------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
U.S. Tones Down Its Criticism of Russia for Iran Arms Deal
Russians Question Wisdom of Their Coziness With Iran
Crew Members Say Civilians Played No Role in Accident
Greeneville commander denies he hurried safety procedures
Waste ban 'puts reactor in doubt'
Nuclear regulator reacts to waste ban
WHO to Study Effect of Shells on Health
German Green party leaders suppress protests
German cabinet lowers ceiling for worker radiation dose
Russia will build reactor for Iran
N. Korea Critical of Bush Stance
North Korean Nuclear Risk
U.S. Ties Taiwan Arms to China Missile Drive
Bush Plans State Visit to China in Fall
White House To Cut Aid to Russia
Budget cut for Russia nuke program
About-Face: The Politics of CO2
Geologists Learning Uranium Containment From Nature
Clinton Acted Hastily on Computer Export Rules, GAO Says

MILITARY
CHINA: AMERICAN WARNING
Beijing's Priorities
IRAQ: LEGAL HELP
Mir's Fall to End An Era In Space
Station crew returning to earth
Campaign to Re-elect Annan at U.N.
GENERAL ASSEMBLY: SOLITARY WOMAN ON TRIBUNAL
As Bush Ponders Cuts, GAO Again Criticizes F-22
Military Death Benefits Rise
Army Rangers Win a Battle Over Berets

OTHER
BLASTS HIT GIANT OIL RIG
Foot-and-Mouth Damages English Tourism
Mr. Bush Warms Up
Death at Ford Plant From Legionnaire's Brings Outbreak to 4
News Analysis: Of Coal and Climates
EPA head downplays strains over emissions controversy
About-Face: The Politics of CO2
Scientists: More research is needed
Prosecutor Says Politics Rushed Turnpike Case
5 Officers Charged With Lying About a Killing
WASHINGTON IN BRIEF
Veteran Agent Is Chosen to Direct Spy Fighting
CIA appeals decision in spy case
Oregon FBI agent gets job as nation's top spy fighter

ACTIVISTS
Lawsuit Challenges New Policing Strategy
Protesting workers greet PM
French nuclear sub aborts docking


-------- NUCLEAR

U.S. Tones Down Its Criticism of Russia for Iran Arms Deal

International Herald Tribune
Friday, March 16, 2001
Jane Perlez New York Times Service
http://www.iht.com/articles/13602.htm

WASHINGTON The Bush administration has taken a muted public approach to Russia's decision to resume sales of conventional arms to Iran, using the arrival of Moscow's senior national security official to express concerns that fell short of sharp criticism.

Secretary of State Colin Powell said the United States had to be "candid with the Russians" in telling them that they should not be "investing in weapons sales in countries such as Iran which have no future."

During the visit to Moscow on Monday of the Iranian president, Mohammed Khatami, the Russian government announced that it would resume sales of conventional arms to Iran and repeated its intention to help Iran complete a long-stalled nuclear power plant. Air-defense missile systems and up-to-date aircraft are reported to be among the items in the Russian package to Iran.

Russia's arms sales to Iran have long been a sore point between Washington and Moscow. Republicans in Congress were particularly critical of the Clinton administration, accusing it of not being tough enough on Russia for its sales of military hardware to Iran.

General Powell spoke just before he met Wednesday with Sergei Ivanov, who heads President Vladimir Putin's security council and is described as the second most powerful official in Russia.

Mr. Ivanov also met for the first time with President George W. Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, who was his host during the visit here. Some unflattering remarks Ms. Rice made about Russia before taking office have been posted on a Kremlin-backed Internet site. For her part, Ms. Rice has said she will not concentrate on the relationship with Russia as much as the Clinton administration had.

Ms. Rice said nothing publicly about her two-and-a-half-hour meeting with Mr. Ivanov, and her aides gave only a scanty account of the topics discussed.

Mr. Ivanov said he had discussed the administration's plans for a missile defense system with Ms. Rice, but not in specifics.

Last month, Mr. Putin responded to the Bush administration's ideas of missile defense and for the first time recognized that a threat existed from rogue nations.

Asked about the nature of the discussion on missile defense, Mr. Ivanov said that it was "in general and conceptual terms because the administration is not that ready yet."

Iran to Buy 2d Russian Reactor

A Russian official said on Thursday that Iran would sign up for a second Russian-built nuclear reactor once the delayed first one had been completed, Reuters reported from Kazan, Russia.

Russia is helping Iran build a nuclear power plant at the Gulf port of Bushehr. Iran says it is for civil use, but the United States has worried it might help the Islamic Republic, which it dubs a "rogue state," develop nuclear weapons.

"In principle," Mr. Khatami "confirmed that as soon as the equipment for the first reactor leaves the factory, a contract for a second reactor will be signed," Yevgeni Sergeyev, general director of the Izhorskiye Zavody plant in St. Petersburg, told journalists.

The Izhorskiye Zavody plant is making basic equipment for the first reactor, which it plans to deliver in the third quarter of 2001.

---

Russians Question Wisdom of Their Coziness With Iran

New York Times
March 16, 2001
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/16/world/16RUSS.html

MOSCOW, March 15 - President Vladimir V. Putin is deep in the Siberian taiga - either skiing or hunting wolves, the Kremlin will not say for sure - but here in the capital there is no vacation from the political debate that Russia's blossoming relationship with Iran has touched off.

A state visit this week by the Iranian president, Mohammad Khatami, the first of its kind since the Iranian revolution, has not only set off alarms in the Bush administration over Moscow's determination to sell arms and nuclear technology to Tehran. It has also caused prominent Russians to question the prudence of developing warmer relations with a country believed to be supporting terrorism.

"The patron of international terrorism has been promised increased sales of arms and broader cooperation in the nuclear energy field," the newspaper Sevodnya said on Wednesday, summing up the visit, which it said had "lived up to Washington's worst expectations." Mr. Putin met with the Iranian leader on Monday and then left for his four-day vacation.

"The Khatami presidency is a liberal facade for the fundamentalist regime," Izvestia said after the visit, under a headline "Dangerous Deal." The real power in Iran, the newspaper warned on Wednesday, "is held not by the liberal Khatami but by the ayatollahs, who take quite a different view of the country's future and its relationship with the outside world." Mr. Putin should not be surprised, the paper warned further, if in 5 to 10 years' time, "a group of Islamic terrorists or separatists armed with military hardware which Moscow had just sent to Tehran" show up in Russia or on its borders.

The domestic debate over Mr. Putin's rush to capture the Iranian market for Russia's beleaguered arms and energy industries is not yet as intense as the American reaction to it - indeed, many Russians support closer ties with Iran. But a sense of danger is growing here, based in part on the fear that Iran's moderates will once again lose power, putting Russian weapons in the hands of hard-liners who might point them at Central Asia or use them to incite Russia's Muslim population. The conflict in Chechnya has intensified this concern.

The sense of danger is also based on the fear that Russia's relations with Washington will only degenerate further as the Bush administration presses Iran over its support for terrorism and its efforts to develop long-range ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction.

"Russia today has a major problem of image deterioration," said Andrei V. Kozyrev, foreign minister under President Boris N. Yeltsin. "We are losing in terms of these demonizing clichés, that every Russian businessman is a thief," or that "Russia is reverting to the old Soviet style of anti-Western behavior."

He added, "This reality requires that we in government, Parliament and business should understand that we have an image problem that should be addressed and that requires a cautious approach in foreign policy." He pointed out that while Russia has no other choice but to do business with Iran, it should do so in a manner that addresses Western concerns about the spread of dangerous weapons technologies.

"I would be extremely cautious in doing any weapons business with Iran since that would put Russia on particularly thin ice," Mr. Kozyrev said.

Nonetheless, Mr. Putin's policy on Iran does have its supporters.

"I think that Russia, the United States and the European Union have a very big stake in the future of Iran and we need many channels of communication," said Andrei A. Kokoshin, national security adviser under Mr. Yeltsin. He characterized Mr. Khatami's visit as "an opportunity for the involvement of Iran in world political affairs and world economic affairs that could provide an alternative to the policies of the conservatives in Iran."

Mr. Kokoshin said he hoped that the United States and Russia could collaborate in drawing Iran out of its isolation. He also rejected the notion that the sale of conventional Russian weapons was a significant factor in Moscow's relations with Tehran.

Even some of Moscow's most pro- Western liberals favor selling arms to Iran, up to a point.

In January, Grigory V. Yavlinsky, who heads the liberal Yabloko Party, wrote an open letter that he thought Mr. Putin should send to President Bush.

In it, Mr. Yavlinsky said Iran represented a "very important arms market for Russia," adding: "Such trade does not threaten our security. We do not intend to make concessions on this issue. This is a very important source of revenue, and the possibility of developing technology.

"I understand that some contracts may cause significant concern in the region. That's why I propose to discuss the commercial and political aspects of this issue."

It is not known whether Mr. Putin has taken Mr. Yavlinsky's advice and conveyed these sentiments to Mr. Bush, but the Russian leader chose this week to send his closest adviser on national security affairs, Sergei B. Ivanov, to Washington. In meetings at the White House and State Department, Mr. Ivanov was expected to try to convince Mr. Bush's aides that Russia is as concerned about the potential danger from Iran as anyone.

Mr. Ivanov likes to say that Russians live much closer to Iran than anyone in the West and therefore Moscow has no interest in assisting Iran's ballistic missile program or its secret efforts to develop nuclear weapons. He also likes to point out that the nuclear power plant that Russia is providing Iran at Bushehr on the Persian Gulf coast is almost identical to a nuclear plant that the United States and South Korea are building in North Korea. He does fail to mention, though, that Washington has hinged the deal on North Korea's agreement to abandon any attempt to develop nuclear weapons.

Iran has essentially made this commitment by signing the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. It has also given the International Atomic Energy Agency the right to supervise and inspect the Bushehr power plant. On a site abandoned by Germany in 1979, the plant is now home to 1,200 Russian engineers and technicians who are working to complete the first phase by 2004.

Washington suspects that Iran is conducting secret nuclear weapons research and remains concerned that Russian assistance at Bushehr will enhance Iran's knowledge and capacities in the nuclear weapons field.

After Mr. Ivanov left for Washington, his colleague, Igor S. Ivanov, the foreign minister, said on Wednesday that Russia would sell arms to Iran "within the limits that are required for ensuring the defensive capability of Iran and that will not hurt third countries or regional stability." And, in one of the most private meetings of the week, the Russian and Iranian defense ministers met on Wednesday to discuss "joint efforts against international terrorism and extremism and questions related to the strengthening of the nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction, their delivery vehicles and missile technologies," according to a report by the Interfax news agency.

Meanwhile, Mr. Khatami, obviously pleased to be in the Russian limelight, took advantage of the platform his visit had afforded him to praise Mr. Putin's government for resisting other governments' "attempts to interfere with cooperation between our two countries, particularly in the peaceful use of nuclear energy."

After his speech, Mr. Khatami left Moscow for St. Petersburg, where today he inspected the nuclear reactor that will be shipped to Iran later this year. Yevgeny Sergeyev, general director of the Izhorskiye machine works said the completion date for the first reactor unit at Bushehr had been set for 2002, but has now slipped to early 2004. He did not give a reason for the delay, but announced that Mr. Khatami confirmed during the visit today that "as soon as the equipment for the first reactor leaves the factory, a contract for a second reactor will be signed."

Mr. Khatami was due to make one more stop in Russia, at Kazan, capital of the autonomous Tatarstan Republic, whose population is largely Muslim.

---

Crew Members Say Civilians Played No Role in Accident

New York Times
March 16, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/16/national/16HAWA.html

HONOLULU, March 15 - Three civilians who were at some of the controls of the submarine Greeneville when it collided with a Japanese trawler played no role in the accident, crew members of the submarine testified today.

"I couldn't have been closer," Petty Officer First Class Corey Lee Harris told a Navy court of inquiry here. Petty Officer Harris was supervising one civilian at controls that initiated a rapid-surfacing maneuver by the Greeneville.

He said the guest, John Hall, a Texas oilman, had his hands on the controls "with my hands intertwined with his." The crewman said nothing unusual occurred in the operation of the levers.

The Greeneville crashed into the trawler Ehime Maru on Feb. 9 as it was demonstrating the surfacing drill for 16 civilian visitors. Nine people on the fishing boat, including four teenagers on an expedition to learn commercial fishing, are missing and presumed drowned.

Besides Mr. Hall, one other guest was seated at the helm of the submarine and another was positioned at an alarm switch when the accident happened. Petty Officer Harris said all three were closely monitored by crew members.

The helmsman, Petty Officer Second Class William Feddeler, told the court that he stood ready to "grab the stick right away" at the first sign of trouble and did that after the collision.

No civilians have been called to testify.

When word first got out that guests were at some controls at the time of the accident, the reaction was swift and furious. Japanese called it outrageous and unforgivable, and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld ordered a moratorium on letting civilians operate military equipment.

In the inquiry, in its ninth day, witnesses have said that the civilians at the controls were irrelevant to the accident. If anything, they said, other civilians who were observing the drill may have been more of a factor.

Testimony has indicated that a fire-control technician did not report data showing a surface vessel close by and stopped updating a chart of sonar contacts because the civilians were in his way.

Rear Adm. Charles H. Griffiths Jr., who conducted the preliminary investigation of the collision, said the observers might have had a "passive" role in the accident. Other crew members have noted, however, that it was not unusual to have a crowd in the control room and that crew members would usually ask people to move if they were in the way.

The three admirals overseeing the inquiry have focused on whether the Greeneville's captain, Cmdr. Scott D. Waddle, with his ship running behind schedule, rushed preparations for the surfacing drill and did not look long enough or high enough to detect the Ehime Maru in a periscope search.

The admirals will help decide the fate of Commander Waddle; Lt. Cmdr. Gerald K. Pfeifer, the executive officer; and Lt. j.g. Michael J. Coen, the officer of the deck. The officers could face a number of punishments, like reprimand, discharge or court-martial.

The admirals will forward their recommendations to Adm. Thomas B. Fargo, commander of the United States Pacific Fleet, for final action.

Commander Waddle's lawyer, Charles W. Gittins, submitted to the court today an outline of what the captain would address in testimony. Mr. Gittins said he would decide whether his client would take the stand only after the court ruled on a request for "testimonial immunity," which would prevent prosecutors from seeking charges based upon what the commander said.

In general terms, the summary said Commander Waddle would address testimony that he rushed plans for surfacing and explain how he conducted his periscope search. He would also clarify what sonar information he had before surfacing.

-------

Greeneville commander denies he hurried safety procedures

Washington Times
March 16, 2001
By Rowan Scarborough THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-2001316222811.htm

The commander of the USS Greeneville when it collided with a fishing boat has labeled as "unfounded" testimony that he rushed safety procedures before the submarine executed an emergency surfacing drill.

In Cmdr. Scott Waddle's first reaction to testimony at a court of inquiry, the officer also said he can justify his periscope search that failed to detect the oncoming Ehime Maru fishing boat. And he can explain the placement of civilian guests inside the nuclear attack submarine's cramped working space.

Cmdr. Waddle's version of events is contained in a letter from his attorney, Charles Gittins, to Adm. Thomas Fargo, Pacific Fleet commander. Mr. Gittins urged Adm. Fargo to grant his client limited immunity so the officer can testify at the ongoing court of inquiry at Pearl Harbor.

The attorney argued that only Cmdr. Waddle can provide the court a full picture of what went on inside the control room on Feb. 9 when the Greeneville surfaced and rammed the Ehime Maru. Nine of 36 Japanese passengers and crew on the fishing boat were killed.

"Without his testimony there will be a number of facts that the Court of Inquiry can reach only by surmise or speculation, double, triple and in some cases, quadruple hearsay, and by drawing conclusions based on this non-firsthand and largely unreliable information," Mr. Gittins wrote in a letter obtained by The Washington Times.

Adm. Fargo appointed three admirals to conduct the court of inquiry. As the "convening authority" in the investigation, he is weighing a request from Cmdr. Waddle to grant him limited immunity. Under such a deal, the officer's testimony could not be used against him at court-martial, if Adm. Fargo decides to convene one.

Rear Adm. Charles Griffiths Jr., who conducted the Navy's first investigation into the accident, testified that Cmdr. Waddle was behind schedule in showing 16 VIP civilians how the Greeneville operated. This prompted him to rush his periscope scan, the admiral said.

But Cmdr. Waddle would testify he did not rush.

"The court now has heard entirely speculative testimony that some real or artificial time constraint may have informed Cmdr. Waddle actions," Mr. Gittins wrote. "Cmdr. Waddle is prepared to address this issue and provide his firsthand testimony concerning this unfounded speculation by prior witnesses. Only Cmdr. Waddle is in a position to provide probative evidence on this issue."

Adm. Griffiths also testified that Cmdr. Waddle's periscope search was too brief and not high enough to spot the fishing boat. The boat was likely only 2,000 yards away at the time, but perhaps camouflaged by 6- to 8-foot seas.

"Cmdr. Waddle desires to address the court directly on the quality of the periscope search he conducted," Mr. Gittins said. "The manner in which it was performed; the depth at which it was performed and why, and whether he directed his search on the bearings of the reported [sonar] contacts and at what optical powers his search was conducted."

Besides the periscope search, another key question is why the Ehime Maru's sonar bearing was not passed on to Cmdr. Waddle by a fire-control technician. The technician told investigators he was inhibited by the relatively large group of VIPs and crew huddled on the periscope platform where Cmdr. Waddle worked.

Mr. Gittins tells Adm. Fargo his client has more to add.

"His testimony would cogently, accurately and succinctly convey his understanding of the contact picture and his actions in sonar and at the fire control station," the lawyer said.

Mr. Gittins also cited the fact that the families of those killed in the collision want Cmdr. Waddle to tell his story.

The letter concludes by saying that evidence to date does not justify a court-martial.

"Such a drastic remedy is one that potentially could strip my client of his retirement benefits, require my client to serve a term of confinement and substantially destroy the future of my client's family," Mr. Gittins wrote. "While such remedies remain to address the conduct of my client. . . . I cannot permit him to testify in this court of inquiry absent such a grant because of the potential substantial prejudice to his future."

-------- australia

Waste ban 'puts reactor in doubt'

Australian News Network
16mar01
From AAP
http://news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,1807416%255E1702,00.html

GREENPEACE today said the future of Australia's new nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights was in doubt after a court banned a ship from unloading its nuclear waste in France.

After a complaint by Greenpeace, the French court banned COGEMA, a French firm specialising in re-processing nuclear material, from unloading the waste at Cherbourg and taking it to its nearby plant at La Hague.

The court heard that the ship, Le Bougenais, was carrying 360 used nuclear fuel rods carried in five 20-tonne protective casks.

The shipment is the second of four deliveries COGEMA has contracted to take from the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO). Some 308 rods were delivered between November 1999 and January 2000.

The decision means the spent fuel, from Australia's existing reactor at the same Lucas Heights site in southern Sydney, won't be processed in France.

Australia has no facility to accommodate the Lucas Heights waste and must send it overseas until a local strategy for it is in place.

"These revelations demolish the Government's claim that a spent fuel management strategy exists for nuclear waste created in Australia," Greenpeace campaigner Stephen Campbell said.

"This places the Government contract to build a new reactor into complete disarray."

The federal nuclear regulator, the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Authority (ARPANSA), has yet to issue a licence for the new reactor to proceed.

It has said a strategy to accommodate the facility's spent fuel waste strategy must be in place before it can proceed.

"ARPANSA has said that the spent fuel management strategy needs to be written in blood before they issue a contract licence," Mr Campbell said.

Argentinian company INVAP was last year awarded the contract to build the reactor and is waiting for final approvals before beginning construction next year.

"Argentina has no facility (to reprocess the waste) and in France they are unlicensed," Mr Campbell said. "It can't really proceed."

Under the COGEMA contract with Australia, the waste was to be reprocessed in La Hague before being sent back to Australia for safe disposal.

But Greenpeace told the court that the fissile matter in the shipments, a form of 23 per cent enriched uranium, has never been dealt with at La Hague and that COGEMA did not have the technology to process it.

------

Nuclear regulator reacts to waste ban

Australian News Network
16mar01
From AAP
http://news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,1807502%255E1702,00.html

12:05 (AEDT) A LICENCE to build a new nuclear reactor in Sydney would not be granted until the operators could assure the safe disposal of spent fuel, the nuclear regulator said today.

A French court has banned COGEMA, a French firm specialising in reprocessing nuclear material, from unloading Australian waste at Cherbourg and taking it to a nearby plant.

The decision followed a complaint from Greenpeace that adequate licensing provisions were not in place.

The Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Authority (ARPANSA) said plans to finalise the construction of the Lucas Heights reactor were still expected for consideration in May.

But ANSTO (the Australian Nuclear Safety Organisation) must finalise its fuel management strategy before the reactor could proceed, ARPANSA said.

Greenpeace earlier claimed the future of the planned reactor in southern Sydney was in doubt after the French court decision.

Australia has no facility to accommodate the Lucas Heights waste and must send it overseas until a local strategy for it is in place.

When asked if the French court decision could place the future of the Lucas Heights reactor in doubt, an ARPANSA spokesman said: "They might encounter this hurdle today. These companies are multinational. There's clearly more than one port in Europe in which the stuff might land if it was forced to".

But ANSTO needed to provide ARPANSA with a fuel management plan before the reactor could proceed, the spokesman said.

"They do need to provide a plan - what fuel they intend to use and beyond that how they intend to deal with it once it is spent it needs reprocessing," he said.

"Those details are required and will be sought by this organisation.

"A licence to proceed will not be granted until those things are satisfied.

"The next major hurdle for ANSTO as far as a replacement reactor is concerned is getting a construction licence.

"We're expecting in May sometime from them an application to proceed with construction."

-------- depleted uranium

WHO to Study Effect of Shells on Health
A New Inquiry in Iraq on Depleted Uranium

International Herald Tribune
Friday, March 16, 2001
Howard Schneider Washington Post Service
http://www.iht.com/articles/13621.htm
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis/web/vortex/display?slug=uranium16&date=20010316
http://www.sltrib.com/03162001/nation_w/80115.htm

BASRA, Iraq The Iraqi government has for years insisted that the use of depleted uranium shells by U.S. forces in the Gulf War inflicted serious environmental damage here in the southern part of the country.

Parts of the desert around Basra remain littered with spent ammunition and the hulls of tanks and other vehicles destroyed by the ultra-hard rounds. Iraqi doctors say the health effects have become increasingly obvious, including abnormal incidence of genetic problems and cancer among children.

In a climate of hostility toward the Iraqi government and in particular President Saddam Hussein, these reports have largely been disregarded in the West. But now, with concern rising in Europe about exposure to depleted uranium munitions used in the bombing of Yugoslav targets during the Kosovo war, the Iraqi claims will get a new review.

A team of World Health Organization officials will arrive here this month to analyze whether there is a link between the use of depleted uranium shells in the Gulf War and cancer or birth-defect rates in this part of Iraq. The study fits with other efforts to see whether the ammunition has damaged the health of those who used it or those against whom it was directed in the 1991 Gulf War as well as the Balkans conflict eight years later.

Initial analyses by the World Health Organization in Kosovo, as well as U.S. Defense Department and other military studies, have concluded there is no connection between the ammunition and cancer or other health problems. A UN Environmental Program study released Tuesday showed "no cause for alarm" over radiation from the controversial munitions, but urged monitoring for unknown long-term effects.

But mounting concern, particularly among NATO countries whose troops were deployed in Yugoslavia, has intensified the demand for further testing. This has made Iraqis feel that the issue is finally getting the attention it deserves. But they are also angry that the United Nations and others did not seem to care when they were the only ones concerned about it.

"We have been talking about this a lot, and nobody really listened," said Abdel Karim Hassan Sabr, deputy director of the Hospital for Maternity and Children in Basra.

Depleted uranium shells were developed for use against tanks and other vehicles because of their armor-piercing strength. The shells are coated with the residual after uranium ore is processed for use in nuclear reactors or weapons. It is less radioactive than naturally occurring uranium, but in some instances may also contain traces of plutonium or other highly radioactive substances.

Independent of its radioactive properties, depleted uranium also has the potentially toxic properties of other heavy metals.

Senior Iraqi officials have tried to maximize the potential propaganda value of the issue. But Dr. Sabr and other physicians say that the evidence they see requires further analysis - a thorough epidemiological treatment, rather than the back-of-the-envelope calculations done to date in southern Iraq.

Dr. Sabr said, for example, that from 1993 to 2000, the rate of congenital defects among live births at the Basra hospital rose from 1.8 percent to more than 4 percent. "Couples here are afraid of getting pregnant," he said. "They are afraid of the birth defects."

So far, however, he said, the hospital has not studied the intervening years or prior years to establish a more detailed record. Nor has it had the time or money to try to determine whether postwar population shifts, intermarriage patterns or other environmental factors might have contributed to the increase.

The area around Basra is heavily industrialized, the flat desert horizon frequently broken with the smokestacks of oil refineries and chemical plants, more often than not emitting a thick black or gray plume of pollution. Near the Shatt-al-Arab waterway, in low-lying, marshy areas, oily slicks of water are visible from the roadway. For 20 years the region has been a focal point of conflict, beginning with the war against Iran during the 1980s and continuing through the Gulf War and a decade of sanctions. The remnants of those battles are prominent, in the form of plentiful war memorials as well as destroyed vehicles, bridges and buildings.

The region remains heavily militarized, with machine guns propped atop Toyota pickups and frequent roadside sentries deployed throughout an area whose Shiite Muslim population broke into open revolt against the largely Sunni Muslim government in Baghdad after the Gulf War ended.

The uprising was suppressed with force, a fact that contributed to the U.S. and British decision to impose a "no-flight" zone over this part of the country, as well as over the northern provinces that are home to Iraq's rebellious Kurdish minority.

The southern region is also poor, a fact Iraqis blame on international sanctions and the U.S. and British air patrols that dash any hope of private investment. Western officials consider its economic conditions a sign of Baghdad's neglect.

But Iraqi health and political officials insist that the depleted uranium shells lie at the root of what they contend is an epidemic.

"We have found the relationship between these things and cancer, and we have announced it," said General Abdel Wahab Jabouri, who serves on an Iraqi committee on depleted uranium that has tried to trace health problems among Iraqi troops to service in areas where the ammunition was most intensively used.

"The uranium causes these diseases," he said. "The subject doesn't need further evidence. Even Americans are complaining."

-------- germany

German Green party leaders suppress protests against transport of nuclear waste

World Socialist Web Site
16 February 2001
By Dietmar Henning
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/feb2001/germ-f16.shtml

Oh, to be a cabaret artist! The German Green Party is supplying material for a new theatre piece from the ecological madhouse. Satire at its best!

The leadership of the party that not so long ago emerged from the peace and anti-nuclear movement is seeking to push through the transport of nuclear waste in Castor containers, and in the process coming into conflict with sections of its own membership that want to protest the project. This latest dispute within the Green party overshadows all the previous political somersaults and twists taken by the party since it entered the federal coalition government.

Since they joined the Social Democratic Party (SPD) government two years ago, the Greens have done an about-face on every issue concerning which they previously organised protests: international peace, inner-party democracy, a variety of social issues. That the issue of nuclear power is no different became clear last summer, when the government reached an agreement with the nuclear industry-the so-called "nuclear consensus."

Green Environmental Minister Jürgen Trittin gave in to all of the demands of the nuclear industry and signed an agreement that guarantees the existence of the majority of nuclear power plants for the next 30 years. This, however, did not prevent Trittin from claiming that the "nuclear consensus" meant the "beginning of the abandonment" of nuclear energy.

Trittin, who in the past never missed a demonstration against nuclear power or against the transport of Castor containers, and was often carried away by police after attempting to block such transport, is now seeking to push through the transport of nuclear waste. Today he speaks for the government and acts to block anti-nuclear protests.

In so doing he has advanced utterly contradictory arguments. Last week he warned his opponents within the party: "If we want to remain credible, we must stand by the consequences of our politics." It is no doubt courageous for a Green minister to speak of "credibility," but Trittin leaves no doubt that his credibility is surpassed by the suppleness of his spine.

Since the "nuclear consensus" guarantees the existence of nuclear power plants over the coming years, Trittin declares that the Greens in government should aim to insure uninhibited business for the nuclear industry. According to his new credo, this includes the transport of nuclear waste in Castor containers.

The SPD-Green coalition government has already planned several transports of highly radioactive material. The first is to begin on February 28, starting from the nuclear plant Neckarwestheim and proceeding to a temporary storage point in Ahaus. The next begins March 27 from the reprocessing plant in La Hague, France and proceeds to what could become a permanent disposal site in Gorleben. There are plans to make room at this site for the storage of used fuel rods from German nuclear power plants, similar to the storage of nuclear waste at the Sellafield plant in Great Britain.

The German nuclear industry could not maintain production without such transports, which is why the export of used fuel rods had been an important form of support for the nuclear industry under the previous government-the conservative regime headed by Helmut Kohl. Blockades mounted by anti-nuclear activists were directed not only against the transport of nuclear waste and the dangers involved in the movement of radioactive Castor containers through highly populated areas, but against the overall functioning of nuclear power plants, since they would not be able to operate if the transports were halted.

But under conditions where these forms of protest failed to stop a single Castor transport-the Kohl government used massive police deployments and water cannons to break up the demonstrations-the Green party claimed it would be possible to stop such nuclear "madness" and the dangers to the general population only from a position of strength-inside the government itself.

Now the Greens have been in government for two years, and what has changed? The old "madness" is being justified with new arguments. As the saying goes: "The more things change, the more they stay the same." As if eager to confirm this saying at any cost, Trittin behaves like the patron saint of the nuclear industry. In a tone of utter conviction he claims that the "Green" Castor containers are completely safe, and that unrestricted collaboration with the nuclear lobby means the "beginning of the abandonment" of nuclear energy.

The arrogance and lack of scruples with which the Green party leadership proceeds underscores the change that has taken place within the former environmentalist party. In a January 22 resolution the Green party claims that, in contrast to the transports carried out under the Kohl government, today "the contamination limits shall be maintained with sufficient security during the entire transport." Residents living along the transport routes are not alone in harbouring doubts about this claim.

No one in the leadership of the Greens refers any longer to the security of the population. For them it is much more important to develop arguments to break down popular resistance to the measures they are planning. The stock phrase, "We want to achieve the abandonment of nuclear energy through the nuclear consensus," is repeated in all sorts of variations and permutations. It is usually followed by the admonition: "The attempt to organise stoppages that are not founded on security considerations is in contradiction to the nuclear consensus.... This goes for blockages of necessary transports, such as those called for by parts of the anti-nuclear movement." This is why the party leadership is calling on its "communal and regional associations to support only such demonstrations as are aimed at abandoning nuclear energy, while maintaining maximum security"-in other words, to support only pro-government demonstrations.

Following opposition within the anti-nuclear movement to this resolution (especially from the affected region of Lower Saxony), Trittin became more outspoken. In his letter of February 6 he bluntly demanded that the party organisations in Lower Saxony abstain from any kind of protests against the nuclear industry. Naturally, he insisted, he still defended blockages as "a form of civil disobedience." But if they were directed against nuclear energy, he would not stand for any nonsense.

"Just because somebody sits on his backside on a street doesn't mean we agree with it," he declared. Regarding the Castor transports, he said, "The party leadership thinks that the protests against the transport of nuclear waste are ... politically wrong. Not because we reject blockages, demonstrations or singing, but because we reject the aims that are to be achieved by this sitting, walking and singing."

"The requirements for carrying through the transports are in place," Trittin writes. "Consequently there is no reason for Greens to demonstrate against them." And that's that!

Meanwhile, party Chairman Fritz Kuhn is visiting the party's communal and regional organisations, attempting to bring the rank and file into line with the policies of the government. He also uses the "nuclear consensus" and the phrase "the beginning of the abandonment" of nuclear energy to pressure and silence the rank and file. As if it were some kind of incantation, his arguments are all founded on the "nuclear consensus," which is so obsequious and unconditional toward the nuclear industry that industry leaders have thus far not even bothered to sign it.

When the Green party was founded some 20 years ago, a large section of its rank and file came from anti-nuclear groups. Today this party utilises its position in government to suppress any opposition to nuclear power. Its turn to the right seems to know no bounds. The logic of their own arguments will lead the Green leaders to call for the police truncheon and harsher punishment against anti-nuclear activists.

A further thought regarding the credibility of the Greens: the former spokeswoman of the Green party, Gunda Röstel, is now earning millions as manager for project development and business planning for Gelsenwasser AG , a subsidiary of the E.ON group, which under the slogan "New Energy" (water, sun, wind) sells cheap nuclear-generated electricity.

---

German cabinet lowers ceiling for worker radiation dose

Platts
16March2001
Bonn (Nuclear News Flashes)--

The German cabinet approved a new version of the federal radiation protection ordinance, which lowers the ceiling for annual professional doses from 50 milliSieverts to 20 mSv, in conformance with European Union rules. Sources said that the immediate effect will be to delay--or even terminate--the licensing for the Konrad and Gorleben repository projects for low-level waste and high-level waste, respectively. That might happen, they said, because all the licensing documents for both projects were prepared on the basis of the 50 mSv/y ceiling. Officials at the Federal Radiation Protection Agency (BFS) said they hoped to "adjust" the documents for the Konrad project in time to put licensing back on track as of this summer.

------- iran

Russia will build reactor for Iran

Washington Times
March 16, 2001
By David R. Sands THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-200131621417.htm

Russian nuclear power officials said yesterday they will build a second nuclear reactor for Iran amid mounting concerns on Capitol Hill over Moscow's growing military and technology sales to Tehran.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers, meanwhile, will ask President Bush in a letter today to slash aid to Russia if arms deals - announced this week during a Moscow summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Mohammed Khatami -proceed.

The Bush administration, which considers Iran a rogue state and a sponsor of terrorism, warned Mr. Putin this week that sales of arms and nuclear technology to Iran would have "serious ramifications" for U.S.-Russian ties.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher declined to comment on the latest reactor deal, but added: "Our overall policy in this area is quite well known."

Russia in November abrogated a secret understanding with the Clinton administration that it would refrain from new arms deals with Iran. The Putin-Khatami meeting provided the first official fruits of the warming military relationship between the two countries.

Operators of a St. Petersburg nuclear plant are already at work on one nuclear reactor contract, worth about $800 million, that Tehran says will supply power from the Persian Gulf port of Bushehr.

The U.S. government has protested that Russian technology could be used to develop nuclear weapons.

Mr. Khatami toured the site of the St. Petersburg plant yesterday as part of the first visit by an Iranian leader to Russia in four decades.

Afterward, factory General-Director Yevgeny Sergeyev told reporters that Mr. Khatami confirmed plans to order a second reactor after the first is delivered, possibly by late next year.

Delays in delivering the first plant - first ordered in the mid-1990s - have been a source of friction between Iran and Russia.

But Mr. Sergeyev said yesterday the Iranian leader signaled his clear intention to proceed with a second contract that could be worth up to $1 billion for Russia's cash-strapped export sector.

Rep. Joseph M. Hoeffel, Pennsylvania Democrat and the principal author of the letter to be sent to Mr. Bush today, noted that a 1996 anti-terrorism law prohibits U.S. aid to countries that "provide lethal military equipment to terrorist states."

"We want a good relationship with the Russians," Mr. Hoeffel said in a telephone interview yesterday.

"But they can't expect a good relationship with us if they don't see the necessity of not selling arms to a rogue nation that sponsors terrorists," he added.

Iran has been on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism since 1984.

The United States provided more than $1 billion in assistance to Russia in fiscal year 2000, including $196 million under the Freedom Support Act; $222 million through Department of Energy programs; and $240 million in food assistance through the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Another $360 million in funds under a program to reduce and control the old Soviet Union's nuclear-missile storage sites would not be affected any aid cutoff, said Mr. Hoeffel.

"The strategic implications of Russia's arms transfers to Iran cannot be underestimated," the congressional letter warned.

"Russia's recent actions should stimulate intense scrutiny by the United States, and while we recognize the waiver authority granted in this law, we urge you to act swiftly and appropriately," the lawmakers wrote to Mr. Bush.

Signers included former House International Relations Committee Chairman Benjamin A. Gilman, New York Republican; Rep. Gary L. Ackerman, New York Democrat and ranking minority member of the International Relations subcommittee on the Middle East; Rep. Steny H. Hoyer, Maryland Democrat; and Rep. Curt Weldon, Pennsylvania Republican and a leading voice among congressional Republicans on Russian issues.

Mr. Boucher said the administration had not yet received the letter and declined to comment on its contents.

Russian officials have rejected U.S. complaints about the Iranian deals, saying they were a bilateral matter between two sovereign states.

Sergei Ivanov, Mr. Putin's top security adviser, told senior Bush administration officials during a visit to Washington this week that Russia planned to sell only defensive arms and the sales would not destabilize the region.

Returning to Moscow yesterday, Mr. Ivanov told reporters he had had productive meetings with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell.

"We had a good understanding on maintaining everything we achieved which was good under the previous administration and on creating new mechanisms," said Mr. Ivanov.

He said Moscow and Washington are still discussing new institutions for handling the bilateral relationship, to replace the joint commissions of the Clinton years chaired by Vice President Al Gore and a succession of Russian prime ministers.

• This article is based in part on wire service reports.

-------- korea

N. Korea Critical of Bush Stance

Associated Press

SEOUL -- North Korea strongly denounced the Bush administration, saying it has adopted a hostile policy aimed at "stifling" the communist country.

It was the North's first direct criticism after President Bush met last week with South Korea's president and set a hard-line stance toward the North, ruling out an immediate resumption of Clinton-era negotiations.

Pyongyang's angry reply came a day after it abruptly called off cabinet-level talks with South Korea, striking a blow to reconciliation efforts. Some in the South said the Bush administration's stance may have sparked the move.

The Rodong Shinmun, the newspaper for the North's ruling Korean Workers' Party, said Washington was "escalating its provocative and reckless" rhetoric against the North.

It also objected to U.S. concerns about human rights and allegations that the North sponsors terrorism.

At the White House last week, Bush met with South Korean President Kim Dae Jung. Afterward, Bush expressed skepticism about North Korea's intentions and said any deal in which the North agrees to limit its missiles must include verifiable terms that would prevent cheating.

--------

North Korean Nuclear Risk

International Herald Tribune
Friday, March 16, 2001
http://www.iht.com/cgi-bin/generic.cgi?template=articleprint.tmplh&ArticleId=13528

Regarding the report "U.S. Doubts Rise on North Korean Deal to Build Nuclear Reactors" (Feb. 26):

I would like to add my doubts to those of the writer. The North Korean nuclear energy program, KEDO, is running late. The site for the nuclear plants due to come on stream in 2003 is desperately bare.

In 1994 the world came closer to a nuclear war than at anytime since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. At the last minute, former President Jimmy Carter intervened directly with the North Korean leader, Kim Il Sung, to pull the world back from the brink. The agreement signed in 1994 was a perfect technological fix to a political crisis.

However the fix has become unstuck. First the Americans, having brokered the deal, expected someone else to pick up the hefty $4.5 billion tab. Worse followed. Washington was at least supposed to stump up for the heavy fuel oil, but the Republicans who controlled Congress would not play or pay. It did little for North Korean belief in U.S. good faith to find, in the coldest months of the year, that the expected deliveries failed to materialize.

Neither a Bush presidency nor a Republican Congress is likely to dig into its pockets for North Korea. They would rather use them as a scapegoat for funding National Missile Defense and repay all those who contributed so generously to the $3 billion spent on America's recent electoral farce.

Even if the KEDO budget were doubled, $9.0 billion would be a small price to pay to avoid a possible global economic, environmental and humanitarian tragedy.

GLYN FORD. Brussels. The writer, a British member of the European Parliament, recently visited the KEDO site.

-------- missile defense

U.S. Ties Taiwan Arms to China Missile Drive

International Herald Tribune
Friday, March 16, 2001
Compiled by Our Staff From Dispatches AP, Reuters
http://www.iht.com/cgi-bin/generic.cgi?template=articleprint.tmplh&ArticleId=13625

Admiral Warns Beijing About Its Buildup

BEIJING China has about 300 missiles that can strike Taiwan and appears to be adding about 50 each year in a buildup that could prompt Washington to improve Taiwan's defenses with high-tech weapons, the commander of U.S. Pacific forces said here Thursday.

Weeks before Washington is to decide on what weapons to sell Taiwan this year, the commander, Admiral Dennis Blair, said Chinese missile deployments could largely determine whether Washington would sell Taiwan the anti-missile systems that are opposed by Beijing.

"There will be a point at which that missile buildup will threaten the sufficient defense of Taiwan and which it is the United States' policy to maintain," Admiral Blair said at a briefing two days into a six-day visit to China. "It's important that the Chinese make the connection between what they deploy on their side of the strait and the types of technologies that the United States might make available to Taiwan to provide for its sufficient defense."

As Admiral Blair arrived in Beijing, China signaled a softening in its opposition to U.S. plans for national and regional missile defenses, saying that it looked forward to discussing the issues during a visit to Washington next week by Deputy Prime Minister Qian Qichen.

China's chief arms negotiator, Sha Zukang, repeated Beijing's opposition to a national anti-missile shield on Wednesday, saying that its deployment would be a "unilateral nuclear expansion." But Mr. Sha added that China wanted to narrow its differences with the administration of President George W. Bush over its plans for a system to shield the United States from a limited missile attack.

Admiral Blair said he welcomed Mr. Sha's more moderate tone and his apparent distinction between a regional and national missile defense system. "When I discussed these systems with Chinese officials," the admiral said, "I did not get much of a sense that they were drawing distinctions. Anything that had 'MD' in it was bad, and anything that did not was good. So I welcome the distinction they seem to be making."

Admiral Blair said any decision by the U.S. military to sell such a system to Taiwan would largely depend on China's missile deployments in areas near Taiwan. Admiral Blair said he discussed the issue on Wednesday with China's military chief of staff, General Fu Quanyou. Asked whether General Fu had accepted his arguments, Admiral Blair replied, "No, I just got a few Chinese proverbs."

U.S. law obliges Washington to ensure that the island has sufficient weapons to defend itself. Beijing fears that a Taiwan equipped with high-tech weapons could resist pressure for reunification and fight off any attempt to seize it by force.

Admiral Blair, making his third visit in two years as commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, is the most senior American officer to visit since Mr. Bush became president in January. Meeting with Admiral Blair on Wednesday, General Fu urged the Bush administration "to stop arms sales to Taiwan immediately so as to avoid damaging Sino-U.S. relations," according to a report by Xinhua, the official press agency.

Washington is expected to decide by next month whether to approve Taiwan's weapons requests for this year. Among those requests are four destroyers equipped with a system that defends ships against aircraft and missile attacks.

China fears that the so-called Aegis system could form part of a more comprehensive shield to defend Taiwan against missiles and has warned Washington not to sell it.(AP, WP)

System Is Called Highly Potent

Aegis, named after the Greek gods' mythic shield, is designed to counter all current and projected threats to a naval battle group and potential inland targets, Reuters reported from Washington.

With upgrades being integrated, Aegis ships could be part of an anti-ballistic missile defense to protect ports, airfields and population centers. At the heart of the Aegis system is the navy's most advanced radar, the computer-controlled AN/SPY-1D, which uses electromagnetic energy to track the range, altitude and direction of air and surface targets.

Paired with a state-of-the-art vertical launching system, it is said by its builder to give Arleigh Burke-class destroyers the power to hurl more missiles and guide them in flight with greater accuracy than any other system afloat.

Designed and integrated by Lockheed Martin, the system is advertised as able to track hundreds of targets at a time from the water's surface to the stratosphere.

A key Chinese concern appears to be the upgrades that would give Aegis ships the first ballistic missile defense capability. Beijing fears that together with possible sales of upgraded Patriot missile batteries, Aegis would encourage Taiwanese who want to declare independence from China, Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan said in Beijing last week.

---

Bush Plans State Visit to China in Fall

New York Times
March 16, 2001
By MARC LACEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/16/world/16PREX.html

WASHINGTON, March 15 - Administration officials said today that President Bush intended to make a state visit to China in October, but the White House held off on an official announcement of the visit even though Prime Minister Zhu Rongji prematurely mentioned it in Beijing.

Mr. Bush had already announced plans to visit Shanghai in October to attend the annual Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, and administration officials said today that he would probably stay on to meet with Chinese officials in Beijing. After Mr. Zhu's announcement, though, White House officials would say publicly today only that Mr. Bush appreciated the invitation to extend his stay but that aides were still working on the logistics.

Such visits are typically announced jointly, and White House officials had intended to lay the groundwork for Mr. Bush's visit and announce it next week when Deputy Prime Minister Qian Qichen will become the first official from Beijing to meet with Mr. Bush in Washington.

"The fact is that the president plans to go to Shanghai and meet up with Chinese officials after that," an administration official said. "The Chinese are just a little ahead of themselves in announcing this."

The president has so far made only one brief foreign trip as president, to Mexico. He is widely expected to add stops in Japan and South Korea to his trip to Asia.

In Beijing, Mr. Zhu made announced a Bush visit at an annual televised news briefing before several hundred reporters gathered in the Great Hall of the People.

He said that the Chinese government did not yet know many members of the Bush administration and that what Beijing has heard from the White House had sometimes been contradictory. "It will take some time for the two sides to get to know each other," the Chinese leader said.

Mr. Zhu's remarks seemed to irritate the White House. "It's always proper to notify people who are invited to a meeting before you notify the press," said Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary. "I know that sounds novel."

At his daily news briefing, Mr. Fleischer said the White House would follow protocol, despite the announcement in Beijing.

"The president is very pleased to have received the invitation to visit China, and we are considering how we can respond at this time," Mr. Fleischer said. "And as soon as we have a formal response, of course it will be conveyed to the Chinese government, and then we will let you know shortly thereafter."

The administration's goal of deploying a missile defense system is expected to top the agenda when Mr. Qian arrives in Washington next Thursday. Chinese officials have opposed the Bush administration's plan for a missile shield, but White House officials say they are encouraged that Beijing seeks to discuss the matter.

"This will be the beginning of an opportunity to talk with them about missile defense," a senior administration official said. "Missile defense really should not be seen as a threat by anyone that doesn't intend to blackmail us."

The Chinese are also concerned about Taiwan's requests to buy advanced American weapons.

"The Chinese do have a role to play in this," the senior Bush aide said, and added, using the initials for the People's Republic of China, "If they are not appearing to threaten Taiwan, then Taiwan's needs are different than if the P.R.C. is presenting a threat to Taiwan."

Mr. Bush's visit would follow a similar trip by his predecessor. President Clinton attended a summit meeting with China in 1998.

-------- russia

White House To Cut Aid to Russia

InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 3/16/2001
By H. JOSEF HEBERT Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406405468

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration plans deep cuts in programs aimed at helping Russia safeguard its nuclear materials even though a recent high-level commission called the program essential to national security.

A proposed budget for fiscal 2002, now being put together by the administration, would cut spending for Russian nuclear nonproliferation activities from $872 million to $800 million, government and private sources said Thursday.

The cuts were ordered by the White House despite several attempts by Energy Secretary Spence Abraham to obtain more money for a program widely supported by nonproliferation advocates, said these sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The Energy Department originally had hoped for a substantial increase in financial support for the program. A Clinton administration draft proposed more than $1.2 billion for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1, the sources said.

In January, a bipartisan, private commission called the risk of theft of Russian nuclear materials ``the most urgent unmet national security threat'' facing the United States and urged sharp increases in spending.

The Energy Department initiatives targeted by budget cutters include programs aimed at reinforcing security at Russian nuclear weapons facilities, providing help to economically strapped Russian nuclear scientists and helping Russia convert weapons-grade plutonium to less-threatening materials.

While changes may still be made in the funding levels before President Bush sends Congress his detailed budget proposals for fiscal year 2002, several attempts by the department to get additional money already have been rebuffed by the Office of Management and Budget, the sources said.

``This budget signals a retreat from a decade's worth of work with Russia to secure nuclear weapons expertise and materials,'' said William Hoehn of the Russian American Nuclear Security Advisory Council, a nonproliferation advocacy group.

According to the latest DOE budget document, programs to increase security at Russian nuclear facilities would be cut by $31 million to about $170 million. The Energy Department sought an increase to $225 million.

The government's Russia ``nuclear cities'' program, aimed at finding jobs and getting economic aid to Russian nuclear scientists, would be cut by $20 million to about $7 million, the sources said.

Bush will ask for more money to dispose of Russia's excess plutonium stocks, but the amount falls far short of the proposed doubling of the $226 million program that the Clinton administration proposed, the sources said.

Reports of the budget cuts brought a sharp response Thursday from Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif., a member of the House Armed Services Committee.

``Dramatic cuts to these programs ... may cripple our efforts to secure nuclear material in Russia and ensure that Russia's nuclear physicists are gainfully employed in nondefense-related industries,'' Tauscher wrote Mitchell Daniels, director of the Office of Management and Budget.

In January, a top-level, bipartisan commission issued a report recommending top priority and sharply increased on the Russian nonproliferation assistance programs. The panel said the risks of Russian nuclear materials being obtained by terrorists or unfriendly smaller states is significant and real.

The report urged spending of $30 billion over 10 years to help Russia keep its nuclear materials and atomic scientists out of the hands of rogue states or terrorists. Such spending would be a prudent investment in world security, the commission concluded in a report sent to the Energy Department and White House.

The panel was co-chaired by former GOP Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker of Tennessee and Lloyd Cutler, a White House counsel for former President Clinton. The commission also included former Democratic Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia and former Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., both widely respected experts on nonproliferation and national security.

-------

Budget cut for Russia nuke program

InfoBeat News
Afternoon Edition - 3/16/2001
By H. JOSEF HEBERT Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406411790

WASHINGTON (AP) - A program to help Russia safeguard its nuclear materials is facing deep budget cuts by the Bush administration, although a bipartisan commission recently called these efforts essential to protecting U.S. national security.

President Bush's proposed fiscal 2002 budget, now being put together, would cut spending for Russia nuclear nonproliferation activities by more than $72 million, government and private sources who have seen the numbers said Thursday.

The Energy Department had planned to increase the program, which the Clinton administration had earmarked for a 50 percent increase to $1.2 billion for the fiscal year that will begin Oct. 1.

The final funding levels will be set in Congress, where some lawmakers already were expressing concern.

``Dramatic cuts to these programs ... may cripple our efforts to secure nuclear material in Russia and ensure that Russia's nuclear physicists are gainfully employed in non-defense related industries,'' Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif., wrote to Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser.

Tauscher is a member of the House Armed Services Committee.

The cuts were ordered by the White House, despite several attempts by Energy Secretary Spence Abraham to obtain more money, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

In January, a bipartisan commission issued a report calling the risk of theft of Russian nuclear materials ``the most urgent unmet national security threat'' facing the United States and urged sharp increases in spending for the Russia nonproliferation programs.

The Energy Department initiatives targeted by budget cutters include programs aimed at enhancing security at Russia's nuclear weapons facilities, providing help to economically strapped Russian nuclear scientists and helping Russia convert weapons-grade plutonium to less threatening materials.

While changes may still be made in the funding levels before President Bush sends his final fiscal 2002 budget to Congress, several attempts by the department to get additional money have been rebuffed by the White House Office of Management and Budget, the sources said.

``This budget signals a retreat from a decade worth of work with Russia to secure nuclear weapons expertise and materials,'' said William Hoehn of the Russian American Nuclear Security Advisory Council, a nonproliferation advocacy group.

According to the latest DOE budget document, programs to increase security at Russia nuclear facilities would be cut by $31 million to about $170 million. The Energy Department had sought an increase to $225 million.

A program aimed at finding jobs and getting economic assistance to Russian nuclear scientists would be cut by $20 million to about $7 million, according to the sources.

Bush will ask for more money to dispose of Russia's excess plutonium stocks, but the amount falls far short of the proposed doubling of the $226 million program that the Clinton administration had proposed, the sources said.

The bipartisan commission included experts in nuclear nonproliferation and national security and was chaired by former GOP Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker and former Democratic White House counsel Lloyd Cutler.

Others on the panel included Former Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia and former Rep. Lee Hamilton, both Democrats and widely respected experts on national security and nuclear nonproliferation.

Their report, requested by the Energy Department, concluded that the risks of Russian nuclear materials being obtained by terrorists or hostile states is significant and real.

The report urged stepped up spending for programs to help Russia safeguard these materials and help Russia's atomic scientists, some of whom are facing dire economic times in the post-Cold War era, find jobs.

It said $30 billion is needed over the next 10 years to do the job, adding that such spending would be a prudent investment in U.S. and world security.

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

About-Face: The Politics of CO2

New York Times
March 16, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/16/opinion/L16CARB.html

To the Editor:
Re "Bush, in Reversal, Won't Seek Cut in Emissions of Carbon Dioxide" (front page, March 14):

It comes as a shock, but hardly a surprise, to learn that President Bush has decided to abandon his position on carbon dioxide emissions (if in fact that was ever really his position). Throughout the campaign, I kept thinking of him as the Rorschach candidate. Moderates, conservatives and even some environmentalists saw what they wanted to see, as the candidate ran toward the center. Now safely in office, his true colors come through.

If he had said that carbon dioxide was not a pollutant, and that scientific knowledge of the causes of global warming was incomplete, might these views have cost him half a thousand votes in Florida?

BRYAN CURRY Phoenix, March 14, 2001

To the Editor:
Re "Mr. Bush Reverses Course" (editorial, March 15):

With one sweeping pronouncement, President Bush has imperiled the global environment, defied our global allies, endangered our pursuit of clean energy and undermined the credibility of his own Environmental Protection Agency administrator.

And for what? To assure the country's utilities that when push comes to shove, the continued wealth of his corporate sponsors will always be uppermost on the president's agenda. Unless it is reversed, this irresponsible decision will haunt us all for generations.

BILL SCHILLACI Ridgewood, N.J., March 15, 2001

To the Editor:
Re "Bush, in Reversal, Won't Seek Cut in Emissions of Carbon Dioxide" (front page, March 14):

The exorbitantly high profits that the generators of electric power are now making would make it easy for them to bear the costs of retrofitting their generators to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions.

And if requiring that new generating plants meet tighter emission controls would materially slow their construction, the generating companies could be given the option of retrofitting them later.

W. DAVID SLAWSON Los Angeles, March 14, 2001

To the Editor:
Re "Mr. Bush Reverses Course" (editorial, March 15):

The secret word is "nuclear." If we want to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the long run (the only thing that counts), we will "go nuclear." But politicians, Republicans and Democrats alike, are afraid to utter the word.

ROBERT W. ALBRECHT Seattle, March 15, 2001 The writer is an electrical engineering professor, University of Washington.

To the Editor:
Re "Bush, in Reversal, Won't Seek Cut in Emissions of Carbon Dioxide" (front page, March 14): This decision suggests that, while President Bush insists that he will "leave no child behind," he evidently has no qualms about leaving them a ruined Earth.

STEPHEN C. WILSON New York, March 15, 2001

-------- virginia

Geologists Learning Uranium Containment From Nature

Science Daily
3/16/2001
Virginia Tech (http://www.vt.edu:10021/ur/news/newsndex.html)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/03/010313074642.htm

Blacksburg, VA, March 13, 2001 -- Three decades ago, possibly one of the richest uranium deposits in the US was discovered at Coles Hill in rural South-central Virginia. Although the deposit was considered for mining, it was never developed. However, this site may yield knowledge of great value as a natural laboratory for radioactive waste containment.

"The uranium has just been sitting there for hundreds of thousands of years," says A. K. Sinha, professor of geological sciences at Virginia Tech. "Sitting there" are the operative words. "There is a water table about 11 meters (36 feet) down, and the uranium-rich bedrock about 20 meters (66 feet) down. The uranium should have migrated to the next county, but it hasn't."

"You would expect ground water in this type of natural system to have carried the uranium away from the site into the surrounding environment, but we don't see that," says Virginia Tech Ph.D. student Jim Jerden, of Atlanta, Ga. "We think we can learn something from this site that can be applied to existing contaminated sites and nuclear waste repositories."

Sinha explains, "Uranium is toxic, particularly when it is concentrated, such as in nuclear fuel, weapons, and radioactive wastes. In nature, there are deposits that are extremely concentrated and they should be of great concern, as uranium may be transported in solution through ground water activity. But, in nature, things have a way of reaching a 'steady state'. The Coles Hill deposit, for instance, shows no measurable evidence of leakage into the surrounding soils and rocks. This 'natural analog' provides a scientific window where we can study what prevents uranium from contaminating its surroundings."

As geologists, Sinha and Jerden are looking at the natural system that contains the Coles Hill uranium deposit as a unique geologic analog for uranium-contaminated sites and nuclear waste repositories. "Nature may present a model for the scientifically sound management of nuclear wastes and contaminated sites," says Jerden.

Jerden will present some of his research from Coles Hill at the 36th annual meeting of the Northeastern Section of the Geological Society of America (GSA) in Burlington, Vermont, March 12-14. "I will talk about the interaction of soil, rock, and ground waters, and the details of the minerals that inhibit uranium from being transported into the surrounding environment. Specifically, we have discovered that the abundance of phosphorous and its interaction with uranium is likely the cause for the lack of migration," he says.

Later this month, Sinha, Jerden, and Lucian W. Zelazny, professor of soil sciences at Virginia Tech, will meet with scientists from the University of Georgia's Savannah River Ecology Laboratory (SREL) and the University of South Carolina medical program to discuss a research partnership for using advanced technologies for a better understanding of the behavior of uranium in soils.

"SREL scientists have been experimenting with phosphorous and uranium in the laboratory. The goal of these experiments was to develop new cost effective technologies that can be applied for remediation of uranium contaminated sites, so they were very interested when we told them we were researching a natural system in which uranium and phosphorus are combining to naturally limit uranium transport," explains Jerden.

It is not just the richness and the self-containment of the deposit located only two hours away from Virginia Tech's Blacksburg campus (south east of Chatham, Virginia, near the little town of Gretna) that makes it such a unique resource for researchers. "The corporation that discovered the site did extremely good exploration of this deposit," explains Sinha. "They drilled approximately 70,000 feet of solid rock (70 1,000-foot cores). They created an enormous database. It would cost the government tens of millions of dollars to do that today, but this cost was borne by industry." When the mining activities were abandoned the corporation donated their information to Virginia Tech, and gave the cores for storage to the Virginia Museum of Natural History.

"We have an infrastructure database already generated at no cost to the taxpayer," says Sinha. "Virginia Tech has augmented this database through shallow drilling supported by the Virginia Division of Mineral Resources and is using the data and the samples to prove the site is a world class scientific target for research.

"We are asking basic questions," he says. "What are the natural processes that inhibit migration of uranium? If we can understand that, then our colleagues in engineering and other sciences can apply that knowledge to develop better strategies for cleaning up and managing contaminated sites and nuclear waste repositories.

"We are working in partnership with other institutions that wish to characterize this site so that all the people interested in the environment can use these resources to understand the transport of uranium," Sinha concludes.

The subject of Jerden's doctoral research is to understand the geology of the uranium containment at the Coles Hill deposit. His GSA presentation, "Uranium transport in weathered bedrock: Application of environmental petrology," will be presented at 10:50 a.m. March 13, at the Sheraton Conference Center, Diamond Salon II.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Virginia Tech for journalists and other members of the public. If you wish to quote from any part of this story, please credit Virginia Tech as the original source. You may also wish to include the following link in any citation: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/03/010313074642.htm

-------- us nuc politics

Clinton Acted Hastily on Computer Export Rules, GAO Says

Washington Post
Friday, March 16, 2001; Page E04
By Ellen Nakashima Washington Post Staff Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A12704-2001Mar15?language=printer

President Clinton relaxed export controls on high-performance computers to countries such as Russia, China and India in his final days in office without adequately analyzing the national security threat, a General Accounting Office official told Congress yesterday.

The Jan. 10 move to ease limits on high-speed computer exports "fails to address all militarily significant uses for computers at the new thresholds and assess the national security impact of such uses," Susan S. Westin, the GAO's managing director of international affairs and trade, told the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee.

Sophisticated computers are needed to build modern military systems, from those that manage the battlefield to those that design nuclear weapons. Computer manufacturers, struggling for sales, say high-speed computers are readily available to foreign powers and strict controls hurt their business prospects globally.

Westin said the administration's failure to justify its actions demonstrated the need for a comprehensive review of the national security implications of relaxing the export controls and the framework for deciding what should be allowed to be sold abroad.

Sen. Fred D. Thompson (R-Tenn.), the committee chairman, agreed with Westin's conclusions and called for a commission to conduct such a review.

"What we need is an honest, independent assessment of how to balance national security with business interests here," Thompson said. "I'd like to see something like the Rumsfeld Commission [a 1998 panel on the ballistic missile threat]. . . . We've let countries like China call the tune. How can we continue to see the proliferation of the technologies to develop weapons of mass destruction by China and Russia and not assess it?"

On Tuesday, another Clinton-ordered regulation will take effect, easing the requirement that computer firms notify the Commerce Department before exporting a high-speed computer to "sensitive" countries. The 1998 National Defense Authorization Act requires the president to justify changing the notification thresholds for exports of high-performance computers to "sensitive" countries. The justification must address potential military uses and assess the impact on national security.

Computer industry representatives say the export controls are ineffective. Imposing limits based on computer speed -- millions of theoretical operations per second, or MTOPS -- has little significance in a world when even laptop computers are readily available and can be networked to achieve greater power, they argue. In her testimony, Westin agreed that the MTOPS measure is outdated.

The January change raised the MTOPS threshold above which licenses are required from 28,000 to 85,000. A year ago, the threshold was 2,000 MTOPS. (A 600-megahertz Pentium 3 home-computer chip operates at 1,400 MTOPS.) The bar requiring firms to notify the Commerce Department of an export was also raised to 85,000 MTOPS.

Industry representatives and some military analysts say that speed alone is not directly linked to weapons' capability. They note that most military applications are performed on computers with much less power than 85,000 MTOPS. The Stealth fighter was developed with a computer whose speed was under 500 MTOPS.

High-performance computers have many military applications, but "thresholds are not going to prevent anyone from designing a nuclear weapon," said Kenneth Flamm, an international affairs professor at the University of Texas who helped develop the export controls implemented in 1993 and 1995. "They're not going to prevent anyone from designing a fighter jet."

Brookings Institution military analyst Michael O'Hanlon agreed. "If we were the only country in the world that made them, I would probably favor stronger controls," he said. "But it's very difficult to limit controls in this area because there are so many producers. . . . In a sense you're only going to have to concede defeat on this issue, and fight your battles where you can win them."

"These are very large potential markets," an official of one company said yesterday. "We have to be there in the long term. We need to establish a presence and get market share and develop customer loyalty."

Current rules allow firms to export computers of any power to U.S. allies such as Japan and members of the European Union. Exports of very powerful computers are prohibited to countries such as China, Russia and India without an export license.

-------- MILITARY

CHINA: AMERICAN WARNING

New York Times
March 16, 2001
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/16/world/16BRIE.html?pagewanted=print

The commander of United States forces in the Pacific, Adm. Dennis C. Blair, left, said during a visit in Beijing that American arms sales to Taiwan will address China's addition of 50 missiles or more each year to the estimated 300 missiles it now has aimed at Taiwan. President Bush will decide in April what weapons the United States will agree to sell Taiwan this year. Taiwan's shopping list includes four guided-missile destroyers equipped with Aegis radar systems that can defends ships against aircraft and missile attacks. Craig S. Smith (NYT)

-------- china

Beijing's Priorities

New York Times
March 16, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/16/opinion/L16CHIN.html

To the Editor:
Re "China Sends Its Army Money, and Taiwan a Signal" (Week in Review, March 11):

Beijing's increase in defense spending will allow its army to subsist comfortably without engaging in commercial enterprises on the side. But soldiers weren't the only ones moonlighting: so were the elementary-school children in Wanzai County who built fireworks during lunch to supplement inadequate school financing. This enterprise may have led to the deaths of at least 42 people, mostly children, in an explosion at the school last week.

This is a sobering illustration of where Beijing's priorities lie. The fear that Taiwan will declare independence validates spending $17.2 billion on defense while the education system remains in squalor. If there isn't enough money to go around, President Jiang Zemin should let the soldiers build the fireworks, not the children.

JUNG-TZUNG YIH Director, Information Division Taipei Economic and Cultural Office New York, March 12, 2001

-------- iraq

IRAQ: LEGAL HELP

New York Time
March 16, 2001
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/16/world/16BRIE.html?pagewanted=print

France and Russia proposed that the United Nations commission overseeing compensation for Iraq's invasion of Kuwait provide assistance to help Iraq prepare its legal defense against $46 billion in claims for environmental damage stemming from the gulf war. During its 1990-91 occupation of Kuwait, Iraq's forces set oil wells on fire, causing widespread pollution. The commission will take up the issue again on April 2. Meanwhile, it approved payments of $2.4 billion, most of which will go to the Kuwait government to meet damage claims. Elizabeth Olsons (NYT)

-------- space

Mir's Fall to End An Era In Space
Russia to Terminate Station Next Week

By Peter Baker and Kathy Sawyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, March 16, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10630-2001Mar15?language=printer

STAR CITY, Russia -- As Sergei Zalyotin turned off the lights and closed the hatch of the Mir space station, he left bread and salt on the table, in keeping with Russian custom to welcome the next crew of cosmonauts.

But as it turned out, there would be no next crew. Unbeknownst to Zalyotin when he returned to Earth aboard a Soyuz capsule last June, he would be the final commander aboard the world's longest-manned orbiting space platform. Bereft of funds, Russia plans to transmit an 11-minute pulse next week that will send the abandoned station to a watery grave in the Pacific Ocean.

The demise of Mir ends an important chapter in the history of space exploration. It was the first time men and women occupied a home above the planet more or less permanently and the prototype for the kind of cross-border cooperation that led to the International Space Station being constructed 250 miles overhead. It was an adventurous 15-year ride, filled with harrowing and heroic tales of great breakthroughs and near-fatal catastrophes.

The station has also become -- particularly in its final days -- a metaphor for Russia, the all-too-visible symbol of a pioneering space program humbled by the fall of the superpower that sponsored it. The blow to Russian pride has led to numerous protests in recent weeks, as well as a resolution by the lower house of parliament, the State Duma, begging the government to somehow save Mir, all to no avail.

"It's been there 15 years and everything has an end," Zalyotin reflected during an interview at the cosmonaut training center outside Moscow.

To others, though, the finale is overdue. U.S. officials have long urged Russia to discard Mir, which in its waning years often resembled a favorite old car that spent more time in the shop than on the road. NASA would prefer that Russia concentrate its meager resources on the international station.

"Mir is clearly seen by the Russians as the last remaining symbol of space glory," said James Oberg, a former U.S. flight control engineer and author of several books on the Russian space program. "But it's a delusional nostalgia. For all the robustness of Mir, the Soviets never figured out what to do with it outside of feel-good propaganda."

Now, its final legacy will be determined by the success or failure of its splashdown. Mir has been steadily drifting down in its orbit for months -- it was about 145 miles above Earth on Tuesday -- and, if all goes according to plan, Russian officials will transmit a signal that will trigger its final plunge next Thursday. Russians expect most of it to burn up in the atmosphere, but about 1,500 fragments should fall into a 120-by-3,600-mile zone in the South Pacific east of New Zealand.

Mir is the largest man-made object ever to plummet from orbit. The collection of laboratories and living quarters, assembled gradually over the years, stretches about 96 feet by 86 feet in a shape resembling a dragonfly. Its nearest rival in terms of mass was the 76-ton U.S. Skylab, which fell out of control in 1979, scattering debris on Australia.

Japan and a number of South Pacific islands have expressed concern that a repeat of that experience could mean disaster. U.S. military and civilian space experts dismiss these worries as unwarranted, noting that large objects, from meteorites to spent rocket stages, regularly plow into Earth's atmosphere unnoticed.

Nonetheless, the Russians -- while insisting "it's 100 percent impossible" for the station's wreckage to rain on inhabited areas, as space agency spokesman Sergei Gorbunov put it -- decided to take out $200 million in insurance.

Named for the Russian word that means both "world" and "peace," Mir has been circling the globe since Feb. 20, 1986. It has played host to more than 100 people from 15 countries, including seven U.S. astronauts, and served as a laboratory for more than 17,000 scientific experiments.

But as it kept orbiting long after its official five-year lifespan, Mir began showing its age as it experienced one calamity after another. The nadir came during a docking procedure on June 25, 1997, when an unmanned Progress cargo ship smashed into the station and nearly forced the two Russian cosmonauts and American astronaut Michael Foale to evacuate.

Through it all, the Russians refused to give up. "We were sure of ourselves. We were sure we could repair anything," said Yelena Kondakova, a former cosmonaut.

Ultimately, the decrepit Russian economy could no longer support the program. Instead, Russia has joined the United States in a 16-country consortium to build the $60 billion international station.

This rankles those here who see a once-proud Russia taking a subservient role to NASA.

"This is perhaps one of the last symbols," complained Sergei Akifev, president of an organization formed to support Mir. "We used to have strong power -- now it's gone. We used to have strong industry -- now it's gone. We had a huge, strong, capable army -- now we have an army which is capable of fulfilling orders, but combat morale is very weak."

Mir will occupy a special place in the annals of falling satellites, given its sheer heft, lingering suspense about how well the thrusters can control such an unwieldy mass once it enters the atmosphere and the slight possibility that an engine might fail.

In January, Russian handlers dispatched a fresh cargo ship to attach itself to Mir, providing the thruster power to maneuver the station safely on its final descent. That phase is to begin at 7:32 p.m. Wednesday EST with two "set-up" engine firings, according to a schedule announced by the space agency this week, but which could change. The most suspenseful phase will come five hours later when the attached rocket will fire in a sustained burst to point the sprawling complex toward its target zone. If all goes well, fragments will hit the Pacific at 1:21 a.m. EST Thursday.

The Russians have asked the U.S. government and the European Space Agency to help track Mir. Using its global network of radar and optical sensors, the Colorado-based U.S. Space Command is monitoring Mir along with more than 8,300 other orbiting objects and forwarding information to Russian Mission Control near Moscow.

No one can predict exactly how Mir will behave or how it will be torn apart on the way down. Although most of it is expected to melt in the atmosphere, engineers expect fragments totaling 20 to 25 metric tons to reachthe Earth's surface. The largest individual piece, they estimate, should weigh less than 1,600 pounds.

At about 60 miles up, the facility should start heating and glowing red from friction with the thickening atmosphere. It should begin breaking up, experts estimate, at about 50 miles up, with the lightest pieces, such as the insect-like solar power wings, falling off first. The surviving pieces should resemble comets as they streak toward impact.

"The question is, can [the Russians] maintain control all the way down," said Nicholas Johnson, chief scientist for orbital debris at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

--------

Station crew returning to earth

InfoBeat News
Afternoon Edition - 3/16/2001
MARCIA DUNN AP Aerospace Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406411892

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) - The international space station's returning skipper, Bill Shepherd, cannot wait to embrace his wife and his two dogs after months apart.

But he is not looking forward to the physical discomfort awaiting him when he returns to Earth on Wednesday, Day 141 of his mission.

``I'm not that anxious to see what it's going to be like'' to re-adapt to gravity, he said Friday. His two Russian crewmates, former Mir residents, have been through this before, ``and they're telling me it's going to be arduous.''

Bones and muscles weaken in weightlessness, and the immune system also suffers. Shepherd, Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev, members of the space station's first crew, were vigilant about exercising in space to minimize the damage.

The three men leave space station Alpha on Sunday, handing over control to a Russian commander and two Americans.

NASA put off space shuttle Discovery's undocking by one day to give the 10 astronauts and cosmonauts more time to pack a cargo carrier with trash and unused equipment for return to Earth.

Gidzenko said he is looking forward to his first shower in 4 1/2 months.

Shepherd is proud of the work accomplished at the orbiting outpost.

``We did basically put the space station in commission. We gave it a name that seems to be sticking,'' he said. ``We have taken something that was an uninhabited outpost, and we now have a fully functional station where the next crew can do research.''

Shepherd said he would like to return to space some day, but only if he can fly on a ship ``that's going to go somewhere.''

``We should be making plans to have vehicles built, somewhat along the lines of this station, but that have another destination away from the Earth,'' he said.

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

Campaign to Re-elect Annan at U.N.

New York Times
March 16, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/16/world/16NATI.html

UNITED NATIONS, March 15 - The Organization of African Unity opened a campaign today to have Secretary General Kofi Annan re-elected to a second five- year term.

Mr. Annan, a Ghanaian who most diplomats say would be hard to beat, has said he will make a decision this month on whether to seek re-election.

His term expires Dec. 31, but the Security Council could name a candidate at any time between now and then. The General Assembly then votes on the Council's choice, virtually always without disagreement.

Mr. Annan, who is 63, has made significant management changes within the United Nations and helped to improve relations with Washington.

But there are two possible hurdles to an easy re-election, diplomats say.

In some influential developing countries, he has provoked opposition because he has supported intervention by the United Nations when governments abuse their people. Some of the strongest criticism has come from Asia, coincidentally as some argue that it is Asia's turn to hold the office.

---

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: SOLITARY WOMAN ON TRIBUNAL

New York Times
March 16, 2001
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/16/world/16BRIE.html?pagewanted=print

The United Nations General Assembly nearly shut out all women as judges on the Balkans war crimes tribunal only a few weeks after a decision convicting three Bosnian Serbs of rape. Thirteen men were elected to 14 judgeships before Judge Florence Mumba of Zambia, who delivered the rape decision, was able to battle through seven ballots to hold her seat. She was the only woman among 25 nominees. The successful United States candidate was Theodor Meron, an international law expert at New York University. Barbara Crossette (NYT)

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

As Bush Ponders Cuts,
GAO Again Criticizes F-22

By Greg Schneider
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 16, 2001; Page E04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A12703-2001Mar15?language=printer

The General Accounting Office issued a report yesterday that criticizes the F-22 fighter program for missing cost and schedule targets, slamming the costly Air Force warplane just as the Bush administration is considering military cuts.

"I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I find the timing of this report very suspicious. The stakes for this program are very high, and the political timing could not be more sensitive," said Loren Thompson, a military consultant with the Lexington Institute, a think tank in Arlington.

The GAO has for years been critical of the F-22, which is made by Bethesda-based Lockheed Martin Corp. Yesterday's report was a response to a standing request from Congress for an annual update on the program's progress.

But seldom has the climate been so unsettled. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has delayed making a decision on buying the next 10 of the jets until later this year, leaving the program officially in limbo as Congress takes up budget deliberations. And President Bush said this week that he is uncertain the nation can afford all three major fighter-plane programs now on the Pentagon's list -- the F-22, the Navy's Super Hornet and the multi-service Joint Strike Fighter.

In yesterday's report, the GAO notes that problems in assembling test versions of the F-22 have left flight testing at least four months behind schedule. In addition, the testing is inefficient, and would have to nearly double the number of goals achieved per flight-test hour to get back on track, the report said.

Such delays will force the Pentagon to make costly purchasing decisions before the Air Force proves that the jet works, and they will increase costs on the $61.9 billion program, the GAO said.

The report recommends scaling back the number of F-22s purchased each year to 10 -- from the planned peak of 36 -- until more testing is completed.

Officials at Lockheed Martin had not yet digested the report by yesterday evening. But they -- and the Air Force -- have consistently argued that the plane is getting sufficient testing and is proving itself technically sound.

----

Military Death Benefits Rise

WASHINGTON IN BRIEF
Friday, March 16, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A12624-2001Mar15?language=printer

The Bush administration endorsed legislation yesterday to increase by $50,000, to $250,000, maximum death benefits for families of military personnel killed in a series of recent military disasters.

The legislation would make the survivor benefit increase -- which had been scheduled to take effect April 1 -- retroactive to Oct. 1.

That would allow the additional benefits to go to families of the 17 American sailors killed in the Oct. 12 terrorist bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.

For the Record

• The FBI chose a 28-year agent and former counterespionage chief at the CIA to coordinate the government's spy-fighting activities. FBI Special Agent David W. Szady was named to head a counterintelligence "board of directors" that includes senior deputies at the CIA and the Defense Department and FBI Director Louis J. Freeh.

• Forty-two law enforcement officers were killed on duty in the United States in 1999, the lowest number on record, the FBI said. That was a decline of more than 31 percent, from 61 deaths the year before.

• A General Accounting Office report criticized former president Bill Clinton's decision to relax export controls on high-performance computers that foreign countries could use to build more powerful nuclear weapons and for other military purposes. Release of the report coincided with a decision by the Senate Banking Committee to delay action on a bill to exempt mass-marketed computers and other high-tech items from export controls.

----

Army Rangers Win a Battle Over Berets

New York Times
March 16, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/16/national/16BERE.html?pagewanted=print

WASHINGTON, March 15 - In a concession to the Rangers, the Army today approved their request to switch the color of their distinctive beret to tan from the black that is soon to be standard- issue for most of the rest of Army.

The decision by the Army chief of staff, Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, appeared to settle a dispute that has drawn the attention of members of Congress and even President Bush, who recently asked the secretary of defense to look into the matter.

Currently, only three Army units wear berets: Airborne units wear maroon, Special Forces wear green and Rangers wear black.

The Army said it approved the Rangers' request to change their beret color "to maintain the distinctiveness of the unit."

-------- OTHER

-------- environment

BLASTS HIT GIANT OIL RIG

New York Times
March 16, 2001
World Business Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/16/business/16FOBR.html

A pair of explosions before dawn yesterday on the world's largest offshore oil platform, operated by Petrobras in the Campos Basin about 78 miles off the Brazilian coast, left one worker dead and nine missing. Calling the situation "grave," the president of Petrobras, Henri Phillipe Reichstuhl, said the 40- story platform, which produces 80,000 barrels of oil a day, was listing heavily and could capsize. Petrobras has suffered a series of costly oil spills in recent months, and labor unions say 81 workers have died in industrial accidents on Petrobras projects since 1998. Larry Rohter (NYT)

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Foot-and-Mouth Damages English Tourism

New York Times
March 16, 2001
By ALAN COWELL
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/16/world/16FOOT.html

STONETHWAITE, England, March 15 - Donna and Gary MacRae's hotel, the Langstrath Country Inn, stands in bucolic splendor at the end of a curling lane where the tarred road ends and serious walking begins in the valleys and craggy ramparts of the Lake District.

But since an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease began three weeks ago, closing rural trails and country footpaths, the mountains that the MacRaes see from their windows might as well be on the moon. Off- road walking has been outlawed. Outsiders are staying away.

And that is taking its toll on entire regions where people like hoteliers, shopkeepers and suppliers depend on visitors for their livelihoods.

"This outbreak is not just affecting farmers," said Robert Perkins, who runs a company that makes walkers' boots and other gear. "It's affecting the whole rural infrastructure. It's only a matter of weeks before some small retailers go bust."

Many hotels are all but empty. The companies that supply them with beer, milk and eggs are losing orders. The roads are eerily free of tourists' cars and delivery vans. Some stores offer discounts on goods like parkas and fleeces. Farmers are canceling equipment orders, and employees in the tourism business are being laid off.

"This time last year, we had eight people working for us," Mr. MacRae said at his 10-room inn. "Now we have one, on a three-day week."

In such small places, said Michael Taylor, an economist at Merrill Lynch in London, the effects are draconian.

The MacRaes decided this week to close their inn for the foreseeable future because they have no guests, and cancellations have cost them $15,000 over the last three weeks.

"It's just not worth it," Mrs. MacRae said.

And that gloomy assessment rattles along a chain of businesses.

As part of the government measures to contain the disease, much of Britain, including 46 million acres of farmland, or 76 percent of the nation, has been placed off limits to walkers and outsiders for fear that they may carry foot-and-mouth to infect new animals. Even though the nearest case is 10 miles from the Langstrath Country Inn, the Lake District has been hard hit. Of 251 cases reported across Britain by Thursday, about 70 were in Cumbria, which includes this scenic area. The outbreak is now reckoned to be more severe than the last major scourge, in 1967.

The disease, which has leaped the Channel to France, prompting an American ban on many European meat imports, shows no sign of abating. No one can tell when the disease will peak. Since the outbreak began on Feb. 20 in Essex, more than 200,000 animals have been marked for slaughter, and pyres of carcasses have become grim, almost medieval, totems of the disease, generating columns of smoke.

Today, the government announced even harsher measures, saying an additional 100,000 animals that may simply have been near infected animals will be killed.

In these parts, where tens of thousands of sheep freckle the hillsides, the first blossoms of spring bring lambing time. But some farmers may not even visit flocks put out to winter pasture. Some of the 193,000 full-time farmers and farm owners in Britain say they may well go out of business, mainly those who have spent generations building up pedigree herds that could be wiped out.

"It will just be devastating," said Lisa Randall, a spokeswoman for the National Farmers Union.

The timing could not be worse. Outdoor tourist centers like the Lake District and Snowdonia or the Cotswolds would usually be preparing for school vacations, the time when the earnings season begins in earnest for many hotels and stores and tea shops. "We might just as well forget Easter," Mrs. MacRae said.

The malaise, though, goes further. In Keswick, just north of here, Michael Standring owns an outdoor store called George Fisher where walkers buy boots and parkas and other gear. This year, they have stayed away. "It's hurting very hard," Mr. Standring said.

Earnings are down by 40 percent, he said, and the losses stand to increase if enough of the 15 million people who typically visit the Lake District each year stay home. The losses, Mr. Standring said, could exceed $200,000 in April, the popular time for selling gear for the new season. "I don't think people in the cities fully understand what's happening," he said.

Some do. South of the Lake District, in Lancaster, Mr. Perkins said his company, Brasher Boots, was losing $15,000 a day because stores like George Fisher are not reordering, all part of a chain that ends in the forlorn sign on Mrs. MacRae's hotel here, "Sorry, closed due to foot and mouth crisis."

Even the owners of hotels that are staying open face say they had to scramble for business. One owner, Hans Bonkenburg at the Dale Head Hall Hotel south of Keswick, said that because of overhead, "I have no choice. I have to open."

Ian Stephens of the Cumbria Tourist Board, which promotes the Lake District tourism industry, said: "People are facing catastrophe. Many businesses have spent money on improving premises, taken out quite hefty loans, and this should be the time they start making income to pay off the debts."

He estimated the district's losses at $15 million a week, with 350 jobs being lost weekly.

High-ticket horse races like the Cheltenham Gold Cup have been postponed. Hunting has been banned, and cattle movement has been restricted. Fishing in farming areas has stopped, and zoos and amusement parks are threatened.

Some sports teams, including hockey and rugby players, have canceled games because they involve moving around the country and possibly spreading the disease.

"The feelers go out a long way," Phillipa Swain of the British Tourist Authority said. "You have gift shops, tea shops, souvenir stands, cabdrivers, bus companies."

Unlike the situation with mad cow disease, which battered the dwindling $21 billion farming industry, foot-and-mouth disease is not generally fatal to the cloven-hooved animals it infects like sheep, cows, pigs and goats. They normally recover after a few weeks.

Only rarely are humans infected.

But the disease, which can be borne on a zephyr of wind, on the tires of cars or on shoes and clothes, is so contagious that the standard response is to destroy infected animals rapidly.

In economic terms, agriculture accounts for 1.8 percent of output, according to Mr. Taylor at Merrill Lynch. According to the Agriculture Ministry, the profits and earnings from farming have fallen to less than one-third of their 1973 level, hitting £2 billion, or $3 billion, last year.

Although farmers are to receive compensation for lost animals, hoteliers and other business people have not been promised similar help.

The threat to rural tourism, which employs one-fourth of the work force in the Lake District, is considerable. The overall value of tourism, including daytrippers, other domestic travelers and foreign visitors, is $96 billion, Ms. Swain of the tourist authority said. An estimated $13 billion of that is from rural tourism.

The disease has yet to affect the thousands who congregate each day at Buckingham Palace or throng London's West End. But beyond the cities, the disease has brought strains between farmers and other industries. "There are people who are saying, `Get the sheep off the hills and let's get the walkers back on,' " Mr. Stephens of the Cumbria Tourist Board said.

The outbreak, which the Conservatives have called a national crisis, has not dented the overall economy. It depends for two-thirds of its strength on city-bound services like banks and restaurants and relies for one-fifth of its activity on industries like automobile plants and steel mills. But, Mr. Taylor said, if the disease persists into early summer and foreign visitors stay away, "that could have a major effect."

---

PUBLIC INTERESTS
Mr. Bush Warms Up

New York Times
March 16, 2001
By GAIL COLLINS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/16/opinion/16COLL.html

Finally, we have a president who knows how to run the government like a business.

Presuming the business is Pets.com.

Dick Cheney sat George W. Bush down this week and explained that even though Mr. Bush had promised to reduce carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere, he didn't really mean it.

The vice president is in charge of the president's energy task force, when he is not occupied with foreign policy, negotiating with Congress and undergoing life-saving hospital procedures. So it's pretty remarkable that he's already had time to determine that whatever the nation's energy policy is going to be, it will not involve doing anything whatsoever about carbon dioxide.

This was useful information for Mr. Bush, who signed off on a letter disavowing his former position and went off to inspect another faith-based initiative.

"I was responding to reality," Mr. Bush said, explaining why he had repudiated his promise, humiliated the head of his Environmental Protection Agency and made it pretty much impossible for the United States to do anything about global warming for the next four years.

That was pretty good for just a few hours' work. But this is an efficient administration, led by an M.B.A. from Harvard.

Mr. Bush arrived in the White House just as the nation was plunging into a stock market dive and the California utility crisis. Since he is a guy known for setting priorities, nobody was surprised when he immediately honed in on taxes and energy. Then we began noticing that while the country needed to quickly stimulate consumer spending, Mr. Bush was fixated on eliminating taxes on the wealthy in 2011. The California crisis is mainly about natural gas, and Mr. Bush keeps talking about drilling for oil in a wildlife preserve.

The president seems to be governing some other country. Maybe Belgium is the place that needs to eliminate the estate tax.

And then there was the matter of air pollution. I don't know if this nation is ready for a charming president who can't keep his word.

Most people think reducing carbon dioxide emissions will help control global warming. But Mr. Bush lumps global warming in the same category of questionable theories where he puts evolution. So it surprised people when he made a speech in Michigan last September, saying that if he was elected, he would require power plants to reduce emissions of four dangerous pollutants, one of them carbon dioxide.

This was not something that aides could ascribe to Mr. Bush's well- known habit of articulating sentences in which only the nouns reflect his actual thought. ("He meant to say we'll reduce emissions from plants.")

It was a read-off-the-teleprompter policy address, and it was a pretty big deal. There are no mandatory emission standards on carbon dioxide right now, and even Al Gore was afraid to demand any. In fact, in his speech, Mr. Bush practically called the vice president an environmental wimp. "My opponent calls for voluntary reductions in such emissions. In Texas we've done better - with mandatory reductions, and I believe the nation can do better," he said. (Who knows how many environmentally conscious suburban voters in Florida this helped sway?)

This week, however, the administration decided that Mr. Bush had been reading the wrong words. The speechwriter misspoke. "A campaign document that was not well written," shrugged a White House spokesman.

Further spinning suggested that Mr. Bush thought carbon dioxide emissions are already covered under federal law, and only intended to promise to regulate things that are already regulated.

By yesterday, the administration was saying that Mr. Bush had simply changed his mind after intense consultations with Mr. Cheney and several senators who would not know global warming from a gas grill. Then he informed Christie Whitman of the E.P.A., who's theoretically in charge of the policy, that there had been a change in direction - in fact a veritable U-turn.

It all goes to show, his supporters said, that the guy is a great manager. Knows when to hold, knows when to fold. "I don't think you should hold a president to a campaign pledge that is not a good pledge," said Senator Rick Santorum.

Read my lips - no new emissions.

---

Death at Ford Plant From Legionnaire's Brings Outbreak to 4

New York Times
March 16, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/16/national/16LEGI.html

CLEVELAND, March 15 - A Ford Motor Company worker who died last week had Legionnaire's disease, bringing to four the number of cases confirmed among workers at an engine casting plant here, officials said today.

Ford's Cleveland Casting Plant, which employs 2,500, was closed on Wednesday night at least through the weekend after the third case was confirmed. The plant has not been proven to be the source of the disease, which is caused by water-borne bacteria.

The Ford worker, Donald Tafoya, 61, died on March 9 with symptoms of pneumonia. The Cuyahoga County health commissioner, Timothy Horgan, said today that test results on Mr. Tafoya were positive for the bacteria that cause Legionnaires' disease.

Two of the sick workers were still hospitalized today, and the third was being treated at home, said Willie Hubbard, president of United Auto Workers Local 1250.

Health officials were also double- checking 10 cases of pneumonia among Cleveland Casting workers.

Health investigators took water samples today from shower stalls, drinking fountains, air-conditioning units and other areas at the plant to determine if the bacteria exist there.

Legionnaires' disease is a form of pneumonia that is spread through inhalation of mist from contaminated water. It does not spread from person to person.

It was identified at a 1976 American Legion convention in Philadelphia. Symptoms include high fever, cough and shortness of breath.

A Ford spokesman, Ed Miller, said there was no evidence of any health risk to employees at three adjacent Ford plants. Water samples will be taken at those plants after the casting plant, which makes engine blocks and crankshafts, is checked.

Ford said the shutdown was not expected to affect assembly plants for at least the next several days.

---

News Analysis: Of Coal and Climates

New York Times
March 16, 2001
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/16/science/16CARB.html

President Bush's reversal this week on a pledge to cut power plant emissions highlights the difficulty of controlling carbon dioxide, a seemingly benign ingredient of the air people exhale, but also, many scientists say, a chief cause of global warming.

A growing body of research has concluded that carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases appear responsible for at least half of a warming trend over the last 50 years and pose a threat to ecosystems, water supplies, coastlines and tropical agriculture in the new century.

Advocates on each side of the issue point to a long, varied list of factors that have stalled efforts to control carbon dioxide in the United States and worldwide.

These vary from the political influence of industries and energy companies that have plants that release the gas to the lack of any clear and present harm from the increase in carbon dioxide that has already occurred: a 25 percent gain since the late 1800's, almost all of it from smokestacks and tailpipes.

But the chief sticking point is simply that carbon dioxide - unlike more familiar forms of pollution, which can be filtered - is for the moment an unavoidable byproduct of burning fuels, particularly fossil fuels, and especially the biggest source, coal.

That means, as Mr. Bush stated this week in reversing his campaign promise, almost any effort to cut emissions must curtail the use of coal, which now supplies 56 percent of the country's electricity. And that means it would cost a lot of money.

The cost is important not only to the domestic debate over the need for a law cleaning up power plants, but also to negotiations over the Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 treaty that would, if ratified, commit 38 industrialized countries to reduce greenhouse emissions. Each country, in calculating the merits of reductions, has a different estimate of how it would affect the economy.

Those dependent on coal - the United States, for example - see mainly economic peril in a binding treaty. Those that generate most of their electricity with carbonless nuclear power - France, for example - are less likely to resist.

But the cost is only one side of the calculus that leads either to action or inaction to blunt climate change, environmental experts say.

The other is weighing risk: risk to health, ecosystems, agriculture and the like. Countries or communities generally have to perceive some definable threat on a clear timetable to be prompted to act to repel the threat or at least to invest in an insurance policy.

In the past, pollution problems were almost always attacked only after those two conditions were satisfied. Lead was removed from gasoline because levels in blood were high. As unleaded gasoline became the norm, lead levels in blood sharply dropped.

Other air pollutants - like soot, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides - leave discernible fingerprints: grimy windows, sterilized mountain lakes downwind from power plants or eye-burning clouds of smog.

In contrast, carbon dioxide, as opponents of cuts like to point out, is harder to cast as a villain. In fact, the skeptics say, no clear evidence exists that a crime has been committed.

The gas is, after all, the substance that plants transform through photosynthesis into corn, pansies and rosewood.

Finally, in instances where scientists say they have measured its effects, they are always secondary, indirect, and often far, far away from where most of the earth's human population is located.

The most recent findings have come from melting mountain glaciers and satellites monitoring an increase in the amount of heat trapped in the upper atmosphere as greenhouse gases build.

These are hardly the kinds of effects that are quick to generate a call for new laws or global treaties that could raise energy costs.

A lack of urgency and a focus on costs both contributed to the breakdown of talks on the Kyoto in The Hague last November. The shift this week by Mr. Bush has, according to a variety of battle-worn veterans of the climate wars, threatened prospects for the next round of treaty talks, which are scheduled to take place in Bonn in July.

The White House action left opponents of controls on carbon dioxide doing the e-mail equivalent of high- fives. On Tuesday night, the Cooler Heads Coalition, an informal network of groups opposing cuts in greenhouse gases, sent an urgent Internet alert from its chairman, Myron Ebell. "We have won a famous victory, and everyone should congratulate themselves," he wrote.

Still, some supporters of controlling carbon dioxide say they are confident that momentum will eventually swing their way, though perhaps slower than they would like.

Sherwood L. Boehlert, a moderate Republican congressman who was first elected to represent Utica, N.Y., in 1982, said it took eight years of fighting for acid rain controls to be added to the Clean Air Act in 1990. Power plant emissions of the offending compounds, nitrogen oxides, have dropped but remain too high, Mr. Boehlert said.

"And I still have some colleagues in the House telling me it's a figment of my imagination," he said.

The same timetable is likely to hold true for actions to curtail global warming, said Mr. Boehlert, one of a small but growing minority of Republican officials seeking limits on carbon dioxide along with other air kinds of air pollution.

Yesterday, undeterred by Mr. Bush's decision and a near certain prospect of failure, Mr. Boehlert and a bipartisan group of colleagues introduced House and Senate bills calling for exactly what the president rejected - adding carbon dioxide to the list of power plant emissions to be cut.

----

EPA head downplays strains over emissions controversy

CNN
March 16, 2001
http://www.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/03/16/whitman.epa/

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The chief of the Environmental Protection Agency said Friday her ability to work with President Bush has not been strained by his decision to reverse a campaign promise to limit carbon dioxide emissions.

EPA Administrator Christie Whitman said Bush consulted her on his decision to abandon his campaign pledge to list carbon dioxide as a pollutant and that she expressed her opinion. She said she didn't feel her advice had been ignored, but understands the president is the one who makes the final decision.

"That's the way it works," the former New Jersey governor said.

In response to a question about whether she might resign in protest over the decision, she said, "not because of this issue, not now."

She added that she was unaware that the president was considering this decision when she assured European environmental leaders at a meeting in Italy two weeks ago that the administration would curtail carbon dioxide emissions.

Whitman said she did not feel the change in policy would hurt the chances of resuming international global warming talks. She said she plans to reach out to European leaders soon to explain the administration's decision.

Whitman said she is "entirely supportive of where we are" and described her relationship with the president as "fine." She planned to meet with him Friday afternoon.

When asked by a student of the National Young Leaders Conference why Bush reversed his position, Whitman said: "He didn't ... Well, he did." She said the president was concerned limiting emissions might worsen the current energy crisis and didn't want to do so until the US had the technology to cap carbon dioxide.

When asked if she would complete her term as EPA administrator she said: "Well, that's four, three years from now. I have no clue what's going to happen in the next few, but not because of this issue, not now."

---

About-Face: The Politics of CO2

New York Times
March 16, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/16/opinion/L16CARB.html

To the Editor:
Re "Bush, in Reversal, Won't Seek Cut in Emissions of Carbon Dioxide" (front page, March 14):

It comes as a shock, but hardly a surprise, to learn that President Bush has decided to abandon his position on carbon dioxide emissions (if in fact that was ever really his position). Throughout the campaign, I kept thinking of him as the Rorschach candidate. Moderates, conservatives and even some environmentalists saw what they wanted to see, as the candidate ran toward the center. Now safely in office, his true colors come through.

If he had said that carbon dioxide was not a pollutant, and that scientific knowledge of the causes of global warming was incomplete, might these views have cost him half a thousand votes in Florida?

BRYAN CURRY Phoenix, March 14, 2001

To the Editor:
Re "Mr. Bush Reverses Course" (editorial, March 15):

With one sweeping pronouncement, President Bush has imperiled the global environment, defied our global allies, endangered our pursuit of clean energy and undermined the credibility of his own Environmental Protection Agency administrator.

And for what? To assure the country's utilities that when push comes to shove, the continued wealth of his corporate sponsors will always be uppermost on the president's agenda. Unless it is reversed, this irresponsible decision will haunt us all for generations.

BILL SCHILLACI Ridgewood, N.J., March 15, 2001

To the Editor:
Re "Bush, in Reversal, Won't Seek Cut in Emissions of Carbon Dioxide" (front page, March 14):

The exorbitantly high profits that the generators of electric power are now making would make it easy for them to bear the costs of retrofitting their generators to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions.

And if requiring that new generating plants meet tighter emission controls would materially slow their construction, the generating companies could be given the option of retrofitting them later.

W. DAVID SLAWSON Los Angeles, March 14, 2001

To the Editor:
Re "Mr. Bush Reverses Course" (editorial, March 15):

The secret word is "nuclear." If we want to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the long run (the only thing that counts), we will "go nuclear." But politicians, Republicans and Democrats alike, are afraid to utter the word.

ROBERT W. ALBRECHT Seattle, March 15, 2001
The writer is an electrical engineering professor, University of Washington.

To the Editor:
Re "Bush, in Reversal, Won't Seek Cut in Emissions of Carbon Dioxide" (front page, March 14): This decision suggests that, while President Bush insists that he will "leave no child behind," he evidently has no qualms about leaving them a ruined Earth.

STEPHEN C. WILSON New York, March 15, 2001

-------- genetics

Scientists: More research is needed

InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 3/16/2001
By PHILIP BRASHER AP Farm Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406405489

WASHINGTON (AP) - Scientists advising the government on genetically engineered corn say more research is needed to determine its impact on the environment and assess the health risks of new varieties of the grain.

The corn, known as Bt for a bacterium gene it contains, is genetically altered to produce its own pesticide to kill an insect pest. Some research has suggested the corn could be harming an unintended target, Monarch butterflies, in farmers' fields.

The Environmental Protection Agency, which released a report Thursday by the scientific advisers, is considering whether to renew registrations for gene-altered varieties of corn and cotton.

The panel said extensive field studies of the corn need to be done. ``Sound science must guide the agency's decisions. Inappropriate conclusions drawn from inappropriate database are to be avoided,'' the scientists said.

In a section of the report that could pose problems for companies developing new varieties of biotech corn, the scientists said there was ``no data or criteria'' to make ``absolute'' assessments of the potential of new corn proteins to cause allergic reactions in people.

The National Academy of Sciences last year also recommended developing new ways to test genetically engineered crops to see how allergenic they might be.

The biotech industry was put on the defense last fall when a variety of biotech corn that was not approved for human consumption was found in taco shells and other food products. That variety, known as StarLink, has since been withdrawn from the market, and the EPA is not considering renewing its license.

StarLink contains a protein that breaks down slowly in the digestive system, a sign that it could be allergy inducing.

Other varieties of biotech corn digest more quickly, and the government says they pose no health risk.

The EPA said last fall that biotech corn posed little risk to the butterflies or anything else it was not supposed to harm.

Some scientists on the 20-member panel thought that was ``overly optimistic,'' while others believed the EPA's conclusion was accurate, given the research that has been published so far, the report said. There appeared to be little disagreement among the scientists that additional studies were needed.

``There is a lot of work that industry and EPA needs to do before they can even think about'' reregistering the biotech corn, said Jane Rissler, a biotechnology expert with the Union of Concerned Scientists. ``To me this report has delay written all over it. It says in so many ways that a lot of work needs to be done.''

A series of studies sponsored by the Agriculture Department last summer should address the scientists concerns about the corn's impact on Monarch butterflies, said Val Giddings, vice president of food and agriculture for the Biotechnology Industry Organization.

Results of those studies are expected to be published in a scientific journal this spring. Scientists involved in the research say it suggests there is little risk to Monarchs.

``EPA will take into account those studies,'' Giddings said.

He criticized the scientists for setting what he called a ``zero-risk standard'' for biotech crops that would be impossible to meet.

``If that were applied to foods in the existing food supply, many foods generally recognized as safe would be eliminated,'' such as peanuts, soybeans and milk, of which cause allergic reactions, he said.

Registrations for existing biotech corn and cotton crops are due to expire in September.

The EPA said in a statement that would do a ``comprehensive evaluation'' of those crops, ``taking into account all data available to the agency.''

-------- police

Prosecutor Says Politics Rushed Turnpike Case

New York Times
March 16, 2001
By LAURA MANSNERUS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/16/nyregion/16TROO.html

The testimony of a top aide to Peter G. Verniero, New Jersey's former attorney general, has resurrected questions about whether politics played a role in the indictment of two state troopers in the 1998 New Jersey Turnpike shooting that turned racial profiling into a national issue.

The testimony of the onetime aide, Paul Zoubek, was released Wednesday evening, hours after the New Jersey Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by the troopers, who had argued that Mr. Verniero timed their indictments to smooth the way for his own nomination to the Supreme Court, where he now sits.

But lawyers for the troopers said yesterday that the testimony of Mr. Zoubek, who was the head of the Division of Criminal Justice in the attorney general's office, corroborated a ruling in October by Judge Andrew J. Smithson of State Superior Court that the indictments were politically motivated.

In his ruling, which dismissed the most serious charges against the troopers, Judge Smithson said Mr. Verniero had announced the first of two indictments to quiet a "frenzy of public interest in racial profiling." In doing so, he said, prosecutors violated the troopers' rights by prejudicing a second grand jury that was still hearing evidence on the shooting, in which three unarmed black and Hispanic men were wounded during a traffic stop on the turnpike.

That decision was overturned in January, however, by an equally stinging appellate court decision.

The troopers, John Hogan and James Kenna, were both indicted by separate grand juries, first on charges that they had falsified their arrest records to conceal racial profiling and later on charges of aggravated assault and attempted murder. When the first indictment was announced in April 1999, Mr. Verniero had been nominated for a Supreme Court seat and was awaiting his confirmation hearings.

Now, in advance of hearings on racial profiling to begin Monday in the State Senate Judiciary Committee, Mr. Zoubek, Mr. Verniero's former aide, has told lawyers for the committee that Mr. Verniero decided to announce the first indictment "because we were subject to criticism of delay in this investigation." In that testimony on Saturday, Mr. Zoubek said he and other aides had advised him against announcing the indictment, saying that it "raised the potential issue of taint" of the grand jury still sitting.

Robert Galantucci, Mr. Hogan's lawyer, said yesterday that the defense had not decided how or whether it could use Mr. Zoubek's testimony. "We received yesterday the Supreme Court's denial, the Supreme Court that Mr. Verniero sits on," he said. "This morning I pick up the paper and see that Mr. Zoubek basically confirmed what Judge Smithson said - and what the Appellate Division said there is no evidence of."

Other lawyers familiar with the case said Mr. Zoubek's testimony would, at the very least, allow the defense to argue that Mr. Verniero's own aides had produced new evidence that could support another motion to dismiss the charges.

"It's going to damage the state's case against these two troopers," one lawyer said.

But Robert A. Mintz, a lawyer for Mr. Verniero, said, "I don't see anything at all new in Zoubek's testimony," and added that it was consistent with accounts given by other aides and state police officials.

When he appears before the Judiciary Committee, Mr. Verniero is expected to face tough questioning about the wider issue of when he became aware of evidence that state troopers were stopping black and Hispanic drivers much more often than whites. Even as the federal Justice Department investigated allegations of profiling in New Jersey, Mr. Verniero denied for two years that the practice existed, then announced in April 1999 - a day after announcing the troopers' first indictment - that he had learned that profiling was "real, not imagined."

The committee chairman, Senator William L. Gormley, called for a stepped-up investigation of racial profiling last fall, after Judge Smithson dismissed charges against the troopers. After that decision was overturned, Senator Gormley said questions about the indictments' timing would be pursued.

Mr. Gormley, like Justice Verniero, is a Republican, and had been a principal advocate of his Supreme Court nomination in a very bitter confirmation battle. Mr. Verniero won confirmation by one vote, with all the Senate Democrats and three Republicans opposing him.

---

5 Officers Charged With Lying About a Killing

New York Times
March 16, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/16/national/16MIAM.html

MIAMI, March 15 - Five members of the Miami Police Department's SWAT team have been charged with lying during a federal investigation of a 1996 drug raid in which a 73-year-old man was killed in a hail of 123 bullets.

The officers, Jose Acuna, Ralph Fuentes, Arturo Beguiristain, Eliezer Lopez and Alejandro Macias, were indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of obstruction of justice. All five have been on the force at least 12 years.

They were accused of fabricating evidence and agreeing to make false statements regarding the killing of Richard Brown, a retired seaman who was shot by the five officers and a sixth SWAT team member. The indictment said the officers lied in an effort to "justify the deadly force" used on Mr. Brown.

The officers were placed on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of their case, the police said. They could get up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

Four of the officers were charged on Wednesday. Bond was set at $100,000, and they immediately posted bond. The fifth defendant, Officer Macias, turned himself in today and was assigned the same bond.

The SWAT team said that earlier on the day of the raid, Mr. Brown was seen dealing drugs from his home. The officers said he refused to let them into the apartment and then fired two shots from a revolver when they burst through the door. Mr. Brown was fatally shot as his 14- year-old great-granddaughter sought cover. No drugs were found in the home, but drugs were found outside a window.

Mr. Brown's family has said the SWAT team's informers were wrong and called his shooting brutal and unnecessary. Last year the city settled a lawsuit with the family and agreed to pay $2.5 million after an assistant city attorney found the accounts of participating police officers unbelievable and contradictory.

A lawyer for Officer Lopez, Harry Solomon, said the defendants would be vindicated.

"These are fine dedicated police officers who are only being tried because of political pressure exerted on the U.S. Attorney's office," Mr. Solomon said.

-------- spying

WASHINGTON IN BRIEF

Washington Post
Friday, March 16, 2001; Page A07 Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A12624-2001Mar15?language=printer

For the Record

• The FBI chose a 28-year agent and former counterespionage chief at the CIA to coordinate the government's spy-fighting activities. FBI Special Agent David W. Szady was named to head a counterintelligence "board of directors" that includes senior deputies at the CIA and the Defense Department and FBI Director Louis J. Freeh.

---

Veteran Agent Is Chosen to Direct Spy Fighting

New York Times
March 16, 2001
National News Briefs
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/16/national/16NATI.html

WASHINGTON, March 15 (AP) - The F.B.I. named a veteran agent today to coordinate the government's counterintelligence activities.

The agent, David W. Szady, will lead a counterintelligence "board of directors" that includes Louis J. Freeh, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and deputies at the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Department.

Mr. Szady, a special agent in the bureau's office in Portland, Ore., has 25 years of experience in counterintelligence investigations and has been chief of the C.I.A.'s counterintelligence center, the bureau said.

-------

CIA appeals decision in spy case

InfoBeat News
Afternoon Edition - 3/16/2001
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406411515

SEATTLE (AP) - The Central Intelligence Agency is appealing a federal judge's decision to allow a case brought by two Cold War spies to proceed.

In January, U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik ruled for a second time that he would not dismiss the case, which involves a Seattle-area couple who say the agency reneged on a promise of lifetime financial security in return for their help in obtaining intelligence about their homeland.

The CIA maintains that under an 1875 Supreme Court ruling, courts have no power to enforce secret government contracts. In an order made public Thursday, Lasnik agreed to let the CIA take the matter to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

At issue is whether the CIA should be able to break promises to defectors while leaving them no recourse for appeal. The agency and the courts have ignored or dismissed the claims of numerous spies and defectors by falling back on the 1875 ruling, Totten v. United States.

The Totten ruling, which involved a spy hired by the Union during the Civil War, said courts could not rule on alleged secret contracts because the disclosure that such contracts existed could jeopardize national security.

The spies in this case are a former high-ranking foreign diplomat and his wife, now living in the Seattle area. They are identified only as John and Jane Doe in court papers because they may still face charges in their homeland, which has not been disclosed.

The CIA has refused to comment about the case or say whether it made any promises to the couple.

------

Oregon FBI agent gets job as nation's top spy fighter
Counterintelligence expert David W. Szady takes a new post protecting national secrets from domestic and foreign intrusion

The Oregonian
Friday, March 16, 2001
By Mark Larabee of The Oregonian staff
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/news/oregonian/01/03/lc_61szady16.frame

FBI chief Louis J. Freeh on Thursday named David W. Szady, Oregon's top FBI agent and a counterintelligence expert, to the newly created post of coordinating the government's spy-fighting efforts.

As the nation's first governmentwide counterintelligence executive, Szady will be charged with identifying the nation's crown-jewel secrets and developing ways to protect them.

"The key thing about the job is to identify the key assets of the country," said Szady, a 28-year FBI veteran. "What do we need to protect that could cause the most damage to the U.S. if it's stolen and used against us?"

Dubbed "CI-21," which stands for counterintelligence in the 21st century, Szady will lead a staff of government spy catchers whose aim will be to thwart expanding threats from foreign spies, terrorists and computer hackers. He will answer to a board of directors headed by Freeh, and deputy directors of the CIA and Justice and Defense departments.

The group is not charged with protecting just traditional Cold War-like secrets, such as missile guidance systems and weapons technology. It's also looking to cloak private-sector secrets, such as developments in computer chips and software, banking technology and the Internet.

"We have to protect against intrusion into the nation's computer systems," Szady said. "Developing an outreach program to the private sector, like Oregon's Silicon Forest, is a key aspect of CI-21."

The announcement comes a month after the FBI charged one of its own agents, Robert Philip Hanssen, with spying for Moscow for 15 years. Hanssen is alleged to have furnished Russian agents with scores of highly classified national security and counterintelligence information in exchange for more than $600,000.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which reviewed Szady's appointment, said the threat to U.S. security interests is real.

"This is about as important as it gets," Wyden said. "There's been a major breech. The information that got out is not trifling stuff. It's going to take somebody of Dave Szady's character to turn this around."

President Clinton created the new post in January, partly in response to allegations that Taiwan-born nuclear scientist, Wen Ho Lee, was a spy. Federal agents began investigating Lee in 1996 on suspicion that he provided China with design plans for Trident missile warheads. He pleaded guilty in September to one count of mishandling classified information.

Szady said the Lee case is a perfect example of the type of problem CI-21 is designed to avoid. The case resurrected old questions about the nation's somewhat fractured anti-spying efforts. After years of bureaucratic resistance, Szady hopes his work will broaden the efforts of the nation's national security agencies to work together.

"People who are friends could still be our friends, but they're trying to steal our secrets," Szady said. "There are key things within our nuclear program that different countries are looking for."

Szady, 57, who joined the FBI in September 1972 as a field agent in Mobile, Ala., is considered a counterintelligence expert.

From 1975 to 1985, he rose to supervisor of the FBI's headquarters intelligence division, where he oversaw the investigation of convicted U.S. Navy spy John Walker Jr. Before his arrest in May 1985, Walker lead a spy ring that sold secrets to the Soviet Union, including a manual on Navy contingency plans in the event of war in the Middle East.

From 1985 to 1995, Szady ran the FBI's major foreign counterintelligence program in San Francisco, then spent two years there as the assistant special agent in charge, running counterintelligence operations in Silicon Valley.

Beginning in March 1997, Szady was the FBI's chief of counterintelligence and counterespionage, which included being the FBI liaison to the CIA. In May 1999 he was assigned to run the FBI's Portland field office, supervising 92 agents.

Szady said it's painful for him and his family to leave Oregon. He said he's proud that he elevated the FBI's drug, organized crime and white-collar crime investigative teams, expanded the agency's presence in Eastern Oregon and developed crucial working relations with local police.

You can reach Mark Larabee at 503-294-7664 or by e-mail at marklarabee@news.oregonian.com.


-------- activists

Lawsuit Challenges New Policing Strategy Aimed At Political Speech

From: Partnership for Civil Justice <pcj@justiceonline.org>
Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 18:14:23 +0000
Subject: [I01] J20 suit

NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD
National Office: Heidi Boghosian, Exec. Dir., 212-627-2656, ext. 11 Washington, DC: Zachary Wolfe, Nat'l V.P., 202-530-5992

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 3/15/01

Lawsuit Challenges New Policing Strategy Aimed At Political Speech

The Partnership for Civil Justice and the National Lawyers Guild today have filed an amended complaint to hold government agencies accountable for their unconstitutional conduct on Inauguration Day, and their misrepresentations to the Court that week. "This lawsuit challenges the unchecked use of repressive militarized police forces against civilians who seek to express political dissent," said NLG member Mara Verheyden-Hilliard of the Partnership for Civil Justice.

The lawsuit began the week before the Inauguration, in an effort to prevent the government from silencing political speech. Papers filed then demonstrated a well-founded fear that protesters critical of the Bush Administration and the 2000 electoral process would be subjected to an unprecedented police presence and be singled out and obstructed in accessing the sidewalks and plazas along Pennsylvania Avenue, where they planned to communicate political messages to the newly inaugurated president and the general public. Despite promises by the government in open court, papers filed today indicate that the "checkpoints" were used to prevent demonstrators from gaining access to the parade route, while access for Bush supporters was largely unimpeded. "They turned control of the Freedom Plaza checkpoint over to the Presidential Inaugural Committee. This proves that the protesters' concerns from the start were justified - these checkpoints were solely to benefit the PIC, and the incoming President's political allies," said Carl Messineo of the Partnership for Civil Justice.

Moreover, the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department continued its pattern of violent disruption of peaceful protesters. The MPD unlawfully detained hundreds of demonstrators five blocks away from the checkpoints for approximately one hour. There and elsewhere, the MPD used batons without justification, seriously injuring several demonstrators and instilling fear in everyone who dared to speak out on Inauguration Day. MPD even enforced a law struck down as unconstitutional by the Court on January 19.

"In addition to these violent and chilling attacks on demonstrators, which have become shamefully typical police reactions to political demonstrations in recent months, we today have clear indications of unlawful and extraordinarily troubling conduct by agent provocateurs" said Zachary Wolfe, a PCJ attorney and NLG National Vice President. One person infiltrated protest planning meetings last year, and suggested using explosives - a suggestion that was of course immediately condemned by these peaceful demonstrators. Other agent provocateurs were caught on video circulating throughout the crowds and assaulting peaceful, lawful demonstrators with pepper spray.

The National Lawyers Guild urges its members and supporters throughout the country, as well as the media and general public, to monitor the development of this case and be on guard for similar attacks on political expression elsewhere. We are aware of similar attacks on speech in other jurisdictions, and fully support this lawsuit and other efforts to defend the precious constitutional right of free speech.

Partnership for Civil Justice, Inc. 1901 Pennsylvania Ave., NW Suite 607 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 530-5630

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Protesting workers greet PM

Australian News Network
16mar01
From AAP
http://news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,1807688%255E1702,00.html

16:20 (AEDT) MORE than 100 protesting workers and trade unionists gave Prime Minister John Howard a noisy reception when he arrived at a meet and greet session in Sydney's west today.

The prime minister had come to the Parramatta Town Hall to talk to local business and community leaders but found the front entrance surrounded by demonstrators, including the sacked workers from Matraville factory Grenadier Coating.

Mr Howard managed to slip into a side door and make his speech at the function.

However, as the Prime Minister left the building the protesters swarmed around him shouting "Shame Howard shame".

About 70 workers at Grenadier Coating, operated by Chircan Holdings and Mahiya Holdings, were last week left jobless and owed $650,000 after the company went bust.

The employees later found out that many of their superannuation and other entitlements had not been paid since last August.

Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union of Australia (TCFUA) state secretary Barry Tubner challenged Mr Howard to treat the workers the same as he did the sacked National Textile employees just over a year ago.

Mr Howard's brother Stanley was a director of National Textiles.

"The PM said the textile workers were special and he said it had nothing to do with his brother," Mr Tubner said.

"Well it is quite obvious that these workers are as special as the National Textile people and the only thing we haven't got is his brother.

"So I challenge him to look after these employees the same as he did the other group of workers.

"If it is true that his brother had no involvement in his decision-making, then these people should be able to expect his help."

Union organiser Joe Isaacs said Grenadier Coating was guilty of fraud after the union discovered superannuation contributions and a worker's child support payments had not been met.

"It is tantamount to fraud or embezzlement of people's money," he said.

Mr Isaacs said the government's current liquidation laws did not do enough to protect workers' entitlements.

"I'd like to see the government put legislation in place so that directors of companies can be held personally responsible for rip-offs like this," he said.

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French nuclear sub aborts docking

Australian News Network
16mar01
From AAP
http://news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,1807660%255E1702,00.html

16:00 (AEDT) ANTI-NUCLEAR demonstrators today claimed the scheduled docking of a French nuclear submarine south-west of Perth was aborted because of the group's protests.

Fremantle Anti-Nuclear Group (FANG) destroyed an effigy of a submarine on a beach 40km south west of Perth today before sailing to the Garden Island naval base to protest against the movements of the French submarine FNS Perle.

The group had planned to deliver a letter, written in French, to the Perle's captain asking that the vessel be removed from Perth, returned to France and decommissioned.

However, FANG spokesman Scott Ludlam said the submarine had heard of the planned protests and decided to undertake its crew change at sea.

"It's a major victory for us. Cockburn Sound is nuclear free for another day," Mr Ludlam said.

FANG questioned why the submarine was given permission to dock at Garden Island, saying the Australian government did not have a defence agreement with the French.

The group also claimed safety plans surrounding the submarine's visit were so poor that any accidents would lead to "Chernobyl in Western Australia".

"The community of Perth weren't asked if we wanted a nuclear reactor floated into Cockburn Sound," Mr Ludlam said.

"We've had a look at the safety plans and think they're pathetic.

"Frankly, if there's an accident on the ship, we're stuffed. It would be Chernobyl in Western Australia."

Today's protest came as a French court blocked a state-owned nuclear reprocessing firm from unloading a cargo of Australian spent nuclear fuel.

Mr Ludlam said the protesters took great confidence from the reports from Cherbourg today of the successful court bid by environmental group Greenpeace to deny access to a ship carrying spent uranium rods from a French port.

------- Onelist (submissions from subscribers)