------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Sub inquiry may determine fate of VIP tours
To Meet the Military
China Sends Its Army Money, and a Signal to the U.S
Ammunition for Debate
A Challenge To Israel's Nuclear Blind Spot
A New Leader Makes New Distinctions
Planning a New North Korean Strategy
Russia suspends dismantling weapons
Line 1 workers identified
Health survey
Gov't Questioned on Uranium Deal
Hanford battles Russian invaders:
Department of Health's Release of Sherwood Uranium Mill

MILITARY
Iraqis head to war training camps to free Jerusalem
Allies Enlisted To Pay for Jet
Some Hopeful Signs as Colombia Meets With Rebels and Envoys
Colombian rebels suspend talks in apparent protest
President proposes scrapping drug program
Replacement Crew Enters Space Station
Disclosures, criticism mount against Osprey
Astronauts finish NASA's longest spacewalk

OTHER
Fame Aside, Frog Finds No Habitat in Calaveras
Bush's Moves on Environment Disappoint Industry
And You Thought Germs in the Subway Were Bad
Nafta's Powerful Little Secret
Pesticide-treated wood used in playgrounds leaks
Foot-and-mouth outbreak spreads in Britain
FTAA poses big risk
Feds right to not let Landry speak at summit
Ignoring, and Then Embracing, the Truth About Racial Profiling
Navy Drops Spy Charges In Petty Officer's Case
Espionage Case Against Sailor Is Abandoned
Attorney general orders review of FBI security
Arafat's bodyguards accused of terrorist attacks

ACTIVISTS
Citigroup Paid Weill $127.8 Mln, Rubin Got $45.3 Mln
Why Peace Eludes Mexico's Indians
Shouts, but Little Violence, at Connecticut Racial Rally
Rebel army marches into heart of Mexico City
Mass Honors 10 in I.R.A. Who Starved


-------- NUCLEAR

Sub inquiry may determine fate of VIP tours

03/11/2001
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2001-03-11-sub.htm

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii (AP) - The inquiry shedding light on the role civilians may have played in the USS Greeneville's sinking of a Japanese trawler also is highlighting the Navy's protectiveness of a program that helps the otherwise stealthy submarine force garner public support. That conflict won't easily be resolved by the three admirals overseeing the court of inquiry that enters its second week Monday.

But regardless of their findings, the program that allows "distinguished visitors" onto submarines, as well as other Navy ships, is unlikely to survive in its current form, one military expert said.

"The program of distinguished visitors on submarines is certainly dead for the foreseeable future - not because they had any direct contribution to this, but it just doesn't look good," said Gary Solis, a retired Marine lieutenant colonel and judge advocate who teaches military law at West Point.

Sixteen civilians from five states were on the Greeneville for what was to be a six-hour excursion south of Oahu on Feb. 9. Most, if not all, were crowded into the submarine's control room during an emergency surfacing drill that sent the Greeneville rising into the hull of a high school fisheries training vessel from Uwajima, Japan.

The Ehime Maru sank in 2,000 feet of water, killing nine men and boys.

The court of inquiry could result in policy changes and courts-martial for the submarine's now-relieved captain, Cmdr. Scott Waddle; the executive officer, Lt. Cmdr. Gerald Pfeifer; and the officer of the deck, Lt. j.g. Michael Coen.

The admirals also must examine the implementation of the "distinguished visitor embarkation program."

Rear Adm. Charles Griffiths Jr., who led the preliminary investigation of the collision, has played down the fact that two guests supervised by crew members were at key controls during the drill, and that another was allowed to blow the horn that notified the crew of the impending rapid ascent.

But Griffiths determined that the guests, simply by their presence, may have had a passive role in the tragedy.

A fire control technician, who had the job of analyzing sonar data and plotting contacts with surface ships, told investigators he didn't notify Waddle about a contact in the area and even stopped plotting an hour before the collision because of the crowded conditions.

The submarine also was running 43 minutes behind schedule because lunch for the visitors ran late, Griffiths said. He said the crew later performed sonar and periscope checks much more quickly than Navy standards dictate.

The Pacific Fleet had 21 at-sea tours for a total of 307 guests on fast-attack submarines like the Greeneville last year, an average of 15 guests per trip, according to Navy estimates. Three times as many went to sea on bigger ballistic missile submarines. And including carriers and other surface ships, the Pacific Fleet had a total of 7,836 guests on 158 trips last year, down from 11,440 guests on 233 trips in 1999.

"We think it's important that the American public see their ships, submarines and aircraft," said Lt. Cmdr. Flex Plexico, spokesman for the Pacific Fleet. "The whole purpose of that submarine is to protect and defend our American public. It only seems logical that the American public would have an opportunity to see their submarine, and more importantly to interact with our sailors."

The need for public education is greater now that there are fewer people in the general population who have either served in the military or know someone who has served, he said.

The Greeneville went to sea with civilians twice in 1999 and three times last year.

"I got the impression that Greeneville is frequently tapped (for civilian tours) when she's available because she's good at it," Griffiths testified last week.

Following the trawler sinking, the Pentagon ordered commanders not to allow civilians to operate military equipment until a review has been completed.

But the court of inquiry has shown the Navy has a strong interest in preserving the civilian visitor program.

"I'm a strong believer in the (program), whether it's family cruises ... whether it's special distinguished visitor embarks, such as in this case," one member of the court, Rear Adm. David Stone, said at the start of the inquiry last week. "I think it's part of who we are as a Navy. It's America's Navy. We need to continue that program, and make sure we do it safely."

---

To Meet the Military

March 11, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/11/opinion/L11SUB.html

To the Editor:

Re "Defense Lawyer Challenges Idea That Sub Crew Rushed" (news article, March 8):

Obviously, it's necessary to scrutinize all the factors that may have contributed to the sinking of the Japanese trawler by the submarine Greeneville. But it would be unfortunate if the presence of civilian observers at the scene of this tragic accident ended Pentagon programs that bring the military and civilian worlds together.

One of my most memorable experiences was a visit last year as a civilian guest with our soldiers patrolling villages in Kosovo. This was no public relations exercise but a chance to learn firsthand about the challenges that our men and women in uniform face.

We need to strengthen the links between America's protectors and their fellow citizens. That's what these programs do. To end them would shortchange Americans in and out of uniform.

RAPHAEL BENAROYA Rochelle Park, N.J., March 8, 2001

-------- china

China Sends Its Army Money, and a Signal to the U.S

March 11, 2001
New York Times
By CRAIG S. SMITH
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/11/weekinreview/11SMIT.html

SHANGHAI -- China announced its biggest military budget increase in 20 years last week, making generals from Washington to Tokyo sit up. Certainly the 17.7 percent jump to $17.2 billion this year is intended to send the message that China is serious about modernizing its 2.5-million-man armed forces in order to give the United States pause if it thinks of operating unchallenged in Asia. But military analysts say the focus for now remains a limited one: Taiwan.

Shen Dingli, a Chinese military expert at Shanghai's Fudan University, described the logic in a way that parallels what Western experts say: "We're increasing our military capability in order to ensure that Taiwan doesn't declare independence. But what China is adding to its arsenal is far from what's necessary to challenge the United States in the Asia-Pacific."

That said, China's increased spending signals a basic shift in how the country perceives itself in the world, a perception that began changing in 1996 after Taiwan's first democratic presidential elections.

For more than a decade before that, China had let its military drift, following Deng Xiaoping's assessment that 20 years of peace would allow the country to pursue economic development unharassed. As a result, the People's Liberation Army suffered years of shrinking budgets in real terms. Even the 10 to 12 percent increases of the early to mid 1990's were cut by inflation.

Then came Taiwan's elections, an indication that the island was moving farther from Beijing's grasp. China fired missiles into the sea off Taiwan's coast to warn the island's government against moves toward outright independence. The United States responded by sending an aircraft carrier through the Taiwan Strait. That infuriated Beijing and humiliated the People's Liberation Army, highlighting its lack of options.

Anxiety over the state of the military increased when Japan passed revised guidelines for defense cooperation with the United States in 1997 and decided to join the United States in co-research of a theater missile defense system that could potentially be used to protect Taiwan. Then President Lee Teng-hui of Taiwan characterized the island as a state equal to China in 1999, and Taiwan elected the independence-minded Chen Shui- bian as Mr. Lee's successor.

After that came the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's bombing campaign in Kosovo, which posed the question in China: "Will the U.S. use its unbridled power to someday intervene in Taiwan, Tibet or Xinjiang?"

NATO's errant bombing of China's embassy in Belgrade only punctuated those concerns, allowing the army to open a debate over the continued validity of Deng Xiaoping's analysis.

Domestic politics, meanwhile, converged to lend the army support. Growing corruption in the military, which had become increasingly involved in commercial pursuits to supplement its meager budget, had raised alarm, and President Jiang Zemin forced it to divest all of its businesses beginning in 1998. He promised to make up the lost revenue through budget increases later on.

The debate dominated the discussion at 1999's annual summer leadership conference at the northern seaside resort of Beidaihe, where the decision to increase military spending was made. A White Paper on China's military a year later reflected the new assessment:

"In view of the fact that hegemonism and power politics still exist and are further developing, and in particular, the basis for the country's peaceful reunification is seriously imperiled, China will have to enhance its capability to defend its sovereignty and security by military means."

For those who had followed this chain of events, the increased budget came as no surprise. The question now is where China will spend the money.

Much of it is expected to finance training exercises, maintenance and force restructuring. There are plans to cut the army's size, but even that will be expensive because demobilized soldiers must be relocated and retrained. China is also expected to spend more on its missile modernization program, thanks to American missile defense initiatives.

Most of the spending, according to Mr. Shen and others, is intended to enhance the country's ability to intimidate Taiwan. "For Taiwan, to deter separatists, we need third-generation fighters, missiles and precision-guided weaponry, amphibious landing equipment, electronic warfare equipment, all of which can be domestically manufactured," said Mr. Shen.

Because China lacks a huge high-tech arms industry, developing new weapons is slow and expensive. "Although R. & D. spending will eventually produce something, given the inefficiencies of the Chinese system this might be one of the least threatening areas for them to spend defense dollars," said Phil Saunders, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

Even then, the money will be thinly spread. In announcing the budget increase, Finance Minister Xiang said much of it would go to boost officer's salaries. Some, too, is earmarked as compensation for revenue lost when the military gave up its businesses.

OF course, the announced budget is only part of China's military spending. Some analysts put the total at double or even quadruple the budgeted amount, including money used to buy arms abroad, which are paid for from a separate, undisclosed hard-currency fund. But even at a multiple of three, China's defense spending is far outdistanced by that of the United States.

"If the concern is that China will challenge U.S. interests, that is a long, long way off," said Evan Medeiros, a senior research associate at the Monterey Institute's nonproliferation program. "But if the concern is that they will make the U.S. more cautious in their operations in the Asia-Pacific region, that's more realistic."

David Finkelstein, deputy director of CNA Corp.'s Center for Strategic Studies, put it another way: "They want to be the regional hegemon, so that no Asian- Pacific nation can make serious decisions without taking China into account."

-------- depleted uranium

Ammunition for Debate

Sunday, March 11, 2001
Pioneer Planet
MIKE HUGHLETT
http://www.pioneerplanet.com/seven-days/tod/business/docs/027289.htm

A tank-piercing shell being developed by Alliant Techsystems with a core of depleted uranium is fiercely effective and inexpensive. It's also blamed for health problems among Gulf War vets and in Kosovo, though conclusive evidence is lacking.

The M829A1 shell worked so well during the Gulf War, boasts weapons manufacturer Alliant Techsystems, that U.S. Army tank commanders nicknamed it the ``Silver Bullet.''

The shell, with its super-dense metal core, pierces the strongest armor at long distances, quickly turning a tank into a smoldering ruin. It's inexpensive, too. The metal that makes the Silver Bullet so dense -- depleted uranium, or DU -- is low-level radioactive waste from the process of making nuclear bombs and fuel rods.

The weapon has proved to be such a hit that Alliant, the leading U.S. ammunition maker, is designing a more lethal and accurate version, courtesy of a government contract that should eventually total $130 million. If all goes well, the new DU weapon will be battlefield-ready within a couple years, and Hopkins-based Alliant will have claimed victory in a critical product line: tank ammo.

There's just one potential problem: Depleted uranium shells are becoming one of the most politically controversial battlefield weapons since the land mine.

Over the winter, a cloud of anti-DU sentiment has settled over Europe. Lawmakers in Italy and Germany have even urged NATO to renounce DU weapons, as claims have spread that shells used in Kosovo and Bosnia are responsible for cancer deaths among European soldiers. They echo claims made by some veterans in the United States that DU is to blame for cancers and mysterious maladies suffered by soldiers who served in Iraq.

The U.S. Army's own studies have conceded potential health risks of DU weapons. Still, there's no conclusive scientific evidence that DU has actually caused cancer or any other disease. No major U.S. studies have linked depleted uranium to Gulf War Syndrome. And several experts say radiation levels in DU weapons simply aren't high enough to cause significant radiation-related illnesses.

Yet the argument rolls on, and will likely continue to do so given the longstanding public fear of anything associated with the word ``radioactive.''

Alliant doesn't even use the word ``depleted uranium'' in press releases about its new 120 mm tank shell, and that's indicative of DU's future, said William Arkin, senior military affairs adviser for Human Rights Watch and a columnist on military affairs for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and the Washington Post.

Uranium scares people, making DU ammunition a hard sell to the public, Arkin said. ``It is an untenable weapon,'' he said. ``I can really foresee conflicts in which U.S. coalition partners will impose restrictions on the use of depleted uranium.''

DU details

The uranium atom, in its natural state, primarily comes in two models: U-235 and U-238. U-235 makes up less than 1 percent of natural uranium, and it's coveted for use in nuclear bombs and atomic power plants. U-235 is separated from U-238 in something called an enrichment plant, leaving behind tons of uranium with ``depleted'' radiation levels. This is DU, and its radioactivity is 40 percent less than that of natural uranium.

Depleted uranium's density is rivaled only by tungsten. But tungsten costs more and is less readily available than DU. Plus, in the Army's view, DU does a superior job demolishing enemy tanks.

The U.S. military had begun developing DU ammunition by at least the late 1960s. In 1969, Minneapolis-based munitions maker Honeywell received a license to use DU at the Twin Cities Army Ammunition Plant in Arden Hills, according to Nuclear Regulatory Commission records. From 1978 to 1988, the company's Twin Cities facility produced 30 mm DU rounds designed to blast tanks, fired from wing-mounted cannons on the Air Force's A-10 jets.

(The Air Force, in a 1976 study, concluded that the biomedical hazards of these rounds were ``practically negligible,'' according to a Defense Department report.)

Honeywell stopped making DU weapons at the Twin Cities ammo plant in the late 1980s, a couple years before it spun off its arms business into Alliant, a separate company.

Alliant still has the capability to make 30 mm aircraft cannon rounds, though they're not currently in production. The company's biggest DU-related project these days is the development of the new tank shell.

Honeywell helped develop the Silver Bullet in the 1980s, and Alliant and its main competitor in the ammo business, Primex, both supplied the weapon during the Gulf War. Primex (now a part of General Dynamics) won an exclusive contract for the post-Gulf War DU tank round. But Alliant roared back in August 1998, scoring rights for the third generation of the weapon.

The new round, designed in Hopkins, is expected to have an improved propulsion system and a heavier DU core, Arkin said. Alliant announced last month that it has completed the weapon's design, a key milestone. Government testing is slated for June in Maryland, and production is set to begin later this year.

Alliant's development contract for the DU tank shell is worth $42 million. If the weapon goes into full production, Alliant stands to reap a total of $130 million through 2004. Further sales are expected beyond 2004, depending on Army inventory levels.

The DU tank contract is not a big share of Alliant's overall business, considering the company has about $1 billion in yearly sales and will capture an additional $500 million-plus in annual revenue after it completes its pending purchase of Alcoa Inc.'s rocket propulsion operations.

But the new DU tank ammo contract isn't chicken feed, either.

``This is a tremendously important win for Alliant and establishes the company as the world leader in the development and production of tactical and training tank ammunition,'' Alliant's then president said in a 1998 press release. The release noted, too, that contracts like the one for the DU tank round are critical to meeting earnings growth goals, and that if the new weapon goes into full production, it could add ``significantly'' to revenues.

Tank ammunition is part of Alliant's conventional munitions segment, which made up about 43 percent of the company's sales through the nine months ending Dec. 31. Alliant's conventional munitions include everything from the propellant for Sidewinder missiles to ammunition for .45 caliber handguns and Apache helicopter-mounted machine guns.

As for 120 mm tank ammo, Alliant says in securities documents that it's the U.S. Army's largest supplier, with an exclusive contract for a non-DU round. ``The design, development and high-volume production of tank ammunition is one of the company's most important core capabilities,'' Alliant said in a recent press release.

Company officials declined to be interviewed for this story.

Gulf War use

As Alliant has been working on its new tank round, controversy has been growing over depleted uranium weapons. Increasingly, DU has been mentioned in the same breath as Agent Orange, the defoliant used in the Vietnam War. (Veterans claimed the chemical caused cancer and other illnesses, and sued its seven manufacturers, settling for $180 million.)

DU worries were rooted initially in ``Gulf War Syndrome,'' a collection of symptoms that include chronic fatigue, joint pain and short-term memory loss. Tens of thousands of American and allied veterans complained of post-war ailments, including about 1,150 in Minnesota and Wisconsin who have been treated by the Minneapolis Veterans Administration Hospital.

Theories abound on what causes Gulf War-related illness: exposure to Iraqi chemical weapons; U.S. military vaccines against biological warfare threats; stress -- the sort of thing that gave rise to ``shell shock'' and ``battle fatigue'' after previous wars; inhaling or ingesting particles of depleted uranium.

Allied forces were certainly familiar with DU, firing about 320 tons of it in the Iraqi desert, disabling more than 1,000 enemy tanks in the process. The Pentagon has acknowledged that more than 1,000 U.S. soldiers -- at a minimum -- were exposed to DU.

In the worst cases, about 100 U.S. soldiers were in vehicles hit by so-called ``friendly fire'' containing depleted uranium. Some ended up with DU shrapnel embedded in their bodies. Several hundred more were exposed to DU particles while handling the aftermath of friendly fire incidents, or by cleaning the remains of an Allied munitions depot that had accidentally exploded. Hundreds more breathed in smoke from that ammo fire.

Then there were the victory celebrations in the desert: U.S. soldiers triumphantly clambering over torched Iraqi tanks.

Army staff sergeant Antonio Jose Oye was on the scene while vanquished Iraqi tanks were still hot, because he had a job to do. Oye, who served in the Army for almost 20 years and now lives in Fridley, worked in military intelligence during the Gulf War. Part of his mission was to sift through wrecked tanks, looking for documents, assessing enemy weaponry, and digging up other any other useful information.

He said he wasn't told to take precautions against radiation, even though DU munitions were common in tank-to-tank battles.

Not long after returning to the United States in late 1991, Oye said he began experiencing joint pain, restricted lung capacity, fatigue and short-term memory loss. He said the Veterans Administration has declared him partially disabled because of ``service-related illnesses'' -- though not specifically due to the Gulf War.

The 44-year-old Oye doesn't know what caused his health problems: the oilfield smoke he said he breathed, the Iraqi weapons bunkers he said he helped detonate or the depleted uranium he believes he was exposed to. But the Veterans Administration says it's not the DU. Oye had his urine tested as part of a VA initiative aimed at Gulf War veterans. The results showed normal levels of uranium.

Risk research

The Army admitted in 1998 that it failed to adequately prepare soldiers like Oye for the potential hazards of depleted uranium. Too many soldiers were allowed to work on DU-contaminated vehicles without respirators and other equipment or clothing that would protect them from radiation.

The Army's own research over the years has also pointed out DU's potential health hazards. In a study one year before the Gulf War, the Army acknowledged the longstanding policy of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission that ``any radiation exposure, no matter how small, presents some health risk.''

Just a year before that Army study was published, the U.S. Navy switched from depleted uranium to tungsten in its 20 mm rounds, figuring that tungsten met its performance requirements and reduced the probability of radiation exposure.

Still, the Army maintains that DU's battlefield benefits far outweigh its risk, pointing to evidence like this:

The Baltimore VA Hospital has monitored veterans injured in friendly fire incidents since 1993 -- including several with DU shrapnel lodged in their bodies and higher than normal concentrations of uranium in their urine -- and so far has found no DU-related sickness.

Last fall, the Institute of Medicine, an affiliate of the National Academy of Sciences, concluded that it was doubtful DU was linked to lung cancer or kidney dysfunction (two diseases associated with uranium exposure) in Gulf War veterans.

``All the viable studies show that the (DU) risks are very small,'' said Steve Fetter, a professor at the University of Maryland's School of Public Affairs and an expert on radiation's health effects.

Fetter and Princeton University physicist and public affairs professor Frank von Hippel have studied DU and concluded that soldiers who inhaled large amounts of depleted uranium particles might face significant risks of kidney damage. But only soldiers with DU shrapnel in their bodies face a statistically significant radiation risk, they concluded. Beyond that, radiation risks are so low as to be statistically undetectable, they say.

But scientific opinion on DU's radiation effects is not uniform.

Asaf Durakovic, a well-regarded radiation biologist and head of nuclear medicine at a Saudi Arabian hospital and research center, has been a leading critic of DU. He's examined Gulf War veterans for several years and has concluded that some of their illnesses may be related to depleted uranium.

Durakovic, a former head of the Wilmington, Del., VA Hospital, has consistently found excess levels of depleted uranium in the body fluids of more than 40 American, British and Canadian Gulf War veterans he has tested.

More recently, he's said that he's found traces of the isotope Uranium 236 in the urine and bone tissue of several veterans. Uranium 236, which is more dangerous than U-238, does not occur in natural uranium. It is created in nuclear reactors, along with highly radioactive plutonium.

Laboratories in Switzerland and Finland have also recently announced they discovered small amounts of plutonium in shrapnel from American weapons found in Kosovo. The Pentagon has acknowledged that, due to production flaws, some American depleted uranium weapons contained traces of plutonium -- but not at dangerous levels.

The DU debate

Much of the debate over depleted uranium boils down to a critical scientific question: At what level is radiation exposure dangerous, and how do you measure that exposure?

``This is a debate that has been going on for 40 years,'' said Jonathan Moreno, head of the University of Virginia's Center for Biomedical Ethics and author of ``Undue Risk: Secret State Experiments on Humans.''

Scientists are sure high doses of radiation cause cancer. Beyond that, conventional wisdom has held that any dose of radiation increases the risk of cancer. But another view holds that below a certain threshold, health risks don't increase.

The DU flap also hinges on a cultural issue: a lingering distrust of the U.S. government and the contractors who have helped supply its arsenal, say scientists and military and biomedical ethics experts.

``It's the same old story, it happens again and again,'' said Dan Guttman, a fellow at the Center for American Government at Johns Hopkins University and executive director of President Clinton's Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments. The United States has a history of hiding risks from soldiers and nuclear industry workers in order to avoid liability and embarrassment, Guttman said.

Added Moreno: ``Once there's been a loss of trust, it's hard to get it back.''

The trust level on depleted uranium has been particularly low in Europe, where more than 40,000 DU rounds were fired from 30 mm cannons during NATO air campaigns in the Balkans.

In late December, the Italian media kicked off a month-long DU news frenzy, linking ``Balkans War Syndrome'' to the deaths of five Italian soldiers who had served in Kosovo. Within the next few weeks, Germany said it would review cases of leukemia in its military; Portugal started screening 10,000 soldiers who served in the Balkans; and the United Kingdom announced that its soldiers who had served in the Balkans would be tested for DU contamination, reversing an earlier policy that such tests were unnecessary.

The British government, like NATO and the U.S. military, maintains that DU weapons are safe. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization has said there's no evidence linking depleted uranium to Kosovo veterans' health problems, though much more study is needed.

Arkin, the Washington D.C. military analyst, doubts further study will necessarily clear up the matter. ``More studies are not going to convince people that uranium is safe, regardless of the science,'' he said. ``Should we cater to the public panic? Absolutely, yes.''

His reasoning: When a democratic nation uses force, it must meet the public's ``moral and aesthetic standards.'' Weapons that don't meet those standards get stigmatized -- just look at napalm and land mines, he said.

Alliant has long been a target for protesters because it makes land mines, although the company says its mines self-destruct within 15 days. Furor over land mines led in 1997 to an international treaty -- which the United States opposed -- outlawing the weapons.

Fetter, the University of Maryland scholar, said that concern over land mines was more justified than anxieties over DU. Land mines, he said, ``were slowly murdering farmers in developing countries.''

Still, Fetter said, the rising tide of public opinion against DU -- particularly in Europe -- could greatly limit its use. ``There is an enormous PR problem here and it is probably not solvable.''

Mike Hughlett can be reached at mhughlett@pioneerpress.com or (651) 228-5428

-------- israel

A Challenge To Israel's Nuclear Blind Spot

Washington Post
Sunday, March 11, 2001; Page B02
By Jonathan Broder
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50043-2001Mar10?language=printer

Some years ago, I was riding on a bus in Jerusalem when a woman boarded and sat down, placing her dog on the seat beside her. As the bus filled up, a man asked the woman to hold the dog so he could sit down, too. "The dog has a ticket," the woman snapped, defiantly showing the stub. The man persisted. Before long, the other passengers had taken sides, shouting so loudly that the driver finally pulled over to settle the matter. With great solemnity, we took a vote. The dog won.

No matter the subject, Israelis love to debate. On any given day, you can hear a nation of self-styled pundits engaged in ferocious discussion, often at high volume. All topics, from the political to the personal, are fair game.

All except one: the nuclear weapons that Israel possesses but refuses to acknowledge.

A thick canopy of ambiguity shrouds Israel's nuclear program, held in place by legal restrictions that generally prohibit the disclosure of state secrets -- including public discussion of Israel's nuclear weapons. The only way journalists and academics have been able to address the issue is by attributing any facts to "foreign sources" -- a device that allows Israel to pretend it is keeping the world guessing about its nuclear capability. This deliberate policy of obfuscation is called "nuclear opacity."

This week that policy will be challenged -- not by some foreign enemy of Israel, but by one of its own. Avner Cohen is an Israeli scholar who has been living in the United States for three years because he fears arrest for publishing a political history of Israel's nuclear weapons program. Today, he plans to leave his home in Takoma Park and fly back to Tel Aviv, where he intends to confront the powerful defense establishment in the name of academic freedom.

There is a surreal aspect to this, because the broad facts of the matter are widely known. Israel constructed its first nuclear device on the eve of the 1967 Middle East War, and now, according to CIA estimates, has between 200 and 400 nuclear warheads. Israel refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or any other accord that would require it to account for the nuclear material it produces at its Dimona reactor in the Negev Desert. And yet, publicly, Israel will only say that it will not be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East.

The origins of Israel's nuclear opacity policy go back to a White House meeting between President Richard Nixon and Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir in 1969. Meir confirmed that Israel had developed nuclear weapons, saying they were needed as a hedge against another Holocaust. Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger,recognized that the Israeli bomb was already a fait accompli. They also agreed that Israel was a responsible nuclear power, having possessed such devices before the 1967 conflict yet opting instead for a conventional war. And they were loath to antagonize America's vocal pro-Israel lobby.

Eventually, Washington and Jerusalem came up with a formula that would avoid a bruising political confrontation: Israel would neither test nor declare its nuclear weapons, and the United States would look the other way.

For Israel, this policy has provided the best of all possible worlds: It has enabled the country to keep its nuclear weapons, unhindered by U.S.-led non-proliferation efforts that have prevented the development of such weapons by other countries; and it has continued to receive American aid. For the United States, opacity has served as a lesser evil, helping to keep Israel's nuclear thumb out of Arab eyes and thus reduce the potential for regional war.

But now, much to Israel's discomfort, Avner Cohen wants to discuss that policy of opacity in public. Cohen hasn't been back to Israel since 1998, when his book about the political history of Israel's nuclear bomb program was published in the United States without the approval of the Israeli censor. The book, "Israel and the Bomb," includes no technical or operational details about Israel's nuclear arsenal, only a meticulously researched history of Israel's decision to go nuclear, based on declassified public documents and Cohen's interviews with key players in the effort. But the book doesn't attribute anything to "foreign sources," and angry Israeli defense officials have threatened in the press to prosecute Cohen if he ever returns home again.

Still that is precisely what the 49-year-old Cohen plans to do. Cohen has plans to deliver lectures this week on the question of scholarship and government secrecy to fellow academics at Jerusalem's Van Leer Institute and later this month at Tel Aviv University, but his lawyers have warned him that he's likely to spend more time talking to police. Cohen could face arrest, trial and imprisonment on charges of criminally compromising Israel's nuclear secrets.

The Israeli security establishmentviews the return of Avner Cohen as an opportunity to remind other Israeli scholars that challenges to the country's most sacred policy taboo will not be tolerated. But it should instead be an opportunity to permit some public discourse on the issue, lifting security restrictions that can only corrode Israel's democracy.

Born in Tel Aviv, Avner Cohen grew up in the affluent suburb of Ramat Hasharon, where his classmates were the children of Israel's top military and political leaders. After earning his doctorate in philosophy from the University of Chicago in 1981, he returned to Israel to teach at Tel Aviv University, publishing scholarly articles on political theory, nuclear ethics and proliferation. In 1990, Cohen won a MacArthur Foundation fellowship and went to MIT to research Israel's nuclear history.

With his frequent visits to Israel to conduct interviews and study declassified documents, it wasn't long before Cohen and his work came to the attention of Israeli authorities, who placed him under Mossad surveillance. At MIT, the office of a colleague where Cohen's research materials were stored was broken into. One day, Cohen found that the entire windshield of his car had been carefully removed and politely placed on the roof of the vehicle while the interior was apparently combed for documents.

Cohen tried to play by the rules: In 1994, he returned to Israel and dutifully submitted a draft of his book to the Israeli censor -- who banned it. Cohen appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court, but the court chose not to rule, instead urging the two sides to find a compromise. In the face of the censor's continued refusal to sign off on any part of the book,a dispirited Cohen returned to the United States, where he completed work on the manuscript as a fellow at Harvard and the United States Institute for Peace.The book was published by Columbia University Press.

Since the book's publication, Cohen, now a senior researcher at the National Security Archive at George Washington University, has become a controversial figure in Israel. Defense officials regard him as a criminal who compromised the country's most closely held secrets. Academics, including some who have been deeply involved in Israel's nuclear effort, say there is nothing in Cohen's book that damages Israeli national security. Reuven Pedatzur, a writer on national security affairs for the Israeli daily Ha'aretz, calls Cohen's story "a classic example of Israeli democracy's black hole: the area of national security where the usual laws of a democratic society do not apply."

The time has come for Israel to shine some badly needed light into that black hole. As an independent researcher, Cohen does not speak for the Israeli government, and therefore his book poses no real threat to its policy of opacity. And while no responsible person -- certainly not Cohen -- suggests that the government should go "transparent," which would upset a balance that has lasted well for more than 30 years, there are important ancillary issues that Israelis have a right to explore.

These include questions not only of policy but of environment, health and safety. Where is nuclear waste being stored? How safe is that storage? What effect is it having on the country's fragile water table? It took the end of the Cold War for the United States to begin addressing environmental disasters like the Hanford nuclear waste site in Washington state. In theirtiny, crowded country, Israelis don't have the luxury of waiting until peace permits such environmental issues to be discussed.

And then there is the right of Israelis to know who they are as a nation. As a piece of scholarship, Cohen's book joins the work of Israel's so-called "new historians," who have used recently declassified documents to reexamine national myths. Their work has provoked furious domestic debate on the degree of Israel's vulnerability in 1948 (and hence, the scope of its victory in the War of Independence), and whether the Palestinians were driven out of Israel or left voluntarily, as the official version claims. Preventing debate about Israel's nuclear history denies citizens an important chapter in the nation's narrative, one that is crucial for understanding what the country has become today.

The return of Avner Cohen is more than just a test of the limits of academic freedom. It is a test of the health of the country's democracy. A growing number of Israelis feel they have been denied the freedom to debate one of the government's most fateful decisions. Israeli authorities should accept that granting that freedom is another way to protect the nation's security.

Jonathan Broder is a senior writer for the Jerusalem Report.

----

A New Leader Makes New Distinctions

Washington Post
Sunday, March 11, 2001; Page B01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50042-2001Mar10?language=printer

A smiling Ariel Sharon sat behind his desk two days after his swearing in and said: "It's hard to be a prime minister." Years ago, the Israeli general was regarded as finished -- blamed for the failure of Israel's war in Lebanon. But last year, as Ehud Barak's dreams of peace disappeared in a wave of continuing violence and stalemated negotiations with the Palestinians, Israel's people demanded security for themselves and their families. By an overwhelming majority, they turned to Sharon, the 73-year-old Likud party leader.

Washington Post columnist and Newsweek contributing editor Lally Weymouth spoke with Sharon on Friday in his first interview with a foreign journalist since taking office. Excerpts:

SHARON: President Bush had called me two days ago and invited me to visit him on March 20.

WEYMOUTH: How do you want to see U.S.-Israeli relations develop?

We will make every effort to strengthen our relations. I think the Bush administration will be very friendly toward Israel. We [share an interest in] stability in the Middle East and in missile defense.

You were elected to bring security to the people of Israel. How do you plan to do that?

I would like to negotiate with the Palestinians, but this government will be different from the former one. It will not negotiate under terror or violence. . . .

Reportedly, some of [Palestinian leader Yasser] Arafat's own security apparatus is engaged in terrorism. Is this so? The Palestinian Authority does not take any preventive steps against the infrastructure of the terrorist organizations. And Arafat's most loyal forces, such as the presidential guard and Force 17, are active participants in violence and terror.

Have you talked to Arafat?

About three weeks ago, Arafat called me and we had quite a long conversation. I stressed that I would like to make a clear distinction between terrorist organizations -- against whom we have to take the necessary steps -- and the Palestinian population, whose conditions I would like to ease. I said I would like to start immediately by opening the gates in areas [controlled by] the Palestinian Authority to raw materials, [permitting] their agricultural products to be taken out and increasing the number of Palestinians [allowed to come to work in Israel]. But a day or so later, a wave of terror started and has continued right up to today.

Do you believe Arafat has control?

He hasn't lost control.

Does he have less control than six months ago?

No change.

If Arafat wanted to stop the terror, could he?

Yes, he can stop it.

When you spoke to Arafat on the phone, did he indicate he would control the violence?

He listened. He did not answer.

Did he call you or did you call him?

He called me. I said I would like to ease the conditions of your people but in order to do so, steps should be taken to stop the violence.

The United States is hoping you will turn over tax payments to the Palestinian Authority.

We shouldn't look at Arafat as someone who cannot pay his wages. They have property worth over a billion dollars all over the world.

Do you have plans to meet Arafat?

I'm ready to meet and negotiate with him, but that cannot be done under pressure of terror or violence. That is the difference between this government and Barak's. Making those concessions weakened Israel.

It's rumored that your government may close the Gaza airport so that Arafat's plane cannot take off.

I don't want to go into details. Because the Palestinian Authority is behind terror, the concept should be to ease the lives of ordinary citizens and harden the lives of those in the Palestinian Authority. Arafat agreed to take the necessary steps, but he freed many terrorists who are now involved in terror. As well as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah is involved in terror inside Israel. They are backed by Iran and have the sympathy of Syria. Hezbollah has never had better relations with Syria.

Is that because Syria's new president, Bashar Assad, is more sympathetic to [Hezbollah] than his father?

I think the father, being more experienced, understood better. Hezbollah also has support in Arafat's presidential guard. Ten days ago, a colonel in the presidential guard was killed by us: He was the liaison with Hezbollah.

What are the targets of Islamic Jihad?

Their targets are Israeli and Jewish targets around the world.

Do you have an interim plan because Barak's attempts at a comprehensive deal failed?

Barak agrees he did not succeed. President Clinton called me and said Israel is free from what he calls "Clinton principles." He said he had warned Arafat many times that he was playing with terror. The former president came up with certain proposals. He said they failed because of Arafat. And therefore Israel is no longer committed to this plan.

Some say you plan to create a unilateral separation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

One should look at realistic plans. Until 1967, the length of the border of Judea and Samaria [biblical names that many Israelis use for the West Bank] was 309 kilometers, and we never managed to control it. If we were to make the separation Barak mentioned, the length of the border would be over 700 kilometers. Who could patrol this border? It is not realistic. There should be an interim agreement or a situation of nonbelligerency. I know the Palestinians are suffering from lack of contiguity [between the areas under the Palestinian Authority's control]. They don't want Israeli check points.

Would you give the Palestinians contiguity?

Yes, and a road so they could travel freely from the north to the south of Judea and Samaria. I have a plan so they don't need to cross checkpoints. Maybe that is the way to move forward to peace.

Is the Palestinian Authority importing a lot of weapons and ammunition?

The most dangerous equipment being smuggled in is arms they are not entitled to have [coming] from Sinai and by ship via Gaza's beaches. They have to stop it.

Do you think Iraq is a threat to Israel?

I think that the new administration rightly regards Iraq as a very dangerous country. The [Iraqis] have the know-how [to make] weapons of mass destruction. They have a very capable group of scientists. No doubt, they are making tremendous efforts to possess weapons of mass destruction. Therefore, we support the steps being taken [in Washington]. I think there is also a danger of Iran getting long-range missiles, thanks to support from North Korea and Russia. The most dangerous thing is that Iran has become the center of radical Islamic terror. . . .

If the intifada gets worse, would you consider reentering Palestinian-controlled areas on the West Bank?

Palestinian-controlled areas? No. Areas that were given to the Palestinians -- there, I think the situation is irreversible, and I don't think we have to reenter. That doesn't mean that Israel will not take steps against people who find shelter there.

What are your other priorities?

To encourage immigration to Israel. We have to make a major effort to bring Jews from Russia, South America, Central America, France, the Ukraine, from other places in the former Soviet Union. And, of course, we will make a major effort for American Jews to live here.

I believe that in the coming 10 to 12 years, we have to make an effort to bring another million Jews here. We brought 1 million in the '90s. By the year 2020, I hope the majority of Jews will be living in Israel. We also have to make a tremendous effort in education, here and abroad, to teach Zionist values on the one hand and, on the other hand, [develop] the most sophisticated scientific technology.

And then we must bring unity to the Israeli citizens -- between ourselves and Jews around the world. I believe I can talk to the right and to the left, to the religious and the secular, to the ultra-orthodox, to the Arabs, to Jews in Israel and those in the diaspora. And then, of course, we must attract more investment. These are going to be my main goals.

Is Israel at a crisis point?

The country is facing great dangers. On the other hand, there are great hopes. It is a country of talents. I think that the idea is to contain the dangers and to pursue the hopes. I believe I can do it.

Are you going to try to do a deal with Syria?

It's very hard for this small nation to negotiate on two fronts. And besides, Syria at present is the main supporter of the Hezbollah. I think first we have to deal with the Palestinians.

Some say you'll be like the hard-liner Richard Nixon, who unexpectedly opened America's relationship with China -- that you'll be the hawk who is able to make peace with the Palestinians.

I believe I can make peace because I saw all the horrors of war. I participated in the wars and lost my best friends in battles. I was seriously injured twice. Therefore, I understand the importance of peace better than the politicians who speak about peace but never experienced war.

-------- korea

Planning a New North Korean Strategy

March 11, 2001
New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/11/weekinreview/11SANG.html

WASHINGTON -- When it comes to confronting paranoid dictatorships, Washington has long been trapped between two extreme strategies: embargo and isolate, which is how it has dealt with Saddam Hussein for a decade; or engage and enmesh, also called the China strategy.

Neither approach has proven very satisfactory, perhaps because they overestimate America's influence. Fidel Castro has survived four decades of American isolation. And while a decade of commercial and cultural engagement with China has nudged along economic freedoms, the State Department concluded recently that the treatment of dissidents has worsened.

Now, amid apparent rifts in his party and his administration, Mr. Bush has been forced to face the fascinating and complex case of North Korea.

As Mr. Bush discovered last Wednesday, when President Kim Dae Jung of South Korea visited him here, these are very confusing times for anyone dealing with Pyongyang. Bowing to a concerted campaign of economic and nationalistic inducements plotted by Mr. Kim, the North has cracked open its door. It is finally executing old agreements to create rail and road links across the demilitarized zone, opening diplomatic relations with European powers and keeping promises to halt its terrifying missile tests and commando raids.

But the country remains the closest thing on Earth to the dark side of the moon, so no one knows whether this outreach is a change of heart or Asia's modern-day answer to the Trojan horse.

Even more perplexing, Mr. Bush finds himself caught between those - including, it seems, Secretary of State Colin Powell - who want to see if North Korea is serious about negotiating an end to its missile exports and manufacturing, and the Washington hard-liners who think the best thing to do with North Korea is to treat it the way Ronald Reagan dealt with a weakening Soviet Union. That is, turn the economic screws, confront it with military technology that it can't match and hope it will collapse.

"I do have some skepticism about the leader of North Korea," Mr. Bush said of Kim Jong Il, with whom President Clinton nearly concluded a missile control deal last year. He joins a long list of such skeptics.

But he begged the largest question: Since North Korea is in many ways a unique case - capable of doing extraordinary harm to the South and perhaps Japan, but not capable of surviving a lengthy war with the West - either engaging or confronting it represents a unique set of risks.

The military threat is well known: With fearsome artillery so close to Seoul, North Korea's leaders could destroy one of Asia's most vibrant cities in minutes. Add to that the country's remarkable isolation, which has bred enormous mystery about it in the West and a paranoia among its own leaders. They believe - quite fervently - that those 37,000 American troops on the border are poised to invade them, not just to protect the South.

And in recent years they appear to have developed a burning desire for legitimacy, symbolized by their intense focus on being taken seriously by the United States. So far their only strategy to achieve that has been blackmail. The countries that get attention and aid, they figured out, are those that strike a little fear into the hearts of the Pentagon. So they develop missiles and nukes, then bargain them away.

For those reasons, it's no surprise Mr. Bush wants to sound a hard line: What new president wants to be taken as a patsy? Or, as one of Mr. Bush's aides said last week, "I'm kind of tired of the old pattern where they shoot off a missile and we send them a bucket of wheat."

But taking a hard line has plenty of risks, too. This is hardly an empire, evil or otherwise; it can't even feed its own people. It is also astonishingly totalitarian, something not too difficult to pull off in a small country where radios are fixed to one or two approved stations and the phone book is the size of a school directory. That's why Mr. Kim, the South Korean leader, arrived here to argue that North Korea's problem is rooted in deep insecurity, and that as soon as Seoul and Washington solve that, some of the knottier questions - like missile exports - might begin to melt away.

SO far, the Bush White House isn't buying.

"We all have the same goals, but very different perceptions," one of Mr. Kim's most senior aides said. "We cannot afford a collapse of North Korea; this is not like West Germany absorbing East Germany. And what happens if the North Korean state falls? A military government takes over, and the prospect of a last, desperate war becomes very real."

In fact, there are two reasons that Kim Dae Jung approaches the North so differently than Mr. Bush's aides do.

The first is economic: If the North collapses, or lashes out, it's not the United States that will take the hit. A surge of refugees across the border would trigger social chaos in the South; a surge of workers would undercut South Korea's relatively high wages.

The second is a matter of psychology: the cartoon imagery in which the West has cast Kim Jong Il all these years. Some of it reflects reality, but some does not. Kim Jong Il has, in past decades, arranged for kidnappings; he has exported missiles; he has probably manufactured one or two nuclear weapons. Before his father's death in 1994, some considered him a pornography- loving fool who would be quickly overthrown. But he's still there, and new intelligence estimates say he is firmly in charge.

President Kim, who won last year's Nobel Peace Prize, has also realized that China and Russia will no longer keep North Korea afloat. "I am aware that some read the changes on the part of North Korea as being merely temporary or tactical," he said. But either way, he added, "one thing is certain: for North Korea change is not a matter of choice but of survival."

James R. Lilley, who served as ambassador to South Korea under President Reagan and Mr. Bush's father, said that "you definitely have a clash of views here."

"It's our belief that the North Koreans have to show us far more than they have," he said. "It's Kim's belief that we are overly legalistic - that he can look in the eyes of the North Koreans and see their `nunchi,' their soul." Mr. Lilley isn't quite sure what that nunchi looks like. But Mr. Bush isn't likely to find out until he looks into their eyes, too.

-------- russia

Russia suspends dismantling weapons

03/11/01
MSNBC
NBC NEWS
By Dana Lewis
http://www.msnbc.com/news/542671.asp?cp1=1

A response to Bush's campaign for missile defense system The Cold War long over, the United States and Russia are playing a game of brinkmanship centered on missile defense plans..

MOSCOW, March 11 - Russian President Vladimir Putin suspended the dismantling of nuclear warheads called for under the START II treaty with the United States on President Bush's inauguration day, NBC News has learned. And Russian officials insist that Moscow will end cooperation on nuclear disarmament if Washington presses forward with plans to build a national missile defense system.

"IF THE NMD (national missile defense) is deployed in the United States, we will have to forget about reductions of strategic offensive weapons," said Yuri Kapralov, director of Russian Security and Disarmament.

Russia also has rolled out its counter-threat, the Topol-M missile. Although it is ostensibly a single-warhead intercontinental ballistic missile, experts believe it could be converted to carry several warheads, which would violate the Start II agreement.

Under the arms-reduction pact, which the United States and Russia signed in 1993, both countries committed to eliminating missiles with more than one warhead.

"The Topol-M already has the capability to overcome any anti-missile defense," said Gen. Vladimir Yakovlev, commander of Russia's rocket forces. He added that the next move was up to the United States.

HIGH-STAKES BATTLE

In the high-stakes game of sword vs. missile shield, Putin has mounted a diplomatic offensive, arguing that North Korea and Iran are not as great a threat as argued by the United States. He's even proposed a limited missile defense plan for Europe.

"The 1972 ABM treaty is like an axis to which a whole series of international security agreements is attached," Putin said last week. "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."

Former President Mikhail Gorbachev - who confronted the Reagan administration's campaign on behalf of the "Star Wars" defense shield - has warned that the U.S. system would spark a new arms race - "a new spiral of militarization with unpredictable consequences."

Critics say the Kremlin is reverting to Soviet-era tactics, using the missile shield to try to drive a wedge between Washington and its European allies. But the Russians counter that the real risk is to advances made through arms control over the past three decades.

NBC correspondent Dana Lewis is based in Moscow.

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

Line 1 workers identified
Researchers ID 2,500 former IAAP workers.

The Hawk Eye
By Mike Augspurger
Sunday, March 11, 2001
http://www.thehawkeye.com/specials/IAAP/breaking/b31100.html

University of Iowa health researchers so far have determined that more than 2,500 people assembled nuclear weapons at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant.

For several weeks. Project Director Kristina Venske said staff members have gone through 36,315 index cards at the IAAP facility in Middletown. The cards showed the workers' Social Security numbers, hiring dates, termination dates and job codes.

The university's College of Public Health is funded with a $500,000 grant from the Department of Energy to find and screen for health problems people who helped build nuclear bombs for the Atomic Energy Commission from the late 1940s to the mid-1970s.

For the most part, Venske said, the cards weren't clear if a worker was employed by the Department of Defense or the Atomic Energy Commission -- the former operated the non-nuclear portions of the plant and the latter rented space for the nuclear operations.

The next step is to look at the job codes to see which ones were specific to Line 1. Researchers have learned from former workers what codes are related to that production line.

Howard Nicholson, also a member of the team, said so far the index cards showed 2,146 names of people who were on Line 1.

"We had an educated guess that the number may have been up to 4,000 people who worked there," he said last week.

In addition, 437 people have contacted the U of I researchers to say they worked on Line 1. Nicholson said residents in 28 states have contacted them.

"It's been fairly interesting. Many of the people who called in from out of state have relatives in the area or heard about the former worker program," he said.

Some people have told researchers that they weren't full-time on Line 1. Rather, they worked in other areas of the plant and were pulled off those stations to occasionally help on Line 1.

Nicholson said so far officials have not be able to determine those patterns by IAAP records.

Of the total number, officials are not sure how many of the former workers are alive. Researchers plan to contact the Social Security Administration which will assist in verifying a person's status. All the information is confidential, he said.

"From the information we've had to work with, I'm real pleased to get that many names," Nicholson said. "The response from the public has been outstanding."

The search is not done, however, and U of I officials still want people who worked on Line 1, or their relatives, to contact them -- especially with current addresses.

Venske said some information has been found in industrial hygiene records, which list radiation exposures an employee may have received.

"We've had several of those, especially from the late 1960s into the 1970s," she said, noting officials now have requested information back to the 1950s.

The hygiene information gives health researchers an idea what kind of exposure people were receiving, she said.

"By and large, the readings on their film badges have been very low," she said. "We've only seen a few years work and have no conclusions on that yet."

Because of delays in finding information, Venske said the health officials have not yet sent out health and job surveys to those who have contacted the university.

Before the surveys can be sent out, researches must determine what workers' job were and what exposures may have been associated with their jobs.

They have had difficulty in tracking down all the records needed to complete the task, she said. Those records, which include environmental reports and the personal hygiene data, include anything having to do with the AEC.

"There's a whole lot of bureaucratic red tape that slows down the process," she said.

Besides the Social Security route, U of I officials also plan to check with the state health registry and track down death certificates that would list the cause of death.

"We need to get a feeling of whether there are higher incidents of cancer or not when compared to the general population," she said.

Although officials are concentrating on Line 1 workers, they also feel they may miss other workers associated with the area, such as people in laundry, maintenance or construction.

"The ultimate goal is to provide medical screenings for these people," she said.

---

Health survey

The Hawk Eye
Sunday, March 11, 2001
http://www.thehawkeye.com/specials/IAAP/breaking/b231100.html

Burlington Atomic Energy Commission Plant -- Former Worker Program is a health study being conducted by researchers for the University of Public Health.

The program hopes to:

·Identify all Line 1 workers with employment histories spanning any time period between 1947 and 1975.

·Determine substances and occupational hazards to which this group of workers may have been exposed in the production of atomic weapons.

·Develop a plan, based on the results of discussions and questionnaires, for further medical screening.

People wishing to participate in the study are asked to call the University of Iowa toll free at (866) 282-5818.

People should have the following information ready: name, including middle initial; address; telephone number; years the caller or relative worked on Line 1 and job title (if known); health concerns and history.

Information also may be sent to: BAECP-FWP, Department of Occupational & Environmental Health, College of Public Health, 100 Oakdale Campus No. 222 IREH, Iowa City, Iowa 52242-5000.

The Hawk Eye 800 S. Main St., Burlington Iowa 52601 319-754-8461 Front Desk | 319-754-6824 FAX | 1-800-397-1708 Outside Burlington

-------- ohio

Gov't Questioned on Uranium Deal

Sun, 11 Mar 2001
The Associated Press
By H. JOSEF HEBERT

WASHINGTON (AP) - When the government put enriched uranium estimated to be worth $10 million up for sale, it expected a good return. Instead, the U.S. Treasury received a scant $76,051, raising the ire of Energy Department investigators.

A private contractor, who handled the sale, reaped millions of dollars, according to auditors.

After a review of the sale, the department's inspector general concluded that the contractor, who prepared and packaged the uranium and negotiated the deal, was paid $3.4 million for ``questionable costs'' that should never have been allowed.

On top of that, Fluor Fernald Inc., received a $675,430 fee for handling the deal, nearly 10 times what the government made on the 1997 sale, said the inspector general's report recently made public.

Still, the deal was vigorously defended Friday by the contractor and by the Energy Department office at the Fernald weapons plant near Cincinnati, where the uranium was located and is being disposed of as part of a general cleanup project.

``We don't think the sale was a bad deal. We told the IG (inspector general) that and that's still our position,'' said Glenn Griffiths, deputy director of the DOE site office at the Fernald facility. He said the alternative to the sale was to declare the uranium a waste and face huge disposal costs.

Under the sale agreement, neither the name of the buyer nor the specific sale price can be made public for five years, said Griffiths. Other department sources said the company is a foreign uranium fuel provider.

According to the IG investigation, Fluor Fernald Inc., the managing contractor for environmental cleanup at Fernald, estimated the sale would get the government $5 million to $7 million. Instead, the government received $76,051 after all fees and other costs were calculated, according to the IG report.

There were contradictory explanations Friday on how much money actually was paid for the 978 metric tons of uranium, which the buyer resells after it is diluted as commercial reactor fuel.

Ken Morgan, a spokesman for the DOE's Ohio field office, said the amount was ``substantially less'' than the $10.5 million ``projected sales revenue'' cited by the IG report. Griffiths said the number was essentially corrected, but included all of the costs involved, including preparing the material, which was in many different forms and not properly packaged or analyzed.

But Griffiths said the $5 million to $7 million profit projections were made in 1990 before the market for uranium softened dramatically. He said the material was advertised as early as 1992, but no buyer was found for five years.

Still, the inspector general's report questioned the millions of dollars that were awarded to Fluor Fernald for cost recovery and the additional $675,430 ``award fee'' since the project ``was not completed within budget.''

``In our judgment, had this process been effectively managed, the department could have returned an additional $3.6 million to the Treasury,'' Inspector General Gregory Friedman wrote Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham.

Fluor Fernald spokesman Jeff Wagner said the IG report ``takes a very narrow view'' of the sale. ``We feel that we fulfilled our obligation in the project and did it very well and safely,'' said Wagner.

While Abraham had not yet seen the report, his spokesman, Joe Davis, said that the secretary is taking the IG's findings seriously. ``We're going to make sure we take a close look at it,'' said Davis.

While the uranium deal, reached more than three years ago, raises concerns, Friedman wrote that ``the more pressing issue'' is how the department will handle future uranium sales, including one expected at Fernald as early as this summer. That sale again is expected to be handled by Fluor Fernald Inc.

Two years after the uranium sale agreement was signed, Fluor Fernald, a subsidiary of the Fluor Corp., a $12.4 billion energy and construction conglomerate, had its DOE contract renewed for managing the environmental cleanup of the Ohio facility.

-------- washington

Hanford battles Russian invaders:
Radioactive plants cost plenty to snag as tumbleweeds

Sunday, March 11, 2001
Seattle Times
The Associated Press
By Linda Ashton
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis/web/vortex/display?slug=tumble11m&date=20010311

RICHLAND, Wash. -- The Cold War may be over, but the Hanford Nuclear Reservation continues to battle Russian invaders -- tumbling, radioactive tumbleweeds.

Russian thistle is a dead menace here on the windswept desert of south-central Washington. Each winter, the deep tap root on the plant decays, and the spiny brown skeleton above ground breaks off and rolls away.

"Our dream is that we have this place tumbleweed-free," says Ray Johnson, a biological control manager for radiation protection at Fluor Hanford, the contractor managing the U.S. Department of Energy site.

But that's about as likely as a Soviet revival.

While less than 1 percent of the tumbleweeds corralled and compacted at Hanford are radioactive, the ones that are cost a bundle to clean up.

Hanford is the most contaminated nuclear site in the country, built in 1943 for the top-secret Manhattan Project. For 40 years, Hanford would make plutonium for the nation's nuclear arsenal, including the atomic bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.

Russian thistle, a non-native or invader species, is a particular problem at underground burial sites for radioactive waste, where their tap roots reach down as far as 20 feet and suck up such nasty elements as strontium and cesium.

A stiff winter wind can send the tumbleweed as far away as four miles, and then "we've lost control of our contamination," Johnson says. But most get hung up within a few hundred yards, usually on sagebrush, fences or in stairwells at the buildings scattered across the site.

Two years ago, uncontrolled contamination spread by fruit flies at the site made Hanford a national laughingstock, spoofed by humor columnist Dave Barry and in the syndicated comic strip, "Sylvia."

The flies had been attracted to a soil fixative with saccharin in the base that was being sprayed on a contaminated site. They flew to a lunch room and spread the taint to nearby Dumpsters, which wound up at the Richland municipal landfill.

Johnson can laugh -- a little bit -- about it now, recalling attempts to find the source of the contamination. As crews ran radiation detectors around the lunch room, and passed over a fruit fly, "the contamination flew away," he recalls.

The journeys of a few thousand fruit flies cost $2.5 million to clean up.

Riding herd on Hanford's tumbleweeds, and its flying insects, is part of an annual $4 million integrated soil, vegetation and animal control (ISVAC) program, run by DynCorp. for Fluor.

Radiation control specialists survey the tumbleweeds on the 560-square-mile reservation, using Geiger-Mueller counters that click when radioactivity is present. If contaminated tumbleweeds are found, an ISVAC crew is called in for disposal duty.

"The weeds are fairly low danger," says Todd Ponczoch, a radiation control technician, scanning tumbleweeds along a fence line with a Geiger counter. None was registering as radioactive on a recent trip.

A large, three-pound radioactive tumbleweed might measure out at 150 millirads, or about 1/100th of the allowable annual dose of radiation per person at Hanford.

Radioactive tumbleweeds are pitchforked by specially trained and clothed workers into a regulated garbage truck, compacted and disposed of at an on-site low-level waste dump. A trail of paperwork is required as well.

The sites must be satisfactorily cleaned up and covered with six inches of good fill material.

Nonradioactive tumbleweeds are territory for the Teamsters.

"It's an easy job. It gets us outside," says Joe Aldridge, a Teamster from Richland, as he pitchforks a plant into the garbage truck, which can hold about 1,800 pounds of tumbleweeds. "Digging ditches is a lot worse."

The uncontaminated tumbleweeds are dumped in an open pit. Up until five or six years ago, the "clean" tumbleweeds were burned and the ash buried. But the state Department of Health put a halt to that practice for fear that some radioactive tumbleweeds might find their way into the mix and disperse contamination into the air.

Preventive measures are also part of the control program, and include backpack, roadside and aerial spraying with herbicide to kill the thistle. Sometimes a bio-barrier -- a costly engineered textile -- is laid down to block the formation of thistle roots.

"What you've got to do is make sure your contaminated areas are tumbleweed-free," Johnson says.

Clearly, this isn't Kansas, where at least two enterprising souls are raising Russian thistles, turning them into tumbleweeds and selling them for home decor. But in the vast, open and uncontaminated portions of the reservation, some areas are simply left to nature.

Even Johnson can acknowledge their rightful place in the world:

"If we didn't have them, the West wouldn't be the West, and we couldn't sing 'Tumblin' Tumbleweeds.'"

---

Department of Health's Release of Sherwood Uranium Mill
Site License Marks End of Nine-Year Reclamation Project

Sun, 11 Mar 2001
/PRNewswire/
By NRC

Is First in U.S. to Receive License Termination Approval

OLYMPIA, Wash., -- A uranium mill site on the Spokane Tribe of Indians Reservation has been reclaimed with native plants, and is once again available to tribal members for traditional and historic uses. Wildlife has already returned to the reclaimed area. The Sherwood uranium mill near Wellpinit, operated by Western Nuclear, Inc. from 1978 to 1984, today received license termination by the state Department of Health. It's the first state-regulated conventional uranium mill closure in the country to be approved by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

"Working on this project with the Spokane Tribe of Indians and Western Nuclear has gone very well," said Secretary of Health Mary Selecky. "Our mission is to improve and protect public health, and this project does that with a heavy soil cover over mill-tailings and by returning native plants to the site so tribal members can use the land in traditional ways."

After ceasing operations in 1984, Sherwood remained in standby status until 1992 when the company permanently closed the site. Reclamation work on the mill began in 1992 following approval of the closure plan by the Department of Health. Reclamation of the associated open-pit mine was substantially completed in 1992 and was released by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in 2000.

The mill-site closure plan was designed specifically for Sherwood to account for the unique geography, type of operation and geology. It incorporates a thick soil cover over the tailings and contaminated soil rather than one of compacted clay, and uses native plants to remove moisture. The bio-engineered cover was developed for long-term stability and will require little maintenance.

"We're extremely proud to leave this project knowing we accomplished everything we promised," said Mike Schern, president, Western Nuclear, Inc. "This experience was a textbook case of government agencies at the state and federal level working in partnership with each other and industry. This collaborative effort was the key to the success of this project."

By regulation, the U.S. Department of Energy assumes responsibility for perpetual care and maintenance of the mill site, which includes periodic monitoring. Regulatory oversight will continue to be provided by the NRC.

Western Nuclear is a wholly owned subsidiary of Phelps Dodge Corporation, based in Phoenix, Arizona. The firm has a 24-hour media information line, 602-234-8008.

SOURCE Washington State Department of Health

-------- MILITARY

Iraqis head to war training camps to free Jerusalem

03/11/2001
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-03-11-iraq-camps.htm

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Vowing to "liberate all of Palestine," a group of Iraqi volunteers on Sunday bid an emotional farewell to their families and left for military training in the so-called Jerusalem Army.

With his call to form an army to wrest Jerusalem from Israeli control, President Saddam Hussein has cast himself as the defender of the historic city as Arab leaders meet in Cairo to discuss their stance on both Israel and Iraq.

Saddam made his call for volunteers for the "Jerusalem Army" in October, responding to Israel-Palestinian clashes that had erupted the month before. The clashes have so far killed 424 people.

The official Iraqi News Agency says that more than 7 million men and women - nearly a third of the 22 million population - volunteered for the force. It was unknown how many were in the first batches to be trained, but the figure appeared to be in the thousands.

On Sunday, Iraqi volunteers chanted, "with our blood and souls ... we sacrifice for Saddam," as their wives and children kissed them goodbye. A similar group left for military training on Saturday, in an event broadcast on Iraqi television.

"Everybody should look at the stand made by Saddam Hussein and the people of Iraq and the Baath party," Latif Nasaif Jassim, a high-ranking official of the ruling Baath Party, told the crowd on Sunday. "We are going today to train, and after training you will be ready to join the Jerusalem Army to liberate all of Palestine."

It was not clear what the volunteers would do once their training was completed.

Saddam, who shocked the world by invading Kuwait a decade ago, has called for a war to liberate Jerusalem, but other Arab leaders say negotiations are the only way to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has ridiculed calls for war.

Arab foreign ministers discussed the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process in the Egyptian capital on Sunday as they prepared for an Arab League summit later this month in Amman, Jordan.

The Cairo talks and the Amman summit also were expected to grapple with growing calls to end Iraq's isolation since it invaded Kuwait and then was forced to retreat in the Gulf War.

The issues of Israeli-Palestinian clashes and Iraq's isolation are becoming increasingly intertwined among Arabs, in part because of Saddam's stated willingness to fight for Jerusalem.

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators across the Arab world have waved Iraqi flags and shouted praise of Saddam - and criticized their own governments for not taking a firmer stand against Israel.

Demonstrators also have expressed sympathy for ordinary Iraqis suffering under U.N. trade sanctions that cannot be lifted until Saddam proves he has surrendered chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. U.S. support for the sanctions is often portrayed as anti-Arab, just as the United States is seen by many Arabs as supporting Israel against the Palestinians.

Control of Jerusalem continues to be a flashpoint of Arab emotion.

On Sunday, Jordan joined Iran and other Mideast nations in criticizing U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's statement that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.

On Thursday, Powell told the U.S. Congress that while there is no immediate plan to relocate the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv, President Bush is committed to moving it "to the capital of Israel, which is Jerusalem."

In a session of Jordan's Parliament, Prime Minister Ali Abu-Ragheb said that Powell's statements on the holy city, which both Israel and the Palestinians claim, will "lead to more tension and complications to an already complex issue."

Israel considers Jerusalem its undivided and eternal capital. But few countries have accepted its claim to the entire city, whose eastern half was controlled by Jordan until the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. The Palestinians want east Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.

-------- arms sales

Allies Enlisted To Pay for Jet

By Greg Schneider
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 11, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48745-2001Mar9?language=printer

Brig. Gen. Erik Pedersen of Denmark was impressed by what he saw behind the big golden door in a Crystal City office building -- action photos, scale models, even a cockpit simulator for the biggest U.S. weapons program of modern times, the Joint Strike Fighter warplane.

For 45 minutes, Pedersen sat through a military-style briefing that was in reality a sales pitch, conducted by the staff of Lockheed Martin Corp. The unspoken message: Wouldn't you hate to miss out on all this?

Led by the Pentagon, Lockheed Martin and rival Boeing Co. are mounting an unprecedented marketing campaign to get foreign governments to help pay for development of the Joint Strike Fighter, which is being designed to use some of the most advanced technology ever to be put on an aircraft.

Using a sliding scale similar to the "angels" and "patrons" list of a theater company, the Pentagon is offering select allies the chance to contribute anywhere from $2 billion for a "Level One" partnership to $250 million for a "Level Three" stake in the Joint Strike Fighter. In return, the allies can put their officers on teams developing key areas of technology or even have a say in which contractor -- Lockheed Martin or Boeing -- would build the plane.

The Pentagon has never before allowed other nations in the back room for developing such a major weapons program, where they can get insight into some areas of sensitive technology and influence the type of product the United States ends up building.

The effort shows not only how creative the military must be to pay for increasingly expensive weapons in peacetime, but also how far the notion of cooperation has penetrated the Western alliance since the Persian Gulf War.

The plan may have a more immediate effect: keeping the Joint Strike Fighter program alive. The Bush administration is reassessing military spending priorities and has said that costly fighter planes are of particular concern. But as more allies buy into the Joint Strike Fighter, it becomes harder for Congress or the Bush administration to cut the program.

"It's something that could not be killed lightly without massive diplomatic implications," said Richard Aboulafia, a military aircraft expert with the Teal Group consulting firm.

Arms-control advocates and some in Congress have raised concerns that the cooperative approach could spread U.S. military secrets.

"How are we going to protect our technology?" one Republican aide in the House said. The House International Relations Committee has demanded that the Pentagon promise to notify Congress before selling the Joint Strike Fighter to partner nations, but the issue remains unresolved.

Meanwhile, the push is on to woo allied countries on a list drawn up by the Pentagon. Bethesda-based Lockheed Martin spent more than $600,000 a year ago to install in its Crystal City offices the Fighter Demonstration Center, a combination museum and new-car-style showroom with halogen track lights and two briefing rooms.

Boeing is spending nearly as much to outfit a tractor-trailer with a dramatic paint job, a conference room and a Joint Strike Fighter flight simulator, and this summer it will drive the display across Europe, with stops in Paris and at NATO headquarters in Belgium.

Neither company can afford to cut corners when it comes to promoting a program of this magnitude. The Joint Strike Fighter is conceived as a versatile workhorse that will serve all branches of the military. The 3,000 planes Pentagon plans to buy for more than $200 billion would make it the costliest weapons program in U.S. history.

Supporters say the export market for the plane would at least match the number of U.S. purchases. Projected to enter service in 2007, the Joint Strike Fighter -- including models that could land on aircraft carriers and even hover -- could become the world's fighter plane of choice for most of this century.

Britain was the first country to sign up for the development program. In January, the British military's acquisitions chief sat in a Pentagon conference room packed with generals, admirals and contractors -- including Lockheed Martin's president -- and signed a memorandum agreeing to invest $2 billion.

That makes Britain responsible for 8 percent of the $25 billion development portion of the Joint Strike Fighter program. As the only country invited to be a Level One partner, Britain is the only foreign nation that will have a say in selecting the company to win the contract this fall.

The British also have 10 staffers among the 125 people in the Pentagon's Joint Strike Fighter program office.

"We took the judgment that this was such an important program to us, if we wanted to have any influence over the decision-making process, we'd be better off doing it as an insider. . . . We wanted to be sure we were a valid lobbying voice, if you like," said Capt. Simon Henley, who heads the Joint Strike Fighter effort for the British and is the deputy logistics chief for the program itself.

The Pentagon has encouraged U.S. companies to line up industrial partners in the countries that might participate in the program, paying for executives to fly to Europe and meet with their overseas counterparts.

Boeing, for example, lists suppliers from Britain, Denmark and the Netherlands in a recent news release proclaiming that the company treats its partners' employees as if they were Boeing's own. "This degree of empowerment and trust is unprecedented in the aerospace industry," the news release says.

Italy, Turkey and the Netherlands are looking at becoming Level Two partners for about $1.2 billion each. That would allow each nation to putthree to five people in the program office, and they could pick which technology teams they wanted to be on -- avionics, for instance, or propulsion.

Canada and a team of Denmark and Norway are considering Level Three stakes, which would amount to an investment of $250 million to $500 million. Each could put one staffer on a technology team of its choice.

Singapore, Israel and a few other nations have been invited to contribute smaller amounts for access to certain information about the program and to position them to someday purchase the plane.

Most of the prospective partners have already contributed to the earliest stages of the program. Britain has paid $200 million, and five others have chipped in $10 million each.

"This is very unique. It's the first time I know of we've gotten international partners involved this early in a major weapons system," said Jon A. Schreiber, the Pentagon's director of international programs for the Joint Strike Fighter.

At the behest of the Clinton administration, Schreiber began putting together a plan for foreign involvement in 1996. He ran it past a series of panels for approval -- the Pentagon's Arms Transfer Policy Review Group, the State Department, the Commerce Department and the foreign relations committees in Congress.

Then Schreiber began meeting with potential partners, arming foreign military attaches with information to go back home and conduct a "sell job" on their governments, he said.

"We've put a business case together," Schreiber said. "What we need to do is convince them there is a return on their investment."

The return Schreiber promises includes not only military insight but also some tangible benefits. Partner countries would be able to buy the planes without going through a lengthy arms-export process and would not have to pay a surcharge that is sometimes applied to overseas arms sales to cover research and development costs.

The partners also would get a cut of some of the money paid by other countries that buy the plane.

The United States also benefits from the arrangement, Schreiber said. The foreign partners bring to the project their own technological advances, such as the Italian experience of doing hover landings of Harrier jets on aircraft carriers. In addition, as more nations buy the plane, it spreads out overhead costs, dropping the price for planes the United States buys.

Above all, getting all the allies to fly the same plane would make it far easier to conduct joint military operations.

"If you are interested in coalition warfare any time in the next 50 years, this is the airplane you need to buy," said William S. Harrell, a Joint Strike Fighter program official with Lockheed Martin.

That message resonates with many of the nations deciding whether to invest. Military cooperation is "one of the key features of our current defense strategy," said Michael Slack of Canada's Department of National Defense in Ottawa. The Joint Strike Fighter would be an important way to achieve that goal, he said.

But there are other factors that Canada and other nations are pondering. Will the program create jobs in their countries? Would they be better off waiting to see what the world is like after 2007 before spending so much money?

"The U.S. Department of Defense is asking Canada for a great deal of money to participate in the program," Slack said. "There are a number of outstanding issues that remain unsettled."

High on that list, he said, is whether the Bush administration will cut the Joint Strike Fighter in its pending review of military spending plans. "It would be quite embarrassing if we did sign up to the program and within a couple of weeks the new administration elected, for whatever reason, to cancel the program," Slack said.

In such a case, a country that invested would lose whatever of its money had been spent, program officials said. That prospect is especially troubling for potential European partners, which face enormous internal political pressure to buy homegrown products such as the Eurofighter -- a jet built by a consortium of countries -- or the French Rafale.

Countries such as Denmark and Norway have been reliable customers for the Lockheed Martin-built F-16 fighter plane for more than two decades; the 4,000th F-16 rolled off the assembly line last year, making it one of the most popular warplanes in history. U.S. defense executives dread losing that market to European rivals.

"If we choose not to do [the Joint Strike Fighter], believe me, that need will be filled by some other airplane," said Lockheed Martin's chairman and chief executive, Vance D. Coffman. "The question is, are you willing as a country to turn [that] over to some other country? It's an industrial-base question."

So the marketing campaign goes on. The Pentagon bused a group of military officials from Germany, Japan, Switzerland, Greece, Canada, New Zealand, Denmark, the Netherlands and Finland to Patuxent River Naval Air Station on March 1 to see one of Lockheed Martin's demonstration versions of the plane.

More than 2,000 people have toured the company's Fighter Demonstration Center in the past year, about a third of them from other countries. Pedersen, the Danish general, said the facility has been a valuable tool for explaining the program to his government.

His only regret was that he didn't get to fly the simulator. "I would like that. Why not?" he said. "It is rather impressive."

-------- colombia

Some Hopeful Signs as Colombia Meets With Rebels and Envoys

March 11, 2001
New York Times
By JUAN FORERO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/11/world/11COLO.html

BOGOTÁ, Colombia, March 10 - When the government ceded land to Colombia's largest rebel group in 1998 as a peace gesture, the rebels declined to allow international monitors into the area. And in two years of peace talks, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, has been cold to the idea of foreign participation in peace talks.

So when the rebels met with envoys from 25 countries on Thursday and agreed that a small group of nations could serve as facilitators in future peace negotiations, diplomats and analysts celebrated. The rebels' acceptance of a group of observer nations, analysts said, is a sign that a rebel group long suspicious of foreign involvement is open to some degree of international participation in the peace efforts.

"Little by little, the idea of international participation is growing on them; I think it's a forward step in the process," said Daniel García- Peña, the government's former peace negotiator. "You have to remember that the FARC is very rural, very nationalistic. For them, the United Nations is an organization led by the Yankees." The foreign diplomats, meeting with the rebel leader Manuel Marulanda and government negotiators deep in rebel- held territory, agreed to create a 10- nation group that would meet with the rebels and the government every two months.

The group - to consist of Cuba, Canada, Spain, France, Italy, Mexico, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Venezuela - would not have a direct role in peace negotiations. And Mr. Marulanda continued to insist that a resolution to Colombia's 37- year-old conflict could only be achieved by Colombians. Still, despite the group's limited role, diplomats and analysts said the new development was good news for a peace effort that has been marked more by broken promises and unilateral walkouts than fruitful dialogue.

"The important thing is that now there are international mechanisms to track the peace process in Colombia," said Jan Egeland, United Nations special envoy to Colombia.

The visit by the envoys was agreed upon last month, during an extraordinary meeting between President Andrés Pastrana and Mr. Marulanda designed to restart peace negotiations. The envoys, all diplomats or ambassadors, came from Europe, Latin America, Japan and Canada; the United States declined to attend.

Many of the countries represented are opposed to American military aid to Colombia, which makes up most of a $1.1 billion United States contribution to Plan Colombia. Foreign governments, particularly the Europeans, have pledged hundreds of millions in loans and grants for social development projects.

The meeting on Thursday provided the rebels with a forum in which to stress the importance of development aid. The rebels' hope, experts said, was to prod for an expansion of such assistance and to sway foreign governments against American plans for military aid to Colombia's government, said Vicente Torrijos, a political scientist at the Universidad del Rosario in Bogotá.

The rebels were also able to express their frustration with defoliation of coca, Colombia's military buildup and the ties between paramilitary killers and the state security forces. "It was a chance for them to give their side of the story," said Russell Crandall, an American political scientist in Bogotá.

The gathering also gave the international community the chance to raise concerns about the rebels' use of homemade bombs, its recruitment of child soldiers and its dependence on kidnappings to finance its war.

---

Colombian rebels suspend talks in apparent protest

03/11/2001
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-03-11-colombia.htm

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - The nation's second-largest guerrilla group has suspended discussions with the government in apparent protest of U.S.-backed drug fumigations in northern Colombia.

The National Liberation Army, or ELN, announced the suspension in an e-mail sent to government peace envoy Camilo Gomez, the presidential palace said Saturday.

Before the rupture, the government appeared on the brink of ceding a Delaware-sized swath of territory to the ELN in the region where the fumigations are taking place to launch peace negotiations. The 5,000-strong insurgency has been fighting the state for more than three decades.

Government officials, however, were optimistic that discussions aimed at beginning formal peace negotiations would resume quickly.

"This is an impasse that we hope to overcome," said Gomez.

Although the content of ELN commander Paul Beltran's message wasn't revealed, local news reports said the ELN broke off talks to protest U.S.-backed aerial fumigations in the southern part of Bolivar State that the rebels view as unwelcome foreign intervention.

Washington is supporting the drug war through a $1.3 billion aid package that includes military hardware and training for Colombian counternarcotics troops. The drug crops are guarded by leftist rebels and right-wing paramilitaries who earn millions of dollars a year from the nation's narcotics industry.

The Bolivar fumigations began last month when low-flying airplanes backed by helicopter gunships began spraying herbicide on crops of coca - the raw ingredient of cocaine.

Sprayings launched last December in southern Colombia have destroyed some 72,000 acres of coca, according to U.S. and Colombian officials. Critics say the sprayings are also killing food crops and leaving farmers sick and with no other source of income.

The controversial land deal the government and the ELN were closing in on would have relinquished territory to the guerrillas for nine months to host peace talks.

Experts say the ELN has been debilitated by a string of military defeats and is ready to end its insurrection. Last December, it freed 42 captive police and soldiers to advance discussions with the government.

Colombia's government has been holding turbulent peace negotiations with the nation's largest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, for two years.

-------- drug war

President proposes scrapping drug program

03/11/2001
USA Today
http://usatoday.com/news/nlead.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-03-11-drug.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - Since the first Bush administration, federal dollars have paid for security officers, alarm systems and after-school activities for youngsters in poor public housing projects.

President Bush, however, has proposed scrapping the Public Housing Drug Elimination Program, saying it has had "limited impact" and that "regulatory tools such as eviction are more effective at reducing drug activity in public housing."

Program supporters are worried about the message it would send to public housing residents, who themselves fear it may imperil their safety.

In his proposed budget for 2002, the president wants to give public housing leaders about half of the $310 million allocated this year for the program for security, higher utility rates or other needs.

Part of Bush's approach is getting religious groups involved in neighborhoods. The Department of Housing and Urban Development, which oversees a variety of housing programs mainly for the poor, "is going to be one of the lead agencies in the faith-based efforts," said Robert Woodson Jr., deputy chief of staff at HUD.

A program supporter, Rep. John LaFalce, D-N.Y., said Bush's idea would, in effect, tell families trying to raise their children in public housing that "drug dealers are welcomed back" and that combating crime no longer is a priority.

But Woodson said Congress spends hundreds of millions yearly on the drug initiative and "we still have a lot of problems and crime in public housing. Maybe we need a different approach here."

During the week in February when Bush proposed his budget, a Kentucky police officer was shot in the chest and nearly died while trying to arrest a suspected drug dealer in a Louisville housing project.

Louisville has used the federal program to pay for 14 lawmen to patrol housing complexes and would be concerned about losing the money, said Tim Barry, acting director of the housing authority.

Advocates for the 1.3 million families who live in government housing projects defend the program started in 1989 under then-HUD Secretary Jack Kemp in the administration of Bush's father. An aide to Kemp said Kemp would not discuss the program.

"It's just absolutely insane to say it hasn't worked," said Richard Nelson, director of the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials.

Nelson said the substitute spending recommended by Bush would not even cover half the expected increase in utility costs.

Ethel Velez, 52, a lifelong public housing resident in New York, says that while the drug program has not solved problems, scrapping it would add to crime worries in housing projects.

"If they're going to get less (protection) than they get now, they're going to be mad - and very scared," said Velez, the president of her Harlem neighborhood association of more than 3,000 people.

In all, Bush proposed cutting an estimated $1.3 billion next year from programs overseen by HUD, according to an analysis by LaFalce, who held a news conference last week with other Democratic congressman to criticize the spending plan.

"Reducing funds needed to improve the lives of the poorest children in America, those who live in public housing, is a very odd way to show compassion," said Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass.

LaFalce, the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, said a proposed $700 million reduction in a repair fund would mean that public housing residents' "leaky roofs may never be fixed, and that their dilapidated 30-year-old stoves won't be replaced."

Bush said the reduction would have no immediate impact because most housing authorities have a backlog in repair money.

"People should not feel it at all," said HUD's Woodson.

Woodson said the fund is often used for major renovation projects on unoccupied buildings, so "you're not talking about families who don't have running water because a boiler unit was not fixed."

-------- space

Replacement Crew Enters Space Station

March 11, 2001
New York Times
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/11/science/11SHUT.html

HOUSTON, March 10 (AP) - The International Space Station's first replacement crew entered its new home this morning after the space shuttle Discovery docked with the space station.

Yuri V. Usachev, a Russian astronaut, and two Americans - Col. James S. Voss, retired, and Col. Susan B. Helms of the Air Force - will take over for a three-member crew that has been aboard the station for four months. They will move in over the next several days.

Mr. Usachev, the next commander, was the first to enter the space station. He shook hands with the current commander, Capt. William M. Shepherd of the Navy.

In addition to a new crew, the shuttle carried an Italian-made module filled with five tons of equipment and supplies.

---

Disclosures, criticism mount against Osprey

03/11/2001
USA Today
By Dave Moniz
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-03-11-osprey.htm

WASHINGTON - The Marine Corps has repeatedly downplayed safety problems with the tilt-rotor Osprey, including a near crash in 1999 similar to a deadly accident last April, recent disclosures concerning the hybrid aircraft show.

The Osprey, which lands and takes off like a helicopter and flies like an airplane, barely averted crashing aboard the USS Saipan during a sea test in February 1999. While hovering about 10 feet above the deck of the amphibious assault ship, the Osprey rolled severely to the left and nearly slammed into the ship's deck.

The Marines rarely mention the incident, but Bill Lawrence, a former Marine and Osprey test manager in the early 1990s, says it was a "huge red flag" and possibly foreshadowed a crash in April 2000 that killed 19 Marines.

"This told us there was an anomaly in the flight control system," Lawrence said in an interview. "What it meant was, we don't know everything we thought we knew about this aircraft."

Lawrence theorizes that the sudden loss of control in 1999 pointed to potentially serious problems with the Osprey's flight control system. After the near mishap, the Navy command overseeing development of the aircraft suspended the sea tests for six months and made corrections to the Osprey's flight control software.

"If this was a case where we just went out and treated one symptom of a larger problem, that's what we need to find out," Lawrence says.

The Marines dispute Lawrence's theory. They say the incidents in February 1999 and April 2000 are unrelated. Rather, they blame the 2000 crash on pilot error: The Osprey greatly exceeded its safe landing speed before losing control.

Still, Lawrence's concerns are among a growing list of safety problems dogging the Marines' $30 billion program to replace aging helicopters. Under development for nearly two decades, the Osprey faces a difficult fight for survival in light of two fatal crashes last year, poor evaluations by Pentagon testers and a budding scandal involving its maintenance records.

After four Marines were killed in an Osprey crash last December, the Pentagon appointed a panel to weigh the aircraft's future.

Friday, widows of crewmembers pleaded with the panel to make sure the aircraft is safe. "My husband gave his life for that aircraft, but unfortunately, it has serious problems," said Connie Gruber, whose husband, Maj. Brooks Gruber, was among the 19 Marines who were killed in the April 2000 crash, which occurred in Arizona.

But a recent series of disclosures about the aircraft's performance over the past two years, including Lawrence's concerns, suggests that the Marines have been reluctant to admit the Osprey isn't ready to fly regular missions.

In an interview two months ago, the Marines' top aviation commander, Lt. Gen. Fred McCorkle, said the Osprey has suffered no significant flight problems other than four crashes in 10 years. The first two were a decade ago.

But a record of problems collected by the Pentagon panel and USA TODAY shows that the Osprey's flight performance over the past two years includes several troubling incidents. In addition to the near crash in 1999, the Osprey has suffered three hydraulic system failures, a malfunction in a drive shaft and two engine fires.

McCorkle did not mention any of the incidents to USA TODAY when asked directly about problems with the Osprey. Instead, he praised its capabilities and safety record.

Marine Corps officials would not make McCorkle available for another interview on the Osprey. Instead, they said that at the time of the first interview, the general knew about the near crash and drive-shaft problem, but not the hydraulic failures.

Marine Corps spokesman Lt. David Nevers said that some incidents might not have been considered serious enough at the time to notify McCorkle personally.

Despite all the problems, the Marines continue to back development of the Osprey, which they say is faster, flies farther and carries more troops than conventional helicopters.

Built jointly by Boeing and Bell Helicopter Textron, the Osprey has strong backing in Congress and is being touted as a solution to civilian air congestion problems. The Marines plan to buy 360 Ospreys.

If the program survives, it likely has at least two years of testing and modification ahead of it, Pentagon sources say.

Defense Department officials close to the program say the hybrid aircraft would have to overcome critical questions about its flight worthiness, hydraulics, reliability and current combat limitations.

It's unclear how long the additional testing would take and how much it would add to the Osprey's cost.

Former test manager Lawrence and Frady Wilson, a former Osprey test pilot, say the aircraft's flight testing to date has been inadequate. They describe Osprey advocates as rushing the tilt-rotor aircraft into development without fully exploring its flight characteristics.

Although the Osprey has numerous critics, Lawrence, a Vietnam veteran and an experienced helicopter pilot, says he does not count himself as one.

Both Lawrence and Wilson describe themselves as supporters of tilt-rotor technology. But they express concern about pressure from everyone involved in the program, including the contractors and the Marines, to rush the Osprey into development. "They are absolutely moving too fast with this aircraft," says Wilson, who flew the Osprey in the early 1990s and left the program in 1993.

Bob Garner, a former Osprey program director, denies program officials cut corners in testing at any stage. He says many of the complaints raised by government evaluators and critics aren't valid.

"I have very high faith in the people in the test program," Garner says. "We never understand all we would like to understand about all these weapons systems."

---

Astronauts finish NASA's longest spacewalk

03/11/2001
USA Today
http://usatoday.com/news/nation/2001-03-11-shuttle.htm

SPACE CENTER, Houston (AP) - In what's being billed as NASA's longest spacewalk, two astronauts rearranged the outside of the International Space Station on Sunday to make room for an Italian cargo carrier.

The excursion by shuttle-soon-to-be-station crew members Jim Voss and Susan Helms was just four minutes shy of nine hours and entailed slow, deliberate work with cables and connectors - "a jungle of wires" as Voss called it.

"We knew this one was going to be tough," NASA's lead flight director, John Shannon, said when it was all over. The spacewalkers were "right on the edge" of what they could handle, he said, but performed admirably despite some initial butterfingers that put them an hour behind.

A plastic bag containing a hydrazine-detection kit floated out space shuttle Discovery's hatch as the spacewalk got under way. "Uh, oh," Helms uttered. Voss managed to catch the bag.

Minutes later, Voss accidentally let go of a viselike device needed for a work platform. The 10- to 15-pound chunk of metal, about the size of a thick dictionary, drifted away and joined the thousands of pieces of junk orbiting Earth.

Because the part is considered critical, NASA had a spare on board.

The main event was the relocation of a docking port on space station Alpha. The bulky cone had to be moved from one side of a module to an other so the shuttle crew could plug the Italian-made cargo carrier into the vacated spot late Sunday night.

The reusable $150 million module, named Leonardo for Italy's Signor da Vinci, was packed with 5 tons of gear and ferried to the space station aboard Discovery. It will be emptied and returned to the shuttle for the March 17 undocking.

Voss and Helms disconnected all the cables on the docking port and removed an antenna to make room for Leonardo. "It's not my day apparently," Voss said as he struggled with stiff connectors.

The two also installed equipment in advance of next month's delivery of Alpha's massive robot arm. They did not have time to complete all the wire hookups and left the job for two other shuttle astronauts who will conduct a spacewalk late Monday night.

Helms paused just long enough to wish her mother a happy 68th birthday.

"Mom, I just couldn't think of a better way to spend your birthday," said Helms, a first-time spacewalker. "Sorry I'm not with you, though."

About 6.50 hours after going outside, Voss and Helms retreated to Discovery's airlock, a spacewalk pressure chamber, and patiently waited as shuttle crane operator Andrew Thomas moved the docking port. The spacewalkers were ready to rush out if necessary, but their assistance was not required.

After more than two hours in the cramped airlock, they were ordered back into the crew cabin and their spacewalk was officially over.

Kieth Johnson, lead spacewalk officer at Mission Control, said NASA considers it the longest spacewalk under the record-keeping rules now in place. The previous record was set in 1992 by three astronauts who went out to grab a wayward satellite. That spacewalk lasted eight hours and 29 minutes.

Helms and Voss will spend the next four months living aboard the space station, along with their Russian commander, Yuri Usachev, who moved in Saturday. Voss was to settle into the station Sunday night, and Helms on Tuesday night.

They're replacing Alpha's first crew, led by American Bill Shepherd. By the time Shepherd and his two Russian shipmates return to Earth aboard Discovery on March 20, they will have spent 140 days in space.

-------- OTHER

-------- environment

Fame Aside, Frog Finds No Habitat in Calaveras

March 11, 2001
New York Times
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/11/science/11FROG.html

The frog made famous by Mark Twain has won a critical habitat designation in California. But in a twist worthy of Twain himself, the habitat does not include Calaveras County, the scene of Twain's famous short story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County."

That was not lost on federal officials who approved the final plan for the 4.1 million acres of habitat on Tuesday.

"We hope to work with many people in Calaveras County who have expressed to us they would like to have Mark Twain's frog come home," said Patricia Foulk of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.

The frog was already listed as threatened, but the new designation exposes developers to greater federal scrutiny by mapping out where frog populations live or could recover.

The government was required to develop the habitat plan after environmental groups won a lawsuit contending that the government must declare a critical habitat for any species protected under the Endangered Species Act. The frogs are considered important indicators of the health of aquatic areas.

California once had millions of the frogs, but now only four places in the state are known to have more than 350, said Peter Galvin, a conservation biologist for the Center for Biological Diversity.

Not everyone in Calaveras County is enamored of the red-legged frog, which has not been found in the county for years.

Since 1928, the bullfrog has taken center stage at the Calaveras County Fair and Jumping Frog Jubilee. Fair organizers and officials lobbied lawmakers over concerns that designating the county as a protected area for the red-legged frog would send the bullfrog packing and kill the event credited with bringing $1 million a year to the area.

"To establish red-legged frogs in the area they'd have to kill bullfrogs. That's tied to our economy," said Tim Shearer, city administrator for Angels Camp. "If they kill them, the frogs are not there for the tourists."

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Bush's Moves on Environment Disappoint Industry

March 11, 2001
New York Times
By DOUGLAS JEHL
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/11/politics/11ENVI.html

WASHINGTON, March 10 - While environmentalists have sounded an anxious alarm over President Bush's agenda, it is his allies in industry who are expressing concern that his administration is falling short of their expectations.

Several surprising first moves, particularly on clean air, have put environmental organizations in the unexpected role of offering guarded praise for an administration they fought hard to defeat. The industry representatives, who see themselves as early losers, have circulated a view that Mr. Bush's presidency might not be as much of a departure from his predecessor's as hoped.

Beginning with word of a decision not to try to overturn President Bill Clinton's declaration of nearly two dozen national monuments, the new administration has gone on to uphold a Clinton-backed plan to rein in diesel emissions and signaled support for a plan to begin regulating carbon dioxide emissions to combat global warming - steps seen as anathema by oil and mining interests.

"It may be just too early to tell, but we're not seeing a difference of philosophy from the Clinton days," said a leading industry lobbyist who insisted that neither his name nor that of his organization be published. "If their goal is to keep on sticking it in the eye of business, they've done a good job."

Each side said it suspected that the timing and substance of the administration's initial steps might have been motivated by a desire to be seen early on as a friend of the environment. Certainly, the careful way in which the Bush allies have begun to register their discontent - almost always under the cover of anonymity - has served to give voice to criticisms while reinforcing the politically useful impression that the White House might not be as bad as the environmentalists made out.

It is nonetheless striking, each sidesays, that business interests seem to have lost out to environmental ones in most early big decisions, particularly when the administration has been sounding a distinctly conservative note on other issues, like tax cuts and labor.

"There have been some encouraging signs," said Gregory Wetstone, program director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, which fought hard in the unsuccessful effort to block the nomination of Gale A. Norton as interior secretary.

Perhaps the most unexpected overture from the new administration to the environmentalists has come in signs that it may be prepared to embrace a stance on global warming not too far from the one Al Gore championed in the presidential campaign. Christie Whitman, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, has said that the administration was sufficiently concerned about the problem that it might regulate emissions of carbon dioxide. That stance was attacked last week in an article on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal (another target was Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill, who has expressed concern about global warming) and has prompted loud protests from industry representatives.

"They don't want to do anything that will set the environmentalists off," John Grasser, a spokesman for the National Mining Association, said of the administration's tentative embrace of a plan that the energy industry has long said would amount to a new tax on fossil fuels. "We've got to talk to the Bush administration and let them know that the political wind blows our way, too."

The real test, each side says, will be the battle over Mr. Bush's plan to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration. Environmental groups have highlighted the issue in appeals that leaders say have paid dividends in increased membership and fund-raising.

Business groups expect the Bush administration to stand firm on Arctic drilling, and they are counting on the White House to try to reverse or scale back regulations that in many cases were imposed in the last days of the Clinton presidency.

Some Bush allies say any complaining is overwrought.

"I think it's premature to start talking in terms of wins and losses," Representative James V. Hansen, the Utah Republican who is chairman of the House Resources Committee, said today. "I'd tell these people to keep their powder dry. Most of the administrative offices don't even have their staffs put together yet."

Among major rulings still being reviewed by the White House six weeks into Mr. Bush's term is one that would permanently ban road building on about 60 million acres of national forest land, a move supported by environmentalists as a barrier to development of about one-third of forest land. Industry groups, including snowmobile dealers and mining conglomerates, and officials in Western states oppose the ban, saying it will unfairly curb their activities.

Another ruling would drastically lower the limit for arsenic in drinking water, a move opposed by the mining industry, which said it would add significantly to their costs.

A third, part of a legal settlement approved on Mr. Clinton's last day in office, would require the Environmental Protection Agency to set new standards for pesticide use that would take into account any health risks to children. The agriculture industry and pesticide manufacturers have complained that their views were ignored in the decision.

On these issues and others, Republicans in Congress have made tentative moves toward overturning the rules, even as they wait for the White House to make its position clear.

But the first sign of the Bush administration's intentions is more likely to emerge in the courts, as the Justice Department must decide beginning this week whether to defend the Clinton administration's positions against what have become a number of challenges by business groups and states.

On Mr. Bush's first full day in office, his chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., issued a memorandum imposing a 60-day moratorium on Clinton administration rules that had not yet taken effect, prompting hopes from their foes that Mr. Bush planned to reverse them.

But so far, the only rules on which the new administration has announced a decision have been limits on diesel emissions and the new national monuments, both of which have strong public support. Some people who have close ties to the new administration said that the White House might have concluded it would be a mistake to pick too many fights. And in the case of the monuments, Ms. Norton, the interior secretary, has broad discretion over how they are administered.

"I think what we have in the administration is a bunch of thoughtful people trying to make good decisions, and that doesn't mean taking on willy-nilly a bunch of environmental regulations in ways that wouldn't be responsible policy and wouldn't be politically responsible," said Doug Crandall, a top Republican aide to the House Resources Committee.

In its few staff and budget decisions in environmental matters, the new administration seems to have tried to bow to conservatives and business interests. As Ms. Norton's top deputy at the Interior Department, the White House on Thursday said it would nominate J. Steven Griles, an assistant interior secretary under President Ronald Reagan who now works as a lobbyist for the mining industry.

Among those passed over for the post was John Turner, a director of the federal Fish and Wildlife Service in President Bush's father's administration. As the head of the Conservation Fund, an environmental organization, he has a reputation as a moderate and was reportedly recommended by Vice President Dick Cheney. Administration officials said Mr. Turner lost out in large part because conservative property rights advocates tarred him as being too closely aligned with environmental interests.

Mr. Bush's new budget calls for cuts of 4 percent or more at the Interior and Agriculture Departments and the Environmental Protection Agency, the main agencies with environmental responsibilities. In his budget address to Congress, Mr. Bush heaped attention on the $4.9 billion he is seeking for the national parks. Critics said that too much of the money, to be spent over five years, would go for road building and tourist buildings, and too little to preservation and research.

The decision to let stand the limits on diesel emissions might also have been timed to divert attention from the budget cuts. Although it was announced by Mrs. Whitman, the decision had been directed in large part by top aides to Mr. Bush, administration officials said today. They said oil industry warnings that the strict new emissions standards could lead to fuel shortages had been outweighed by the health-based arguments made by the rule's proponents, which included the automobile industry as well as environmental groups, and by evidence of broad popular support for the regulation.

When she announced the administration's decision to retain the monument designations, Ms. Norton made clear that the new administration would be open to plans that might shrink their boundaries or allow more commercial and recreational use.

But some in the oil industry in particular still saw the announcement as a bad sign, mostly because Ms. Norton did not voice a specific commitment to keeping the new lands open to energy exploration.

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And You Thought Germs in the Subway Were Bad

March 11, 2001
New York Times
By JOE SHARKEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/11/weekinreview/11SHAR.html

As if chronic delays, rising fares and the looming threat of disruptive labor disputes this spring and summer weren't enough, put-upon airline travelers have been hearing more lately about another potential source of dismay: the spread of infectious disease.

No one is saying airplanes are spreading plague and pestilence, or that the days of grim Ellis Island-style health inspections could be returning. But with more than 1.5 billion people traveling by air each year from every corner of the earth, world health officials are increasingly concerned about the ability of contagious diseases to hitch quick rides from continent to continent. They are calling for better exchange of medical information among international health and air industry officials and more efficient ways to respond to crises, like requiring airlines to maintain better seating lists so potentially exposed passengers can be notified months later when cases arise.

Last week, airports from Japan to western Europe asked travelers arriving from Britain to wipe their feet on disinfectant- doused mats. The reason was fear that the arriving passengers could literally track in the virus responsible for foot-and-mouth disease, a highly contagious ailment that is decimating sheep, cattle and pig populations on British farms.

At American airports, longstanding precautions are being tightened. On Thursday, the Department of Agriculture declared a "heightened alert" over foot-and-mouth disease and said it had added 100 agents to its normal contingent of 1,800 who monitor international arrivals. Accompanied by baggage-sniffing dogs looking for prohibited foods, inspectors are asking passengers from Britain and other countries where the disease is active whether they visited a farm or rural area. Those suspected of carrying the virus can be required to have shoes, clothing and possessions disinfected.

Foot-and-mouth disease is just one of a growing number of infectious illnesses, some in the form of new drug-resistant strains, that can be transported on airplanes, which in some cases resemble flying petri dishes for disease incubation.

"A communicable disease occurring in one country can the next day find itself transmitted to another, anywhere in the world," the World Health Organization said in a statement last week announcing the opening next month of a medical center in Lyon, France, where international medical and public health specialists will be trained to better monitor outbreaks of cholera, yellow fever, meningitis, hepatitis, Ebola and other diseases that can be transmitted by air travelers. Over the last two decades, more than 30 new communicable diseases have been identified, the organization said.

"This has been something that has concerned the public health service since at least World War I, when international air travel started," said Victoria Harden, a staff historian at the National Institutes of Health. The advent of antibiotics like penicillin alleviated many worries about contagion after World War II, she said. But in the last decade, with air travel reaching into formerly isolated areas, health officials are increasingly worried about widespread transmission of communicable diseases. In 1994, for example, New York City health officials isolated 11 travelers from India who had arrived with symptoms of bubonic plague.

LAST month the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reminded health authorities that four cases of highly contagious meningococcal disease were identified last March among 15,000 Muslim pilgrims returning to the United States from the annual hajj to Saudi Arabia, and to be on the lookout for symptoms of the disease among returning pilgrims this year.

Next month, the International Air Transport Association, an airline trade group, is sponsoring a conference for medical and travel experts called "Cabin Health: Risks and Remedies." High up on the list of risks is tuberculosis, which is epidemic in some parts of the world. "We have investigated and documented occurrences of TB transmission during long air travel" in the last few years, said Dr. Kenneth G. Castro, a tuberculosis specialist at the C.D.C.

In one case, an airline crew member apparently transmitted the disease to other crew members "who had spent multiple hours working together," Dr. Castro said. Another case involved transmission by a woman to passengers sitting near her on a long international flight.

While the possibility of contracting TB is small and isn't "something that should obsess the potential traveler," Dr. Castro said, airlines and physicians need to be better informed about those infected with TB who travel by air, especially on flights of eight hours or more, when transmission is most likely. Travelers with the AIDS virus are especially vulnerable to TB infection.

"People are flying to places now where there is more TB, on planes where they are spending longer periods of time in a closed environment," said Dr. Scott Franzblau, a microbiologist and tuberculosis specialist at the University of Illinois.

While in-flight air-filtration systems typically work well in combating many airborne infections, Dr. Franzblau said, more flights are being delayed and sit on the tarmac using auxiliary ventilation systems "that don't work so well." For health reasons alone, he said, "Airlines should really try to minimize ground time."

EVEN more than passengers, flight crews are exposed to potential contagion by diseases as varied as chicken pox, influenza and hepatitis. Though airlines voluntarily try to keep cabin air adequately filtered, "there really are no minimum ventilation standards" mandated by law to flush out contaminants, said Judith Murawski, an industrial hygienist with the Association of Flight Attendants, a union that represents about 50,000 flight attendants at 27 airlines.

The union wants aircraft cabins to be covered by the Occupational Health and Safety Administration to ensure stricter safety standards. Currently, the Federal Aviation Administration has responsibility for cabin safety.

"They may be experts in aviation, but they're not experts in workplace safety," Ms. Murawski said. "If the air quality is not good for the passengers for the four hours that they're on board and they get off with a headache, well sure, that stinks. But it's quite different for a person who has to work in that environment all the time.`

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Nafta's Powerful Little Secret

March 11, 2001
New York Times
By ANTHONY DePALMA
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/11/business/11TRIB.html

Their meetings are secret. Their members are generally unknown. The decisions they reach need not be fully disclosed. Yet the way a small group of international tribunals handles disputes between investors and foreign governments has led to national laws being revoked, justice systems questioned and environmental regulations challenged. And it is all in the name of protecting the rights of foreign investors under the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The corporations - American, Canadian and Mexican alike - that directly invest in neighboring countries are thrilled that Nafta provides some protection. But foes of the trade pact say some of their worst fears about anonymous government have become reality. And as Western economies move toward more free trade and globalization, environmentalists, consumer groups and anti-trade organizations are increasingly worried about how the tribunals influence the enforcement of laws. The groups are gearing up for a fight at the Summit of the Americas next month in Quebec, where President Bush will be pushing a vast new Free Trade Area of the Americas, which would provide for similar tribunals.

Protesters will attack the sweeping powers and broad impact of the tribunals, along with their very nature - ad hoc panels drawn from lists of academics and international lawyers almost unknown outside their highly specialized fields.

"What we're talking about here is secret government," said Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen, a consumer watchdog group in Washington that has been critical of Nafta and other trade agreements. Ms. Claybrook said the 16 Nafta cases that have been filed so far in the United States, Canada and Mexico showed how corporations were using Nafta not to defend trade but to challenge the functioning of government. "This is not the way to do the public's business," she said.

The tribunals have been used in Nafta disputes for only a few years, but the complaints they have handled have already had many repercussions, including these:

• The Canadian government lifted restrictions on manufacturing an ethanol-based gasoline additive that it considered hazardous after an American manufacturer said that the ban hurt its business.

• A tribunal ordered Mexico to pay an American company $16.7 million after finding that local environmental laws prohibiting a toxic- waste-processing plant that the company was building were tantamount to expropriation.

• A Canadian-based funeral company is asking the United States government for $725 million in compensation after a Mississippi jury found the company guilty in 1995 of trying to put a local funeral home out of business, and levied $500 million in damages. The company contends that the jury sought to punish it because it is foreign. If the tribunal awards compensation, critics say, all jury awards involving foreign investors may be challenged.

• United Parcel Service, the package-delivery company, has filed a complaint contending that the very existence of the publicly financed Canadian postal system represents unfair competition that conflicts with Canada's obligations under Nafta. Critics worry that if the tribunal upholds the U.P.S. claim, government participation in any service that competes with the private sector will be threatened.

IT is clear that investors have gained a shield far more powerful than almost anyone had imagined when Nafta was written in the early 1990's. "There is no doubt that these measures represent an expansion of the rights of private enterprises vis- à-vis government," said Prof. Andreas F. Lowenfeld, an international trade expert at the New York University School of Law. "The question is: Is that a good thing?"

The international tribunals are authorized under a Nafta clause called Chapter 11, dealing with investments. Investors who believe they have suffered a loss because of a breach in Nafta rules can bring a claim against the government of the country where they made their investment. They can have the complaint heard under one of two existing sets of rules - one from the United Nations, the other from an independent office of the World Bank.

These off-the-shelf mechanisms adopted by Nafta have commonly been used to resolve private disputes between corporations, and are thus intended to provide a great degree of confidentiality. Both critics and proponents agree that the provisions run headlong into demands for openness and accountability when public issues are involved.

"The fact that the drafters of Nafta chose this secretive process to resolve these disputes is further evidence that they weren't foreseeing matters of broad social concern coming before these panels," said Martin Wagner, director of international programs for the Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund, an environmental group in San Francisco.

Critics say the corporate victories have spawned even bolder and broader challenges, each one further undermining public policy. In a recent case that critics consider one of the most worrisome, the Methanex Corporation of Vancouver, British Columbia, is challenging California's decision to phase out the use of a gasoline additive containing methanol, which Methanex makes. The state considers the additive, MTBE, which was originally intended to reduce air pollution from motor vehicle emissions, to be a health hazard when it enters the water supply. Santa Monica, Calif., with 93,000 residents, had to shut down most of its municipal wells when gasoline containing MTBE leached into the drinking water a few years ago.

METHANEX contends that MTBE poses absolutely no health hazard and that the state's action would effectively destroy its market. "The work that was done to make the decision to move forward with the ban wasn't extensive enough to draw the conclusion that MTBE is hazardous," said Bradley W. Boyd, director of investor relations at Methanex.

The company recently amended the claim to include accusations that a decision by Gov. Gray Davis of California to ban the additive might have been politically motivated and linked to more than $200,000 in campaign contributions by the Archer Daniels Midland Company, which makes a competing product. A spokesman for the governor, Gabriel Sanchez, called the accusations "ludicrous."

Mr. Boyd said Methanex was not asking for the ban to be lifted, but rather for Methanex to be compensated if it was prevented from doing business in California because of the ban. The company wants $970 million in compensation, which rankles many Californians.

"It's the height of corporate moxie," said Michael Feinstein, an environmental activist who is the mayor of Santa Monica. He said he was worried that a precedent would be set if the MTBE phase-out was undermined. Even if the tribunals have no power to overturn laws, he said, a decision in Methanex's favor "would have a devastatingly chilling effect on all such future laws and standards because of the belief that they would not stand up to challenge."

The United States government, named as a defendant in the Methanex complaint, is also concerned that the case stretches Nafta beyond recognition. In a statement to the tribunal, the government contends that "Methanex's claim does not remotely resemble the type of grievance for which the states parties to the Nafta created the investor-state dispute mechanism."

Mr. Wagner has asked the tribunal to consider breaking with tradition and accepting written statements from third-party groups like the Bluewater Network, a citizens' environmental organization. The three- person tribunal hearing the complaint is unusual in that its members include former Secretary of State Warren Christopher. The tribunal determined in January that it had the right to accept written arguments, and said it would decide later whether to do so in this case.

Mr. Wagner said he was able to keep abreast of the proceedings by filing periodic Freedom of Information requests that force the United States government, when named as a defendant, to release the documents. Other advocates who obtain the filings this way post some on a Web site - www.naftaclaims.com. Canada also has a public access information law, but Mexico does not.

Officials who oversee the tribunals say that they understand concerns about the less-than-public aspects of the panels' work but that anything that opens the proceedings would undermine the promise of confidentiality that corporate investors consider essential. That, they say, would undermine the primary purpose of the arbitration mechanisms - to help foster commercial development.

"The whole thing here was to have a mechanism to give a base level of comfort to foreign investors," said Ko-Yung Tung, vice president and general consul of the World Bank and secretary general of its International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes, which handles Nafta claims. He said that forcing more disclosure could drive corporations away from the established dispute-resolution process.

"If increased foreign investment is the prime goal in this, then making public these proceedings may be less important" than protecting investors, Mr. Tung said.

The center occupies a small suite of offices inside the World Bank's modern headquarters in Washington. With seven lawyers and four members of its support staff, it now oversees eight Nafta cases. There are also 29 other disputes on the center's docket that arise from some of the more than 1,400 bilateral treaties involving more than 130 nations that have signed an international convention to abide by the World Bank's investment rules.

For 20 years after the center was created in 1966, it established panels that heard on average no more than one case a year. Now, officials said, about one case is filed every month.

THE center's primary responsibility is to appoint the arbitrators to the panels, choosing from a list of internationally recognized experts who are paid $1,500 a day for their work. The center is bound by strict confidentiality rules, and only investors can say whether documents should be made public.

"It's unfair to call this a closed or secret process," said Antonio R. Parra, deputy secretary general of the International Center. "While it's clearly not on all fours with a court proceeding, I don't think it is something that is shrouded in secrecy."

Under the center's rules, proceedings can be made public if both the investor and the involved government agree. But the Nafta proceedings are never opened to the public, nor have third parties until now been allowed to submit briefs. Corporations want the proceedings to remain closed.

"The majority of claimants in these cases are not large multinational corporations but small- to medium-sized companies," said Clyde C. Pearce, a California lawyer who represented one such company, the Metalclad Corporation, in a complaint against Mexico over the construction of a toxic-waste-processing site. Mr. Pearce said the obligation of responding to briefs submitted by third parties could overwhelm corporate lawyers, who are already outmatched by the governments they are bringing the claims against.

"If others want to weigh in on these cases, they have access to their governments and should use that route to get their views across, not the tribunals," he said.

The other set of rules governing Nafta tribunals was devised by the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law, based in Vienna. "Arbitration is really private justice," said Jernej Sekolec, its secretary. Mr. Sekolec says the commission's rules for handling disputes are routinely written into commercial contracts between investors and, increasingly, agreements that let private investors bring complaints against a foreign government.

But he said the commission itself never became involved in a dispute in any way, not even to select the arbitrators. "Our overall mission is to streamline and facilitate negotiations and conclusions of contracts," he said.

Typically, the parties in a dispute each name one tribunal member and agree jointly to a third. Each panel is unique, and critics say this lack of continuity makes it hard to establish clear legal precedent.

That is especially important because a tribunal decision technically cannot be appealed. It can be submitted to a local court for review, to ensure that there was no corruption or gross misinterpretation of the rules. Mexico has recently filed such a review in the case won by Metalclad. Another appeal was filed recently by the Canadian government in a case won by S. D. Myers Inc., an Ohio waste-disposal company that said it was hurt by a Canadian law banning the export of PCB's.

Barry Appleton, a Canadian trade lawyer involved in several claims before Nafta tribunals, said critics were so driven by their opposition to globalization that they were overstating the power of the tribunals, which he contends are nothing more than dispute-resolution panels with no power to overturn any laws. "What they're doing," he said of the critics, "is scaremongering."

Mr. Appleton said the arbitration panels were meant to provide a nonpolitical alternative to resolving disputes in court. But he said controversy had arisen because the drafters of Nafta appeared to assume that the investor-protection provisions would be used by Canadian and American investors to protect their investments in Mexico from outright expropriation.

"The Canadian and American governments thought this was not going to apply to them," Mr. Appleton said, "and now they're disappointed."

THE lack of a traditional appeal process, transparency and legally binding precedent, along with the wide scope of what can be challenged under the free-trade investment rules, have made many people wary in all three nations, including government officials. Pierre Pettigrew, Canada's minister of international trade, has written to his counterparts in the United States and Mexico to begin a process of what he calls "clarifying" the limits of Nafta's investment protections and perhaps amending the agreement before negotiations begin in earnest on the Free Trade Area of the Americas.

Activists planning to go to the Summit of the Americas in Quebec said they would protest the idea of adopting similar tribunals in a hemispheric free-trade pact. "This is an example of the excessive powers enjoyed by corporations under Nafta that should not be expanded," said the Alliance for Responsible Trade, in a critique of the United States position on the proposed trade pact.

Critics also object to President Bush's campaign to gain approval of a so-called "fast-track authority," which expired after Nafta was passed in 1993. Mr. Bush has said he needs it to present the hemispheric trade pact to Congress for a vote without possibility of amendment. The critics contend that the scope of Nafta's investment-protection chapter was not well understood because the fast-track process denied Congress the chance to evaluate the agreement thoroughly.

The clash between investor rights and public policy is expected to grow more intense, even within the agencies entrusted with keeping aspects of the cases secret.

"The demand for a more transparent process will cause tension with the more traditional concept of confidentiality - it's inevitable," said Margrete L. Stevens, senior counsel of the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes. She said she believed that there was room to adjust, to open the process in keeping with such expectations throughout the world today - but only, she said, if "the parties have come under pressure in their own countries to do this."

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Pesticide-treated wood used in playgrounds leaks

03/11/2001
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2001-03-11-pesticide.htm

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) - A type of pressure-treated wood used to build several playgrounds, decks and picnic tables leaks arsenic at levels higher than state environmental officials consider safe, a newspaper's investigation found.

The wood, banned as environmentally hazardous in many countries, is sold in lumber stores across the United States. It is widely used in Florida because it stands up to termites, beetles and humidity.

The arsenic comes from chromated copper arsenate, a powerful pesticide injected into the wood that can leak into soil around it, The St. Petersburg Times reported Sunday based on a study from a laboratory hired by the newspaper.

Small doses of arsenic can be fatal, and long-term exposure can cause cancer, but it is unclear whether contact with arsenic leaking from posts and boards is dangerous. Most home supply stores sell picnic tables made of the wood, even though wood-treatment companies say it should never be used for cutting or food-preparation.

The laboratory conducted soil tests near the sunken posts at five wooden playgrounds. Every test detected levels of arsenic above the levels the state considers safe.

The wood industry says its studies show the wood is safe.

"Is it safe? The answer is: Yes, it is perfectly safe. We don't see a problem," said Scott Ramminger, president of the American Wood Preservers Institute.

The industry has fought efforts to ban CCA-treated lumber in Minnesota.

Switzerland, Vietnam and Indonesia have banned CCA-treated wood, and Japan, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Australia and New Zealand have restricted or proposed restrictions for it. Connecticut health officials issued a warning three years ago that said children who frequently play on CCA-treated playgrounds come in contact with a major source of arsenic.

The Environmental Protection Agency banned most arsenic pesticides years ago but made an exception for pressure-treated wood.

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Foot-and-mouth outbreak spreads in Britain

03/11/2001
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-03-11-foot-mouth.htm

LONDON - While British government officials insisted the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease was under control, 25 new cases were reported Sunday - the highest daily total so far.

The Agriculture Ministry confirmed a total of 164 cases in the United Kingdom since the disease was first identified in Britain on Feb. 20.

More than 114,000 animals have been destroyed, and another 30,000 are awaiting slaughter to keep the highly contagious disease from spreading further, the Agriculture Ministry said.

"It's under control," Agriculture Minister Nick Brown said Sunday. "What we don't know is how much is incubating, which spread before the movement restrictions were put in place."

Brown said he could not tell how long cases would continue to emerge.

"They all trace back to the original source of infectivity," he said. "We are still dealing with outbreaks that had spread before the movement restrictions took place."

He said nearly 500 veterinarians were dealing with the disease, including experts from the United States, Australia and continental Europe.

Livestock movement has been severely restricted. The European Union has closed all livestock markets and banned imports of meat, livestock and milk products from Britain in response to the disease.

Movement by other animals and by people in the countryside has been discouraged, and people making necessary trips are being asked to walking through troughs of disinfectant.

New cases reported around the country Sunday included outbreaks in Scotland, Wales, the Lake District of the northwest, Devonshire in the south, and Kent in the southeast.

Foot-and-mouth disease - which strikes cloven-hoofed animals such as sheep, pigs and cows - is easily spread by afflicted animals or by carriers such as humans, horses and wild animals. It can also become airborne, though officials say it seems to have spread through the air only several times during this outbreak.

Meat from an infected animal is safe to eat, but animals that recover from the disease produce less meat or milk. A country that imports livestock touched by the disease risks infecting its own herds, endangering its export business.

There have been no confirmed cases in the rest of Europe, but a farm in northern Germany was sealed off Sunday after calves showed symptoms similar to those of foot-and-mouth.

-------- imf / world bank / ftaa

FTAA poses big risk

Sunday 11 March 2001
Montreal Gazette
ARTHUR SANDBORN
http://www.montrealgazette.com/editorial/pages/010311/5079658.html

In April, the heads of state of 34 countries are meeting in Quebec City for the Summit of the Americas. They will be discussing a treaty to create the Free Trade Area of the Americas.

The FTAA is as important for the citizens of the Americas as the creation of the European Economic Community was for the residents of that continent. The decisions taken by our political leaders will have an impact on our social programs, our living conditions, our economy and our democracy.

The process leading to the creation of the FTAA is totally undemocratic. No debate has gone on in our Parliament, or in any of the parliaments involved. No referendums are foreseen. No American parliament will be set up to monitor the trade agreement. No debate on a common currency has taken place, yet many Latin American countries such as Ecuador and El Salvador have abandoned their national currencies for the U.S. dollar. The public debates leading to the creation of the EEC and to a common currency were difficult, but democratic process was respected.

The FTAA is to be an extension of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. That agreement not only lowered trade barriers, it also consecrated the "right" to invest freely without government interference or "preferential treatment."

Although NAFTA has been in effect since 1994, the negative effects of the agreement are just beginning to hit us. The loss of Canadian control over environmental rules and regulations is already under way, as NAFTA strikes down national environmental legislation.

A major blow came when Canada banned the gasoline additive called MMT, which creates dangerous levels of magnesium pollution. Ethyl Corp., which produces MMT, sued Canada in 1997 alleging our ban on MMT allowed us to expropriate the company's future profits. Ethyl sued under NAFTA, and won. The Canadian government withdrew legislation banning MMT and dished out $19 million of our tax revenues ($13 million U.S.) to Ethyl in an out-of-court agreement. Is that the kind of "free trade" Canadians want?

Unfortunately, environmental legislation is not the only potential victim of NAFTA rules. For example, UPS is suing Canada for $230 million because Canada Post's links to Purolator supposedly give that company an unfair advantage in providing parcel-delivery service. The list of lawsuits is long, with potential fines for Canada already tallied at some $16 billion.

Are Canadians ready to foot the bill? One thing is clear: our government never asked us. The FTAA discussions are going to extend this craziness to 34 countries. They are also planning the extension of the trade deal to many new fields so far excluded from NAFTA. Although the negotiations are top secret, the true story is starting to come out in the open.

Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians published a secret document in January that outlines the intention of FTAA negotiators to cover all public services. The list of items being discussed include health care, home care, public education, child care, energy, water services, postal services, transportation, publishing and broadcasting.

Mrs. Barlow claims "every single social program, environmental regulation and natural resource is at risk under the proposed FTAA." I feel that she is right.

In fact, the persistent refusal of the Canadian government to submit the content of the future FTAA for public debate and approval is about all that we should need to become very, very worried. Trade Minister Pierre Pettigrew claims his hands are tied, as all 34 countries must approve the publication of the 900 odd pages that make up the FTAA so far. This means the FTAA talks will be concluded, and the results will be presented, as a "take it or leave it" deal. Mr. Pettigrew and Prime Minister Jean Chretien will then tell us we have no choice but to sign, or to be excluded from the future free-trade deal.

The second sign of dirty dealing is the completely un-Canadian and anti-democratic level of police repression that is being prepared for the meeting in Quebec City. If people were upset by Sgt. Pepper's attack against demonstrators in Vancouver, well, they ain't seen nothing yet. The steel walls and barbed wire to be installed around the National Assembly and major hotels during the Summit of the Americas are something out of Northern Ireland. We must not allow such measures in Canada.

Those opposed to any or all aspects of this trade deal have no choice but to organize resistance throughout the Americas, and to demonstrate in force.

I'm going to Quebec City to demonstrate against the FTAA on April 21, as should all citizens who feel that human beings, social programs, public services and democracy are more important than the right of corporations to make profits.

Don't get me wrong. International trade is necessary, and inevitable. However, social peace and justice are also necessary, and inevitable. Democratically elected governments exist to ensure a certain balance between social and economic pressures, and that balance is being seriously endangered by the FTAA.

The Gazette Board of Contributors: Arthur Sandborn is president of the Conseil Central du Montreal Metropolitain of the Confederation of National Trade Unions. The views of contributors are not necessarily those of The Gazette.

---

Feds right to not let Landry speak at summit

Sunday 11 March 2001
Montreal Gazette
TOMMY SCHNURMACHER
http://www.montrealgazette.com/editorial/pages/010311/5079797.html

It' was a hectic week for Quebec Premier Bernard Landry. On Thursday, he became the unelected new leader of the province he prefers to describe as the "Quebec nation." On Friday, the new face of sovereignty celebrated his 64th birthday.

His cabinet appointments were most reassuring. We can rest easy knowing that Remy Trudel who used to be in charge of agricultural issues, will now use his considerable expertise to solve the health-care crisis.

Landry ended his pedestrian inaugural speech on Thursday afternoon by humbly mentioning the mandate he has from the "collectivity." His humility was understandable since he, in fact, has no mandate.

The collectivity might recall he was crowned leader of the Parti Quebecois, which received fewer votes in the last election than did the Liberals.

Having suitably recovered from the horror of having his view obscured by a dozen Canadian flags flapping in the breeze outside his Quebec City digs, our new premier is currently practicing his Rodney Dangerfield "I can't get no respect" shtick in time for next month's Summit of the Americas.

This is apparently a very big deal that involves evil and dastardly corporations making secret plans to enslave the world.

Actually, the 34 heads of state and government who will be hightailing it to Quebec City in April will be subject to a rigourous schedule of bountiful breakfasts, tasteful luncheons and lavish dinners. During the all-too-rare moments when they will not be dining or posing for press photos, they will be diligently furrowing their brow cobbling together the tiresome details on extending the North American Free Trade Agreement to the entire hemisphere.

The distinguished members of this motley crew are not exactly in any great rush. They ardently hope to have all the details finalized by 2005.

Anti-capitalist protesters, rank amateur and seasoned professional alike, are understandably upset, since any such agreement might create jobs, promote economic growth - and the ultimate injustice - lower prices for consumers.

Protesters from hither and yon have apparently become so adept at bringing international gatherings to a complete standstill that security cannot be left solely in the hands of Aline Chretien and her Inuit carvings.

There are plans to use more than 5,000 cops to police this historic event. One wonders who will be left to look after the safety of the rest of the country.

While some of the officers will be handed the thankless task of manning the enormous 20-foot fence that will surround the walled city, others will be on hand to prevent Jean Chretien from manhandling the protesters.

You can see why Landry just doesn't want to miss out on all this action.

He had hoped to use the summit as the ideal venue to trumpet the virtues of Quebec independence and embarrass Canada in the same way Lucien Bouchard and Joseph Facal did in October 1999 when Ottawa made the mistake of providing this dynamic duo with a platform to attack Canadian federalism at a conference in Mont-Tremblant.

It was Bill Clinton who saved the day by saying Quebec did not have the criteria necessary to justify secession. One can just imagine the reaction of George Dubya if Landry started kvetching about federal-government intrusions.

With Landry in place as premier of Quebec, the feds found themselves in a lose-lose situation and they chose the lesser of two evils.

Had they allowed Landry to speak, he would have undoubtedly spoken in French, Spanish and English, using the opportunity to sing the praises of Quebec and its intention to become an independent nation with an exciting new partnership with the rest of Canada.

If leaders of these countries heard Landry speaking at an event hosted by the Canadian government, they would take this to mean that Canada was amenable to such a ridiculous arrangement and all that really remained would be to iron out some of the planning details.

One can be sure that Bernard Landry would not have pointed out that most members of the collectivity remain steadfastly opposed to Quebec independence.

But how will the leaders of all these other governments react when they pick up the paper to read that Landry has not been asked to speak?

They will turn the page.

- Tommy Schnurmacher is heard weekdays 9 a.m. to noon on CJAD 800 radio. His E-Mail address is: tommys@total.net

-------- police

Ignoring, and Then Embracing, the Truth About Racial Profiling

March 11, 2001
New York Times
By MATTHEW PURDY
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/11/nyregion/11TOWN.html

TRENTON - As cover-ups go, this one was about as effective as a wash rag on a sumo wrestler. The ugly stuff was sticking out everywhere.

A black woman apparently driving too slowly on the New Jersey Turnpike reported to the state in April 1994 that she was signaled to move over by white troopers, one of whom shouted through a loudspeaker: "That's why your kind will never be president!" A truck driver reported that same year that a trooper he argued with about parking in a turnpike service area called him a racial epithet and told him he was going to jail.

A black dentist, Elmo Randolph, testified that he was stopped dozens of times in the 1980's and 1990's traveling the turnpike to work. Troopers invariably asked, do you have guns or drugs? "My parents always told me, be careful when you're driving on the turnpike," said Dr. Randolph, 44. "White people don't have that conversation."

White people running the government had a different conversation. In May 1997, according to a deposition of an aide to Peter G. Verniero, then the attorney general, Mr. Verniero met with the state police superintendent, Carl A. Williams, and "sort of fixed him in the eye and said, `Look, is - let's get this straight - is racial profiling a problem at State Police?' And he said, `No.' "

WHEW! One can only imagine Mr. Verniero's relief.

The Whitman administration, pressured by lawsuits and the federal government, acknowledged racial profiling two years ago. Volumes of documents on profiling have been made public since, including depositions released last week in advance of State Senate Judiciary committee hearings.

The focus is on Mr. Verniero, former Gov. Christie Whitman's eager and loyal right- hand man, whose thumb was dutifully in the dike when the truth flooded out. With her blessing, he scampered for higher ground, namely a seat on the State Supreme Court.

Just 37 when he became attorney general, Mr. Verniero sounded like a sheriff in a bad western. "They'd have to tie me to a train and drag me along the track before I'd sign a decree," he scoffed at the idea of an agreement with federal officials acknowledging profiling, the documents show.

Even as the truth was becoming indisputable, Mr. Verniero continued to appeal a 1996 state court ruling that found racial profiling. A July 1997 memo to Mr. Verniero showed that up to half of those stopped on one area of the turnpike were black or Hispanic. By February 1997, the state police knew that on parts of the turnpike, almost 90 percent of drivers whose cars troopers requested permission to search were black or Hispanic. "At this point, we're in a very bad spot," read an internal police memo.

But at his Supreme Court confirmation hearing, Mr. Verniero said "the issues and allegations of racial profiling crystallized in my mind" only after troopers shot three unarmed minority men on the turnpike in April 1998. Gunfire will do that.

So will politics. In early 1999, with the court seat beckoning, Mr. Verniero began an expedited review that ultimately acknowledged profiling. Suddenly it was expeditious to admit what officials and politicians had long found convenient to ignore. Why so fast? "I assume it was because of his confirmation, but I don't know that for a fact," an assistant attorney general, Jeffrey J. Miller, said in a deposition.

In December, Mr. Verniero said that while "reasonable minds may differ regarding the timeliness of my actions," the need for reform "did not become sufficiently compelling in my opinion until 1999."

THE coming hearings will return Mr. Verniero to the Legislature, where he was never popular. As Mrs. Whitman's counsel and then chief of staff, he was seen by many legislators as unseasoned and ambitious, a combination that irked the seasoned and ambitious. He won confirmation to the Supreme Court by one vote, after the state bar association deemed him unqualified because of lack of experience.

John A. Lynch, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said he expects the hearings to establish Mr. Verniero's "pattern of manipulation."

It will take more than a hearing to expiate the pattern of profiling. It's ingrained in history. When a state lawyer wrote a memo suggesting a review of profiling in 1993, the attorney general at the time, a Democrat, jotted in the margin: "If it ain't broken, don't fix it." It was, but they didn't.

-------- spying

Navy Drops Spy Charges In Petty Officer's Case

March 11, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/11/national/11NATI.html

SPRINGFIELD, Va., March 10 (AP) - The Navy has dropped all charges against a sailor it accused of spying for the Russians after the military judge in the case questioned the evidence.

Cmdr. James P. Winthrop, the officer overseeing the Navy's prosecution of the sailor, Petty Officer First Class Daniel King, said in a letter on Friday that he doubted the validity of a confession Petty Officer King was said to have given investigators. "I don't believe the government evidence on any of the charges is strong," Commander Winthrop said.

Petty Officer King, a former cryptologist at the National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Md., has been detained at a Marine Corps base since October 1999.

---

Espionage Case Against Sailor Is Abandoned

March 11, 2001
New York Times
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/11/national/11NAVY.html

SPRINGFIELD, Va., March 10 - The Navy has dropped all charges against a sailor it accused of spying for the Russians after the military judge in the case questioned the evidence.

Cmdr. James P. Winthrop, the officer overseeing the Navy's prosecution of the sailor, Petty Officer First Class Daniel King, said in a letter on Friday that he doubted the validity of a confession Petty Officer King was said to have given investigators.

"I don't believe the government evidence on any of the charges is strong," wrote Commander Winthrop, who has been serving as the military equivalent of a pretrial judge.

Petty Officer King's lawyer characterized the case as an abuse of authority. But a Navy spokeswoman, Cmdr. Roxie Merritt, said the sailor remained "a self-admitted traitor."

Commander Merritt said the Navy had been forced to drop espionage charges and two lesser charges because of the difficulty in protecting national security while upholding Petty Officer King's right to a public trial. "We would have had to disclose more information at trial than what King is alleged to have disclosed," Commander Merritt said.

Petty Officer King, a former cryptologist at the National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Md., has been detained at Quantico Marine Corps Base since October 1999.

When he was arrested last year, Navy officials said he had come under suspicion after a routine lie detector test and eventually admitted that he had passed secrets to the Russians in 1994.

In recommending that the case be dropped, Commander Winthrop said the sailor's mental state at the time of his confession and a lack of corroborating evidence raised doubt about the confession's validity.

Petty Officer King's lawyer, Jonathan Turley, said his client was released Friday night.

"When we picked him up at the brig, he gave us all big hugs," Mr. Turley said. "He was just glad to be finally heading home."

Mr. Turley said Petty Officer King, 41, would reach 20 years of Navy service in eight days and expected to retire with a full pension.

---

Attorney general orders review of FBI security

03/11/2001
USA Today
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-03-11-fbi-review.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - Attorney General John Ashcroft said Sunday he has ordered an internal investigation to determine how former FBI agent Robert Philip Hanssen, charged with spying for Russia, allegedly avoided detection for 15 years.

The investigation by the Justice Department's inspector general will focus on FBI procedures and went wrong in the Hanssen case, Ashcroft said. But it could lead to a recommendation of discipline "if there was any wrongdoing by anybody aside from Hanssen in this case," department spokeswoman Mindy Tucker said.

The internal investigation will be conducted at the same time as a separate review ordered by the department immediately after Hanssen's arrest last month. William Webster, a former CIA and FBI director, is evaluating the FBI's internal security procedures and will recommend changes that could prevent future espionage cases.

Ashcroft said on ABC's "This Week" that the inspector general's investigation was "following avenues that might not otherwise be determined productive avenues for examination" by Webster.

Ashcroft said Hanssen, a 25-year FBI veteran and counterintelligence expert, was responsible for a "grave loss" in national security.

-------- terrorism

Arafat's bodyguards accused of terrorist attacks

03/11/2001
USA Today
http://usatoday.com/news/world/mideast/2001-03-11-terror.htm

JERUSALEM (AP) - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon accused Yasser Arafat's bodyguard unit of carrying out terrorist attacks against Israel and said Sunday it was not possible to hold peace talks with the Palestinian leader in the current climate of violence. Sharon, who has been in office less than a week, had been restrained and diplomatic when speaking of his longtime rival, and had held out the possibility of an early meeting. But in an interview with the Fox News Channel, the new Israeli leader was sharply critical of Arafat and said no talks were planned.

"Most of the terrorist acts at the present time are carried out by Palestinian armed forces, security services and even the (forces) closest to Arafat, that is, what you call Force 17, the presidential guard," Sharon said.

Sharon said Arafat was in control of the Palestinian security forces and could also crack down on Palestinian militants if he wished.

"But Arafat never took any preventive steps against the infrastructure of the terrorist organizations," Sharon added.

The comments came a day after Arafat told the Palestinian parliament that he was ready to resume peace talks. However, he was also quoted in the Saudi Arabian newspaper Okaz as saying that the Palestinian uprising, or intefadeh, "will continue."

Arafat also reiterated the Palestinian demand that peace talks must start where they left off under the previous Israeli premier, Ehud Barak.

Arafat's Fatah movement distributed leaflets Sunday calling for nationwide protest marches on Monday. "The criminal Sharon should learn from his predecessor Barak," the leaflets said. "In the end, Barak failed and the intefadeh remained."

Sharon says he is not bound by Barak's offer, which he regards as too generous, and insists that no peace negotiations will take place until calm is restored. "It's impossible to conduct the negotiations under the pressure of fire and terror and nonstop violence," Sharon said in the television interview.

He also expressed disappointment that Arafat didn't use the speech Saturday to call for an end to the violence, which has claimed more than 420 lives since it erupted in September.

Aides to Sharon and Arafat have been holding behind-the-scenes contacts, though they are not dealing directly with renewing negotiations, said the director of Sharon's office.

"There are contacts all the time regarding other things. It is important that there are channels of communication all the time," Uri Shani, head of the prime minister's bureau told Israel's army radio.

Palestinian officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed there was contact between the sides.

Both Sharon and Arafat have important meetings on their calendars this month that appear likely to precede any face-to-face talks.

Sharon said he did not expect to meet with Arafat before he visits with President Bush in Washington on March 20, and Arafat is planning to attend a meeting of the Arab League, also later this month.

Meanwhile, Israel's army tightened its blockade Sunday on the West Bank city of Ramallah as part of its security closure on Palestinian areas that has been imposed to varying degrees since the beginning of the hostilities.

Ramallah, in the hills north of Jerusalem, has been a hotbed of activity in the Palestinian uprising, and the army said it was focusing its crackdown on the city.

The army also announced the arrests of four Palestinians suspected of carrying out attacks against Israelis.

Another suspected Palestinian militant, 23-year-old Ibrahim Ali Dirawi, who was arrested March 1 in the Gaza Strip, has acknowledged taking part in five attacks since December, Israeli security sources said.

The sources said Dirawi was a member of the militant Islamic group Hamas, and his information pointed to an increase in the strength of Hamas in Gaza.

In this week's edition of Newsweek magazine, Sharon dismissed reports that Israel would consider reoccupying Palestinian-controlled areas if the unrest continued.

"Areas that were given to the Palestinians - there the situation is irreversible, and I don't think we have to re-enter," Sharon said in the interview.

To date, 424 people have been killed in the violence that broke out in late September, including 348 Palestinians, 57 Israeli Jews and 19 others.
<a name="activists"></a>

-------- activists

Citigroup Paid Weill $127.8 Mln, Rubin Got $45.3 Mln

Sun, 11 Mar 2001
By Vernon Silver

New York, March 2 -- Citigroup Inc., the biggest U.S. financial services company, paid Chairman and Chief Executive Sanford Weill $127.8 million in salary, bonus, stock and stock options in 2000, the company said in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing. Robert Rubin, the former U.S. Treasury secretary who is chairman of Citigroup's executive committee, was paid $45.3 million in stock, cash and stock options in 2000. Rubin, 62, who joined the company in 1999, did not exercise any stock options. Rubin's pay was up from the $21.4 million he made for working a little more than two months in 1999.

CITIGROUP'S INVESTMENTS DRIVE ORANGUTAN'S CLOSER TO EXTINCTION

The Business week article below profiles Citigroup's aggressive expansion into the Asian market and particularly the ways the company exploited the human suffering of the Asian crash in Indonesia. Citigroup has a long track record of underwriting destructive activity in Indonesia and the story of what is happening to Indonesian's forests, wildlife and local communities is a clear example of why we must re-write the rules of the global economy to include environmental and human rights protections.

In the last twelve years, Indonesia has lost over forty-two million acres of tropical forest, the primary reason for this is the rapid growth of palm plantations to produce palm oil for export. Throughout the 1990s, nearly 500,000 acres were converted to palm oil plantations each year. Big investors like Citigroup have been eager to finance the destruction. In total investors have applied for the release of nearly fifty million acres for oil palm development, an area equaling one-tenth of Indonesia's total land base.

Oil palm plantations have become an increasing problem for the people, the wildlife, and the environment of Indonesia. Scientists estimate that over the last decade the population of wild orangutans has declined by nearly fifty percent. A recent study by the Bronx Zoo's Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) concludes that unless poaching and habitat destruction are stopped Indonesia's orangutan population will be extinct within a decade. Orangutans are the only great ape in Asia and are among humanities closing living relatives.

Citi is involved with one of the most notorious palm oil companies, London Sumatra (LonSum). The company is currently in the process of clearing and planting 372,000 acres of new palm oil plantations, despite resistance from local indigenous communities. To the many indigenous peoples who survive by harvesting renewable, non-timber resources such as rubber, fruit, honey, and medicinal plants the destruction of the rainforests for palm plantations means the end of their way of life. There have been many reports that LonSum uses members of the armed forces and local government officials to intimidate local people to sell their land and there is a growing protest movement against the company. LonSum has also been repeatedly accused on setting forest fires as a tactic for seizing land. In 1997 and 1998 fires scorched twenty-five million acres of land in the provinces of Sumatra and Kalimantan causing massive smog that affected the health of seventy million people across Southeast Asia. The Indonesian authorities acknowledge that plantation companies-who use fire as a cheap and quick means of land clearing-are in large part responsible for the fires.

Citigroup began financing LonSum in 1994 and has been involved in syndicated loans (with other banks) amounting to over $300 million dollars. As of February of 2000 LonSum begin defaulting on its debts and now creditors like Citigroup have an unprecedented opportunity to change the destructive policies of companies like LonSum.

Let Citigroup know that you want them to stop funding rainforest destruction in Indonesia. Call and ask them what are they doing to help protected Indonesian's endangered orangutan population? Ask them what the social and environmental standards they apply to their lending, financing and trading? Tell them to go BEYOND THE BOTTOMLINE and STOP FUNDING DESTRUCTION!

Call: Director of Public Affairs Mark Rogers 1-718-248-1092 (direct line) General Switchboard 1-800-756-7047 Cardholder line 1-800-950-5114

Email: investorrelations@citi.com

Write: Sandy Weill, CEO Citigroup Center 153 E. 53rd St NY, NY 10043

For more information on Citi's activities in Indonesia see <http://www.ran.org/ran_campaigns/citigroup/04102000-2.html>

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Why Peace Eludes Mexico's Indians

March 11, 2001
New York Times
By GINGER THOMPSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/11/weekinreview/11THOM.html

VENUSTIANO CARRANZA, Mexico -- The fading portraits of some 30 men and boys, victims of violent family feuds, adorn the wall of a local meeting hall here, turning it into an altar of death that evokes Mexico's despair at achieving peace in the southern state of Chiapas.

This is one of many towns where conflict within Mexico's Indian communities rages almost unnoticed in the shadow of a high-profile uprising in the name of all of them by rebels known as Zapatistas.

For seven years now, most official peace efforts and international attention have focused on the Zapatistas' campaign against the discrimination and abandonment that have kept most of Mexico's 10 million indigenous people mired in poverty, illiteracy and sickness. This week, the attention will be magnified as an unarmed delegation of Zapatista commanders, accompanied by hundreds of supporters in a caravan of buses and trucks, arrives in Mexico City to lobby before the Congress for approval of a list of reforms. The new government of President Vicente Fox has welcomed the opening as a way to move the conflict from the battlefield to political debate.

But it is unlikely that any peace made with the Zapatistas will mean a quick peace for the people of Venustiano Carranza, for their conflict is less with the Mexican government than among themselves. Although an agreement might lessen tensions in many Indian communities, real reconciliation will probably require years of intense and meticulous monitoring.

Many of these communities have been torn for generations by struggles over land, religion and power. The fighting pits fathers against sons, brothers against brothers, neighbors against neighbors.

People here trace the roots of the violence to the time of Mexico's conquest by Spain, when their ancestors began fighting to keep their native lands from white invaders. Then, in the late 1960's, they say, the same fear of losing their land turned Indian families against one another as the population grew and the supply of land didn't. Here, for example, one clan demanded that some 75,000 acres of shared farm land be divided so that it could establish a separate settlement.

Gaspar Díaz Reyes, a middle- aged elementary school teacher with a long face and thin moustache, was one of the first to die in the fighting and his photograph hangs at the top of some two dozen other victims' portraits in a community center called "The House of the People." Among other faces on the wall are the nine victims - one a 7-year-old boy - of an October 1984 massacre in the sugar cane fields surrounding this village.

Today, every town gathering here is held in this mausoleum-like setting. And graffiti throughout town blare: "Never forget October 1984."

IF the government wants to stop the massacres, then there must be true justice for all those who have died," said Bartolomé Pérez Martnez, the leader of the clan that raised the photographic memorial to its dead. "That is the only way there can be peace."

Disputes over land drive dozens of indigenous conflicts across Chiapas, an overwhelmingly agricultural state where many of the 3.9 million people are subsistence farmers with only questionable titles to the land on which they live. Because there are few employment alternatives to farming, fights over land often become fights for survival. In the past, intervention by the Mexican government was often guided by political favoritism, and only aggravated the disputes.

Juan González Esponda, who was recently appointed the state commissioner for reconciliation, said corruption has inflamed numerous other conflicts in Chiapas. "There has been no respect for the law, and that is exactly where we must begin," he said. "We must weave an entirely new social fabric."

Mr. González said that in the last five years, 160 people have been killed in political clashes across the northern part of Chiapas. Over the decades, tens of thousands have been forced to flee their homes in religious fights around the municipality of San Juan Chamula. And the 1997 massacre of some 45 people in the community of Acteal continues to spawn revenge killings.

Perhaps it was the long habit of fighting for their land against outsiders that set the stage for the internecine fighting. Perhaps the explanation lies elsewhere, in the labyrinth of local customs, calls for vengeance and official corruption. Whatever the reason, it seems ironic that just as Mexico draws closer to a national understanding on Indian grievances, the advances could be offset by the depth of discord among indigenous people themselves.

A former history professor, Mr. Esponda acknowledged that the job ahead of him seemed titanic. Still, he remained optimistic. "There is a new conviction among the people that there has to be an end to the killing among brothers," he said. "People are tired of living in fear."

One thing that gives him hope is the very attention now being lavished on the Zapatistas. With their march, the rebels are taking a classic political gamble: they hope that their campaign before the Mexican Congress will help them gather all the disparate Indian groups under one Zapatista banner.

LAST weekend, when representatives from 42 of the 56 Indian ethnic groups in Mexico gathered in the central Mexican state of Michoacán for the third National Indigenous Congress, the rebels' presence made it the most well-attended and widely covered indigenous meeting in recent years, organizers said. Putting aside disagreements over strategy and control, the representatives unanimously agreed to organize peaceful rallies across the country to demand that the government accept their list of reforms.

"We will continue defending our autonomy," read a closing declaration, "and by defending it, we will also defend the freedom of all who, like us, want to live their differences, their songs, their visions for their own lives with dignity."

In Venustiano Carranza, however, expressions of a desire for reconciliation seemed half-hearted.

"We are tired of fighting," said Mr. Pérez, the caretaker of the community's memorial to the dead. "But if we do not risk our lives to defend our land, what are we going to be able to leave our children?"

---

Shouts, but Little Violence, at Connecticut Racial Rally

March 11, 2001
New York Times
By PAUL ZIELBAUER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/11/nyregion/11WALL.html

WALLINGFORD, Conn., March 10 - As could be expected from a well- publicized meeting of white supremacists in a town known for its history of racial conflict, there was hate, there were fistfights, there were police officers and there were protesters. There was even a bloody lip or two.

But in the end, aside from a brief melee between pepper-spraying police officers and a few anti-racist demonstrators, the latest flourish of a few white-power advocates here ended rather peacefully, with one arrest and no major injuries.

Today's encounter was the culmination of a weeks-long plan by a local racist group to present a speech by Matt Hale, the national leader of the World Church of the Creator, which claims to be one of the most popular white supremacist groups in the United States. After news spread that the Wallingford Town Library had allowed the group and Mr. Hale to reserve a meeting space, a counterdemonstration was organized and today's battle lines were drawn.

"We have good support in Wallingford," said Kenneth A. Molyneaux, 23, who said he drove nine hours from Akron, Ohio, to help organize Mr. Hale's visit. Mr. Molyneaux said Mr. Hale chose Wallingford after hearing about the controversy last year surrounding the mayor's refusal to grant city workers a paid holiday for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday.

"It shows that Wallingford is fertile ground for our ideas," Mr. Molyneaux said, as a bank of skinheads began scuffling with a larger crowd of mostly white college-aged objectors. "We can do things in a polite civil way," he said.

The dispute over Dr. King's birthday, which drew a visit from the Rev. Jesse Jackson, ended after Connecticut's General Assembly passed, and Gov. John G. Rowland signed, a bill that required all cities and towns to recognize Dr. King's birthday with a holiday. The bill was aimed at Wallingford, which had been the only municipality of Connecticut's 169 towns and cities that did not recognize the holiday with a paid day off.

But legislation was unlikely to prevent today's kind of conflict, in which a handful of young white men wearing black jackets and clean-shaven heads were drawn into repeated shouting matches, and a few fights, with a much larger crowd of about 50 mostly white, young self-described left-wing opponents of racism.

About two dozen police officers in full riot gear from Wallingford and the Connecticut State Police looked on as the competing groups hurled insults and a few snowballs at each other.

"He's profiting off your ignorance. How does that feel?" Matt Flood, a graduate student at Sacred Heart University in Bridgeport, shouted at the skinheads. "He's exploiting you."

At 2 p.m., Mr. Molyneaux and a retinue of young white men with shaved heads, many dressed from neck to toe in black, were allowed past a barricade of Wallingford police officers gripping batons. Minutes later, the police repelled a wall of advancing protesters, many of them also clad in black with camouflage bandannas over their faces, with squirts of pepper spray that left many young men and women gasping and searching for snow to cake on their stinging eyes.

Shortly thereafter, about a dozen black men, women and children, who had been attending a church service down the street to discuss Mr. Hale's presence today, filed into the library to attend his speech. But the children and two of the women left minutes later.

Indeed, inside the library's community room, Mr. Hale's voice was repeatedly drowned out by chants of "Go home" from a dozen or so people in attendance. Mr. Hale, whose two-hour speech attacked everything from what he called the United States Border Patrol's coddling of illegal immigrants to the characterizations of his movement by the "Jewish-controlled press," seemed flustered, even after he began using a bullhorn to address the 40 or so supporters seated before him.

"The idea of racial equality is one of the most absurd ever created in this world," said Mr. Hale.

"We didn't oppress other races," he said. "The blacks sold themselves into slavery. All over Africa, white countries had to tell them to stop enslaving blacks. We must understand history."

At 4 p.m., the Wallingford police told Mr. Hale his allotted time was up and hustled him out a side door and into a patrol car, which was briefly blocked by protesters.

Police Lt. Thomas Curran said one person was arrested for disorderly conduct inside the community room, and the police, who searched everyone with hand-held metal detectors, had temporarily confiscated a loaded and licensed .357 Magnum handgun and "an assortment of knives."

"I think it went extraordinarily well," Lieutenant Curran said as the meeting ended. "The crowd got a little angry, but it wasn't anything we couldn't control."

But after Mr. Hale left and most of his followers were told to leave the library parking lot, the police, lined up in attack formation, pushed into a band of protesters, firing blasts of pepper spray and poking their batons at anyone who moved too slowly. Five police dogs were also at the ready.

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Rebel army marches into heart of Mexico City

03/11/2001
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-03-11-mexico-rebels.htm

MEXICO CITY (AP) - Fulfilling a vow in their declaration of war seven years ago, Mexico's masked Zapatista rebels led a march into the heart of Mexico City on Sunday to press their demands for Indian rights.

Winding up a two-week tour of southern Mexico, the Zapatista leaders became the first rebel group to ride openly into the city since revolutionary leaders Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata - the rebels' namesake - did it in 1914.

The 23 masked rebel commanders and their leader, Subcomandante Marcos, rode a flatbed truck and waved to onlookers on Mexico City boulevards as supporters marched and rode behind.

Both new President Vicente Fox and the Zapatista National Liberation Army hope to benefit from the event. The rebels want to win support as a political force. Fox hopes it will help him achieve what two previous presidents failed to do: persuade the rebels to abandon their guns.

But the arrival was not quite as the rebels envisioned it when they shocked the world by emerging from obscurity to seize several cities in the southern state of Chiapas on Jan. 1, 1994, the very day Mexican officials were celebrating enactment of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Instead of "conquering the Mexican federal army," the goal they set in their declaration of war, the 24 Zapatista leaders have found themselves touring the country in a bus caravan protected by federal police.

Instead of "liberated" Mexican civilians, they find themselves accompanied by hundreds of foreign supporters who see the Zapatistas as exemplars of the struggle against the global financial system.

The "evil government" against which they rebelled was toppled last year: not by armed leftist insurgents but peacefully, at the polls, by Fox, a former Coca Cola executive whose pro-market leanings the leftist rebels deeply distrust.

Fox's welcome of the Zapatista march has been so effusive that Marcos has accused him of trying to turn it into a Fox march.

"Welcome Subcomandante Marcos, welcome to the Zapatistas, welcome to the political arena, the arena of discussion of ideas," Fox said in a radio address on Saturday. Fox said the rebel tour was proof of the new democracy ushered in when he broke the former ruling party's 71-year grip on the presidency.

The Zapatistas used their bus caravan from the Chiapas jungle village of La Realidad to barnstorm for sweeping constitutional reforms that would grant Mexico's roughly 10 million Indians more local autonomy and guarantee them schools and radio stations in their own languages.

They have also repeatedly expressed wariness of Fox. In an interview published Sunday with the magazine Proceso, Marcos said he and Fox were "diametrically opposed."

"We are part of the world moving toward recognizing differences, and he is working toward hegemony and homogenizing, not just the country, but the world," Marcos said.

But the differences may be negotiable. Speaking of himself, Marcos conceded he was "more of a rebel seeking social change" than a revolutionary.

Fox's first act in office was to send the Indian rights bill to Congress, and has freed scores of Zapatista prisoners and closed several army bases. But the rebels insist others be freed and more bases near their strongholds be closed before peace talks can start.

The heavily publicized tour has apparently boosted the Zapatistas' popularity. On Wednesday, the Mexico City newspaper Reforma said a telephone poll showed that 45% of people had a favorable view of Marcos, up from 34% in February. The poll had a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.

That may be linked to the fact that other polls show increasing numbers of Mexicans consider the Zapatistas a political rather than a military organization - even though they are avowedly at war with the government.

"They've haven't appeared as an armed force for quite some time," said Antonio Leyva, 46, one of the thousands who gathered in the city's main plaza to see the Zapatistas.

Leyva, a sociologist, welcomed the change, in a country with a long history of uprisings that were brutally repressed. "What they (the Zapatistas) are doing, and in part what the government is doing, is unprecedented."

The Zapatistas have roots in Indian peasant organizations, church activists and a Leninist guerrilla group from northern Mexico.

Their only significant military success was the seizure of the Chiapas towns. Fighting with the government lasted only 12 days before a cease-fire took hold.

Peace talks with the government started in February, but have been stalled since 1996 in a dispute over how to guarantee Indian rights - the first of six subjects to be discussed with the government en route to a peace agreement.

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Mass Honors 10 in I.R.A. Who Starved

March 11, 2001
New York Times
By DEAN E. MURPHY
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/11/nyregion/11IRIS.html

For the soul of Bobby Sands, let us pray," said Gerry Coleman, the political education director of Irish Northern Aid Committee.

"Lord, hear our prayer," came the response from the 1,000 or so people gathered in St. Patrick's Cathedral.

"For the soul of Francis Hughes, let us pray," Mr. Coleman continued.

"Lord, hear our prayer," came the response.

And so it went yesterday, 10 names in all, the 10 Irish Republican Army members who died 20 years ago in a hunger strike at a prison in Northern Ireland, recalled in a somber service as heroes and martyrs for Ireland.

The memorial Mass, officiated by Msgr. Eugene V. Clark, was the biggest in a decade to honor the hunger strikers and was timed to follow a similar remembrance held in Belfast, Northern Ireland, the organizers said.

The widow of Mr. Sands, the first of the 10 to starve in a protest over the imprisonment of I.R.A. members by the British authorities, appeared in black. She said nothing during the Mass - the prayers were led by Mr. Coleman and the monsignor - but outside the cathedral she expressed gratitude for the turnout, which was said to be among the largest since memorial Masses for the hunger strikers were first held in the early 1980's. The annual service was last performed at St. Patrick's in 1991, according to organizers.

The widow, Geraldine Sands, said the crowded pews gave her renewed hope that her husband's death still held meaning for the Irish people.

"I worry about people forgetting," said Mrs. Sands, who rarely speaks publicly. "It was a big sacrifice we all gave. It should never be forgotten."

Mrs. Sands said she did not want to comment on the current political situation in Northern Ireland, but she said the strike in 1981 was an unusual event that brought together many disparate people in Ireland and around the world. That unity was reflected in the cross section of Irish Americans and others in attendance yesterday, most of whom put their differences aside for the day.

As an example, members of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, the Catholic group that runs the annual St. Patrick's Day parade in Manhattan, shared communion with members of the Lavender and Green Alliance, a gay and lesbian organization that has been critical of the parade's exclusion of openly homosexual groups.

"I wouldn't like to think they died for nothing," Mrs. Sands said of her husband and the other hunger strikers. "Of course, it was worth it."

During his sermon, Monsignor Clark spoke of the 10 as martyrs in the tradition of St. Ambrose and St. Thomas More. He said their deaths should serve as an inspiration of self-sacrifice. "It is a very important thing that you keep this all alive in your minds and pass it on to other people," he said in closing.

Larry Downes, president of the Friends of Sinn Fein Organization, said the hunger strike in 1981 changed Irish history by giving inspiration to the Republican political movement and educating people around the world about the Republican cause. "It was the springboard for the current peace process," Mr. Downes said.

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