------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
What people are saying about the Navy sub accident
Japan critical of civilians on sub
Russia angry on missile allegations
Navy stops drills with civilians
Japan pressures U.S. on sub findings
Japanese premier facing crisis
Bush orders review of guests on subs
President Backs Look At Military's Guest Policy
UK Nuclear Firm Invests in Offshore Wind Power
Canadian Reactor Rumors Stir Nuclear Debate
U.N.: No Plutonium Shell Health Risks
Group advises Bush on nuke defense
Russia attacks missile defense plan
Blair Offers Some Support on Shield
Old hands in town to sound out Bush
Russia accuses U.S. of Cold War rhetoric
Missile defense threatens world security
Decoding defense speak
Russia Test - Launches Missiles
Russia Launches Missile Tests
Russia denies charge that it helps Iran, N. Korea
Russia test-launches ballistic missiles
Russia Responds to U.S. Missile Shield
Russia denies it is exporting missile technologies
Lab Security Measures Shelved Pending Study
The solution that glows in the dark
NRC freezes CP&L spent nuclear fuel storage plan
Toxic Utah: Trash, troubles are piling up
Did Reagan Win the Cold War?
Former Security Advisers Urge Clearer Foreign Policy

MILITARY
Museum wants Colombia leader's towel
Colombia to Ask Bush For Additional Funds
Colombian Peasants Block Road to Protest Enclave
Cuba Sanctions Assessed
Afghanistan opium said wiped out
Bush may end Mexico drug evaluation
Taleban is hailed as drug enforcer
U.S. planes attack Iraq radar sites
U.S., Britain Strike Targets Near Baghdad
Chronology of Strikes Against Iraq
U.S., Brit Planes Attack Iraq Sites
U.S. and British Forces Attack Air Defense Installations in Iraq
Israel denies 'poison gas' use
Seven Serbs Die in Kosovo Blast
Recent Kosovo Anti - Serb Attacks
U.N. set to deploy in Congo this month
Sick Gulf War vets want Bush help
Pregnant VMI cadet to stay in school
China cruise missile
Redeploy the Dollars
Pentagon Bars Civilians From Submarine Controls
Navy Stops Drills With Civilians
Below the radar

OTHER
Senators revive 'brownfields' bill
Anti-nuke flotilla to sail again in South Pacific
European biotech firms face hurdles
NSA warns it can't keep up with rapid changes in IT
Lawmakers focus on NSA technology, CIA spies
O'Neil's challenges
Senate Committee Questions Clinton's Pardon of Deutch
Senate panel asks CIA to investigate Deutch pardon
Panel discusses terrorism practices
Former terrorist jailed in Germany

ACTIVISTS
China says sect member killed self
Colombia highways blockaded
political skills training!
BLSP IKE PANEL ON C-SPAN
NO NAFTA for the Americas - NO FTAA
Students Continue to Mobilize Against Sodexho
Yale to release some ethical investing information

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-------- NUCLEAR

What people are saying about the Navy sub accident
Sailors' duty: Rescue those in distress

02/16/2001
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/2001-02-16-opline.htm

San Francisco Chronicle in an editorial: "Revelations that two civilians were manning key controls aboard the (USS Greeneville) submarine when it rammed a Japanese fishing ship off Hawaii (on Feb. 9) raise serious questions about the Navy's safety-and-rescue policies. ... Coast Guard crews rescued 26 within an hour as the sub's crew stood by, apparently making no effort to pull the survivors from life rafts in rough seas. Nine were still missing. ... A Navy spokesman said the submarine's crew was unable to rescue survivors 'due to hazardous sea conditions' and attempts to bring life rafts aboard would have 'increased the danger to those in the rafts.' Maybe, but that seems to contradict the stern, international maritime code that requires sailors to take every measure possible to rescue people in distress at sea."

The Washington Post in an editorial: " When asked whether the presence of civilians at the controls could have played a role in the accident, the chief Navy spokesman, Rear Adm. Stephen Pietropaoli, offered the divisive response that 'only people who don't understand how submarines work' would raise such questions. In fact, no naval expertise is required to imagine how the Greeneville's captain and other senior officers might have been distracted as they sought to please their guests or whether the Navy is withholding key facts because it wants to avoid full accountability and minimize its embarrassment. ... Since the Navy is failing to deliver the necessary openness, other independent authorities, such as the Pentagon's inspector general and congressional committees, should join the investigation of the Hawaii accident."

Chicago Tribune in an editorial: " One (civilian) visitor reportedly sat in a helmsman's seat while the other operated switches to empty the ballast tanks for surfacing. Were visitors in control of the ship? Were the ship's officers distracted? Those are the first questions the Navy has to answer. ... The Pentagon encourages civilian visits to its ships to foster knowledge and understanding of the military. There's nothing wrong with that. But this wasn't some Sunday afternoon on a skiff in Lake Michigan."

The Houston Chronicle in an editorial: "The USS Greeneville conducted two periscope sweeps and used passive sonar before blowing its main ballast tanks in an emergency surfacing drill. But the submarine did not use active sonar, which might have detected the (Japanese fishing ship) Ehime Maru and avoided the collision."

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in an editorial: "Judgments are premature. I t may not have mattered who was at the controls. ... The central issue is why the submarine was unaware that the fishing vessel was above it. It may be that the presence of civilians was a distraction, but that is a question for a Naval court of inquiry. As for not picking up survivors, the question for Navy investigators is what good it would have done. Were seamen drowning in the sea as the USS Greeneville looked on? Or did the missing Japanese go down with their ship, in which case no assistance would have helped? Was there any point in transferring survivors from life rafts to the submarine when they would have had to be put on other vessels within a short time? What undoubtedly looks bad now might turn out to be merely prudent."

Omaha World-Herald in an editorial: "It is worth noting that submariners are among the U.S. military's elite forces. Because of the conditions under which they must work, they are required to be in prime physical shape, above average in intelligence and psychologically stable. But all of that will be of minimal if any comfort to the Japanese survivors who lost family and friends. To the extent that concrete answers can be attained, they assuredly are needed. Was there human, procedural or equipment error, or some combination? Only when such information is at hand can U.S. military officials exert every reasonable effort to see to it that there are no such tragedies in the future."

---

Japan critical of civilians on sub

2/16/2001
Infobeat News
http://us.f23.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login?.rand=c4s9q624q0jcd

UWAJIMA, Japan (AP) - People in this remote village were angered Thursday to hear that a civilian was at the controls when a U.S. Navy submarine shot up from the sea and into a Japanese fishing boat off Hawaii. The USS Greeneville rocketed into the boat carrying Japanese high school students on a two-month training trip and sent it to the bottom of the sea Feb. 9. Twenty-six aboard were rescued within an hour; nine remain missing.

Foreign Minister Yohei Kono spoke to Secretary of State Colin Powell and demanded information on exactly what the civilians did at the controls. Kono said in a ministry statement that it would be an "extremely grave situation" if the participation of the civilians led to the accident. Powell was quoted as saying that there was not yet any evidence of that. Kono also asked Powell why U.S. officials did not directly inform Japan that civilians were taking part in the sub's maneuvers, the ministry said.

In Washington, State Department officials confirmed that Kono called to express his concerns.

Powell promised to work with Japan and to provide information in a timely manner, the officials said. Powell told Kono the Pentagon is the best channel for information, the officials added.

Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori sent an official to Washington to convey the strong wishes of relatives of the missing for a continued search, Mori spokesman Kazuhiko Koshikawa said.

The civilian tour aboard the USS Greeneville was arranged by a former commander of U.S. military forces in the Pacific, retired Adm. Richard Macke, said Cmdr. Conrad Chun, a Pacific Fleet spokesman.

---

Russia angry on missile allegations

MOSCOW (AP) - Top Russian defense officials Thursday fiercely rejected U.S. charges that Russia is spreading missile technologies to Iran and North Korea and warned the allegation could deeply mar relations. At least four senior Russian officials slammed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - who made the charges - and accused him of using Cold War rhetoric. They alleged that he is beholden to U.S. defense contractors who would stand to benefit from the development of a new national defense system. Despite Thursday's tough talk, Russian officials expressed hope that Moscow and the new administration of President Bush would be able to calmly discuss the divisive issues of nuclear nonproliferation, the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty and NATO expansion.

Tough talk coming from senior officials of the Bush administration has deeply irritated the Kremlin, particularly Senate testimony last week by CIA Director George Tenet, who lumped Russia together with Osama bin Laden and China as global threats.

Rumsfeld said it made no sense for Russia to export missile technologies but then protest U.S. attempts to defend itself against missiles. He stressed that the proposed missile defense shield would protect the nation only against small-scale attacks, not the massive sort that Russia could launch.

Russia and many of the United States' NATO allies believe the missile defense would render useless the ABM treaty, considered a keystone of nuclear nonproliferation.

---

Navy stops drills with civilians

2/16/2001
InfoBeat News
http://us.f23.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login?.rand=c4s9q624q0jcd

WASHINGTON (AP) - Navy submarine commanders have been ordered not to perform emergency surfacing drills with civilians aboard, pending the outcome of investigations into a submarine collision with a Japanese fishing vessel off Hawaii, Navy officials said Friday. As a precaution, submarine commanders also are not allowed to permit civilians at control stations, the officials said.

Two civilians aboard the USS Greeneville were at control positions when the accident happened, although the Navy has said there is no evidence they played any role in the tragedy.

At the Pentagon Friday, a Japanese foreign ministry official, Seishiro Eto, met with Deputy Defense Secretary Rudy de Leon to discuss last week's accident and prospects for recovering the ship and the nine missing. Eto, who did not comment to reporters upon arriving at the Pentagon, was scheduled to hold talks later at the State Department.

President Bush said Thursday the Pentagon should review its policy on civilian participation in military exercises.

----

Japan pressures U.S. on sub findings

UWAJIMA, Japan (AP) - Amid rising anger and distrust, Japanese officials sought an explanation of why civilians were at the controls of a U.S. Navy submarine when it smashed into a Japanese fishing vessel off Hawaii.

Ietaka Horita, principal of the high school that owned the boat, said Friday that he was "enraged" to hear that civilians were at the controls of the submarine and that he found out about it from media reports, not government investigators. Horita, who returned from Hawaii Thursday night, said it was painful to come back with nine people still missing from the collision.

The Japanese are urging the Americans to continue searching for those missing since the Feb. 9 accident: four 17-year-old students, two teachers and three crew members.

The USS Greeneville, practicing a quick surfacing maneuver, rocketed into the Ehime Maru, which was carrying Japanese high school students on a fisheries training mission, and sent it to the bottom of the sea. Of the 35 people aboard, 26 were rescued.

-----

Japanese premier facing crisis

TOKYO (AP) - Though he has survived repeated scandals and the closest no-confidence motion in a decade, a game of golf may prove to be the downfall of Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori. Mori, who has been one of Japan's least popular leaders since taking office less than one year ago, is facing what appears to be his worst crisis yet over his decision to continue a game of golf after hearing that a U.S. submarine and a Japanese fishing boat had collided off Hawaii. Anger over his failure to get off the green has prompted strong criticism from within his party's leadership.

And on Friday, party secretary-general Makoto Koga joined opposition criticism of Mori's decision to accept a free membership in the country club where he was playing, calling it "inappropriate." Even Mori's staunchest supporters appeared to be wavering. Seeing Mori as too much of a political liability ahead of elections this summer, the party's largest faction will seek Mori's resignation after this year's budget is passed by Parliament late next month, according to a report Friday in the Asahi, a major newspaper.

---

Bush orders review of guests on subs

February 16, 2001
Washington Times
By Rowan Scarborough
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-20012162286.htm

President Bush yesterday ordered the Pentagon to review its practice of inviting civilians on military exercises after disclosure that VIPs sat at control stations when the submarine USS Greeneville smashed into a Japanese training vessel.

"I think what's going to be necessary is for [Defense] Secretary [Donald H.] Rumsfeld and the Defense Department to review all policy regarding civilian activity during military exercises," Mr. Bush told reporters at the White House. "I look forward to the Defense Department review of the policies, their current policies, and particularly in light of the recent tragedy that took place in Hawaii."

A defense source said a preliminary investigative report on the week-old accident was submitted yesterday to Rear Adm. Albert Konetzni, the top Pacific submarine commander. He will forward the document to Adm. Thomas Fargo, Pacific Fleet commander, whose options include ordering the investigator to compile more information or shifting to a criminal probe.

The Greeneville skipper, Cmdr. Scott Waddle, was relieved of his command. Former submariners predict that his career is finished.

The Navy yesterday again declined media requests to release the names of the 16 business leaders and spouses who were aboard the Greeneville. But two came forward in television interviews and denied doing anything that could have caused the collision at sea.

Adm. Fargo was in Washington this week and briefed selected senators behind closed doors. He told them two civilians were at control stations during the attack submarine's "emergency blow" - a training exercise in which the Greeneville rushed from a 400foot depth to the surface, nine miles off the Hawaiian coast. The submarine rammed and split open the ship Ehime Maru. Nine crew members and passengers are missing and presumed dead.

Adm. Fargo said one civilian manned the helmsman's station, which controls the directional rudder. The other guest was positioned at the main ballast switch, which triggers the expulsion of water and intake of pressured air to send the submarine upward. He told the senators both civilians were closely supervised by control room crew members.

Former submarine commanders say that civilian visits have been common practice for decades. They say the real question in the accident is not the submarine's course as it rose to the surface, but why the crew failed to detect the approaching 174-foot Japanese fishing training vessel.

Several current and former naval officers said in interviews they believe the Navy should end the practice of letting civilians sit at control stations during "dynamic" exercises such as a 400-foot blow.

The Pentagon said both the Pacific and Atlantic fleets will conduct reviews.

"It's incumbent upon us to take a round turn," said Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, a Pentagon spokesman. "So yes, both the submarine force in the Pacific and the Atlantic are looking at the procedures and ensuring that - on the side of prudence, that . . . in the conduct of those embarks, they're going to take extra care to ensure that they're done completely safely."

Adm. Quigley added, however, that the VIP day trips will continue as a useful public relations tool in teaching the public about Navy operations.

Pentagon officials, including Mr. Rumsfeld, said this week there was no evidence the Greeneville's 16 guests were a distraction to the control room crew.

"There is no indication at this point in the investigation that the civilians had any impact on the outcome," said Rear Adm. Stephen Pietropaoli, the Navy's chief spokesman.

Adm. Pietropaoli acknowledged, however, that he should have informed the public at an earlier stage that civilians sat at some control stations at the moment of impact.

"We didn't do a good job of getting that out sooner," he said.

Two of the guests on the Greeneville did talk yesterday on NBC's "Today" show.

Both denied they presented any distractions to the crew. "I adamantly deny this is the case," said Todd Thoman. "It was nothing but professional and not one thing got done on that submarine that the commanding officer was not made aware of and in total control of."

John Hall said he was the one who turned the ballast switch. He said a crew member watched his every move.

Mr. Thoman said a seaman made two complete turns with the periscope before the submarine submerged to 400 feet to prepare for the blow.

"You don't do anything on this vessel without someone either showing you how to do it, telling you how to do it or escorting you around," he said.

------

President Backs Look At Military's Guest Policy

Friday, February 16, 2001
Washington Post
By Edward Walsh and William Booth
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10631-2001Feb15?language=printer

President Bush said yesterday that the Defense Department should review its policy of inviting civilians to participate in military exercises, a practice that resulted in the presence of 16 civilians aboard a nuclear-powered submarine when it collided with a Japanese trawler off Hawaii last Friday.

As Bush spoke, National Transportation Safety Board investigators in Hawaii said they plan to interview all of the civilians, two of whom offered yesterday the first eyewitness accounts of what happened aboard the USS Greeneville. Those accounts shed little light on why the submarine's crew failed to spot the 190-foot fishing boat Ehime Maru before performing an emergency surfacing maneuver.

In an interview on NBC-TV's "Today" show, the eyewitnesses, John Hall and Todd Thoman, said the crew carefully checked the surface for ships before the maneuver. They also insisted that the civilians were under tight supervision by Navy personnel throughout their time on the sub.

The two men, who were in Hawaii in connection with a golf tournament that had been planned to benefit the Battleship Missouri Memorial in Pearl Harbor, said they could not explain why the Greeneville's crew failed to detect the fishing boat, which sank almost immediately after the collision.

The Coast Guard rescued 26 people from the trawler, a training vessel for a Japanese vocational high school. Three crew members, two teachers and four students are still missing.

Speaking to reporters at the White House, Bush said "what's going to be necessary" is for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld "to review all policy regarding civilian activity during military exercises."

Bush added: "I want to reiterate what I said to the prime minister of Japan. I'm deeply sorry about the accident that took place, our nation is sorry that the accident happened, and we will do everything we can to help recover the bodies."

All the military services routinely invite civilians who are considered "opinion leaders" to witness or participate in military exercises, a practice they believe builds public support for the military.

In the television interview, Hall and Thoman described the moments that led up to the collision. They said the submarine's officers, including the skipper, Cmdr. Scott Waddle, thoroughly scanned the surface through a periscope before executing an "emergency main ballast blow," which brings the vessel rapidly to the surface.

Hall said he was one of the civilians sitting at two of the submarine's three main control stations during the maneuver. He said he pulled the levers that set off the ballast blow, but that at all times a crew member was "right next to me, elbow-to-elbow."

"I pulled them down, I counted to 10 seconds, out loud, and then put the levers back in place," Hall said. "The seaman that was standing next to me put his hands over my hands and made sure the levers were in and locked, and he said, 'Sit down.' Immediately, you sit down and the submarine began to rise, and it came very quickly."

In Hawaii, NTSB board member John Hammerschmidt said the interviews with members of the Greeneville's crew supported Hall's account of the incident. During the emergency ballast blow, a seaman's hands were "intertwined" with the civilian's at the controls, Hammerschmidt said.

Asked whether he thought the civilians had distracted the crew during the maneuver, Thoman said: "I adamantly deny . . . that is the actual case. This is a vessel that the minute we walked on board . . . this was a business, and it was nothing but professional, and not one thing got done on that submarine that the commanding officer was not made aware of and in total control of."

"We went nowhere on this vessel without an escort," he continued. "Everyone was always accompanied by a member of the crew. Nothing out of the ordinary took place."

Before practicing an emergency ascent, the crew is supposed to raise the submarine to periscope depth to look for ship traffic and to listen through sonar for the sound of propellers. If the area is determined to be clear, the submarine dives several hundred feet, levels itself and blows its ballast tanks -- an action that rapidly propels it to the surface.

Thoman said that, before the maneuver, a crew member "took the periscope up and made two complete rotations of 360 degrees." Waddle, the skipper, then took the periscope and "went around one, if not two, more times. And at that point, he said, 'Okay,' " Thoman said.

Thoman said he watched the television monitors that showed the view through the periscope and saw no vessels on the surface. He said the submarine then dove to about 400 feet.

According to Hall, the entire maneuver -- from the time the periscope was lowered until the moment the Greeneville burst through the surface -- took less than 10 minutes.

At a Pentagon briefing yesterday, Rear Adm. Stephen Pietropaoli, the Navy's chief spokesman, said the emergency surfacing maneuver generally takes less than 10 minutes and often only five or six minutes. "We try to keep that time as short as possible, clearly, so that the surface picture doesn't change while we're underwater," he said.

Hall and Thoman also described the aftermath of the collision. Hall said there was "a very loud noise and the entire submarine shuddered" and that Waddle exclaimed: "Jesus, what the hell was that!" He said Waddle, who has been relieved of his duty pending the investigations of the Navy and NTSB, looked through the periscope and said, "We have hit . . . ," naming the Japanese ship.

Hall said Waddle immediately asked the civilians to leave the control room and to go one deck below to the crew mess. Thoman said they were not there long because sailors quickly prepared the mess as an emergency treatment area for possible casualties, while the civilians were escorted to the missile room on a lower deck.

Describing Waddle's demeanor during the crisis, Hall said: "I remember the captain coming over and giving instructions to the crew that they needed to relax a little bit, that he felt that the adrenaline was pumping in everybody and they were trained for this, and they needed to slow down and do everything proper."

Attempts to reach Hall and Thoman yesterday were unsuccessful. The two men had worked in the Houston office of Fossil Bay Resources Ltd., a Canadian venture. The Houston office was recently closed, and Hall and Thoman no longer work for the company, according to officials at the firm's Dallas headquarters.

In a statement issued by Don Hess, executive vice president of the USS Missouri Memorial Association in Honolulu, Fossil Bay Resources paid a $7,700 fee to the association in connection with its sponsorship of a charity golf tournament to aid the association. He said the golf tournament planned for this year was canceled and that the fee was returned to Fossil Bay.

Hess identified two other civilians aboard the Greeneville as Michael and Susan Nolan. He said they had made a contribution to the association in connection with last year's charity golf tournament.

This morning, the couple left their home in the Koko Head neighborhood east of Honolulu after being contacted by reporters seeking comment on the accident. Michael Nolan is a marketer of golfing accessories. Telephone messages left at his home were not returned.

Booth reported from Honolulu.

-------- britain

UK Nuclear Firm Invests in Offshore Wind Power

01/02/16
Lycos News
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/feb2001/2001L-02-16-12.html

LONDON, United Kingdom, February 16, 2001 (ENS) - The United Kingdom's nuclear power generator, British Energy, is to begin developing large scale offshore wind power in a joint venture with Renewable Energy Systems, one of the largest wind energy companies in Europe.

Friends of the Earth hailed Thursday's announcement as "a victory for common sense."

Nine 300kw turbines were installed on Blyth Harbor wall in 1992. Last year, turbines were erected one kilometer off shore. (Photos courtesy Blyth Offshore Wind Limited)

The joint venture company, Offshore Wind Power Limited, is evenly split between the two energy providers. The company's first act was to apply for a development lease from the Crown Estate, which owns the sea bed around the UK.

The Crown Estate manages the hereditary possessions of the Sovereign, which includes more than 120,000 hectares of agricultural land, substantial blocks of urban property and almost half the foreshore, together with the seabed out to the 19 kilometer (12 mile) territorial limit.

Its origins date back to the reign of King Edward the Confessor, born 998 years ago. Profits made on the land it manages are paid to the UK's treasury for the benefit of taxpayers.

Thursday's announcement follows last December's opening of the Blyth Offshore Wind Project in northeastern England. The £4 million (US$5.8 million) project one kilometer off Blyth Harbor is not only the largest ever erected offshore but the first to be built in such a demanding position, subject to the full forces of the North Sea.

The project was developed by Blyth Offshore Wind Limited, a consortium of Powergen Renewables, Shell, Nuon and AMEC Border Wind. Work started in July, with Danish wind energy company Vestas, AMEC Marine, Seacore and Global Marine Systems as the main contractors.

One of two 66 meter diameter rotors is lifted into place in the Blyth Offshore Wind Project.

Offshore Wind Power Limited brings together two of the most established power generating and engineering companies in the UK.

Renewable Energy Systems (RES) is one of Europe's leading wind energy developers and part of the large British construction company, Sir Robert McAlpine Ltd. The company is the largest UK based wind energy developer with more than 1,100 megawatts of capacity in contracts at various stages of development in the United States, Europe, Asia and the Caribbean.

Plans this year include construction of the world's largest wind farm in Texas, with a capacity of 280 megawatts.

British Energy is the UK's largest power generator, supplying more than 20 percent of the country's power.

"We are pleased to be sharing our power generation and supply expertise with one of Europe's leading wind energy developers to form a robust team for the development of offshore wind power," said Peter Hollins, chief executive of British Energy.

"Adding generation from wind energy to our nuclear portfolio means the company will continue to make an enormous contribution to the UK achieving and maintaining its climate change commitments."

Chief executive of British Energy Peter Hollins. (Photo courtesy British Energy)

Managing director of RES, Dr Ian Mays said the joint venture is confident of its bid to the Crown Estate "given our combined expertise in wind power development, construction, power generation and supply."

"Offshore wind power has huge potential in the UK for generating clean and efficient electricity, thereby helping the UK meet its climate change commitments," said Mays.

The pre-qualification application to the Crown Estate marks the first stage in a development process which could last around four years.

Following pre-qualification, Offshore Wind Power Limited will apply for consents, carry out surveys and enter a round of grant applications to the Department of Trade and Industry. The UK government supports offshore wind development and has made £89 million (US$128.6 million) available for similar projects under its Renewables Obligation, a consultation document published in October.

The Department of Trade and Industry is considering long term investment of more than £6 billion (US$8.7 billion) worth of offshore wind farms. The department anticipates that the offshore wind industry will generate 1.8 percent of the total UK electricity supply by 2010.

The long term potential, however, is far greater. The UK is one of the windiest countries in Europe and has enough offshore wind to supply three times the country's current electricity requirements, according to government figures.

By developing renewable sources of energy, the UK hopes to limit its emissions of greenhouse gases. (Photo by Ian Britton, courtesy freefoto.com)

Friends of the Earth's climate solutions campaigner Mark Johnston said Thursday's announcement was "a tacit admission that nuclear power is uneconomic," adding that it "debunks the tired claim that new nuclear power stations are required to limit the emissions that threaten dangerous climate change."

"Renewable energy has enormous potential. It makes economic and environmental sense and is the best way to tackle the causes of global warming."

In the last century, consumption of non-renewable sources of energy has caused more environmental damage than any other human activity. Electricity generated from fossil fuels such as coal and crude oil has led to high concentrations of carbon dioxide and other harmful gases in the atmosphere. This has led to ozone depletion and global warming.

The UK government has sent itself a domestic goal of cutting carbon dioxide (C02) emissions by 19 percent by 2010 and is increasingly looking to renewable sources of energy to achieve this.

Renewable energy sources, such as the wind and sun, cause fewer emissions and are inexhaustible.

-------- canada

Canadian Reactor Rumors Stir Nuclear Debate

01/02/16
Lycos News
By Neville Judd
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/feb2001/2001L-02-16-11.html

OTTAWA, Canada, February 16, 2001 (ENS) - An environmental group claims the Canadian government is about to subsidize the country's leading vendor of nuclear power reactors by C$500 million (US$324.8 million).

The Sierra Club of Canada says the money is for Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) and the National Research Council (NRC) to build a new reactor known as the Canadian Neutron Facility at AECL's Chalk River Nuclear Laboratories in Ontario, 150 kilometers (93 miles) northwest of Ottawa.

Testing at AECL's Chalk River lab in Ontario. (Photos courtesy AECL)

A spokesman for AECL told ENS that the Sierra Club would probably have protested the distribution of electricity a century ago.

The government owned AECL builds and sells nuclear power reactors, including CANDU power reactors, MAPLE research reactors and the MACSTOR advanced spent fuel storage system. The company is involved in research and development and provides nuclear engineering products and services to customers worldwide.

A proposal to build the Canadian Neutron Facility has been before the federal government for two years. Canada's current research reactor, National Research Universal (NRU), was built in 1957 and is not expected to operate beyond 2005.

The NRU produces a majority of the world's supply of medical isotopes to diagnose and treat cancer, heart disease and other illnesses. And it is used for materials research, providing neutrons for university and private sector industrial research.

Neutrons can detect light elements as easily as dark elements, making them a useful research and development tool for scientists studying metals and biological and polymer materials.

If built, the CNF will continue the NRU's work on materials research and develop and test a new generation of CANDU reactors, as well as support existing CANDU reactors. CANDUs generate 14 percent of Canada's electricity.

AECL's Candu 9 reactor.

Active in Canada since 1969, the Sierra Club wants nuclear power phased out. It claims rumors circulating in Ottawa and the recent throne speech point to the imminent announcement of funding for the neutron facility.

The Governor General Adrienne Clarkson delivered the throne speech January 30 to open the first session of this year's parliament. Clarkson said the government would "continue to pursue excellence in Canadian research by strengthening the research capacity of Canadian universities and government laboratories and institutions."

Clarkson announced the government's intention to "at least double the current federal investment in research and development by 2010."

"Far from reducing government funding for nuclear power, $500 million for this new reactor would push subsidies into the stratosphere," said Sierra Club policy consultant Dave Martin.

"The government should invest in people not reactors. The $500 million for this reactor could fund 100 nurses for 70 years, buy 100 MRI [Magnetic Resonance Imaging] machines and operate them for three years, or treat two and a half million emergency patients."

Martin recalled a March 1996 budget announcement, in which the government decided to lower AECL's subsidies by eliminating its material research program. The Chretien government pledged to reduce AECL subsidies to $100 million (US$65 million) per year by 1999.

Governor General Adrienne Clarkson. (Photo courtesy Office of the Governor General)

According to Sierra Club, the AECL received a subsidy of $156 million (US$101 million) last year.

This is the first of several points, AECL spokesman Larry Shewchuk took issue with.

"For the 1999-2000 fiscal year, the funding was $105 million for research and development," said Shewchuk. "There was one time, additional funding to cover Y2K, which all government departments got. If you include Y2K, then total government funding was $137 million."

The proposed cost of the neutron facility is $466 million, said Shewchuk, not $500 million.

The Sierra Club wants potential users, not the government, to pay for the construction and operating costs of the new reactor, if it is built. The group identifies utilities and private corporations as the source of this funding.

"Utility companies have little if any requirement for neutron research," said Shewchuk. "Private corporations are billed for research time on NRU and they would be billed for their time on the CNF.

"After 43 years, it's probably incalculable to estimate how much money NRU has earned over its initial investment. I don't understand the Sierra Club's hangup over government funding of the CNF."

Prime Minister Jean Chretien. (Photo courtesy Office of the Prime Minister)

Shewchuk said that if the government does fund CNF it would be more akin to an investment than a subsidy. Martin called the CNF a "make work" project.

"I guess it's ironic that NRU's neutrons provided the basic science that years later evolved into computers and email, so the Sierra Club can write and email journalists statements arguing we shouldn't continue neutron research," said Shewchuk.

"The Sierra Club benefits from neutrons as much as anybody else. If we turned the clock back 100 years, the Sierra Club would probably be protesting the distribution of electricity.

"The Sierra Club suggests the money should instead be used to buy MRI machines. Without a source of neutrons, we wouldn't have the development of machines like MRI units. What new medical technologies might we miss out on if we follow the Sierra Club's reasoning?"

The Sierra Club said that the proposed CNF is not intended to produce medical isotopes. Two MAPLE reactors currently under construction in Chalk River will produce the medical isotopes now produced by NRU for a private company, MDS Nordion, and not the North American research community.

The group said the CNF is not needed because materials and reactor research can be conducted at other international facilities.

"It would be much more cost effective for Canadian companies to buy time on the global network of neutron sources," said a Sierra Club spokesperson.

"There are four high flux neutron reactor sources in operation or planned - two in the United States, one in France and one in Russia. In addition, there are 18 medium flux reactors - similar to the NRU and the proposed CNF - in operation or under construction around the world."

-------- depleted uranium

U.N.: No Plutonium Shell Health Risks

February 16, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-UN-Switzerland-Uranium.html
http://us.f23.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login?.rand=c4s9q624q0jcd

GENEVA (AP) -- Rounds of depleted uranium fired by NATO warplanes in Kosovo two years ago contained deadly plutonium, but at ``very low'' levels that pose no health risks, U.N. officials said Friday.

Laboratories in Switzerland and Sweden found ``traces'' of plutonium on four spent rounds of ammunition collected by a U.N. team in November, the U.N. Environment Program said.

``The amount of plutonium found in the depleted uranium penetrators is very low and does not have any significant impact on their overall radioactivity,'' the U.N. statement said.

The U.N. team is trying to determine whether any danger could be associated with the leftovers from the 1999 NATO bombing campaign against Serb forces.

``According to an assessment by the Swiss AC-Laboratory Spiez, these newest findings about the composition of the depleted uranium only lead to a minor change in the overall radiological situation and should therefore not cause any immediate alarm,'' said UNEP Executive Director Klaus Toepfer.

The U.N. study was continuing, he said.

Earlier Friday, the Swiss Defense Ministry released results from the Spiez laboratory showing the findings of about one part plutonium per billion parts of depleted uranium.

``The plutonium found so far thus poses no additional risk,'' the ministry said.

The U.N. statement said the Swedish and Swiss labs were working with three other European facilities to analyze 340 soil, water, and other samples taken during the November field mission.

Depleted-uranium ammunition has come under intense scrutiny because of fears it was associated with cases of leukemia in some NATO peacekeepers who served in the Balkans.

The presence of plutonium had been predicted by Swiss scientists after earlier testing found traces of enriched uranium in the samples.

Depleted uranium, a heavy, dense metal usually left over from making fuel for nuclear reactors, is used for some ammunition because it can penetrate tanks and other armored vehicles.

The discovery by the Spiez laboratory a month ago that limited amounts of enriched uranium were in the samples indicated the metal used in the ammunition had come from nuclear reprocessing plants and therefore might also contain the more hazardous plutonium, scientists said at the time.

NATO says its studies have shown no connection between depleted uranium munitions and cancer among soldiers who served in the Balkans.

Scientists say plutonium is about 200,000 times more radioactive than uranium and the radiotoxicity is about a million times higher.

The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology says that even less than a thousandth of a gram of plutonium in the lungs could cause serious health problems, such as bone and lung tumors.

The Spiez tests found a much smaller amount -- between 0.4 and 1.3 billionths of a gram of plutonium per gram of depleted uranium, said the ministry.

NATO has said the alliance had always accepted that there were trace amounts of plutonium in depleted uranium, but they caused almost no additional radioactivity.

-------- missile defense

Group advises Bush on nuke defense

2/16/2001
Infobeat News
http://us.f23.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login?.rand=c4s9q624q0jcd

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Nixon Center, a private policy group, advised the Bush administration Thursday to insist that Russia stop helping Iran develop missiles and nuclear weapons. A report designed to influence U.S. policy toward Moscow said the administration should use Russia's interest in potentially lucrative technology contracts with American companies to try to stop the cooperation with Tehran. "The United States has more leverage than it has used to induce Russia to halt its assistance," the report said. Also, Russia should be warned that by helping Iran it is hastening the day when Iran will be able to deploy long-range missiles, the report said. The Nixon Center backed the Bush administration's determination to proceed with a defense against missiles. "To the extent the U.S. has the technology, the money and the domestic political will, it should be prepared to deploy NMD (a national missile defense) regardless of Russia's views," the report said. However, since the administration has not decided on a system or a schedule, "there is no reason to create a diplomatic crisis," the report said. In exchange for Russia going along with the U.S. program, which is banned under the 1972 U.S.-Soviet Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the Nixon Center said Russia "may accept a payoff in deeper cuts in offensive systems."

The United States and Russia agreed in the 1992 START II treaty to reduce their arsenals of long-range nuclear warheads to 3,000 to 3,500. Russia is seeking deeper cuts, while the Bush administration has declined to make a commitment until the Pentagon conducts a policy review.

---

Russia attacks missile defense plan

2/16/2001
InfoBeat News
http://us.f23.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login?.rand=c4s9q624q0jcd

MOSCOW (AP) - The Russian military test-launched two ballistic missiles Friday, and a top general accused the Bush administration of "anti-Russia" rhetoric, warning that a proposed U.S. missile defense would stoke a new arms race. The missiles were launched from a land-based silo in northwest Russia and from a nuclear-powered submarine in the Barents Sea, and officials said they successfully hit their targets in a range on the Kamchatka Peninsula, some 4,200 miles to the east. Strategic missiles are generally capable of carrying nuclear warheads, as are some tactical missiles.

The military tests came as Moscow has stepped up its rhetoric against U.S plans for a national missile defense system - fueled by anger at U.S. claims that Russia is spreading nuclear missile technology to North Korea and Iran.

Russian opposition to the Bush administration's security policy has intensified following a television interview with U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on Wednesday in which he called Moscow "part of the problem" of nuclear proliferation.

---

Blair Offers Some Support on Shield

February 16, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Britain-Missile-Shield.html

LONDON (AP) -- Prime Minister Tony Blair is offering tentative support for President Bush's proposal to build a national missile defense system, a plan that some critics worry could spark a new arms race.

``This is definitely in the box marked 'handle with care' on all sides,'' Blair told Forbes magazine in an interview posted on its Web site Thursday. ``It is a very sensitive issue. ... My own judgment is that provided we handle it with care, there is a way through which meets America's objectives and other people's concerns.''

The interview is slated to appear in the March 5 issue of the magazine's international edition.

Blair plans to travel to Washington to meet with Bush at Camp David next week and the two are expected to discuss the new president's decision to deploy a limited ballistic missile defense shield.

Blair has been reluctant to take a position on the missile defense proposal, and leaders of the opposition Conservative party have accused him of vacillating. Conservative leader William Hague supports the plan.

Critics believe the missile shield would spell an end to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, and some European leaders agree with Russian warnings that it could touch off a new arms race. China also views plans for a U.S. missile shield as a threat to its security.

``I understand totally America's desire to make sure that its people are properly protected,'' Blair said. ``I also understand the concerns people have about the ABM treaty and the desire to preserve it.''

Members of Blair's cabinet have urged Washington to talk to Russian leaders before going ahead with plans for the missile system, which Bush administration officials have said would also be available to defend America's allies.

During a visit to Washington last week, British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook refused to endorse the program directly.

Bush has said the shield is necessary to protect the United States from attacks by countries such as North Korea, Iran or Iraq.

---

Old hands in town to sound out Bush

February 16, 2001
Washington Times
By David R. Sands
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-2001216224543.htm

China is using some familiar faces and some old connections as it tries to sound out the new Bush administration on its plans for U.S.-Chinese relations.

With a series of potential flash points on the horizon, three of Beijing's senior American hands are in town this week to meet with lawmakers, journalists and aides of President Bush.

The delegation, which included two former ambassadors to the United States and the former head of the Foreign Ministry's office that handles U.S. relations, even stopped in Houston to visit former President George Bush before coming to Washington.

The senior Mr. Bush, the current president's father, headed the U.S. liaison office in Beijing after President Nixon re-established diplomatic contacts with the Chinese government.

Chinese Embassy spokesman Zhang Yuanyuan called the trip a "private visit." Vice Premier Qian Qichen, Beijing's senior foreign policy official, is expected to visit Washington next month.

Although not an official trip, "given the high caliber of the visitors, this was a chance to meet with administration officials, renew old friendships and compare notes on policy matters," Mr. Zhang said.

The three met with Undersecretary of State Alan Larson at the State Department, as well as with private China specialists and representatives of overseas Chinese organizations.

The visitors include Zhu Chizhen, who was ambassador to the United States during the Bush administration and the early Clinton years. Also in town is his successor, Li Daoyu, who served until 1998.

The third member of the delegation is Zhang Wentu, who served as ambassador to Canada and then headed the Foreign Ministry's office that oversaw U.S. affairs.

All three are retired from their diplomatic posts, although Mr. Li is now a deputy in the National People's Congress.

Tom Frechette, spokesman for the elder Mr. Bush, said the Houston meeting was "simply a courtesy visit" by the Chinese diplomats.

"It was definitely not a policy meeting," said Mr. Frechette, who declined to comment on the discussions at the private session.

The embassy spokesmen said the three men are expected to brief government officials in Beijing upon their return on their meetings here.

The new administration could be in for a bumpy ride with China as it attempts to chart its foreign policy priorities in Asia. Mr. Bush on the campaign trail rejected the Clinton administration's formula of China as a potential "strategic partner" and said U.S. policy in the region should focus much more on Japan.

The administration is getting bipartisan pressure from Congress to aggressively back a resolution critical of China at next month's U.N. human rights gathering in Geneva.

Beijing has bitterly criticized past resolutions.

In April, the administration is expected to decide whether to approve new arms sales to Taiwan, which China insists is part of its territory. Taiwanese officials have been lobbying for the sale, and many of the people appointed to senior posts in the new Bush administration have a history of sympathy for Taiwan.

Zhou Mingwei, deputy minister of Taiwan Affairs for the State Council, China's super Cabinet, is expected to visit Washington next week, the highest official contact Beijing has had with the administration since Mr. Bush took office.

Most critically, Mr. Bush has made it clear he plans to go ahead with testing and deployment of a defense system against missile attacks from rogue states.

Beijing has complained that the system would undermine the ability of its small nuclear force to retaliate against a U.S. missile strike.

Mr. Bush earlier this week signaled that he wanted to begin talks with China on his missile defense idea.

Beijing yesterday said it would agree to such talks, but made it clear that it opposed any attempt to overturn the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, which banned such defense systems.

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Russia accuses U.S. of Cold War rhetoric on missile defense
Friday, February 16, 2001
Nation & World:
Seattle Times
Associated Press
By Deborah Seward
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis/web/vortex/display?slug=russia16&date=20010216

MOSCOW - Top Russian defense officials yesterday fiercely rejected U.S. charges that Russia is spreading missile technologies to Iran and North Korea, saying the allegations could deeply mar relations.

At least four senior Russian officials slammed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who made the allegations, and accused him of using Cold War rhetoric. They said he is beholden to U.S. defense contractors who would stand to benefit from the development of a national missile-defense system.

The comments followed an interview with Rumsfeld Wednesday on PBS' "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer" in which he called Moscow "part of the problem."

"They are selling and assisting countries like Iran, North Korea and India and other countries with these technologies, which are threatening other people, including the United States, Western Europe and countries in the Middle East," Rumsfeld said.

Gen. Leonid Ivashov, head of the Russian Defense Ministry's international-relations department, led the verbal crusade against Rumsfeld, telling the Interfax news agency, "Russia is irreproachably fulfilling its international obligations, including under the regime of nonproliferation of missile technologies."

Maj. Gen. Vladimir Belous, head of Russia's Center for International and Strategic Studies, said Rumsfeld's remarks were reminiscent of Cold War times.

"Judging by experience, ill-considered statements may only do damage to the relations between the great powers in the delicate sphere of nuclear nonproliferation," Belous told the ITAR-Tass news service.

Despite the tough talk, Russian officials expressed hope that Moscow and the new Bush administration would be able to calmly discuss the divisive issues of nuclear nonproliferation, the 1972 anti-ballistic-missile treaty and NATO expansion.

"I expect a calm dialogue between Russia and the United States, and both sides will take into account all aspects of this issue," said Sergei Ivanov, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin and head of Russia's Security Council.

Background, Related Info & Multimedia: A top Russian security official sternly warned that a planned US national missile defense system would trigger a new arms race.

http://play.rbn.com/?url=ap/waset/g2demand/test.rm&proto=dual

---

Missile defense threatens world security

February 16, 2001
Excite
The Daily Cardinal U. Wisconsin
By Sarah Turner
http://news.excite.com/news/uw/010216/university-206

(U-WIRE) MADISON, Wis. -- While millions of children go to sleep every night hungry, our government continues to waste the people's money on a national missile "defense" system, the cost of which monetarily and politically will significantly outweigh any potential benefits. Since 1984, when President Reagan unveiled his proposed "Star Wars" plan, the U.S. government has spent more than $60 billion to make the plan a reality, with little to show for it.

In 1972, the United States along with several other countries, including Russia, signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. This treaty, now seen as the cornerstone of global stability, effectively prohibited creating a nuclear weapons system in space. Since that time anti-nuclear activists have successfully pushed for a global reduction in nuclear weapons proliferation.

Unfortunately, the Clinton administration and now the Bush administration have resurrected the once-dead Star Wars program, renaming it the National Missile Defense Program in an attempt to boost public relations. The goal of such a system would be to use radar and satellites to detect enemy missiles as they are fired, and shoot them down with U.S. missiles or lasers in space. As U.S. State Department spokesperson James Rubin has said, it's like trying to hit a bullet with a bullet at 14,000 miles per hour.

Even if the U.S. military could come up with a system able to accomplish this overwhelming task, many variables in a real attack could make the National Missile Defense system worthless. The Union of Concerned Scientists has pointed out that a warhead can be divided into hundreds of small bomlets, each of which could contain biological or chemical weapons.

These bomlets would be released from the missile early in flight, creating numerous targets that would overwhelm a U.S. system, which in its entirety would only be able to down 20 missiles. "Any country with the wherewithal to build a long-range missile, and perhaps the nuclear warhead to go with it, would also be able to create countermeasures to defeat a missile defense system," argues physicist Lisbeth Gronlund.

The creation of a National Missile Defense system will spark another global arms race. Several countries, including France, Germany and Canada, are angered that the United States is pursuing a National Missile Defense system, because they feel that the fragile balance of power in the world will be disrupted. Russia and China in particular have made harsh statements regarding this U.S. policy.

Russian President Vladimir Putin warned, "If the U.S. proceeds to destroy the 1972 ABM Treaty ... we can and will withdraw not only from the START II Treaty, but from the whole system of treaty relations having to do with the limitation and control of strategic and conventional arms."

The Chinese government also fears that a U.S. anti-missile system would render its long-range missiles obsolete, and leave them vulnerable to attack. "(Star Wars) would not only threaten the nuclear disarmament process but would also shatter the basis for nuclear non-proliferation," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhang Qiyue said.

Aside from united condemnation from enemies and allies alike, the proposed U.S. National Missile Defense system will be worthless against more pressing threats to U.S. security. As Russian Defense Minister Marshall Sergeyev has said, "North Korea has no intention of forcing the United States to its knees." Any country launching a nuclear missile at the United States would be in effect committing mass suicide, and this is a very strong deterrent.

A more likely avenue of weapons delivery would be a bomb in a suitcase. Robert Walpole, a CIA analyst has stated, "U.S. territory is more likely to be attacked with weapons of mass destruction from non-missile delivery ... than by missiles, primarily because non-missile delivery means are less costly and more reliable and accurate."

Our government has access to some of the smartest scientists and policymakers in the world. The people who hold the reins of power know the dangerous drawbacks that come with pursuing a national missile defense program. Unfortunately, major defense industries like Boeing, Raytheon, TRM and Lockheed Martin have poured more than $2.6 million in soft money into Democrat and Republican campaigns since 1996. In addition, giant defense political action committees have given $3.7 million to federal candidates in the past three years.

In his final address to the nation, President Eisenhower issued a grave warning, "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwanted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." The best way to pursue security is to become an active and informed citizenry with methods and goals toward peace.

------

Decoding defense speak

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2001
Christian Science Monitor
By Daniel Schorr
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2001/02/16/fp11s1-csm.shtml

The battle of the acronyms, you might call it.

NMD - national missile defense. You're going to hear a lot in coming months about NMD along with ABM, the Antiballistic Missile Treaty. And you're going to be hearing that the Russians, the Chinese, and a whole lot of other people are worried about what NMD will do to ABM.

Why should they be worried about a shield, an umbrella, which, if it ever works, will be there just to protect us against some rogue North Korean or Iranian missile or two? To understand that, you have to understand another acronym, MAD, or mutually assured destruction, which is the premise for the ABM Treaty that Presidents Nixon and Brezhnev signed in 1972.

It goes like this: Defense becomes offense when your adversary can't be sure of his ability to retaliate against a nuclear first strike. Stability depends on both sides being vulnerable, however contradictory that may sound.

That's what Mikhail Gorbachev told President Reagan about his pet "star wars" program, SDI, or Strategic Defense Initiative, and that's what the Russians and others are telling the Bush administration about NMD.

However, NMD is a limited program that might stop a couple of North Korean, Iraqi, or Iranian missiles, but could never stop hundreds of Russian missiles. Yes, say the Russians. But once you're able to shoot down a couple of missiles, nothing will keep you from expanding the program to be able to shoot down a lot of them.

So, say the Russians, NMD will kill ABM, and then we're back in a dangerous all-out arms race. Never mind that the Soviets couldn't win an arms race back then, and Russia certainly couldn't today.

They say they have some tricks up their sleeves: decoys to fool our missiles and a shower of rockets that would overwhelm any defense.

They are talking about MIRV ICBMs. That is Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles with Multiple Independently targeted Reentry Vehicles, that is, multiwarhead missiles.

Maybe they can do that, maybe not. By the time we find out, we are all in terrible trouble.

The Russians now say they have persuaded North Korea to give up its missile program, and are working on Iran to do the same. And so, they say, once rogue states are no longer acting like rogues, we shouldn't need NMD unless it's aimed at somebody else.

That's the state of play on NMD vs. ABM. The Bush administration says it will forge ahead with NMD and pull out of ABM if necessary. The Russians are forging ahead with what we might call AMD - Anti-Missile Defense.

-------- russia

Russia Test - Launches Missiles

February 16, 2001
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Russia-Missile-Launches.html

MOSCOW (AP) -- Russian armed forces test-launched two ballistic missiles Friday, one from a land-based silo in northwestern Russia and the other from a nuclear-powered submarine in the Barents Sea.

The launches came amid an outpouring of anger among top military officials over U.S. allegations that Russia was spreading missile technology to dangerous regimes, and over the U.S. plan to pursue a limited national missile defense system. Russia says that plan could derail the strategic balance of power.

Ilshat Bamchurin, the head of the press service of the Strategic Missile Forces, said that a Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missile had been launched successfully from the Plesetsk cosmodrome to a target on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia's Far East. He said that the launch was part of a training exercise.

The Northern Fleet launched another ballistic missile from a submarine in the Barents Sea to the Kura test range on Kamchatka, said Fleet spokesman Igor Dygalo.

Dygalo called the successful test from underwater ``yet another confirmation of the effectiveness of the system of the military administration, and also the reliability of the naval strategic nuclear forces.''

The Topol is expected to be the main component of Russia's long-range missile forces. Most of Russia's other long-range missiles are either past their service lifetime or will have to be dismantled under the START-II arms reduction treaty, which both Russia and the United States have ratified but which has not yet gone into effect.

Unlike Russia's older missiles, the single-warhead Topol is a relatively small missile designed to be fired from trucks or other vehicles, making it difficult for potential enemies to locate and track.

Deployment of the U.S. missile defense system would go against the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which Russia calls a cornerstone of the current arms control regime.

But Washington says such the missile defense system is intended to protect the United States from possible missile attacks by rogue nations and wouldn't be capable of deflecting a massive nuclear attack of the kind Russia can launch.

Russia has warned that attempts to amend the treaty could trigger a new arms race, and the Russian military has said that fitting multiple warheads to the Topol-M missiles would be a part of Moscow's response if the United States walks out of the treaty.

In what was seen as a further attempt to show Russia's military might, Russian jets held air exercises near Norway and Japan on Wednesday -- prompting those two countries to scramble fighter jets. Japan protested that Russian planes entered its airspace, which the Russian military denied.

--------

Russia Launches Missile Tests

February 16, 2001
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Russia-Missiles.html

MOSCOW (AP) -- Firing from the sea, air and land, Russia on Friday launched an array of missile tests that underline the strength of its rocket forces amid increased tension with the United States over missile defense.

The tests came as a top Defense Ministry official accused President Bush's administration of engaging in ``anti-Russian'' rhetoric and basing its proposal for a national missile defense system on ``pure fantasy.''

The launches also came just days before a planned visit by the head of NATO, whose eastward expansion worries the Kremlin.

The Russian armed forces launched a Topol intercontinental ballistic missile from the Plesetsk base in northwestern Russia and a ballistic missile of unspecified type from a submarine in the Barents Sea off Russia's north coast. Both hit their targets in a test range on the Kamchatka Peninsula some 4,200 miles away in Russia's far eastern extremities, officials said.

Later Friday, news reports said air force bombers test-fired one strategic and two tactical missiles in southern Russia. Strategic missiles are generally capable of carrying nuclear warheads and tactical missiles often can bear them.

The Topol, which has been in service since the mid-1980s, and an advanced version called the Topol-M, are expected to be the backbone of Russia's missile forces in the coming years. Many of Russia's other missiles are either past their service dates or will have to be dismantled under the START II treaty, which both Russia and the United States have ratified but which has not gone into effect.

The Topol class missile currently carries just a single warhead, but Strategic Missile Force commander Gen. Vladimir Yakovlev has said they could be fitted with multiple warheads if the United States goes ahead with a proposal to create a national missile defense system.

The Topol, which weighs about 45 tons, is a relatively small missile that can be fired from mobile launch vehicles, making it difficult for foes to locate or track. Officials were clearly pleased that Friday's launch showed the formidable weapon still in working order.

The tests demonstrate that ``Russian strategic forces are capable of overcoming any anti-missile defense, be it a currently existing one or a potential one,'' the military's first deputy chief of staff Gen. Valery Manilov said Friday, according to the news agency Interfax.

Fitting the Topol with multiple warheads would increase its effectiveness against the proposed U.S. national missile defense system. The U.S. administration says such a system is necessary to protect the country against potential attacks by small countries believed to be developing nuclear missiles.

Russia vehemently opposes the plan, which would require amending the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that the Kremlin says is a keystone of world stability. The treaty bans national missile defense systems under the belief that a country would not launch a nuclear strike if it were unable to protect itself against retaliation.

On Friday, Col. Gen. Leonid Ivashov, head of the Defense Ministry's international cooperation department, denounced the U.S. proposal and said enacting it would touch off a new arms race.

He said talk of the necessity to develop a national missile defense system is ``pure fantasy.''

Ivashov also said Russia will present specific proposals for an alternative to the U.S. system when NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson visits Russia next week.

The visit is part of a NATO effort to promote better relations with Russia, which have been damaged by the alliance's bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 and by its eastward expansion.

Russia is especially distressed about the possibility of the former Soviet Baltic republics becoming NATO members, which would leave Russia's militarily vital enclave of Kaliningrad surrounded by the alliance and bring NATO within 100 miles of St. Petersburg.

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Russia denies U.S. charge that it helps Iran, N. Korea with missiles

Friday, February 16, 2001
Philadlphia Inquirer
ASSOCIATED PRESS
By Deborah Seward
http://inq.philly.com/content/inquirer/2001/02/16/national/RUSSIA16.htm

MOSCOW - Top Russian defense officials yesterday rejected U.S. accusations that Russia was spreading missile technologies to Iran and North Korea and warned that the allegations could deeply mar relations.

At least four senior Russian officials criticized Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld - who made the allegations - and accused him of using Cold War rhetoric. They said he was beholden to U.S. defense contractors that would stand to benefit from the development of a missile-defense system.

The comments followed an interview with Rumsfeld Wednesday on PBS's NewsHour With Jim Lehrer in which he called Moscow "part of the problem."

"They are selling and assisting countries like Iran, North Korea and India and other countries with these technologies, which are threatening other people, including the United States, Western Europe and countries in the Middle East," Rumsfeld said.

Despite yesterday's tough talk, Russian officials expressed hope that Moscow and the Bush administration would be able to calmly discuss the divisive issues of nuclear nonproliferation, the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, and NATO expansion.

Gen. Leonid Ivashov, head of the Defense Ministry's international relations department, led the verbal barrage against Rumsfeld, telling the Interfax news agency that "Russia is irreproachably fulfilling its international obligations, including under the regime of nonproliferation of missile technologies."

Tough talk coming from senior officials of the Bush administration has deeply irritated the Kremlin, particularly Senate testimony last week by CIA Director George Tenet, who lumped Russia together with Osama bin Laden and China as global threats.

Rumsfeld said it made no sense for Russia to export missile technologies but then protest attempts by the United States to defend itself against missiles. He stressed that the proposed missile-defense shield would protect the nation only against small-scale attacks, not the massive sort that Russia could launch.

Russia and many of the United States' NATO allies believe the proposed U.S. missile-defense system would render useless the ABM treaty, considered a keystone of nuclear nonproliferation.

However, the sharp talk by Russian defense officials may well just be the Kremlin's own rhetorical answer to what some senior officials in Moscow consider a U.S. propaganda campaign aimed at winning concessions from Russia before real talks begin on key nuclear issues.

There were signs that Kremlin pragmatists were prepared for serious dialogue.

"I expect a calm dialogue between Russia and the United States, and both sides will take into account all aspects of this issue," said Sergei Ivanov, a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin's and head of Russia's powerful Security Council.

------

Russia test-launches ballistic missiles
Test-fires send strong signal in debate over U.S. missile defense plan

01/02/16
Philadelphia Inquirer
ASSOCIATED PRESS
By Judith Ingram
http://inq.philly.com/content/inquirer/2001/02/16/national/16MISSILE.htm
http://www.msnbc.com/news/531356.asp?cp1=1

MOSCOW, Feb. 16 - Russia test-launched ballistic missiles from both land and sea on Friday, sending a strong signal across the Atlantic in its arms row with the new U.S. administration.

THE LAUNCHES came amid an outpouring of anger among top military officials over U.S. allegations that Russia was spreading missile technology to dangerous regimes, and over the U.S. plan to pursue a limited national missile defense system. Russia says that plan could derail the strategic balance of power.

Ilshat Bamchurin, the head of the press service of the Strategic Missile Forces, said that a Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missile had been launched successfully from the Plesetsk cosmodrome to a target on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia's Far East. He said that the launch was part of a training exercise.

The Northern Fleet launched another ballistic missile from a submarine in the Barents Sea to the Kura test range on Kamchatka, said Fleet spokesman Igor Dygalo.

Dygalo called the successful test from underwater "yet another confirmation of the effectiveness of the system of the military administration, and also the reliability of the naval strategic nuclear forces."

The Topol is expected to be the main component of Russia's long-range missile forces. Most of Russia's other long-range missiles are either past their service lifetime or will have to be dismantled under the START-II arms reduction treaty, which both Russia and the United States have ratified but which has not yet gone into effect.

Unlike Russia's older missiles, the single-warhead Topol is a relatively small missile designed to be fired from trucks or other vehicles, making it difficult for potential enemies to locate and track.

ABM TREATY VIOLATION

Deployment of the U.S. missile defense system would go against the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which Russia calls a cornerstone of the current arms control regime.

But Washington says such the missile defense system is intended to protect the United States from possible missile attacks by rogue nations and wouldn't be capable of deflecting a massive nuclear attack of the kind Russia can launch.

Russia has warned that attempts to amend the treaty could trigger a new arms race, and the Russian military has said that fitting multiple warheads to the Topol-M missiles would be a part of Moscow's response if the United States walks out of the treaty.

In what was seen as a further attempt to show Russia's military might, Russian jets held air exercises near Norway and Japan on Wednesday - prompting those two countries to scramble fighter jets. Japan protested that Russian planes entered its airspace, which the Russian military denied.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

-------

Russia Responds to U.S. Missile Shield with Massive Missile Tests

16 February 2001
space.com
By Yuri Karash
Moscow Contributing Correspondent http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/launches/missile_defense_010216.html

A day after Washington blasted Moscow for allegedly undermining international security, a high-ranking Russian military official said recent weapons tests prove that modern technology can pierce any antimissile defense shield. A Russian Tu-95MS ("Bear") long-range strategic bomber launched an air-based strategic missile on February 16, and another bomber -- a Tu-22 ("Backfire A") -- launched two tactical missiles during training exercises.

Russian Air Force Commander-in-Chief Army Gen. Anatoly Kornukov said the launches were a success.

"All the launched missiles hit targets at a training range located in the southern part of Russia," he told SPACE.com.

Meanwhile, a Russian nuclear submarine launched a nuclear missile out of the Barents Sea and, as a special test of operational readiness, the Russian Strategic Missile Forces (RVSN) successfully launched a silo-based Topol (NATO code SS-25) intercontinental ballistic missile at a target in the Kura range located in Kamchatka in the nation's far east.

RVSN spokesman Ilshat Baichurin said the Topol missile -- the oldest of its type still in the Russian arsenal -- performed flawlessly despite having outlived by 150 percent its operational period of service.

Taken together, the tests confirmed the continuing strength of Russia's missile force, said Col.-Gen. Valery Manilov, first deputy chief of staff.

"Russian strategic forces can break through any kind of antimissile defense system -- both the existing and the one which could be built in the future," Manilov told SPACE.com. "These tests have also proved the perfection of our [Russian missile] technology and the highest professional competence of our military."

In particular, Manilov noted that the missile performed with "a minimum possible deviation from targets."

Tolerance for "criticism" waning

The Russian press has interpreted recent remarks by U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, CIA Director George Tenet and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice accusing Russia of attempting to move missiles in the Kaliningrad region of western Russia as, collectively, "a broad-scale attack" against Moscow.

"Never since Reagan was president, in [the] pre-Perestroika period, could one hear such harsh high-level U.S. criticism of Russia," noted Nezavisimaya Gazeta (Independent Newspaper), one of the nation's major periodicals.

According to the journal, by accusing Russia of moving nuclear weapons closer to NATO countries and transferring missile technology to so-called "rogue nations," the United States is trying to justify its intention to amend the 1972 Antiballistic Missile (ABM) treaty, which prohibits the development of missile-killing weapons.

Alexei Arbatov, deputy chairman of the Duma (lower chamber of Russian parliament) Defense Committee, said he shares this opinion.

"If the United States believes that Russia violates any international treaties, they must encourage Russia to observe these treaties," Arbatov said, "...not...destroy [the ABM treaty], which is a cornerstone of world stability."

---

Russia denies it is exporting missile technologies

Friday, February 16, 2001
Bergen Record
Associated Press
By DEBORAH SEWARD
http://www.bergen.com/morenews/russia16200102168.htm

MOSCOW -- Top Russian defense officials Thursday fiercely rejected U.S. charges that Russia is spreading missile technologies to Iran and North Korea and warned that the allegation could deeply mar relations.

At least four senior Russian officials slammed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- who made the charges -- and accused him of using Cold War rhetoric. They alleged that he is beholden to U.S. defense contractors who would stand to benefit from the development of a new national defense system.

The comments followed an interview with Rumsfeld on Wednesday on PBS' "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer" in which he called Moscow "part of the problem."

"They are selling and assisting countries like Iran, North Korea, and India and other countries with these technologies, which are threatening other people, including the United States, Western Europe, and countries in the Middle East," Rumsfeld said.

Despite Thursday's tough talk, Russian officials expressed hope that Moscow and the new administration of President Bush would be able to calmly discuss the divisive issues of nuclear non-proliferation, the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, and NATO expansion.

Gen. Leonid Ivashov, head of the Defense Ministry's international relations department, led the verbal crusade against Rumsfeld, telling the Interfax news agency that "Russia is irreproachably fulfilling its international obligations, including under the regime of non-proliferation of missile technologies."

Tough talk coming from senior officials of the Bush administration has deeply irritated the Kremlin, particularly Senate testimony last week by CIA Director George Tenet, who lumped Russia together with Osama bin Laden and China as global threats.

Rumsfeld said it made no sense for Russia to export missile technologies but then protest U.S. attempts to defend itself against missiles. He stressed that the proposed missile defense shield would protect the nation only against small-scale attacks, not the massive sort that Russia could launch.

Russia and many of the United States' NATO allies believe that the missile defense would render useless the ABM treaty, considered a keystone of nuclear non-proliferation.

Maj. Gen. Vladimir Belous, head of Russia's Center for International and Strategic Studies, said Rumsfeld's remarks were reminiscent of Cold War times.

"Judging by experience, ill-considered statements may only do damage to the relations between the great powers in the delicate sphere of nuclear non-proliferation," Belous told ITAR-Tass.

However, the sharp talk by Russian defense officials may well just be the Kremlin's own rhetorical answer to what some senior officials in Moscow consider a U.S. propaganda campaign aimed at winning concessions from Russia before real talks start on key nuclear issues.

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

Lab Security Measures Shelved Pending Study

Friday, February 16, 2001
Washington Post
By Walter Pincus
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A12481-2001Feb15?language=printer

In his last days in office, former energy secretary Bill Richardson temporarily suspended a series of measures that had been taken over the past two years to tighten security at the nation's nuclear weapons laboratories.

Richardson discontinued some of the measures, which included giving polygraph or "lie detector" tests to more than 10,000 employees, pending a high-level review to determine whether they have done more harm than good.

He had instituted many of the security measures under pressure from Congress after allegations of Chinese espionage at the lab. But laboratory managers and scientists have complained in recent months that the crackdown was making it difficult for them to do their jobs and for the labs to recruit first-rate researchers.

"I'm not just concerned with security," Richardson said in a telephone interview. "I was concerned with the morale of the labs."

In addition to widespread polygraphing of Energy Department employees, the measures included tighter computer security, limited access to classified materials and controls over foreign visitors.

Richardson ordered that the new policies be suspended until administrators from Washington, regional Energy Department officials and lab managers can gather for a "review conference" to discuss security, according to a Jan. 18 memo from the former secretary to John A. Gordon, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration.

Under legislation passed by Congress last year, Gordon, a retired general who also serves as an undersecretary of energy, has primary responsibility for running the Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Sandia national laboratories.

No date has been set for the conference, which was proposed last month by a commission on science and security set up by Richardson. The commission chairman, former deputy secretary of defense John J. Hamre, said this week there is "dissonance within the system" because "security people are not talking to scientists" and implementation of the rules has varied from one lab to the other.

Richardson also ordered Gordon to set up a task force to examine physical security around nuclear materials stored at the labs. In recent exercises designed to test those barriers, U.S. troops playing the role of infiltrators quickly overcame guards who were supposed to protect nuclear materials.

Richardson's successor as energy secretary, Spencer Abraham, has not yet decided whether to reimpose the suspended security measures, according to an Energy Department spokesman.

Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee and of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that oversees funding of the labs, expressed dismay over the suspension, saying he did not understand why Richardson wanted a last-minute review of "policies that were mostly his."

Domenici also voiced strong opposition to cuts sought by the White House Office of Management and Budget in the Energy Department's $5 billion "stockpile stewardship" program, which funds efforts at the national labs to ensure the safety and reliability of U.S. nuclear weapons. Two of the labs, Los Alamos and Sandia, are in New Mexico.

Contending that the stockpile program "can't get by with less," Domenici predicted that OMB's reported request for a $180 million cut "won't stand." OMB's new director, Mitchell Daniels, "just did not have enough time to understand the problems in the program," he said.

---

The solution that glows in the dark

February 16, 2001
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/national/pruden.htm

LOS ANGELES. You can't say Californians have been scared straight. But the shocking news about the shortage of kilowatts in California has diverted attention from the usual sun, sand and self-absorption for which the state is famous.

Some Californians are even talking about nuclear-generated electric power again.

The Los Angeles Times, usually a reliable guide to the temperature of the body politic, ran a Page One story the other day that was downright respectful of the politically incorrect heresy that nuclear energy might be a benign and efficient way to produce electricity, after all.

Several captains of the electric-power industry in the United States met in New Orleans last week and declared themselves in the midst of a nuclear-power renaissance, and heard the happy news that there's a seller's market in secondhand nuclear power plants.

And if California, the harbinger of all things new, is suddenly respectful of the way a large part of the rest of the developed world generates electric power, the radical environmentalists might as well start digging up their basements, searching for a place to hide with their fears.

Since the beginning of the nuclear age, 131 commercial nuclear plants have been built, 28 of those have been shut down and the remaining 103 plants generate 20 percent of the nation's electric power. Not so long ago the prospects for more nuclear electric power were remote.

Jay Brister, an executive at Entergy, the New Orleans-based regional utility that provides most of the electricity for Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi (even if it can't properly spell its name), told the Los Angeles Times that as recently as three years ago nuclear power plants were such headaches that the act of shutting down a plant was "the ultimate nuclear Advil." So eager were utilities to get rid of the plants that they often sold them for pennies on the dollar. "Do whatever you have to," one utility executive told his officers, "just get rid of the beast."

The great horror story that threatened to kill nuclear power graveyard-dead, naturally, was Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. The only people who were hurt by the meltdown at Three Mile Island were the utility's stockholders, but a hysterical media persuaded millions of Americans that Pennsylvania was glowing in the dark and about to sink all the way to Shanghai.

Since the disaster that didn't happen at Three Mile Island in 1979, no American utility has built a nuclear power plant, even though the industry regards them as safe, efficient and a more economical way of generating electricity than either the coal-fired and water-powered plants that are the American norm.

The owners of old nuclear plants can, and do, thank California for sending the price of these secondhand plants soaring. Rising fuel prices and the global warming fright so carefully nurtured by the media has helped, too.

But this is all talk, and talk is all that anyone seems to be doing to solve the power shortage on the ground in California. The Democrats who control the state legislature are moving toward a state re-regulation of the power facilities in return for the billions that would enable the utility companies to escape bankruptcy. Another solution would authorize Gov. Gray Davis to negotiate a price for the 32,000 miles of electric wires in California. The silence that has greeted this is the sound of one hand clapping.

Says Rep. Chris Cox, a California Republican: "We witnessed in spades how that didn't work in the Soviet Union." Lawrence J. Makovich of Cambridge Energy Research Associates told the House Energy and Commerce Committee yesterday: "California's current response appears to be too little too late."

Californians are painfully aware of the derision in which California is now held in the rest of the country, the perception that the tree-huggers and friends of the snail darter are finally getting the reward they deserve and should have expected. In fact, many residents of Southern California, which has been affected least, and particularly of Los Angeles, which has not been affected at all, share the fun of heaping ridicule on their fellow citizens in the north.

But mostly there's incredulity that California -the largest, richest and most self-assured state -could get itself in a pickle of this size and flavor. Gray Davis insists that he has made "great progress" toward a solution in recent weeks, but that won't help anyone, least of all Gray Davis, when the lights go out again. Republicans here have put a second wave of radio commercials into play, blaming the governor. Maybe he didn't do it, but he's the man who gets to take the heat. Gas heat, of course. The plug's been pulled on the electric stuff.

Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Times.

-------- ohio

NRC freezes CP&L spent nuclear fuel storage plan

February 16, 2001
http://news.excite.com/news/r/010216/15/utilities-nuclear-fuel

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Federal regulators on Friday put on hold Carolina Power and Light Co.'s plan to store more spent fuel at its Shearon Harris nuclear power plant located near Raleigh, North Carolina. CP&L is one of two major electric utilities owned by Progress Energy Inc.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff approved in December the electric utility's request to put two additional spent fuel pools in service at the 900-megawatt power plant.

However, the commission said on Friday it wants agency staff to provide more information about their action and directed CP&L not to store fuel in the new pools.

The commission acted following a request from the Board of Commissioners of Orange County, N.C. for an immediate suspension and stay of the amended operating license approved by NRC staff.

The agency's five-person commission rejected the Orange County petition, arguing it was not permitted by NRC regulations, but said it would determine whether to exercise its discretion and review the staff's decision.

The commission has given its staff 14 days to provide additional information and views on the matter.

The Harris plant was originally designed for four reactors, but only one was completed. However, the plant has four spent fuel pools as initially planned.

The NRC issued a license for the Harris plant in 1987, authorizing CP&L to use two of the four pools to store spent fuel from the facility and the utility's other nuclear power reactors -- Brunswick Units 1 and 2 near Southport, North Carolina and the H.B. Robinson plant near Hartsville, South Carolina.

The utility asked the NRC in December 1998 for an amended operating license to place the two other spent fuel pools in service at Harris to provide storage for all four of its nuclear units.

-------- utah

Toxic Utah: Trash, troubles are piling up
Waste facilities, recycled dumps boost health toll

Friday, February 16, 2001
Deseret News
By Lucinda Dillon and Brady Snyder http://www.deseretnews.com/dn/sview/1,3329,250011378,00.html

Utah faces a heap of toxic garbage concerns both real and imagined - and in some regards, residents of the Beehive State are their own worst enemy.

With our big families and lackluster conservation efforts, Utahns generate trash. Lots of it. And that trash production contributes to a larger environmental problem. Throughout the state, well-publicized incidents show growing concern about the health toll of incinerators, landfills and the parks and properties built on top of dumps:

In Davis County, a group of residents is investigating what they consider to be a grave community danger - the plant where tons of their own garbage is burned. Some residents believe excessive dioxin emissions from the state's only household and commercial waste incinerator are giving them brain cancer. The Davis County Health Department, under urging from the public and activists, has initiated an investigation into residents' claims.

In an unprecedented declaration, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services last month upgraded dioxin, which is produced at the Layton incinerator, to a "known human carcinogen," intensifying fears of residents and activists who have long worried that the chemical is hazardous to communities.

In Utah County, residents have sued a developer who built a community of manufactured homes on the old Spanish Fork Landfill, which closed a decade ago. Syringes, medicine bottles, tires, asbestos and foul odors have emerged from the old dump site through the lawns and landscaping of Spanish Fork Ranch residents.

This month the Utah County Health Department issued a strong warning about long-lasting landfill dangers. "It should be recognized that any dwelling placed on top of an active biological system, such as a landfill, is fraught with hazards," according to a department statement, which says this should be done "only as a last resort."

In other areas, state officials are monitoring dumps where tests have given rise to concerns about groundwater contamination.

Who is to blame?

For years, Klint Woolsey enjoyed the peas and tomatoes, squash, radishes, corn and carrots he grew on his Layton property. Now he believes the produce might have been harmful instead of healthy.

Less than a mile away, two tall stacks from a Wasatch Energy Systems incinerator emit into the air byproducts from tons of trash burned every day - and some of those byproducts are toxic.

The 72-year-old Woolsey didn't connect the incinerator to his own life until a year ago, when he began stumbling while on vacation in Arizona with his wife. He was falling down, Woolsey said recently from his daughter's Layton home. Not acting himself. "Pretty soon, I didn't know anything."

A CAT scan showed a shadow on his brain. Two days later, doctors removed 90 percent of a brain tumor as big as an apple.

The cancer has caused Woolsey, his family and other residents to look to the incinerator and ask questions.

Four times in the past six years the plant has failed state-mandated tests of dioxin emissions. The incinerator currently has no way to regulate dioxin. The plant repeatedly appeals its failed tests, and it has asked the state to double the amount of dioxin it is allowed to release. The state Air Quality Board has not ruled on this request.

These repeated emission failures and residents' perception the plant is dragging its feet about addressing the problem have led to a grass-roots effort to link the incinerator to gliosarcoma, the type of brain cancer Woolsey has. The idea is that dioxin travels into the ground and air nearby - it gets absorbed into the soil, inhaled by residents and eaten by animals that graze in Davis County.

"We've had a garden and we've been eating out of it for 13 years, so I don't know . . . " Woolsey said.

Woolsey's daughter, Louise Love of Layton, has done her own research. "I have no proof right now. But how am I going to get any until I get someone out here to do a study?"

A hand-drawn map shows 30 cases of gliosarcoma Love has tracked down among friends, neighbors and residents within a three-mile radius of the incinerator.

Karen Keller, epidemiologist for the State Department of Health, said 30 gliosarcoma diagnoses would be extremely high for such an area, but her office hasn't been able to verify all 30 cases. Without verification - from individual doctors who are reluctant to divulge patients' histories or pin cancers and problems on a specific source - Keller's hands are tied.

Woolsey's physician, Dr. Deborah T. Blumenthal, director of the division of neuro-oncology and assistant professor of neurology at the Huntsman Cancer Institute, says this case does not illustrate a connection as strong as that between smoking and certain types of lung cancer.

She has seen Love's list of 30 people with brain tumors and knows Woolsey as well as two other residents who died of "GBM" or glioblastoma. She has not confirmed the other cases of gliosarcoma, a rare type of GBM.

She said she is concerned about the list and says it is appropriate to encourage a cancer cluster study. "From what I could find out about dioxin, I didn't see a link with brain cancers," Blumenthal said. She did see lab evidence that chronic dioxin exposure in rats causes lung lesions, ovarian tumors and liver tumors.

Davis County officials, meanwhile, have followed the notion that dioxin is less harmful than other, ever-present environmental hazards of disposing solid waste.

"Yeah, there's people in Layton with cancer," said Layton Mayor Jerry Stevenson, who also chairs Wasatch Energy's board. "Did the incinerator cause it? I don't think so."

Burning vs. burying

Burning trash has an upside. It reduces landfill waste, kills bacteria that might otherwise seep into groundwater and potentially reduces ozone-depleting gases emitted by decomposing trash.

And every year Utah must find someplace to stuff the 4 million tons of solid and hazardous waste - enough to fill the Delta Center 18 times - its residences and businesses generate. Most of that garbage is put in landfills, and about 4 percent is burned at the Layton incinerator. Landfill problems are obvious in Spanish Fork, where a master-planned residential community was built on a former dump. Residents living on the site now suffer headaches, nausea and hair loss, and the county health department has ordered all homes on the former landfill moved.

The physical symptoms in Spanish Fork are most often blamed on methane gas, which is constantly emitted from landfills. The ground above the old landfill has also tested positive for asbestos, which is linked to lung cancer.

"I don't dare take a drink of water or turn on the heater. I'm afraid our house is going to blow up," Spanish Fork resident Erin Dodge said last month. "We shouldn't have to live there."

To bury or not to bury. To burn or not to burn. Sentiment is varied on all sides of the garbage issue.

And many residents see Utah as the nation's favorite dumping ground. A new 2,400-acre landfill in east Carbon is touting successes. Buried there are dregs from New York Harbor, tons of contaminated soil from a northern California railyard, shredded car parts from General Motors plants.

"We're willing to take waste from anywhere," Kirk Treece, ECDC general manager, told lawmakers last fall during a tour of the site.

Within the garbage discussion, the Layton incinerator has been under nearly constant fire.

LeGrand Bitter, executive director of Wasatch Energy, is a perpetual cheerleader for the incineration industry, and he frequently notes how dangerous everyday landfills can be. "Some places have been able to just dig a hole in the ground," he said. Bitter is quick to offer statistics that indicate dioxin emissions aren't as evil as advertised. He maintains two families of four burning their waste in a backyard barrel would produce as much dioxin as his incinerator, which burns 400 tons of trash per day and has no dioxin control measures.

A presenter told him that at a conference, he says. "I have no reason to doubt that representation."

Trashing Utah

Certainly, Wasatch Energy reduces landfill space. "There is no 100 percent environmentally safe way of disposing of garbage - whatever you do," said Stevenson. "We have to reduce that garbage as much as we can."

But Utahns don't reduce.

Statewide, consumers contribute mountains to a trash disposal problem that is at best disconcerting and at worst a full-fledged health hazard. We barely recycle. We rarely conserve. We fill up our trash cans and watch their contents disappear into the backside of garbage trucks that carry their loads to places most people have never seen.

"The state doesn't have a mandated recycling goal," explained Ralph Bohn, solid waste section manager for the state Division of Solid Waste Management. So the state doesn't track recycling.

The best recycling data Bohn has comes from BioCycle Magazine, which conducts a yearly national recycling survey. The magazine reports that Utah recycles 15-20 percent of its waste. In comparison, Arizona recycles 26 percent of its trash, Oregon 30 percent, Maine and New York, 42 percent.

Along the Wasatch Front, West Jordan and Sandy are the only cities with mandatory recycling, which means residents pay for curbside recycling service even if they don't use it. Recycling proponents say more cities need to follow the two cities' lead.

"They say they're able to reduce their waste by half," said Brad Mertz, marketing manager for recycler BFI. "It reduces what they have to pay for trash."

Recycling does reduce trash costs, says Jim Jones, Waste Management's business development manager. But for many cities, falling trash prices can't make up the extra recycling fees.

Recycling markets are fickle and Waste Management sometimes has a hard time finding buyers for recyclables. Often, Utah has to ship recycled goods to places like California where there are more buyers, said Jones, which boosts Utah cost to recycle.

"You don't get into recycling to make money. Basically the reason people do it is because it's the right thing to do," Mertz said. "Everywhere we've implemented recycling the response has been incredible. People know it's the right thing to do and they want to do it."

But Utah clearly isn't there yet - throughout state, 18 landfills each accept 20 tons of trash every day. Landfilling is popular here because it's cheap, $22 a ton versus four times that for recycling.

Groundwater is tested beneath half of these big landfills, and the rest are exempt from this testing for various reasons. In Grand County for example, the landfill is built on a 5,000-foot layer of impermeable shale, so there is no groundwater within the dump's reach that can be contaminated.

"Our No. 1 concern with landfills and garbage is groundwater contamination," Bohn said. Methane gas emissions and rodent control are also major headaches for Bohn's department.

Four landfills - including a dump in Davis County operated by the same group that runs the incinerator there - have failed preliminary groundwater tests and are under close observation by state environmental officials.

In Washington County, Duchesne, the Trans-Jordan Landfill and Davis County, officials have discovered high levels of metals and organic elements, and inappropriate "water chemistry," Bohn said. All four sites are being assessed by the division.

In Spanish Fork, waterfowl living in Utah Lake marshland became sick in areas near its landfill turned master-planned community. Test results of water draining from the landfill into the wetlands show contamination. Arsenic. Lead. Chromium. Cadmium.

The state recognizes these concerns. Bohn says there are dozens of unlined landfills statewide that could allow poisonous leachate - groundwater contaminated by underground garbage - to seep into lakes, streams and drinking water.

"We do have landfills out there," Bohn said, "that are polluting and that have impacted the groundwater."

Dioxin and cancer

But landfills have not seen scrutiny like Wasatch Energy's incinerator.

Wasatch Energy has initiated some health-risk assessment tests and taken samples of from soil and a milk-producing goat nearby.

The tests, all funded by Wasatch Energy, are designed to ease public fears and prove the plant's dioxin emissions are not damaging the public health. The tests and health assessments, however, are written in scientific jargon and aren't well understood by the general public.

State Department of Air Quality director Rick Sprott has been central in Utah's dioxin debate. His department is criticized both by residents who say the state is too lax with Wasatch Energy and incinerator officials who say they are unfairly targeted. "There has been a lot of public concern," he said.

The brain cancer issue is two-fold: Is there a cancer cluster around the incinerator, and, if so, is dioxin to blame?

Evidence to support the first concern has streamed in from nearby residents. Love's list of 30 residents who say they have the same kind of brain cancer that Woolsey has is one example. But the Utah Department of Health and the Utah Cancer Registry, however, can't confirm such a claim.

According to the health department's bureau of epidemiology, a cancer cluster is, "three or more cases occurring within a certain location or geographical area and time period."

Despite the apparent frequency of gliosarcoma in Layton, state epidemiologist Keller says the health department has never been notified of the cluster. Her office is usually notified of such clusters by county health departments or individual residents.

Richard Harvey, former director of the Davis County Health Department and vice chairman of Wasatch Energy's board, said he never notified the state because he could never substantiate the existence of a cluster.

"We've examined these types of things in the past and our experience has been that there has not been the amount of problems that people make out," Harvey said.

However, Harvey's replacement, Lewis Garrett, who has no affiliation with Wasatch Energy and has been on the job only a month, has initiated an examination into brain cancer rates in Layton and Davis County. Garrett said he will begin looking at Utah Cancer Registry data and then expand his investigation.

Melanie St. Claire, another Layton resident, has also been in touch with residents in the area around the plant. "We just want someone to look into it," said St. Claire, who lives two miles from the plant.

"The plant has had all these failed tests. They clearly are dragging their feet," St. Claire said. "Something has to be done to see that this isn't the cause of this sickness."

E-MAIL: lucy@desnews.com ; bsnyder@desnews.com

-------- us nuc politics

Did Reagan Win the Cold War?

Friday, February 16, 2001; Page A25
By Michael Kinsley
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A12548-2001Feb15?language=printer

"I've become more and more deeply convinced that the human spirit must be capable of rising above dealing with other nations and human beings by threatening their existence," said President Reagan in his "Star Wars" address of 1983, in which he first proposed to build a defense against nuclear missiles. Its purpose, he said, would be introducing greater stability" in the relationship between the United States and theoviet Union. "We seek neither military superiority nor political advantage."

Reagan's hagiographers, currently frolicking in celebration of his 90th birthday, now say he was lying about all this. They don't put it that way, of course. But that is the necessary implication of their claim that Reagan's tough rhetoric, his costly defense buildup, and his Strategic Defense Initiative in particular were all part of a successful strategy to defeat communism and win the Cold War.

If Reagan was lying in order to hide an actual intention to destroy the Soviet Union, who was he trying to fool? Not the enemy, since the whole theory is that Reagan scared the Soviets into giving up. If he was lying, it must have been in order to deceive the American citizenry about the most important issue facing any democracy. Not nice.

But more likely he was telling the truth. In favor of this theory is the fact that in all his denunciations of communism and the Soviet Union, before and during his presidency, the emphasis was on the enemy's enormous and allegedly growing military strength, and the need to counter it for our own survival -- not the hope, let alone the intention, of toppling it.

The famous exception is his "Evil Empire" speech of 1982, in which he predicted that communism will end up "on the ash heap of history." Reagan's critics wrongly denounced that speech for stating the obvious about who were the good guys and who were the bad guys of the Cold War. But even on this occasion he described the collapse of communism as "a plan and a hope for the long term." He (correctly) gave most credit to communism's own economic and political failures. And the "concrete actions" he advocated to hasten the day (although "we must be cautious about forcing the pace of change") were entirely unmilitary -- basically the creation of what became the National Endowment for Democracy.

In the economic sphere (discussed in last week's column), the Reagan hagiographers give him credit for things he intended that never happened, such as smaller government. On the world stage, they credit him for things he never intended that did happen.

Well, so what? Even if Reagan didn't intend his military buildup to achieve victory, that was the happy result -- wasn't it? Maybe, maybe not. Certainly the half-century-long bipartisan policy of containment played a role. The effect of variations one way or another is debatable. The notion that Jimmy Carter left us weak and vulnerable is certainly exaggerated. Once you give up the idea that Reagan planned it all, the notion that his buildup (for which we're still paying) made the crucial difference becomes less than obvious.

Some former Soviet apparatchiks have testified that Reagan's policies were devastating. This is oddly persuasive to people who wouldn't have believed a word these guys said when they were following the party line of their previous masters. But it's amazing how credible you can become when you tell me what I want to hear.

Suppose events had played out closer to the way Reagan actually predicted. Suppose that, two decades later, communism's internal collapse was continuing on a long fuse, but meanwhile its military strength had continued to grow. And suppose we had responded with continued Reagan-style increases in defense spending. What would the Reagan hagiographers be saying then? Would they be saying, "Well, he did a lot of great things, but his defense policy doesn't seem to have worked"? No, they would be saying exactly what they're saying now: that history had proved him right.

Winning an argument you refuse to lose is a pyrrhic victory. If no outcome short of outright defeat or nuclear annihilation would be accepted as evidence that Reagan's policy was a failure, no particular outcome is evidence that it was a success.

One Reagan foreign policy initiative almost no one tries to defend is trading weapons for hostages in Iran-contra. It was morally contemptible, it violated one of the central principles that got Reagan elected, it trampled the very value of democracy it was ostensibly designed to promote. And it didn't even work.

But the question history must decide is: Was it better or worse than oral sex with an intern? It seems to me that subverting the Constitution on an important policy matter is worse than embarrassing everybody with your private squalor. It seems to others that overzealousness in freedom's cause is easier to forgive than raw self-satisfaction. Whoever is right about that, the mantra of the Lewinsky scandal was that the lying, not the original transgression, is what counts. If so, Reagan's sins are at least equal to Clinton's. He never testified under oath until he was out of office and his claims not to remember things had become sadly believable. But at the height of the scandal Reagan lied to us on television just as spectacularly as Clinton did, with that little shake of the head, rather than a Clintonian bite of the lower lip, as his signature gesture of phony sincerity.

Michael Kinsley, editor of Slate (www.slate.com), writes a weekly column for The Post.

---------

Former U.S. National Security Advisers Urge Clearer Foreign Policy

01/02/16
Radio Free Europe
By Robert McMahon
http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/2001/02/16022001113925.asp

New York, 16 February 2001 (RFE/RL) -- A panel of national security advisers who served four U.S. presidents has stressed the need for the United States to define a clear new direction for its foreign policy.

The panelists are all members of the Republican Party of President George W. Bush. They made it clear during a discussion last night (15 February) at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York that they believed former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, let foreign pol icy drift in key areas such as relations with Russia and nuclear disarmament.

The national security advisers on the panel -- Henry Kissinger, Richard Allen, Robert McFarlane, and Brent Scowcroft -- held office during a period that spanned the beginnings of U.S.-Soviet détente to the end of the Cold War.

All four said U.S. policy regarding Russia needs to be re-appraised. Kissinger, adviser to President Richard Nixon, said the previous administration placed too much emphasis on Russian internal reforms. But there seems to be no clear idea, he says, on how to deal with Russia now that Boris Yeltsin is no longer president.

"What should one do about a Russia that in many respects is beginning to adopt czarist-like policies, and czarist-like institutions. What is the long-term policy of the United States?"

According to some of the panelists, on issues such as nuclear weapons the United States and Russia continue to operate under a Cold War mentality. Scowcroft, adviser to presidents Gerald Ford and George Bush Sr., said it is time for the two nuclear superpowers to inject fresh ideas into disarmament talks on issues such as offensive weapons, defensive missiles and nuclear proliferation.

"We live and we will continue to live in a nuclear age, and what we need to figure out is what is the relationship of these three aspects of the nuclear problem and how we put them together to maximize stability in a world where nuclear weapons are going to continue to be with us."

Allen, who was President Ronald Reagan's first national security adviser, noted that the current president called for a re-thinking of U.S. nuclear weapon policy during his campaign last year.

The Bush administration made its first policy speech in a multilateral forum at an international arms control conference yesterday in Geneva. But the U.S. and Chinese representatives clashed over the U.S. plans to build a national missile defense, which China says poses a risk of a nuclear arms buildup in outer space.

The U.S. ambassador to the conference, Robert Grey, said Washington's priority was to begin negotiations aimed at ceasing the production of nuclear bomb-making materials such as plutonium and enriched uranium.

The debate at the Council on Foreign Relations yesterday also touched on Russia's emergence as an energy producer for Western Europe. McFarlane, a Reagan administration security adviser, said Europe's primary source of oil -- the North Sea fields -- were being depleted. He said Russian President Vladimir Putin in recent trips to European capitals has repea tedly sought to develop a major market in Europe for Russian oil. McFarlane says a potential European dependency on Russian oil was something the Bush administration needed to consider.

"Russia is the natural source of European energy, and that will happen. But with it will come the inevitable influence, and the vulnerabilities on the European side involved in reliance upon Russian energy."

Kissinger and Scowcroft also expressed concern that the Euro-Atlantic alliance, strong during the Cold War, was weakening because of Europe's own transformation. Europe is increasingly framing policy as a single entity, and Kissinger says it is important that the Bush administration adjust its strategy toward the alliance accordingly.

Scowcroft says the new administration also needs to acknowledge that most conflicts in the world are internal. He says the U.S. response to such conflicts in recent years has been inconsistent, sometimes motivated by humanitarian concerns, as in the case of the former Yugoslavia, but other times muddled.

"We cannot go on the way we have with, for example, massive intervention in Kosovo, a tut-tut to the Russians on Chechnya, and actually pressuring the government of Sierra Leone to take the most bestial thugs possible into the government."

The panelists also agreed with Bush administration plans to review U.S. sanctions policy. They were doubtful about the effectiveness of sanctions, but all supported continuing the UN sanctions against Iraq as long as it fails to allow weapons inspectors into the country. Kissinger said the U.S. government must not bow to pressure to lift the 10-year-old sanctions against Iraq or it would face a major setback in the region.

"If the United States acquiesces in the lifting of sanctions, I think that will be considered a major American defeat in the Middle East."

The four panelists, while now out of government, have varying degrees of influence in the new administration. Scowcroft mentioned he discussed foreign policy with George W. Bush in the weeks leading up to the presidential inauguration in January.


-------- MILITARY

Museum wants Colombia leader's towel

2/16/2001
Infobeat News
http://us.f23.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login?.rand=c4s9q624q0jcd

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - Colombian guerrilla leader Manuel Marulanda may not be ready to throw in the towel after four decades of war. But when he is, the National Museum will be waiting. The Bogota museum has asked the legendary rebel chief to donate one of the trademark towels he drapes over his shoulder for a new collection of contemporary artifacts. The museum has already obtained a host of other memorabilia to Colombia's tragic violence: the straw hat and suit of two slain presidential candidates; some charred sofas left over after the burning down of the Supreme Court building in Bogota during a 1985 guerrilla raid. The collection would not be complete, museum director Elvira Cuervo said, without "the belongings of a guerrilla who has held the country in check for 40 years."

Marulanda, whose trademark towel was displayed to the world during a widely-covered peace summit last week with President Andres Pastrana, has yet to answer the request. But he isn't short on towels. Reporters have seen at least a half dozen fresh towels hanging inside the sport utility vehicle Marulanda drives around rebel territory in the humid southern plains. The leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, wipes sweat of his brow and swats flies with the ever-present cloth. For many Colombians, the towel has come to symbolize the man.

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Colombia to Ask Bush For Additional Funds

Friday, February 16, 2001
Washington Post
By Scott Wilson
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A9443-2001Feb15?language=printer

BOGOTA, Colombia, Feb. 15 -- President Andres Pastrana said today that he planned to seek a fresh infusion of U.S. financial assistance during his first meeting with President Bush this month to spur economic development in regions where U.S.-trained troops are destroying drug crops.

Pastrana said in an interview that the newly revived peace process with Colombia's largest guerrilla group depended on an increase in such economic assistance, perhaps as much as $500 million a year from the United States alone. He said the money would be used to address high unemployment and other economic obstacles that prompt Colombians to join the drug trade or illegal armed groups for their livelihood.

Pastrana said his trip to Washington would be a way to introduce himself and his country to the new administration at an important moment for his anti-drug plan and the peace negotiations. The Bush administration has inherited a two-year, $1.6 billion aid package that is designed to reduce Colombia's role as the world's largest cocaine producer and deprive a decades-old leftist insurgency of its chief revenue source.

Pastrana's words seemed calculated to refocus Washington's attention on Colombia as a new administration faces a host of foreign policy questions. By stressing non-military elements, Pastrana underlined his hope for a new financial commitment to boost a development strategy he has often declared key to the drug war's long-term success.

In addition to highlighting successes in the drug war -- much of which has been the result of aerial fumigation, which has killed 65,000 acres of coca crop in the southern province of Putumayo, the country's principal coca-producing region -- Pastrana said he planned to make the case that the United States must do more to help ensure that the drug trade did not resurge.

Pastrana said more resources must be committed to social development programs that encouraged farmers to uproot lucrative drug crops for legal ones. That strategy, along with other civilian programs such as human rights and judicial reform, account for only 25 percent of the U.S. aid package that forms the centerpiece of a multibillion-dollar anti-drug and economic development program known as Plan Colombia. He said increasing resources for small farmers was a key topic during his meeting with rebel leader Manuel Marulanda last week that revived peace talks and for the first time paved the way for international participation in the process.

"We are a poor country," Pastrana said in his office at the graceful Colonial-era Casa de Narino, the presidential palace. "But we are spending $1 billion a year of our money to keep drugs off the streets of Washington and New York. We need more help. This is a long-term plan, maybe 15 to 20 years."

The United States is the largest market for Colombia's drugs. Former president Bill Clinton, whom Pastrana remembered today as a staunch ally, pushed through a package last year that included more than 50 transport helicopters, military trainers and funds for development programs.

Pastrana, who was elected in 1998 on a peace platform, has argued that depriving the illegal armed groups of drug profits will encourage them to seek peace. Last week, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) agreed to rejoin talks with the government after a three-month lapse. Pastrana said he believed the 18,000-member rebel army was beginning to suffer financially because of Plan Colombia.

An 8,000-member privately funded paramilitary army that battles the FARC on the same side as the army also is profiting from the drug trade. Human rights groups have accused the Colombian armed forces of assisting the paramilitary groups. But Pastrana pointed to the government's support for a commission established with the FARC last week to study the paramilitary question and a new investigative unit responsible for identifying the group's financial patrons.

"The paramilitaries are not a problem between the government and the FARC," Pastrana said. "They are a problem facing the whole country. But they are the result of the guerrillas. Once there is peace with the guerrillas, the paramilitaries will end."

Pastrana said he had been trying to obtain a copy of "Traffic," the Academy Award-nominated film about the global drug trade, to get a sense of the popular U.S. perception of the drug war. But much of his concern today, expressed with animation during a 45-minute interview, centered on the more mundane aspects of how he intended to end his country's deep-seated drug trade.

He warned bluntly that without greater investment in drug-producing regions, the drug trade would move more deeply into Colombia's jungle -- or return in a few years. He said he hoped to lobby for more investment in meetings with Commerce Secretary Donald Evans and Trade Representative Robert Zoellick and in his talks with Bush's national security team during a visit that begins Feb. 25.

Unemployment here is hovering near 20 percent, and Pastrana said he needed to create 350,000 new jobs to bring the rate down one percentage point. He said government and FARC officials would soon tour European and Latin America capitals to drum up foreign investment for rural areas that are the primary arenas of the drug trade and civil war.

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Colombian Peasants Block Road to Protest Enclave

February 16, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-colombi.html

BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - Thousands of peasants blocked one of Colombia's main highways on Friday in defiance of stern warnings by President Andres Pastrana, who wants to grant leftist rebels a demilitarized safe haven in the area.

Pastrana, seeking to end a four-decade-old war, is considering giving temporary control of a 1,560-square-mile area in the northern district of Bolivar to the country's second-largest leftist guerrilla force.5,000-strong, Cuban-inspired National Liberation Armywill begin formal peace talks to end the war which has claimed 35,000 civilian lives in the last 10 years.

The country's largest guerrilla movement, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), began peace talks two years ago when Pastrana granted them a much larger enclave, the size of Switzerland, in the south of the country.

Some 5,000 local people opposed to the ELN safe haven blocked the highway connecting the capital, Bogota, with the Atlantic coast late on Thursday.

They parked buses across the road, built barriers of tree trunks and sat down on the highway.

``We are not going to stop our protest until the government suspends its plans to hand our towns to the ELN,'' one peasant, who headed a group waving signs that read ``No to the demilitarized zone'', told RCN television.

Pastrana, who has made peace the main priority of his center-right administration, warned that he would not tolerate the roadblocks and accused right-wing paramilitary groups, the rebels' bitter enemies, of being behind the protests.

``We are not going to allow paramilitary groups, as we know they are behind these protests, to paralyze the entire country,'' Pastrana told reporters during a visit to the central coffee-growing city of Pereira.

DEATH SQUADS PLEDGE TO CONTINUE FIGHTING

In a letter to ELN commanders, the self-styled United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) pledged on Friday to continue fighting the rebels if Pastrana grants them the area.

``As long as you continue resorting to terrorism and mass kidnappings we regret to inform you that the AUC will continue fighting a guerrilla war against you and your acolytes,'' the AUC wrote in the letter, which was posted on their web site.

The outlawed AUC, which rights groups accuse of having links to the army and of carrying out massacres against suspected civilian leftist collaborators, said they would only ''reconsider'' if the ELN agreed to a cease-fire.

As troops and soldiers were dispatched to the area, government peace commissioner Camilo Gomez traveled on Friday to San Pablo and Cantagallo, two villages in the heart of the proposed ELN enclave, to talk with residents.

The ELN, which has launched recent devastating attacks against the country's oil industry, wants the safe haven as a precondition for ending its sabotage campaign and starting a peace dialogue.

However, the protesters, who deny any links with the paramilitaries, said they fear the ELN enclave would be used for recruiting fighters and keeping hostages for ransom -- something the FARC is alleged to have done in its territory.

The government has insisted that tighter regulations for the ELN enclave, including the presence of civil authorities and international monitors, would ensure the rules are obeyed.

European countries have pledged millions of dollars in social programs, including crop substitution plans to woo poor peasants away from drug crops, if the enclave is established.

Ending a tense three-month hiatus, Pastrana and the FARC's top commander, Manuel ``Sureshot'' Marulanda, resumed two-year old peace talks on Wednesday after the government coaxed the guerrillas back to the negotiating table with promises of a further crackdown on right-wing paramilitaries.

On Friday, government and FARC negotiators agreed to discuss next Thursday and Friday a possible cease-fire. If reached, it would be the second in the war's 37-year history.

Both sides, who met in the jungle town of Los Pozos in the FARC's enclave, also invited a group of European and Latin American countries to a meeting in the territory on March 8.

-------- cuba

Cuba Sanctions Assessed

February 16, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/16CUBA.html

WASHINGTON, Feb. 15 (AP) - Sanctions on Cuba have cost the United States less than $1 billion a year in exports and the impact on Cuba has been relatively minimal as well, according to the summary report of a new study by the International Trade Commission, sent today to Congress.

The "overall historical impact" on both economies has been minimal, it found. But rice exports of the United States have suffered in particular, and the ban on tourism has hurt American travel operators along with the Cuban economy.

-------- drug war

Afghanistan opium said wiped out

2/16/2001
Infobeat News
http://us.f23.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login?.rand=c4s9q624q0jcd

JALALABAD, Afghanistan (AP) - U.N. drug control officers said the Taliban religious militia has virtually wiped out opium production in Afghanistan - once the world's largest producer - since banning poppy cultivation in July. A 12-member team from the U.N. Drug Control Program spent two weeks searching most of the nation's largest opium-producing areas and found so few poppies that they do not expect any opium to come out of Afghanistan this year. "We are not just guessing. We have seen the proof in the fields," said Bernard Frahi, regional director for the U.N. program in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He laid out photographs of vast tracts of land cultivated with wheat alongside pictures of the same fields taken a year earlier - a sea of blood-red poppies.

A State Department official said Thursday all the information the United States has received so far indicates the poppy crop had decreased, but he did not believe it was eliminated. Last year, Afghanistan produced nearly 4,000 tons of opium, about 75% of the world's supply, U.N. officials said. Opium - the milky substance drained from the poppy plant - is converted into heroin and sold in Europe and North America. The 2000 output was a world record for opium production, the United Nations said - more than all other countries combined, including the "Golden Triangle," where the borders of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar meet. Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban's supreme leader, banned poppy growing before the November planting season and augmented it with a religious edict making it contrary to the tenets of Islam.

The Taliban, which has imposed a strict brand of Islam in the 95% of Afghanistan it controls, has set fire to heroin laboratories and jailed farmers until they agreed to destroy their poppy crops.

Last year, poppies grew on 12,600 acres of land in Nangarhar province. According to the U.N. survey, poppies were planted on only 17 acres there this season and all were destroyed by the Taliban.

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Bush may end Mexico drug evaluation

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush is open to ending the annual U.S. evaluation of Mexico's drug-fighting efforts, officials said Thursday, in a goodwill gesture on the eve of Bush's trip to visit newly installed Mexican President Vicente Fox. "Mexico has seen a new birth of freedom," Bush said at the State Department as he prepared for the first foreign trip of his presidency.

Fox and other Mexican leaders have railed against the congressionally mandated drug certification process, which can result in economic penalties.

Talks between the two leaders are expected to trace a wide range of issues, including immigration, trade, energy and drugs. But no major developments are planned for the scheduled 7 1/2-hour session at San Cristobal, the site of Fox's dusty ranch 210 miles northwest of Mexico City in the state of Guanajuato. Bush and Fox - both ranch owners who favor Western wear and enchiladas - plan to stress their personal ties, not their nations' differences. As they meet, there will be a series of picture-taking sessions showing them in cozy, casual settings.

"President Fox and I met as governors, and I look forward to deepening our friendship," said Bush, a former two-term Texas governor. "But I look forward even more to forging a deeper partnership between our two great nations."

One sticking point in U.S.-Mexico relations is the 14-year-old law requiring the U.S. president to certify annually which of nearly 30 countries are cooperating in the fight against drug trafficking. Those considered not to be doing enough can be "decertified" and face possible sanctions. The next deadline for State Department decisions on certification is March 1.

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Taleban is hailed as drug enforcer

February 16, 2001
Washington Times
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-2001216211448.htm

JALALABAD, Afghanistan -U.N. drug control officers said the Taleban religious militia has virtually wiped out opium production in Afghanistan - once the world's largest producer - since banning poppy cultivation in July.

A 12-member team from the U.N. Drug Control Program spent two weeks searching most of the nation's largest opium-producing areas and found so few poppies that they did not expect any opium to come out of Afghanistan this year.

"We are not just guessing. We have seen the proof in the fields," said Bernard Frahi, regional director for the U.N. program in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He laid out photographs of vast tracts of land cultivated with wheat alongside pictures of the same fields taken a year earlier - a sea of blood-red poppies.

A State Department official said yesterday all the information the United States received so far indicated the poppy crop had decreased, but he did not believe it was eliminated.

-------- iraq

U.S. planes attack Iraq radar sites

2/16/2001
InfoBeat News
http://us.f23.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login?.rand=c4s9q624q0jcd

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush ordered an airstrike Friday on Iraqi military sites south of Baghdad to destroy five military command sites that threatened American and British aircraft. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said the action was "a routine strike" to enforce the no-fly zone in Iraq and protect U.S. personnel. Bush authorized the strike Thursday morning. British and U.S. planes took part in the attack.

Marine Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold said the strike involved 24 aircraft that targeted Iraqi command sites that control radar that had increased their frequency and sophistication and threatened U.S. jets patrolling Iraqi air space.

The Pentagon said it took about 2 1/2 hours for the operation, the first ordered by Bush since taking office. All U.S. and British planes involved in the attack returned safely, the official said.

The strike was the first against targets outside the southern no-fly zone since December 1998, when U.S. and British planes staged a four-day air campaign against Iraq. The strike did not appear to mark a departure from U.S. policy toward Iraq.

The Clinton administration said any military target in Iraq that threatened allied planes enforcing "no-fly" zones over northern and southern Iraq were fair game.

However, the new Bush administration released millions of dollars to Iraqi opposition groups to work inside the country to destabilize President Saddam Hussein's hold on power.

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U.S., Britain Strike Targets Near Baghdad

Friday, February 16, 2001
Washington Post
By Charles Babington
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A16164-2001Feb16?language=printer

U.S. and British planes attacked Iraqi targets south of Baghdad today, hitting gun and radar systems that were threatening the allied aircraft that routinely patrol the "no-fly" zone over Iraq, Pentagon officials said.

Two dozen planes launched the attacks about 12:30 p.m. EST "because the Iraqi air defenses had been increasing both their frequency and the sophistication of their operations," Marine Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold told reporters at the Pentagon. The Iraqi actions, he said, "yielded an increased threat to our aircraft and our crews."

President Bush authorized the raids Thursday morning. He was told of the outcome during his first foreign trip as president, as he visited the ranch of Mexican President Vicente Fox.

Bush said told reporters there, "a routine mission was conducted to enforce the no-fly zone . . . It is a mission about which I was informed, and I authorized it."

The five targeted anti-aircraft systems were north of the 33rd Parallel, which marks the northern edge of the "no-fly" zone over southern Iraq, Newbold said. U.S. and British planes have enforced that zone – preventing Iraqi planes from entering - since the end of the 1991 Gulf War.

Today's strikes were the first against Iraqi targets outside the no-fly zone since December 1998, when U.S. and British planes launched attacks for four days. The planes did not have to leave the zone to fire their weapons, Newbold said, adding that all the planes returned safely. The attacks, he said, were delivered "efficiently and effectively." He said he knew of no civilian casualties.

Baghdad television reported that five Iraqis were killed in the strikes, which took place after darkness fell in the Arab nation, CNN reported. It showed pictures of civilians that it said were injured.

Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein has remained an intractable U.S. foe since the Persian Gulf War a decade ago, when allied military units forced him to relinquish his hold on Kuwait. He has refused to allow U.N. inspectors into Iraq to search for weapons of mass destruction.

Bush said today that if there's evidence that Iraq is assembling such weapons, "we will take appropriate action."

In recent days, beefed-up Iraqi anti-aircraft units have posed new threats to the planes and pilots patrolling the no-fly zone. Newbold described today's strikes as "essentially a self-defense measure."

Bush chaired a White House meeting on Iraq this month. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told his staff to rethink U.S. strategy on Iraq.

U.S. intelligence officers have grown concerned because Saddam has significantly increased his inventory of SA-6 missile batteries. One official told Washington Post columnist Jim Hoagland earlier this month that the Iraqis may have three dozen or more of the sophisticated missiles, which Pentagon officials say pose a serious threat to American and allied pilots patrolling the no-fly zones set up over Iraq after the 1990 war.

Also earlier this month, U.S. officials approved plans by Iraqi opposition groups to use U.S. funds for their activities. The United States had provided covert aid to opposition groups in the years after the end of the Persian Gulf War in 1991. But thoseefforts came to a tumultuous end when Hussein's military rolled into the U.S.-protected "safe area" of northern Iraq, rousting the opposition.

Staff writer Alan Sipress contributed to this report.

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Chronology of Strikes Against Iraq

February 16, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-US-Iraq-Chronology.html

A list of some of the most significant strikes by allied forces against Iraq since the Persian Gulf War. U.S. and British warplanes strike Iraqi defense sites almost daily in the no-fly zones.

Iraq does not recognize the no-fly zones and has been challenging allied aircraft since December 1998. The allies say their planes never target civilians, but Iraq says strikes have killed some 300 people and injured more than 800.

--Feb. 26, 1991: U.S.-led coalition forces Iraqi troops out of Kuwait. Baghdad accepts cease-fire two days later.

--April 1991: United States, France, Britain declare 19,000-square-mile area of northern Iraq ``safe haven'' for Kurds and impose no-fly zone north of 36th parallel.

--Aug. 27, 1992: United States, backed by Britain and France, declares ``no-fly'' zone over southern Iraq to protect Shiite Muslim rebels. United States and some allies begin air patrols.

--Jan. 7, 1993: After Baghdad refuses to remove missiles that United States says it has moved into southern Iraq, allied warplanes and warships attack missile sites and a nuclear facility near Baghdad.

--June 27, 1993: U.S. warships fire 24 cruise missiles at intelligence headquarters in Baghdad in retaliation for what the United States calls plot to assassinate President Bush.

--April 14, 1994: Allied planes enforcing no-fly zone shoot down two U.S. helicopters carrying a U.N. relief mission, mistaking them for Iraqi helicopters. Twenty-six people are killed, including 15 Americans.

--Sept. 3-4, 1996: U.S. ships and airplanes fire scores of cruise missiles at Iraqi anti-missile sites to punish the Iraqi military for venturing into the Kurdish ``safe haven'' in northern Iraq.

--Sept. 11, 1996: Iraqi forces fire a missile at two F-16s in the northern no-fly zone. United States responds by sending more bombers, stealth fighters and another aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf region. Iraq accuses Kuwait of an ``act of war'' for allowing U.S. jets into Kuwait.

--November, 1996: Two U.S. F-16 pilots fire missiles at Iraqi radar sites near the 32nd parallel in the southern no-fly zone.

--June 30, 1998: A U.S. F-16 fighter fires a missile at an Iraqi surface-to-air missile battery in southern Iraq after Iraqi radar locks on four British patrol planes.

--Dec. 16, 1998: Weapons inspectors withdrawn from Iraq. Hours later, four days of U.S.-British air and missile strikes begin, pounding Baghdad.

--Feb. 10, 1999: U.S. and British warplanes fire at two air defense sites in Iraq after three waves of Iraqi fighter jets violate southern ``no-fly'' zone.

--Feb. 24, 1999: Air Force and Navy aircraft attack two Iraqi surface-to-air missile sites near Al Iskandariyah, about 30 miles south of Baghdad, in response to anti-aircraft artillery fire and an Iraqi aircraft violation of southern no-fly zone.

--November 22, 1999: Navy fighters fire missiles at a ``surface-to-air missile site'' after Iraqi anti-aircraft artillery fire at a coalition aircraft. The site was located near the city of an-Najaf, about 85 miles south of Baghdad.

--April 4, 2000: Coalition aircraft target four Iraqi military sites with precision-guided munitions -- including a military radar site at Nasiriyah, 17 miles southeast of Baghdad. Iraq says two killed in U.S.-British air raid in the south.

--Feb. 16, 2001: U.S. and British warplanes bomb sites around Baghdad on Friday, hitting targets U.S. officials said posed threat to air patrols. Twenty-four attack planes involved, much more than in recent missions over northern and southern Iraq.

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U.S., Brit Planes Attack Iraq Sites

February 16, 2001
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-US-Iraq.html?pagewanted=all

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Executing President Bush's first military attack order, two dozen American and British warplanes bombed military sites around Baghdad on Friday, hitting targets that officials said were threatening allied patrols.

The strike was the first outside the ``no fly'' zone over southern Iraq in more than two years, although President Bush said it did not signal a change in his administration's policy.

``A routine mission was conducted to enforce the 'no fly' zone,'' Bush said at a news conference in Mexico with President Vicente Fox. ``It was a mission about which I was informed and I authorized. But I repeat, it's a routine mission.''

At the Pentagon, a U.S. general called the strike a ``self defense measure'' initiated by the commander of U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf. The number of U.S. and British attack planes involved -- 24 -- was much larger than in previous missions over northern and southern Iraq in recent years.

The Pentagon said the five targets were long-range surveillance radars and associated facilities that Iraq has used more frequently over the past six weeks to coordinate its defenses against U.S. and British patrols. The radars allow Iraq to make better use of its surface-to-air missiles.

The U.S. Central Command said that Iraq recently increased the frequency of its use of anti-aircraft artillery and surface-to-air missiles against the patrols, with more than 60 incidents since Jan. 1. It gave no figures for previous periods.

Asked whether the attack was a signal to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein that the Bush administration would take more frequent and more forceful military action, Bush said, ``Saddam Hussein has got to understand that we expect him to conform to the agreement that he signed'' after the 1991 Gulf War.

Iraq has not followed the requirements set down in cease-fire resolutions that were designed to ensure that it not develop long-range ballistic missiles or nuclear weapons. The Iraqi government does not recognize the ``no fly'' zones that American and British aircraft have been enforcing since shortly after the war, saying they violate its sovereignty.

Bush said Saddam and his nation must not try to acquire or build weapons of mass destruction. ``If we catch him doing so, we'll take appropriate action,'' the president said. Friday's attack, however, appeared largely unrelated to Iraq's bomb-building ambitions but rather a new chapter in the long-running battle over ``no fly'' zones.

The United States, with British and French support, established the southern zone as a means of preventing Iraqi government forces from attacking Shiite rebels. The northern zone was meant to protect minority Kurds, whose uprising after the Gulf War was crushed by the Iraqi army.

``We will enforce the 'no fly' zone, both south and north,'' Bush said. ``Our intention is to make sure the world is as peaceful as possible.''

In addition to land-based Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles and Navy F/A-18 Hornets from the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman in the Persian Gulf, there were many other command, control and other support planes involved in Friday's action, the Pentagon said. Officials declined to provide full details.

Bush repeatedly said Friday's attack was a routine mission. Some on Capitol Hill saw it differently, however.

``With his decision today to target Iraqi command and control sites, President Bush has signaled that he is not interested in simply maintaining an appearance of containment,'' said Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., chairman of the House International Relations Committee.

The Bush administration recently released millions of dollars to Iraqi opposition groups to work inside the country. Those opposition leaders were meeting Friday with State Department officials when the attack occurred.

Ahmad Chalabi, a leader of the anti-Saddam Iraqi National Council, said he welcomed the U.S. action but ``air strikes alone will not solve the problem.''

``Air strikes,'' he said, ``must be within a comprehensive plan to get rid of Saddam.''

In London, Defense Secretary Geoffrey Hoon said the attacks were a ``proportionate response'' to an increased threat to patrolling aircraft.

``Saddam Hussein should be clear that we will not tolerate continued attempts to endanger the lives of our air crew,'' Hoon said. ``But if he stops shooting at us there will be no need for the RAF to attack his air defenses.''

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Bush authorized the strike Thursday morning.

Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold described the strike as a ``carefully planned and orchestrated strike'' that had been recommended by Army Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of U.S. Central Command. Because four of the five targets were outside the ``no fly'' zone over southern Iraq, the plan had to be approved at higher levels, including the president, Newbold said.

Newbold, who is director of operations for the Joint Staff, told a Pentagon news conference that it appeared all targets were struck.

``It reached the point that it was obvious to our forces that they had to conduct the operation to safeguard those pilots and the aircraft. In fact (it was) essentially a self-defense measure,'' he said.

The Pentagon said the U.S. warplanes used precision-guided ``standoff'' weapons, but declined to offer further details. From Newbold's description of the operation, it appeared likely that the F-15Es fired AGM-130 missiles, which are equipped with a guidance system that enables the crew of the launching aircraft to watch the missiles' flight path on a television monitor and steer them to their target.

The strike was the first against targets outside the southern zone since December 1998, when U.S. and British planes staged a four-day air campaign against Iraq.

Iraq has said that some 300 people have been killed and more than 800 injured since it began challenging the patrols at that time.

Air-raid sirens wailed through Baghdad Friday night and explosions were heard as anti-aircraft weapons fired into the sky.

The Pentagon said the raid was launched at 11:20 a.m. EST; the missiles were launched at 12:30 p.m. EST, and the allied planes cleared Iraqi airspace at 1:40 p.m. EST.

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U.S. and British Forces Attack Air Defense Installations in Iraq

February 16, 2001
By DANIEL J. WAKIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/16/world/16CND-IRAQ.html

Two dozen American and British warplanes blasted Iraqi air defense targets around Baghdad today in response to what military officials said were heightened and more accurate attacks on the planes patrolling a "no flight" zone over the southern part of the country.

The jets struck at five radar and command and control sites, four of them above the 33rd parallel that marks the boundary of the no flight zone, and all in uninhabited areas, said Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold, the Pentagon's joint staff director of operations.

The targets were 5 to 20 miles from Baghdad, he said. General Newbold gave no information on casualties, but Iraqi news media said some civilians were injured.

"All indications we have are that the strikes were conducted efficiently and effectively," the general said. No further attacks were expected in the immediate future, he said.

Clashes in the area have been constant since a four-day bombing campaign at the end of 1998, but today's attack was particularly intense. Nevertheless, deflecting the suggestion that he was hardening the American line on Iraq, President Bush called the attack a "routine mission" which he authorized.

"We will continue to enforce the no fly zone until the world is told otherwise," Mr. Bush said at a news conference in Mexico, where he was holding talks with President Vicente Fox. "Our intention is to make sure that the world is as peaceful as possible," he said. But Mr. Bush said that the United States would continue to monitor whether Iraq was seeking to build weapons of mass destruction. "If we catch him doing so, we will take the appropriate action," he said.

The operation began about 11:20 a.m. Eastern time and ended at at 1:40 p.m. The planes never crossed north of the 33rd parallel, and they used long-range, precision-guided weapons, officials said.

Since previous allied strikes dented the Iraqis ability to track warplanes in the southern zone, Baghdad has been using radar bases north to coordinate missile and anti-aircraft artillery fire, General Newbold said.

"The Iraq air defenses had been increasing both their frequency and the sophistication of their operations," he said. That "had yielded an increased threat to our aircraft and our crews."

"It reached the point that it was obvious to our forces to conduct an operation to safeguard those pilots and the aircraft," he said, calling today's strikes "essentially a self-defense measure."

Pilots were seeing missile plumes and anti-aircraft artillery explosions outside their planes in what had become an almost daily threat, General Newbold said.

He said the operation was recommended by the pilots who patrol the southern Iraqi skies, and a Pentagon spokesman, Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, stressed that the mission originated with the Central Command in response to questions about whether President Bush had ordered it.

The Iraqi missile and artillery fire has increased since the beginning of the year, with more than 60 incidents since then, the United States Central Command said. Two smaller scale allied strikes were reported earlier this week.

Western news agencies reported from Baghdad that sirens wailed in the city and that explosions and anti-aircraft fire could be heard. One Iraqi television station interrupted its programming to play patriotic songs and show images of commandos training.

The allied jets and Iraqi forces in the south have clashed regularly since December 1998, when the United States and Britain began four nights of air strikes to punish Iraq for refusing to cooperate with United Nations weapons inspectors. Clashes have also occurred in the "no flight" zone over northern Iraq.

The zones were established after the Persian Gulf war. The United States and Britain, citing United Nations resolutions, said they were necessary to protect Iraq's Kurdish minority in the north and Shiite minority in the south.

Iraq does not recognize the "no flight" zones, and the Pentagon says Iraq has fired surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft artillery at allied warplanes more than 700 times since December 1998. Iraqi aircraft have entered the southern "no flight" zone more than 150 times since then, the Pentagon said.

Iraq says allied attacks have killed and wounded civilians, but Washington says the planes never target civilians.

-------- israel

Israel denies 'poison gas' use

2/16/2001
Infobeat News
http://us.f23.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login?.rand=c4s9q624q0jcd

JERUSALEM (AP) - The Palestinian Authority has asked foreign medical labs to investigate its claims - renewed Thursday by Yasser Arafat and strenuously denied by Israel - that Israeli troops are using "poison gas" on Palestinian civilians. The Israeli army denied the charges, saying that its soldiers use "standard tear gas" and smoke bombs against Palestinians.

Army spokesman Brig. Gen. Ron Kitrey accused the Palestinians of fabricating the symptoms. After viewing footage of Palestinians treated for gas inhalation, former Israeli army surgeon-general Eran Dolev said he saw no signs of perspiration, vomiting or skin burns, symptoms of exposure to nerve or mustard gas. "This resembles more than anything else just a state of anxiety. We're not talking here about poisonous gas," he said.

The charges - a renewal of accusations made by the Palestinians in the past - emerged this week after Israeli soldiers and Palestinian gunmen battled for two nights in the Gaza Strip town of Khan Yunis.

The Israeli army said troops fired smoke bombs to drive out gunmen. However, about 60 Palestinians treated at Nasser Hospital for gas inhalation showed symptoms such as spasms, fainting and severe burning in the eyes and throat, said Dr. Yasser Sheikh Ali.

-------- kosovo

Seven Serbs Die in Kosovo Blast

February 16, 2001
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Kosovo-Attack.html

PODUJEVO, Yugoslavia (AP) -- Kosovo militants blew up a bus carrying Serb families on a pilgrimage to the graves of their ancestors on Friday, killing seven people, injuring 43 and leaving behind a tangle of charred metal, scraps of clothing and scattered notebook pages covered with children's doodles.

The attack was the deadliest in more than a year and is likely to further undermine efforts by NATO and the United Nations to improve relations between Serbs and ethnic Albanians after last year's rise to power of a democratic government in Belgrade.

NATO detained two ethnic Albanians near the scene before the remote-controlled bomb was detonated -- just after two armored personnel carriers full of Swedish troops passed safely over it.

``All of a sudden, everything burst, the bus seemed to have fallen apart,'' Gorica Stjepanovic, 24, said from her hospital bed in Kursumlija, a Serbian town just outside Kosovo. ``Blood was dripping from the roof, we were trying to see whose blood.''

``Somebody's leg was hanging from the window,'' said Stjepanovic, her left eye bandaged and her clothes filthy from the blast. ``When I managed to get out, parts of bodies were everywhere.''

Sasa Stojanovic, 28, sustained cuts, bruises and injuries to her leg. ``I saw people flying through the glass, but they seemed to be more body parts than people,'' he said.

No details on the seven dead were immediately available.

The bus -- near the city of Podujevo, 25 miles northeast of Pristina -- was part of a five-vehicle convoy carrying about 250 people, accompanied by five Swedish armored personnel carriers and a medical detachment, peacekeepers said.

The bus company that chartered the vehicles to the Serbs said they were en route to Gracanica, just south of Pristina. The families were planning to visit graves of relatives on Saturday, the Orthodox Day of the Dead, and attend church services.

The 100 to 200 pounds of explosives were detonated by remote control from more than half a mile away, said Brig. Gen. Rob Fry, commander of British troops in the region.

``This is an act of ruthless, premeditated murder,'' he said.

Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica urged Serbs ``not to fall into the trap of Albanian terrorists and respond with force to their crimes.'' He called on NATO to prevent Kosovo from becoming a place ``where fear and intimidation rule.''

The U.N. Security Council condemned the attack, urged calm and called on ``all inhabitants of Kosovo to stand against the violence of extremists working against peace and stability.''

The European Union called the attack a ``barbarous act of violence'' and also called for calm.

There were signs the bombing -- apparently by ethnic Albanian radicals -- was part of a broader campaign against the Kosovo Serb minority.

The Beta news agency in Belgrade quoted unidentified NATO officials as saying that peacekeepers deactivated six remote-controlled bombs Friday near the southwestern Serb enclave of Strpce. The officials linked the bombs to the one that destroyed the bus, saying they apparently were meant to target Serb convoys.

NATO officials could not immediately confirm the report but said a car in the area was being searched for a possible bomb.

Angry Serbs gathered in Gracanica, where the bus had been headed, and in Caglavica, just south of Pristina. Beta reported that a Serb woman was killed after a car sped through a roadblock she and other Serbs set up, an ethnic Albanian-owned restaurant was set on fire and an ethnic Albanian bus was attacked.

Reporters in Caglavica saw a bus burning and the body of an ethnic Albanian woman on the road. Hundreds of Serbs hurled stones at ethnic Albanian cars speeding through the town.

Large-scale ethnic violence has generally ceased since mid-1999, when NATO peacekeepers took control of the Serbian province as part of a deal ending the NATO bombardment of Yugoslavia and putting a stop to a Serb crackdown in Kosovo.

But ethnic tensions have continued. Kosovo's Serb minority has increasingly been targeted by members of the ethnic Albanian majority seeking to get even for the Serb crackdown. Many of Kosovo's 200,000 Serbs have fled the province.

Friday's attack was the deadliest since July 1999, when 14 Serb farmers were machine-gunned to death while tilling their fields south of Pristina.

Also Friday, ethnic Albanian extremists operating in a buffer zone in southern Serbia just outside Kosovo kidnapped four Serbs, Serbian Information Minister Biserka Matic said. The Red Cross said they were later released unharmed.

Kosovo Serbs frequently travel north to Serbia proper to shop, normally under NATO protection. Kosovo remains formally part of Serbia, the main republic in Yugoslavia.

Ethnic Albanians are pushing for independence for Kosovo after 10 years of repression under the rule of ousted Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.

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Recent Kosovo Anti - Serb Attacks

February 16, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Kosovo-Attacks-Glance.html

Recent anti-Serb attacks:

-- May 29, 2000 -- An attacker opens fire on a group of Serbs gathered in a store in an eastern Kosovo village patrolled by U.S. soldiers, killing a 4-year-old boy and two men.

-- Feb 2, 2000 -- A U.N. bus carrying 49 Serb civilians is rocketed, killing two and leaving five injured.

-- Jan 7, 2000 -- An ethnic Albanian gang kills two Serb women on their way to a Christmas Day liturgy in the southwestern city of Prizren.

-- Dec 27, 1999 -- Assailants hurl grenades into a bar in southeastern Kosovo, injuring at least 10 people.

-- Dec 4, 1999 -- An explosion blows apart the home of a local Serb leader in the eastern part of the province, killing a woman and injuring two other family members, just hours after NATO reports that two other Serbs were killed about 30 miles southwest of Pristina while gathering firewood.

-- Sept 7, 1999 -- Two people are killed and four wounded after shells hit two all-Serb villages.

-- Aug 16, 1999 -- Attackers fire mortar rounds at a village in the U.S. sector, killing two Serb teen-agers and injuring five other Serbs.

--July 23, 1999 -- Fourteen Serb farmers are machine-gunned to death in a field south of Pristina

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

U.N. set to deploy in Congo this month

February 16, 2001
Washington Times
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-2001216211448.htm

LUSAKA, Zambia - Zambia announced that U.N. troops would begin deploying in war-torn Congo on Feb. 26.

It is the same date that U.N. observers and Congo agreed upon for the start of internal talks to end the war.

But analysts said total peace still required a nod from defiant Rwandan President Maj. Gen. Paul Kagame, who boycotted yesterday's summit.

Zambian President Frederick Chiluba, host for the talks that led to the1999 peace accords, announced the deployment of the long-delayed peacekeeping force.

"We welcome this move and we hope the United Nations will also move quickly on matters of disarmament in the Congo," Mr. Chiluba told a summit to revive the stalled peace process in Congo.

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

Sick Gulf War vets want Bush help

2/16/2001
Infobeat News
http://us.f23.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login?.rand=c4s9q624q0jcd

WASHINGTON (AP) - As veterans mark the 10th anniversary of the Gulf War cease-fire this month, thousands still are struggling with mysterious debilitating illnesses.

President Bush focused on the military this week, but Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison - a fellow Texan and Republican - and other veterans' advocates say they're still waiting to hear him say something about research and treatment of Gulf War illnesses. Hutchison is co-sponsoring with Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., a bill that would extend by 10 years the Dec. 31 deadline for Gulf War veterans to get compensation for undiagnosed illnesses that could be service-related. A companion bill in the House is sponsored by Rep. Donald Manzullo, R-Ill.

Although many millions of dollars have been spent on government studies into the illnesses, a presidential panel in December concluded that none of the research has validated any specific cause and that more study is needed.

Hutchison has criticized the government's efforts and she said she plans to meet with Bush to discuss where the government should focus its efforts. Durbin is less critical of government research, but said that as long as veterans are suffering sicknesses that seem to be associated with the war, the government should offer compensation.

The Pentagon says an estimated 90,000 troops who served in the Gulf War complain of maladies including memory loss, anxiety, nausea, balance problems and chronic muscle and joint pain.

---

Pregnant VMI cadet to stay in school

2/16/2001
InfoBeat News
http://us.f23.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login?.rand=c4s9q624q0jcd


LEXINGTON, Va. (AP) - Less than four years after being ordered to admit women or turn private, Virginia Military Institute says a cadet is pregnant. The school, all-male for its first 157 years, identified the woman only as a junior athlete from Virginia. The father was not identified. The cadet is to remain in school and has opted to live in the barracks rather than take a leave of absence or move to separate quarters, the school said Thursday. As a cadet, she is not allowed to marry because the school requires cadets to be single.

The college, forced to admit women by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1997, has consulted with the Justice Department about how the pregnancy is being handled, spokesman Mike Strickler said. VMI is under the supervision of the department as part of the lawsuit that brought the end of its all-male admissions policy.

VMI is handling the pregnancy under a medical disabilities policy that allows cadets to remain in the corps as long as their condition doesn't prohibit them from fulfilling their duties. Expelling the woman would have been illegal under federal laws.

---

China cruise missile

February 16, 2001
Washington Times
Inside the Ring Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough Notes from the Pentagon.
http://www.washtimes.com/national/inring-200121621294.htm

China's military conducted a test of a new cruise missile last month, according to U.S. intelligence officials.

The missile test was monitored by U.S. intelligence agencies. Officials said the missile does not have a Pentagon designation yet.

China currently operates several anti-ship cruise missiles, including its most advanced C-801, which was sold to Iran. The Chinese also have imported supersonic SSN-22 Sunburn anti-ship cruise missiles for deployment on its two Russian-made Sovremenny guided-missile destroyers.

Adm. Robert Natter, commander of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet, mentioned China's growing anti-ship cruise-missile threat during a meeting with reporters this week. He suggested that China may be developing an advanced version of the Sunburn.

In discussing future Navy force structure and capabilities now under review, the four-star admiral asked whether the Navy wants to be able to confidently counter such threats.

"The Sovremennys in China come to mind," he said. "They've got a pretty good surface-to-surface missile on that ship. Can we counter it? Yes. Can we counter a supersonic grandson of that missile? I'm a little more worried about that."

Military voters

The director of the Defense Department's Federal Voting Assistance Program is letting Congress know that, if there were problems in overseas military balloting in the 2000 election, don't blame her office.

In a three-page letter to Rep. Steve Buyer, Indiana Republican, Director Pauline K. Brunelli says her office unleashed "extraordinary efforts" to educate service members on how to vote legally and promptly.

"We are meeting with state and local election officials and convening meetings with military coalition and overseas citizens organizations for remedies to ballot transit time to include the use of technology," Ms. Brunelli says in the Jan. 30 letter.

The tumultuous, 36-day Florida recount, where late-counted overseas ballots provided the winning margin for President's Bush's 537-vote victory, showcased glitches in military absentee voting.

Democratic Party lawyers exposed those weaknesses by challenging hundreds of votes on grounds they lacked Florida's requirement for a postmark. The Pentagon acknowledged that some envelopes did not get stamped. In other cases, ballots mailed aboard ship were late arriving in the United States.

Ms. Brunelli's letter contends her office took steps beforehand to prevent such snafus. Among them:

• Taping a video of Gen. Henry H. Shelton, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, "explaining the importance of military participation in our election process."

• Conducting 62 workshops for voting-assistance officers. "These workshops provided guidance and training to the men and women responsible for assisting military and overseas citizens in understanding and complying with the individual state's requirements for requesting absentee ballots."

• Sending a package of proposed legislative changes to each state to "simplify this process and make the absentee voting process more consistent among the states." The department is asking states to do away with "unnecessary restrictions" such as notarized or witnessed ballots while urging them to allow Internet voting.

Ms. Brunelli wrote that, to date, 45 states have accepted her office's on-line design of the federal application for a state ballot.

"Providing this form on our Web site made it immediately available to military and overseas citizens who otherwise may have been inconvenienced in obtaining a copy of the card stock form," she says.

Predator 1, Iraq 0

How many Iraqi jet fighters does it take to shoot down an unmanned aerial vehicle? Answer: More than two.

Intelligence officials tell us two Iraqi jets recently scrambled in an unsuccessful attempt to intercept and shoot down a U.S. Predator unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) over the skies of Iraq.

The Predator is a propeller-driven pilotless aircraft that can send back video and photo reconnaissance pictures. During the recent encounter, we are told, the Iraqi jets wanted to blast the drone with an air-to-air missile but failed. "They were unable to acquire the UAV" with the onboard targeting gear, one official said.

Cash-strapped Army

The money crunch continues to hit the U.S. Army hard. We received this dispatch from Germany recently highlighting how shortages of funds were cutting sharply into training time and housing repairs.

"Over here in Germany, home of the US Army 1st Armored and 1st Infantry Divisions, we are really feeling the effects of the last administration," one officer wrote.

"My brigade of over 2,000 soldiers does not have any money right now to send our troops to essential military readiness schools; we are short parts and tank upgrades; I am 50 percent or below in some soldier quotas."

This message was sent from a corps commander last month:

"Just keep in mind that [U.S. Army, Europe commander] Gen. [Montgomery] Meigs has only one pot of money right now because we are so strapped, and that is the Base Support Fund. If you request an allocation to fix some operational program, you might get approved for that request, but just know that that money will come from the Base Support Fund: that means you are taking from your soldiers and their families."

At one base in Budingen, Germany, soldiers' housing was found to have mold growing on the walls and rampant cockroach infestation. Single soldiers are living in houses with no heat and with crumbling walls. "We cannot seem to keep up," said one officer.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff want Congress to approve $7 billion in emergency funding to tackle some of these problems. But so far, President Bush, who ran on a slogan of "help is on the way" to the armed forces, has refused to submit a formal request. But Pentagon officials say the president eventually will send over the paperwork once Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld pulls enough staff together to scrutinize each item.

Coed submarines

The Pentagon women's advisory committee has been pressing the Navy for years to reconfigure the under-construction Virginia-class attack submarine to accommodate women.

The Navy has repeatedly said no. But that's not to say it did not take a careful look at mixed-sex boats.

We're told that during the early design phase, the Navy created a special private berthing area where women could be housed, complete with their own "head" -Navy parlance for a bathroom. But once the room was drawn in, designers had to take space away from other areas. They found out the sub lacked sufficient room for storage, so the experiment was scrapped.

"There just wasn't enough storage space," one Navy source says.

If anyone has seen video footage of a Los Angeles-class attack sub going to sea, they know just how crowded things are. Food and other supplies are stacked in every available space. Crewmen sleep in the torpedo room. Sailors eat shoulder-to-shoulder in the mess.

The Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services (DACOWITS) in a report last year urged the Navy to redesign the Virginia.

"Current experience indicates it is unreasonable to presume that women will not be assigned to submarines sometime in the next 40 years," which is the estimated service life of Virginia-class submarines, the committee said. "Redesign now before this submarine class begins full production will avoid even more costly reconfiguration in the future."

But the Navy said in a memo that reconfiguring the sub, scheduled to enter service in 2004, "would have two negative effects: further degrade habitability for both genders and require removal of operational equipment reducing war-fighting effectiveness."

Intercepts

• A Pentagon insider's assessment of 68-year-old Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld: "He has a lot of energy. He's very smart and very crafty. He has a tight inner-circle."

• Rep. Curt Weldon, Pennsylvania Republican and a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, departs today for Russia along with a congressional delegation. The group is to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday and is scheduled to travel to Kaliningrad. A major topic of discussion will be menacing Russian strategic war games and the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons to Kaliningrad, a Baltic enclave, Mr. Weldon tells us. "It's very troubling to me," Mr. Weldon said of the exercises and nuclear arms.

• Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough are syndicated columnists. Gertz can be reached at 202/636-3274 or by e-mail at gertz@twtmail.com. Scarborough can be reached at 202/636-3208 or by e-mail at scarbo@twtmail.com.

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Redeploy the Dollars

February 16, 2001
By CINDY WILLIAMS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/16/opinion/16WILL.html

One of President Bush's campaign promises was a top-to-bottom review of American military strategy, missions, forces and weapons. His will not be the first sweeping review of the Pentagon's post-cold-war plans. Similar reviews in 1991, 1993 and 1997 all set out to restructure the military - and all failed. They did result in smaller forces and reductions in major weapons purchases. Yet the forces and weapons themselves changed surprisingly little. Across the services and within them, the structure of our military is virtually the same as during the cold war.

Mr. Bush's review could be different. Donald Rumsfeld, the new secretary of defense, has named Andrew W. Marshall to lead it. Mr. Marshall, who started his career at the Rand Corporation in 1949, was one of the fathers of American nuclear strategy.

One of the nation's first cold warriors, Mr. Marshall was also one of the last. As late as 1988, a commission he headed concluded that the Soviet Union would remain America's principal military competitor for at least another 20 years. But once the Soviet Union's demise was no longer in doubt, Mr. Marshall became a tenacious advocate of fundamental change, deeply critical of cold war forces and systems that he found no longer solved the nation's military problems - for example, Army units too large and too heavy to deploy quickly to hot spots. His strategic viewpoint, his independence and his commitment to change will make it possible for him to establish a blueprint for our armed forces that finally comes to terms with the end of the cold war.

Neither the first Bush administration nor the Clinton administration dared break with the tradition of slicing the defense budget into unchanging shares for each of the military departments. From the end of the Vietnam War until the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Army claimed 29 percent of spending, the Department of the Navy (including the Navy and the Marine Corps) 37 percent, and the Air Force 34 percent. Those shares remain essentially unchanged today; at most, 1 percent of the defense budget has migrated from one service to another since 1990. Indeed, much of what passed for military strategy in the reviews of the last decade looks more like a rationale, invented after the fact, for equal defense reductions across the services - reductions that failed to reshape the forces in any fundamental way.

Adhering to the same budget pattern year after year makes it easier to avoid open warfare within the Pentagon. But it ignores the enormous political and military shifts around the globe, and the technologies that should have sparked a change in the relative utility of ground, air, naval and amphibious forces. By clinging to the cold war budget agreement, two administrations have perpetuated a business- as-usual attitude that, to put it mildly, discourages innovation.

In a major defense policy speech before his election, President Bush called for matching the military's budget priorities to a strategic vision, not the other way around. He proposed allocating the military's weapons budgets to "the services that prove most effective in developing new programs." The president's proposal means making the services compete for defense dollars - letting one service win some ground and another lose it in the battle for the budget. This idea should extend to choices about military missions and force structure as well as weapons.

Competition to create incentives for military innovation is consistent with a fundamental tenet of the Bush administration: that competition is good for America. It's time for the administration to view our tax dollars as "strategic vouchers" that will go to the service that comes up with the most creative and cost-effective solutions to the problems our military will face in the future.

Mr. Marshall's strategic review can make the difference between a military that was shaped by the cold war and one that can handle the needs of the future. Of course, changing the way dollars flow across the services will not be easy. Pentagon insiders say the service chiefs hope to continue to divide the pie as in the past. To counter this budgetary nonaggression pact, President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld will have to build a coalition of their own with members of Congress who favor a modern military or have other priorities for projected surpluses. They may even have to fire a few people who disagree.

Mr. Bush must be willing to use up real political capital to push his ideas through. But the result will reward the effort. The nation deserves a fundamental break from military spending practices that for decades have allocated money across the services only for the sake of peace inside the Pentagon.

Cindy Williams, a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is editor of "Holding the Line: U.S. Defense Alternatives for the Early 21st Century."

----------

Pentagon Bars Civilians From Submarine Controls

February 16, 2001
By JAMES DAO with CHRISTOPHER DREW
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/16/national/16SUB.html?pagewanted=all

WASHINGTON, Feb. 15 - The Navy has tightened its rules on allowing civilians to participate in training exercises aboard submarines, at least until the investigation into the sinking of a Japanese fishing trawler off Hawaii is completed, Pentagon officials said today.

Also, President Bush said today that he would ask Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld to review all the services' policies on allowing civilians to participate in military exercises, considered one of the Pentagon's most effective public relations tools.

Civilian visitors were at the controls of two important stations aboard a nuclear attack submarine, the Greeneville, when it collided with a Japanese fishing vessel on Feb. 9 during a rapid surfacing maneuver off Honolulu. Nine of the people who were aboard the fishing boat are missing and presumed dead.

Navy officials maintain that there is no evidence that the presence of the civilians at the controls contributed to the collision. But as a precaution, the Navy has ordered all submarine commanders to keep civilian visitors from sitting at control panels and has told the commanders not to perform emergency surfacing maneuvers with civilians on board.

"They have been told to take some additional precautions until we know what happened," a senior Navy official said.

On the NBC's "Today" show this morning, one of the civilians who was on board the Greeneville, identified as John Hall, an oil and gas executive, described how he had been allowed to pull the levers that put air into the ballast tanks, causing the submarine to rise.

"I pulled them down, I counted for 10 seconds out loud and then put the levers back in place," Mr. Hall said. "The seaman that was standing next to me put his hands over my hands and made sure the levers were in and locked and he said, `Sit down.' Immediately you sit down and the submarine began to rise and it came very quickly."

Mr. Hall said that moments after the nose of the submarine broke through the surface, he heard a loud noise and felt the submarine shudder.

Asked what the captain, Lt. Cmdr. Scott Waddle, said at that moment, Mr. Hall replied, "I remember his words pretty vivid. He said, `Jesus, what the hell was that?' "

The visitors were then immediately escorted down one deck to the crew's mess.

Commander Waddle has been relieved of his post pending the results of investigations by the Navy and the National Transportation Safety Board. A preliminary report by Rear Adm. Charles Griffiths Jr., a submarine group commander, could be completed on Friday.

Several submarine veterans, including three retired admirals, said in interviews that it was hard to understand how the Greeneville's crew could have failed to detect the fishing trawler when it was so near, at least based on new information from the civilians and the Pentagon.

One possibility, they said, was that the Greeneville's officers had not raised the periscopes high enough to catch sight of the 190-foot trawler.

The admirals, all former submarine commanders, said that when a submarine first checks to see if it is safe to surface, it normally raises one of its periscopes as little as six inches to a foot above the waves.

Then, if a full rotation of the periscope does not reveal any ships nearby, a common precaution is to raise the submarine - and thus the periscope - even higher. The admirals said that in a drill in local waters, it would be common to raise the periscope at least four to six feet above the sea level.

And in seas with swells, they would have raised the boat enough to lift the periscope as much as 20 to 30 feet above the waves to enable them to survey much greater distances, all three of the admirals said.

Navy officials have said there were swells of several feet over the Greeneville. They have not disclosed how high the periscope was raised.

Submarine veterans also said that if the fishing trawler was moving at 11 knots, as its captain has said, it should have been making enough noise to register on the Greeneville's passive sonar systems.

But they said that there could be limitations in the ability to track vessels that are either directly in front or behind a submarine.

"Without knowing more about the acoustic conditions, it's very hard to know why they didn't detect them," said retired Vice Adm. Bernard M. Kauderer, a former commander of submarines in the Atlantic Fleet.

But, he said, "it sounds like they didn't get it at all."

"It seems like a combination of misses," Admiral Kauderer said. "Someone should have gotten it."

Adm. Stephen R. Pietropaoli, a Navy spokesman, said in a Pentagon briefing today that he did not know whether the Greeneville had been within a training area marked on public maps when the collision occurred. But he said the submarine's assigned operating area was "far broader" than the area marked on the maps.

Admiral Kauderer, however, said training maneuvers were typically conducted inside the designated areas, which are noted on maps specifically to warn private vessels of possible submarine activity.

Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said today that senior Navy officials told Congressional officials on Wednesday that Commander Waddle should have been able to see at least five nautical miles through his periscope.

Mr. Levin said that in the few minutes it took the submarine to dive 400 feet and then rise back up, the fishing trawler could probably have moved only about two miles. That would have put the vessel well within periscope range when Commander Waddle made his visual check, Mr. Levin said.

The Navy has refused to release the names of the 16 civilians who were on the Greeneville, citing privacy issues and the ongoing investigation. Fourteen of those people were part of a group who had contributed money to the U.S.S. Missouri Memorial Association. Their trip was arranged by a Navy admiral who was forced to retire in 1995 after he made an offensive remark about the rape of a 12-year-old Okinawan girl.

Mr. Hall and Todd Thoman, another civilian interviewed on "Today," used to work for Fossil Bay Resources Ltd., an independent oil and gas company in Texas. They could not be reached for further comment yesterday.

Don Hess, the executive vice president of the memorial association, said the company had paid $7,500 to sponsor a golf tournament meant to raise money for the battleship memorial. But Mr. Hess said that the tournament was postponed, and that the fee was returned to the company last December.

----------

Navy Stops Drills With Civilians

February 16, 2001
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Submarine-Collision.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Navy is barring civilians from submarines during emergency surfacing drills while investigators try to determine how the USS Greeneville slammed into a Japanese fishing vessel off Hawaii.

In addition, submarine commanders also are being ordered not to allow civilians at control stations, Navy officials said Friday. Two civilians aboard the Greeneville were at control positions when the accident occurred, although the Navy has said there is no evidence they played any role in the tragedy.

The Greeneville was practicing an emergency ascent on Feb. 9 in waters off the coast of Pearl Harbor when it rammed the Ehime Maru, a training vessel for commercial fishing. Twenty-six people were rescued and nine are missing -- four high school students, three crewmen and two teachers.

In Honolulu, the National Transportation Safety Board, investigating the accident because a civilian vessel was involved with probable loss of life, said it has had telephone interviews with four of the 16 civilians who were aboard the Greeneville. Safety board member John Hammerschmidt, briefing reporters, said it has not been determined whether the civilian sitting at the submarine's helm had any role in the accident.

``Exactly how involved that person was, we don't know that right now,'' Hammerschmidt said. ``That will come as our interview process continues.''

Toxicology reports requested by the Coast Guard showed that none of the Ehime Maru's surviving crew tested positive for drugs or alcohol, Hammerschmidt said. He said 25 members of the Greeneville's crew were tested for drugs and were clean.

Meanwhile, a support ship was preparing to launch a remotely operated deep diving vehicle to descend 1,800 feet to the ocean floor and locate and film the Japanese vessel.

The C-Commando, a 220-foot vessel carrying the Super Scorpio II, left port for the site nine miles off Diamond Head and was expected to launch the ROV early Friday afternoon, conditions permitting, said Lt. Cmdr. Flex Plexico, a spokesman for the Pacific Fleet.

A preliminary Navy fact-finding look into the accident has been completed, Pentagon officials said, but the officer who will decide how to proceed with an investigation -- Adm. Thomas Fargo, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet -- has not finished reviewing it.

Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. Craig Quigley said the Japanese government has insisted it be consulted before Fargo decides how to proceed with the investigation.

Fargo will have several options: He could ask for more information before taking action, he could convene a board of inquiry to take sworn statements or he could move directly toward a court-martial.

The National Transportation Safety Board is doing its own investigation. Over the next week, NTSB investigators will interview all 16 civilians who were aboard the submarine at the time of the collision.

The NTSB will not disclose the contents of those interviews until they all have been completed.

The Navy has scaled back its search for the missing. The Coast Guard, which is now directing the search, said it had gone ``beyond reasonable expectations'' but said the operation would continue indefinitely.

A senior Japanese Foreign Ministry official, Seishiro Eto, met separately with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and with Alan Larson, an undersecretary of state.

Pentagon spokesman Craig Quigley told reporters that Eto was given a rundown by a Coast Guard representative on their response to the accident.

He also was briefed on the continuing effort by the Coast Guard to find the missing, Quigley said.

Most of Eto's discussions were with Rudy de Leon, the deputy defense secretary, but Rumsfeld joined the meeting for about 10 minutes, the spokesman said.

State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said Larson reiterated ``our regret and our apology'' for the accident and promised to provide Japan with prompt information about it.

Eto had no comment for reporters as he left the State Department.

---

Below the radar

February 16, 2001
Washington Times
Christopher M. Lehman
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-column-2001216184345.htm

In the few weeks since Bill Clinton has left office, an astounding number of misdeeds by Mr. Clinton and his administration have come to light. The pardons and their related political contributions, the silverware and furniture, the office in Manhattan and now the revelations about the outrageous rents being paid in Little Rock for a warehouse have offended the sensibilities of most Americans.

With these scandalous events unfolding, it would be easy to overlook a minor event such as the letting of a contract to move a retired Navy ship. However, there is now emerging a scheme no less offensive than those listed above, but this scheme has been hatching below the radar - so to speak - and it has, so far, escaped the attention of the new Bush administration.

In a little noticed move in October 1999, the liberal democratic senator from California, Barbara Boxer, inserted a provision in the Fiscal Year 2000 Defense Appropriations bill providing funds to transfer the battleship USS Iowa from the Navy base at Middleton, Rhode Island to a Maritime Administration facility near San Francisco. This move was intended to make it all but inevitable that the USS Iowa would become a floating museum and tourist attraction for the City of San Francisco. The funding for the move was inserted into the Defense Appropriations bill in the midnight hour and was buried deep in the hundreds of pages of legislation.

Normally, this could be considered a minor and relatively harmless instance of congressional pork-barreling. However, the battleship USS Iowa and its sister ship the USS Wisconsin have been protected by law from being stricken from the Navy's fleet because an overwhelming majority in Congress believe that these two powerful ships need to be kept at the ready in case they are needed in a future war. Despite the U.S. Navy's mistaken desire to retire these ships permanently due to cost constraints, the Congress in 1995 included a provision in Public Law 104-106 that required the Navy to preserve the two powerful ships as mobilization assets. The stated reason was that they are the Navy's "only remaining potential source of around-the-clock accurate, high volume, heavy fire support."

Richard Danzig, Bill Clinton's secretary of the Navy until this past Jan. 20, sided with Mrs. Boxer (and against his own chief of naval operations) on this issue. In the closing days of the administration, he pushed through a contract for towing the Iowa all the way from Rhode Island through the Panama Canal to Suison Bay near San Francisco at a final cost that will almost certainly exceed the $3 million appropriated.

This action should be halted until the Bush administration has an opportunity to review the issue. Just like the Clinton administration's 11th-hour efforts to stuff the Federal Register with new and far-reaching regulations, the Navy secretary's attempt to move the Iowa to San Francisco was an attempt to make a last-minute political payoff at the taxpayer's expense. And, just as those last-minute federal regulations were stopped in their tracks by President Bush, so too should the order to move the Iowa be halted until the matter can be reviewed.

Mr. Bush has ordered a full review of America's defense posture, and the issue of whether to return the battleships to the fleet should be a part of that review. Until the review is complete, the battleship Iowa should stay in Rhode Island where it can be properly maintained as directed by Congress. The new chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and many other senior members of Congress think that it makes sense to bring the battleships back to the fleet to close the dangerous shortfall in naval gunfire support capabilities that now exists. The commandant of the Marine Corps is also deeply concerned about this shortfall and has testified that "we Marines have been at considerable risk in naval surface fire support since the last battleships were retired."

The battleships Iowa and Wisconsin were retired in 1992 for cost saving reasons even though they were fully modernized in the mid-1980s by President Reagan. They were the first ships to fire Tomahawk missiles in Operation Desert Storm and they are, in fact, modern, survivable arsenal ships, much like the ships that Mr. Bush spoke of during the campaign. The Navy should be ordered to halt the move of the Iowa until the Bush administration can conduct a full defense review.

Christopher M. Lehman served as a special assistant for national security affairs to President Reagan from 1983-1985.

-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

Senators revive 'brownfields' bill

2/16/2001
Infobeat News
http://us.f23.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login?.rand=c4s9q624q0jcd

WASHINGTON (AP) - A bipartisan group of senators is trying to revive legislation for cleaning up abandoned industrial sites that was blocked in the last Congress in a deal between Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and Sen. Michael Crapo of Idaho. The lawmakers want to assure that developers willing to build on the moderately contaminated "brownfields" would have modest cleanup costs and be insulated from future lawsuits under the Superfund toxic waste law. "It provides finality for state cleanups that does not exist today while allowing the federal government the specific opportunity to come back if the situation requires it," Sen. Bob Smith, R-N.H., chairman of the Senate Environment Committee, said Thursday. Smith and three other committee members - Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Lincoln Chafee, R-R.I. - presented a new version of the legislation. Reid said they hoped it would be the first bill to get committee action this year.

The bill would limit the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to reopen a cleanup. Only when a release or threatened release of contaminants poses an imminent and substantial danger to the public or environment could the agency intervene. As long as states create a public record of brownfields and take adequate actions on them, listing of any sites as Superfund priorities and thus opening up the potential for liability claims would be deferred. There are tens of thousands of brownfields around the country.

The bill envisions federal spending of $200 million annually for five years, including $50 million per year for grants to states and Indian tribes.

Ammonia spill kills fish in Romania

BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) - Thousands of dead fish were found floating Thursday in a river in southern Romania after ammonia leaked from a nearby chemical company. It was the second major spill in the past month in Romania, and the third since last year. The spill occurred in the Jiu River near Craiova, a city of 300,000 located about 155 miles west of Bucharest. The leak originated at Doljchim, a state chemical company, which was starting up its ammonium plant after repair work. Ten times the accepted levels of ammonia were discovered in the river. Later, ammonia levels returned to normal, officials said.

Locals in nearby villages plucked out the dead fish which floated to the surface of the river. Some tried to sell the fish, private television Antena 1 reported.

Cornel Mondea, the head of county government in Dolj, the county where the spill occurred, said 175 pounds of fish were confiscated from city food markets. Managers of the Doljchim company were fired, Mondea said. Authorities closed the plant that caused the spill and a criminal investigation is underway.

Last month, cyanide spilled into the Siret River in northeast Romania, killing tons of fish and causing at least 60 people to get sick from eating contaminated fish. A cyanide spill last year near Baia Mare in northwestern Romania discharged 130,000 cubic yards of cyanide-tainted water from a gold mine reservoir into river systems in Romania, Hungary and Yugoslavia. The incident has been described as Europe's worst river pollution disaster in a decade.

Pandas still face extinction

GLAND, Switzerland (AP) - The giant panda - a symbol for endangered species across the planet - is still facing extinction because its mountain forest home is disappearing, the World Wildlife Fund said Thursday. In a report to mark the WWF's 40th anniversary, the organization said loss of suitable habitat in China's Sichuan province was the major threat to the survival of the panda, which has a wild population of about 1,000. "The only hope for the future of the giant panda is to balance the needs of humans and the needs of the panda," report co-author Elizabeth Kemf said. "Giant pandas need vast areas of temperate mountain forests with lots of bamboo; people living in the vicinity of the animals need secure sources of income and better livelihoods," she said. The 24-page report said it is simply not true that pandas were endangered because of an inability to breed easily.

Although pandas live longer in captivity - there were 126 in zoos in November 1999 - only 28% of them are breeding. In the wild, all adult pandas are reproductive. Therefore pandas should not be taken from the wild for the purpose of breeding, the report said. It added that zoos that receive pandas "on loan" should plough back part of their earnings into panda conservation in China.

In the United States alone, zoo earnings from on-loan pandas are estimated at $1 million per year.

A 1999 survey in one county in Sichuan province showed that the panda's habitat had shrunk by 30% in 12 years as forest areas were cleared for logging and agriculture.

-------- environment

Anti-nuke flotilla to sail again in South Pacific

Friday, February 16, 2001
Environmental News Network
By Michael Perry
http://www.enn.com/news/wire-stories/2001/02/02162001/reu_nonukes_42050.asp

Anti-nuclear protest flotillas are to set sail from Sydney and Wellington on Sunday, combining in the first such fleet since 1995 when boats converged on France's South Pacific nuclear test site at Mururoa atoll.

This time the target is two British-flagged ships, Pacific Pintail, carrying a cargo of nuclear fuel from France to Japan, and its escort ship, Pacific Teal.

Environmental group Greenpeace has said the cargo of MOX, which combines plutonium and uranium oxides recycled from spent nuclear fuel, contains enough plutonium to make 20 atomic bombs.

Three yachts from Australia and four from New Zealand, carrying around 40 protesters, plan to come along side the British ships and hoist their anti-nuclear banners.

"We will raise our voice...and tell them we don't like the South Pacific being used as a nuclear highway," Henk Haazen, a Mururoa veteran, said on Friday as he prepared his yacht Tiama.

Bobbing in Sydney Harbour, the 50-ft steel cutter already has her war paint - four large banners proclaiming "Stop Plutonium Shipments" hang from safety stanchions from bow to stern. Nearby John Simpson, who has sailed his yacht Photina to Mururoa, splices a thick rope bridle to the nose of Tiama's inflatable dinghy. Another protest banner lies rolled inside the dinghy.

Haazen won't say exactly what role the inflatable will play in the protest, but stresses it will be a peaceful protest and no attempt will be made to stop the ships.

"That would be a foolish thing to do with a ship carrying some of the most deadly cargo in the world," Haazen told Reuters.

Haazen wants to raise public awareness of the plutonium shipments. "The flotilla is an effective tool to make these ships visible off our coast. They stay 200 nautical miles off in international waters, nobody sees them, nobody talks about them."

But Haazen knows first hand the risks the protesters face.

In 1985 he had just joined Greenpeace on board the flagship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland when French secret agents planted a bomb on its hull and sank her to prevent it from carrying out a protest campaign at Mururoa. The ship's photographer was killed.

In 1995, Haazen, Greenpeace founder David McTaggart and fellow protester Chris Robinson landed on a coral outcrop near Mururoa and played cat and mouse with French commandos for two weeks.

"We decided the best way we could further the campaign to stop nuclear testing was to land on the nearby islands and they would have to suspend the testing," he recalled.

Their exploits became folklore in the environment movement.

Haazen has studied weather forecasts and expects rough conditions - it is still cyclone season in the South Pacific.

Using a protractor to plot his destination on a chart, he estimates it will take four to five days to reach the rendezvous.

The point is marked by a simple pencil circle. The plutonium ships are prohibited from entering Australian waters, so Haazen has calculated there is only a 75 nautical mile stretch of water between Lord Howe and Norfolk islands where they can pass.

"We may not even find the ships if they secretly go through Australian waters," he said.

-------- genetics

European biotech firms face hurdles

2/16/2001
Infobeat News
http://us.f23.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login?.rand=c4s9q624q0jcd

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - Biotech firms are heralding a new law that ends the European Union's ban on licensing genetically modified products, but a more daunting hurdle - consumer wariness - makes it unlikely that Europe will see a sudden biotech boom. EU nations formally approved new rules on labeling and monitoring genetically modified crops on Thursday, lifting a three-year ban on licensing new biotech foods. France and Italy abstained.

The nations now have 18 months to implement the law. However, each country retains the right to approve new biotech products, making it possible for individual governments to keep the ban in effect. France, Italy, Denmark, Austria, Luxembourg and Greece have indicated that they may require stricter safeguards before approving new genetically modified foods.

To date, the EU has approved 18 genetically altered products, but stopped three years ago in the face of public health and environment concerns.

Companies producing modified foods are awaiting regulatory approval for several crops, including genetically altered corn, tomatoes, potatoes and cotton. Some applications date back to 1996.

The European Commission, the EU's executive body, said it hoped the new law would be enough to persuade governments to stop blocking the licensing of new biotech products.

-------

NSA warns it can't keep up with rapid changes in IT

Feb. 16, 2001
By Dan Verton
http://www.computerworld.com/cwi/Printer_Friendly_Version/0,1212,NAV47-68-84-88_STO57808-,00.html

(Feb. 16, 2001) The National Security Agency (NSA), the signals intelligence arm of the Pentagon, is losing the race to keep up with technology, its director says. And the IT industry may be the only thing that can save it.

More than a year after the NSA's director, Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden, announced his "100 Days of Change" to revamp and revitalize an agency steeped in bureaucracy and outdated technology acquisition practices, the electronic spy chief went public with warnings of technological obsolescence. Hayden told a national television audience this week on CBS's 60 Minutes that the NSA remains behind the rest of the world in keeping up with IT development.

"We're behind the curve in keeping up with the global telecommunications revolution," said Hayden. "Our adversary communications are now based upon the developmental cycle of a global industry that is literally moving at the speed of light ... cell phones, encryption, fiber-optic communications, digital communications," he said.

The NSA operates the world's largest pool of supercomputers and eavesdropping networks, designed to give senior government leaders such as the president real-time intelligence on the activities of terrorists and in world hot spots. However, the spread of encryption, fiber-optic cable and the sheer volume of communications to be intercepted and analyzed have overcome the NSA's ability to maintain the technical edge it once held.

The agency's self-proclaimed inability to keep up with commercial technology has led some to suggest that it might be time for the NSA to follow in the footsteps of the CIA and form its own private-sector research firm. In the spring of 1999, the CIA chartered In-Q-Tel Inc., a private, not-for-profit firm dedicated to tapping the private sector's ability to develop cutting-edge IT products that could enhance the agency's intelligence-gathering and -processing capabilities.

Jim Clapper, a former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency who is now director of intelligence programs at SRA International Inc. in Fairfax, Va., said the In-Q-Tel model is a good idea for the NSA. Clapper even went so far as to say he thinks the In-Q-Tel concept should be expanded to the entire intelligence community as long as proper funding was made available. "The In-Q-Tel concept is a great one and would serve NSA well," said Clapper.

"It certainly couldn't hurt," said Allen Thomson, a former CIA scientist. An In-Q-Tel for the NSA would "allow innovators to make money without having to deal with the usual government procurement hassles" and would also act as a buffer to insulate the innovators from bureaucratic problems, he said.

A spokesperson for Arlington, Va.-based In-Q-Tel said the company has briefed a number of other federal agencies on its efforts and "there continues to be strong interest on the part of entrepreneurs" in working with the firm. An NSA spokesperson said an internal agency effort known as Project Trailblazer has been designed to look at ways to improve the agency's technology acquisition process. The NSA is also preparing to release a proposal for a $5 billion outsourcing contract, known as Project Groundbreaker, that will transfer operation of all of its administrative networks to one of three bidders

Olga Grkavac, executive vice president of the Enterprise Solutions Division at the Information Technology Association of America, called Groundbreaker "a very innovative contract" and said the three potential prime contractors -- AT&T Corp., Computer Sciences Corp. in El Segundo, Calif., and OAO Corp. in Greenbelt, M.D. -- "have the expertise that NSA needs."

Bill Crowell, CEO of Santa Clara, Calif.-based Cylink Corp. and a former NSA director, said he's "bullish on the concept of In-Q-Tel" and would favor "any effort furthering and leveraging the commercial market." In particular, he said, he hopes those efforts would include technology development in the areas of processing, high speed computing, telecommunications, security and storage.

But not everybody thinks outsourcing or more money for technology research is the answer. Winn Schwartau, an information warfare expert and president of security consulting firm Interpact Inc. in Seminole, Fla., said the telecommunications revolution is not the problem. Instead, he said the spread of encryption is the problem.

"The amount of privacy and anonymity that the bad guys have available to them makes our intelligence job much harder," said Schwartau. "It's like trying to listen in to a [virtual private network]. You cannot do it." Rather, the NSA needs to get back to basics and improve its ability to use human sources and physical taps, he said. "Going after cryptography with technology is not money well spent."

---

Lawmakers focus on NSA technology, CIA spies

Friday, February 16, 2001
The Star
http://thestar.com.my/tech/story.asp?file=/2001/2/16/technology/16spytek&sec=technology

WASHINGTON: Senior lawmakers who conduct oversight of US intelligence programmes say modernising technology at the National Security Agency (NSA) and beefing up the CIA's spy networks are priorities this year.

"Funding NSA for this year and in the future is a very high priority for the committee -- to modernise them, keep them on the cutting edge of technology,'' Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Shelby said in a Reuters interview this week.

NSA intercepts communications such as phone calls, e-mail messages and faxes worldwide through listening posts, satellites and other technical means. The agency has been increasingly criticised for not keeping pace with changing technologies.

Even NSA Director-General Mike Hayden said on CBS's 60 Minutes II this week: "We are behind the curve in keeping up with the global telecommunications revolution.''

"NSA is an area that is well understood to need realignment with the world as it is today,'' House Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter Goss, a Florida Republican, said in an interview. "It's got to be updated.''

More funding to revamp NSA may mean economies elsewhere in the intelligence budget, but neither Goss nor Shelby, an Alabama Republican, would discuss specific programmes.

The intelligence budget is classified, but experts estimated the current fiscal year's budget at about US$30bil (RM114bil). The last public figures for the intelligence budget were US$26.7bil (RM101.5bil) in fiscal 1998 and US$26.6bil (RM101.5bil) in fiscal 1997.

Fighting "terrorism'' has become an ever greater focus for US intelligence, and lawmakers said more efforts were needed to use spies to collect information.

Experts have said the Oct 12 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, which killed 17 US sailors, highlighted the need for more spies on the ground to penetrate extremist groups and collect information to prevent such attacks in the future.

The Senate Intelligence Committee is completing its own examination of the Cole attack and will issue recommendations addressing any intelligence shortfalls in collecting and disseminating information and issuing threat warnings.

The terrorism focus led House Speaker Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican, to establish a new "Working Group on Terrorism'' within the House Intelligence Committee.

Both Goss and Shelby saw a need to bolster the CIA's clandestine service which trains officers to go overseas and recruit foreign nationals to spy for America.

Senate Intelligence Committee auditors were expected in the next few weeks to complete an analysis of the CIA director's five-year plan to increase the number of spies.

The auditors examined recruiting and training for the clandestine service, where the recruits were sent into the field, what threats they were supposed to address and whether the Central Intelligence Agency properly funded the operations.

"I believe that the CIA needs to put more and more emphasis on the recruitment, training, and retention of people with various language skills,'' Shelby said.

Goss said he would like to see the intelligence community offer the president covert alternatives for handling adverse foreign situations so there could be a course of action other than the diplomatic table or military bombing.

"There's got to be something in between,'' Goss said, adding that the goal of the intelligence budget was "more efficient'' rather than bigger.

"However my personal estimate would be yes I think we are going to have to ratchet up the intelligence budget a little bit,'' Goss said. "Not because of anything except that we have underinvested for so long that we are exposed where we need not be exposed right now.''

The intelligence community needed to pay attention to new areas of information warfare and space policy, he said.

Shelby is planning to resurrect a provision that could impose prison terms on officials who leak classified information. The measure drew fire from news organisations and was vetoed by former President Clinton last year.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, elevated this year to senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, had opposed the anti-leak provision last year. She also believes the overall intelligence budget figure should be public. Pelosi, the highest-ranking woman ever on the congressional intelligence committees, said diversity was an issue she wanted to explore in a public hearing.

"It's not only in the recruiting but in the opportunities at the highest level of the intelligence community,'' she said. "Put more women chiefs of station in very important stations.'' --Reuters

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

O'Neil's challenges

February 16, 2001
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-house-200121618454.htm

As much of the mainstream media would have it, the principal reason the global economy doesn't succumb to endemic, cyclical financial chaos is the rehabilitating, counter-apocalypse measures taken by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The Bush administration is challenging this retrograde but widespread notion - and naturally getting attacked for it.

In press interviews recently, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil questioned the wisdom of some IMF bailouts, particularly the ill-fated 1998 loan to Russia, some of which has allegedly emerged in secret Swiss bank accounts. Despite the IMF loan, Russia's currency, the ruble, took a nosedive and the Russian government defaulted on its debt, triggering another crisis in Brazil which sent shock waves around the globe. "Most observers would say what happened in Russia was . . . not a surprise. Have you ever tried to do business in Russia? Ever try to write an enforceable contract?" said Mr. O'Neil in an interview with The Washington Post.

Indeed, Russia's crisis was the result of the country's fiscal mismanagement and endemic, policy-driven problems. The IMF failed to prevent or predict it. Investors jumped into Russia fully expecting the IMF to bail out the country, and therefore themselves, at the first signs of trouble. These investors bet on the likelihood of an IMF rescue, not on the long-term prospects of the country. Once they made their profits, they hightailed it out of Russia, sending the country into a tailspin. And just how did these investors get the idea the IMF was in the bailout business for mega-rich creditors? Why, from the 1995 Mexico and 1997 Asian bailouts, naturally.

So these rescues have actually made the abrupt influx and exodus of capital quite severe, contributing to, rather than alleviating, long-term economic turmoil. Mr. O'Neil has wisely proposed that the IMF raise its concerns regarding potential crises publicly, thereby pressuring governments to act pre-emptively.

In an editorial, The Washington Post accuses Mr. O'Neil of echoing some of "the unhelpful hostility to international financial bailouts voiced by Republicans in Congress." However, judging from the outpouring of humanity in Seattle and Washington streets, opposition to these type of bailouts doesn't come exclusively from Republicans in the hallowed halls of the legislature.

As a parting shot, The Post maintains that not doling out bailouts "increases both the human toll of the crisis and the likelihood that panic will spread to other countries." But the editors at the paper conveniently forgot that while bailouts lessen the toll of crises for ultra-wealthy humans, the poor and middle class suffer the brunt of the tight monetary conditions that the IMF invariably requires.

Although IMF loans can buy short-term stability, they have also helped generate increasingly severe crises that require bailouts more expensive than the last. The Bush administration should be commended for challenging some mainstream misperceptions regarding the institution. One hopes it will back up the rhetoric with concrete reform recommendations for the IMF.

-------- police

Senate Committee Questions Clinton's Pardon of Deutch

Friday, February 16, 2001
Washington Post
By Vernon Loeb
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10762-2001Feb15?language=printer

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence yesterday launched an inquiry into former President Clinton's pardon of former CIA director John M. Deutch, sending a letter to CIA Director George J. Tenet to determine whether he or anyone else in the U.S. intelligence community was consulted beforehand.

A senior intelligence official responded last night that neither Tenet nor anyone else at the CIA had any knowledge of the pardon in advance. The official also disclosed that Deutch's CIA security clearances -- suspended by Tenet in August 1999 as punishment for Deutch's home computer security violations -- have been revoked within the past week.

Clinton pardoned Deutch on Jan. 20 for mishandling hundreds of highly classified intelligence documents on unsecure home computers linked to the Internet, making them vulnerable to cyber-attack.

The pardon caught Justice Department officials by surprise. It came less than a day after they had secured Deutch's signature on a plea agreement -- nullified by the pardon -- in which he admitted to a misdemeanor for unauthorized retention of classified material and agreed to pay a $5,000 fine.

"I am very disturbed by what appears to be a subverting of the judicial process in the case of former director Deutch," Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), chairman of the intelligence committee, said yesterday. "If John Deutch had already agreed to plead guilty to criminal violation, I just don't understand why the president would undermine his own Department of Justice."

As a result of the pardon, Shelby said, "Deutch essentially walked away from what is one of the most egregious cases of mishandling of classified information that I have ever seen short of espionage."

A Senate source said the intelligence committee had also requested a meeting with Deutch's attorney, Terrence O'Donnell, a partner at Williams & Connolly who previously served as general counsel at the Department of Defense during the administration of former president George Bush. O'Donnell has worked closely at the firm with David E. Kendall, Clinton's private attorney, but there is currently no evidence that Kendall was involved in seeking a pardon for Deutch.

Neither O'Donnell nor Deutch could be reached for comment on whether or not they sought a pardon from the president. It is unclear whether Deutch requested clemency from Clinton or whether the president acted on his own. But a former senior administration official said yesterday that numerous individuals with prior government national security experience had called the White House and expressed support for a Deutch pardon.

Having fielded some of those calls, national security adviser Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger told President Clinton that he supported pardoning Deutch on the merits, the former official said, adding that Berger was not directly approached by Deutch or his attorneys.

Berger and other senior White House officials believed Deutch deserved a pardon even though his home computer security violations were egregious. They cited his overall contributions to the government over many years and the fact that there is no evidence that any of the classified material he mishandled was ever obtained by unauthorized individuals.

"An awful lot of people outside of the government called . . . and said this would be a very good thing to happen -- it had a lot of support in the national security world," the official said.

Shelby disagreed, saying Clinton's pardon of Deutch could "have an extremely demoralizing effect on the rank and file within the intelligence community. The clear message is if you are connected, you walk."

---

Senate panel asks CIA to investigate Deutch pardon

02/16/2001
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-02-16-deutch.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Senate Intelligence Committee is investigating President Clinton's pardon of former CIA Director John Deutch, who was accused of mishandling classified documents on his home computer.

The Senate panel sent a letter to the current CIA Director George Tenet to determine whether he or anyone else in the intelligence community was consulted before Clinton issued the pardon, according to an anonymous source close to the committee's chairman, Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala.

Earlier this month, the Pentagon concluded that the government secrets Deutch stored in personal journals on his unsecured home computer did not damage national security.

"While the possibility of compromise cannot be foreclosed with certainty, our analysts have found no evidence of compromise," it said in its investigation report.

The seven-page document said Deutch kept 26 personal journals, containing about 675 pages of text, on computer memory cards during his tenure at the Defense Department. The journals included references to some of the most highly classified Pentagon programs.

Deutch and family members had used his America Online account with the same computer on which he stored the personal journals relating to his Pentagon work.

An earlier Pentagon investigation said his practice of using an unsecured home computer to store sensitive information was "extremely risky" because it was vulnerable to a computer "hacker."

-------- terrorism

Panel discusses terrorism practices

2/16/2001
Infobeat News
http://us.f23.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login?.rand=c4s9q624q0jcd

WASHINGTON (AP) - Political threats from the barrel of a gun should be met by punishing governments that help terrorists, a panel on how democracies should deal with terrorism was told Thursday. The advice came from former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and David Trimble, Protestant first minister of Northern Ireland's new power-sharing government, members of a panel on Capitol Hill sponsored by a conservative think tank and Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn. Panel members discussed challenges facing the Bush administration and the United States.

Netanyahu said the principal requirement for dealing with terrorism is punishment of complicit nations. He mentioned Russia and China as examples of countries that provide weapons to terrorists and terrorist states and said other countries that provide terrorist havens are equally guilty. Iran and Iraq "will soon have" nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, which will make "what we've experienced for the last few decades child's play," Netanyahu said. Describing Russia as one of the world's worst proliferators of weapons through technology, advisers and materials, Netanyahu said: "The most important thing the United States can do is ... try to stop this flow of the technology of death," principally by exerting economic and political pressure.

The same goes for China, Thompson said.

The panel noted others who abet terrorists by harboring them, providing false identity documents and such.

Asked how one deals with a terrorist, Netanyahu said he took a hard line with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat when he was prime minister, insisting that Arafat's Palestinian Authority jail terrorists and collect weapons in occupied areas.

Witness ID's bin Laden aide

NEW YORK (AP) - One of the men accused of plotting the deadly bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa once bought weapons for a man later convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, according to evidence delivered to the jury Thursday. The information had been previously disclosed by attorneys, but jurors learned for the first time about the alleged tie between defendant Wadih El-Hage and Mahmud Abouhalima, who was convicted of conspiracy in the Trade Center attack. El-Hage said he bought an AK-47 and two other guns for Abouhalima in 1989, two years after meeting him at a New York City mosque. He said Abouhalima wanted to use the weapons to train men who were going to Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union. But he said Abouhalima never came to Texas to pick them up so he sold them. El-Hage, a 40-year-old U.S. citizen from Arlington, Texas, is charged with lying to the grand jury and conspiracy in the 1998 embassy bombings. If convicted, he could face life in prison.

Also facing a possible life sentence on conspiracy charges is Mohamed Sadeek Odeh, 35.

Mohamed Rashed Daoud Al-'Owhali, 24, and Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, 27, could face the death penalty if convicted of murder conspiracy.

The nearly simultaneous bombings in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killed 224 people, including 12 Americans.

The U.S. government has accused Osama bin Laden, a Saudi millionaire, of directing the attacks. Bin Laden and a dozen others indicted by federal prosecutors remain at large.

El-Hage sat passively as prosecutors read aloud his testimony to a grand jury in 1997. The text showed that he first met bin Laden in 1986 and that he worked for a company in the early 1990s which bin Laden controlled.

Convicted terrorist gets 9 years

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) - A former terrorist who knew German's foreign minister during his youthful antiestablishment days was sentenced to nine years imprisonment Thursday for killing three people in a 1975 attack on an OPEC meeting. The case has forced Germans to address the social unrest that rocked their country 30 years ago - in particular Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, who has been on the defensive over his well-known past as a left-wing activist who wrangled with police.

Hans-Joachim Klein, who renounced terrorism shortly after the OPEC attack, sat with his head bowed and his arms crossed as Judge Heinrich Gehrke read his sentence of nine years' imprisonment on three counts each of murder and attempted murder and hostage taking. Klein, 53, had admitted the court that he took part in the attack on the OPEC headquarters in Vienna, Austria, but denied killing anyone.

Although murder carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment in Germany, prosecutors sought 14 years while the defense pleaded for eight. Since Klein was jailed 18 months in France while waiting to be extradited, he will only have to serve 7 1/2 years.

---

Former terrorist jailed in Germany

February 16, 2001
Washington Times
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-2001216211448.htm

FRANKFURT, Germany - A former terrorist was convicted yesterday and sentenced to nine years in prison for a 1975 attack on a meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries in Vienna, Austria, after a trial that focused attention on some German leaders' radical pasts.

Hans-Joachim Klein was convicted on charges of hostage-taking and three counts each of murder and attempted murder in the attack believed to have been masterminded by Venezuelan terrorist Carlos the Jackal, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez.

The four-month trial revived memories of social unrest that rocked Germany 30 years ago -and the role some present-day politicians played during it. Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, a former Klein friend, testified in the trial.

-------- activists

China says sect member killed self

2/16/2001
InfoBeat News
http://us.f23.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login?.rand=c4s9q624q0jcd

BEIJING (AP) - Another purported member of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement committed suicide by setting himself on fire Friday in Beijing, China's state-run Xinhua News Agency said. Xinhua said Tan Yihui, a 25-year-old shoe shiner from southern Hunan province, set fire to himself in western Beijing. A witness who called police saw Tan covered in gasoline and then saw him set himself on fire, Xinhua said.

State-run TV showed police covering a blackened body with a white sheet. It said Tan started practicing Falun Gong in 1997. Tan was the sixth purported Falun Gong member to set fire to himself in Beijing in less than a month.

On Jan. 23, four women and a man soaked themselves with gasoline and set themselves on fire in Tiananmen Square. One woman died.

There was no immediate comment from Falun Gong about the new immolation. China's government has used the self-immolations to support its claims that Falun Gong is an evil cult and to whip up public backing for its relentless and sometimes brutal 19-month crackdown on the sect.

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Colombia highways blockaded

http://us.f23.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login?.rand=c4s9q624q0jcd

BARRANCABERMEJA, Colombia (AP) - Angry peasant demonstrators blocked major highways in the country's volatile northeast on Friday to protest President Andres Pastrana's plans to open peace talks and cede territory to a second Colombian guerrilla faction. As many as 20,000 residents had joined the protests, which entered their second day, national highway police chief Gen. Alvaro Velandia said. Five separate blockades were obstucting transport between the Caribbean coast and the rest of Colombia. Presidential peace envoy Camilo Gomez headed to the region to try to quell the protests, which thus far were peaceful.

Riot police dispersed demonstrators early Friday who were blocking the road connecting Barrancabermeja, a major oil refining center and the hub of the contested region, to its airport. The demonstrators, their demands backed by a right-wing paramilitary group active in the area, oppose Pastrana's plans to cede control over two area towns to the leftist National Liberation Army, or ELN.

Indian cops arrested after shooting

SRINAGAR, India (AP) - Four members of an army intelligence unit were arrested after police said one of them fired at protesters, killing a man and injuring at least six others in India-controlled Kashmir on Friday. Police in Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu-Kashmir state, said officer Harvinder Singh opened fire at a crowd of demonstrators who were being chased away by the police. At least 60 rounds of tear gas were fired by police as they tried to push back the angry demonstrators, who were protesting the killing of six people in Srinagar on Thursday. The six people were killed when army soldiers fired at mourners blocking a highway in Kashmir.

About 500 protesters gathered Friday at the headquarters of an Islamic militant group, the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front, in the Mysoma neighborhood of central Srinagar to protest the killings, police said.

Almost a dozen Islamic rebel groups have fought Indian security forces in Kashmir since 1989 in a rebellion that has claimed more than 30,000 lives.

---

political skills training!

Thu, 15 Feb 2001
Amy Fisher <amyfisher@envirocitizen.org> Subject:

TIRED OF POLITICIANS IGNORING YOUR COMMUNITY?

It's time to build political power and make your voice heard! Learn how at the 2001 Environmental Justice Summer Training Academy (EJ STA).

Join other community and student organizers who are leading the charge to make environmental justice a priority in the 2001 elections and beyond. EJ STA is an intensive 6-day program that trains young people of color in political skills to protect our communities. Through skill sessions and campaign simulations you'll learn:

-How to run a winning campaign -How to impact critical social and public health issues -How to organize online and in the media

...the tools you need to make a difference in your community and on your campus!

Rolling Admissions -- APPLY NOW for your best chance to get in!!

Apply online now and learn more about environmental justice at http://www.ejnow.org

Time: June 9 - 14, 2001 Location: Catholic U., Washington, D.C. APPLICATION DEADLINE: Friday, April 13, 2001

It's only $50, due upon acceptance, for 6 days of housing, food, and amazing trainings.

For more information contact: Aditi Vaidya, EJ STA Director, at 202.547.8658, or ejsta@envirocitizen.org

EJ STA is sponsored by the Center for Environmental Citizenship, http://www.envirocitizen.org, and the League of Conservation Voters Education Fund, http://www.voteenvironment.org -- Amy Fisher Northeast Organizer Center for Environmental Citizenship 59 Temple Place #669 Boston, MA 02111 617.542.2782

Tired of politicians ignoring your community? Learn how to build political power and make your voice heard at the Environmental Justice Summer Training Academy. APPLY NOW at http://www.ejnow.org

Check out what's going on in the Northeast at http://www.envirocitizen.org/northeast

--------

BLSP IKE PANEL ON C-SPAN

Thu, 15 Feb 2001
jcolen <jcolen@the-beach.net>

TO: BUSINESS LEADERS FOR SENSIBLE PRIORITIES MEMBERS FROM: BEN COHEN

BUSINESS LEADERS PANEL ON IKE'S FAREWELL ADDRESS TO BE AIRED BY C-SPAN

Our January 17 panel discussion marking the 40th anniversary of President Eisenhower's famous Farewell Address will be aired by C-Span on Presidents' Day, February 19. The time is tentatively set for 9:30 p.m., with a rerun scheduled (again tentatively) for 1:05 a.m. February 20, East Coast time. The program will be telecast simultaneously nation-wide, so West Coast times are February 19, 6:30 and 10:05 p.m.

Panelists were David Brinkley, director of the Eisenhower Center at the University of New Orleans; Dr. Lawrence Korb, assistant secretary of defense during the Reagan administration; Blanche Weisen Cook, author of the Declassified Eisenhower as well as two highly acclaimed volumes on the life of Eleanor Roosevelt; and Ted Sorensen, special counsel to President Kennedy. Bill Hartung of the World Policy Institute at the New School served as moderator.

Please be sure to tune in for a provocative discussion of what motivated Eisenhower, the professional soldier, to focus his speech on the "undue influence" of the "Military-Industrial Complex," and why that famous warning is still relevant today. And do spread the word.

For more information, call Gary Ferdman, 212-563-9245, X 17.

------

US: ALL CALL DAY FEB. 22: NO NAFTA for the Americas - NO FTAA!

Thu, 15 Feb 2001 16
"Jessica Roach" <JROACH@citizen.org>

ACTION ALERT - ACTION ALERT - ACTION ALERT

All-Call Day of Action Thursday, February 22: "NO NAFTA for the Americas - NO FTAA"!

Thousands of fair trade activists delivered "wake-up calls" to the U.S. Congress last month to demand that our Representatives get involved in breaking the silence around secret negotiations to create "NAFTA for the Americas." Formally called the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), it is an expansion of NAFTA to all 35 countries in the western hemisphere but one (that's Cuba). We reminded Congress that FTAA is NAFTA all over again, and that we won't stand for sending living-wage jobs to union-busting sweatshops to save Big Business a buck, for endangering regulations that protect public health and safety and the environment, and the "investor-to-state" rules that allow corporations to sue governments -- at taxpayer expense! -- anytime they feel that laws designed to protect people and communities limit their profit margins.

Now you have their attention. Last month, a bipartisan group of 63 Representatives sent a letter to the White House, demanding that the U.S. Trade Representative start consulting Congress about the negotiations, as required by the Constitution, and that the negotiations process be opened so that all documents on FTAA are available to the public. So Congress is growing more aware of our concerns. But the big challenges are still ahead of us! Trade negotiators are going ahead with planned meetings this April on FTAA -- without input from citizens or our elected representatives. We must keep the pressure on Members of Congress to join the fight against NAFTA for the Americas!

HERE'S YOUR CHANCE: CONGRESS IS COMING HOME! The first recess period of the 107th Congress is coming up, February 16-26, and this is your chance to speak up again while they're on your home turf.

YOU can help stop NAFTA for the Americas! This week, here's how:

* Get a meeting! The best way to make an impression is to talk to your Representative face to face. Put together a diverse group of people from your district (union representatives, environmental leaders, local officials, students, human rights advocates...) and request a meeting at your hometown office, or go on your own. Don't take no for an answer! If the Representative can't meet, find out if a staffer is available or ask about the schedule for town hall meetings so that you can address your concerns there. Talking points and sample meeting request letters are at www.tradewatch.org.=20

* Be part of the national All-Call Day on FTAA on Thursday, Feb. 22! Call your Representative and Senators at their district offices. These local numbers can be found in your phone book blue pages, or from their official websites (check www.house.gov and www.senate.gov). Then call their trade staffers in Washington through the Capitol Switchboard (202-224-3121). Ask them to commit to oppose the "NAFTA for the Americas"!

* Write a letter to the editor! Samples are online at www.tradewatch.org

. If your Representative hasn't stated his or her position on "NAFTA for the Americas" yet, this is a good place to ask them, publicly, to do it -- especially if he or she turned down your request for a meeting!

* Report back! If your Representative or Senators tell you about their positions on FTAA, we want to know so that we can thank fair trade champions and keep the heat on those who favor profits over people. Call us at 202-546-4996 and ask for the Global Trade Watch field team, or email alesha@citizen.org.

For more information on "NAFTA for the Americas" and how YOU can be part of the "Campaign of Inquiry" to uncover the truth about these negotiations, visit www.tradewatch.org or call Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch at 202-546-4996.

------

Students Continue to Mobilize Against Sodexho

February 16, 2001
(by way of Jonah Zern <jzern1@yahoo.com>)
"A Calver" <jzern1@yahoo.com>

This is an exciting time for student activism around Sodexho's connections to the private prison industry and its treatment of workers. There are currently about 50 campuses with active student groups in the US and Canada.

(if you have any trouble linking with articles or they are not longer up, then email acalver@hereunion and I will e-mail you a copy)

This past week alone saw:

1. A panel discussion and organizing meeting at the University of Toronto

2. A large forum at Ithaca College with the Bob Stern, General Counsel of Sodexho Marriott and Kevin Pranis from the Prison Moratorium Project. Hundreds turned out to hear speakers discuss whether Ithaca College should terminate it's food service contract with Sodexho Marriott. President Peggy Williams has promised a decision on whether to end the contract by March 19, 2001.

http://www.ithaca.edu/ithacan/articles/0102/15/news/LSstudents_and.htm

3. At Xavier College in Ohio, about a hundred people turned out to astudent-labor rally at the Cintas Center where the Xavier Musketeers played a nationally televised basketball game. Sodexho-Marriott workers at Xavier are organizing a union with HERE Local 12. Protesters at the Cintas Center called upon Sodexho-Marriott to sign a card-check neutrality agreement, which would allow the workers to decide for themselves if they want a union without harassment or intimidation from Sodexho managers.

http://www.citybeat.com/current/news.shtml

4. Starting February 23, Sodexho Marriott must post notices at many of its 5000 non-union workplaces to notify workers of their legal rights under the National Labor Relations Act.

To avoid civil prosecution, Sodexho-Marriott agreed last February to drop two illegal work rules prohibiting employees from talking to outsiders about their working conditions or talking to each other at the work site before or after their shifts.

But according to the NLRB Regional Director in Baltimore, Sodexho-Marriott did not live up to all of its obligations under last year's settlement. As a result, the company must now re-notify its employees about the rescinded rules by posting federal notices a second time at more than 5,000 of its locations throughout the United States. The federal notices should be posted in a conspicuous place for sixty days at all locations where Sodexho-Marriott previously distributed handbooks with the illegal workrules.

The Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union will be working with students to see if the notices are properly posted in Sodexho Marriott's cafeterias. Students who are able to help should contact Andrea Calver, HERE Student Liaison by e-mail at acalver@hereunion.org. Please e-mail a phone number and the best time to reach you and Andrea will contact you for a short conversation.

---

Heeding call, Yale to release some ethical investing information
Some activists say posting of reports is only small step in right direction

Friday, February 16, 2001
YDN
BY JONATHAN HORN

The public will gets its first look at Yale's attempts to make ethical investing decisions within the next week, but some student activists feel more disclosure is necessary.

The Yale Corporation decided last weekend that the Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility should release reports of its recent recommendations along with the broader instruction guide it follows in making its suggestions on socially responsible investing.

"This report will outline the topics we worked hard on last year and in general what kind of actions the committee took," said School of Management professor William Goetzmann, who chairs the committee.

The eight-member advisory committee makes recommendations to the Yale Investment Office about how to invest in a socially responsible manner, including how to vote on shareholder resolutions. The investment office usually heeds the advice of the committee, and student groups have long pressured the committee to disclose more about how it makes recommendations.

"There has certainly been an interest by the committee in doing this since I've been doing this," Goetzmann said. "So I think there's been an interest in the Yale community with getting some sense of what the committee does."

The first report, which the committee will put online this week, explains the committee's recommendations from last year on the topics of genetic engineering, the environment and tobacco, said Daniel Stone '01, who is the undergraduate representative on the advisory committee and a member of the Student Alliance to Reform Corporations. STARC has been leading the advocacy group for disclosure of Yale's investing policy and decisions.

Last spring, the advisory committee held a series of public meetings, but despite earlier student protest about the closed investment policy, few students attended.

The committee states in the report to be issued that Yale has advised companies to take extra steps to ensure the safety of genetically engineered products.

"As a committee we felt that it would be our belief that corporations ought to take extra special steps to see that new genetically engineered products they were making were safe," Goetzmann said. "Our advice was to urge corporations to try and assure themselves that their stuff was safe."

Stone, who is the only student with a preliminary copy of the report, said he is disappointed with the committee's stand on the environment. The committee did not endorse the CERES treaty, which lays out voluntary minimal environmental standard for companies and decided to revisit the issue in the future.

"I think that the CERES principle decision is disappointing because I think at this point it is pretty well accepted and not that radical of a proposition," Stone said. "That's going to be up for debate this year. In my opinion, it's a minimal effort we can take to show these environmental issues are crucially important."

STARC member David Corson Knowles '03 said although the new report is a step in the right direction, more disclosure is still needed.

"We think things like that should be totally out in the open," Corson-Knowles said. "Optimally Yale would disclose how its votes on every stockholder resolution that comes before it."

Yale President Richard Levin could not be reached for comment.

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