamentary democracy that guarantees all basic rights and freedoms to its citizens, including the freedom of speech," Mr. Vondra wrote.

The strike briefly disrupted programming, but independent stations covered the story, showing the government no longer could control the flow of information, he said.

"Additionally there is a new generation of young journalists who are not willing to follow politically motivated orders or to stop their investigative reporting simply because someone does not like it," Mr. Vondra wrote.

"Here lies the problem, as well as the difference. Some politicians, most of whom still remember the times of domination by a one-party system, do not believe in the complete independence of public media."

The "journalists' rebellion" is hardly unique in the former Soviet bloc countries of Eastern Europe, he said.

"It is a common feature of all post-communist countries struggling to build a stable and functioning civil society, having already achieved their main goal of a functioning free market and democracy," Mr. Vondra wrote.

---

Protesters demand president's ouster

February 12, 2001
Washington Times
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-2001212211332.htm

KIEV, Ukraine - Chanting and carrying a giant Ukrainian flag, protesters marched through the capital yesterday to demand the ouster of President Leonid Kuchma, accusing him of playing a role in the disappearance of an opposition journalist.

The third demonstration in a week came hours before Mr. Kuchma welcomed Russian President Vladimir Putin, who arrived last night for talks. Rising tension about the missing journalist has embarrassed the Ukrainian president and forged an unlikely alliance between nationalist and leftist forces.

Critics claim Mr. Kuchma played a role in the disappearance of Heorhiy Gongadze, a journalist who reputed high-level corruption and disappeared in September.

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Funeral held for Filipino activist

2/12/2001
InfoBeat News
http://us.f23.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login?.rand=40ul86unq5pep

MANILA, Philippines (AP) - Thousands of Filipinos marched in a funeral procession Monday for a prominent left-wing activist and former communist guerrilla who was slain by four gunmen last week. A red hammer-and-sickle flag and a handful of bullets covered the coffin of Filemon "Popoy" Lagman, chairman of the Solidarity of Filipino Workers labor federation, as friends and family mourned him in a Manila chapel. Lagman was shot Feb. 5 as he walked to a book-launching ceremony on the University of Philippines campus.

Police said Monday they had a new lead in their investigation but would give no details. They have not named any suspects.

Lagman, the former Manila branch head of the Communist Party of the Philippines, was a top figure in its guerrilla war against the government. His unit launched attacks against police, military officers, local officials and businessmen.


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