------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Did John Wayne die of cancer caused by a radioactive
Iran, Iraq in non-conventional arms race
Media Gets Tour of Sub's Sister
Putin in Seoul for 'Epoch - Making' Korea Talks
Putin Arrives in South Korea
Health risks remain
Cellphone suits mount though risks uncertain
Sub's Commander Expresses Regret to Victims' Families
Greeneville Officers offer conflicting stories
China aids Pakistani, 'rogue' missile programs, CIA says
Iraq Sees Ongoing UN Talks on Sanctions Impasse
Altering sanctions on Iraq has support
No UN Arms Inspectors Even if Sanctions Gone
Iraq, U.N. open talks on sanctions
10 Years Later, Hussein Is Firmly in Control
UN, Iraq To Open New Round of Talks
Japan MOX fuel plan dealt a setback
Putin in Korea: A Mix of Trade and Politics
Retrograde Movement
Russia May Expand Nuclear Shield
Missile defense system not necessary
The nuclear wasteland
Sailor's Letter Claims Misfire Sank Kursk
Victor Reis To Discuss Nuclear Policy Issues
Senate Republicans Propose Big Overhaul of Energy Policy
GOP energy bill includes Alaska drilling incentive
Paducah cleanup funds face big cut
Bush Budget a New Start

MILITARY
Diplomatic courtesy
Colombian President Says U.S. Should Talk to Rebels
Medical marijuana hearings will be held this week
U.N. tribunal convicts two Bosnian Croats
U.N. Must Fight Slavery, From Bosnia to Sudan
New NATO awaits Powell
New non-lethal energy weapon heats skin

OTHER
Space Group Plans Solar Sailing Voyage
UN scientists warn of climatic Armageddon
Uncle Joe goes to the bank
Health project maps cancer hot spots
Court Argues Property-Rights Case
European farmers protest for more mad cow aid
A Global Warning to Mr. Bush
Nevada
Last-minute legacy
Britain confirms more foot-mouth woe
Festivities Turn Violent in Austin and Seattle
ATTORNEY GENERAL AGREES TO TESTIFY
Delaware
Hanssen had no role in hunt for Ames
Hanssen holds some cards in his favor
Moles Often Burrow Deeper Than Spy Hunters Can Dig
Peru opens door to pardon or amnesty for American leftist
High employee turnover raises safety concerns

ACTIVISTS
MOVEMENT VS. CAPITALIST GLOBALIZATION:
Pledge To Renounce Weapons of Mass Destruction
Don't Bushwhack Injured Workers!
Protest in Philly and DC
6th Annual United Farm Workers Student Conference
Women's EDGE Open Meeting Announcement!
Mexican Rebels Begin Protest March to the Capital
ANTIVIOLENCE MARCH
Montana
Jackson's income triggers questions
Australian upsets Tibet-rights groups
Porto Alegre Call for Mobilisation

-
-------- NUCLEAR

Did John Wayne die of cancer caused by a radioactive movie set?

The Straight Dope,
February 26, 2001
Chicago Reader
by Cecil Adams: cecil@chicagoreader.com
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_016.html

Dear Cecil:

My girlfriend says that half of the film crew and eight of the cast of the movie "The Conqueror" starring John Wayne died of cancer after an A-bomb test in Nevada. It can't be the truth--that many people--can it? Please, Cecil, give us the Straight Dope. --John L., Santa Monica, California

Cecil replies:

I'm horrified to have to report this, John, but your girlfriend's claim is only slightly exaggerated. Of the 220 persons who worked on The Conqueror on location in Utah in 1955, 91 had contracted cancer as of the early 1980s and 46 died of it, including stars John Wayne, Susan Hayward, and Agnes Moorehead and director Dick Powell. Experts say under ordinary circumstances only 30 people out of a group of that size should have gotten cancer. The cause? No one can say for sure, but many attribute the cancers to radioactive fallout from U.S. atom bomb tests in nearby Nevada. The whole ghastly story is told in The Hollywood Hall of Shame by Harry and Michael Medved. But let's start at the beginning.

The Conqueror, a putative love story involving Genghis Khan's lust for the beautiful princess Bortai (Hayward), was a classic Hollywood big budget fiasco, one of many financed by would-be movie mogul Howard Hughes. Originally director Powell wanted to get Marlon Brando for the lead, but John Wayne, then at the height of his popularity, happened to see the script one day and decided he and Genghis were meant for each other. Unfortunately, the script was written in a cornball style that was made even more ludicrous by the Duke's wooden line readings. In the following sample, Wayne/Genghis has just been urged by his sidekick Jamuga not to attack the caravan carrying Princess Bortai: "There are moments fer wisdom, Juh-mooga, then I listen to you--and there are moments fer action--then I listen to my blood. I feel this Tartar wuh-man is fer me, and my blood says, 'TAKE HER!'" In the words of one writer, it was the world's "most improbable piece of casting unless Mickey Rooney were to play Jesus in The King of Kings."

The movie was shot in the canyonlands around the Utah town of St. George. Filming was chaotic. The actors suffered in 120 degree heat, a black panther attempted to take a bite out of Susan Hayward, and a flash flood at one point just missed wiping out everybody. But the worst didn't become apparent until long afterward. In 1953, the military had tested 11 atomic bombs at Yucca Flats, Nevada, which resulted in immense clouds of fallout floating downwind. Much of the deadly dust funneled into Snow Canyon, Utah, where a lot of The Conqueror was shot. The actors and crew were exposed to the stuff for 13 weeks, no doubt inhaling a fair amount of it in the process, and Hughes later shipped 60 tons of hot dirt back to Hollywood to use on a set for retakes, thus making things even worse.

Many people involved in the production knew about the radiation (there's a picture of Wayne himself operating a Geiger counter during the filming), but no one took the threat seriously at the time. Thirty years later, however, half the residents of St. George had contracted cancer, and veterans of the production began to realize they were in trouble. Actor Pedro Armendariz developed cancer of the kidney only four years after the movie was completed, and later shot himself when he learned his condition was terminal.

Howard Hughes was said to have felt "guilty as hell" about the whole affair, although as far as I can tell it never occurred to anyone to sue him. For various reasons he withdrew The Conqueror from circulation, and for years thereafter the only person who saw it was Hughes himself, who screened it night after night during his paranoid last years.

--CECIL ADAMS

--------

Iran, Iraq in non-conventional arms race

February, 26 2001
Jerusalem Post
By David Rudge
http://www.jpost.com/Editions/2001/02/26/News/News.22017.html

HAIFA (February 26) - Iran and Iraq appear to be just a few years away from attaining atomic bomb capability, according to Dr. Dany Shoham, an expert on weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East arena.

Shoham, a senior researcher at Bar-Ilan University's Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, maintains that either might try to take a short-cut to achieve its aims.

In both cases, the regimes apparently still lack adequate quantities of fissile material - enriched military grade uranium or plutonium - necessary for producing atomic bombs.

Iran and Iraq are making intensive efforts to produce this material by domestic application of existing technologies, while seeking ways of acquiring it from other countries.

Shoham said that if either was able to achieve this, they could conceivably have nuclear bombs or atomic warheads within a year.

A recently-published report by the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) said that Iraq could have an atomic bomb within three years, and that by 2005 would have developed a long-range missile capable of hitting the capitals of Europe. The forecast relating to nuclear weapons is apparently based on the estimated time it would take Iraq to produce its own fissile material.

Shoham noted that Iran, which enjoys the support of several countries such as Pakistan, China and Russia, is in a better position than Iraq in the ballistic field, having already developed, tested, and produced a medium-to-long-range missile.

Furthermore, he stressed that Iran is covertly amassing stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons in addition to its intensive efforts to achieve nuclear capability, despite being a signatory to international conventions banning the acquisition and development of weapons of mass destruction.

"Iran has and is implementing the very same concept as Iraq - the total acquisition of all types of non-conventional weapons and, in conjunction, the development of delivery systems, primarily in the form of ballistic missiles," said Shoham.

"Iraq's programs in these fields were set back by the Gulf War and the subsequent UN inspections, but since the latter ceased in 1998 Saddam Hussein's regime has been vigorously renewing missile development and its non-conventional weapons programs.

"Iran, which is the most technologically advanced country in the Middle East with the exception of Israel, has been in a more advantageous position than Iraq. It has not been under the international microscope as much as its neighbor and has been pursuing its aims in these various fields in a far more sophisticated and elegant manner."

Shoham stressed that the threat to Israel from the non-conventional weapons race of both countries is very real and Israel has to increase intelligence efforts to meticulously monitor the progress Iran and Iraq are making in these fields.

"In this respect, close cooperation with the US should be encouraged. For its part, Israel also has to locate the facilities involved in both Iraq and Iran that are dealing with these specific programs so that they can be bombed at a later stage should this prove necessary," he said.

"I doubt the concrete effectiveness of diplomatic efforts to persuade countries like China, Pakistan and Russia to reduce their aid to Iran, for instance, but this avenue should not be disregarded and certainly not ignored.

"It is also imperative to convince the international community of the necessity for renewing and tightening international inspections in Iraq for the obvious reasons," Shoham added.

--------

Media Gets Tour of Sub's Sister

February 26, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Sub-Collision-Tour.html

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii (AP) -- It's not hard to see how 16 civilian visitors crowded into the cramped control room of the nuclear submarine USS Greeneville could have confused, if not disrupted, critical operations.

What happened Feb. 9 will come under close scrutiny when a rare Navy court of inquiry begins next week into the Greeneville's sinking of a Japanese fishing vessel off Honolulu during an emergency surfacing drill.

As a prelude to the March 5 hearings, Navy officers on Sunday gave the media a tour of the USS Columbia, the Greeneville's sister Los Angeles-class submarine.

Lt. Cmdr. John Mosier, one of two escort officers leading seven journalists on the tour, ended up crawling across the three helm position seats to lead the group into the adjacent sonar room.

Although the control room is about 15-by-12 feet, much of that space is occupied by side-by-side periscopes, two navigation tables, a three-seat helm position, a chief of the watch position, a four-seat fire control station and an officer-of-the-deck position.

Columbia's sonar room -- essentially a hallway with four work stations -- usually holds two trained sonarman and a supervisor. The Greeneville's sonar room was staffed with a trainee, a trained sonarman and a supervisor when it performed an emergency surfacing drill as a demonstration for VIP guests Feb. 9, the National Safety and Transportation Board said.

The 6,900 ton submarine surfaced under the 500-ton Ehime Maru, ripping the fishing vessel's hull open and sinking it within minutes. Twenty-six people were rescued, but nine, including four high school boys, are presumed dead.

The Navy has not released any official reports about the accident, but the NTSB's independent investigation has focused on failure of the Greeneville to detect the Ehime Maru's proximity on sonar.

Investigators noted two problems on the day of the collision: A repeater screen used in the control room to monitor sonar wasn't working and the manual, backup system wasn't available.

The sonarmen track each detected sound, forward the information to the fire control technician and announce the contacts to the control room.

The technician, sitting about six feet to the right of the officer of the deck, determines the direction, course and speed of each contact. The calculations are displayed on the technician's four monitors and on a repeater screen, mounted in front of the officer of the deck. NTSB investigators say that the Greeneville's repeater screen was not working Feb. 9.

``On board Columbia, if something were broken we would develop a procedure approved by the skipper to continue to operate,'' said Mosier, the Columbia's executive officer. ``The other thing you have to recognize is that the officer of the deck has the ability to go into sonar and look at the repeaters, he does have access to a fire control system.''

As a backup, technicians also pencil in the sonar contacts on a scroll of graph paper, also located about six feet away from the officer of the deck. The Greeneville's technician told NTSB investigators that the crowd of civilians prevented him from plotting the sonar contacts on the paper.

``To safely navigate the ship, the commanding officer... has a wide array of information such that he can develop an understanding on what's going on around him,'' said Mosier. ``If any of those data points are not immediately available, it's up to him to ascertain what he needs in order to gain a solid understanding on what's going on around him.''

Mosier stressed he was speaking of normal operating procedures and had no direct knowledge of what happened on the Greeneville. At least eight people were in the control room at the time of the collision.

In its initial briefing on the Greeneville accident, NTSB investigators pointed to the failure of the submarine to use active sonar to determine if there were surface vessels in the area.

Following an NTSB investigation of the submarine USS Houston's 1989 sinking of a tugboat 10 miles off California, the NTSB recommended the Navy direct submarines to use active sonar searches prior to coming to periscope depth in areas with high boating traffic.

But Navy submarines seldom use active sonar that transmit sound because it disrupts the much more effective passive sonar, especially in shallow waters, said Lt. Cmdr. Dave Werner, spokesman for the Pacific Submarine Command.

------

Putin in Seoul for 'Epoch - Making' Korea Talks

February 26, 2001
Reuters
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-korea-r.html

SEOUL (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin was due to meet Kim Dae-jung on Tuesday for talks the South Korean president described as an ``epoch-making'' moment in relations between the two states.

Russia has tried to play a high-profile role in an historic rapprochement under way between the two Koreas. The thaw was an emotional display as families from North and South were reunited in strictly supervised meetings coinciding with Putin's visit.

Putin placed incense on a flame before a monument to South Koreans who died fighting the Moscow-backed Communist North -- a clear symbol of how Moscow's role has changed, from Cold War patron of Pyongyang to eager trading partner of Seoul.

Russia says its remaining clout with its former clients in the North could make it an important player in peace talks. Moscow hopes to win an economic bonanza from reconciliation and also undermine U.S. arguments for an anti-missile defense shield.

Russian railway officials are part of Putin's delegation, aiming to reach a deal to link the South, via the North, to Russia's Trans-Siberian Railway. That would make it possible for South Korean goods to reach Europe by rail in a matter of days.

``The current visit of President Putin will be an epoch-making event in the history of Russian-Korean relations,'' President Kim Dae-jung told Russia's ORT public television station in a clip of an interview aired in Moscow late on Monday.

``In the past, President Yeltsin came to our country but that was at a time when inter-Korean relations were not in such a state of improvement as now, so at that time we could not consider tri-lateral projects of cooperation between North and South Korea and Russia,'' he said.

He said he and Putin would discuss the rail link and development of Russia's Siberian and Far Eastern regions.

Putin was due to meet Kim later on Tuesday and also meet Korean businessmen. On Wednesday he is to address parliament and meet an opposition leader before flying to Vietnam for a visit.

The family reunions, the third of their kind since South Korea's Kim visited Pyongyang for a landmark summit last June, were to continue through Wednesday. Korean news broadcasts have shown emotional footage of weeping family members embracing in Pyongyang and in Seoul.

RUSSIA SAYS THAW UNDERMINES MISSILE DEFENSE PLANS

A thaw on the Korean peninsula is one of Moscow's main arguments against the U.S. anti-missile shield, a $60 billion plan that Moscow and Beijing say will spark a new arms race.

Washington says it wants the shield to protect U.S. territory from missiles fired by ``states of concern'' -- it used to call them ``rogue states'' -- and North Korea tops its list.

Pyongyang jolted the West in 1998 by test-firing a ballistic missile over Japan. Washington says an updated version could hit U.S. territory by the middle of this decade, and Pyongyang could also sell its technology to other ``rogues'' like Iran or Iraq.

North Korea said it was only putting a small satellite in orbit in 1998. Putin visited Pyongyang last year and won a pledge from leader Kim Jongi-il to abandon the missile program if other states pay for future launches.

Russia says the best way to deal with the threat is to bring Pyongyang in from the cold.

---

Putin Arrives in South Korea

February 26, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-SKorea-Russia.html

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- China and North Korea used to say their alliance was as close as ``lips and teeth.'' The same could be said of the U.S.-South Korean alliance today. The powerful economy of Japan is critical to both Koreas.

Russia has the most undefined role of the four great Pacific powers on the Korean peninsula, a circumstance that Russian President Vladimir Putin hopes to change with a trip this week to Seoul. He arrived Monday night and was scheduled to leave Wednesday.

``Mr. Putin is obviously trying to announce that Russia is back, back in Asia as it is in Europe,'' said Ralph Cossa, head of the Pacific Forum CSIS, a research center in Hawaii.

The visit comes against the backdrop of Russia's criticism of U.S. plans for a missile defense system, which Washington says could foil a possible attack by countries such as North Korea.

It also coincides with fresh uncertainty over U.S.-North Korean ties: last week, Pyongyang threatened to pull out of missile and nuclear accords with the United States, citing the ``hardline'' stance of the new administration in Washington.

Putin courted Pyongyang with a visit last year. Relations between the communist allies foundered in 1990 when the Soviet Union opened diplomatic ties with South Korea and got a massive infusion of aid in return.

After meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, Putin said the North was ready to abandon its missile program if other nations help it launch civilian satellites. Some analysts perceived his remarks as an attempt to insert Russia into the long-running missile debate between Washington and Pyongyang.

Russia appears eager to play a role in the reconciliation process between the two Koreas, offering to help in the potentially lucrative reconnection of cross-border railways that run into Siberia and China.

``There is no hidden agenda,'' said Andrey Osmakov, a spokesman at the Russian embassy in Seoul. ``We don't need any war on our border. We are interested in a stable situation on the Korean Peninsula.''

Trade will feature in talks between Putin and President Kim Dae-jung. The two sides are expected to discuss a possible South Korean purchase of Russian military hardware to settle debts owed by Moscow.

In other high-level diplomatic activity, Kim Dae-jung will travel to Washington for a March 7 meeting with President Bush, and Kim Jong Il will reportedly head to Moscow in April.

Soviet and U.S. forces divided the Korean peninsula when Japanese colonizers left at the end of World War II, and Russian pilots fought on the North Korean side in the 1950-53 Korean War.

Today, Moscow does not play a role in any multilateral mechanisms on the peninsula. The four-party peace talks, for example, include the two Koreas, China and the United States.

Japan, South Korea and the United States run a consortium that is building two nuclear reactors in North Korea to alleviate energy shortages. As part of the 1994 deal, Pyongyang froze its suspected nuclear weapons program.

''(Russia) appears to act as a loose cannon, throwing its weight here and there around the peninsula, depending on circumstances and its own national interests,'' Alexandre Mansourov of the state-run Diplomatic Academy in Moscow wrote in a recent analysis.

---

Health risks remain

02/26/2001
USA Today
By Joanne Suder
http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/2001-02-26-ncoppf.htm

The cellular-phone industry has mounted a convincing, expensive campaign supporting its claim that cellphones are safe. But a crucial element is missing: sufficient, unbiased and scientifically sound research to warrant those safety claims.

Consumers have not been adequately informed or protected. And that is the reason why the courtroom has become the appropriate forum to resolve an issue that already has caused life-threatening illness and death to unsuspecting consumers, including individuals who worked within the cellular industry.

Meanwhile, a growing body of scientific data from large-scale laboratory and epidemiological studies clearly has shown that cellular-phone exposure causes damage at the DNA, or cell, level - resulting in memory loss, motor skill degradation, tissue damage and, ultimately, tumor development.

In short, because DNA damage is often a precursor to cancer, the link between cellular-phone usage and cancer cannot be dismissed.

In fact, five of seven long-term epidemiological studies already have shown, only five years into data collection that will continue for decades, an increased risk of brain tumors in the area where RF radiation is deposited into the cellular-phone user's brain.

If similar findings continue to emerge, more than 100 million people in the United States alone - including young children whose brains and bodies are still developing - are at risk of incurring health damage from cellular-phone use.

The current debate about cellular-phone safety has been fueled by two factors: the regulatory agencies' unwillingness to prudently assess the health risks, and the cellphone industry's irresponsible position that, in the absence of absolute scientific certainty, consumers needn't be warned about potential health hazards.

It is also telling, and troubling, that the only large-scale U.S. study of cellular-phone safety - supported by $25 million in industry funding - was conducted not independently but rather by the industry itself. And when the lead researcher reported preliminary findings suggesting health risks, he was discredited by the industry.

The net result of this failed initiative is that no reliable pre-market safety testing has been performed on cellular phones, and no warning labeling has been issued.

This creates a scenario with the potentially tragic outcomes we have witnessed with shredding SUV tires and flammable children's pajamas.

Joanne Suder is a Baltimore attorney who represents Dr. Christopher Newman in his lawsuit against Motorola.

---

Cellphone suits mount though risks uncertain

02/26/2001
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/2001-02-26-nceditf.htm

Dr. Christopher Newman has brain cancer, an affliction that, even after five surgeries, likely will kill the Baltimore neurologist. Newman blames radio waves from his cellphone. He wants Motorola to pay more than a billion dollars.

To that end, he has hired some of the nation's most formidable legal talent to press his case: Peter Angelos, famed for his role in the multi-billion-dollar defeats of the asbestos and tobacco industries among others.

Newman's suit, currently in pre-trial hearings, is part of a new wave planned by a nationwide coalition of law firms. Since Newman filed his lawsuit last fall, similar cases have popped up in Illinois, Louisiana and Georgia. Researchers and lawyers for another Baltimore law firm coordinating the cases with Angelos say a dozen more could be filed in the next 60 days including cases in Texas and another in California that will be filed as early as this week.

Trouble is, scientific studies increasingly raise doubt that cellphones cause cancer at all. Unless lawsuits take a back seat to lab work, the suits needlessly will scare the public and raise costs. The only winners will be lawyers looking for billion-dollar jackpots like the ones that let Angelos run a major league baseball team.

No clear connection

In the past three months, three separate studies have concluded cellphones pose no measurable cancer risk.

• This month, The Journal of the National Cancer Institute published a 13-year study of 420,000 Danish cellphone users. It concludes: "The results do not support the hypothesis of an association between the use of these telephones and tumors."

• In January, The New England Journal of Medicine published a National Institute of Health study of 789 brain-tumor patients. The conclusion: "These data do not support the hypothesis that the recent use of hand-held cellular telephones cause brain tumors."

• In December, the Journal of the American Medical Association published an American Health Foundation study of 469 brain- cancer patents concluding "handheld cellular telephones (are) not associated with risk of brain cancer."

Even some of the industry's most vociferous critics agree that science doesn't support many of these lawsuits. "We're so early in the game, we don't know what's really happening - I don't believe these lawsuits are right," says George Carlo, a former cellular-industry researcher who authored Cell Phones: Invisible Hazards in a Wireless Age and whose work is regularly cited by lawyers suing the industry.

Each of the studies calls for more research. In addition, other studies, mostly of animals and in laboratory experiments, have shown potential dangers.

At this stage, though, a full-scale legal assault is likely to play out as unjustly as a similar attack on breast implants in the early and mid 1990s. There hysteria led to multi-billion dollar legal settlements by the implant makers, the bankruptcy of Dow Corning, billions more in losses to investors and thousands of lawsuits against doctors. Despite the fact that research continues to exonerate the implants of causing immune or connective-tissue diseases, lawsuits continue.

Lawsuits could backfire

With cellphones, though, the pot could be much richer. And since the lawyers inevitably will make a concerted effort to whip up fear, more people will be needlessly scared. Cellphone companies have about 100 million customers and revenues of $50 billion a year in the USA alone compared to silicone breast manufacturers' $20 billion in revenues and several million silicone breast-implant customers.

At the same time, the lawyers' transparent greed is likely to fuel a counterproductive backlash that could deter more credible suits - the kind that punish businesses for knowingly selling dangerous products, such as defective child seats and dangerous birth-control products.

Business interests have long sought to remove that legal threat, and along with it a valuable deterrent. Their chances for success improved significantly when Republicans took control of the White House and Congress.

But the cellphone lawsuits serve no such higher goal. They're about profiteering.

More and better science to settle the issues is already underway in both the United States and Europe. Until their verdicts are in, these lawsuits are premature.

---

Sub's Commander Expresses Regret to Victims' Families

February 26, 2001
New York Times
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/26/national/26HAWA.html

HONOLULU, Feb. 25 - Breaking his silence, the commander of the nuclear submarine that accidentally sank a Japanese educational fishing trawler 16 days ago, leaving nine people missing and presumed dead, has sent an emotional letter of regret to the Japanese people.

But the letter from Cmdr. Scott D. Waddle, the skipper of the submarine Greeneville, did not contain the apology that the victims of the families of the trawler, the Ehime Maru, had been seeking, or an admission of responsibility.

The text of the letter was released today by Commander Waddle's civilian lawyer, Charles W. Gittins. Neither Adm. Thomas B. Fargo, the commander of the Pacific Fleet, nor Rear Adm. Albert H. Konetzni, commander of submarine forces in the Pacific, was informed in advance that he was sending the letter, Navy officials said.

"It is with a heavy heart that I express my most sincere regret to the Japanese people and most importantly, to the families of those lost and injured in the collision between the U.S.S. Greeneville and the Ehime Maru," Commander Waddle wrote. "No words can adequately express my condolences and concern for those who have lost their loved ones. I too grieve for the families and the catastrophic losses that the families have endured."

Commander Waddle has made no public statement since his submarine, which was on a routine training exercise with 16 civilians aboard, tore through the bottom of the Japanese trawler just nine miles from Pearl Harbor, sending it to the bottom of the sea within minutes.

He was interviewed by Navy investigators during their preliminary investigation, but refused to be interviewed by the National Transportation Safety Board, which is conducting its own investigation. It is not known whether he will take the stand before the the formal court of inquiry that the Navy has convened. It is scheduled to open a public hearing on March 5.

In his letter, he expressed hope that the court of inquiry would "resolve the questions and uncertainties surrounding this tragedy."

"It is my most sincere desire," he continued, "to determine the truth about what happened."

Adm. William J. Fallon, vice chief of naval operations, arrived in Hawaii today for briefings with Admiral Fargo and Adm. Dennis C. Blair, commander in chief of the United States Pacific Command. Admiral Fallon is heading to Japan on Monday as a special envoy to explain the details of the accident and deliver a letter of apology from President Bush to Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori.

Navy officials allowed journalists today to tour the Columbia, a Los Angeles-class submarine similar to the Greeneville, which is in drydock undergoing repairs. Journalists saw the submarine's small control room, like the one on the Greeneville where Commander Waddle, other officers, crew members and a group of civilian visitors were crammed when Commander Waddle announced the sea clear of any surface vessels and one of the civilians was allowed to work the controls that sent the submarine rocketing to the surface in what is usually an emergency maneuver.

One of the factors contributing to the accident may have been the malfunctioning of a large monitor that duplicates crucial sonar readings and displays them directly between two periscopes in the control room. The monitor serves as a way for the commanding officer and other officers stationed at the periscopes to immediately double-check for the presence of other vessels in the area.

Journalists were also shown the consoles on one side of the control room where a technician plots information relayed from the sonar room, and graph paper secured on two rollers under a fluorescent light at the front of the control room where he is supposed to transfer information about other vessels. The technician on the Greeneville has told Navy investigators that the presence of so many people in the control room made it impossible for him to continue penciling in his information onto the graph paper.

Asked what would happen on the Columbia if its duplicate monitor were not functioning, Lt. Cmdr. John Mosier, the submarine's executive officer, said: "We have developed a standing order for operating when any piece of equipment is out of commission. We would take special precautions. We would develop written guidance for the commanding officer."

---

Greeneville Officers offer conflicting stories

February 26, 2001
Washington Times
By Rowan Scarborough
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-200122623739.htm

Officers aboard the USS Greeneville when it rammed the Ehime Maru have told investigators conflicting stories about what happened just before the fatal accident.

The investigative report, portions of which were read by a Navy source to The Washington Times, portend contentious hearings when the Navy Court of Inquiry meets March 5 in Honolulu.

The Navy has named as subjects to the inquiry the Greeneville's captain, Cmdr. Scott Waddle (CO); Lt. Cmdr. Gerald K. Pfeifer, the executive officer; and Lt. j.g. Michael J. Coen, the officer of the deck (OOD). One role of the Court of Inquiry is to decide whether the officers should face criminal charges.

The three officers' statements to Navy investigators suggest that the three men, rather than being allies during the inquiry, will be adversaries who blame each other's actions for the sinking of the Japanese fishing vessel.

A Navy investigator's summary of the interview one day after the accident said, "Cmdr. Waddle stated that [Lt. Coen] was a newly qualified OOD and that he regularly had to tell him what to do."

Cmdr. Pfeifer, however, shifts blame toward his commanding officer.

Cmdr. Pfeifer told investigators Cmdr. Waddle was too quick to bring the submarine to periscope depth in preparation for an emergency surfacing drill, or "blow." He said the crew still did not know enough about two sonar signatures of surface ships, one of which turned out to be the fishing vessel Ehime Maru.

"Very quick for CO to order ship to [periscope depth]," said an investigator's notes of an interview with Cmdr. Pfeifer. "[Executive officer] and [officer of the deck] did not really feel comfortable with contacts."

The Washington Times reported on Friday that a preliminary Navy investigation blamed a series of crew errors as the reason the Greeneville surfaced and rammed the Japanese ship. Nine teen-agers and crew among 35 passengers are missing and presumed dead.

The report, by Adm. Charles Griffiths, a submarine group commander, said the sub detected the Ehime Maru via passive sonar. But the crew failed to follow proper procedures to determine the ship's exact location before conducting the fatal "blow."

The report also said Cmdr. Waddle's periscope scan beforehand was too brief and not high enough. And the report said a "significant" number of crew and VIP civilian guests on the periscope stand "did interfere" with control room communication. It said the fire control technician had tracked the Ehime Maru to as close as 2,000 yards, but failed to tell Cmdr. Waddle because of the civilians' presence.

During his interview, Cmdr. Pfeifer emphasized his belief that Cmdr. Waddle moved too hastily.

"Overheard CO tell OOD make preps for [periscope depth]. Want to be at [periscope depth] in five minutes," the investigator's notes say. "[Cmdr. Pfeifer] thinks that that is very aggressive . . . [Cmdr. Pfeifer] thought 'whoa.' [He] wanted a broached look. Did not tell CO."

A Navy source says Cmdr. Waddle did not learn until days after the accident that his fire control technician failed to tell him the Ehime Maru, labeled S-13 by the sub's crew, was possibly only 2,000 yards away. Cmdr. Waddle's standing order was to report any contact within 10,000 yards.

The omission will likely pit the commander against the technician during the Court of Inquiry proceedings.

During a two-minute periscope search, neither Cmdr. Waddle nor Lt. Coen saw the oncoming Ehime Maru, which at the time was likely within 2,000 yards. The Navy report states that the search was neither long enough nor high enough to detect the oncoming Ehime Maru.

Cmdr. Pfeifer told investigators, "Thought that is not a high look but that is the way the CO has always done it."

Lt. Coen told investigators he was concerned the captain was about to operate outside a submarine test area.

"Lt. Coen expressed that he was concerned because he thought they had only about five miles ahead within their authorized submerged operating area," according to notes of his interview.

The officer said that the Feb. 9 blow was his first and he was "excited, tight" in the minutes leading up to the drill.

He also said he was unable to complete his periscope search before Cmdr. Waddle took over and performed the scan.

Lt. Coen also contended he told the fire control technician to "forcefully report if a contact was close."

The Navy's preliminary report states the technician did not report to the captain his plotting of the Ehime Maru because the periscope platform was crowded with crew and civilian guests. The Navy invited 16 business leaders on board for the Greeneville's six-hour cruise.

The confidential report said, "The location and number of civilian visitors did interfere with the ability of the OOD and commanding officer to use the fire control system and converse with the [technician] in ascertaining the contact picture from the time the ship was preparing for periscope depth until the emergency blow was conducted. Better distribution of the civilian visitors could have dramatically improved this situation."

In other developments, Cmdr. Waddle yesterday issued his first public statement since the Feb. 9 accident that claimed nine Japanese lives. In a statement released by his attorney, Charles Gittins, Cmdr. Waddle said in part, "It is with a heavy heart that I express my most sincere regret to the Japanese people and most importantly, to the families of those lost and injured in the collision."

The Naval Academy graduate said he hopes that the inquiry discovers the true cause of the collision in order to prevent such accidents in the future.

"Such actions must be taken to preserve the honor of those who lost their lives, the honor of their families, my family's honor, the honor of the Greeneville crew and the honor of our two nations," he said.

It is not clear whether the officer's statement, which fell short of an apology, will soothe Japanese ire over the accident. The Navy is sending its second-ranking officer, Adm. William J. Fallon, to Tokyo this week to express U.S. apology for the Greeneville's sinking of the Ehime Maru.

Cmdr. Waddle's public statement said in part:

"I know that the accident has caused unimaginable grief to the families of the Ehime Maru missing students, instructors and crew members, to the Uwajima Fisheries High School, to Ehime Maru Captain Hisao Onishi, to the Uwajima city communities, and to all of the Japanese people. No words can adequately express my condolences and concern for those who have lost their loved ones. I too grieve for the families and the catastrophic losses that the families have endured."

"The investigation that is about to begin at Pearl Harbor hopefully will resolve the questions and uncertainties surrounding this tragedy. It is my most sincere desire to determine the truth about what happened so that such a disastrous accident never again occurs."

Legal sources say that with legal proceedings ahead, it would be unwise for Cmdr. Waddle to issue an apology and thus imply wrongdoing on his part.

-------- china

China aids Pakistani, 'rogue' missile programs, CIA says

February 27, 2001
Washington Times
By Bill Gertz
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-200122723245.htm

China continued to send "substantial" assistance to Pakistan's missile program during the first half of 2000 and also aided missile programs in Iran, North Korea and Libya, according to a CIA report.

"Chinese missile-related technical assistance to Pakistan continued to be substantial during this reporting period," the CIA said in its semiannual report to Congress on arms proliferation.

The report said that Chinese missile assistance is helping Pakistan move rapidly toward full-scale production of short-range ballistic missiles that are solid-fueled -meaning they can be launched on short notice.

"In addition, firms in China provided missile-related items, raw materials, and/or assistance to several other countries of proliferation concern - such as Iran, North Korea and Libya," the report said.

The Clinton administration last year waived U.S. economic sanctions against China for its missile sales after gaining a promise that Beijing would not sell missiles or components to anyone seeking nuclear-delivery vehicles.

"The Clinton administration refused to sanction China even in the teeth of overwhelming evidence of violations," said Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control. "The question now is whether the Bush administration will do anything about it."

The report comes after a public dispute between the United States and China over Beijing's development of a fiber-optic communications network connecting Iraq's air-defense network.

The report also said that U.S. intelligence agencies "cannot rule out" intelligence reports that China is continuing to assist Pakistan's nuclear-weapons programs - despite a pledge by Beijing in May 1996 to halt support to nuclear facilities in Pakistan operating outside international controls.

The report covering the first six months of 2000 is required by law. In addition to Chinese arms proliferation, the report also states that:

• Russia sold ballistic-missile goods and technology to China, Iran, India and Libya, and its efforts to curb dangerous arms sales to rogue states "remain uncertain."

"Russian entities during the first six months of 2000 have provided substantial missile-related technology, training and expertise to Iran that almost certainly will continue to accelerate Iranian efforts to develop new ballistic missile systems," the report said.

• Moscow also is a major supplier of conventional arms to China, India, Iran, Syria, Libya and North Korea.

• Iraq is developing an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) by converting Czech L-29 trainers into pilotless jets. The UAV could be used to deliver chemical or biological weapons. Iraq also has rebuilt key elements of its missile production facilities and is rebuilding chemical weapons plants.

• Syria is seeking to purchase nuclear material from Russia that could help Damascus develop nuclear weapons. A joint Russian-Syrian nuclear cooperation program was drawn up in January 2000.

• Libya is expanding its missile program since sanctions were lifted last year and is seeking a medium-range-missile capability. Tripoli also is seeking to acquire material and equipment for biological weapons. Russia and Libya resumed joint nuclear cooperation last year.

Regarding North Korea, another major arms proliferator identified in the report, the CIA said Pyongyang is continuing to buy material for its missile program and also sought to buy technology with nuclear weapons applications.

"During the first half of 2000, Pyongyang sought to procure technology worldwide that could have applications in its nuclear program," the report said. "But we do not know of any procurement directly linked to the nuclear weapons program."

Under the 1994 Agreed Framework, North Korea was supposed to have halted its nuclear weapons program in exchange for nuclear power reactors considered less useful in nuclear arms applications.

Henry Sokolski, director of the private Non-Proliferation Policy Education Center, said the report shows the need for the new Bush administration to do more to combat the spread of weapons of mass destruction and missiles.

"This report only highlights even further why we not only will need to strengthen defenses, including missile defense, but to renew our nonproliferation efforts," Mr. Sokolski said.

-------- iraq

Iraq Sees Ongoing UN Talks on Sanctions Impasse

February 26, 2001
Reuters
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-un-talk.html

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Despite harsh public statements from Iraq, U.N Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Monday visiting officials from Baghdad were seeking a way to break the deadlock over 10-year old U.N. trade sanctions.

And Iraq's foreign minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, after the first of two days of crucial talks with Annan, said he expected future discussions, an indication this week's meetings are the beginning of a process aimed at ending the impasse.

``After this round, I think we will have a series of rounds,'' he told reporters, saying no dates had been set yet.

The U.N. and Iraqi teams initiated high-level discussions for the first time in years on the sanctions, imposed in August 1990 when Baghdad's troops invaded Kuwait. A key condition for lifting them is allowing arms inspectors to check on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, which Baghdad has refused to do.

According to Annan, ``The spirit has been good and I think that, from the indications they have given, they also are anxious to find a way of breaking the impasse,''

``We are at the beginning yet,'' he said. ``It's going to be a tough discussions. I can't promise miracles in the next two days but we are moving along.''

The two sides, which reviewed disarmament and humanitarian issues on Monday, will meet on Tuesday morning and afternoon, with Annan hoping the Iraqis might share their views ``on where we go from here,'' U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard added.

Sahaf said Iraq had reviewed disarmament moves over the past 10 years, reaffirming his country had no dangerous weapons. The session concentrated on Iraq's ``grievances'' and ``how it sees the possibilities of finding the way out.''

Publicly, his statements appeared harsher than what may have evolved during the sessions.

He told reporters during a break in the meetings that no arms inspectors would return to Iraq even if the sanctions were abolished. If they did, they had to visit all countries in the region and ``first Israel because they have atomic arsenals and all other arsenals.''

``There will be no return for any inspectors to Iraq -- even if the sanctions are totally lifted,'' al-Sahaf said.

SHIFT IN BIG POWERS POSITIONS

In contrast Annan told reporters there had been an ``important and healthy shift'' stemming from discussions in capitals of Security Council members on what to do next.

He referred specifically to a review of Iraqi policy by the new U.S. administration of President George W. Bush.

``For a long time the attitude has been 'This is our policy, this is the way we do things,''' Annan said.

``But I think recently we have put on the table that critical question -- 'What should we be doing?''' he said.

Iraq has refused to allow weapons inspectors back into the country since December 1998. They left on the eve of a U.S.-British four-day bombing raid to punish Baghdad for what they called its failure to cooperate with weapons searches.

For the United Nations, Annan will have little to negotiate until the Security Council agrees on a common position. France, Russia and China want an immediate suspension of the sanctions, while the United States and Britain are conducting a review of their policies.

For a start, some U.S. officials said this could include releasing some of the 1,600 contracts from Iraq, worth close to $3 billion, that the United States has frozen over the past few years, to the dismay of even its allies. They include mainly infrastructure repairs.

BEGINNING OF A DIALOGUE?

But Western diplomats said it was crucial that Washington and London find common ground with France, a European Community member. They said the current Annan-Sahaf meetings would be considered a success if Iraq acknowledged they were the beginning of a dialogue, rather than a one-shot session.

Annan noted there had been considerable progress made in the last decade in ridding Iraq of nuclear arms and long-range ballistic missiles. But he said there was work to be done on biological and chemical weapons and only inspectors could judge how much, ``once they have been able to get back into Iraq.''

Secretary of State Colin Powell was in the Middle East this week trying to convince Arab leaders to rebuild the now-frayed alliance against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

But most have lost interest in sanctions, are critical of repeated U.S. and British attacks on Iraqi air defenses and are worried that Israeli-Palestinian violence will enhance Saddam's prestige. However, Powell succeeded in getting Syria's agreement to place oil revenues flowing from Iraq over the last few months under U.N. control.

---

Altering sanctions on Iraq has support

01/02/26
USA Today
By Barbara Slavin
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-02-26-iraqsanctions.htm

BRUSSELS - Secretary of State Colin Powell said Monday that he has found "solid support" from Arab nations for restructuring United Nations economic sanctions that have hurt the Iraqi people more than the regime of Saddam Hussein. Speaking to reporters following six stops in the Middle East over three days, Powell also disclosed a diplomatic victory during his first overseas mission: Syrian President Bashar Assad has promised to put Syrian imports of Iraqi oil under U.N. control.

Powell, who met with the new Syrian leader before flying here, said Assad did not set a date for placing the oil imports under U.N. supervision.

U.S. officials believe Syria has been buying 180,000 barrels of Iraqi oil a day since November, in violation of the sanctions.

The United States wants the revenue from Iraqi oil sales to Syria placed in a U.N. account so Iraq cannot use the money to buy weapons.

In his talks with Arab leaders, Powell proposed to make it easier for Iraq to import consumer and industrial items. But in return, he wants to tighten controls on weapons sales to Iraq and Iraqi oil exports.

Powell won support for that tradeoff from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Kuwait. Powell has proposed the change because the 10-year-old sanctions have become widely unpopular and heavily flouted.

The secretary conceded that the United States has been "too strict" in its attempts to keep civilian items with potential military uses out of Iraqi hands. Among $3 billion in goods that the United States has blocked from going to Iraq are refrigerated trucks, water pumps and even eggs. The eggs could be used to develop biolgical weapons.

Powell said he hoped to have a new sanctions policy complete in time for a summit of the 22-member Arab League in Jordan on March 22.

The secretary, who returns to Washington today after consulting with NATO allies, conceded that he anticipates criticisms on Capitol Hill that the administration is going soft on Saddam.

He said his response would be that the administration was not "weakening sanctions but restructuing them in a sensible way that points at the target-weapons of mass destruction, not the Iraqi people."

Powell had some leverage over Syria to force compliance with the sanctions: Syria hopes to become a temporary member of the U.N. Security Council next year, but Washington could block its membership if Syria continues to import oil surreptitiously from Iraq.

After the Powell-Assad meeting, the official Syrian Arab News Agency did not mention oil but said Assad stressed to Powell that Syria remains committed to the Israeli-Arab peace process.

Meanwhile, in Washington, the State Department's annual human rights report released Monday criticized Israeli security forces for using "excessive force" last year against Palestinians in territories occupied by Israel. The report also rebuked Palestinian security forces for violent attacks on Israeli civilians.

Earlier Monday, Powell received a hero's welcome in Kuwait City at a ceremony marking the 10th anniversary of the Gulf War. Powell was reunited with former president George Bush, the father of the current chief executive, whom Powell called "Bush number 43" because he is the 43rd president.

Contributing: Bill Nichols in Washington

---

No UN Arms Inspectors Even if Sanctions Gone

February 26, 2001
Reuters
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-iraq-un.html

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Unrelenting, Iraq's foreign minister said on Monday U.N. arms inspectors would be barred from his country even if 10-year-old U.N. trade sanctions were abolished.

Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf told reporters, after a crucial morning meeting with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, that no inspectors would return to Iraq. And if they did, they had to visit all countries in the region and ``first Israel because they have atomic arsenals and all other arsenals.''

``There will be no return for any inspectors to Iraq -- even if the sanctions are totally lifted,'' al-Sahaf said.

He spoke after the opening session between his high-level delegation and U.N. officials on ways to break the impasse on decade-old trade sanctions, linked to allowing the U.N. arms monitors into Iraq after a two-year hiatus.

Disarmament issues were on the agenda for Monday morning and humanitarian concerns in the afternoon. Any unfinished business will be taken up on Tuesday during the first attempt in years to move beyond the status quo.

Al-Sahaf said Baghdad had fulfilled all Security Council requirements and ``that means an immediate lift of sanctions,'' imposed in August 1990 when Baghdad's troops invaded Kuwait.

Iraq has refused to allow weapons inspectors back into the country since December 1998, when the United States and Britain conducted a four-day bombing raid to punish Baghdad for failing to cooperate with searches for forbidden weapons.

Asked what the Iraqi team had brought to the table, he said there were no new proposals. Instead, he said the Iraqis had submitted detailed reports proving Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.

NOT EXPECTING 'MIRACLES'

Annan, shortly before the two-day talks started on Monday, said he did not ``expect miracles'' but was encouraged by various governments reevaluating their policies.

Although expectations were low for the two-day sessions, Annan said there was an ``important and healthy shift'' which stemmed from discussions in capitals of Security Council members on what to do next, including a review by the U.S. administration of its Iraq policy.

``For a long time the attitude has been 'This is our policy, this is the way we do things,''' Annan said.

``But I think recently we have put on the table that critical question -- 'What should we be doing?''' he said.

No one expects the talks to produce an early agreement on issues that have eluded a divided 15-nation Security Council -- especially allowing arms inspectors to verify Iraq no longer has any dangerous arms.

``I am encouraged the Iraqi delegation is here,'' Annan said. ''I hope we can find some ways as we move forward of breaking the current impasse, which no one finds satisfactory.''

``I do not expect miracles in the two days of talks but at least it is a beginning,'' he said.

For the United Nations, Annan will have little to negotiate until the Security Council agrees on a common position. France, Russia and China all want an immediate suspension of the sanctions, while the United States and Britain are conducting a review of their policies.

For a start, some U.S. officials said this could include releasing some of the 1,600 contracts from Iraq, worth close to $3 billion, that the United States has frozen over the past few years. They include mainly infrastructure repairs.

BEGINNING OF A DIALOGUE?

Western diplomats said it was crucial that Washington and London find common ground with France, a European community member. They said the meetings would be considered a small success if Iraq acknowledged they were the beginning of a dialogue, rather than a one-shot session.

Annan too said he hoped the two days of talks would be a prelude to further discussions. He noted there had been considerable progress made in the last decade in ridding Iraq of nuclear arms and long-range ballistic missiles.

But he said there was work to be done in the biological and chemical weapons areas and only inspectors could judge how much, ``once they have been able to get back into Iraq.''

Secretary of State Colin Powell is in the Middle East trying to convince moderate Arab leaders to rebuild the now-frayed alliance against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

But most have lost interest in sanctions, are critical of repeated U.S. and British attacks on Iraqi air defenses and are worried that Israeli-Palestinian violence will enhance Saddam's prestige.

---

Iraq, U.N. open talks on sanctions

02/26/2001
USA Today
http://usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2001-02-26-untalks.htm

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Iraq and the United Nations opened a new chapter in their tumultuous recent history Monday with talks aimed at breaking an impasse that has kept U.N. weapons inspectors out of Baghdad for more than two years. Expectations were low that two days of talks between Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Foreign Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf would produce any breakthrough on restarting inspections - or on lifting sanctions, as Baghdad has demanded.

Indeed, Annan tempered expectations as he arrived at U.N. headquarters, saying he didn't expect miracles. But he said he was encouraged by what he called an "important and healthy shift" in the attitude about Iraq sanctions from certain governments.

He cited the review that the Bush administration is conducting into its Iraq policy, and similar assessments being undertaken by other key governments about sanctions.

"For a long time the attitude had been 'This is our policy. This the way we do things,"' Annan said. "But I think recently we have put on the table that critical question of 'What should we be doing?' And I hope out of this review and search will emerge a constructive way forward."

Al-Sahhaf, for his part, said he would explain in detail during the talks that Iraq had fully complied with U.N. resolutions requiring that it destroy its biological, chemical and nuclear weapons and the long-range missiles used to deliver them.

"Now it is the role of the Security Council to implement its mutual obligations towards Iraq: That means an immediate lift of sanctions imposed on Iraq," al-Sahhaf said.

U.N. weapons inspectors left Iraq on Dec. 16, 1998 - hours before the United States and Britain launched four days of airstrikes to punish Baghdad for what they said was its failure to cooperate with U.N. arms searches.

Inspectors haven't been back since - and al-Sahhaf said upon his departure from Baghdad on Wednesday that Iraq wouldn't accept them as a condition to lifting sanctions.

But the Security Council has said U.N. weapons inspectors must return to Iraq to start verifying that its weapons are gone before it would even consider suspending the trade embargo imposed on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

"We would hope - since we're always optimistic - that the Iraqis would come and say that they have finally decided to begin implementing the resolutions," said Acting U.S. Ambassador James Cunningham. "But that's certainly not the expectation."

Hopes for progress from the U.N. end are also tempered by uncertainties surrounding the Bush administration's Iraq policy. Secretary of State Colin Powell is in the region, marking the 10th anniversary of Kuwait's liberation from Iraq and meeting with Iraq's neighbors. He is trying to impress on them the U.S. view that Saddam Hussein poses a threat to them and deserves to have sanctions made more effective.

But support for sanctions in the Middle East and elsewhere is waning after 10 years. China, as well as France and Russia, have pressed for sanctions against Iraq to be suspended.

These three permanent Security Council members have also sharply criticized U.S. and British patrols of the no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq, which were established after the Persian Gulf War to protect minority Kurds and Shiites from Saddam's forces.

All three - and a host of Arab nations - bitterly condemned the airstrikes earlier this month near Baghdad, and Iraqi officials have said the attacks would be raised at the talks with Annan.

"If they expected any results from the talks with the U.N., then why didn't they wait to strike Iraq so they could say that the dialogue was not up to their expectations?" Saddam was quoted as saying during a Cabinet meeting Sunday, the state-owned newspaper al-Jumhuriya reported Monday.

Annan didn't bow to Iraq's request that he condemn the strikes, but he did say their timing, so close to the talks, was "awkward."

---

10 Years Later, Hussein Is Firmly in Control

February 26, 2001
New York Times
By JOHN F. BURNS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/26/world/26IRAQ.html?pagewanted=all

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 25 - Ten years ago, Saddam Hussein looked - at least in the view of the American- led military alliance that defeated his forces in Kuwait - every inch a finished man, another discredited dictator heading for the ignominy of history's rubbish heap.

After a 43-day air and land war, the Iraqi ruler's occupation forces were in headlong retreat, perhaps 50,000 of his troops dead, his military and intelligence infrastructure reduced to rubble, his self-proclaimed image as man of steel shattered like his bombed-out palaces, and American advance battalions halted, deeply frustrated, only a few hours' drive from Baghdad.

What a difference a decade makes.

On Monday, Kuwait will reach the climax of celebrations marking the 10th anniversary of the end of its occupation. Among those attending will be former President George Bush, who assembled the allied force, saw it through to Kuwait's liberation on Feb. 27, 1991, then decided not to press on to Baghdad to topple Mr. Hussein.

The hope, then, was that the Iraqi ruler would fall of his own dead weight, weakened by a constricting regime of United Nations sanctions and rejected by a people he had already ruled for nearly 12 years.

But in Baghdad, in February 2001, almost nothing is as Mr. Bush and other leaders of the gulf war alliance hoped.

Mr. Hussein, now 63, is as firmly in power in this nation of 23 million people as ever, and just as harsh in defense of his power, according to human rights reports chronicling the parade of opponents, would-be assassins and "traitors" into Iraq's prisons, and on with chilling regularity to the firing squad or gallows.

Although large swaths of the north and south of his country are no-flight zones patrolled, and sometimes bombed, by American and British warplanes, Saddam Hussein has successfully resisted any United Nations inspection of his suspected effort to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons since December 1998. Baghdad is rebuilt with glittering new palaces and state guesthouses, imposing new statues of Mr. Hussein and scaffolding cladding the few bombed-out government buildings not yet restored.

At one statue today, outside a new 680-foot concrete communications tower in central Baghdad built to replace one obliterated by a 1998 American air attack, self-consciously enthusiastic Iraqis clustered for photographs before a 30-foot bronze casting of Mr. Hussein, a pistol at his hip, a military beret on his head, his right arm thrusting forward as if commanding a new assault.

The statue, like others around Baghdad, has become a favorite stop for Iraqi wedding parties - a place to get photographs for the mantle that can testify to a family's loyalty to Mr. Hussein.

On the statue's plinth are what are said to be tangled fragments of the Tomahawk cruise missiles that struck the earlier tower. At Mr. Hussein's feet, bronze images, each the size of a bread plate, show former President Bush, Margaret Thatcher, Britain's prime minister at the time of the Kuwait invasion, and François Mitterrand, the French president whose forces also joined the war.

Elsewhere in Baghdad, there is another story - of children begging wretchedly for their families in the street, of former engineers and high school teachers selling cheap clothing and spit-roasted kebabs off handcarts and rusting bed frames for the equivalent of $2 a day, of wards where patients, including tiny children, lie dying for want of medicines and life-support machines. All of this, the Iraqis say, is symptomatic of how a decade of sanctions has reduced the people of this country, at least those lacking the privileges of a pampered elite, to lives of destitution.

But for the moment, the mood Mr. Hussein's loyalists seem keen to promote is one of triumphalism, more than hand wringing for the deprived. In effect, those loyalists say, Mr. Hussein has wrung victory from defeat (a word they never use) by defying the sanctions, by refusing to bow to the United States, by remaining in power long after his gulf war adversaries have retired, or died. Mr. Hussein, the loyalists say, has never flinched, and never will flinch, before American power.

"We've resisted for 10 years, we've survived, we've rebuilt our country without financial aid, sanctions are crumbling and there are no foreign armies on our soil," said Nasira al-Sadoon, editor in chief of the state-owned Baghdad Observer. "We stood alone, against an alliance of more than 30 armies, a third world country against the world's greatest superpower, and it is they who have been defeated, not us. We are very proud of ourselves."

Mr. Hussein himself has been silent in recent days, apparently content with the rambling speech he gave in January, when Iraq marked the war's start with a military parade that showed off some of its new tanks and rockets and rebuilt army battalions.

The Iraqi ruler, using the language of the Koran, spoke of the war for Kuwait as one in which Iraq, "representing those who defend right against falsehood," confronted the Western and Arab allies, whom he described as "the debased, the enemies of Allah, and those who had Satan as a protector."

For years, Iraq has said that a million people died in the war - almost certainly a huge exaggeration, but a staple of Iraqi propaganda. According to an official translation of his speech, Mr. Hussein proclaimed all who died martyrs, saying: "Much dear blood of the dear ones was shed. But they have become the flagstaff of the banner proclaiming, `Allah is the Greatest.' They have become the candles that dispel darkness before the march of great Iraq, for generations after generations, and whenever darkness tries to veil Iraq's luminous march."

He added, "Thus Iraq has remained, the people have remained, the army has remained."

By the standard of some of his acolytes, Mr. Hussein's was the moderate view. In remarks that seemed aimed at drawing support among hard-liners in the ruling Baath Party, Uday Hussein, Mr. Hussein's 36- year-old man-about-town eldest son, took up the issue of Kuwait in a working paper he presented in Parliament in November, demanding that the map of Iraq on the Legislature's emblem be changed to show Kuwait as part of Iraq.

Tariq Aziz, the deputy prime minister who conducted many negotiations for Iraq before, during and after the occupation of Kuwait, backed the proposal - an act unthinkable without being sure of Saddam Hussein's support. "Iraq was the victim of a conspiracy against its sovereignty and national interest, and Kuwait was part and parcel of that conspiracy," Mr. Aziz said amid the Iraqi celebrations marking the start of the war. "So Kuwait got what it deserved in 1990."

The instinct for attack, at least in polemical terms, has been encouraged in recent days by what Mr. Hussein appears to have taken as a sign of American weakness: the decision by President Bush - routinely referred to in Baghdad's propaganda as "the son of a viper," or "little Bush" - to muster new consensus for a fresh version of the United Nations sanctions.

The American aim is apparently to address concern that existing sanctions are responsible, as Iraq has claimed, for widespread deaths from disease and malnutrition, despite the oil-for-food program that allows Iraq to sell oil for vital food and medical supplies, while maintaining a tight arms embargo that would prevent, or at least inhibit, Iraq from developing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

In recent months, one gulf war ally after another - among them, close American allies like France, Turkey and Saudi Arabia - have denounced the sanctions, and often openly flouted them. At least a dozen countries have broken the air embargo by flying planes belonging to their national carriers into Baghdad, and three, Egypt, Jordan and Syria, have begun scheduled flights. Each flight has been met with fanfare at the Baghdad airport.

About the only aspect of the sanctions controversy on which Iraq and the United Nations officials who enforce sanctions agree is that Iraq has had permission to spend $9.6 billion under the oil-for-food program, but that a larger sum - $13 billion of Iraq's oil revenue - has been spent on reparations to Kuwait, payments to members of the coalition that defeated Iraq and on United Nations costs.

Beyond that, everything is disputed, particularly the number of people who have died as a result of sanctions. Iraq claims the total is 1.5 million - including 500,000 children; United Nations officials and State Department reports dispute that as exaggerated, and say that Iraqi officials have cynically exploited the sanctions by diverting imported food to government loyalists, or even smuggling it back out of Iraq for re- sale elsewhere, and by going months without ordering any medicines at all.

At the Saddam Children's Hospital on the eastern outskirts of Baghdad, a dark, brooding place that has become the prime stop on the Information Ministry's guided tours, few doctors, patients or relatives seem much interested in the debate over who - Iraq, the United States or the United Nations - is responsible. All they see is the abject standards, the lack of basic medicines, the primitive levels of hygiene, the absence of equipment.

The pediatric intensive-care ward, filled with children dying of leukemia, meningitis and other diseases, is Dickensian, with sobbing mothers, a putrid smell, and a pervasive sense of hopelessness.

To listen to Iraqi officials, all this has reinforced popular support for Mr. Hussein. But to a visitor returning to Baghdad for the first time since December 1990, on the eve of the gulf war, there is an air that seems different.

In 1990, fear among ordinary people was palpable. Today, although every conversation in the presence of government-assigned minders produces routine expressions of admiration for Saddam Hussein, there are hints in unmonitored conversations - irreverent jokes about statues, talk of a "different" and "free" Iraq within 5 or 10 years - that suggest at least stirrings of dissent.

How to build on such subtleties to press for political change, while relieving the miseries of ordinary Iraqis, remains a complex quandary for Washington and London. But outsiders who know Iraq well say that the sanctions - by reducing many Iraqis to levels of bare subsistence and adding to Mr. Hussein's formidable powers that of bestowing scarce necessities - have strengthened, not weakened, Iraq's ruler.

A high-level official in a neighboring Arab country, a man who knows Mr. Hussein personally, said that this should motivate Washington to ease the sanctions, or even abandon them.

"You've made Saddam the underdog, and that's been an inestimable gift," the official said. "If the aim was to bring Saddam down, you should listen to Iraqis, who will tell you that without sanctions the Saddam regime would never have survived."

---

UN, Iraq To Open New Round of Talks

February 26, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-UN-Iraq.html

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Iraq and the United Nations were opening a new chapter in their tumultuous recent history with talks aimed at breaking an impasse that has kept U.N. weapons inspectors out of Baghdad for more than two years.

Expectations were low that two days of talks starting Monday between Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Foreign Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf would produce any breakthrough on restarting inspections -- or on lifting sanctions, as Baghdad has demanded.

But diplomats and U.N. officials were encouraged that the Iraqis had requested the talks and were coming to U.N. headquarters in New York.

``You have to have some hope, otherwise I wouldn't be getting into this exercise,'' Annan said. ``It may take some time. I don't think we are going to have a miraculous breakthrough. But at least it's a beginning.''

U.N. weapons inspectors left Iraq on Dec. 16, 1998 -- hours before the United States and Britain launched a four-day airstrike campaign to punish Baghdad for what they said was its failure to cooperate with U.N. arms searches.

Inspectors haven't been back since -- and al-Sahhaf said upon his departure from Baghdad on Wednesday that Iraq wouldn't accept them as a condition to lifting sanctions.

Al-Sahhaf said he would insist during the meetings that the Security Council immediately lift the sanctions -- and that he would provide documents proving his country is free of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

But the Security Council has said U.N. weapons inspectors must return to Iraq to start verifying its weapons are gone before they would even consider suspending the sweeping trade embargo imposed on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

``We would hope -- since we're always optimistic -- that the Iraqis would come and say that they have finally decided to begin implementing the resolutions,'' said Acting U.S. Ambassador James Cunningham. ``But that's certainly not the expectation.''

Hopes for progress from the U.N. end are also tempered by uncertainties surrounding the Bush administration's yet-to-be-formulated Iraq policy. Secretary of State Colin Powell is in the region meeting with Iraq's neighbors trying to impress on them the U.S. view that Saddam Hussein poses a threat to them and deserves strong sanctions.

But support for sanctions in the Middle East and elsewhere is waning after 10 years. At the United Nations, Annan himself has questioned how an organization that was created to care for the weak and vulnerable has instead become the source of suffering for an entire population.

``At least we should give some hope to the Iraqi people,'' said Deputy Chinese Ambassador Shen Guofang. ``I think that is reasonable.''

China, as well as France and Russia, have pressed for sanctions against Iraq to be suspended.

These three permanent Security Council members have also sharply criticized U.S. and British patrols of the no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq, which were established after the Gulf War to protect minority Kurds and Shiites from Saddam's forces.

All three -- and a host of Arab nations -- bitterly condemned last week's airstrikes near Baghdad, and Iraqi officials have said the attacks would be raised at the talks with Annan.

Annan didn't bow to Iraq's request that he condemn the strikes, but he did say their timing, so close too the talks, was ``awkward.''

-------- japan

Japan MOX fuel plan dealt a setback

February 26, 2001
Excite News
http://news.excite.com/news/r/010226/05/utilities-japan-nuclear

TOKYO, Feb 26 (Reuters) - Plans by Japan's power industry to use a controversial imported MOX plutonium-uranium enriched fuel were dealt a blow on Monday after a local governor refused to allow it at a power plant in his region.

Fukushima prefectural Governor Eisaku Sato was quoted as telling the local assembly that he would not for the time being give his approval for Tokyo Electric Power Co Inc (TEPCO) to begin loading the mixed oxide fuel at its Fukushima No 1 nuclear power plant as planned.

An official at the Fukushima prefectural government quoted Sato as saying he believed there was still deep-seated public distrust of Japan's nuclear policy after two nuclear mishaps in 1999, including a deadly accident at a plant in Tokaimura.

"The people's fear and distrust of nuclear policy has risen following the JCO accident and the falsification of MOX data, and I do not believe that public support for the introduction of MOX fuel has recovered," Sato was quoted as saying.

He was referring to an accident at a uranium processing plant operated by private company JCO Ltd in Tokaimura, about 140 km (90 miles) northeast of Tokyo in September 1999.

The incident, Japan's worst ever nuclear accident, exposed three workers to radiation, two of whom later died.

Sato's second reference was to state-owned British Nuclear Fuels Ltd's (BNFL) falsification on MOX fuel shipped to Kansai Electric Power Co Inc, which caused Japan's second largest power utility after TEPCO to put on hold its plan to use MOX fuel from December 1999.

Japan's power industry had initially planned to begin commercial use of MOX fuel in 1999 but was forced to postpone its plans due to that year's mishaps.

TEPCO President Nobuya Minami said in a statement released in response to Governor Sato's remarks that it would continue to work to gain the trust of the people of Fukushima prefecture for MOX fuel.

Poor in natural resources, Japan virtually relies wholly on imports for its energy needs.

TEPCO had been originally expected to take advantage of regular maintenance checks due from early April to late May to load MOX fuel at its Fukushima No 1 power plant.

Japan sees the use of MOX as crucial for its energy security, despite criticism that it will be cheaper for utilities to rely on low-cost natural uranium than to reprocess MOX fuel, which can be used in conventional reactors after some modification.

The Japanese electric power industry has said it plans to commission about 16-18 reactors to use MOX fuel by 2010, starting with TEPCO's Fukushima power plant and Kansai Electric's Takahama power plant on the Japan Sea coast.

It says that its basic plan on MOX remains unchanged despite the delays since 1999.

A major delay on Japan's MOX use could also setback plans in the industry to build Japan's first MOX fuel processing plant.

Japan currently depends on imports for MOX fuel, but it said last November that it would build a MOX plant aimed to start operations by 2009. TEPCO's share closed up 0.91 percent at 2,785 yen.

Related Stories Japan nuke industry frets in face of deregulation (Feb 28 3:55 am ET)

-------- korea

Putin in Korea: A Mix of Trade and Politics

February 26, 2001
New York Times
By DON KIRK
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/26/world/26KORE.html

SEOUL, South Korea, Feb. 25 - President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia is to arrive here on Monday to cement deals for his hard-pressed economy. It is the first visit by a Russian leader since Boris N. Yeltsin came in 1992.

The Russians are just as eager now to expand economic ties, and to find a way to pay off debts that have grown to $1.8 billion. But they may also be looking for a chance to expand their role on both sides of the demilitarized zone that has divided the peninsula since the Korean War.

"Putin's desire is to reintroduce Russia into the scene," said Robert Scalapino, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley and an expert on the region.

Andrei Osmakov, an official at the Russian Embassy here, said, "We need stability on the Korean peninsula because the Korean peninsula is a neighbor of Russia."

Against that background, President Kim Dae Jung's efforts at reconciliation with the North are expected to be a major topic. Mr. Putin is also expected to stress his opposition to the American plan for a national missile defense. A danger from North Korea has been cited by Americans as one rationale for such a system.

The prospect of discussion of a tradeoff reflecting the policy aims of both leaders means the meeting is likely to be far more pointed than was the last South Korean-Russian summit meeting, in May 1999, when Mr. Kim saw Mr. Yeltsin in Moscow.

"Previously, Korea thought Russia could be a negotiator with North Korea," but those expectations have not been realized, said Kim Duk Joo, a specialist in Russian affairs at the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security. "The Russians should participate in a dialogue on peaceful coexistence."

The Russian need for trade and investment is also expected to be high on Mr. Putin's agenda, especially development of natural gas in Irkutsk, with Moscow promoting a pipeline through North Korea to South Korea, and a Russian proposal to rebuild the rail network that once connected the Russian Far East to ports in the South.

---

Retrograde Movement

February 26, 2001
New York Times
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/26/opinion/26SAFI.html

WASHINGTON - George W. Bush's foreign policy so far has made three mistakes and missed one opportunity.

1. Pretending the easing of economic pressure on Iraq is the imposition of "smart sanctions." Apparently Bush has decided to cave in to France, Russia and Syria and permit resumption of business-as-usual with Saddam Hussein. The trick is to acquiesce while looking fierce; hence our pinprick bombing of radar sites.

Although the mission was to "degrade" rather than destroy Iraqi air defense, all it degraded was our air force technology's reputation for accuracy. Bush claimed success, however, in another mission - "to get his attention." Saddam got the message, all right: Bush the Younger's technique is to conceal a retreat from an inadequately enforced sanctions policy in a loud hail of ineffectual bombs.

We will now have what the administration labels "smart sanctions" - that is, few if any penalties for defying the world as Saddam uses new oil revenues to build his germ-war weapon in secret. What Bush thinks is smart about this sanctions policy is that it shows the world he can retreat - engage in a "retrograde movement" is the military euphemism - with head held high.

2. Bowing to Blair. The British prime minister wanted a Washington meeting to endorse Bush's take-that-you-cad slap at Saddam and to shore up ratings in his election campaign against resurgent Conservatives. The deal to be done is for Britain to lead Europe into cooperation with America's inexorable adoption of missile defense; in return, the U.S. would allow Britain to persuade us that the independent European rapid reaction force, so eagerly sought by France, would not undercut the Atlantic Alliance.

What happened at Bush's first summit meeting? He gave Blair what he wanted, embracing the non-American force, and in return - when it came to British support for missile defense - got from Blair only a medium hello. Abandoning U.S. interests in negotiation makes Bush likable to foreign leaders, but let's hope Vladimir Putin doesn't show up at Camp David before our man gets his sea legs.

3. Undermining Israel's response to the war being waged against its existence. After Palestinians rejected the Clinton-Barak plan to divide Jerusalem (thereby revealing that their hunger would not be satisfied until Arabs "returned" to take over all of Israel), Yasir Arafat's war of terror escalated.

The Bush reaction to the organized guerrilla war against Israel has been to pretend that both sides are at fault. Clinton-like, he calls for "an end to violence" - as if the victims of terror were as culpable as those instigating and sustaining it. Such serene evenhandedness in the face of aggression is as strategically foolish as it is morally wrong.

Israel's caretaker government is trying to limit its reaction to Arab bombings and lethal bus-driver rampages to a strict but nonviolent blockade. Even this restraint is not enough for our State Department, still dominated by the same Clinton crowd that brought us the giveaway peace process that started a war.

Bush's holdover ambassador in Tel Aviv, even as Colin Powell arrived for his first visit, stated as the U.S. position: "We urge the Israelis to cease their policies of economic pressure against the Palestinians."

What is Bush suggesting by this - greater military retaliation? Hardly. Does he propose no Israeli pressure in response to a systematic killing of Jews? Apparently so. Before buying into Appeasement Now, the visiting Powell would do well to read Barbara Amiel's powerful piece in London's Daily Telegraph about Israel's importance to the survival of Judaism.

4. Failing to respond dramatically to a friend in trouble. Turkey is a secular, Muslim, NATO ally. Its Incirlik base makes possible our patrol of a no-fly zone in Iraq, which protects Iraqi Kurds from genocide. But political strife has led to a financial crisis and investors are fleeing.

Colin Powell in full panoply is in the neighborhood. Couldn't he extend his trip by one well-photographed day to assure Ankara of our confidence, which would do much more for Turkish stability than Bush's phone call? Is he so frozen into a schedule that he cannot seize the moment?

This has not been a propitious foreign-policy beginning. Closer attention is needed to right the ship.

-------- missile defence

Russia May Expand Nuclear Shield to Other European Countries

26 February 2001
space.com
By Yuri Karash
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/missions/russia_abm_010226.html

Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russia is prepared to expand the coverage of the Russian-U.S. missile launch notification center in Moscow to other European countries during a meeting with NATO Secretary General George Robertson held last week.

The meeting took place Tuesday, Feb. 20 on the same day as the joint U.S.-Russian parliamentary meeting called the 'Duma-Congress.'

The Russian press reported that at the joint meeting, U.S. Congressman Curt Weldon (R-Pennsylvania) said that he had brought a "verbal message" from U.S. President George Bush to Putin proposing that the two countries work together on a joint antiballistic missile system. However a spokesperson from Weldon's office in Washington said that Weldon delivered no such message from the president.

The congressional delegation was invited to come to Moscow by Russia's Unity (Yedinstvo) party, which is closely associated with President Putin. The U.S. team consisted of four Republicans and four Democrats.

The meeting took place in the Duma (the lower chamber of the Russian parliament). It was co-chaired by Weldon and First Deputy Speaker Lubov Sliska. The discussions were mainly focused on problems related to the plans of the new U.S. administration to deploy a national missile defense system.

On Feb. 22, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said that the ABM (antiballistic missile) treaty "has not outlived itself and remains the fundamental" factor that assures the strategic stability in the world. According to Ivanov, it is from this position that Russia intends to continue its negotiations with the new U.S. administration.

Moscow believes that the existing ABM treaty "provides enough opportunities" to neutralize threats to the international community, including those related to missile technology. This treaty is the key link "in the whole structure of the security and disarmament field," said Ivanov. "If we take this link out of this security structure, it [will] fall apart," he remarked. At the same time, Moscow takes the view that the ABM Treaty "does not rule out [other] opportunities for the joint search for ways to neutralize international threats," he said.

Recent statements by key Russian officials, including President Putin, suggested that Moscow is willing to take a closer look at its current nonproliferation policy.

"Even more so-called threshold countries have recently appeared in the world trying in various ways to acquire such devastating weapons of mass destruction as nuclear arms," said Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Ivanov, who went as far as to acknowledge that the potential acquisition of nuclear weapons by other countries "is a real danger and also represents a threat to Russia."

Speaking at the Security Council meeting on Feb. 22, Putin said, "we [the Kremlin] had questions [regarding nonproliferation] for some particular organizations, particularly for [Rosaviacosmos Director General] Koptev. Rosaviacosmos-related [nonproliferation] problems have recently been effectively solved. However, not all of the remaining organizations have [observed a nonproliferation regime the way Rosaviacosmos did] so that we could say the same about them."

Putin also declared Russia's readiness to "conduct a productive dialog in this [nonproliferation] field, particularly with NATO and European Union countries."

According to the Kommersant newspaper, such statements by Putin are an indirect acknowledgement of the fact that some Russian state bodies do not carefully watch how their subordinate enterprises observe a nonproliferation regime. Such acknowledgement, believes the paper, will just strengthen the positions of those in the United States who want to reconsider the ABM treaty on the grounds that Russia is exporting missile technologies to 'rogue nations.'

During meeting on February 24, between the U.S. State Department and the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs exchanged ideas on ABM treaty. According to Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, the U.S. and Russian approach to the ABM issue "do not coincide with each other." Ivanov said that this is 'quite natural' considering that each country would pursues its own national interests.

The Russian minister remarked, however, that "both sides agreed to constructively discuss this issue taking into consideration each other's interests."

According to a source within the Russian delegation, "heads of U.S. and Russia's foreign policy establishments agreed to form groups of experts on START and ABM, which will immediately start their activity." These groups will consider the proposals [on ABM] of both Russia and the United States.

Recent Russian overtures toward NATO, along with its intention to develop a dialog with European Community, may also be a prelude to its joint development of an antiballistic missile system with other European countries. Foreign Minister Ivanov said that Russian and NATO must cooperate in the creation of "common and all-encompassing European security without boundaries, which would embrace all European states." According to Gen. Anatoly Kornukov, Air Force Chief-of-Staff, Anti-Aircraft Defense system of Commonwealth of Independent States, which was created in 1995, could become a part of common European ABM system.

---

Missile defense system not necessary

February 26, 2001
Excite News
Minnesota Daily
U. Minnesota
http://news.excite.com/news/uw/010227/university-81

(U-WIRE) MINNEAPOLIS -- It is upsetting to see President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld pushing for the ill-conceived national missile defense system bound to cause more harm than good to America's foreign relations. There are no countries posing a major threat to the U.S., and building such a system has the potential to deteriorate international nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation efforts, to unleash an arm race with Russia and to disturb diplomatic relations with key European allies. Bush should focus on developing peace strategies and a nuclear-free world instead of encouraging military build-ups.

The Russians have illustrated that building an anti-missile shield will require an amendment to the most comprehensive arms control agreement thus far, the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. This treaty has been the foundation to subsequent accords between the United States and the former Soviet Union that have limited the proliferation of nuclear weapons and nuclear testing. In addition, Rumsfeld's recent accusations that Russia has been selling nuclear technology to Iran upset Moscow. The Russians denied the accusations and pointed out that such comments were just trying to justify American military corporations' interests in building a defense shield.

On Thursday, Russia proposed a similar missile defense system to both the European Union and NATO as a way to create a cooperative missile defense system that would defend them from any "rogue" states' attacks. Such plans prompted a meeting between Secretary of State Colin Powell and Russia's Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov on Saturday during Powell's Middle East tour. Although the meeting showed both countries are willing to address complicated military issues, there was no agreement about a missile defense system.

It is becoming increasingly difficult for the U.S. to justify the ballistic system to European allies. Both England and France have understandably reacted coldly to such an idea. A possible nuclear attack coming from the so-called rogue states, or countries that pose a threat to U.S. national security -- North Korea, Iran and Iraq -- is unlikely, as these countries have neither the military nor technological capabilities to launch a successful attack. Thus far Russia, despite all its problems, is the only country possessing enough intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles to threaten the United States. While China has only about 20 to 24 ICBMs, its SLBMs are much shorter range, and no other nation has operational ICBMs. Additionally, internal U.S. reports say the technology to launch a national missile defense system is currently not available, and will not be for possibly five years.

It still seems, however, that the U.S. government is convinced building a national defense missile system is a priority. However, there is enough evidence showing that a "nuclear attack" from rogue states it is unlikely. At an estimated cost of about $60 billion, national missile defense would be a waste of taxpayers' money. It is time the U.S. government moves away from traditional military deterence policies and starts building a policy toward peace.

-------- russia

The nuclear wasteland
Russia's plan to import spent nuclear fuel risks making a bad situation worse

2/26/01
US News & World Report
By Masha Gessen
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/010226/nukes.htm

MUSLYUMOVO, RUSSIA-A man dressed in gray cotton-padded pants and jacket and a tatty rabbit hat lies on his stomach very still, pressing his face into a hole in the ice. A warm spring here means the Techa River never freezes, forcing fish to come up for air right in this spot, where he can grab them with his bare hands. Hearing two visitors come down from the road, the man gets up to look. "That's a Geiger counter," he says, noting the device they're carrying. "You looking for radiation? I heard it's all gone away."

It has not. The Geiger counter gives a reading of 154 microrads per hour, roughly seven times the maximum safe dose of background radiation. When the snow melts away, background radiation in some places along the shore will measure over 1,000.

The village of Muslyumovo is less than 50 miles from Mayak ("Beacon"), the world's oldest nuclear fuel reprocessing plant, which has been dumping liquid radioactive waste into the river since the late 1940s. Accidents regularly shake Mayak-at least five occurred in the 1990s-but the best-known one is the 1957 waste-container explosion, one of the worst nuclear disasters of all time. About 10,000 people were evacuated from the contaminated area that year, and tens of thousands more probably should have been. But a lethal combination of ignorance, poverty, and official indifference keeps people living on the land and feeding off it-with nightmarish consequences.

Despite the alarming record of operational mishaps and regulatory laxness, the Ministry of Atomic Energy, or Minatom, wants authority to import thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel from power plants in Europe and Asia. The ministry envisions earning billions of dollars-money that could expand its already considerable political clout and finance construction of new nuclear power plants. The far-fetched plan, which calls for the construction of 40 new reactors in the next 20 years-an impossible undertaking even for a wealthy country-has proved popular with Russian officials, and the parliament is set to give its OK this month.

Most of that spent nuclear fuel would end up at Mayak. Up until now, Russia has by and large banned such imports of spent nuclear fuel; the relatively little that it does import, along with domestic fuel, uses virtually all capacity at Mayak and the two other radioactive-waste storage facilities in Siberia. If the Minatom plan is approved, Mayak would reprocess some of the spent nuclear fuel, yielding plutonium. Next, the atomic energy ministry would construct a new nuclear power station next to the plant, employing a so-called breeder reactor, which both uses and extracts plutonium-based fuel.

Ignoring public opinion. There's opposition from the Russian nuclear regulatory agency, the State Committee for Atomic Oversight (GAN). Minatom's response? It is pushing for legislation to curtail the powers of the safety agency, which environmental activists say is already exceedingly permissive.

Minatom-and its allies in the parliament and the Kremlin-are prevailing in the face of opinion polls showing that 70 percent to 90 percent of Russians oppose importing radioactive waste. Last fall, environmentalists gathered 3 million signatures in support of holding a referendum-an unprecedented grass-roots success in a country where such organizing efforts are rare. But the Central Election Commission threw out just enough votes to quash the initiative. Complains former presidential adviser Alexei Yablokov, one of the organizers, "If we had collected 5 million signatures, they would just have thrown out that many more."

In the villages around the Mayak plant, opposition often gives way to tired indifference. "We are worried about feeding our kids, and we really can't give much thought to all this radiation stuff," says Maria Akhmadeyeva, who teaches elementary school in Muslyumovo. "We are soaked with this nuclear stuff anyway," adds her colleague, Russian language teacher Guzal Yalalova.

"I guess the region needs this new nuclear power plant," acknowledges Muslyumovo Mayor Gaynulla Kamalov. "But no one's promising us any of the benefits." Indeed, in the past, funds earmarked for residents of the contaminated region were consistently siphoned off. An early 1990s deal, in which the United States bought Russian plutonium, was supposed to provide $5.9 million for environmental relief in the region contaminated by Mayak; in fact, according to a General Accounting Office report, only $158,000 was used for the specified purpose: improvements in the local health center. And the medical diagnostic equipment that was purchased has proved a mixed blessing for residents, who still have little money to pay for treatment. Mayor Kamalov, 56, knows all about this: He has had to scrimp, save, and beg to pay for five operations for his now 3-year-old grandson, who was born with several tumors around his chest.

Invisible peril. In this remote Ural Mountains region 1,000 miles east of Moscow, residents live with the bitter consequences of pollution they can neither see, nor taste, nor smell. Gilmenur Karimova recalls the day four years ago that her granddaughter Alina was born with severely deformed legs and five fingers missing. "We cried so much," she says. The family managed to pay for two operations that enabled Alina to walk, but they are terrified at the $600 per finger they have been quoted for the hands. Alina, who makes beautiful ballpoint-pen drawings of mermaids and her mother despite her handicap, believes her fingers will eventually grow out.

The contamination is spreading. An underground reservoir of radioactive waste from Mayak is inching ever closer to a river that will carry it through the region to the Arctic Ocean. An aging dam that blocks the Techa River poses another danger, which GAN warns will grow if more spent fuel is brought to Mayak for reprocessing.

But these are just the most immediate risks from the possible deregulation of the Russian nuclear industry. Other potential nuclear disasters: a dozen very old reactors, including six Chernobyl-type reactors and one reactor in the center of Moscow that happens to be the world's oldest. GAN has tried to shut down these monsters in the past, but Minatom has already said it plans to keep them going-and even to re-launch one Chernobyl-type reactor this spring.

Minatom also hopes to build several fast-neutron breeder reactors, a technology opposed by the United States because it extracts plutonium that could be stolen to make black-market nuclear weapons. The Russians should have their own reasons to reconsider: The one existing Russian breeder reactor, at the Beloyarsk power plant, has had 26 accidents. But in Moscow, the issue seems more about political power and its benefits than about nuclear power.

---

Sailor's Letter Claims Misfire Sank Kursk

February 26, 2001
New York Times
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Russia-Submarine.html
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-02-26-kursk.htm

MOSCOW (AP) -- A note left by a sailor said the nuclear submarine Kursk was sunk by the explosion of a practice torpedo, a Russian newspaper reported Monday. Navy officials refused to comment on the claim.

Russian officials found two notes from different crew members during the operation to retrieve some of the bodies of the Kursk's 118 crewmen last year, but said at the time that neither shed any light on the cause of the disaster.

The first note, written by Lt. Dmitry Kolesnikov, told how 23 sailors crowded into the crew's rear compartment and were unable to escape after the Kursk sank in the Barents Sea on Aug. 12. Officials have never identified the author of the second note or spelled out its contents.

The respected daily Izvestia on Monday quoted unidentified naval officers as saying the second note was written by Lt. Rashid Aryapov, who said the explosion, which sent the submarine crashing onto the seabed, was caused by the misfiring of a practice torpedo.

``That confirms the reason for the disaster that is the most unpleasant for the military leadership,'' the newspaper said.

The government hasn't yet issued a verdict on the cause, saying the disaster could have been touched off by an internal malfunction, a collision with a foreign submarine or a World War II mine. Navy officials have said a collision with a Western submarine was the most likely cause.

The unidentified Northern Fleet officers told Izvestia that the letter described how the submarine ``somersaulted'' in the water after the explosion and that pieces of equipment that the shock wave tore from their stowage places injured crew members. They said the note, written on a book page and wrapped in plastic, was found on one of the bodies.

Northern Fleet spokesman Capt. Igor Babenko refused to comment on the report.

``The note immediately went to the government commission in charge of investigating the cause of the disaster and we have never seen it,'' he said by telephone.

When the note was found, Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov, who was in charge of the Kursk salvage operation, described the note as saying that the crew was suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning from the fire and the rise in pressure. The note itself was never shown.

Igor Spassky, the head of the Rubin design bureau that designed the Kursk, has said that he knew what caused the disaster but refused to name the reason. Izvestia quoted Igor Kurdin, who leads a group of retired submariners, saying that Spassky had told him that the first blast indeed came from a misfiring torpedo.

After the Kursk slammed onto the seabed, four combat torpedoes detonated, instantly killing most of the crew, Kurdin quoted Spassky as saying.

Most Russian and foreign experts have agreed that a misfiring torpedo was the most likely cause of the disaster. The government plans to raise the submarine to the surface later this year.

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

Victor Reis To Discuss Nuclear Policy Issues

26 Feb
US Newswire
http://www.usnewswire.com/topnews/Current_Releases/0226-108.html

Victor Reis to Discuss Nuclear Policy Issues at Potomac Institute for Policy Studies' Seminar To: Assignment Desk, Daybook Editor Contact: Erin O'Connell of the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, 703-525-0770, x241 Web site: http://www.potomacinstitute.org

News Advisory:

What:

The Potomac Institute for Policy Studies invites you to attend its Executive Luncheon Series featuring Dr. Victor H. Reis, who will discuss "Modeling Nuclear Policy." The U.S. is currently revisiting the wisdom of nuclear power plants. This and other complex nuclear policy issues are being explored that require global models. In his talk, Reis will address several nuclear policy issues, including global plutonium flows and government investment in new nuclear power technology. He will show how interactive modeling can help clarify different policy views. Audience members will be invited to participate by providing inputs to the models.

When:

Wednesday, Feb. 28 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Where:

Potomac Institute for Policy Studies Ballston Metro Center Office Tower 901 N. Stuart Street, Suite 200 Arlington, Va. 22203 Ballston Metro Stop/Orange Line

About the Speaker:

Reis currently leads the Nuclear Strategies Project, a multi-organization venture whose purpose is to help understand and develop strategies for the international nuclear enterprise. He is a member of the U.S. Strategic Command's Strategic Advisory Group and the Sandia National Laboratories national Security Advisory Panel. Dr. Reis has also served as the Assistant Secretary for Defense Programs in the U.S. Department of Energy, Director of Defense Research and Engineering at the Pentagon, and Deputy Director and the Director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

About the Executive Luncheon Series:

The Executive Luncheon Series was initiated three years ago by the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies and has hosted many notable experts in a variety of national security fields. The purpose of the series is to keep the Institute and its community abreast of current national security issues, and to allow the Institute to promote an ever-expanding outlook on the application of technology and technology policy.

R.S.V.P.s are necessary. Please contact Erin O'Connell or Vanessa Webb at 703-525-0770.

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

Senate Republicans Propose Big Overhaul of Energy Policy

February 26, 2001
New York Times
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/26/politics/26CND-ENERGY.html

WASHINGTON, Feb. 26 -- Calling the nation's energy problem a looming national security crisis and an economic threat, Senate Republicans introduced today the first major bill in a decade to overhaul energy policy and encourage domestic oil exploration.

The bill, presented by Senator Frank Murkowski of Alaska, the chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, is expected to set off one of the year's fiercest policy debates pitting the oil industry against conservationists. Its introduction comes against the backdrop of California's rolling power outages, a problem that Republicans say gives their bill fresh momentum.

Central to the energy bill is a provision that would permit oil drilling inside the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a wilderness area in Alaska's north slope. The measure, which has met with strong resistance in Congress in the past, is vehemently opposed by many Democrats and some Republicans, who say it would needlessly disrupt the refuge.

President Bush, a former oil executive and a strong supporter of drilling in the Alaskan refuge, has directed Vice President Dick Cheney to create a task force on energy policy and to work with Senator Murkowski on steering a final bill through Congress.

"American dependence on foreign oil threatens our national security and our freedom, and we need to recognize that," said Senator Trent Lott, the Republican majority leader, on the Senate floor today, advocating drilling in the refuge.

Senator Murkowski's legislation also includes numerous tax credits to spur oil and natural gas production by small and mid-sized companies and to promote alternative fuels. The flurry of proposed tax incentives could complicate President Bush's desire to limit his tax-cut proposal to $1.6 trillion over 10 years.

The 300-page bill, called the National Energy Security Act, seeks to reduce America's reliance on foreign oil to 50 percent by opening up new tracts of land for oil exploration. The United States currently imports 56 percent of its oil. It would also promote the production of natural gas, coal and nuclear energy and and increase home heating assistance for the poor.

Senator Murkowski said he sought to balance the need for a national energy policy and the concerns of environmentalists. He pointed out that large oil companies receive no tax breaks.

But a number of Democrats, environmental groups and lobbyists are actively opposing the bill, calling it heavily titled toward the oil industry.

In an interview today, former President Jimmy Carter, an opponent of the Alaskan drilling, called the bill "counter productive" and one that "would increase oil profits." He said he was especially disturbed by the proposal to drill in the Arctic refuge and to meddle with clean air standards.

"It directly contravenes what Presidents have maintained as a position since Dwight Eisenhower," Mr. Carter said. "I feel that this is ill-advised legislation that would bespoil a precious area of our country" for a very small amount of oil.

Mr. Carter, who struggled with energy policy during his own term, said he sought, unsuccessfully, to turn the refuge into a national park. In the end, he protected the refuge from "being despoiled," he said -- leaving Congress and the President a loophole to lift the ban. At the same time, he allocated 95 percent of Alaska's coastal regions for oil speculation and production.

"It not only contravenes what I think is best concerning the Alaska national wildlife region," Mr. Carter said. "It has some very serious destructive elements to the overall protection of our environment and removes some of the encouragements to energy conservation."

All day today, Republicans took the Senate floor to promote their energy bill, saying the United States has suffered for years because of its increased dependence on oil from such countries as Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

---

GOP energy bill includes Alaska drilling incentive

02/26/2001
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-02-26-energy.htm
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/politics/AP-Energy-Congress.html

WASHINGTON (AP) - Senate Republicans introduced an industry-friendly energy bill Monday, calling the nation's energy problems the greatest threat to economic growth. They promised action by summer.

The bill, already sharply criticized by many Democrats, calls for opening an Arctic wildlife refuge in Alaska to oil drilling and would provide tens of millions of dollars in tax incentives or regulatory relief to the oil, coal, natural gas and nuclear industries.

The legislation also would expand programs to help low-income families cope with energy bills, provide new tax incentives for renewable energy sources such as wind and solar and provide a tax break for buying ultra-efficient cars, homes and appliances.

A broad spectrum of industry - from manufacturers and small business groups, to timber, mining and energy interests - applauded the legislation as a first step toward boosting energy supplies.

Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, who crafted the bill, said a congressional assessment on the cost of the bill had not yet been completed. An advocacy group critical of the bill, Taxpayers for Common Sense, estimated the cost conservatively at $23.6 billion over 10 years.

Most environmentalists and energy-efficiency proponents said the legislation was too heavily focused on production rather than conservation and favored polluters. The Sierra Club called it "a giveaway for fossil fuel producers."

Former President Jimmy Carter took the unusual step of voicing his objection to the legislation in a series of telephone calls Monday to reporters, primarily because of his strong opposition to proposed drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.

The refuge "was set aside not to be exploited for ... a very small amount of oil that won't be available for 10 years," said Carter in an interview. Carter in 1980 signed the legislation that assured no drilling in the refuge without congressional approval.

While Sen. John Breaux, D-La., joined as a co-sponsor, some Democrats already have promised to filibuster the measure if the Arctic refuge provision is not removed.

Environmentalists voiced other concerns about the bill Monday. In boosting clean coal technology, the bill also would exempt power plants from additional emission requirements under the Clean Air Act. It also would turn over to states the Interior Department's regulation of oil and gas leases on federal land, possibly affecting environmental enforcement, critics said.

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., said he hoped an energy package will be voted on by the full Senate sometime this summer, but that no action would be taken before the White House completes its long-term energy package.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham praised Murkowski "for moving forward quickly" on energy legislation, but said the administration task force was still working on "a variety of policy initiatives and ideas" it plans to put forward shortly.

Lott, at a news conference unveiling the GOP bill, said "we're heading for trouble" without a broad energy plan that promotes production, adding "it's not enough to encourage conservation."

He said the country is facing "an energy crisis" that, if not addressed, will pose "the greatest threat to future economic prosperity in this country."

The bill would do little to address the most immediate energy concerns - soaring natural gas prices nationwide and California electricity shortages that threaten to spill over to other western states this summer.

Murkowski acknowledged that the measure is designed to address the long-term problem of growing U.S. dependence on foreign oil. The bill seeks to reduce such dependence from 56% to 50% over the next 10 years.

Calling the legislation "balanced" between conservation and production, Murkowski rejected criticism that it would primarily benefit already profitable oil companies.

"This isn't a tax bill favoring Big Oil," said Murkowski, a close congressional ally of the oil industry. He said the tax benefits are aimed at small independent producers.

Murkowski said the country needs the estimated 11 billion to 16 billion barrels of oil believed to be beneath the 1.5 million acre coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northeastern Alaska.

And, he insisted, the oil can be developed using current technology without harming the environment. The refuge is the summer calving grounds for caribou and the seasonal home to other wildlife, including millions of migrating birds.

The bill also would:

Provide tax breaks for small oil producers and construction of new refineries.

Streamline permitting processes for oil and gas pipelines.

Promote research into new-generation nuclear power plants and provide tax incentives for efficient nuclear power production.

Provide tax incentives for buying automobiles that achieve 50 miles per gallon, or purchase ultra-fuel efficient homes and appliances.

-------- kentucky

Paducah cleanup funds face big cut
Projects at nuclear weapons sites could lose $400 million

Tuesday, February 20, 2001
Louisville Courier-Journal
By JAMES R. CARROLL
http://www.courier-journal.com/localnews/2001/02/20/ky_uran.html

WASHINGTON -- Kentucky political leaders are alarmed about a plan being considered by President Bush to slash $400 million from cleanup funds for dozens of former nuclear weapons sites, including the Paducah uranium plant.

Gov. Paul Patton and the state's delegation to Congress engaged in lengthy negotiations with the Clinton administration last year to boost federal spending to clean chemical and radiation contamination around the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, which processed uranium for nuclear weapons.

Those efforts paid off in an agreement to add nearly $50 million to the Energy Department's $41 million cleanup budget for Paducah.

The prospect of a setback in fiscal 2002 has Patton and delegation members writing letters to defend the spending. Meanwhile, the proposed cut is being met with anger from some Paducah plant neighbors and environmentalists.

"You could almost see it coming," said Ronald Lamb, who owns Lamb Alignment, an auto repair shop in Kevil, Ky., near the Paducah site.

Rep. Ed Whitfield, a Republican whose district includes the Paducah facility, and Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said they intend to push hard for enough money to keep the decontamination and cleanup project moving ahead at Paducah.

"I'm not going to view (the proposed funding cut) as set in stone," Whitfield said. "We're going to continue our efforts to obtain adequate funding to keep the cleanup on schedule at Paducah, and I'm sure that many other people around the country will be doing the same thing."

The Energy Department is spending $6.2 billion this fiscal year on its various cleanup projects nationwide. A cut of $400 million represents about 6.5 percent of that total.

But Paducah, which ranks 15th in cleanup spending on the department's list of 65 contaminated sites around the country, stands to suffer more because it isn't among the top 10 sites. About three-quarters of DOE cleanup money goes to the 10 worst sites, a list headed by the Hanford nuclear reservation in Richland, Wash. Environmentalists have labeled Hanford the nation's most contaminated nuclear site because about 60 percent of the country's entire volume of nuclear waste is there.

At Paducah, the clean up is of contaminants including radioactive plutonium, uranium and technetium, as well as beryllium, chromium, arsenic, PCBs and various other oils. The site has cylinders containing an estimated 486,000 metric tons of depleted uranium, and 52,000 drums of various chemical wastes.

Even the current budget's $90 million isn't enough to clean up the Paducah site, government auditors have said.

The General Accounting Office, the nonpartisan auditing arm of Congress, has estimated a minimum commitment of $124 million a year would be needed to make notable progress toward ridding the 3,400-acre Western Kentucky complex of the worst radioactive and hazardous materials that threaten the environment and public health.

The GAO has said it will take about $1.3 billion to meet a previously agreed cleanup deadline of 2010. The state wants even greater spending, estimating the cleanup cost as high as $3 billion.

Patton repeatedly has told Congress that $200 million a year would be needed at Paducah to comply with the 2010 target date. At the end of last week, the governor was preparing a letter to Kentucky's congressional delegation and to the Bush administration reiterating his concern about losing ground on the Paducah project.

BUSH, WHOSE budget for fiscal 2002 is expected on Capitol Hill by the end of the month, is looking at various cuts in the Department of Energy, including a recommendation from the White House's Office of Management and Budget that $400 million be trimmed from cleanup spending nationwide.

But the administration isn't going public with its budget plans yet.

"We are trying to work through issues," said department spokesman Joe Davis. "But we are not commenting on any of the specifics."

Whitfield and House colleagues from other states that have contaminated facilities last week sent the second of two letters to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham urging an increase in cleanup spending.

"The president obviously is putting additional money into education and the military and some other areas, including tax reduction, and this is just his proposal for his budget," Whitfield said. "I'm sure the compromising will be started soon."

In their Feb. 14 letter to Abraham and OMB director Mitchell Daniels Jr., Whitfield and House members of both parties said the decontamination budget "must realize a significant increase to continue its legally binding cleanup commitments with our states in order to reduce long-term costs to the American taxpayer."

"A budget request below the necessary amount will result in delays and higher long-term costs to the American taxpayer," the lawmakers said, "not to mention added threats to the environment surrounding these former weapons production sites and legal actions by states against the federal government."

McConnell, in a statement released by his office, said the Paducah cleanup "remains one of my top priorities."

Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., also issued a statement, saying that reducing Paducah cleanup money "would be completely unacceptable to me." He cautioned, however, that "it's a bit early to get all up in arms about these reports."

LAMB, A MEMBER of the Site Specific Advisory Board, a citizen's group that monitors cleanup activities at the Paducah plant, said he wasn't surprised by talk of cutbacks in cleanup funding.

"Basically the people (Bush) put in place I don't think will see the same standards of clean up as the Clinton administration had. They don't seem to be that environmentally inclined," Lamb said.

But Al Puckett, a Western Kentucky farmer who worked at the plant for 12 years in the late 1950s and early 1960s, said he doesn't think the amount of money is the issue.

"I don't think that plant can be cleaned up. I think it's so contaminated," said Puckett, who lives about a mile from the site. "I think what they ought to do is put a fence around that place and just leave it, because any money they spend will be wasted money."

But Tom FitzGerald, who heads the Kentucky Resources Council, an environmental group that lobbies primarily at the state legislature, said Paducah's problems aren't hopeless. He warned, though, that a cut in cleanup money now would inflict long-lasting damage on the DOE's standing with the public.

"They could undercut and erode overnight whatever modicum of credibility they started to reestablish with communities," he said. "It is not only unwise, but is a slap in the faces of these communities who have already paid more than their share for the defense effort."

-------- us nuc politics

Bush Budget a New Start

February 26, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bush-Budget.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House billed President Bush's spending and tax cut proposals as ``a blueprint for new beginnings'' as the administration intensified its effort on Monday to sell its forthcoming budget by striking a centrist tone.

In talking points distributed on Capitol Hill, administration officials emphasized Bush proposals that could have been made by a moderate Democrat: boosting spending for education, conservation and other programs; reducing the national debt by a historic $2 trillion over 10 years; and providing ``fair and responsible'' tax relief.

``First, the budget will fund America's priorities,'' the talking points said. ``Second, the budget will provide the largest debt reduction in history. Third, it provides fair and responsible tax relief.''

Bush will use a Tuesday night address to a joint session of Congress to describe his plan, which is the keystone of his economic program. The following morning, he will release his $1.9 trillion budget for fiscal 2002, which will include the beginning of his proposed $1.6 trillion, 10-year tax cut.

Democrats have said Bush's tax reductions are more expensive than he admits and would be far too generous to the rich while soaking up money needed for domestic programs and other priorities.

Not mentioned in the White House talking points is a decision to cut the Energy Department's budget to $19 billion, roughly $400 million below current levels, said a senior administration official speaking on condition of anonymity.

The official said the military portion of the agency's budget -- two-thirds of it, covering nuclear weapons -- would be minimally affected by the reductions. That will leave the rest of its programs withstanding cuts nearly across the board.

Energy is among many agencies whose budgets will be restrained to leave room from the projected $5.6 trillion, 10-year federal surplus for Bush's proposed tax cut and other priorities.

Overall, Bush is proposing holding discretionary spending to a 4 percent increase next year, to around $663 billion, officials said. Discretionary spending is the one-third of the budget that covers everything the government does but its automatically paid benefits like Medicare.

Speaking to reporters at the White House before meeting with his Cabinet, Bush said some members of Congress ``may not like the fact that we're asking for there to be fiscal sanity in the budget.

``But that's one of the reasons I became the president. Because I said, 'Give us a chance, and we will have fiscal sanity in our budget,' and I look forward to making the case,'' he said.

The White House talking points were labeled, ``A blueprint for new beginnings, a responsible budget for America's priorities.''

They provided few new details of Bush's budget plans. But they did say he would propose tripling funds for children's reading programs, creating more than 1,200 new community health centers, and provide $900 million for a land and water conservation program.

Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., reiterated warnings by congressional Republicans that more work is needed before Bush's tax package can make it through Congress.

``The president clearly needs to be very intimately involved,'' Lott told reporters, citing similar efforts by past presidents. ``I'm sure this president will be and I'd encourage him to be'' telephoning wavering lawmakers to help ensure their support.

Lott said Bush's tax plan is not ``the Holy Grail,'' but added, ``I'm committed to trying to keep the package within the framework the president is going to ask for.''

Bush plan includes reducing income tax rates, cutting taxes on many married couples, and phasing out the inheritance tax.

The political weak point for Bush is the Senate, which is divided 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans. Moderate GOP Sens. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and James Jeffords of Vermont have said Bush's tax cut is too expensive, while Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia has been the only Democrat to express support for Bush's package.

-------- MILITARY

Diplomatic courtesy

February 26, 2001
Washington Times
Embassy Row James Morrison News and dispatches from the diplomatic corridor.
http://www.washtimes.com/world/embassy-2001226213427.htm

The new Chinese ambassador may have gotten a lecture about Iraq when he visited the State Department last week, but most new envoys are getting a warm welcome at the White House, where President Bush appears to enjoy meeting the diplomats.

Some have noted that Mr. Bush is spending even more time talking to the new ambassadors than President Clinton did.

Seven ambassadors presented credentials to Mr. Bush on Feb. 14, while China's Yang Jiechi handed a copy of his credentials to Secretary of State Colin Powell. Mr. Yang, a personal friend of the Bush family's, will present his credentials to the president at a later date.

Mr. Powell took the occasion to express his concern to Mr. Yang about reports that China had sent workers to Iraq in violation of U.N. sanctions and was helping build a fiber-optics network to improve Iraq's anti-aircraft systems.

The ambassadors at the White House on Valentine's Day had a warmer reception, even the new envoy from Kazakhstan, which the United States has criticized for human rights abuses.

Ambassador Kanat Saudabayev stressed the importance Kazakhstan places on relations with the United States.

Mr. Bush, in reply, said, "The United States recognizes the important role that Kazakhstan plays as a leader in Central Asia on several fronts - security, trade, environment and social issues."

He told Croatian Ambassador Ivan Grdesic, "The United States and Croatia have developed a solid friendship. It is a friendship that I hope you and I, both as new arrivals in Washington, will be able to strengthen in the coming years."

Mr. Grdesic replied that his country "is dedicated to the ideal of peace, tolerance, prosperity and friendly relations among nations."

He also sought support for Croatia's goal of joining NATO.

The other ambassadors who presented credentials to Mr. Bush were Carlos Alzamora Traverso of Peru, Emmanuel Touaboy of the Central African Republic, Milan St. Protic of Yugoslavia, Meret Orazov of Turkmenistan and Juan Jose Bremer of Mexico, who had presented a copy of the credentials to the Clinton administration before Mr. Bush's inaugural.

-------- colombia

Colombian President Says U.S. Should Talk to Rebels

February 26, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-US-Colombia.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- One day before Colombian President Andres Pastrana meets with President Bush, the State Department issued a report Monday denouncing his government's human rights record.

Police and soldiers commit murders, high-ranking officers are rarely held accountable for offenses, and security forces do little to stop right-wing paramilitaries, the department said in its annual report examining human rights worldwide.

``Members of the security forces collaborated with paramilitary groups that committed abuses, in some instances allowing such groups to pass through roadblocks, sharing information or providing them with supplies or ammunition,'' it said.

The report's release coincided with Pastrana's four-day visit to the United States, which is providing the Colombian armed forces with combat helicopters and troop training under a $1.3 billion anti-drug aid package, making Colombia the third-largest recipient of U.S. military aid.

Asked about the report after he met with Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., Pastrana stressed areas of progress noted in the report, such as efforts to improve the judicial system and professionalize the military.

``In global terms, I think it is a fair report of the realities we are living in in Colombia,'' he said.

Earlier, in a meeting with U.S. reporters before the report was released, Pastrana said his government has made progress in human rights but recognizes more needs to be done.

``We are working very hard basically and we are very committed right now in trying to achieve a way of really controlling what is happening inside our country regarding violations of human rights,'' he said.

The report echoes many of the criticisms made before by human rights groups, who say the number of massacres is rising. But the source of the report -- the U.S. government -- and its timing are awkward for Pastrana. It diverts attention from issues he hoped to stress in his visit, such as renewing and expanding 10-year-old Andean trade preferences and securing U.S. involvement in the Colombian peace process.

Pastrana said he would like the United States to resume contacts with Colombia's largest leftist guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, with whom the Colombian government is in slow-moving peace talks. The United States broke contact with the group after three Americans were kidnapped and killed by rebels in 1999. Pastrana wants the United States to participate in a multinational meeting on the peace process March 8 in the guerrilla-held demilitarized zone.

Colombia's human rights record was a major concern last year when lawmakers approved the $1.3 billion aid package. Before the money could be spent, Congress required the Clinton administration to certify that Colombia had met a series of human rights conditions. The administration found that most conditions had not been met, but allowed the aid to go through, citing national security concerns.

In his meeting with reporters, Pastrana stressed his government's efforts to fight paramilitaries, who are blamed for the country's worst atrocities. He said that a special brigade had been created to capture them, that the government is confiscating their assets, and dismissing soldiers linked to them.

Military penal codes have been changed and, for the first time, an army general, Jaime Uscategui, was convicted in connection with a 1997 paramilitary massacre.

The State Department noted some improvements in Colombia's legal system, but said ``the government's human rights record remains poor.''

Paramilitaries and leftist guerrillas were blamed for most of the violence, with paramilitaries ``responsible for an increasing number of massacres and other politically motivated killings.''

It said military leaders have repeatedly said they will not tolerate collaboration between soldiers and paramilitary groups. ``However, security force actions in the field were not always consistent with the leadership's position,'' it said.

-------- drug war

Medical marijuana hearings will be held this week

Monday, February 26, 2001
Richard Schmitz,
FYI, Mike

Maryland's companion medical marijuana bills will receive public hearings this week. Senate Bill 705 will be heard by the Judicial Proceedings Committee on Wednesday, while House Bill 940 will be heard by the Judiciary Committee on Thursday. Bill hearings in both committees begin at 1:00 p.m., and more than 10 bills are scheduled to be heard in each committee.

Before the hearings occur, Maryland residents should call all of the undecided members of both the Senate and House committees and encourage them to vote in favor of the medical marijuana bill.

You can call the undecided committee members toll free from within Maryland by dialing 1-800-492-7122 and using the following extensions:

SENATE JUDICIAL PROCEEDINGS COMMITTEE

NAME (PARTY-DISTRICT) ........................... EXTENSION
Walter Baker, Chair (D-District 36) ............. ext. 3639
Leo Green, Vice Chair (D-District 23) ........... ext. 3631
Richard Colburn (R-District 37) ................. ext. 3590
Timothy Ferguson (R-District 4) ................. ext. 3704
Ralph Hughes (D-District 40) .................... ext. 3656
Philip Jimeno (D-District 31) ................... ext. 3658
Clarence Mitchell (D-District 44) ............... ext. 3612
Perry Sfikas (D-District 46) .................... ext. 3598

HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE

NAME (PARTY-DISTRICT) ........................... EXTENSION
Ann Marie Doory, Vice Chair (D-District 43) ..... ext. 3476
David Boschert (R-District 33) .................. ext. 3223
Emmett Burns (D-District 10) .................... ext. 3350
William Cole (D-District 47A) ................... ext. 3319
Melony Ghee Griffith (D-District 25) ............ ext. 3076
Tim Hutchins (R-District 28) .................... ext. 3247
Carol Petzold (D-District 19) ................... ext. 3001

If any legislator is not available to take your phone call, leave a brief message telling him or her why you support medical marijuana. Further, if you live in one of the committee members' districts, be sure to tell him or her that you are one of his or her constituents.

As always, be courteous and professional in your efforts on behalf of this legislation.

Lastly, if you have received any responses from state legislators regarding medical marijuana, please e-mail them to state@mpp.org so that we can lobby those legislators more effectively as the process unfolds.

Thank you to every Maryland resident who has contacted legislators via MPP's Web site. More than 350 letters have already been sent to a wide range of Delegates and Senators.

HOW TO SUPPORT THE MARIJUANA POLICY PROJECT

MPP's state legislative monitoring service is funded entirely by the contributions of MPP allies and members nationwide. In order to launch this service in January 2001, MPP had to raise more than $127,000 from hundreds of donors in 2000.

In order to continue with this service in 2002, MPP needs to raise another $127,000 during this calendar year. If you find MPP's legislative monitoring service helpful, please consider making a donation at: http://www.mpp.org/MoneyForStates

Because MPP devotes 100% of its efforts toward influencing public policy, contributions are not tax-deductible. However, the above link also provides a way to make a tax-deductible

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

U.N. tribunal convicts two Bosnian Croats

02/26/2001
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-02-26-croats.htm

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) - The U.N. war crimes tribunal on Monday convicted a senior Bosnian Croat military officer and a high-ranking civilian Bosnian Croat of war crimes against Bosnian Muslims.

The court said Dario Kordic, a leader of the nationalist Croatian Democratic Union and of the Croatian Defense Council, helped plan and organize a campaign to drive Muslims from an area the Croats wanted to join to the newly created state of Croatia. Kordic, 40, was sentenced to 25 years imprisonment.

The tribunal also convicted Mario Cerkez, 41, a Croat military commander, of war crimes in leading attacks against Muslim villages during the Bosnian war in 1993-94. He received a 15-year sentence.

Presiding Judge Richard May of Britain said Kordic was involved in crimes "characterized by ruthlessness and savagery and in which no distinction was made as to the age of its victims: Young and old were either murdered or expelled."

Kordic, a politician, was found innocent of being among those who set the policy of ethnic cleansing, but was "enthusiastic" in carrying out the campaign "and played an instrumental part," the judgment said.

"You played your part as surely as the man who pulled the trigger," May told Kordic.

The worst of the massacres was in Ahmici on April 16, 1993, when Croatian militiamen stormed into Muslim homes. Entire families were gunned down and houses set ablaze. Survivors of the bullets were burned alive.

Before the attack, 356 Muslims and 87 Croats lived in the village. Immediately afterward, no Muslims remained. Croat homes were left untouched.

The court found that Kordic was involved in planning that raid.

Kordic and Cerkez were charged with a total of 44 counts of murder, persecution, plunder and other war crimes or crimes against humanity, and could have been sentenced to life imprisonment. But the court found that their responsibilities were less than described by the prosecution during the 20-month trial.

Kordic was convicted on 12 counts, and Cerkez on 15. The more than three years they have been in custody will be counted toward their terms, the court said.

Both suspects turned themselves in to the tribunal in 1997, two years after being indicted.

The proceedings against Kordic, the most influential political figure brought to trial, were seen as a test case for political responsibility for atrocities on the battlefield.

But the court was cautious in applying the rule of command responsibility against him. It said Kordic was not in "the highest echelons" of policymaking, and he "did not possess the authority to stop the crimes or punish the perpetrators."

Both men were found to have organized "a pattern of plunder" in which mosques were deliberately targeted.

As part of an "ethnic cleansing" campaign, Bosnian Croat forces murdered hundreds of Muslims from a string of villages, used women and the elderly prisoners as human shields during enemy bombing raids and forced thousands of others to flee, the indictment says.

Prosecutors say the massacres were so effective and systematic that they effectively destroyed or removed almost the entire local Muslim population.

"The number of dead may never be known," May said, but they were surely in the hundreds, with thousands more expelled.

The tribunal, established in 1993 to try those responsible for atrocities in the Balkans, has publicly indicted 98 individuals. Some of those still at large include former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, ex-political leader Radovan Karadic and military chief Ratko Mladic.

---

U.N. Must Fight Slavery, From Bosnia to Sudan

February 26, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/26/opinion/L26SLA.html

To the Editor:

The conviction by a United Nations war crimes tribunal of former Bosnian Serb soldiers for enslaving and raping Muslim women is a watershed (front page, Feb. 23). While slavery and the slave trade are outlawed in many international treaties, millions live in bondage.

The United Nations tribunal must act against slavery and gang rape wherever they occur. One glaring example is southern Sudan, where gang rape of women and girls during slave raids is common.

Many teenage girls who have been liberated recount being repeatedly raped by government-backed militiamen. Yet the testimony of these young women is generally met with silence. Just because the victims are not white Europeans does not mean that we can ignore their plight.

The landmark ruling at The Hague should be but the start of a persistent campaign against slavery around the world.

JESSE SAGE Associate Director American Anti-Slavery Group Boston, Feb. 23, 2001

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

New NATO awaits Powell

01/02/26
Lincoln Journal Star
Knight Ridder Newspapers
BY DANIEL RUBIN
http://www.journalstar.com/nation?story_id=3698&date=20010226&past=

BRUSSELS - The last time Colin Powell visited NATO, there were no Russians in the hallways, no Czechs, Hungarians or Poles in the meetings, and no German troops in the Balkans.

The European Union was little more than a trade group in 1993. Now it is a powerful common market moving toward a single currency. And European leaders are eager to augment their new economic muscle with military might: Plans are under way to field a 15-nation European defense force independent of the United States and the 52-year-old, American-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

No longer united in facing Soviet tanks across the Berlin Wall, both the United States and Western Europe are going their separate ways on a wide variety of security, economic and other issues, from global warming to trade with Iraq to imports of beef and bananas.

Of course, Western Europe and North America remain united by common interests, shared sacrifices and democratic values, and trans-Atlantic relations have had their ups and downs for more than 200 years. But when Powell arrives here Tuesday as secretary of state, he will confront several volatile issues that threaten to divide the United States from its closest allies.

Many West Europeans worry that plans for an American missile defense could trigger a new nuclear arms race, fuel anti-Western nationalism in Russia and encourage more nations, and even terrorist groups, to acquire nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

Buoyed by their efforts at political integration and by economic growth that the United States may have trouble matching, at least this year, the West Europeans increasingly are devising their own military and trade strategies after 56 years of American domination.

Europeans also are wary of Bush's intentions in the Balkans, where the United States was the backbone of the 1999 air campaign against Serbia, but where national security adviser Condoleezza Rice has suggested the administration might want to scale back its military commitments.

Reviving a time-honored Soviet strategy of trying to "decouple" the United States and its European allies, Russian President Vladimir Putin has sought to exploit the trans-Atlantic squabbles and reassert Russia's place as a power to be reckoned with in Europe.

Missile defense "has the potential to really cause trans-Atlantic rows," said Charles Grant, an analyst with the Centre for European Reform in London.

Official reactions among allies vary from Britain's cool support to a tart warning from France, where President Jacques Chirac this month called the administration plan "a strong incitement to proliferation."

In between are the Germans, who are skeptical, wondering when their many questions will be answered. The Bush administration has not said whether its plans are for land or sea or satellite systems; it has simply said the Clinton administration's $60 billion plan was inadequate.

The very fear of attack is something many U.S. allies cannot figure. The nation's impetus for missile defense is in part a reaction to intelligence that the Chinese are technologically years more advanced than thought in their nuclear missile program. The United States has not fingered China by name in its statements about risk, instead contending that the missile defense is needed to prevent "rogue nations" from attacking. Europeans weigh the threat differently.

Most people in Western Europe are not frightened by ballistic missiles attacks, Grant said. "Those people who have lived in London, Paris, Berlin or Rome have faced terrorism all their lives."

"We do not see the need for it," said a French diplomat. "Our threat assessment is different."

European attitudes about the U.S. missile initiative are evolving fast. Christopher Makins, the president of the Atlantic Council in Washington, said it is harder for U.S. allies to object to the concept because the NATO nations already have signed off on the goal of building theater missile defense to protect their own forces.

Public opinion is something else, however. In Germany, a new poll by the Emnid research agency found that 64 percent of respondents think national missile defense could trigger a new arms race.

"Transatlantic skepticism is spreading," commentator Klaus-Peter Schoeppner wrote in the German newspaper Die Welt on Wednesday, describing the Bush administration as "a president surrounded with hawks who is appointing men who were formed in the Cold War to his security staff."

Former German foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher wrote Wednesday in the newspaper Der Tagesspiegel that the unilateral imposition of one nation's will on other countries would "amount to repeating the mistakes of European history on a global scale. Over the second half of the 20th century, the European allies did well cooperating on equal terms rather that striving towards domination," Genscher wrote, apparently referring in part to his own country's Third Reich.

But even French analysts are realistic about the dim prospects for stopping the American project. While the Bush administration has said it wants to consult with its allies, it is equally clear that the president wishes to go ahead with a missile defense.

"By the end of the day, if technology permits, America will have some manner of national missile defense, and it is probably useless for us to fight a rear-guard battle," said Dominique Moisi, the deputy director of the French Institute for International Relations in Paris.

Powell will need to do some "smoothing and soothing" as one NATO diplomat said, playing what Moisi called the good cop to the bad cop Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld played at a Munich conference, during which he never once mentioned the European Union.

While the Europeans decry what they consider American arrogance, they also insist on creating their own EU-based defense force. The goal is for the EU nations by 2003 to be able to put 60,000 soldiers into action for up to a year within 60 days of the outbreak of a crisis.

The problem, EU and NATO officials agree, is how to get EU troops into battle and keep them there with proper logistics, communications and intelligence. To do that, European nations would need to beef up their defense budgets at the same time they must provide generous social benefits to their aging populations.

"It is in the interest of the U.S. as well," said Dick Leurdijk, a defense analyst with the Clingendael Institute in the Netherlands. "They've said the Europeans should take more responsibility, should take more of the burden. The consequence of that approach is Europe should establish a rapid-reaction force."

Among the key issues to be discussed is when the EU force might act without American participation. Canadians and Americans, who are members of NATO but not of the EU, have made it clear that they would want to be heard if their supplies and personnel were to be used.

"If all we're doing is setting up separate planning and operational structures, what good does another 'committee' get us?" one NATO diplomat asked.

While no senior government official has proposed a trade-off - national missile defense for the EU's rapid reaction force - the compromise has been suggested at think tanks and seminars.

Charles Grant, the analyst in London, thinks that's where the discussions are headed. "The Europeans would say, 'We accept national missile defense begrudgingly. Please talk with us when you do it.' And the U.S. would accept the European Strategic Defense Force begrudgingly, but 'please talk with us when you do it.' I think that's got to be the arrangement."

-------

New non-lethal energy weapon heats skin

Monday, 26 February 2001
vny.com
By KELLY HEARN,
http://www.vny.com/cf/News/upidetail.cfm?QID=163207

WASHINGTON, Feb. 26 (UPI) -- The Marine Corps is developing a non-lethal weapon that uses electromagnetic energy to heat but not permanently burn human skin. The weapon could help soldiers counter terrorism threats, control unruly crowds and defend airfields and ships.

Experts confirmed it was the first time the military had designed a so-called "directed energy weapon" for use against human targets.

The weapon concentrates energy into a beam of micro-millimeter waves that penetrate clothes to rapidly heat moisture particles in the outermost layer of flesh without going deep enough to damage organs. The device reportedly causes no permanent damage to the body or to electronic devices such as pacemakers.

Dubbed the Vehicle-Mounted Active Denial System, the weapon was revealed in a story published first in the Marine Corps Times Monday.

Officials at the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate in Quantico, Va. reportedly planned to show the classified system to top generals in April. But Monday's story scuttled those plans and sent officials scrambling to contain a possible public relations fiasco.

A Marine spokesmen would not comment on the system, saying only that subject specialists would be available for interviews later this week.

Though detailed information about the weapon's design remain classified, the story stated that the weapon would heat a target's skin to approximately 130 degrees Fahrenheit in about two seconds. Humans start to feel pain at 113 degrees. The report went on to say that soldiers could fire the weapon from distances exceeding 750 meters (2,250 feet) from their target -- a range that would allow them to remain outside the reach of most small arms fire. The weapon could be mounted atop a military vehicle or on an aircraft.

Defense experts told United Press International the Marines especially have sought new ways to non-lethally confront large, hostile crowds. Among other things, the Department of Defense has looked to lasers, teargas and rubber bullets for less-than-lethal impact. But these have either proven ineffective or have attracted consternation from human rights groups.

"Unlike the other three branches, the Marines often are in situations where there are lots of innocent bystanders, where they have to control an unruly mob," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a non-profit policy research firm in Alexandria, Va. "Tear gas and rubber bullets just have not been effective, so they've want something more lethal than those and less lethal than an M16. Whether they have found that here remains to be seen."

"One of the fears is that there will be a misapplication of this kind of technology, particularly in terms of civilian use," said Chris Hellman, a senior analyst for the Center for Defense Information, a Washington D.C.-based independent research group that monitors military planning and policy. "Clearly we've seen military combat weaponry migrate to the civil sector. Just walk past any Swat Team and you see what is basically an army unit," he told UPI.

The article quoted an official saying that human subjects had been exposed to the beams more than 6,000 times under laboratory conditions. Furthermore, military researchers had completed a study, which has not been released, on the long-term health effects of exposure.

"This puts a non-lethal arrow in quiver of commanders," said Ron Madrid, former Marine and an expert on non-lethal weaponry at the University of Pennsylvania. "It provides decision makers with options. You can guarantee that the Marines were excruciatingly detailed in building in technological limiters to keep the system from having a lethal effect,"

Retired Major General William L. Nash, the former commanding general of the 1st Armored Division, told UPI the device will inevitably create a race to build counter weapons. "The good news is the weapon is non-lethal but the bad news is that for every weapon there is bound to be a counter weapon," he said. "I can imagine someone trying to develop a polymer based shield against this, for example."

The Defense Department spent nearly $40 million over 10 years to develop the technology, said the Marine Corps Times report. The Air Force co-sponsored the project, the story said, doing much of the research and development.


-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

Space Group Plans Solar Sailing Voyage

February 26, 2001
Reuters
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/science/science-space-sail-dc.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In what sounds like a purely fantastic voyage, a private U.S. group that boosts planetary exploration said on Monday it plans to use the power of light to sail a giant windmill-shaped contraption through space.

The Planetary Society, founded by the late astronomer Carl Sagan and others, said the vehicle features reflective surfaces that will be propelled when particles of light called photons hit it.

The fanciful craft, with its 30-yard sails, is to be launched on a converted Russian intercontinental ballistic missile from a submarine in the Barents Sea later this year. The total cost of the mission is about $4 million.

This so-called solar sail technology has been theorized as a means for space travel for decades but never put into practice, according to Louis Friedman, one of the society's co-founders and its current chief.

Friedman, who worked with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration on solar sail technology in the 1970s, said it might make interstellar flight possible much sooner than most scientists now estimate.

``Interstellar flight is an idea to us the way airplane flight was to (Leonardo) Da Vinci: Hundreds of years into the future with no real way of knowing how to do it,'' Friedman said in a telephone interview from his Pasadena, Calif., office.

``With (solar) sailing it may not be that far in the future,'' he said; rather than hundreds of years, such flights might be possible with this technology in 100 years.

The mission, called Cosmos 1, would begin with a sub-orbital test deployment of the solar sail in April and an orbital flight of several days, weeks or months toward the end of the year.

The craft would be visible to the naked eye from some places on Earth, but only as a bright dot in the sky.

The project is being funded by Cosmos Studios, a science entertainment venture run in part by Sagan's widow and longtime collaborator, Ann Druyan.

The mission does not aim to travel between the stars or even between the planets, but merely to show that the technology exists that could make this possible in the future, Friedman said.

Solar sailing is powerful enough to push spacecraft between the planets from Mercury out to Jupiter, the society said in its announcement. Beyond Jupiter, space sailing could be done using powerful lasers focused over long distances in space.

More information about the mission can be seen online at http://www.planetary.org.

-------- environment

UN scientists warn of climatic Armageddon

26 FEBRUARY 2001
The Scotsman
http://www.thescotsman.co.uk/index.cfm?id=48974&d=200201

SCIENTISTS yesterday predicted an environmental catastrophe of biblical proportions, with the world ravaged by droughts, flooding and disease.

The chilling vision, presented in the report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), reveals that large portions of the world's population are threatened with imminent disaster.

This vision of disaster for humanity is matched by the impact of climate change on the natural world.

After studies of more than 420 habitats, the report warned of deserts spreading across Africa and the disappearance of Alpine glaciers, together with a decline in Arctic sea-ice and the increased frequency of extreme rainfall.

As a result, the IPCC concluded: "Some species currently classified as 'critically endangered' [would] become extinct". Species such as polar bears and African mountain gorillas are threatened. Marine habitats are equally at risk and there are fears the world's coral reefs could disappear within 50 years.

Scientists have for years warned about the impact of global warming. What is significant about this report, however, is the degree of precision about the extent and impact of climate change.

Research was conducted by some 700 scientists and based on the findings from 3,000 studies. Given the political sensitivities of the climate debate, the 19-page summary was subject scrutinised by government representatives during exhaustive discussions prior to release.

In those circumstances, not surprisingly, the scientists' language was hedged by probabilities and possibilities. However, the dire messages underlying its publication shone through.

"Most of the earth's people will be on the losing side," said James McCarthy, the Harvard University environmental scientist who co-chaired the panel.

Professor McCarthy's bleak conclusion helps to highlight the fact that people in developing countries are most at risk from the consequences of climate change.

While the report suggested there might be economic gains and losses in wealthier countries, the disastrous impact of extremes of weather in other regions would serve to increase "the disparity in well-being between developed countries and developing countries".

Put simply, many poorer nations will be unable to take measures to combat the repercussions of climate change. Rapidly-rising population is likely to lead to huge pressure on water supplies and, with insufficient infrastructure to meet the threat of infection, developing nations will also be at great threat from malaria, cholera and other diseases.

Although more able to take precautionary action, the developed world is also threatened. Impacts range from the decline of Alpine snow and disappearance of glaciers (with obvious consequences for tourism) to the higher incidence of cyclones and the spread of disease.

Last year, New York's Central Park was shut when West Nile virus, a mosquito-borne disease, was responsible for the deaths of seven people. Those deaths are likely to be the thin end of the wedge.

The report makes clear that in the years ahead, the US, Canada and Australia will see an expansion in a range of other deadly diseases, including malaria, tick-borne Lyme disease, Ross River virus and Murray Valley encephalitis.

Other densely-populated coastal areas, ranging from Egypt to Poland and Vietnam, will be at risk from flooding as a result of rising sea levels.

In Britain, low-lying coastal regions are vulnerable. The World Wildlife Fund drew attention to the risks presented to ten per cent of the UK's designated reserves, those in wetland and coastal areas.

Change in temperature is already most extreme in the polar regions and this could have disastrous consequences.

"Polar regions contain important drivers of change." reads the report. "Once triggered, they may continue for centuries, long after greenhouse gas concentrations are stabilised, and cause irreversible impacts on ice sheets, global ocean circulation and sea-rise."

The Geneva report followed another released by the panel last month in Shanghai, China. That predicted global temperatures could rise by as much as 5.8C over the next century. The increase was much higher than expected and there was clear evidence that industrial pollution, including emissions from cars, was to blame.

"The greater the rate of change, the more adverse the effect," said World Bank chief scientist and panel chair Dr Robert Watson. "Change threatens basic human needs like food and water."

But effective international action remains elusive, in part because of the reluctance of the US to commit to firm targets to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and the push in developing countries like China toward economic progress.

International environmental campaigners have given the report a cautious welcome.

"Governments have accepted that global warming is already happening, it is getting worse and nature is bearing the brunt of it," said Jennifer Morgan of the World Wide Fund for Nature. She called on ministers from major industrial countries who will meet in two weeks in Trieste to accept the conclusions of the UN report.

Frances Maguire, of the environmental pressure group Friends of the Earth, said European governments should "stand firm and force President George W Bush to agree an effective international deal on cutting emissions".

Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott said world leaders needed to "redouble" their efforts to find a solution.

"The new report shows that we risk major irreversible changes unless we significantly cut emissions of greenhouse gases," he said.

Mike Wade Tuesday, 20th February 2001 The Scotsman

---

Uncle Joe goes to the bank

Tuesday, February 27, 2001
CLEAN LAFFS
"Giggles, Snickers and Guffaws you don't have to Feel Guilty About"

According to the Knight-Rider News Service, the inscription on the metal bands used by the U.S. Department of the Interior to tag migratory birds has been changed. The bands used to bear the address of the Washington Biological Survey, abbreviated: "Wash. Biol. Surv." until the agency received the following letter from an unidentified camper:

"Dear Sirs: While camping last week I shot one of your birds. I think it was a crow. I followed the cooking instructions on the leg tag and I want to tell you it was horrible."

The bands are now marked Fish and Wildlife Service.

---

Health project maps cancer hot spots

02/26/2001
USA Today
By Kathleen Fackelmann
http://usatoday.com/news/health/2001-02-26-hotspots.htm

Health-Track, a national public health project supported by the Pew Charitable Trusts, is launching the Web site (health-track.org) to give Americans an easy way to get information on cancer death data and environmental toxins in their vicinity that have been linked to cancer.

The group is touting its Web site as the first of its kind. People using the Web site can pull up a map of the entire country or they can zoom in on a state, county or even a town.

"This gives communities information they have a right to know," says Jim O'Hara, Health-Track's executive director.

Health-Track took death statistics collected by the National Cancer Institute for eight cancers: bladder, brain, breast, Hodgkin's disease, leukemia, liver, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and prostate. A color-coded map shows hot zones (in red) or regions with cancer deaths in the top 20% for the nation. Then users can pull up an overlay that highlights areas where the Environmental Protection Agency has gotten reports of carcinogenic chemicals that were released into the environment by industries.

Among trends pinpointed by the maps:

A hot zone for bladder cancer in the Northeast. Public health experts suspect an environmental cause for bladder cancer, particularly for men in the New England states who have worked in jobs using chemical solvents to clean machinery or engines. The overlay pulls up solvents and many other toxins in those states, adds Lynn Goldman, the scientist who analyzed the data for Health-Track. Hot zones for breast cancer in the Northeast, West Coast and Great Lakes regions. No one knows why these parts of the country have elevated rates of deaths from breast cancer. One theory: Something in an urban polluted environment might increase the risk, Goldman says. High death rates for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in the Northeast and Great Lakes regions. The maps show a proliferation of toxic chemicals in these states.

An advocacy group for U.S. industry asserts there is no evidence that exposure to trace amounts of chemicals in the environment causes human cancers. Elizabeth Whelan, president of the American Council on Science and Health in New York City, says the Web site distracts from the known causes of cancer and generates unfounded fears.

O'Hara acknowledges that toxic chemicals are just one of many possible causes of cancer, along with diet and genetics. His group makes no claim that these toxins actually caused the cancer in question, he says. "We're not arguing cause and effect."

Instead, he says, the information will let people start asking local health officials about cancer and the pollutants that may be fouling their air, land or water.

---

Court Argues Property-Rights Case

February 26, 2001
New York Times
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/26/national/26CND-SCOTUS.html

WASHINGTON, Feb. 26 - The Supreme Court has struggled for years over how and when to apply the Fifth Amendment's injunction that private property shall not be "taken for public use without just compensation."

The justices were not necessarily closer to a clear answer today after an argument over whether an environmental regulation that barred development on 18 acres of oceanfront wetlands in Rhode Island amounted to a "taking."

But the case has drawn wide attention in property-rights and environmental circles because it offers a vehicle for the court finally to create the kind of expansive takings doctrine that recent cases have been inching toward. An expansive definition of a taking would make land use regulation much more expensive for all levels of government.

Like nearly all such cases, this 30-year-old land-use dispute reached the Supreme Court in a tangled procedural state presenting numerous obstacles to a broad, clarifying ruling.

One big question was whether a property owner who acquired land after a regulation was in place was "on notice" of the development restrictions and therefore barred from claiming entitlement for compensation for a taking.

While there is some dispute about the chronology in this case, the landowner, Anthony Palazzolo, became sole owner of the waterfront property in 1978, several years after both Rhode Island and the federal government began to regulate the filling of coastal wetlands.

Mr. Palazzolo's lawyer argued that because the land itself had previously been unregulated, the new regulations should not be binding on subsequent owners.

Several justices found this assertion startling. "There is no logical stopping place until you get back to Roger Williams and the 17th-century settlement," Justice David H. Souter observed.

---

European farmers protest for more mad cow aid

02/26/2001
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-02-26-madcow.htm

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - Riot police Monday turned water cannons on farmers besieging European Union headquarters to demand more money to cope with the mad cow crisis.

Hundreds of tractors blocked major roads in the Belgian capital, snarling traffic as agriculture ministers from the 15 EU nations gathered to discuss the campaign against bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease.

However, the EU's Agriculture Commissioner, Franz Fischler, said there was no additional money available to compensate farmers for cows that have to be destroyed.

Instead, he proposed a major reform of the EU beef sector, including a reduction in production to push up prices and a move away from intensive, industrial-style farming, which use artificial feeds and chemical pesticides.

"This crisis has certainly shown that there is a case for moving back toward farming practices which respect the environment," he said.

With beef consumption plummeting, France, Spain, Ireland, Luxembourg, Austria and Belgium have asked the EU to provide immediate extra aid to help the beef industry.

"We are in a crisis, and we must show solidarity," said French Agriculture Minister Jean Glavany. "We have a choice, to support small farms... We must take our responsibility on a European level."

But the European Commission says it cannot go beyond the EU's $36.8 billion farm budget this year without the agreement of all 15 EU nations. Germany, for one, opposes any increases.

In recent months, the EU has ordered carcasses of cattle older than 30 months to be destroyed unless they are tested and declared mad-cow free. It has also banned meat on the bone.

Farmers are compensated for the destroyed meat, even if it is free of the disease.

The outbreak of foot and mouth disease in Britain has added to the problems of livestock producers. Brtain has halted all exports of live animals, meat and dairy products.

"We are not going to export our problems to other people," said British Farm Minister Nick Brown. He said the ban would remain until "we can demonstrate to our trading partners that we are disease free."

Over the weekend, Britain began slaughtering and incinerating thousands of livestock carcasses.

Mad cow disease was first diagnosed in Britain, where 177,500 cows have been infected since the outbreak was detected in the 1980s. Although the number of reported cases is lower elsewhere in the EU, widened testing recently has turned up cases in Germany, Italy and Spain.

Demand for beef has plunged by 27% across the EU since October.

Mad cow disease is believed to cause a brain-wasting illness in humans, known as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. The human form has killed some 80 Europeans since the mid-1990s, mostly in Britain.

---

A Global Warning to Mr. Bush

February 26, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/26/opinion/26MON1.html

Scientists meeting in San Francisco a week ago heard a startling prediction: the seemingly indestructible snows of Kilimanjaro that inspired Ernest Hemingway's famous short story may well disappear in the next 15 years. To most mainstream scientists, the rapid erosion of Kilimanjaro's majestic ice cap, along with the steady retreat of mountaintop glaciers elsewhere, is further dramatic evidence of a relentless warming of the earth's atmosphere that cannot be explained by normal climate shifts and is at least partly traceable to the burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil.

This depressing news might also inspire President Bush to pay attention to an issue he has lately avoided. Mr. Bush has asked Vice President Dick Cheney and a blue-ribbon team to devise an energy strategy, which will almost certainly recommend a more aggressive search for oil and gas. Yet so far as is known, he has not asked anyone to figure out how the country should deal with the consequences of burning those fuels.

To be sure, the Bush team is new on the job. For that reason, the United Nations has agreed to delay until May the next round of formal negotiations over the Kyoto Protocol, the draft treaty on global warming negotiated in 1997. It is also true that this is the sort of issue that generates no enthusiasm in Congress and disappears from public consciousness at the first cold snap - meaning that it is precisely the kind of issue that requires presidential leadership.

Mr. Bush cannot afford to wait forever to provide that leadership. Each month seems to bring new and stronger evidence that warming is occurring, that human activities are behind it and that the consequences for future generations could be catastrophic. In January, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the most authoritative voice on the issue, warned that warming over the next century would increase more than originally thought, from a minimum of 2.7 degrees to a truly unnerving 10.4 degrees. It also concluded that human actions were largely responsible. In a follow-up report released last week, the panel identified short-term consequences like shrinking glaciers, vanishing coral reefs and changing seasons, and it warned of much bigger problems down the road - rising oceans, violent floods and the spread of diseases like cholera and malaria, especially in poorer countries that are least able to defend themselves.

President Clinton got nowhere in his efforts to persuade an indifferent Congress to institute the efficiency and anti-pollution measures necessary to curb the nation's appetite for fossil fuels. But he did leave behind the Kyoto Protocol, an agreement among industrialized nations to cut combined emissions of greenhouse gases to about 5 percent below their 1990 levels by 2012. Many details need to be worked out, but if the protocol is ever to become a binding treaty, the United States will have to take the lead, not least because it produces one-fourth of the world's greenhouse emissions with only 5 percent of its population.

For much the same reason, of course, this country will also bear the biggest costs in terms of investing in cleaner fuels and cleaner plants. Mr. Bush opposes the Kyoto agreement, partly because he thinks it unfairly burdens the United States. But if he reads the treaty carefully, he will find that it explicitly favors this country because it includes various mechanisms, like emissions trading, that would enable the United States to meet its targets without crippling investments at the source.

Mr. Bush has in fact been less dismissive of the problem than some of his aides. He has endorsed the idea of regulating carbon dioxide, the main global- warming gas and one of the few pollutants not covered by the Clean Air Act. And in a policy paper provided to the New York Academy of Sciences before the election, he promised to work for a "comprehensive, fair and effective agreement." There are even a few hopeful environmentalists who think that Mr. Bush, given his credibility with American industry, will have a better chance than Al Gore would have had of getting something done on an issue that needs bipartisan support. But so far he has not even made a start.

---

Nevada

01/02/26
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Fallon - Tests showed that a teenage boy doesn't have leukemia in this small town where 11 earlier cases have been confirmed, his father said. The teen and another child were described last week as potentially the 12th and 13th children to develop the disease in the Fallon area. No other information was available about the teen's illness or about the other suspected leukemia case.

Washington

Olympia - The $40 million-a-year geoduck clam industry could collapse because of the state's failure to closely monitor commercial harvesting, says a state report. The 3- to 4-pound clams are considered a delicacy in Asia.

---

Last-minute legacy

February 26, 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

A magazine cover depicting President Bush as Harry Houdini, bound in chains and red tape and struggling to free himself from the shackles of President Clinton's regulatory legacy, is about to land on the desks of 60,000 high-level bureaucrats in the federal government.

The cover story in the monthly Government Executive magazine, titled "Escape Artist," focuses on the likely fate of more than 25,000 pages of new rules sent to the Federal Register in the last few months of the Clinton administration.

The Clinton executive orders and assorted rules fence off 5.6 million acres of Western lands as federal monuments, ban road construction in 60 million acres of national forests, require businesses to protect workers from repetitive stress injuries, create new medical privacy rights - and, if that's not enough, force Americans to stop using top-loading washing machines in favor of more expensive front-loading models within seven years.

---

Britain confirms more foot-mouth woe

February 26, 2001
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-2001226212112.htm

LONDON - British agricultural authorities yesterday confirmed new cases of foot-and-mouth disease at a cattle and sheep farm in southwest England, amid rising fears of a wider outbreak.

Officials in northern England began the grim task of burning the carcasses of hundreds of animals slaughtered in an effort to contain the highly infectious livestock ailment.

More than 800 pigs - doused in oil and placed on pyres - were set on fire in Northumberland, in the outbreak's first mass incineration. Britain has been scrambling since Feb. 19 to contain the outbreak of the disease.

-------- police

Festivities Turn Violent in Austin and Seattle

February 26, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/26/national/26NATI.html

AUSTIN, Texas, Feb. 25 (AP) - Some participants in weekend Mardi Gras festivities here threw beer bottles and punches and smashed windows, injuring about 30 people. More than 50 people were arrested.

The Austin police arrested 35 people early today and an additional 21 early Saturday on charges including indecent exposure and public intoxication. Police used tear gas and shot rubber pellets this morning to disperse the crowd, estimated at about 100,000 people.

In Seattle, about 200 police officers in riot gear broke up Mardi Gras festivities early today.

Seven people were arrested. One person was stabbed, a police officer suffered a broken arm and a woman was hit by a car.

More Community Policing

WASHINGTON, Feb. 25 (AP) - The number of police departments using community policing nearly doubled from 1997 to 1999, the Justice Department said today.

A report by the department's Bureau of Justice Statistics released today showed that 64 percent of local police departments in 1999 had officers patrolling neighborhoods on foot or bicycle or had programs to work with local groups to address crime.

That was nearly double the number in 1997, when 34 percent of departments had community policing.

---

ATTORNEY GENERAL AGREES TO TESTIFY

February 26, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/26/nyregion/26MBRF.html?pagewanted=all

TRENTON: Attorney General John J. Farmer Jr. is expected to testify next month before a State Senate committee investigating the state police and charges of racial profiling. The Senate Judiciary Committee plans hearings on March 19 and 20. A witness list issued by State Senator William L. Gormley, the Republican committee chairman, has 33 names, including those of several former attorneys general and dozens of ranking state police officers and former superintendents. Senator Gormley has said he wants Mr. Farmer to detail reforms under way at the state police. (AP)

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Delaware

01/02/26
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Wilmington - Under pressure from federal officials, Delaware State Police stepped up efforts to hire more black troopers during the past three years. But black troopers are quitting the state police at the same rate they are being hired, leaving the agency with just two more black officers than it had in 1990, according to federal statistics. Less than 10% of the 594-member force is black.

Utah

Provo - A police sergeant has been charged in a case of road rage. Sgt. Timothy Meyer, 52, was cited for disorderly conduct. The off-duty officer and Sam Clayson, 29, of Spanish Fork stopped their trucks on state Route 189 in Provo Canyon to fight after jostling for a passing lane, officials say.

-------- spying

Hanssen had no role in hunt for Ames

02/26/2001
USA Today
By Edward T. Pound and Kevin Johnson
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-02-26-hanssen.htm

WASHINGTON - Accused spy Robert Hanssen, a veteran FBI agent, did not participate in a secret mole hunt within U.S. intelligence that ultimately led to the 1994 capture of CIA agent Aldrich Ames, current and former top officials said Monday. These U.S. officials, long familiar with intelligence operations, also said it was highly unlikely that Hanssen had participated in the assessment of damage that took place after Ames was exposed as a spy for Moscow. Ames' espionage led to the executions of several Russians who spied for the USA, officials have said.

On Wednesday, the Senate Intelligence Committee is likely to explore whether Hanssen compromised U.S. efforts to uncover Ames. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., the panel's chairman, and others in Congress have expressed concern that Hanssen might have undermined the damage analysis conducted in the aftermath of Ames' arrest.

Current and former officials interviewed by USA TODAY said they were confident that Hanssen had not compromised the mole investigations. One former official noted that had Hanssen known about Ames, it is unlikely that Ames would have been captured.

Hanssen, 56, a senior counterintelligence agent for the FBI, was arrested Feb. 18 and charged with espionage. An FBI affidavit says he sold secrets about U.S. spy methods to the Russians beginning in October 1985. The affidavit said he was paid $1.4 million in cash, diamonds and deferred money.

The affidavit says Hanssen was active as a spy for at least six years. But it shows no activity between December 1991 - the month the Soviet Union collapsed - and autumn 1999. Officials say he may have cut off his contacts with Moscow because he feared he was vulnerable in the wake of the Soviet breakup.

In late 1991, the U.S. intelligence community began to develop a relationship with KGB officials. Top CIA and FBI officials entertained KGB officials at a dinner in a suburban Washington restaurant in October 1991. The next March, a CIA delegation spent 10 days in Moscow as guests of the KGB.

The current and former government officials said efforts to find a mole in the U.S. government intensified in the mid-1980s, after intelligence operations were compromised. In the early 1990s, the FBI and the CIA set up a task force to search for a mole. The FBI also had a separate unit looking at prior unresolved investigations of potential moles.

One current official said that although Hanssen may have suspected something unusual was afoot - FBI agents were detailed to work at CIA, for instance - bureau officials believe he had no access to the Ames investigative files. Officials said great efforts were made to conceal the operations. In 1993, Ames was identified as the chief target of the investigation.

Officials said, however, that nothing is certain in the spy business. They note that Hanssen was a computer expert who in the early 1990s hacked into the office computer of Raymond Mislock, then the FBI's top counterintelligence official on Russia. Mislock also was a chief mole hunter.

---

Hanssen holds some cards in his favor

02/26/2001
USA Today
By Pete Earley
http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/2001-02-26-ncguest1.htm

"The Justice Department really screwed up," CIA traitor Aldrich Ames told me. Prosecutors had seized his bank accounts, expensive house, even his Jaguar sports car, but had overlooked another asset. "They didn't say a word about the $2 million the Russians are holding for me in Moscow."

I nearly laughed out loud. Did Ames, who was responsible for the deaths of 10 agents, really believe his Russian pals were going to pay him $2 million now that he had been caught and was sure to spend his life in prison?

"Pete," he replied, "They will pay me. I'm not the only American out there spying for them. There are others and they will be watching to see how the Russians treat me now that I've been caught."

I had no idea in July 1994 when I interviewed Ames that FBI Agent Robert Philip Hanssen was also allegedly a spy. The FBI claims the Russians have tucked away $800,000 in Moscow for him, too. Based on last week's news reports, it looks like the government has a "slam dunk" case. Hanssen is doomed. His fate sealed. He's headed for a death sentence.

Don't you believe it. Having done books about America's two most notorious spies, Aldrich Ames and Naval officer John Walker Jr., I can tell you that Hanssen has several aces he still can play - if he is smart.

Swap information for a plea bargain: Despite the public bravado, neither the FBI nor federal prosecutors will want this case to come to trial. Why? Proving espionage is difficult. The Russians aren't going to testify. Even more important, the U.S. intelligence community will not want to discuss its secrets and "tradecraft" in public. Add in embarrassment by the FBI. The fact that Hanssen spied for 15 years undetected is as big of a black eye for it as Ames was for the CIA. It will take a lot of television reruns of Efrem Zimbalist Jr., getting his man in The FBI to restore confidence.

Moreover, there are practical reasons why the government will want to negotiate a plea bargain. It wants to debrief him and quickly assess how much damage he has done. What documents did he sell, what does he know about his Russian contacts? What information did the Russians ask him to steal? (Knowing what documents the Russians didn't want him to steal will be useful because that might mean they already are getting them from someone else.)

Finally, who better than a veteran Russian spy to tell the FBI what is wrong with its security?

Use media to put out his side of the story. Television bigshots are hounding his Washington, D.C., attorney, Plato Cacheris, in hopes of nailing a ratings-grabbing "exclusive interview." They can't pay Hanssen, but they will promise to tell "your side of the story."

I remember hearing Ames plot how he was going to offer Diane Sawyer an exclusive interview, but only if she first broadcast a sympathetic interview with his bratty wife, Rosario, who the government had jailed as his co-conspirator. Ames urged Rosario to portray herself as an abused spouse who was helplessly manipulated by her vicious CIA-trained husband.

I wasn't surprised when Sawyer took that approach in her "exclusive" with Rosario. Nor was I shocked when Ames later granted his first interview to someone else. With spies, there is no honor. Cacheris will try to spin stories that will give Hanssen a human face.

Offer cooperation in exchange for leniency for family. Hanssen would be wise to look at how Walker and Ames negotiated pleas. Walker, who was a KGB mole for 18 years, pulled a coup, Ames blew it. The difference was attitude. Walker despised the media, hated the government, and never felt regret, embarrassment, or remorse. He had a street punk's attitude. It worked. The government agreed to go soft on his son, Michael, in return for Walker's full cooperation. Michael was lured into the spy ring by his father and was arrested on the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz, where he'd stolen secret documents that he was supposed to destroy. Michael was paroled after serving 15 years, a relatively light sentence for a major spy.

Ames immediately gave prosecutors whatever they wanted, naively thinking his cooperation would free his wife. It didn't. She spent nearly four years in prison on charges that many legal scholars believe could have been easily rebuffed.

Don't get me wrong. Hanssen is not walking away from all this. The government will threaten the death penalty (unlikely) and a life sentence (almost certain.) He's a lost cause, but if he hangs tough, he might be able to save his family.

You can bet Hanssen didn't report the $1.4 million in alleged KGB payoffs on his income tax. Everything he owns will be seized. His wife and children will be put out in the street. That's where a deal will be struck: Hanssen's help in return for his family being spared bankruptcy.

If that fails, then Hanssen might want to take a more dramatic step: ask the Russians to transfer the $800,000 into a Swiss account.

Think I'm joking?

After interviewing Ames, I flew to Moscow and met with a Russian general who had "handled" the CIA spy. The first thing he told me was, "Please tell Mr. Ames we will keep his money drawing interest in a bank and will be searching for ways to get it to him."

As I was preparing to leave that night, my Russian host took my arm and said, "You know, we could give you Ames' two million and you could find a way to get it to him."

For a brief second, I envisioned myself flying home with my briefcase bulging with $100 bills, but I suspected my host was testing me. I politely declined.

I don't know if the Russians ever kept their promise to Ames. But Ames was right about one thing: there was at least one spy watching to see how the Russians were going to react. The question now is: Who is out there watching to see how the Russians will treat Hanssen?

Pete Earley is the author of Confessions of a Spy: The Real Story of Aldrich Ames and Family of Spies: Inside the John Walker Spy Ring.

---

Moles Often Burrow Deeper Than Spy Hunters Can Dig

February 26, 2001
New York Times
By JAMES RISEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/26/national/26SPY.html?pagewanted=all

WASHINGTON, Feb. 25 - When Col. Vitaly Yurchenko of the K.G.B. walked into the United States Embassy in Rome on Aug. 1, 1985, he brought with him what appeared to be the solution to one of the most troubling mysteries facing the United States intelligence community.

Mr. Yurchenko revealed that a C.I.A. officer who had been fired just before he was to be posted to Moscow had become a spy for the K.G.B., the Soviet secret police and intelligence apparatus. Mr. Yurchenko knew him only as Mr. Robert, but senior C.I.A. officials immediately realized that it had to be Edward Lee Howard, who had been fired in 1983 after being trained to become a "deep cover" officer in Moscow.

To American counterintelligence experts, Mr. Yurchenko's revelation about Mr. Howard seemed to explain why the C.I.A.'s most important spy in Moscow, Adolf G. Tolkachev, a Soviet aviation design scientist, had been arrested just months earlier.

In fact, Mr. Yurchenko was full of secrets, so the C.I.A. assigned its chief of Soviet counterintelligence, Aldrich H. Ames, to help debrief him.

Nine years later, when Mr. Ames himself was arrested on espionage charges while driving his Jaguar to the agency's headquarters in northern Virginia, his case finally seemed to explain the loss of many United States intelligence operations that Mr. Howard had never known about.

And now, with the arrest on Feb. 18 of Robert Philip Hanssen, an F.B.I. agent, 7 years after Mr. Ames's apprehension and more than 15 years after Mr. Hanssen is suspected of beginning to spy for Moscow, American intelligence experts are again revising the espionage record.

The F.B.I. now believes that Mr. Hanssen began spying just a few months after Mr. Ames, and that he betrayed some of the same agents to the K.G.B. In effect, the government charges that Mr. Hanssen spied in a slipstream behind Mr. Ames, making his betrayal all the more difficult to uncover.

So the Hanssen case provides fresh insight into the dilemma facing American counterintelligence experts each time they catch a spy. There is a natural inclination among investigators to believe that the latest arrest can clear the blotter of unsolved espionage mysteries. But it now appears that the task facing America's spy hunters has been complicated by the fact that Moscow had so many well-placed agents, including some who did not quit when the Soviet Union collapsed.

Now, some officials suggest that there may be others still undetected, and that the latest arrest is not necessarily the ultimate catch.

In 1994, after Mr. Ames's arrest, C.I.A. officials were repeatedly asked how he could have spied for so long without detection. Today, those same questions are being asked of the F.B.I. about Mr. Hanssen. In both cases, the history of the cold war's final years may provide some clues.

By 1985, the C.I.A. and F.B.I. had developed the most impressive inventory of spies against Russia in American history. The K.G.B. and the G.R.U., the Soviet military intelligence service, were riddled with moles.

What the C.I.A. and F.B.I. did not know, however, was that the reverse was also true. The K.G.B. was also on a hot streak. By 1985, American officials now believe, the Soviets had well-placed agents in the agency, the bureau, the State Department, the United States Navy and the United States Army in Europe. Among them, the government charges, was Mr. Hanssen, who the bureau says volunteered to spy for Moscow in October 1985.

The result was the declaration of an invisible espionage war, one that is still playing itself out today.

In some cases, it appears that the same secrets were being passed to Moscow by more than one spy. That overlap among Russian agents inside the United States government may have led American investigators in some instances to assume that the arrest of one spy had plugged a leak.

For example, American officials said that Mr. Howard, who defected to the Soviet Union after fleeing the United States in September 1985, and Mr. Ames both betrayed Mr. Tolkachev, the design scientist. So when Mr. Yurchenko led investigators to Mr. Howard, there was a sense within the C.I.A. that a mystery had been solved.

But by late 1985 and early 1986, as more Russian agents working for the United States were inexplicably arrested by the K.G.B., the C.I.A. began to realize that Mr. Howard could not be the answer. The agency then began to search for other causes of what were called the "1985 losses."

Still, the inquiry was repeatedly sidetracked. Mr. Yurchenko's return to Moscow in November 1985 muddied the waters, and the arrest of Valery F. Martinov, a K.G.B. officer, upon his return to Moscow as one of Mr. Yurchenko's escorts caused additional confusion. Some American officials wondered whether Mr. Yurchenko may have gleaned information about American moles inside the K.G.B. during his lengthy debriefings with the C.I.A. and F.B.I., and then revealed that information to the K.G.B. after his return. But today, American officials say they believe that both Mr. Ames and Mr. Hanssen betrayed Mr. Martinov.

The C.I.A. went down another blind alley when a mysterious K.G.B. officer contacted the agency and claimed to have the answer for the K.G.B.'s roundup of American spies. The agency's communications center in Warrenton, Va., had been compromised, the K.G.B. officer said. But the agency could not find such a breach.

American intelligence officials were stymied again in late 1986 and 1987, with the espionage investigation of possible leaks by Marine guards who had served at the United States mbassy in Moscow. Fearful that guards had let K.G.B. agents into the C.I.A.'s station inside the embassy in Moscow, the agency conducted a detailed examination of the station, but eventually concluded that there was no evidence that the K.G.B. had gained access.

The 1994 arrest of Mr. Ames seemed to solve the mystery of many of the 1985 losses. As chief of Soviet counterintelligence in 1985, Mr. Ames had access to virtually all of the C.I.A.'s operations against the K.G.B., and also knew about cases being jointly run with the F.B.I.

But the Ames case led to changes within American counterintelligence and forced the F.B.I. and C.I.A. to work more closely together. And so officials now stress that they quietly learned their lesson after the Ames case, and did not jump to the conclusion that he could be held accountable for all unsolved espionage cases. Within months of Mr. Ames's arrest, officials now say, a secret new investigative unit was created to renew the hunt. Officials now credit that unit for conducting the investigation that led to Mr. Hanssen.

-------- terrorism

Peru opens door to pardon or amnesty for American leftist

February 26, 2001
Washington Times
By Natalia Mielczarek
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-200122622817.htm

American leftist Lori Berenson could be eligible for an amnesty or pardon even if she is convicted at her second trial on terrorism charges early next month, Peru's justice minister said in Washington.

Diego Garcia Sayan told reporters during a visit late last week that his government would not interfere in the retrial of Miss Berenson, who has been jailed in Peru since 1996 on charges of collaborating with Tupac Amaru guerrillas.

But, he said, even if she is convicted, there are ways in which she might be eligible to regain her freedom.

She could be granted amnesty, but only if a request is initiated by the Peruvian Congress, the minister said. She also could be granted a pardon by the president, but that would happen only after a conviction.

Miss Berenson's case "can and should be dealt with in courts, not by the executive power in Peru or any other democratic country," he said.

Mr. Garcia acknowledged that the parents of Miss Berenson, a New York native, had grown impatient with the slow progress in the case of their daughter but denied there had been any effort by the government to delay the proceedings.

Miss Berenson was sentenced to life in prison in 1996 by a military court on charges that she had worked with the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement in a plot to take over the Peruvian Congress.

After years of pressure from the United States, a military court overturned her conviction in August and granted a new trial to be held in a civilian court. Superior Court Prosecutor Walter Julian Vivas formally asked last week for the civilian court to give her a 20-year prison term.

Mr. Garcia defended Peru's handling of the case, pointing out that it was not included in a recent list of human rights violations prepared in cooperation with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

Mr. Garcia and the commission signed an agreement in Washington on Thursday that identified 258 cases of human rights violations in Peru. About half of them are expected to be resolved, the minister said.

--------

High employee turnover raises safety concerns

2/26/2001
USA Tody
Gannett News Service
By Ledyard King,
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-02-26-airportsafety.htm

WASHINGTON - After 14 months as a baggage screener at Los Angeles International Airport, Bilal Abdul Hasan is ready to move on.

Working the graveyard shift at $8.97 per hour and few benefits, he has lasted longer than many of his co-workers. But now, fed up with the low pay and poor work conditions, he plans to quit after helping his fellow screeners negotiate their first union contract.

Hasan, 62, is evidence of a troubling trend: startlingly high turnover among employees who serve as a safety net against terrorist threats at the nation's busiest airports. Interviews with screeners and the most recent statistics suggest many baggage screeners usually leave their jobs in their first year, often to take other airport jobs that have less stress and more pay.

The rampant turnover has led to less experienced screeners and understaffing at some security checkpoints, raising concern about the safety of the nation's airports.

It also has contributed to traveler inconvenience. At Cincinnati, Seattle and several other airports last year, terminals were shut down and thousands of passengers had to wait hours for rescreening because passengers who triggered alarms got through checkpoints improperly.

Turnover rate reached an average of 126% at the 19 U.S. airports deemed the most vulnerable to terrorist attack, according to federal statistics for 1998-99. The airports, which include those serving Honolulu, Seattle and Detroit, are considered most at risk based on the heavy volume of passengers boarding flights and for flights to international destinations.

Tops on the turnover list were airports in St. Louis and Atlanta.

In a report released last month, the General Accounting Office, Congress' watchdog arm, reiterated its concerns about the security risk high turnover poses to the traveling public. It also criticized the Federal Aviation Administration for falling years behind in its efforts to improve screener training and certification.

FAA officials call the turnover rates "unacceptably high" but said they are taking steps to improve airport security.

Together with the airline industry, they've introduced high-resolution X-ray machines at checkpoints and implemented new testing techniques designed to keep screeners alert. In May, the agency is scheduled to unveil its plan to certify screeners, a task now left to the discretion of security firms that hire airport workers.

But improved training and high-tech detection devices will mean little if experienced screeners - who often earn little more than minimum wage - keep leaving, congressional investigators said.

"If you are not on the job very long, you don't have the experience to know what you're looking at," said Gerald Dillingham, the GAO's associate director for transportation issues. "The human is the final arbitrator, even with sophisticated machines. If you're not really skilled at it, you can miss it."

Widespread concerns about airport security surfaced in 1988 in the aftermath of the Pan Am 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland. They were re-ignited following the 1996 explosion of TWA 800 near Long Island, N.Y., when government investigators initially thought terrorists were responsible but later blamed it on a short-circuit that sparked a fuel tank explosion.

A White House panel formed after the TWA 800 crash recommended more thorough background checks of baggage screeners as well as federal certification of companies that hire them. Computerized fingerprinting began in January with certification to start later this year.

Hasan said he doesn't believe frequent turnover poses a great safety risk. But he says the difficulty in recruiting new screeners means that anyone with a "good, clean record" can get a job, regardless of skill.

The airlines are not happy with the turnover among baggage screeners either. They argue that higher professional standards would ultimately elevate both the job's stature and its compensation.

But they say the system generally is very safe.

"When it's all said and done, how many bombs have been found at the checkpoints? Not very many. And how many planes have been hijacked because of screener performance?" said Richard Doubrava, managing director of security for Air Transport Association, which represents the country's major airlines. "The screeners do a wonderful job."

That was not what the GAO found when it analyzed FAA records.

Historically, screeners have failed to detect dangerous objects - generally weapons or any materials used for making explosives - as much as 20% of the time during routine FAA tests. On more covert and random inspections, the fail rate was significantly higher, Dillingham said.

Screeners for Argenbright Security Inc., which has about 8,000 security workers in many of the nation's biggest airports, usually spend a week in training before they're allowed to work at a checkpoint. Then a supervisor observes them during their first days of baggage inspection.

Starting pay usually runs between $7 and $7.50, but raises can be significant if the screener is competent and stays with the job, said Argenbright spokeswoman Celeste Bottorff. She said the company's average turnover rate is less than the national average, but she wouldn't say by how much.

The screening companies have suffered from high turnover, she said, largely because of a strong economy that offers many career choices. The turnover rate is the ratio of workers who must be replaced in one year to the average number of positions.

"Would a dollar an hour make a difference? That's hard to say. In the wage game, it's all relative to the other opportunities," she said. "The real answer is to pay a fair wage and treat them well."

But screeners interviewed in Los Angeles and San Francisco said they formed unions because the screening companies were not treating them well enough. They describe a low-paying job where airline passengers can be combative, bosses are quick to discipline workers and equipment is not always working properly.

"No one can really survive on only $18,000 a year, or without health care," Stacy Pitts, an Argenbright screener for Delta Airlines, told an FAA panel last year. "Raising wages and providing affordable benefits is the best way to help turn this job into a quality job that workers value and remain committed to."

Hasan, who moonlights as a hairdresser, said three-quarters of the screeners he knows work a second job. They can make more money and not have to worry about the stress of ferreting out a bomber.

"We're the first line of defense at the airport," he said. "The job we're doing is a pretty damn dangerous job."


-------- activists

MOVEMENT VS. CAPITALIST GLOBALIZATION:
COMING NEXT: BATTLE OF QUEBEC--

April 20-22
By Sarah Sloan

Actions Planned in Canada, Mexico and U.S.

In April 2001--one year after protests rocked the meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Washington--activists from the anti-globalization movement will again rise up in protest outside a meeting of capitalist vultures.

This time it's the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City, Canada--a meeting of heads of state and trade ministers representing every country in the Western Hemisphere except socialist Cuba. There they will discuss the Free Trade Area of the Americas.

While all of the countries to be represented are capitalist countries, most are also oppressed nations dominated by the United States and other imperialist powers.

What is the FTAA?

Like NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, the FTAA is a plan to facilitate the expansion of finance capital, especially by the United States. The FTAA is meant to expand the NAFTA model to all 34 countries in Western Hemisphere except Cuba, opening them to greater degrees of exploitation by U.S. banks and corporations.

NAFTA has meant more sweatshops and more poverty for the people of Mexico. Many small farmers have been driven off their land as a result of U.S. agribusiness flooding the market with goods there. It has also meant layoffs for workers in the U.S. and Canada, and more companies have moved factories to Mexico to exploit cheaper labor.

The April 20-22 Summit of the Americas is the third meeting to discuss the FTAA, which is scheduled to be finalized in 2005. This program will go beyond NAFTA, expanding on some of its features, such as the right of corporations to sue governments over laws that infringe upon their profits and their ability to increase the privatization of health care, education and other services.

In response, activists will converge in several locations. QUEBEC CITY

Major protests are planned in Quebec City April 20-21. Groups organizing include Summit of the Americas Welcoming Committee (CASA) in Quebec, and the Montreal-based groups Anti-Capitalist Convergence (CLAC) and Operation SalAMI.

Workers World spoke to Josina Dunkel, a student at McGill University in Montreal. She said students there expect the demonstrations to be massive.

"There is a whole climate around these demonstrations," Dunkel said. "The momentum for them is huge."

She reported that the Canadian Federation of Students--the more leftist of the two student unions there--was organizing 50 buses to Quebec. Students at Concordia University are allowed to defer their final exams so they can participate in the protests.

A protest is planned at McGill on March 7 to demand academic amnesty so that students there can also defer their exams.

"The anti-globalization movement is strong in Canada," Dunkel told WW. "It actually predates the events in Seattle. There was a huge demonstration in Vancouver [against an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in 1998], which is on the border with Seattle, before the November 1999 World Trade Organization demonstration. It was attacked by cops and followed up with nationwide student organizing.

"Campus groups started forming at the beginning of the year to work on the anti-FTAA protests," she added.

Activists from Canada will protest as close to the meetings as possible. Many from the U.S. will also head for Quebec, though some are making the decision to concentrate their efforts at the U.S.-Canada border.

FROM BUFFALO, N.Y., TO TIJUANA, MEXICO

Since a group of Buffalo college students flew to Seattle to attend the anti-WTO protests, various progressive groups in the area have formed the Buffalo Activist Network. Their next focus is organizing regionally for a series of actions beginning April 19 and culminating in a major action on April 22 at the Peace Bridge on the U.S.-Canada border.

Groups from New York, Cleveland and many other cities plan to participate. Organizers expect thousands to join in various actions.

Activists from New England, meanwhile, will head towards Vermont. There protesters will try to go to Quebec City as well as have actions at the border.

Border actions are also planned for the U.S.-Mexico border. A major demonstration is planned for the Tijuana, Mexico, and San Diego border area. A legal demonstration is planned to facilitate participation by immigrants and undocumented workers.

Organizers are hoping for major mobilizations from the U.S. West Coast and Mexico.

LABOR ON BOARD

Many Canadian labor unions are gearing up for the protests. The Canadian Union of Public Employees--a huge, militant union of public-sector workers--is mobilizing.

From the U.S., AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, Teamsters President James P. Hoffa, and Steel Workers President George Becker have all issued statements opposing the FTAA.

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union passed a resolution in December that "supports the efforts to organize protests against the FTAA in Quebec next April and encourages its members who can attend to do so."

The ILWU resolution states in part: "The globalizing policies of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have already extended the harm of the free market to some of the farthest corners of the world. But instead of satisfying international capital's greed, it has only whetted its appetite for more."

NAFTA's result, the ILWU said, was the loss of 400,000 jobs from the U.S. and a decline in living standards for Mexican workers.

The United Electrical Workers passed a resolution supporting anti-FTAA protests. "Their plan promises to benefit multinational corporations, while destroying good jobs, weakening unions, devastating national economies, sending people into deeper poverty and destroying the environment," said the resolution.

It continued: "The trade ministers of the FTAA fear an interruption in the negotiations could halt the entire process.

"Tens of thousands of working people and their allies in the student, farm, environmental and human-rights movements succeeded [in disrupting the WTO in Seattle]. We do have the power to stop the FTAA."

POST-SEATTLE REPRESSION

For U.S. activists, the Quebec City demonstration presents a logistical challenge. Border police have wide discretion to stop entry into Canada.

For example, a van carrying New York activists to an organizing meeting in Quebec City was recently stopped at the border. The van was searched and political materials were seized and copied. No one made it to the meeting.

This is consistent with the post-Seattle policing strategy that involves not only repression at demonstrations, but attempts to stop them from happening.

Organizers for the Jan. 20 protests at George W. Bush's inauguration in Washington and the August 2000 demonstrations at the Democratic Convention in Los Angeles fought and won battles against local police, who attempted to keep demonstrators miles from their targets.

In late January, protesters in Davos, Switzerland, prevailed against incredible hurdles set up by authorities, including turning away hundreds at the border, suspension of train service, and liquid cow manure mixed with freezing water shot at them through fire hoses.

Police preparations for Quebec City are no less rigorous, according to reports. Plans call for an approximately four-kilometer-long wall to be erected around downtown, in what is already a walled city.

SUBVERSIVE MOVEMENT

An Associated Press article by Tom Cohen, entitled "Quebec Fortress Prepares for Summit," reads:

"The towers and walls built to repel invaders of centuries past no longer suffice for protecting 34 heads of state coming for the Summit of the Americas in April.

"So another wall will be built, this one of metal fencing around several square miles of old Quebec City, says [Normand] Houle of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

"Riot police will stand guard along the fence in an old-fashioned show of force intended to prevent a burgeoning protest movement from disrupting the three-day summit ... It will be one of the largest security operations in Canadian history...

"Houle insists security forces will be ready for anything, even protesters trying to repeat the British tactic from 1759 of climbing the cliffs along the St. Lawrence to attack the bastion of what was then called New France. 'If 2,000 people try to scale the cliff, we'll be there,' he says."

Media reports like that are part of a conscious scare campaign to keep activists and other concerned people away from the protests.

It also shows that the capitalist state sees this not just as a "burgeoning protest movement" but as a subversive movement.

These demonstrations are not simply protests about one issue or another. They are manifestations of a movement that is against the system itself--one that identifies capitalism as the root cause of society's ills and as the enemy.

---

Scientists' and Engineers' Pledge To Renounce Weapons of Mass Destruction

http://www.lasg.org/pledge/pledgefrm_a.html

I pledge never to participate in - the design, development, testing, production, maintenance, targeting, or use of nuclear, biological,or chemical weapons or their means of delivery; or in research or engineering that I have reason to believe will be used by others to do so.

Name:

Institutional Affiliation:

Discipline or Occupation:

We will not release or distribute your contact information without your permission.

Address:

City:

State:

Postal Code/Zip Code:

Country:

E-mail address:

Initial sponsoring organizations:

Los Alamos Study Group, Attn: Greg Mello, 212 E. Marcy Street, #10, Santa Fe, NM USA 87501

Natural Resources Defense Council, Nuclear Program, Attn: Christopher Paine, 1200 New York Ave. NW #400, Washington, DC USA 20005

Tri-Valley CAREs, Attn: Marylia Kelley, 2582 Old First Street, Livermore, CA USA 94550

Western States Legal Foundation, Attn: Jackie Cabasso, 1504 Franklin Street, Suite 202, Oakland, CA USA 94612

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Don't Bushwhack Injured Workers !

WHEN Wednesday, Feb. 28 8-9 a.m.
WHAT: Hands Off the Ergo Standard Rally:
WHERE: Grand Hyatt Hotel 11th & H Sts., N.W. Washington, D.C.

EVERY YEAR MORE THAN 600,000 WORKERS suffer serious injuries from heavy lifting, repetitive work and poorly designed jobs. After 10 long years of struggle, working families won an ergonomics standard to protect workers from these crippling injuries.

But Big Business and the Bush administration want to take this worker protection away-immediately. Vice President Dick Cheney speaks to the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) Wednesday. NAM is the leading proponent of efforts to abolish the ergonomics standard through an immediate, extreme, undemocratic and never-before-used maneuver in Congress called the Congressional Review Act. Let them know that working families won't let Congress Bushwhack injured workers! Join AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and working family activists!

For more info: Andre Banks AFL-CIO Student Program Coordinator 202.508.6989 abanks@aflcio.org

---

3/5/01: Protest in Philly and DC

Mon, 26 Feb 2001
http://www.tac.org.za/

GLOBAL DAY OF ACTION ON THE AIDS CRISIS: Affordable AIDS Drug for All!

MONDAY, MARCH 5

The events below are in response to the call to action and solidarity from AIDS activists in South Africa against multinational pharmaceutical companies.

Groups around the world are responding to the call by organizing a Day of Action targeting drug company profiteering on March 5, 2001.

On this day, the court action by more than 40 multinational drug companies against the South African government will be heard in the Pretoria High Court. The drug companies are suing the South African government in order to block affordable, generic AIDS drugs and importation of less expensive drugs from other nations.

Called by the Treatment Action Campaign of South Africa, folks of all backgrounds will rally in defense of South Africa's attempt to bring drugs to its poorest citizens and Brazil's famously successful AIDS program.

Both now stand threatened by the big drug monopolies and US trade actions. This time, it truly is a matter of people before profits, and above all, human life.

On March 5, we will say NO to murder by patent, to death by profit!

We will say YES to hope and to affordable medicines!

PHILADELPHIA

RALLY: MARCH 5, 8:30 am - 9:30 am Glaxo SmithKline Headquarters, 16th and Vine Streets

Free buses leave Philadelphia from 16th and Vine at 9:30 sharp to travel to Washington, DC

TO RESERVE BUS SEATS TO DC, contact jdavids@critpath.org, 215-985-4448 x 165

WASHINGTON, DC

MARCH & RALLY: MARCH 5, 1:30 pm

PROTEST U.S. TRADE POLICIES AND COMPANIES BLOCKING ACCESS TO MEDICINE

Meet at Freedom Plaza at 14th and E NW. March to Bristol Myers Squibb offices and Bush Administration location

For more information: katie@critpath.org, 215-731-1844

_

To download outreach flyers or get more information on the campaign go to: http://www.globaltreatmentaccess.org/nyc.html Global Treatment Access Campaign/ (GTAC) NEW YORK Phone: 212-674-9598 E-mail: GTACny@hotmail.com

DETAILED SUMMARY

In South Africa, subsidiaries of US and European mega-drug companies have taken the South African government to court over its commitment to purchase cheaper generic and/or brand name medicines for millions living with HIV/AIDS. Originally filed in 1998 and supported by Clinton-Gore threats of trade sanctions until late 1999, the law suit is scheduled for trial in Pretoria March 5-12.

In late 2000, the world largest and most profitable pharmaceutical company threatened a lawsuit against an Indian generic manufacturer, CIPLA, which was supplying cheaper medicines in Ghana. On Feb. 8 this year, pharmaceutical representatives said they would protect their patent rights against CIPLA's new plan to sell generic AIDS anti-virals to poor governments at a huge discount.

This February, the U.S. lodged a complaint against Brazil at the World Trade Organization over its production of generic AIDS drugs. In what the New York Times calls a model solution to the AIDS crisis, Brazil has provided free AIDS drugs to over 60,000 citizens, and cut its death toll by over half since 1996. Now Brazil's program is endangered by the strong-armed tactics of big Pharma acting through their proxy, the US government.

The AIDS epidemic is the modern plague, and its impact will lay waste to the continent of Africa, wiping out a whole generation of working men and women, and leaving millions of orphans. However, this pandemic is treatable. The same medicines that have kept tens of thousands alive in this country, is out of reach for the world's poor, now making up over 95% of total AIDS cases.

Because of their monopoly patents, drug companies make mega-profits selling AIDS medicines at huge mark-ups - as much as 4500%. For example, the Indian manufacturer CIPLA has just offered anti-viral triple therapy costing $10,000 per year in the U.S. for $600 to poor African countries and for $350 to Medecins Sans Frontier.

The pharmaceutical giants, however, are working hard to keep their monopoly grip on the market by preventing generic competitors and desperate countries from providing cheaper alternatives. Sometimes, the industry acts directly on its own behalf by filing lawsuits and/or threatening court action.

Other times, it works behind the scene at the White House, in the Congress, with the U.S. Trade Representative, or at international agencies including the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, the World Health Organization, and UNAIDS. Activists around the world are protesting drug profiteering and death by monopoly pricing.

Even in our rich country, seniors fight back at price gouging by taking buses to Canada where drug prices are far cheaper. Joining them is a growing chorus of journalists, economists, students, religious figures, care givers, international charities, and nobel prize winning doctors, who cannot deny the simple truth - people are dying of AIDS because of corporate greed.

On March 5, a global day of action, timed to coincide with the South African court case and in support of the Brazilian AIDS program, will be held marking a new stage in the growing international solidarity movement. Called by the Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa, solidarity demonstrations and rallies will be held around the world. In the US, we have a special responsibility to fight the pharmaceutical companies on their home ground, and reaffirm our moral commitment to human values. In this case, it truly is a matter of people before profits.

Drop the Pharma lawsuit against affordable medicines in South Africa.

Drop threats against CIPLA's low-price AIDS medicines offer.

Drop the U.S. WTO action against the model Brazilian AIDS program.

Fund access to medicines now.

Stop the genocide by corporate greed.

###### Julie Davids ######
###### ACT UP Philadelphia ######
###### jdavids@critpath.org ######

Chris Ouma, Nairobi physician, Action Aid Kenya

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6th Annual United Farm Workers Student Conference

Mon, 26 Feb 2001
News from the Farm Worker Movement(www.ufw.org):
http://www.ufw.org/ufw/student.htm

6th Annual College Student Conference March 9 - 11, 2001 at UFW's Keene, CA

Dear College Participants:

¡Bienvenidos! You are invited to participate in our 6th Annual United Farm Workers Student Conference, Celebrando El Legado de Cesar on March 9-11, 2001 in La Paz, UFW headquarters. At the conference, you will meet other student activists, attend training workshops on what the UFW is about and learn ways in how to organize your school and community on farm worker issues.

This conference is open to college students only for a fee of $60.00 per student (transportation not included). The deadline is February 26. There is limited housing available (on a first come, first serve basis) and you need to pre-register to be guaranteed housing.

Now that weve reached the year 2001, farm workers are still struggling in the fields for better working conditions; La Lucha continua. With all your help, we will be celebrating Cesars birthday as a state paid holiday for the very first time! Si Se Puede! Only organized can we mobilize our communities in order to win justice para los campesinos. In La Paz meet volunteers and members who built the union, and where Cesar Chavez is laid to rest. You will also find out how you can get involved in La Causa and be part of El Movimiento.

Hope to see you there!

Sinceramente

Alicia Sandoval (415) 674-1884 alicia s74@hotmail.com

Yolanda Sánchez (661) 336-1678

Conference coordinators

Go to: http://www.ufw.org/ufw/student.htm to sign up to participate and/or to download a copy of the student conference brochure.

For more information on the Farm Worker Movement visit our web site at http://www.ufw.org and/or subscribe to the Farm Worker Movement list serve by sending an e-mail to UFW-subscribe@topica.com

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Women's EDGE Open Meeting Announcement!

Mon, 26 Feb 2001

Dear friends and members of Women's EDGE:

Please join us for our upcoming Open Meeting, "Talking Trade: American Women on Globalization and Human Rights."

Women's EDGE recently conducted nine focus groups in several cities around the U.S. with Asian, Hispanic, African American and Caucasian women. The purpose of the research was to learn what American women are thinking about globalization and trade and how to effectively tell the story of how women in the Global South are affected by international trade. Ritu Sharma, Executive Director of Women's EDGE, and John Lamson of the media firm MacWilliams, Cosgrove, Smith and Robinson will discuss the preliminary results of these focus groups. Here's a preview of the results:

*There is broad awareness of the plight of women in developing countries. American women see education as an important way to lift the poor out of their current situations and they see the U.S. as a valuable educator and facilitator of this process.

*Women understand that we should be culturally aware when dealing with developing countries, but also recognize that there are fundamental human rights that women have regardless of culture. *African American women responded to these issues at a more emotional level. They relate to these issues in a spiritual manner, and feel a "moral obligation."

They also were the only group to express an allegiance with women in developing countries: "As women, we should help other women."

Want to learn more? Join us for a brown bag lunch at the Academy for Educational Development (AED), 1875 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Greeley Hall, Third Floor, on Wednesday, March 14, from 12:30-2:00pm. Beverages and cookies will be provided. We look forward to seeing you! Please RSVP to Sara Pipher, (202) 884-8396 or spipher@womensedge.org.

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Mexican Rebels Begin Protest March to the Capital

February 26, 2001
New York Times
By GINGER THOMPSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/26/world/26MEXI.html?pagewanted=all

SAN CRISTÓBAL DE LAS CASAS, Mexico, Feb. 25 - Piling into a caravan of vans, trucks and buses accompanied by human rights monitors and foreign sympathizers, the Zapatista rebels set off today from this colonial town where their insurrection began seven years ago on what they called a March for Dignity.

In a two-week, 32-city tour across southern Mexico, the rebels hope to summon the kind of attention and momentum to their cause that the 1963 March on Washington did for the American civil rights movement, bringing together people from different walks of life to press for new rights for Mexico's 10 million indigenous people.

"For almost 200 years we have remained outside this house that we built from the ground, that we freed, that we lived and died for," the Zapatista's famously masked leader, Subcommander Marcos, told a crowd of some 10,000 supporters on Saturday night as he stood on a stage painted with murals. " `Enough!' cry the voices of this country's first people. We want a place. We need a place. We deserve a place."

But even with his gifts as an orator and writer, the masked rebel leader is no Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And as he and the 24-member Zapatista delegation move toward Mexico City, they also carry with them the stigma of violence.

Some 145 people were killed in the 12 days of fighting at the start of the Zapatista conflict on New Year's Day in 1994. Although a cease-fire has been in effect for most of the conflict, hundreds more people have died in the last several years.

The Zapatista carvan has drawn a surprisingly broad and varied crew of backers for the cause of a motley rebel band that has gained attention and supporters from near and far, among them Grace Braley, 66, of Yonkers. "I am here in a sense of solidarity," she said, "in a sense of believing that the Zapatistas have set an example for the entire world."

Before it even began, the caravan became a political sensation in Mexico, rousing opposition and support, and firing debate over how to guarantee that all Mexicans share in the democratic changes ushered in with the election of President Vicente Fox, who defeated a party that ruled for 70 years.

President Fox has made a peaceful resolution of the Zapatista conflict a top priority. On his inauguration nearly 100 days ago, he immediately began taking steps to restart peace talks that have been stalled for more than four years. The march is the Zapatistas' way of piling still more public pressure on Mr. Fox to live up to his word.

But the caravan has divided the president from leaders in his conservative National Action Party, which urged him to ban the demonstration. And political leaders across the country have described the caravan as an affront to law-abiding citizens.

Some have called it a risk to national security. Last week officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which monitored the safety of the Zapatistas during past peace talks, announced that they would not escort the caravan.

While the rebels have been promised safe passage by the government and freedom from arrest, the atmosphere in some states along the route is simmering with threats. That has raised concerns about the possibility of violence as the caravan traverses regions of southern Mexico that are in significant ways not much different from the old American South.

Indeed Chiapas, a state steeped in Mayan traditions, is often referred to as the Mississippi of Mexico. It is ravaged by racial and political violence, by poverty, hunger and illiteracy and by the flight of young men and women who have gone north in search of work and dignity.

On Saturday night, the ragtag rebels and their supporters held a farewell rally for the delegation of Zapatista leaders who say they plan to address Congress once they arrive in the capital, something the government has said it will allow them to do.

This time, they came to this colonial city masked but unarmed. Many of them had traveled half the day, with only a few tortillas for food and torn sandals on their feet.

"Death to the system that forgets and humiliates," read one banner. Another read, "Long live the rights and cultures of indigenous people."

Subcommander Marcos, the rebels' principal spokesman and chief strategist, is not Indian by blood. But indigenous Zapatista commanders reaffirmed his honorary place among them by giving him a ceremonial baton and the Mexican flag at the rally here on Saturday.

Subcommander Marcos called the march a quest for equality, justice and democracy. He vowed that the Zapatistas' struggle would not end until Mexico's Indians - people he described as "those of us who are the color of the earth" - were able to take their rightful place in the nation.

For his part, President Fox has dismantled dozens of military checkpoints and closed four military bases in Chiapas. And more than 40 Zapatista prisoners have been released from jail.

But the president has also seemed increasingly torn by the political forces that support and despise the rebels. In an abrupt change of course about two weeks ago, he announced that he would not comply with rebel demands to close three more military bases unless the Zapatistas agreed to meet with government representatives.

Subcommander Marcos responded by agreeing to meet with just about anyone except members of the Fox administration - including several journalists and a Mexican comedian.

Since then, it appears that the government has begun to try to beat Subcommander Marcos at his favorite game: public relations.

Mr. Fox has orchestrated his own high-profile campaign for peace and Indian rights in an effort to usurp some of the vitality of the Zapatista cause.

The director of the president's Office for the Development of Indigenous People announced that a $1 million grant from Teléfonos de México would be used to free hundreds of Indian prisoners who had been kept in jail on misdemeanor charges because they were unable to pay fines as low as $50.

The Mexican media giant Televisa will join with its competitor, TV Azteca, to sponsor a concert for peace on Saturday, featuring popular rock bands. And throughout the next week, news reports indicate that Mr. Fox is scheduled to visit many of the same cities as the Zapatista tour, announcing programs aimed at helping Mexico's indigenous people.

In a televised address to the nation last Friday, he said he welcomed the Zapatista caravan and called it a "march for peace." Interior Minister Santiago Creel said government forces would provide security to the Zapatista delegation.

"Welcome to the march that will be a bridge for peace and the vindication of indigenous people," Mr. Fox said.

Subcommander Marcos did not return the warm greeting. "He says this is a march for peace and he keeps our brothers in jail," the rebel leader said on Saturday. "He says this is the march for peace and he keeps his troops occupying the homes of hundreds of women and children and old people who have fled to the mountains in resistance."

"Those who are in the government," the rebel leader added, "have tried to turn this into a march for a false peace."

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ANTIVIOLENCE MARCH

February 26, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/26/nyregion/26MBRF.html?pagewanted=all

NEW HAVEN: Hundreds of community activists and political leaders rallied yesterday against violence on city streets. The March Against Violence, sponsored by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, came in response to several recent crimes in New Haven, including six murders this year. (AP)

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Montana

01/02/26
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Kalispell - A conservative radio talk show host has sparked an economic boycott of local businesses that have contributed to environmental groups. John Stokes said the move by his listeners against what he calls "green Nazis" protests federal land closures to timber cutting and snowmobiling and the resulting lost jobs in the Flathead Valley. Opponents called the boycott shortsighted.

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Jackson's income triggers questions

February 26, 2001
Washington Times
By Steve Miller and Jerry Seper
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-2001226233251.htm

CHICAGO - The Rev. Jesse L. Jackson's opulent lifestyle has prompted many of his critics here to ask the obvious question: Where does the 59-year-old activist get the money to pay for three homes, first-class travel and a $3,000 monthly child-support payment to a former mistress?

"It's a question mark we've all had for years," said Chris Dudley, former executive director of the Illinois Republican Party. "He's got front-row seats at the [Chicago] Bulls games. He's undoubtedly a wealthy man."

"That's a good question," added Don Beachem, vice chairman of the Illinois Minority Community Alliance, a Cook County sheriff's deputy who claims to have his finger on the pulse of Chicago's sizable black community.

"The only thing I can tell you is what I hear from other people," said Mr. Beachem. What he hears is that Mr. Jackson's financial support comes from "his organizations, from PUSH, the Rainbow Coalition, from the Citizenship Education Fund. I'd imagine there is some grant money in there, too."

The conglomerate of eight nonprofit and public organizations that Mr. Jackson is affiliated with are for the most part financed by the generosity of corporate America and a multitude of loyal followers.

The organizations include the 30-year-old People United to Serve Humanity (PUSH), the Citizenship Education Fund (CEF) - both of which are tax-exempt and nonprofit - and the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, formed in 1996 as a for-profit corporation.

The complaints among many of his critics in Chicago are loud and clear: Mr. Jackson, under the guise of selflessly promoting social change, has lined his pockets.

He has an estimated annual income of about $300,000.

Mr. Jackson's home, a large two-story white stucco located a half-mile from the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition headquarters on this city's south side, sits in the upscale Jackson Park Highlands.

It's an old section of town that, despite the high levels of crime which forces homeowners to put up barred windows, is also given to beautifully baroque houses that are valued on tax rolls between $100,000 and $125,000.

At various times, Mr. Jackson also owned two other homes, one in Washington purchased for $100,000 in 1985 and another in Greenville, S.C., purchased in 1984 for $40,000.

Steve Taylor, publisher of a regional black newspaper, the Kankakee City News, recently wrote an editorial accusing Mr. Jackson of playing the race card to make himself one of the wealthiest black ministers in the nation.

Mr. Jackson denies such accusations and said he has simply lobbied major corporations to steer business and capital toward minority entrepreneurs.

"Rather than race, we talk business," Mr. Jackson said. "If what I have to offer holds no value to [a corporation], then we don't talk."

The companies that do talk and give out money, some of them Fortune 500 corporations, have become generous contributors to the nonprofit organizations led by Mr. Jackson.

The CEF, for example, has received nearly $4 million in pledges from SBC-Ameritech, AT&T, Viacom, GTE and Bell Atlantic in recent years.

Mr. Jackson, though, is uncharacteristically humble about his standing in the national black community and his role in attracting corporate largesse.

"This is my job," he said during a 90-minute interview with The Washington Times.

He dresses like any other businessman, wearing a conventional suit with his tie often askew as he tackles his daily duties of redressing perceived racial and economic injustices.

Mr. Jackson noted with his customary wry smile that he could have ridden his profile as a prominent civil rights activist to great wealth. He pointed out that when, in the early 1970s, he negotiated black ownership of several Chicago-area car dealerships and numerous McDonald's franchises, he could have cashed in personally.

"I could make more, but I'm not interested in that," he said. "One or more of those franchises could have been mine. I have no piece of them."

Mr. Jackson points to his current passion of attracting capital for black businesses as an example of what he does for a living.

Self-dubbed as "The Wall Street Project," it is a movement to persuade corporate America to invest in minority businesses. It has seen some significant results, including a commitment by AT&T to have $1 billion in bonds brokered through Blaylock & Partners LP, a black-owned firm in New York.

The civil rights leader, however, is never far from the pulpit. He greets his local followers at a traditional Saturday morning service in the ornate sanctuary of the Rainbow/PUSH headquarters.

The 300 or more people who attend - about 10 percent of them white - listen to Mr. Jackson's every word as he speaks to them in hushed tones.

Backed by a six-piece band and a choir, Mr. Jackson presides over a service that is like any other in America, save for one thing: At the back of the massive hall is a 10-by-10 banner of Mr. Jackson, a testament to his powerful charisma and popularity among his followers.

The service is broadcast on cable access television and local radio. And at the end of the service, as at any religious service, the contribution plate is passed around.

The activist's finances

In his earlier days as a civil rights activist, Mr. Jackson was saddled with questions about one of his organization's accounting practices and its lack of accountability in the use of federal grant money.

Government auditors in 1979 challenged the way Mr. Jackson's operation PUSH spent $1.7 million in federal grants. The program received $6.5 million from various federal agencies over a short period of time at the end of the Carter administration.

Auditors reviewing grants said that $737,000 had been improperly spent and questioned the spending practices involving another $1 million. The organization negotiated a settlement with the government to repay more than a half-million dollars in the early 1980s, plunging itself into an operating deficit that reached nearly $340,000 by 1986.

At the same time, a government-funded study conducted by the American Institute for Research declared that the program had accomplished little.

More criticism also came in the late 1970s from Department of Education auditors, who contended that PUSH had failed to account for how it spent $1.2 million of $4.9 million in federal grants.

The controversy associated with the grant money days are over, assured Mr. Jackson. "They gave us federal grants when we didn't even want them," he said.

Mr. Jackson explained that an appearance on the television show "60 Minutes" in 1979 prompted some government officials to besiege the fledgling organization with ways to solicit public funding.

Although the fiscal bumbling may be in the past, the perception remains that Mr. Jackson lives on public dollars.

With characteristic urgency, Mr. Jackson refutes that misconception saying, "We don't have any taxpayer money. We don't want any taxpayer money. I learned my lesson. It was distracting. We didn't ask for it. We were going out and talking to kids at that point, and you don't need government money to do that."

True enough, none of his nonprofit organizations have any grant money and have not had any for years.

Yet this has not stopped Mr. Jackson's benefactors from taking advantage of the tax-exempt status that some of his organizations enjoy.

His Rainbow/PUSH and Push for Excellence had incomes of more than $4 million in 1998, and the affiliate tax-exempt CEF declared revenue of $9 million in 1999.

Mr. Jackson draws a $120,000 annual salary from PUSH, a nonprofit group formed in 1971 and incorporated in 1977. Spokesman John Scanlon, a New York-based public relations agent, said Mr. Jackson also earns close to $150,000 annually in speaking fees as well as an undisclosed sum of income from CNN, where he has hosted a public affairs show, "Both Sides With Jesse Jackson," since 1992. The show, however, was taken off the air last month.

In addition to the income from CNN, Mr. Jackson's speaking fee varies, Mr. Scanlon said, according to the ability of the audience to pay. It ranges from giving speeches free of charge to a substantial cost, said Mr. Scanlon, who declined to name any other revenue-producing sources for his client.

The speaking fees are arranged through a separate, public entity known as Jacqueline Inc., which is controlled by Mr. Jackson's wife.

Moreover, Mr. Jackson said he accepts the gratuity of others when he travels as an activist.

"I get plane tickets, hotel rooms when the beneficiaries can afford such costs," he said. "But when we went to the Mississippi Delta, for example, we sure couldn't get a comp there, so we pay our own way."

Mr. Jackson's income has increased since his records became public in 1984 when he announced his candidacy for the presidency -the first of two presidential bids. That year, he released his 1983 tax return showing an annual income of $115,000. In 1987, according to a financial disclosure statement he filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), his annual income exceeded $250,000.

This included a salary of $192,090 from Personalities International Inc., a now-defunct Chicago speaker's bureau formed in 1984 by Mr. Jackson's family; $18,750 in payments from his National Rainbow Coalition; and more than $33,000 in honorariums for speeches at colleges, conventions and churches.

Jackson: 'I can take the hits'

Yet as Mr. Jackson's wealth and profile has grown over the years, so has the number of his detractors. In the beginning, his opposition came from some unlikely corners.

In 1982, the St. Louis Sentinel, a black newspaper, reported that Mr. Jackson had asked a local coalition of businessmen for $500 each to lead a boycott of Anheuser-Busch Co., a business with deep roots in the community and a stellar record of minority employment. In an editorial headlined "Minister or Charlatan?" the paper accused him of running a game to extract monetary contributions from local businesses.

Mr. Jackson, unaccustomed to such treatment, filed a $3 million libel suit against the paper.

"Anheuser-Busch was a good corporate citizen," said Michael Williams, co-publisher of the Sentinel. "We questioned his motives. We had black business owners who were really offended that Mr. Jackson would want money to go after this company."

But when a judge asked Mr. Jackson to produce his financial records during the trial, the civil rights leader declined. The case was dismissed.

Since then, critics have consistently questioned - including the recent revelation of an illegitimate daughter and lavish child-support payments - the nature and source of Mr. Jackson's finances. The mishandled federal grants, for example, dogged Mr. Jackson for years.

His presidential runs in 1984 and 1988 also cast him as a man with a reputation for being a spendthrift.

An FEC audit of the 1984 campaign found that the Jackson committee underreported its receipts by $826,000 and its expenditures by more than $1 million. The 1988 campaign committee found itself initially ineligible for federal matching funds because of bounced checks.

Mr. Jackson's inability to curtail his spending habits has left some critics wondering whether the activist's crusade for social justice and economic parity comes with overhead costs that are too high.

"Any time Jesse shows up now, it's going to cost you," said Hurley Green Sr., publisher of a conservative black newspaper in Chicago.

Mr. Green said he used to ghostwrite a column for Mr. Jackson, which ran in another local black newspaper, the Chicago Defender.

"I did it until I found out that Jesse was getting paid for it," Mr. Green said in an interview last week. "I thought he was doing it for the community, and I never saw a dime."

In his interview with The Washington Times last week, Mr. Jackson played down these instances of questionable financial dealings with a story focusing on his 1984 trip to Syria which helped to secure the release of captured Navy Lt. Robert Goodman.

When his plane returned to the United States and he was preparing to face a throng of waiting reporters, Mr. Jackson said he was "wondering what kind of questions they would ask, things about what this might mean to world peace or how the release all came about."

"Instead, the first thing I heard," he said, assuming a television reporter's self-important stance with an extended arm grasping an imaginary microphone, "was 'who paid for your hotel?'"

Mr. Jackson is a survivor. The attacks from his critics, last month's revelation of an illegitimate child and several reports of mistresses are met with apologies and remorse. But, he said: "I can take the hits because God has blessed me."

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Australian upsets Tibet-rights groups

February 26, 2001
Washington Times
By Calum MacLeod
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-200122622326.htm

BEIJING - Angry human rights groups are accusing Australian Health Minister Michael Wooldridge of handing the Chinese government a propaganda coup when he recently lauded its efforts to improve social conditions in Tibet.

The minister's comments after a three-day tour of Australian aid projects in the Himalayan region must have been "very gratifying" for a Chinese government that is "struggling to find some international acceptance for [its] human rights record," complained Alex Butler, vice president of the Australia Tibet Council.

Mr. Wooldridge, the most senior Australian official to visit Tibet in 13 years, stood his ground at a weekend news conference, where he said he had raised human rights issues with the Chinese government but remained impressed by its commitment to helping the poorest members of society.

Describing the Chinese as "gracious hosts" on an "exceedingly worthwhile trip," Mr. Wooldridge said he had no sense that his visit had been exploited for positive publicity.

"Australia is running serious aid projects in Tibet that are improving the lot of the poorest Tibetans," he said Saturday in Beijing. "Seeing [these projects] in action is something Australians should be proud of. It is very practical aid, and very successful aid."

Australia is spending about $3.5 million on two projects to relieve iodine deficiency and provide clean water. An iodine salt factory has been built in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, and another is planned in a more remote area of Tibet.

Mr. Wooldridge said he had raised human rights issues during "lengthy and detailed discussions" with senior officials in Lhasa, including the vice chairman of the Tibetan Autonomous Region. He said he had brought up "concerns that are frequently raised in Australia," but declined to give details.

Mr. Butler dismissed the minister's explanation as "the same old stuff" conducted behind closed doors.

"The public is expected to take their word for it that progress is being made, though on the ground in Tibet there is no sign of progress at all," he said.

"We have had four years of hearing this identical statement over and over again. Why should the public take this seriously? We never have any real disclosure or accountability by either side."

Mr. Wooldridge argued that human rights "also involve a kid not contracting HIV from its mother, or being mentally retarded from iodine deficiency, or dying from gastroenteritis because of poor water. I thought China was . . . trying to really do something for the poorest of its people."

The minister said Australia's ambassador had received a positive response to a proposed project aimed at strengthening the legal framework in Tibet. "If a project like that goes ahead, then it is something that would have a meaningful effect on human rights."

The Chinese government has long boasted of the progress it has brought to a backward region annexed by the People's Liberation Army in 1950. Chinese officials were reported to have told Mr. Wooldridge that before 1950 there were only two hospitals in Tibet and that the few doctors there served only the ruling class.

Today, officials say, Tibet boasts more than 1,200 hospitals and clinics staffed by more than 10,300 medical professionals. Life expectancy has risen to 65 years, from just 36 before 1950, according to government figures.

However a new study by American and Tibetan doctors published this month found that more than half the children in Tibet suffer from stunted growth.

"Our data show that Tibetan children are not 'small but healthy,' " said the researchers in The New England Journal of Medicine. "They have clinical signs of malnutrition as well as high morbidity and mortality."

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Porto Alegre Call for Mobilisation

Mon, 26 Feb 2001
Carol Brouillet
<cbrouillet@igc.org>

Social forces from around the world have gathered here at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre. Unions and NGOs, movements and organizations, intellectuals and artists, together we are building a great alliance to create a new society, different from the dominant logic wherein the free-market and money are considered the only measure of worth. Davos represents the concentration of wealth, the globalization of poverty and the destruction of our earth. Porto Alegre represents the hope that a new world is possible, where human beings and nature are the center of our concern.

We are part of a movement which has grown since Seattle. We challenge the elite and their undemocratic processes, symbolised by the World Economic Forum in Davos. We came to share our experiences, build our solidarity, and demonstrate our total rejection of the neoliberal policies of globalisation.

We are women and men, farmers, workers, unemployed, professionals, students, blacks and indigenous peoples, coming from the South and from the North, committed to struggle for peoples' rights, freedom, security, employment and education. We are fighting against the hegemony of finance, the destruction of our cultures, the monopolization of knowledge, mass media, and communication, the degradation of nature, and the destruction of the quality of life by multinational corporations and anti-democratic policies. Participative democratic experiences -- like that of Porto Alegre -- show us that a concrete alternative is possible. We reaffirm the supremacy of human, ecological and social rights over the demands of finance and investors.

At the same time that we strengthen our movements, we resist the global elite and work for equity, social justice, democracy and security for everyone, without distinction. Our methodology and alternatives stand in stark contrast to the destructive policies of neo-liberalism.

Globalisation reinforces a sexist and patriarchal system. It increases the feminisation of poverty and exacerbates all forms of violence against women. Equality between women and men is central to our struggle. Without this, another world will never be possible.

Neoliberal globalization increases racism, continuing the veritable genocide of centuries of slavery and colonialism which destroyed the bases of black African civilizations. We call on all movements to be in solidarity with African peoples in the continent and outside, in efense of their rights to land, citizenship, freedom, peace, and equality, through the reparation of historical and social debts. Slave trade and slavery are crimes against humanity. We express our special recognition and solidarity with indigenous peoples in their historic struggle against genocide and ethnocide and in defense of their rights, natural resources, culture, autonomy, land, and territory.

Neoliberal globalisation destroys the environment, health and people's living environment. Air, water, land and peoples have become commodities. Life and health must be recognized as fundamental rights which must not be subordinated to economic policies. The external debt of the countries of the South has been repaid several times over. Illegitimate, unjust and fraudulent, it functions as an instrument of domination, depriving people of their fundamental human rights with the sole aim of increasing international usury. We demand its unconditional cancellation and the reparation of historical, social, and ecological debts, as immediate steps toward a definitive resolution of the crisis this Debt provokes. Financial markets extract resources and wealth from communities and nations, and subject national economies to the whims of speculators. We call for the closure of tax havens and the introduction of taxes on financial transactions.

Privatisation is a mechanism for transferring public wealth and natural resources to the private sector. We oppose all forms of privatisation of natural resources and public services. We call for the protection of access to resources and public goods necessary for a decent life.

Multinational corporations organise global production with massive unemployment, low wages and unqualified labour and by refusing to recognise the fundamental worker's rights as defined by the ILO. We demand the genuine recognition of the right to organise and negotiate for unions, and new rights for workers to face the globalisation strategy. While goods and money are free to cross borders, the restrictions on the movement of people exacerbate exploitation and repression. We demand an end to such restrictions.

We call for a trading system which guarantees full employment, food security, fair terms of trade and local prosperity. Free trade is anything but free. Global trade rules ensure the accelerated accummulation of wealth and power by multinational corporations and the further marginalisation and impoverishment of small farmers, workers and local enterprises. We demand that governments respect their obligations to the international human rights instruments and multilateral environmental agreements. We call on people everywhere to support the mobilizations against the creation of the Free Trade Area in the Americas, an initiative which means the recolonization of Latin America and the destruction of fundamental social, economic, cultural and environmental human rights.

The IMF, the World Bank and regional banks, the WTO, NATO and other military alliances are some of the multilateral agents of neoliberal globalisation. We call for an end to their interference in national policy. These institutions have no legitimacy in the eyes of the people and we will continue to protest against their measures. Neoliberal globalization has led to the concentration of land ownership and favored corporate agricultural systems which are environmentally and socially destructive. It is based on export oriented growth backed by large scale infrastructure development, such as dams, which displces people from their land and destroys their livelihoods. Their loss must be restored. We call for a democratic agrarian reform. Land, water and seeds must be in the hands of the peasants. We promote sustainable agricultural processes. Seeds and genetic stocks are the heritage of humanity.

We demand that the use of transgenics and the patenting of life be abolished. Militarism and corporate globalisation reinforce each other to undermine democracy and peace. We totally refuse war as a way to solve coflicts and we oppose the arms race and the arms trade. We call for an end to the repression and criminalisation of social protest. We condemn foreign military intervention in the internal affairs of our countries. We demand the lifting of embargoes and sanctions used as instruments of aggression, and express our solidarity with those who suffer their consequences. We reject US military intervention in Latin America through the Plan Colombia.

We call for a strenghtening of alliances, and the implementation of common actions, on these principal concerns. We will continue to mobilize on them until the next Forum. We recognize that we are now in a better position to undertake the struggle for a different world, a world without misery, hunger, discrimination and violence, with quality of life, equity, respect and peace.

We commit ourselves to support all the struggles of our common agenda to mobilise opposition to neoliberalism. Among our priorities for the coming months, we will mobilize globally against the:

· World Economic Forum, Cancun, Mexico, 26 and 27 February

· Free Trade Area of the Americas, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 6-7 April and Quebec City, Canada, 17-22 April

·Asian Development Bank, Honolulu, May

·G8 Summit, Genova, Italy, 15-22 July

· IMF and World Bank Annual Meeting, Washington DC, USA, 28 September - 4 October

· World Trade Organisation, 5-9 November (Quatar?)

On April 17, we will support the international day of struggle against the importation of cheap agricultural products which create economic and social dumping, and the feminist mobilization against globalization in Genova. We support the call for a world day of action against debt, to take place this year on July 20.

The proposals formulated are part of the alternatives being elaborated by social movements around the world. They are based on the principle that human beings and life are not commodities, and in the commitment to the welfare and human rights of all.

Our involvement in the World Social Forum has enriched understanding of each of our struggles and we have been strengthened. We call on all peoples around the world to join in this struggle to build a better future. The World Social Forum of Porto Alegre is a way to achieve peoples' sovereignty and a just world.

Hundreds of organizations have signed this call. If you want to see the endorsements, please check http://attac.org/fra/asso/doc/doc502sign.htm

If your organization wants to sign it, please send a email to attacint@attac.org mentioning your endorsement and giving all useful information.

World Social Forum website: http://www.worldsocialforum.org

Organizing the US mobilization committee- Carol Brouillet

contact- cbrouillet@igc.org or http://www.communitycurrency.org

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