------- Index of Articles
NUCLEAR
Sub commander: 'I was trying my best'
Sub Skipper Takes Responsibility
Sailor Admits Not Reporting Japanese Boat
Arms and the Taiwanese
China policy check
The Nuke Slayer
Italy agrees with EU on uranium
Plans To Import Spent Nuclear Fuel
Snags Hit FPL-Entergy Merger Plan
MILITARY
Raids finds proof of Colombian rebel drug-running
PM's drug clean-out
Mexico suggests legalizing drugs
Experts may have spotted vanished Mars lander
Taco Bell promises free tacos if Mir hits target
China nixed extension of U.N. Macedonia force
OTHER
Bush warns of looming energy crisis
Ship carrying acid sinks off Spain
Aral Sea gone dry
Bush reverses standards for water contamination
Bush Proposes Rollback on Mining Law
Oil rig sinks off Brazil's coast
Turkey, IMF reach initial deal
New Jersey troopers: Ex-AG knew of profiling
Jailed Woman in Peru Is Tried in Open Court
Berenson to be tried on terror charges
ACTIVISTS
Please boycott amazon.com! Here's why.
SQ butt of summit protest as artists toss toilet paper
US-Mexico Border Mobilization
Guatemalan students occupy schools
CFT resolution on the Energy Industry
-------- NUCLEAR
Sub commander: 'I was trying my best'
USA Today
03/20/2001
http://usatoday.com/news/nation/2001-03-20-sub-waddle.htm
PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii (AP) - By turns apologetic and defensive, the skipper of a submarine that sank a Japanese trawler took the stand Tuesday, blaming errors by himself and his crew for the accident.
"These mistakes were honest and well-intentioned," said Cmdr. Scott Waddle, who testified as the Navy court of inquiry neared an end.
Waddle's sworn testimony was a surprise because his attorney had indicated he would not testify without immunity, which the Navy rejected.
Waddle said he asked for immunity "in the event the international and political environment dictated that I be sacrificed to an unwarranted court-martial." While criticizing the Navy's decision, he said he decided it was imperative he speak.
"This court and the families need to hear from me," he said, turning to face some of the victims' relatives. The wives of two of those killed brushed away tears as Waddle spoke.
Waddle's boat, the USS Greeneville, smashed into the Japanese fishing vessel Ehime Maru while demonstrating a rapid-surfacing drill for 16 civilians. Nine people, including four teen-age boys, were killed.
Waddle said he was "truly sorry for the loss of life and the incalculable grief."
"As commanding officer, I am solely responsible for this truly tragic accident, and for the rest of my life I will live with the horrible consequences of my decisions and actions that resulted in the loss of the Ehime Maru," he said.
But he also told the three admirals presiding over the court, "I was trying my best to do the job that I was assigned" and appeared to shift some of the blame to his crew for failing to provide sufficient backup.
The inquiry has focused on whether Waddle rushed preparations for surfacing, and whether he performed an inadequate periscope search before taking the Greeneville up.
Waddle disputed earlier testimony that he ran an informal - if not lax - ship.
"I was not informal," he insisted.
One by one he answered the criticisms leveled at him and his command over the last two weeks.
Under questioning from Rear Adm. David Stone, Waddle said that much of what happened on Feb. 9 fell short of his own command standards and that he was unaware of the problems until the inquiry.
For example, Waddle said he didn't know that nine of 13 watch stations were not manned by the originally designated crewmen and that one sonar station was watched by a trainee rather than a qualified crew member. Waddle said he assumes those crewmen took it upon themselves to swap stations and relieve their colleagues.
"That, to me, does not meet this standard of yours," Stone said, referring to Waddle's command credo of "safety, efficiency and backup." Stone said it indicated a "loose organization."
"It was not effective planning. I don't refute that," Waddle admitted, noting that commanding officers often rely on their subordinates to ensure scheduling is done properly.
"It's obvious that the plan was not efficient, because the plan didn't work," he said.
Waddle said he was surprised to learn trainees had been working alone in the sonar room for the two years he commanded Greeneville and that it took "a horrible, tragic accident" to raise the issue.
"Well, captain, it was your boat," interjected Vice Adm. John Nathman, the inquiry's presiding officer.
Later, Nathman questioned whether Waddle, who took the submarine on a series of sharp, tight turns for the VIP guests was "just giving them the E-ticket ride at Disneyland on a submarine."
Under investigation are Waddle; his executive officer, Lt. Cmdr. Gerald Pfeifer; and the officer of the deck, Lt. j.g. Michael Coen. All three could face courts-martial. Before Waddle testified, a Navy lawyer listed the crimes he is suspected of committing: dereliction of duty, improper hazarding of a vessel and negligent homicide.
After Waddle's testimony, closing arguments were expected.
Once the inquiry concludes, the panel will produce a report of its findings and recommend whether the officers should be punished. The report goes to Adm. Thomas Fargo, head of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, who has up to 30 days to review it and take final action.
-------
Sub Skipper Takes Responsibility
Yahoo News
By JEAN CHRISTENSEN, Associated Press Writer
Associated Press - Tuesday March 20 3:47 PM ET
PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii (AP) - By turns apologetic and defensive, the skipper of a submarine that sank a Japanese trawler took the stand Tuesday, blaming errors by himself and his crew for the accident.
``These mistakes were honest and well-intentioned,'' said Cmdr. Scott Waddle, who testified as the Navy court of inquiry neared an end.
Waddle's sworn testimony was a surprise because his attorney had indicated he would not testify without immunity, which the Navy rejected.
Waddle said he asked for immunity ``in the event the international and political environment dictated that I be sacrificed to an unwarranted court-martial.'' While criticizing the Navy's decision, he said he decided it was imperative he speak.
``This court and the families need to hear from me,'' he said, turning to face some of the victims' relatives. The wives of two of those killed brushed away tears as Waddle spoke.
Waddle's boat, the USS Greeneville (news - web sites), smashed into the Japanese fishing vessel Ehime Maru while demonstrating a rapid-surfacing drill for 16 civilians. Nine people, including four teen-age boys, were killed.
Waddle said he was ``truly sorry for the loss of life and the incalculable grief.''
``As commanding officer, I am solely responsible for this truly tragic accident, and for the rest of my life I will live with the horrible consequences of my decisions and actions that resulted in the loss of the Ehime Maru,'' he said.
But he also told the three admirals presiding over the court, ``I was trying my best to do the job that I was assigned'' and appeared to shift some of the blame to his crew for failing to provide sufficient backup.
The inquiry has focused on whether Waddle rushed preparations for surfacing, and whether he performed an inadequate periscope search before taking the Greeneville up.
Waddle disputed earlier testimony that he ran an informal - if not lax - ship.
``I was not informal,'' he insisted.
One by one he answered the criticisms leveled at him and his command over the last two weeks.
Under questioning from Rear Adm. David Stone, Waddle said that much of what happened on Feb. 9 fell short of his own command standards and that he was unaware of the problems until the inquiry.
For example, Waddle said he didn't know that nine of 13 watch stations were not manned by the originally designated crewmen and that one sonar station was watched by a trainee rather than a qualified crew member. Waddle said he assumes those crewmen took it upon themselves to swap stations and relieve their colleagues.
``That, to me, does not meet this standard of yours,'' Stone said, referring to Waddle's command credo of ``safety, efficiency and backup.'' Stone said it indicated a ``loose organization.''
``It was not effective planning. I don't refute that,'' Waddle admitted, noting that commanding officers often rely on their subordinates to ensure scheduling is done properly.
``It's obvious that the plan was not efficient, because the plan didn't work,'' he said.
Waddle said he was surprised to learn trainees had been working alone in the sonar room for the two years he commanded Greeneville and that it took ``a horrible, tragic accident'' to raise the issue.
``Well, captain, it was your boat,'' interjected Vice Adm. John Nathman, the inquiry's presiding officer.
Later, Nathman questioned whether Waddle, who took the submarine on a series of sharp, tight turns for the VIP guests was ``just giving them the E-ticket ride at Disneyland on a submarine.''
Under investigation are Waddle; his executive officer, Lt. Cmdr. Gerald Pfeifer; and the officer of the deck, Lt. j.g. Michael Coen. All three could face courts-martial. Before Waddle testified, a Navy lawyer listed the crimes he is suspected of committing: dereliction of duty, improper hazarding of a vessel and negligent homicide.
After Waddle's testimony, closing arguments were expected.
Once the inquiry concludes, the panel will produce a report of its findings and recommend whether the officers should be punished. The report goes to Adm. Thomas Fargo, head of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, who has up to 30 days to review it and take final action.
---
Sailor Admits Not Reporting Japanese Boat
New York Times
March 20, 2001
By JAMES STERNGOLD
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/20/national/20HAWA.html
HONOLULU, March 19 - The petty officer on the nuclear attack submarine Greeneville charged with tracking nearby vessels testified today that the ship's sonars showed several times that the Japanese trawler Ehime Maru was within close range before they collided. But he said that he failed to notice all the readings, and that he did not notify the submarine's captain even when there was evidence of a problem.
The witness, Petty Officer First Class Patrick T. Seacrest, was the so-called fire control technician when his submarine surfaced abruptly off Hawaii on Feb. 9 and rammed the Ehime Maru, sinking it. Nine people were lost in the accident.
Petty Officer Seacrest never fully explained his fatal lapse in not providing the critical information, and if anything, his testimony made it more inexplicable.
At one point, he said, he was focused on tracking a ship that had just been picked up by the sonar and so missed signs that the Ehime Maru was getting perilously near the Greeneville.
He also said that when the ship's computers showed the Japanese vessel closing in, at about 2,000 yards, he assumed they were wrong, because the Greeneville's captain had checked through the periscope several times and not seen the vessel. So, he testified, he manually programmed the computer to show the Ehime Maru out of range because of the lack of a sighting.
"That's not a proper procedure, is it?" asked the lawyer for Cmdr. Scott D. Waddle, Charles W. Gittins.
Petty Officer Seacrest replied, "No, it's not written down anywhere."
His testimony came in what appeared be the final phase of the court of inquiry's investigation into the collision. Lawyers for Commander Waddle will decide on Tuesday whether he will testify.
Two of the three senior officers who are the targets of the inquiry offered limited testimony today. Lt. j.g. Michael J. Coen, the Greeneville's officer of the deck the day of the accident, offered unsworn testimony, which meant that he could not be cross-examined by the Navy. He offered an apology and pleaded to be allowed to continue his Navy service, but offered no details of what happened on the submarine that day.
"I want you to know that you are in my thoughts and prayers at all times," Lieutenant Coen said to family members of the Ehime Maru's crew who were present. "And you will be for the rest of my life."
Lawyers for the other officer, Lt. Cmdr. Gerald K. Pfeifer, the ship's second in command, submitted a written statement to the court that was not made public.
But this morning Commander Waddle broke his silence and told reporters in front of the court that if he did testify, he would take responsibility for the accident.
"The first word I will say to the court will be that fact - that I'm accountable and I'm responsible for the accident that led to the tragic collision and sinking of the Ehime Maru," Commander Waddle said. "None of my crew members should be accountable or responsible for that accident."
Petty Officer Seacrest indicated that the submarine rushed through some of its safety procedures, like a visual check of the area through its periscope, before it shot to the surface in a drill that was conducted largely for the benefit of 16 civilian guests aboard the submarine.
The captain took just 80 seconds for those checks, at two levels, rather than the norm, about three minutes. But Petty Officer Seacrest also said he was not overburdened, tracking just three ships in the area.
An earlier investigation by the Navy had determined that Petty Officer Seacrest was slightly hampered in his work of tracking nearby vessels by the presence of civilians in the control room that day.
But Petty Officer Seacrest plainly contradicted that earlier assessment today, saying that if he had noticed the Ehime Maru's close range earlier he could have notified the captain easily. He was granted immunity for his testimony today, which means it cannot be used against him later in a military court.
Petty Officer Seacrest seemed to take responsibility for the accident, but the lapses that caused the disaster still seemed hard to comprehend, even to some of the senior Navy officers involved in the court of inquiry here.
One of the more puzzling portions of the sailor's testimony came when he repeated that the captain and two most senior officers on the ship were not just competent but highly qualified, and yet they failed to even notice that Petty Officer Seacrest, who was so trusted that he was an official career counselor to junior crewmen, was not plotting by hand the coordinates of nearby vessels on the paper wall chart.
In response to questioning by Mr. Gittins, Petty Officer Seacrest said the top officers maintained the highest standards on board the Greeneville.
"And for whatever reason that day you chose not to maintain that standard?" Mr. Gittins asked.
"That is correct," Petty Officer Seacrest responded.
Capt. Bruce MacDonald, the counsel for the court of inquiry, at one point asked pointedly, "You got lazy, didn't you, Petty Officer Seacrest?"
Petty Officer Seacrest replied: "Yes, sir. A little bit."
Petty Officer Seacrest said that while the submarine was preparing check the area with its periscope, the captain had told him he had a "good feel for the contact picture."
In one confusing moment, Captain MacDonald noted that Petty Officer Seacrest had manually moved the Ehime Maru's position from roughly 2,000 yards away to more than 9,000 yards only after the collision, according to the submarine's computer records. Petty Officer Seacrest insisted, however, that he recalled taking that step before the collision.
His testimony came on what may have been the last day in which officers will provide sworn testimony in this phase of the Navy's inquiry. Earlier today, the head of the inquiry, Adm. Thomas B. Fargo, announced that he decided to refuse a request by Commander Waddle for immunity.
Mr. Gittins had said earlier that Commander Waddle would exercise his right to refuse to testify unless he received the grant.
Once this inquiry concludes, perhaps on Tuesday, the three admirals presiding over it will provide recommendations on what actions the Navy should take against the three officers. Admiral Fargo will then have 30 days to issue a final decision.
As fire control technician, Petty Officer Seacrest takes sonar data and plots it on computers and on a paper map nearby to provide a clear picture of all vessels in the vicinity. He admitted that he failed to update the paper chart with accurate data.
He said that as the captain prepared to raise the submarine up high enough to scan the area through the periscope, he had not noticed that the Ehime Maru had closed in, from 15,000 yards to 4,000 yards, because he was focused on another ship that had just been detected by the sonar.
-------- china
Arms and the Taiwanese
Washington Times
March 20, 2001
Gary Schmitt
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-house-2001320191526.htm
During Chinese Vice Prime Minister Qian Qichen's visit to the United States this week, his principal goal will be to convince the Bush administration not to sell new, advanced weapons to Taiwan. A decision on the sales is due from the administration in April. This year's decision is more fraught with consequences than usual, for it comes at a turning point for all concerned.
In China, Jiang Zemin is preparing to step down from his leadership post in 2002. Accomplishing Taiwan's merger with the mainland is a key element in establishing his legacy. His predecessors, Mao Tse-tung and Deng Xiao-ping, brought Tibet and Hong Kong under Beijing's control. Mr. Jiang will look like a failure if he does not make great strides toward reunification with Taiwan.
Not surprisingly, China's policy toward Taiwan has grown increasingly belligerent. Last year, in a major policy shift, China announced that Taipei's failure to resume talks on unification would be grounds for military action. Previously, the Chinese position was: "If you veer from the status quo, we will use force." Now the position is, "If you cling to the status quo, we will use force."
China has spent enormous sums over the past decade improving its ability to launch an attack on Taiwan, deploying hundreds of surface-to-surface missiles and buying advanced aircraft, submarines, surface ships and cruise missiles from Russia. And Beijing announced earlier this month that it intends to increase its military spending by 18 percent this year.
Meanwhile, Taiwan is also at a crossroads as a result of its extraordinary transformation from dictatorship to democracy. Last March, Taiwan accomplished its first-ever peaceful transfer of power from the long-ruling Kuomintang to the Democratic Progressive Party of new president Chen Shui-bian. Despite its historic political transformation - and conciliatory policies toward the mainland - however, Taiwan has yet to be welcomed by the democratic family of nations. In fact, Taiwan remains as isolated as ever.
More worrying still, it is becoming increasingly vulnerable to Chinese military pressure. While Taiwan has tried to respond to China's efforts by reforming its own military, it does not have the wherewithal to counter China's build-up alone. Only the United States, or its allies, can provide the necessary "hardware" (submarines, and air and missile defenses) and "software" (from training to assistance in developing operational doctrines) to offset the mainland's new capabilities.
Moreover, it often takes years to build and deliver the weapons systems Taiwan needs. And years of delayed sales by the United States have allowed China to build up its own capabilities without a corresponding build-up on Taiwan's side of the Strait.
Which brings us to the United States. The end of the Cold War brought a substantial shift in American strategic priorities. Put simply, the biggest challenge to American interests is no longer the Soviet Union, but China's rising power and its expressed desire to undermine America's ability to exercise its role as the world's only superpower. And while Beijing's strategy is played out in any number of ways - including providing weapons technology to U.S. adversaries, such as Iran and Iraq - the most immediate point of contention is Taiwan.
Unfortunately, despite the moral and strategic imperatives created by Taiwan's democratic transformation and China's emergence as a contentious power, our Taiwan policy has not changed to meet these new circumstances. The Clinton administration for eight years allowed Taiwan's defensive capabilities to deteriorate, while doing virtually nothing to decrease Taiwan's political and diplomatic isolation.
In classic Clintonian fashion, announcements of arms sales hid important truths; that certain items were recycled from previous years, while others would stay in mothballs in the United States, only to be delivered in the event of a crisis half the world away. In general, his administration treated Taiwan, not China, as though it were the cause of instability in the region.
The Clinton team believed that appeasing China in the short term would pay off as China reformed internally and let go of its vision of a "greater China." Following this logic, officials inserted themselves more and more into the cross-straits negotiations, and increasingly tilted toward Beijing's perspective. Yet this sanguine vision of China's future is just one of many possibilities that may play out in China, and most analysts see a nationalistic attachment to Taiwan as a significant feature of Chinese policy for the indefinite future. The United States simply cannot condition its security policy, or its obligations to Taiwan, on China's distant and uncertain democratization. Indeed, containing Chinese adventurism abroad is probably a prerequisite for China tackling the very serious problems it has at home.
All this may now change. The new Bush foreign policy team includes officials who understand that, over the past several years, the United States has emboldened China while weakening U.S. alliances with the democrats in the region. They have watched as China, no longer worried about the huge threat once posed by the Soviets along its borders, openly takes aim at America's leadership position in Asia. And they recognize what a strategic disaster it would be for the United States were Taiwan to be coerced militarily and brought under the control of an aggressive, authoritarian Beijing.
We'll know soon whether President Bush can translate this understanding into action. How he decides to meet the Taiwan challenge will signal both China and America's allies in Asia about whether the new administration is going to keep to its campaign pledge to treat China as a "strategic competitor" or will instead allow the military balance between China and Taiwan to continue to tilt in Beijing's favor.
Gary Schmitt is executive director of the Project for the New American Century.
---
China policy check
Washington Times
EDITORIAL • March 20, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-house-2001320182945.htm
With the visit this week of Chinese Vice Premier Qian Qichen, President Bush has the opportunity to execute a more appropriate and realistic policy toward China.
A recent congressional report found that Taiwan urgently needs to bolster its defense, both in terms of weaponry and intelligence, and should establish closer ties with the U.S. military. The president should put into effect the recommendations of this report, and thereby show Beijing that he remains vigilant as regards the security threat that China poses to the United States and its friends.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff report concludes that current U.S. policy toward Taiwan is "outdated, dangerous," and could lead to a conflict between Taiwan and China that would involve the United States. Bill Gertz, a reporter for The Washington Times, obtained a copy of the report. Taiwan and the United States should set up direct communications between the Pentagon, the Hawaii-based Pacific Command and Taiwan's Defense Ministry, the report said. Furthermore, the militaries of the two countries should train and conduct exercises together. Finally, Taiwan wants and needs a variety of weapons systems, which it would like to purchase from the United States, the report said. Four Aegis-equipped guided missile destroyers, to improve Taiwan's capability to defend against aircraft attacks; P-3 submarine-hunting aircraft with longer-range and more accurate missiles, to challenge any potential Chinese blockade, and high-speed anti-radiation missiles (HARM), to counter new Chinese S-300 surface-to-air missiles deployed near Taiwan, are among the items on Taiwan's wish list. Taiwan's need for better protection from China is substantiated by recent U.S. intelligence, which found that when the Chinese military simulated a sea-borne blockade against Taiwan, mock U.S. aircraft carriers did absolutely nothing, indicating the Chinese don't expect the U.S. military to defend Taiwan in such a scenario.
China conducted the military exercise seven months after U.S. Adm. Dennis Blair, the Pacific commander, had met privately with top Chinese generals in Beijing, and informed them that the United States stands ready to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack. According to one official, the Chinese generals dismissed the statement as "a laughable bluster." And seven months ago, they would have been right. The same ought not be true today.
Mr. Bush must demonstrate to China that the Clintonian, for-sale foreign policy era is now over. This does not mean that we should give up on having trade relations with the Chinese, just that the United States should be willing to take a more balanced and realistic approach. Taiwan deserves as much.
-------- depleted uranium
The Nuke Slayer
DISCOVER Vol. 22 No. 4 (April 2001)
Discover Dialogue: Arjun Makhijani The Nuke Slayer
Say the word nuclear, and scandal seems to follow, from Chernobyl to America's polluted nuclear-weapons production facilities. The latest controversy centers on the Balkans, where NATO forces fired more than 40,000 shells with dense, armor-piercing tips made of depleted uranium. At least 15 European soldiers who served there have developed or died of leukemia in the past five years. Outraged relatives blame the deaths on these munitions, a link the Pentagon hotly disputes. Arjun Makhijani, an engineer and president of the Maryland-based Institute for Energy and Environment Research, has analyzed past environmental abuses in his book Nuclear Wastelands: A Global Guide to Nuclear Weapons Production and its Health and Environmental Effects (MIT Press, 2000). He shares his thoughts with Discover associate editor Josie Glausiusz.
What's your opinion of current controversy over depleted uranium missiles?
It's a huge, huge scandal. These complaints deserve to be investigated seriously, but instead the American government is dismissing them without adequate study. This is very reminiscent to me of what the government did with the people who helped make nuclear weapons. It said, "No, you weren't hurt; we are sure the doses were low; really conditions were very safe; you didn't breathe very much radioactive material." Last year, of course, they made a blanket admission that half-a-million workers were put in harm's way, and we don't know how many of them got cancer as a result.
How could these missiles harm human health?
When they're fired, the metal burns at a very high temperature. And the fine particles that result are not the same as is seen typically, say, in a factory that makes depleted uranium metal. Some researchers have suggested that the uranium oxide dust created at very high temperatures will stay in the body for much, much longer than oxide which is generated at lower temperatures, because it is a kind of insoluble ceramic particle that dissolves a lot more slowly, and so may be eliminated from the body a lot more slowly. How might these particles cause cancer?
Depleted uranium is primarily dangerous when it's inside your body, because it emits alpha radiation, which gravely damages the cells near where it is located, or even a single cell. So if you breathe it in, for instance, it can increase the risk of lung cancer, and it can migrate to the bones. Soldiers and civilians who handle depleted uranium shells could get cuts in the hands or arms, and so get oxide particles directly into the bloodstream.
Do you believe that depleted uranium missiles caused cancer deaths among soldiers who served in the Balkans?
I don't know. Cancer is a very common disease, there were a lot of soldiers there, and we must be careful in making scientific conclusions. I think four things are called for. One, the suspension of use of depleted uranium missiles. Two, conducting independent studies. Three, giving the benefit of the doubt to both the civilians and combatants so that they get the medical treatment they deserve. Fourthly, committing to cleanup. You cannot pretend that modern war is precise in its effects, and that just because no NATO troops died during the 1999 Yugoslavia-NATO war [in Kosovo] the long-term effects on the combatants and noncombatants are negligible or can be ignored. In the case of depleted uranium, there's a lot of it lying around. There should be some declaration of what was used, where it was used, how much, where it's expected to be found, and where it can be recovered.
What in your opinion are the most pressing nuclear issues today?
In the nuclear power field, it's the continued use of plutonium as a fuel for reactors, and the continued reprocessing and piling-up of commercial plutonium stocks in Russia, France, England and Japan. It's a waste of money, it's a proliferation risk and there are problems with significant discharges of radioactivity into the environment.
Then there is the problem of about 4400 nuclear warheads on hair-trigger alert in the United States and Russia combined. The high alert state is getting more and more dangerous all the time, because Russia is losing its infrastructure. They don't have radar coverage of the sky. They don't have sufficient satellites up to provide them with 24-hour tracking of up-and-coming missiles. So they are more prone to make mistakes. I think it is extremely dangerous for the United States and Russia to persist in keeping warheads on tactical alert.
Have nuclear weapons contributed in any way to peace?
No. The most you can say about nuclear weapons is that they seem to have prevented white people from going at each other's throats. They have not directly fought each other in Europe for the last fifty years. But instead they have exported wars to the Third World. This idea that nuclear weapons have maintained the peace is a fantasy that has been created by the short-sightedness and self-absorption of the Europeans who have been writing history for the last couple of hundred years.
Do you think the world will ever rid itself of nuclear weapons?
Well, my mother sometimes wonders what I am doing in this business. She keeps telling me it's not going to change. My answer to her is, "I have to try. I can't look at myself in the face and say I'm not trying, knowing what I know." I do think that if the world doesn't rid itself of nuclear weapons, that we are inviting nuclear chaos. Look at the Middle Eastern question. There is also a commitment under the extension of the non-proliferation treaty to create a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East. Now, if there is no resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian question, then how the nuclear situation in the Middle East evolves will be anybody's guess.
Why do you do what you do?
We want to democratize science. We don't think you can really be a democracy in the true sense unless you understand the important scientific issues of modern life, especially in the environmental and energy fields. Right now we're doing a study on the environmental effects of modern war. Our work on depleted uranium will be part of that.
Do you think that nuclear materials should be allowed in space for peaceful purposes?
I respect the idea of space exploration. I think we know a lot more about our planet because of what space explorers have done. But what many people don't realize is that the amount of plutonium in the Cassini mission to Saturn contains more radioactive plutonium than has been released in all the atmospheric weapons testing. I think there are other ways to do these missions, and we should carefully evaluate the priority for doing them. What is the hurry to get to Pluto or Saturn? We are doing a very bad job of husbanding this planet. Maybe we ought to leave the other planets alone for a little while until we learn to take care of the one we've got.
For more information about the work of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, see http://www.ieer.org/.
For data on depleted uranium use in the Balkans see http://www.antenna.nl/wise/uranium/dissbk.html
-------
Italy agrees with EU on uranium
InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 3/20/2001
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406443343
http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/printer/
ROME (AP) - An Italian panel has reached the same conclusion as European Union experts: there is no proven link between depleted uranium and cancer in soldiers.
The Italians, however, on Monday recommended the continued monitoring of soldiers' health.
The incidence of cancers in soldiers who served in Bosnia and Kosovo was lower than the normal incidence of such tumors in the overall population, said Franco Mandelli, head of the investigative panel commissioned by the Defense Ministry.
Earlier this month, EU experts concluded that depleted uranium used in armor-piercing weapons had no link to health problems, findings that concurred with NATO's own studies.
U.S. aircraft used munitions containing depleted uranium, a slightly radioactive heavy metal, during the 78-day air campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999, as well as in Bosnia in 1994 and 1995.
Concerns arose in several European countries this year when Italy began studying the illnesses of veterans of Balkans peacekeeping missions.
The Italian commission studied 28 cases of cancer from late 1995 through January 2001 in 39,450 Italian soldiers. Ten of those cases ended in death. Comparing the incidence of cancer in Italian soldiers to Italians in general, the panel found that the number of cases in soldiers was ``significantly lower than the expected'' number, the commission said.
Mandelli did note that the rate of Hodgkin's disease was higher than expected _ nine instead of four cases _ as well as that of acute lymphatic leukemia _ two instead of the expected incidence of one.
But he said those findings were ``not statistically significant,'' given the overall number of cancers and the size of the population studied.
-------- russia
Plans To Import Spent Nuclear Fuel Prompt Safety Concerns
Radio Free Europe
01/03/20
By Sophie Lambroschini
http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/2001/03/20032001115129.asp
Russia's lower house of parliament is scheduled to vote on March 22 on the second reading of a controversial plan to import spent nuclear fuel. The plan, which has the active support of the atomic energy ministry, proposes to lift Russia's 1992 ban on nuclear-waste imports. It swept easily through its first reading in December, outraging both domestic and international environmental groups. While the largely submissive Duma looks likely to pass the plan, many doubts remain about the feasibility, safety, and political import it. In this first of a three-part series, RFE/RL Moscow correspondent Sophie Lambroschini looks at the details of the ministry's proposal and whether it can actually work.
Moscow, 20 March 2001 (RFE/RL) -- One of the most worrisome after-effects of the industrial world's weakness for atomic power is spent nuclear fuel. Worldwide, nearly 200,000 tons of spent fuel from nuclear power plants are sitting in temporary containers as scientists and government leaders debate the best way of disposing of the radioactive and non-biodegradable waste.
With no simple solution to the problem, Russia's Atomic Energy Ministry proposal to dispose of some 20,000 tons of the world's spent fuel might seem like a reasonable option. The ministry has argued that Siberia's vast stretches of uninhabited land are an ideal temporary repository for spent nuclear fuel -- and Russia's key to earning billions of dollars from countries looking to get rid of their waste.
According to the ministry's market research, the project could bring as much as $20 billion to the country's cash-strapped coffers. Minister Yevgeni Adamov has said that a part of the profits could cover the cost of boosting safety and environmental standards in the country's own nuclear industry.
Advocates of the plan have an additional benefit in mind: reprocessing the spent fuel to extract plutonium, which can then be burned in converted nuclear reactors instead of more traditional low-enriched uranium.
By the ministry's logic, the plan will allow Russia to have its cake and eat it too. It will make money and receive the raw materials for an endless source of energy at the same time.
Adamov is so convinced of the merits of the plan of creating a self-perpetuating energy system that pays for itself that he even refuses to refer to spent fuel as "waste:"
"We don't plan to import nuclear waste. And whoever uses that word to describe spent nuclear fuel -- the most valuable source of energy and the most strategically valuable raw material, since other types will eventually run out -- either has a bad memory or confuses things on purpose."
But regardless of whether it is called waste or raw material, critics say spent fuel is not something that Russia -- with its dubious nuclear-safety record -- should be importing. Adamov's plan has been attacked by a number of environmental groups as well as Russia's state agency for nuclear safety, Gosatomnadzor. Andrei Kislov, who co-authored the agency's analysis of Adamov's proposal, says any move to lift the 1992 import ban would be premature:
"If nuclear fuel is imported now, it will be stored in conditions that are not up to existing safety demands."
Kislov says that the two existing Siberian sites that have been earmarked for the project are run-down and not prepared to either reprocess or store large quantities of incoming spent fuel. He says Russia should set up proper reprocessing facilities and storage space -- as well as pass laws governing compensation for damage in case of nuclear accidents -- and only then lift the ban:
"The sites that exist at Mayak in the city of Ozyorsk [in the southern Urals] and at the chemical plant in Zheleznogorsk [in eastern Siberia] aren't made for such large additional quantities of spent nuclear fuel. They just don't have the capacity to store this safely. So the task is to build the necessary [storage sites] and, if also required, reprocessing facilities. For the moment these things don't exist, so we at Gosatomnadzor think that it is too early to change the legislation to allow imports of fuel."
The question of storage is further complicated by reprocessing, which creates waste that is even more radioactive and difficult to store than the original spent fuel. This second-generation waste, which can come in liquid, solid, and gas form, must be stored in special ceramic containers buried deep underground in order to avoid the risk of contamination.
An additional problem is that no one reprocessor can handle the wide variety of the world's spent fuels. Mayak's RT-1 reprocessor, for example, is built to accept spent fuel from Russian nuclear submarines and certain pressurized water reactors, but would most likely have to be adapted to process fuel from nuclear reactors in potential client countries like South Korea, Taiwan, and Switzerland. Russia currently does not have the necessary resources to either restructure its existing plants or build new ones.
Vladimir Kuznetsov is a specialist in nuclear energy. Having worked as an inspector at both Gosatomnadzor and the Chornobyl nuclear power plant, he now spends his time lobbying for a total overhaul of what he says is a decrepit nuclear infrastructure.
Kuznetsov states his position bluntly: the import of spent nuclear fuel will multiply the risk of accidents. He says Russian's bargain-basement reprocessing prices -- which the Atomic Energy Ministry has called one of the plan's key selling points -- is evidence of the country's unsafe and outmoded facilities:
"If in France or Great Britain it costs $1,500 to reprocess a kilogram of spent nuclear fuel, [Russia currently] charges Ukraine $200 to $300 per kilogram. These prices are much too low. If we had the same security standards, the same environmental protection standards, and the same salaries for the people working on these sites [as those in the West], the price would be higher. [Our] prices are low because we have 1950s' technology."
Reprocessing the waste is only one problem. Transporting the waste raises another set of difficulties. The fuel, which is contained in hundreds of tiny cylinders strung onto rods and stored in 8-meter-long hexagonal units, is very radioactive and cumbersome to transport.
Russia now has only a single four-car train equipped to transport spent fuel. Kuznetsov says as many as 20 transports are required for Russia's own spent nuclear fuel each year but that in reality only three or four transports are made. The process, he says, is simply too complicated -- and at $1.5 million per transport, too expensive -- for Russia's current capabilities.
That, combined with the dilapidated condition of Russia's railways and almost nonexistent safety training for workers, makes people like Kuznetsov worried about the outcome of an import program. He and the Russian non-governmental Social-Ecological Union co-authored a study concluding that accidents in transporting radioactive material are two to three times more common in Russia than in Europe.
Kuznetsov recalls one such "accident" he was sent to inspect at the Bilibino nuclear power plant in Russia's far eastern Chukotka region in 1990:
"Some technicians were instructed to take a dummy unit -- that is, one without spent nuclear fuel -- and try as an experiment to cut it into smaller pieces, because eight meters is difficult to transport. So what did they do? In their simple-mindedness, they took a real spent [fuel] unit [from storage]. When it hasn't been used it's a silver color. When you take it used out of the reactor, it's really black, like it's from hell. So they took it and cut it into pieces. And our little friends who did this work were put into an ambulance [with severe radiation poisoning] and then taken by plane to Moscow."
Kuznetsov adds that the traditional secrecy surrounding the country's nuclear industry make safety issues that much more difficult to address. In short, he says, Russia is barely capable of handling its own spent fuel, and is definitely not ready for a full-fledged import program.
Vitaly Nasonov, an Atomic Energy Ministry spokesman, agrees that Russia must address many issues before a spent-fuel import program can get off the ground, adding that so far there have been no serious negotiations with any countries looking to unload their spent fuel. But, he says, passing the legislation first is the only way to get the decades-long project moving:
"According to the initial plan, the import in itself can begin quickly -- in a year or two -- so that we can get the financial resources, [the payment for taking the spent nuclear fuel]. But as for when the technology will work, it's difficult to [predict] just like that. You have to prepare the whole infrastructure, reorganize the sites where [storage and reprocessing] will take place, build containers. Everything will depend on financial possibilities and support, and what the disposition in state structures will be towards it. And while you're moving over to the system of reprocessing the fuel that you imported, you'll have to store it for about 20 years. [But] until the legal, legislative issues are solved issues, no one will begin to work on those things."
The Atomic Energy Ministry has not said how much the necessary overhaul of Russia's nuclear storage, reprocessing and transport systems will cost. But outside estimates have put the price of even minimal upgrades to existing storage facilities -- a tiny link in an enormous project -- at over $50 million alone.
Some critics suggest that the ministry's avid support for the expensive and complex plan has to do with more than just increased revenue and potential fuel supplies. In the second part of this series, our correspondent will look at how the proposal may also serve to breed new and dangerous levels in Russian nuclear-weapons proliferation.
-- Part 2 By Sophie Lambroschini
http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/2001/03/20032001120917.asp
The Russian State Duma will give a second reading to a controversial plan to lift a ban on the import of spent nuclear fuel. The plan, which proposes to import and reprocess some 20,000 tons of the world's radioactive spent fuel -- and to earn state coffers an estimated $20 billion in the process -- has been criticized by environmentalists and energy experts, who say Russia's poor nuclear safety record is reason enough to block the plan. Other opponents cite another major cause for concern: fear that the import plan will allow Russia to boost its production of weapons while exposing it to greater risk of accidents and terrorist theft. In this second of a three-part series, RFE/RL's Moscow correspondent Sophie Lambroschini looks at the dangers of possible proliferation.
Moscow, 20 March 2001 (RFE/RL) -- Russia's Atomic Energy Ministry defends its plan to import and reprocess spent nuclear fuel by saying import revenues can be invested to make the country's nuclear sector safer. But nuclear and non-proliferation experts argue that safety concerns are not at the heart of the ministry plan. They and other critics say it is actually Russia's weapons producers who stand to benefit from the plan.
Atomic Energy Minister Yevgeny Adamov has said that part of the $20 billion he estimates Russia will earn from importing spent fuel will go toward improving safety and environmental conditions in the country's nuclear power industry. He has also said that the spent fuel itself will not simply be stored, but reprocessed into plutonium-based fuel and burned in Russian reactors.
As Adamov sees it, the import plan succeeds on all sides -- money plus a nearly limitless supply of fuel. But critics say the plan is dangerous. They see the ministry's plan to reprocess, rather than store, spent fuel -- as a move that would pose a threat of nuclear proliferation.
Rose Gottemoeller is a Carnegie Endowment senior associate in Washington specializing in non-proliferation issues. Until last year, she worked at the U.S. Department of Energy, a key contributor to U.S. nuclear policy. She explains the potential threat in Russia's import proposal:
"As fuel is brought into Russia, it would be reprocessed and therefore create more plutonium which would be remaining here in Russia, and would perhaps in the future be used for energy production but in the meantime -- perhaps for 40 or 50 years -- would represent a real threat of proliferation of nuclear weapons, because plutonium, of course, is one of the key nuclear materials used in nuclear weapons."
Experts say they are particularly concerned that any reprocessed plutonium placed in storage for eventual use as fuel could easily fall into the hands of terrorists or black marketeers. Steven Dolley, an official with the Washington-based Nuclear Control Institute, a private watchdog organization, also sees a danger in Russia's plans to use extracted plutonium in its reactors:
"Anyone who really knows how to make a nuclear weapon says that you can do it with reactor-grade plutonium, so it's an issue of concern. Whether or not the Russian government would have such plans for this fuel, I couldn't say. I don't think that's the primary proliferation concern. I think a much greater proliferation concern is the possibility that a big part of this plan is to use revenues from the spent fuel import and storage to support a plutonium MOX fuel and breeder reactor program which would put tons and tons of plutonium into commercial circulation in Russia and significantly increase proliferation risks of theft and diversion."
The production of so-called MOX fuel -- that is, mixed plutonium-uranium oxide fuel -- is an especially controversial element of Russia's plans to reprocess its imported spent fuel. MOX is the final link in Russia's plan to create a complete fuel cycle. When burned in special breeder reactors, MOX fuel can automatically recycle itself by producing more plutonium. Ideally, pairing mixed-oxide fuel and breeder reactors could mean an infinite and cost-efficient source of atomic energy for Russia.
Critics, however, warn that the system would result in enormous amounts of plutonium -- which can come in the form of powder or small metal pieces -- criss-crossing the country as it traveled from reprocessing plants to fuel fabrication facilities and on to reactors. Dolley says the difficulty of assuring secure storage and accurate measurement of the material at each stage in its journey leaves it vulnerable to the threat of both theft and accidents:
"There's an inherent degree of measurement error in the technology used to keep track of plutonium which can't be overcome. And when you're talking large-scale -- of the tons of material that reprocessing plants and MOX fuel fabrication facilities call for -- the degree of uncertainty is up in the area of maybe even dozens of kilograms: enough for several nuclear weapons."
Cases of nuclear theft have already been noted in Russia. Vladimir Kuznetsov, a Russian nuclear expert and former inspector with state nuclear safety agency Gosatomnadzor, said a Russian researcher at the Luch Nuclear Institute in Podolsk in 1992 and 1993 systematically stole a total of 1.5 kilograms of plutonium. Kuznetsov said the theft was not detected at the time because the amounts taken always stayed within the margin of measurement error.
Carnegie associate Gottemoeller says the best possible option to prevent proliferation is the storing of unprocessed spent fuel, which cannot be used for weapons. She says the cumbersome spent fuel elements are to a certain degree self-protecting, because of the intense radiation they emit.
Dolley, however, says that safety hazards remain even with the storage:
"[There is] a sabotage scenario where conventional explosives would be used to destroy and disperse the spent fuel, creating a radiological hazard that would be possible to disperse a large amount of radioactivity over a great area."
Defenders of the import plan say there is little reason to expect Russia would ever use new supplies of plutonium to boost its weapons production. They cite official statistics that say the country already has 50 tons of weapons-grade plutonium in stock -- enough to make thousands of weapons.
But opponents say the projected $20 billion in import revenue could still prove a boon to Russia's sagging arms industry. Countries which might be looking to unload their spent nuclear fuel -- such as Taiwan, Switzerland, and Bulgaria -- could end up indirectly financing the weapons production.
Such logic is based on the historically tight-knit relationship between Russia's nuclear energy and defense sectors. Nuclear expert Kuznetsov explains:
"All the institutes who work on nuclear programs work, in some way or another, on arms projects. By giving money to this [import] program, it means you are giving money to these institutes. Only a child or someone who doesn't know anything about the nuclear sector here doesn't know this."
Russian defense analyst Pavel Felgenhauer agrees. In his weekly defense column in "The Moscow Times" newspaper, he cites a remark by Atomic Energy Minister Adamov that military nuclear programs should be accelerated using ministry revenues. Felgenhauer claims that such "acceleration" would be focused on developing new technologies like so-called "penetrator" missiles that are designed to detonate a nuclear explosive from deep under the ground.
Kuznetsov says the traditional secrecy surrounding Russia's nuclear industry may also facilitate the diverting of Atomic Energy Ministry funds to defense, rather than energy, projects:
"If [there were] strict [financial] controls -- for example, that a certain amount of the $22 billion went to ecological programs, a certain amount went to building new storage sites, and [a certain amount] to personnel [safety] training -- and if I could check them, then it wouldn't occur to me to think that [the money] would go to arms [programs]. But when I don't have that information, only one thing comes to mind: that this money will go straight to the military sector. Or part of it will. And the other part will be stolen."
The nuclear sector's lack of transparency was bolstered last month when a Duma committee rejected amendments to the waste-import plan providing independent controls over future import contracts. The Atomic Energy Ministry has also supported a government plan to strip Gosatomnadzor -- which opposes the import plan -- of its right to issue licenses to nuclear facilities. It has been proposed that the ministry assume all licensing rights in the future, meaning an end to any pretense of checks and balances within the Russian nuclear sector.
Some Gosatomnadzor officials (unnamed) say that -- short of privatizing the nuclear energy sector -- it will be impossible to break the link between Russia's civil and military nuclear programs. Still, rising political tensions over the issue may have soured the mood of the Duma since its conciliatory first reading of the import plan in December. In the third part of this series, our correspondent will look at how political factors in Russia and abroad may affect the fate of the Atomic Energy Ministry's plan to import spent nuclear fuel.
Part 3 By Sophie Lambroschini
http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/2001/03/20032001122041.asp
Even opponents of Russia's controversial plan to import spent nuclear fuel say the package of three bills is likely to pass its second reading Thursday (March 22) in the Duma. But some observers are questioning what role the United States, which controls the majority of the world's spent fuel, intends to play in Russia's ambitious plan to store -- and reprocess -- up to 20,000 tons of highly radioactive nuclear fuel. In this last of a three-part series, RFE/RL Moscow correspondent Sophie Lambroschini looks at the politics and policymaking behind the proposal.
Moscow, 20 March 2001 (RFE/RL) -- In December a government proposal to import spent nuclear fuel sailed through its first reading in the Russian Duma with barely a murmur from the opposition.
The proposal's second reading this week may not go so smoothly. The fate of the Atomic Energy Ministry's plan to import 20,000 tons of the world's spent nuclear fuel depends on Russia's internal politics.
The pro-import mood in Russia's lower house of parliament has cooled since the December reading. This is due largely to massive lobbying efforts by the plan's opponents, many of them regional politicians from Siberia, where the imported fuel will likely be shipped. Some experts also say that the United States may have the power to halt the Atomic Energy Ministry plan by forbidding the export to Russia of its own spent fuel.
Still, most observers say the plan -- which consists of three bills lifting a 1992 ban on spent-fuel imports and providing for revenues to pay for cleaning up Russia's nuclear industry -- is likely to scrape through its second and third reading.
They say the Duma, which has been largely submissive to President Vladimir Putin, will not be able to withstand Kremlin pressure on the issue. The action of a Duma committee, which last month threw out a number of amendments that would have imposed independent control over the plan's import process and financial flows, further suggests that the plan is likely to get a smooth ride.
Critics of the plan have spent the past three months gathering ammunition. Most recently, the Duma's anti-corruption commission published a report accusing Atomic Energy Minister Yevgeny Adamov of illegal business activities, tax evasion, and appointing unqualified people to high ministerial posts.
Import opponents say the report -- which was forwarded to the Prosecutor-General's Office with an inquiry request -- has heightened existing concern that revenue from importing spent nuclear fuel would be misused or simply vanish into Russia's notoriously opaque nuclear sector to be used on defense projects.
Influential communist Duma deputy Anatoly Lukyanov told RFE/RL that the revelations about Adamov had done serious damage to the Atomic Energy Ministry's reputation and fed doubt among deputies over the wisdom of the import bill:
"There is such a [large] flow of comments [coming from our voters]. I think that this issue has yet to be settled once and for all. It will still be discussed, especially in the area of controlling the nuclear-waste imports."
Two separate news conferences by anti-import lobbies are being held before the Thursday reading. Sergey Apatenko, a deputy from the pro-government Unity faction and a conference organizer, says opposition to the plan has brought together deputies from across the political spectrum. But Apatenko says he doubts that opposition efforts in the end will have any serious impact on the vote.
"Even before the first reading, I spoke to a number of Communist deputies. I went to about 10 or 15 people. They all said they would vote against the plan. And now the situation is the same. I recently spoke to them as part of our group's activities and they said again that they will vote against. Well, when you've already been tricked once -- when they showed their true colors on December 22 -- there's no reason to believe what they say now. That's why I think the [lobbying] work should not be stopped now -- it should be intensified."
Observers say overall support for the bill is strong because many deputies accept the Atomic Energy Ministry's argument that Russia will not be able to overhaul its aging nuclear sector without the $20 billion in revenue the import plan is supposed to bring in.
The Duma's two largest factions -- Unity and the Communists -- are expected in large part to come out in favor of lifting the import ban. If the plan passes its second reading, it will have to go through a third and final reading before being sent to the Federation Council -- the upper house of parliament -- and the president to be made into law.
However, some observers point out that even if the plan becomes law, external pressure from the United States may still be able to thwart it by slashing its list of potential clients.
Officially, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) will not comment on the policies of other nations, and has yet to issue a formal statement on Russia's import plan. However, the United States -- which has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to cut down on available stocks of enriched uranium and weapons-grade plutonium -- has indicated that the proliferation risk posed by Russia's crumbling nuclear sector is an important concern.
With this in mind, Rose Gottemoeller, a Carnegie Endowment senior associate and former DOE official, says the U.S. will definitely oppose the Atomic Energy Ministry's plan to reprocess into plutonium the spent fuel it imports. Moreover, she says the U.S. will be able to curtail the Russian plan by vetoing the import of all spent fuel of U.S. origin:
"The United States is responsible for any fuel that was basically fabricated in the United States. And so the United States is going to have to agree to the long-term disposition of this fuel in Russia, because the United States, basically, when it fabricates and sells fuel to a nuclear utility anywhere in the world, retains the right to have a say in its final disposition."
Gottemoeller says the U.S. may exercise this right if the Russians fail to meet certain conditions:
"So the United States will have a say in whether or not this fuel can go to Russia. [And it will require some considerable negotiations to ensure that Russia will not be reprocessing this fuel because] under no conditions will the United States be willing to see this fuel go to Russia if it is going to be reprocessed. That will be just a basic condition. So then it will be up to the Russians to decide if that is an acceptable condition."
Gottemoeller argues that the U.S. could even veto Russia's storage of the spent fuel if it deems safety standards insufficient. Darwin Morgan, an Energy Department spokesman, told RFE/RL that countries currently holding fuel of U.S. origin include Brazil, the Czech Republic, India, Japan, Mexico, Slovenia, South Korea, Switzerland, Taiwan, and the so-called "Euratom" group of 15 European nations.
However, Russian Atomic Energy Ministry spokesman Vitaly Nasonov says the import of spent nuclear fuel will be a profitable business for Russian even without these clients:
"There's nothing scary about [the possible ban on U.S.-origin fuel] -- then we just won't [import it.] I think that even without U.S. fuel, the market is still [big] enough."
But Nasonov did admit the ministry's original projected earnings of $20 billion from spent fuel imports was based on research that included the U.S.-origin fuel markets.
Some experts also doubt that the U.S. is, in fact, defending anti-proliferation principles and point to what they see as recent contradictions in U.S. policy.
One such apparent contradiction is a published DOE study laying out a "technical framework" for the storage of foreign spent fuel in Russia. Russian environmentalist Vladimir Slivyak says the study is a sign that the U.S. is actually toying with the idea of taking Russia up on its offer to import spent fuel.
The study was drawn up by the California-based Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a DOE affiliate. It is based on the hypothetical but potentially real example of spent fuel being shipped from Taiwan through Vladivostok in Russia's Far East to either of the two Siberian nuclear plants earmarked by the import proposal. It lists, in very general terms, the technical issues involved, like the need to build additional storage and transport facilities.
The study suggests that the storage program could be an extension of a U.S.-Russian agreement on plutonium disposition signed last year. The agreement provides for the United States to help Russia begin fabricating mixed plutonium-uranium oxide fuel, or MOX, using weapons-grade plutonium.
MOX, when burned in special reactors, can automatically recycle itself, creating a closed and infinite fuel cycle. It has been tentatively mentioned by the U.S. as a constructive way of using up excess weapons-grade plutonium, despite widespread concern about the plan's safety risks.
However, DOE official Morgan says the Livermore study was strictly hypothetical and does not reflect U.S. policy.
Russian nuclear expert Vladimir Kuznetsov, who has been an outspoken opponent of the import plan, says his fear is that in the end most countries will prefer to see their spent fuel shipped to a distant location in Russia rather than deal with disposing of it themselves. He says: "It is in the corporate interest [of every country's nuclear sector] to find a way to get disconcerting nuclear energy by-products -- spent fuel, waste, and other radioactive material -- out of the public eye."
It may be precisely this attitude that the plan's supporters are banking on if this proposal is passed and becomes law.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
Snags Hit FPL-Entergy Merger Plan
InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 3/20/2001
By ALAN CLENDENNING AP Business Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406441247
NEW YORK (AP) - The proposed $9 billion merger of FPL Group Inc. and Entergy Corp. has hit vaguely defined snags, prompting concerns among analysts about the fate of the deal that would create the nation's largest utility.
In a brief press release, the companies jointly announced Monday that ``certain issues have arisen in connection with their pending merger, including governance structure/value-related issues and integration of the companies going forward.''
FPL spokeswoman Mary Lou Kromer and Entergy spokesman Horace Webb declined to elaborate. FPL and Entergy officials plan to meet soon in an attempt to deal with the problems.
Last July, the companies announced an all-stock deal _ then worth about $7 billion _ to forge a utility powerhouse with 6.3 million customers from Florida to Arkansas.
Shareholders approved the deal in December, and it was expected to be finalized in the fourth quarter after regulatory scrutiny of the merger.
The broad scope of the new potential merger roadblocks suggests the problems are serious enough to threaten the marriage of the two companies, analysts said.
``You look at it, and you say something negative is going on,'' said Tim Winter, an analyst at A.G. Edwards & Sons Inc. in St. Louis. ``Obviously there's a significant issue that has come up, but we have no idea what it is.''
Paul Fremont, an analyst with Jeffries & Co. in New York, speculated that there may be a dispute over management control of the combined company.
The terms of the deal specified that FPL chairman James L. Broadhead would be chairman of the new company. The plans call for Entergy chief executive Wayne Leonard to be president and chief executive officer, and for the 15-member board to consist of eight members from FPL Group and seven from Entergy.
``I think management was originally on board, so something must have developed,'' Fremont said. ``If it is a management dispute, something must have developed more recently.''
Although possible stumbling blocks with regulatory approval weren't mentioned in the press release, a lawyer who specializes in energy deals said that scenario shouldn't be ruled out.
``It could be something the regulators are requiring for the merger to go through takes value away from the combined company,'' said Mark Zvonkovic, a partner with King & Spalding in New York.
In Monday afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange, FPL stock dropped $2.04, or 3 percent, to $62.21 per share. Shares of Entergy dropped 57 cents, or 2 percent, to $36.93, also on the NYSE.
FPL Group, which is based in Juno Beach, Fla., is the parent company of Florida Power & Light. Entergy, based in New Orleans, has regulated power businesses in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.
Both companies have extensive holdings in nuclear power generation and wholesale power trading, in which large volumes of electricity are sold on the competitive market to industry and other utilities.
The combined company, to be headquartered in Juno Beach, would have a generating capacity of more than 48,000 megawatts, including 10,000 megawatts of nuclear generating. Entergy owns eight nuclear plants. FPL has four.
If the deal goes through, the new company will the country's No. 1 utility in terms of customers, surpassing Columbus, Ohio-based American Electric Power Co., which has 4.8 million customers.
The two companies have a combined work force of about 24,000. Officials have said they plan to cut about 1,200 positions.
-------- MILITARY
-------- colombia
Raids finds proof of Colombian rebel drug-running
March 20, 2001
By Steve Salisbury
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-2001320221724.htm
BARRANCOMINA, Colombia - Colombia's Marxist rebels are directly engaged in the production and export of cocaine, according to documents, eyewitness testimony and receipts discovered in recent weeks in a remote eastern rain forest.
The evidence, stronger than anything previously documented, is important because U.S. policy calls for helping Colombia to fight the drug trade while avoiding direct involvement in its decades-old guerrilla war. That will become more difficult if the rebels turn out to be drug lords.
The guerrillas long have acknowledged that they impose a "war tax" on drug crops, but insist they do not take part in growing and selling illicit drugs.
That claim is contradicted by evidence uncovered over the past two months by special forces commandos of the Colombian army.
The evidence indicates that guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) buy coca-leaf "base" from peasants, pay operators of "laboratories" to refine the coca base into cocaine powder that is up to 99 percent pure, then sell the product to drug barons who smuggle the cocaine abroad.
"We may not have direct evidence against the FARC leadership yet, but it's the conductor of the orchestra," one prosecutor said.
The army's Operation Gato Negro (Black Cat), which is still in progress, was designed to drive guerrillas from a stretch of the Guaviare River that forms the border between Vichada and Guainia provinces, and to dismantle the narcotics infrastructure that finances the guerrilla movement.
Gen. Jorge Mora, commander of the army, gives top priority to the effort, which is overseen by the commander of the 4th division, Gen. Arcesio Barrero. The front line base for Gato Negro is in the village of Barrancomina on the Guainia side of the Guaviare River.
"You have to squeeze [the rebels] like a sandwich," Gen. Barrero said of the operation.
Army closes in
For more than two years, military intelligence and law enforcement agents had received accounts from peasants coming from Barrancomina and nearby villages that the FARC's 16th front, a unit of about 250 guerrillas, was engaged in cocaine and arms trafficking.
Many of those stories involved the 16th front's commander, Tomas Molina Caracas, alias "El Negro Acacio," and a suspected Brazilian drug dealer in his mid-30s who is known in the area as "Alvaro."
Alvaro's legal name is believed to be Luis Da Costa. He is also known to Brazilian and Colombian authorities by the alias "Fernandinho."
Military sources said that within days after Operation Gato Negro went into action Feb. 12, some 3,300 soldiers of the Colombian army's elite rapid deployment force had been flown into the area aboard eight U.S.-made UH-60 Black Hawk and five Russian-made Mi-17 helicopters.
It was the first military presence in this sparsely inhabited region, reachable only by air or river, since the army entered Barrancomina for a couple of days two years earlier.
The two mobile brigades and one special forces brigade disembarked with little warning in Barrancomina and the villages of Guerima 30 miles west, Puerto Principe about 65 miles southwest and Puerto Lindo, in between, systematically setting out to patrol the jungle and rivers.
Officers said the guerrillas had hurriedly fled from the villages. In a modest blue wooden house abandoned by Alvaro in Barrancomina, they reported having found $74,950 in cash as well as photographs, accounting notebooks and other significant documents.
Several days later, a special forces squad caught up with Alvaro at a farm. He managed to escape as gunfire erupted, according to a suspect captured at the scene, but the army later received reports that he had been wounded three times, most seriously in his right shoulder.
Days after that, the commandos surprised 16 guerrillas at a farm some nine miles north of Barrancomina. Six guerrillas were killed in a 30-minute firefight, officers said, while two army personnel, a lieutenant and a commando, were wounded.
Peasants told the army that they recognized some of the dead as escorts to Acacio, the 16th front commander. According to a guerrilla radio communication intercepted later by the army, Acacio himself had fled to the southwest.
Finding drug labs
Throughout the area, the soldiers discovered numerous drug labs, often with abandoned guerrilla encampments nearby. By March 8, troops had destroyed 29 peasant labs for processing coca leaf and nine sophisticated labs called "crystallizers" or "chongos" where coca base could be refined into cocaine powder.
Even more important, from a judicial investigative perspective, were some documents that were discovered March 4 and shown to a reporter visiting the area with the hard-charging field commander of the rapid deployment force, Brig. Gen. Carlos Fracica.
On that morning, special forces commandos entered a chongo near Barranco de Picuro, about 15 miles east of Barrancomina and half a mile north of the Guaviare River. The setup comprised nine rustic stick structures of different sizes with palm-thatched roofs.
Some huts were clogged with machinery, generators, ovens, presses, bags of powdered cement, buckets of baking soda and 55-gallon drums of chemicals to make cocaine. Others were a kitchen and lodgings for about 15 to 20 workers.
Gen. Fracica, who arrived shortly afterward aboard a Black Hawk helicopter, said it was the biggest lab found to that point of the operation. He estimated its monthly cocaine production capability at 3 to 5 tons.
Soldiers also had placed on a table near the entrance to the complex a FARC propaganda leaflet and two small receipts, both dated Nov. 26, 2000, and indicating payments to someone using the alias "Pollo," or "Chicken."
One was for 1 million Colombian pesos - about $500 - for receipt of "5,000 grams of crystal," amounting to a little more than 11 pounds. The second was for 4 million pesos - about $2,000 - for receipt of "5,000 grams of coca."
Near the bottom of each receipt was a maroon ink stamp with block lettering reading "16th front" and the name of a rebel hero for whom the front is named. Both were signed "Mono," whose identity was not clear.
Pluto's story
A captain and two soldiers, questioned independently, each said the receipts were found under a mattress in the workers' sleeping quarters. The same FARC stamp was also on documents found at other sites; civilians in the region confirmed its routine use.
"Crystal" commonly refers to refined cocaine powder, while "coca" could refer to refined or unrefined cocaine.
The amounts on the receipts do not correspond to the prices of coca base - which costs about $400 to $450 per pound, according to people in the business - or refined cocaine, which "crystallizer" labs sell for about $900 to $1,000 per pound.
More likely the amounts represent either a tax or a two-part payment to a chongo operator for processing the same 11 pounds of refined cocaine.
Additional insight into the guerrillas' drug operations was provided by a Barrancomina resident with links to the drug business who for his safety can be identified only by a randomly chosen alias, "Pluto."
Speaking in this quiet village with swept dirt streets and 1,000 to 1,500 inhabitants, he said he had once visited a crystallizer lab and seen about 20 guerrillas there.
"The guerrillas sleep in hammocks, while the workers sleep in bunk beds," Pluto said.
"The FARC buys coca base, sometimes giving loans to peasants to produce it. If others want to buy and sell coca base and crystal, they can, but they have to pay a tax to the FARC.
"The FARC then takes coca base to crystallizer labs owned by individuals. Juan Boyaco is the biggest chongo lab owner. Pollo is an owner. I know him. They call him Pollo because he has pale skin like a chicken. . . .
"He lives in Bogota, but has come here every several months to tend to business for a month or two," Pluto added. "There are others. They turn the FARC's coca base into crystal cocaine for a fee.
"If for some reason there is a problem with cash flow, or if there is a need for machinery and chemicals, the FARC gives loans and brings what's needed. The FARC then sells the cocaine to drug dealers from other countries who fly here, like Don Alvaro from Brazil, and Peruvians, who take the cocaine out. I heard they go to Suriname."
Alvaro's arrival
Another villager who knows Alvaro and El Negro Acacio confirmed the FARC role in cocaine production. "El Negro Acacio is in charge of everything," he said.
Army summaries of documents captured during Operation Gato Negro, which army intelligence identified as belonging to Alvaro, show seven flights by him or somebody else to Brazil since April 28. They also show that the carrier transported 3,894 pounds of cocaine that Alvaro apparently had purchased for $3.7 million and sold for $6.5 million, earning a net profit of $1.9 million after paying $943,000 in expenses and bribes.
Many of Barrancomina's inhabitants know of Alvaro, but few talk about him.
"Visitors sometimes come here, and we don't know who they are. It's bad to butt in about where they come from and where they're going," said the town's mayor, Berta Cecilia Ricardo.
However, those who will talk say it was one or two years ago that the man identified in a Brazilian "wanted" bulletin as Luis Da Costa first arrived in Barrancomina.
Pluto and others described Alvaro as an overweight, affable man who joined them in soccer games and sometimes brought Brazilian prostitutes to the town.
"He is best friends with the FARC," one man said. "The guerrillas would always protect him."
Alvaro usually was surrounded by up to a dozen guerrilla bodyguards, including one called "Tumaco" who is believed by authorities to be in charge of obtaining precursor chemicals for the cocaine labs.
Alvaro and El Negro Acacio "are partners," said a military intelligence analyst in 4th division headquarters in the central Colombia city of Villavicencio. Alvaro "tells Acacio that he wants to buy so many kilos of cocaine, and Acacio has his men collect it for him."
Payment in weapons
A notebook that the army says it captured contains a list showing what appear to be payments ranging from $2,000 to $78,000 with notations such as "Pilots/15,000." The notebook contained the names "Bolas," "Dumars," "Oscar" and "Raspao," all believed by the army to represent guerrillas who handle the 16th front's finances.
The aliases "Oscar" and "Raspao" are believed to have been used by a brother or cousin of Acacio's who once supervised finances and who, residents said, left the town several months ago after killing two men during an argument over a gambling debt.
Bolas is believed to have replaced Oscar as the chief financial officer of the 16th front.
Pluto and investigators said Alvaro sometimes pays the FARC in dollars, sometimes in weapons. According to an army intelligence summary of documents, Alvaro bartered 543 rifles, including AK-47s and G-3 assault rifles, and 2,417 pistols to the FARC in exchange for cocaine.
Pluto said he was once enlisted to unload ammunition-filled sacks from a Centurion airplane that had arrived from Brazil at the Barrancomina airstrip.
It is still not clear how far up the FARC chain of command the drug activity goes.
But the evidence and testimony from the jungle around Barrancomina make it clear that the FARC's relationship with the drug trade goes beyond simply charging a tax on coca crops.
Said Pluto: "The FARC is the maximum cocaine cartel. They are the owners. They don't take over the entire chain because they don't have the contacts abroad. Alvaro does that for them."
-------- drug war
PM's drug clean-out
Australian News Network
20mar01
By JOHN KERIN
http://news.com.au/newspulse/pulseframe/0,4711,1816903^421,00.html
DRUG groups last night condemned a move by John Howard to revamp the country's leading drugs advisory body.
The criticism follows confirmation that as many as five members of the Australian National Council on Drugs, which is headed by the Salvation Army's Major Brian Watters, will not be kept on for new terms.
Those going include the founder of Family Drug Support, Tony Trimingham, Wesley Noffs of the Ted Noffs Foundation and Karen Hart, the former head of the National School Principals Association.
Wayne Hall, the head of the University of NSW National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, has resigned. The president of the Families and Friends for Drug Law Reform, Brian McConnell, said last night that its representative, Mr Trimingham had been "sacked".
"After the Ryan by-election, the Prime Minister said he was now listening to the community . . . but this shows he is not listening," Mr McConnell said.
He said Mr Trimingham favoured strategies such as heroin trials and injecting rooms, but these did not fit Mr Howard's ideologies.
The Australian Intravenous League, a body representing illicit drug users, said it was dismayed at the changes. "Without adequate consumer representation, how can the council possibly reflect the needs of the people most affected by illicit drugs?" executive officer Annie Madden said.
"(This) will not help the lives of the many thousands of drug users who were hoping for change and a humane response," she said. But Mr Howard said in a statement that new appointments would add to the range of expertise on the council.
"(Claims) that members of the Australian National Council on Drugs will not be reappointed because they do not support a zero-tolerance approach to drug policy . . . and that they are making way for those who do support such an approach are wrong," he said.
---
Mexico suggests legalizing drugs
Washington Times
March 20, 2001
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-2001320215247.htm
MEXICO CITY - Struggling with the corruption and violence caused by drug trafficking, President Vicente Fox says the solution might be to eventually legalize drug use.
In an interview published by two newspapers Sunday, Mr. Fox indicated agreement with a police official who suggested last week that the only way to win the war on drugs was to legalize drugs -eliminating the profits and violence caused by illegal trafficking.
"That's right, that's true, that's true," the newspaper Unomasuno quoted Mr. Fox as saying. But the president quickly qualified that statement, saying Mexico could not move alone and indicating he did not expect such a step soon.
-------- space
Experts may have spotted vanished Mars lander
USA Today
03/20/2001
By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/science/astro/2001-03-20-mars-lander.htm
Spy agency analysts may have spotted a missing Mars probe. Lost in December of 1999, NASA's Mars Polar Lander is thought to have crashed after the premature shutdown of its landing rocket. However, the Web news site space.com reports that imaging experts at the federal National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) believe they have spotted the lander "intact on the surface, sitting atop its trio of landing legs." Agency spokeswoman Jennifer Lafley called the report "basically correct" but said her agency and NASA needed more time to confirm the discovery.
"The report is preliminary in terms of its findings," NASA spokesman Don Savage said. "Word has gotten out before all questions have been answered."
Experts from Malin Space Science Systems, operator of the camera aboard the Mars Global Surveyor orbiter, which took the pictures NIMA is relying upon for its analysis, will review the evidence with help from other Mars experts in coming weeks, Savage said. The find relies on interpretation of "a few pixels" in the images, he said.
The lander disappeared Dec. 3, 1999, as it headed for a landing site near Mars' South Pole. A failure review board concluded that as the craft's landing gear opened a few hundred feet above the landing site, a software glitch shut down its braking rocket. After redirecting the Mars Global Surveyor to image the landing site, NASA eventually declared the craft a loss.
The space agency spent February of last year chasing a faint radio signal that might have come from the probe, but it concluded that the signal was false. Two smaller probes, designed to burrow into the Martian surface like torpedoes, also disappeared.
NIMA interprets space reconnaissance images for national security agencies. Agency analysts took on the Mars probe hunt as an exercise.
---
Taco Bell promises free tacos if Mir hits target
USA Today
03/20/2001 - Updated 12:28 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/nphoto.htm
IRVINE, Calif. (AP) - If Mir hits the bull's eye, everyone in the United States will win a taco.
That's what Taco Bell is promising 281 million Americans if the core of the Russian Mir space station hits a floating target the fast-food company will anchor 10 miles off Australia.
"I don't know what the odds are," said Laurie Gannon, a spokeswoman for the Irvine-based company. "Call Vegas."
The 135-ton Mir is expected to come crashing back to Earth on Friday, ending 15 years in orbit. Russian controllers expect as much as 25 tons of Mir's wreckage will survive re-entry to hit a remote area of the Pacific Ocean well east of Australia.
One expert said the odds the station's core will come down on Taco Bell's 40-by-40 foot vinyl target - emblazoned with the company's logo and "Free Taco Here!" - are slim to none.
"They're not going to lose any money at all. I'd say the chances are zero, or as close as you can get," said William Ailor, director of The Aerospace Corp.'s Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies.
Should Mir somehow score a bull's eye, Taco Bell estimates it would have to spend less than $10 million to give everyone in the U.S. a coupon for a free taco. Just in case, the company has purchased an insurance policy to cover the cost.
-------- u.n.
China nixed extension of U.N. Macedonia force
Washington Times
March 20, 2001
By Betsy Pisik THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-2001320222130.htm
NEW YORK - The international community has long worried that the Balkan conflict could spill across the border from Kosovo into Macedonia, so much so that the United Nations until two years ago maintained a protective force on that frontier.
That operation was scotched by China in February 1999 for reasons having nothing to do with the Balkans conflict.
Weeks before the U.N. Preventive Deployment Force in Macedonia (Unpredep) was to have been routinely extended for another six months, the Macedonian government established diplomatic ties with Taiwan. China had warned it might veto the extension if the Skopje government went ahead. On Feb. 25 it did just that.
"The U.N. peacekeeping forces have completed its designated mission in Macedonia and there is no need for an extension there," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said the next day in Beijing.
"The U.N. is faced with a serious financial crisis, and the limited resources of the U.N. should be used in places with more urgent need."
Russia abstained on the 13-1 Security Council vote.
U.S. and other diplomats had appealed to Beijing not to pull the plug, citing the instability of the former Yugoslavia.
The mission was established in March 1995 to monitor and report any developments in the border areas that could undermine confidence and stability in the territory. That mandate was later expanded to include the monitoring of arms smuggling.
"Until now, the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia has not been adversely affected by the conflict in Kosovo," Secretary-General Kofi Annan wrote in February 1999 when he urged the council to extend Unpredep for another six months.
"However, the potential serious repercussions that continued violence in Kosovo could have upon the external and internal security of the country cannot be ignored, given the large proportion of ethnic Albanians in the population" of Macedonia.
One-third of Macedonia's 2 million citizens are ethnic Albanian, and until recently have lived in comparative harmony with the nation's Slavic majority. But six days of fighting around the city of Tetovo have begun to polarize the nation into ethnic camps.
Energized Slavic Macedonians from around the world flooded some U.S. media outlets with hundreds of e-mail messages over the weekend, urging the United States, the United Nations and NATO to come to the nation's defense.
The majority of e-mail messages had the same text, telling NATO, Britain and the United States: "You opened this horrible Pandora's box by your Kosovo adventure. . . .
"Instead of running away from the looming catastrophe in Macedonia, I implore you to live up to your responsibilities and not abandon this monster of your own making."
A few were more personalized, with the writers taking great pains to explain Macedonia's precarious situation.
"Albanian extremism sets the stage for yet another showcase of fleeing refugees, many innocent lives being lost, suffering of all people just for the sake of their radical aspirations," wrote Daniel Jakimovski, a Macedonian living in France.
The Security Council and Mr. Annan have condemned the renewed fighting, but so far have shown no desire to act on Macedonian Ambassador Naste Calovski's appeals for military assistance.
"It would have been very useful to have it now," Mr. Calovski said of Unpredep. "The main thing is that Kosovo should not spill over their problems to Macedonia. What we are witnessing now is a kind of aggression from paramilitary terrorists."
During the Serbian attacks on Kosovo, Mr. Calovski pointed out, his nation opened its borders to fleeing Albanian Kosovars, offering them what little shelter it could.
"And now, instead of saying 'Thank you,' look what they are doing," he said yesterday.
• Kristina Stefanova in Washington contributed to this article.
-------- OTHER
-------- energy
Bush warns of looming energy crisis
Washington Times
March 20, 2001
By Patrice Hill THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-200132022557.htm
President Bush and key advisers yesterday said the nation faces critical shortages of electricity, natural gas and refined gasoline that could cause further price spikes and California-style power outages.
The White House's warning on energy came as California imposed rolling blackouts for a third time this year, cutting power to homes and businesses from San Francisco to Beverly Hills.
The administration predicts similar power shortages could occur in New York City and Long Island this summer, and make the electricity supply less reliable in the Midwest.
The California crisis and many other energy problems that have cropped up in the past year are largely homegrown - the result of regulatory burdens and neglect of the nation's energy needs and infrastructure in recent years, Mr. Bush said after meeting with his energy task force at the White House.
"One thing is for certain: There are no short-term fixes," he said.
While much attention has focused on recent curbs in oil production by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, the president said, "It's important for American consumers to understand that if we have a price spike in refined product, it's not going to be because of the price of crude oil being $25 or $26 a barrel; it's going to be because we don't have enough capacity, refining capacity."
No new gasoline refineries have been built in 25 years, Mr. Bush said, a shortcoming that, coming on top of high prices for OPEC's crude oil, led to last year's price spikes in reformulated gasoline in the Midwest and heating oil in the Northeast.
The nation also is not generating enough natural gas to meet an expected 62 percent explosion in demand in the next 20 years. And it has not built enough power plants to keep up with electricity consumption, the president said.
"We're beginning to pay the price for it," he said.
The solution will require an easing of the regulatory and political barriers that have caused a decline in energy production in the United States, Mr. Bush said, as well as cooperation with Mexico and Canada to boost energy supplies throughout the hemisphere.
The president cited his administration's move last month to ease environmental restrictions and enable California to more speedily build power plants as an example of what can be done right away to boost energy supplies.
He said he also is encouraging Mexico to let American companies explore for natural gas. Mexican law bars foreigners from drilling, at the same time the Mexican government lacks the cash it needs to explore on its own.
Gas, unlike oil, must be produced for the most part in North America because it cannot be shipped in large quantities. Yet 40 percent of the potential gas resources in the United States are on federal lands where drilling is either prohibited or severely restricted, and the last lease sale for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico was more than a decade ago.
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, in a speech before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, yesterday blamed the Clinton administration, and derided California politicians, for first causing energy shortages by erecting regulatory and political barriers to development and then ignoring the consequences.
"Their energy strategy boiled down to: You can't find it, you can't transport it, and even if you get it, we don't want you to use it," Mr. Abraham said. "Through neglect or complacency or ideology, this approach has led to the crisis we face today."
Mr. Abraham noted that even President Clinton's much-ballyhooed remedy of releasing Strategic Petroleum Reserves last year to ease high oil prices backfired because the oil had to be shipped overseas to be refined.
The last decade's shortsighted policies have hurt the most in California, where politicians continue to block the building of power plants that are needed to end the state's energy crisis, he said.
"In California, workers are being laid off, companies are leaving the state, farmers and small businesses are losing millions, consumers are threatened with rolling blackouts, but local officials reject power plants with little regard for the consequences," Mr. Abraham said.
"Some people just don't get it," he said, holding up a full-page ad in the New York Times sponsored by environmental groups with the bold headline, "The last thing California needs is new power plants." Environmentalists say conservation and alternative energies like wind and solar power are the answer in California.
But far from curbing energy consumption, the demand for natural gas from California power plants - driven by environmental policies that favor it over coal as a clean source of energy - has helped create the most acute shortage faced by the country today.
With nine out of 10 new power plants coming on line in the United States due to be fueled by natural gas, just moving the amount of gas they need to market will require an additional 38,000 miles of transmission pipelines and 255,000 miles of distribution lines, at an estimated cost of up to $150 billion, Mr. Abraham said.
Environmentalists lately have been advocating the use of natural gas produced in Alaska's Prudhoe Bay fields as an alternative to drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, which they vehemently oppose.
But Mr. Abraham said that without a pipeline to carry the gas from Alaska to the rest of the United States, the Prudhoe gas right now must be pumped back into the ground.
The energy secretary added that to accommodate an estimated 45 percent increase in demand for electricity driven in part by Internet use in the next 20 years, the United States would have to overcome environmental objections and build from 65 to 90 new power plants each year. Yet the country hasn't built so many power plants since 1985.
To meet the electricity needs, the nation must continue to rely on coal, he said, adding that the Bush administration's desire to avoid "regulating coal out of existence" is what prompted the president last week to decide against imposing a new regulatory regime requiring power plants to cap their emissions of carbon dioxide.
The economy will pay a price if the nation fails to address these energy problems, he said. "The nation's last three recessions have all been tied to rising energy prices, and there is strong evidence that the latest crisis already is having a negative effect."
The cost in lost wages, sales and productivity reached $2.3 billion in just two weeks in California in January, he said, while the economy as a whole has lost a full percentage point of growth.
-------- environment
Ship carrying acid sinks off Spain
InfoBeat News
Afternoon Edition - 3/20/2001
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406448211
BREST, France (AP) - A freighter carrying sulfuric acid sank in the Bay of Biscay off the northern coast of Spain on Tuesday, but the risk of pollution seemed minimal, authorities said.
All 23 crew members were rescued when the Balu, a 24-year-old Maltese-registered ship, sank en route from Frederiksen, Denmark to the south of Spain.
The police port authority in the western French town of Brest said the ship was carrying about 8,000 tons of sulfuric acid when it sank about 136 miles north of the Spanish coast. The area is about 250 miles south of Brest.
Winds of around 37 mph were blowing in the region on Tuesday morning, and waves were swelling up to 16{ feet. No efforts could be made to retrieve the cargo.
Experts agreed that the acid would cause little ecological damage if it did escape from the hold of the ship, which is managed by Monaco-based company Traschimar SAM.
``Any pollution would be short-lived and confined to a limited area around the wreck,'' said Christophe Rousseau, a specialist at Brest's CEDRE, an agency for study and research into sea pollution.
Rousseau said the acid, which is highly soluble in water, would dilute over time. French and Spanish authorities will carry out tests in the surrounding waters to be sure there is no significant pollution.
Lloyd's of London, the world's largest marine insurer, listed the freighter as belonging to Dundee Shipping and Trading Ltd. The French Transportation Ministry said it had ordered its Accident Inquiry Office to investigate why the freighter, which it said could carry 6,000 tons of sulfuric acid, sank.
The crew members _ a South Korean master and Croatian and Filipino officers _ were plucked off the sinking boat by a Spanish rescue helicopter and transferred to two vessels nearby, the port authority said.
French authorities have been especially mindful of the dangers posed by sea travel around its coasts since an aging oil tanker, also Maltese-registered, broke in two off the coast of Brittany in December 1999, spilling millions of gallons of oil into the Atlantic and onto the region's beaches and rocky coast.
Last October, another tanker, the Ievoli Sun, sank in the English Channel with toxic chemicals aboard but little leakage was reported.
France's Green Party warned Tuesday that ``a new ecological threat'' was hanging over French coasts with the sinking of the Balu, and it called for more stringent controls on sea traffic.
----
Aral Sea gone dry
Soviet irrigation projects left nothing but dust, disease
Montreal Gazette
Tuesday 20 March 2001
PEGGY CURRAN The Gazette
mailto:pcurran@thegazette.southam.ca?subject=Web Page feedback
http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/pages/010320/5033787.html
When film-maker Geoff Bowie arrived in the remote town of Muynak in Uzbekistan last spring, he thought he knew exactly what he would find.
Once a bustling seaside resort, with holiday camps and abundant fish and game, Muynak has been ravaged by foolhardy irrigation policies which have drained rivers and left a crust of pesticide-laden dust in the basin of what was once the Aral Sea.
The result has been an ecological and medical catastrophe. The water supply has dried up and the fishery has collapsed. Seventy per cent of the region's people are sick, suffering from tuberculosis or other respiratory illnesses, kidney, liver, immunological and neurological ailments, and cancer. Birth defects are common and low birth weight is the norm, hardly surprising when 95 per cent of women of child-bearing age are anemic.
"I was expecting a war zone," said Bowie, the Concordia University graduate who wrote, produced and directed The Hospital at the End of the World, a one-hour documentary which airs tomorrow on The Nature of Things.
"I was shocked by how normal life seemed to be, with people going to work and going on dates. It was only once I started to visit the cotton farms and hospitals and talk to the zoologists and toxicologists that I realized how profoundly screwed up the place was."
The film examines the impact of a misguided Soviet campaign in the 1960s to turn Central Asia into the world's greatest cotton-growing region, redirecting its rivers and creating 38,000 square kilometres of new desert. Now the area is too arid to sustain cotton or rice.
"People told me they used to have one dust storm a year. Now they have five, with the toxic dust blowing off the sea bed into everyone's face," Bowie said.
International agencies have been slow to respond to the crisis in Central Asia, an area of little strategic or economic importance, and local researchers and activists are frustrated and angry with the West's apparent indifference. As host and narrator David Suzuki points out, while people in rich, developed nations generally think of TB as a disease of their ancestors, one-third of the world's population is infected with the disease and 3 million people die of it each year.
Bowie notes that Medecins Sans Frontieres is the only agency active in Muynak, treating patients who have developed a virulent, multi-drug-resistant strain of TB and studying the link between the emptying of the sea, soil damage and the spread of disease. "I don't know why nobody's there. Maybe it's because (other agencies) think it's a chronic problem and they don't want to go near it."
- The Hospital at the End of the World airs tomorrow on The Nature of Things (CBMT-6 at 9 p.m.). Following the broadcast, at 10 p.m., there will be a one-hour Internet chat on the tuberculosis epidemic at www.cbc.ca/interact.
---
Bush reverses standards for water contamination
USA Today
03/20/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-03-20-arsenic.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration on Tuesday rescinded a decision made three days before the end of Bill Clinton's presidency to require 3,000 communities to upgrade their water systems to protect against arsenic poisoning.
The Environmental Protection Agency said it was withdrawing the new standards reducing allowable levels of arsenic in drinking water by 80% until it can review the science and costs more.
"I am committed to safe and affordable drinking water for all Americans. I want to be sure that the conclusions about arsenic in the rule are supported by the best available science," said EPA Administrator Christie Whitman.
The administration also announced Tuesday it would honor a consent decree to toughen pesticide regulations that EPA signed with environmental groups and farm workers the day before Clinton left office. But it said it would take a new look at some of the risk assessments in re-evaluating pesticides.
The new drinking water rule was intended to update an arsenic standard that has been in effect for nearly 60 years. It would have cut the acceptable level of arsenic in drinking water from 50 parts per billion to 10 parts per billion.
Arsenic is both a naturally occurring substance and industrial byproduct. Environmentalists have argued for years that the arsenic standard set in 1942 should be lowered.
"The scientific indicators are unclear as to whether the standard needs to be as low as 10 parts per billion," Whitman said.
The EPA had proposed setting it at 5 parts per billion last year in response to a lawsuit by the Natural Resources Defense Council but then settled at 10 parts per billion. In 1999, the National Academy of Sciences found arsenic in drinking water causes bladder, lung and skin cancer, and might cause liver and kidney cancer.
NRDC said it will file another suit challenging Tuesday's decision.
"This outrageous act is just another example of how the polluters have taken over the government," said Erik D. Olson, an attorney for the environmental group, referring to the mining interests that are the source of some arsenic.
Last week, Bush said he had changed his mind and decided against regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant contributing to global warming. And the Agriculture Department moved last week to lift Clinton administration orders banning logging and road-building in about one-third of the nation's national forests.
NRDC also was a party in the pesticides consent decree, which requires EPA to determine whether certain insecticides and weed killers act together as cumulative poisons. EPA said Tuesday its attorneys told Whitman she had little flexibility to change or withdraw from the decree.
Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, the senior Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said he was pleased that Bush did not bow to industry pressure on the pesticides issue.
"Pesticides can permanently harm a young child's brain development, and this settlement will make sure that federal standards are developed and enforced to protect children," Reid said.
-----
Bush Proposes Rollback on Mining Law
InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 3/21/2001
By JOHN HEILPRIN Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406459756
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration will propose suspending new environmental regulations on hardrock mining that were imposed on President Clinton's last day in office over industry objections.
The Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management will announce Wednesday it is reopening the so-called revised 3809 regulations giving the government new authority to prohibit new mine sites on federal land, The Associated Press learned.
The restrictions would remain in effect until July when the BLM anticipates publishing new regulations the could lift the prohibitions.
``People have raised concerns about the new rules on both policy and legal grounds,'' acting BLM Director Nina Rose Hatfield said in a statement obtained Tuesday night by the AP. ``If there are legitimate issues which need to be addressed, we should do so sooner rather than later.''
The regulations require miners of gold, silver, uranium, copper, lead, zinc and molybdenum on federal claims to post a bond guaranteeing they will clean up after themselves. The reclamation bond must be equal to 100 percent of the estimated cleanup cost.
Previously, mines disturbing less than five acres per year did not have to provide a cleanup bond and companies could pledge their own assets instead of putting up a cleanup bond.
The new regulations also give BLM's land managers the right to deny a mining permit under some circumstances and to enforce standards for assuring that groundwater supplies aren't contaminated.
Hatfield pointed to four lawsuits challenging the 3809 regulations.
``We want to avoid creating disruption and uncertainty for the industry, the states and the BLM which jointly regulate the mining industry, and the public,'' she said. ``It would be better to address these concerns now in a thorough review rather than have a partial implementation which may be delayed or subsequently stopped.''
Mining industry officials welcomed the move while environmentalists condemned it.
John Grasser, a spokesman for the National Mining Association, said the regulations went beyond any law enacted by Congress. The association is one of the groups that had challenged the regulations in court.
``They're doing the right thing; it's a commonsense approach,'' Grasser said.
Lexi Shultz, a staff attorney for U.S. Public Interest Research Group, said the administration has again ``caved to special interests and put the environment at risk.''
``Mining companies often go bankrupt and that means they often walk away leaving a mess that later become Superfund sites,'' she said.
The administration also announced Tuesday that it is rescinding new Environmental Protection Agency standards reducing permissible amounts of arsenic in drinking water by 80 percent. Mining operations have been identified as one of the sources of arsenic seeping into municipal water supplies.
Last week, the Agriculture Department moved to lift Clinton's orders banning logging and road-building in about a third of the nation's national forests and Bush reversed course on a campaign proposal to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant.
---
Oil rig sinks off Brazil's coast
USA Today
03/20/2001
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001-03-20-oilrig.htm
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) - One of the world's biggest oil rigs sank in the South Atlantic on Tuesday, and the state oil company Petrobras warned that more than 300,000 gallons of diesel fuel on board was likely to spill.
The 40-story-tall rig, crippled and listing after an explosion last week, "shifted suddenly" in heavy seas 75 miles off the coast early Tuesday morning, the company said. Workers who had been trying to save it gave up and fled.
At about 10:30 a.m., the rig tipped over and went down in about 10 minutes. Film footage showed the platform descending until only the green heliport was visible above the waves. Then it went under, as oil workers, many sobbing, looked on from a nearby ship.
"It's at the bottom of the sea," said Carlos Aurelio Miranda, a Petrobras spokesman.
Petrobras Chief Executive Henri Philippe said there was a "fine film of oil" on the spot where the rig went down but that the company was ready to contain it.
He said containers holding 312,000 gallons of diesel fuel, would collapse under water pressure on the sea bottom at a depth of 4,455 feet. Also, the rig had 78,000 gallons of crude - most of it in hoses between the wells and the rig. Those hoses were attached when the rig went down and could break, he said.
Reichstul said the oil and gas wells themselves were sealed before the rig was evacuated and could not leak.
"There is a plan in place to protect the environment," Reichstul said. "We are not terribly worried about the environmental question."
Petrobras had 11 ships on the spot to combat a spill, said Irani Varela, the company's safety and environment chief. Four were to skim oil off the surface, four others carried 20 miles of floating oil barriers and three had chemicals to break down the oil.
Varela said, however, that the barriers would have little effect in high seas, where swells Tuesday were 6 feet high. He said the cleanup would take up to four days, but that winds and tide suggested the oil would be carried out to sea.
Navy divers, engineers and foreign consultants had been working for days, trying to salvage the gigantic rig after Thursday's explosion and fire. The accident killed at least two workers and left eight others missing and presumed dead. A supporting pillar was knocked out, and the platform tilted and began sinking slowly off the coast of Macae, 120 miles northeast of Rio.
Workers tried to keep it afloat with nitrogen and compressed air. After partly righting, the platform began to sink again on Monday, when high winds and rough seas hindered rescue efforts.
The rig, built in Italy and later modified in Canada, was the top producer in the oil-rich Campos Basin, which accounts for most of the 1.5 million barrels of oil Brazil produced daily.
The platform was pumping about 83,000 barrels of oil and processing 1.3 million cubic meters of gas daily, but the company had plans to raise its production to 180,000 barrels a day.
Finance Director Ronnie Vaz Moreira said that with a total loss of production from the rig, Petrobras would lose $450 million this year. The loss also could hurt Brazil's trade balance, which has been stuck in the red for years.
The accident sparked criticism of Petrobras, which has laid off workers and raised profits to a record $5 billion last year. Critics say Petrobras is farming out jobs to less-qualified companies, which increases safety risks.
The oil rig disaster also has added to economic jitters and helped to push the Brazilian currency to two year-low. On Monday, it dipped to 2.17 to the dollar before recovering.
------- imf / world bank
Turkey, IMF reach initial deal
InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 3/20/2001
By BEN HOLLAND Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406441381
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) - Turkey and the IMF have reached a preliminary agreement on measures to shore up an economy that the government Monday predicted would contract by 2 percent this year.
Economy minister Kemal Dervis said the government and the IMF had agreed on the framework of a new economic program to tame inflation and regain market confidence. He said the government would complete work on the program and send it to the IMF ``in the next few weeks.''
The IMF will back the program and is looking at bringing forward dlrs 6.25 billion of already scheduled loans to Turkey, IMF Europe head Michael Deppler said Monday. He did not say if the IMF would offer Turkey fresh loans.
``I hope this program, whose framework we have agreed with the IMF, will bring the foreign support we need,'' Dervis said.
Turkey is seeking international loans to recover from a financial crisis which has led to a sharp fall in the lira, widespread layoffs and price hikes. Dervis said Turkey would begin ``intensive efforts'' to raise money on international markets this week.
IMF backing should make this easier, analysts said.
``It won't be easy, but Dervis can find money,'' said Hursit Gunes, an economist at Marmara University.
The search for funds will take Dervis to Washington next weekend. U.S. Ambassador Robert Pearson said Monday that Washington was ready to help Turkey through its current troubles, the Anatolia news agency reported. He gave no details.
More funds will come from the domestic market, with the Treasury planning to raise up to dlrs 3.5 billion in a bond issue Tuesday.
``We must definitely defeat inflation, which for years has gnawed at the Turkish economy and blocked faster growth, and we will beat it,'' Dervis told reporters.
The program aims to bring annual inflation below 20 percent by 2002, he said. Inflation now stands at around 30 percent, but Dervis warned it would rise in the next few months.
The finance ministers and central bank governors of the world's seven most industrialized nations, the G-7, welcomed Turkey's framework for new economic reforms, in a joint statement issued by the Treasury Department in Washington.
``The program will rightly focus on achieving low inflation and sustainable public finances through sound fiscal and monetary policies,'' the statement said. ``Long-term political commitment by the Turkish authorities to rigorous implementation of their program remain absolutely critical to its success.''
Dervis expressed hope that economy would recover later this year.
``With a contribution from exports and tourism, we will begin to grow again, and this time on stronger foundations,'' Dervis said. But union leaders remained skeptical.
``This program was drawn up to help the country's 500 largest firms...I can't see a plus point anywhere in it,'' said Sami Evren, head of a civil servants trade union, KESK.
Last week, the government announced the broad outlines of a program, including measures to speed up privatization and restructure the country's troubled banking sector.
Earlier programs have ``twice fallen apart because of problems in the banking system,'' Deppler said.
``The program we're looking at addresses these issues quite forcefully,'' he said. ``What we're trying to do is establish the basis for a new program that will not be as prone to crisis as others have been.''
The Turkish lira has lost about a third of its value since the latest financial crisis began last month. The fall in the lira sent prices and interest rates soaring, and companies began laying off workers to cut losses.
-------- police
New Jersey troopers: Ex-AG knew of profiling
USA Today
03/20/2001
http://usatoday.com/news/nation/2001-03-20-profiling.htm
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) - New Jersey's former attorney general knew racial profiling was a problem long before he admitted it publicly and even tried to avoid a federal investigation because it would damage the state's reputation, witnesses said Tuesday.
Testimony before a state Senate committee focused for a second straight day on the former attorney general, Peter Verniero, who is now a justice on the New Jersey Supreme Court. He is expected to testify next week.
Verniero knew of concerns that state police were targeting minority drivers as early as December 1996 and that the Justice Department might launch an investigation, Assistant Attorney General John Fahy testified.
Verniero was adamant that he would not allow a federal probe and planned to visit the agency to make amends, Fahy said.
"He was afraid it would reflect adversely on our state and the administration," Fahy said.
Fahy did not provide detailed statistics that showed state police targeted minorities more than whites, but he said Verniero was aware racial profiling was a problem.
"Anyone with an ounce of common sense could see we had a history and if you're going down to Washington it's a big issue," Fahy said.
Verniero did not publicly admit racial profiling was a practice by state police until April 1999. He did so in a report issued a year after two troopers fired shots at a van stopped for speeding on the New Jersey Turnpike.
Three of the four men inside - all unarmed and all minorities - were wounded. The white troopers have said they fired in self-defense, thinking the van's driver was trying to run them over.
Verniero released the report one day after announcing an indictment against the two troopers for the shooting. Witnesses testified Monday that Verniero rushed to release the report because the Justice Department planned a civil rights lawsuit.
Assistant Attorney General George Rover also testified that he collected state police studies showing minorities were stopped and searched at much higher rates than whites.
He said he was ordered not to give federal investigators access to the information without permission from Alexander Waugh, Verniero's former executive assistant and now a state judge.
"He told me to hold onto it and he would get back to me," Rover said.
-------- terrorism
Jailed Woman in Peru Is Tried in Open Court
New York Times
March 20, 2001
By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/20/world/21PERU.html
LIMA, Peru, March 20 - Lori Berenson, an American accused by Peruvian authorities of cooperating with leftist rebels of the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement six years ago, used her first appearance in open court today to declare her innocence and to object to having to listen to her trial from behind bars.
"I am innocent of all the accusations made against me," the 31-year- old former M.I.T. student told the judge, who is hearing her case in a courtroom inside the San Juan prison in Lurigancho, just east of Lima.
Ms. Berenson, the daughter of New York City college professors, said her case - she was convicted of treason by a military court - was used by the government of President Alberto K. Fujimori, who resigned in disgrace in November, as a smoke screen to hide political problems in the country.
The public prosecutor, Walter Julián Rivas, is basing his prosecution on the argument that though Ms. Berenson may not have been a member of the Túpac Amaru, she is guilty of terrorism and offenses against public order because she collaborated with the group, known by its Spanish acronym, MRTA.
Prosecutors are seeking a 20-year sentence if Ms. Berenson is convicted.
Ms. Berenson told the court that the anti-terrorist laws under which she was being charged were enacted during a state of emergency and had attracted international criticism because they overrode detainees' rights.
Members of the public as well as the media were allowed free access to the courtroom, where the proceedings were also watched by Ms. Berenson's parents, Mark and Rhoda Berenson.
In January 1996, in a trial denounced as unfair by the United States, Ms. Berenson was convicted of treason and sentenced to life in prison by a military court. In closed- door hearings the military court concluded that she had been a leading member of the MRTA, and had been involved in that group's plans to take over the Peruvian Congress in November 1995.
Ms. Berenson's parents, with legal advice from Ramsey Clark, a former attorney general of the United States, have waged a campaign in the American media, emphasizing that the military trial of civilians - a procedure established by the Peruvian government in 1992 - failed to meet internationally recognized criteria for a fair trial.
In August of last year, a military court overturned Ms. Berenson's life sentence and handed the case over to civilian courts.
---
Berenson to be tried on terror charges
Washington Times
March 20, 2001
By Drew Benson THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-2001320222356.htm
LIMA, Peru - Less than a year after Peru's top military court overturned her life sentence for involvement with leftist rebels, American Lori Berenson returns to court today to be retried before civilian judges for "terrorist collaboration."
The three-judge trial will serve as a test of Peru's judiciary, which was controlled for years by ex-spy chief Vladimiro Montesinos whose involvement in a bribery scandal brought down the government of President Alberto Fujimori.
Miss Berenson's parents, New York professors who have dedicated themselves to winning their daughter's release, claim a fair trial still is not possible in Peru.
"Even though Mr. Fujimori and Dr. Montesinos are gone, repressive statutes, procedures and rules still persist and most of the criminal justice system's personnel remain the same," Mark and Rhoda Berenson said in a statement issued at a news conference last week.
Prosecutors are seeking the minimum 20-year sentence for the 31-year-old Miss Berenson for her involvement with the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, which is known by its Spanish acronym MRTA. Miss Berenson maintains she is innocent.
The trial is expected to last at least 15 days and it could take more than a month for the three-judge panel to reach its verdict. Under Peru's legal system, the prosecution may appeal, meaning whatever the outcome, the case will likely be decided by Peru's Supreme Court.
Miss Berenson, a former Massachusetts Institute of Technology student, was sentenced to life in prison in 1996 on charges of treason by helping the leftist MRTA plan a thwarted takeover of Congress.
But after years of pressure from the United States, Peru's top military court overturned her conviction in August, granting her a new trial on a lesser charge of "terrorist collaboration" by a civilian court.
The military court ruled new evidence showed she was not a leader of the rebel group, a necessary legal element to make the treason charge stick.
Interim President Valentin Paniagua, in power until a newly elected government takes over July 28, has worked to establish conditions guaranteeing honest polls. Elections are set for April 8.
Mr. Paniagua told foreign reporters earlier this month that conditions now exist in Peruvian courts for fair trials.
"With respect to due legal process, which concerns the lawyers and family of Miss Lori Berenson, they can be sure that they are guaranteed by the law," Mr. Paniagua said.
But former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who is acting as a human rights consultant for the Berensons, disagreed.
"Unless you reform the institution, changing personnel will not matter and tragedies of the past will be repeated," Mr. Clark said last week.
Mr. Clark said he has sent requests to, among others, the InterAmerican Court of Human Rights and Peru's Justice Minister asking Peru to throw out the case for reasons including double jeopardy.
Miss Berenson was swiftly condemned to life imprisonment by a masked military tribunal in 1996 after being nabbed on a Lima bus in late 1995 in the company of the wife of one of the rebel leaders.
Hours later, Peruvian police raided a house where Miss Berenson had once lived with MRTA rebels. The shootout left several MRTA dead and effectively quashed their plans to raid Peru's Congress.
Miss Berenson says she did not know her former housemates were terrorists.
Before she arrived in Peru in late 1994, Miss Berenson spent time in El Salvador, where she served as a secretary to a top Marxist rebel leader during peace negotiations there.
Prosecutors have charged that Miss Berenson not only knew what her MRTA roommates in Lima were up to, but was posing as a journalist to gain access to and reconnoiter the Congress.
The MRTA later made headlines when they led a four-month bloody siege of the Japanese ambassador's residence in Lima.
At Miss Berenson's 1996 trial her defense was denied rights normally associated with due process, such as the opportunity to cross-examine witnesses and present evidence.
International human rights groups have condemned Peru's military tribunals, which sent hundreds of Peruvians to prison.
-------- activists
Please boycott amazon.com! Here's why.
From: billcv2000@yahoo.com
Tue, 20 Mar 2001
I am encouraging everyone to boycott Amazon.com. They are anti-union, anti-worker, and they supported Limbaugh hate radio, still support National Review magazine, and they supported the Ashcroft nomination.
The links to articles that back this up are on my new website, FREE SPEECH CENTRAL. It is the new home to 'Bill's BEST Links'. Since February 12 I have added over 140 more new links to Democratic Party sites, Progressive & anti-bush News, T-Shirts, Activist tools, GOP Hall of Shame, Yahoo groups, etc.
Check it out when you have time. The URL is http://www.linkcrusader.com. Thanks.
Best Regards, Bill Cavanaugh
---
SQ butt of summit protest as artists toss toilet paper
Montreal Gazette
Tuesday 20 March 2001
CHARLIE FIDELMAN The Gazette
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/pages/010320/5033939.html
Bearing balloons, masks, feathered headgear and a pink pussycat hat, a group of artists yesterday threw toilet paper at the Surete du Quebec.
The unfurling streamers in front of SQ headquarters on Parthenais St. was a drill for the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City next month, said event organizer Francois Gourd, to a backdrop of noise-makers.
"There won't be just bricks thrown but poetry, too. There will be crazy people throwing confetti and having fun with music," promised Gourd, formerly with the now-defunct federal Rhinoceros Party, and founder of Les Entartistes, a group that employs pie throwing as a means of political protest.
Its targets have included William Johnson, Pierre Bourque, Stephane Dion and Jacques Parizeau.
Today, Gourd is with the Collectif de Resistance Ludique, which uses other methods to get a message across, like hurling toilet paper and confetti at the barricades surrounding Quebec City to protest against the summit.
Two stoic SQ officers reluctantly accepted a bouquet of red, heart-shaped balloons and then watched as toilet paper unraveled over the fence and on to trees inside the headquarters yard.
"There will be a red zone, a blue zone, a yellow zone, kind of like a Monopoly game," said Gourd of the huge security arrangements for the Old City, with thousands of police officers on hand. "We'll be in the white zone. It's called PQ operation because that means toilet paper in French."
The group is planning to hold a demonstration with giant sculptures, paintings, music and poetry sessions.
The artists' collective is part of a growing movement in opposition to the summit and the Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement that 34 heads of state are expected to sign.
"Our message is, 'Stop hiding and tell us what you're going to discuss, '" said Gourd, echoing activists' complaints the summit is being held behind closed doors.
Social conscience, said sculptor Armand Vaillancourt, is an obligation.
"We can't take it any longer," Vaillancourt said, counting mad-cow disease, poverty and and capitalism among the evils of globalization.
Yesterday's event was also a publicity stunt for the group's "Fete de la Resistance, SOS Humanite" concert on April 5, to be held at the Medley and featuring a dozen artists, including singer Karen Young, dancer Pol Pelletier and her troupe, music ensemble Fanfare PourPour, and the Accueil Bonneau Choir.
"Tickets are on sale at the SQ," Gourd quipped.
---
US-Mexico Border Mobilization
State-Wide Coordinator Meeting at Tijuana
From: SIUHIN@aol.com
Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001
For more infor, please contact:
Tel: (626)403-2530 e-mail: BorderActions@aol.com URL: http://www.actionla.org/border http://www.stopFTAA.org/sf (San Francisco) http://libertad.ucsd.edu/ftaa/ (San Diego)
I - 3/4 Tijuana Meeting Agenda
Saturday, March 24, 2001 Regional Coordination meeting in Tijuana for information, please contact:
Enrique - Endavalos@aol.com (San Diego) Siu Hin - siuhin@aol.com Tel: (626)695-3405 (Los Angeles) Paul - (510)834-1883, Tel: Pegro373@yahoo.com (San Francisco)
If you need housing, or car pooling to San Diego, please contact your local contacts ASAP!
Location: Casa de la Cultura, Tijuana
Schedule: 12:00 PM: a report of the Zapatista caravan. 2:30 PM: The Stop the FTAA! Regional Coordination meeting in Tijuana.
Agenda:
1) final draft of organizing structure, points of unity, April 20-22 planning.
2) bottom-liners (logistics, legal, art, convergence center, march planning, programming, Media, etc)
3) How to coordinate with other cites on FTAA actions.
4) long-term startagey, how to built a long-term solidarity building with Mexian activists?
II - Propose Plans for April 20-22 Border Mobilization
Friday, April 20, 2001 Stop the FTAA! Forum Location: Unitarian Church 4-6pm Breakout sessions 6-7pm Big Kitchen will provide lasagna 7-9:30pm Main Forum. Several speakers are ligned up including Medea Benjamin and Domingo Gonzales. Contact Herb Shore for more information. 619-287-5535
Saturday, April 21, 2001 Stop the FTAA! Border Action In the morning a march will start at the 31st Anniversary Celebration of Chicano Park in Logan Heights. Demonstrators will ride the trolley to San Ysidro where they will join the main event.
1pm Main demonstration at Larsen Park, San Ysidro U'Wa people from Colombia will speak There will be a delegation from San Diego meeting a delegation from Tijuana at the train tracks in San Ysidro.
THE TRIP TO THE TRACKS IN SAN YSIDRO IS NOT SURE. WE NEED TO KNOW IF WE WILL GO TO THE BORDER FIELD PARK OR TO SAN YSIDRO.
Sunday, April 22, 2000
An all Day bi-national activists/workers/students conference.
III - April 20-21 Border Action Call to Action/Points of Unity
APRIL 21: MULTINATIONAL DAY OF PROTEST *STOP THE FREE TRADE OF THE AMERICAS AGREEMENT or NAFTA FOR THE AMERICAS
On Saturday, 21 April, 2001, we are proposing a multinational day of protest in the San Diego/Tijuana region in solidarity with the protests in Quebec as part of the campaign against the FTAA and for humanity.
Come join us in support of worker's rights, immigrant rights, indigenous rights and the environment.
Points of Unity
1. We are promoting a multinational day of action on 21 April to support the mobilization in Quebec, Canada. We will show the world that they are not alone.
Living in the US/Mexico border, we know the consequences of the neoliberal free trade: freedom for businesses in both countries; militarization and higher border fences for the people.
2. We are promoting this multinational day of protest and education in San Diego/Tijuana with progressive people, groups and coalitions from San Diego, Baja California, Los Angeles, San Francisco and other communities in the US and Mexico.
3. We are supporting the struggle of maquiladoras workers and farmworkers of San Quintin, Baja California. The 21 April campaign will publicize these struggles and obtain material aid for progressive organizations in Baja California's maquiladoras and San Quintin farmworkers.
4. We are asking indigenous farmworkers groups in San Quintin to promote a protest in that area if that action strengthens their struggle and organization. (Resolution of the Globalphobic Conference, Oct, 2000)
If San Quintin's groups accept to organize a 21 April protest in the Valley of San Quintin, the Coalition to Stop the FTAA will promote this protest and coordinate it with the border protest.
5. We are supporting the delegation of the EZLN from Chiapas to Mexico City and the caravan that will leave from Tijuana to Mexico City to meet the EZLN delegation on 11 March, 2001. We are asking the EZLN to endorse the 21 April protest in Baja California/California.
6. We are organizing a non-violent, legal protest. This means that:
1) No groups or individuals will engage in violence, verbal or physical. 2) No groups or individuals will engage in property destruction. 3) No groups or individuals will plan civil disobedience or direct action.
When we demonstrate in the border area, we will not give excuses to the military and police forces, the Border Patrol and other agencies that patrol the border to repress us. We are promoting the participation of workers, students, religious organizations, unions, migrants, Chicanos/as, families, gays and lesbians, etc. and we are promoting the creation of a safe environment for a broad, multinational and pluricultural day of protest.
IV - Coming Events on Los Angeles, Tijuana-San Diego
*Los Angeles* General LA Area Border Planning Meeting 7 PM Monday March 26, April 2, April 9 April 16 at CARCEN, 2845 W. 7th Street, Los Angeles
SATURDAY MARCH 31ST, 12pm-6pm TEACH-IN At CARECEN, 2845 W. 7th St, at Hoover Sponsored by the Southern California Fair Trade Network
PANELS:
STOP THE FTAA(FREE TRADE AREA OF THE AMERICAS)
RESISTING CORPORATE GLOBALIZATION:
Connecting the local and the global
COLOMBIA: A Case Study in Globalization and US Intervention
workshops with: Angela Sanbrano, CARECEN Professor Enrique Ochoa, Latin American Studies, CSULA Dee Dominguez, Kitanemuk Tribe of Tejon Indians Blase Bonpane, Office of the Americas, L.A. Peace Center Coalition Eve Baker, El Rescate Colombia Project Patrick Reinsborough, Rainforest Action Network Simmi Gandhi, Health Care Worker, SEIU, SCFTN Li'i Furumoto, UCLA MECHA Carmen Valadez, Factor X, Maquiladora worker/organizer, Mexico
Tijuana- San Diego
Thursday, March 29, 2001 12pm City College teach-in in conjunction with Cesar Chavez day. Jaime Cota will be one of the speakers.
WE DON'T KNOW IF JAIME COTA WILL BE A SPEAKERS, WE HAVE NOT TALKED WITH HIM ABOUT THAT. HE IS JUST RETURNING FROM MEXICO!!!!!
Monday, April 02, 2001 A teach-in will be hosted at the university in Tijuana.
May 11, 2001 Post Stop the FTAA! demonstration event at the University of San Diego in Manchester Hall
Stop the FTAA! Committee Meetings in San Diego
Education Commitee Monday, March 19 7:30pm at Herb Shore's home 5228 East Falls View Dr. phone: 619-287-5535
Outreach Committee Wednesday, March 21 6pm Contact Justin Akers
Sunday, April 01, 2001 Stop the FTAA! San Diego meeting 2pm in room L113 at City College
Sunday, April 01, 2001 Training of monitors for the Stop the FTAA! border action on April 21. Contact Steph Sherer
Mexico-US Border Mass Mobilization LIBERATE THE BORDER, NO MORE BLOCKADES! April 20-22 2001 Tijuana - San Diego, and beyond...
Tel: (626)403-2530 e-mail: BorderActions@aol.com mail: Border Action Project 6709 La Tijera Blvd. #326 Los Angeles, CA 90045
URL:
http://www.actionla.org/border http://www.stopFTAA.org/sf (San Francisco) http://libertad.ucsd.edu/ftaa/ (San Diego)
---
Guatemalan students occupy schools
Washington Times
March 20, 2001
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-2001320215247.htm
GUATEMALA CITY - More than 200 students have occupied two schools in southern Guatemala to protest a program requiring high school students to teach at least one person to read in order to graduate.
The takeover began Wednesday when more than 1,500 students stormed the Central American Institute for Boys and the school's partner institution for girls in the rural state of Jalapa, said Mynor Elias, a student leader, in an interview published yesterday.
Since then, 200 students working in 12-hour shifts have blocked police from entering the schools, forcing administrators to cancel classes indefinitely statewide.
------
CFT resolution on the Energy Industry
Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001
From: Alan Benjamin <alan@energy-net.org>
Bay Area Labor Task Force For Public Power in Calif, - c/o Golden Gate Chapter of the Labor Party, P.O. Box 40637, San Francisco, CA 94140 Phone: (650) 355-5329 or (415) 626-1175; Fax: (415) 626-1217
The following resolution was passed on March 11, 2001 by the California Federation of Teachers at their annual Convention in Los Angeles.
--
WHEREAS corporate control of the power systems has been shown to be a disaster for the people of California, and
WHEREAS both education and the energy system in California are far too critical for life to be controlled by the private sector, and
WHEREAS the corporations now in charge of our state's power supply have given away billions of dollars to their parent companies and are crying for a taxpayer bailout, and
WHEREAS the money saved by municipalization of the power system could be used for education and other social services, and
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the CFT publicly favor the transfer of the power system into public ownership, and opposed any bailout of the present corporations who control our power supply.
------- Onelist (submissions from subscribers)