------- Index of Articles
NUCLEAR
Sub commander refuses questioning
Japan Ready to Help U.S. Raise Sunken Trawler
British protester charged with racist abuse
Czech nuke plant due on stream after shutdown
Powell defends Iraq policy
Iraq to discuss U.N. sanctions next week
UN-Iraq talks may be 'awkward'
Russia outlines mobile missile shield
Russia pushes for joint European missile defense
Russia Presses Missile Defense Plan
Administration Surveys Technology Behind Missile Defense System
The Navy's search for answers
Safety fuels debate over nuclear plants
Nuclear power makes a comeback
Union at Piketon cancels plans to appeal to Bush
Oregon State U. to house nuclear reactor
Tampering With Strategic Stability
MILITARY
Manila Says It Will Call Cease-Fire
The man in front of the tanks
China fortifying Iraq's air-defense system
Burmese junta figure killed in crash
Burmese General Dies in Air Crash
Utah
Supreme court hears marijuana case
Iraq strikes timed to avoid workers
Saddam enjoys boost in popularity among Palestinians
U.N. Judges Uphold War Crimes Case
Civilian at the Controls: the Early Years
Mapping strategies
OTHER
Iowa
Al's tank
Report shows global warming risks
Agency's Mission Combines Conservation and Fossil Fuel Drilling
Delaware
Timber ind. optimistic about Bush
Court declines Endangered Act case
Some Biotech Upstarts Fizzle Against Native Plants
IMF and World Bank Heads Hail New Era With Africa
Court: Police can bar suspects from own homes
Riot Police Dislodge Unionists Who Took Over Korean Plant
Germany creates police units
Even walls won't protect your privacy now
Sweden charges suspected spy
FBI agent charged with espionage
Russia silent on spy arrest
Arguments in Bomb Trial, but With His Own Lawyer
ACTIVISTS
Ex - Cold War Warriors Powell, Fischer Meet in U.S.
Activists at Daewoo Motors clash with police
Russians protest destruction of Mir
Kurds Abandoned on French Riviera Hold Protest
Police raid Daewoo Motor plant to end protest
Scientists urged to renounce arms work
Quebec City Crackdown
-------- NUCLEAR
Sub commander refuses questioning
2/20/2001
Infobeat News
http://us.f23.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login?.rand=12mtde48asmeh
HONOLULU (AP) - The commander of the U.S. submarine that sank a Japanese fishing vessel has refused to discuss the accident with investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board until the Navy completes its investigation, officials said on Monday. NTSB investigators met with Cmdr. Scott Waddle over the weekend when he told them his lawyer recommended he only respond to written questions from the NTSB for the time being and only about search and rescue efforts, NTSB spokesman Ted Lopatkiewiscz said. Waddle's information could be crucial to the NTSB effort to determine how the USS Greeneville failed to detect the 190-foot Ehime Maru before it conducted an emergency rapid-ascent drill nine miles south of Diamond Head on Feb. 9.
The Ehime Maru, a commercial fishing training vessel, was headed toward fishing grounds 300 miles southeast of Oahu when the Greeneville crashed into it. The submarine tore through the hull of the ship, sinking it within minutes. The vessel was found by underwater probes Friday night in 2,000 feet of water. The ship was on a two-month training trip with students from a Japanese high school. Twenty-six people were rescued but nine have not been found - three crewmen, two teachers and four students.
The Navy announced Saturday it would conduct a court of inquiry _ its highest-level administrative investigation - to focus on the actions of the Greeneville's three top officers: Waddle; its executive officer, Lt. Cmdr. Gerald K. Pfeifer, and the officer of the deck, Lt. j.g. Michael J. Coen. Three admirals will oversee the hearing, which could lead to courts-martial, said Adm. Thomas Fargo, commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet. The board is scheduled to convene Thursday.
---
Japan Ready to Help U.S. Raise Sunken Trawler
February 20, 2001
Reuters
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/world/submarine-japan-usa.html
TOKYO, Feb 20 (Reuters) - Japan decided on Tuesday to send experts to aid the United States in its efforts to raise a trawler rammed and sunk by a U.S. nuclear submarine.
The accident left nine missing, including four 17-year-old fisheries students, presumed dead inside the sunken vessel, and has strained U.S.-Japanese ties.
Kyodo news agency said the decision was made at a meeting of officials from various government ministries, who agreed to select the experts from among employees of private shipbuilding and salvaging companies as well as ministry bureaucrats.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda told a news conference earlier in the day that Japan had formed a committee to discuss helping the United States raise the trawler from its ocean bed, some 600 metres (2,000 ft) below the surface off Hawaii.
``We believe we should do what we can to cooperate from a technological point of view,'' he said.
Experts say raising the ship would be technically very difficult and could take months, and the U.S. government has not yet decided if it will do so, citing the need to collect additional data.
This has aroused anger among the families of the missing, who demand concrete assurances that the ship will be raised.
The February 9 tragedy in which the nuclear submarine USS Greeneville abruptly surfaced and sank the Japanese trawler carrying 35 people, including 13 high school students, has strained already tense U.S.-Japan ties.
TENSE TIES
Just prior to the accident, relations were damaged when the chief of U.S. military forces on the southern Japan island of Okinawa, Lieutenant General Earl Hailston, sparked outrage by referring to local government officials as ``nuts'' and ``wimps'' in an internal e-mail sent to 13 officers.
Analysts have said the submarine accident could prompt the mistrust and resentment of U.S. troops stationed in Japan to spread beyond Okinawa, home to 26,000 of the 48,000 U.S. troops on Japanese soil, to mainland Japan.
Amid mounting anger, a rally will be held in Tokyo on Thursday to protest the submarine accident and a string of recent crimes allegedly committed by U.S. servicemen in Okinawa.
Unpopular Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori has also come under fire for his sluggish response to the accident, adding fuel to growing demands for his resignation.
Japan said on Monday it wanted to send the captain of the sunken vessel to participate in the U.S. Navy's court of inquiry into whether three officers from the submarine should be disciplined. A top U.S. Navy official announced at the weekend in Honolulu that the Navy would convene its highest form of administrative investigation this week to determine if disciplinary action should be taken.
If Japan agrees to a request to take part, the court would comprise three U.S. officers and one Japanese officer in an advisory capacity.
In an ironic twist, a Japanese trawler carrying fisheries high school students on a training trip similar to that of the sunken ship rescued four U.S. citizens aboard a drifting sailboat near the island of Hawaii on Monday, Kyodo news agency said.
The ship had been searching for the sailboat, which went adrift on Saturday after its mast broke, following a request from the U.S. Coast Guard, Kyodo said.
-------- britain
British protester charged with racist abuse for dragging US flag on ground
20 February 2001
UK The Independent
By Severin Carrell
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/UK/This_Britain/2001-02/flag200201.shtml
An anti-nuclear protester has been charged with racial abuse against the American people after she allegedly dragged a United States flag along the ground during a demonstration against the Star Wars missile defence system.
In an unprecedented case, the Crown Prosecution Service has accused Lindis Percy of being motivated by racist hatred of the American people when she "trailed" the US flag on the road at the US military eavesdropping base at Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire.
At a pre-trial hearing atHarrogate magistrates' court yesterday, the prosecution claimed this offence, which carries a £2,500 fine, caused "harassment, alarm and distress" to US personnel driving out of the base during the demonstration last December. It is thought to be the first time the new anti-racism powers introduced under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 have been used in this way.
The demonstration, staged to coincide with the confirmation that George Bush was officially president-elect, was called to protest against Mr Bush's expected support for "son of Star Wars", the controversial ballistic missile defence system planned by the US.
Ms Percy, 59, a health visitor from Hull, was initially charged with obstruction of the highway, as was another senior member of the Campaign for Accountability of American Bases, Anni Rainbow.
The CPS added the racial abuse charges after its lawyers studied CCTV footage from the base's security cameras. The flag, which has "Stop Star Wars" painted on it, has not been confiscated.
Ms Percy is alleged to have draped the flag across the road at the gates to the USbase. It was driven over by a member of the American Legion, a staunchly patriotic ex-servicemen's association based at Menwith Hill.
In the United States, ex-servicemen's groups and politicians have campaigned for desecration of the flag to be made a federal offence.
The trial of Ms Percy, a veteran anti-nuclear campaigner, has been set for late April.
-------- czech republic
Czech nuke plant due on stream after shutdown
February 20, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9864&newsDate=20-Feb-2001
PRAGUE - The controversial Czech nuclear power plant Temelin, fiercely opposed by neighbouring Austria, will be brought back on line later this week after a month-long shutdown, a spokesman said yesterday.
The latest shutdown started ahead of planned revisions due to vibrations and a crack on steam piping on Temelin's turbine, in the non-nuclear, power-generating part of the station.
"The repair is basically complete. The final completing works are underway now," Temelin's spokesman Milan Nebesar told Reuters.
The failure has delayed by one month the planned launch of a full trial operation, originally planned for May.
The $2.6 billion plant, built just over 50 km from Austrian borders, has had a rocky start. Austrian protesters have staged border blockades demanding its closure, and a series of minor failures forced repeated shutdowns since it was first launched last October.
Austria says the station, which combines a Russian VVER-1,000 reactor with a US-made control system by Westinghouse, may be unsafe. Its operator, the government-controlled power company CEZ insists it is a state-of-the-art project.
The Czech government has agreed to conduct an environmental impact study at the station to appease the Austrians.
US lawyer Ed Fagan, who made a name representing compensation-seeking Nazi victims and is now representing Austrian opponents of the plant, demanded that Westinghouse submit documents on the delivery of control and safety systems to Temelin.
Speaking to reporters on the Austro-Czech border earlier on Monday, Fagan said that he would "cause pain in the senior management ranks" if Westinghouse failed to comply by March 20.
He did not elaborate on what further measures would be taken.
------ iraq
Powell defends Iraq policy
02/20/2001
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-02-20-iraq.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) - Secretary of State Colin Powell defended the U.S. policy of patrolling Iraq's air space and said Tuesday it will continue "as long as we believe that mission is necessary" to contain Iraq's military ambitions.
In renewed defiance of the joint U.S.-British patrols in "no-fly" zones over southern and northern Iraq, Iraqi air defenses fired surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft artillery at allied planes in the southern zone Saturday and Sunday, Pentagon officials said Tuesday. No planes were hit.
In comments to reporters at the State Department, Powell defended Friday's air strikes against Iraqi air defense installations and said they were required to reduce the threat to allied pilots.
Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. Craig Quigley said the strikes achieved their purpose of "disrupting and degrading" Iraq's air defenses, but the military will not release a detailed public assessment of the attack's effectiveness. To do so could help Iraq prepare for any future attacks, he said.
Quigley would not say how many or which types of U.S. bombs or missiles were used.
Powell discussed Iraq and other subjects with German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, who expressed his government's "understanding" - but not support - for Friday's U.S.-British airstrikes.
While acknowledging that Iraq has been pursuing weapons of mass destruction in violation of U.N. Security Council requirements, Powell defended the policy of containment, the 10-year effort led by the United States and Britain to reduce Iraq's ability to threaten its neighbors.
"Containment has been a successful policy, and I think we should make sure that we continue it until such time as Saddam Hussein comes into compliance with the agreements he made at the end of the war," Powell said. "But we have to find ways to do it, to not hurt the Iraqi people."
Powell stressed that the Bush administration is reviewing its Iraq policy, and he intends to discuss the matter this weekend during visits to Arab countries, Israel and Belgium, where he will meet with NATO foreign ministers.
He said the purpose of enforcing flight-interdiction zones over Iraq is to "keep Iraq from being the aggressor against its own citizens," a reference to minority Kurds in the north and rebellious Shiites in the south.
"As long as we believe that mission is necessary, then we're going to protect our pilots," he said.
Quigley said Friday's attack was in response to indications that Iraq was integrating its air defenses in a way that would give them better chances of shooting down allied planes. The bombs were aimed at radars and command and control "nodes" that are part of the air defense network.
"We think we had an impact on that," he said. "Was it permanent? No." Later, he said the Pentagon was pleased with the results, even if the bombs were not 100% effective. "It isn't perfect. It never is."
Although Iraq does not recognize the legitimacy of "no-fly" zones over the southern and northern portions of its territory, it is not contesting U.S. and British air patrols as frequently in the north this year. According to the U.S. European Command, which manages air patrols over northern Iraq, Iraqi air defenses in that area have fired on allied planes only twice this year, most recently Feb. 12.
Friday's joint U.S.-British attacks against five air defense sites around Baghdad were timed to avoid killing or injuring Chinese civilian and military workers helping install underground fiber-optic cables to significantly improve the effectiveness of Iraq's air defenses, a senior defense official said.
"On a Friday you have the lowest number of people present - both Iraqis and Chinese," the senior official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "The goal wasn't to kill people, the goal was to bust up stuff."
The official said some portion of the fiber-optic network already was operating at the time of the bombing.
Asked about Chinese assistance and the fiber optics, Quigley on Tuesday declined to comment.
---
Iraq to discuss U.N. sanctions next week
02/20/2001
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2001-02-20-talks.htm
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Tuesday that Iraq will attend talks next week aimed at breaking a stalemate over U.N. sanctions, but acknowledged that recent allied airstrikes could make dialogue "awkward." Iraq, which wants the United Nations to lift crippling economic sanctions imposed after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, sent word it still plans to participate in talks in New York on Feb. 26-27, Annan said.
"Obviously the timing is a bit awkward ... but the Iraqis have confirmed that they are coming," he told reporters at the U.N. headquarters. "So we will be able to pursue our attempts to break the impasse and pull them in to cooperate with the U.N."
Iraq has refused to allow the return of U.N. inspectors who must verify its claims that its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons have been destroyed before sanctions can be lifted.
Annan's planned meeting with Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf have been seen as a chance to start a dialogue on the intertwined issues of sanctions and weapons inspections.
Though a major breakthrough has not been expected from the meeting, the fact that Baghdad requested it and is sending a high-level delegation is seen as positive.
"It may take some time," Annan said. "I don't think ... we will have a miraculous breakthrough, but at least it's a beginning."
American and British warplanes bombed five sites in Iraq on Friday in an attack the Pentagon said was designed to degrade Iraq's capability to defend against allied air patrols over the "no fly" zone over southern Iraq..
In a letter to Annan, Al-Sahhaf urged the U.N. chief to "condemn the dangerous aggression and the increase of tension" and to take "speedy steps to prevent such attacks from taking place again," the official Iraqi News Agency said Sunday.
Annan has not condemned the allied strikes on air defense and radar sites south of Baghdad. He said he was not consulted or informed before the airstrikes - the most serious attack on Iraq in two years.
"It was immediately after the air action that the U.S. authorities called to explain to me that they saw this as routine - not escalation, not a qualitative difference in their activities in Iraq - and that it was ... not to continue," Annan said.
The air raid drew widespread condemnation, some of it from key U.S. allies in the Middle East and Europe, who said it was time for Washington to reconsider its policies toward Iraq.
Russia, France and China - Iraq's key supporters on the Security Council - all said the airstrikes were unprovoked and would damage international efforts to resolve the sanctions issue.
China called on the United States and Britain on Saturday to stop military action in Iraq immediately to create a favorable atmosphere for the upcoming talks.
U.N. weapons inspectors left Iraq in December 1998, just ahead of allied airstrikes launched to punish Iraq for blocking inspections.
-------
UN-Iraq talks may be 'awkward'
01/02/20
Infobeat
Associated Press
By EDITH M. LEDERER
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406210256
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Tuesday that Iraq will attend talks next week aimed at breaking a stalemate over U.N. sanctions, but acknowledged that recent allied airstrikes could make dialogue ``awkward.''
Iraq, which wants the United Nations to lift crippling economic sanctions imposed after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, sent word it still plans to participate in talks in New York on Feb. 26-27, Annan said.
``Obviously the timing is a bit awkward ... but the Iraqis have confirmed that they are coming,'' he told reporters at the U.N. headquarters. ``So we will be able to pursue our attempts to break the impasse and pull them in to cooperate with the U.N.''
Iraq has refused to allow the return of U.N. inspectors who must verify its claims that its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons have been destroyed before sanctions can be lifted.
Annan's planned meeting with Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf have been seen as a chance to start a dialogue on the intertwined issues of sanctions and weapons inspections.
Though a major breakthrough has not been expected from the meeting, the fact that Baghdad requested it and is sending a high-level delegation is seen as positive.
``It may take some time,'' Annan said. ``I don't think ... we will have a miraculous breakthrough, but at least it's a beginning.''
American and British warplanes bombed five sites in Iraq on Friday in an attack the Pentagon said was designed to degrade Iraq's capability to defend against allied air patrols over the ``no fly'' zone over southern Iraq..
In a letter to Annan, Al-Sahhaf urged the U.N. chief to ``condemn the dangerous aggression and the increase of tension'' and to take ``speedy steps to prevent such attacks from taking place again,'' the official Iraqi News Agency said Sunday.
Annan has not condemned the allied strikes on air defense and radar sites south of Baghdad. He said he was not consulted or informed before the airstrikes _ the most serious attack on Iraq in two years.
``It was immediately after the air action that the U.S. authorities called to explain to me that they saw this as routine _ not escalation, not a qualitative difference in their activities in Iraq _ and that it was ... not to continue,'' Annan said.
The air raid drew widespread condemnation, some of it from key U.S. allies in the Middle East and Europe, who said it was time for Washington to reconsider its policies toward Iraq.
Russia, France and China _ Iraq's key supporters on the Security Council _ all said the airstrikes were unprovoked and would damage international efforts to resolve the sanctions issue.
China called on the United States and Britain on Saturday to stop military action in Iraq immediately to create a favorable atmosphere for the upcoming talks.
U.N. weapons inspectors left Iraq in December 1998, just ahead of allied airstrikes launched to punish Iraq for blocking inspections.
-------- missile defense
Russia outlines mobile missile shield
February 20, 2001
CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/02/20/russia.nato.02/index.html
MOSCOW, Russia -- NATO has been urged to consider a Russian alternative to Washington's planned system for shooting down incoming nuclear missiles.
Moscow presented its proposals for a cut-price European anti-missile defence shield to NATO secretary-General George Roberrtson on Tuesday.
The mobile system would be an alternative to the planned $60 billion U.S. National Missile Defense (NMD) system that Moscow says would invalidate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and threaten a new arms race.
Robertson said the Russian plan was evidence that both NATO and Russia recognised the threat of missiles from unstable states and had to work together to counter it.
"What is important now is that we have a Russian proposal to deal with the same kind of perceived threat," Robertson said after meeting President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin.
"We look forward to examining this proposal in detail and hearing a presentation from Russian experts on what has been put forward."
Last year Putin called for joint work on a "non-strategic" defence system to counter potential attacks from what Washington has referred to as "rogue states" such as Iraq, Iran and North Korea without undermining arms pacts.
The result was Russia's proposal for a close assessment of existing and future missile threats. If detected, they could be nipped in the bud by joint political efforts.
Failing that, mobile anti-missile units would be deployed near the potential aggressor only as a last resort.
Some European members of NATO share Russian misgivings over NMD and have sought details of its proposals.
Robertson said: "The priority for us is to achieve a common understanding."
Colonel-General Leonid Ivashov, who heads Russia's military foreign relations department, said Russia's three-stage proposal was "radically different" from the U.S. scheme.
Washington has already signaled a willingness to negotiate over NMD with its NATO allies and Russia and China.
But a Russian military and diplomatic source, quoted by Interfax news agency, played down any suggestion that Russia and the U.S. could produce a joint anti-missile shield.
The source said such a proposal would make legitimate U.S. plans to abandon the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty -- seen by Russia as the bedrock of arms control -- and give Washington access to Russian technology it lacked.
It also could upset other key players, the source said.
"It could stir antagonism in China, India and a host of other countries which share Russia's position on the necessity of upholding the ABM agreement," the unnamed source said.
---
Russia pushes for joint European missile defense
02/20/2001
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-02-20-russianato.htm
MOSCOW (AP) - Russia's president pressed NATO's secretary-general on Tuesday to seriously consider a joint European missile defense proposal, and said Moscow continued to view NATO's eastward expansion as a clear danger.
"We have noticed your statement that the alliance does not view Russia as an adversary. We welcome this statement and appreciate it," Vladimir Putin told George Robertson in a Kremlin meeting. "But the expansion of the defensive union to the borders of Russia cannot be explained by anything other than a threat to Russia."
The Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia very much want to join the Western alliance, but NATO as a whole has no firm commitment. Their membership would allow NATO jets to reach vital sites in western Russia within minutes.
Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev presented Robertson with Russia's official proposals on a possible joint European missile defense, first put forward last year by Putin. The system is Moscow's answer to the U.S. plan to build its own limited missile defense shield to protect against possible attacks by such countries as North Korea.
If an expert commission decides that Europe is vulnerable to strikes by non-strategic missiles and the threat cannot be combatted militarily, then the proposal calls for creation of mobile anti-missile units, Defense Ministry officials said.
"These elements will be mobile and will be deployed in the directions of the greatest risk of missiles to cover the most important objects," the Interfax news agency quoted a top Defense Ministry official, Col. Gen. Leonid Ivashov, as saying.
Putin said once NATO specialists had studied Moscow's proposals, Russian experts could travel to NATO headquarters in Brussels to press their case with the alliance and with the European public. He also proposed expanding a Russian-U.S. center for exchange of information on missile launches to include European partners.
Putin expressed appreciation for Robertson's role in getting NATO-Russian relations back on track after the alliance's bombing campaign in Yugoslavia, which Moscow answered by breaking off most of the confidence-building ties that had been established between Moscow and Brussels.
But he warned that the tendency of some unnamed NATO members - presumably the United States, under the leadership of President Bush - to paint Russia in a harsh light could lead to new crises.
"We ... are aware of the statement made by certain representatives of the West - we can read - who are trying to recreate the image of Russia as the evil empire even though it doesn't scare anyone anymore," Putin said. "Any threats and arms races emerge where and when there is a lack of confidence."
Robinson responded that the priority for NATO and Russia "must be to build a crisis-resistant relationship based on trust and openness."
---
Russia Presses Missile Defense Plan
February 20, 2001
New York Times
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/20WIRE-RUSSIA.html?pagewanted=all
MOSCOW - Russian President Vladimir Putin lobbied NATO's chief Tuesday to give serious thought to Moscow's answer to the United States' multibillion-dollar plans for a national missile shield -- a smaller mobile defense system for Europe.
NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson said Russia should not count on Europeans in the alliance splitting ranks with Washington over a missile defense system.
``I made it clear that the NATO allies accept that the United States has made its decision to have an effective missile defense,'' Robertson said. ``But what is important now is that we now have a Russian proposal to deal with the same kind of perceived threat.''
Moscow vehemently opposes the U.S. plan to construct its own missile defense shield to protect against intercontinental missiles from small potential nuclear powers like North Korea. The estimated cost of a U.S. system ranges from $30 billion to $60 billion.
Details of the Russian alternative presented to Robertson on Tuesday were sketchy, but it includes proposals for joint Russian-European mobile defenses to counter medium- and short-range missiles.
The plan, said Russian military officials, also envisages forming a joint group of experts to analyze possible missile threats. If such threats are considered serious, Russia and European states would jointly deploy anti-missile defenses as a last resort.
Moscow fears the U.S. project would be expanded to protect the United States from larger nuclear arsenals, like Russia's. It says the shield would violate the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, which Moscow considers a cornerstone of disarmament; the ABM treaty prohibits a national missile defense umbrella. Russian officials also insist that Washington has exaggerated the missile threat.
In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. Craig Quigley said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had not seen the Russian proposal but was ``heartened'' by Russia's acknowledgment that Europe faces possible missile threats.
Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev presented Robertson with Russia's official proposal in a Kremlin meeting.
Putin first made the proposal last year, but the lack of details prompted observers to call it an attempt to draw a wedge between European NATO members and the United States.
Putin urged Lord Robertson to quickly consider the proposal. ``Our military and civilian experts are ready to arrive in Brussels to explain the meaning of Russian proposals to the European public,'' Putin told Robertson at a Kremlin meeting.
``The mobile anti-missile units will be deployed in the directions of the greatest risk of missiles to cover the most important facilities,'' a top Defense Ministry official, Col. Gen. Leonid Ivashov, told reporters.
In Beijing, Chinese President Jiang Zemin on Tuesday denounced U.S. plans for a missile defense shield, saying the system could ``sabotage global strategic balance and security.''
Jiang made his comments to German Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping.
Germany is among U.S. allies who have expressed reservations about missile defense and has urged Washington not to proceed without consultations with other nations.
In a phone call Tuesday, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and his Chinese counterpart Tang Jiaxuan discussed a planned Sino-Russian summit this year and agreed to coordinate their opposition to the U.S. missile shield, the foreign ministry said.
``Worry was expressed in connection with plans of the USA on developing a national missile defense system. It was agreed that Russia and China will further tightly coordinate their positions'' on preserving the AMB Treaty, which the United States wants to amend to allow a national missile defense, a statement said.
Putin thanked Robertson for his efforts to get NATO-Russian relations back on track after the alliance's bombing campaign in Yugoslavia, which Russia answered by suspending most of the confidence-building ties between Moscow and Brussels. Late Tuesday, Robertson attended the reopening of NATO's information office in Moscow.
But Putin reiterated that NATO's plan to expand eastward is among Russia's top concerns. The Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have pushed for joining the alliance.
Sergei Ivanov, the secretary of Putin's Security Council, said Russia itself may bid for NATO membership someday -- a statement Putin made last year. Robertson, in turn, invited Putin to visit NATO headquarters.
Robertson told reporters that ``an open-door policy to NATO membership in no way threatens Russia, because we do not see Russia as an adversary but a partner ... in Europe and in the Euro-Atlantic area.''
Yevgeny Volk of the Heritage Foundation's Moscow office dismissed Moscow's missile defense proposal as a propaganda effort designed to erode support for the U.S. missile defense program among NATO members.
``It's bound to fail,'' Volk said. ``Russia lacks the former Soviet propaganda machine that could influence Western Europeans.''
-------
U.S.: Administration Surveys Technology Behind The Missile Defense System
01/02/20
Radio Free Europe
By Askold Krushelnycky
http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/2001/02/20022001122235.asp
The new U.S. administration will spend the next several months considering the possible deployment of a National Missile Defense (NMD) system to protect the United States and its allies against ballistic missile attacks from so-called "rogue nations." The $60 billion plan has won some wary acceptance in Europe but has been severely criticized by Russia -- which today presented NATO with its own plan for a European missile defense shield. In this two-part report, RFE/RL correspondent Askold Krushelnycky looks at the technology behind NMD and whether such a system can really work.
Prague, 20 February 2001 (RFE/RL) -- The United States' proposed National Missile Defense (NMD) system has its roots in earlier U.S. efforts to produce an anti-missile defense, the most notable of which was the Strategic Defense Initiative.
Proposed by President Ronald Reagan's administration in the 1980s, the SDI system -- dubbed "Star Wars" -- was designed to counter a massive missile attack by the Soviet Union by using thousands of small nuclear missiles orbiting the earth in satellites.
The initiative was abandoned long before it was ready for deployment. Many critics at the time said SDI was not technically feasible in any case. But just the threat of its potential deployment has been credited with prompting the Soviet Union to make deep cuts in its arms stockpile, hastening the end of the Cold War.
When U.S. defense systems were reviewed in 1990, a mass Soviet missile attack was no longer considered a threat. But a limited attack by terrorists or nations hostile to the U.S. was. The National Missile Defense program to counter such rogue attacks was initiated the following year.
The NMD project developed slowly until 1998, when Iran and North Korea both carried out tests using Soviet-era surface-to-air missiles. Other nations including Iraq were believed to have acquired similar capabilities.
The U.S. Defense Department spokesman for NMD, Lieutenant Colonel Rick Leaner, says that knowledge led the U.S. to place a higher priority on the project. Lehner says NMD could now be operational as early as 2005:
"The U.S. has no missile defense at all at this point in time and we believe that there are nations who are intent upon developing and making operational long-range missiles with weapons of mass destruction that could perhaps in a few years threaten the U.S. homeland as well as our friends and allies, and there comes a point when you take steps to ensure the safety of your people. And we're taking those steps now."
NMD has been referred to as the new "Star Wars." But Lehner says although NMD owes a lot to its 1980s predecessor, the challenges that such a defense system faces today are different:
"It must also be remembered that the SDI program was designed to defeat thousands of warheads from hundreds of missiles from the former Soviet Union, which is a threat that is not applicable today. But we've had tremendous benefit from the investment we made in SDI and indeed it has brought us to where we are today with advanced development effort for the current National Missile Defense technology."
NMD differs from SDI most significantly in that its missiles are surface -- and not satellite- -- based. NMD is also designed to destroy enemy warheads by colliding with them in space. The collision causes no nuclear explosion, and any remaining debris from either missile incinerates upon re-entering the Earth's atmosphere.
The ambitious NMD project brings together a variety of existing and developing ground- and space-based technology to detect, track, intercept, and destroy mid-flight hostile missiles launched at the U.S. and its allies.
Early detection is key to the system's success. Although existing spy satellites with fixed orbits and pre-set viewing areas can be used for the time being, they are due to be replaced within a decade by a space-based infrared system of maneuverable satellites.
On the ground, NMD plans to use five existing early-warning ground radar systems. It will also employ x-band radar, an advanced system now in development, that will be able to track precisely the path of an enemy missile and weed out decoy missiles launched alongside a real warhead.
NMD's intercept missile consists of two parts: a booster rocket to propel the missile to a position near the enemy warhead, and the so-called Exo-atmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV), which destroys the missile by colliding with it.
The EKV is one of the most innovative components of NMD. Many say it is also its weakest link. After separating from its booster rocket, the EKV must rely on its own propulsion, guidance and communication systems while still receiving updated information from the NMD command center on Earth.
The system was given three test-runs during the Clinton administration, but only the first was successful. Lehner says the other two attempts failed because of relatively minor technical problems.
"The current program is very much on track. Right now we're preparing for our fourth intercept attempt, perhaps late this spring or early summer. Our first intercept test in October 1999 was very successful. We intercepted the mock warhead going more than 15,000 miles per hour (23,000 kilometers per hour) over the Pacific Ocean. Now we had two subsequent tests that failed, not because of the technology, but because of minor hardware (equipment) difficulties and a bit of bad luck."
However, many scientists believe that some of the scientific and technological questions facing the National Missile Defense system may be impossible to overcome. In the second part of this report, to come out tomorrow, we examine those potential problems.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
The Navy's search for answers
February 20, 2001
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-house-2001220185958.htm
It was the Navy's ultimate press coup, only it wasn't the VIPs on the USS Greeneville submarine who were doing the spinning. What was supposed to be a demonstration exercise to get 16 business leaders to "spread the word about the Navy," in the words of Pacific Fleet spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Conrad Chun, ended with the destruction of a Japanese fishing vessel and the presumed deaths of nine crewmen and students. With the news that civilians were at two of the control stations during the exercise, both the Japanese and the American people have started asking their leaders hard questions. The court of inquiry could convene as early as Thursday, though it may be some time before we have any real answers. However, the incident has also posed the more enduring question of how political and military leaders affect the public trust through their communication following such a tragedy.
Though most experts on the issue have insisted that civilian involvement in such training exercises is routine, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld insisted that no evidence exists that the visitors' presence contributed to the accident, the question remains: Why didn't the Navy report the civilians' presence at the controls until four days after the accident? Initial statements by the Navy made clear that the crew had followed appropriate procedures to look for any object that would be in the submarine's path before it rose to the surface.
The Greeneville's captain, Cmdr. Scott Waddle, has been relieved of his duty and the Navy has suspended all civilian visits during emergency surface drills. If neither the officer nor the civilians were at fault, such actions do not make sense. Granted, the public should expect the Navy to conduct a thorough investigation before it begins listing the names of those who are responsible. But no-fault statements do more to fuel distrust than to allay it.
Japan has done its share to fuel public suspicions. As much as the Japanese have challenged the U.S. Navy for allowing civilians to be at the controls and not being forthcoming about it, Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori's own response to the disaster was reprehensible. Upon hearing about the Japanese vessel's fate, his reaction was to ask his secretary whether he could finish his golf game. This he spent the next two hours doing. President Bush, on the the other hand, lost no time in apologizing to the prime minister directly for the incident and called for prayer for the victims.
In the wake of an investigation that may yet take weeks or months, the Navy, the Japanese leadership and the American media would do well to follow the president's example. Patience tempered with humility earns public trust in a way that quick denials and accusations never will.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
Safety fuels debate over nuclear plants
THREE MILE ISLAND ACCIDENT OFTEN CITED
Tuesday, Feb. 20, 2001
San Jose Mercury News
BY FRANK SWEENEY
http://www0.mercurycenter.com/premium/scitech/docs/nukeside20.htm
It began with a pump failure, a minor problem for the operators of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant along the Susquehanna River just a few miles from the Pennsylvania state capital.
But then a valve malfunctioned, causing a reactor coolant leak. And things got worse, as radioactive contaminants were inadvertently released into the river and air in the worst commercial reactor accident in United States history.
The March 28, 1979, incident did not cause any immediate injuries. But it aroused public fears about nuclear safety, led to lingering questions about long-term effects of the accident, and sent the nuclear power industry into a tailspin from which it only now is recovering. The cleanup cost $1 billion, and no new nuclear plants have been ordered in the United States since then.
The effect of the accident, in the early days of the nuclear power industry, was enormous. Leading to greater understanding of the risks, it triggered development of improved safety systems, better operator training and more stringent federal regulations aimed at achieving a mantra of ``Never Again.''
While safety improved in the United States, the industry took another huge public relations hit seven years later when the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukraine caught fire and exploded, sending radioactive contamination drifting over thousands of square miles of the former Soviet Union and other countries. The accident was exacerbated by a glaring construction omission -- the Chernobyl plant did not have a containment structure around the reactor vessel, a design that would have never been approved in the United States.
Now, more than 20 years after Three Mile Island, as many U.S. nuclear power plants approach the end of their normal life spans and their operators seek to extend their 40-year licenses an additional 20 years, critics voice new concerns.
One of their biggest fears is that aging plants will become ever more at risk of accidents as their components break down after years of operating in a hellish, super-heated environment. They say there is no answer to safe storage of spent nuclear fuel, which will remain deadly radioactive for centuries.
Nuclear power ``was promised to us as safe, yet it's hard to forget Three Mile Island where the incredible and impossible accident happened, and Chernobyl where vast tracts of land have been rendered poisoned for the far distant future,'' said Paul Gunter, director of the Reactor Watchdog Program of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service in Washington, D.C. ``This is an industry that is inherently dangerous.''
The Three-Mile Island accident occurred when the plant was only a few months old, when things are most likely to break, Gunter said. ``What we've yet to see are accidents resulting from age deterioration in the final stages of plants' lives.''
Nuclear power plants ``have gotten a lot older, cracked, eroded, corroded and embrittled,'' Gunter said. ``Industry and the regulators do not have good science in predicting how quickly these things are going to wear out at the end of their lives.''
As an example, Gunter cited ruptures of steam generator tubes in pressurized water reactors, the most common type in the United States. In these reactors, the cooling water from the reactor enters a steam generator through tubes, in turn creating steam in a separate system. The radioactive water coolant does not physically mix with the water to be turned into steam -- unless the tubes rupture.
Gunter said the industry has had dozens of steam generator tube ruptures. ``Granted, there's nothing on the scale of Three Mile Island, but they could have cascaded into catastrophic releases.''
Industry representatives are quick to defend their safety record.
``Plants are designed to withstand steam generator tube ruptures,'' said Ted Marston, vice president and chief nuclear officer of the Electric Power Research Institute, a non-profit research consortium in Palo Alto. ``They've been managed because operators are trained to respond, and the newer steam generators have materials more resistant to corrosion.''
Marston said much of the equipment in nuclear plants is replaced over time ``because it wears out. We upgrade to more modern technology.''
And with relicensing of plants for additional 20 years, he said, ``we can replace major components and justify it on an economic basis.''
One of the thorniest problems is what to do with spent uranium pellets that fuel the plants. Currently, this high-level radiation is stored at the plant sites, in steel-lined concrete vaults filled with water or stainless steel or concrete casks.
In 1987, federal legislation designated Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert as the location for a central, underground repository for all high-level nuclear waste. The Department of Energy's scientific investigation of the geology and hydrology of the area found no ``showstoppers,'' and a recommendation is expected to be made to President George W. Bush by the end of the year on whether spent nuclear fuel should be stored there. But critics say Yucca Mountain is not geologically suited for a repository, and that trucks and trains transporting the waste to the site in the largest nuclear shipping campaign ever would expose people in 43 states to potential ``mobile Chernobyls.'' Yucca Mountain, Gunter said, ``has evidence of water intrusion, sits above an aquifer, has more seismic activity than the San Francisco Bay Area and is within a few miles of some very young volcanic cinder cones.''
And a transportation accident in which the shipping container is fractured and catches on fire could release a plume of irradiated fuel much like the Chernobyl accident, according to the Nuclear Information and Resource Service.
However, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, the Washington, D.C.-based industry trade association, there have been only eight accidents involving spent fuel containers in the United States over the past 40 years. No container ever leaked or cracked to relase radioactive materials.
Contact Frank Sweeney at fsweeney@sjmercury.com or (408) 920-5675.
---
Nuclear power makes a comeback
AS ELECTRICITY DEMAND SURGES,
ATTENTION RETURNS TO THE ECONOMIC POTENTIAL OF ONCE-REVILED INDUSTRY
Tuesday, Feb. 20, 2001
San Jose Mercury News
BY FRANK SWEENEY
http://www0.mercurycenter.com/premium/scitech/docs/nukes20.htm
Spurred by unsatiated electrical demand, a booming economy and deregulation, the nuclear power industry is enjoying a national resurgence after decades in the economic and political dungeons.
Nuclear power's comeback, however, is also spurring another revival -- calls of ``Remember Three Mile Island.'' Critics of nuclear energy, who nervously are watching the industry's nascent resurgence, say public opposition to nuclear energy remains as strong as ever.
But after years of being reviled for safety concerns and costs, and plagued by memories of the accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania and the meltdown of the Chernobyl plant in the former Soviet Union, beleaguered nuclear power is getting a new look from the energy industry. Plants that once sold for bargain-basement prices are now drawing billion-dollar bids. In a power industry that is rapidly consolidating, the plants are now seen not as white elephants but as cash cows.
Energy companies aren't rushing to build new nuclear power plants -- the last one was ordered in 1978, and no new plants are being proposed in California.
But new ones are being considered, mostly in the East, according to some observers. And the companies that own a large number of existing plants, which are getting closer to the end of their 40-year licensed life spans, are seeking to re-license them for an additional 20 years.
Why the renewed attention? Despite its rocky history and widespread concerns about safety and disposal of radioactive waste, nuclear power has turned out to be a highly efficient way for some power companies to produce electricity.
``People realized there's money to be made from nuclear power,'' said Mitchell Singer, spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the nuclear power trade organization in Washington, D.C. Because it does not burn fossil fuels, he said, ``it's the greatest source of emission-free electricity. It's environmentally friendly.''
Critics disagree, as strongly as ever.
The nuclear power industry is the ``largest managerial disaster in U.S. business history,'' said Paul Gunter, director of the Reactor Watchdog Program of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service in Washington, D.C.
``It has been built on the myth of the peaceful atom and resulted in the most expensive way ever to boil water to make electricity,'' Gunter said. ``It is a `clean' energy that has resulted in timeless nuclear waste.''
In addition to voicing concerns about storage and transportation of used nuclear fuel, critics worry anew about the risk of accidents. Extending the lives of aging power plants after years of exposure to intense heat and radiation, they say, could invite disaster.
A nuclear power plant is simply a device to heat water to create steam, which turns a turbine attached to a generator to produce electricity. Instead of burning fossil fuels such as oil, coal or natural gas, a controlled nuclear reaction involving uranium heats the water.
The plants use a series of steel and concrete barriers to prevent the release of radioactive material into the outside environment.
Today, 103 nuclear power reactors of two types are operating in 31 states. Only two -- the Diablo Canyon plant near San Luis Obispo and the San Onofre plant in northern San Diego County -- are in California. Voters 12 years ago shut down the Rancho Seco plant near Sacramento.
Nuclear power generates about 20 percent of the electricity in the United States, with coal-fired plants producing about half of the nation's power. In California, nuclear and coal account for less than 20 percent of the electricity generation; natural gas and hydropower provide the bulk of our energy.
The resurgence of nuclear power is a recent development.
``Over the past six to eight months, there has been a convergence of factors -- rising demand, deregulation, growing economy, improved performance of plants,'' Singer said.
``There is an estimate the economy is expected to increase electrical demand 30 to 35 percent by 2010,'' he said, while the Energy Information Agency of Department of Energy ``forecasts 1.8- to 2.5-percent increases per year over the next 20 years.''
In California, Singer said, ``half the growth is the result of the digital economy. Power consumption in Silicon Valley is growing three times faster than in the rest of the United States.''
And this has sent values of nuclear plants, depressed for decades and selling for far less than they cost to build, rising faster than Bay Area housing prices.
``The first transfers were selling for a tenth of a comparable coal plant,'' said Ted Marston, vice president and chief nuclear officer of the Electric Power Research Institute, a non-profit research consortium in Palo Alto. ``Now, prices are going up to levels of other generating assets.''
Singer, of the Nuclear Energy Institute, offered several examples.
Last year, he said, Dominion Electric Co. in Virginia spent $1.3 billion to buy a three-reactor plant in Connecticut, even though one of the reactors will be decommissioned. In November, Entergy Corp. of New Orleans bought two nuclear plants in New York for $976 million after bidding started at about $600 million.
AmerGen Energy Co. tried to buy a one-reactor plant in Vermont for $23.5 million, Singer said. But with interest from Entergy and others, AmerGen had to increase its bid to $93.8 million, and the deal still isn't done.
Probably the biggest success story against the longest odds in the nuclear power industry is that of Pacific Gas & Electric Co.'s Diablo Canyon plant, which began operating in 1985 -- 11 years behind schedule and $5 billion over budget. It had a history of design blunders that included reversed blueprints and late discovery of a nearby earthquake fault.
So in 1988, the California Utilities Commission allowed PG&E to charge artificially higher rates for electricity from the plant because it was assumed Diablo Canyon would have only a short life and operate far short of its capacity.
But Diablo Canyon turned out to be a fantastically efficient and profitable nuclear power plant. Although it lost money in its first three years of operation, it has produced more than $3 billion in profit for PG&E since.
When both reactors are operating, Diablo Canyon generates nearly 2.2 million kilowatts of electricity, enough the meet the needs of 2 million people, PG&E says.
Although nuclear plants are the most expensive to build, they are the cheapest to fuel.
It costs about $1,300 per kilowatt output to build a nuclear power plant, Singer said, compared with $1,000 for a coal-fired plant and just $440 for a natural-gas plant.
However, the payoff comes in operating costs. In 1999, the latest year for which the institute has complete figures on fuel prices, natural gas cost 3.52 cents per kilowatt-hour, oil was 3.18 cents, coal was 2.07 cents and nuclear fuel was 1.83 cents.
So it makes economic sense to extend the lives of older nuclear plants at a cost of $10 per kilowatt vs. $1,300 per kilowatt to build a new plant, Singer said.
Nuclear power plants were initially licensed by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission to operate for 40 years. Last year, two plants in Maryland and three in South Carolina were given 20-year renewals.
``Another 25 have filed or announced their intentions,'' Singer said. ``It's conceivable that most of today's 104 plants will be relicensed.''
That's in sharp contrast to just a short time ago, said Marston of the power research institute. ``Five years ago, the attitude of the utility companies was, `We're going to run these plants, but maybe not as long as we can, and decommission them prematurely,' '' he said.
Now the industry has consolidated, too.
As many as 50 different companies and utilities once operated nuclear plants. ``There are 33 now, and it will be down to six to 12 in the next five years,'' Marston said. ``People who want to be in the business know how to run them.'' Over the years, reactor operators have learned how to squeeze more electricity from their power plants, increasing output more than 20 percent as plants were upgraded and maintenance procedures revised.
In the late 1980s, nuclear power plants operated on average of 63 percent of their capacity, with a lot of downtime for maintenance and replacement of a third of their fuel every 18 months. ``Last year, plants ran close to 90 percent capacity,'' Marston said. ``It's a mature industry. We've learned a lot in the last 30 years.''
The average downtime, Singer said, was 101 days in 1990; two years ago it was 41 days, with a number of plants shutting down for as few as 25 days to refuel.
The increase in electrical generating capacity for those reasons is the equivalent of building 23 additional power plants, Singer said.
But critics such as Gunter, of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, say increased output threatens safety, as it may result in plant operators shortchanging critical maintenance.
``The industry is not only increasing the running times from 15 to 18 or even 24 months between maintenance outages, it is running them 15 percent hotter to get more electricity out of them,'' Gunter said. This, he charged, ``pits profit margins against safety margins.''
Marston disagrees.
``You could always say the glass is half empty or half full,'' Marston said. ``Much of that maintenance is being done while the plant is operating.''
Nuclear reactors have what Marston called ``two or three different trains of equipment to provide a function. You can take one out and maintain it without adversely affecting safety of the plant.''
Ultimately, even with license extensions, nuclear reactors have a limited lifespan and some day will be replaced.
Singer predicts new nuclear plants will be built in the next five to 10 years.
Economics will drive the decisions, Marston said. With natural gas prices soaring, the energy industry will look at coal-burning and nuclear-fired technologies.
``And with global climate change, is coal the best option?'' he asked. ``We may see a new nuclear plant being ordered in the next few years.''
Contact Frank Sweeney at fsweeney@sjmercury.com or (408) 920-5675
-------- ohio
Union at Piketon cancels plans to appeal to Bush
Tuesday, February 20, 2001
Akron Beacon Journal
Associated Press
BY KATHERINE RIZZO
http://www.ohio.com/bj/news/ohio/docs/023312.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A union canceled plans to send 200 uranium enrichment plant workers to an appearance Tuesday by President Bush, based on signs that a freeze in federal money for the operation will be resolved, the union leader said.
``I got calls from the White House, from the Energy Department, from the governor's office, from Senator (Mike) DeWine's office, all over,'' said Dan Minter, who heads local 5689 of the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International Union.
``We're convinced that they're going to resolve this issue, that this is being worked at high levels, including on Air Force One, since Senator DeWine is traveling with the president.''
During the president's visit to an elementary school in Columbus, Ohio, the workers had intended to urge Bush to release funds needed to save jobs at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant and preserve the ability to refire the plant if needed in the future.
Production in Piketon is scheduled to end in June.
The Clinton administration proposed putting the plant in what it called ``cold standby'' status, which requires winterizing and other changes at the plant that must begin soon. Ohio Gov. Bob Taft has said money from the federal government needs to start flowing by March.
Taft's chief aide for business, Dave Celona, met with union leaders on Tuesday, Taft spokesman Kevin Kellems said. Kellems did not know whether the governor had discussed the plant's future with Bush.
``They are working together with a unified front to make the case together. We await a decision, understanding that this is a new administration and the governor has been working with members of Congress and communicating clearly how important this is to Ohio. We anticipate further talks soon,'' Kellems said.
The Bush administration has not released the first installment of $630 million committed by the Clinton administration, and Ohio lawmakers and the union have been aggressively suggesting to the Energy Department possible ways to do that.
The financial move is complicated by questions raised by the General Accounting Office and by congressional appropriators.
The GAO said the Energy Department illegally went around Congress to make the money available for the standby preparations, winterization and the testing of a new technology at Piketon.
Rep. Sonny Callahan, R-Ala., the House Appropriations subcommittee chairman in charge of the department's budget, subsequently urged energy officials to find some other account to get the needed funds.
That has not yet happened.
The government got out of the uranium enrichment business and spun off its two processing plants in 1998 in a $1.9 billion stock sale.
The investor-owned company that now operates the plants, U.S. Enrichment Corp., decided last year it needs only one facility to handle all its business. It is keeping open the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Kentucky.
Both plants were built after World War II to enrich uranium to bomb grade, but in recent years have only processed uranium for nuclear power plant fuel.
-------- oregon
Oregon State U. one of 12 universities to house nuclear reactor
February 20, 2001
Excite News
OSU Daily Barometer Oregon State U.
By Sam Boush
http://news.excite.com/news/uw/010220/tech-88
(U-WIRE) CORVALLIS, Ore. -- In the United States response to nuclear reactors is as varied and violent as any major issue. When picturing a nuclear plant, a light-hearted person might think of scientists in white suits who sit, Homer Simpson-like, in front of daunting control boards -- the kind of guys whose most rigorous physical activity, on a given day, is stapling.
Some who remember images of the disaster at the Soviet-run Chernobyl plant are haunted by the fear of a similar catastrophe happening here in the United States.
Perhaps that's why a myriad of students are unaware that there is a nuclear reactor right here on campus. Or maybe the public's anti-nuclear sentiments combined with the desire of the university administration not to advertise to incoming students that they will live near a reactor influence the lack of awareness.
Nonetheless, Oregon State University's Radiation Center is completely harmless, its operators say, because it is equipped with a fail-safe automatic shutdown system that kicks in before temperatures get anywhere near meltdown range.
"It's really frightening to think that there is a nuclear plant in the town I grew up in," said Scott Beyer, an OSU freshman. "I know it's supposed to be safe, but we've all heard about Chernobyl and Three Mile Island."
Although Beyer, an electrical engineering student, doesn't utilize the center, the facility provides space and technical support for all types of internal and off-campus instructional activities involving nuclear science, nuclear engineering, nuclear and radiation chemistry, radiation protection and similar programs. Currently, 70-75 different courses per year are taught totally or in part at the Radiation Center: 40 percent of classes use the reactor, and 40 percent of the reactor's operating hours support these classes.
OSU is one of only 18 universities in the United States to have a Department of Energy, and one of only 12 to have a nuclear reactor of this size. Yet it looks like the most harmful thing inside the Radiation Center building, located on the corner of Jefferson Way and 35th Street on the east end of campus, should be dairy cows or day care.
"We claim that the OSU Radiation Center is the best facility in the West," said Steve Binney, director of both the Radiation Center and the Institute of Nuclear Science and Engineering. "No one has challenged us on that yet."
Built in 1964, and operational three years later, the Radiation Center features a host of specialized equipment. Among these are the TRIGA Mark II reactor and the Cobalt-60 gamma irradiator. To go near the reactor, federal law requires a visitor to strap on a dosimeter, which measures the radiation near the body. It is rare, however, for anyone to receive doses of radiation much larger than they would naturally.
The reactor may look as cold and lifeless as Leonard Nemoy, but when running at full power it can get up to one megawatt. This is the nuclear equivalent of throwing a chinchilla into a tank filled with millions of barracudas.
The reactor is fueled by uranium, which is bathed in 460 gallons of flowing water. The uranium heats the water on the bottom which rises to the top of the tank, only to be replaced by the colder water from above.
How much uranium is used?
"The amount of uranium is not discussed openly," said the Radiation Center's Analytical Support Manager, Mike Conrady, who cited security reasons, such as theft, for not disclosing the amount. "I can tell you that it is in the kilogram range."
This slight downside is balanced by a plethora of good uses for the plant. Besides being a great place to do nuclear research, the Radiation Center facilities are used in the disciplines of physics, geology, anthropology and forestry, among others. Archaeologists might use the facility's technology to determine where a particular clay pot was made, while forensic scientists use the facility for such things as analyzing bullet lead.
"We have helped out in 30 homicide cases," Binney said. "The most recent was in Polk County where our evidence helped to convict this guy for killing three people."
Tours, designed to familiarize the public with nuclear processes, go through the plant almost every day. Last year the Radiation Center conducted 113 tours involving 1,805 visitors. Among the guests were scientists, engineers, federal officials and international visitors from as far away as Japan.
"Part of our job is service," Binney said. "We provide education about nuclear matters for the general public."
So what do OSU students have to pay for this facility? Beyond tax dollars that help maintain the Radiation Center, one of the most direct effects on students is the existence of Oregon State Police on campus. OSU has both Oregon State Police and OSU Security Services on campus, whereas the University of Oregon has only a department of public safety similar to OSU's security services. The presence of a nuclear reactor is the direct reason this university has a state police force.
"Federal nuclear regulation requires an armed response capability," said Oregon State Police Trooper Timothy Gallagher. "The radioactive material in a reactor can be used as a weapon by terrorist groups."
However, don't be alarmed by talk of terrorists or meltdowns. Binney said he honestly believes a meltdown cannot happen. As for a terrorist attack on Corvallis, that's about as likely as Pauli Shore winning an Academy Award.
-------- us nuc politics
Tampering With Strategic Stability
Tuesday, February 20, 2001
Washington Post
By Leon Fuerth
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A27407-2001Feb19?language=printer
It's commendable that a review of nuclear weapons policy is an early priority of the Bush administration, but it would be more encouraging if there were reason to believe this study will be undertaken in a spirit of real inquiry. However, the outcome may well be preordained, written months ago.
The task for those engaging in this study is not likely to have been "Tell us what you think we ought to do" but rather "Tell us how to implement what we already intend to do." And those intentions have been reasonably clear since the campaign: build a much more powerful defense of the United States against ballistic missiles than can be accommodated by the ABM Treaty without radical change; abandon the treaty if it stands in the way of that objective; bypass formal arms control and instead take deep unilateral cuts in U.S. nuclear weapons; and do away with the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
There is something in this package to please almost everybody: those who think the ABM Treaty is an anachronism; those who believe we should build something approaching Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" defense; those who are impatient with lengthy negotiations and want to cut more deeply into nuclear inventories; and those who think that an end to nuclear testing presents unacceptable risks to the security of the United States. It also appeals to those who are impatient with constraints that other countries wish to put on American freedom of action -- be they allies or the Russians or the Chinese.
What is missing, however, is an appeal to the concept of strategic stability. This is an idea which holds that the relationship between opposed nuclear forces is just as, or more, important than numbers alone. Depending on how it is done, reducing nuclear launchers and warheads in and of itself might make this relationship more rather than less dangerous. SALT I -- the first strategic arms control agreement -- had this effect. It capped the number of launchers for ballistic missiles but left open the option to deploy multiple warheads on the remaining launchers (MIRVs). As a result, we and the Soviet Union entered a new and even more threatening phase of the nuclear arms race.
START II, on the other hand, was designed around a mutual recognition of this problem and as a result provided for both reductions and de-MIRVing. But START II may be a dead letter, since the Russian parliament has written into law that Russia may not execute its terms unless the United States shows that it intends to preserve the ABM Treaty. The Russians are in effect asking whether we still have agreement on a central point: that stability must be mutual or it does not really exist.
If you combine sharply reduced numbers of nuclear weapons and increasingly effective defenses, one way of looking at the result is that it creates an increased temptation for launching a first strike in a crisis. Why? Because conservative military planners can think of desperate situations in which one side might hope to destroy as much as possible of the other side's nuclear forces before they can be launched, and then rely on defenses to soak up the remainder.
Would any sane government think it could get away with this kind of plan? Perhaps not. But the arms race is only cloaked in the hyper-rational language of experts. It is really about existential, and therefore potentially irrational, fear. That is why nuclear capabilities are so much more important as drivers in the psychological equation of war and peace than are statements of intention. Capability endures; intentions do not.
But sharp nuclear reductions and a strong nuclear defense are the essence of the arms control proposal put forward by President Bush during his campaign. His position appears to be that we will unilaterally reduce as we see fit, regardless of what the Russians choose to do, and outside the bounds of any formal agreement. His position also appears to be that we will give the Russians an option to sign on to whatever form of defense we decide to build, but if they do not, we will give notice and abandon the ABM Treaty without regret, making it impossible for either side to know how far the other will go in deploying strategic defenses.
Perhaps the Russians will buy into all of this. If they do, we could have a fatally flawed nuclear relationship, by mutual agreement. At some point in the future, the results could be a calamity. The relationship between these forces could be less stable than before. And as far as nuclear weapons are concerned, reductions without benefit of a carefully negotiated agreement mean that neither side would have the right to know what has been done with the weapons taken out of sight -- a blank spot that could be a source of major trouble in a time of strained relations.
On the other hand, if the Russians do not buy in, we will end up with an open field for a new arms race: no arms control agreement to formally confine offensive nuclear weapons; no agreement to regulate defensive systems; and no agreement to prevent renewed testing and diversification of nuclear weapons.
That's not win-win. It's not even win-lose. It's lose-lose. Even though the Soviet Union is dead and the Russian Federation is for the moment poor and weakened, it would be folly to see history in such a shortsighted way. Moreover, there is the issue of how all this relates to China and its choices about strategic nuclear weapons. Not least, will costs for a much bigger missile defense come at the expense of modernizing our conventional forces?
Clearly, the opening of the Bush administration's review of nuclear policy must also mark the reopening of a major national debate on the same subject. It has been a long time since we had one. But we've had the wake-up call.
The writer was national security adviser to former vice president Al Gore and is now Shapiro Visiting Professor of International Relations at George Washington University.
-------- MILITARY
Manila Says It Will Call Cease-Fire
Tuesday, February 20, 2001
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A27464-2001Feb19?language=printer
MANILA, Philippines -- The new president of the Philippines said today that she would order a cease-fire with separatist Muslim rebels in the south of the country in an effort to give a new impetus to peace talks.
The order for suspension of military operations was expected to take effect quickly.
"I would say that building peace would be less expensive than supporting an all-out war," President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo said at a news conference.
Since becoming president Jan. 20, Arroyo has made a top priority of resuming peace talks with rebels belonging to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which is fighting for a separate Islamic state in the southern Philippines, and communist guerrillas, who are waging a Marxist insurgency nationwide.
Justice Secretary Hernando Perez said yesterday that Arroyo has approved the release of 49 political prisoners, including Muslim and communist radicals, in an effort to accelerate renewal of the talks.
----
The man in front of the tanks
February 20, 2001
Washington Times
Jeffrey Gedmin
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-column-2001220201131.htm
A decade ago, the international community trained its eyes on Vytautas Landsbergis when he stood up to Mikhail Gorbachev and Soviet tanks. Today, the former Lithuanian president warns of a different kind of threat. If NATO excludes the Baltic states from the next round of NATO enlargement, argues Mr. Landsbergis, Moscow may interpret the decision as a sign from the West that Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia still belong to the Russian sphere of influence.
The Baltic states were occupied and illegally annexed by the Soviet Union in June, 1940. The Russians continue to claim, on the contrary, that the Baltic states were always a legitimate and legal part of Soviet territory and thus should be strictly off limits to inclusion in the U.S.-led military alliance.
Mr. Landsbergis' story, now told in "Lithuania: Independent Again," is an extraordinary one. He was a quiet, mild-mannered music professor, who became president of the three million-strong republic at a time when Lithuania was squaring-off with the Soviet Union over independence. And he seemed singularly ill-suited for the task at hand. The man with no experience, no currency, precious little international support or national army faced a master politician in Mikhail Gorbachev. With four million men under arms, Mr. Gorbachev also enjoyed considerable sympathy from the West for his campaign to liberalize the Soviet Union. Would this small breakaway republic jeopardize all the progress Mr. Gorbachev was making?
Poor Mr. Landsbergis. He was "not handsome," he was "not smooth," he was not even "especially articulate," one of his close colleagues told the New York Times.
He had only courage, defiance and principle on his side. It didn't look like much. In April, 1990, the Soviets closed down the supply of natural gas and oil to Lithuania. On Jan. 13, 1991, Soviet tanks rolled into Vilnius, seizing the city's television station and surrounding the parliament building. Unarmed civilians were unable to stave-off the assault. Fourteen Lithuanians were killed as they tried to resist. Mr. Landsbergis sharply rebuked U.S. President George Bush, when Mr. Bush offered only measured criticism of Mr. Gorbachev following the deaths of the Lithuanians who tried to defend the television tower.
Mr. Landsbergis confounded the Soviet leader in negotiations. In personal contacts with Mr. Gorbachev, the Lithuanian president addressed him as Mikhail Sergeyevich, adopting the conversational style used by a respectful friend. "I wanted to demonstrate that our relationship was normal," writes Mr. Landsbergis, "that I had no intention of building psychological barriers." Otherwise, Mr. Landsbergis selectively used the expression "Your Excellency," instead of the usual expression "Comrade," a gesture that undoubtedly irritated the Soviet ruler.
On substance and detail, Mr. Landsbergis was relentless. He made it clear that he was representing the Republic of Lithuania, not the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic. Everything was negotiable. But he would not climb down on the question of national independence.
Mr. Landsbergis' autobiography offers useful insight into the history of anti-Sovietism, Lithuanian nationalism and the tiny republic's path to independence. The writer recalls from his youth his first encounters with Soviet indoctrination and intolerance. When a Lithuanian composer drafted politically unacceptable lyrics, censors promptly returned the text for revision. Mention of God was to be deleted. The reply to this overbearing insistence on conformity was an outpouring of anti-Soviet poems and literature that was stuffed into briefcases and backpacks and read by Mr. Landsbergis and his friends with great relish.
Mr. Landsbergis recounts many details of Soviet oppression including the sad story of Pavlik Morozov, who turned his father over to the secret police. The elder Morozov, a peasant farmer who had hidden grain from Soviet authorities so his family might eat, was arrested and executed. To avenge the act, the grandfather killed the boy - who becomes, in Soviet mythology, a revolutionary hero and martyr. "All this," writes Mr. Landsbergis, "for betraying his family!"
The role of Mr. Landsbergis in Lithuanian politics has dwindled. He was ousted as president in 1993 when his economic policies backfired. He later isolated himself from members of his own party when, as president of the parliament, he sought to expand his own powers, ostensibly to fight communists. Last year, he even apologized for serious mistakes made by his party over the years and his own heavy-handed approach to political opponents and the media.
Mr. Landsbergis' style in the campaign for independence no longer seemed to fit with the post-communist landscape that emerged in Lithuania. Which kind of leadership will be most suitable for this small nation, then, as Lithuania prepares its European Union and NATO credentials - and Moscow works, shrewdly and patiently, to keep the door to full Western membership closed?
Jeffrey Gedmin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and executive director of the New Atlantic Initiative.
---
China fortifying Iraq's air-defense system
February 20, 2001
Washington Times
By Bill Gertz
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-2001220223110.htm
China is building a fiber-optic communications system for Iraq's new air-defense network that was targeted by U.S. and British bombing last week, Pentagon officials confirmed yesterday.
"The Chinese are in the process of helping to construct a fiber-optic connection network to better integrate the air-defense system of Iraq," said a senior defense official. "These are largely buried fiber-optic cables that would protect them from a variety of things like weather - or coalition air attacks."
The Chinese fiber-optic program in Iraq, part of a new integrated air-defense network that was nearly finished before the raid Friday, was first reported by The Washington Post yesterday.
The air-defense network will greatly increase Iraq's ability to target and shoot down patrolling U.S. aircraft with anti-aircraft missiles, defense analysts said.
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has offered a reward to any air-defense unit that succeeds in downing a U.S. or allied jet patrolling the two air-exclusion zones over northern and southern Iraq.
The officials said the bombing raid by some two dozen warplanes was conducted on a Muslim holiday to avoid killing people - including Chinese military officials and civilians working on the fiber-optic network.
"We wanted to take out the system and hardware and not the people," the senior official said.
Pentagon officials said they do not know how long China has been helping build the air-defense network or whether the U.S. government has protested the apparent violation of U.N. sanctions on Iraq.
China's government has condemned the bombing raid, along with the Russian government.
The Chinese involvement in an Iraqi military program is raising questions among some U.S. officials about China's assistance to America's enemies. CIA Director George Tenet stated in Senate testimony last week that China is a leading supplier of weapons and missiles to rogue states, such as Iran, Libya and North Korea.
However, the Iraqi fiber-optics program is the first time China's involvement in selling arms to the Baghdad government was made public.
The damage caused by Friday's bombing of some 20 radar stations that are part of the new air-defense network is not clear and still being assessed, the officials said.
As of last week, satellite photographs and other reconnaissance data showed that seven targets described as command-and-control "nodes" or central points in the new integrated air-defense system were destroyed or severely damaged.
Because the radars vary in size, it has been difficult to tell which have been put out of action completely and which systems may be functioning fully or partially, the officials said.
China several years ago set up a nationwide system of fiber-optic communications lines through its territory. The fiber-optic system is able to handle larger volumes of communications and is more secure against electronic eavesdropping.
U.S. companies also have sold fiber-optic communications equipment to China, raising questions about whether U.S.-origin fiber-optic know-how was resold to Iraq as part of the air-defense network.
The sanctions imposed after the 1991 Persian Gulf war prohibit sales of military goods to Iraq until it gives up all its weapons of mass destruction and certain missile programs.
The United Nations allowed Chinese companies to repair severe damage to Iraq's electrical-power-grid system from the Gulf war.
Arthur Waldron, a China specialist at the University of Pennsylvania, said the Chinese help to the Iraqi air-defense system shows Beijing continues to align itself "with the most backward and repressive regimes in the world."
"We see an increasing pattern, in which the Chinese align themselves with states like North Korea, Iran, Syria and Iraq," Mr. Waldron said.
Mr. Waldron said China's communist dictatorship is the cause of Beijing's support to rogue states.
"The dictatorship needs external enemies and is exaggerating fears that foreigners are going to come in and subvert China," he said.
-------- burma/myanmar
Burmese junta figure killed in crash
February 20, 2001
Washington Times
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-2001220212751.htm
RANGOON, Burma - One of the most powerful generals in Burma's military junta was killed yesterday in a helicopter crash that left 14 others missing, the government said. A Cabinet minister and seven junta officials are among them.
The military helicopter carrying 22 officials and seven crew members crashed into the Salween River in southeastern Burma. Lt. Gen. Tin Oo, 67, was going to the city of Pa-an to inspect a bridge.
---
Burmese General Dies in Air Crash
February 20, 2001
New York Times
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/20/world/20BURM.html
YANGON, Myanmar, Feb. 19 - One of the most powerful generals in Myanmar's junta was killed today in a helicopter crash that left 14 others missing and presumed dead, the government said.
A cabinet minister and seven officials of the military junta appeared to be among the missing.
The military helicopter carrying 22 officials and 7 crew members crashed into the Salween river in the southeast of Myanmar, formerly known as Burma. Lt. Gen. Tin Oo, 67, and the rest of his party were going to Pa-an, about 100 miles southeast of the capital, Yangon, to inspect a bridge.
Myanmar Television, quoting a government statement, said the Russian-made MI-17 helicopter went down after going through "a sudden patch of bad weather."
Government officials said on condition of anonymity that among those missing and presumed dead were Brig. Gen. Lun Maung, a minister in the prime minister's office, and Maj. Gen. Sit Maung, the commander of the southeastern forces.
-------- drug war
Utah
01/02/20
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/2001-02-20-ncguest1.htm
Salt Lake City - A bill that passed the Utah House and is now before the Senate would make it a crime to surreptitiously slip someone a drug, including alcohol. Causing the consumption of any substance likely to cause bodily injury would be a misdemeanor and could be increased to a second-degree felony depending on the substance. Supporters say the proposed law will help counter the use of so-called date-rape drugs.
-------
Supreme court hears marijuana case
01/02/20
Infobeat
Associated Press
By KATHERINE PFLEGER
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406210681
WASHINGTON (AP) - Supreme Court justices joined a spirited debate Tuesday over whether law enforcement officials violated an Oregon man's constitutional rights when they used a heat-sensing device to find he was growing marijuana in his home.
At issue is whether narcotics agents violated a constitutional ban on unreasonable searches when they trained a thermal imaging device on Danny Lee Kyllo's house - without a search warrant.
Kyllo's attorney, Kenneth Lerner, said the home should be a refuge, where people should be free to let down their guard without fearing the government could be unreasonably looking over their shoulder.
``Why don't your reasonable expectations of privacy include technology? ... You know there are such things as thermal imagers,'' Justice Antonin Scalia asked. ``Why do we have to assume we live in a world without technology?''
``The burden is really improperly placed on the citizen to figure out what technology the government may come up with,'' Lerner replied.
The government argues that law enforcement officials were within constitutional limitations when they utilized the scan, which sensed heat patterns emanating from Kyllo's home indicative of lights used to grow marijuana. They used the images - along with a tip from an informant and electricity records - to obtain a search warrant of his Florence, Ore., home.
``If the thermal imager functioned like an X-ray machine ... then we don't dispute that it would be a search,'' Deputy Solicitor General Michael Dreeben said. ``We are not learning what activities are going on or where they are going on in that house.''
But Justice Steven Breyer seemed skeptical. He said that bird watchers carry binoculars and Boy Scouts have flashlights, which improve human senses, but ``who has a heat thermal device? Nobody, except a few.''
In 1991, a narcotics task force was investigating whether Kyllo's neighbors were growing marijuana at a triplex house.
But when officers used a thermal imager on Kyllo's residence, they found unusual amounts of heat coming from his home's side wall and garage roof.
After obtaining a warrant and searching the house in January 1992, agents found drug paraphernalia and more than 100 marijuana plants. Kyllo was arrested.
He was sentenced to 63 months in prison, but the high court's decision could lead to important new guidelines on how law enforcement officials use technology while conducting searches.
In the past, the high court has allowed law enforcement agencies - without warrants - to fly over a person's property or use a flashlight to illuminate a person's car.
However, the justices have required warrants when officials put microphones inside a person's home or listening devices on public telephones, among other surveillance methods.
A district court judge in Portland originally ruled against Kyllo, who pleaded guilty on the condition that he could appeal the legality of the search.
After an initial ruling in his favor, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals later upheld the use of the thermal imaging device, saying its use did not constitute an illegal search.
The case is Kyllo v. U.S., 99-8508.
On the Net: For the Supreme Court Web site: http://www.supremecourtus.gov
-------- iraq
Iraq strikes timed to avoid workers
2/20/2001
Infobeat News
http://us.f23.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login?.rand=12mtde48asmeh
WASHINGTON (AP) - The joint U.S.-British air strikes on Iraq were timed to avoid killing or injuring Chinese civilian and military workers who were helping install underground fiber-optic cables to significantly improve the effectiveness of Iraq's air defenses, a senior defense official said Monday. American and British warplanes bombed five sites in Iraq on Friday in an attack the Pentagon said was designed to degrade Iraq's capability to defend against allied air patrols over the "no fly" zone over southern Iraq. "On a Friday you have the lowest number of people present - both Iraqis and Chinese," the senior official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "The goal wasn't to kill people, the goal was to bust up stuff." The official said some portion of the fiber-optic network already was operating at the time of the bombing.
Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold, the director of operations for the Joint Staff, told a Pentagon news conference on Friday that the targets struck by American and British planes were long-range surveillance radars and other sites that provide the command-and-control links to Iraqi surface-to-air missile batteries. He said these facilities had helped Iraq coordinate its defenses and had resulted in numerous near misses against allied air patrols in recent weeks.
---
Saddam enjoys boost in popularity among Palestinians
February 20, 2001
Washington Times
By Ben Barber
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-2001220213639.htm
With a rash of vitriolic anti-Israeli rhetoric and cash payments of $10,000 to the family of every Palestinian killed by Israeli forces, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is enjoying his greatest surge of popularity in the West Bank and Gaza since the Gulf war.
Large crowds have marched in the territories for three days, waving photographs of Mr. Hussein to protest U.S. and British air strikes outside Baghdad and sending a chill through Israeli officials who recall the Iraqi Scud missiles that rained on Israel in 1991.
"Saddam, we wait for your rockets to hit Tel Aviv," members of one crowd chanted Sunday as marchers fired automatic rifles in the air.
Saddam has adroitly linked his cause to that of the Palestinians by blaming "Zionists" for the air strikes and portraying himself as a fellow victim of Israel and the West. He has mobilized 6,600 volunteers and on Saturday ordered the training of 300,000 more to create an "army for the liberation of Jerusalem."
While few Israeli officials think Saddam will reveal he has been defying U.N. resolutions by firing new Scuds at Israel, they are not taking chances.
"We have to take Saddam seriously because until now he has attempted to carry out everything he has threatened," said Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh.
"One must clearly see him as a potential danger," he told Israeli radio on Sunday. "His stance on our conflict with the Palestinians is an extreme stance and more than that it could have influence in the near term."
The United States and Israel started five days of joint military exercises using Patriot anti-missile defenses yesterday in Israel's Negev desert, possibly aimed at calming Israeli fears of an Iraqi revenge attack on Israel.
U.S. officials said the exercises were planned long before Friday's bombing of five Iraqi radar sites near Baghdad, aimed at stopping the increased firings on U.S. and British planes monitoring no-fly zones over Iraq.
Saddam has long appealed to the Arab masses as a champion who stood up to the West in the Gulf war, even though Arab states Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia joined the U.S.-led coalition against him.
His offer of $10,000 to each of the approximately 350 Palestinians killed by Israel since Sept. 29 has also endeared him to the Palestinians.
Rakad Salem, secretary-general of the Arab Liberation Front, a Palestinian faction backed by Iraq, told the London Daily Telegraph that he has given out $4 million to the families of the "martyrs" in the new intifada - $10,000 for each death and from $500 to $1,000 for each person wounded.
An Israeli army spokesman said by telephone from Jerusalem that the $10,000 Iraqi payments were also reported Sunday in the Arabic-language Palestinian press.
Asked whether the payments might be encouraging Palestinians to risk death by fighting Israelis, the spokesman said: "They have autonomy. They can get humanitarian funds if they want."
Saddam, whose own people are dying for lack of basic medicines, has also tried to ship more than 1,000 tons of food and medicine to the territories in a convoy of trucks through Jordan. Iraq complained to the United Nations yesterday that the shipment was being blocked by Israeli authorities.
Iraq has also asked the United Nations for permission to donate $930 million to the Palestinians out of the so-called oil-for-food program, which allows Iraq to sell some oil to purchase basic commodities for its people.
Palestinian officials were quick to show their appreciation after Friday's air strikes in Iraq.
"I convey our brotherly support and our stand at the side of the Iraqi people," said Ahmed Korei, Palestinian Legislative Council speaker, in a letter to his Iraqi counterpart, Saadoun Hamadi.
The outpouring of Palestinian support, most recently by some 1,500 people marching near Hebron in the West Bank yesterday, is the most dramatic since Palestinians turned out during the Gulf war to cheer the Israel-bound passage of Scud missiles overhead.
Saddam's threat of an army to capture Jerusalem is not taken too seriously since any such army would have to march across Jordan or Syria to reach Israel.
But Iraq has twice moved elements of up to five divisions near the borders with Syria and Jordan since September. It has also offered to help Syria if the fighting between Syrian-backed Hezbollah guerrillas and Israel were to draw Syria into a war with the Jewish state.
Syria, long estranged from Iraq, has been drawing closer to Baghdad in recent months and is widely reported to have reopened a major pipeline allowing Iraq to sell oil in defiance of the U.N. sanctions.
That will be a concern for Secretary of State Colin Powell, who leaves Friday for a swing through Egypt, Israel, the Palestinian territories, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Kuwait.
According to the U.N. Special Commission, which monitored Iraqi weapons programs after the Gulf war, Iraq still has from six to 24 Al-Hussein ballistic missiles, the enhanced version of the Scuds that were fired against Israel during the war.
Iraq is also capable of producing chemical and biological warheads for its missiles, Ha'aretz newspaper reported yesterday.
• Abraham Rabinovich in Jerusalem contributed to this report, which is based in part on wire service reports.
-------- u.n.
U.N. Judges Uphold War Crimes Case
February 20, 2001
New York Times
ASSOCIATED PRESS
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) -- U.N. judges on Tuesday upheld the convictions of two Bosnian Muslims and a Bosnian Croat for the murder and torture of Serb prisoners during the 1992-1995 ethnic conflict in the former Yugoslavia.
The five-judge appellate panel led by David Hunt of Australia, however, quashed several other counts against the defendants and ordered the case referred to a new court to review their sentences.
No date was given for a further hearing of the case, which has dragged on since 1997 at the International Criminal Tribunal.
Zdravko Mucic, Hazim Delic, and Esad Landzo sat still between U.N. guards in the high-security courtroom as Hunt announced the decision. Mucic, the Bosnian Croat defendant, smiled and adjusted a chunky wooden crucifix on his chest.
The defendants were sent back to a U.N. detention center in The Hague ``until further orders,'' the ruling said.
The so-called Celebici trial -- named for the camp in central Bosnia -- is the only case before the tribunal involving crimes committed against ethnic Serbs.
On Nov. 16, 1998, a three-judge court at the tribunal convicted the three defendants of the murder, torture and rape of Serb prisoners at the Celebici camp in 1992. They were sentenced to up to 20 years in prison.
The defendants, arguing that they did not have formal authority over subordinates, said in their appeal that events at the camp occurred among local Bosnians of different ethnic backgrounds.
``A position of de facto command may be sufficient to establish the necessary superior-subordinate relationship,'' the appellate panel said Tuesday in upholding the initial Celebici decision.
In a setback for the prosecution, however, the appeals chamber upheld the acquittal of a fourth defendant, Zejnil Delalic, a Muslim military commander.
Delalic had been accused of having overall control of the camp. The trial judges had said there was not enough evidence to link him to atrocities.
The appellate case was a potentially embarrassing one for the tribunal: grounds for appeal included the allegation that the Nigerian presiding judge in the original trial, Adolphus Karibi-Whyte, ``was asleep during substantial portions of the trial,'' occasionally even snoring.
While the appeals judges said the allegations were ``highly colored and gravely exaggerated,'' they accepted that Karibi-Whyte had been asleep for intervals of up to 30 minutes.
But the judges rejected the ground of appeal, saying they had ``not been satisfied that any specific prejudice was suffered by ... the appellants.'' Karibi-Whyte's term was not renewed and he returned to Nigeria following the verdict.
Although Tuesday's complex and technical judgment may have limited consequences for the defendants, it is likely to have broad ramifications for trials of political leaders charged with ordering mass atrocities.
That issue will be crucial in the cases of several Bosnian Serb leaders in custody and in particular if former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and other top suspects are ever taken into custody.
The tribunal, which convened trials in 1995, has convicted 11 Bosnian Serbs and Croats of war crimes and crimes against humanity for atrocities during the Bosnian conflict.
-------- u.s.
Civilian at the Controls: the Early Years
Tuesday, February 20, 2001
Washington Post
By Al Kamen
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A27420-2001Feb19?language=printer
Turns out this wasn't the first time an American submarine has sunk a Japanese ship named Ehime Maru, the Honolulu Star Bulletin reported last week.
On Oct. 12, 1943, during World War II, the USS Halibut torpedoed the cargo ship Ehime Maru in the Coral Sea. That ship was described as a medium freighter, displacing about 4,500 tons.
Of course, that action was intentional. The latest one was an accident. But as is becoming clear, the Navy has long known the hazards of letting civilians get their hands on the controls of nuclear subs.
Back in early 1992, our own colleague Barton Gellman took the helm of the USS Grayling. Gellman wrote: "Midway through 'angles and dangles,' a series of turning dives and climbs, Cmdr. Robert P. Dunn insisted on placing a reporter at the helm" -despite Gellman's warning that he had "no mechanical aptitude."
"It took me less than two minutes to put the sub in an uncontrolled dive," he wrote. "Somehow I managed to skew the boat and turn its vertical control surfaces partly horizontal. 'Full rise! Full rise on the planes!' yelled Diving Officer C.E. Richardson, not one bit of pleasure in his voice." Never rose to the level of an emergency, although a rack of pies spilled in the galley below.
----
Mapping strategies
February 20, 2001
Washington Times
Inside the Beltway John McCaslin Political tidbits and other shenanigans from around the nation's capital.
http://www.washtimes.com/national/inbeltway.htm
The Pentagon's National Imagery and Mapping Agency, or NIMA, blamed by the Clinton administration for producing an outdated map that led to the accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during the Kosovo war, is updating one of its teams. "The NIMA Gay/Lesbian Team is seeking highly motivated individuals who want to become involved and make a difference at NIMA," says a memo we've obtained.
Multiple purposes of the team include: The identification of agency-wide issues of common concern to members of the gay and lesbian community to include diversity and gay/lesbian-resistant behaviors, policies, practices and procedures; and the development of strategies to eliminate diversity and gay/lesbian-resistant behaviors, policies, practices and procedures.
John McCaslin, a nationally syndicated columnist, can be reached at 202/636-3284 or by e-mail:mccasl@twtmail.com.
-------- OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Iowa
01/02/20
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm
Cedar Rapids A former engineer is encouraging the state to move toward using hydrogen fuel cells and other alternatives as a way to avoid high energy prices. Bill Leighty presented a miniature hydrogen fuel cell to the Science Station in Cedar Rapids as part of a visit to promote a study sponsored partly by his family's Leighty Foundation.
Kansas
Topeka - A bill to encourage the production of biodiesel fuels has won approval in the Kansas House. The bill would exempt from all taxation all property used exclusively for producing biodiesel fuels, which use animal fat or soybeans. Supporters of the bill say the fuels are better for the environment than traditional diesel fuel.
---
Al's tank
February 20, 2001
Washington Times
Inside the Beltway John McCaslin Political tidbits and other shenanigans from around the nation's capital.
http://www.washtimes.com/national/inbeltway.htm
Three Republican members of Congress are either driving, or else are on the waiting list, for Toyota's new environmentally friendly Prius.
But not former Vice President Al Gore. Made in Japan, the $20,000 car gets 60 miles per gallon using a hybrid engine - part internal combustion, part electric.
Maryland Republican Reps. Constance A. Morella and Roscoe G. Bartlett, and freshman Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican, have all gone green with the ecologically correct cars.
"I love mine. It is spacious, has trunk room and gets great mileage," Mrs. Morella commented after picking up her new car earlier this month. "It's green, just like the technology it represents."
Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer of California and Rep. Brian Baird of Washington are also on the list to get a Prius.
Even Environmental Protection Agency chief Christine Todd Whitman is also said to be looking at one of new gas-saving, clean-burning vehicles for herself.
As for Mr. Gore, an outspoken environmentalist, we're told he wouldn't go near the new Japanese car - even for a test drive - during his recent presidential campaign.
"He was afraid of Detroit and the unions," says our automotive expert. "They hate this car."
-------- environment
Report shows global warming risks
2/20/2001
Infobeat News
http://us.f23.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login?.rand=12mtde48asmeh
GENEVA (AP) - Tropical island paradises and glistening Alpine skiing retreats may be lost to future generations, while melting ice caps in polar regions could unleash climate changes that would continue for centuries, according to a U.N. report released Monday. The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said poor countries would bear the brunt of devastating changes as a result of global warming. But it warned that the rich wouldn't be immune, with Florida and parts of the American Atlantic coast likely to be lashed by storms and rising sea levels. "Most of the earth's people will be on the losing side," Harvard University environmental scientist James J. McCarthy, who co-chaired the panel, told reporters.
Scientists meeting separately at a conference in San Francisco on Sunday said the melting of equatorial glaciers in Africa and Peru are another powerful indication of global warming. They said the white ice atop Africa's Mount Kilimanjaro, and others in Peru and Tibet, may be disappearing, the victim of a process of shrinking mountain glaciers everywhere.
Monday's Geneva report was a summary of 1,000 pages of research into "Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability," conducted by some 700 scientists. Given the political sensitivities of the climate debate, the 19-page summary was subject to line-by-line scrutiny by government representatives during weeklong discussions prior to release. The report said global economic losses from so-called natural catastrophes increased from about $4 billion per year in the 1950s to $40 billion in 1999. Total costs were in reality twice as high, it said.
Norwegian wolf hunt underway
OSLO, Norway (AP) - A Norwegian government team on Monday shot and killed the first of nine wolves marked for death in a hunt that has drawn protests from conservationists and Swedish officials. Sven Norberg, of the Norwegian Directorate for Nature Management, said the wolf was killed in Osterdalen, about 125 miles north of the capital, Oslo. The directorate ordered the wolves killed because they had wandered outside a zone in which Norway allows the animals.
Wolves were hunted to the point of extinction in southern Scandinavia until they protected in the 1970s. Now the population has grown to about 100 in Norway and neighboring Sweden.
Swedish officials objected to the hunt, saying at least 200 wolves were needed to sustain the population.
Last week, three conservation groups, including the World Wildlife Fund, failed to block the hunt in a court, which rejected claims that the was illegal because wolves are endangered. Farmers and local residents claim the wolves kill their livestock and pets, and spread fear in the long, sparsely populated Osterdalen.
Protesters have camped in the area hoping to hamper the hunt, and news reports said their presence had stopped at least one previous kill because activists were near the line of fire and the professional hunters chose not to shoot.
---
Agency's Mission Combines Conservation and Fossil Fuel Drilling
February 20, 2001
New York Times
By DOUGLAS JEHL
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/20/science/20REFU.html?pagewanted=all
VENICE, La., Feb. 15 - At the mouth of the Mississippi, at Louisiana's far southern tip, a marsh that is home to alligators, herons, egrets, ospreys, spoonbills and more than 200 other species has since 1935 enjoyed protected status as the Delta National Wildlife Refuge.
For nearly all of that time, the wildlife has shared its watery quarters with oil and gas wells, pipelines and pumping stations built by energy companies, which have also dredged countless canals, almost always acting with federal permission.
The cohabitation is not altogether unusual. From Alaska to North Dakota to Louisiana, the federal Fish and Wildlife Service permits oil and gas exploration or production at 29 of its 530 refuges, even though habitat conservation is supposed to be the agency's primary mission. Out of sight to all but wildlife, oil workers and the rare outsider, the infrastructure includes some 1,400 wells.
But now, with the Bush administration considering other federal sanctuaries, notably the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, as sources of new energy supplies, questions about what has and has not worked in places like the Delta refuge have suddenly become a focus of both interest and contention.
"I'm not saying that what's happened in Louisiana has been perfect, because nothing in life is perfect," said Senator John B. Breaux, the Louisiana Democrat who is among a handful in his party to support drilling in the Arctic refuge. "But with all the oil that's at stake in Alaska, it's time to take a look."
But environmentalists and others opposed to drilling in the Arctic refuge say the record of oil and gas developments at other refuges should, at best, be regarded as an unfortunate exception. Even if it is subtle, they argue, the harm inflicted in refuges in Louisiana and elsewhere will be long-lasting, and not worth the short-term economic gain of exploiting nonrenewable oil resources. The Arctic tundra may be even more sensitive to an industrial footprint, conservationists say.
"By definition, a wildlife refuge is a special place - it's a place that wildlife need," said Noah Matson, refuge program manager for Defenders of Wildlife, a national environmental group. "So why damage it by oil and gas activity that, one way or another, is bound to be harmful?"
Accessible only by boat, 10 miles from the nearest port, the 400,000-acre Delta refuge may be the clearest example of the coexistence that people like Mr. Breaux argue can prudently proceed in the Arctic.
"I guess if you want primitive, this is the place to come," said David Patterson, production supervisor for the Jetta Production Company, whose employees work seven days and seven off, operating from an industrial island in the marsh that is linked by pipeline to 64 wells.
Jetta and Texaco operate some 78 oil and gas wells in the refuge, making the operation the largest at any wildlife refuge in the lower 48 states.
Under these companies and Jetta's predecessor, the Chevron Corporation, there have been a number of small oil and gas spills here in the last 10 years, during which a concerted effort at environmental recordkeeping began. wildlife service officials describe several as having been significant, killing vegetation and affecting 40 to 80 acres of marsh. But the agency says there was no indication of harm to wildlife.
That record is roughly comparable with those of other refuges where oil and gas activity is under way, with no major spills or widespread death of wildlife in recent memory, wildlife service officials say. Still, at the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, oil and gas exploration has led to evidence of PCB contamination, these officials said, while at the D'Arbonne refuge in northern Louisiana, the use of improper equipment was linked to mercury contamination in the late 1980's.
At the D'Arbonne refuge and others in the South, environmental problems arise when drilling brings to the surface saltwater that is not part of the natural habitat. And in the Delta refuge and others along the Gulf Coast, the dredging of canals has contributed to the loss of wetlands.
Over all, cautioned Jim Kurth, deputy director of the national wildlife refuge system at the wildlife service, "we don't have a fair sense systemwide of the impact of oil and gas drilling in the refuges."
But energy industry officials say what is known about the record should demonstrate that energy exploration and wildlife can coexist.
"I think you can do your operations in a way that protects what a wildlife refuge is designed to protect and, in some cases, enhance it," Elliott Laws, Texaco's president for safety, health and the environment, said in a telephone interview, describing the lessons he said his company had learned since drilling its first well in the Delta refuge in 1941.
As Mr. Bush's allies, including Senator Frank H. Murkowski, the Alaska Republican who heads the Energy Committee, have been eager to point out, at least one environmental group, the Audubon Society, has appeared to condone drilling on wildlife refuges. Until 1999, the group permitted oil and gas production on a private refuge it owns on the Louisiana coast. The society has been a vocal opponent of new drilling in the Arctic refuge, but its officials have insisted that the two stances are not incompatible, on grounds that it had decided long ago to end the energy operation as soon as a lease expired.
"It's something we did, and it's why we have the position we do in Alaska," John Bianchi, an Audubon spokesman, said.
By law, national wildlife refuges enjoy a level of protection that may be second only to areas set aside by Congress as wilderness areas, off limits to all but hikers and pack horses. While national forests and most other federal land is set aside for varied purposes that include logging, mining and drilling, and national parks and monuments must be accessible to the public, refuges are supposed to permit only activity compatible with protecting wildlife.
But until about a decade ago, the rules governing refuges, first imposed in 1966, have sometimes been honored in the breach, with little effort made to determine whether operations like those in the Delta refuge were harming animal habitat. Even now, records are spotty, leaving the actual effect debatable.
In a survey of wildlife service managers by the agency in 1991 and 1992, a substantial number described oil and gas operations at their refuges as incompatible with wildlife protection. But in many cases,federal officials say, nothing can be legally done to halt the energy operations, because the subsurface rights are in private hands.
In most cases, when the federal government owns the mineral rights to land beneath the refuges, it no longer offers them for lease. But an exception is made when, as with many of the Delta wells, the government concludes that it has an obligation to taxpayers to extract the oil and gas because otherwise, a neighboring drilling operation on nonfederal land would be able to do so first.
"If you ask, Is a refuge better off with or without oil and gas development, I'd say probably without," said Dan Ashe, chief of the national wildlife system for the wildlife service.
The Arctic refuge is a special case - and not just because of the sheer volume of oil estimated to lie beneath, which at 5 billion to 19 billion acres ranks as the largest single discovery in the United States.
The refuge has been off limits to drilling, as part of a compromise reached in 1981. But Congress holds the power to authorize the start of oil development on 1.8 million acres along the coast, and Mr. Bush has said he will push for just such a vote as part of what he says is a broad effort to reduce dependence on foreign oil.
In the Senate, Mr. Murkowski is expected to introduce his own proposal in the next 10 days, as a rough draft for a Bush plan that is not expected until April. And opponents have begun to gear up for a fight about whether it is possible, as Mr. Bush has asserted, for drilling in the Arctic refuge to proceed "in an environmentally sensitive way."
At the refuge in Louisiana, wildlife managers say, oil companies have been quick to report even the smallest spill and willing to shift pipelines and even drilling sites to meet environmental concerns.
In the last 10 years, said James O. Harris, supervisory biologist for the federal refuges in southeast Louisiana, the wildlife service has collected about $1 million in fees from the oil companies to mitigate damage in the Delta refuge. That, Mr. Harris said, has been enough to help the agency recover more than 1,000 acres in wetlands, or 10 times the amount lost to energy operations in the period.
"There were times when you had spills when you wish they weren't there," Mr. Harris said of the oil companies from his office in New Orleans. "But because of their presence there, we've been able to do some restoration projects that we might not have been able to do."
Still, Jim Graham, until recently the wildlife biologist at the Delta refuge, said that as cooperative as relations were, he could never quite escape the feeling that the oil companies did not belong.
"You have a pristine area, like a refuge out there, and then you have these structures," Mr. Graham said. "They may not be doing any harm to the refuge, but you're putting an object into the area that's foreign to it."
---
Delaware
01/02/20
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/2001-02-20-ncguest1.htm
Lewes - State fishing regulators are considering a plan that could lead to Delaware's first commercial oyster harvest since 1995. The harvest would be restricted, with regulators expecting only 100 people to qualify for permits. The oyster population around the state has been decimated by disease and overfishing.
Maine
Portland - One of Maine's largest dairies is preparing an aggressive campaign to promote its hormone-free milk after seeing similar efforts pay off for other local dairies. H.P. Hood, Inc. in Portland said it plans to use the Maine Seal of Quality to push farther into the southern New England market. Over half of Maine's dairies refuse to use hormones to boost milk production.
New Jersey
Southamptom - The state's push to preserve a million acres of rural land may soon benefit Pinelands farmers who have seen the value of their land plummet. New Jersey agriculture officials are considering offering cash to Pinelands farmers if they agree never to allow their land be developed. In 1979, the federal government created the 1.1 million-acre Pinelands National Preserve to limit development, preserve open space and protect wildlife.
Rhode Island
East Providence - City officials are turning to television cameras to look for holes in the sewer system. Crews began lowering cameras into manholes and snaking them through the sewer lines to identify leaks, backups or illegal hookups. The city began to inspect the sewer system after complaints from environmental groups that untreated sewage is spilling into Narragansett Bay.
South Dakota
Rapid City - A two-day multiracial rally is planned for next month to protest the proposed expansion of the Dakota, Minnesota and Eastern Railroad. The Cowboys and Indians Alliance says the rally, on March 2-3, will bring together Lakota tribal members and non-Indian ranchers and farmers who oppose the $1.4 billion project. Opponents say the railroad will harm the environment and violates treaty rights.
Virginia
Richmond - The Mattaponi Indians went to the state Capitol to proclaim that the Mattaponi River is sacred and efforts by Newport News to pump water out of it into a reservoir would destroy their way of life. The Indians say the 1,500-acre reservoir would destroy their hunting and fishing culture as well as numerous Indian archaeological sites. The Mattaponi have lived along the river for thousands of years.
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Timber ind. optimistic about Bush
01/02/20
InfoBeat
Associated Press
By KATHERINE PFLEGER
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406210637
WASHINGTON (AP) - When George W. Bush promised throughout his campaign to let states play a larger role in land management decisions, the timber industry took note. Now that Bush is in office, industry officials want him to follow through.
They are heartened by indications from Bush advisers that steps will be taken to increase timber harvests and turn over environmental controls to states.
``I do see a new optimistic attitude in our industry,'' said Chris West, vice president of the American Forest Resource Council. ``We expect a return to some balance and thoughtfulness not driven by political science, but natural resource science. For eight years, we felt we were under assault.''
Since the late 1980s, the timber harvest on federal land has decreased about 75 percent, the result of Forest Service policy changes and various lawsuits. West said more than 200 mills have closed in the Northwest alone.
Beyond economics and jobs, federal policies that limit logging have handcuffed local forest managers, leaving the nation's forests overgrown and vulnerable to wildfires, critics say. They favor more forest thinning and other preventive projects.
Robert Nelson, a member of Bush's environmental advisory group assembled during the presidential campaign, said ``inefficient, irrational elements of environmental policy'' impede rather than promote forest health.
``The current system is extremely gridlocked,'' he said.
Environmentalists, meanwhile, are gearing up to try to protect gains made under the Clinton administration.
They are worried by what they've seen from Bush so far, noting he attended a major fund-raiser with timber interests last spring in Portland, Ore., and pointing to people like Nelson - who favors abolishing the Forest Service - as evidence Bush is listening to extremists.
They also are watching for who becomes the new head of the Forest Service and the Agriculture Department undersecretary who will oversee the service, believing those positions will offer strong indications of what types of policies to expect.
Michael Francis, senior policy adviser at The Wilderness Society, says he's confident the public will force the ``timber barons'' - Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney - not to act too quickly or broadly.
``People generally are in tune to healthy forestry. People don't go into forests to look at clear cuts,'' he said.
Bush hasn't articulated specific goals for the timber industry, but political observers say his main thrust will be to allow states to determine how the land is used.
``The No. 1 concern is that the edicts from Washington are not the way to solve problems,'' said Doug Crandall, chief of staff for the House subcommittee on forests and forest health.
Meantime, the timber industry is choosing its targets. First on the list is the ban on road-building and most logging in about one-third of all national forest land - nearly 60 million acres. It was announced just before Clinton left office.
``There is a reason it was one of the last things (Clinton) did. It was going to be the most egregious,'' said Michael Klein, spokesman for the American Forest & Paper Association. ``From a policy standpoint, it flew in the face of all scientific study'' about maintaining forest health.
Western Republicans, among them Rep. Jim Hansen, R-Utah, have bristled at the roadless plan and other last-minute Clinton environmental policies.
Hansen, chairman of the House Resources Committee, has called the roadless restrictions ``one of the most egregious abuses by the Clinton administration.'' He has vowed to overturn them.
Bush has delayed implementation of the plan for two months while the regulations are reviewed. To change them, he would have to institute a new rulemaking process, which could take years. A judge also could undo it.
Also on the industry's list of unfavorable Clinton policies:
- A November rule that limits logging, skiing or hiking in national forests if forest managers determine the activities could permanently harm the ecosystem.
- A land-access policy, released Jan. 18, specifying how landowners, including loggers, must comply with the Endangered Species Act if they need to use federal lands to access their private property.
- A plan that dramatically reduces logging to better protect fish, wildlife and drinking water across 11 million acres of the Sierra Nevada, stretching nearly the length of California. Critics say the plan will cost the timber industry some 1,000 jobs.
---
Court declines Endangered Act case
01/02/20
InfoBeat
Associated Press
By ANNE GEARAN
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406210770
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court declined Tuesday to reopen the debate over the Endangered Species Act's impact on private landowners.
The court, without comment, turned aside a case testing whether farmers may kill endangered red wolves that stray from a federal refuge.
The case contained a stark ideological and constitutional question - how far does federal control extend - and a political twist as well.
Theodore Olson, President Bush's constitutional lawyer in the Supreme Court case that decided the 2000 election, was the chief lawyer for North Carolina farmers angry over dead livestock.
Olson also was named last week as the Bush administration's solicitor general, or lead Supreme Court lawyer. If Olson was confirmed by the Senate and the justices took the wildlife case, he would have had to quit as the lawyer in this case and then decide whether to argue precisely the opposite side.
The Clinton administration opposed the farmers and argued that the wolves should be left alone. A new administration typically sticks with the positions already on record in pending Supreme Court cases, but some constitutional lawyers say this case might have been an exception.
Clinton administration lawyers hurried to file their legal papers in the case before leaving office last month.
The dispute grew out of the federal government's 1986 decision to reintroduce red wolves to eastern North Carolina.
Predatory wolves were all but eradicated in the eastern United States in the last century. Under the 1973 Endangered Species Act, the government rounded up the last wild red wolves in the mid-1970s and began a captive breeding program.
The law makes it a crime to ``take'' a threatened or endangered animal without a permit. ``Take'' is defined as ``to harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect,'' or to attempt any of those things.
On private property, a killing is excused if the animal was immediately threatening human life, or if it was caught in the act of killing livestock.
The red wolf dispute echoes fights over protections for other endangered animals, from cougars to spotted owls to tiny fish. In each case the argument came down to the question of which is more important - the animal or the livelihood, safety or convenience of people living nearby?
The farmers and officials in counties bordering the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge claim that the wolves have ranged far from federal land, killing livestock and threatening people as they go.
Olson cited a 1998 study that suggested that 41 of approximately 75 wolves in the wild lived on private land around the refuge.
Charles Gilbert Gibbs and Richard Lee Mann III lost a federal lawsuit that challenged the government's right to regulate what happened to the wolves on private land.
Mann claimed a wolf stalked his young son, and he admitted killing a wolf he believed was a threat to his cattle. Gibbs blamed wolves for the death of several calves.
A divided 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the lower court.
The landowners and county officials asked the conservative-led Supreme Court to decide if Congress' constitutional power to regulate commerce between states extends to protecting the wolves.
``While the court has suggested that the commerce power extends, unsurprisingly, to commercial transactions involving captured animals or their parts, the court has never said, much less held, that the commerce clause is brought into play due to the simple presence of wild animals on private property,'' Olson wrote in urging the justices to hear the case.
An expansive concept of interstate commerce is the constitutional bedrock for a host of sweeping federal protections for the environment, civil rights, worker safety and other issues.
For example, Congress essentially said it had power to forbid housing discrimination because even though one case of discrimination in one state would have only local effect, there is broad economic harm from many such cases in many states.
In this case, the Clinton administration said the animals are important to tourism and science. One day there might be enough animals in the wild to allow hunting for pelts, the government argued.
The government and animal protection groups also say there is little evidence the wolves harmed their neighbors.
Conservative lawyers and jurists, such as dissenting 4th Circuit Judge J. Michael Luttig, argue that many applications of the commerce clause stretch federal control far beyond what the constitutional framers imagined.
The Supreme Court avoided a direct ruling on the extent of the commerce clause earlier this term, when it limited the scope of the Clean Water Act but did not take on the wider constitutional issue.
The case is Gibbs v. Babbitt, 00-844.
-------- genetics
Some Biotech Upstarts Fizzle Against Native Plants
February 20, 2001
New York Times
By CAROL KAESUK YOON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/20/health/20WEED.html
Just being genetically engineered does not make a plant any more likely to become an invasive or persistent weed, according to a huge new decade-long study published this month in Nature.
In what some researchers called the longest-term study ever of environmental risks from biotech plants, a team of British scientists found that genetically modified potatoes, beets, corn and oilseed rape planted in natural habitats were as feeble at spreading and persisting in the wild as their traditional counterparts.
Scientists said research should allay fears that genetic engineering per se would make plants more prone to becoming vigorous, invasive pests.
"It puts the last nail in the coffin of the idea that all genetically engineered plants are terrible weeds," said Dr. Norman C. Ellstrand, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California at Riverside, who was not involved in the new study.
But researchers, including the authors, emphasized that the new findings did not mean that all biotech crops would be environmentally benign either. Though these four crops did not muster any real threat, researchers said other genetically modified plants - endowed with more advantageous foreign genes - might have what it takes to invade and persist in natural habitats.
"The problem is you might find people who want to extrapolate way too far," said Dr. Mick Crawley, an ecologist at Imperial College London and the lead researcher on the new study, "people who want to say there could be no problem with genetically modified plants in natural habitats."
Dr. Crawley said the project, which cost in the millions of dollars, was financed by public and biotech industry money.
In the grand study, the team of researchers sowed thousands of biotech and conventional seeds (or for potatoes, tubers) in 12 different natural habitats and under a variety of conditions in each habitat.
What they found was that whether genetically modified or not, the crops did not stand much of a chance in any of the habitats against England's native plants.
In fact, nearly all of the crops of both kinds disappeared within the first few years of the experiment. By the end of the full 10 years, only one outpost of traditional potato plants was still hanging on.
"The bottom line is, with these genes, in these crops, there's no difference," Dr. Crawley said of the success of the two types of plants.
Dr. Crawley noted that the particular genetically engineered crops used in the study carried foreign genes that were not likely to give the plants an advantage that would promote their spreading and survival in England's forests, heaths and bogs.
The oilseed rape, corn and beets were engineered with foreign genes providing herbicide resistance - a trait not likely to be useful in the wild where farmers are not out spraying herbicide.
The potato was genetically engineered to have insect resistance. While insects can be devastating pests to farm and garden plants, insects are typically not responsible for keeping plant population sizes in check in the wild, Dr. Crawley said. As a result, insect-resistance is not considered a powerful advantage that will increase a plant's ability to spread or persist in natural habitats.
Since the crops tested proved only as noninvasive as expected, researchers say, the study did not shed light on the more pressing question: whether biotech plants engineered with genes likely to make them succeed in the wild could indeed become fast-spreading weeds. Scientists interviewed said good candidates for testing include plants engineered with foreign genes for drought resistance or disease tolerance.
In addition, Dr. Ellstrand said that the environmental threat investigated - whether genetically engineered crops could themselves become weeds - had always been low on scientists' list of concerns about biotech plants. Among other more pressing concerns are whether genetically modified crops can create problematic weeds by passing their foreign genes on to wild relatives.
-------- imf / world bank
IMF and World Bank Heads Hail New Era With Africa
February 20, 2001
Reuters
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/world/africa-imf.html
BAMAKO, Feb 20 (Reuters) - The heads of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund hailed a new era in their relations with Africa on Tuesday during an unprecedented joint visit to the continent.
The two met 10 African heads of state during two days of meetings in the Malian capital Bamako, and were due later to meet the leaders of Algeria, South Africa and Nigeria to discuss a plan to revive investment and growth in Africa.
``Bamako marks a new vision in relations with Africa,'' Horst Koehler, director general of the IMF, told a news conference on Tuesday. ``It is the first time that the heads of state have invited us to tell us what they want and how to help them.''
World Bank President James Wolfensohn said another meeting was planned for a year's time to review progress.
``I think we have created a real partnership between the Bretton Woods institutions and the African heads of state,'' Wolfensohn said. ``The presidents have said what their priorities are, notably, health, education infrastructures and agriculture.''
Koehler and Wolfensohn were due to meet Nigeria's President Olusegun Obasanjo and his counterparts Thabo Mbeki of South Africa and Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria late on Tuesday before continuing to the Nigerian capital Abuja on Wednesday.
BLUEPRINT FOR AFRICAN RENAISSANCE
The three presidents were expected to present their plan for an African renaissance, a long-term development programme flagged by Mbeki at the World Economic Forum in Davos last month. Few details of it have been published so far.
One focus will be ways of attracting more funds for development, especially by lowering the risk of investing in Africa.
``The special thing about the Bamako meeting compared to previous meetings is that for the first time we have the directors of the two institutions together at the same time,'' said Gabon's President Omar Bongo.
Senegal's President Abdoulaye Wade, who described Koehler and Wolfensohn as ``our advocates in the West'' said Africa must not miss the chance offered it by the meeting.
``Not only are the institutions disposed to finance us more, but they are also prepared to make our case to other donors, on the sole condition that we organise ourselves to produce regional, rather than national programmes,'' Wade said.
Wolfensohn and Koehler are also due to travel to Tanzania and Kenya during their visit, aimed in part at demonstrating their commitment to Africa.
A second regional summit, this time for East Africa, will begin on Thursday in Dar es Salaam.
A small group of hecklers demonstrated outside the meeting as it opened on Monday, one of them denouncing IMF policies as ``economic circumcision.'' Africans have long accused the World Bank and IMF of dictating programmes from on high.
-------- police
Court: Police can bar suspects from own homes
02/20/2001 - Updated 05:43 PM ET
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/court/2001-02-20-heat.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) - Police who are convinced that a drug suspect will destroy evidence if left alone may hold him outside his home while they get a warrant, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.
In a second case exploring the balance between law enforcement and privacy rights, the court also heard the arguments of a man arrested after police outside his house used a heat-measuring device to detect a marijuana growing operation inside.
In the first case, Charles McArthur and a Sullivan, Ill., officer had a polite standoff outside his trailer four years ago, after police confronted him with allegations from his estranged wife that he had marijuana hidden under his couch.
For about two hours, McArthur refused to let the officer inside without a warrant, and the officer refused to let McArthur go inside alone.
The justices voted 8-1 that the officer acted appropriately.
Police "had probable cause to believe that a home contained contraband, which was evidence of a crime," and every reason to think that McArthur would destroy the stash if he got the chance, Justice Stephen J. Breyer wrote for the majority.
Indeed, McArthur has admitted that is exactly what he would have done.
Police "imposed a restraint that was both limited and tailored reasonably to secure law enforcement needs while protecting privacy interests," Breyer wrote.
As in several other drug-search cases the court has heard or decided recently, the issue pits law enforcement needs against the right to privacy. The court explored the same equation in arguments involving the heat detector.
Last November, the court ruled that police may not erect random roadblocks to look for drug dealers because such checkpoints subject many innocent motorists to scrutiny. In April, the court said authorities may not randomly squeeze luggage on buses while hunting for drugs.
Danny Lee Kyllo claims police violated the Fourth Amendment's protections against unreasonable searches when they used the heat detector to scan his house from a distance.
Police did not have a search warrant, and the government argues none was needed. The heat sensor was not "like an X-ray machine" that would allow authorities to see inside a house, Deputy Solicitor General Michael Dreeben argued to the justices Tuesday.
"We are not learning what activities are going on or where they are going on in the house," Dreeben said.
Kyllo's attorney, Kenneth Lerner, argued the heat scan was invasive enough to violate his client's privacy.
"We may expect people to walk around with binoculars, but we don't expect them to walk around with thermal imagers," Lerner said.
Justice Antonin Scalia challenged Lerner on that point.
"You know there are such things as thermal imagers," Scalia asked. "Why do we have to assume we live in a world without technology?"
Narcotics detectives used the information from the heat scan, along with a tip from an informant and electricity records, to get a warrant for Kyllo's Florence, Ore., home.
When agents searched the house in January 1992, they found drug paraphernalia and more than 100 marijuana plants. Kyllo was arrested.
A decision in his case is expected before the close of the court's current term in June.
In the Illinois standoff case decided Tuesday, the high court overturned a state appeals court's ruling that the seizure violated McArthur's Fourth Amendment rights.
Justice John Paul Stevens was the lone dissent. He said the tiny amount of drugs found in McArthur's home makes the case a poor instrument for such an important constitutional test.
Lower courts, Stevens wrote, "placed a higher value on the sanctity of the ordinary citizen's home than on the prosecution of this petty offense."
Stevens argued the court should not have tried to decide the case at all, but if pressed he would have upheld the Illinois courts.
"They correctly viewed that interest - whether the home be a humble cottage, a secondhand trailer or a stately mansion - as one meriting the most serious constitutional protection," Stevens wrote.
The case now returns to Illinois courts.
The case is Illinois v. McArthur, 99-1132.
---
Riot Police Dislodge Unionists Who Took Over Korean Plant
February 20, 2001
New York Times
By DON KIRK
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/20/world/20DAEW.html
SEOUL, South Korea, Feb. 19 - Acting against labor unionists at the Daewoo Motor Company, riot police officers stormed a large plant near Inchon today and dislodged most of the several hundred orkers who had seized it over the weekend to protest layoffs.
About 60 union members were arrested as the police took back the building.
In a showdown broadcast on television, the officers, wearing masks and carrying shields, clashed with workers at the fence around the plant and then knocked down the main gate with excavators turned into battering rams.
About 4,000 officers swarmed through the gates, swinging clubs and confronting workers who were carrying steel pipes. Columns of officers fanned through the plant, which occupies a square kilometer in Pup yong, a section of Inchon, a port 20 miles west of Seoul.
A dozen workers were injured, while many disappeared over the walls. Before fleeing they set fire to the flimsy structures they had built to sleep in during what they had hoped would be a prolonged struggle against the company's decision to cut its work force. About 100 relatives of workers, who had stayed inside the compound to support the unionists, filed out, escorted by the police, soon after the raid began.
Workers and their family members shouted denunciations of President Kim Dae Jung, whom they blame for authorizing the crackdown and whose policies, they said, jeopardize their livelihoods for the sake of big business interests.
Slogans pasted and painted on walls inside the plant denounced President Kim and Kim Woo Choong, who founded the Daewoo group and whom prosecutors want to question about accusations that he and his aides deliberately misled creditors about the group's debts.
The clash is testing President Kim's resolve to follow through on a program that calls for scaling down or closing enterprises that have been unable to survive in the current prolonged economic crisis. At the same time, the response of the workers underlined the view among many Koreans that workers are being asked to make sacrifices while owners and senior executives survive on renewed loans and bond issues.
Armed with warrants for the arrests of 32 union leaders, the police arrested 60 workers but were unable to find some of the leaders.
The occupation occurred after Daewoo Motors fired 1,750 workers on Friday. Union members built up their force on Saturday before declaring on Sunday that they would hold out until the company backed down on the dismissals.
Several hundred white-collar workers who are not members of the union entered the plant early today to protect computers, research and development facilities, and the paint shop from vandalism. Union officials did not try to block them.
If the police succeed in calming the labor storm, company officials hope to resume negotiations with the General Motors Corporation, the only bidder interested in buying the plant since the Ford Motor Company withdrew its bid in September.
Officials warned that the workers had to behave, or face far more devastating threats to their livelihoods. "The proposed foreign sale would be possible only after Daewoo Motor breaks even and can operate without fresh loans," warned the finance minister, Jin Nyum, summarizing the government's position.
Lee Seung Keun, director in charge of the Daewoo Motor problem at the government-owned Korea Development Bank, said, "We would like to sell to G.M. very quickly." Korea Development is the lead creditor for the banks that have owned Daewoo since its bankruptcy in 1999.
With the work force finally reduced, Mr. Lee said, Daewoo Motor will not need further transfusions of money after June.
Daewoo's problems were blamed largely on overspending by the founder, Mr. Kim, who is in hiding in Europe. Eight people, including two former company presidents, are charged with misleading creditors, inflating assets to $32 billion more than the company had in order to obtain loans. The eight were among 34 people, including accountants and administrators, indicted today on fraud charges.
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Germany creates police units
01/02/20
Infobeat
Associated Press
By BURT HERMAN
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406209708
FORST, Germany (AP) - Plagued by a sharp rise in hate crimes, Germany is forming special federal police units to counter neo-Nazis and is considering a program to turn skinheads into informers.
Germany's top law enforcement official on Monday visited a federal police station in eastern Brandenburg state with one of the new teams. The government is paying $1.9 million to fund 80 additional officers for the eastern border region, the largest of several such units recently put in place across the country.
``We hope to rattle the extreme-right scene in this area,'' Interior Minister Otto Schily said, adding that he's talking with other states to broaden the program.
Earlier this month, Schily said the number of hate attacks rose dramatically to 13,753 crimes between January 2000 and November, an increase of 45 percent from the year before.
On Monday, a synagogue in the northern German city of Luebeck was evacuated after receiving a bomb threat and finding a suspicious briefcase. The briefcase had wires and a red light but contained no explosive.
In March 1994, Luebeck became the site of the first attack on a Jewish place of worship in postwar Germany when young neo-Nazis firebombed the synagogue. That was followed by a May 1995 arson fire that began in the synagogue's storeroom, prompting police to put constant patrols around the building.
The new federal police units won't take over regular patrols handled by state police but will help combat neo-Nazis in their normal area of responsibility _ in train stations and at borders. The officers will also be available to help in special cases if local police need it.
In the first month the unit has been operating in Forst, on Germany's border with Poland about 95 miles southeast of Berlin, officers identified more than 100 members of the extreme right and helped patrol during a demonstration of the far-right National Democratic Party.
Along with the new officers, Schily also said he was in discussions about a ``dropout program'' for neo-Nazis allowing them to leave skinhead gangs and possibly get leniency in exchange for helping authorities.
State authorities reported 553 far-right attacks on foreigners between and January of last year and November, including killings, bodily injury and firebombings _ 156 more than during the same period in 1999.
The issue has become more visible since last summer's still-unsolved bomb attack in Duesseldorf injured a group of recent immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Despite media speculation at the time that the extreme right was involved, police have since said they think it ``unlikely'' the bombing was a hate crime.
-------- spying
Even walls won't protect your privacy now
02/20/2001
USA Today
By Tony Mauro
http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/2001-02-20-ncguest1.htm
SAN DIEGO - In the continuing saga of government invasion of our personal privacy, today could be a landmark day.
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case that asks whether police may use "thermal imaging" devices to detect the heat coming from a house - in this case, heat from an indoor marijuana-growing operation - without first obtaining a search warrant. Does this police practice violate our cherished Fourth Amendment guarantee against "unreasonable searches and seizures"?
The case is being closely watched as a guide for a whole new generation of spy toys and detection devices that law enforcement officials are using to gather evidence against potential lawbreakers.
Today, the issue is thermal imagers, hand-held devices that can detect small gradients in temperature in the houses, cars and bodies at which they are pointed. But that is just the beginning, as panelists at an American Bar Association discussion here Friday made clear.
Not long from now, panelists said, we will be grappling with satellite imagery, increasingly capable of identifying small objects (marijuana bales, perhaps stolen cars) from space. The recent use of digital cameras at the Super Bowl to match attendees with the images of known criminals opens another new frontier. With the advent of retinal "fingerprinting" - our retinas are unique - one scientist in the audience said that someday a well-placed device could scan the eyes of everyone at a stadium and precisely identify every individual there.
Some jurisdictions want to place transponders in all vehicles, enabling police to determine, for example, who passed by or stopped at a crime scene at a given time. Great for law enforcement, but not so great for our freedom to travel. Video cameras on street corners and night-vision devices that can identify a person from a mile away in total darkness are already in use.
The explosive growth of these devices can be traced to the end of the Cold War, said panelist Ronald Goldstock, a New York lawyer. National security agencies that once did not want their surveillance devices scrutinized in court are now less worried about letting police use and defend the technology.
Now is the time to intensify the study of "the application of the Constitution to significant new forms of technology," said Washington, D.C., lawyer Sheldon Krantz at the San Diego discussion.
The case before the Supreme Court is a good place to start. More than nine years ago, Oregon law enforcement officers used a thermal imaging device - an AGEMA Thermovision 210, to be exact - to determine that a lot of heat was emanating from the roof and one wall of a house on Rhododendron Drive in Florence, Ore. As they suspected, Danny Kyllo, the occupant of the house, was not growing rhododendrons or even African violets inside the house, but rather marijuana.
Kyllo was arrested on marijuana-manufacturing charges in January 1992. Ever since, the courts have wrestled with whether the use of the device by police violated Kyllo's Fourth Amendment rights.
As that length of time suggests, these issues are not easy. In this case and others that have looked at thermal imaging, judges cannot even agree about what is being searched by these devices. Some, including the latest ruling in the Kyllo case, say the police are only capturing "heat waste" outside the house and not searching or piercing the privacy of the house at all. Some have analogized this "heat waste" to the garbage you put at the side of the road for collection - which the Supreme Court has already said can be searched by police without a warrant.
That strained logic has been rejected by other courts that correctly see the use of these devices as a search of the home itself, not just its emanations. These thermal devices pick up not only "heat waste" outside, but also can detect legitimate uses within, such as a hot tub or, as one court artfully put it, "two commingled objects emitting heat in a bedroom at night" through an open window. What happened to Kyllo was clearly a search that should have been subject to Fourth Amendment constraints.
Ever since the Supreme Court first grappled with the Fourth Amendment implications of wiretapping technology early in the past century, a major factor it considers is whether the police activity violates what society would regard as a reasonable expectation of privacy. By now, for example, we no longer have a reasonable expectation that the contents of our luggage will be private when we head to the airport. As a result, officials there can pass our bags through a metal detector without first obtaining a search warrant.
With thermal imaging, as with the other new surveillance devices, that expectation of privacy needs to be preserved in the law early in the life of the technology. Once a new method of invading privacy becomes commonplace, in an oddly self-fulfilling way, it is hard to stop, because the public's expectation of privacy from the device has been washed away.
The case of Danny Kyllo may be the last best chance for the Supreme Court to draw the line boldly in favor of privacy and to keep our homes, at least, secure from the Orwellian future of a heat-seeking, eyeball-scanning, omnipresent government.
Tony Mauro is Supreme Court correspondent for Legal Times and American Lawyer Media. He is a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.
---
Sweden charges suspected spy
02/20/2001
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-02-20-swedespy.htm
STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) - Swedish police have detained a suspected spy, security officials said Tuesday.
Authorities would not reveal the nationality or gender of the suspect, but a Swedish newspaper reported that it was a man who was working for Russia.
Sweden's security police agency said the person was detained Monday on suspicion of grave espionage, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. The charge means that the suspect's activities were harmful to Sweden.
The suspect was employed in the field of trade and industry, the agency said.
"Because of the situation in the investigation, no further information can at this point of time be released," Prosecutor Tomas Lindstrand was quoted as saying in a brief statement.
The daily tabloid Expressen, citing sources familiar with the case, reported Tuesday that the male suspect was accused of cooperating with Russia.
"I can only confirm that a preliminary investigation has begun," security police chief Jan Danielsson was quoted as saying. "We are at a very sensitive stage."
Danielsson and Lindstrand could not be reached for further comment Tuesday. Russian Embassy spokesman Mikhail Skupov declined comment.
The case comes at a sensitive time as Russian President Vladimir Putin is scheduled to visit the capital, Stockholm, on March 23-24 in connection with a European Union summit.
Sweden, which has a population of about 9 million people, currently holds the rotating EU presidency. The Scandinavian nation has made good relations between Russia and the European Union one of its major goals.
Swedish Justice Ministry officials said they had been informed about the investigation but provided no details about the case.
Attorney Tomas Nilsson, who was appointed to represent the suspect, also was tightlipped about the investigation.
"I'm prevented from revealing what has emerged during the interrogation," he was quoted as saying.
Only five people have been charged with grave espionage in Sweden since World War II.
The latest case was Lt. Col. Bertil Stroeberg, arrested in 1983 on allegations that he was spying for Poland, the Swedish news agency TP reported. Stroeberg was sentenced to six years in prison.
Separately Tuesday in Washington, the FBI said a veteran agent has been accused of spying for Russia and charged with espionage.
The agent, Robert Philip Hanssen, was arrested at his home in Vienna, Virginia, Sunday night, said FBI spokesman Bill Carter.
---
FBI agent charged with espionage
02/20/2001
USA Today
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-02-20-spy1.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) - A veteran FBI agent was accused Tuesday of spying for Russia for more than 15 years, betraying three Russian undercover agents to Moscow and disclosing volumes of U.S. secrets in return for diamonds and up to $1.4 million. The FBI director called the case "the most traitorous actions imaginable." Robert Philip Hanssen, 56, the father of six, was only the third FBI agent ever accused of espionage. President Bush called it "a difficult day," particularly for the law enforcement and intelligence communities. Hanssen, a 25-year FBI agent, was arrested Sunday night at a park in suburban Virginia after dropping a package of documents for his Russian contacts, authorities said. FBI agents confiscated $50,000 hidden for him at a nearby drop site.
Hanssen provided Moscow with the identities of two KGB officials who had been recruited by the U.S. government to serve as agents in-place at the Soviet Embassy in Washington, FBI Director Louis Freeh said. The agents, whose names were first compromised by Aldrich Ames, were tried on espionage charges on their return to Moscow and executed. A third KGB official identified by Hanssen was imprisoned but ultimately released, Freeh said. Ames pleaded guilty to spying for the Soviet Union in 1994.
Operating under the codename Ramon, Hanssen kept his identity and occupation secret from the Russians, Freeh said. He said Hanssen frequently ran his name, address and his drop sites through FBI computers to see if they had raised any alarms.
Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., who said he was briefed on the case a week to 10 days ago as chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said Hanssen may have caused grave harm.
"This could be a very, very, very serious case of espionage," Shelby said in a telephone interview from Alabama. "Here's an agent who is a veteran of the FBI, who's been doing counterintelligence for a long time. He knows a lot. He could have given them a lot."
Hanssen provided the KGB and its successor agency, SVR, with information since 1985 on top secret U.S. intelligence and counterintelligence activities, including investigative techniques, sources, technical operations, double agents and targets of U.S. intelligence, according to a 100-page FBI affidavit
He also tipped off the KGB to the FBI's secret investigation of Felix Bloch, a foreign service agent suspected of spying for Moscow in 1989, the FBI said. The KGB was then able to warn Bloch, the agency said. Justice Department prosecutors were never able to find key evidence that Bloch passed secret documents.
Freeh said the extent of damage, while still being assessed, looked to be "exceptionally grave." He added, "The criminal conduct alleged represents the most traitorous actions imaginable against a country."
Bush, in a statement that he read to reporters on Air Force One, said that even in the post-Cold War era, espionage is a serious threat to U.S. national security.
"Allegations of espionage are a reminder that we live in a dangerous world, a world that sometimes does not share American values," said Bush. "To anyone who would betray its trust, I warn you, we'll find you and we'll bring you to justice."
Attorney General John Ashcroft echoed the warning, saying, "The espionage operations designed to steal vital secrets of the United States are as intense today as they have ever been."
There's always a risk that an agent with access to top secret information and knowledge of internal security procedures can breach the system, but Freeh said security measures need to be tightened and ordered an internal review, to be headed by former FBI and CIA Director William Webster.
"We don't say, at this stage ... that we have a system that can prevent this type of conduct," said Freeh.
Hanssen had been spying since 1985, the FBI alleged. It began investigating him at the end of last year, Freeh said.
The director said ongoing efforts to uncover foreign spying turned up original Russian documentation of an American spy who turned out to be Hanssen. "We didn't stumble into this investigation," said Freeh, but didn't elaborate on what led the FBI to focus on Hanssen.
According to the affidavit, Hanssen became an agent of the KGB while he was assigned to the intelligence division of the FBI field office in New York City as supervisor of a foreign counterintelligence squad.
The FBI director said agents on Sunday covertly intercepted $50,000 in cash left for Hanssen to pick up. Overall, Freeh said, Hanssen had received more than $650,000 in cash, as well as diamonds, and an additional $800,000 had been set aside for him in an overseas escrow account.
"This was his bread and butter for many, many years," said Freeh.
Hanssen kept his identity a secret even from the Russians, who did not learn his name or his employer until his arrest, Freeh said. He apparently came under FBI suspicion only late last year.
"The trusted insider betrayed his trust without detection," Freeh said.
Freeh credited the government for catching Hanssen "red-handed" in turning over secret documents but could not explain how an agent was able to work for the Russians undetected for 15 years.
Some of Hanssen's contacts have been identified, said Freeh.
Hanssen was charged with espionage and conspiracy to commit espionage after an investigation conducted by the FBI, the CIA, the State Department and the Justice Department.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Randy Bellows said Hanssen could face the death penalty if convicted and could be fined up to $2.8 million - twice his alleged personal gain from the activities of which he is accused.
The FBI agent was charged with passing classified documents to agents for the KGB on March 20, 1989, with the intent of injuring the United States. The charges contended that Hanssen had been spying since October 1985. A hearing was set for March 5.
Plato Cacheris, Hanssen's attorney, said he believes federal authorities "always talk like they have a great case, but we'll see." Asked how Hanssen would plead, Cacheris said "at this point not guilty," but he added "it's very embryonic."
Cacheris, asked if Hanssen's case was related to that of Ames, replied: "There's not a connection but there is some relevant material."
Nancy Cullen, a neighbor, described Hanssen's neighborhood as being in shock with news of the arrest. "They go to church every Sunday - if that means anything."
---
F.B.I. Agent Charged With Espionage
February 20, 2001
New York Times
By DAVID STOUT
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/20/national/20CND-SPY.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON, Feb. 20 - A veteran agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation spied for Moscow for some 15 years, selling secrets that endangered the country's security and caused the deaths of two Russian agents who were working for the United States, the Justice Department said today.
The suspect, Robert Philip Hanssen, 56, was arrested on Sunday at a wooded park near his home in Vienna, Va., just outside the capital, after leaving a package of information meant for his Russian handlers, Justice Department officials said. He was held after arraignment today in Federal Court in Virginia, where his lawyer said he would plead not guilty.
"This is a difficult day for the F.B.I.," the agency's director, Louis J. Freeh, said this afternoon at a somber news conference.
Attorney General John Ashcroft, who heads the F.B.I.'s parent organization, the Justice Department, said the case was a troubling reminder that, even in the post-cold war era, clandestine efforts to learn vital American secrets are "as intense today as they have ever been."
Mr. Freeh declined to say whether the case of Mr. Hanssen is as serious as that of Aldrich Ames, the C.I.A. offical who was sentenced in 1994 to life in prison for giving extremely sensitive secrets to the Russians. But the seriousness of the latest espionage case was underscored by the presence today not only of Mr. Ashcroft and Mr. Freeh but of William Webster, former head of both the F.B.I. and the Central Intelligence Agency.
Mr. Webster is to head a special panel to look into ways to improve F.B.I. security, Mr. Freeh said.
Mr. Freeh said Mr. Hanssen had sold, among other items, dozens of classified documents, including papers with information on Russian agents working for the United States; a study detailing what the Central Intelligence Agency knew concerning the Soviet K.G.B.'s efforts to infiltrate it, and other material detailing American secrets.
"In one case, he compromised an entire technical program of enormous value, expense and importance to the United States government," according to a 100-page affidavit released today. (Documents and photographs related to the Hanssen case were being posted today on the F.B.I. web site: www.fbi.gov.)
Randy Bellows, an assistant United States attorney in Virginia, said the defendant could face the death penalty if he is convicted. He could also be fined up to $2.8 million.
Mr. Freeh said that, around the time of the suspect's arrest, investigators had intercepted $50,000 cash at another secluded Virginia drop site. Altogether, Mr. Freeh said, the suspect received more than $650,000 in cash over the years, as well as quantities of diamonds. Although there was initial confusion today about whether the suspect received any more money, there were reports that another $800,000 had been set aside for him in an overseas account.
The F.B.I. director said Mr. Hanssen had volunteered his services to the Soviet Union and had continued to traffic with Russia after the fall of the Soviet state. Mr. Freeh declined to give many details on how the authorities had begun to suspect Mr. Hanssen. He did say that Mr. Hanssen's training and background as an agent had made him a skilled player in the cat-and-mouse game, until he came under suspicion in recent months. Mr. Hanssen's Russian handlers did not even know his identity until his arrest, Mr. Freeh said.
The Justice Department released material that it said includes extensive correspondence between Mr. Hanssen and his Russian handlers, who the authorities said did not even know his identity except for code designations like "Ramon" and "B."
In a 1985 offer to the Soviets, the department said, Mr. Hanssen wrote a high-ranking Soviet embassy official offering to send a batch of valuable documents. "I trust that an officer of your experience will handle them appropriately," the letter said. "I believe they are sufficient to justify a $100,000 payment to me."
On several occasions, letters from the Russians expressed good wishes to their American helper. "Congratulations on your promotion," one letter said. "We wish you all the very best in your life and career."
In 1987, the American expressed annoyance at confusion over a drop site. "Recognize that I am dressed in business suit and cannot slog around in inch-deep mud," he writes. On another occasion, he stresses the importance of extreme caution: "I am much safer if you know little about me. Neither of us are children about these things."
And in a 1986, the American suggests that he might like diamonds "as security to my children." Perhaps he could be a "guest lecturer" for the Russians, he suggested. "Eventually, I would appreciate an escape plan. (Nothing lasts forever.)
The two Russians who were executed were K.G.B. agents who were recruited to serve as American agents while at the Soviet embassy in Washington, Mr. Freeh said. When they returned to Moscow, they were tried and sentenced to death. Another agent whom Mr. Hanssen betrayed was imprisoned for a time in Russia, the director said.
In Moscow, Boris N. Labusov, a spokesman for Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, the K.G.B.'s successor agency overseas, went on Russian television to suggest that the publicity given the spying case in Washington was politically motivated.
As long as intelligence agencies existed, there would always be the threat of disclosing people who worked for one side or the other, Mr. Labusov said.
"When a spy scandal is elevated to a political level, it is necessary to understand who and what is behind it, who derives benefits from it," said Mr. Labusov, who avoided making more specific charges.
Mr. Hanssen, a Chicago native, received a degree in chemistry from Knox College in Illinois in 1966. He studied dentistry at Northwestern, then received a master's in accounting and information systems there in 1971. As an undergraduate, he also studied Russian. He became a certified public accountant in 1973.
After working briefly for an accounting firm, he became a special investigator for the Chicago Police Department in 1972. He joined the F.B.I. in 1976, working on white collar-crime investigations in Indiana until being assigned to the New York City office from 1978 to 1981.
In the past two decades, he has worked at the F.B.I.'s offices in Washington and New York.
President Bush issued a statement expressing dismay at the arrest of Mr. Hanssen, only the third F.B.I. agent to face such charges.
Mr. Freeh said Mr. Hanssen's actions were "an affront to the American people" and had brought "pain and suffering" upon his family. The suspect is married and has six children.
The Director said there is no evidence that any other American was involved with Mr. Hanssen's spying activities. Asked how the suspect could have remained undetected for so long, perhaps even passing polygraph exams, Mr. Freeh said there was no way to tell, yet.
Asked who was responsible for the latest embarrassment to the F.B.I., Mr. Freeh said, "The buck stops with me. It happened on my watch."
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Russia silent on spy arrest
2/20/2001
InfoBeat News
http://us.f23.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login?.rand=3amttj1gu4197
MOSCOW (AP) - Russian authorities maintained silence Tuesday after the announcement that an American who allegedly spied for Russia had been arrested in the United States. Robert Philip Hanssen, a 27-year veteran of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, was arrested in Vienna, Va. on Sunday night, FBI spokesman Bill Carter said. Boris Labusov, the spokesman for Russia's Foreign Intelligence Agency, had no comment on the arrest. A Foreign Ministry spokesman, Vladimir Oshurkov, likewise declined to comment on the arrest or its possible impact on bilateral relations. "As of now, we do not have information about this," Oshurkov said.
Russian-U.S. relations recently have been jolted by accusations of spying on both sides. Two months ago, a Moscow court convicted a former U.S. naval intelligence officer, Edmond Pope, of espionage for obtaining plans for a high-speed torpedo. Putin pardoned Pope for health reasons.
-------- terrorism
Arguments in Bomb Trial, but With His Own Lawyer
February 20, 2001
New York Times
By BENJAMIN WEISER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/20/world/20TERR.html
Defense lawyers are supposed to fight hard for their clients. But sometimes the two see things differently.
The recent opening arguments in the trial of four men accused in the conspiracy to bomb the American embassies in East Africa in 1998 were a case in point. The prosecution went first, followed by a defense lawyer. And then another defense lawyer. But when the third rose and addressed the judge, he said that he had an "important problem."
"I just have to advise the court," said the lawyer, Frederick H. Cohn, "that my client has instructed me not to open."
He added, "I don't know if I am going to obey that."
Lawyers do not have to agree to all their clients' requests, and opening arguments give the defense an important chance to make a first impression on the jury. The judge, Leonard B. Sand of Federal District Court in Manhattan, told the lawyer: "That's a decision for you to make."
Mr. Cohn said he understood, but that he would abide by the request of his client, Mohamed Rashed Daoud al-'Owhali, 24, a Saudi citizen who could face the death penalty if he is convicted of playing a role in the attack of the American embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1998.
It was not the first time Mr. al- 'Owhali and his lawyers disagreed over tactics.
Last year, different defense lawyers representing Mr. al-'Owhali were preparing to go to Washington to argue before the Justice Department that Janet Reno, who was attorney general at the time, should not authorize the death penalty against their client. But Mr. al-'Owhali told his lawyers not to go.
The lawyers appeared before Judge Sand, saying they felt conflicted between Mr. al-'Owhali's wishes and their own ethical obligations, especially in a potential death-penalty case.
Judge Sand asked the lawyers if they had any doubt about Mr. al-'Owhali's "mental capacity or the rationality of his instructions" to them. When the lawyers said no, the judge said they could ethically abide by their client's request.
The lawyers did not make the trip, and Ms. Reno eventually authorized the death penalty.
It remains to be seen whether Mr. al-'Owhali will, in the end, allow his lawyers to deliver a closing argument, or, if he is convicted of trying to carry out the suicide attack, prevent them from arguing against execution.
All Rise? Not So Fast
In some ways, the embassy bombings trial is like an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical: it takes a good long time for the stage to be set and the characters to take their appointed places before the curtain rises every day. After Hanna the bomb-sniffing dog pads through the courthouse with her nose to the ground; after the reporters waiting in the courtroom finish their joking post-mortems on yesterday's news; after the Arabic and Swahili translators discuss the weather and climb into their translation booths; after the prosecutors enter carrying files and the defense lawyers follow recalling courtroom antics of the past; after Joel Blum, the in-house audio-visual technician, checks the microphones and the half- dozen speakers mounted on the walls; after the four defendants are led in by federal marshals with their wrists cuffed behind their backs and are placed in their chairs and their hands are freed and shackles are clamped to their legs; after Judge Sand strolls in from the robing room; after members of the public are ushered toward the last row of the gallery; after motions are heard and an expectant silence settles over Courtroom 318; after everything is finally ready and the 18 jurors amble in and groggily claim their seats; then, and only then, does the trial actually begin. ALAN FEUER
Time Is No Fugitive Here
Thomas Hobbes, the 17th century British political thinker, once described human existence in nature as nasty, brutish and short. Paul W. Butler, one of the prosecutors in the bombings case, once described the terrorism trial as long, complicated and chilling.
All concerned say the trial is going to be long. But as lawyers are wont to say, there was proof beyond a reasonable doubt offered in court last week as to just how long it is likely to be.
During a break in the proceedings on Wednesday, Judge Sand told the jury that the trial was going to be so protracted that he had already arranged a week's vacation for them. In August. ALAN FEUER
-------- activists
Ex - Cold War Warriors Powell, Fischer Meet in U.S.
February 20, 2001
Reuters
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-fischer.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Secretary of State Colin Powell held his first talks in office on Tuesday with German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, who faces official inquiries at home into his left-wing militant past.
Powell, a former Cold War warrior and Fischer, a former eco-warrior, made no reference to questions about whether the German minister may have lied at a murder trial when he denied providing accommodation for an urban guerrilla in the 1970s.
They focused instead at a news conference on key issues facing their key transatlantic relationship.
These include U.S. plans for a missile shield opposed by Russia and China, cooperation in the Balkans and Europe's plans for a rapid reaction force aimed at carrying out humanitarian peacekeeping missions and taking some of NATO's burden.
``Minister Fischer is a very thoughtful and committed champion of transatlantic relations and a true friend of the United States,'' Powell told the news conference after they met to pave the way for a future meeting between President George W. Bush and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.
His words were in contrast to a controversy in Berlin over Fischer's alleged links to urban guerrilla movements in the days when he was battling police on the streets of Frankfurt.
German prosecutors have announced a probe into whether Fischer committed perjury in giving evidence in a murder trial of an ex-comrade, who was convicted last week for his part in Carlos the Jackal's 1975 attack on OPEC ministers in Vienna.
Wolfgang Bosbach, deputy parliamentary leader of Germany's opposition conservatives, said on Tuesday a parliamentary inquiry also seemed increasingly likely.
Powell said they had joked about the fact that they were former colleagues in the 1980s, of sorts.
When he was wearing a uniform to fight communism as commander of U.S. troops in former West Germany, Fischer wore jeans and sneakers on being sworn in as environment minister in Hesse state for the then-radical Green Party.
These days they both wear suits, and Fischer was on NATO's side when it bombed Yugoslavia over Belgrade's actions against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo -- unlike the days when he opposed the war against communists in Vietnam, in which Powell served.
Reminded by a reporter of Fischer's past views, which also included opposition to U.S. missiles in Germany and the Gulf War, when Powell commanded the military, the two men grinned.
``Amazing, isn't it?'' said Powell, before pointing out how much the world had changed since then.
``We are now the best of friends between our nations, and I think the best of friends between men,'' he said, shaking Fischer's hand in a show of solidarity.
REASSURANCES ON BALKANS, MISSILE DEFENSE
Powell offered fresh reassurances about the U.S. commitment to Balkan peacekeeping. There were fears of a quick pull-out after a preelection pledge by Bush to review the force.
``Today Americans and Germans stand side-by-side in that troubled region, working diligently until the day our presence there will no longer be required,'' Powell said.
He said they discussed tensions in Kosovo and expressed support for a plan by Belgrade to end violence there.
They also discussed the European Union's plans to build a rapid reaction force, which has prompted some leading U.S. Republicans to voice fears about whether it might weaken the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Similarly, European leaders have expressed concerns that U.S. plans for a National Missile Defense may threaten the stability of strategic arms control since Russia sees NMD as a threat to its arsenal of thousands of nuclear weapons.
Powell has responded by pledging to consult with Russia and China and key U.S. allies as NMD technology is tested.
Fischer said they had a ``very good discussion'' on NMD and added, ``We are looking forward (to) a close consultation within NATO and on a bilateral level.''
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Activists at Daewoo Motors clash with police
02/20/2001
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-02-20-daewoo.htm
BUPYONG, South Korea (AP) - Activists hurled gasoline bombs at club-wielding riot officers Tuesday during a protest against a police raid on striking workers at a Daewoo Motors plant a day earlier.
Protesters burned two empty police buses while marching toward the plant at Bupyong, 18 miles west of Seoul. The rally, which drew about 600 people, was organized by the Korea Confederation of Trade Unions, one of two umbrella labor groups.
At one point, angry officers used plastic shields to smash the windows of a van owned by the labor group.
The fighting, which lasted for 20 minutes, broke out when police blocked the marchers from approaching the plant. Several ambulances, sirens wailing, headed to the scene. One policeman was taken away, bleeding from a leg. Police declined to comment on the number of injuries and arrests.
Officials at the confederation said they would hold more protests until police release 80 workers detained Monday at Bupyong, which closed last week and is expected to reopen March 6.
About 1,500 workers at Daewoo's two other major car plants in South Korea, Kunsan and Changwon, staged sympathy walkouts for several hours Tuesday. However, most workers remained on the job and production was unaffected.
Police broke up a four-day protest by 600 laid-off workers at Bupyong, Daewoo Motor's main plant, on Monday night. The company fired 1,751 workers last week as part of restructuring efforts in the wake of the 1997-98 Asian currency crisis.
Daewoo Motor, South Korea's third-largest car firm, applied for bankruptcy in November under debts that totaled $15 billion at the time. Creditors want it sold to a foreign investor.
The court-appointed head of Daewoo Motor, Lee Jong-dae, confirmed negotiations to sell Daewoo to General Motors but said the American firm has yet to propose a price. GM reportedly offered between $3 billion and $4 billion last year, but Daewoo's market value has dropped considerably since then.
Daewoo can produce 2 million vehicles in plants at home and abroad. Although in deep financial trouble, it could help foreign investors break into South Korea's closed car market and use it as a stepping stone into China, a growing market.
At a Cabinet meeting, President Kim Dae-jung said the layoffs were regrettable but necessary.
"If Daewoo folds, all its employees will lose jobs. If it can survive with limited layoffs, it can hire back later those who lost jobs," Kim said.
Lee said a GM takeover would be a better option than suggestions that the government turn the car firm into a public entity funded by tax money.
"Making Daewoo a public or national corporation will take a long time and I don't think creditors would wait," he said.
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Russians protest destruction of Mir
02/20/2001
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-02-20-mir.htm
MOSCOW (AP) - On the 15th anniversary of the Mir space station, scientists and others protested Tuesday against the planned end of what was once the symbol of Russia's space glory.
About 100 protesters stood outside the headquarters of the Russian Space Agency, chanting slogans and stamping their feet to stay warm in the freezing temperatures.
Protesters criticized the Russian government's decision late last year to bring down the Mir in a controlled descent, which has been tentatively scheduled for mid-March.
The decision brought praise from Moscow's partners in the International Space Station, which want the government to devote its scarce resources for space research to the new station. Many were also relieved that the increasingly accident-prone Mir would end its orbit.
But the decision provoked anger among some cosmonauts and others who argue that the Mir has not outlived its usefulness, and among nationalists who see the space station as a national treasure.
"There's no point in dumping Mir before the International Space Station is open for scientific work," said Vladimir Bryukhanov, an engineer at the Moscow Institute for Space Instrument Design, at the protest Tuesday.
Nobody from the agency came out of the building during the demonstration.
The 140-ton space station was the jewel of the Soviet space program when it was launched on Feb. 20, 1986, and it has far surpassed the three to five years it was expected to last. But as it aged, it suffered a long string of accidents, including a fire in February 1997 and a near fatal collision with an unmanned cargo ship just four months later.
According to current plans, the Mir will be directed to a stretch of the South Pacific about equidistant between Australia and Chile in mid-March. The exact date will depend on solar activity.
Some 1,500 fragments of the station are expected to survive the fiery re-entry and fall over an ocean area 120 miles wide by 3,600 miles long.
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Kurds Abandoned on French Riviera Hold Protest to Press for Asylum
February 20, 2001
New York Times
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/20/world/20KURD.html
FRÉJUS, France, Feb. 19 - The large group of Kurds abandoned on the rocks of the Riviera pressed their case for political asylum today, even holding a sit-down strike in the military camp where they are being held.
Apparently none of the 900 immigrants have any identification, which is not uncommon among people transported by smuggling networks. Some have described a trip from Iraq through Turkey. They may be anxious to establish that they came from Iraq, to strengthen their pleas for asylum.
Their arrival has fueled a public argument over whether to welcome the Kurds or feed and comfort them and ship them out.
French officials are afraid of encouraging a rush on France by smuggling networks.
Down the coast today, 200 Africans in four boats landed illegally in Spain.
"We have to treat this issue in both a national and European context, so as not to reward the criminals who smuggled them," Prime Minister Lionel Jospin said today.
The refugees here were stranded after a week in the fetid hold of the rusting freighter East Sea, whose masked, Turkish-speaking crew ran it aground near Boulouris, just east of here, and fled in a lifeboat.
By law, the government has 20 days to deport them or free them while they await hearings. Officials have repeatedly said they will decide on a case-by-case basis, but one hinted today that it might be possible to return them en masse to Turkey because they embarked there.
This morning, about 200 of the refugees being held at Camp Lecoq, a marine base on a back road of this town, sat down to block the gate. They were only about 30 feet from journalists who were outside but kept back by a line of police. A translator, Dogan Memhet, said they had four complaints: they were cold, they disliked the food, they wanted more medical care for their children and they wanted political asylum granted quickly.
At about 10:30 this morning, at a signal from two apparent leaders, they stood up again - but having little else to do, they milled around in front of the large military bakery that serves as their mess hall.
Their complaints brought a rejoinder from a Red Cross official who said they had plenty of blankets and plenty to eat. Beyond the help of the army and Red Cross, local people have come by the base to drop off baked goods, clothing and toys.
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Police raid Daewoo Motor plant to end protest
2/20/2001
Infobeat News
http://us.f23.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login?.rand=12mtde48asmeh
BUPYONG, South Korea (AP) - Thousands of riot police raided Daewoo Motor Co.'s main plant Monday, using forklifts to break down the front gate and end a four-day sit-in protest by 600 laid-off workers. Workers fought back, hurling rocks and firebombs before dispersing and hiding inside the sprawling plant in Bupyong, 18 miles west of Seoul. At least one worker was taken to the hospital. As helicopters clattered overhead, police searched assembly lines and support buildings for workers and union leaders. Within an hour, most workers had left. About 60 protesters were detained by police. Police moved in after previous clashes with workers that left a dozen people injured.
The government of President Kim Dae-jung considers layoffs a necessary step toward streamlining the nation's bloated big businesses and regaining investor confidence. Daewoo Motor, South Korea's third-largest carmaker, collapsed in the 1997-98 Asian economic crisis. It has been surviving under court receivership since it filed for bankruptcy in November under an estimated bank debt of $10 billion.
Daewoo officials said they did not think the protest would spread because 5,000 workers at the company's two other plants in Kunsan and Changwon were not expected to join in. The layoffs were part of efforts to make Daewoo Motor more attractive to General Motors Corp. GM began negotiations to take over Daewoo in September but it is reportedly reluctant to continue without layoffs. Last week's dismissals completed Daewoo's first-phase restructuring plan to cut its total workforce by 44% from 16,149 to 10,655. Most of the layoffs came from the company's main plant, which was inefficient because of its outdated facilities.
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Scientists urged to renounce arms work
February 20, 2001
Tri-Valley Herald/Alameda Newspapers Group
By Glenn Roberts Jr.
Three anti-nuclear groups and a national environmental organization have begun an international campaign asking scientists and engineers to pledge not to perform work relevant to weapons of mass destruction.
Launched in San Francisco during this weekend's annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the campaign asks researchers to pledge never to participate in "the design, development, testing, production, maintenance, targeting, or use" of weapons of mass destruction.
Those who take the pledge are asked to renounce "research or engineering that... (will likely) be used by others" to study weapons of mass destruction.
Joseph Rotblat, a physicist who shared the Nobel Prize in 1995 for his nuclear nonproliferation work, has endorsed the pledge campaign.
In a written statement, Rotblat said, "At a time when science plays such a powerful role in the life of society, when the whole destiny of mankind may hinge on the results of scientific research, it is incumbent on all scientists to be fully conscious of that role and conduct themselves accordingly."
Responsibility
He added, "I appeal to my fellow scientists to remember their responsibility to humanity."
The campaign was organized by Livermore-based Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment, Oakland-based Western States Legal Foundation, New Mexico's Los Alamos Study Group, and the national Natural Resources Defense Council.
Andreas Toupadakis, 46, a former Lawrence Livermore Laboratory chemist who quit his job Jan. 31, 2000, because he said he could no longer justify his weapons-related work, supports the pledge.
Toupadakis, who spoke at the Saturday event launching the pledge, said he hopes that graduate students will consider committing to the pledge before they embark on their career paths.
"This pledge is trying to bring awareness to graduate students, to make sure that they don't join places where they will regret it afterward," he said Monday.
By studying what agencies are paying for research, scientists and engineers can try to determine whether the work will likely benefit weapons of mass destruction, Toupadakis said. Scientists must realize that there is an important link between weapons work and the foreign policy of the United States.
Toupadakis said that since he left the lab, "I do what I like now -- I don't do what I don't believe in."
Marylia Kelley, executive director for Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment said the campaign collected about 18 signatures on Saturday, and scientists attending the conference were encouraged to take time to mail in their pledges after the event.
Michio Kaku, a theoretical physics professor at City University in New York; Charles Schwartz, emeritus physics professor at University of California, Berkeley; Pervez Hodbhoy, a visiting physics professor from Pakistan; and Zia Mian, a research scientist at Princeton University, are also among the pledge's supporters.
"This is an international drive," Kelley said. "Our goal is an education campaign -- (to make researchers) aware of the different guises under which nuclear weapons research and development hides."
She added, "If scientists and engineers refuse to do (weapons) work, then no matter how much money governments are willing to put into it, it won't happen."
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Quebec City Crackdown
Tuesday, February 20, 2001
February 20, 2001
AlterNet
Darryl Leroux,
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=10510
From April 20-22, Quebec City has the dubious honour of hosting the 3rd Summit of the Americas. The Summit will bring together 34 heads of state -- every head of state in the Americas except Fidel Castro. And despite stringent security measures, including the largest police deployment in Canadian history, a tremendous contingency of anti-globalization protesters will be there to shake up the process.
Aside from the Summit's usual declarations on security and terrorism, human rights and democracy, the main focus of this year's meeting will be to finalize the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) agreement. According to Pierre Pettigrew, Canada's Trade Minister, "The FTAA is inextricably linked to the Summit of the Americas process."
This agreement, which by its very nature will affect the everyday lives of millions, extends the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to the entire Western hemisphere. It has been the subject of secretive negotiations since the first Summit was held in Miami in 1994. Negotiators have set 2005 as the FTAA's implementation deadline.
Like NAFTA, the FTAA will submit health, education, environmental and labor standards to the forces of the free market. There are numerous illustrations of how such free trade agreements work in favor of corporations and against governments and individuals. Take the case of Metalclad Corp., a Texas-based toxic waste-disposal company, which accused the Mexican government of violating Chapter 11 of NAFTA. The Mexican state of San Luis Potosi had refused to allow Metalclad to re-open a waste-disposal site that was contaminating the local water supply. In response, Metalclad sought $90 million in compensation. In August 2000, a NAFTA Tribunal ruled in favor of Metalclad, ordering the Mexican government to pay $16.7 million in compensation.
Meanwhile, workers have filed more than 20 labor complaints under NAFTA's labor side agreement, almost all of them against the Mexican government (since NAFTA does not allow complaints to be brought against corporations). In almost every case, fundamental violations of labor law have been proven, yet nothing concrete has been done to redress the workers' complaints. Incidents like the recent police violence of January 2000 against striking workers at Mexico's Kuk-Dong garment factory (whose biggest customer is Nike) and the Duro Bag factory (whose biggest customer is Hallmark) point out the impotence of the labor agreements. As Martha Ojeda, the director of the Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras, says, "We already know that its [NAFTA's] protections for labor rights are worthless."
Since the anti-WTO protests in Seattle, there has been a growing awareness of neo-liberalism's failure to protect citizens' rights. To the wide coalition of protesters that will decend on Quebec in April, the FTAA represents another push of that same neo-liberal agenda. Not surprisingly, Canadian authorities are well aware of the potential PR disaster the Summit could become -- and they are doing everything they can to silence the dissenting voices in Quebec.
Security measures being planned for the Summit are sweeping -- the largest police deployment in Canadian history. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) estimates that the overall budget for the police operation during the three-day Summit will be well over $22 million. Over 5,000 officers from the RCMP, provincial Surete du Quebec and local municipal forces are slated to work during the three days, while the Surete du Quebec assures people on its web site that if need be it will "co-ordinate and establish the necessary liaisons with the Canadian Armed Forces." Apparently, the need has arisen, as the Armed Forces have already been called in -- they are currently training 800 riot police just outside of Quebec City.
Police officials have declared that they will establish a security perimeter in downtown Quebec, around the Vieux-Quebec and the Haute-Ville, two areas where the Summit will take place in April. They plan on erecting a 2.4 mile long metal fence, similar to those found around prisons, in the streets of the provincial capital sometime in early spring. The perimeter will cover approximately 4 square miles of the downtown core.
Moreover, all citizens who reside or work in the security perimeter -- nearly 25,000 people -- are currently being given a security pass to enter the area, as will over 5,000 official delegates and nearly 3,000 accredited media. The original police plan to run criminal record checks on all Quebec residents receiving a pass was quickly shelved in the face of widespread public outrage.
At a November press conference to announce more details on the planned security measures, Serge Menard, Quebec's minister for Public Security, surprised many by explaining that the Orsainville provincial prison will be emptied of its over 600 inmates during the Summit to make room for arrested protesters. He later went on to justify the need for such drastic police measures by saying, "If you want peace, you must prepare for war." This thinly veiled attempt to intimidate residents of Quebec City falls in line with the RCMP's portrayal of the Summit as "an eventual crisis situation," thereby justifying all police actions.
The RCMP recently announced that it has rented all vacant apartments and houses within the security perimeter, as well as reserved all hotel accommodations within 55 miles, to avoid leaving anything vacant for trouble-makers. In an ironic twist on the notion of "free markets," the RCMP even forced several NGOs that had reserved hotel accomodations and conference rooms up to a year in advance out of their reservations, thereby assuring their space monopoly. They will reportedly go so far as to seal all sewer entrances within the security perimeter for fear of protesters finding their way through the underground maze and onto the laps of government officials and business executives.
In a late January border incident, Canadian officials extended their suppressive policies to a group of U.S. citizens. Ten New York City-based individuals trying to attend a strategy meeting organized by the Summit of the Americas Welcoming Committee (CASA in French) were denied entry into the country. Canadian officials proceeded to search the van, collecting and copying all documents pertaining to the mobilization against the Summit. As the activists were leaving, one Canadian official added wryly, "It is my job to protect the Canadian economy."
Within Quebec City, the paranoia surrounding Summit security is reaching a fevered pitch. On February 4th, two plainclothes officers arrested three youth on one of the main avenues downtown for, ironically, handing out pamphlets denouncing the Summit security's violation of civil rights. Once their story became public, both the police and Quebec City Mayor Jean-Paul L'Allier quickly apologized for the "mistake," by explaining that the officers had misunderstood a local bylaw. However, only days before, members of the largest Quebec-based coalition mobilizing against the Summit were confronted by officers for passing out the same pamphlet in a mall.
In response to these police moves, la Ligue des droits et libertes du Quebec (the Rights and Liberties League of Quebec) urged police not to create the impression that protesting is illegal, as it is a basic right protected under Canadian law. Spokesperson Andre Paradis explained "that the necessity to establish a security perimeter shouldn't transform the provincial capital into a city under siege, where the fundamental rights of civil society to express itself cannot be exercised in public space."
In spite of high-level police intimidation, a large and diverse coalition is still planning opposition to the Summit. The largest group is Operation Quebec Printemps 2001 (OQP 2001), a coalition that was formed in December 1999. OQP brings together over 30 regional organizations (as of mid-February) including unions, NGOs, campus groups, community organizations, and political parties, as well as individuals. Coalition members' concerns range from the FTAA's impacts on labor and the environment to the threats on civil liberties resulting from the Summit itself.
Although the demands of coalition members vary greatly, the aim of OQP 2001 is to raise awareness about the FTAA and globalization, organize non-violent protest, and present viable alternatives to corporate globalization. A "People's Summit" is planned for April 17-22 that will bring together activists from across the hemisphere and feature workshops, conferences, teach-ins and demonstrations. Alternatives, a large Quebec-based NGO and member of the OQP coalition, has also leased a building just beyond the security perimeter that will serve as the "Alternative Media Center." The Center is now open to journalists and a Quebec City Indy Media website (www.quebec.indymedia.org) in French, Spanish, and English is now up and running.
Another major group planning resistance to the Summit is the Montreal-based Anti-Capitalist Convergence (CLAC). Formed in April 2000 to offer a radical, anti-capitalist critique of corporate globalization, CLAC recently helped form the Quebec City-based Summit of the Americas Welcoming Committee (CASA). CASA and CLAC are now planning a Carnival Against Capital, including events in Quebec City and Montreal throughout April 2001 and culminating in a Day of Action on Friday, April 20, in Quebec City. The Carnival will include workshops, teach-ins, concerts, conferences, cabarets, street theatre, protests, and direct action.
CASA and CLAC are also planning a series of events in Quebec City, for activists to discuss strategy, build networks, and become familiar with the city. The first such meeting, at the end of January, saw over 350 activists from across the U.S. and Canada share ideas and strategies for April. Meanwhile, CLAC has an "FTAA Caravan" moving across the northeastern United States and Canada. The caravan has already visited dozens of communities, most recently in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, New Hampshire and Vermont.
CASA and OQP 2001 are also working to provide lodging and food for out-of-towners coming to Quebec City for the Summit. The two groups, in collaboration with the People's Potato (a Quebec-based organic food provider), are working on establishing kitchens in Quebec City to provide low-cost meals for locals and out-of-towners alike. Since the RCMP has reserved a block of 11,000 hotel rooms for the Summit, the search for lodging space has been difficult. However, OQP 2001 is trying to rent halls and gymnasiums and, in conjunction with the CASA, has planned an "Adopt a Protester" program. The idea, as CLAC member Jaggi Singh explains, "is to have protesters sit down and eat with Quebec City residents to get the real story (not the corporate media's) out to residents of the city. That way, people will have a chance of understanding what's actually going on."
Darryl Leroux is a freelance journalist living in Peterborough, Ontario.
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