------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Inquiry Into Sub Collision Concludes
Captain of Sub Accepts Blame, and Spreads It
Submarine skipper takes stand, blame
Submarine snapshots
Sub skipper takes responsibility
Submarine collision chronology
China Warns U.S. on Warship Sale to Taiwan
Chinese leader opposes weapons sale
ITALY: NO URANIUM LINK
Jaswant visiting Washington in early April
Bin Laden is 'cult figure' of Pakistani Muslims
Israel supplies radar to India
Mori evasive on NMD
Moscow Says Remarks by U.S. Resurrect 'Spirit of Cold War'
Johanns to visit USS Nebraska submarine
Bush Admin. Drags Feet on Nuclear Worker Comp.
Cheney: Energy panel to look at nuclear power

MILITARY
Differences over Taiwan to be aired
Arms Dealer Pleads Guilty to Bank Fraud
China Comes Calling
Court Says Hospitals Cannot Drug-Test Pregnant Women
High court rules on drug testing mothers
Longer Sentences Sought for Ecstasy Traffickers
Penalties stiffened for selling ecstasy
Police in Pakistan Detain 20 Political Party Leaders
NATO Leader Asks for More Kosovo Troops
NATO's dilemma
Still friends
NASA Opposing Russian Plan for Tourist on Space Station
Spy-Analysis Agency Says It May Have Found Lost Mars Lander
Russian space officials work to align Mir
Space station skipper celebrates with burger, beer
Discovery returns to Earth
Foot-and-mouth disease forces Army to cut exercises
Darpa mobile project preps 'soldier's radio'

OTHER
English Village Butchery Blamed for Mad Cow Deaths
E.P.A. to Abandon New Arsenic Limits
Deal in Maine Prevents Development of Forestland
BRITAIN: ARMY BATTLES FOOT-AND-MOUTH
DiFrancesco Seeks to Save Meadowlands
Oil Rig Sinks; Some Leaking Is 'Inevitable,' Official Says
Foot-and-Mouth Disease Confirmed in the Netherlands
Dutch confirm first case of foot-and-mouth
Brazilian oil rig begins to leak fuel into Atlantic
Government seizes sheep suspected of disease
Bush reconsiders environmental initiatives
A Setback for Forests
Termite alert
Metro Briefs
Lawyer Says Political Feud Is to Blame for Sheriff's Trial
Attorney General Discouraged Release of Data on Profiling
Armed Murder Suspect Killed as Chief and Sheriff Squabble
State Department expels Russian diplomats
Berenson's Father Appeals to Peru
Berenson's father appeals to Peruvians
Berenson proclaims her innocence

ACTIVISTS
Mexico's Fox to meet Zaptatistas' demands
Ad Intended to Stir Up Campuses More Than Succeeds in Its Mission
World Briefing
Hunger strike leads to first death in Turkey
New Chiapas peace bid announced by Fox
PLEASE SIGN PETITION
Pak. parties gearing for show of strength
Ken Wiwa's speech


-------- NUCLEAR

Inquiry Into Sub Collision Concludes

New York Times
March 21, 2001 Filed at 1:27 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Submarine-Collision.html

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii (AP) -- It was the gospel of Scott Waddle's command: safety, efficiency, backup. The skipper of the USS Greeneville had preached those words so often his crew recited them like schoolchildren practicing their ABCs.

On an overcast February morning, when the nuclear-powered attack submarine departed Pearl Harbor on a daylong cruise for a group of civilian guests, the crew and their skipper left their credo behind.

They were unsafe, allowing a trainee to operate a sonar post without a qualified crewman.

They were inefficient, running 43 minutes behind and skimping on preparations to surface and get back home.

They did not provide backup, failing to report key information about the location of another ship.

A Navy court of inquiry into the Feb. 9 collision between the Greeneville and the Japanese trawler Ehime Maru uncovered a myriad of deficiencies aboard the submarine that day. One thing is clear: Had the crew and their commander practiced what they preached, the accident might never have happened.

Nine people, including four teen-agers learning how to fish, were killed when the submarine crashed into the trawler while demonstrating a rapid-surfacing drill for its guests.

``It's obvious some honest mistakes were made on this tragic day that led to the loss of life,'' Waddle, facing a possible court-martial, testified at the inquiry. He concluded: ``The teamwork broke.''

The inquiry ended Tuesday after 12 days and 33 witnesses. Over the coming weeks, the three presiding admirals will produce a report of their findings.

They also will recommend whether Waddle; his executive officer, Lt. Cmdr. Gerald Pfeifer; and his officer of the deck, Lt. j.g. Michael Coen, should face punishment. That decision ultimately rests with the chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.

The officers could face anything from a reprimand or discharge to a military trial and prison time.

Waddle, the only one of the three to testify under oath, stands to lose the most. While accepting full responsibility for the collision, he sought to convince the court his actions do not warrant prosecution.

``Cmdr. Waddle exercised his judgment and he did his best on that day,'' the skipper's lawyer, Charles Gittins, told the court. ``He may have fallen short, but it wasn't criminal.''

The Accident: Looking Back

On the day of the accident, ``the stars and the moon and a few other things weren't going right,'' Rear Adm. Albert Konetzni, head of the Pacific Fleet's submarine force, testified.

When the Greeneville left Pearl Harbor at 7:59 a.m., it was an unusually ugly day. Skies were hazy and seas were choppy, with swells of 6 feet or more. Four hours later, when the Ehime Maru left Honolulu Harbor, the stark white ship faded into the clouds.

On the Greeneville, the crew was rusty. The sub had been in the shipyard six months getting outfitted with new equipment. It had finally set sail in January for a month of operations, returning to Pearl Harbor one week before the accident.

More training had been scheduled the weekend of Feb. 9 but was canceled a few days earlier. The 16 civilian guests had been put on the Greeneville because it already was heading out to sea. When the sub's plans changed, under Navy rules, the ride-along should have been scrapped.

While standards were disregarded before the sub left, they were flagrantly ignored once the ship set sail.

For starters, nine of 13 key watch stations were manned by sailors not listed on the daily schedule. One post, a sonar station, was assigned to a trainee instead of a qualified operator.

Several crewmen testified it was standard practice in the Greeneville's sonar room to allow trainees to work without a qualified operator, even though it violates Navy procedures. The captain said he first learned of the practice at the inquiry, even though he had been skipper of the Greeneville two years.

A fire control technician, who analyzes sonar data and tracks surface vessels, admitted he also strayed from procedures when he stopped plotting sonar contacts on a scroll inside the control room. When challenged by the court's counsel, the crewman acknowledged he ``got lazy.''

Waddle admitted he violated Navy procedures by taking the submarine to classified depths to show his visitors what his ship could do. The court's presiding officer, Vice Adm. John Nathman, accused the commander of ``giving them the E-ticket ride at Disneyland on a submarine.''

For the court, the investigation boiled down to how Waddle ran his ship: Did he go too far in trying to impress his guests? Did he move too fast because he was showing off and, in doing so, sacrifice safety?

The cause of the accident centered on two factors -- why sonar operators and the fire control technician did not detect the Ehime Maru, and why Coen and Waddle never saw the boat through the periscope.

Testimony showed Waddle rushed preparations to surface the sub. A Navy investigator theorized it was because the ship was late getting back to port after lunch with the civilians ran long. Waddle, however, maintained he was not hurrying.

Nevertheless, the skipper ordered Coen to get to periscope depth in five minutes, though it usually takes 10 to ensure the submarine has accurate sonar data. He and Coen then spent 80 seconds, rather than the standard three minutes, looking through the periscope before proceeding on with the maneuver.

Sonar operators testified they believed they would have detected the Ehime Maru with only a couple more minutes to obtain data.

More important, the fire control technician had data six minutes before the collision showing the vessel was just 4,000 yards away. He testified he never saw that data because he was analyzing another sonar contact and did not have enough time to go back and finish his analysis of the first.

Why neither Coen nor Waddle saw the vessel through the periscope may never be clear. The boat may have been obscured by the haze, though the court noted Waddle could have taken a higher look.

That decision may haunt Waddle forever.

``In my mind I was confident ... there was nothing there,'' he said. ``I don't know why I didn't see the Ehime Maru. I know that I didn't.''

At the conclusion of the inquiry, Waddle's lawyer assured the court that ``safety, efficiency and backup were not mere rhetoric'' aboard the Greeneville.

Even the Navy's lead investigator, Rear Adm. Charles Griffiths Jr., conceded the Greeneville was a well-run ship that had a ``bad day where some mistakes were made.'' ``They happen to add up in a very worst-case way,'' Griffiths testified.

The admirals, too, seemed to grapple with the paradox of an accident like this happening on a sub like the Greeneville. Konetzni, the fleet's head submariner, offered his own explanation: ``Human beings fail.''

---

Captain of Sub Accepts Blame, and Spreads It

New York Times
March 21, 2001
By JAMES STERNGOLD
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/21/national/21HAWA.html

HONOLULU, March 20 - In combative and at times emotional testimony, the captain of the submarine that sank a Japanese fishing trawler near here last month took full responsibility today for the fatal accident but also suggested that some of his officers had set in motion the disaster by failing to follow established procedures.

The three admirals conducting the session responded with withering questioning of the captain's command style and judgments - at several points stating flatly that they did not believe some of his answers.

The testimony by the captain, Cmdr. Scott D. Waddle, was a surprise because his lawyer had said that without a guarantee that his testimony would not be used against him, he would remain silent. The head of the court of inquiry, Adm. Thomas B. Fargo, denied that request for immunity on Monday.

Commander Waddle opened the session today on a defiant note by saying the denial was a mistake and insisting that his testimony was needed to prevent the Navy from deciding how to respond to the sinking based on political pressures "at the highest levels" rather than facts.

Commander Waddle repeated his apologies to the families of the Japanese who were lost, acknowledged his responsibility as the captain of the submarine Greeneville and said he had overridden his lawyers' concerns about testifying because it was "the right thing to do."

But the perils he faced by appearing on what was the last day of the court of inquiry were immediately clear. The admirals meticulously picked apart and attacked nearly every major decision that he made on Feb. 9, when he took 16 civilians out for a demonstration cruise and, during one emergency exercise, roared to the surface and crashed into the 190-foot trawler Ehime Maru, sinking it within minutes. Nine aboard, including four teenage students, were lost at sea, straining American relations with Japan.

The admirals showed how the commander's actions had deviated from his own standing orders and how he had inexplicably rushed through at least four procedures that might have prevented the disaster. And they rejected, at times angrily, his repeated suggestions that some of his officers had let him down by failing at their own duties.

Commander Waddle kept insisting that his orders had been clear, if not explicit. "I did not micromanage my crew," he said. "I empowered them to do their jobs."

He added that he had admired a quote from Teddy Roosevelt about how a good officer needed to delegate responsibilities to his officers.

But as the lapses in following orders and in standards were detailed, Adm. John B. Nathman commented, "This conflicts with what you said your command was all about."

At another point, Commander Waddle insisted that he had expected his subordinates to know their roles and perform them competently, without constant reminders. Adm. Paul F. Sullivan tartly countered, "Do you operate your submarine based on expectations?"

On Monday, Petty Officer First Class Patrick T. Seacrest, who was in charge of tracking nearby vessels, described his own startling lapses in judgment. He said that, first, he had not noticed that the Ehime Maru was closing in fast on the Greeneville, and then, once the sonar showed it perilously close just before the exercise, he had manually overridden the computers and placed the trawler well out of range because Commander Waddle had not seen the ship in a check through the periscope.

But the admirals' sharp questioning today made it seem highly unlikely that Petty Officer Seacrest, who did receive immunity for his testimony, would take sole blame.

Although it could take the court several weeks to decide who will be held responsible, and what sanctions might be applied, today's tense, pointed session provided the clearest indications yet that Commander Waddle could face a court-martial for what the admirals characterized as a series of poor decisions intended largely to impress a group of visitors on the submarine.

The court disclosed for the first time today that Commander Waddle was under suspicion of three major crimes: dereliction of duty, placing the submarine in a hazardous situation, and, most serious, negligent homicide, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years' imprisonment.

Commander Waddle was the last of 33 witnesses to testify over 12 days, and the focus was largely on unusual procedures and the decided haste with which he seemed to have gone through numerous safety procedures. One problem involved a video monitor in the control room that displays the bearing of any nearby vessels. The monitor, which repeats information visible to a sonar officer, was not working the day of the accident, Commander Waddle testified. Questioned repeatedly, he said he had not explicitly discussed the equipment failure with any of his senior officers.

He also testified that 9 of the 13 sailors seated at critical watch stations during the trip had swapped positions he had assigned without notifying him. Commander Waddle characterized himself as demanding strict adherence to orders and maintaining order at all times, but he said he could not explain why the changes had been made without his noticing.

Also, while a third of his crew had stayed behind that day for training, he said he had taken no special measures to ensure that all operations were closely watched.

When Commander Waddle explained that he had given no instructions to another senior officer to watch the sonar with special care because the monitor was down, Admiral Sullivan said, "I just don't believe it."

The admirals also pointed out that four safety procedures, ranging from the way the Greeneville tracked nearby ships to the way it surfaced and used its periscope, had been skipped or abbreviated.

Commander Waddle said that when he had looked through the periscope, there was haze but he had been able to see jets taking off from the Honolulu airport, about 14 miles away. Yet he had not seen the Ehime Maru, by then a mile away or less. He did say that he had hurried through the search, taking about 80 seconds when the norm is three minutes or so. But he repeatedly denied that he had been rushing.

Perhaps the toughest questions came from Admiral Nathman, who had seemed particularly insulted by the suggestion that the court could be swayed by political concerns. When Commander Waddle defended his decision not to order special sonar awareness, Admiral Nathman raised his voice and gesticulated, saying, "It makes me question the standards on Greeneville."

------

Submarine skipper takes stand, blame

Washington Times
March 21, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/national/nobyline-2001321224827.htm

HONOLULU (AP) - By turns apologetic and defensive, the skipper of the submarine that sank a Japanese fishing boat took the stand yesterday, blaming errors by himself and his crew.

"These mistakes were honest and well-intentioned," said Cmdr. Scott Waddle, who testified as the Navy court of inquiry ended.

In a closing statement, Cmdr. Waddle's civilian attorney, Charles Gittins, implored the three presiding admirals not to recommend a court-martial.

Mr. Gittins blamed the accident on a series of extraordinary circumstances that he said could not be duplicated.

"Commander Waddle exercised his judgment, and he did his level best. He may have fallen short on that day, but it wasn't criminal," Mr. Gittins said.

Under investigation are Cmdr. Waddle; his executive officer, Lt. Cmdr. Gerald Pfeifer; and the officer of the deck, Lt. j.g. Michael Coen.

All three men could face courts-martial. Before Cmdr. Waddle testified, a Navy lawyer listed the crimes he is suspected of committing: dereliction of duty, improper hazarding of a vessel and negligent homicide.

The admirals are expected to take three weeks to report on their findings and to 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.

Lt. Cmdr. Brent Filbert, representing Lt. j.g. Coen, said the problem of the collision has "a very simple answer. It has a human answer. The commanding officer, Cmdr. Waddle, rushed himself and rushed his crew."

Cmdr. Waddle's sworn testimony was a surprise because his attorney had indicated he would not testify without immunity, which the Navy rejected.

Cmdr. 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 Cmdr. Waddle spoke.

Outside the hearing, Ryosuke Terata, whose son was among those killed, said the families welcomed the skipper's testimony as "keeping his promise that he made to us when he apologized."

The USS Greeneville smashed into the Japanese fishing vessel Ehime Maru while demonstrating a rapid-surfacing drill for 16 civilians. Nine persons, including four teen-age boys, were killed.

Cmdr. 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 Cmdr. Waddle rushed preparations for surfacing and whether he performed an inadequate periscope search before taking the Greeneville up.

Their voices sometimes rising in impatience, the three admirals presiding over the court questioned Cmdr. Waddle closely about the decisions he made, including giving a junior officer five minutes to perform a maneuver that couldn't be done that quickly.

They also went over an 80-second periscope search - a standard search is three minutes -shortly before the collision.

"This is clearly your last good chance to have avoided" the boat, said Rear Adm. Paul Sullivan.

"I don't know why I didn't see the Ehime Maru. I know that I didn't," Cmdr. Waddle said.

The commander said he had no reason to doubt his crew. "I didn't micromanage my crew. I empowered them to do their job," he said.

For example, Cmdr. 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. The commander said he assumes crewmen took it on themselves to swap stations and relieve colleagues.

"Well, captain, it was your boat," interjected Vice Adm. John Nathman, the presiding officer.

Adm. Nathman also questioned whether Cmdr. Waddle, who took the submarine on a series of sharp turns for civilian guests, was "just giving them the E-ticket ride at Disneyland on a submarine."

-------

Submarine snapshots

InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 3/21/2001
By The Associated Press
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406461837

A court of inquiry, the Navy's highest form of administrative investigation, could result in a recommendation for courts-martial of the three USS Greeneville officers who are the subjects:

_Cmdr. Scott Waddle, 41. Graduated U.S. Naval Academy in 1981. A native of Austin, Texas, Waddle served on three other ships, as electrical officer, engineer and executive officer. He took command of the USS Greeneville two years ago. He holds the Meritorious Service Medal, the Navy Commendation Medal and the Navy Achievement Medal.

_Lt. Cmdr. Gerald Pfeifer, 38. Graduated Naval Academy in 1986. Previous assignments include two other nuclear submarines, the USS Nevada and the USS Batfish. Former commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet Nuclear Propulsion Examination Board, Pfeifer arrived on the Greeneville in October 1999. He holds the Meritorious Unit Commendation and the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal.

_Lt. j.g. Michael Coen, 26. Commissioned from the Navy ROTC at Florida State University in 1997. Enlisted in Naval Reserve on active duty in 1995 to serve in the Nuclear Propulsion Program. He holds the National Defense Service Medal and the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal. The Greeneville is his first assignment.

Three Navy admirals presided over the court and will recommend whether the officers should face punishment. They are:

_ Vice Adm. John B. Nathman. Commander of the Naval Air Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet. Former commander of the seven-ship Nimitz Battle Group. The USS Nimitz is the largest U.S. nuclear aircraft carrier.

_ Rear Adm. Paul F. Sullivan. Director of plans and policy at the U.S. Strategic Command. Former commander of the Navy's Trident submarine fleet in Washington state.

_ Rear Adm. David M. Stone. Commander of Cruiser/Destroyer Group FIVE and the Nimitz Battle Group. Former commander of the Standing Naval Force Mediterranean.

---

Sub skipper takes responsibility

InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 3/21/2001
By JEAN CHRISTENSEN Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406461807

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii (AP) - By turns apologetic and defensive, the skipper of a submarine that sank a Japanese trawler was on the stand Tuesday, blaming errors by himself and his crew for the accident as a Navy court of inquiry into the collision ended.

``These mistakes were honest and well-intentioned,'' said Cmdr. Scott Waddle.

In a closing statement, Waddle's civilian attorney, Charles Gittins, implored the three admirals presiding over the hearing not to recommend a court-martial.

Gittins blamed the accident on a series of extraordinary circumstances that he said could not be duplicated.

``Commander Waddle exercised his judgment, and he did his level best. He may have fallen short on that day, but it wasn't criminal,'' Gittins said.

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.

The admirals are expected to take three weeks to report on their findings and to 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.

Lt. Cmdr. Brent Filbert, representing Coen, said the problem of the collision has ``a very simple answer. It has a human answer. The commanding officer, Cmdr. Waddle, rushed himself and rushed his crew.''

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.

Outside the hearing, Ryosuke Terata, whose son was among those killed, said the families welcomed Waddle's testimony as ``keeping his promise that he made to us when he apologized.''

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 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.

Their voices sometimes rising in impatience, the three admirals presiding over the court questioned Waddle closely about the decisions he made, including giving a junior officer five minutes to perform a maneuver that couldn't possibly have been done that quickly.

They also went over in detail the 80-second periscope search _ a standard search is three minutes _ that took place shortly before the collision.

``This is clearly your last good chance to have avoided this collision,'' said Rear Admiral Paul Sullivan.

Waddle raised his arms and clenched his fists in the air to simulate turning the periscope as he described the search, saying he looked in the area of reported contacts and believed he knew what was going on at the surface.

``I don't know why I didn't see the Ehime Maru. I know that I didn't,'' he said.

Waddle disputed earlier testimony that he ran an informal _ if not lax _ ship.

``I was not informal,'' he insisted.

One by one he addressed criticisms directed at him and his command over the past two weeks _ why was the boat running late, why did they perform the dangerous maneuver of rapid surfacing, why didn't Waddle and his officers have a clearer picture of what was going on.

Waddle said he had no reason to doubt his crew.

``I didn't micromanage my crew. I empowered them to do their job,'' he said.

Under questioning, 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.

``The teamwork broke. No one raised a flag,'' Waddle said.

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,'' Rear Admiral David 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.''

---

Submarine collision chronology

InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 3/21/2001
By The Associated Press
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406461811

Key dates in the deadly collision between a U.S. submarine and a Japanese fisheries training boat:

_ Feb. 9: USS Greeneville collides with Ehime Maru while demonstrating emergency surfacing drill for 16 civilians. Coast Guard commences search and rescue for nine missing Japanese.

_ Feb. 10: Greeneville Cmdr. Scott Waddle is reassigned to the staff of Submarine Forces-Pacific.

_ Feb. 13: Navy confirms civilians were operating some submarine controls when accident occurred, fueling outrage in Japan.

_ Feb. 16: Navy starts underwater survey of crash site and locates the Ehime Maru. It begins studies to determine the feasibility of salvage.

_ Feb. 16: Adm. Thomas Fargo, head of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, receives the Navy's preliminary investigative report.

_ Feb. 17: Fargo announces he will convene a court of inquiry, the Navy's highest level of administrative investigation.

_ Feb. 23: Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld orders an indefinite moratorium on permitting civilian visitors to operate military equipment ``when such operation could cause, or reasonably be perceived as causing, an increased safety risk.''

_ Feb. 25: Waddle issues a statement to the relatives of those missing expressing his ``most sincere regret.''

_ Feb. 27: Adm. William J. Fallon, the Navy's No. 2 officer, arrives in Japan to deliver a letter of apology from President Bush to Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori. Fallon later meets with the families of those missing.

_ March 2: Coast Guard calls off search for missing.

_ March 5: Court of inquiry convenes.

_ March 12: Navy receives feasibility study estimating cost of raising the Ehime Maru at $40 million. Analysis of raising vessel continues.

_ March 20: Waddle testifies; court of inquiry concludes.

--------- china

China Warns U.S. on Warship Sale to Taiwan
Vice Premier, Who Meets Powell Today and Bush Thursday, Sees Rising Tensions

Washington Post
Wednesday, March 21, 2001; Page A25
By Steven Mufson and Robert G. Kaiser Washington Post Staff Writers
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32824-2001Mar20?language=printer

China's most seasoned diplomat, Vice Premier Qian Qichen, who meets with President Bush on Thursday, warned yesterday that the U.S. sale of advanced destroyers to Taiwan could torpedo U.S.-China relations and raise the chances of military conflict.

Qian said selling the Aegis destroyers would be a "grave violation" of a 1982 agreement limiting U.S. arms sales to Taiwan. In a breakfast meeting with media executives in New York yesterday, Qian added that the sale could increase the chances of Chinese military action to bring about reunification with the self-governing island of Taiwan that Beijing says is part of China.

"It would change the essence of the issue from a peaceful approach to bring about reunification to . . . a military approach," said Qian, who meets Secretary of State Colin L. Powell today. Asked if that meant the sale would provoke military action by China, Qian said, "It all depends on the circumstances."

The Bush administration decision over an arms package for Taiwan is due next month, part of an annual ritual in which the United States chooses what weapons to sell from a list Taiwan submits. This year, the most controversial item is Taiwan's request to buy four Arleigh Burke-class destroyers equipped with missiles, guns, torpedoes and special Aegis radar systems capable of tracking 100 targets simultaneously. Chinese officials fear the Aegis-equipped destroyers, which would not be ready for delivery until 2005, could link Taiwan with future U.S. missile defense systems.

Taiwan has also asked to buy submarines, more sophisticated missiles, Kidd-class destroyers, P-3 submarine hunting aircraft and software upgrades for fighter planes.

Whether Qian prevails may indicate the direction of China policy under Bush. Senior Chinese officials hope Bush will follow in the footsteps of his father, a former U.S. envoy to China who heeded Beijing's sensibilities. But they fear the younger Bush, under the influence of conservatives in his administration, might take a tougher stance toward Beijing and more openly support Taiwan.

Those concerns might have been heightened Monday when State Department spokesman Richard A. Boucher refused to repeat the "three no's" enunciated by then-President Bill Clinton during a visit to Shanghai in 1998. That policy stated no support for Taiwan independence, no recognition for a separate Taiwanese government, and no backing of Taiwan's entry into international organizations. Boucher would only say that the United States supports a "one-China" policy and "peaceful resolution acceptable to the people on Taiwan."

Qian's focus on the Aegis destroyers is a gamble. If his mission fails and the Bush administration sells the Aegis destroyers to Taiwan anyway, it might diminish the prestige of Qian, dean of the Chinese foreign policy establishment and member of the Chinese Communist Party's Politburo.

Under the 1982 communiqué, President Ronald Reagan agreed to limit arms sales to Taiwan. But in a separate one-page memo filed with the National Security Council, Reagan said the United States would limit sales so long as the balance of military power between China and Taiwan was preserved. Under earlier accords and in the Taiwan Relations Act, the United States severed its military alliance with Taiwan but said it would continue to supply the island with weapons to defend itself from possible attack from the Communist mainland.

Many senior administration officials want to do more to help Taiwan because they believe hundreds of Chinese missiles located in Fujian province on the coast across from Taiwan have changed the balance of military power across the straits.

In addition, the Aegis destroyers have powerful friends in Congress. One of the two shipyards that build the destroyers, which cost about $1 billion each, is in Pascagoula, Miss. The father of Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) once worked in the shipyard. In addition, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) supports advanced arms sales to Taiwan.

Larry Wortzel, a former U.S. military attaché in Beijing and now director of Asia studies at the Heritage Foundation, has proposed that the administration sell Taiwan Kidd-class destroyers -- which are older and less sophisticated but available now -- and begin to build four extra Aegis destroyers without promising them to Taiwan. In 2005, when the Aegis destroyers would be complete, the United States could sell them to Taiwan or keep them for U.S. antimissile needs.

Other China experts say that Taiwan should first shore up hangars and warehouses of existing fighter jets and ammunition to improve its ability to withstand an initial Chinese missile attack.

The senior U.S. military officer in the Pacific, Adm. Dennis Blair, has urged China to reduce tensions by withdrawing some of the missiles that lie within range of Taiwan, but China has rebuffed those suggestions. "Our military is not aimed at Taiwan as a target," Qian said. "I don't think this should be a problem."

Some U.S. lawmakers have expressed concern about Beijing's recent 17 percent boost in its public military budget. Qian played down its significance. "Even with the increase, it [defense spending] only amounts to the equivalent of $17 billion. . . . That level is still reasonable," he said. He said China spent 5 percent of what the United States spends on defense and a third of what Japan spends.

China experts note that public spending figures do not include a substantial and secret acquisition budget.

Qian said he was "cautiously optimistic" that the Bush administration would decide against the Aegis destroyer sales to Taiwan, as did the Clinton administration last year. "I hope to reach a common understanding," Qian said. He added that he hopes to persuade Bush to visit Beijing this fall after a meeting of Pacific leaders in Shanghai.

-------

Chinese leader opposes weapons sale

InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 3/21/2001
By GEORGE GEDDA Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406462626

WASHINGTON (AP) - A top Chinese official said Tuesday in advance of talks with President Bush that Chinese-American relations would suffer a ``very serious'' setback if Taiwan receives permission to buy four U.S. destroyers with highly sophisticated radar equipment.

Taiwan is expected to dominate Deputy Prime Minister Qian Qichen's talks with Secretary of State Colin Powell on Wednesday and with Bush on Thursday.

Taiwan has requested four destroyers equipped with the Aegis radar system. The state-of-the-art battle system defends ships against aircraft and missile attacks. The administration is expected to make a decision next month.

Meeting with media representatives in New York, Qian refused to rule out a pre-emptive attack on Taiwan if Bush goes ahead with the sale.

``It all depends on the circumstances,'' he said.

Asked about Qian's remarks, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said, ``We do expect differences on the role and the impact of U.S. arms sales to Taiwan.''

He said it is longstanding U.S. policy not to consult with China on arms sales to Taiwan.

``We sell to Taiwan what we think is appropriate and necessary to meet their legitimate defensive needs,'' he said.

China and Taiwan have been ruled separately since both sides split amid civil war in 1949. China considers Taiwan a renegade province and contends it should not be treated like an independent nation with diplomatic relations with other countries.

Boucher said the administration believes the U.S. relationship with Taiwan helps to give the island ``confidence and comfort'' to engage with Beijing.

Qian said the Aegis sale would be a violation of a 1982 agreement under which the United States pledged not to improve the quality or quantity of its weapons sales to Taiwan compared with previous years.

``Just imagine,'' Qian said, ``China has always stood for peaceful reunification'' with Taiwan. The Aegis sale would ``change the issue into a military solution,'' he added.

Boucher said he could not say whether an Aegis sale would violate the 1982 agreement because a review process is still under way.

China fears Aegis could form part of a more comprehensive shield to defend Taiwan against a missile attack.

Qian also reaffirmed China's opposition to the Bush administration's plans to deploy a missile defense system to protect American territory.

``This is not just an issue involving China,'' he said. ``If the global equilibrium is broken so casually, it could lead to an international crisis.''

As China sees it, U.S. deployment of a missile defense would alter the international power balance in favor of the United States because, among other factors, it would neutralize China's offensive capability.

Critics of the Bush plan contend that a missile defense program could touch off an arms race.

Powell has defended the concept on grounds that it will deter an adversary who might otherwise be tempted to develop a capability for launching missiles against American cities.

The American tone toward China has been more hostile since Bush took office, and his encounter with Qian may be the most adversarial he has had with any foreign leader.

On such issues as trade, the Korean peninsula and non-proliferation, the two countries have shown an ability to cooperate but they appear deeply divided on Taiwan.

Qian, highlighting the positive, said he was pleased that Bush indicated a desire to attend the annual Asia-Pacific summit meeting, which is set for Shanghai in October.

``It is encouraging for this to be arranged six months in advance,'' he said. ``It is good for the stability and growth of the relationship.''

Asked about the appointment of aides in the administration who are considered unfriendly to China, Qian said his country has had constructive ties with Republican and Democratic administrations since 1972.

All, he noted with satisfaction, have pursued ``the same policy of one China.''


-------- depleted uranium

ITALY: NO URANIUM LINK

New York Times
March 21, 2001
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/21/world/21BRIE.html

A preliminary Italian study of the so-called Balkan Syndrome found no link between the use of depleted uranium ammunition and cancer among soldiers. The scientific commission was set up by the Italian government, which was one of the first NATO allies to raise an alarm over the high rate of cancer among soldiers who served in Bosnia between 1995 and 1999. Similar British and American scientific studies have also failed to establish evidence of a link. Alessandra Stanley (NYT)

-------- india / pakistan

Jaswant visiting Washington in early April

The Hindu
Wednesday, March 21, 2001
http://www.indiaserver.com/thehindu/2001/03/21/stories/02210008.htm

NEW DELHI, MARCH 20. The External Minister, Mr. Jaswant Singh, will visit the United States early next month to set in motion a high-level interaction with the Bush administration.

Mr. Singh is visiting Washington from April 5 to 7 at the invitation of the US Secretary of State, Mr. Colin Powell. The visit falls within the framework of the regular ``dialogue architecture'' unveiled during the visit by the former U.S. President, Mr. Bill Clinton. The framework envisages regular foreign-ministry level meetings as well as an annual summit between the Prime Minister and the U.S. President. Apart from Mr. Powell, Mr. Singh who is also the Defence Minister, will meet his counterpart, Mr. Donald Rumsfield. The Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister and National Security Adviser, Mr. Brajesh Mishra, has met Mr. Rumsfield earlier.

The meeting between Mr. Singh and Mr. Powell will take stock of the Indo-U.S. relations and give new direction to the evolving relationship. The topics which are expected to be discussed include nuclear non-proliferation including the US post -Pokharan sanctions on India, terrorism, developments in Afghanistan, Indo- Pak. relations, China, energy security and other regional and global issues.

---

Bin Laden is 'cult figure' of Pakistani Muslims

Washington Times
March 21, 2001
By Arnaud de Borchgrave THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-200132122648.htm

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan - Demonization by the West of the world's most wanted terrorist has turned Osama bin Laden into a "cult figure among Muslims," says Pakistan's military ruler.

In an exclusive interview on Monday, Gen. Pervez Musharraf said the world's Muslims are angry with the West because of complaints ranging from "the decline in moral values as conveyed by Hollywood movies" to a perceived pattern of attacks on Muslims in Chechnya, the Balkans, the Palestinian territories and Iraq.

U.S. demands for the arrest and trial of bin Laden, believed to have masterminded the 1998 bomb attacks that killed 224 persons at U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, are seen by many Pakistanis as part of that pattern, Gen. Musharraf said.

As a result, the suspected terrorist has become "a hero figure on the pedestal of Muslim extremism."

Wearing a tweed sport jacket and tan slacks with an open-neck shirt, Gen. Musharraf spoke at Army House, his official residence in Rawalpindi.

He repeated a proposal first aired to The Washington Times four weeks ago by Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider that a three-man panel of "distinguished Islamic legal scholars" be convened in an Islamic third country to examine the evidence against bin Laden - evidence that he said Mr. Haider has seen and found persuasive.

The Islamic jurists should be drawn from Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and a third Islamic nation to be agreed upon by the parties concerned, Gen. Musharraf said.

Mr. Haider told The Washington Times in February that the Afghan Taliban militia's supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, had indicated to him he was willing to consider such a proposal.

Asked why Pakistan was the only country in the world to support the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, Gen. Musharraf replied, "National interest and security, pure and simple." Pakistan is already threatened by India and does not want another enemy on its western border.

Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large for The Washington Times, a position he also holds with United Press International. The following is excerpted from his interview with Gen. Musharraf:

QUESTION: What makes you believe that Pakistan can have a functioning democracy in place in the 18 months you have remaining in office, out of the three years authorized by your Supreme Court?

Frankly, I don't understand how a very poor country of 140 million that is 70 percent illiterate and trying to cope with 2 million Afghan refugees can hope to achieve Western standards of democracy.

ANSWER: This is a very loaded question. But my frank answer is that I totally agree with your underlying assumption. The Pakistani environment is not fully conducive to real parliamentary democracy, as it is understood in the West. But at the same time, the demands of the whole world, particularly the United States, and of our own people, make it imperative that we give it our best shot.

I do not believe there is anyone in Pakistan who thinks we shouldn't have democracy. So irrespective of one's views and with the passage of time, and if we establish the conditions for the very essence of democracy - which means beginning with the grass roots where there is none today - I think we have more than a sporting chance by returning power to the people.

What we have to eradicate is the parody of democracy we have suffered which was camouflage for the systematic plunder of the country by a political elite. We turn over the first new leaf next August 14 with local elections. This will plant the seeds and start the process of establishing the democratic foundations for a new Pakistan.

Q. So you are confident that 18 months after seizing power - following the last Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's attempt to kill you by crashing your plane - you have stopped Pakistan's slide into chaos and that you can stick to the timetable for restoring civilian rule by October 2002, with a solvent and honest government and banking transparency. But why is Pakistan's 53-year history pockmarked by occasional military coups - you are the fourth military ruler - to clean the democratic stables?

A. The problem is that the constitution does not provide an answer to all our political problems.

Q. So you're going for constitutional reform in your remaining months?

A. If we have to amend the constitution, we shall do that, too. The missing link was the district level in our country that was excluded from the political process, in effect disenfranchising millions. The superstructure was also defective. It must be designed to provide a constitutional answer to any political crisis. We must establish a proper balance of power under the constitution.

Q. Are you suggesting you need a strong president?

A. He should certainly not be a figurehead as he is now. But the power of a strong president must also be offset in a system of checks and balances.

Q. So you do not believe Pakistan is ripe for a De Gaulle-type solution that saved France in 1958 from the corrupt Fourth Republic's parliamentary system and a figurehead president, and established a new presidential constitution?

A. No, that is not the proper solution for Pakistan. But we need to bring minor adjustments at the top and major ones at the grass-roots level.

Q. To restore your traditional alliances, especially with the United States, doesn't Pakistan require a major voice that is respected both domestically and internationally? Such as S. Yaqub Khan, your former foreign minister, who would command immediate attention in Washington as Pakistan's most respected elder statesman?

A. This is something we have to give a lot of thought to. First, he must command respect domestically and then internationally.

Q. Right now the only Pakistani politician known abroad is Benazir Bhutto.

A. Unfortunately true. She is the darling of the Western media because they are not informed about what she really did in Pakistan. She is the one who let the country down.

Q. Former President Farooq Leghari, who dismissed Mrs. Bhutto, told me that between her and former Prime Minister Sharif, some $3 billion was plundered from the country. He also said that about $50 billion had vanished in the past 20 years. Is that possible in such a poor country?

A. Yes. I cannot vouch for the accuracy of $50 billion, but I know it was many billions of dollars. As for Bhutto and Sharif, it was more than $3 billion. It all disappeared abroad into offshore tax shelters and investments through front companies and third-party names.

Q. No one understands the Taliban in Afghanistan better than Pakistan. Could you explain what is happening in that country where an Islamic tribe that lost its head engages in the kind of cultural vandalism not seen since Hitler, Stalin and Mao?

A. We do not attempt to rationalize vandalism. We regret it. We condemn it.

Q. But do you understand it?

A. It is an ignorant, primitive interpretation of Islam that is condemned by the entire Islamic world. As to what is happening in Afghanistan, quite clearly after the Soviet Union withdrew its forces in 1989, the country splintered into small parts under the authority of warlords fighting among themselves. The Tajiks, the Uzbeks, the Pashtuns, all wanted their piece of the action. It was the dismemberment of Afghanistan that was taking place after the United States walked away from the 10-year war effort we conducted together and with Saudi Arabia to defeat the Soviet occupation.

(The) Taliban came in much later and reunified the country by force with the support of the Afghan people. Armed opposition groups fell like a deck of cards because they were up against people power. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind from everything we know that the people of Afghanistan are fully behind [the] Taliban - drought and hunger notwithstanding.

Q. Are you suggesting that the United States is responsible for these events after abandoning the mujahideen freedom fighters to their own devices?

A. To a certain extent, without a doubt. All their support walked away and Afghanistan was left high and dry. The so-called Afghan Arab mujahideen returned to their native countries whence they had been recruited and where they now found themselves unwanted as terrorist suspects. Many then went back to Afghanistan. And many also came here or went to other countries in the region.

Q. Why is Pakistan the only country in the world to support the Taliban?

A. National interest and security, pure and simple. We have one big threat from the East with India. We have no desire to add another threat from the West with Afghanistan where we have the same tribes on both sides of the border. We also have 2 million Afghan refugees on our territory, plus 170,000 since last year.

Q. So you have influence over the Taliban in Kabul?

A. Certainly not what the United States seems to believe. As soon as I heard about [the] Taliban's plans to demolish all statues of Buddha, I sent a strongly worded message admonishing them to cease and desist. I also sent my interior minister to Kabul with an unequivocal demand that was ignored.

Q. What, in your judgment, should be done about Osama bin Laden, now described by the United States as the world's most wanted terrorist? How does Pakistani public opinion view him and is he becoming a cult figure?

A. The Western demonization of OBL, as he is known in Pakistan, made him into a cult figure among Muslims who resent everything -from the decline in moral values as conveyed by Hollywood movies and TV serials to America's lack of support for Palestinians being killed by Israeli occupation forces; to what Russia is doing to Muslims in Chechnya; what the West did to Muslims in Bosnia and in Kosovo; sanctions against civilians in Iraq; the U.S. Tomahawk cruise missile attacks against Sudan and Afghanistan; India's oppression of Muslims in Kashmir. Our Muslims look at East Timor and say why can't Kashmir be liberated the same way.

It is a very long list of complaints that has generated a strong persecution complex that the OBL cult figure has come to embody. He is a hero figure on the pedestal of Muslim extremism.

As to what to do, I think we should take a leaf from how Libya, the United States and the United Kingdom settled the Pan Am 103 act of terrorism over [Lockerbie in] Scotland. A compromise solution was eventually found for a neutral venue in the Netherlands under Scottish law. We must be equally inventive in the case of OBL.

Q. What do you have in mind?

A. The Taliban government has suggested that OBL should be tried in Afghanistan, where the United States would present the evidence against OBL in the bombings of two American embassies in Africa to the Supreme Justice of the Shariat Court in Kabul. That, of course, is a nonstarter for America.

What I would like to suggest is that a panel of three distinguished Islamic legal scholars be formed -one from Afghanistan, one from Saudi Arabia and one from a third country to be negotiated. This body would then meet in an Islamic country to be determined among the parties. This could be anywhere from Morocco to Malaysia. Sometimes we tend to forget that almost one out of five people on Earth is Muslim. The three prominent jurists would then listen to the evidence presented by the Americans.

Q. Your Interior Minister, Moinuddin Haider, was recently presented with this evidence by U.S. authorities. Was it compelling?

A. Minister Haider determined that it was.

Q. OBL also has many sympathizers in Pakistan?

A. Yes, among the extremists. They are no more than 1 percent of the Pakistani population, but they hold 99 percent of our people hostage to their demagogic sloganeering.

Q. One percent is still a lot of people. And they scare the majority into appeasing them?

A. Yes, 1.4 million extremists add up to a lot of extremists. They make a lot of noise, but they don't get elected because 99 percent of the people are moderate in their outlook.

Q. How do you explain that the "Jihadis" - Holy Warriors - are growing in numbers and importance in Pakistan?

A. Primarily because of the military struggle in Kashmir, where more and more mujahideen freedom fighters are involved in the struggle to liberate Kashmir. Twenty years of warfare by Kashmiri guerrillas is now morphing into a popular uprising by the people. The other root cause of Pakistani extremism is extreme economic deprivation, which is a mirror image of the growing disparities between rich and poor nations that the digital revolution has not alleviated.

Young unemployed are easy prey for ideological recruitment in the name of religion. It gives meaning and purpose to their young lives that they see without hope. Extremist recruits can also see that despite all the loans they read about from international institutions and friendly countries nothing has materialized. They conclude, rightly, that they money has been stolen by a tiny minority of political elites. These are the people who have been the gravediggers of democracy in the name of defending democracy.

Q. Interior Minister Haider says, "Islam teaches us patience, kindness and understanding, but what is happening today is destroying our society and it will destroy our country." Do you agree?

A. If we do not check extremism is what Mr. Haider is referring to. We have a large community of Shi'ia Muslims in Pakistan and the divide with the Sunni Muslims is comparable to the strife between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. Sectarian violence, exacerbated by clandestine Indian agents - I have proof positive on this score - has taken 300 lives in recent times.

Q. The Jihadis behave like paramilitaries, swaggering with automatic weapons in public and your madrasas - religious schools where the holy Koran is taught -are proliferating by the thousands. Is a scenario whereby "mullahs with nukes" take over Pakistan, as the mullahs conquered Iran in 1979, conceivable?

A. Like Americans, Pakistanis consider it their birthright to own guns. But at our last Cabinet meeting, we decided to ban any public display of weapons and the provincial governors have been ordered to enforce the ban with vigor beginning very shortly. As for the madrasas, they fill a vacuum in very poor rural areas that are illiterate to teach the Koran. But "mullahs with nukes" is bad science fiction.

Q. Last week the International Court of Justice in The Hague rendered its decision on a territorial waters dispute that concerned oil and gas rights between Bahrain and Qatar. Both countries had agreed to the jurisdiction and Qatar won four of the five points in dispute. Why not submit the Kashmiri dispute to the ICJ?

A. Because this is not a territorial dispute between India and Pakistan. This concerns the right of the people of Kashmir who do not wish to be with India. It is not a question of adjusting the Line of Control here and there between Indian-controlled Kashmir and free Kashmir. The Line of Control itself is the problem. The aspirations of the Kashmiri people is what this is all about.

Q. And you can resolve this across a table with India as you are now advocating?

A. Why does India say no? They want to talk about bilateral problems except Kashmir. But we have no bilateral issues with India except for Kashmir.

Q. Doesn't this require third-party involvement?

A. By all means, but India says no. Let the United Nations or the United States become involved. India won't hear about it. India says let's go back to the Lahore declaration of 1999. But I was there as chief of staff when it was drafted. The first draft did not even contain the word Kashmir. It was added later as an apologetic afterthought.

Q. Is Pakistan now prepared to sign a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty?

A. We are not quite there, but getting there. There are a number of prominent voices that believe this means we would be giving up our nuclear option now that we have become a nuclear power. This will have to be carefully explained by me in the coming weeks - that there is no rollback of our security. Unless we change perceptions to accept the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, we would be destabilizing ourselves internally.

Q. But you have just retired your two leading scientists - Qadeer Khan, the father of your nuclear bomb, and Ashfaq Ahmad, the chairman of Pakistan's Atomic Energy Commission - who then declined to join your government as advisers with Cabinet rank. So perhaps people put this together with the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and conclude that means freezing further nuclear development.

A. Their retirement has nothing to do with the CTBT. Both these national heroes have been extended in their positions several times already. But I believe they will now join the government. Dr. Khan told me his position has been misreported in the media and we are having dinner this coming week to work out his new assignment.

Q. Only 1.2 million Pakistanis out of a population of 140 million pay any kind of tax, which gives you a tax-to-GDP ratio of only 11 percent, woefully short of what it takes to run a government that meets minimal essential services and adequate defense. As a result, Pakistan's $38 billion foreign debt, run up over the last two decades, eats up 86 percent of your revenue. By 2004, you will owe IMF and other foreign creditors over $21 billion in debt servicing alone -more than twice your annual exports. How does one square this vicious circle?

A. You paint a nightmarish scenario that is an accurate picture of our present predicament. But we have a strategy to get out of it. More than half our expenditures go to debt servicing. Which means we have to reduce debt servicing. This in turn means our donors must be persuaded to give us some relief. At least in the short-term heavy-interest debt.

If the donors do not wish to assist us, we will accelerate privatization [and] proceeds would then go to pay the heavy-interest debt. Beyond that, we plan a vigorous export drive to increase our foreign earnings.

Q. This brings us back to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty as a sine qua non for the relief you seek.

A. Linkage of sorts.

Q. There is a direct link between debt rescheduling and CTBT?

A. Not direct but some linkage, especially with Japan for the next tranche of aid [an estimated $1 billion].

Q. How do you view the new Bush administration?

A. Every Pakistani was rooting for Bush and when he won there was sincere jubilation.

Q. And now disappointment?

A. No, not yet. We understand they need time to reassess relations with friends and adversaries alike. As you know, we took our lumps under the previous administration that initiated sanctions against us because we were not willing to leave India with a nuclear monopoly in the subcontinent. Hopefully old friendships can now be rekindled.

-------- israel

Israel supplies radar to India

The Hindu
Wednesday, March 21, 2001
http://www.indiaserver.com/thehindu/2001/03/21/stories/03210005.htm

JERUSALEM, MARCH 20. American pressure notwithstanding, Israel has supplied India parts of the sophisticated radar system Green Pine, capable of detecting ballistic missile attacks from hundreds of kilometers away, the daily Haaretz reported today.

It said the parts of the radar system, indigenously developed by Israel, were shipped to India a few days before Mr. George Bush took over as the U.S. President.

The Green Pine radar system, developed by Elta Electronic Industries, is based on technology similar to the Phalcon Airborne Radar System, which Tel Aviv planned to sell to China but didn't under U.S. pressure.

In the wake of Pakistani missile threat perception, India decided to buy the radar in 1998, but the deal came under a cloud following its nuclear tests and the subsequent American pressure on Israel to hold it back.

-------- missile defense

Mori evasive on NMD

The Hindu
Wednesday, March 21, 2001
By Sridhar Krishnaswami
http://www.indiaserver.com/thehindu/2001/03/21/stories/0321000i.htm

WASHINGTON, MARCH 20. The United States and Japan went through an expected range of issues as the President, Mr. George W Bush, and the Japanese Prime Minister, Mr. Yoshiro Mori, reiterated in a Joint Statement that the bilateral friendship ``is rooted in friendship, mutual trust and shared democratic values''.

The two leaders also said that the solid relationship enabled the two countries to deal with problems such as the ``regrettable Ehime Maru accident''. The sinking of this fishing vessel set off a rocky patch in the bilateral relations with the criticism and feeling in some quarters that the U.S. has done enough by way of apologising for the accident which killed nine Japanese nationals

While security and economic issues were the main focus at the White House on Monday, the dominant topic undoubtedly was the state of the Japanese economy. Administration officials have said that the visiting Japanese Premier was told by Mr. Bush to tackle the corporate debt and bad loans that were weighing down Japanese banks.

Mr. Bush is further reported to have told Mr. Mori that there was the perception in the U.S. that Tokyo was not doing enough on the matter. An unnamed senior official has said that Mr. Bush was ``heartened'' by the unusually explicit acknowledgement of the non-performing loans issue by the Japanese Prime Minister. Mr. Bush has also told Mr. Mori that the strategy of relying on exports as the way out of economic troubles was not the answer to the problem.

Originally, this was to have been a different kind of a meeting with Mr. Mori coming to Washington as a strong leader; and one who would be discussing several subjects with Mr. Bush including the sinking of the Ehime Maru off the coast of Hawaii. In the last four weeks, Mr. Mori's position has not only weakened but the markets also have been taking such a severe beating that the focus was shifting to economics. In fact, there were questions whether Mr. Mori should be making the trip as a ``lame duck'' leader.

For an administration that has started focusing on Japan as the ``linchpin'' of American foreign policy in the Far East, Mr. Mori was not as forthcoming as some would have expected on strategic issues and subjects that are dear to the administration here. The Japanese leader did not commit himself on the National Missile Defence system and merely reiterated the earlier Tokyo positions of one of ``understanding'' where the Bush administration is coming from.

Washington, under a Republican administration, may be eager for a Japan-centred East Asian/Pacific policy, but there are enough indications that Tokyo may be quite wary of the regional implications of any expanded role for itself. In fact, Mr. Bush had apparently told Mr. Mori that cooperation with a firm ally like Japan would enable the country to maintain peace. But this reference - in the Bush administration's language - to an enhanced security role for Tokyo did not bring forth a response from the Japanese leader, it is said.

Further according to Japanese officials, Mr. Mori is said to have told the President that the present administration must back South Korea's ``sunshine policy'' towards North Korea as this policy intended to promote dialogue with Pyongyang on such issues as its global weapons threat. Mr. Bush is said to have reiterated his call for the U.S., Japan and South Korea to cooperate closely over North Korea.

Mr. Mori's reference to Mr. Kim Dae-jung's sunshine policy vis-a-vis Pyongyang is a clear indication of a concern that the Bush administration is moving away from the earlier approach. Mr. Bush took a hardline against Pyongyang during his recent summit with Mr. Kim; and has told Mr. Mori that Washington is not inclined to resume missile talks with Pyongyang anytime soon.

-------- russia

Moscow Says Remarks by U.S. Resurrect 'Spirit of Cold War'

New York Times
March 21, 2001
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/21/world/21RUSS.html

MOSCOW, March 20 - Russia today accused two senior officials of the Bush administration of making "openly confrontational" statements by labeling Moscow as an "active proliferator" of dangerous weapons technologies.

The Russian Foreign Ministry issued its strongly worded response to an interview published in Britain's Sunday Telegraph in which Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul D. Wolfowitz, used the most trenchant language to date among senior Bush aides to complain of Russia's role in providing ballistic missile technology to Iran and other nations.

The interview marked the second time in recent weeks that Mr. Rumsfeld openly criticized Russia's proliferation record. It comes at a time when the administration is said to be reviewing whether to continue a policy of high-level engagement and cooperation with Russia, or to downgrade the relationship to reflect Russia's diminished status and to show disapproval of Russia's opposition to American policy initiatives in missile defense and nonproliferation.

"Russia is an active proliferator," Mr. Rumsfeld said in remarks to Winston S. Churchill, grandson of the wartime leader, who conducted the interview at the Pentagon. "It has been providing countries with assistance in these areas in a way that complicates the problem for the United States and Western Europe." He added, "We all have to live with the results of that proliferation." Mr. Rumsfeld made a similar statement on Feb. 14.

Mr. Wolfowitz was more caustic, saying of the Russians, "these people seem to be willing to sell anything to anyone for money. It recalls Lenin's phrase that the capitalists will sell the very rope from which we will hang them."

He went on to say, "My view is that they have to be confronted with a choice." Moscow, he said, "can't expect to do billions of dollars worth of business and aid and all that with the United States and its allies" while at the same time selling "obnoxious stuff that threatens our people and our pilots and our sailors."

Russia, along with China and North Korea, has provided assistance to Iran's military and ballistic missile programs and is constructing a civilian nuclear power station in Iran, which Washington opposes.

After the demise of the Soviet Union, the Clinton administration carried out extensive programs of diplomatic exchanges, joint commissions and financial aid programs, one goal of which was to persuade Moscow to limit the sale of weapons and dangerous technologies to undependable states.

Though there were a number of successes, there were also conflicts, especially in the case of Iran, where Russia sees an important market for conventional arms and for its civilian nuclear power industry. Moscow also asserts that Iran is a strategically placed neighbor that Russia must cultivate in order to counter Islamic extremism in Central Asia.

Asked about the Russian Foreign Ministry's statement today, Rear Adm. Craig R. Quigley, a Pentagon spokesman, said: "The public record has shown just how many weapons Russia has sold for a very long time. Iran is just the latest customer." But the Foreign Ministry said, "We are once again, without proof, being labeled practically the main proliferator of weapons of mass destruction."

The statement asserted that the remarks by the Pentagon officials "run counter to the public position of the new American president, namely that Russia and the United States are not adversaries and do not threaten each other." Last week, President Bush told another British interviewer: "Russia is not an enemy. They may be a threat, if they decide to be, but they're not an enemy." He said he would make this point "very clear" to Russian President Vladimir V. Putin when he met him.

Russia accused Mr. Rumsfeld of hurling "these accusations in the spirit of the cold war" as a means to explain his intention to build an antimissile shield over the United States.

Mr. Rumsfeld could not have disagreed with that, and indicated that the Pentagon was now considering a much broader missile system that could attack "rogue" missiles shortly after they were launched, in midflight, and as they re-entered the atmosphere.

The defense secretary told Mr. Churchill that Pentagon planners were studying these new missile defense projects "unconstrained" by the 1972 treaty that banned them. "Eventually, one would anticipate that you would have something that would not be a single system, but a layered system with flexibility and some redundancy."

And when the time comes for President Bush to decide whether to pull out of the 1972 treaty, "you have to start consultations," Mr. Rumsfeld said, "with your friends, allies, and ultimately, with Russia."

Mr. Rumsfeld's vocal skirmishing with Moscow is also connected with a broader trans-Atlantic debate - and diplomatic rivalry - over a number of pressing security questions ranging from NATO's role in the Balkans, to how to maintain sanctions on Iraq and how to shape a new European defense force outside the NATO alliance.

In each of these matters, Russia has stated its opposition to Washington's views and has tried to galvanize support in Europe to alter or reverse American policy initiatives. Today, for instance, Russia's foreign minister, Igor S. Ivanov, visited Yugoslavia, suggesting that the United States and its allies had been wrong to intervene in the Balkans to protect "national minorities" from Serbian repression and ethnic cleansing. He said that those same minorities were now fomenting terrorism in Macedonia.

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

Johanns to visit USS Nebraska submarine

Lincoln Journal
01/03/21
BY SCOTT BAUER The Associated Press
http://www.journalstar.com/nebraska?story_id=2749&date=20010321&past=

The commander of the state's fictional Great Nebraska Navy will be out to sea - for real. Gov. Mike Johanns plans to spend 24 hours this week on the nuclear submarine USS Nebraska.

The governor, who awards admiralties to the landlocked state's mock sea force, left Tuesday for the Naval Submarine Base at Kings Bay, Ga., and is to board the submarine today. Johanns toured the USS Nebraska when he was mayor of Lincoln but this will be his first overnight stay on the vessel.

Civilian tours of submarines have come under fire since the USS Greenville rammed a Japanese fishing boat and killed nine people off the coast of Hawaii while demonstrating a rapid-surfacing drill for 16 civilian guests in February.

Following the accident, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld ordered an indefinite moratorium on permitting civilian visitors to operate any item of military equipment, but visits where civilians are just observing were not banned.

Nebraskans joining Johanns on board the USS Nebraska this week are Cornhusker volleyball Coach John Cook, Nebraska Cattlemen President J.D. Alexander of Pilger and Valmont Inc. Chairman Mogens C. Bay. Also on board will be several officials from the U.S. Strategic Command at Offutt Air Force Base south of Omaha.

Depending on weather and world events, two groups of about a dozen Nebraska residents get to ride the submarine each year, said Allen Beermann with the Big Red Sub Club, which organizes the trips and selects who gets to go.

"We try to take a cross-section of people who touch a lot of people in their work," said Beermann, a former secretary of state. "We want people in positions of influence from across the state."

Previous USS Nebraska passengers include Sen. Ben Nelson, University of Nebraska Athletic Director Bill Byrne, Omaha musician Chip Davis and various state senators and mayors.

In compliance with Navy regulations, only men are allowed to participate in the overnight sub rides. Women can only take part in day trips.

The trips are used to promote the military among Nebraskans, while the submarine's crew enjoys meeting residents from the vessel's namesake state, Beermann said. During the governor's trip, crew members will have an opportunity to sit down with Johanns and ask him questions about Nebraska.

The USS Nebraska, which was commissioned in 1993, is one of 10 nuclear-powered strategic missile submarines assigned to the base in Georgia.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities

Bush Admin. Drags Feet on Nuclear Worker Comp.
LABOR DEPARTMENT BALKS AT STARTING NEW PROGRAM

Associated Press
March 21, 2001
by Katherine Rizzo

WASHINGTON (AP) -- In just four months, the government is supposed to start taking applications from job-sickened nuclear workers eligible for special federal compensation.

Congress gave the Labor Department $60.4 million to set up the program.

But Labor Secretary Elaine Chao doesn't want to do it, and lawmakers with ailing constituents said Wednesday they're worried about people with incurable illnesses having to wait too long for compensation if Chao gets her way.

``Cancer is killing my constituents right now,'' said Rep. Ted Strickland, D-Ohio. ``This will, in my judgment, inevitably result in a delay.''

In a letter to the White House, Chao suggested that the Justice Department be put in charge of the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program.

Chao's letter said that the department has the experience to do the job because it handles a small program giving one-time payments to uranium miners, millers and people who lived downwind of nuclear test sites.

``To create a new infrastructure when DOJ already has the tools to effectively implement and administer this program is duplicative,'' she wrote.

Labor Department spokesman Stuart Roy said Chao wants to take advantage of special expertise at the Justice Department.

``It's a very complex issue dealing with long-term exposure to radiation,'' he said. ``She believes it can be handled more efficiently at DOJ because they have the infrastructure.''

Ohio Sens. George Voinovich and Mike DeWine sent the White House a letter explaining that the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) payments handled by the Justice Department are one-time apology payments, not a medical claims reimbursement program.

The Labor Department, they noted, reviews medical benefit claims for federal workers, and also has a network of regional offices staffed with claims-takers.

``The Department of Justice does not have the necessary infrastructure or expertise to administer this program effectively,'' the two Republicans wrote. ``In fact, at a congressional hearing last year, DOJ officials testified that they were not equipped to administer this program.''

The Justice Department has three attorneys, two supervisors and 14 payment clerks running the RECA program. Its staff has received about 9,000 claims over the past decade.

In contrast, the Labor Department runs a worker compensation program for government employees that has a staff of more than 900 and considered more than 19,000 wage-loss claims in 1999, the latest year for which figures were available.

``Giving this new responsibility to the folks at RECA would clearly overwhelm the system and lead to a lot of dissatisfaction with the program,'' said Rep. Jeff Bingamon, D-N.M.

``They don't have a good record in administering the RECA program. There have been a lot of complaints -- well-founded complaints, in my opinion.''

A bipartisan group of House members with constituents suffering from serious lung diseases or cancer as a result of their nuclear weapons-related work also weighed in.

The Labor Department ``was selected to run this program because this agency has administered a number of other federal worker compensation programs for as long as 90 years,'' wrote the lawmakers from districts with beryllium- radiation- or silica-sickened workers.

``We want to underscore that this proposed change is at odds with congressional intent and would assign a massive set of responsibilities to an agency that lacks the infrastructure to manage these claims.''

That letter, circulated by Strickland and Rep. Ed Whitfield of Kentucky, was signed by Republicans Jim Gibbons of Nevada and Zack Wamp of Tennessee, plus Democrats Mark Udall of Colorado; John LaFalce of New York; Tom Udall of New Mexico; Ken Lucas of Kentucky; Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania.

The Labor Department got the $60.4 million appropriation because it was viewed as the government's expert on occupational illness and compensation programs.

It handles worker compensation claims for federal employees, overseas employees of U.S. military bases, coal miners seeking compensation for black lung disease, harbor workers and outer continental shelf workers.

The nuclear workers program was created by Congress last year.

It was approved as an entitlement, or mandatory spending program -- with guaranteed payouts, just like Social Security, Medicare, food stamps, veteran pensions and student loans.

---

Cheney: Energy panel to look at nuclear power

Excite News
March 21, 2001
By Randall Mikkelsen
http://news.excite.com/news/r/010321/21/energy-cheney

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Vice President Dick Cheney said Wednesday his energy policy team was considering the future of U.S. nuclear power and that new nuclear plants could reduce greenhouse gases better than a "seriously flawed" Kyoto global warming treaty.

"If you want to do something about carbon dioxide emissions, then you ought to build nuclear power plants. They don't emit any carbon dioxide. They don't emit greenhouse gases," Cheney said on MSNBC's "Hardball" program.

The 1997 Kyoto treaty seeks to limit industrial nations' emissions of "greenhouse gases," including carbon dioxide which is produced by burning fossil fuels in power plants and vehicles. Such gases help retain the earth's heat and are thought to contribute to global warming.

Cheney said the Bush administration opposes the treaty because it treats nations unequally in limiting emissions.

President Bush in January put Cheney in charge of a Cabinet-level task force to develop a long-term strategy to increase U.S. energy security. Its recommendations were expected in about six weeks, Cheney said.

"A chapter in the report will deal with the nuclear questions and whether or not we want to go forward, but no decisions have been made yet," he said.

A senior aide to Cheney said the task force had not yet begun to study the nuclear issue. She said Cheney's remarks were intended as a comment on the greenhouse gas issue and not as a signal the panel would recommend new nuclear plants.

But asked whether the panel would study the possibility of building new plants, she said, "they're not going to ignore nuclear generation."

No permits to build U.S. nuclear plants have been granted since 1975, although nuclear power provides about 20 percent of U.S. electricity, Cheney said.

The 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear accident, a near meltdown of a Pennsylvania power plant that spread low-level radiation over an area near the plant, put a long-term chill on the industry.

GLOBAL WARMING TREATY "FLAWED"

Cheney drew a contrast between nuclear power and the Kyoto treaty, saying the agreement was "seriously flawed" because it did not place restrictions on developing nations such as China and India.

The treaty was signed by the United States under former President Clinton, but not submitted to the U.S. Senate for ratification.

"We do not support the approach of the Kyoto treaty," Cheney said. "If you're really serious about greenhouse gases, one of the solutions to that problem is to go back, and let's take another another look at nuclear power, use that to generate electricity without having any adverse consequences."

Forms of electricity generation such as coal- or oil-fired plants emit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

Bush last week retreated from a campaign promise to require power plants to limit emissions of carbon dioxide. The European Union responded with concern that the act signaled a U.S. retreat from efforts to fight global warming.

Cheney said that Bush made clear U.S. opposition to the Kyoto treaty in his decision last week on carbon dioxide.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Bush did not include increasing nuclear power in his energy platform during his campaign. But he indicated Bush had not ruled it out.

"His charge to them (Cheney's committee) was to look broadly and to look long term," Fleischer said. "We'll take a look at the recommendations in their totality."

-------- MILITARY

Differences over Taiwan to be aired

USA Today
03/21/2001 - Updated 05:18 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-03-21-china.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. defense relationship with Taiwan was a main topic Wednesday night for a meeting between Secretary of State Colin Powell and a top Chinese official.

Deputy Prime Minister Qian Qichen made clear before his arrival in Washington that China would strenuously oppose the sale to Taiwan of four U.S. destroyers with highly sophisticated radar equipment.

It was not clear whether Powell was prepared to address the issue in any depth because the State Department has said it is longstanding U.S. policy not to consult with China on U.S. arms sales policy toward the island. Qian was to meet with President Bush on Thursday.

On Tuesday, Qian warned that Chinese-American relations would suffer a "very serious" setback if Taiwan receives permission to buy the destroyers.

Taiwan wants to buy the vessels but the administration has offered no hint as to whether the request will be approved. U.S. policy is to meet Taiwan's legitimate defense needs.

If the sale is authorized, Qian said "the essence of the issue would change from a peaceful approach to reunification to a military approach.

Asked if that meant immediate military action against Taiwan, he said only, "It all depends on the circumstances.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, responding to the comment on Wednesday, said U.S. policy all along has been in support of peaceful resolution.

"We've always said that we would see a resort to anything other than peaceful means as something of grave concern to us," he said.

Boucher said other areas of difference were likely to be discussed, including human rights and the administration's plans to deploy a missile defense system.

On a separate issue, Boucher called for the immediate release of Gao Zhan, a Chinese-born American University professor who was picked up at Beijing airport on Feb. 11 with her husband and 5-year old son.

Her husband, Xue Donghua, and son were held separately for 26 days before being allowed to return to the United States.

Gao's son is a U.S. citizen, but authorities failed to inform the U.S. Embassy of his detention as required by treaty, said a human rights group, Human Rights in China. It quoted Xue as saying his son was traumatized by being held separately from his parents.

Boucher said he could not discuss the case because of Privacy Act considerations.

-------- arms sales

Arms Dealer Pleads Guilty to Bank Fraud

New York Times
March 21, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/21/national/21PLEA.html

LOS ANGELES, March 20 - An international arms dealer who was once imprisoned for conspiring to smuggle weapons into Iraq has pleaded guilty to bank fraud.

The arms dealer, Sarkis Soghanalian, 72, entered the plea on Monday in Federal District Court here. He faces up to five years in prison in a stolen-check scheme that netted $250,000, but prosecutors agreed to recommend leniency in exchange for his testimony in a related case.

Sentencing was set for June 4.

Mr. Soghanalian was convicted in 1991 of conspiring to sell combat helicopters and rocket launchers to Iraq in the 1980's. He was sentenced to more than six years in prison, but was released in 1993 when he helped the federal authorities break up a Middle East counterfeiting ring.

On Monday, Mr. Soghanalian admitted depositing a stolen City National Bank check in the Paris bank account of his company, TIDR.

-------- china

China Comes Calling

New York Times
March 21, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/21/opinion/21WED2.html

Tomorrow's White House visit by China's top-ranking diplomat, Qian Qichen, offers President Bush an opportunity to set a constructive course with Beijing. Few international relationships are as important, and as complex, as that between the United States and China. Vital issues of economics, trade and security are intertwined, along with compelling human rights concerns. As the 21st century unfolds, Beijing's advance to the front ranks of global power assures that all of these issues will take on ever greater significance.

Productive relations with China do not require playing down China's faults or setting aside American interests. In the three decades since Richard Nixon began to normalize ties, no American administration has come up with a completely satisfactory China policy. But Mr. Bush's predecessors have left him much to build on, including the Clinton administration's success in preparing the way for Beijing's accession to the World Trade Organization.

As Chinese power grows, America has an interest in seeing Beijing increasingly integrated into the world economy and global institutions. The United States should also encourage China to act as a stabilizing political and military force in Asia and to abide by universal human rights standards. The two nations are unlikely to form the partnership that Bill Clinton prematurely envisioned, but they need not be antagonists.

Perhaps the most volatile issue in America's relationship with China is Taiwan, yet that is the first subject that Mr. Bush faces. If he yields to conservative pressure and authorizes the sale of four destroyers equipped with America's most advanced naval radar system to Taiwan, Mr. Bush is likely to condemn his China policy to a sustained period of discord with Beijing. The Aegis is the Navy's most powerful battle-management radar, and could be adapted to provide Taiwan with a limited shield against Chinese missile attack.

There is much about Taiwan that deserves American admiration, including its maturing democracy and vital market economy. China must recognize that the United States has a strong interest in seeing Taiwan develop its democratic institutions. But Washington, for its part, must understand that China's determination not to let Taiwan become an independent nation is deeply rooted. The best course for the United States, China and Taiwan is to maintain Taiwan's current status as an autonomous, but not independent, entity until such time as Beijing and Taipei peacefully agree on a mutually acceptable formula for their relations.

American military assistance to Taiwan is a critical factor in this equation. Some American aid is warranted to help Taiwan defend itself against China's longstanding threat to use force if necessary to reunite Taiwan with the mainland. But the sale of the Aegis radar system is not justified at this point and would be needlessly provocative.

Some conservative Republicans argue that selling the Aegis and other advanced weapons systems would give Taiwan confidence to negotiate a peaceful resolution of its differences with Beijing. They also say such sales would send a useful message of military toughness to China. They overlook significant changes in Beijing's diplomatic approach to the Taiwan issue. After years of arguing that its "one China" formula meant Taiwan had to subordinate itself to the Communist mainland government, Beijing now speaks of "one China" as a kind of larger confederation, of which capitalist Taiwan and the Communist mainland could both be parts. Beijing also implies its willingness to maintain the political and military status quo so long as Taiwan does not declare independence.

Selling the Aegis would diminish, not increase, security across the Taiwan Strait. No Aegis- equipped ship could be delivered to Taiwan for eight years. But announcing a sale could cut off the promising diplomatic explorations now going on. If the military threat from China increases, it may become appropriate to revisit the sale proposal at a later date. But for now diplomacy offers the best hope for stable relations between Taiwan and the mainland and between China and the United States.

-------- drug war

Court Says Hospitals Cannot Drug-Test Pregnant Women Without Consent

New York Times
March 21, 2001
By DAVID STOUT
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/21/national/21CND-SCOT.html

WASHINGTON, March 21 - More than a decade ago, at the height of the crack cocaine epidemic, a public hospital in Charleston, S.C., began to test the urine of some pregnant women and to turn any evidence of cocaine use over to the police.

The Supreme Court said today that it was wrong.

The Court ruled, 6 to 3, that such testing was an unreasonable search in violation of the Fourth Amendment if a patient did not consent to the procedure.

"While the ultimate goal of the program may well have been to get the women in question into substance abuse treatment and off of drugs, the immediate objective of the searches was to generate evidence for law enforcement purposes in order to reach that goal," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority.

"The threat of law enforcement may ultimately have been intended as a means to an end," Justice Stevens went on, "but the direct and primary purpose...was to ensure the use of those means. In our opinion, this distinction is crucial."

So what the hospital did was wrong, even though its motive was "benign rather than punitive," Justice Stevens wrote. Joining him in the majority opinion were Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy filed a separate concurring opinion.

The dissenters were Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. The opinions in Ferguson et a. v. City of Charleston et al., 99-936, can be read on the Court's web site: www.supremecourtus.gov.

The crack epidemic has waned in recent years, and the Charleston hospital has since discontinued its testing procedure, but the issue decided today is not moot, since 10 of the women who were arrested have sued the city for damages. Most of the plaintiffs are black, but a racial-discrimination claim that was part of the original proceedings was rejected by lower courts.

A crucial question was whether the testing fell under a "special need" category that allows searches even without a warrant - drug testing of transit workers, for example, or searches of students' lockers by school authorities.

When the case was argued last Oct. 4, a Charleston city lawyer argued - unpersuasively, as it turned out - that "law enforcement was not the purpose of this thing at all." Rather, he contended, the city was just trying to help women free themselves of their addiction and bring healthy babies into the world.

But a lawyer for the women argued that, in turning the test results over to the police, hospital authorities violated the constitution and skirted the confidentiality of the doctor-patient relationship.

Today's ruling overturned a finding by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, which had agreed that the urine testing fell under the "special need" designation.

In the dissent, Justice Scalia asserted that the urine testing was neither coercive nor onerous, and that it fell under the special designation, as the Fourth Circuit had concluded.

Justice Scalia said that today's majority decision, in opening the way for the women to seek damages from doctors and nurses, "proves once again that no good deed goes unpunished."

---

High court rules on drug testing mothers

USA Today
03/21/2001 - Updated 01:50 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/court/2001-03-21-moms.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - Hospitals cannot test pregnant women for drugs without their consent and turn the results over to police, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday in a decision that bolstered the Constitution's protection against unreasonable searches.

The 6-3 decision said such drug-testing by a South Carolina public hospital violated the Constitution even though the goal was to prevent women from harming their fetuses by using crack cocaine.

Such tests require a search warrant or consent, the justices said.

"While the ultimate goal of the program may well have been to get the women in question into substance abuse treatment and off of drugs, the immediate objective of the searches was to generate evidence for law enforcement purposes in order to reach that goal," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the court.

When hospitals gather evidence for the purpose of incriminating their patients, "they have a special obligation to make sure that the patients are fully informed about their constitutional rights, as standards of knowing waiver require," Stevens said.

Some women were arrested from their hospital beds at the Medical University of South Carolina, a public hospital in Charleston. The women were jailed under the state's child-endangerment law, but their lawyers contended the policy was counterproductive and would deter women from seeking prenatal care.

Stevens' opinion was joined by Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy filed a separate opinion also deciding the drug tests were unlawful.

Dissenting were Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Writing for the three, Scalia said doctors are supposed to have the mother and child's welfare in mind, and "that they have in mind in addition the provision of evidence to the police should make no difference."

The Constitution's Fourth Amendment generally requires that searches be authorized by a court warrant or based on reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed.

However, the Supreme Court has allowed drug testing without a warrant or individual suspicion when the government can demonstrate a "special need." Under this reasoning, the court has authorized such testing of public high school students and railroad workers involved in accidents.

Wednesday's ruling means that drug testing of pregnant women without their consent to protect fetuses cannot be considered a "special need."

The decision reverses a federal appeals court ruling that said the South Carolina hospital's drug-testing policy was a valid effort to reduce crack cocaine use by pregnant women.

The hospital began drug-testing in 1989, during the crack cocaine epidemic, and turning positive results over to police. If a woman's urine test indicated cocaine use, she was arrested for distributing the drug to a minor.

The policy was changed in 1990 to give drug-using patients a choice between being arrested or enrolling for drug treatment.

Ten women sued the hospital in 1993, saying the policy violated the Constitution. The hospital, which treats indigent patients, later dropped the policy, but by then police had arrested 30 maternity patients.

A federal jury ruled for the hospital and the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed in 1999. The appeals court said the urine tests were "minimally intrusive."

The hospital's lawyer told the Supreme Court during arguments last October that the women were jailed not only for using an illegal drug but in an effort to keep them from causing irreparable harm to their child.

Lawyers for the women argued that upholding the drug tests would broaden police officers' authority to conduct other types of searches without warrants or individual suspicion, as long as they could give a health or safety reason for the search.

The Supreme Court ruled for the women.

Stevens wrote that the hospital's motive "was benign rather than punitive. Such a motive, however, cannot justify a departure from Fourth Amendment protections." He added that the policy "was designed to obtain evidence of criminal conduct ... that would be turned over to the police and that could be admissible in subsequent criminal prosecutions."

Last November, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that police cannot set up random roadblocks to hunt for illegal drugs, saying the checkpoints violated the Fourth Amendment.

Wednesday's case is Ferguson v. City of Charleston, 99-936.

---

Longer Sentences Sought for Ecstasy Traffickers

New York Times
March 21, 2001
National News Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/21/national/21NATI.html

WASHINGTON, March 20 - The United States Sentencing Commission moved today to toughen the penalty for selling the drug Ecstasy.

Under current guidelines, the sale of 2,750 grams, or about 11,000 pills, is punishable by five years in prison. The new standards lower the threshold for a five-year sentence to 200 grams, or about 800 pills.

Sentencing guidelines for powdered cocaine, by comparison, call for five years in prison for selling 500 grams of that drug. The commission, which sets sentencing guidelines for federal judges, has been pressured by Congress to stiffen penalties for trafficking in Ecstasy, which has gained popularity among teenagers at nightclubs and at all-night dance parties known as raves.

The commission's action today was an "emergency amendment" to its guidelines; it has until May 1 to submit a proposal to Congress, which could make the change permanent.

---

Penalties stiffened for selling ecstasy

USA Today
03/21/2001 - Updated 06:33 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/nlead.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - Ecstasy, a drug once used primarily at nightclubs, has expanded beyond the club scene and is being sold at high schools, on the street and even at coffee shops in some cities, the White House drug policy office said Wednesday.

The availability of ecstasy increased dramatically, and more blacks and Hispanics are using the drug, the agency said in its biannual report that chronicles trends in drug use.

The ecstasy problem prompted the U.S. Sentencing Commission to enhance guideline penalties Tuesday for those peddling large quantities of the drug, which sells for $10 to $45 per pill on the street.

Under temporary new guidelines, which federal judges must follow, people the commission would consider local distributors - those caught selling 800 pills - would be sentenced to more than 6 years in jail. That's triple the time they would have gotten under previous guidelines.

The commission was responding to a congressional mandate to stiffen penalties for ecstasy trafficking.

Defense lawyers said the change makes ecstasy, on a per-dose basis, five times more serious to possess or sell than heroin and is excessive for a drug that is neither as harmful nor as addictive as heroin or cocaine. Some medical researchers also opposed the new guidelines.

"This is a wholly political act, not one based on scientific evidence," said Edward Mallett, president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

But the chairwoman of the commission told senators Wednesday at a hearing on narcotics that ecstasy has serious and possibly long-term harmful affects.

"We have learned that ecstasy has unique pharmacological effects, physiological risks, user profiles, collateral consequences and trafficking patterns that make comparing ecstasy to other drugs of abuse very difficult," Diana Murphy, commission chairwoman, said in a statement before the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control.

Ecstasy's chemical name is methylenedioxymethylamphetamine, or MDMA. A user normally experiences feelings of euphoria and increased desire to interact socially. Blood pressure, heart rate and body temperature increase dramatically.

While overall teenage drug use has either fallen or stayed the same in recent years, ecstasy use has climbed. The White House report, presented at the hearing, showed that more than 80% of officials surveyed in 20 cities around the country said ecstasy was more available than ever.

Nightclubs and dance parties known as "raves" are the most common venue for using ecstasy, but law enforcement, epidemiologists and drug treatment providers reported that the drug also was being sold at private parties, college campuses, high schools and on the street.

In New York, officials reported sales of ecstasy and other "club drugs" in shopping malls. In Washington, ecstasy was being sold in coffee shops, the report said.

"Use is no longer confined to the rave scene," said Dr. Donald Vereen, deputy director of the drug policy office. "We cannot afford to ignore these warning signals about the dangers of MDMD use."

The new guidelines recommend sentences of between 63 months to 78 months for first-time offenders caught selling 800 pills. The sentence used to be 15 months to 21 months for that number.

The guidelines are effective for six months starting May 1. The commission, an independent federal agency that sets national sentencing policy, can submit a permanent rule to Congress in May.

-------- india/pakistan

Police in Pakistan Detain 20 Political Party Leaders

New York Times
March 21, 2001
By CELIA W. DUGGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/21/world/21CND-PAKI.html

NEW DELHI, March 21 - Moving to prevent a rally against military rule that was to be held in Lahore on Friday, police in Pakistan today detained more than 20 leaders of political parties and have arrested hundreds of party workers since Monday, politicians and human rights lawyers said.

Senior leaders from Pakistan's two major national parties, the Pakistan People's Party and the Pakistan Muslim League, were among those rounded up, as were representatives of some of the other 16 parties that have joined the Alliance for Restoration of Democracy.

The Alliance has called on the generals who have run the country since a bloodless coup in October 1999 to hold national elections immediately. But Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the army chief who is now governing Pakistan, has said he has no plans to relinquish power until the end of next year.

The military government made no comment on the arrests today, but it banned all political demonstrations in public places a year ago.

The military has exiled the deposed prime minister and Muslim League leader, Nawaz Sharif, and prohibited the participation of political parties in local elections, which were held today as the latest crackdown on political dissent was being carried out.

General Musharraf has taken the position that Pakistan must be cleansed of its corrupt political leadership, especially Mr. Sharif and his rival, Benazir Bhutto, who has been living abroad since her conviction on corruption charges.

But politicians and human rights lawyers said the military was only clothing self-serving motives in high-minded garb. They said the initial euphoria that greeted the military's seizure of power from Mr. Sharif, who was increasingly despised for his corrupt, authoritarian ways, has given way to disillusionment as the military lingers in office.

"The political forces are getting their act together," Asma Jahangir, a leading human rights lawyer in Lahore, said in a telephone interview tonight. "If they do, they can become a catalyst to bring other people out. But the military government wants to prepare a smooth path for their own lackeys and this would have been an obstacle."

Ms. Bhutto, in a statement issued by her party, the Pakistan People's Party, called the latest police action "brutal and barbaric".

Earlier today, Pakistan's Human Rights Commission condemned the detention of the party workers as an anti-democratic step that was meant to prevent political parties from pursuing their legitimate aims.

Some leaders in the Alliance for Restoration of Democracy maintained that the military regime has been selective in its enforcement of the ban on public meetings, allowing such gatherings for right-wing and religious parties but cracking down on the parties whose leaders it disdains.

-------- nato

NATO Leader Asks for More Kosovo Troops

New York Times
March 21, 2001
By JANE PERLEZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/21/world/21DIPL.html

WASHINGTON, March 20 - The secretary general of NATO, Lord Robertson, has asked NATO members to send about 1,400 more troops to Kosovo so that the alliance can better cope with the crisis in neighboring Macedonia by stepping up border patrols.

In his request for more soldiers, Lord Robertson stressed that there were no plans to extend the Kosovo peacekeeping operation into Macedonia itself, diplomats said.

But the appeal for reinforcements showed that NATO was stretched thin as it tried to control Kosovo and prevent Kosovo Albanians from moving across the border into Macedonia to join the insurgency.

As President Bush emerged tonight from a tour of the Central Intelligence Agency's headquarters in suburban Virginia where he gave a short speech, he was asked about the possibility of direct United States military assistance to Macedonia. "We'll work with NATO to develop a strategy that will help Macedonia protect herself," Mr. Bush said.

The Pentagon was not expected to agree to sending more troops to supplement the roughly 5,000 American soldiers in Kosovo, officials said.

A much more likely possibility was for the United States to provide some unmanned reconnaissance aircraft for use over Macedonia, where a small group of ethnic Albanians are fighting the Macedonian Army near the city of Tetovo.

At a Pentagon briefing today, a spokesman, Rear Adm. Craig R. Quigley, said that the United States had not yet received a formal request for more troops. President Bush, who campaigned last year on drawing down American troops in Kosovo, has tried to keep his administration at a distance from the intensifying fighting in Macedonia.

From the European perspective, Washington appeared to be looking at the Macedonia crisis as "an irritating little problem they hope will go away," one NATO diplomat said. In Europe, there was increasing concern that the Macedonia fighting could descend into the fifth Balkan war since the collapse of Yugoslavia in the early 1990's.

Officials in several American allies in Europe are said to have increasing concern that NATO would begin to look impotent if Macedonia were allowed to descend into fierce ethnic conflict while more than 35,000 NATO-led soldiers remained next door in Kosovo.

The Pentagon has made abundantly clear, NATO diplomats said, that it does not want American troops in Kosovo to be involved in missions that go beyond its borders.

At NATO headquarters in Brussels, where Lord Robertson made the request Monday night and where it was further discussed today among NATO ambassadors, there was a understanding that the Europeans would have to meet the new request, diplomats said. So far, only Spain has come forward, pledging about 150 new troops, a NATO official said.

New troops would allow the commander of the NATO-led forces in Kosovo to fill out a reserve force depleted in recent weeks as troops from it have been posted to active duty, a senior NATO official said.

The NATO forces in Kosovo have come under strain as they try to quell two hot spots - the ethnically divided city of Mitrovica and the border area near the opening to the Presevo Valley, where Kosovo Albanian guerrillas have been fighting Serbs.

In addition, NATO-led forces have suddenly had to concentrate on the border of Kosovo and Macedonia. Patrols were reinforced starting in late February, but there is now a need for further reinforcements, NATO officials said.

At the Pentagon briefing, Admiral Quigley said about 150 American troops were moved on to the border in February to halt the flow of fighters and arms into Macedonia. A total of about 300 American soldiers were now patrolling that border, he said.

In Washington today, the discussion of Macedonia focused on supplying money to the Macedonian government and on giving it the mettle to hold back the guerrillas.

Robert Frowick, an experienced American diplomat who knows Macedonia well, will go to the capital, Skopje, as the head of the mission of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe there.

At the State Department, the spokesman, Richard Boucher, said the administration was examining ways it might increase its funding to the Macedonian government, which the ethnic Albanian population criticizes for not sufficient attention to it. About 30 percent of the people of Macedonia are ethnic Albanian; Slavs are in the majority.

The United States was providing $33 million for economic and civic society programs this year, including an Albanian-language university, Mr. Boucher said. Also, $13.5 million was going to Macedonia in military assistance, a small amount of it for training, he said.

One immediate concern is the Macedonian military's use of tanks around Tetovo, which is predominantly Albanian. American and NATO officials fear that is heavy- handed and risks alienating the population.

---

NATO's dilemma

Washington Times
EDITORIAL • March 21, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-house-2001321191327.htm

Kosovo's ethnic Albanian rebels had the world's firepower at their fingertips in 1999; now they're back asking for more in Macedonia.

When NATO and the United Nations blessed the guerillas as a civilian peacekeeping corps in Kosovo in September 1999, complete with new uniforms and a new name, the renegade band had little responsibility but to demilitarize. In return for their paper promise, they received the withdrawal of Serb forces and the eventual overthrow of Yugoslav dictator Slobodan Milosevic. In a few months, they were not only able to return to their homes, but to wage a campaign of reverse ethnic cleansing on the Serbs.

Now they're hoping the world will once again come to their aid as they band with Macedonia's Albanians, who make up around one-third of the population there, in search of self-rule, new borders and more rights. Unlike two years ago, though, they are rebelling against a democratically elected government in Macedonia and Yugoslavia, and have shown themselves to be an unreliable and violent force. Washington is aptly not ready for another blessing.

"Kosovo inspired us a great deal," Arban Aliu, who oversees rebel fighters in Tetovo, Macedonia, told the Associated Press. "We can do the same thing here," he said, pledging that they would take this war to all of Macedonia.

Now NATO and the United States are faced with a dilemma: On the one hand, NATO's rebel stepchildren have come to expect that their powerful ally during the Kosovo bombing campaign will continue to come to their aid, regardless of their wayward actions. On the other hand, the Macedonians are asking for help in fighting those NATO protected while Mr. Milosevic was still in power.

To the first question, the rebels must realize that their own intransigence, evidenced by their use of the demilitarized zone on the border of Macedonia, Kosovo and Serbia to launch attacks and strengthen an arms supply line to different Albanian rebel groups, revokes any right they had to protection. Their recent attacks on Macedonia have sent more than 5,000 Macedonians fleeing into neighboring countries. Secondly, they must realize that turning their focus from building their own infrastructure to conquering others' does nothing to enhance the cause of an independent Kosovo.

NATO and the United States should support nonmilitary aid to the Macedonians to protect the borders and quell the violence. They should also support the moderate ethnic Albanian communities in Kosovo and Macedonia, which seek peaceful and political means of strengthening their minority rights.

The international community should not have adopted the rebels in the first place. But now that it has, it must make clear to the rebels that it will not support violent means for the ethnic Albanians to acquire self-determination. Until it does that, leaders like Mr. Aliu and his rebels will confidently continue to make expanding war in the Balkans their cause.

---

Still friends

Washington Times
March 21, 2001
Geoff Hoon
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-column-2001321193927.htm

Last month at Camp David, President Bush stated his support for Europe's effort to become a stronger, more capable partner for the United States in deterring and managing crises. The United Kingdom is determined that the European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) will improve Europe's capabilities; will do so in a manner that will also strengthen NATO and is fully coordinated, compatible and transparent with NATO; and will provide the fullest possible participation of European allies who are not in the European Union (EU).

In Washington this week, I will be emphasizing to the administration and to Congress that NATO remains the only vehicle for collective defense in Europe, and our first choice for management of security crises in and around Europe. I will emphasize the priority we have given to implementing NATO's Defense Capability Initiative - agreed at the Washington Summit two years ago. I will also say that we need a European option to deal with crises when NATO chooses not to be engaged. The European Union already gets involved in crises across a range of economic, diplomatic and humanitarian fronts. Developing a military option in the European Union, linked to NATO, is the right approach: it must make sense to capitalize on the additional political will and momentum the European Union can generate.

There are two key conditions for ESDP to be successful. First, a strategic partnership between the European Union and NATO. We want full transparency and consultation between the European Union and NATO as a potential crisis develops. There will be no separate EU armed forces, nor any separate EU operational planning capacity. European forces will remain available to NATO as they are now.

Second, we need real improvements in European capabilities. British Prime Minister Tony Blair made that clear when he first proposed a new effort to invigorate European defense in October 1998. It remains essential today. Britain has taken a leading role in the effort to achieve this.

Anybody familiar with defense planning knows that improving capabilities is a long-term process. Securing increased resources is a tough political challenge. Europe needs to do more - and we have made a start. Britain's defense budget will increase in real terms in each of the next three years. Other European countries are starting to do the same.

But the problem is not simply one of resources. Europe already has some two million men and women in uniform. And we spend around $160 billion a year on defense. The real challenge is to make our forces more useable and to spend our money more effectively. ESDP will give the political push needed to help make these changes happen. The Headline Goal agreed at Helsinki last year usefully complements NATO's Defense Capabilities Initiative and will help ensure that we meet the challenge.

Most important of all, European nations have major new equipment programs to bring real increases in firepower and mobility. They include equipment already in production - like the Eurofighter fast jet, new combat and transport helicopters, and the Storm Shadow cruise missile - and others in development, like the A400M strategic transport aircraft and the Meteor air-to-air missile.

The United Kingdom has been pursuing this modernization program for several years. When Mr. Blair's government came to office in 1997, we knew we had to adjust the roles and structure of our armed forces to reflect a new strategic environment - just as the United States is doing. Our strategic defense review concluded that we needed a more flexible force structure to deal with challenges to our interests, not only in Europe but farther afield. We realized that we needed new capabilities in areas like command and control, and strategic lift. We are now investing heavily in those requirements. We are building a new generation of destroyers, acquiring Roll-on, Roll-off ferries to enhance our sea-lift capacity, and are buying next-generation air-to-air missiles. These new capabilities will benefit ESDP and NATO alike.

Britain's partnership with the United States is at the center of many of our modernization plans. British armed forces now deploy Apache attack helicopters, Tomahawk land attack missiles and Maverick precision-guided munitions. We are spending $1 billion to lease and support Boeing C-17s. All this reflects the high priority we attach to inter-operability with the United States, in missions like those we conduct jointly over Iraq. The flagship of our collaboration is the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program; we committed $2 billion in January for the development phase alone. JSF will be a vital capability for the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force, and will further cement the ability of American and British armed forces to operate together.

Our industrial links are equally close. BAE Systems, Rolls Royce and other British-owned companies are significant suppliers to the Department of Defense. The British Ministry of Defense in turn has placed orders and commitments in the United States over the past six months with a total value of almost $4 billion - clear evidence of our commitment to an open defense market across the Atlantic.

Mr. Bush also spoke with Mr. Blair at Camp David last month about increasing cooperation in defense trade and removing unnecessary barriers, while preventing leaks of advanced technology to potential adversaries. That is a vital goal, and a vital stimulus to achieving the stronger military capabilities Europe and NATO need. Our common endeavors in this will help secure the more powerful, more effective NATO that remains our common aim.

Geoff Hoon is Britain's secretary of state for defense.

-------- space

NASA Opposing Russian Plan for Tourist on Space Station

New York Times
March 21, 2001
By WARREN E. LEARY
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/21/science/21NASA.html

WASHINGTON, March 20 - NASA officials insisted today that Russia give up plans to send a tourist to the International Space Station next month, saying that allowing a nonastronaut aboard during the early construction stage of the outpost could compromise safety.

The United States and all of the other international partners in the project remain opposed to sending an American businessman to the station as part of the crew of a Soyuz spacecraft scheduled to blast off on April 30. The partners are not against the idea of letting the businessman, Dennis Tito, visit the station, officials said, but such a trip should come later and when the tourist is better trained.

The stand against Mr. Tito's trip came as Russian astronauts scheduled for the Soyuz mission returned to the Johnson Space Center in Houston today for training following a one-day boycott. The astronauts, who received orders from Moscow to participate in the training sessions, walked out shortly after their arrival Monday when it became apparent that NASA would not allow Mr. Tito to participate.

A spokesman for the Russian Aviation and Space Agency said Russia wanted its astronauts to continue preparing for the flight, but ending the boycott did not mean it was giving up on sending Mr. Tito, who is paying the Russians up to $20 million for the privilege.

"Dennis Tito, whether or not he undergoes the U.S. stage of the training for the flight to the ISS, remains in the crew of the Soyuz space ship, which will leave for the space station on April 30," the spokesman said, Reuters news agency reported.

Michael Hawes, NASA's space station program director, said all of the nations taking part in the project, except Russia, voted last week at meetings in Moscow to oppose letting tourists visit the station until guidelines on training and other issues could be drafted for such visitors.

"It is not the right of any partner to take unilateral actions that affect the other partners," Mr. Hawes said here at a news conference.

NASA and the station partners, including the European Space Agency, the Japanese Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, are continuing to work on rules for flying nonastronauts, Mr. Hawes said, and it might be possible for Mr. Tito to take part in a Soyuz flight scheduled for October if he meets the criteria.

Mr. Tito, a 60-year-old engineer who formerly worked for NASA plotting spacecraft trajectories, is a space buff who became a multimillionaire after founding a California investment company. He underwent nine months of training at Star City in Russia to fly to the Mir space station, but those plans were canceled when Russia decided to bring down the aging, trouble-prone station, an action now planned for Friday.

Russian space officials, strapped for money to run their programs, then switched Mr. Tito's trip to the international station.

Part of Russia's contribution to the new project is supplying three- person Soyuz ships to the station to act as rescue vehicles in case of emergencies. These spacecraft must be replaced every six months on six- day taxi flights to the station, in which the Soyuz crew returns to Earth in the older ship. The April flight, and one coming up in October, are scheduled taxi missions.

NASA officials said they believed Mr. Tito and other potential nonastronaut visitors to the station would need at least six to eight weeks of training in Houston before such trips. There is not time before the April flight for Mr. Tito to get the proper training or for the station partners to resolve other issues concerning tourists, such as legal liability in the event of accidents, Mr. Hawes said.

Mr. Hawes said partners in the space station program, a 16-nation effort to construct a $60 million research laboratory in orbit, would continue to talk with Russia about resolving the visitor issue. But he and other officials sidestepped questions of what might happen if Russia decided to fly Mr. Tito in April over the objections of the other partners.

If Mr. Tito is sent to the station over the partners' objections, Mr. Hawes indicated the station's three current residents, a Russian and two Americans, would not be asked to bar him access. "We are not going to put the crew in any kind of a policing situation," he said.

If Mr. Tito does go, Mr. Hawes conceded, the partners will have to come up with plans to deal with the presence of a visitor. "We are a far cry from having to deal with that, though," he said.

---

Spy-Analysis Agency Says It May Have Found Lost Mars Lander

New York Times
March 21, 2001
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/21/science/21MARS.html

A federal agency said yesterday that it might have found the Mars Polar Lander, a $165 million spacecraft that vanished in December 1999, just before making a planned touchdown on the red planet.

The agency, which analyzes spy photographs for the federal government, said its analysts had examined images of Mars for more than a year and had located what appeared to be the lander resting on rocky soil.

The agency, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, described its results as intriguing and tentative. But an agency official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that while analysts continued to scrutinize the evidence, it was "pretty good" and that the agency was confident of the find.

The agency is an arm of the Pentagon that serves the nation's intelligence community mainly by analyzing pictures taken by the nation's orbiting fleet of spy satellites. Its specialists use advanced methods to tease as much information as possible out of images.

After the Mars lander disappeared, the space agency asked the imagery agency to hunt for the lost craft, officials of both said yesterday. It pored over pictures taken by a spacecraft orbiting Mars.

David H. Burpee, director of public affairs for the imagery agency, said a final answer might take months and require additional photographic clues from the orbiting spacecraft, the Mars Global Surveyor.

The hint of a find sent a frisson of cautious excitement though the nation's space community yesterday.

"It would be the detective story of the century if it turns out that they've really got something," said Edward Weiler, head of space science at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. "I'd be the first in line to congratulate them. But we're not in line yet."

In fact, Dr. Weiler said he had seen the images and was "quite skeptical" that the lander had been found.

"There's not enough data," he said. Mars Global Surveyor will be able to obtain more images of the site, which lies in the original projected landing area, this summer or fall, Dr. Weiler said.

The potential find was first reported in Space.com, an electronic news service.

Space experts said yesterday that the discovery of the lander, if confirmed, could potentially aid the analysis of what went wrong with the mission and speed planning for future ones.

---

Russian space officials work to align Mir

USA Today
03/21/2001 - Updated 07:50 AM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-03-21-mir.htm

MOSCOW (AP) - With the Mir space station on the designated low orbit, space officials prepared Wednesday for the delicate job of stabilizing the station - a maneuver essential for the success of its controlled plunge into the South Pacific.

The station lowered to an altitude of 132 miles on Wednesday - the orbit designated as a starting point for the descent process that is to culminate Friday, said Mission Control spokesman Valery Lyndin.

"The next step will be bringing Mir to a stable position on Thursday," he said.

Mir has been in a slow rolling motion since the end of January as space officials tried to save its unstable batteries and precious fuel for the re-entry. Mission Control officials have acknowledged that switching on its computer-controlled orientation system could be tricky.

In December, Mission Control lost contact with the station for more than 20 hours because the batteries suddenly lost power. Space officials have managed to retain contact with Mir during several subsequent power losses, but each of those incidents disabled its central computer for several days.

Fearing that Mir's unstable batteries could cause similar glitches, Mission Control experts have worked out a backup - using the onboard computer and separate radio communications of the Progress cargo ship docked at the station.

If Mir's position isn't stabilized, the re-entry process will become uncontrollable.

Mir's central computer has remained in the so-called "indicator regime," providing data about the station's systems, which are working normally, Lyndin said. Early Thursday, Mission Control will begin sending computer commands to switch on Mir's orientation system and fire thrusters to steady the station, he said.

The key will be to orient the orbiting station with the sun in such a way that the solar panels can soak up the maximum amount of energy possible to charge the batteries.

If the process goes smoothly and Mir remains stable, the Progress will fire its engines twice for about 20 minutes Friday morning, at around 3:30 a.m. Moscow time (7:30 p.m. EST Thursday) and 5 a.m. Moscow time (9 p.m. EST Thursday) during consecutive orbits. That will slow the station and change its orbit from round to elliptical.

Then, at around 8 a.m. Moscow time (midnight Thursday EST), Progress engines will fire one last time for 23 minutes to send the station hurtling into the South Pacific between Australia and Chile. Most of Mir is expected to burn up in the atmosphere during the fiery re-entry, but up to 27.5 tons of debris are expected to reach the Earth surface.

Space officials voiced confidence that they could carry out a safe descent, pointing to their experience in dumping dozens of Progress ships and other spacecraft into the same area of the Pacific the same way.

But the 143-ton station is by far the heaviest spacecraft ever dumped, and its dimensions and shape make it difficult to exactly predict the re-entry.

All engine thrusts would be conducted over Russian territory to allow Mission Control to get maximum information from ground radars. Once the Progress engine fires the last time, Mir will head down over China and Japan - and will be invisible to Mission Control.

Russian space officials said there was no way to track the Mir after it heads down and quickly locate where the debris went.

---

Space station skipper celebrates with burger, beer

USA Today
03/21/2001 - Updated 04:36 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2001-03-21-shuttle2.htm

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) - The first commander of the International Space Station surprised his doctors, his trainer-wife and even himself by walking off space shuttle Discovery on Wednesday and celebrating the end of his 4 1/2 months in orbit with a cheeseburger and a beer.

Many space travelers come back to Earth feeling queasy and too weak to walk because of the punishing effects of gravity after even just a few weeks of weightlessness.

American astronaut Bill Shepherd's only complaints: Everything felt heavy and his balance was a little off.

"I'm glad I didn't make a bet with him because I would have lost big-time," marveled wife Beth, who is also his rehabilitation therapist.

A team of doctors and fire-and-rescue technicians rushed to the space shuttle following its pre-dawn landing to help Shepherd and his Russian crewmates, Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev. The three men flew back to Earth in reclining seats to ease their re-encounter with gravity.

The doctors expected the three spacemen to be weak, wobbly, nauseated, possibly even powerless to move. But all three declined to be carried out on stretchers and walked away on their own, alongside their four shuttle crewmates.

"Everything is about three times as heavy as I expected," said Shepherd, 51, who lifts weights. "Just putting on these coveralls, I picked up what's got to be a couple ounces of cloth and it felt like five pounds."

Even more amazing than his agility was his appetite. Almost all of the seven Americans who returned from long Mir missions a few years back took it slow and easy. A few could barely stand the smell of food.

Shepherd returned from space station Alpha requesting a Heineken.

"Unfortunately, we didn't have any Heinekens, but he did have a beer. I figure it was like a Budweiser or something," his wife said.

Shepherd and his two crewmates exercised vigorously aboard the space station to minimize the damage.

The astronaut savored his first shower and his first night in a bed since October. The couple hope to fly home to Houston - and their two Labrador retrievers - on Thursday following a round of medical tests that began almost immediately after touchdown.

"Hopefully, the first thing that we'll do is we'll grill a big steak out there by the pool - drinking Heineken," his wife said.

The testing to measure Shepherd's bone and muscle loss and examine his heart and lungs will continue, along with grueling rehabilitation, for the next several weeks.

Shuttle commander James Wetherbee guided Discovery to a 2:31 a.m. touchdown - an hour and a half late because of rain clouds and gusts. The shuttle returned 13 days after it lifted off on a mission to deliver a fresh space station crew and five tons of gear.

Shepherd, Gidzenko and Krikalev circled Earth about 2,200 times during their inaugural, 141-day space station mission, traveling 58 million miles. During their stint aboard, a new laboratory was added along with electricity-generating solar wings, which enabled the opening of a sealed-off section of the space station.

"One of the hardest things for me to do was to say goodbye to space station," said Shepherd, a Navy captain and former SEAL. "I had eight years of my NASA career invested in working to try and help get it flying and then making it operational."

A new crew has moved in and will be on board through July: Russian commander Yuri Usachev and American astronauts Jim Voss and Susan Helms.

"I think things we have done ... will change the way people do things in space from here on out," Shepherd said.

---

Discovery returns to Earth

USA Today
03/21/2001 - Updated 10:07 AM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/nation/2001-03-21-discovery.htm

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) - Space shuttle Discovery glided to a pre-dawn touchdown Wednesday, bringing the first residents of the international space station home from their 4.5-month voyage.

The congratulations started rolling in as soon as Discovery landed.

Bill Shepherd, space station Alpha's first commander, and his two Russian crewmates, Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev, rode back from orbit in reclining seats to ease their reintroduction to gravity.

A team of doctors rushed aboard the shuttle to assist the three. The physicians expected the space station pioneers to be weak, wobbly, dizzy and possibly nauseated after months of weightlessness, but all three men walked away from the shuttle and shunned the gurneys waiting for them.

Within a few hours, Shepherd was gobbling a cheeseburger.

"The Expedition One crew is doing great. They're up and walking around," shuttle commander James Wetherbee reported shortly after touchdown. "The docs don't let them walk around too much. They do have medical experiments that they have to do."

The tests were for gauging the men's readjustment to gravity, including bone and muscle loss incurred by months of weightlessness. Also a top priority: long-awaited reunions with wives and other family members at the Kennedy Space Center crew quarters.

Shepherd, a sturdy man who enjoys weightlifting, picked up a 5-pound book after touchdown and said it felt like 40 pounds, according to Wetherbee. Astronaut Andrew Thomas sat next to the three space station men during the descent and was surprised by their vigor. He felt awful when he returned from his own 4.50-month space station mission, aboard Mir in 1998.

"He said he looked over and they were up and getting out of their suits before he even realized it was possible, they were doing so well," Wetherbee told reporters.

Space station Alpha's three new inhabitants were thrilled to learn of Discovery's safe return.

"I hope Shep, Yuri and Sergei are enjoying their first minutes back on the planet," astronaut Susan Helms radioed to Mission Control.

Discovery's homecoming was delayed 1.50 hours because of thick rain clouds and gusty wind at the landing strip. The crosswind was right at the safety limit as Wetherbee guided Discovery to a 2:31 a.m. touchdown.

The shuttle returned 13 days after it lifted off on a mission to deliver not only a new space station crew but 5 tons of space station gear.

"All in all, it was a great mission," shuttle program manager Ron Dittemore said from Mission Control.

NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin was not present for the landing; like many others, he stayed away thinking bad weather would send the shuttle and the seven men on board to California or keep them in orbit an extra day.

The space station voyagers circled Earth about 2,200 times during their trailblazing, 141-day mission, covering 58 million miles. Their former orbital home was flying over the North Atlantic near Nova Scotia when Discovery touched down.

Alpha was a barren outpost when Shepherd and his crew arrived on Nov. 2. When they left on Sunday, it was a sophisticated, sprawling complex.

The three were the first to live on the space station and therefore had to contend with numerous mechanical problems.

"Just watching it grow and departing, having seen a successful expedition, was the real highlight," Shepherd said Tuesday.

The 51-year-old Navy captain said the high point of his mission was turning over control of the space station to its new commander, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Usachev. The astronaut called it "a historic day in space."

Usachev and his American crewmates, Helms and Jim Voss, will spend the next four months aboard the space station.

NASA's next shuttle launch, meanwhile, is just one month away. Endeavour is scheduled to lift off April 19 with a Canadian-built robot arm for the space station.

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

Foot-and-mouth disease forces Army to cut exercises

Washington Times
March 21, 2001
By Rowan Scarborough THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-200132123230.htm

Europe's battle against foot-and-mouth disease has struck the U.S. Army.

The Army is drastically reducing training for 65,000 soldiers in Germany for fear that boots and equipment could spread the highly contagious virus afflicting livestock in at least two European countries. The disease, however, poses no threat to humans.

The service's European headquarters in Heidelberg sent a message to commanders Friday ordering a training halt until at least March 28.

"Due to the potential massive spread of [foot-and-mouth disease] and the necessity to reduce to an absolute minimum the risk of infection and transmittal, German and allied forces are prohibited, with immediate effect, from conducting all exercises and other training activities outside of permanent [containment] areas, including training areas," said the Army message, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times.

Millie Waters, an Army spokeswoman in Europe, said the message was based on an order from the German armed forces.

"We are going to fully comply with the host-nation order," Ms. Waters said.

She said training is banned in open fields and forests, major training sites, landing and drop zones - "anywhere where it's really not a hard surface."

Troops, however, will be able to do some types of training, such as firing weapons on ranges inside U.S. installations.

As to the effect of the restrictions on overall combat readiness, the Army spokeswoman said, "It's really too early to say at this point. We continue to collect information and to review matters overall."

There are exceptions to the training ban.

Those who can continue open-field training include units preparing for peacekeeping deployments in Bosnia-Herzegovina or Kosovo, and for emergency search-and-rescue operations.

Germany is home to the Army's V Corps, which includes the 1st Armored and 1st Infantry divisions, and the 21st Theater Support Command.

Europe is battling to contain an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease that surfaced in Britain last month, then France, and threatens pigs, cattle, sheep and goats throughout the continent. The virus is spread easily by shoesand equipment.

The Pentagon last week said military personnel and their families were taking precautions not to spread the disease during travel. The Food and Drug Administration and Customs Service are requiring travelers to disinfect footwear if they have come in contact with open spaces and agricultural areas.

"We are following their lead as to what's required and then working with them to make sure that those sorts of preventive steps are carried out for military members when they return to the United States also," said Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, a Pentagon spokesman.

Earlier this month, Norway barred British troops from taking part in NATO exercises for fear they could carry the disease on their boots.

Washington has banned imports of European raw meat to the United States. Customs agents have disinfected the footwear of some travelers entering the United States from Europe.

--------

Darpa mobile project preps 'soldier's radio'

EE Times
03/21/01
By George Leopold EE Times
http://www.eetimes.com
http://www.eet.com/story/OEG20010321S0049

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon's research agency is preparing to demonstrate a "soldier's radio" next year designed to provide mobile communications among individual troops anywhere on the battlefield. The "infrastructure-free" radio network will be based on the Linux operating system and will support multiple StrongARM processors, program officials said.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa; Arlington, Va.) said it plans to demonstrate the infantry radio concept in the field as early as the summer of 2002. The mobile-radio program, which seeks to provide each soldier with a high-data-rate cell phone, would rely on "extreme frequency agility" and a new networking approach to link infantry units spread out over a wide area.

The "soldier's radio" is being developed by a contractor team led by ITT Aerospace and Communications (Fort Wayne, Ind.). ITT is working with MontaVista Software Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.) to port embedded Linux to StrongARM processors. Darpa has adopted Linux as part of an open-systems approach to technology development.

Much of the impetus for the tactical radio program stems from the explosion of mobile communications in the commercial world. "People always ask why there are no cell phones in the field," said Paul Kolodzy, a program manager in Darpa's Advanced Technology Office. The reason, of course, is that there are no relay towers or basestations on the battlefield.

The Darpa mobile-communications program, also know as the "situational awareness system," would use high-capacity, low-power radios linked together by a "self-configuring" network to keep soldiers connected with each other at frequencies ranging from 20 MHz to 2.5 GHz. Kolodzy called the architecture a "mobile, ad-hoc, peer-to-peer network" that uses frequency-hopping technology to avoid communication intercepts and location-finding capability - in other words, situational awareness on the battlefield - but little power.

If deployed, the system could be scaled up to as many as 10,000 network nodes. The reconfigurable network would have to perform geographical routing of mobile communications via network gateways. "How you do the geo-routing is the biggest deal," Kolodzy said.

The planned technology demonstration next year would link 70 prototype radios over a network utilizing MontaVista's Hard Hat version of the standard Linux kernel and other open-source components, as well as StrongARM processors, DSPs and FPGAs. All hardware was chosen to reduce power consumption in the field.

The first beta version of the soldier's radio is expected to be ready by the end of the year, program officials said.

The field tests will help determine whether the radios can avoid enemy jamming, estimate a soldier's position when the global positioning system isn't available and provide a link between soldiers and battlefield sensors. Moreover, developers will determine whether they can keep the network operating in battlefield scenarios ranging from jungles to congested urban areas.

Potential users of the soldier's radio include the Army, Marine Corps and U.S. Special Operations Forces, Darpa said.

Program officials and contractors are also touting the mobile-communications program as an example of how commercial equipment based on open-source systems can be used to get new systems to the field faster and at lower cost. For example, ITT and MontaVista said they were able to speed technology development by porting Linux to StrongARM processors.


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English Village Butchery Blamed for Mad Cow Deaths

New York Times
March 21, 2001
By WARREN HOGE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/21/world/21CND-BRITAIN.html

LONDON, March 21 - A report into five deaths from the human form of mad cow disease in the same English village concluded today that the cause was a traditional local method of slaughter that permitted brain matter from diseased animals to contaminate cuts of meat.

The five people died between August 1998 and October 2000 in Queniborough, Leicestershire - the largest cluster of victims from the same locality in the epidemic that has claimed 90 lives in Britain. There are five more confirmed cases of the incurable Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a brain wasting malady that humans get from eating meat from animals with bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease.

Dr. Philip Monk, a consultant in public health for the Leicestershire Health Authority, said a nine-month study of farming and food supply in the area had found that all five cases had one detail in common. Each of the victims had consumed meat from one of four Main Street butchers who used small slaughterhouses that, unlike larger concerns, worked with carcasses that still had the animal's head attached to the body.

Their slaughtering techniques included a step in which the skull is split open, and Dr. Monk theorized that brain matter from animals with mad cow disease passed to cuts of meat either through the use of the same knives, cleaning with the same cloth or placement on the same cutting board. He said the boning process was ``extremely tricky and very messy'' and that the brain membrane was gelatinous and difficult to keep from oozing out.

The local butchers were catering to a clientele who ate brains as a source of protein, a practice he said was common in Britain during World War II but had become so rare with later generations that the butchers in question gave up that part of their business by the mid 1980's. The incubation period for Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is thought to be between 10 and 16 years, and all five victims became infected between 1980 and 1991, the only time they had been living in the area together.

``These were traditional craft butchering practices carried out by people who were experts in their tradition,'' Dr. Monk said in defense of the shops involved. ``None of them were illegal.''

The practice of butchers' having contact with brains was banned in Britain in 1989, three years after mad cow disease was first identified here, and since 1996 whole heads of animals must be disposed of in slaughterhouses as specified risk material. The disease's capacity to produce the fatal disease in humans became known in 1996 and led to a three-year European Union worldwide ban on the export of British beef. It cost the country billions of dollars in lost business, and farmers were only just recovering from the crisis when the hoof and mouth disease outbreak began four weeks ago.

Dr. Monk discussed the subject at a town meeting in a rugby club in Queniborough, using overhead slides to outline how his team of investigators reached their conclusions. Their search narrowed down to the butcher shops after discarding a host of other possible causes including cattle feed, water supply, dentistry and body piercing.

Asked by one of the villagers what the liklihood was that anyone else in Queniborough would come down with the disease, Dr. Monk said, ``What we want people to take away from this meeting is that we are not able to say what will happen in the future except that the liklihood of this set of circumstances happening again is very, very small.''

Ray Anderson, a professor of infectious diseases at Imperial College, London, who assisted the study, told the BBC: ``It is important not to overinterpret the findings from this cluster. It is only five cases, and it says that the epidemic is still very uncertain for the future.'' Hugh Pennington, professor of bacteriology at Aberdeen University, said: ``It is not enough yet to say whether we are going to have a few hundred cases or thousands or tens of thousands. Unfortunately, the only way to know is to await events.''

Arthur Beyless, the father of one of the five victims, said after the meeting that his belief that meat from traditional butchers instead of supermarkets was vital to a child's health may have inadvertently contributed to the death of his daughter, Pamela, 24, two years ago.

``We always bought quality meat,'' he said. ``At the time Pamela was growing up, we were not on a lot of income, but I had always been taught that there should be meat on the plate, and I always wanted that to be the best quality. The reason we went to traditional butchers in our area was because the meat was of good quality and prepared using traditional means.''

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E.P.A. to Abandon New Arsenic Limits for Water Supply

New York Times
March 21, 2001
By DOUGLAS JEHL
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/21/politics/21ENVI.html

WASHINGTON, March 20 - The Environmental Protection Agency said today that it intended to withdraw a new drinking-water regulation approved by the Clinton administration, saying it did not believe that the decision was supported by the best available science.

The rule, which would have reduced by 80 percent the permissible standard for arsenic in drinking water, had been a priority of environmental groups for more than a decade. It had been vigorously opposed by the mining industry and by some municipalities on grounds that the cost of compliance could reach into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

The decision, announced by Christie Whitman, the E.P.A. administrator, leaves in place, at least for now, an arsenic standard established in 1942. It is the Bush administration's most significant departure from the environmental policies of the Clinton administration.

The withdrawal came just days before the new rules, approved in President Bill Clinton's last week in office, were to become final.

The agency's decision turns on the question of whether there is sufficient evidence to determine the level at which arsenic poses an unacceptable risk to human health when it is in drinking water. Arsenic, a naturally occurring substance, is also a known carcinogen.

A 1999 study by the National Academy of Sciences concluded that the current arsenic standard of 50 parts per billion "could easily" result in a 1-in-100 risk of cancer. The report went on to recommend that the acceptable levels be revised downward "as promptly as possible." The 10 parts per billion standard approved by the Clinton administration is identical to the one adopted several years ago by the European Union and the World Health Organization.

A former E.P.A. official who helped draft the Clinton policy used strong words in condemning today's action.

"I'm stunned," said the ex-official, Chuck Fox, who until January was the agency's assistant administrator for water. "This action will jeopardize the health of millions of Americans, and it compromises literally a decade's worth of work on behalf of developing a public health standard."

The action was the second victory in a week for the mining industry, which was a big contributor to President Bush and the Republican party and which had sued to block the Clinton rules. Last week, coal producers embraced the administration's decision not to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.

John Grasser, a spokesman for the National Mining Association, called the administration's decision to withdraw the drinking-water rule a source of significant relief.

"The Clinton administration rushed this out in the midnight hour," Mr. Grasser said. "We felt all along that it was really a political decision unsupported by the science."

Advocates for the mining and chemical industries, along with some people representing cities that would have been affected by the new rule, argued that the new standards were arbitrary and would have exacted a huge financial cost.

Ms. Whitman cited that argument in explaining today's decision.

"It is clear that arsenic, while naturally occurring, is something that needs to be regulated," Ms. Whitman said in a written statement today.

But, she continued, "certainly, the standard should be less than 50 p.p.b., but the scientific indicators are unclear as to whether the standard needs to go as low as 10 p.p.b."

Earlier, in announcing the decision in a speech to the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies, Ms. Whitman pledged, "When we make a decision on arsenic, it will be based on sound science and solid analysis."

At least 11 million Americans, most of them in small towns and rural areas but some in cities as large as Albuquerque, rely on drinking water that contains more arsenic than the 10 parts per billion that would have been allowed under the Clinton rules, officials of the environmental agency said.

But they would not be immediately affected by the Bush administration's decision to withdraw the Clinton rules, the officials said, because the new standard would not have begun to take effect for three years.

A senior E.P.A. official said the administration hoped to come up with its own recommendation by sometime this summer.

The rules on arsenic in drinking water fall under the Safe Drinking Water Act, and Congress had set a deadline of June 2001 for the E.P.A. to come up with a new standard.

The Associated Press reported tonight that the administration would seek to suspend another environmental action taken under President Clinton. The change would set aside stricter rules on hardrock mining that required compliance with tightened environmental standards.

On the arsenic rule, among lawmakers who had been most outspoken in urging the Bush administration to withdraw the Clinton rules was Senator Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, whose state has high naturally occurring arsenic levels.

In a letter to Ms. Whitman earlier this year, Senator Domenici said the rules would impose "an excruciating financial burden" on his state, affecting one in four municipal water systems, imposing a price of compliance of $400 million to $500 million.

Congressional Democrats reacted bitterly today to reversal of the Clinton policy.

"This is another example of a special interest payback to industries that gave millions of dollars in campaign contributions," said Representative Henry A. Waxman, the California Democrat who was the author of the safe drinking water legislation.

Arsenic is a common byproduct of mining operations, so stricter standards for its content in drinking water would translate into stricter standards for many mining sites.

The wood products industry also supports the administration's ruling because arsenic is used to pressure- treat lumber. The industry's trade association, the American Wood Preservers Institute, which had supported the mining industry in a lawsuit welcomed the news today.

"We're very relieved and delighted about what we hear," said Mel Pine, the organization's spokesman.

---

Deal in Maine Prevents Development of Forestland

New York Times
March 21, 2001
By CAREY GOLDBERG
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/21/national/21MAIN.html

BOSTON, March 20 - As of today, more than three quarters of a million acres of some of the wildest land in Maine, a total area larger than Rhode Island, will be protected forever from development under a deal that experts call the largest forestland conservation easement in American history.

The easement deal, which would allow continued selective logging on the land, brought together the Pingree family, which has owned great tracts of the Maine woods for seven generations, and conservationists concerned that Maine's 17 million acres of forest, most of which are privately owned, might be divided into smaller lots and possibly sold to developers.

The Pingrees agreed in 1999 to provide the conservation easement on the land by selling the development rights to a private nonprofit group, the New England Forestry Foundation. But it then remained to be seen whether the foundation would manage to raise approximately $37 per acre to buy the rights.

Today, the foundation transferred $28,142,316 to Pingree Associates, the organization that represents the family; and it registered new deeds to the 762,192 acres, specifying that the land can never be developed, in six Maine counties.

"Buildings can fall down," the governor of Maine, Angus King, said today at a news conference at the Statehouse in Augusta. "Programs can be changed. Anything that we do here can be changed a generation hence. What we're doing, however, today, in terms of setting aside this land for the people of Maine, and indeed the people of the United States, is permanent."

The money to pay for the easement came from other foundations, a few millionaires and more than 1,200 individuals, including some fourth- graders from Portland, Me., who held a penny-collecting drive and gathered more than $800, project leaders said.

The landscape to be preserved includes 110 lakes and ponds, more than 2,000 miles of river frontage, including 16 miles on the St. John River, and habitats for peregrine falcons, bald eagles and more. The land is some of the most remote in the eastern United States. Under the agreement, the public retains recreational access to the land.

The project has drawn little opposition. Paper companies said they liked the plan because it preserved a "working forest." Environmentalists liked it because it prevented development, like vacation homes, though some said it should go further and restrict logging.

Today's deal fits into a broader push in Maine recently to preserve forestland, particularly as paper companies have sold off large tracts of it, raising fears that developers could move in on choice lots. In 1998, the Nature Conservancy announced it would pay $35 million for 185,000 acres of International Paper Company land in northern Maine, and is spending $15 million on other Maine land purchases. In 1999, Maine voters passed a $50 million bond issue to support land purchases.

But no other Maine deals approach the Pingree easement in size. Nor has any such deal in the United States, experts say. The next-largest conservation easement on American forestland involved about 110,000 acres in the Adirondacks, and the largest easement in general is on 140,000 acres of ranchland in Montana, said Keith Ross, director of land protection for the New England Forestry Foundation.

The small foundation, which was created in 1944, has generally kept a low profile, working with families who want to keep their woodlands intact, productive and family-owned.

It turned out to be just the partner that the Pingrees had been seeking. It supported continued timber harvesting but would also help fashion an easement that would let the Pingrees protect their holdings from potentially devastating estate taxes, Steve Schley, the president of Pingree Associates, said today in a telephone interview.

"Because of all our lake and water frontage, someday some I.R.S. agent could well have said, `The next Disneyland could be here,' and valued it as such," Mr. Schley said. "This project recognizes that value today and precludes that sort of valuation difficulty in the future. So for estate tax purposes, and our ability to subsequently move the ownership through the generations, this should be very helpful."

The idea of the easement, Mr. Schley said, was a "win-win-win."

"This was a case where it worked for the private landowner; it worked for the environment and it worked for the public that can continue to enjoy the property." he said.

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BRITAIN: ARMY BATTLES FOOT-AND-MOUTH

New York Times
March 21, 2001
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/21/world/21BRIE.html

Army trucks and 200 soldiers were pressed into service in western England to help clear carcasses of 60,000 dead animals from fields in the continuing effort to curb the spread of the highly contagious foot-and-mouth disease. The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food reported 19 more confirmed cases, taking the total to 368 since the outbreak four weeks ago. The Conservative Party's leader, William Hague, trailing Labor by more than 20 percentage points in polls, said Prime Minister Tony Blair should abandon plans to call an election on May 3 because of the farm crisis. Warren Hoge (NYT)

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DiFrancesco Seeks to Save Meadowlands

New York Times
March 21, 2001
By ANDREW JACOBS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/21/nyregion/21MALL.html

LYNDHURST, N.J., March 20 - Calling the Meadowlands a "precious area of our Garden State," Acting Gov. Donald T. DiFrancesco asked the developers seeking to build a huge shopping complex to consider moving their project off a swath of marsh that environmentalists have been trying to save for more than a decade.

During a news conference in a nature preserve carved from a former landfill near the proposed mall site, Mr. DiFrancesco called on the developers to look at other sites in northern New Jersey, including the nearby Meadowlands Sports Complex, which could find itself with a void if the Devils and Nets move from the Continental Airlines Arena to a stadium proposed for Newark.

"I'm convinced we can find a smart-growth solution that creates jobs, meets the public need and sparks prosperity without destroying the critical natural resources that we have," Mr. DiFrancesco said this afternoon. While the developers said they would reluctantly consider alternative sites for what would be the state's largest mall, they rejected Mr. DiFrancesco's suggestion that they withdraw their application to the Army Corps of Engineers, the agency that will ultimately decide whether they can pave over 90 acres of reed-filled wetlands in the town of Carlstadt that are essential to the plan.

"We respect Mr. DiFrancesco's decision to take a position, but we do not believe his position is sound in fact or in law," said Jim Dausch, senior executive vice president of the Mills Corporation, which is based in Arlington, Va.

A spokeswoman for the Army Corps said she could not respond to Mr. DiFrancesco's comments, adding that there was no timetable for a final ruling. But environmentalists said his decision to speak against the project today would fortify the corps's resolve to deny the permit. Both the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the Environmental Protection Agency have said the mall would destroy valuable wildlife habitat.

Beyond his public remarks today, Mr. DiFrancesco has considerable influence over the state agencies that grant environmental and transportation-related approvals for such projects.

Opponents of the mall said Mr. DiFrancesco's stance could save not only the parcel, but perhaps also a larger portion of the Meadowlands, a 32-square-mile patchwork of tidal marshes, outlet centers and garbage dumps that has long stood as a symbol of man's contempt for nature.

"This is a great first step toward a revolutionary policy of keeping development out of the Meadowlands," said Richard P. Kane, vice president of the New Jersey Audubon Society, one of many groups that hopes to turn the remaining wetlands into a state or federal park. "What we need here is a wildlife refuge, not another mall."

By taking on a thorny issue that had been sidestepped by his predecessors, Mr. DiFrancesco, a Republican, is clearly trying to burnish his environmental credentials for November's gubernatorial elections, where he will face at least two opponents who have already raised objections to the Mills project.

Known for his deal-making prowess, Mr. DiFrancesco tried hard today not to enrage the political establishment in heavily Republican Bergen County, by making it clear that he wanted to find another site for the mall in their county. Mr. DiFrancesco said he would push the Mills Corporation to look at the Continental Arena, which would become vacant if the Devils and Nets make good on their intentions to relocate to a new stadium in downtown Newark. So far, the teams' owner, the YankeeNets, have been stymied in their effort to gain generous state subsidies for a Newark arena that is expected to cost $325 million.

By finding a new use for the Continental Arena, Mr. DiFrancesco would have an easier time persuading the Legislature to approve the kind of financial assistance the YankeeNets is seeking. If he were to make a Newark stadium possible, find a new use for the arena and save a high-profile slice of wetlands, Mr. DiFrancesco would score a remarkable victory, satisfying environmentalists, Bergen County's leaders and voters in Newark.

Some local businesses, labor union officials and the mayor of Carlstadt were displeased by Mr. DiFrancesco's announcement. Rich Fritzky, president of the Meadowlands Regional Chamber of Commerce, said he felt betrayed by the acting governor's move to kill a project that would create 7,000 construction jobs and 12,000 permanent jobs. "It's bad governance," he said, "and it shows really bad faith."

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Oil Rig Sinks; Some Leaking Is 'Inevitable,' Official Says

New York Times
March 21, 2001
By LARRY ROHTER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/21/business/21RIG.html

RIO DE JANEIRO, March 20 - After five days of frantic efforts to keep it afloat and recover the bodies of nine workers left onboard, the world's largest offshore oil platform sank into the South Atlantic this morning.

Henri Philippe Reichstul, president of the state-controlled oil company, Petróleo Brasileiro, or Petrobras, which operated the rig, said today that it was "inevitable" that at least some of the nearly 400,000 gallons of oil stored on it would spill into the ocean.

Brazilian television showed the platform, which was 40 stories high and weighed more than 31,000 tons, tipped over sideways and almost entirely submerged this afternoon, with little more than a helicopter pad still above water.

The giant rig, known as P-36, was built in Italy and later modified at shipyards in Canada and Singapore before Petrobras acquired it through a Bolivian intermediary; it was insured for $500 million.

It began operating a year ago this month in the oil-rich Campos Basin in the South Atlantic, about 78 miles off the coast of Rio de Janeiro state. Drilling to a depth of more than one mile, the platform had been producing 83,000 barrels of oil a day, about 5 percent of the total output of Petrobras.

But early on March 15, the rig was shaken by a series of explosions and began to list.

With fires raging and one firefighter already dead, all but 9 of the 175 workers were evacuated to another platform, and then to the mainland. Petrobras workers immediately began to try to stabilize the platform and find their missing co-workers, who are presumed dead.

Rough weather and high waves have hampered their work. "Sea conditions undoubtedly complicated the work of the divers and contributed to the sinking of Platform P-36," Mr. Reichstul said today at a news conference. "Certainly the bad weather accelerated its sinking."

He also said that the rig's oil and gas wells had been sealed before it was evacuated. But oil and diesel fuel were stored in tanks aboard the rig, and industry experts said the tanks would almost certainly be ruptured by mounting water pressure as the platform sank. The ocean is about 4,400 deep at the site of the rig.

Petrobras officials said that more than a dozen vessels equipped with floating barriers have been sent to try to contain any spill.

Meteorologists said today that prevailing winds were blowing to the south, away from the coast, but that high winds were also preventing effective use of the barriers.

"There is a plan in place to protect the environment," Mr. Reichstul said. "We are not terribly worried about the environmental question."

The demise of P-36 is the latest in a series of problems for Petrobras, whose stock price fell more than 2 percent as soon as the sinking was announced.

Two major oil spills in 14 months have led to large fines and heavy criticism of the company, Brazil's largest, which produces nearly all the country's oil and reported a profit of $5.2 billion in 2000.

The platform disaster is also a setback for Brazil's drive to become self-sufficient in oil.

Petrobras had been producing about 1.5 million barrels a day and hoped to raise its output to 1.8 million barrels by 2005. But now, the company will need to spend an estimated $500 million importing oil to replace P-36's lost production until a new rig can be bought and put in place.

"We're going to increase oil production this year, despite the accident," Mr. Reichstul said. "Production in 2001 will exceed that of last year."

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Foot-and-Mouth Disease Confirmed in the Netherlands

Associated Press
March 21, 2001 Filed at 8:14 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Foot-and-Mouth.html

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) -- Far from being contained, the foot-and-mouth disease that has devastated cattle herds in Britain gained ground on the European continent, with the Netherlands on Wednesday confirming its first cases.

The announcement by the Dutch agriculture minister that four contaminated cows were detected Wednesday, and the near certainty that hundreds of goats had been infected, quashed hopes that the feared livestock disease could be bottled up in a small corner of France, the only other place in continental Europe where it has been identified.

The European Union in Brussels quickly imposed a ban on livestock exports from the Netherlands and on exports of meat, daily and animal products from four Dutch provinces unless they are treated to ensure they cannot be carrying the disease.

Gunshots from the rifles of government veterinarians rang out across snowy fields at a northeastern farm where dozens of animals were killed after coming into contact with infected animals. Police set up roadblocks to isolate the farm near Oosterwolde and two others 12 miles east, near the villages of Olst and Oene, where the disease was detected.

About 17,000 animals were to be destroyed in farms within a 1,000-yard radius of the three farms, the Agriculture Ministry said.

Although not dangerous to humans, foot-and-mouth is deadly for livestock and highly contagious, capable of being spread even by the wind.

The setback in the Netherlands came after the French Agriculture Ministry said Tuesday that 224 herds had been tested but no new cases had been reported since last week, when six farms were put under quarantine.

In Britain, where the outbreak first appeared last month, 72 new cases were confirmed in the past two days, bringing the total to 434 on Wednesday. The government pledged to speed up the destruction of infected animals.

So far 223,000 animals have been killed in the United Kingdom, and about 125,000 others were marked for destruction.

Dutch Agriculture Minister Laurens-Jan Brinkhorst reinstated a nationwide ban on moving livestock, including chickens, just two days after it had been partially lifted. He banned the movement of milk or dairy products for three days. Customs inspectors at Schipol airport outside Amsterdam were ordered to closely inspect baggage and passengers.

``You know that I don't show my emotions easily, but I want to say that I sympathize with the farmers and their families who have already suffered so much. This is a very big blow,'' he said.

How the animals were infected was a mystery. Brinkhorst said the Olst farm had not bought or sold any cattle for the last 12 months, which underscored the need for harsh control measures.

``The disease probably was transferred by human contact or through the air,'' he said.

The four cows were found by a veterinarian who was called in by the farmer, not by government inspectors. ``The doctor didn't even need to do a test, the animals were so sick he could diagnose it immediately,'' a ministry spokesman said.

The government, which was having problems disposing of the mountains of carcasses, said animals that cannot be killed will be inoculated to prevent the disease from spreading.

Until now, EU members had avoided vaccination, fearing it would strip them of their disease-free status in world markets. Inoculated animals bear the same foot-and-mouth antibodies as infected animals.

Germany ordered increased checks on its border, which passes within 25 miles of the Dutch farms where the disease was confirmed. Deputy Agriculture Minister Alexander Mueller said Germany will try to trace any livestock imported from the infected area before restrictions were imposed on animal transports.

The Dutch Agriculture Ministry said the discovery of the infected cows at Olst persuaded the government to reclassify from suspected to confirmed cases about 500 goats at the Oene farm, three miles away, even though their final blood test results would not be available until Friday. All were destroyed last weekend.

Dutch meat wholesalers warned that a prolonged international ban on meat and livestock exports would be a severe blow for the Netherlands, where dairy and meat farming is intensive.

A wholesalers' organization said meat exports to non-European countries are normally banned for 12 months after a country is declared free of the disease. That will cost the Netherlands as much as $618 million.

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Dutch confirm first case of foot-and-mouth

USA Today
03/21/2001
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001-03-21-foot.htm

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) - The Netherlands confirmed its first cases of foot-and-mouth disease on Wednesday, making it the second country on the European continent to detect the livestock ailment. Tests concluded that four cows had contracted the disease on a farm near Olst, in the eastern part of the country. All 60 head of cattle and 20 sheep were being destroyed immediately.

The 15-member European Union quickly banned all livestock exports from the Netherlands, as well as meat, dairy and other animal products from four Dutch provinces unless they are treated to ensure they cannot be carrying the disease. The move extends restrictions already imposed on Britain, where the outbreak originated, and France, where it was first discovered on the continent.

The Dutch government halted exports and reinstated a nationwide ban on transporting livestock that had been lifted just two days earlier, extending it to cover chickens.

Authorities also said that about 500 goats on a farm in nearby Oene were slaughtered after foot-and-mouth symptoms were detected last weekend. Final results of blood tests were not expected until Friday, but Agriculture Ministry spokeswoman Martina de Ham said, "The symptoms were so obvious that they leave no doubt."

Animals were ordered destroyed on farms around the infected farm in Olst and around the Oene farm. On a farm near Oosterwolde, about 12 miles to the west, authorities killed a herd of cattle with rifles. The carcasses were scooped up with a crane onto a truck to be taken away.

In France, the Agriculture Ministry said Tuesday that tests of 224 herds had not revealed any further cases and just six farms remained under quarantine.

Britain, where the disease was first detected a month ago, confirmed 16 new cases, bringing the total number to 411 on Wednesday. The government pledged Wednesday to speed up the process of destroying infected animals.

Forty-five new cases of the livestock ailment were confirmed Tuesday, the highest one-day tally yet, and the European Union extended its ban on exports of British livestock and meat until April 4.

EU spokeswoman Beate Gminder said the European Commission regretted the news from the Dutch government, but added: "We are still confident that the disease can be contained."

She added the EU "will keep under review" the possibility of a vaccination program to stem the spreading of the highly contagious disease.

Four areas in the Netherlands were placed under quarantine, including a slaughterhouse and a farm in the south, de Ham said. A 6 1/4-mile radius around the areas was closed.

Dutch farmers already have destroyed thousands of cattle, sheep, goats and deer imported from Britain and France as a precaution.

Britain's Prince Charles, himself a gentleman farmer, canceled an Austrian skiing holiday to show solidarity with farmers hit by the disease.

"He doesn't want to go on that kind of holiday at the moment, given everything that is going on with foot-and-mouth," said a spokeswoman for the prince's St. James's Palace office.

Encouraging a back-to-business attitude for Britain's devastated countryside, the government announced an advertising campaign to lure visitors back and said canals, 350 historic properties and possibly some footpaths would be reopened. Ministers also unveiled a program of tax relief for rural businesses hit by the disease.

So far 223,000 animals have been killed in the United Kingdom, and about 125,000 others marked for destruction, the Ministry of Agriculture said.

The epidemic has shut British livestock out of markets worldwide, and put its European trading partners on alert.

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Brazilian oil rig begins to leak fuel into Atlantic

USA Today
03/21/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-03-21-oilrig.htm

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) - The world's biggest floating oil rig sank in the South Atlantic on Tuesday, and the state oil company Petrobras said some of the 300,000 gallons of diesel fuel on board had apparently already started to leak.

A cleanup flotilla of 11 ships with floating barriers and oil-dispersing chemicals surrounded a slick at the spot 75 miles off the coast where the 40-story-tall rig, crippled and listing after an explosion last week, went down in heavy seas.

However, scientists and the government said the environmental impact would not be great, in part because the spill was so far from the coast.

Workers who had been trying to save the rig were evacuated to another floating platform after it "shifted suddenly" before dawn, the company said.

At about 10:30 a.m., the rig tipped over and sank in about 10 minutes. Film footage showed the platform disappearing into the water until only the green heliport was visible above the waves. Oil workers looked on, many sobbing for comrades who died in the disaster.

Two workers were killed in the explosion, and eight others are missing, presumed dead inside the sunken rig.

Petrobras Chief Executive Henri Philippe Reichstul said all the oil would eventually leak into the sea. He said there was already a "fine film" of diesel oil on the surface.

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. The rig also 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.

As barriers were set up around the spill, a second slick was sighted, Petrobras said. It wasn't known whether the new spill was crude or diesel.

"There is a plan in place to protect the environment," Reichstul said. "We are not terribly worried about the environmental question."

Four ships carried 20 miles of floating oil barriers, "enough for a spill 10 or 15 times this size," said Irani Varela, the company's safety and environment director. Four other ships were prepared to skim oil off the surface and three had chemicals to break down the oil.

Varela said, however, that the barriers would have little effect in high seas, where swells late Tuesday were four feet high.

Scientists said the environmental impact would likely be negligible. The lighter diesel oil tends to evaporate in a few days, while the crude oil would separate and the heavier sediment would sink.

"It would be different if it were in a bay or on the coast, but the open sea is relatively sterile, and fish can just avoid it," said Paulo Cesar Rosman, professor of coastal and oceanographic engineering at Rio's Federal University. "It probably will surface little by little, a slick here and there."

The government environmental protection agency also said the spill was unlikely to have a major environmental impact on the region.

Still, the spill was part of a larger problem, Rosman said.

"Jacques Cousteau taught us that oil spills are like smoking - the problem is the cumulative effect over time," he said. "This is one more."

Navy divers, engineers and foreign consultants had been working around the clock for days, using nitrogen and compressed air to expel water from flooded compartments. But high winds and rough seas hindered rescue efforts Monday, and the gigantic rig again began to sink slowly off the coast of Macae, 120 miles northeast of Rio.

Built in Italy and later modified in Canada, the rig was the top producer in the oil-rich Campos Basin, which accounts for most of the 1.5 million barrels of oil Brazil produces 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 said loss of production from the rig would cost Petrobras $450 million this year. The loss also could raise oil imports and hurt Brazil's trade balance, which has been stuck in the red for years.

Still, Petrobras already was talking about moving in another rig and said oil output could rise this year despite the accident.

"The offshore industry always claimed it's a technical wonder, that they can substitute a rig in a matter of months," said George Hawrylyshyn, editor of the local trade magazine Brazil Energy. "This will be a test for them."

Petrobras might find it harder to overcome rising criticism that it has sacrificed safety for profits. In recent years the company has slashed its work force and farmed out jobs to private companies, which some union officials say are less qualified.

Accidents at oil rigs in the Campos Basin have become routine, said Fernando Carvalho, a director of the Oil Workers' Federation.

Petrobras shares dipped 7% on local stock markets Tuesday, and rumors flew that Reichstul's job was on the line. But stock analysts have maintained their recommendation for Petrobras, which earned a record $5 billion in net profit and has excellent long-term prospects.

---------

Government seizes sheep suspected of disease

USA Today
03/21/2001 - Updated 06:33 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/nphoto.htm
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Mad-Sheep.html

GREENSBORO, Vt. (AP) - Federal agents seized a Vermont farmer's flock of 234 sheep Wednesday for fear they are infected with a version of mad cow disease - the first such action ever taken against livestock in the United States. The U.S. Agriculture Department "has no choice but to take this decisive action based on the threat the sheep pose to the health of America's livestock nationwide," said Craig Reed, administrator of USDA's animal and plant health inspection service.

A team of federal agents and agriculture officials arrived at Houghton Freeman's farm at daybreak. Two cattle trucks were loaded up by 11 a.m. and will take the sheep to Iowa, where they will be tested and destroyed.

Freeman and another farmer had waged a court battle to save their sheep after the Agriculture Department ordered the flocks seized last July.

The flocks consisted of sheep that were either imported from Belgium in 1996 or were descendants of those animals.

The seizure went peacefully, but Thomas Amidon, a lawyer for Freeman, called it "sad, depressing and a rushed judgment."

"This is so unnecessary," he said.

USDA spokesman Ed Curlett said the seizure was the first of any cow or sheep in the United States under suspicion of having an illness related to mad cow disease.

The USDA has said four sheep from Freeman's flock showed signs of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy, a class of neurological diseases that includes both bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, and scrapie, a sheep disease not harmful to humans. The government said the sheep may have been exposed through contaminated European feed.

However, the USDA tests could not confirm whether the sheep have BSE. The animals will undergo further testing at a USDA lab in Ames, Iowa.

There have been no confirmed cases of mad cow disease in the United States. Scrapie has been in the United States since at least 1947.

The second disputed flock of about 140 sheep is owned by Larry and Linda Faillace of East Warren. No date has been set to take their sheep.

Linda Faillace said Wednesday she felt "anger, frustration, disbelief" and accused the USDA of failing to heed science.

"That's what makes us so angry. USDA builds up public hysteria over a species that doesn't get the disease," she said.

The human version of BSE, which like the animal version has a long incubation period, has killed almost 100 people in Britain and other European countries since 1995. The scare has virtually wiped out the British beef industry.

After losing their case in U.S. District Court in February, the Faillaces and Freeman appealed and asked that the seizure order be put on hold until the case had worked its way through the courts. An appeals court refused to stay the seizure but said it would hear the case.

The farmers also sought help from the Vermont's congressional delegation, but all three members stood by the USDA.

"Too little is yet known about this disease, but we do know that it is deadly and that it has the potential to spread quickly, widely and insidiously if not handled early," Sens. Patrick Leahy and James Jeffords and Rep. Bernard Sanders said in a statement.

The Vermont Farm Bureau also supported the animals' destruction.

"The more you look into it, the more you realize it's not a perfect world, and the science isn't perfect, the risk isn't worth it, and you move on," said the bureau's president, Clark Hinsdale.

The USDA offered the farmers up to $2.4 million for their flocks last year, but they refused, deciding instead to continue their court fight. USDA veterinarian Dr. Linda Detwiler said the farmers will be compensated for the fair market value of their sheep.

While the seizure was a first, a flock of 21 sheep from the same family of sheep was voluntarily turned over to government officials last summer by their Vermont owner and were destroyed.

---

Bush reconsiders environmental initiatives

USA Today
03/21/2001 - Updated 01:50 PM ET
By Traci Watson, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-03-20-enviroinitiatives.htm

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration delayed new drinking-water protections Tuesday and plans to propose a suspension of new mining limits later this week. Both regulations were put into place during President Clinton's last months in office. The flurry of activity has alarmed some environmental leaders. "Environmental policy is being taken back to the 19th century," said Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club.

These efforts come after President Bush decided last week to reverse a campaign promise to cut power plants' emissions of carbon dioxide. Many scientists implicate those emissions in global warming.

Christie Whitman, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, said Tuesday that she would delay a rule that would have restricted the amount of arsenic allowed in tap water. That rule was scheduled to take effect Friday. "I want to be sure that the conclusions about arsenic in the rule are supported by the best available science," Whitman said.

Arsenic is a carcinogen that occurs naturally in the drinking water in parts of the USA, especially the West. The Clinton rule, which was finalized January 17, replaced a standard written more than 50 years ago. Proponents said the new rule would protect public health. Opponents said it would be costly and too strict.

The mining rule also overhauled regulations that hadn't changed in decades. Finalized in November, it put stricter criteria on mining public lands and beefed up companies' responsibility for mine waste.

Western lawmakers said it would cost jobs and revenue. "Before we commit to these new rules, we want to take another look and give the public another chance to comment," said Larry Finfer, a Bureau of Land Management spokesman.

---

A Setback for Forests

New York Times
March 21, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/21/opinion/L21ENVI.html

To the Editor:
Re "U.S. Offers Further Delay to Forest Rules" (news article, March 17):

The Bush administration has seen fit to deliver two devastating blows to the environment in one week.

President Bush's concession to industry by filing notice to suspend implementation of the roadless area conservation policy is reckless and unwise. This policy was three years in the making, had 600 public hearings and 1.6 million public comments. It is a blatant and lamentable assault on the last 30 percent of untouched national forests.

What is more important: protecting our forests for future generations or letting Boise Cascade log them for short-term profits?

ALLAN HUNT-BADINER
Big Sur, Calif., March 18, 2001
The writer is a board member and chairman emeritus, Rainforest Action Network.

---

Termite alert

Washington Times
EDITORIAL • March 21, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-house-2001321191557.htm

Termites gnawing on your deck? Got a fence that needs fixing? New Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules governing the manufacture of pressure-treated lumber that will begin going into effect this month might make such projects a more frequent chore.

That's because EPA is demanding that arsenic levels in chromated copper arsenate (CCA), a compound used in the pressure-treating process, be cut from 50 parts per billion to 10 parts per billion. EPA says the new rules will help make ground and drinking water cleaner and safer. But critics charge that EPA is once again issuing new rules without scientific evidence.

Specifically, the desired reduction from 50 parts per billion to 10 parts per billion is apparently arbitrary, with no evidence that the reduced levels will aid public health for the better. "The rule is so overwhelming. It could affect us in so many ways . . . If there is no threshold for what a carcinogen is, the rule could be applied to rain that is washed off the roof," said Mel Harkrader Pine of the American Wood Preservers Institute. "We have no idea where it will end."

Almost all pressure-treated wood sold in the United States uses CCA (98 percent); some 350 plants would be affected as well, not to mention Harry and Harriet Homeowner, who might find the boards they purchase less resistant to wood-boring insects and the elements. Critics say the total cost of the arsenic rules, which are to be implemented over the course of the next five years, could cost billions annually. Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico has introduced a bill to put the kibosh on the EPA's arsenic diktat, which he claims would cost his own state $400 million just to update water-treatment facilities.

The real issue, though, is not cost per se but rather justification. It's one thing if EPA issues a rule to address a legitimate problem. However, it's quite another thing for EPA to simply issue expensive ukase that's essentially arbitrary, or at least, which lacks objective scientific support. Mr. Domenici is right to seek revocation of the EPA's new arsenic rules, and deserves to be supported in his endeavor.

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Metro Briefs

New York Times
March 21, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/21/nyregion/21MBRF.html

IRVINGTON: POLICE RECRUITMENT

State Police officials have intensified their efforts to recruit racial and ethnic minorities, this time with the help of the N.A.A.C.P. The Rev. William Rutherford, the president of the state N.A.A.C.P., yesterday joined with the State Police superintendent, Col. Carson J. Dunbar Jr., to call on blacks and Hispanics and other minorities to join the force. The two appeared together for the first time to announce an extension of the latest round of recruiting to May 1. The N.A.A.C.P. criticized the force last year as insufficiently aggressive in recruiting racial and ethnic minorities. Steve Strunsky (NYT)

HARTFORD: MARSHALS SWORN IN

Gov. John G. Rowland proclaimed a "new beginning" yesterday as he conducted a swearing-in ceremony for more than 250 new state marshals. The marshals are former deputy sheriffs who converted to a new name and a new system on Dec. 1, after voters overwhelmingly approved a referendum abolishing the elected office of sheriff. Mr. Rowland was a longtime critic of the scandal-plagued sheriff's system. (AP)

---

Lawyer Says Political Feud Is to Blame for Sheriff's Trial

New York Times
March 21, 2001
By AL BAKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/21/nyregion/21SUFF.html

CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y., March 20 - Although the Suffolk County sheriff is charged with campaign corruption, his lawyer told a jury today that he was on trial for another reason: a political feud with the county district attorney.

In a brief yet forceful opening statement, the lawyer, William D. Wexler, said that the feud between Sheriff Patrick A. Mahoney and District Attorney James M. Catterson Jr. "lurks behind" every aspect of the prosecution's case.

"How did we get here today?" Mr. Wexler said. "Well, I'm going to tell you." He slowly quoted what he said were Mr. Catterson's words: " `He's my sworn enemy. He's my sworn enemy.' "

He added, "Those are the public statements of the district attorney of this county about Sheriff Mahoney."

With that stinging statement, the bitter political battle between the county's top law enforcers that this trial has promised to showcase was under way in State Supreme Court here. The trial is expected to last 10 weeks.

The prosecutor, William T. Ferris, sprang to his feet to object to Mr. Wexler's comments. A few moments later, Justice Richard L. Buchter - a Queens judge assigned to the case because he is unfamiliar with Suffolk's political scene - emphasized to jurors that any claims of bad blood between Mr. Mahoney, 58, and Mr. Catterson, 70, could be used only to try to show bias on the part of a witness, not as a defense against the charges.

Prosecutors refused to comment after the proceedings, but have repeatedly rejected any notion that politics or Mr. Catterson's views are playing a part in their case.

"It is the first day of testimony in what is going to be a very long trial," said Drew Biondo, a spokesman for Mr. Catterson. "The witnesses and the evidence will speak for themselves."

Mr. Mahoney and his former undersheriff, Edward J. Morris, 51, are facing a combined indictment of 90 counts returned by a grand jury last June. In his opening statement on Monday, Mr. Ferris portrayed the two men as power-hungry political opportunists who used the county jail, in Riverhead, as an unofficial campaign headquarters, where they squeezed employees for contributions in exchange for plum assignments or better pay.

Today, Mr. Morris's lawyer, Thomas J. Spota, also attacked the government's case.

As the wives of the two defendants looked on, Mr. Spota, who is seeking the Democratic nomination this year to run against Mr. Catterson, a Republican, said the government's case was built on biased witnesses, particularly correction officers whose testimony had been coerced.

"I say to you," Mr. Spota told the jury, "that the testimony of those correction officers is infested with lies, polluted with perjury and contaminated with inconsistencies."

Mr. Spota said Mr. Morris, who faces 29 felony counts and up to 20 years in prison if convicted of all charges, would testify in his own defense. During a break in court, Mr. Mahoney, who is facing one felony count and up to four years in prison if convicted of all charges, said, "I cannot wait to get on the stand."

Then, moments later, Mr. Morris, seated at the defense table, mocked the prosecution as boxes of evidence taken from his office at the jail were wheeled into court on a pushcart.

"This is the district attorney's re- election, right here in the courtroom," Mr. Morris said, pointing to an elaborate overhead projector. "Look at all this money."

---

Attorney General Discouraged Release of Data on Profiling, Lawyers Testify

New York Times
March 21, 2001
By LAURA MANSNERUS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/21/nyregion/21TROO.html

TRENTON, March 20 - While New Jersey was under scrutiny in a Justice Department investigation of racial profiling, top state law enforcement officials including the former attorney general, Peter G. Verniero, were so anxious about appearances that they discouraged aides from providing data showing that the practice continued unabated, two lawyers from the attorney general's office testified today.

In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the two deputy attorneys general portrayed superiors who showed no interest in seeing the data, ignored what was available and then, in 1999, claimed that some reports had only recently been made available by the state police.

But in testimony tonight, the former state police superintendent, Col. Carl A. Williams, said emphatically, in response to several questions, that he had never ordered anyone to withhold information from the attorney general's office.

Deputy Attorney General George Rover, who was assigned to provide the Justice Department with statistics on racial disparities in the treatment of drivers, said that a superior had instructed him not to give the department any documents that it had not specifically requested.

Much of the data, including audits from 1995 and 1996, came to light only in the interim report that Mr. Verniero issued in April 1999, when he said he had learned that racial profiling was "real, not imagined."

Mr. Rover and another deputy attorney general, John M. Fahy, who said he briefed Mr. Verniero on racial profiling in 1996, sat together through seven hours of often hostile questioning. They rarely mentioned Mr. Verniero, but they were asked repeatedly whether he knew of data from several state police units showing that a highly disproportionate number of black and Hispanic drivers were being subjected to searches.

Mr. Verniero, now an associate justice of the State Supreme Court, faces many questions about the timing of his response to reports of racial profiling. He is to be the committee's final witness next week.

His handling of the racial profiling issue drew national attention after three unarmed black and Hispanic men were shot by two troopers who pulled them over on the New Jersey Turnpike in April 1998.

Colonel Williams insisted at the time that the state police were not discriminatory in their patrols or in searches intended to interdict drug trafficking. He said tonight that while the state police began compiling records on stops, searches and arrests in 1996, no one from the attorney general's office questioned him about these practices until the month after the shooting. He was dismissed by Gov. Christie Whitman in 1999.

In the hearings on Monday and today, a series of witnesses on the lower rungs of the chain of command testified that they had passed along damaging data about profiling starting in 1996.

Mr. Fahy said "it was no secret" that the state police had found that troopers were making stops and searches of black and Hispanic drivers at unacceptably high rates.

Still, Mr. Fahy, who dealt with profiling only in the first few months of Mr. Verniero's tenure, said he could not recall receiving much of the information that state police officials had said was relayed to him.

Mr. Fahy tried the case that led to a 1996 ruling by a Superior Court judge that the state police had shown a pattern of discrimination; that ruling later prompted the Justice Department to investigate.

Questioned sharply by the committee's lead counsel, Michael Chertoff, Mr. Fahy said that he would have asked for any statistics relevant to the case had he known they existed. "I'm not afraid of the facts," he said repeatedly.

Mr. Fahy said that when Mr. Verniero learned of the Justice Department inquiry in December 1996, he called a meeting of top aides. The attorney general, Mr. Fahy testified, was very concerned about how the inquiry was portrayed, asking the aides to refer to it as a "review" rather than an "investigation."

Mr. Fahy made clear that Mr. Verniero seemed to be aware that the profiling issue was a problem for prosecutors in New Jersey. He said that when he wrote a letter to the Justice Department for Mr. Verniero's signature in January 1997, a paragraph about police searches was deleted without his knowledge.

Mr. Fahy and Mr. Rover both said they were not consulted about the attorney general's interim report, which said that "certain internal studies and audits," including information on searches of minority motorists, "were not made known" to lawyers in the office.

Mr. Rover said he was assigned by the executive assistant attorney general, Alexander P. Waugh Jr., to respond to the Justice Department's general request for documents. Later, he said, Mr. Waugh told him not to provide anything unless and until the department asked for it. Asked if he thought the instruction originated from a higher-ranking source, the deputy said he did not know.

After Mr. Waugh left the attorney general's office, Mr. Rover told the first assistant attorney general, David Hespe, about the Justice Department requests, he testified. When the department called to ask for audits or statistics on stops and searches on the southern portion of the turnpike, he said, he asked Mr. Hespe whether he should forward a report that had been sent to him by the state police.

Mr. Rover continued: "He told me, `Don't turn it over. Tell them we're working on something. Let me know if they call again.'"

---

Armed Murder Suspect Killed as Chief and Sheriff Squabble

New York Times
March 21, 2001
By ROBERT HANLEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/21/nyregion/21SLAY.html

HACKENSACK, N.J., March 20 - A 20-year-old murder suspect was killed in a wild gun battle with the police here early today, several hours after a feud between Hackensack's police chief and the Bergen County prosecutor had interfered with the search for the suspect.

After the gunfight, in which the suspect fired dozens of bullets from an AK-47 rifle, the police chief, Charles Zisa, and the prosecutor, William H. Schmidt, became involved in a personal and public squabble. The two men, who have a history of strained relations, accused one another of starting a jurisdictional dispute early Monday that led to the removal of Hackensack police officers and detectives from the hunt for the suspect, Najee T. Brown.

Hackensack's mayor, John F. Zisa, the chief's brother, stepped into the dispute this afternoon by asking New Jersey's acting governor, Donald T. DiFrancesco, and the attorney general, John J. Farmer, to suspend Mr. Schmidt while the state investigated the rift.

"What the prosecutor did here is mind-boggling, and seriously calls into question his competency to continue in his position," Mayor Zisa said. "He literally put the people of our community at risk."

The State Division of Criminal Justice, a branch of Mr. Farmer's office, plans to review the mayor's complaint, said a spokeswoman, Emily Hornaday. She called such a review routine, adding that state law enforcement officials hoped that the two men would "begin to repair a damaged relationship for the betterment of the community."

During a news conference this afternoon, Chief Zisa contended that early Monday morning, Mr. Schmidt ordered the Hackensack police removed from both the search for Mr. Brown and the investigation into the Sunday night killing of a 19-year-old Hackensack man, Ryan Travis, in a rooming house on Central Avenue. Investigators considered Mr. Brown a prime suspect.

"We feel his irresponsible and inexcusable actions created a climate for this tragedy to occur," Chief Zisa said of the prosecutor. "It's unconscionable they'd leave this guy out there by blocking us."

Mr. Schmidt denounced the chief's accusation as "absolutely and categorically untrue." He said Chief Zisa withdrew the officers from the case, an accusation the chief denied.

The dispute began about 4 a.m. Monday, about seven hours after Mr. Travis was fatally shot twice in the chest as he and Mr. Brown argued in the hallway of the rooming house, according to the authorities. In the pre-dawn hours, Mr. Schmidt and Chief Zisa said, a witness was found and was about to be questioned.

An argument developed about whether the witness would be taken to Hackensack police headquarters or the offices of Mr. Schmidt's homicide squad, about a mile away. Mr. Schmidt's aides said today that the squad's office was more suitable because there were stenographers and several interview rooms there.

Chief Zisa said the issue of which office to use was insignificant to him. But, he said, he asked Mr. Schmidt to explain why the questioning could not be done at Police Headquarters. He quoted the prosecutor as responding, " `This is not a debate.' " Then, Chief Zisa said, Mr. Schmidt ordered the Hackensack police off the case.

Mr. Schmidt offered a different version of the conversation. "He said unless it were done his way he would pull his people and conduct a parallel investigation and then it would be a race to see who got to the witnesses and suspect first," he said.

Mr. Schmidt said he then called the state attorney general's office and received permission to formally supersede the Hackensack police and take control of the investigation.

After receiving a formal letter from Mr. Schmidt, the Hackensack police dropped out of the search, said Chief Zisa, who insisted that they had been ousted.

He said Hackensack detectives considered Mr. Brown a suspect in the killing and started looking for him. "But we didn't look for him all day Monday," the chief said.

About 3:30 this morning, Mr. Brown returned to the Central Avenue home where Mr. Travis was fatally shot and began firing the AK-47 into the building and into the air, the authorities said. Eight police officers - five from Hackensack and three from the Bergen County Police Department - exchanged gunfire with Mr. Brown, who may have fired as many as 100 shots at buildings and the police before being killed, the authorities said.

-------- spying

Official: State Department expels Russian diplomats

USA Today
03/21/2001 - Updated 07:47 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-03-21-russiandips.htm
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-US-Russia.html

WASHINGTON (AP) - The United States expelled several Russian diplomats suspected of being spies Wednesday, according to a U.S. official who said the action was in retaliation for the alleged espionage an FBI agent conducted on behalf of Moscow.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said fewer than 10 diplomats were ordered out of the country by Secretary of State Colin Powell. The official did not know the exact number.

The Russian ambassador to the United States was summoned to the State Department on Wednesday and told by Powell that the suspected spies had to leave the country. The official did not know how long the diplomats were given to leave the United States.

The move is a reaction to the arrest last month of FBI agent Robert Hanssen, a counterintelligence officer charged with passing information to the Soviet Union and Russia for 15 years. The United States alleges that Hanssen compromised extensive U.S. intelligence-gathering operations, including a tunnel dug beneath the Russian embassy in Washington.

Hanssen, 56, was a 25-year FBI veteran and counterintelligence expert. He is accused of giving Moscow 6,000 pages of secret U.S. documents since 1985 in exchange for than $1.4 million in cash and diamonds. He was arrested Feb. 18 after authorities said he dropped off a package of documents at a Virginia park for his Russian contacts

A 100-page indictment accused Hanssen of comprising, among other things, "an entire technical program of enormous value, expense and importance to the United States government."

-------- terrorism

Berenson's Father Appeals to Peru

Associated Press
March 21, 2001 Filed at 3:34 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Peru-Berenson.html

LIMA, Peru (AP) -- One day after Lori Berenson proclaimed her innocence in court to charges she plotted with leftist guerrillas to seize Congress, the New York native's father pleaded her case Wednesday on national television.

``Lori is an accused terrorist, but she is not a terrorist. I know she is innocent. God knows she is innocent,'' Mark Berenson said through a translator on Panamericana's morning news program.

``A person must be presumed innocent. It is up to the government of Peru to prove her guilty,'' he said.

A secret military court convicted Berenson in 1996 and sentenced her to life in prison for allegedly helping the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, or MRTA, plot the thwarted Congress takeover.

But after years of pressure from the United States, Peru's highest military court overturned the conviction in August, leading to the new civilian trial, in which Berenson faces lesser charges of ``terrorist collaboration.''

Berenson's comments Tuesday were her first in a public forum in Peru since a pre-sentence declaration she made in 1996, when she angrily expressed her sympathy for Peru's poor and yelled, ``There are no criminal terrorists in the MRTA. It is a revolutionary movement.''

For many Peruvians, weary from 15 years of guerrilla-fueled violence including car bombings, assassinations and kidnappings, the statement was tantamount to a confession.

Walter Gonzalez, a delivery man, fell back on an old Spanish proverb when asked his view of Berenson, saying: ``Tell me with whom you walk and I will tell you who you are.

``She was up to her neck with the MRTA,'' he said.

Peru's government hopes Berenson's public retrial will demonstrate judicial fairness and independence after reforms following the fall of former President Alberto Fujimori and his fugitive intelligence adviser Vladimiro Montesinos.

For years, they exercised tight control over the courts, stacking them with provisional judges who were quickly replaced when rulings were not in line with their wishes.

But Berenson's parents and legal advisers said they were shocked by the courtroom setup and procedures that she now faces.

She was ushered into a built-in cell. She had to ask for special permission from the presiding magistrate to consult with her lawyer during the proceedings and to declare her innocence.

New York attorney Tom Nooter, who represents the Berenson family, called the scene ``Kafkaesque.''

``It's not the fault of the Peruvian people, but I don't think they know what a fair trial means,'' Berenson's mother, Rhoda Berenson, told The Associated Press before going to visit her daughter Wednesday in the Santa Monica Women's prison.

In the United States' justice system, based on English common law, a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty, the burden of proof is on the accuser and a jury decides the outcome.

Peru's justice system, like much of Latin America, is based on the Napoleonic Code, the body of French civil law enacted in 1804, in which there is no jury, but a panel of judges.

Under the Napoleonic Code, a person is presumed guilty if arrested by the state after an investigation. Although the presumption of innocence is written into Peruvian law, the practice more closely follows that French tradition.

``If there is evidence of guilt, the person must demonstrate he is innocent,'' said attorney Martin Belaunde, president of Peru's Bar Association. ``He isn't guilty yet, but he is in a middle ground. There is still a presumption of innocence, but it is a weakened presumption.''

---

Berenson's father appeals to Peruvians

USA Today
03/21/2001 - Updated 12:36 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-03-21-berenson2.htm

LIMA, Peru (AP) - Lori Berenson's father appealed to Peruvians on Wednesday not to presume his daughter is a terrorist, after the New York native proclaimed her innocence at her retrial on charges she helped leftist guerrillas.

Mark Berenson appeared on a nationally televised morning news program a day after the retrial began, with his plea to Peruvians, many of whom are used to seeing his daughter described as a leftist radical who plotted with the rebels to take over Congress.

"Lori is an accused terrorist, but she is not a terrorist. I know she is innocent. God knows she is innocent," Mark Berenson said through a translator on the Panamericana news program. "A person must be presumed innocent. It is up to the government of Peru to prove her guilty."

A secret military court convicted Berenson of treason in 1996 and sentenced her to life in prison for allegedly helping the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement plot the thwarted Congress takeover.

But after years of pressure from the United States, Peru's highest military court overturned the conviction in August, leading to the new civilian trial, in which Berenson faces the lesser charge of "terrorist collaboration."

In the courtroom at Lima's San Juan de Lurigancho prison on Tuesday, the 31-year-old former Massachusetts Institute of Technology student proclaimed her innocence.

"I am innocent of all of the charges made against me," Berenson said, while standing in a concrete cell behind steel bars - a common arrangement for terrorism trials in Peru. "The fact that you have me behind bars violates the principle of a presumption of innocence."

Berenson's parents watched from the first row of a gallery jammed with reporters and curious onlookers. Her mother, Rhoda Berenson, clutched a tape recorder to use for translating the proceedings afterward. As Lori Berenson was led out of the court after the session, she blew her parents a kiss and managed a smile.

Prosecutors said Berenson came to Peru with the purpose of collaborating with the Tupac Amaru group, known by its Spanish acronym MRTA. They said she rented a house in suburban Lima in 1995 that served as a hide-out for the rebel group.

Reading the 1995 statements of captured group members, prosecutors said Berenson participated in training exercises at the safe house and served food, wearing a ski mask to disguise herself.

Berenson attorney Jose Luis Sandoval claims the witnesses have since altered, recanted or disavowed statements made in 1995.

Berenson's supporters argued that the new trial should not proceed since it constitutes double jeopardy in antiquated terrorist courts, which the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has labeled repressive and unfair.

The three-judge panel suspended the trial until Thursday to give Berenson a chance to consider a confession, which could lead to a reduced sentence. The prosecution seeks 20 years.

"Lori has nothing to confess. She is innocent. Innocent people don't confess," her father told reporters.

Berenson has said she didn't know that her housemates were rebels or that they planned to try to take over Congress. Sandoval has argued that the guerrillas tricked her.

Authorities arrested Berenson in November 1995 on a bus with the wife of a guerrilla leader after the women visited the Congress building, where police charge they posed as journalists to gather information in preparation for an attack.

Authorities say they foiled the plot by arresting Berenson and 14 guerillas.

Berenson's comments Tuesday were her first in a public forum in Peru since a pre-sentence declaration she made in 1996, when she angrily expressed her sympathy for Peru's poor and yelled, "There are no criminal terrorists in the MRTA. It is a revolutionary movement."

For many Peruvians, weary from two decades of guerrilla-fueled violence including car bombings, assassinations and kidnappings, the statement was enough to convict her.

Oral testimony in the new trial is expected to last at least 15 days. The court could take more than a month to reach its verdict.

---

Berenson proclaims her innocence

Washington Times
March 21, 2001
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-200132121236.htm

LIMA, Peru - An optimistic and somewhat nervous Lori Berenson, a U.S. citizen convicted of treason in Peru in 1996 but later granted a retrial, yesterday denied charges of aiding Marxist rebels at the opening day of her public hearing.

"I would like to make it clear I am innocent," Berenson, 31, told a three-judge panel from behind bars in a concrete cell. Speaking fluent Spanish, the bespectacled former leftist activist and student stood by two female armed guards.

After three hours, Judge Marcos Ibazeta adjourned the hearing at the courthouse in Lima's San Juan de Lurigancho prison. Proceedings resume tomorrow.

-------- activists

Mexico's Fox to meet Zaptatistas' demands

USA Today
03/21/2001 - Updated 12:39 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-03-21-mexico.htm

MEXICO CITY (AP) - Expressing "absolute will to achieve peace," President Vicente Fox on Tuesday made a dramatic appeal for a meeting with Zapatista rebel leaders who say they plan to leave Mexico City and head back to the jungle on Friday.

Fox announced he would meet more of the rebels' conditions for talks, transforming three military bases into community centers and freeing more Zapatista prisoners.

"Where there were weapons, there will be hearts and wills to promote the dignity of our indigenous brothers and sisters," Fox said in a brief speech at the presidential residence of Los Pinos.

He said he was sending a letter inviting rebel leader Subcomandante Marcos to meet with him "before his return to Chiapas."

That would appear to pose a scheduling conflict between Fox's plan to visit California from Wednesday to Friday morning and the Zapatistas' plans to leave Mexico City on Friday.

"I propose that we have a dialogue that would lead to approval (of the Indian rights bill) ... and promote throughout the country an ambitious program of human development for the 10 million indigenous brothers and sisters," Fox said.

Fox also called on Congress to find a way to meet with Zapatista rebels to discuss the proposed law on Indian rights backed by the rebel movement.

In a university appearance immediately after Fox spoke, Marcos made no response. But in a second appearance, Zapatista comandante Tacho, without referring specifically to Fox's latest offer, called the president's entreaties to the rebels "just words."

"What he says is pure lies," Tacho said, speaking beneath a banner in both Spanish and English calling for the president to "get the troops and paramilitary forces out" of Chiapas.

The 24 masked rebel leaders made a two-week march through much of the country to rally support for the Indian rights law. But on Monday, Marcos expressed frustration at dealings with "caveman politicians" who were balking at rebel demands.

Marcos earlier vowed to stay in Mexico City until Congress approves the rights bill that resulted from a 1996 agreement between the government and rebels.

Congressmen from several leading parties have said the bill needs to be modified before going to a vote, perhaps by the end of April. Many also rejected Marcos' demand that the masked insurgents be allowed to use the congressional podium to address all lawmakers.

Fox, who took office on Dec. 1, welcomed the Zapatista march and endorsed the Indian rights bill, hoping to draw the Zapatistas away from threats of a return to the armed clashes of early 1994.

But the Zapatistas have refused to reopen negotiations with the government. They have accused Fox of hostility for his failure to close the three army bases, despite his closure of four others earlier.

At a luncheon with businesspeople from the textile industry Tuesday afternoon, Fox qualified his earlier remarks, emphasizing that he made his latest offer "not for Marcos or for 'Zapatismo,' but for the 10 million indigenous people who demand acknowledgment of their rights."

The rebels emerged on Jan. 1, 1994, to seize six towns. Within days they had retreated, but 12 days of fighting left more than 145 dead before a cease-fire took hold.

Peace talks started quickly, but stalled in 1996 after the government of previous President Ernesto Zedillo rejected a proposed bill to enact the Indian rights agreement.

---

Ad Intended to Stir Up Campuses More Than Succeeds in Its Mission

New York Times
March 21, 2001
By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/21/national/21BROW.html

PROVIDENCE, R.I., March 19 - The editor of the student newspaper at Brown University says he knew a tempest was headed his way and rose to open the door for it.

A few weeks ago, the editor, Brooks King, read about a campaign by David Horowitz, a conservative author in Los Angeles, to place an advertisement in college newspapers denouncing calls for reparations to black Americans for slavery. In the full-page advertisement, Mr. Horowitz argues that blacks do not deserve redress because white Christians ended slavery, and that rather than getting compensation, black Americans owe the country for the freedom and prosperity they now enjoy.

Mr. King says he concluded that the advertisement intended to offend sensibilities at liberal campuses, exposing what Mr. Horowitz and other conservatives describe as the intolerance of political correctness. And he decided that because this was part of an important national debate, he would take up the challenge.

"But I didn't expect this," Mr. King, a lanky, bespectacled junior, said.

Last week, student protesters removed stacks of The Brown Daily Herald from its stands on campus.

In running the advertisement, Mr. King became only the latest college editor in recent weeks to find himself entangled in a racially tinged controversy prompted by Mr. Horowitz. At the University of California, The Daily Californian ran the advertisement, but, under pressure from protesters, issued a front-page apology regretting having become "an inadvertent vehicle for bigotry."

At the University of Wisconsin, Julie Bosman was confronted by 100 students demanding her resignation after the paper she edits, The Badger Herald, ran the advertisement.

In a telephone interview, Mr. Horowitz said university campuses suffered from a prevailing liberal orthodoxy that treated conservative views, and those who expound them, like toxic waste: fit for burying or burning, but not for engaging in dialogue.

"Colleges should be stimulating discussions of these issues, not encouraging political rallies on behalf of one side of the issues," he said, and called the protesting students "campus fascists."

Mr. Horowitz said he noticed that campuses were holding conferences on reparations throughout Black History Month, but none were debating the question so much as presuming reparations were a good idea.

Leon Botstein, president of Bard College in New York, said that Mr. Horowitz was clearly on a campaign of provocation but that colleges were easy prey. Contrary to their image as arenas of intellectual debate, Mr. Botstein said, colleges tolerate dissent poorly.

"We say we believe in dissent but we actually do not practice it well," Mr. Botstein said, especially in matters of race, what he called "the central question of life in America."

At Brown, the protesters, a group that included African-Americans, Asian-Americans and whites, formed human chains at scattered sites and demanded that the paper pay its own form of reparations - by donating the $725 it earned from the advertisement to the Third World Student Coalition, and giving them a free page of advertising space to refute Mr. Horowitz. The paper refused the demands but expanded space for opinion articles in today's issue.

The group's ire was directed at first at decision to run the advertisement, transforming the clash here - and on most other campuses Mr. Horowitz has approached - into a debate not over reparations, but over the limits of expression.

"This is not an issue of free speech," said Kohei Ishihara, a junior whom the protesters designated their spokesman. "This is about profits. The Herald profited from the deliberate distortion of history."

Papers at most of the 47 universities approached, including Harvard, Columbia and the University of Virginia, declined the advertisement from Mr. Horowitz, who also publishes Heterodoxy, a bimonthly paper lampooning political correctness. At the University of Wisconsin's Madison campus, The Badger Herald printed the advertisement, and stacks of the paper were taken from distribution racks and trashed.

In the aftermath, Ms. Bosman, the Badger Herald editor, wrote a column for The Wall Street Journal, defending Mr. Horowitz's right to buy the advertisement. "Rather than rebut Mr. Horowitz's arguments, the protesters simply tried to drown out his message with name-calling directed at the Herald," she wrote.

Daniel Hernandez, the editor of The Daily Californian, was chastened by the experience. In a letter from the editor, Mr. Hernandez vowed to play a tougher role defining "what is tasteful, appropriate, bigoted or detrimental" to his paper's readership, a step he acknowledged "now raises a whole slew of questions and concerns based on the ethics of journalism and publishing."

A former editor of Ramparts magazine, a leftist publication of the Vietnam era, Mr. Horowitz turned away from his leftist roots after sending a friend to work for the Black Panther Party. The friend was murdered, and Mr. Horowitz's investigations led him to say that she had been executed for asking too many questions. He dissociated himself from the Panthers, branding the organization as a political front for drug dealing and other criminal activities.

Mr. Horowitz said that like Mr. King, he was surprised by the force of the reaction to his advertisement. "Did I think some leftists would lift them from the boxes? Yes," he said. But he said he was taken aback by the level of outrage focused on the papers that ran the advertisement, and on him for placing it.

"These black students come in and say, `This hurts our feelings,' " he said. "Come on, an argument hurts your feelings? Fight back."

Here at Brown, some said they were deeply upset by Mr. Horowitz's seeming effort to minimize the moral crime of slavery. "For us, it's not about playing a political game," said Sharon Luk, a senior who joined the chain of protesters. "We don't have the money to play that game.

"For us, no, for me, it's that we cannot sit down while blatant lies are being spread about us or our brothers and sisters who've watched their history be erased over and over."

Overlooked in much of the uproar over publication is the deeper national debate on reparations over slavery, which could have found fertile ground for discussion on this campus. Just over the Connecticut border, the Aetna life insurance company and The Hartford Courant newspaper have in recent years acknowledged their historic profits from the slave trade. Aetna insured slaves, while The Courant ran advertisements seeking the return of runaway slaves. Recent scholarship has focused on the importance of slavery to the old New England fortunes. Brown University itself is named for a known slave trader, John Brown.

Stanley Fish, dean of arts and sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said student editors were confused if they thought they were obliated to print any advertisements regardless of content.

Mr. Botstein of Bard said there was another common misperception.

"Anybody who tells you once upon a time you could say anything you want on campus" is romanticizing the past, he said. "Once upon a time you were labeled a communist. Once upon a time you were labeled a Jew lover."

---

World Briefing

New York Times
March 21, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/21/world/21BRIE.html

ROMANIA: DOGS SHIPPED ABROAD Animals Without Borders has begun shipping stray dogs to Belgium and France to prevent their being killed after a campaign began on March 1 to rid Bucharest of 200,000 strays. The city has captured about 1,500 dogs, and about half have been sterilized, inoculated and adopted. Protesters, including the actress Brigitte Bardot, have come to support sterilization to try to forestall the killings. Donald G. McNeil Jr. (NYT)

THE AMERICAS

MEXICO: REBELS ASKED TO STAY President Vicente Fox appealed to Zapatista rebels to stay in Mexico City and negotiate with Congress over his proposed Indian rights bill. Mr. Fox said he would meet the rebels' demands to close three more military bases near their jungle headquarters and free more Zapatista prisoners. He asked Congress to meet with rebel leaders quickly to discuss the Indian rights legislation. Tim Weiner (NYT)

---

Hunger strike leads to first death in Turkey

USA Today
03/21/2001 - Updated 12:41 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-03-21-hunger.htm

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) - The first of more than 250 inmates protesting prison transfers starved to death Wednesday on the 60th day of the hunger strike.

Cengiz Soydas, a member of the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front, died at Ankara's Sincan prison, said Erdal Guzel of the prisoners' rights group Ozgur Tayad.

Soydas and other political prisoners have been on strike since November. They are protesting the transfer of leftist inmates from dormitory-style wards to individual cells where they say they are more vulnerable to abuse by guards.

Soldiers raided 20 prisons in December to put an end to the strike and to transfer some 1,000 inmates to the new one- to three-person cells. Thirty inmates and two soldiers were killed in the clashes.

The government says the new cell system is key to ending the riots, hostage-taking and hunger strikes staged by inmates linked to leftist, Kurdish and Islamic militant groups.

Prisoners' relatives say the inmates are repeatedly beaten in the new cells, and international human rights groups have urged authorities to investigate the claims. The Justice Ministry denies the allegations.

Three other inmates reportedly suffered strokes in the western prison of Edirne, private NTV television said. One of the inmates cannot move his arm and the others cannot walk, it said. The inmates were refusing medical treatment.

---

New Chiapas peace bid announced by Fox

Washington Times
March 21, 2001
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-200132121236.htm

MEXICO CITY - President Vicente Fox began a new peace initiative yesterday for the southern state of Chiapas, inviting Zapatista leader "Subcommander Marcos" for talks and urging Congress to do the same.

Mr. Fox also announced the closure of three military bases in Chiapas and the release of political prisoners, in compliance with conditions the leftist rebels had set for a restart of peace talks that collapsed in 1996.

The address came one day after Marcos announced he and other Zapatista commanders would return to their strongholds Friday, two weeks after their triumphal arrival in the Mexican capital following a peaceful march from the southern state of Chiapas.

---

From: "Bill Smirnow" <smirnowb@ix.netcom.com>
Wed, 21 Mar 2001

PLEASE SIGN PETITION
After signing this petiton, please dissemenate as widely as possible.

Thanks.

If you haven't already, please sign the petition to prevent the renewal of the Price Anderson Act, and to insure that tnuclear contractors and operators accept full responsibility for all damages to the public, without any statute of limitations.

http://www.petitiononline.com/repealpa/petition.html

The Price Anderson Act, established in 1957, was meant to ensure funds would be available to the public in the event of a nuclear incident. It does NOT do this. Instead, the Price Anderson Act excuses nuclear generators from all but a tiny fraction of the damages which could result from a major nuclear accident.

The P.A. Act applies a statue of limitations for illnesses (like cancer), caused by an accident, and victims of such disease will ber endered ineligible for any compensation whatsoever after the limiting date expires. This will deprive them of any remedy for damage since most cancers take longer to develop than the statute of limitations in the Act.

The P.A. Act in effect has discouraged the development of alternative safer sources of energy which are much less costly to the American taxpaying utility rate payer.

The petition calls for the NON-RENEWAL fo the Price Anderson Act, and that nuclear contractors and operators must assume full responsibility for all damages to the public, without any statue of limitations.

Please sign the petition at: http://www.petitiononline.com/repealpa/petition.html

------

Pak. parties gearing for show of strength

The Hindu
Wednesday, March 21, 2001
By B. Muralidhar Reddy
http://www.indiaserver.com/thehindu/2001/03/21/stories/0321000a.htm

ISLAMABAD, MARCH 20. Political parties in Pakistan are gearing to mobilise public support for a proposed rally in Lahore on March 23 in support of their demand for an immediate announcement of a time-table for holding of elections by the military government.

The rally is being watched with keen interest as it would be the first-ever street demonstration since the military take-over in October 1999. It coincides with the Foundation Day of Pakistan.

The rally is not expected to be anything more than a symbolic event for a variety of reasons. But the Musharraf Government is not taking any chances. Reports from all the four provinces suggest that the authorities have already launched a drive to round up leaders of the Alliance.

Being organised by the Alliance for Restoration for Democracy (ARD), a conglomerate of mainstream parties that took birth weeks before Mr. Nawaz Sharif went on exile to Saudi Arabia, the rally is slated to be held in defiance of the ban on outdoor political activities by the Musharraf Government.

The ARD began with a bang in November with the Pakistan Muslim League (PML) and the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) for the first time joining hands to be part of the same group. The MQM led by Mr. Altaf Hussain, considered to be the third largest political force in Pakistan, was also in it.

But alas in the last four months the ARD has lost much of its sheen. Mr. Sharif dealt a big blow to the alliance by striking a `deal' with the military government to go on an exile to Saudi Arabia. Within weeks, his party suffered a major split in all the four provinces with the dissidents considered close the military deciding to go their own way.

As if the developments on the Muslim League front were not enough, the MQM decided to part ways with the ARD after it failed to persuade the Alliance to accept its demand for incorporation of the 1940 Lahore Resolution on maximum autonomy to provinces as part of its charter.

After the departure of the MQM and the divisions in the PML, the Alliance is left with small parties that do not count much in public support.

The burden of making the rally a success is entirely on the shoulders of the PPP led by Mrs. Benazir Bhutto. Though the PPP continues to have a well-oiled party machinery in each of the four provinces, it is handicapped in the absence of Mrs. Bhutto herself from Pakistan. She has made it known several times in the last few weeks that she could consider ending her self-imposed exile and return to Pakistan if her party leaders and cadres give her the proof of their strength and determination to stand by her in any eventuality. So it would be more of a test to her party leaders rather than the smaller constituents of the ARD to prove on March 23 if the time has arrived for the return of their leader to Pakistan.

------

Ken Wiwa's speech
March 21st, 2001
at the rally for the liberation of Min Ko Naing, in Ottawa, Canada,

I want to thank Rights and Democracy for inviting me to address you today. I am here because I once spent 36 hours in Burma and since then I have felt duty bound to lend my weight to the struggle for democracy in that country so today offers me an overdue opportunity to put my shoulder to the wheel.

After my father, Ken Saro-Wiwa, was executed in 1995 by the Nigerian military regime for leading our people to stand up for our rights against Shell Oil and the military dictatorship in Nigeria, I spent the next two years trying to answer why a man would live for a struggle that was likely to end with his death?

I spent two years searching for an answer and it was only after I met Aung San Suu Kyi in Rangoon that I really began to understand why some people are prepared to risk their lives for a people. It is because as my fellow countryman Wole Soyinka once wrote, the man dies in those who stay silent in the face of oppression. Or as Martin Luther King once said the only condition for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. Which is why we are here today.

Min Ko Naing is one of those rare individuals whose life articulates the bitter experience and the silent hopes of a generation. His freedom may not in itself solve any of Burma's structural problems but his freedom has a symbolic value that far outweighs the immediate consequences for his people. In fact I would go as far as to suggest that Min Ko Naing's freedom is also my freedom. Because his experience is representative of a world where the few continue to hold down the rights of the many in the name of greed masking as business. Which is precisely why Burma's junta has and continues to deny Min Ko Naing his freedom and his rights.

In the brief I was given for today I was asked to draw parallels between the Ogoni struggle for justice in Nigeria and that of the pro-democracy movement in Burma. Indeed there are, or should I say, there were many parallels because since I visited Burma we have lost one thing in common - a brutal military dictatorship. Although Nigeria now has a democratically elected government, I still find it eerily ironic that Burma's SPDC shares the exact same acronym as Shell in Nigeria. But I suspect there is more to this than an unhappy coincidence because oil is what defines and determines the struggle for democracy in both Nigeria and Burma. It is our unhappy fate that the genuine aspirations of both our peoples are being held down by oil companies and their clients in power who seek to exploit and manipulate the tremendous mineral and material resources of our countries for their selfish ambitions. In the rush for obscene profits, the oil companies and business interests in Burma and Nigeria have shown a remarkable and disgraceful inhumanity, putting profits before people, gloating in the success of the few in the midst of abject communal poverty. And it is the dehumanizing poverty of the Burmese and the Nigerian people that trouble me, that keeps me on the road. Whenever I glance back at where I have come from and then summon the courage to peek into the future, I can't describe or even imagine what I see but it gives me sleepless nights. The vision of the future for Burma and Nigeria makes me deeply uncomfortable in my comfort. When I read that Most of Burma's 1700 political prisoners are students and that the universities have been open for only 30 months in the 13 years since 1988, I am staggered and depressed. The legacy of gleeful mismanagement, wilful short sightedness, of individual greed over the commonwealth has left a generation of Burmese and Nigerians intellectually and psychologically paralysed. What sort of country are the general planning on leaving behind? Well I have seen a part of the answer to that question.

I only spent 36 hours in Rangoon and I never even got a glimpse of the devastating effects that widespread drug abuse and aids as caused in that country but I did get to spend a night in a four star hotel in downtown Rangoon. Although my bed was one of the most comfortable I have ever laid in, Than shwe's spooks and the ghosts of Burma's future kept me awake that night.

As far as I could determine I must have been the only guest in what, admittedly, was a beautifully appointed building. But like many others, who have been to Burma, I couldn't help feeling that the country readily evokes descriptions like haunted and heartbreaking. But when visitors summon up these descriptions it is not to drape some kind of romantic sentimentalism over the pressing problems of Burma but to emphasize why those who visit Burma can never really leave. It literally breaks your heart to see the place been torn apart by stupidity, pride and greed.

But the country that Burma most reminded me of is not so much Nigeria but South Africa. And it is for this reason, the beginning of the end of Apartheid came in 1976 when police opened fire on black students in Soweto. The global outcry had ramifications that led to the end of Apartheid fourteen years later. When I read about 1988, 1 can't help but think of Soweto and its aftermath. I know Ne Win and his cronies like a good prophecy but perhaps it is pertinent to point out that 14 years after 1988 is next year. Wishful thinking aside though, I think it is time the international community and all the good men and women raised our voices to protest Min Ko Naing's continued detention and stop the genocide of Burma's future.

Note: Rights and Democracy posted this note of speech on its website http://www.ichrdd.ca/111/english/contentsEnglish.html


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