------- Index of Articles
NUCLEAR
One time nuclear attack base offers US facilities again
Timeout on arms treaties
Aorta Tell The Truth
Lunch put sub behind schedule
Agent may have sold invaluable U.S. secrets
Naval Inquiry Hears Sub Crew Rushed Drill
Errors by Submarine Crew Led to Sinking, Court Is Told
Navy investigators examine control room of sub
Tourists in subs and in space are a good idea
Military Joy Rides:
Lunch delayed submarine's schedule
Watchdog confirms pylon cancer link
British Energy plans nuclear power plants
Commission receives scientific experts' opinion
EU Panel Clears NATO Uranium Risk
Iraq inspections are still priority
A Road Through Seoul
How Politics Sank Accord on Missiles With North Korea
A Visit by South Korea's Leader
U.S. Has Lot To Offer N. Korea
China to raise defense spending
Putin's e-warning on missile defense
Plutonium deal can be amended
Putin Answers Questions Online
Not fit to print
Calif. Wanted More Power Help
Colorado
MILITARY
U.S. Will Watch Chinese Military
China Denies Helping Iraq Build Air Defenses
China Denies Involvement in Iraqi Air Defenses
New Files Tie U.S. to Deaths of Latin Leftists in 1970's
The dazzling triumph of Saddam Hussein
NATO speeds U.S. troops to Kosovo clash
Dam creates Bangladesh, Myanmar tension
China Plans Major Boost In Spending for Military
Beijing plans defense spending boost
Rebels called 'willing to die'
Guerrillas gain ground in Colombia
Rethink Plan Colombia
Heroin Seen Spreading to U.S. Suburbia
Federal, state agents raid online pharmacy
Maine
BOXER ARRAIGNED ON DRUG CHARGE
Attack Of The Mutant Space Fungus
A Hard-Working Spacecraft Leaves Its Handlers Beaming
COULD MIR CRAFT BRING MUTANT FUNGI TO EARTH?
Mutant space fungus headed toward Earth
Aorta Tell The Truth
Communities mourn 21 part-time soldiers
Remains of guardsmen recovered from crash site
OTHER
Fact:
E-commerce:
Deer hunt meets goal, ends
Cattle moves to abattoirs despite new cases
Vet says virus still under control
Meat prices forced up by profiteers
New foot-and-mouth alert on Dartmoor
Oil spilled in Columbia River;
Simple Aid to Gorillas Pays Off:
Animals Set Afire as France Fears Outbreak
Toxic Avengers With Leaves
Pataki Names an Environmental Conservation Commissioner
City Hopes Pesticide Injections Will Make Its Trees Beetle-Proof
Arctic Wildlife, Here
EU closes livestock markets
Foot-and-Mouth Crisis
Arizona
Dispute Over Road in Nevada Nears an End
France put on alert for animal disease
Guilty Pleas by Man Beaten in Taped Arrest
POLICE UNION ENDS TALKS
Nebraska
NATIONAL SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE-1
The Carefully Orchestrated Glamour of the KGB
Gap in Hanssen Case a Puzzle
Wilderness of Mirrors
Russians Seek an Explanation After Embassy Tunnel Report
Louis Freeh and the moles
Accused spy seen as 'severe' flight risk
Russia demands explanation for tunnel
FACT OF THE WEEK
With Israel on Terror Alert,
Message to Arafat
Peru to start Berenson retrial
ACTIVISTS
request for GAAN mtg
GLOBAL EXCHANGE JOB OPENING DEMOCRACY PROGRAM COORDINATOR
Anti-nuclear flotilla claims Pacific victory
Greenpeace in pursuit of a shipment of plutonium
MYANMAR PROTEST PLANNED
-------- NUCLEAR
One time nuclear attack base offers US facilities again
March 6, 2001
Radio Australia,
http://www.abc.net.au/ra/newsdaily/s255136.htm
An island once used by the United States to launch two atomic bomb attacks on Japan could become a U-S base again if the Northern Mariana Islands gets its way.
Northern Mariana Island's resident representative to Washington, Juan Babauta, has asked the Pentagon to consider Tinian Island as an alternative site for U-S military bases in Okinawa, Japan.
The move comes amid mounting clamor to reduce American presence in Japan.
In a letter to Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, Mr Babauta said Tinian was strategically located in the Asia-Pacific region and a base there would enable U-S military forces to quickly respond during emergencies.
Mr Babauta said the Northern Marianas was proud of its role in national defence and was willing to do more.
----
Timeout on arms treaties
TUESDAY, MARCH 6, 2001
Christian Science Monitor
By Stansfield Turner
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2001/03/06/fp9s1-csm.shtml
WASHINGTON It's time to take a timeout on nuclear arms-control treaties. They are too slow and too timid. For instance, we started negotiating the START II Treaty in 1991, and it is not yet even ratified. Besides, new treaties are simply not needed to get where we need to go.
On the US side, President Bush has indicated a desire to reduce our nuclear weapons unilaterally, with or without Russian agreement. On the Russian's side, the nuclear arsenal is inexorably declining because they can't afford to replace aging weapons. The best forecast is that before the end of this decade they will be below 1,000 warheads deliverable on the United States.
Our focus, then, should be on ensuring that reductions do take place on both sides, and rapidly enough to assert US leadership in the anti-proliferation movement. Just announcing that we have signed a treaty, or even that we have unilaterally decided to cut the number of our weapons, is virtually meaningless in this context. It takes years to remove and disassemble nuclear warheads, and we have more than 12,000 in our inventory today.
The alternative is to remove warheads to strategic escrow, which means putting them in storage at least 300 miles from their launchers. It also means inviting Russia to place observers on those storage sites to note what goes in and whether anything comes out.
In a matter of three or four years, we could cut the number of ready nuclear warheads in the US to less than 1,000. Since the Russians are going in that direction anyway, they would almost have to follow our lead by creating an escrow on their side.
Once we had the process of strategic escrow moving, we would want to open treaty negotiations with the other six nuclear powers. The objective would be an agreement to reduce to something like 200 warheads each, with all of those in escrow under international observation. This would move the world to a very stable position where no nuclear warheads would be ready for immediate use, but warheads and delivery vehicles could be reassembled if some rogue state acquired nuclear weapons and began threatening with them.
One major impediment to this process is the prospect that the US will build national missile defenses over the opposition of many of our allies and of our principal rivals, Russia and China. Until we resolve this issue, we will be involved in time-consuming bickering over whether, when, and how we will proceed with national missile defense. This will detract both from other major issues between us and these countries, and from moving rapidly into escrow.
The opposition of our allies is grounded in the concern that if we are invulnerable to nuclear attack, we will be less concerned that they may continue to be vulnerable. From their point of view, that makes sense, but no US president could tell the American people that he/she is eschewing a national missile defense, if one were feasible, because our allies would not like it.
Similarly, Russia and China are saying that they want us to remain vulnerable, lest they not be able to threaten us with nuclear attack. Again, this is perfectly logical from their point of view, but not sensible from ours.
Still another objection to national missile defense is that it is likely to kindle a nuclear arms race or even undo existing arms agreements. Neither is likely. The Russians simply do not have the wherewithal to race with us. The Chinese could, and might, but for years they have understood how little nuclear retaliatory capability it takes to deter the US from initiating nuclear war.
Witness that China has only about 20 nuclear warheads that could reach the US today. If China doubled or trebled that number because of any defenses we build, it wouldn't make much difference to anyone. It certainly would not be an incentive for Japan, Korea, or Taiwan to initiate nuclear programs, since they are all already vulnerable to hundreds of Chinese warheads. It would not even be an occasion for India to respond. As for Russia or China abrogating existing arms agreements, doing so could only exacerbate their nuclear inferiority vis-à-vis the US.
The answer is for the US to abrogate unilaterally the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, to concentrate on reducing the numbers of our nuclear weapons, and to move toward an international condominium to bring nuclear stability to the world.
In the past 50 years, there has not been as propitious a moment for controlling and limiting nuclear weapons. We need to move boldly.
• Admiral Stansfield Turner (USN, ret.), former director of central intelligence, is the author of 'Caging the Genies: A Workable Solution for Chemical, Biological, and Nuclear Weapons' (Westview Press).
For further information:
High Energy Weapons Archive
http://www.fas.org/nuke/hew/
Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Project FAS
http://www.fas.org/nwp/
---
Aorta Tell The Truth
Tue, 06 Mar 2001
Slate Magazine
by Scott Shuger
The WP fronts the first day of the Navy's court of inquiry into the Greeneville disaster, but it's the insider reefered at the NYT that has the day's most important new information, the testimony of the admiral who conducted the Navy's preliminary investigation, who indicated two new ways the presence of civilian guests onboard might have contributed to the sub's collision with a Japanese fishing boat:
1) The ship was behind schedule for its pre-assigned time to return to port because of time the ship's captain spent with the visitors during lunch, and the time crunch may have caused him to spend only 90 seconds using his periscope to scan for boat traffic before rushing to the surface;
2) The experienced supervisor who was supposed to consistently monitor a new sonar operator had instead been assigned to help escort the civilians around the sub.
---
Lunch put sub behind schedule;
surfacing maneuver was possibly rushed
Tuesday, March 06, 2001,
Seattle Times
Associated Press
by Pauline Arrillaga
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/SeattleTimes.woa/wa/gotoArticle?zsection_id=268448413&text_only=0&slug=inquiry06&document_id=134272355
PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii - A lengthy lunch for guests aboard a U.S. submarine forced a nearly 45-minute delay in the emergency surfacing maneuver that ended in a fatal collision with a Japanese fishing boat, an admiral testified yesterday.
Rear Adm. Charles Griffiths, who led the Navy's investigation into the accident, said he "surmised" the captain of the submarine then shortened normal safety procedures because he was behind schedule.
Griffiths was the first to testify at a court of inquiry into the collision that left nine Japanese boys and men missing.
The USS Greeneville, a nuclear-attack submarine, was demonstrating an emergency-surfacing drill for 16 civilians when it knifed through the hull of the Ehime Maru on Feb. 9.
Griffiths described a series of events and problems on the day of the accident, including broken equipment, inadequate supervision for a sonar trainee and delays that may have encouraged a rush to get back on schedule.
The surfacing drill had been planned for 1 p.m., but it was pushed back until 1:43 p.m. because lunch dragged on, he said. The crew had to feed guests in two shifts because the mess hall was so small.
Later, with the submarine behind schedule, the sub's captain, Cmdr. Scott Waddle, ordered his crew to go to periscope depth in five minutes, despite procedures that required at least 10 minutes to check for surface vessels, Griffiths said.
"He wanted to get to periscope depth in a hurry," Griffiths said. "I can surmise it was because they were late from their previous schedule."
Then, Waddle and his officer of the deck performed an 80-second periscope search that was too brief, Griffiths said.
Generally, a thorough periscope search takes about three minutes. Waddle has said he did not see the Japanese boat during his scan.
"That ship should have been seen given enough time by the periscope operator," Griffiths said. "The ship went deep too quickly."
Griffiths also said a sonar officer who was supposed to be monitoring a trainee in the sonar room spent much of his time dealing with guests instead. The sonar room monitors surface vessels.
Griffiths testified that on the day of the accident, a sonar display that allows the commander and the officer of the deck to monitor surface vessels was inoperable. Griffiths, a former submarine commander, called it a "vital piece of gear."
---
Agent may have sold invaluable U.S. secrets
Tuesday, Mar. 6, 2001
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Knight-Ridder News Service
By Lenny Savino
http://www.star-telegram.com/news/doc/1047/1:POLITICS31/1:POLITICS310306101.html
WASHINGTON -- Robert P. Hanssen, the veteran FBI agent accused of spying, may have sold Russia some of America's most precious intelligence secrets, including information on how the United States tracks foreign submarines and sniffs out nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, intelligence experts said Tuesday.
The loss of such technical secrets could dwarf the damage from Hanssen's reported disclosure of a secret tunnel under the Russian Embassy in Washington -- demolishing a number of the nation's most important intelligence programs and wiping out more than a billion dollars in research and investment, the officials said.
Hanssen was one of a handful of FBI counterintelligence experts whom the Defense Department and other agencies called upon to protect high- tech intelligence programs collectively called "Measurement and Signature Intelligence," or MASINT, said a senior intelligence official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Hanssen also accessed CIA and Defense Department computer databases to collect highly classified information on MASINT programs, according to counterintelligence experts who asked not to be named.
MASINT programs detect and track submarines, missiles and other weapons by analyzing their sounds, heat, radiation, chemical traces or other physical evidence.
Such programs are increasingly important to the United States as other nations have learned to combat more conventional forms of intelligence gathering, such as satellite photography and communications intercepts, the senior intelligence official said. They also are crucial to U.S. ability to monitor nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and to keep track of mobile Russian nuclear missiles.
"If Hanssen sold the Russians everything he knew about these programs, the damage would be devastating, among the worst we've ever seen," the official told Knight Ridder News Service. "These things can be compromised in an instant. They only work as long as the other side doesn't know what we can do."
Officials are still trying to assess how much damage Hanssen might have done, but his arrest affidavit charges that he passed on details of at least one "Top Secret SCI" (Sensitive Compartmented Information) MASINT program. SCI is a level of security clearance higher than Top Secret that restricts information to a few people who are cleared for a specific code word.
The MASINT document that Hanssen is accused of giving to the Russians detailed recommendations for the CIA director on how MASINT information would be collected and utilized, according to the affidavit.
The document was "highly specific and technical" and disclosed "the Intelligence Community's consensus on specific MASINT objectives and studies leading to needed capabilities," the affidavit says.
FBI spokesman Bill Carter said he could not comment on what MASINT documents were passed or what threat they represent to national security.
"We can't go beyond what's in the affidavit," Carter said. "Damage assessment is under way."
Retired Air Force Gen. James Clapper, a former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, which coordinates MASINT programs, said the technology is used for many purposes, including monitoring the size and characteristics of nuclear test blasts.
"A lot of this is pretty exotic technology," Clapper said. "It's conceivable [the disclosures alleged in the Hanssen case] could be quite egregious."
"It's the Holy Grail of anti- submarine warfare," said Steven Aftergood, an intelligence analyst for the Federation of American Scientists, a Washington-based government watchdog organization. "That would be something that a foreign intelligence service would be eager to get their hands on. Their interest would not so much be in duplicating it as much as discovering ways to evade our collection abilities."
Hanssen, 56, was arrested last month and charged with espionage and conspiracy to commit espionage in connection with passing 6,000 pages of secret documents to the Russians. In exchange for spying over a 15-year period, court papers say, he received $1.4 million in cash, diamonds and deferred deposits in a Moscow bank.
Robert D. Steele, the head of OSS.net, a Virginia counterintelligence consulting company, estimated the cost of MASINT technology development in the United States in the "low billions."
Some MASINT technologies identify specific Russian nuclear submarines by their engine and propeller sounds. Others detect the presence of chemical and biological weapons through traces of their components.
The loss of MASINT information could eliminate U.S. nuclear submarines' ability to avoid detection, make it easier for Russian subs carrying missiles to hide off the U.S. coast and help Russia conceal data on its missile and weapons tests, experts said.
Based on MASINT intelligence taken from soil samples, the United States fired 13 Tomahawk cruise missiles in 1998 at a factory in Khartoum, Sudan, believed to contain the precursors of a chemical weapon, Aftergood said. U.S. intelligence officials said the factory was linked to terrorist suspect Osama bin Laden. A lawsuit by the plant's owner later raised questions whether the information was accurate.
MASINT devices are also used as "monitors" at border crossings to detect the movement of nuclear and chemical weapons through radioactivity or chemical precursors, said a former senior intelligence official who asked not to be identified.
MASINT technology arose in large part as a response to shortcomings in intelligence collection during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, according to the magazine Aviation Week and Space Technology. The United States began centralizing its MASINT efforts to collect intelligence from sensors on U.S. surface ships, submarines, jets, radar platforms and satellites more quickly.
Knight Ridder writer Warren P. Strobel contributed to this report.
---
Naval Inquiry Hears Sub Crew Rushed Drill
Tuesday, March 6, 2001
Washington Post
By Rene Sanchez
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26390-2001Mar5.html
PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii, March 5 -- On the day the USS Greeneville crashed into a Japanese fishing ship, its officers were so busy entertaining civilian guests on board that they fell behind schedule and then rushed to perform a surfacing drill, a senior admiral said today as the Navy convened a rare public inquiry of the accident.
Rear Adm. Charles H. Griffiths, who has led the Navy's preliminary investigation, presented the Navy court with a series of factors that may have complicated the submarine's maneuvers: providing lunch for all the guests in such cramped quarters delayed the Greeneville's rapid surfacing drill for 45 minutes. A supervisor in the submarine's sonar room was assigned to be a "tour guide" instead of watching a trainee. A sonar display that allows the skipper and officer of the deck to monitor surface vessels was broken. And the usual 3-minute periscope check was cut to 80 seconds, Griffiths testified.
At one point, Griffiths told the court, officers on the submarine sent word to Cmdr. Scott D. Waddle of the delays from the long lunch and that Waddle replied, "I have it under control."
But not long after lunch ended, the Greeneville, surfacing at high speed, rammed the Japanese fishing vessel in a collision that claimed nine Japanese lives and that has since put the careers of several Navy officers in jeopardy.
The public probe of what went wrong began this morning inside a small courtroom here, filled with grieving families of the victims and international media.
"While this inquiry cannot change what has happened, a more thorough understanding of what occurred can serve to prevent a reoccurrence," said Vice Adm. John B. Nathman, commander of Naval Air Forces in the Pacific Fleet and the president of the court.
In his account of the submarine's conduct before the collision, Griffiths stopped short of saying that either Waddle or crew members acted improperly. Rather, in hours of deliberate testimony, he drew a portrait of officers in a hurry, working hard to show off the submarine's awesome features to its guests. In fact, Griffiths said, the Greeneville had only set off on its trip that day for the benefit of the civilian guests.
Once at sea, Griffiths said, the civilians crowded in the submarine's control room at times became a physical "obstruction" to officers relaying information to each other in the chain of command.
And shortly after leaving port, Greeneville officers discovered that a screen that displays sonar readings of surface vessels for the commander and the officer of the deck was broken, Griffiths said. The officers decided not to repair it at sea but to wait until the sub was back in port.
Calling the sonar display a "pretty vital piece of gear for ship safety," Griffiths, a former submarine commander, said when a similar device failed on his sub, "I felt somewhat naked. It was a big deal."
The equipment failure took on larger meaning when a Greeneville technician stopped plotting sonar readings on a paper graph for the officers to see because he was distracted by the civilians aboard, he has told the National Transportation Safety Board. He said he had plotted a ship within 2,000 yards but decided he was mistaken after the captain and officer of the deck said they saw no ships on the surface. The technician said he replotted the ship 9,000 yards away.
Griffith's testimony helps to explain what happened on Feb. 9, but the implications for Waddle and the other officers remain unclear. As skipper, Waddle would be solely responsible for his ship, but he was outranked that day by Capt. Robert Brandhuber, who brought the civilians aboard and may be deemed responsible for their actions.
The court of inquiry is the highest administrative hearing a Navy officer can face; it is not a prosecution, but rather a fact-finding proceeding that could be a prelude to a court-martial or criminal charges.
The Navy historically has turned to such proceedings when it has grave concerns about its conduct and wants to ensure public accountability. It staged a similar review of the actions of commanders at this naval base after the surprise Japanese attack on Dec. 7, 1941.
Waddle, 41, the skipper of the Greeneville, arrived here walking arm-in-arm with his wife and said nothing to reporters as he entered the courtroom. He and two subordinate officers have been named as subjects of the inquiry, although the actions of enlisted sailors and Brandhuber may be investigated as well.
The Greeneville was carrying 16 civilian guests on Feb. 9 when it collided with the Ehime Maru, a trawler bearing Japanese vocational high school students on a training voyage. Four of the students, and five members of the ship's crew, were lost at sea. The Coast Guard rescued 26 others.
In addition to examining the actions of the Greeneville's officers and crew, the court of inquiry also may look into the U.S. military's widespread practice of allowing civilians to observe military training exercises. The outcome of the inquiry could affect policies for the Navy's entire submarine fleet.
Two of the civilians were sitting at important control stations when the nuclear-powered submarine executed an "emergency main ballast blow" -- a sudden ascent to the surface. At least one member of the submarine crew told investigators from the NTSB that the civilians were a distraction in the crowded control room.
Those disclosures have stirred outrage across Japan, which put pressure on the Navy to investigate the accident and has called for the United States to raise the Ehime Maru.
Before any witnesses were called today, attorneys for the three officers who have been named in the inquiry seized on a procedure that allowed them to question -- and even to seek to remove -- the three admirals presiding over the inquiry. A Japanese rear admiral, Isamu Ozawa, also is participating in the inquiry as an adviser and non-voting member. He cannot be removed.
During more than an hour of questioning, each of the admirals said that they have hosted civilians on Navy ships and one, Rear Adm. David M. Stone, called the policy now under intensive scrutiny "part of who we are as a Navy."
Rear Adm. Paul F. Sullivan also told lawyers for the parties that ultimate responsibility for the incident could rest on the attack submarine's commander, Waddle. "Certainly the commanding officer's authority is absolute," Sullivan said. "But I have to see what the facts are."
Attorneys for Waddle, Lt. Cmdr. Gerald K. Pfeifer, or deck officer Lt. j.g. Michael J. Coen did not seek to remove any of the admirals from the panel.
Once the inquiry ends, the court will forward its findings to Adm. Thomas B. Fargo, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. He will decide whether a court-martial or other disciplinary action is warranted.
---
Errors by Submarine Crew Led to Sinking, Court Is Told
March 6, 2001
New York Times
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/06/national/06HAWA.html
HONOLULU, March 5 - The naval court of inquiry investigating the collision between the submarine Greeneville and a Japanese fishing trawler opened today with an investigating admiral testifying that the submarine had fallen behind schedule the day of the accident, suggesting its captain and crew may have rushed preparations for a surfacing maneuver just before the collision.
Rear Adm. Charles H. Griffiths Jr., who conducted a preliminary inquiry of the accident, also said that the submarine's sonar room was staffed with one new operator who was not qualified and yet was not consistently supervised during the cruise that day. A petty officer who could have supervised him, the admiral said, had instead been assigned to escort some of the 16 civilian visitors aboard the submarine.
The appearance of Admiral Griffiths, the first witness to testify before the court, provided new details of the Greeneville's actions that day and raised significant new questions about circumstances leading up to the sinking of the Japanese vessel, the Ehime Maru, off the coast here on Feb. 9. Nine of 35 people aboard were lost at sea and are presumed drowned.
Investigators have previously said that presence of civilians had proved a distraction in the control room as the submarine prepared to surface, but the admiral's testimony suggested the civilians affected the Greeneville's operations in significant ways.
The Greeneville's "plan of the day" had called for specific maneuvers to demonstrate the submarine's abilities for the visitors, but fell behind schedule and risked not meeting an appointed time at which harbor masters had been told the submarine would return to Pearl Harbor.
"It turned out she was running about three-quarters of an hour late," Admiral Griffiths, attributing the delay to what he called "valuable time" the Greeneville's captain, Cmdr. Scott D. Waddle, spent with the visitors over lunch.
Admiral Griffiths said the submarine's navigator had warned that the Greeneville had fallen behind schedule after lunch. That left little time for the submarine to complete a maneuver called angles, in which the submarine dips and rises, and the surfacing maneuver that sent it crashing into the Japanese vessel.
"I have it under control," he recalled Commander Waddle saying, witnesses said.
The timing is essential, because investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board have said the Greeneville spent only 90 seconds at periscope depth surveying the surface before surfacing. Submarine experts said that appeared far too brief, especially in swelling seas, and today's testimony suggested the Greeneville might have rushed to return on time.
The testimony came after the lawyer for Commander Waddle opened the court proceedings by challenging the appointment of a Japanese admiral as an advisor to the proceedings. The court's presiding officer, Vice Adm. John B. Nathman, commander of the naval air force in the Pacific, overruled the challenge, but it foreshadowed what was likely to be an aggressive, confrontational defense mounted by the lawyer, Charles W. Gittins.
The Japanese admiral, Rear Adm. Isamu Ozawa, a former submarine commander, was appointed to the court by the commander of the Navy's Pacific fleet, Adm. Thomas B. Fargo, in an effort to assuage the outcry in Japan over the collision.
In the instructions to the court, Admiral Fargo said the appointment of Admiral Ozawa - unlike that of the three American admirals sitting on the court - could not be challenged. That prompted Mr. Gittins to object. Addressing Admiral Ozawa directly, Mr. Gittins emphasized that he had no doubts about the admiral's professionalism but that his role was not clearly specified in naval legal guidelines.
"Our concerns are that members of the court of inquiry are required to take an oath," Mr. Gittins said, making his challenge in the opening minutes of the court. "Admiral Ozawa did not take an oath. Moreover, as a Japanese naval officer, he is not a person who has to take an oath to the Constitution of the United States."
The court convened today inside Pearl Harbor's trial services office under heavy security and the intense glare of an international media corps numbering more than 400 journalists. Guards at the base's main gates conducted extensive checks of identities, causing long traffic backups.
Commander Waddle arrived early this morning accompanied by his wife, Jill. He strode deliberately, dressed in crisp Navy whites, holding his wife's hand and saying nothing. In an article he wrote for Time, however, Commander Waddle said his career was over.
"An accident of this sort, whether or not I am exonerated, will end my career," he wrote. "My last acts as a naval officer will be to ensure there is closure for the families and that the truth is determined."
Inside the courtroom, a small, utilitarian space, the audience was as divided as a wedding. On one side were relatives of the Greeneville's officers, including those of Commander Waddle and two others under investigation: Lt. Cmdr. Gerald K. Pfeifer, the submarine's executive officer, and Lt. Michael J. Coen, the officer of the deck at the time of the accident.
On the other side of the courtroom, were the Japanese, including three government officials and six relatives of those lost at sea, who were flown here at the navy's expense.
The inquiry's panel can recommend whether any disciplinary action is warranted or whether procedures should be changed.
---
Navy investigators examine control room of sub
03/06/2001
USA Today
http://usatoday.com/news/nation/2001-03-06-subinquiry1.htm#more
PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii (AP) - Three admirals toured the USS Greeneville on Tuesday to try to understand the crowding in the control room of the nuclear submarine before it struck and sank a Japanese fishing boat. The tour began the second day of a court of inquiry - the Navy's highest-level administrative investigation - into the Feb. 9 collision. The probe could lead to courts-martial of the Greeneville's top three officers. The Ehime Maru, a high school fisheries training vessel from Uwajima, sank minutes after the Greeneville surfaced underneath it. Nine of 35 people on the ship, including four 17-year-old boys, were lost.
---
Tourists in subs and in space are a good idea
03/06/2001
USA Today
By Alcestis "Cooky" Oberg
http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/2001-03-06-ncguest1.htm
When an American submarine surfaced underneath a Japanese fishing boat, killing nine people, citizens were shocked to hear that "tourists" were at the submarine's controls during vital maneuvers. Although the tourists might have distracted the crew in the confined spaces of the vessel, the true cause of the disaster may wind up being the crew's inattention to basic safety procedures, not anything the tourists did.
Can the same thing happen on the International Space Station Alpha when space tourist/millionaire Dennis Tito flies there April 30 aboard a Russian rocket - a seat bought and paid for out of his personal bank account? U.S. and Russian space officials are haggling over those questions now; their discussions last week failed to set any ground rules for Tito's flight.
American and European critics of Tito's flight berate the Russian sale of space-tourist seats as an irresponsible misuse of the taxpayer-funded space station and a denigration of its true purpose, which is science. Many NASA officials argue that it's "dangerous" to fly non-astronauts and "unfair" to astronauts who have trained many years for their place in space. The Russians - who have a decades-long tradition of flying dozens of foreign visitors to their space stations - argue that the seat is theirs to sell. Besides, commercialization of space and flying citizens to the New Frontier have been long-term goals of the space program for nearly four decades.
And the Russians are right. The U.S. critics' arguments especially ring hollow since these same NASA officials criticizing Tito's flight today enthusiastically OK'd the shuttle flights of several dubious VIPs in recent years - non-scientific, taxpayer-funded junkets by three members of Congress, a Russian bureaucrat who couldn't speak English proficiently and a Ukrainian flag-waver. Furthermore, most of these U.S.-sponsored VIPs had far less expertise, less aerospace education and less-intensive spaceflight training than Tito. One member of Congress, then-senator Jake Garn, was so disabled by motion sickness, the crew had to babysit him through almost the entire flight.
To their credit, the Russians have a great first tourist on their hands. Tito is a highly educated American aerospace engineer who worked for NASA's own Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the 1960s. He calculated, plotted and laid out complicated trajectories to Mars and Venus - that is, he drew the roads NASA's Mariner probes followed through the trackless void of outer space. A tourist-induced disaster is highly unlikely in Tito's case. Even better, if commercialization and popularization of space are goals of the space program, there's hardly a better poster boy for it than Tito - a self-made millionaire and highly respected investor who always dreamed of traveling over orbital pathways - and earned his own money to get there. Think of what Tito's enormous, divergent background in both space and investment can bring to the stale NASA space culture. And how unfair can it be to American astronauts to share quarters with a man who dreamed such dreams and realized them - who got beyond the governmental roadblocks and pioneered his own trajectory into space through good old-fashioned hard work?
Future space tourists may not be as wonderfully qualified as Tito. But the space culture is impossibly stagnant right now, made too homogenized by decades of flying hundreds of government-employed astronauts and government-funded scientists. Indeed, there's an almost xenophobic attitude among NASA astronauts toward flying anyone different, by education or background. It's true they've dedicated many years of training to fly in space. But so have Russian cosmonauts, and they've learned that flying outsiders is no big deal. With the right mental and physical-health criteria required and with enough hands-on training accomplished, there really is no additional danger.
In fact, it would be useful for the Russians to teach all of the international partners the best health protocols to require, the optimal level of training for non-astronauts.
Perhaps, it would also be wise to candidly identify any lingering potential dangers aboard the station: what delicate equipment might be inadvertently damaged, what activities might need to be forbidden during delicate scientific experiments, what emergency procedures must be learned. Certainly, the partners should draw up an agreement that no tourists or VIPs will ever perform vital and dangerous functions such as firing rockets or flying the spacecraft. The fact that tourists were sitting at the controls of the submarine during dynamic maneuvers for a "thrill" was the most shocking revelation to come out of the recent submarine disaster and should be a cautionary tale for the space station.
On the plus side, the space partners could draw up a list of tasks future tourists might be willing and able to do, if trained: cooking, photo documenting, serving as medical-test subjects - an extra set of hands during busy times. When I was a journalist-in-space semifinalist, I offered to deal with the fundamentals of all human existence: to cook all of the meals and to clean the toilet every day. In fact, when NASA canceled the citizen-in-space program, I was disappointed, knowing there was probably a Nobel Prize in physics waiting for anyone who could create a chocolate éclair from scratch in weightlessness or who could maintain a clean and sparkling zero-gravity toilet.
I don't know whether Tito will make an éclair or clean the toilet during his journey. But he's bringing himself, with a head full of business and investment knowledge most astronauts and NASA officials haven't a clue about. Space culture could be greatly enhanced right now by an infusion of new ways of thinking from investors, industrialists, filmmakers, authors and just plain folks.
The danger to the space station is not posed by the presence of tourists, if common-sense protocols are followed and mandated training is provided. The danger comes when common sense is overridden and safety procedures are ignored by the commanders, the crew or the managers of the program.
In this respect, the recent submarine disaster might be similar to the Challenger disaster 15 years ago: "a flawed decision-making process" of the people responsible for safety of the vessels may be at the heart of both disasters, not the unwitting passengers who just did as they were told.
Alcestis "Cooky" Oberg is a freelance science and technology writer living in Houston. She is also a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.
---
Military Joy Rides:
Image at a Price
March 6, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/06/opinion/L06SUB.html
To the Editor:
Re "Sub's Only Mission on Day of Incident Was Civilian Tour" (front page, March 4):
At a time when military commanders complain that they lack the money to train troops properly for combat and peacekeeping operations, we learn that the Navy and other services regularly divert valuable resources and sacrifice training time for public relations purposes.
It is important for the public to understand the rigors of military life and the capabilities of our expensive weaponry, but military commanders may be unnecessarily sacrificing safety and efficiency in order to promote the military's image.
If we learn one lesson from the sinking of the Japanese trawler Ehime Maru by the submarine Greeneville, let it be that we should end the practice of using submarines, ships, planes and tanks to provide joy rides to wealthy and influential "distinguished visitors."
DAN FAHEY Medford, Mass., March 4, 2001
---
Lunch delayed submarine's schedule
March 6, 2001
Washington Times
ASSOCIATED PRESS
By Pauline Arrillaga
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-200136232742.htm
HONOLULU - A long lunch for a U.S. submarine's guests forced a nearly 45-minute delay in the emergency-surfacing maneuver that led to a fatal collision with a Japanese fishing boat, an admiral testified yesterday.
Rear Adm. Charles Griffiths, who led the Navy's investigation into the accident, was the first to testify at a court of inquiry into the collision that left nine Japanese boys and men missing.
The USS Greeneville, a nuclear attack submarine, was demonstrating an emergency-surfacing drill for 16 civilians when it knifed through the hull of the Ehime Maru Feb. 9. The boat, carrying 35 persons, was on an expedition to teach high school students from Uwajima, Japan, how to fish. Four teens, two teachers and three crewmen never were found.
The drill had been planned for 1 p.m., but it was pushed back until 1:43 p.m. because lunch dragged on, Adm. Griffiths said. The crew had to feed guests in two shifts because the mess hall was so small.
He was asked whether the delay was causing concerns.
"I don't know if I would say concerned," he said. "A professional reminder was provided by the navigator to the executive officer to the commanding officer that the ship was behind schedule."
Adm. Griffiths said that Cmdr. Scott Waddle, who was chatting with his guests in the mess hall, responded to the notice by saying: "I have it under control."
Adm. Griffiths said Cmdr. Waddle emphasized spending quality time with his guests during the lunch break.
"He took his time . . . so that ran over," he said.
Later, with the ship falling behind schedule, Cmdr. Waddle ordered his crew to go to periscope depth in five minutes, despite procedures that required at least 10 minutes to check for surface vessels, Adm. Griffiths said.
"He wanted to get to periscope depth in a hurry," the admiral said. "I can surmise it was because they were late from their previous schedule."
Then, Cmdr. Waddle and his officer of the deck performed an 80-second periscope search that was too brief, Adm. Griffiths said. Generally, a thorough periscope search takes about three minutes.
"That ship should have been seen given enough time by the periscope operator," Adm. Griffiths said. "The ship went deep too quickly."
Adm. Griffiths also said that a sonar officer who was supposed to be monitoring a trainee in the sonar room spent much of his time dealing with guests instead.
That meant that in the sonar room, there was one qualified sonar officer, one supervisor and the trainee. The sonar room monitors surface vessels.
Adm. Griffiths said under Navy requirements, a second qualified sonar officer should have been with the trainee at all times.
"His assigned duties officially were to be a tour guide for the guests," Adm. Griffiths said. "Somebody qualified should have consistently been overseeing that operator."
A panel of three other Navy admirals will recommend whether any disciplinary action is warranted against the Greeneville's top officers, Cmdr. Waddle, Lt. Cmdr. Gerald Pfeifer, the executive officer, and Lt. j.g. Michael Coen, the officer of the deck.
Cmdr. Waddle, Cmdr. Pfeifer and Lt. Coen could face anything from a reprimand to court-martial. Adm. Thomas Fargo, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, will review the court's recommendations and take final action. The court also could suggest changes to Navy policies.
The opening session of the inquiry was dominated by procedural matters, with families of some of the victims sitting in the front row.
"I'd like to know everything, especially what was going on inside the submarine, in chronological order," said Ryosuke Terata, the father of a missing teen-ager.
Cmdr. Waddle, walking hand-in-hand with his wife, declined to comment when he arrived for the hearing. In a brief e-mail exchange with USA Today, Cmdr. Waddle asked people to "please pray for those lost at sea." He added, "Pray for me."
"My career is terminated - an accident of this sort, whether or not I am exonerated, will end my career," Cmdr. Waddle wrote for the March 12 issue of Time.
[At the start of the hearing, Cmdr. Waddle's attorney, Charles Gittins, objected to the presence of Adm. Isamu Ozawa of Japan as a nonvoting member of the court. He said U.S. Navy rules don't seem to allow this, Reuters reported.]
The main issues before the court are whether the crew gave the officers enough information to let them detect the Ehime Maru, whether the civilians inhibited the crew from doing its job and why Cmdr. Waddle and Lt. Coen did not see the fishing vessel when they looked through the periscope.
-------- britain
Watchdog confirms pylon cancer link
Tuesday, 6 March, 2001,
BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/health/newsid_1204000/1204923.stm
Parents have demanded restrictions on pylons
The UK Government's radiation watchdog has admitted there is a "weak association" between electromagnetic fields and increased risk of childhood leukaemia. The National Radiological Protection Board's investigation has reviewed all the evidence about health.
This includes a study of 3,000 children in the US, Europe and New Zealand, published late last year, which suggested that pylons could double the risk of childhood leukaemia.
The NRPB's study, chaired by respected scientist Sir Richard Doll, has concluded that the increased danger is slight as the ordinary risk is only one in 20,000 children.
Although the evidence is weak, the watchdog calls for further detailed research to explain "anomalous" studies.
'Weak' evidence
Sir Walter Bodmer, NRPB chairman, told the BBC: "The evidence doesn't only relate to power lines, it's down to the effects of electrical power aound the house.
"The evidence is weak, but it's the responsibility of a body like ours to state the scientific case as it is, and leave policymaking to government."
More than 23,000 homes in the UK are situated near power lines and it has previously been suggested by campaigners that the electromagnetic fields surrounding the cables can trigger leukaemia.
Janette Smith, from north Yorkshire, said that three members of her family had contracted cancer since they moved to a house close to power lines.
She said: "We are relieved to hear the report, because many people have disputed the fact that it could be the pylons.
"If it has caused cancer in children, there is a possibility that it will cause cancer in adults."
'Buffer zone'
Opponents are calling for a mandatory 50-metre (160-ft) "buffer zone" each side of the lines. In the US, legislation prevents new homes being built near power lines.
But some campaigners claim that "hissing" cables can extend the risk several hundred metres from power lines.
Research by Professor Denis Henshaw and Dr Peter Fews, at the University of Bristol, suggests power lines produce electrically charged particles called "corona ions".
According to their controversial theory, these attach themselves to airborne pollutants such as exhaust fumes, giving them an electrical charge and making them more likely to be deposited in the lungs when inhaled.
Some UK parents have engaged lawyers over the issue but studies have mainly been inconclusive.
A study by Bristol University scientists in 1999 identified a "causal" link between pylons and leukaemia. But a number of other studies, including one involving Canadian children, have failed to prove a link.
In a statement, the Electricity Association said: "The considerable body of evidence that has been accumulated over the last two decades clearly suggests that magnetic fields do not cause cancer or any other disease.
"If it is indeed the guidance of the NRPB that this is no longer the case, we would like the Board to clarify what needs to be done as an industry."
-------
British Energy plans nuclear power plants
UK: March 6, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10001&newsDate=6-Mar-2001
LONDON - Nuclear power generator British Energy is drawing up plans to build a chain of nuclear power plants to replace its seven advanced gas-cooled reactors, the Sunday Telegraph newspaper reported.
The first of the gas-cooled installations is due to be shut down by around 2014.
The newspaper said that the company believed rising prices for natural gas and concerns over long-term supplies from the North Sea made atomic energy more attractive.
A spokesman for British Energy said it was keen to keep its 25 percent share of the country's generating market.
Any expansion of nuclear power in Britain will spark anger from environmental groups who have opposed it as a source of energy, especially since Ukraine's 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
But the Sunday Telegraph said that permission to build the planned reactors should be granted.
"Today's nuclear power stations are both extremely safe and, increasingly, economically viable, as gas prices follow oil upwards," it said in an editorial.
-------- depleted uranium
Commission receives scientific experts' opinion
Tue, 06 Mar 2001
uranium@t-online.de
Brussels, The European Commission today received the opinion of the group of independent scientific experts, established according to Article 31 of the Euratom Treaty, on the possible radiological health effects of depleted uranium. On the basis of the information available to date, the experts have concluded that radiological exposure to depleted uranium could not result in a detectable effect on human health. Although the possibility of a combined effect of exposure to toxic and carcinogenic chemicals and to radiation could not be excluded the experts concluded that there was no evidence to support this hypothesis. Receiving the opinion, Environment Commissioner Margot Wallström said: "I am grateful for the speedy work of the experts in producing this opinion. My Commission colleagues and I will take it into account when discussing the need for further action with regard to the health and environmental situation in the Balkans. I also look forward to seeing the results of work carried out by other bodies competent in this field, such as the United Nations Environment Programme whose report will soon be issued."
The group of scientific experts has considered available information on depleted uranium (DU). It has studied the characteristics, properties and uses of uranium and DU, direct pathways of exposure to man as well as exposure due to contamination of the environment, the behaviour of uranium in the body and scientifically agreed predicted health effects per unit of exposure. The experts were asked to take note of the chemical toxicity of uranium, but the opinion relates only to the radiological health consequences.
Opinion of the experts
Having assessed possible exposure to DU, taking into account potential pathways and realistic scenarios(1) of exposure to man, the experts concluded that radiological exposure to depleted uranium could not result in a detectable effect on human health (e.g. cancer).
As regards leukaemia, the latency period is shorter than for solid cancers, but uranium accumulates very little in blood forming organs such as bone marrow. Therefore, the experts concluded that the calculated risk of leukaemia is far below the risk of solid cancers.
Exposure to depleted uranium through contamination of the environment or the food chain has also been considered. Scenarios included deposition of depleted uranium on vegetation, ingestion of contaminated water or soil or consumption of contaminated foodstuffs. The experts concluded that resulting doses through such means would be extremely low.
On the basis of the available knowledge about chemical toxicity, one would expect to observe uranium renal toxicity before any other damage (including cancer). The possibility of a combined effect of exposure to toxic or carcinogenic chemicals and to radiation can not be excluded but there is no evidence to support this hypothesis. Under the scenarios the experts looked at, exposures to DU give low doses, comparable to natural background levels. Therefore there is no reason to believe that chemicals may change the magnitude of the potential radiation effects.
The experts feel that they could not provide guidance with regard to the need for monitoring individuals that have been in contact with DU without knowing the specific exposure situation. The conclusion is that in general it would be more appropriate to monitor the environment (e.g. drinking water supplies) rather than individuals.
The experts also felt that they were not in a position to provide guidance on the need for clean-up measures. Any intervention should take into account the specific situation in question. General protective measures should be considered on the basis of a common-sense approach to prevent easily avoidable exposures. Where appropriate, specific protection against exposure to depleted uranium should be proposed (e.g. warning signs to prevent the public from picking up DU metal pieces).
The experts see no need to derogate DU from any provision of the Basic safety standards (BSS) for the protection of workers and the public from the dangers of ionising radiation: neither do they see a need to introduce stricter requirements in the BSS for specific uses of DU. Background: Involvement of the European Commission in the DU issue.
The European Commission is fully conscious of the concerns which have been expressed relating to the health effects of exposure to depleted uranium. This followed reports of cases of cancer in soldiers who had served in the Kosovo region. A link with DU, which has been used in ammunition to improve its armour penetrating capacity, has been claimed. The use of DU in the Balkans has been confirmed by NATO.
It is against this background, and the fact that EU civilians have worked and visited the region for prolonged periods, that the Commission felt it would be helpful to obtain a scientific opinion on the potential radiological health effects of DU.
The Community has certain responsibilities under the Euratom Treaty in relation to dangers arising from ionising radiation. For this purpose the Commission relies on independent scientific opinions. The experts who provide these opinions are also well placed to advise on the possible health effects of DU on humans as well as effects on the environment.
The Commission therefore convened a working party of the group of independent scientific experts established according to Article 31 of the Euratom Treaty with a view to providing such an opinion. The group met on 30 to 31 of January and on 19 February. The group's competence, according to the Treaty, is to advise on the protection of the health of workers and the general public against the dangers arising from ionising radiation. The opinion is of general application both for civil and military applications of DU. Nevertheless, it is important to acknowledge that the advice was sought in the context of the discussions on the Balkans.
As well as requesting the Article 31 experts to study the available information and to produce this opinion, the Commission has exchanged information and collaborated with other international organisations which are also working in this area, namely the IAEA, UNEP, WHO and NATO.
More information is being collected and analysed by the responsible authorities on location of deployment of personnel, proximity of the local population to attacks involving DU, and precise composition of the DU.
In addition, more information is expected relating to the incidence of diseases in different categories of affected populations. It is noted that UNEP will report in March on the results of samples taken in Kosovo. Member Nations of NATO, including Member States of the EU, are also conducting monitoring campaigns on the environment and on personnel sent to the region.
(1) Realistic scenario of exposure means set assumptions based on real behaviour of man (e.g. breathing and drinking patterns).
---
EU Panel Clears NATO Uranium Risk
March 6, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-EU-Depleted-Uranium.html?searchpv=aponline
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- Depleted uranium used by NATO in armor-piercing weapons in Kosovo had no detectable effect on health, a European Union panel of experts concluded Tuesday.
The findings concurred with NATO's own studies saying there was no link between depleted uranium, a substance used in anti-armor munitions because of its penetrating power, and cancer among peacekeeping troops.
``I don't think there is any reason to be afraid,'' said Prof. Ian McAulay of Trinity University in Dublin, who headed the panel.
U.S. aircraft used munitions containing depleted uranium, a slightly radioactive heavy metal, during the 78-day air campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999, as well as in Bosnia in 1994 and 1995.
A number of European nations also use munitions containing depleted uranium, which has about 40 percent less radiation that natural uranium, which itself is not considered a health hazard.
Concerns arose in several European countries earlier this year when Italy started studying the illnesses of 30 veterans of Balkans peacekeeping missions. Seven of the veterans died of cancer, including five from leukemia.
The European Union sought its own scientific opinion since EU civilian employees have worked and visited Kosovo for prolonged period. Its experts concluded that ``radiological exposure to depleted uranium could not result in detectable effect on human health,'' McAulay said.
With specific regard to leukemia, uranium accumulates very little in blood-forming organs such as bone marrow, making the risk of leukemia is far below that of other cancers, he said.
Depleted uranium also contains a chemical toxicity, and ``the possibility of a combined effect of exposure to toxic or carcinogenic chemicals and to radiation cannot be excluded but there is no evidence to support this hypothesis,'' the panel said.
Margot Wallstroem, the EU's environment commissioner, said the European Union's executive body would consider the study when discussing the need for further action on the health and environmental situation in the Balkans.
-------- iraq
Iraq inspections are still priority
March 6, 2001
Washington Times
By Ben Barber
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-200136221525.htm
The State Department yesterday insisted there had been no change of policy regarding U.N. arms inspectors in Iraq, despite Vice President Richard B. Cheney's comments that the issue was not critical to containing Saddam Hussein.
The return of weapons inspectors evicted from Iraq after U.S. bombings in 1998 remains a central goal of the United States and the sanctions regime, said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.
"If Iraq wants to get out of the box, they're going to have to invite the inspectors in and comply with the U.N. resolutions," he told reporters at a State Department briefing yesterday.
Mr. Cheney said in an interview with The Washington Times published yesterday that the return of the inspectors was not the main focus of current U.S. pressure on Iraq.
"I don't think we want to hinge our policy just to the question of whether or not the inspectors go back in there," Mr. Cheney said in the interview. "It may not be as crucial if you've got other measures in place and you've got a [sanctions] regime that people are willing to support."
Secretary of State Colin Powell announced last week during his visit to five Arab allies - all members of the 1991 coalition that drove Iraq out of Kuwait - that he would recommend changes in the crumbling 10-year-old sanctions program that the United Nations imposed on Iraq.
He proposed allowing Iraq to import more consumer goods - even some with possible weapons applications - while tightening restraints on oil smuggling, which allows Iraq cash to buy weapons.
But at his Jan. 17 confirmation hearing, Mr. Powell had pledged to "re-energize the sanctions regime." Just before his Middle East trip, he said the sanctions could not be eased until inspectors returned to Iraq.
"Let the inspectors in, and we can get beyond this," he said at the time. "Until [Saddam] does that, I think we have to be firm. We have to be vigilant, and I will be carrying this message to my friends in the region."
State Department officials yesterday rejected any idea that easing the sanctions was a sign of weakness or that Mr. Powell's proposals were offered without approval of the Bush administration's more hawkish defense officials.
They said it remained the final objective of U.S. sanctions policies to get inspectors back into Iraq to verify that it has not built nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.
The sanctions on sales of oil and imports of weapons materials will remain in place "until they can demonstrate to the rest of us that they've stopped pursuing these programs," Mr. Boucher said.
"Obviously, the only way they could demonstrate that would be to have inspectors come back in and prove it."
Senior Iraqi officials told U.N. representatives in New York last week that Iraq would never allow inspectors back into the country.
Mr. Powell faces questioning tomorrow at the House International Relations Committee over the decision to bow to regional Arab anger and allow Iraq to import more consumer goods.
The secretary announced the policy following meetings last week with the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Syria.
All of those leaders face intense grass-roots pressure over reports that hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children have died of malnutrition or lack of medicine as a result of the U.N. sanctions.
A senior State Department official said President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld approved the decision to ease the sanctions on consumer goods before Mr. Powell's trip.
"Rumsfeld, [National Security Adviser Condoleezza] Rice and Powell had a series of meetings, including Wednesday lunches," to decide on Iraq policy, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity yesterday.
"Cheney at times attended, and they met with the president, too, in advance of the trip. Rumsfeld was on board that they needed to fix the sanctions. The details remain to be settled." Asked whether the administration was split between hawks and doves, the senior department official said, "No, it is not true. They are big boys, and they know how to work things out."
Mr. Boucher said the Bush administration is carrying out a review of the Iraq policy and will decide how to tighten the noose on:
• Efforts by Saddam to smuggle oil out of Iraq, evading the U.N. oil-for-food program.
• Iraq's attempts to use cash from smuggled oil to purchase weapons and weapons technology.
The administration is seeking to set up customs and money controls based in front-line states such as Turkey, Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, "independent of what Iraq decides to do," Mr. Boucher said.
While administration officials profess agreement on the sanctions policy, they appear to differ on how aggressively to work for Saddam's overthrow.
Former Reagan officials Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz have called for increased U.S. backing for the anti-Saddam exile group, Iraqi National Congress (INC).
Mr. Wolfowitz has been nominated to be deputy defense secretary in the new administration and will not comment. Mr. Perle said last week it was time to give the INC backing to seize power in Iraq.
He told the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on the Middle East on Thursday that the Bush administration should help the opposition set up a political presence in southern or northern portions of Iraq under cover of the no-fly zones patrolled by U.S. and British jets.
State Department officials and analysts are less optimistic about the chances of the INC defeating Saddam, even with the $95 million in aid voted by Congress.
Mr. Boucher said the State Department had cooperated with the INC on such things as "information activities, public activities, collecting information, disseminating information."
"As far as [military] activities," he said, "I guess the only thing I can say at this point is . . . that is being looked at."
-------- korea
A Road Through Seoul
Tuesday, March 6, 2001
Washington Post
By Henry Kissinger
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27452-2001Mar5.html
The visit of South Korea's President Kim Dae Jung to Washington this week occurs at an opportune moment. For his country, the focal point of Asian crises for a century, may now prove pivotal in the emergence of a new and more stable Asian order.
Korea's history has been violent. In 1904-5, the Russo-Japanese War was fought over its future. Occupied by Japan in 1908, liberated in 1945, partitioned in the same year along the 38th parallel, invaded by North Korea in 1950 and by Chinese armies in 1951, saved by its own exertions and American forces, South Korea has faced since then what is arguably the most repressive Communist regime anywhere across one of the most absolute dividing lines in the world.
In the last months of the Clinton presidency, a sudden thaw occurred. South Korea's president was invited to visit the capital of North Korea. The second-highest-ranking military officer of North Korea, Vice Marshal Jo Myong Rok, was received in Washington by President Clinton and hosted at an official dinner by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who followed up with a return visit to Pyongyang. And in his last weeks in office, Bill Clinton was eagerly trying to arrange a presidential trip to Pyongyang, thwarted only because North Korea would not accept his condition to stop the export of missiles.
Did all this herald a fundamental change, or was it primarily a new set of tactics to achieve familiar goals, which include undermining the case for a U.S. missile defense? It is important that we get the answer straight, for on it may depend the future not only of South Korea but of our entire position in the western Pacific.
Over 50 years, North Korea has turned into a caricature of Stalinist tyranny, while South Korea has evolved into a genuine democracy and has reached the threshold of being an advanced industrial country. Even in the age of the Internet, the North has sealed off its population from the rest of the world. Its economy is a shambles. Agriculture has collapsed to the point of producing widespread starvation and malnutrition.
Nevertheless, by devoting an unprecedented proportion of its gross national product to military purposes, North Korea has created large forces of tanks and artillery, many of them deployed within range of South Korea's capital of Seoul. North Korea obtains foreign exchange through the sale of missiles to countries hostile to the United States and by blackmailing the United States, Japan and South Korea into giving it modern technology by threatening to build nuclear weapons.
The long-term objective has not been war, which North Korea could not sustain, but to demoralize South Korea and undermine its relations with the United States by discussing the future of the Korean peninsula directly with the United States. If North Korea succeeds in establishing itself as the legitimate representative of the Korean national interest, Seoul will be marginalized as an American auxiliary. For a while, this policy was not without success. In 1994 the United States conducted separate negotiations with North Korea on the basis of which Japan and South Korea agreed to build two heavy-water reactors for North Korea and the United States agreed to supply heavy oil for North Korea's power plants in return for a suspension (but not abandonment) of its nuclear program. Though the deal was put forward as a contribution to nonproliferation, it probably had the opposite effect. For it may have encouraged other rogue states to initiate nuclear weapons programs to generate a comparable buyout.
It may also have accelerated other aspects of the North Korean proliferation problem. For shortly afterward, North Korea tested a long-range missile that flew over Japan under the pretext of space exploration. This set off another negotiation that brought Albright to Pyongyang to explore the price of stopping that program. The aborted visit of President Clinton in his last month in office would have been part of that political price.
Negotiations with North Korea did achieve a suspension of North Korean plutonium production, but at the price of implying that the future of Korea might be settled directly between Washington and Pyongyang, excluding Seoul. Two events arrested the trend. The first was the death in 1994 of North Korea's dictator, Kim Il Sung, which limited Pyongyang's maneuvering room. The second was the election of Kim Dae Jung to the South Korean presidency, which increased Seoul's diplomatic scope. Kim Dae Jung's so-called "sunshine policy" of encouraging economic cooperation, family reunification and other exchanges reestablished the balance with the United States in contacts with the North.
The key issue, however, is the content of that diplomacy. If it is confined to a changed tone and economic support for the North Korean economy, it will perpetuate the very regime whose threat has been one of the justifications for the U.S. national missile defense program. In fact, the various reciprocal visits seemed to open the floodgates for a policy of reciprocal psychological gestures more than specific agreements. Though Kim Dae Jung received little more than promises of a return visit by North Korean leader Kim Jong Il to Seoul and a very limited opportunity for family reunification, the outside world reacted euphorically. Exchanges of visits culminated in the attendance of Albright at a mass rally celebrating the 55th anniversary of the North Korean Communist Party. Other nations eager not to be left behind were straining to beat a path to Pyongyang.
The collective rush to Pyongyang may have the ironic consequence of tempting Kim Jong Il to return to the previous policy of isolating Seoul, because he could draw the conclusion that he no longer needs direct talks with South Korea to solve his internal problems.
Kim Dae Jung's visit to Washington provides the opportunity to coordinate American and South Korean strategies. Neither America nor South Korea can want to preserve Pyongyang's control system or to perpetuate its military capacities simply on the basis of a gentler tone. Progress in relations with Pyongyang must be based on clear standards by which progress can be measured. At the same time, Seoul and Washington must be receptive if North Korea's actions provide evidence that it is seeking to graduate from the status of a rogue state.
Two principles should govern any common strategy: that the American alliance with South Korea and not the rapprochement with North Korea is the key to stability on the peninsula; and that South Korea should play the leading role in inter-Korean negotiations. Pyongyang must be convinced that the road to Washington leads through Seoul and not the other way around. If these priorities are reversed -- if America upstages Seoul with dramatic gestures -- North Korea may restore at least some of its economy, not from or via South Korea but through outside countries jockeying for a preferred position in Pyongyang.
But Korea is also where the interests of several major powers intersect. Neither China nor Japan is eager for a rapid, if any, unification of Korea. Both consider a unified Korea a potential danger to their security -- especially were it to inherit North Korea's nuclear and missile technology.
China entered the Korean War to prevent unification, and Japan has permitted American bases on its soil in large part to defend the status quo in Korea. China is concerned about the impact of a united Korea on the Korean minorities in Manchuria, while Japan fears that the foreign policy of a unified Korea will rally its public by appealing to long-standing Korean antipathies.
For all these reasons, the evolution of the Korean peninsula must be thoroughly discussed with Kim Dae Jung, and it must provide as well for consultation with all the interested parties, especially Japan, but also with China and Russia. They are aware of the volatility and recklessness of Pyongyang's rulers and of their possession of nuclear weapons. No neighbor of Korea can benefit from military turmoil on the peninsula, even if there are differences about the nature and pace of a desirable evolution.
An important beginning would be coordination to end Pyongyang's blackmailing tactics with respect to weapons of mass destruction. For, whatever their differences, none of the interested powers can wish to be drawn into a conflict by proliferation measures that could have been avoided by joint action.
Consultation is necessary also because other outcomes are possible than the continuation of the repressive Pyongyang regime or its collapse. Countries uneasy about Korean unification may well be prepared to encourage a more benign government in Pyongyang while favoring its remaining separate from Seoul. But in the real world, such options are limited. Any democratic government in North Korea will seek unification. Any authoritarian government will repeat the existing dilemmas. In the end, it will be no more possible to keep Korea divided by the actions of outside powers than proved to be the case in Germany.
Of course, the North Korean regime may collapse, as East Germany did, because Kim Jong Il loses control over events. In many respects, this is probably Seoul's nightmare. A rapid unification process for Korea would dwarf the monumental problems Germany faced for a decade. The ratio of the populations of West to East Germany was about three to one; in Korea it is closer to two to one. The ratio of the per capita GDP in Germany was approximately two to one; the ratio in Korea is closer to 10 to one -- meaning that the economic challenge of unifying Korea is even more daunting than in Germany.
At that point, the four outside powers -- the United States, Russia, Japan and China -- would have to discuss the international status of Korea, while the two Koreas settle the internal arrangements, a procedure similar to the one preceding German unification.
As for the United States, it has no reason to oppose Korean unification and every motive to support it. But far more is at stake for America than the future of Korea, for the future of Asia will importantly depend on what happens to American forces now stationed along the 38th parallel.
While Kim Jong Il has been quoted by Kim Dae Jung as favoring the continued presence of American troops, regardless of what happens in the intra-Korean talks, this is not an assurance on which long-range policy can be built. Nor will the future of American troops in Korea depend entirely on the leaders of the two Koreas. Were tensions to ease dramatically, the presence of American troops could become highly controversial within South Korea. In turn, if these forces were removed, the future of American bases in Japan would become problematic. And if American troops left the rim of Asia, an entirely new security and, above all, political situation would arise all over the continent. Were this to happen, even a positive evolution on the Korean peninsula could lead to a quest for autonomous defense policies in Seoul and Tokyo and to a growth of nationalism in Japan, China and Korea.
The United States may not be able to arrest such trends, but it should not slide into them through preoccupation with the tactics and headlines of the moment.
The writer, a former secretary of state, is president of Kissinger Associates, an international consulting firm that has clients with business interests in many countries abroad.
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How Politics Sank Accord on Missiles With North Korea
March 6, 2001
New York Times
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/06/world/06MISS.html
WASHINGTON, March 5 - Wendy R. Sherman brought along an extra suitcase of cold-weather gear even when she joined Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright for a December trip through Africa.
As the Clinton administration's senior policy coordinator on North Korea, Ms. Sherman was prepared to fly to Pyongyang on a moment's notice. Her task there would be to clear away the final barriers to an accord that would neutralize the North Korean missile threat, which has been a central justification for the hotly debated American national missile defense project. Had she succeeded, the framework of an agreement would have been signed by President Clinton and Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader, in Pyongyang, the North's capital.
But Ms. Sherman never made the trip.
In a decision that is still hotly debated by national security experts, the Clinton administration put North Korea diplomacy aside while the Republican and Democratic presidential contenders wrestled over the vote count in Florida, a decision that Clinton aides have sought to justify on the premise that the president could not travel abroad during a potential constitutional crisis.
By the time the dust settled in Florida, and confronting a lukewarm response from the victorious Republicans, Mr. Clinton's team reluctantly decided that it had run out of time.
"Although there were still critical details to be worked out, it appeared that an agreement was within reach," Ms. Sherman said in an interview this week, reflecting the dominant view in the Clinton team.
The episode remains vitally relevant because the North Korean missile threat has been the driving force behind the debate in Washington over missile defenses, and because President Bush has yet to declare whether he plans to carry through or modify the Clinton strategy.
The Bush team has been generally skeptical about North Korea, and it is not clear how much they will use diplomacy to try to head off missile threats, instead of relying primarily on their plans for missile defense.
The South Korean president, Kim Dae Jung, who will meet with Mr. Bush on Wednesday, is expected to press the new administration to engage with Pyongyang. And while the negotiations are still shrouded in secrecy, they apparently made more progress than generally thought.
According to current and former government experts, Kim Jong Il promised in confidential talks not to produce, test or deploy missiles with a range of more than 300 miles. That offer would prevent North Korea from fielding missiles that could strike the United States.
North Korea, the experts said, also offered to halt the sale of missiles, missile components, technology and training. The pledge would ban systems that North Korea had already contracted to provide to aspiring third world powers.
And North Korea dropped its demand that it be paid cash for giving up its long-range missile programs.
Several important issues remained unresolved, including how to verify the agreements; whether North Korea was willing to destroy missiles it had already produced, and the value of the nonmonetary aid North Korea should receive in lieu of cash.
"We got further than we thought was possible on the missile issue," one government specialist said. "But there is still more work to do on the details before we know if we will have something substantial."
When it comes to ballistic missiles, North Korea has been a major source of concern for Washington. North Korea shocked American defense experts when it tried to put a satellite into orbit in August 1998 on a Taepo Dong-1 missile.
The attempt failed when the solid- fuel third stage exploded. And the Taepo Dong-1 lacked the ability to reach American territory with a nuclear payload.
But experts were worried that with time, North Korea would field a more capable successor, the Taepo Dong-2, which could threaten the United States. North Korea is also one of the major sellers of missile technology around the world. The Iranian and Pakistani missile programs, for instance, are heavily dependent on North Korean technology.
The Taepo Dong test and a general deterioration in relations between Pyongyang and Washington prompted the Clinton administration to ask former Defense Secretary William J. Perry to conduct a policy review.
Traveling to Pyongyang in May 1999, Mr. Perry told the North Koreans that there were two paths they could follow: cooperation, or a collision course with the United States and its Asian allies.
If North Korea chose cooperation, Mr. Perry advised, it needed to give up its missile program. Specifically, the North Koreans should agree not to sell or deploy missiles that exceeded the guidelines of the Missile Technology Control Regime - that is, missiles that can carry an 1,100- pound payload more than 180 miles.
Mr. Perry recalled in an interview that he was initially discouraged by what he heard in Pyongyang.
But the Korea experts on Mr. Perry's team detected a shift in the North Korean stance, and over the next 18 months, developments appeared to prove them right.
North Korea declared a moratorium on its long-range missile tests, and in June, Kim Jong Il and Kim Dae Jung met. And as the clock wound down on the Clinton administration in September, it was asked to receive a high-level Korean envoy.
The envoy was Vice Marshal Cho Myong Rok, the head of the North Korean military, and his visit was taken by most Clinton aides as an indication that Mr. Kim was trying to bring his skeptical generals around.
"I think Kim poked his head out of the groundhog hole, looked around and decided that his regime is not sustainable unless it is somehow connected with the rest of the world," Samuel R. Berger, Mr. Clinton's national security adviser, said today.
Marshal Cho also brought an invitation for Mr. Clinton to visit Pyonyang - and thus underscored a fundamentally different approach to diplomacy. While media-conscious American administrations prefer to carry out painstaking negotiations in advance for a carefully scripted summit meeting, the authoritarian Kim Jong Il believed that agreements should first be resolved at the highest level, leaving details to be worked out later by subordinates.
The invitation also underscored the enormous political value the North Korean government attached to a visit by the American president, seeing a Clinton visit would signify an end to enmity and acceptance by the international community.
Marshal Cho offered the Americans something they wanted as well. He reaffirmed an earlier proposal that Mr. Kim had raised with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia: that North Korea was willing to forgo its long-range missiles if the West would agreed to launch civilian satellites for Pyongyang.
The Clinton administration decided to send Dr. Albright to Pyongyang to see if there was the basis for a Clinton trip. Her visit narrowed the gap with the North Koreas still further and challenged the Western image of Mr. Kim as an irrational leader.
Zippered up in a khaki jump suit, Mr. Kim offered several important concessions during six hours of talks. He offered to "forgo" missiles with a range of more than 300 miles. That concession was tied to an American willingness to provide satellite- launching services.
He also indicated that he was willing to halt all missile exports, including missile components, technical advice and brokering services. And North Korea was no longer asking for a $1 billion a year in cash in return, but was prepared to accept $1 billion worth of nonmonetary assistance, like food, coal or other commodities for its stricken economy.
Little progress was made on verification. The North Korean leader insisted that Washington had adequate means to monitor compliance through satellite and other technical means and did not welcome intrusive inspections.
North Korea's existing stock of missiles was another big issue. Mr. Kim's offer to forgo long-range missiles did not apply to weapons that the North had already produced.
Defense Secretary William S. Cohen and the Joint Chiefs of Staff wanted the North Koreans to destroy their missile stocks, which were a threat to Japan and to American troops in South Korea. Still, the mood at the Pyongyang meetings was good. Mr. Kim invited Dr. Albright to a huge Communist-style celebration by his party in which workers held colored placards in the shape of the Taepo-Dong missile. The North Korean leader turned to Dr. Albright and said this was the first satellite launching and would be the last.
To iron out the remaining differences and set the stage for a summit meeting, the Clinton administration organized expert-level talks in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur.
But without Mr. Kim, the North's experts had no authority to negotiate. When the Americans tried to clarify Pyongyang's position, the North Koreans complained that their move was an insult.
To keep the negotiations moving, the American team gave the North Koreans two documents: a draft framework agreement that could be made public and signed at a summit meeting, and a confidential letter outlining each side's obligations.
Those obligations went beyond the proposals Mr. Kim had made in Pyongyang. The Americans wanted to ban the production, testing and deployment of all missiles with a range of more than 180 miles that could carry a 1,000-pound payload - the same standard that Mr. Perry had cited in his 1999 talks.
The Americans also wanted verification provisions, including a declaration by the North Koreans of the numbers and types of missiles in their arsenal. And the Americans pressed the North Koreans for a commitment to destroy their existing stocks, although some officials would have settled for a promise to negotiate this in the future.
The Americans did not quantify how much assistance they were willing to provide North Korea, though they reportedly considered providing several hundred million dollars a years worth of food aid.
Before the administration could consider a Clinton trip, it was clear there would have to be another session in which the North's negotiators could consult with the one man who could make decisions: Kim Jong Il.
So plans were made to send Ms. Sherman and a team of Pentagon, National Security Council and State Department officials to Pyongyang. Ms. Sherman would be authorized to give the North Koreans a date for a Clinton summit meeting if they made more concessions on missiles.
In an ideal world, officials said, Ms. Sherman would have gone to Pyongyang in November, and if the North Koreans made the needed concessions, she could have arranged a Clinton visit. He would then have signed a broadly written accord, while verification and other technical issues were tackled later.
But the election wrangle intruded. Mr. Berger was reluctant to send an envoy with the election in doubt. He said the administration did not deem it wise for the president to leave the country at the time of a potential "constitutional crisis."
As the weeks dragged on, Dr. Albright and Ms. Sherman kept an anxious eye on Florida. At one point, they were monitoring the Florida events from Mauritius, wondering if the Korea operation would proceed.
After the election was decided in mid-December, Ms. Sherman and the White House Asia expert, Jack Pritchard, briefed Colin L. Powell and Condoleezza Rice. The Bush team made it clear that it would not undercut Mr. Clinton, but not would it endorse a deal, former Clinton aides said. That attitudewas one factor that led the Clinton team not to send Ms. Sherman, according to a former ranking Clinton official. The concern was that the new administration would not support or even complete a deal hammered out then.
Finally, the Clinton administration announced on Dec. 29 that there was no longer enough time for its talks.
Critics inside and outside the government say Mr. Clinton made a mistake by not sending Ms. Sherman ahead. The White House, they say, could have consulted with the Bush team before the election was decided, but refrained for fear of lending legitimacy to Mr. Bush's claims to the White House.
"They did not run out of time; they ran out of courage," said Leon V. Sigal, the author of a book on Korean diplomacy.
Dr. Albright insists that the administration did the best it could. But even she has some regrets.
"Of the various places in the world where there is a chance to change the dynamic, this was it," she said last week. "Do I regret that we did not go forward? I personally do. I wish we could have."
---
A Visit by South Korea's Leader
March 6, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/06/opinion/06TUE3.html
Tomorrow's meeting between George W. Bush and South Korea's president, Kim Dae Jung, will be more than ceremonial. Mr. Kim, the first Asian leader to meet with President Bush, has devoted himself to encouraging a thaw with Communist North Korea. Though the ultimate success of this effort is still uncertain, considerable progress has been achieved, symbolized by the meeting between the South Korean president and North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, last June. But unless the White House assures Kim Dae Jung of continued American support for his northern policies, his chances of ending more than a half-century of military confrontation between the two Koreas could evaporate.
The United States has a strong interest in reducing tensions on the Korean Peninsula, where 37,000 American troops are stationed to deter North Korean aggression. Washington should also explore North Korea's apparent willingness to negotiate an end to its production and sales of long-range missiles. Without an agreement on this issue, North Korea could soon develop missiles capable of threatening American territory.
Last fall, the Clinton administration believed it was very close to achieving such an agreement. But it suspended further diplomacy during the long Florida recount, and then, after Mr. Bush emerged as the winner, decided against a last-minute Clinton trip to Pyongyang to seal an accord. Mr. Bush should assess the progress made by his predecessor and then offer to resume talks aimed at completing a verifiable missile agreement.
The Clinton administration took some useful steps toward easing North Korea's diplomatic isolation and restraining its most threatening weapons programs. In 1994 Washington negotiated an agreement that suspended the North's reprocessing of plutonium, a potential ingredient in nuclear bombs, in exchange for outside help building safe nuclear power reactors. Five years later North Korea agreed to suspend testing of its long-range missiles.
But the North has not yet agreed to halt development of these missiles or to stop selling missiles, their components or the technology used to build them to countries like Pakistan and Iran. That is the commitment the Clinton administration was hoping for. Kim Jong Il assured Mr. Clinton's secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, that he was willing to trade away his long-range missile programs for food and fuel aid and foreign launchings of North Korean space satellites. Crucial details have yet to be worked out, including reliable verification arrangements and the fate of missiles already built.
North Korea's erratic history makes predictions difficult. But there may now be a chance for further reducing tensions on the last active front of the cold war. Mr. Bush and Kim Dae Jung should work together to explore that chance.
---
U.S. Has Lot To Offer N. Korea
March 6, 2001
New York Times
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Korea.html?searchpv=aponline
http://news.excite.com/news/ap/010306/16/us-korea
WASHINGTON (AP) -- On the eve of a White House visit by South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Tuesday the United States has ``a lot to offer'' North Korea if it curbs its missile development and missile export programs.
Powell said the administration has yet to make policy decisions on North Korea because it first wants to consult with Kim, who will meet with President Bush on Wednesday after conferring with Powell.
Kim, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year for his reconciliation efforts with North Korea, also will meet with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and other officials, as well as several senators and House members.
Powell said the administration wants ``to make sure that our North Korea policy is totally synchronized with what our South Korean friends are doing.''
He said President Clinton left some ``promising elements'' on the table concerning North Korea when he departed the White House in January. During his final months in office, Clinton held out the possibility of a trip to North Korea but dropped the idea when he concluded that a missile agreement could not be reached.
The United States is concerned about North Korean medium- and long-range missiles that are capable of reaching Japan and U.S. territory as well. Another concern are North Korean sales of missiles and missile technology to Iran and other countries.
``We think we have a lot to offer that regime (North Korea) if they act in ways that we think are constructive,'' Powell said.
As U.S. goals in the process, he listed steps to reduce the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and missiles and ways to help the North Koreans open their society. In return, the United States would take steps to assist the North Korean economy, which has declined sharply over the past decade.
A senior official who briefed reporters hours before Powell spoke said a missile deal will be hard to conclude because verification would be a challenge in a country as secretive as North Korea.
Last weekend, North Korea signaled impatience with the slow process of the administration's review of its policy options on the peninsula. Government officials in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang reaffirmed a warning that they might scrap a moratorium on long-range missile tests and revive a nuclear program that Washington fears was being used to develop nuclear weapons.
The senior official, asking not to be identified, suggested that such warnings are counter-productive and said the new administration sees North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and his regime as a problem.
While the administration has made no decisions on its Korea policy, it has made clear in several ways that it is less deferential toward Pyongyang than the previous administration.
Last fall, Clinton aides were praising Kim Jong-il as a ``visionary'' for his willingness to consider policy shifts. In his January confirmation hearing, Powell called Kim a ``dictator.''
In addition, Powell has reintroduced the term ``rogue states'' to describe some countries that are engaged in weapons buildups. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had stricken that term from the bureaucratic lexicon because it might offend countries with which the United States was trying to negotiate deals.
There is no apparent difference between the two administrations on South Korea's Kim Dae-jung. Albright was an enthusiastic supporter of Kim's efforts to ease tensions with the North, and Powell echoed that view Tuesday.
``Kim Dae-jung has certainly earned his Nobel Peace Prize by what he started last year,'' Powell said.
-------- missile defense
China to raise defense spending
03/06/2001
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-03-06-chinadefense.htm
BEIJING (AP) - China announced plans Tuesday to raise defense spending by 17.7% this year, in part to fuel its drive to catch up with Western militaries' high technology, citing "drastic" changes in the world military situation.
Finance Minister Xiang Huaicheng said a large share of the $17.1 billion military budget - which analysts say represents only a portion of total defense spending - would go to higher salaries and to improving weapons technology.
Xiang told delegates to the national legislature in its annual session that the increase, one of China's largest over the past decade, was needed "to adapt to drastic changes in the military situation of the world and prepare for defense and combat given the conditions of modern technology, especially high technology."
China has announced double-digit increases in military spending each year for 12 straight years as it seeks to modernize its poorly trained and equipped People's Liberation Army, the world's largest with 2.5 million troops. Last year, the military budget grew 12.7%. It increased by 21% 1995 and 18% in 1994.
The May 1999 bombing by NATO of China's embassy in Yugoslavia and the 1991 Gulf War added urgency to that drive. More recently, China has grown increasingly worried over U.S. efforts to build a missile defense system, which it warns would start a costly and dangerous arms race. China fears the technology could be given to Taiwan, allowing the island - viewed by Beijing as a renegade province - to defend itself against Chinese missiles.
Robert Karniol, Asia-Pacific editor at Jane's Defense Weekly in Bangkok, said China's actual defense spending was thought to be up to five times the official budget. "In the last white paper, the government denied that. Basically, we don't believe them," he said.
Lagging far behind the West, China is believed to be spending more than $1 billion a year to buy foreign military technology, much of it from Russia.
Among the weaponry it has bought from Russia are destroyers carrying supersonic anti-ship missiles considered a serious threat to U.S. warships based in Okinawa and to any U.S. navy attempt to aid Taiwan in the event of Chinese attack.
"It's bad news for the U.S. Navy," Erich Shi, senior editor at the Taiwan monthly magazine Defense International, said of the new budget.
Karniol said another reason for the big spending boost was that Beijing had to compensate the army for the divestiture of its vast commercial empire, in the past a large source of military income.
Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan said at a press conference Tuesday that the United States' proposed $310 billion defense budget dwarfed Beijing's.
"Although you could draw the conclusion from a couple of figures that China's defense spending has increased significantly, the defense budget is the smallest among major nations," Tang said.
Overall, China plans to increase government spending by 9.3% to $210.1 billion, raising the national deficit to a record $31.5 billion.
Xiang said the new budget would also continue heavy construction spending - used in recent years to stimulate domestic demand and keep annual economic growth at 7% or higher.
State-financed construction helped compensate for lower foreign investment and exports during the Asian financial crisis, which began in 1997, and now is likely intended to help make up for lower demand for Chinese goods due to the U.S. economic slowdown.
"There is some instability in world economic growth this year and this will affect China's exports," Xiang noted.
Planning minister Zeng Peiyan told the National People's Congress, which began its 11-day annual session Monday, that economic growth was expected to drop to about 7% this year from 8% in 2000.
In speeches to the Communist Party-controlled legislature, Premier Zhu Rongji and other top officials have outlined an ambitious program of boosting lagging rural incomes, ceding state ownership in favor of private enterprise and of revamping inefficient industries to compete in the global economy.
At the same time, they are promising help to the millions of workers and farmers who could lose their livelihoods as long-protected markets open to foreign imports with China's entry into the free-trading World Trade Organization, expected this year.
---
Putin's e-warning on missile defense
01/13/06
MSNBC NEWS SERVICES
http://www.msnbc.com/news/540161.asp?cp1=1
Russian leader sees world security 'collapse' under U.S. plan Russian President Vladimir Putin sits in front of a laptop computer in Moscow on Tuesday while answering questions from people logged into a cyber-chat around the world.
MOSCOW, March 6 - In his Internet chat debut, Russian President Vladimir Putin re-issued a strong warning to the United States over its proposed national missile defense plan. Putin's comments, after U.S. President Bush expressed optimism that Russia was coming around on this issue, indicated that if Washington went forward, it would threaten the entire basis for international arms control.
PUTIN WAS RESPONDING to questions during a live Webcast on the British Broadcast Corp.'s News Online during which he answered some of more than 16,000 questions sent by e-mail from readers around the world.
Answering a question from Australia about what Russia would do if the Bush administration pressed ahead with a national missile defense system, Putin repeated his warnings that to go forward with the missile defense plan, the United States would be contravening the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty.
If Washington withdraws from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Pact to build the missile shield, it would "create legal consequences over which Russia has no control," Putin said.
He said a change to the ABM would affect other pacts. "The 1972 ABM treaty is like an axis to which a whole series of international security agreements is attached," Putin said. "As soon as we pull out this axis, all of them will automatically fall apart. The whole of today's international security system will collapse."
'The 1972 ABM treaty is like an axis to which a whole series of international security agreements is attached. As soon as we pull out this axis, all of them will automatically fall apart.' - VLADIMIR PUTIN Russian president
Putin has threatened that Russia would withdraw from all arms control agreements if Washington breaks the ABM treaty, but insisted Tuesday that Moscow was "not planning to make any ultimatums."
And Putin said he believed it would be no more difficult to establish good relations with President Bush, a big supporter of the missile shield, than with former President Clinton.
DEFENDING WAR IN CHECHNYA
Putin became plainly irritated with suggestions from Internet users that Russia's war against separatists was unpopular in Chechnya.
"These questions reflect how a significant number of people in the West do not understand what is happening in the Caucasus, especially in Chechnya," Putin said in response to a Danish woman's comment that Russia had used "cruel methods" in Chechnya.
He also parried a BBC journalist's assertion that Russia's campaign had failed to win over Chechen public opinion.
"Many people look at it negatively, many positively. We believe the Russian army's actions are aimed at liberating the Chechen people from the terrorists who had seized power there," he said.
Putin, who took office when his predecessor Boris Yeltsin resigned on New Year's Eve 1999, pledged to work to raise Russians' living standards and said there should be no doubt about his commitment to protect democracy and market reforms.
"I am sure the state does not have an alternative to democratic development and market economy," he said.
"As long as I remain head of state, we will adhere to democratic principles of development, we will develop the political structure of society and will develop civil society.
PRESS FREEDOM CHARGES DISMISSED
He dismissed concerns from a U.S. user that the Kremlin was trying to "suppress reasonable criticism" - an allusion to legal moves against the independent Media-Most group's founder Vladimir Gusinsky, now facing extradition from Spain. Liberals see the case as a test of Putin's commitment to a free press.
"The questions our listeners are asking are a bit aggressive. Not very tolerant," Putin said.
He vowed press freedoms would be observed, but said obliquely that business interests who had acquired industries or media outlets on shaky grounds would be obliged to obey the law.
"Perhaps some don't like the fact that we are trying to establish order so that everyone lives by the law," he said.
"I suspect that some people want to live according to the old rules and fish in murky waters. This will not happen. Nor will there be the destruction of democratic institutions."
PUTIN ENTERS CYBER-ERA
Putin praised the Internet while fielding questions that came in to the Russian Internet news agencies gazeta.ru and strana.ru, which collected them along with the British Broadcasting Corp. Putin then responded to 18, passed on by journalists from the three news organizations.
Among those he answered were questions about his personal life, an opportunity for the him to display uncharacteristic modesty.
The Russian president said he enjoys going to soccer matches even though he seems to bring his team bad luck. He also said he enjoys reading Tolstoy and Dumas, while admitting to an "inbred laziness" when it comes to using the Internet.
Still, Tuesday's venture into cyberspace marked a technological step forward from Putin's predecessor. Yeltsin had no computer in his office and said last December that he had only tried the Internet once because the screen hurt his eyes.
Computers and Internet access are still relative luxuries in Russia, available largely to the better-educated and the young, and the unusual online session appeared to be an attempt to reach out to Russia's younger and largely liberal voters.
Sitting at a laptop in a Kremlin studio, Putin opened the forum by responding to a question about his own Internet use.
"It is a very promising form of communication. I am very excited about it," he answered, adding: "Unfortunately, I do not make much use of it myself because of inbred laziness."
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
-------- russia
Plutonium deal can be amended
March 6, 2001,
Bellona Foundation
Vladislav Nikiforov,
http://www.bellona.no/imaker?id=19422&sub=1
US Department of Energy consciously suggests buying Russian plutonium stocks. Officials from Russian Ministry for Nuclear Energy reject such possibility and threaten to quit the US-Russian deal on decommissioning of plutonium given Western funds are not provided for the Russian MOX program.
On January 10th 2001, U.S. Department of Energy, DoE, published a report on the non-proliferation programs with Russia. The document also contains some new recommendations regarding plutonium handling.
The report suggests ways of plutonium disposal such as immobilisation (mixing with glass/ceramics with the following disposal), burning in the form of so-called MOX-fuel (uranium-plutonium blending for nuclear reactors).
On September 1st 2000, Russia and the United States agreed to decommission 34 tonnes of weapon plutonium each. The agreement stipulates burning of plutonium in Russia and immobilisation as well as burning in the USA. The new report contains also the following point: ?Eliminating up to 100 metric tonnes of Russian plutonium by blending Fuel as mixed oxide fuel [MOX-fuel] and burning it in civilian reactors or immobilising it with high?level waste, as the US and Russia have agreed for an initial 34 metric tons. A ?swap? of excess military plutonium with Western European countries, in exchange for civilian plutonium already being burned as mixed oxide fuel in these countries, would accelerate this process. Alternatively, the US could purchase excess plutonium from Russia, with the US either storing the plutonium or paying for it to be immobilised as waste.?
These recommendations are different from the policy previously followed by DoE in the part regarding buying plutonium and its immobilisation as waste. This idea appeared long time ago but was never pronounced on the official level. Probably this report will become the first step in the new discussions between two countries.
Russia?s attitude was very negative towards any transferral of the plutonium from the country. The official position of DoE was to allow to burn all Russian plutonium stocks in the form of MOX-fuel in Russia. Russian deputy minister of atomic energy, or Minatom, Valentin Ivanov said that Russia on no condition would sell weapon-grade plutonium abroad. ?We can sell only fuel, which has plutonium as a component,? Ivanov added.
The Russian atomic ministry, however, has already sold 100 tonnes of weapon-grade uranium to the United States. First, the uranium is blended down in Russia and then used in the American nuclear power plants, which supply about 20% of the US electricity needs. From June 1995 and through October 2000, the United States paid Russia $1.6bn for slightly more that one-fifth of the 500 tons of uranium that United States agreed to buy between 1993 and 2013.
The Russian deputy minister said that plutonium could be effectively used only in fast breeder reactors, but development of such reactors requires big investments and time. Two billion dollars are needed for the Russian plutonium decommission. An international fund was to be established in order to collect the necessary sum. All the interested parties can make contributions. At present they are ready to transfer $600 million. If the fund does not get $2bn till the end of 2002 according to the agreement, Russia may suspend the work and ?we have to start negotiations again? Ivanov said. The agreement stipulates decommissioning of 4 tonnes of plutonium per year (2 tonnes remain in Russia after decommissioning, 2 tonnes go to the West as MOX-fuel).
Reprocessing of plutonium will allow to transfer Russian nuclear energy to fast breeder reactors - the technology Minatom has great hopes for. According to Ivanov, this process can take 30 years.
?Minatom?s behaviour is the best indicator of the Russian irresponsibility regarding plutonium handling. This material is the waste of the cold war and can be used to destroy life. 'Peaceful' usage of plutonium is expensive and dangerous for environment, people, and even atomic industry. Therefore, it should be well isolated from terrorists and atomic industry,? Vladimir Slivyak, co-chairman of Ecodefense group, said.
----
Putin Answers Questions Online
March 6, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Putin-Online.html
MOSCOW (AP) -- President Vladimir Putin goes to soccer matches even though he seems to bring his team bad luck, enjoys reading Tolstoy and Dumas, and admits to an ``inbred laziness'' when it comes to using the Internet.
Fielding questions Tuesday about his personal life and political views, the Russian leader engaged in an hour-long online chat that elicited more than 15,000 queries from curious Russians and others worldwide.
Computers and Internet access are still relative luxuries in Russia, available largely to the better-educated and the young, and the unusual online session appeared to be an attempt to reach out to Russia's younger and largely liberal voters.
Sitting at a laptop in a Kremlin studio, Putin opened the forum by responding to a question about his own Internet use.
``It is a very promising form of communication. I am very excited about it,'' he answered, adding: ``Unfortunately, I do not make much use of it myself because of inbred laziness.''
The queries came in to the Russian Internet news agencies gazeta.ru and strana.ru, which collected them along with the British Broadcasting Corp. Putin then responded to 18, passed on by journalists from the three news organizations.
Some dealt with political issues, including arms control, the underfunded army, economic and legal reform, and education.
In response to a question from Australia about what Russia would do if the Bush administration pressed ahead with a national missile defense system, Putin repeated his warnings to Washington not to amend the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and said it was linked to other pacts.
``The 1972 ABM treaty is like an axis to which a whole series of international security agreements is attached,'' Putin said. ``As soon as we pull out this axis, all of them will automatically fall apart. The whole of today's international security system will collapse.''
Putin has threatened that Russia would withdraw from all arms control agreements if Washington breaks the ABM treaty, but insisted Tuesday that Moscow was ``not planning to make any ultimatums.''
Putin also answered questions about his personal life, and even cracked a joke or two.
Asked by a man who identified himself as Viktor from San Diego about his typical schedule, Putin joked: ``You know, somehow such questions come easy from California, especially when you are looking at Moscow's snow.''
Describing a typical day, he said he gets up early, exercises and swims for nearly an hour, and then takes a break in the middle of the day for more exercise, before continuing to work until as late as midnight.
Putin said his favorite authors were ``Russian classics,'' such as Anton Chekhov, Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky. He said he had also enjoyed reading Alexander Dumas, Guy de Maupassant and Jules Verne -- but that he was now reading two books on Russian history.
He hesitated when asked about what kind of music he likes.
``I like so-called -- I don't know if you can put it like this, but still -- popular classical music,'' he said. ``If I came home and had a chance to play something, some CD, I would immediately play, let's say Tchaikovsky, or Schubert arranged by Lizst, or Lizst arranged by Schubert.''
He said he likes French films and is a fan of actress Romy Schneider.
He also said he would like to go to an upcoming match by his favorite soccer team Spartak, even though fans have noted the team loses every time Putin attends.
Noting that women don't play a big enough role in Russia's politics, Putin said the ``level of society's freedom, or democracy is determined by the position of the woman in this society.''
But he insisted that his wife Lyudmila's low visibility at official functions was entirely a family matter.
``Some may like it, and some may not,'' he said. ``I think that the citizens of Russia have elected me as president, and not my wife... I am very grateful to her for bearing her heavy cross the way she does, and that's not easy.''
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Not fit to print
March 6, 2001
Washington Times
Greg Pierce
http://www.washtimes.com/national/inpolitics.htm
The Washington Times featured a photo and staff-written story on the front page. The Washington Post played a picture at the top and center of its front page, with a staff story and another picture on the front of its Style section. The Los Angeles Times ran a picture at the bottom of its front page, with a staff story and another picture inside. The New York Times was another story altogether.
The newspapers were covering the christening Sunday of the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan by the former president's wife, Nancy, and speeches by such dignitaries as the president of the United States.
Unlike the other newspapers mentioned here, the New York Times - miffed, perhaps, that a recent poll shows the public ranks Ronald Reagan as the greatest president in American history -went to great lengths to play down the story yesterday.
In fact, the so-called newspaper of record declined to publish any story whatsoever about the event at Newport News, Va., although on page A14 it did run a three-column wire photo of President Bush and a shipbuilding executive watching as Nancy Reagan broke a bottle of champagne across the hull.
The headline on the caption said: "Bush Remembers Crash Victims." The caption said: "President Bush offered his condolences yesterday to relatives of those killed Saturday in the crash of a National Guard plane. He attended a christening of the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan in Newport News, Va., near the base where the victims had been stationed. With him were former President Ronald Reagan's wife, Nancy, and William Fricks of Newport News Shipbuilding, builder of the carrier."
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- california
Calif. Wanted More Power Help
March 6, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-California-Power.html?searchpv=aponline
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Congressional Democrats from California and the Northwest expressed frustration Tuesday at the Bush administration's refusal to temporarily cap wholesale electricity prices in the West, accusing wholesalers of market manipulation.
As Western states face a continuing energy crisis, ``the federal government has been a pathetic disaster itself in its refusal to come to the assistance of the West,'' declared Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., at a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
He said his constituents face 50 percent increases in electricity prices as part of the fallout from California's power supply shortage.
A string of California Democrats testifying before the committee's power subcommittee criticized the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which has authority to impose price controls on wholesale energy markets, for not regulating -- at least temporarily -- wholesale prices in the Western markets.
The commission is allowing ``a small energy cartel'' to controls prices, manipulate the market, and ``rob the state blind,'' complained Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif.
President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, who heads the president's energy task force, oppose price controls in the California energy market and elsewhere. FERC Chairman Curt Hebert also has called such intervention ``counterproductive.''
Inslee said he raised the issued with Bush when the president attended a Democratic congressional retreat weeks ago and was rebuffed. ``He expressed a disinclination to put it mildly,'' said Inslee.
Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, who held Tuesday's hearing, also has opposed any price cap, even if it is temporary. Barton acknowledged price controls might produce ``some short term benefit'' but said it could be detrimental in the long-run.
Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers from California, as well as parts of the Northwest, have urged the FERC to require wholesale power prices be tied to costs, arguing that today's electricity market in California has opened the way for price manipulation by the power generators.
``Only the federal government can provide ... immediate relief'' and head off more severe problems facing the West's power grid this summer, said Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Calif.
One California lawmaker, Rep. Darrell Issa, a Republican, sharply disagreed, arguing against a federal imposition of price caps. ``This is not the right answer,'' said Issa. He said California has had ``artificially low (energy) prices for a long time,'' keeping the market from operating properly.
While not ruling out temporary price controls entirely, Issa argued that any such regulation must be linked to a long-term plan to ensure power supply will meet demand, a commitment in California to all forms of energy usage, including nuclear, and guarantees that any cap will have a specific expiration date.
-------- colorado
Colorado
01/03/06
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm
Colorado - A federal report says cleanup of the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant is several months behind schedule, making it likely that the anticipated $7.5 billion cost will rise. The private contractor hired by the Department of Energy probably won't make its 2006 deadline, according to a General Accounting Office report.
-------- MILITARY
U.S. Will Watch Chinese Military
March 6, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-China.html?searchpv=aponline
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Secretary of State Colin Powell said Tuesday that the Bush administration will carefully watch China's military buildup to see if it threatens U.S. interests in the region.
He also said the administration will ask in upcoming talks with China whether the buildup is defensive, for modernization or has ``offensive potential.''
China's finance minister has told legislators that the government would boost military spending by 17.7 percent this year, the 12th straight year of double-digit increases for the People's Liberation Army. It was the third-highest increase since 1990, surpassed only by hikes of 21 percent in 1995 and 18 percent in 1994.
At a joint press conference with visiting European leaders, Powell was asked what this meant for US-China relations and stability in Asia. He answered, essentially, that it remained to be seen.
``We will be watching their buildup carefully, see how they spend this money, see if it in any way is threatening to our interests in the region or whether it's just modernization,'' he said.
``We also will be especially sensitive to how this buildup relates to ... Taiwan, whether it presents any new threat to Taiwan,'' Powell said.
Until those things are known, he added, he is ``not prepared to say this creates a new ... state of conflict.''
Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. Craig Quigley declined to say whether the increase exceeded U.S. expectations. He said the Pentagon welcomes China's willingness to state openly its defense spending plans and called the announcement ``a welcome addition to the knowledge that the world can then assess as to the amount of money the Chinese government is spending on defense.''
Quigley said it is well known that China is modernizing its military. ``They have made their goals in this area very clear for years now,'' he said.
After announcing the military spending hike, China sought Tuesday to deny weaponry to Taiwan, warning Washington that providing high-tech arms to the island would be dangerous and harm U.S.-China ties.
Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan told a Beijing news conference that selling upgraded Patriot missile batteries and warships with state-of-the-art radars would send ``a very wrong signal'' to Taiwan's government, inflame tensions and encourage Taiwanese who want to remain separate from China.
At a Pentagon news briefing, Quigley was noncommittal about sales to Taiwan.
``There is an ongoing debate both within the government of the United States and with the Taiwan authorities as to what are the defensive systems that need to be made available to the Taiwanese for their legitimate defensive needs.''
Tang defended the spending increase, saying the United States' proposed $310 billion defense budget dwarfed Beijing's $17.07 billion.
China's actual defense spending is thought to be up to five times the official budget. China is believed to be spending more than $1 billion a year on foreign weaponry, and has bought Russian destroyers that could threaten a U.S. Navy attempt to aid Taiwan in case of a Chinese attack.
---
China Denies Helping Iraq Build Air Defenses
March 6, 2001
Reuters
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-china-i.html?searchpv=reuters
BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese investigation has found no evidence to support U.S. charges that Chinese companies are helping Iraq rebuild its air defenses by laying fiber optic cables, Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan said on Tuesday.
Tang said the charges were designed to divert attention from U.S. and British bombing of Iraq, repeating China's initial hard-line response.
``Relevant agencies have carried out serious investigations,'' Tang told a news conference.
``The result of the investigations is that Chinese enterprises and corporations have not assisted Iraq in building the project of fiber optic cable used for air defense,'' Tang said.
China promised last week to look into the accusations, the first sign of trouble between Beijing and the new U.S. administration of President George W. Bush.
It had originally dismissed the charges out of hand as part of a U.S. smokescreen.
But, by offering to take the charges seriously, it had appeared interested in defusing the problem.
Some analysts speculated that Beijing wanted to sweep the issue off the table while it focused on trying to persuade the Bush administration not to sell advanced weapons to Taiwan, a burning preoccupation of Chinese leaders.
Bush must make a decision in April on a new high-tech shopping list of military items drawn up by Taipei, including the Aegis radar defense system.
But Tang has now thrown the ball back into the U.S. court.
Tang again insisted that China respected U.N. resolutions on Iraq and had rules that forced Chinese companies to comply.
The United States launched air raids twice last month to ''degrade'' Iraqi air defenses which U.S. officials say have become newly aggressive toward U.S. aircraft patrolling ''no-fly'' zones.
The zones were imposed over the northern and southern parts of Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War.
Pentagon officials have privately accused China of aiding Iraq in improving its air defenses in violation of U.N. sanctions against Baghdad.
They said raids were timed to avoid casualties to Iraqi and Chinese workers laying fiber-optic cables to link Iraqi radars with anti-missile sites.
---
China Denies Involvement in Iraqi Air Defenses; Increases Military Budget
March 6, 2001
New York Times
By ERIK ECKHOLM
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/06/world/06CND-BEIJIN.html
BEIJING, March 6 - After conducting "serious investigations," China has rejected the American allegations that Chinese companies helped improve Iraqi air defenses in violation of United Nations sanctions, the foreign minister said today.
At a news conference on the second day of China's annual Parliament meeting, Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan also warned the United States of grave consequences if it sells Taiwan advanced weapons systems, an issue that may come to the forefront in April, when the United States is to decide on Taiwan's arms requests.
Underscoring China's determination to press Taiwan to rejoin the "motherland" with force if necessary, even if it means some day confronting American might, China also announced today that defense spending in 2001 would increase by 17.7 percent - accelerating its drive for a more powerful and modern military.
Last month, after American and British warplanes bombed what they said were enhanced Iraqi air defenses, the United States said it had evidence that Chinese firms were selling and installing fiber optic cables and other equipment being used to improve Iraq's anti-aircraft capabilities.
Chinese officials initially denied the charges but their position then seemed to soften, with a spokeswoman saying last week that the government would conduct an investigation. President Bush said that Beijing had promised to "remedy the situation" if the charges proved true.
But now the Chinese government has declared its sometimes free-wheeling international technology companies to be innocent of any improper aid or sales to Iraq.
"Relevant agencies in China have carried out some serious investigations," Mr. Tang said today. "Chinese enterprises and corporations have not assisted Iraq in building the project of fiber optic cable for air defense."
Mr. Tang's wording appeared to leave open the possibility that a Chinese company has worked on non-military telecommunications in Iraq, but he insisted that China had carefully abided by United Nations sanctions. He also charged that the allegations of aid to Iraq's military were a smokescreen, intended to deflect attention from the "unilateral" February bombing of Iraq by the United States and Britain in what he called a violation of United Nations resolutions.
"The Chinese government has reiterated its understanding of China's responsibilities to uphold U.N. Security Council resolutions, and to insure that Chinese companies abide by these resolutions," said Mary Ellen Countryman, a spokesman for the National Security Council. "We will continue to work with the Chinese government to address this issue."
Ms. Countryman did not say whether Washington now considered this incident was a closed matter.
China's top foreign policy official - Qian Qichen, a deputy prime minister, - will visit Washington March 18 in the first high-level contacts since George W. Bush took power, meetings that both sides now see as potentially pivotal. Mr. Tang said today that Chinese-American relations can "continue to move forward" but only if "the American side handles the question of Taiwan well."
China is waging a diplomatic offensive to head off Taiwan's requests to buy warships equipped with the advanced Aegis radar system, which could be used against Chinese planes and missiles, and to buy upgraded versions of the Patriot anti-missile batteries. China fears that such sophisticated weapons, which would require major training programs on their part, would not only embolden the Taiwanese but also bind the American military to Taiwan more closely.
"The American side should come to a recognition of the serious dangers involved," Mr. Tang said today. "It should reign in its wild horse right on the edge of the precipice," he said, using an old Chinese saying.
Unveiling the national budget this morning, the finance minister, Xiang Huaicheng, said official defense spending for 2001 would increase by 17.7 percent over last year, bringing the total to just over $17 billion. But Western analysts say that true military spending may be three to five times that amount, making it hard to know what the real trend in spending is.
Seeking to modernize its huge but modestly trained and equipped forces, China has increased its announced defense budget by more than 10 percent each year for more than a decade, but this year's increase represents an acceleration compared to the 12.7 percent increase in 2000.
Mr. Xiang said the increase was mainly to raise military salaries, but also reflected "the need to adapt to drastic changes in the military situation of the world and prepare for defense and combat given the conditions of modern technology."
China began a crash program to streamline and upgrade its military after watching in awe the performance of the latest American weapons in the Gulf War, and more recently the NATO campaign against Yugoslavia, which China opposed and viewed as an alarming sign of American arrogance. Beyond pruning its huge, poorly skilled army and trying to raise the educational level of officers and troops for "high-tech" warfare, China has spent billions buying naval destroyers, submarines, missiles and fighter jets from Russia.
Still, even if unreported spending is included, China's military budget remains small compared to that of the United States. Mr. Tang said today that China's declared military spending goal this year was little more than 5 percent of the $305.4 billion that will be spent by the United States.
Military analysts here often portray the United States as China's main adversary as it seeks to claim its rightful place as an Asian power, and above all as it tries to force Taiwan back into the fold.
The United States does not have a formal alliance with Taiwan but is committed by law to helping the island defend itself and could easily be drawn into a cross-straits war. China has repeatedly said that an effort by Taiwan to formally declare independence could provoke a military attack and has condemned American arms sales to Taiwan as encouraging pro-independence forces.
Today Mr. Tang also confirmed reports that China and Russia would sign an unusual treaty on "good-neighborly friendship and cooperation" this July, when President Jiang Zemin visits Moscow. Mr. Tang stressed that the treaty is not a formal alliance.
Western experts say the treaty is a largely symbolic attempt by China and Russia to offset what both countries fear is the overwhelming power of the United States in global affairs today.
At the press conference Mr. Tang spoke in scathing terms about Washington's recent annual report on human rights in various countries including China, calling it hypocritical. He also attacked the Bush Administration's decision to sponsor a resolution condemning China's rights record at a United Nations meeting later this month.
"I would like to advise the U.S. side to stop its perverted ways on this question as soon as possible," he said of the human-rights critiques, "and return to dialogue which is the right path."
---
New Files Tie U.S. to Deaths of Latin Leftists in 1970's
March 6, 2001
New York Times
By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/06/world/06COND.html
WASHINGTON, March 5 - A recently declassified State Department document shows that Latin American officers involved in Operation Condor, the joint effort in the 1970's by right-wing governments to crush left-wing opposition, used an American communications installation to share intelligence.
A cable to the State Department in 1978 from the United States ambassador to Paraguay at the time, Robert E. White, quoted the chief of staff to the dictator Alfredo Stroessner as saying an American installation in the Canal Zone was "employed to coordinate intelligence information" among South America countries. "Obviously," the cable said, "this is the Condor network, which all of us have heard about over the last few years."
Mr. White wrote that he had not independently confirmed the accuracy of the Paraguayan's report. But he recommended that Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance "review this arrangement to insure that its continuation is in the U.S. interest."
To Mr. White's knowledge, he said recently, the review was never done.
But the cable appeared to open new avenues of inquiry about the American role in Condor, a shadowy operation to stamp out the Latin American left that, among other things, dispatched death squads to kill critics at home and overseas.
Documents already made public have shown that the F.B.I. helped Condor's efforts early on by investigating South American leftists who were arrested and, in at least one case, tortured.
The cable was discovered by a Long Island University professor, Patrice McSherry, among thousands of documents being declassified on American relations with South American dictatorships.
If Latin American officers did use American facilities to transmit intelligence, this would have provided United States officials the opportunity to monitor Condor activities closely.
Lt. Gen. Samuel Wilson, retired, who was director of the Defense Intelligence Agency through August 1977, said, "If such an arrangement existed on an institutional basis, I would have known about it, and I did not then and do not now."
However, he added, "that such an arrangement could have been made locally on an ad hoc basis is not beyond the realm of probability."
But Peter Kornbluh, a senior analyst at the National Security Archive, said the cable implied "foreknowledge, cooperation and total access" to the plans and operations of Condor.
"The degree to which the U.S.A. knew about and supported these operations has remained secret until now," he said. "The layers of the onion are peeling away here."
Officially, Condor arose as a defense against Communist-inspired terrorism, but its victims included government officials ousted in United States-supported military coups, trade unionists, rights advocates and suspected socialists. By 1978 investigators were tying Condor to the killing of Orlando Letelier, the former Chilean foreign minister, and Ronni Moffitt, an American colleague, in 1976 when the car in which they were riding exploded in Washington.
In his cable, Ambassador White recounted a meeting with a Paraguayan general, Alejandro Fretes Davalos, shortly after a Chilean official visited Paraguay to discuss the Letelier case. Mr. White surmised that in telling him American channels were being used to transmit intelligence for Condor, the generals hoped to fend off questions from the United States Justice Department about their role in the killings.
The cable said Condor nations "keep in touch with one another through a U.S. communications installation in the Panama Canal zone, which covers all of Latin America."
"This U.S. communications facility is used mainly by student officers to call home to Latin America," the cable continued, "but it is also employed to coordinate intelligence information among the Southern Cone countries. They maintain the confidentiality of their communication through the U.S. facility in Panama by using bilateral codes."
Mr. White, who currently runs the Center for International Policy, a research organization, sent his message directly to Secretary Vance in recognition of its sensitivity and his recommendation. In a recent interview, however, he said he had received no response: "Nobody reacted in any way, shape or form."
"What it suggests to me is that people in the U.S. government really actively worked not to have this knowledge, this evidence, in play," he said. "There are thousands of telegrams that come in each day. It's very easy to just drop one down that big memory hole."
---
The dazzling triumph of Saddam Hussein
March 6, 2001
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/national/pruden.htm
Governors make great candidates for president and they usually have a solid grasp of domestic affairs, better than anyone in Washington, and what the people beyond the Beltway really want.
But they usually don't have a clue about what goes on beyond the seas.
Jimmy Carter meant well, and he was a disaster, as we were quickly to learn. The Iranians took hostages because they figured, accurately, that he wouldn't do anything about it.
Ronald Reagan was the exception to the rule that governors don't know beans about foreign affairs. Sacramento was merely a whistle-stop on the Gipper's journey to Washington, and he came to the presidency with a well-formed view of the world, who the bad guys were and what he could, and would, do about them. The result was the end of the Cold War on American terms. The world, just now beginning to realize it, will owe him forever.
Bill Clinton arrived in town ready to feel everyone's pain, and just in time to inherit a nation with a large component of crybabies eager to parade their pain. He was a boffo hit at home, but Saddam Hussein hung him out to dry on the road and Yasser Arafat ironed him flat. He left office with the consolation that he not only wrecked Al Gore's campaign, he wrecked Ehud Barak's government.
Which brings us to George W. Bush. The Texas governor is a bit of a genetic anomaly, the son of a president who knew all about foreign affairs and who didn't have much interest in the domestic stuff. He got bounced because Bill Clinton felt a lot of pain.
George W. had a front-row seat for that campaign, and saw what happened to the old man, and he would make sure that wouldn't happen to him. And so he didn't, and hasn't. He's sticking by a tax cut popular with nearly everyone. You can tell it's popular because the Democrats are pushing a smaller tax cut, and if they hadn't lost the election you can be sure they wouldn't offer a tax cut at all. Democratic hearts break at the prospect of enabling plain folks to spend their own money.
If George W. maintains his present schedule we won't need to hire those additional teachers. He'll teach the kids himself. He's hopscotching across America, dropping in on every schoolroom with an empty blackboard and a book that he can read to the kids. Good politics. He can measure his success in breaking down partisan hard feeling by the noise of Democrats grumbling that he's not playing fair. He's supposed to be an old meanie, but nobody any longer thinks that. Well, maybe Maxine Waters.
Unfortunately, his lack of attention to what's going on across the waters (as they say in rural Texas) is about to incur costs. Colin Powell's trip to the Middle East, offering Saddam Hussein everything he wants without extracting anything in return, was either a stunning miscalculation or an astonishing reach for power.
If the general's offer of concessions to Saddam - a "refinement" of sanctions and softening of the demand for inspection of suspect sites of weapons of mass destruction - was settled administration policy before he left for the Middle East the administration made a breathtaking mistake in not offering an explanation for this remarkable U-turn in U.S. policy. Worse, if the general made the concessions on his own.
Saddam's ambitions are clear enough. The first President Bush vowed, on the eve of the Gulf war, that "this aggression will not stand." And for a few incredible weeks, as American and allied forces routed the Iraqi army with dazzling speed and efficiency, it looked like George H.W. Bush was right. The aggression would not stand.
But in the end it did. General Powell persuaded President Bush to end the war just as Saddam was teetering on the eve of destruction. With the war having ended prematurely - imagine World War II as ending with the liberation of Paris -Saddam was free to rebuild his shattered army and resume his research and manufacture of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
Vice President Cheney says that returning the United Nations inspectors to Iraq, to determine what Saddam is up to as set out in United Nations resolutions, is no longer as important as we were told it was. This may be an attempt to save the general's face. But Colin Powell himself told us how important the inspections were just before he left for the Middle East. The secretary, and presumably the president, now believe that "refined" sanctions will bring the Arab and European allies, such as they are, back into step with the United States. The betting here is that this will never happen, and United Nations inspectors have seen the last of Iraq. Aggression stands, Saddam won, and 148 American men and women died for - what?
Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Times.
---
NATO speeds U.S. troops to Kosovo clash
March 6, 2001
Washington Times
By David R. Sands
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-20013622126.htm
U.S. reinforcements have been rushed to the tense southern border of Kosovo in a bid to keep an ethnic Albanian insurgency in Macedonia from spreading, officials of the international peacekeeping mission in Kosovo said yesterday.
Military commanders of the NATO-dominated Kosovo peacekeeping mission dispatched rapid-reaction troops from the 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment to the Kosovo side of the border, along with Polish and Ukrainian troops.
"We have increased our military presence along the Kosovo border with [Macedonia] to ensure that Kosovo is not used as a staging area for extremist activities" inside Macedonia, Lt. Gen. Carlo Cabigiosu, military commander of the peacekeeping mission, said yesterday, a day after meeting with Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski.
Reporters in the region also said that a convoy of U.S. Army trucks and at least two Black Hawk helicopters were seen near the Kosovo village of Debelde, not far from the fighting in Macedonia.
But officials of the embattled Macedonian government yesterday criticized NATO's response to date and said they planned an appeal today to the U.N. Security Council for an internationally policed buffer zone to prevent further incursions by ethnic Albanian guerrilla forces.
"They are too scared that some of their soldiers might get killed," Macedonian Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski told reporters in the Macedonian capital of Skopje yesterday after an emergency meeting with top NATO representatives.
Tensions in the region escalated sharply Sunday when three Macedonian soldiers were killed in clashes with a band of about 100 Albanian guerrillas in the remote border town of Tanusevci.
The guerrillas, reportedly with links to extremist Albanian groups operating across the border in Kosovo and southern Serbia, have held the Macedonian town since Feb. 12. Macedonian officials fear the conflict could spread in a small country in which Slavs are the majority but ethnic Albanians make up between a quarter and a third of the population.
Details from the remote region are sketchy. Gunshots were heard again yesterday, but NATO observers said they also saw at least part of the Albanian guerrilla force withdrawing from Tanusevci toward the Kosovo border.
But officials in Skopje also said the fighting had spread to two other villages in the country's mountainous north, about 25 miles from the capital.
Macedonia has sealed its northern border and yesterday announced it was calling up all its army and police reservists to deal with the crisis.
The latest unrest has all taken place on the borders of the sector in Kosovo primarily patrolled by U.S. forces.
The fighting and related skirmishes between Albanians and Serbian security forces in southern Serbia have raised fears in Washington and Western Europe of a new round of instability in the Balkans, fueled by the Albanian nationalists who dominate Kosovo.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said yesterday the United States "strongly condemns the acts of violence by extremists who are seeking to undermine the stability of Macedonia, Kosovo and the region." He said he expected the U.N. Security Council to take up Macedonia's request for a buffer zone later this week.
Other countries took an even stronger line. Russian President Vladimir Putin said he would back Macedonia's bid in the United Nations for a new buffer zone, and Bulgaria said yesterday it was prepared to dispatch troops to help a fellow Slav nation.
Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica, who is attempting to quell an uprising by ethnic Albanians in the Presevo Valley, said the international peacekeeping mission that runs Kosovo is directly responsible for the "spread of terrorism" in the region.
The international force "takes care of its own safety and is concerned only with itself and not with the safety of Serbs, Macedonians and moderate Albanians who are all suffering at extremist hands," Mr. Kostunica said yesterday during a visit to the Bosnian city of Banja Luka.
Even Albanian Prime Minister Ilir Meta said yesterday that the attacks "damage the image of all Albanians in the region."
Ethnic Albanian partisans said the unrest reflects continuing discrimination and violence against ethnic Albanians in Yugoslavia and Macedonia. Ethnic Albanians are a majority in Serbia's Presevo Valley and in the villages like Tanusevci along Macedonia's northern border.
Shirley Cloyes DioGuardi, Balkan affairs adviser for the Albanian American Civic League, said the importance of the Tanusevci incident had been greatly inflated by elements within Macedonia who opposed the multiethnic coalition government.
"We condemn all acts of violence as destabilizing," said Mrs. DioGuardi, who just finished a weeklong trip to Kosovo, Skopje and Serbia's Presevo Valley. "But there's no need to make this into an international incident when you're talking about a very small group doing the fighting.""
Macedonia, a staunch NATO ally during the 1999 air war against Yugoslavia, has long been considered a potential source of instability because of its ethnic mix.
The country's largest ethnic Albanian party is part of the governing coalition. Mr. Trajkovski said in an interview Friday that he had seen no signs yet that mainstream Albanian leaders in Macedonia are supporting the rebels.
-------- burma/myanmar
Dam creates Bangladesh, Myanmar tension
Tue, 6 Mar 2001
China Daily
COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh: Bangladesh said yesterday its troops were ready to respond quickly if Myanmar soldiers opened fire across the countries' border or if Myanmar resumes construction of a dam on the Naf border river.
"We are ready for a prompt and appropriate response if they pull the trigger again or resume construction of the dam," said Colonel Shawkat Ali, a commanding officer of the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) border force.
Tension along the border in southeast Bangladesh has been high for the past two weeks since Myanmar began building a dam, or embankment, on the Naf river at Totardia to divert water for irrigation and shrimp farming.
Bangladesh says the structure will cause soil erosion and flooding on the Bangladesh side and has demanded that it be stopped. The two sides exchanged fire across the Naf on January 8 but there were no casualties. Myanmar then suspended construction of the dam but deployed some 35,000 troops along its 320 kilometres border with Bangladesh, Bangladesh military officers say.
The Naf forms part of the border. Ali said Bangladesh had deployed more than 10,000 paramilitary troops to face any attack from Myanmar.
Witnesses said BDR troops have taken up position in fortified positions and bunkers.
"We are maintaining a round-the-clock alert," Ali told reporters. "We are ready to defend our interests along the frontier.''
-------- china
China Plans Major Boost In Spending for Military
Tuesday, March 6, 2001
Washington Post
By John Pomfret
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26882-2001Mar5.html
BEIJING, March 6 (Tuesday) -- Aiming to cope with what it calls "drastic changes" in the world's military situation, China has decided to increase defense spending this year by 17.7 percent, its biggest expansion in real terms in the last 20 years, according to Finance Minister Xiang Huaicheng.
Xiang said in a speech today that the increase would go mainly for pay raises for officers and enlisted men and "to meet the drastic changes in the military situation around the world and prepare for defense and combat given the conditions of modern technology, especially high technology." The speech was delivered to the National People's Congress, China's legislative body, which opened its annual session Monday in Beijing.
The defense spending jump, calculated in real terms, dwarfs recent yearly increases. It comes as China is experiencing zero inflation but faces a record budget deficit, which experts say gives such an increase added significance as a measure of government priorities.
The budget increase reflects a deepening belief here that China must prepare for a conflict with the United States if it wants to recover Taiwan, an island that Beijing considers part of China but whose defenses the United States has pledged to help. This assumption has been coupled with a sense that the People's Liberation Army is falling behind the West in the race for a high-tech military.
New spending would address two other chief concerns, analysts say: a realization that the military must pay higher salaries and train more if it wants to be a force in the world, and a recognition of shortfalls in the military budget since the government forced the army to divest itself of most of its business interests in 1998.
Xiang said this year's publicly acknowledged defense budget would reach $17.195 billion, higher than that of India, Taiwan or South Korea. Analysts generally estimate the real figure is at least three times as high, which would put China almost on par with Japan's $45 billion but nowhere near the U.S. military budget of about $300 billion.
James Mulvenon, a Chinese security specialist at the Rand Corp., noted that the Chinese military received larger percentage increases in its budget in the mid-1990s but that those came at a time of runaway inflation, making them smaller in real terms and less significant as an expression of government policy.
"This is the biggest increase I have ever seen," Mulvenon said. "In an environment of increasing central budget deficits and continuing revenue problems, these types of increases highlight the amount of fiscal pain China's leadership is willing to endure to maintain the loyalty of the military."
Mulvenon said the Kosovo bombing campaign, in which air power and missiles forced Yugoslavia's army out of Kosovo, was a major catalyst for the budget increase, adding to the shock felt by the People's Liberation Army after officers witnessed the weapons used in the Persian Gulf War. The allied victory in Yugoslavia constituted a major part of the "drastic changes" enunciated by Xiang.
Underlying this concern, analysts said, is a view spelled out in a defense white paper issued in October that the United States is now China's main threat and a roadblock on the path to regional military supremacy and reunification with Taiwan. That document accused Washington of "practicing a new gunboat policy and neo-economic colonialism" and remarked that the U.S. plan to create a shield against missiles would seriously destabilize the security of the Asia-Pacific region.
This view has been reinforced recently in several key essays by senior PLA strategists. The deputy chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Xiong Guangkai, wrote in a recent edition of China Strategic Studies, for instance, that the forces of "war, hegemony and power politics are increasing."
"This is very bleak assessment of the global security environment," said David Shambaugh, a specialist on the Chinese military at George Washington University and the Brookings Institution.
Shambaugh said that over the past few years China has embarked on a military modernization program that puts the U.S. military front and center as a potential adversary because Beijing believes Washington opposes China's dream of reuniting with Taiwan. China has bought advanced destroyers and state-of-the-art anti-ship missiles from Russia to counter U.S. aircraft carriers. It has purchased advanced Russian fighters, the Su-27 and Su-30, and it is upgrading its submarine fleet and attempting to improve the accuracy of its missiles.
Money for foreign military purchases, about $1 billion a year, comes from an off-budget fund run by the Central Military Commission. In the 1990s, China spent an estimated $6 billion on foreign military purchases. Taiwan spent $20 billion during that time.
Mulvenon said this year's budget increase for the PLA largely confirmed what U.S. security experts had heard about a debate in China over the 10th Five-Year Plan that occurred in the spring of 1999 as the Kosovo campaign unrolled and China's embassy in Belgrade was hit by U.S. missiles. The Ninth Five-Year Plan, formulated in 1994, set defense increases at about 10 percent per year, adjusted for inflation. Now, he said, the next five years will bring increases of between 15 and 20 percent a year.
As a result, for the first time in more than a decade, China's military spending is growing faster than its expenditures on science and technology, which increased by 14.5 percent this year, Xiang said in his speech.
---
Beijing plans defense spending boost
March 6, 2001
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/world/nobyline-200136221725.htm
BEIJING - Citing "drastic changes" in the international military situation, China plans to raise defense spending by 17.7 percent this year, Finance Minister Xiang Huaicheng said today.
The double-digit increase in military spending, which analysts say represents only a portion of the total defense budget, would go to increased salaries throughout the ranks, he said.
The $17 billion military budget also was needed "to adapt to drastic changes in the military situation of the world and prepare for defense and combat given the conditions of modern technology, especially high technology," Mr. Xiang told delegates to the national legislature.
The 11-day meeting of the Communist Party-controlled legislature is a highlight of China's political calendar. Although carefully scripted, it serves as a communication channel for Chinese leaders, allowing them to hear voices from outside Beijing and taking back word of their policies to the nation.
Yesterday, Prime Minister Zhu Rongji said the country will expand private enterprise, allow foreigners to buy shares in local companies and eventually let citizens own all but "strategic" companies.
The government will also work to raise incomes for its hundreds of millions of farmers, Mr. Zhu said at the start of the annual legislative session, which is expected to set the stage for major leadership changes next year.
Mr. Zhu's comments underscored concern that low and falling incomes could trigger unrest in the countryside, where most Chinese live.
He said economic plans call for annual growth of about 7 percent over the next five years, down from an average of 8.3 percent over the past five years. He said the government hopes to double its year-2000 annual economic output of just over $1 trillion by 2010.
Beijing also plans to step up efforts to conserve water, combat corruption and prepare for entry into the World Trade Organization, Mr. Zhu said in his speech to lawmakers at the vast Great Hall of the People.
But he gave no indication that the government would ease its often brutal 19-month-old crackdown against the meditation group Falun Gong. He called Falun Gong an "anti-human" cult used by "domestic and overseas forces hostile to our socialist government."
The program laid out by Mr. Zhu appeared to have been prepared with an eye to next year's pivotal 16th Communist Party congress, when five of the seven members of the all-powerful Politburo are set to step down.
President Jiang Zemin is thought likely to give way at that time to Vice President Hu Jintao, a 58-year-old party insider little known in the West.
"In the lead-up to next year's party congress, the idea is, 'Let's maintain unity, otherwise we could lose the plot,' " a Western diplomat told Reuters news agency. "It's about not rocking the boat this time," he said.
Said a second foreign diplomat: "If they come up with anything too adventurous now, they'll need to show concrete results before the congress."
Mr. Zhu spoke for 90 minutes in a hall resplendent with the garb of China's more than 50 ethnic minorities, including Tibetans in brightly colored robes, delegates from Inner Mongolia in fur-lined jackets and Manchu women in elaborate headdresses.
In his speech, the prime minister acknowledged the limits of state planning in a society that has changed radically since it began market economic reforms 20 years ago.
He said the government would encourage more state industries to become corporations with shares owned by the public. More would be encouraged to sell shares on foreign stock exchanges, he said.
That would bring China into line with its WTO commitments, which include allowing wholly foreign-owned competitors in industries that previously had been state-controlled.
Despite sweeping reforms, China's biggest companies are state-owned, and the law forbids private ownership in many sectors.
For the short term, China will continue heavy state infrastructure spending and try to spur consumption, Mr. Zhu said.
In the countryside, farmers will be encouraged to work with companies and produce crops on contract, the prime minister said. He said the government will try to spread biotechnology, better seeds and other advanced technologies.
"Areas where conditions permit should be encouraged to explore a land operation rights-transfer system," Mr. Zhu said.
-------- colombia
Rebels called 'willing to die'
Tuesday, March 06, 2001
Seattle Times
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/SeattleTimes.woa/wa/gotoArticle?zsection_id=268448413&text_only=0&slug=colombia06&document_id=134272396
BOGOTÁ, Colombia - In his strongest challenge yet to Colombia's peace process, right-wing paramilitary leader Carlos Castano says his men are "willing to die" to stop a government plan to create a second guerrilla safe haven.
His comments came hours before a clash between guerrillas and paramilitary groups in northern Colombia left 24 people dead, officials said.
The fighting - the latest in a 37-year war that has killed 35,000 civilians in the past decade - took place near the village of El Prodigio, some 45 miles south of the industrial hub of Medellin, Colombia's third-largest city.
President Andres Pastrana's government has proposed creating an 1,120-square-mile demilitarized zone in northern Colombia in an effort to open peace talks with the country's second-largest guerrilla faction, the National Liberation Army (ELN).
Castano, of the right-wing United Self Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), has voiced opposition before to the plan - which would force him to relinquish to the guerrillas territory won by his fighters.
In a letter posted on the AUC's Web site, Castano appeared for the first time to be threatening to attack government troops should Pastrana press ahead with the plan.
"The United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia are on total alert, and our troops are ready to die or to kill, confronting the guerrillas or whomever in order to defeat a new demilitarized zone," read the letter addressed to Pastrana.
The proposed demilitarized zone, a swath of territory about the size of Delaware, would be similar to a larger area in the south that Pastrana granted two years ago to Colombia's largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
Sporadic peace talks with the FARC aimed at ending the civil war have failed to produce a peace accord, however. Critics say the rebels have taken advantage of their sanctuary to fortify themselves militarily while abusing local residents.
Despite opposition by local residents and Castano's 8,000-strong group, the government says it will push ahead with the plan to create the second demilitarized zone.
"Logistically we need an area to carry out negotiations and at this point we believe that area will need to be a demilitarized zone for the ELN," said Jaime Bernal Cuellar, Colombia's former attorney general, who is acting as an intermediary to the rebels.
Bernal said in a phone interview yesterday that Castano's "radical and inflammatory" letter would not impede ongoing talks.
---
Guerrillas gain ground in Colombia
March 6, 2001
Washington Times
By Michael Easterbrook
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-20013622228.htm
SAN PABLO, Colombia - For more than three decades, residents of this forgotten town on the banks of the muddy Magdalena River have pleaded for government protection from Marxist guerrillas.
But in the hopes of achieving peace, the government now appears ready to relinquish the region to the same guerrilla army these people have grown to fear.
San Pablo is part of a 1,120-square-mile zone in north-central Colombia that the government of President Andres Pastrana is on the verge of temporarily ceding to the 5,000-strong National Liberation Army (ELN) as a condition for beginning peace negotiations.
Talks between the government and the ELN aimed at formalizing the long-awaited demilitarized zone are expected to resume soon, according to a spokesman at the presidential palace in Bogota, Colombia's capital.
The idea of surrendering a sweep of resource-rich territory about the size of Delaware to a violent guerrilla movement that residents say has menaced them for decades has enraged the people who live here. Last month, thousands of demonstrators mounted a four-day roadblock to protest the plan. Organizers have threatened more blockades and protests should the government relinquish the zone.
Militiamen back protest
The protesters were assisted by the right-wing paramilitary group United Self Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), conceded Carlos Castano, that group's feared leader, in a recent interview with El Tiempo newspaper. But protest leaders interviewed last week in San Pablo denied it.
"People who have nothing to do with the paramilitaries don't want the guerrillas here," said Eliseo Acevedo, a spokesman for No to the Clearance Zone. "We're prepared to defend ourselves if they come."
It isn't the first time Mr. Pastrana, who was elected on a peace mandate, has tried to lure rebels to the negotiating table with a taste of self-rule. In 1998, he ceded a southern enclave twice the size of New Jersey to Colombia's largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
But after more than two years of sluggish negotiations, he has yet to achieve any significant accords with them. The 37-year armed conflict, which pits leftist guerrillas against private militias and the government, has killed some 35,000 people in the last decade.
U.S. bars observer role
The government and the FARC recently asked delegates from the United States and Cuba to observe a round of negotiations scheduled for March 8. President Bush declined the offer during his meeting in Washington with Mr. Pastrana a week ago. Washington broke contact with the FARC after rebels killed three American indigenous-rights activists in March 1999.
Critics have accused the 16,000-strong rebel army of overbearing rule inside its stronghold and of using it to recruit combatants, produce cocaine and prepare military attacks. Many of the approximately 50,000 people who would live inside the second demilitarized zone say the same abuses will occur there.
"If the police leave, if the army leaves, the population will be left to live under the rule of an armed group that many people here fear," said Norma Cantillo, a municipal judge, who would have to leave. "It would be a state within a state."
According to the plan, about 100 security-force members would leave the area for nine months, creating a safe haven for the guerrillas from which to begin peace discussions with the government. The demilitarized zone, which would also encircle the neighboring township of Cantagallo, would be patrolled by ELN-appointed civic police and 150 Colombians and foreigners to monitor potential human-rights abuses.
ELN promises doubted
The guerrillas have vowed to respect the civilian population and to refrain from committing crimes in the zone. But their promises offer no comfort for those who have had to live with the guerrillas for more than three decades.
"Ever since I can remember, all I have seen here is violence," said Gabriel Perez, 24, whose family owns a shoe store on San Pablo's main road. "Most of it has been the fault of the guerrillas."
The two groups leading the protests say the government should demand that the ELN declare a cease-fire and free all its captive civilians and security-force members before it surrenders the zone. The ELN bankrolls its insurgency partly through obtaining ransoms through kidnappings.
Protest leaders have also accused the government of moving forward with its plan to hand over the area without consulting the communities. They said hundreds of people who have participated in the protests have been declared militarists by the ELN and would have to flee the area if the government creates the demilitarized zone.
Not everyone, however, agrees that the protest organizers speak for the majority. Two nurses at the town hospital who declined to give their names said fears that guerrillas would terrorize the community are overblown.
Zone's benefits seen
They said the creation of the zone might even be good for the region, believing the government might reward residents by spending money on health services, education and infrastructure.
Critics also said the AUC is forcing many demonstrators to attend the protests.
"The majority of those people didn't even want to go," said Regulo Madero, head of Credhos, a regional human rights group based in the city of Barrancabermeja, about an hour by boat from San Pablo.
"If they had refused, they probably would have been forced to leave the zone or suffered some other type of reprisal."
But there is also fear of the ELN, according to community leaders.
The group was born in this rugged territory in the 1960s and found broad support here for its uprising. But that backing eventually evaporated as stories circulated of forced recruitment of minors, extortion demands and iron-fisted rule, said the Rev. Francisco de Roux, a priest in Barrancabermeja and director of the Peace and Development Project for the Middle Magdalena.
"Unfortunately, the ELN made some serious errors with the population,"said Father de Roux. "People here have sad, painful memories. Many are furious with the guerrillas."
Militias control coca crop
The discontent created an opening for the AUC, which made its first incursion into the area in 1998. The paramilitary group now controls most of the area and more than half of the plantations of coca - the plant from which cocaine is made - that flourish around San Pablo, said Father de Roux. The AUC and the FARC earn huge revenues from the local narcotics industry.
The AUC's presence has severely weakened the ELN and is one reason the rebels now seek peace, said analyst Alfredo Rangel, a former national security advisor.
"Now is probably the only opportunity it has to seek a negotiated solution before being totally destroyed," said Mr. Rangel.
"I think a process with the ELN will be much more fluid and rapid than it has been with the FARC."
---
Rethink Plan Colombia
March 6, 2001
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-house-200136192917.htm
Colombian President Andres Pastrana came to the United States recently with his hat in his hand, asking for more U.S. funds to help combat the drug trade through economic development. However, the Bush administration ought not commit any more money to Mr. Pastrana before he has come up with a better plan as to how to spend the $1.3 billion the United States has already allotted his country. Better yet, Mr. Pastrana ought to reform his whole strategy for dealing with Colombia's civil war and burgeoning drug trade.
Most of the counter-narcotics funds that Congress and the Clinton White House set aside for Plan Colombia are destined for the military, although drug interdiction is a task better left to the police. The military is better suited to deal with Colombia's rebel insurgencies, for which some funding will be needed. The lion's share of the Plan Colombia funds, however, ought to go to the police, as Republican Reps. Dan Burton, from Indiana, and Benjamin Gilman, from New York, have been tirelessly advocating.
Colombia's primary efforts ought to be directed toward bolstering the rule of law. Funding for judicial reform is critical, including U.S.-Colombian exchange programs and training for judges and other court employees. The counter-narcotics police unit has proven to be highly effective and dedicated. Furthermore, unlike the military, there hasn't been a single credible human rights violation leveled against this police unit.
What Colombia needs overall is a new strategy for dealing with narco-terrorists - both of the rebel and paramilitary sort. Mr. Pastrana is getting ready to give the ELN, the second most powerful rebel group in the country, a zone that would fall under their own control. But the surrender of another "demilitarized" zone to Colombia's strongest and most brutal rebel group, known as the FARC, has already proven to be a horrible failure.
Furthermore, the secession of territory to a lawless terrorist group constitutes a gross violation of the democratic rights of law-abiding Colombians. Clearly, the Colombians themselves are convinced of this. Days before Mr. Pastrana left for the United States, thousands of peasants defied his stern warnings and blocked one of the main highways in the country to protest the creation of the demilitarized zone in their area.
One thing Mr. Pastrana got right was his request for the United States to liberalize trade with Colombia. "Convincing guerrillas to lay down their arms, and getting peasants to move from coca cultivation into the legitimate economy means we have to create jobs for tens of thousands of Colombians," Mr. Pastrana said.
Although it certainly would be difficult to convince most guerrillas to desist from murder and torture in the spirit of free enterprise, Mr. Pastrana is on the right track. Economic development is, in the end, central to the country's long-term stability. Bill Clinton had pledged to liberalize trade with Colombia, but never followed through. This is one plea the Bush administration and Congress could grant right away.
-------- drug war
Heroin Seen Spreading to U.S. Suburbia
03/06/2001
ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/US/reuters20010306_1818.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Heroin use is on an upsurge in the United States, especially along the East Coast, while use of the drug is spreading from inner cities into suburbs and even some farm towns, law enforcement and health officials say.
"From 1998, we started seeing heroin starting to spread beyond the cities into the surrounding area with some dealers setting up shop in apartments in the suburbs and smaller towns," said Erin Artigiani, coordinator of the Drugs Early Warning System at Maryland's Center for Substance Abuse Research.
From Vermont in the north to Atlanta and Miami in the south, officials are sounding the alarm.
"Vermont has a substantial heroin problem. We're a small market but we're on the corridor between Montreal and Boston and New York and there's a natural creep to the trade," said David Peebles, a top official in the state's corrections department.
A report from the Community Epidemiology Work Group at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued last December showed heroin growing in popularity in Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Miami, Newark, Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, St. Louis, New Orleans and other communities.
The report, issued every two years, relies on reviews of medical and treatment centers, criminal justice and correctional offices and other local sources and often predicts unfolding trends in drug use before they become widely known.
"My sense is that the use of heroin is going up. I think this is very real. It's most prevalent on the East Coast but moving into the Midwest," said Alan Leshner, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
The situation is less pronounced on the West Coast where the number one problem right now is the growth in the use of so-called "designer drugs" such as methamphetamine.
PURITY IS UP AS PRICE DROPS
Officials point to two worrying trends in the heroin trade: first, a huge increase in the purity of drugs sold on the streets from 20 to 30 percent three or four years ago to 70 to 80 percent now.
That makes the drug much more attractive to needle-averse teenagers who would have had to inject the drug to get a high a few years ago but can produce the same effect by snorting it.
There is a widespread and mistaken belief among teens that snorting heroin is not addicting.
At the same time, the street price of heroin has plummeted as more and more dealers get drawn into the trade. Heroin costs as little as $30 a milligram in some cities and addicts can shoot up three times a day for $50 to $60.
Perhaps the most serious trend is the spread of the drug into places it had rarely been seen before.
Heroin has long been a massive problem in Baltimore, where an estimated 60,000 of the city's 600,000 people are addicted. But Baltimore Health Commissioner Peter Beilenson said another 60,000 people from the surrounding four counties were also addicted.
A county by county survey in Maryland found heroin was a serious or emerging problem in 16 of the state's 24 jurisdictions, including some mainly rural communities far from any city.
In Mifflin County, a rural area of 50,000 people in central Pennsylvania, police detective Mike Britt wrote in an article posted on the Internet by MSNBC that since 1998 he had seen a wave of heroin sweep through small-town streets.
"The parents are in denial, saying, 'It won't be my kid who uses heroin'," he wrote. "This drug has proven to me it is attractive to all kids. The price, accessibility, risk are all attractive to teens. The successful students gravitate to this drug as much as the unsuccessful ones."
TROUBLE FINDING A VEIN
On a desolate corner of Monroe Street and Ramsey Street in western Baltimore, no more than a 10-minute drive from the famed Camden Yards baseball park, the human face of the heroin epidemic became apparent one recent afternoon when scores of addicts lined up outside a mobile needle exchange clinic.
Charlie, aged 17, who started doing heroin four years ago and now shoots up at least three times a day, often combining heroin with cocaine, showed counselor John Harris an arm with a nasty developing abscess.
"I'm finding it difficult to get a vein," he said.
"You're going to find that. This is a developing, deteriorating disease. You'll be shooting up in your foot, your thigh, your groin, your armpit -- everywhere before you're done. I'm not lying to you 'cause I've been there," said Harris, who kicked the habit 11 years ago.
In Delaware, community groups say an average of three young people die each month from heroin-related causes. Adult admissions into state-funded treatment facilities rose from 258 in fiscal 1986 to 2,356 in fiscal 2000.
Officials say heroin is marketed to young people using pyramid sales techniques. Users become sellers who find new users who become new sellers.
The Community Epidemiology Work Group also noted that users were getting younger. In Atlanta, for example, it said, "the emergence of a younger cohort of heroin abusers continues to be supported by all indicators."
In Philadelphia, it said, "new cohorts of heroin abusers are in their early to mid-teens." Philadelphia recorded 413 heroin-related deaths in 1998 -- third in the nation behind New York with 448 and Chicago with 404.
According to Leshner, the number of hard-core heroin addicts in the United States has risen by 25 percent in the past five years from around 800,000 to around 1 million in a country of 281 million.
"With the increase in purity and the decrease in cost, new populations have been recruited," he said.
---
Federal, state agents raid online pharmacy
03/06/2001
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2001-03-06-pharmacy.htm
NORMAN, Okla. (AP) - Federal and state agents on Tuesday shut down a pharmacy suspected of illegally selling large quantities of controlled drugs over the Internet.
The day before, agents had raided Mainstreet Pharmacy, which operated an online pharmacy at nationpharmacy.com. Authorities alleged that during a single week about four months ago, the pharmacy filled 1,651 prescriptions for controlled substances and distributed more than 150,000 pills.
"That's way out of the norm with regard to the practice of a normal pharmacy," Bryan Potter, executive director of the Oklahoma State Board of Pharmacy.
A warrant and affidavit supporting the raid were sealed in federal court.
But state complaints to be heard by the pharmacy board this month allege doctors employed by Mainstreet wrote prescriptions for patients for drugs such as Valium and allowed two automatic refills.
The pharmacy had been filling up to 800 prescriptions and refills each day, according to the complaints.
Potter said the state will seek to revoke the licenses of the pharmacy and its owner, Clayton Fuchs of Rowlett, Texas. The board also could vote to fine the pharmacy.
Efforts to contact Fuchs were unsuccessful. A telephone number listed for him in Rowlett was disconnected. A recorded message at the pharmacy Tuesday said it was closed.
Last month, the state suspended the medical license of Dr. Ricky Joe Nelson, who was affiliated with the pharmacy, until a hearing in May on charges he wrote prescriptions for people he never examined.
---
Maine
01/03/06
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm
Maine - Chief Justice Daniel Wathen opened training for officials involved in the new adult drug courts that will begin taking referrals next month in five counties. The new court system recognizes the link between crime and substance abuse and involves intensive treatment and supervision of offenders, officials said.
---
BOXER ARRAIGNED ON DRUG CHARGE
March 6, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/06/nyregion/06MBRF.html
MANHATTAN: Bail was set yesterday at $5,000 for the boxer Hector Camacho, who was arrested at a Manhattan nightclub on a cocaine possession charge. Mr. Camacho, who is due back in court on Friday, posted bail. The police executed a search warrant at the Latin Palace in East Harlem at 2:45 a.m. Sunday. Mr. Camacho, 38, and 12 others were arrested on drug charges. Mr. Camacho was charged with criminal possession of a controlled substance, a felony. His lawyer, David S. Zapp, could not be reached for comment. (AP)
-------- space
Attack Of The Mutant Space Fungus
Researcher Concerned About Microorganisms Aboard Mir Russian Space
Officials Play Down Threat To Earth
March 6, 2001
CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/now/story/0%2C1597%2C276655-412%2C00.shtml
MOSCOW, March 6, 2001 (Reuters) Forget the danger of heavy debris raining down from space when Russia sends the Mir orbiter to a watery grave this month -- the real threat could be mutant fungi, a researcher said Tuesday.
Yuri Karash, an expert on the Russian space program, said there was a possibility microorganisms that have spent the last 15 years mutating in isolation aboard Mir, could present a threat if they survived the fall to Earth.
"I wouldn't overstate it ... but a realistic problem exists," Karash told a news conference.
Karash, who has undergone cosmonaut training and is an aerospace adviser, said his conclusions were based on research carried out by Russia's Institute of Medical and Biological Problems.
Researchers have said that the fungi could be especially virulent if mixed with earth varieties that attack metal, glass and plastic.
Western health officials have in the past expressed concerns about microorganisms that could be brought back to earth after a Russian microbiologist 13 years ago discovered the first of many aggressive forms of fungi inhabiting Mir.
Russian space officials have played down the threat, but visitors to the orbiter have found numerous types of fungi behind control panels, in air-conditioning units and on dozens of other surfaces.
Surprisingly destructive, they give off corrosive agents like acetic acid and release toxins into the air.
---
A Hard-Working Spacecraft Leaves Its Handlers Beaming
March 6, 2001
New York Times
By KENNETH CHANG
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/06/science/06NEAR.html
For a spacecraft that did not follow its script - it was almost lost twice, then missed its destination on the first pass and finally arrived a year behind schedule - NASA's NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft has far exceeded expectations.
The craft even survived an improvised landing on asteroid 433 Eros. In the end, mission controllers just put it to sleep last Wednesday.
If it survives several months of frigid darkness later this year, it may awaken again when the asteroid's changing orientation carries it back into full sunlight next year. Meanwhile, though, scientists are getting used to life without it, and reveling in the data it collected.
"It's going to be a strange feeling, a strange emptiness," Dr. Andrew F. Cheng, the mission's project scientist, said before the space probe's final transmissions. "It feels like a member of my family. This is the spacecraft that would not quit."
The spacecraft sent back about 160,000 pictures. "To be very honest, we still haven't really counted them," said Dr. Joseph Veverka, chairman of the astronomy department at Cornell University, who led NEAR's imaging team. "We were going to be happy with 10,000 images."
On Feb. 12, the barrel-shaped, 1,100-pound spacecraft made its final descent to the surface. NASA downplayed expectations that the spacecraft would survive the landing.
Dr. Robert W. Farquhar, the mission director, was confident he could bring NEAR Shoemaker down slowly, but he was less sure that the spacecraft, which lacked accouterments like landing gear, would not tip over the wrong way, knocking it out of contact.
He watched as data streamed back, including images that captured features as small as half an inch across.
"All of sudden I realized we're still getting data after the thing hit," Dr. Farquhar said. "That was a good moment. That was the first time the United States has been the first to land on any solar system object." (Soviet spacecraft beat their American counterparts to soft landings on the Moon, Venus and Mars.)
The landing - the spacecraft bumped into the asteroid at a mere 4 miles per hour - led to a two-week extension for the mission. While scientists have only begun to analyze the information, they already have clues about the asteroid's makeup. NEAR's instruments detected large amounts of iron nearby but no magnetic fields. That suggests that the iron is in the form of nonmagnetic rust-like oxides.
Earlier data from NEAR Shoemaker has already answered many questions about Eros, one of the asteroids that comes close to Earth's orbit. The asteroid does not tumble wildly through space but instead rotates around one axis, like a planet. It is made of a primitive material, almost unchanged since the beginning of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago.
And somewhat surprising, Eros, 21 miles wide, is basically one big rock, covered by a layer of boulders and dirt up to 300 feet deep. "I think most people would have expected an asteroid the size of the Eros to have been a rubble pile," Dr. Cheng said. Many asteroids are conglomerations of boulders held together by gravity, including 253 Mathilde, an asteroid that NEAR Shoemaker flew by en route to Eros.
After it completed its primary data collection mission at Eros last fall, NEAR Shoemaker began a series of swoops down to a couple of miles of the surface for closer looks. These have provided new puzzles for scientists to solve.
For example, the bottoms of some craters on the asteroid are remarkably flat, seemingly filled with fine particles like the sediment of a dried- up pond. Wind and water, the two usual mechanisms for shifting and leveling dust and sand, are not present on airless, waterless Eros. "It has neither of these and yet it has these land forms," Dr. Cheng said. "Extremely strange things are going on this asteroid. We're going to have fun with that."
Dr. Veverka speculates that perhaps static electricity lifted fine dust particles off the surface, allowing them to move down to the bottom. That would be "a very bizarre mechanism," he said, "but that's the kind of things we're thinking about."
Eros has also experienced many more landslides than would have been expected, considering that gravity on Eros is only 1/1,000th as strong as Earth's. With some of the landslides, Dr. Veverka said, there is no evident scar uphill where the rocks slid from. "It just starts from nowhere," he said.
NEAR, short for Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous, was the first of NASA's "faster, better, cheaper" missions, with a budget of $223 million. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., won the NEAR assignment in 1991, the first deep space mission that NASA delegated to a non-NASA organization. (The spacecraft's name was changed to NEAR Shoemaker last year in honor of the late Eugene M. Shoemaker, an expert on impact craters and co-discoverer of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet that collided with Jupiter in 1994.)
Launched in 1996, NEAR was lost almost immediately after launch because of a glitch with a receiver on the ground. An even more serious problem occurred Dec. 20, 1998, two months before NEAR was to arrive at Eros. Less than one second into a navigation maneuver, NEAR's engine suddenly shut down, communications were cut off and the spacecraft jerked into wild gyrations, "the wacko mode," Dr. Farquhar said. "That was bad. We probably should have lost it at that time."
Twenty-seven hours later, NEAR started sending signals again. "But it wasn't fine," Dr. Farquhar said. In stabilizing its gyrations, NEAR had used up about 65 pounds of propellant. Had it lost another 35 pounds, it would have never made it to Eros.
Far off-course, NEAR zoomed past Eros on Dec. 23, three days after aborted engine firing. With its fuel low, the spacecraft could not make a quick U-turn, but instead set on a longer, looping path that brought it back to Eros a year later.
NEAR entered orbit around Eros, named after the Greek god of love, on Valentine's Day last year. That was not a coincidence.
The original rendezvous date - Jan. 10, 1999 - coincided with Dr. Farquhar's fifth wedding anniversary. "I pick dates that are romantic or whatever," Dr. Farquhar said. "It would have cost too much fuel to get back for our sixth wedding anniversary, so then what I wanted to do was give a Valentine's Day present to my wife."
This year's landing was another Valentine's Day present, albeit two days early.
The hibernating NEAR Shoemaker will enter total darkness in August, with temperatures dropping below minus-230. The spacecraft will start getting peeks of sunshine again in November, with full sunlight returning in August next year. Dr. Farquhar thinks it might then be worth trying to get in touch with NEAR Shoemaker again.
"You can sense that I'm already thinking about it," he said. "I just have various ideas what we could still do."
---
COULD MIR CRAFT BRING MUTANT FUNGI TO EARTH?
Tues., March 6, 2001
Morrock News,
http://morrock.com
A Russian space expert raised a possibility Tuesday that should send shivers down the spines of the paranoid around the world: that when the Mir space station is dropped out of orbit later this month to crash into the Pacific Ocean, it may bring down mutant fungi with it.
During Mir's 15 years in orbit, micro-organisms subjected to the isolation and radiation of space have mutated, said the expert, Yuri Karash, who told reporters, "I wouldn't overstate it . . . but a realistic problem exists."
A Russian microbiologist reported 13 years ago that many "aggressive" forms of fungi had established themselves aboard Mir. Visiting cosmonauts have said that many surfaces throughout the space station are covered with fungi, some of which release toxins and corrosive substances such as acetic acid.
According to researchers quoted by the Reuters News Service, the fungi could be "especially virulent" if they mix with varieties already existing on Earth that attack metal, glass or plastic.
---
Mutant space fungus headed toward Earth
March 7, 2001
Washington Times
By Jennifer Harper
http://www.washtimes.com/national/daybook-20013722534.htm
Forget the fact that some 1,500 assorted nuts, bolts and chunks may rain down upon the Earth when Russia's vintage space station Mir plummets home again in about 10 days.
It's that mutant space fungi we should fret about.
After 15 years of festering away in various air ducts and control panels aboard the old orbiter, some mystery mold is also along for the ride.
"I cannot overstate this. A realistic problem exists," Yuri Karash said yesterday at a press conference in Moscow.
A former cosmonaut and now a journalist, he became unnerved after reviewing Mir documents at the city's 38-year-old Institute of Medical and Biological Problems, which once designed a life-support system for a "Heavy Interplanetary Ship," among other things.
Washington residents can spot Mir in one of its final appearances, passing low in our northeastern skies at 6:43 p.m. tomorrow for two minutes, 10 degrees above the horizon, according to NASA.
Meanwhile, Russian officials have become weary of assuring the governments of Japan, Australia and, more recently, Germany that most of the spacecraft will incinerate upon entering Earth's atmosphere, sometime between March 17 and 20.
But hundreds of fragments are expected to survive the de-orbit -up to 27 to 45 tons worth, by some estimates, raining down in a 3,500-mile-long debris field in the South Pacific between Australia and South America. A few behemoths the size of a car may drop from the sky, traveling a half-mile per second.
"Debris from dozens of booster rockets and hundreds of meteorites annually reach Earth and nothing terrible happens," Mir designer Leonid Gorshkov said yesterday.
Still, the Russian Aerospace Agency is taking no chances with Mir's demise. The agency announced yesterday it was taking out a $200 million insurance policy to cover any damages caused by the 137-ton station during its one-hour finale.
Australian emergency officials have estimated that a car-sized hunk has a one-in-5,000 chance of hitting their country. There are "contingency plans with state and local governments" in place to deal with errant debris, according to spokesman David Templeman.
But back to that fungus, which may soon be among us.
The Russian expert, Mr. Karash, fears that microorganisms growing in isolation above Earth have taken on unknown and "aggressive" forms, a fact confirmed by a Russian microbiologist some 13 years ago. Should they survive Mir's fall to the sea, the fungus could prove corrosive and even toxic.
"Mir does have its own small ecosystem up there," said microbiologist James Staley, head researcher for the University of Washington's new astrobiology program, which is funded by a $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation.
"But I would be surprised if there was a real potential hazard. This fungus would have too much to compete with here on Earth to survive," Mr. Staley said. "Still, the microbiology in that situation, the mutational events up there, are not entirely understood. It is a fascinating thing to think about."
Some folks are more than fascinated with Mir.
An American "extreme" travel group will ferry a group of intrepid and well-heeled observers to the splash site when the time comes, charging $10,000 for a window seat aboard a chartered prop-jet.
The Mir Reentry Expedition, which already has its own commemorative patches, has a group of 60 standing by to depart Los Angeles for Tahiti, where they will then board the research aircraft.
Mir's crash will "look the same as when a big meteorite enters the atmosphere, like a rocket launch, or a big firework," noted Sergei Avdeyex, one of four former Mir cosmonauts who have agreed to go along for old times' sake.
Mr. Avdeyex spent a record-setting 748 days on Mir, and was credited with keeping the craft in orbit during 10 much-publicized mishaps in 1998.
There is a fancy Web site (www.mirreentry.com) for the $1 million jaunt. Organizer Bob Citron is guaranteeing that "Mir's luminous retirement" will have a "spectacular pyrotechnic display," and there will be a post-crash party in Tahiti afterward.
Mr. Citron will use data from both Russian and U.S. space agencies during the flight, which is expected to last about 20 minutes, some 30,000 feet up.
Though the Russians have charged American "space tourist" Dennis Tito an estimated $20 million for a ride in a Soyuz rocket and a 10-day stay on the International Space Station beginning April 30, they will make no money from Mir's final descent.
They're just not interested, they say. "Those who commit suicide by jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge do not pay anything to the authorities of New York, do they?" asked Russia's top space official, Yuri Koptev, at a recent press conference.
-------- u.s.
Aorta Tell The Truth
Tue, 06 Mar 2001
Slate Magazine
by Scott Shuger
The NYT fronts news that the FAA is considering omitting a competitive bid process and straightaway awarding the contract--likely worth hundreds of millions--for modernizing its long-distance air traffic control system to Lockheed Martin, even though the company was the main contractor in an earlier failed attempt at FAA automation. The paper notes that the secretary of transportation Norman Mineta, his deputy-designate Michael Jackson, and Lynne Cheney (wife of Dick) have all held positions at Lockheed. The Times adds that both Mineta and Jackson have agreed to remove themselves from all involvement in decisions relating to Lockheed. (Hmmm...wonder if knowledge of their employment histories will be removed from the memories of all their underlings.) The story adds that two Lockheed competitors, Raytheon and Boeing are less than thrilled. The former's spokeswoman even has a name that fits the situation perfectly: Blanch Necessary.
---
Communities mourn 21 part-time soldiers
Tuesday, March 06, 2001
Seattle Times
The Associated Press
by Sonja Barisic
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/SeattleTimes.woa/wa/gotoArticle?zsection_id=268448413&text_only=0&slug=guard06&document_id=134272397
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. - They were part-time soldiers, men who gave up weeks every year to prepare for their mission of construction work on short notice anywhere in the world for military and humanitarian purposes.
But the 18 members of the Virginia Air National Guard's 203rd Red Horse Flight who died in a plane crash Saturday in Georgia also were very much part of their communities.
They were husbands and fathers, builders, computer specialists, insurance adjusters, Habitat for Humanity volunteers - men who were expected to return to their civilian jobs yesterday after a two-week training mission in Florida.
Instead, they are being mourned as the Virginia National Guard copes with its worst loss of life since 21 men died in the D-Day invasion at Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944.
Guard deaths can hit communities especially hard because units tend to draw from a single area; many of the men killed in Saturday's crash were from southeastern Virginia.
Staff Sgt. Randy Johnson, a 40-year-old from Emporia with a 9-month-old daughter, assembled wooden roof trusses for luxury homes in his civilian life.
"He loved his job with the military because he got to travel all over the world," said Chris Johnson, plant manager at Toll Integrated Systems. He is not related to Randy Johnson.
Staff Sgt. Richard Summerell, 51, and Ellen, his wife of 25 years, ran a vacuum-cleaner business in Franklin. It was destroyed by a flood during Hurricane Floyd in September 1999, and the couple had been running the business from their home since.
"They spent more time after the flood helping everyone else than they did helping themselves," said Nanci Drake, director of downtown development.
Summerell had four children, including a son who is a member of the Red Horse unit.
Tech. Sgt. Dean Shelby, 39, of Virginia Beach, worked at Denbigh High School in Newport News, helping to keep the computer network running.
"He brought forth the energy and the patience that's needed when you deal with computers," Principal Michael Evans Sr. said. "Dean had a kind word for everyone."
Shelby, a father of two, had been planning to celebrate his 20th wedding anniversary this weekend.
The victims were among the 10,000 men and women who spend one weekend a month training in the Virginia National Guard. They also do field training two weeks a year.
The 203rd Red Horse Flight is a construction unit. Formed in 1985, it is capable of mobilizing quickly to build roads, repair runways, construct buildings, dig wells and provide support for U.S. forces anywhere in the world.
The remains of the 21 National Guardsmen - the 18 from Virginia and three from Florida - were recovered yesterday after delays caused by rain and muddy conditions.
---
Remains of guardsmen recovered from crash site
03/06/2001
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2001-03-06-military-crash.htm
UNADILLA, Ga. (AP) - A somber procession of military vehicles delivered the remains of 21 guardsmen to a central-Georgia air base as Army investigators scrambled over the site where their plane crashed, mapping and videotaping the charred wreckage. Lt. Col. Deborah Bertrand, a Robins Air Force Base spokeswoman, said the bodies were transported Monday to the base south of Macon. Local law enforcement officers escorted the convoy.
"We were careful to provide the greatest degree of deference and respect," Bertrand said.
The remains of the three Florida Army National Guard crew members and 18 passengers from the Virginia Air National Guard were to be flown Tuesday, weather permitting, to an Air Force casualty center in Dover, Del.
Investigators from the Army Safety Center at Fort Rucker, Ala., were expected to finish their onsite probe by week's end, but it could be months before they announce a cause of the crash.
About a dozen Air Force and Army investigators were mapping the location of each piece of the plane's wreckage with global positioning devices.
Bertrand said Robins Air Force Base is planning a memorial service for the victims because hundreds of people there have taken part in the recovery operation.
"We need to do this for ourselves and for those we brought home," she said.
The plane, a C-23 Sherpa was flying from Florida to Virginia when it crashed Saturday in a field. The recovery team had been slowed by 3 feet of mud caused by a 4-inch deluge of rain. Wind and sunshine helped dry the field Monday.
The plane's in-flight data and voice recorders were recovered Sunday, but military officials declined to say whether they contained any clues.
The crew from the Florida Guard's 171st Aviation Battalion was flying the plane, taking members of Virginia's 203rd Red Horse Flight Squadron home after a two-week training mission in Florida.
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
Fact:
March 6, 2001
Fact Of The Day Newsletter "Strange...Weird...Bizarre...TRUE!"
http://www.twistedhumor.com/newsletters.shtml
There is a sea squirt (found in the seas near Japan) that digests its own brain. When the sea squirt is mature it permanently attaches itself to a rock. At this point it does not need to move anymore and has no need for a brain. So, waste not want not, it eats it!
---
E-commerce:
friend or foe of the environment?
Tuesday, March 6, 2001
Environmental News Network
By Stephen Leahy
http://enn.com/news/enn-stories/2001/03/03062001/ecommerce_40648.asp
On a single Saturday in July, 100 airplanes and 9,000 trucks delivered more than 250,000 copies of "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" to Amazon.com customers all over the United States. These on-line shoppers got the year's hottest kid's book faster than local bookstores.
On the surface, e-commerce appears to offer a big environmental bonus by eliminating hundreds of thousands of trips to the mall. A closer inspection, however, reveals a net environmental impact that's decidedly mixed, according to Scott Matthews, a research scientist involved in assessing environmental impacts of technology at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
On-line shopping does reduce commuting in gas-guzzling SUVs and the need for yet more retail stores. But every book ordered on the Web is heavily packaged and travels on a transportation network that taps many resources.
Instead of shipping, say, 10 copies of "Harry Potter" in one box to a bookstore, 10 boxes with one book are shipped to e-commerce customers. "This method is costly for everyone," Matthews and colleagues write in Spectrum Magazine, a publication of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers.
With e-commerce sales estimated to hit $200 billion by 2004, it's important to look at the environmental impact of the new trend, they say.
"It's unlikely e-commerce will save the planet as some have claimed," says Bette Fishbein, a senior fellow at Inform, an environmental research organization in New York City. "There might be some reductions in energy use, but there's a huge increase in packaging and shipping by air results in much more air pollution. Office paper use has doubled since the wide-spread use of computers - so much for the promise of the paperless office."
What will e-commerce really mean in the long term? she wonders.
Warehouse shipments to customers require more packaging and increase delivery costs.
"It's already bringing reductions in energy and greenhouse emissions," says Joseph Romm, executive director of the Centre for Energy and Climate Solutions and an expert in energy use. "The economy is growing rapidly, but energy demand is much lower since the advent of the Internet."
Amazon.com, for example, uses 16 times less energy per square foot to sell a book than a regular store, he notes.
Business-to-business e-commerce promises greater energy savings by reducing inventories, overproduction, unnecessary capital purchases and paper transactions. "The Internet can turn buildings into Web sites and replace warehouses with supply-chain software," says Romm. "Information substitutes for energy."
Air delivery is more costly and adds to pollution.
At this point, e-commerce is only a fraction of the total economic picture, thus it isn't the reason behind reductions in energy demand, Matthews maintains. When e-commerce becomes a major part of the economy, what happens to the existing bricks, mortar and asphalt infrastructure of the retail industry? he wonders.
"No one knows what the environmental costs of messing up the existing infrastructure will be," Matthews says.
Huge new warehouses and distribution centers serving e-commerce operations are being built at an incredible pace, says Fishbein. And new retail space is still growing, despite predications that people won't visit malls as often.
She worries that e-commerce is simply boosting consumption. "With global energy and material use projected to more than triple in the next 50 years, we have to find ways to reach sustainability," says Fishbein.
---
Deer hunt meets goal, ends
03/06/01
nj.com
By ROBERT STERN
http://www.nj.com/mercer/times/index.ssf?/mercer/times/03-06-BARCFURC.html
PRINCETON TOWNSHIP -- With 322 deer killed in two weeks, professional sharpshooters hired to thin the township's deer herd have ended their controversial mission, the first of its kind in the state.
While the township's permit to use the sharpshooters is good until the end of March, township Mayor Phyllis Marchand said yesterday that the marksmen, who completed their work over the weekend, are done for the season.
"They met their goal," Marchand said, "and we are delighted with the success of the program within the time frame." Officials had estimated that sharpshooters would kill between 250 and 300 this winter.
Local officials say they are pleased with the initial results of the mission carried out by White Buffalo Inc., a Connecticut-based wildlife management firm.
Despite its early end, foes of the killing, like Nancy Bowman, say they are dismayed that it took place at all and that officials are likely to tap sharpshooters again next winter to further trim the local deer population.
Bowman is executive director of the township-based Mercer County Deer Alliance, an animal-rights group on the front lines in efforts to prevent the use of sharpshooters to kill deer.
The alliance is a key plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the state's deer-management law and program through which Princeton Township's use of sharpshooters was established last year.
Hearings on that lawsuit have not yet been scheduled.
"We will certainly seek another (sharpshooting) permit for next year and any adjustments that have to be made based on our program this year," township Attorney Edwin Schmierer said yesterday.
The township's long-term plan is to reduce the local herd -- which had been estimated to have as many as 1,600 deer -- to no more than 400.
Whether White Buffalo or a different group of sharpshooters would be asked to execute the next round of sharpshooting remains to be decided, Schmierer said.
"We've had a real good experience with (White Buffalo) this year, from our perspective," he said. "Our police department thought that they were absolute . . . professionals."
But he noted that the U.S. Department of Agriculture also offers sharpshooters to cull deer and that there may be other professional firms similar to White Buffalo that might be available.
Deer here and in other New Jersey communities have been blamed for causing traffic accidents, damaging farmers' crops and wooded underbrush and promoting the spread of Lyme disease.
Critics opposed to killing the animals say their role in those problems has been exaggerated to justify gunning them down.
White Buffalo's snipers took aim at deer lured to bait sites on 26 private lots and several public lands -- including the Mountain Lakes Preserve, Herrontown Woods and Smoyer Park. The sharpshooters fired at deer from elevated stands, primarily at night, using high-powered rifles and silencers.
It was the first time such tactics were used to cull deer in a New Jersey community.
Identical tactics have been approved for use in only one other municipality in the state -- Delaware Township, Hunterdon County. There, agents with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration killed at least six deer from Feb. 26 to 28. A more recent tally was unavailable yesterday.
Foes of sharpshooting say that nonlethal alternatives, such as birth control for the deer and special roadside reflectors that deter deer from darting into traffic, would be more humane than killing them and at least as effective at reducing human-deer conflicts.
Princeton Township officials have said such measures either are not proven or could, at best, supplant lethal methods, at least in the first part of the township's five-year deer-management plan.
Schmierer said local officials will look into placing some special reflectors, regardless of the future use of sharpshooters.
"We are going to have some discussion, explore getting some funding for putting those reflectors up (possibly) along Kingston-Princeton Road (Route 27). That's a pretty densely populated area. That would be a good test area for the state-of-the-art deer reflectors," he said.
But projecting exactly how the township's deer-management plan will evolve from this point on is something officials have to discuss, township Committeeman William Enslin said.
"I really hesitate to speculate about what we'll do for next year," Enslin said. "We'll take a careful analysis about what's happened" and go from there.
But he said sharpshooting is likely.
"If you look at the deer-management plan, it calls for getting the size of the herd down, and then other methods will be brought to bear to maintain the herd," Enslin said.
"Let's face it, we didn't get into this to throw in the towel after the first year. We undertook this knowing that (sharpshooting) was a multiple-year commitment," Enslin said. "Otherwise, we haven't solved the problem at all."
---
Cattle moves to abattoirs despite new cases
Tuesday March 6, 2001
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/footandmouth/
Livestock was beginning to move to British slaughterhouses today, even as more farms were declared unsafe as five new cases of foot and mouth disease were reported in England and Scotland.
The discovery of new cases by officials from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has brought the total number of affected farms across the United Kingdom to 76.
The most significant discoveries of the disease were at two farms bordering Dartmoor national park in Devon, where 50,000 cattle graze on common land.
An outbreak was confirmed at Dunna Bridge Farm, Two Bridges on Saturday and fears were increased today with a second case confirmed at a nearby farm at Widecombe in the Moor.
The potential for the disease to have spread to the cattle leading to an enforced mass slaughter operation was described as "nightmare scenario" by the south west regional National Farmers' Union director, Anthony Gibson.
While the disease continued to take hold in some areas, the government said unaffected farms could begin to transport their animals to slaughterhouses under close supervision and under licenses.
Farmers - whose livestock has plummeted in value over the last 11 days of enforced immobility - have been clamouring to apply for licenses. In Aberdeenshire alone, 71 licenses have been applied for.
The British Horseracing Board and Jockey Club today announced that racing in unaffected areas would resume tomorrow - the first time since a ban was introduced last week.
However, music magazine NME warned that some outdoor summer festivals might be cancelled due to the disease.
There are hopes that the crisis may soon be under control as all but one of the confirmed outbreaks in Britain were conclusively linked to diseased animals elsewhere.
Five new cases yesterday - at farms in Bishop Auckland, County Durham; Hatherleigh, Devon; Highampton, Devon; St Weonards, Herefordshire; and near Beattock, Dumfries and Galloway - were also believed to linked to previous cases.
The agriculture minister, Nick Brown, said measures were already in place to start moving unaffected cattle, sheep and pigs to abattoirs, while slaughtering was already under way in parts of Scotland.
Hundreds of special licences have been given to farmers in such areas and one supermarket promised shoppers fresh supplies of British pork as early as today.
The chief veterinary officer, Jim Scudamore, said 14,092 animals had been slaughtered so far while another 60,000 would also be culled.
In France, all movement of sheep, pigs, goats and horses has been stopped for two weeks, although officials at the EU maintain the crisis has not yet reached epidemic proportions.
Meanwhile, banned spinal cord has been found at an abattoir in Blackpool in a consignment of imported beef from Holland. Spinal cord is included in the list of specified risk material (SRM) which is thought to be at greatest risk of carrying BSE infectivity. Under EU rules, it must be removed when the animal is slaughtered.
Europe's veterinary experts will today consider authorising the use of vaccine to counter the spread of foot and mouth disease. But the policy is still seen as a last resort, and too costly, and is likely to be rejected.
---
Vet says virus still under control
Ministry says all outbreaks can be traced back to first
Tuesday March 6, 2001
The Guardian
Paul Brown,
Special report: Foot and mouth disease
http://www.guardian.co.uk/footandmouth/
The Ministry of Agriculture's chief vet, Jim Scudamore, yesterday said he was confident the foot and mouth outbreak was not out of control despite its continued spread.
Every confirmed case had been traced back to the original outbreak at Heddon-on-the-Wall in Northumberland, Mr Scudamore said, although 100,000 sheep which had been in contact with the disease still had to be traced to make sure they were not infected.
"If we were getting outbreaks in new areas unrelated to markets, farms, or vehicles we already know may have been contaminated I would be far more concerned," he said.
"As it is, we believe we are containing the disease to the known contacts before we stopped all farm animal movement on February 23. When the two-week incubation period for the disease ends we expect the number of outbreaks start to fall."
Six new cases were confirmed yesterday, compared with 13 the day before, all in areas where there had been previous outbreaks. Two were confirmed in Devon, at Hatherleigh and Highampton, two at St Weonards in Herefordshire, one at Beattock in Dumfries, and one at Bishop Auckland, Co Durham. They brought the total of confirmed cases to 74.
"I expect the figures to average about eight, nine or 10 [new cases] a day about now and then start to drop later in the week," Mr Scudamore said. There are more than 120 farms still being investigated.
The outbreak discovered at Dunna Bridge farm on Dartmoor on Sunday, on land owned by the Prince of Wales's Duchy of Cornwall estate, was linked to other cases in Devon, the chief vet said.
Investigations were still continuing to see if any of the 46,000 animals on common land had been infected but no decision had been made on whether any of the cattle and sheep which roam free would have to be destroyed. The ponies, which do not contract the disease, would not be killed.
The chairman of the Devon branch of the National Farmers' Union, David Hill, suggested a ring of troops should be posted on a one-mile radius around the farm to prevent wildlife getting in and livestock getting out.
Yesterday Prince Charles confirmed he had spoken to his tenants: "I rang them this morning. It is an absolute nightmare .. particularly as they have spent much of their lives building up a pedigree herd." There are a number of suspect cases in Europe, Italy, France, the Netherlands and Germany, but none has been confirmed and some ruled out as negative. A large number of animals have been slaughtered as a precaution.
The number of animals which have to be destroyed in Britain is still rising, creating logistical problems is getting rid of the carcasses. So far only 14,092 animals have been slaughtered out of a total of 77,614 which will be destroyed because they are infected or have dangerous contacts. The totals are 64,804 sheep, 10,894 cattle, 2,003 pigs and 13 goats.
Mr Scudamore said contractors were being employed to build the pyres and hundreds of tons of straw, wood and coal had to be moved. Some corpses were being buried and some taken to rendering plants in sealed containers but for the majority burning in the farmers' fields was the best course. "Fire kills the virus," he said.
On Sunday in Banff, Aberdeenshire, pigs were slaughtered to supply shops for the first time since the ban on live stock movements was imposed. Licences to slaughter were issued to 170 abattoirs in England yesterday. Lorries carrying the stock have to be disinfected before loading and after delivery.
The only other livestock being moved were in danger of drowning because of flooding but plans are being drawn up to move sheep ready for lambing down from the hills.
The government is also reinspecting all pig farms that use swill - only about l.5% of the total. Nick Brown, the minister of agriculture, said one of the matters to be considered after the outbreak was over was whether swill feeding should be stopped altogether. Swill remains the chief suspect for how the outbreak began. To cope with the crisis the Ministry of Agriculture's 220 field vets have been augmented by 240 volunteers.
More are coming from overseas including two from Australia, eight from the US, 10 from New Zealand, 10 from Canada and four from Ireland.
Work has started on disinfecting abattoirs and farms affected by the disease where the animals have been destroyed. Farms can restock after 30 days, after which time the virus will have been eliminated.
In Hereford three farmers accused of contravening foot and mouth movement restrictions by moving stock had their cases adjourned until March 22.
• The government made no attempt to prepare for the devastating outbreak of swine fever in the pig industry last year, after a major outbreak in the Netherlands, the agriculture select committee will reveal today, writes Patrick Wintour.
The MPs also attack the Ministry of Agriculture over a £66m rescue package for the industry, announced last year, which has still not reached farmers.
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Meat prices forced up by profiteers
TUESDAY MARCH 06 2001
The Times
BY JAMES DORAN, ANDREW NORFOLK AND VALERIE ELLIOTT
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,2-94714,00.html
THE cost of meat is poised to soar as foreign producers profit from the foot-and-mouth emergency by demanding exorbitant prices.
One of the supermarkets' main suppliers announced last night that it would add 30 percent to the prices of all its meat products in the next couple of days as European prices rose by 40 per cent. Lord Haskins, chairman of Northern Foods, one of the main suppliers to Sainsbury, Tesco and Marks & Spencer, said the move was an inevitable consequence of dwindling domestic supplies as a further four cases of the disease were confirmed, taking the total to 74.
Restrictions are, however, being eased: the limited slaughter of livestock from areas untouched by the virus is being allowed and horse racing is to resume in unaffected areas. The first meeting will be held at Lingfield Park tomorrow, and the Cheltenham Festival is expected to go ahead.
Hundreds of farmers have been granted licences to send animals for slaughter, but they are complaining that they are being offered low prices by abattoirs and meat traders, and the National Farmers' Union accused meat companies of being greedy.
Sainsbury is expecting to run out of British pork in its stores today, Asda has been hit by shortages and both are having to pay higher prices for foreign meat, as are Safeway and Tesco. Asda said that the company would absorb the extra costs "for as long as we can", but added: "We are taking a heavy hit."
Tesco promised that it would try to remain competitive, but said that it would have to pass at least some of the price rises to the consumer. A £1.99 pork pie would go up to between £2.19 and £2.58 if all the extra cost were passed on to the consumer. A £1.29 meat lasagne would cost between £1.42 and £1.68.
One City analyst said: "The customer will have to pay more. Even the big supermarkets can't afford to carry the increases we are seeing at the moment."
Both Asda and Safeway took delivery of the first pigs to be slaughtered under the new licences yesterday and said that some British pork would be available in their Scottish stores by tomorrow. Sainsbury and Tesco are having pigs slaughtered today and will receive supplies in their stores by the end of the week.
Until then, many retailers are relying on imports of pork from Denmark, The Netherlands and Germany, beef from Ireland and lamb from New Zealand.
Lord Haskins, a senior government adviser on food issues, said Northern Foods had no choice but to pass on its extra costs to the shops, a move which is likely within two days. "As the price of meat increases, we will have to impose a temporary tariff for our customers," he said.
"About £800 million worth of our sales have meat somewhere in the recipe. We can't send out lasagne with no minced beef or a pork pie without pork, so we have to increase the prices."
Samworth Brothers, a privately owned company which makes Melton Mowbray pork pies, the Ginsters range of sandwiches and pies and supplies own-label sandwiches to Tesco and Waitrose, has had to buy 15 tonnes of EU pork in the past week.
Brian Stein, the group managing director, said: "In the past we've bought 100 per cent British pork, but this week we've been buying Danish, Dutch, German - whatever we can get our hands on.
"Getting hold of it isn't the problem, but we're being asked to pay very silly prices, as much as 20 to 25 per cent more. We've even started to get phone calls from continental slaughterhouses wanting to sell us their meat at fancy prices. Somebody's making money out of this, but it's certainly not us and it's not the British farmer."
The Dutch Meat Board said that rising prices - the cost of fresh pork middle has risen by 15 per cent on the commodities market in the past week - were explained by the "schoolboy economics". A spokesman said: "It's down to supply and demand. Unfortunately, the foot-and-mouth outbreak has placed significant pressures on the market."
The cases confirmed yesterday were in Devon, including a farm bordering on the Dartmoor National Park, and in Herefordshire and Dumfries.
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New foot-and-mouth alert on Dartmoor
Tuesday 6th March 2001
Ananova
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_229685.html
A suspected case of foot-and-mouth disease has been detected on a second farm in the heart of Dartmoor.
Investigations are under way into the discovery at the farm at Widecombe in the Moor.
The farm is understood to be a mile or two from the outbreak confirmed on Sunday at Dunna Bridge Farm, Two Bridges, run by Roger and Marion Winsor.
MAFF officials are in the process of trying to establish whether the Dunna Bridge case is linked to other outbreaks already confirmed in Devon.
If the outbreak is unconnected - meaning it could have been spread via the wind or birds - there could be a cull among thousands of sheep and cattle which roam the moor.
There are up to 46,000 sheep and cattle on the moor, which has a 5,000-year-old farming tradition. Reports from a MAFF vet on the cause of the Dunna Bridge outbreak are being analysed.
The confirmation of the disease at Dunna Bridge farm meant the slaughter of 800 sheep and 170 beef cattle.
Prince Charles, whose Duchy of Cornwall estate owns the farm, telephoned the Winsors yesterday to offer his sympathy.
The Prince, who has twice visited the farm, said it was an "absolute nightmare" for the couple, who have been there since 1987. He said it was a "desperate blow" for the Winsors, adding that the outbreak was a "hideous business".
The couple said they were bewildered by the outbreak because they had been "holed up" at the farm and had done everything at ground level to try to stop it.
The NFU says confirmation of the disease on Dartmoor poses a "nightmare scenario".
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Oil spilled in Columbia River;
Coast Guard trying to determine source
Tuesday, March 06, 2001
Seattle Times
by Hal Bernton
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/SeattleTimes.woa/wa/gotoArticle?zsection_id=268448406&text_only=0&slug=spill06m&document_id=134272385
LONGVIEW, Cowlitz County - Oil from an unknown source has fouled portions of a 30-mile stretch of the Columbia River, threatening birds and leaving a coat of goo on the nets and boats of some salmon fishermen.
"The smell just about makes you sick," said Wayne Dalton, a gillnetter who began to notice the oil about 10:30 p.m. Sunday.
Yesterday, state Department of Ecology officials estimated the size of the spill at 500 gallons, potentially the biggest spill in the lower river since the early 1990s.
Some fishermen thought the spill was considerably larger. "Five hundred gallons," said fisherman Bill Pack. "That must be a joke."
The heaviest concentrations last night were west of Longview, where a cleanup involving skimmers and containment booms was under way.
The spill comes at a sensitive time for some fish - the height of the smelt run and early run of threatened chinook salmon.
The abundance of fish has also lured seals and sea lions upriver to the Longview area, and fishermen said they saw some sea lions swimming Sunday evening through sheen.
Ron Holcomb, an ecology official who spent part of yesterday on the river, said there appeared to be little shoreline impact.
But in an initial survey, state Fish and Wildlife found oiled seagulls and said geese, ducks and blue heron were at risk.
One of the most heavily oiled areas was around Fisher Island, west of Longview, where 100 blue heron nest.
Fish and Wildlife officials said they may launch a bird-rescue effort if a significant number of oiled birds are found.
At a Portland news conference, officials said it wasn't clear whether the spilled bunker oil - a heavy fuel oil - came from a vessel or a source onshore.
Tests were planned to try to determine which vessel could have spilled the oil.
"It's unfortunate that a responsible party would not act responsibly," Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Dawayne Penberthy said.
The Coast Guard said the oil was found in spots from Kalama, about 35 miles north of Portland, to Longview, about 50 miles from the point where the river empties into the Pacific Ocean.
Information from The Associated Press is included in this report.
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Simple Aid to Gorillas Pays Off:
Babies in the Bamboo
March 6, 2001
New York Times
By IAN FISHER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/06/science/06GORI.html
VOLCANO NATIONAL PARK, Rwanda, March 2 - There is no lack of sex, the voyeurs say, and that is one healthy sign. "The foreplay often involves a lot of staring," said Hilary Swarts, a 28-year-old research assistant from Connecticut who sits here in the jungle in muddy boots documenting all manner of behavior from mankind's close relation, the endangered mountain gorilla. The interest is not really prurient: this majestic range of volcanoes is one of only two places in the world where mountain gorillas still exist, and their number here is inching upward. A recent preliminary estimate put the population in this park at 358, up from 324 in 1989, when the last full census was possible.
The increase may sound small, but scientists are pleased, given that the numbers could easily have declined; the park straddles Rwanda, Congo and Uganda, an area of the world with an extraordinary amount of strife. Three wars have been fought here since 1990. Up to a million refugees have camped near the park. Even in times of relative calm like this one, the human population is so dense that fields of potatoes and pyrethrum, a natural insecticide, creep right up to the park's border, a 20- minute hike from the gorillas' nests.
There are several reasons for this success, but the bottom line, scientists say, is: Conservation works, even in the worst circumstances.
It does not necessarily require a lot of money. Annette Lanjouw, director of the International Gorilla Conservation Program, said one important strategy has been merely to keep park rangers paid and equipped in times of war so they can follow the gorillas regularly and continue antipoaching projects.
"It underscores the importance of maintaining support, even if it's low level support during times of conflict," she said. "Paying salaries, and boots and raincoats, is not very exciting conservation work. But that is what saves the parks during conflict."
That salvation comes at a cost; protecting gorillas can be dangerous work. In recent years, one ranger was killed and one kidnapped on the Congo side.
In Rwanda, the park was closed because of war, reopening in July 1999. Recently Western embassies, including that of the United States, eased warnings against travel to see the gorillas. But while it was closed, in 1997, a ranger named Justin Kanezero was on patrol to monitor the gorillas. He and his colleagues were ambushed by Hutu militiamen, who are fighting the Rwanda government. He was shot, and his injury prevents him from working with the gorillas, so he now operates the park's radios.
But, he said, "Our job is protecting the gorillas, even if we get injured."
The difference that dedication makes is notable within the region. To the south and across the border in Congo, where the war is particularly intense, wildlife officials worry that the animals in Kahuzi-Biega National Park are being slaughtered in huge numbers: There are estimates that hundreds of the roughly 2,000 eastern lowland gorillas there have been killed for food or in the fighting - and perhaps all the elephants.
For several reasons, not least the violence, the same level of conservation has not been possible there as in the Virunga mountain range, where Volcano National Park is situated.
"The Virungas are the exception," said Dieter Steklis, vice president for science and research for the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International, who recently wrote a chapter with his wife for a book on the gorilla population in the Volcano park. "And it's because of the enormous protection they have."
Ms. Fossey, the American primatologist who wrote "Gorillas in the Mist," first visited the gorillas in the Virunga range in 1963 in Congo, then four years later founded the Karisoke Research Center on the Rwandan side. She was killed in 1985, but her work and that of others is credited with reversing a sharp decline in numbers. While there were 450 gorillas estimated to live in the park in 1960, there were only 254 in 1981.
By the census of 1989, the number rose to 324. The next year, a civil war in Rwanda exploded - and the fighting in the immediate region has not really stopped.
Fighting is not the only threat. In 1994, up to a million Hutu fled Rwanda, crossing into Congo, then Zaire, after Hutu extremists carried out a genocide of at least half a million Tutsi and moderate Hutu. The refugees lived in fetid camps, and then, as now, scientists worried that diseases that take many human lives could also harm the gorillas.
To combat the dangers to gorillas and the park itself, Ms. Lanjouw, of the gorilla conservation program, said a combination of efforts were begun in the 1990's by international conservation groups, the governments of Rwanda, Uganda and Congo and local park staff like Mr. Kanezero. The staffs of all three parks began cooperating, starting joint patrols and a paper-and-pencil way of monitoring gorillas that could be used under the worst of circumstances.
They kept up antipoaching programs and worked to find alternatives for local people who use the park for wood, food, water and traditional medicine. Outside groups are still paying the salaries of all the park workers in Congo.
In recent years - even in times when the park is closed - local staff have been following most of the gorilla groups every day to make sure they are intact and well. "We must see the whole family," said Felix Semivumbi, 36, a guide. "If you don't see all the gorillas you have to have an idea why."
For all the work, the danger in the park - and particularly in Congo, more violent now than the Rwandan or Ugandan sides - has prevented a full census. But based on the rangers' observations in all three countries, experts recently assembled the estimate of 358 gorillas in the Virunga range - which Ms. Lanjouw said she believes is a slight underestimate. Another 300 mountain gorillas live north of here along the border of Uganda and Congo in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest.
Even without the estimate, the guides and trackers who work in the park said it has been clear that the numbers are rising.
Claude Seruhungo, the park's assistant warden, said that only a few years ago there were few babies in a family of gorillas called the Susa group, the largest group that tourists can see. Today, several tourists accompanied by armed soldiers walked through farmland, then hiked 20 minutes through a forest of bamboo and vines to find the group. It is now quite busy with nine babies and six juveniles running around, literally swinging through the trees.
The guides looked over the gorillas to be sure that all 34 in the group were there and healthy (one is missing a hand, another a foot, from poachers' snares). Sick gorillas are treated by veterinarians. The mere presence of rangers helps keep poachers away.
The guides clearly like the gorillas, who have been habituated to human contact. The men make ape noises when they get near, which sounds something like a grunted "Mhem!"
"I am telling them to come - that we are friends," said one guide, David Sibomana, 33.
It is less clear, though, how much the gorillas like the humans. Tolerance seems to describe things best: one male gorilla named Munyinya was sighted sitting just off a path, as unconcerned as if waiting for a bus. But not long after the tourists came close, he ambled off in what looked distinctly like irritation.
Whatever the gorillas' opinion, many conservationists believe that controlled tourism helps save gorillas because tourists bring in money. But tourists have been victims of violence too - including the eight killed in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest two years ago. Not many have been coming, despite the recent increase in safety.
Even if the wars all end, there is still the basic battle of species to contend with. At the park's border, a farmer named Esperance Nyiramahirwe, 27, chopping at the soil since dawn, said she favored protecting the gorillas. "They are God's creatures," she said. "And God created us."
But Rwanda is poor and the need for farmland is great. Gorilla experts say they need to convince local people that the gorillas and the forest are important, even potentially profitable. Despite her affection for gorillas, there is perhaps a more relevant reality to Ms. Nyiramahirwe's life.
"We don't have enough land to feed our family," she said.
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Animals Set Afire as France Fears Outbreak
March 6, 2001
New York Times
By SUZANNE DALEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/06/world/06FRAN.html
PARIS, March 5 - Alarm that Britain's outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease may have crossed the English Channel mounted today, as French officials announced that traces of the virus had been found in sheep on nine farms in five regions.
The government quickly halted meat exports and hurried to complete the slaughter of more than 50,000 animals that had either come from Britain or come in contact with those that did. Officials called for calm, but the notion of an impending crisis dominated the news and television stations showed piles of carcasses being set alight.
Government officials said tests on sheep from the nine farms showed that the animals had produced antibodies after contact with the virus, but that does not mean that they were active carriers of the disease.
The affected animals were destroyed today, and further tests, to be completed on Tuesday, will determine whether they were carrying a live virus. "We do not know whether they were carriers of the illness," Agriculture Minister Jean Glavany said today.
So far, no active case of foot-and- mouth has been found in France, or elsewhere in continental Europe. But the authorities have moved aggressively to clamp down on any possible outbreak.
In France officials set up roadblocks around the farms in the districts of Cher, Mayenne, Oise, Vienne and Seine-St. Denis, in the center and north of the country. Travel was restricted, vehicles were stopped so they could be disinfected and people were being asked to step in a disinfectant solution.
Officials said they could not wait for the test results on Tuesday before acting to prevent an outbreak from spreading. The disease does not usually affect humans but can have dire financial consequences for farmers.
At a noon news conference, Mr. Glavany announced a halt to the export of meat and a 15-day ban on the movement of cattle, sheep, pigs, goats and horses within France, unless they were being taken for slaughter. Later in the afternoon, health officials announced that horse racing would be suspended.
"The situation is very worrisome," said Mr. Glavany, the minister of agriculture. "It is very worrisome in Britain, and it is very worrisome here. We are watching it hour by hour."
The day brought mixed news for Europeans who have been watching the spread of the disease in Britain with growing horror and, this weekend, saw some of their own farms cordoned off behind quarantine signs.
Denmark, Sweden and Belgium, which had all announced suspected cases of the disease on Saturday or Sunday, based on physical symptoms like blisters, were able to report that their tests proved negative.
But hardly had those results been announced when officials in the German state of Brandenburg said they had sealed off a pig farm after noting possible symptoms in one of the animals.
And in Britain, the disease continued to take its toll. Officials said foot- and-mouth had broken out on another two farms, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 71. More than 400 farms remain under restrictions.
Among the affected farms is one in the heart of the Dartmoor wilderness, owned by the Prince of Wales. Dartmoor, a 365-square-mile national park, is home to about 46,000 head of livestock as well as thousands of wild deer, ponies and boars, and the confirmation of foot-and-mouth disease there raises fears that the disease will be spread by the wild animals. Britain has slaughtered more than 14,000 animals so far to halt the spread of the disease - and is expected to slaughter 60,000 more. Large sections of the countryside remain closed to outsiders, with footpaths, forests and national parks off limits.
For days, Britain's European partners have been anxiously waiting to see if the virus - which can be transmitted by people, cars, clothes, manure, water, hay and even the wind - would jump the channel, which at its narrowest is 21 miles wide, dealing an blow to a farming industry already reeling from the effects of the mad cow crisis.
The two diseases are unrelated. Mad cow, a degenerative brain disease, is fatal to humans. Foot and mouth is a contagious virus akin to a bad cold in humans, but it can kill young animals. Milk cows that get the virus produce less milk and other animals lose weight.
"For a lot of farmers this would be a very hard thing right now," said Costa Golfidis, the director of livestock at Copa, the European farm lobbying group.
Already, the crisis has hit the export markets. Bulgaria banned all of its imports of cloven-footed animals, related products and fodder from France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Ireland as a precaution. Japan imposed a temporary ban on imports of cloven-footed animals and related products from Belgium, France and Denmark. South Korea added possibly suspect meat from France, Germany and Denmark to its quarantine list.
France did get some good news. Officials said tests of two suspected sick cows in the Cher district were negative, as was a case involving sheep at a farm in Roche-la-Molière, a village southwest of Lyon in the Loire region.
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Toxic Avengers With Leaves
March 6, 2001
New York Times
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/06/science/06PLAN.html?pagewanted=1
As scientists struggle to find cheaper, easier ways to clean up polluted soil and groundwater, they are increasingly wielding a novel tool: plants.
In the United States alone, the cost of decontaminating tens of thousands of toxic sites on factory grounds, farms and military installations is expected to eventually surpass $700 billion, several analyses show.
The main approach so far, digging out offending chemicals and carting them to special landfills, is costly and disruptive, often requiring fleets of trucks, forests of mechanical wells and other equipment.
After a decade of field and greenhouse tests, a variety of techniques harnessing the absorptive power of plants' roots appear poised for a much expanded role.
Hundreds of species of plants, together with the fungi and bacteria that infuse the rhizosphere, the ecosystem around roots, represent the botanical equivalent of detox centers, seeking and often breaking down molecules that can harm most other life, soil scientists and botanists say.
There are sunflowers that capture uranium, ferns that thrive on arsenic, alpine herbs that hoard zinc, mustards that lap up lead, clovers that eat oil and poplar trees that destroy dry-cleaning solvents.
In fact, poplars are so effective that people in the fast-growing "phytoremediation" business have a new name for them. "A stand of poplars is a self-assembling solar-powered pump-and-treat system," said Steven A. Rock, an environmental engineer in the National Risk Management Research Laboratory of the federal Environmental Protection Agency in Cincinnati.
There, Mr. Rock is part of a team tracking research into ways plants can fight pollution. Small tests have been run at some sites on the federal Superfund list of worst toxic spills, and a growing number of larger projects have successfully cleaned plots where pollution is not as severe but still violates standards.
It is this kind of pollution problem - with low, dispersed, but harmful levels of contamination - that has proved least amenable to conventional technologies and is likely to be the most valuable niche for plants, Mr. Rock and other experts said.
Still, he and many scientists stress that there are still many questions to resolve before a particular project gets going.
Plants must be chosen not only for their ability to go after the chemicals involved, but also for their tolerance of weather and other conditions at a site.
Some plants that meet these requirements may actually make matters worse. For example, research is still under way to determine whether some solvents extracted from the ground by trees end up evaporating through pores in leaves.
For now, it appears that very little gets into the air, and what does is usually quickly degraded by sunlight, a variety of scientists say. But more work is being done.
Also, care must be taken to avoid the chance that insects or wildlife might eat plants that have accumulated high concentrations of toxic materials. Some laboratory studies are showing that insects avoid plants with high metal concentrations, and that pattern may explain how the metal-accumulating trait evolved in the first place.
Perhaps the biggest limitation of plants is that they take time to grow and time to work, with several crops over months or successive seasons often needed to eliminate pollution.
At sites requiring urgent action, there will always be the need to "dig and dump," said Dr. Steven P. McGrath, senior principal scientist at the Institute of Arable Crops Research, in Hartfordshire, England, and an expert in the use of plants to purge metals from the soil.
But he is one of many experts who still see enormous potential worldwide for the greener method.
"These techniques offer the promise of cleaning up the legacy of pollution in a cost-effective way," Dr. McGrath said. "With biological methods, prices come down by orders of magnitude into an area where as a society we can afford it."
So far, the market appears to agree with Dr. McGrath. A recent analysis of the phytoremediation business by Dr. David J. Glass, a biologist and environmental business analyst in Needham, Mass., projected that the industry, with $50 million to $86 million in revenues in 2000, is likely to see an annual income of $100 million to $170 million by next year and reach $400 million a year by 2005.
That does not count the possible market overseas, Dr. Glass said, where low-cost cleanups will find many uses as developing countries eventually grapple with the side effects of industrialization. "Twenty- five years from now, it'll be the rest of the world that's cleaning up," Dr. Glass said.
A Mystery of Chemistry
Another potential impediment to acceptance of plants in toxic cleanups is that, to a significant extent, much remains unknown about just how they do what they do, Mr. Rock said. The rhizosphere and the chemical processes that carry pollutants into roots and then stash them harmlessly in plant tissue still constitute "a green box," he said. "We know what goes in, we know what comes out, but we're not at all sure what's going on inside."
For years, this mystery kept regulatory agencies - long focused on traditional technologies - from taking phytoremediation seriously, he said. But with a growing list of successful projects, the method is proving its worth - even if some of the physiology and chemistry remains murky, he added.
"The most important thing is to make sure nothing bad is leaving a site," Mr. Rock said. "You have the same cleanup standard whether you dig it, burn it or grow something on it. It's got to be the same level of clean. It's just another tool in the toolbox."
What is known is that plants' roots evolved as extremely efficient mechanisms for pulling necessary nutrients, water and minerals out of the ground.
Dr. Ilya Raskin, a professor of plant biology at Rutgers, who is widely credited with coining the term phytoremediation 12 years ago, said the lengths of the maze of roots and tiny root hairs of a single sunflower plant could total many miles.
"Plants can't run around hunting for food," Dr. Raskin said. "So they must harvest it. Root systems are a giant solar-driven harvesting mechanism that permeates every nook and crevice in the soil."
Dr. Raskin conducted early tests of ways to exploit this mechanism to sop up radioactive substances and heavy metals. One of the most striking tests took place in 1995 in a small pond within sight of the Chernobyl nuclear power plants in Ukraine, where sunflowers were grown on Styrofoam rafts with their roots dangling in the water.
The pond, like everything for miles around, was contaminated with Strontium 90, Cesium 137 and other harmful radioactive substances released during the reactor fire in 1986. Within days, the sunflowers, which have dense mops of roots, accumulated levels of cesium and strontium that were several thousand times as high as the concentrations in the water.
Often, plants gather nutrients and other chemicals in the soil in tandem with bacteria and other soil life. Through photosynthesis, the plants pump oxygen and specialized enzymes down into the ground, helping the micro-organisms break down organic material.
As far as botanists know, the rigors of natural selection - at least until well into the 20th century - did not involve surviving exposure to substances like trichloroethylene, also known as TCE, a metal-degreasing solvent, or ethylene dibromide, a pesticide used to kill soil nematodes that has been banned in the United States but sometimes taints aquifers beneath farmland. Even so, some plants effectively dismantle these synthetic compounds, according to a variety of studies and field tests.
At an E.P.A. research laboratory in Athens, Ga., studies showed that an enzyme produced by a common aquatic weed, parrot feather, effectively destroyed trinitrotoluene, better known as TNT. This has led to several successful pilot projects in which artificial wetlands removed the chemical from water that had flowed under military firing ranges.
From Ecuador to the Hudson River Valley, similar constructed wetlands are already cleaning up polluted water from landfills, slaughterhouses, cider mills, sewage plants, fish farms and parking lots.
Putting Trees to Work
One of the most established techniques is using trees, mostly poplars and willows, to pump and treat groundwater from aquifers contaminated with solvents or other toxic organic compounds.
Phytokinetics Inc., based in North Logan, Utah, is one of more than half a dozen companies deploying trees to treat such sites. At the peak of the growing season, said Dr. Ari M. Ferro, a biochemist and Phytokinetics' president, each tree can pump more than 15 gallons of water each day. At former oil refineries in Wyoming and Montana, the company has planted plots with 1,000 trees per acre, resulting in a pumping rate of 10 gallons a minute per acre.
"The trees are pumping like crazy," Dr. Ferro said. "The contaminants get sucked up into the root zone and biodegraded."
Other trees are being put to work, with plantings of koa on a pineapple plantation in Hawaii extracting ethylene dibromide from groundwater.
The quickest growth in the business is in the use of plants to remove heavy metals from soil.
One of the notable successes in this area came last year in Detroit, when Edenspace Systems, a phytoremediation company in Chantilly, Va., completed a cleanup of a lead-laced plot of land tucked amid a complex of DaimlerChrysler buildings.
The top four feet of soil was bulldozed to a nearby area and planted in sunflowers and then Indian mustard, both of which are known to accumulate lead. The lead concentration in the soil was reduced 43 percent, bringing it below federal and state limits. The project cost $900,000, according to Michael Curry, the remediation project manager for the company. But that was more than $1 million less than it would have cost to cart the 5,700 cubic yards of soil to a hazardous waste landfill. Instead, only a few cubic yards of tainted plant material had to be disposed of, he said.
"It's not a magic bullet, but it's very cost effective," Mr. Curry said. "We'd definitely consider doing it again."
Just as botanists have been scouring the plant world for promising drugs, now they are seeking particular species that have evolved the ability to target roots at hot spots of a variety of toxic heavy metals and other elements in soil and accumulate concentrations so high that some of them, when dried, are up to 5 percent metal by weight.
Dr. Alan J. M. Baker, a botany professor at the University of Melbourne in Australia, is one of the veteran plant prospectors, having found promising species from New Caledonia to Crete. The count of metal accumulators is more than 440 species, he said.
In France, researchers studying the zinc-loving trait of alpine pennycress, a wild European herb, recently showed that its roots seek out the hottest hot spots of the metal, which often accumulates in farmland and is toxic to many other plants.
A Plant That Loves Arsenic
The latest discovery came at a central Florida lumberyard where the ground was badly contaminated with arsenic compounds from wood preservatives. Arsenic is so toxic to most plants that it is an ingredient in some herbicides. But after scientists at the University of Florida tested 14 plant species growing there, last year they found that the brake fern, common in the Southeast and other parts of the world, had arsenic in its fronds and stems at more than 200 times the concentration in the soil.
The work was reported last month in Nature. Under a licensing deal, the fern is being sold by Edenspace to filter the element out of water. The E.P.A. recently reduced limits for arsenic in drinking water in this country, and it also contaminates thousands of wells in Bangladesh.
Dr. Lena Q. Ma, an associate professor of soil and environmental chemistry at the university and the study leader, said her main interest was determining how the plant works. "It not only tolerates arsenic, it loves it," Dr. Ma said. "It has to have some mechanism to take it up and store it in a form that doesn't interfere with the plant and kill it. That's our next work."
The next frontier, as in so many other areas of biology, is genetic manipulation, as scientists seek to blend the best attributes of different plants - and not just plants. Already, yellow poplars have been grown with a gene taken from bacteria that transform a toxic form of mercury into a safer one.
And last June, research described in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences successfully inserted into tobacco plants a gene for a mammalian liver enzyme that breaks down a variety of toxic organic chemicals.
The gene functioned "spectacularly" in one plant, said Dr. Lee A. Newman, an author of the study who teaches at the University of South Carolina School of Public Health.
She was involved in the Hawaiian project using koa trees and has also used poplars in successful TCE cleanups in Oregon and Washington.
The next goal would be to try to insert the mammalian gene in trees or other larger plants that could extract much larger amounts of the particular chemicals, she said. But she acknowledged that even though such plants would never turn up in a taco shell or other human food, the prospect of genetic manipulation would probably be looked at skeptically by the public.
In all of the cleanups, she said, even with unaltered plant species, great care will have to be taken to avoid mistakes.
"If you have a couple of big flops people will lose confidence," she said.
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Pataki Names an Environmental Conservation Commissioner
March 6, 2001
New York Times
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/06/nyregion/06DEC.html
ALBANY, March 5 - Gov. George E. Pataki today named a former deputy commissioner who helped devise his policy on toxic waste cleanup to head the State Department of Environmental Conservation.
If confirmed by the Senate, the former official, Erin M. Crotty, will take over the department in two weeks, succeeding John P. Cahill. She would be the first woman to hold the job. Mr. Cahill, who headed the department for four years, was promoted last month to become a senior policy adviser to the governor.
Ms. Crotty is now a lobbyist for Plug Power, a joint venture near Albany that is trying to develop methods of using fossil fuels or hydrogen to produce electricity through a chemical reaction, rather than through combustion.
Mr. Pataki, who sees himself as a committed environmentalist, expressed confidence that Ms. Crotty has the expertise to be a fine commissioner. She was his first choice, he said, once he decided to bring Mr. Cahill into his inner circle of advisers.
"The first person I thought of was this person, but we didn't know if we would be able to entice her back into public service," he said.
Reactions to Ms. Crotty's nomination were mixed among environmentalists and lawmakers. Ms. Crotty headed a group that developed Mr. Pataki's policy on state Superfund sites, which favors weakening cleanup standards for sites that will used by industry in the future. That policy has drawn fire from some environmentalists and Democratic lawmakers who favor keeping stricter standards.
"The administration has again passed over the environmental community and gone to industry for the head to lead this department," said Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky, a Westchester County Democrat who heads the Assembly's Environmental Conservation Committee. "She's the person who ran the attempt to weaken Superfund and to reduce business responsibility to clean up its own mess."
Some environmentalists, however, praised Ms. Crotty's grasp of the issues and said she was not a rigid ideologue.
"I didn't like what came out of the governor's Superfund working group, but I think Erin Crotty is one of a handful of people that really understand the issues," said Val Washington, the executive director of Environmental Advocates, a lobbying group. "I see her as someone who can continue to work on it."
Ms. Crotty, who is 34 and grew up in Troy, N.Y., said that she agreed with the governor on most issues.
"The priorities of mine are the priorities of the governor," she said. "My job is to implement them."
Before joining Plug Power in October 1999, Ms. Crotty served for two years as a deputy state environmental commissioner in charge of cleaning up contaminated sites and ensuring water quality.
Ms. Crotty first joined the administration as an aide to the governor's counsel, Michael Finnegan, in 1995. She played an important role in negotiating a historic agreement between New York City and upstate communities that protects the city's watersheds without resorting to a filtration plant. The agreement imposes development restrictions around the reservoirs.
Before Mr. Pataki's election in 1994, Ms. Crotty worked as a policy analyst for the New York State Senate Commission on Toxic Substances and Hazardous Wastes.
The Republican-controlled Senate must vote on Ms. Crotty's nomination, , but aides to the majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno, said they did not foresee much opposition.
Among the first issues Ms. Crotty will have to deal with are a proposal to develop industrial wastelands in the cities, the federal government's plan to dredge contaminated soil from the Hudson River and questions surrounding the emergency use of diesel generators to provide power this summer, environmentalists said.
After the governor announced her nomination at a news conference today, she said her parents were naturalists and anglers. They had instilled in her, she said, a deep commitment to protecting the environment from a young age.
"This is one of those life-changing moments," she said, as she took the podium in front of the cameras.
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City Hopes Pesticide Injections Will Make Its Trees Beetle-Proof
March 6, 2001
New York Times
By BARBARA STEWART
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/06/nyregion/06TREE.html
New York City is about to try a new weapon in the war against Asian long-horned beetles, the pest that has destroyed thousands of trees in the city and on Long Island.
Starting in April, trees at risk of being infested with the beetles will be injected with insecticide, said Fiona Watt, chief of the forestry division of the City Parks and Recreation Department.
"It's our best shot yet," Ms. Watt said. "We've had few tools at our disposal - mostly survey and subsequent removal of trees. This is a new tool that looks very, very encouraging in reducing the beetle infestation and ultimately reducing the number of trees that are lost."
The Asian long-horned beetle was first spotted in Brooklyn in 1996 and has no natural enemies in North America. To date, the only way to fight the spread of the beetles has been to cut down infested trees.
The beetle has caused the destruction of 3,000 trees on the East Side of Manhattan, in northern Brooklyn, and Bayside, Flushing and Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, as well as northwestern Queens. The city has replanted 4,000 trees.
The new treatment is scheduled to begin when trees' sap begins running in the late spring. Small plastic canisters containing insecticide will be inserted into holes drilled into the bases of trees.
The insecticide will then be absorbed by the tree and spread through its trunk, branches and leaves. When the beetles eat their way through the tree, ingesting the insecticide, they will be killed.
One treatment lasts an entire season. The insecticide, called imidacloprid, is also used in flea powders and lawn treatments.
The city and the United States Department of Agriculture are planning to treat 8,200 trees in the city and about 4,000 trees on Long Island from April to June, when the trees' circulatory systems will be active, Ms. Watt said. The treatment has succeeded in Chicago, where the beetle has caused the destruction of 1,400 trees.
The insect prefers maples, including sugar, red, Norway, silver and sycamore maples, as well as elms, birches, horse chestnuts and poplars. They kill trees by eating them from the inside.
About half of the city's 5 million trees are varieties that are vulnerable to the beetles, said Parks Commissioner Henry J. Stern.
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Arctic Wildlife, Here
March 6, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/06/opinion/L06ARC.html
To the Editor:
"Neither Barren Nor Remote," by William Cronon (Op-Ed, Feb. 28), was a truly eloquent explanation of the importance of maintaining natural areas, no matter how far away they seem. While I will probably never be able to travel to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, I enjoy its beauty when I see its migratory birds visit me here in New York City.
APHAEL D. MAZOR Brooklyn, Feb. 28, 2001
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EU closes livestock markets
03/06/2001
USA Today
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001-03-06-foot.htm
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - European Union veterinary experts on Tuesday ordered all livestock markets closed for two weeks in the 15-nation bloc in an effort to contain foot-and-mouth disease.
The EU panel said livestock transports would be allowed between farms and direct to slaughterhouses, but all markets and gathering points for cattle, pigs and sheep would be banned.
The panel also extended until March 27 a ban on all exports of meat, livestock and milk products from Britain and said the tires of vehicles arriving from Britain to other EU nations must be disinfected.
The measures are set to come into force once they are formally adopted by the European Commission, a decision EU spokesman Gregor Kreuzhuber said would come this week.
Although no confirmed cases have been found outside Britain, the new restrictions reflected deep fears that the livestock virus could spread through herds in mainland Europe.
The curbs were approved despite Britain's message to the meeting that the outbreak of foot-and-month disease may be close to peaking.
"The information he gave was rather reassuring," said European Commission spokesman Thorsten Muench of a briefing by Britain's representative on the panel.
"The (British) authorities expect a peak today, tomorrow or through this week."
Several EU nations were pushing for tougher action. Italy had demanded a complete ban on all livestock movement across borders within the EU, but the panel of veterinary experts did not go that far.
---
Foot-and-Mouth Crisis
March 6, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/06/opinion/L06BRI.html
To the Editor:
Re "Foot-and-Mouth Disease Intrudes, Putting British Farmers in Dread" (front page, March 3):
Tourist and business travel to England, Ireland and Wales continues even as we read that foot-and- mouth disease can be carried anywhere, including on the shoes and clothing of travelers.
The obvious question that must be asked and answered immediately is, What is our government doing to protect the United States from the looming health threat, and when will the government move to guarantee that none of the foot-and-mouth viruses reach our country's livestock?
The time for intelligent, practical, effective action is now, not tomorrow.
LOIS ERWIN Waldwick, N.J., March 3, 2001
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Arizona
01/03/06
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm
Arizona - The National Park Service has started planning the removal of non-native tamarisk trees along the Colorado River in Grand Canyon National Park. Preliminary surveys conducted in 157 side canyons indicate that tamarisk is in the early stages of invading tributaries from the main river corridor. Tamarisk displaces native vegetation.
Georgia - The state's chief environmental official approved paying Flint River basin farmers not to irrigate their crops from feeder streams and lakes, based on forecasts of a fourth consecutive year of severe drought. The state could pay up to $10 million to persuade about 1,450 Flint basin farmers not to withdraw water to preserve flow into the river.
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Dispute Over Road in Nevada Nears an End
March 6, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/06/national/06NATI.html
RENO, Nev., March 5 (AP) - Forest Service officials have recommended approval of a settlement that would allow Elko County to rebuild a road in northern Nevada that was the focal point of protests by property rights advocates.
The dispute began when the Forest Service refused to rebuild a washed- out stretch of road for fear of the effect on a threatened fish, the bull trout. In 1999, a group of Nevadans calling themselves the Jarbidge Shovel Brigade tried rebuilding the road. They were stopped when the Forest Service was granted a restraining order.
The compromise would require the county to contribute up to $200,000 toward efforts to improve other parts of the road and the habitat for the threatened fish.
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France put on alert for animal disease
March 6, 2001
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-200136213522.htm
PARIS - France yesterday banned exports of animals at risk from foot-and-mouth disease after tests on nine herds showed traces of thehighly contagious virus. In Belgium, tests showed no evidence of the disease in suspected pigs.
So far, there have been no confirmed cases of the disease in continental Europe: The Agriculture Ministry said it was not yet clear whether the animals in France were carriers, only that tests showed that they had produced antibodies after being in contact with the virus.
But with fears growing that the disease will spread from Britain and Northern Ireland, where 70 separate outbreaks have been reported, France outlined strict new security measures that will freeze some sectors of its animal industry.
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Guilty Pleas by Man Beaten in Taped Arrest
March 6, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/06/national/06NATI.html
PHILADELPHIA, March 5 (AP) - A Philadelphia man who was kicked and punched by police officers in an arrest caught on videotape last July pleaded guilty today to more than a dozen charges connected to a two-week crime rampage that preceded his capture.
The arrest of the man, Thomas Jones, 31, was broadcast just weeks before the Republican National Convention opened in Philadelphia.
Mr. Jones pleaded guilty to felony charges that included 2 counts of carjacking, 10 counts of robbery and 2 counts of aggravated assault as well as misdemeanors including simple assault, reckless endangerment and drug charges.
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POLICE UNION ENDS TALKS
March 6, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/06/nyregion/06MBRF.html
HARTFORD: The Waterbury police union walked out on contract concession talks with state officials yesterday, leading Gov. John G. Rowland to predict passage of a state takeover bill that includes sanctions opposed by city unions. Leaders of eight unions met throughout the day with the state budget director, Marc Ryan, but disagreed on concessions, Mr. Rowland said. The breakdown means he will push for a takeover bill that would allow the state to exercise broad power over union contracts, Mr. Rowland said. A police union spokesman did not return a call for comment. (AP)
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Nebraska
01/03/06
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm
Nebraska - A Dixon County grand jury found no wrongdoing on the part of police officer Matthew Hoffman in the shooting death of Daniel Start last November. Start was shot and killed after a chase ended with him running from his car in a cornfield and shooting at the officer, officials said. The investigation determined that Hoffman acted in self-defense.
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NATIONAL SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE-1
fas.og
http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nspd/index.html
Organization of the National Security Council System
This document is the first in a series of National Security Presidential Directives. National Security Presidential Directives shall replace both Presidential Decision Directives and Presidential Review Directives as an instrument for communicating presidential decisions about the national security policies of the United States.
National security includes the defense of the United States of America, protection of our constitutional system of government, and the advancement of United States interests around the globe. National security also depends on America's opportunity to prosper in the world economy. The National Security Act of 1947, as amended, established the National Security Council to advise the President with respect to the integration of domestic, foreign, and military policies relating to national security. That remains its purpose. The NSC shall advise and assist me in integrating all aspects of national security policy as it affects the United States -- domestic, foreign, military, intelligence, and economics (in conjunction with the National Economic Council (NEC)). The National Security Council system is a process to coordinate executive departments and agencies in the effective development and implementation of those national security policies.
The National Security Council (NSC) shall have as its regular attendees (both statutory and non-statutory) the President, the Vice President, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Defense, and the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. The Director of Central Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as statutory advisors to the NSC, shall also attend NSC meetings. The Chief of Staff to the President and the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy are invited to attend any NSC meeting. The Counsel to the President shall be consulted regarding the agenda of NSC meetings, and shall attend any meeting when, in consultation with the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, he deems it appropriate. The Attorney General and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget shall be invited to attend meetings pertaining to their responsibilities. For the Attorney General, this includes both those matters within the Justice Department's jurisdiction and those matters implicating the Attorney General's responsibility under 28 U.S.C. 511 to give his advice and opinion on questions of law when required by the President. The heads of other executive departments and agencies, as well as other senior officials, shall be invited to attend meetings of the NSC when appropriate.
The NSC shall meet at my direction. When I am absent from a meeting of the NSC, at my direction the Vice President may preside. The Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs shall be responsible, at my direction and in consultation with the other regular attendees of the NSC, for determining the agenda, ensuring that necessary papers are prepared, and recording NSC actions and Presidential decisions. When international economic issues are on the agenda of the NSC, the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy shall perform these tasks in concert.
The NSC Principals Committee (NSC/PC) will continue to be the senior interagency forum for consideration of policy issues affecting national security, as it has since 1989. The NSC/PC shall have as its regular attendees the Secretary of State, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Defense, the Chief of Staff to the President, and the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (who shall serve as chair). The Director of Central Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff shall attend where issues pertaining to their responsibilities and expertise are to be discussed. The Attorney General and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget shall be invited to attend meetings pertaining to their responsibilities. For the Attorney General, this includes both those matters within the Justice Department's jurisdiction and those matters implicating the Attorney General's responsibility under 28 U.S.C. 511 to give his advice and opinion on questions of law when required by the President. The Counsel to the President shall be consulted regarding the agenda of NSC/PC meetings, and shall attend any meeting when, in consultation with the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, he deems it appropriate. When international economic issues are on the agenda of the NSC/PC, the Committee's regular attendees will include the Secretary of Commerce, the United States Trade Representative, the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy (who shall serve as chair for agenda items that principally pertain to international economics), and, when the issues pertain to her responsibilities, the Secretary of Agriculture. The Chief of Staff and National Security Adviser to the Vice President shall attend all meetings of the NSC/PC, as shall the Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor (who shall serve as Executive Secretary of the NSC/PC). Other heads of departments and agencies, along with additional senior officials, shall be invited where appropriate.
The NSC/PC shall meet at the call of the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, in consultation with the regular attendees of the NSC/PC. The Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs shall determine the agenda in consultation with the foregoing, and ensure that necessary papers are prepared. When international economic issues are on the agenda of the NSC/PC, the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy shall perform these tasks in concert.
The NSC Deputies Committee (NSC/DC) will also continue to serve as the senior sub-Cabinet interagency forum for consideration of policy issues affecting national security. The NSC/DC can prescribe and review the work of the NSC interagency groups discussed later in this directive. The NSC/DC shall also help ensure that issues being brought before the NSC/PC or the NSC have been properly analyzed and prepared for decision. The NSC/DC shall have as its regular members the Deputy Secretary of State or Under Secretary of the Treasury or Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs, the Deputy Secretary of Defense or Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, the Deputy Attorney General, the Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget, the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Deputy Chief of Staff to the President for Policy, the Chief of Staff and National Security Adviser to the Vice President, the Deputy Assistant to the President for International Economic Affairs, and the Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor (who shall serve as chair). When international economic issues are on the agenda, the NSC/DC's regular membership will include the Deputy Secretary of Commerce, a Deputy United States Trade Representative, and, when the issues pertain to his responsibilities, the Deputy Secretary of Agriculture, and the NSC/DC shall be chaired by the Deputy Assistant to the President for International Economic Affairs for agenda items that principally pertain to international economics. Other senior officials shall be invited where appropriate.
The NSC/DC shall meet at the call of its chair, in consultation with the other regular members of the NSC/DC. Any regular member of the NSC/DC may also request a meeting of the Committee for prompt crisis management. For all meetings the chair shall determine the agenda in consultation with the foregoing, and ensure that necessary papers are prepared.
The Vice President and I may attend any and all meetings of any entity established by or under this directive.
Management of the development and implementation of national security policies by multiple agencies of the United States Government shall usually be accomplished by the NSC Policy Coordination Committees (NSC/PCCs). The NSC/PCCs shall be the main day-to-day fora for interagency coordination of national security policy. They shall provide policy analysis for consideration by the more senior committees of the NSC system and ensure timely responses to decisions made by the President. Each NSC/PCC shall include representatives from the executive departments, offices, and agencies represented in the NSC/DC.
Six NSC/PCCs are hereby established for the following regions: Europe and Eurasia, Western Hemisphere, East Asia, South Asia, Near East and North Africa, and Africa. Each of the NSC/PCCs shall be chaired by an official of Under Secretary or Assistant Secretary rank to be designated by the Secretary of State.
Eleven NSC/PCCs are hereby also established for the following functional topics, each to be chaired by a person of Under Secretary or Assistant Secretary rank designated by the indicated authority:
Democracy, Human Rights, and International Operations (by the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs);
International Development and Humanitarian Assistance (by the Secretary of State);
Global Environment (by the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy in concert);
International Finance (by the Secretary of the Treasury);
Transnational Economic Issues (by the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy);
Counter-Terrorism and National Preparedness (by the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs);
Defense Strategy, Force Structure, and Planning (by the Secretary of Defense);
Arms Control (by the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs);
Proliferation, Counterproliferation, and Homeland Defense (by the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs);
Intelligence and Counterintelligence (by the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs); and
Records Access and Information Security (by the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs).
The Trade Policy Review Group (TPRG) will continue to function as an interagency coordinator of trade policy. Issues considered within the TPRG, as with the PCCs, will flow through the NSC and/or NEC process, as appropriate.
Each NSC/PCC shall also have an Executive Secretary from the staff of the NSC, to be designated by the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. The Executive Secretary shall assist the Chairman in scheduling the meetings of the NSC/PCC, determining the agenda, recording the actions taken and tasks assigned, and ensuring timely responses to the central policymaking committees of the NSC system. The Chairman of each NSC/PCC, in consultation with the Executive Secretary, may invite representatives of other executive departments and agencies to attend meetings of the NSC/PCC where appropriate.
The Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, at my direction and in consultation with the Vice President and the Secretaries of State, Treasury, and Defense, may establish additional NSC/PCCs as appropriate.
The Chairman of each NSC/PCC, with the agreement of the Executive Secretary, may establish subordinate working groups to assist the PCC in the performance of its duties.
The existing system of Interagency Working Groups is abolished.
The oversight of ongoing operations assigned in PDD/NSC-56 to Executive Committees of the Deputies Committee will be performed by the appropriate regional NSC/PCCs, which may create subordinate working groups to provide coordination for ongoing operations.
The Counter-Terrorism Security Group, Critical Infrastructure Coordination Group, Weapons of Mass Destruction Preparedness, Consequences Management and Protection Group, and the interagency working group on Enduring Constitutional Government are reconstituted as various forms of the NSC/PCC on Counter-Terrorism and National Preparedness.
The duties assigned in PDD/NSC-75 to the National Counterintelligence Policy Group will be performed in the NSC/PCC on Intelligence and Counterintelligence, meeting with appropriate attendees.
http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/pdd/pdd-75.htm
The duties assigned to the Security Policy Board and other entities established in PDD/NSC-29 will be transferred to various NSC/PCCs, depending on the particular security problem being addressed.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/spb/pdd29.html
The duties assigned in PDD/NSC-41 to the Standing Committee on Nonproliferation will be transferred to the PCC on Proliferation, Counterproliferation, and Homeland Defense.
http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/pdd41.htm
The duties assigned in PDD/NSC-35 to the Interagency Working Group for Intelligence Priorities will be transferred to the PCC on Intelligence and Counterintelligence.
http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/pdd35.htm
The duties of the Human Rights Treaties Interagency Working Group established in E.O. 13107 are transferred to the PCC on Democracy, Human Rights, and International Operations.
http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/eo13107.htm
The Nazi War Criminal Records Interagency Working Group established in E.O. 13110 shall be reconstituted, under the terms of that order and until its work ends in January 2002, as a Working Group of the NSC/PCC for Records Access and Information Security.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/clinton/eo13110.html
Except for those established by statute, other existing NSC interagency groups, ad hoc bodies, and executive committees are also abolished as of March 1, 2001, unless they are specifically reestablished as subordinate working groups within the new NSC system as of that date. Cabinet officers, the heads of other executive agencies, and the directors of offices within the Executive Office of the President shall advise the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs of those specific NSC interagency groups chaired by their respective departments or agencies that are either mandated by statute or are otherwise of sufficient importance and vitality as to warrant being reestablished. In each case the Cabinet officer, agency head, or office director should describe the scope of the activities proposed for or now carried out by the interagency group, the relevant statutory mandate if any, and the particular NSC/PCC that should coordinate this work. The Trade Promotion Coordinating Committee established in E.O. 12870 shall continue its work, however, in the manner specified in that order. As to those committees expressly established in the National Security Act, the NSC/PC and/or NSC/DC shall serve as those committees and perform the functions assigned to those committees by the Act.
To further clarify responsibilities and effective accountability within the NSC system, those positions relating to foreign policy that are designated as special presidential emissaries, special envoys for the President, senior advisors to the President and the Secretary of State, and special advisors to the President and the Secretary of State are also abolished as of March 1, 2001, unless they are specifically redesignated or reestablished by the Secretary of State as positions in that Department.
This Directive shall supersede all other existing presidential guidance on the organization of the National Security Council system. With regard to application of this document to economic matters, this document shall be interpreted in concert with any Executive Order governing the National Economic Council and with presidential decision documents signed hereafter that implement either this directive or that Executive Order.
cc: The Executive Clerk
Source Notes Source: NSC hardcopy In this unofficial release, neither the document date (approximately 15 February 2001) nor the President's signature was evident. Transcription and HTML: Steven Aftergood
mailto:saftergood@igc.org
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The Carefully Orchestrated Glamour of the KGB
Tuesday, March 6, 2001
Slate
By Anne Applebaum
http://slate.msn.com/foreigners/entries/01-03-06_101978.asp
We deciphered their telegrams; they got a U.S. Army cipher clerk to tell them about it. We tapped the phone lines in East Berlin; they found a British intelligence officer to keep them informed. We listened to their subs; a National Security Agency employee let them know. Indeed, Special Agent Robert Philip Hanssen was, if you believe the Washington Post, only the latest in a long line of Westerners to spill the beans to Russia. And I don't think they did it just for the money. As it happens, I was in Moscow last week at the old KGB (now FSB) headquarters in Lubyanka Square and caught a glimpse of just how carefully that organization continues to craft its glorious image.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24763-2001Mar5.html
Or rather, I wasn't exactly at headquarters; I was around the corner from headquarters, visiting one of those anonymous Moscow office buildings to which only expected visitors are admitted. Inside, there is a gloomy columned hall, a bust of Feliks Dzherzhinsky, a plaque: "To the Chekists, Soldiers of the Revolution." The Chekists were the secret police of Lenin's era, but the term, for those fond of the organization still best known as the KGB, has become generic. Beneath the plaque, someone had laid flowers. On closer examination, they turned out to be plastic.
The plaque marks the entrance to the KGB museum, a curious institution set up in 1984. Originally, the exhibits were intended for the enlightenment of the KGB's employees, who remain the museum's most frequent visitors. Now they are also open to the occasional outsider who is willing to book far in advance-and, of course, to pay a small fee.
We were met by a guide-a KGB historian and FSB colonel who wished to remain anonymous-who ushered my small group into a long room covered with photographs. In its center a Russian flag was draped over a pedestal, precisely the sort of pedestal upon which once sat busts of Lenin. To the left, there was an empty display case. I am reliably informed that it once contained a portrait of Boris Yeltsin. Now it is gone, which is hardly surprising: Yeltsin, after all, is the man the KGB held responsible for the destruction of the Soviet Union, an event that the colonel flatly described as the result of "negative external pressures, working in conjunction with internal agents of Western influence."
Other than that, there were surprisingly few signs of the times. Indeed, for all the changes of the past decade, the Russian security services have, it appears, a surprisingly traditional view of themselves. Although the museum contained a small corner dedicated to the more than 20,000 secret police officers who lost their lives in the purges of the 1930s, there was no reference either to the many thousands of other secret police officers who killed them or to many hundreds of thousands of completely innocent people they killed as well, or even to the Gulag, the vast camp complex that was directly under the control of the Soviet security services from 1929 to 1953, and within which millions of completely innocent people also suffered and perished.
Needless to say, there was no mention of the KGB's historical support for international terrorism; on the contrary, the last section of the museum is dedicated to the "fight against terrorism," which the FSB says it is waging in Chechnya today. Nor was there a mention of the role the KGB played in creating some of the bloodier secret police services in the developing world. In fact, the museum was almost entirely given over to espionage and counterespionage, briefcases cleverly designed to hide radio transmitters, tiny tape recorders concealed within fountain pens and watches, the sorts of thing that would appeal to James Bond and to American FBI agents with free time on their hands.
Indeed, the KGB's descendants remain inordinately proud of the foreign spies they captured-there is a photograph of the American U-2 spy plane that crashed, infamously, on Russian soil, and a thread from the rug that Gary Powers, its pilot, wove while in Vladimir prison-and of the agents they recruited. A pipe that once belonged to Kim Philby, the most notorious of the Cambridge Five, the ring of British double agents, is lovingly displayed. Beside it is a battered coaster bearing a picture of Pall Mall, the "street in London where the clubs of English aristocrats are located," as the accompanying label explains. "Kim Philby was a member of one of them." Another plaque adds that "he dedicated his life to the fight for human happiness."
The FSB also remains in awe of its former leaders and isn't inclined to apologize for their mistakes. The colonel informed us that Dzherzhinsky-to whom a large exhibit is dedicated-was not, as some might mistakenly assume, an exceptionally paranoid policeman responsible for the deaths of thousands, but rather a forward-looking "free-marketeer." He said almost the same thing about Lavrenty Beria, head of the secret police throughout the 1940s, an era when millions were arrested and deported. Alas, he explained, "Beria was murdered too soon." The FSB is still convinced that had it been given a free hand, the Soviet Union would still be in place, and it would still be prosperous.
This all tallies well with official policy. In a rare interview last year, Lt. Gen. Sergei Lebedev, head of the SVR, the foreign-intelligence wing of the Russian security services, declared that the "romanticism" of the service was still what prompted many young recruits to sign up. In recent years, the agencies have sponsored the publication of exciting true-life spy stories; the colonel himself sold me a glossy, coffee-table history of Russian counterespionage from Peter the Great to the present.
Perhaps it is no wonder that Special Agent Robert Philip Hanssen felt-as he put it in his letters to his Russian contacts-"insanely loyal" to the KGB, whose double-agent he had wanted to be since his teen-age years. It hasn't apologized for its mistakes; it hasn't reformed its views of itself or its history. Carefully orchestrated glamour does, it seems, sometimes pay off.
Anne Applebaum, a journalist based in London and Warsaw, is a regular contributor to the London Sunday Telegraph and is at work on a history of Soviet concentration camps. You can e-mail her at foreigners@slate.com.
---
Gap in Hanssen Case a Puzzle
Tuesday, March 6, 2001
Washington Post
By Walter Pincus and Vernon Loeb
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27503-2001Mar5.html
Federal investigators are trying to determine whether accused spy Robert P. Hanssen went "dormant" and stopped providing information to Moscow for some period of time between 1991 and 1999, U.S. officials said.
In a lengthy affidavit filed in court last month, the FBI summarized detailed evidence that Hanssen corresponded with the Soviet KGB from 1985 to 1991 and then with its successor organization, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, or SVR, from 1999 to 2001.
The 1985-1991 communications apparently were contained in a KGB dossier obtained by the United States from Russian sources last year. Hanssen's letters to the SVR in 1999-2001 were obtained from recent searches of Hanssen's computers.
But Hanssen's activities from 1991 to 1999 remain a mystery to the FBI. Some current and former officials believe that he curtailed his alleged espionage for an extended period, while others cite clues that he remained active. "We don't actually know," one senior FBI official said last week. "It is a blank."
At a Feb. 20 press conference announcing Hanssen's arrest, Attorney General John D. Ashcroft alleged that Hanssen committed espionage from mid-1985 through February 2001 "with the possible exception of several years in the 1990s."
FBI Director Louis J. Freeh noted at the time that the government's affidavit does not allege any espionage activities by Hanssen between February 1995 and January 1999, while he worked on assignment as a counterintelligence agent in the State Department's Office of Foreign Missions, a unit responsible for monitoring foreign diplomats.
But in a court document filed in the Hanssen case Thursday, prosecutors wrote that "we are not talking here about a spy who was active in the 1980s and who has been dormant for the past decade. Rather, this is a spy who remained active until he was handcuffed."
One possible indication that Hanssen remained active from 1991 to 1999 comes from an October 1999 letter to Hanssen from his Russian handlers. In the letter, according to the FBI affidavit, the Russians told Hanssen that "the sum set aside for you has risen and presents now about $800,000."
That is $500,000 more than the $300,000 Hanssen's KGB handlers had mentioned setting aside for him in earlier communications, when he allegedly was being paid at a rate of $100,000 a year in 1987, 1988 and 1989.
Since Hanssen apparently continued to be paid in the mid-1990s, some current and former U.S. counterintelligence officials say, it makes sense to assume he was still an active spy. "That's a sign Hanssen was not dormant like some people are saying," said one former senior CIA security expert. "He was still providing secrets."
But there is no consensus on this point. "I wouldn't draw conclusions from the regularity of Moscow's payments," said one former FBI counterintelligence specialist, who believes Hanssen was dormant at least part of the time. "He could have been paid a one-time bonus."
Plato Cacheris, Hanssen's lead attorney, declined last week to discuss his client's activities from 1991 to 1999. "The gap is there in the government's case," he said. Cacheris previously has indicated that Hanssen intends to plead not guilty.
One former senior FBI official, who strongly believes Hanssen stopped spying during the gap period, said Hanssen might have been spooked in the fall of 1991, when the Soviet Union was collapsing and a delegation of KGB representatives visited FBI headquarters for the first time.
"I could see how someone in his position could be scared that if the Soviet Union really was going to change its stripes, his treachery might be uncovered," the former official said.
During the 1991-1999 period, Hanssen continued to have access to highly classified information, first as chief of the FBI National Security Division's National Security Threat List section and then as an official in the FBI's Washington field office. His access to sensitive information continued once he was assigned in early 1995 to the State Department, an assignment that continued until January of this year.
There, for six years, Hanssen had broad access to information on counterintelligence issues involving foreign diplomats and intelligence agents stationed in the United States. As FBI liaison to the State Department, he also hand-carried secret intelligence reports back and forth between Foggy Bottom and FBI headquarters and attended regular monthly meetings of section chiefs in the FBI's National Security Division.
One final clue that Hanssen may never have curtailed his alleged espionage activities for more than brief periods comes in a last note to his SVR handlers, which he left at a clandestine drop site near his Vienna home minutes before his arrest.
According to the FBI's affidavit, the note said he believed he was under suspicion and feared that his "greatest utility" to the Russians "has come to an end, and it is time to seclude myself from active service."
Hanssen made no reference in the letter to having done that before. And his reference to seclusion only seemed to mean a lack of contact for a year. He closed the letter by saying: "I will be in contact next year, same time same place."
---
Spying Game: Wilderness of Mirrors
March 6, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Spy-vs-Spy.html?searchpv=aponline
http://www.nandotimes.com/nation/story/0%2C1038%2C500460379-500701297-503818439-0%2C00.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The list of classified information that FBI agent Robert Hanssen is accused of selling to the Russians is long on details about spies spying on spies.
As the potential scope of revelations is evaluated, Hanssen's case is a reminder that espionage at times can be as much about finding out what the other side knows about your own intelligence operation as it is about getting nuclear codes or other vital secrets.
In a trade dubbed a ``wilderness of mirrors,'' practitioners may not see much more than reflections of each other.
``It has very little to do with a nation's top secrets sometimes,'' said Loch Johnson, a University of Georgia political scientist who worked on intelligence for the Clinton White House and congressional committees. ``It does begin to be a little bit circular -- counterintelligence agencies going after one another.''
Even so, former U.S. spymasters say much can be lost, or gained, for national security when an insider betrays how one side's intelligence operation has penetrated the other side's.
Hanssen is alleged to have divulged an eye-popping wealth of information about American intelligence-gathering, including extensive detail about how U.S. officials had tapped into Russian spy operations.
Among documents the former counterintelligence official is alleged to have stashed in Hefty bags and left in ``dead drops'' for Russian handlers were details on the U.S. Double Agent Program, the FBI Double Agent Program and U.S. government studies of future intelligence requirements and KGB recruitment operations. Officials also believe Hanssen tipped off Moscow to a secret tunnel the Americans built under the Soviet Embassy in Washington for eavesdropping.
``He compromised United States Intelligence Community technical operations of extraordinary importance and value,'' the FBI said in an affidavit supporting Hanssen's arrest.
A federal court moved on Tuesday to establish ground rules for how Hanssen's lawyers can access and handle classified information in the case. It issued a protective order that allows the defense access to top-secret documents but prohibits their disclosure and requires that all classified information be kept under seal.
A federal judge said Monday the government's case against Hanssen is ``extraordinarily strong'' and ordered him confined to jail. Hanssen has not entered a plea, but his attorney said he would plead innocent. A May 21 preliminary hearing has been scheduled.
Steve Aftergood, an intelligence analyst for the Federation of American Scientists, said it appears much of the damage allegedly done by Hanssen ``was to U.S. intelligence, but not necessarily to the United States.''
``When officials speak of vital secrets that might have been lost, they are really speaking within the framework of intelligence, and not national security as a whole,'' he said.
In the Aldrich Ames case, as with Hanssen, the focus was on classified information about U.S. intelligence-gathering. Ames, a CIA official who pleaded guilty to espionage in 1994, is blamed for the deaths of at least nine agents working for the United States in the Soviet Union and for disclosing U.S. counterintelligence techniques.
``A lot of spying is a self-perpetuating game in which each side is simply trying to penetrate the other and to discover intelligence operations that the other side is running,'' Aftergood said.
Other notable spy cases, however, have been more directly related to national security.
Retired Navy Warrant Officer John A. Walker Jr., for example, pleaded guilty in 1985 to running a spy ring that gave the Soviets secret codes that allowed them to read 1 million classified Navy cables.
Robert Gates, CIA director under former President Bush, stressed that the vast majority of U.S. intelligence work is aimed at gathering information about possible threats to American security, such as terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, regional conflicts and military modernization around the world.
``Those are the things that preoccupy American intelligence,'' Gates said. At the same time, he said, U.S. officials have to be vigilant against those who can ``give away the means by which we gather the information we need to know on these threats.''
``These people inside can do serious damage in terms of our ability to accomplish the broader mission,'' Gates said.
James Woolsey, CIA director under former President Clinton from 1993 to 1995, said America's open society makes it harder to safeguard secrets. More pervasive polygraph tests of government employees, for example, would help deter foreign espionage but could intrude on workers' civil liberties.
Penetrating rival spy networks, he said, does not raise the same problems, which can make counterintelligence ploys ``money well spent.''
Woolsey said striking the right balance between safeguarding secrets and protecting civil liberties means ``you can never be sure that you're completely successful'' at avoiding security breaches.
As a result, he added, ``You have to be a bit more paranoid in this business than you do when you're out in the normal world of business or commerce or law.''
---
Russians Seek an Explanation After Embassy Tunnel Report
March 6, 2001
New York Times
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/06/world/06MOSC.html
MOSCOW, March 5 - Russia's Foreign Ministry summoned the American chargé d'affaires today to demand an explanation for reports that intelligence services had dug a tunnel under the Soviet Embassy in Washington during the 1980's.
Russia's demand for clarification of press reports about the tunnel, said to have been built at the height of the cold war, added to a growing list of irritants in spy scandals jolting relations between Washington and Moscow.
A ministry statement said the chargé d'affaires, George Krol, had been asked to "explain the position of the U.S. State Department." It said that, if proved true, the reports would amount to a "blatant violation of recognized norms of international law, valid throughout the world in relation to diplomatic representations."
The New York Times reported on Sunday that investigators believed that the plan to dig the tunnel to monitor communications in the Washington embassy had been betrayed by Robert Hanssen, an F.B.I. agent arrested last month on charges of spying for the Soviet Union and Russia.
Mr. Hanssen's case, in which he is accused of selling secrets to the Soviet Union and Russia since 1985, is one of several espionage cases inflaming relations in recent months.
They include that of Edmond Pope, an American businessman sentenced in Russia last year to 20 years in prison on charges of seeking information on an underwater torpedo. President Vladimir Putin pardoned him in December.
The reported construction of the tunnel would have coincided with American complaints in the 1980's that a new embassy building in Moscow was full of listening devices. American diplomats eventually moved into the building but only after substantial reconstruction.
In Washington today, a Federal judge, Theresa Buchanan, ordered Mr. Hanssen to be held in jail until trial. Judge Buchanan, of the United States District Court in Alexandria, Va., said that the government's evidence was "exceptionally strong" and that Mr. Hanssen posed a risk of flight because he had a passport and access to funds overseas.
Mr. Hanssen, a 25-year veteran of the F.B.I. and a counterintelligence expert, was arrested on Feb. 18 and has been accused of spying for Moscow for more than 15 years. Mr. Hanssen was asked by the judge whether he understood that his lawyers were not contesting the prosecution's detention request. He replied, "Yes, I do."
---
Louis Freeh and the moles
March 6, 2001
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-house-200136192655.htm
Leave it to a mole for the Russians to expose a multi-million dollar, underground tunnel that the U.S. government built to eavesdrop on Kremlin diplomats in Washington. The New York Times reported Sunday that federal investigators believe that alleged spy Robert Hanssen may have tipped off his handlers about a tunnel that was built under the Soviet embassy in Washington. The tunnel was run jointly by the FBI and the National Security Agency and appears to have become operational in the 1980s, just around the time Mr. Hanssen exposed it to the Soviets.
Many experts were quick to blame FBI Director Louis Freeh after a mole was discovered in his agency. It now appears those experts were right - to a certain degree. Like Mr. Hanssen, it would appear Mr. Freeh was a victim of arrogance. Since Mr. Freeh had excessive confidence in his own leadership and the loyalty of his top people, he failed to take some constructive steps that could have made the bureau less vulnerable to espionage. A high-ranking intelligence insider told editors at The Washington Times that Mr. Freeh "fostered an attitude in the bureau that no one in our inner sanctum is going to be a spy."
There is no measure or even combination of measures that would have guaranteed detection of Mr. Hanssen's spying. But had the bureau adopted some inexpensive and potentially effective security initiatives, Mr. Hanssen's espionage goals could have been challenged and possibly deterred.
The FBI, for example, frequently employs a technique commonly referred to as mail cover, in which the bureau asks the U.S. Postal Service to photograph the front and back of envelopes delivered to known foreign agents. But the FBI didn't use mail cover for all KGB officers, and Mr. Hanssen was in a position to know which ones were not being covered.
In 1985, Mr. Hanssen made his initial contact with the Soviets by writing a letter to Kremlin officer Viktor Degtyar. In that letter, Mr. Hanssen offered out his fee-based spying services and identified three KGB officers who were collaborating with the FBI, two of whom were later executed by the Soviets. Had this medium not been open to Mr. Hanssen, he would have been much harder-pressed to approach the Soviets without revealing his own identity to them.
Polygraph testing is also an inexact but useful tool. But Mr. Freeh failed to require routine polygraphs for his employees and Mr. Hanssen was never required to take a lie detector test. Furthermore, the FBI completes background checks, including financial reviews, of its employees every five years. These reviews should take place at least once a year.
Interestingly, Bill Clinton had recommended some reorganization of the intelligence apparatus, including the naming of a czar to oversee counterintelligence spending by all agencies and identify the most sensitive technologies, weapons and other national assets. One wonders if the former president had caught wind of the mole hunt before leaving office.
While the good news is that Mr. Hanssen was caught, the bad news is that he was discovered only after a windfall of documents from Russia were turned over to the FBI. Certainly, Mr. Freeh has much thinking to do, and he will hopefully be just as critical of himself and the bureau as he was of the CIA after the Ames debacle.
---
Accused spy seen as 'severe' flight risk
March 6, 2001
Washington Times
By Daniel F. Drummond
http://www.washtimes.com/metro/default-200136222629.htm
A federal judge yesterday ordered accused spy Robert Philip Hanssen to be held without bond, saying the FBI agent posed "a severe risk of flight."
U.S. District Judge Theresa Buchanan said that the government's evidence against the counterespionage specialist is "extraordinarily strong," and that Mr. Hanssen could pose a threat to society if free.
In a five-minute bond hearing at U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., yesterday, Mr. Hanssen wore a prison-issued green jumpsuit with the word "prisoner" printed on the back.
Mr. Hanssen, 56, sat quietly and spoke only once, when the judge asked if he knew he was entitled to a full detention hearing. "I do, your honor," he replied.
The 25-year FBI veteran was arrested Feb. 18 and charged with spying for the Soviet Union and Russia over the past 15 years. He faces the death penalty if convicted.
"Robert Hanssen possesses in his head enough secrets to cause significant damage to the United States," Assistant U.S. Attorney Randy I. Bellows told Judge Buchanan. "And given the sentence he faces, he poses a severe risk of flight."
Court documents filed by the prosecution note that FBI agents found a Swiss bank account number in Mr. Hanssen's briefcase, which prosecutors said confirmed him as a flight risk.
One of Mr. Hanssen's attorneys, Plato Cacheris, disagreed with Mr. Bellows but did not press the matter. "We don't object to the detention," he said.
Under an agreement reached last week between prosecutors and Mr. Hanssen's attorneys, a preliminary hearing or formal indictment was postponed until May 21. The agreement allows Mr. Hanssen's attorneys to look at some of the government's evidence against him, including a 109-page affidavit.
"There has been no plea discussion," said Preston Burton, another of Mr. Hanssen's attorneys, adding that neither side has broached the subject.
Mr. Hanssen's attorneys have entered a not-guilty plea, and Mr. Cacheris yesterday told reporters the affidavit has gaps. He did not provide details.
Prosecutors said Mr. Hanssen gave the Soviets and then the Russians more than 6,000 pages of U.S. secrets in exchange for $1.4 million - $600,000 in cash and diamonds, and another $800,000 in escrow in a Moscow bank.
Mr. Hanssen is suspected of compromising the identities of several Russian agents spying for the United States. He also may have told the Russians about a U.S. espionage tunnel under the Russian Embassy in Northwest, according to a report Sunday in the New York Times.
Russia's Foreign Ministry yesterday demanded that the United States provide details. The Foreign Ministry issued a statement suggesting that Moscow was officially unaware of the tunnel's existence.
Investigators arrested Mr. Hanssen in a Fairfax County (Va.) park, not far from his home in Vienna, where he lived with his wife and six children. FBI agents said he had just left a package under a wooden footbridge, which they said was a "dead drop" site for delivering secret documents to his Russian handlers.
---
Russia demands explanation for tunnel
March 6, 2001
Washington Times
By Bill Gertz
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-2001362341.htm
Russia's Foreign Ministry summoned the U.S. charge d'affaires yesterday to demand an explanation for reports that intelligence services dug a tunnel under the Soviet Embassy in Washington in the 1980s.
Charge d'Affaires George Krol, the ranking U.S. diplomat while awaiting the appointment of a new ambassador, went to the ministry for "a clarification of the tunnel story," a U.S. Embassy official said. "A discussion took place to address that question."
A Foreign Ministry statement said the reports, if proven true, would amount to a "blatant violation of recognized norms of international law, valid throughout the world in relation to diplomatic representations."
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the envoy promised to pass Russia's concern on to Washington, but he suggested the United States might not respond. "I don't know that we've promised to get back to them, and I don't know when we will," Mr. Boucher said at a daily press briefing.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer would not discuss the accuracy of the report about the tunnel and said "any conversations between our nations will be private ones."
A spokeswoman for Russia's SVR foreign intelligence service, Tatyana Samolis, said she would not be surprised by the tunneling operation. "It is well known that the U.S. intelligence services harbor a passion for tunneling," Miss Samolis was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying. "Take, for instance, the Berlin tunnel from the 1950s."
U.S. officials said privately that the Russian protests about the tunnel are "blatant hypocrisy" because Moscow was found to have built similar tunnels under the new U.S. Embassy in Moscow. Construction was halted after the discovery in the mid-1980s that the entire structure was riddled with Russian electronic bugs.
Construction was completed in the late 1990s, and the tunnels, ostensibly to be used for utility work, were blocked off, U.S. officials said.
U.S. officials confirmed that the FBI and National Security Agency constructed a secret tunnel near the Russian Embassy on upper Wisconsin Avenue to eavesdrop on electronic communications.
The tunnel is believed to have been compromised by accused spy Robert P. Hanssen, who has been charged with providing Russia with highly classified details of such programs. The tunnel was first reported Sunday by the New York Times.
"If this was compromised early on by Hanssen, the Russians had all the way up until recently to feed disinformation to the United States because we didn't know it was compromised," said Vincent Cannistraro, a retired CIA officer.
"And they are excellent at doing that," Mr. Cannistraro said.
Noel Matchett, a former National Security Agency official, said: "It is a well-known defensive technique. If you know someone is intercepting your communications, whether a government or industry, one of the defenses is to feed disinformation, and of course the Russians are masters at that."
One way disinformation could have been used by Moscow was to force U.S. counterspies to "chase up blind alleys" by going after false suspects or conducting investigations that were fruitless, Mr. Matchett said.
"What you're really trying to do is reduce the other side's [counterintelligence] effectiveness," he said.
"We were basically blind to Soviet, and later Russian, intelligence operations because of Hanssen's role in compromising all of our counterintelligence, methods, and techniques and targets," Mr. Cannistraro said.
According to U.S. News & World Report magazine, U.S. officials suspect Mr. Hanssen also compromised two very sensitive FBI counterspy programs.
One program, dubbed Pocketwatch, monitored Soviet commercial companies used for spying, and a second operation, known as Spiderweb, was a secret program to monitor suspected Russian intelligence officers.
-------- terrorism
FACT OF THE WEEK
Tue, 06 Mar 2001
Fact Of The Day Newsletter "Strange...Weird...Bizarre...TRUE!"
http://www.twistedhumor.com/newsletters.shtml
Iraqi terrorist, Khay Rahnajet, didn't pay enough postage on a letter bomb. It came back with "return to sender" stamped on it. Forgetting it was the bomb, he opened it and was blown to bits.
---
With Israel on Terror Alert,
Sharon Completes Cabinet
March 6, 2001
New York Times
By WILLIAM A. ORME Jr.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/06/world/06MIDE.html
JERUSALEM, March 5 - Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon put the final elements of his unity government together today as police officers stood guard throughout the country in a state of high alert, braced for a repetition of the terror bombing that killed three Israelis and wounded scores more in a coastal city on Sunday.
The Israeli police have not disclosed the identity of the bomber, who also died in the blast. No organization has yet claimed responsibility for the attack. But the militant Hamas movement asserted that as many as 10 suicide bombers were poised for action in Israel, and the police stepped up security at crossroads near Palestinian areas as well as in shopping malls, movie theaters and bus stations.
"The terrorist organizations are motivated to strike," Shlomo Aharonishky, Israel's chief of police, said today. "It will be difficult for us to operate this extensively for an extended period of time."
Fears in Israel over a resurgence of terrorism appear to have aided Mr. Sharon's efforts to assemble a broad-based new government by Wednesday, his self-imposed deadline. After cementing an expected alliance with the religious Shas Party late Sunday, Mr. Sharon today awarded the big-budget Housing Ministry to Natan Sharansky, the high-profile leader of a small Russian immigrant party, increasing his majority to 68 in the 120-member Parliament.
Two other small factions - the five-member National Religious Party and tiny two-brother Gesher Party - announced today that they would not join the unity government, though they said they will support it. "I certainly won't be a minister without portfolio only to keep a seat warm," said a disgruntled David Levy, the Gesher leader and a two-time foreign minister, who unsuccessfully sought a leading role in the new cabinet.
Mr. Sharon also appeared close to success in his effort to persuade Parliament to repeal the current system of separate direct elections for prime minister. The Likud Party whip, Reuven Rivlin, expressed confidence today that he would have more than the 61 votes needed for approval on Wednesday.
That change, scheduled to come into effect in the next general election, is expected to bolster the sagging fortunes of the two larger parties, while diminishing the appeal of smaller factions rooted in ethnic identity or single-issue politics.
Mr. Sharon's unity movement has already prompted the disintegration of the six-member Center Party, a coalition of disaffected former Likud and Labor members who backed Yitzhak Mordechai, a former defense minister, in his failed 1999 effort to become prime minister.
Today two of the Center Party's founders - Uri Savir, a longtime peace negotiator and aide to Foreign Minister-designate Shimon Peres, and Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, a former military chief of staff - resigned from Parliament.
The party members still in Parliament negotiated for posts in the new government, with Dan Meridor seeking the Justice Ministry and Dahlia Rabin, daughter of the assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, headed unexpectedly to the office of deputy defense minister.
Roni Milo, another Center Party founder, was offered a newly created job as information minister, with the task of coordinating Israeli public relations efforts abroad. But in one of several signs of emerging tensions in the still-unformed Sharon government, Mr. Milo's promised post came under swift attack today from Mr. Peres, who said Israel's international communications should remain the province of the Foreign Ministry.
Another indication of possible tension in unity ranks was the demand by the new tourism minister, Rehavam Zeevi, considered perhaps the most right-wing member of the new government, for control over the hitherto-autonomous and apolitical Antiquities Authority.
Though seemingly innocuous, the Antiquities Authority is embroiled in a diplomatically and religiously explosive dispute with Palestinian Muslim clerics about Islamic renovations and excavations in the plaza outside Al Aksa Mosque, a place revered by Jews as the site of their First and Second Temples. Israeli rightists have urged the authority to exercise its theoretical - but rarely exercised - power under Israeli law to halt the work.
Mr. Peres, long a target of Mr. Zeevi and other hard-right backbenchers, today referred to the unity government almost as if he were not a central member and architect of the coalition. "I don't believe that Sharon and his government are interested in living with terror, rage, hate and blood," he said in an interview on the Israeli radio. "We all have to find a solution."
---
Message to Arafat
March 6, 2001
Washington Times
James Morrison
http://www.washtimes.com/world/embassy-200136214523.htm
The U.S. ambassador to Israel has demanded that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat curb "terrorism and violence" after a bomb attack in the Israeli resort town of Netanya on Sunday.
"I want to, on behalf of the U.S. government, condemn in the strongest possible terms this latest terrorist outrage," Ambassador Martin Indyk told reporters after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon over the weekend.
"It is absolutely essential that steps be taken by the Palestinian Authority and Chairman Arafat to resume the security coordination, to curb the terrorism and the violence and the incitement," he added.
The attack killed four persons, including the suspected bomber.
---
Peru to start Berenson retrial
March 6, 2001
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-200136213522.htm
LIMA, Peru - Peru's civilian retrial of Lori Berenson, a U.S. woman facing 20 years in prison on charges she collaborated with a Marxist rebel group's foiled attack on Congress, will begin March 20, two weeks later than first announced, the government said yesterday.
"I estimate the trial will last four to six weeks," Javier Llaque, a senior official at the anti-terrorism court that will conduct the trial, told Reuters.
In 1996, military judges sentenced Berenson, a 31-year-old New Yorker, to life in prison as a leader of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, Berenson has always said she is innocent.
-------- activists
request for GAAN mtg
Tue, 06 Mar 2001
For our meeting on March 24 I am writing to follow-up on the pre-meeting work for the Access Subgroup. I know you volunteered to be part of the drafting committee for the strategic overview paper and presentation. I hope you can still help.
We are now finalizing these brief reports for all six issue areas so we can get them out before the meeting. I attach a description of what we looking for on each issue.
We are not looking for a huge amount of work here: a couple of pages, maybe an hour or two. We assume that the authors of these reports basically have this information in their heads and what they don't know they can get quickly from colleagues.
The main point is to provide very briefly an overview of key advocacy goals and strategies now being undertaken by community groups. The purpose is to inform those not following the issue and to prime the discussion for each working group. I elaborate a bit more in the attached description.
Besides yourselves I am sending this to MSF and CPT knowing their interest. Feel free to include other groups in the drafting committee, but we need to get this done soon. We hope to have all drafts by the end of this week.
So take a look at the attached description and let me know.
Paul Boneberg 510-601-8901
Intellectual Property and Trade Law (Access to Medicines Campaigns) What are our goals and strategies to utilize or reform existing intellectual property and trade laws to make therapeutics more broadly available for HIV and other diseases?
Includes all discussion of trade law reform.
Paul Davis pdavis@critpath.org Health GAP Coalition ACT UP Philadelphia
+1.215.731.1844 ACT UP tel. +1.215.731.1845 fax +1.215 474.6886 direct To Post a message, send it to: a16trainers@eGroups.com To Unsubscribe, send a blank message to: a16trainers-unsubscribe@eGroups.com
Pre-Meeting Work in the Issue Subgroups
Many of the participants in the March 24 meeting will not be familiar with each other's advocacy work. Therefore we are seeking to "jump start" the discussion by surveying the advocacy work currently being done in each of the issue areas that will comprise the six subgroups in our meeting. This survey will be undertaking by having a few groups working in each area draft a brief overview paper for distribution to all participants and to present an overview in the opening panel of strategy meeting. GAAN and ICRW will provide staff support to these efforts as well as distributing the written reports.
What is needed is a concise, yet inclusive overview of the key advocacy issues within each area, the advocacy work now being done (i.e. goals and strategies), obvious gaps in the current work, and strategic disagreements that may exist among key players. What we don't want is one-sided analysis as that simply defers debate to issue subgroups themselves and impedes forthright debate. To this end we have asked more then one group to undertake this pre-meeting work and further that groups with differing opinions be expressly included in preparing the reports and the panel presentations.
Specifically we are hoping for a 1 to 4 page Strategic Overview of Key Advocacy Issues for each subgroup. The questions we need answered are:
1. What is the strategic importance of these issues and how to they fit into the larger advocacy framework?
2. Given this strategic analysis what are the overarching goals of those organizations now undertaking advocacy work?
3. What advocacy strategies are currently being undertaken to achieve these goals? (I.e.-authorizing legislation, appropriations legislation, impacting existing program activities, impacting existing policy implementation)?
4. Are their goals and strategies now being undertaken that are in conflict? What is the differing strategic analysis for this conflict?
5. Are their obvious gaps in this work where entire issues are not being addressed?
6. In conclusion what strategic aspects of these issues would you highlight for the group as a whole?
Attachments-As needed groups may attach a handful of one-page presentations by specific organizations on key issues.
(Example off the top of my head and with no connection to reality)
Research--Strategic Overview of Key Advocacy Issues (Groups asked to participate in drafting team AmFAR, IAVI, Church World Services, LLEGO, and the ACT-Up NY)
1. Research is of fundamental importance to all global AIDS activities developing new therapeutics and preventions tools. (More)
2. Groups now undertaking advocacy work on research have established several principle goals including: -Development of an effective vaccine with 5 years, -Development of an effective Microbicides with 3 years, -Significant advances in therapeutics specifically.. -(More)
3. The principle strategies for advancing these goals vis-à-vis the USG are: -Increasing appropriations for NIH research 100% over the next 5 years for ... -Authorizing legislation to provide incentive to biotech companies for Microbicides development -Impacting existing NIH research activities around ethical considerations -More -More
4. There appears to be conflict among groups working on vaccines on the level of incentives to offer pharmaceutics as research incentives
There appear to be disagreement on ethical standards that should be utilized in research in developing nations.
5. The group notes that little work is being done on microbicides and MSM populations
6. In conclusion the group would highlight that research is the essential technology for ending the pandemic. Efforts to address other issues should be sure not to diminish research efforts, but rather assume continuing benefit as new and better therapeutics become available.
One Page Attachments:
"NIH research ethics must be reformed" from AVAC "No give-away to pharmaceuticals" from SFAF "Why research funds should not come from USAID's budget" PI "Support Microbicide authorization bill HB 4239" AmFAR
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GLOBAL EXCHANGE JOB OPENING DEMOCRACY PROGRAM COORDINATOR
Tue, 06 Mar 2001
Global Exchange seeks a staff person to coordinate our new Democracy Campaign, a program that developed out of the debacle of the last presidential election that aims to make our electoral system more inclusive and more democratic. We will promote a Voters Bill of Rights, produce educational materials on "What does democracy look like?", hold teach-ins, join the struggle for an end to discrimination at the polls, oppose state laws that ban former felons from voting, create greater openings for third parties, push for public financing of campaigns, explore the creation of statewide independent debate commissions and promote alternative voting systems such as proportional representation and instant-runoff voting.
Global Exchange is a non-profit research, education, and action center that internationally promotes democratic reforms and social justice in the US and overseas. We have a national membership base, publish books and articles, organize speaking tours, and make extensive use of the mass media to spread our message. We are nationally known for promoting fair trade instead of "free trade" and for pressuring corporations to be more accountable to their workers, the community and the environment.
The tasks for the Democracy Coordinator include, but are not limited to, the following activities, in conjunction with other members of the team:
Organize teach-ins and other educational events;
Write and distribute educational materials on electoral reform;
Carry out a campaign to urge corporations to stop giving contributions to political parties and promote public funding of campaigns;
Help build and mobilize a racially and politically diverse national and statewide network focusing on electoral issues;
Pursue the possibility of setting up a California debate commission for candidates running for statewide offices;
Help with fundraising, from both individual donors and foundations;
Contact the media, set up press conferences, and give press interviews.
Candidates should have at least three years organizing experience, and extensive knowledge of the present electoral system and proposed reforms. They should have excellent writing, media, organizing and computer skills; be ready to deal with multiple tasks and grasp new opportunities as they arise; and have great "people skills". Fundraising experience is a plus.
Compensation is negotiable, depending on experience. Global Exchange is an affirmative action employer and strongly encourages a diverse pool of candidates to apply. Send résumé and cover letter to Search Committee, Global Exchange. Open until filled. Posted Feb. 20, 2001.
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Anti-nuclear flotilla claims Pacific victory
Tuesday, March 06, 2001
Environmental News Network
http://www.enn.com/news/wire-stories/2001/03/03062001/reu_nonukes_42387.asp
A ship carrying nuclear fuel from France to Japan changed course on Tuesday to avoid a mid-ocean protest by a flotilla of six yachts in the Tasman Sea off Australia, environmentalists said.
The first anti-nuclear protest fleet to sail into the South Pacific since French nuclear testing at Mururoa atoll in 1995 claimed a high seas victory and vowed to return in greater numbers if the Pacific was used again as a "nuclear highway."
"We never planned to impede their progress...all we ever planned was to form a symbolic chain across the international waters," Greenpeace spokeswoman Elisabeth Mealey told Reuters.
"As far as we're concerned, it's a victory for us that they've had to avoid us, that they've gone to this trouble to evade the flotilla," she said.
The British-flagged ship Pacific Pintail is carrying a cargo of nuclear fuel from France to Japan, escorted by another ship, the Pacific Teal. Greenpeace has said the cargo, which combines plutonium and uranium oxides recycled from spent nuclear fuel, contains 507 lb of plutonium, enough to make 20 atomic bombs.
The Nuclear-Free Tasman Flotilla said in a statement the two ships had changed their northerly course by 50 degrees, sped up to 15 knots from eleven knots, and headed northwest near Australia's Lord Howe Island, north-east of Sydney.
"The skippers and crew of the yachts radioed the captains of the Pacific Pintail and Pacific Teal to express their strong opposition to the sea being used as a nuclear highway," the flotilla said in a statement released by Greenpeace.
Flotilla spokesman Henk Haazen, skipper of the Tiama yacht, said the Pacific protest movement was growing, with a local flotilla protest planned this weekend in Fiji.
"The flotilla movement will be back and it will be even bigger if they attempt to use the Tasman and Pacific routes again," he said.
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Greenpeace in pursuit of a shipment of plutonium
Tue, 6 Mar 2001
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newslink/weekly/newsnat-6mar2001-46.htm
Antinuclear protesters have failed in an attempt to intercept a passing shipment of plutonium, which is skirting Australia's East Coast.
The two freighters, the Pacific Pintail and the Pacific Teal, have radically altered their course near Lord Howe Island to avoid a Greenpeace flotilla.
The ships are on a nonstop run from France to Japan, carrying controversial loads of mixed oxide fuel.
The skipper of the Greenpeace yacht Tiama, Henk Haazen, says they are in pursuit, but it is unlikely they will catch up to the fast moving freighters.
"It is a bit like a reverse cat and mouse game, with the little mouse chasing the big cat," he said.
"But these ships are 100 metres long and they can do 16 knots, we can only do eight or nine."
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MYANMAR PROTEST PLANNED
March 6, 2001
New York Times
Compiled by Anthony Ramirez
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/06/nyregion/06MBRF.html
NEW HAVEN: Students at Yale University and at more than 50 other colleges and universities plan to hold a 24-hour fast today to protest what they call university and business support for Myanmar's military regime. The students said American retailers and designers were importing apparel from Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, even though the American government had condemned that nation's military regime. The students said companies including Kenneth Cole, JanSport and the Dress Barn had promised to stop buying from Myanmar last year, following student protests. Steven Greenhouse (NYT)
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