------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Russia and Bush Team Escalate War of Words
Questioning Navy's Policy of Civilian Voyages
China Put on Back Foot by Straight-talking Bush Administration
Powell, Qian optimistic about differences
The U.S.-Chinese Partnership Is Worth Preserving
Soldiers Claim Italy Skewed Study on 'Balkans Syndrome'
FBTR passes 53-day continuous operation test
Discoverer of heavy hydrogen
A slowdown in foreign relations?
North Korea Invites EU to Dialogue on Missiles
U.S.-Russian Relations Slide in Putin's First Year
Chinese Envoy to Discuss Taiwan With Bush
Experts Expect Russia to React in Kind
S.Africa awards contract for nuclear power plant
More senators weigh in against Labor Department proposal
Nuclear worker plan draws complaints
Arizona Highways
LITTLE NOTICED ACCIDENT AT SAN ONOFRE NUCLEAR POWER REACTOR
Lawrence Livermore shows off discoveries
COMPENSATE NEVADA'S SICK NUCLEAR WORKERS

MILITARY
Cold War Adversaries Gather in Cuba
China Asserts U.S. Scholar Confesses Security 'Crimes'
Scholar accused of harming national security
Yabba Dabba Scooby Doo
War council to fight drugs battle
Court Curbs Drug Tests During Pregnancy
Nation waits for insanity to stop in the drug war
Medical Hallucinogens?
Station Commander Ends 4.5 Weightless Months
Final death burn for famed Russian space station
Mir's pioneering legacy
Mir's Marvelous Orbit
Mir's destruction set for tomorrow
Kofi Annan to Seek 2nd U.N. Term
Annan to seek second term as secretary-general

OTHER
Democrats Offer Alternative Energy Plan
Study of Chemicals in Americans Shows Encouraging Trends
Arsenic and Old Laws
Republicans' Budget Plans Ignore Arctic Oil Drilling
Foot-and-Mouth Disease Now Reported in Ireland
U.S. Inquiry Into Meat Safety in New York and New Jersey
World Briefing
Five Britons' Mad Cow Deaths Traced to Butchering Methods
U.S., Cautious on Mad Cow, Seizes Flock of Sheep
Democrats blast Bush for assault on environment
Foot-and-mouth disease spreads to Ireland
Environmental Abyss
Brazil declares risk from spill contained
Light in the darkness
Study Optimistic on Safer Land Mines
Attorney General Was Alerted to Profiling
Voters Replace Sheriff Who Was Fatally Shot
KUWAIT: POLICEMAN ADMITS KILLING
BROOKLYN: FORMER OFFICER TO PLEAD
Tracking Abusive Police
Louima to get $9M in police lawsuit
Parts auctioned for fraction of value
Bush Ends CIA's Role As Middle East Broker
California's Electric Shock
Agreements on Evidence Speed Up Terror Trial
Russia Warns It Will Reply in Kind to Ouster of Envoys
U.S. Orders First Expulsions of 50 Russian Diplomats
Russian Diplomats Ordered Expelled in a Countermove
Russian spies in U.S. up 40%
Russia to expel American diplomats
U.S. expels 56 Russians in spy answer
Spy climate: Chilly, but not cold
Spy Row May Fuel Bush Inclination to Ignore Russia
Supersecret NSA said to be falling behind in tech advances
Terror Suspect Held Secretly for 4 Months

ACTIVISTS
WANTED: RESEARCH EXPERIENCE IN CONSERVATION BIOLOGY
World Briefing
Zapatistas spurn Fox on immediate talks
Earth First vs. Earth worst


-------- NUCLEAR

Russia and Bush Team Escalate War of Words

International Herald Tribune
Thursday, March 22, 2001
Patrick E. Tyler New York Times Service
http://www.iht.com/articles/14288.htm

MOSCOW The Russian government has accused two top Bush administration officials of making "openly confrontational" statements by labeling Russia as an "active proliferator" of dangerous weapons technologies and seeking to portray it as a threat to U.S. and other Western interests.

The Foreign Ministry issued a strongly worded response to an interview published in The Sunday Telegraph in Britain in which the U.S. defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, used the most trenchant language yet employed by senior Bush aides to complain of Russia's role in providing ballistic-missile technology to so-called "rogue states" such as Iran.

The interview marked the second time in recent weeks that Mr. Rumsfeld openly criticized Russia's proliferation record. It comes as the administration of President George W. Bush is said to be reviewing whether to continue a policy of high-level engagement and cooperation with Russia or to significantly downgrade the relationship to both reflect Russia's diminished status as a great power and show Washington's disapproval of its 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 late British prime minister, who conducted the tape-recorded interview at the Pentagon. "It has been providing countries with assistance in these areas in ways that complicate the problem for the United States and Western Europe" and "we all have to live with the results of that proliferation."

Mr. Wolfowitz appeared more caustic in his comments, saying of the Russians: "These people seem to be willing to sell anything to anyone for money."

He went on to say that Russia needed to be "confronted with a choice." He said Moscow could not 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, have provided assistance to Iran's military and ballistic missile programs, and Moscow is currently constructing a civilian nuclear power station in Iran, which Washington opposes. In the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse, 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 rogue states.

Though there were a number of successes, the record was mixed, according to many specialists, especially in the case of Iran, where Russia sees an important market for conventional arms and for its civilian nuclear power industry.

Responding on Tuesday, the Foreign Ministry said, "We are once again, without proof, being labeled practically the main proliferator of weapons of mass destruction."

Russia accused Mr. Rumsfeld of slinging "these accusations in the spirit of the Cold War."

For the first time publicly, Mr. Rumsfeld indicated that the Pentagon was now considering a much broader missile defense 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 missile defense schemes "unconstrained" by the 1972 treaty that bans them.

------

Questioning Navy's Policy of Civilian Voyages

New York Times
March 22, 2001
By JAMES STERNGOLD
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/22/national/22HAWA.html?pagewanted=all

HONOLULU, March 21 - There was a great deal at stake when Cmdr. Scott D. Waddle made the surprise decision to testify here on Tuesday about how the submarine he commanded, the Greeneville, accidentally sank a Japanese fishing trawler while surfacing last month.

His request for immunity had been denied, but he still chose to explain his decisions in a hostile proceeding that will determine his future and that could even affect United States- Japanese relations.

And several experts said Commander Waddle, 41, appeared to give the court more grounds, although not many more grounds, for charging him with negligence in the collision, in which nine people aboard the 190- foot Ehime Maru were lost.

But there was an important subtext to the unusual court proceedings that was touched on in perhaps the least dramatic moment at the end of a dramatic day: the Navy's practice of taking civilians out on ships for what critics have called high-priced joy rides.

After Commander Waddle had gone toe-to-toe with the three admirals in charge of the court in a day of testy exchanges, his civilian lawyer, Charles W. Gittins, gave a rambling closing statement. At one point Mr. Gittins seemed to veer off course by raising the question of what 16 civilians were doing on the Greeneville and what connection they had to the retired admiral, Richard Macke, who had made the arrangements.

Mr. Gittins also raised the question, left dangling, of whether Admiral Macke, now working for a telecommunications company, enjoyed some business benefit by getting those civilians on board. Jay M. Fidell, a former judge in the Coast Guard and now a civilian lawyer, was in the courtroom and said Mr. Gittins's remarks appeared to be a calculated hint about what might be dragged into the open if the Navy chose to court-martial Commander Waddle.

"The role of these civilians has been a gaping hole in this investigation," Mr. Fidell said, "and Gittins was letting the admirals know he would break this code of silence if they really go after his client."

The Navy chose the very public, but little used court of inquiry to examine the case at least in part, it seemed, to salve Japanese anger over the accident. The Navy even took the unusual step of inviting a Japanese admiral to join the court of inquiry as a nonvoting member.

The step could backfire, since some experts said his influence, and the fact that Commander Waddle's lawyer was not permitted to question whether the admiral brought any prejudices or preconceptions to the case, could be grounds for an appeal.

"I thought it was unusual and could give some ammunition" for an appeal, said John S. Jenkins, a retired Judge Advocate General for the Navy and now the senior associate dean at the George Washington University Law School.

Several experts said that one benefit of using a court of inquiry was that it was the sole Navy investigative body that could compel testimony from civilians.

But in fact, the Navy brought none of the civilians from the Greeneville to the court, nor did it subpoena Admiral Macke, a Honolulu resident.

The issue is important because the court of inquiry not only can recommend what charges might be brought against individuals, but also it is supposed to examine and make recommendations about Navy policies. This one was unexamined.

Shortly after the accident, on Feb. 9, much of the focus by the National Transportation Safety Board (which actually interviewed the civilians) was on what role the civilians might have played, particularly after it was disclosed that the entire purpose of the short cruise was to impress them. The Navy has maintained the program as a way to foster support among influential individuals and the public in general, never more needed than at a time of peace when the services are under pressure to maintain their enormous budgets.

In a preliminary investigation, Rear Adm. Charles H. Griffiths Jr. had said the sailor in charge of the sonar that day, Petty Officer First Class Patrick T. Seacrest, had told him the civilians in the control room interfered with his getting critical information to the captain about the locations of nearby vessels. On the witness stand on Monday, Petty Officer Seacrest halted when asked the same question and, after a long pause, said the civilians had not been in the way. There was no follow-up. On Tuesday, Commander Waddle was asked the same question, just once, in contrast to the grilling on other issues. He denied, in a single sentence, that the civilians had been in the way, although he disclosed that he had been kept out of the control room for an unusually long time because he was dining with the civilians and then signing autographs.

"I am concerned that this was an incomplete investigation without more on the role of the civilians," said Eugene R. Fidell, the president of the National Institute of Military Justice, in Washington (and Jay Fidell's brother). "I think the court of inquiry would have a firmer basis on which to base its decisions if it had testimony from these civilians."

-------- china

China Put on Back Foot by Straight-talking Bush Administration

Inside China Today
Mar 22, 2001
http://www.insidechina.com/news.php3?id=317402

BEIJING -- (Agence France Presse) When China's foreign policy czar Qian Qichen sits down with U.S. President George W. Bush Thursday a darkening cloud will be hovering uncertainly over Sino-U.S. relations.

The veteran diplomat is no stranger to tricky diplomatic missions to Washington -- he had the unenviable job of patching up ties after China's 1989 massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square.

But even Qian must be a little taken aback by the sheer volume of irritants needling relations just two months after Bush entered the White House with less than whole-hearted enthusiasm for China's communist leaders.

Public and pointed criticism of China's poor human rights record and U.S. allegations that Chinese companies helped Iraq upgrade its air defenses in defiance of UN sanctions set the early tone.

But it is the Bush administration's repeated pledges to build a National Missile Defense system and its uncompromising language on the subject of U.S. weapons sales to Taiwan that have really put Beijing on the back foot.

A resolution in the U.S. Congress demanding Beijing should not be allowed to hold the 2008 Olympic Games because of its human rights record and China's detention of a U.S.-based academic have added extra spice.

A Beijing-based diplomat said China was genuinely concerned by the tone of the new U.S. administration and uncertain where ties were heading.

"President Jiang Zemin has been caught offguard by the firmness of the new U.S. administration. That's why he has sent his closest foreign affairs advisor to probe Washington's real intentions," the diplomat told AFP.

At the heart of the tricky relationship is Taiwan, and before Vice Premier Qian met Wednesday with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell Chinese officials again pressured the administration over its arms sales to the island.

Beijing views Taiwan as a rebel province and threatens to use force to bring the island back under its control. While China shops for sophisticated weapons to gain military superiority, the United States is bound by its own legislation to sell Taiwan enough arms to defend itself.

Professor Lau Siu-kai of the Chinese University in Hong Kong said there was real apprehension in Beijing that Bush's hawkish attitude towards China would embolden Taiwanese independence supporters.

Lau said Beijing was always jittery when there was a change of government in the United States, but that Bush was causing more flutters than usual.

"I don't think Beijing has any idea quite what Bush is going to do. China is certainly worried, but it is also very skilled at dealing with the United States and knows how to bring pressure to bear," said Lau.

China is using that pressure at the moment to try to stop Washington approving the sale to Taiwan of the Aegis radar system which could provide early warning of any Chinese missile attack and the first phase of a U.S. missile shield over the island.

"Qian can be very tough and has a great deal of experience in dealing with the Americans. He will bring Bush back to reality by explaining exactly what the consequences of his policies could be," said Lau.

Lau said China could play on U.S. fears over missile and nuclear proliferation and stress its ability as a permanent member of the UN Security Council to nullify U.S. initiatives on the international stage.

China's foreign ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao on Thursday kept up the pressure on Washington over the Aegis sale, using typically strident language.

"It will be an action seriously infringing on China's sovereignty, harming China's national security and intensifying the situation across the Straits. It will bring serious destructive results to Sino-U.S. ties," he warned.

Zhu also rounded on the U.S. Congressmen who tabled the resolution opposing Beijing's Olympic bid.

"This is an act showing contempt for and challenging the Olympic principles and will be opposed by all peoples that uphold justice," he said. Agence France Presse

---

Powell, Qian optimistic about differences

Washington Times
March 22, 2001
By Ben Barber THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-2001322224144.htm

Chinese Vice Prime Minister Qian Chichen and Secretary of State Colin Powell agreed yesterday that China and the United States have disagreements but that their common interest in peace, stability and economic growth will dominate their differences.

In their brief, separate statements to reporters yesterday evening at the State Department, the two addressed the Chinese effort to persuade the Bush administration to turn down Taiwan's request for advanced Aegis destroyers.

"Undeniably we have disagreements, but as long as both sides . . . view the problems in the long-term perspective, see common ground and properly handle the differences, I am sure China-U.S. relations will enjoy a healthy and steady growth," said Mr. Qian, who is to meet with President Bush today at the White House.

Mr. Powell extended a warm greeting to Mr. Qian, recalling his first visit to China in 1972 as a young lieutenant colonel.

"I look forward to discussing with the vice premier ways to expand our ties that are constructive and that advance our countries' respective interests," Mr. Powell said.

He praised China's economic reforms and said that once China and then Taiwan join the World Trade Organization, "I hope it will expand cross-straits ties."

Mr. Powell referred indirectly to U.S. complaints that China has been threatening Taiwan and selling weapons, missiles and military or nuclear technology to Iraq, Iran and Pakistan.

Discussions with the Chinese official would focus on "stability in East Asia, South Asia, the Persian Gulf and the Middle East," Mr. Powell said.

"We recognize that we disagree," and need "candid talks" to deal with those disagreements, Mr. Powell said.

In New York Tuesday, Mr. Qian called differences over Taiwan, which Beijing regards as a renegade province, "the most important and sensitive issue in China-U.S. relations".

Mr. Bush must decide in April whether to sell Taiwan the destroyers equipped with advanced Aegis radar systems - a sale supported on Capitol Hill by several key Republicans.

Analysts think that even though China has 1.3 billion people - compared with 20 million on Taiwan -Beijing's army cannot effectively cross the 90-mile-wide Taiwan Strait and maintain a beachhead in facing well-equipped and well-trained Taiwan forces, said Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project.

U.S. officials have remained intentionally vague about whether they would intervene to defend Taiwan if China attempted to invade.

The Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 mandates only that the United States supply Taiwan with the means necessary to defend itself.

In 1996, when China sent missiles into the sea off Taiwan to protest what it saw as a drift toward independence, President Clinton moved two U.S. aircraft carriers nearby in a signal of support for Taiwan.

"We do expect differences on the role and the impact of U.S. arms sales to Taiwan," Mr. Boucher said at a news briefing Tuesday. But he added, "We sell to Taiwan what we think is appropriate and necessary to meet their legitimate defensive needs.

"I think the secretary has made quite clear that we're not seeking an enemy and we're not seeking to turn China into a foe," Mr. Boucher said yesterday. "We're looking to cooperate where we can, but we'll discuss differences candidly."

Mr. Bush could sell the ships and risk Chinese ire, delay the sale to use as a threat against future Chinese aggression or turn down the Taiwan request and risk giving in to Chinese saber rattling, said Mr. Milhollin.

"None of the choices are very good," he said.

In addition to seeking to persuade the United States not to sell the destroyers to Taiwan, Mr. Qian is expected to oppose the deployment of a national missile defense or a theater missile defense.

Apart from weapons, Mr. Powell and Mr. Bush are expected to restate U.S. criticism over China's arrests of members of the Falun Gong movement. The State Department last month reported that the human rights situation in China was deteriorating.

Yesterday, a bipartisan coalition of 41 members of the House called on the International Olympic Committee to reject China's bid to host the 2008 Games because of Beijing's rights record.

The New York-based Human Rights in China group asked Mr. Bush to raise with Mr. Qian the case of a U.S.-based Chinese scholar detained last month at the end of a family visit to China.

--------

The U.S.-Chinese Partnership Is Worth Preserving

International Herald Tribune
Thursday, March 22, 2001
Jiemian Yang The New York Times
http://www.iht.com/articles/14165.htm

SHANGHAI With the election of a new American president, Chinese-American relations often go through a period of adjustment and the testing of limits. When China's deputy prime minister, Qian Qichen, and President George W. Bush meet this Thursday, their primary task will be to reach agreement on the general framework for bilateral relations in the coming four years.

Unfortunately, the Bush administration appears to be backing away from the idea of "strategic partnership" between China and the United States, a characterization that the Clinton administration used. Instead the new administration seems to be focusing less on partnership and more on differences and disagreements.

This move from an emphasis on constructive cooperation is a step backward. Strategic considerations have always been prominent in Chinese-American relations since President Richard Nixon decided to seek rapprochement with China in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Today China and the United States still share a great many common concerns, ranging from curbing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to protecting the global environment. Indeed, the two countries have been working in parallel on security issues on the Korean Peninsula, the Asian financial crisis and nuclear proliferation on the South Asia subcontinent.

With globalization and regionalization gathering momentum, there is plenty of room for China and the United States to cooperate to further their common objectives. This week's meeting could help sketch out an agenda for discussion between Mr. Bush and President Jiang Zemin when they meet at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in October.

At the same time, it is natural that the two sides differ on a number of issues. Efforts should be made to neutralize, if not remove, their differences.

The two countries need to begin a strategic dialogue on the controversial issue of national missile defense systems and the accompanying systems of theater missile defense. How they handle this issue will have a great impact on global and regional security.

Naturally, the differences between China and the United States on missile defense reflect their respective concepts of strategy and national interests. It is therefore somewhat encouraging to see that Secretary of State Colin Powell has indicated the need to consult with China on this matter.

However, the more immediate and serious challenge is American arms sales to Taiwan, because next month the Bush administration will decide what kind of weapons to sell.

While the Chinese generally object to any arms sales to Taiwan, this time they have expressed extreme opposition to the sales of destroyers equipped with the Aegis radar system and PAC-3 missile systems, improved versions of the Patriot system. The Bush administration needs to review this objection with an eye toward maintaining America's long-term interest in stability in the Taiwan Strait.

Since Mr. Qian is the Beijing official overseeing Taiwan affairs, the Taiwan issue is likely to be central in the discussion.

Last August Mr. Qian significantly redefined the "one China" concept in a pragmatic way that was not given sufficient attention in the United States. He announced that one China includes both the Chinese mainland and Taiwan, a modification from the previous statement of Taiwan being a part of China only. This formulation allows considerably more flexibility in easing cross-strait tensions. This is crucial because Taiwan has always been the most important and sensitive issue. If mishandled, this issue could bring the two countries to a confrontation, while a stable relationship will depend on reaching an understanding on Taiwan. Finally, one must remember that there is a ceiling and a floor for the Chinese-U.S. relationship. One visit by a Chinese leader could never change the overall situation fundamentally.

The success or failure of Mr. Qian's visit should not be based on a single issue. Only frequent communications, including those about issues on which the two nations disagree, will make possible a general improvement in bilateral relations, which could enhance security in Asia and globally as well.

The writer, senior fellow and director of the Department of American Studies at the Shanghai Institute for International Studies, contributed this comment to The New York Times.

-------- depleted uranium

Italian study

FROM: Dan Fahey - duweapons@hotmail.com

Regarding the following press report, I have two comments:

1. Depleted uranium was not used in Somalia.

2. Of the 51 US veterans examined by the US Department of Veterans Affairs in 1999, one had Hodgkin's lymphoma and one had a bone tumor. Despite this fact, in January 2001, Pentagon spokesman Dr. Michael Kilpatrick told the NATO press corps: "We have seen no cancers or leukemia in this group, which has been followed since 1993." If the Italian soldiers or others have developed Hodgkin's lymphoma, and they were actually exposed to DU as opposed to merely serving in the geographic region where it was released, this may be an avenue worth exploring.

--

Soldiers Claim Italy Skewed Study on 'Balkans Syndrome'

Reuters Thursday, March 22, 2001

ROME A group representing Italian soldiers and their families on Wednesday contested a government report that said it had not yet found a link between the use of depleted uranium weapons and cancer among servicemen.

The association argued that the Defense Ministry was working with questionable data, skewing results to underplay the effects of the so-called Balkans Syndrome.

On Monday, Franco Mandelli, head of a scientific commission set up by the government to look into cancer among soldiers who served in the Balkans in 1995 and 1999, said the incidence of tumors was "significantly less than expected."

But the military support group said the findings were skewed by including soldiers who had not worked in contaminated areas and people who had been sent to the Balkans for just one day.

"The Mandelli Commission report is unacceptable and should be thoroughly redone," said Falco Accame, head of the soldiers' group known as the National Association to Help Victims Belonging to the Armed Forces and the Families of the Fallen.

Mr. Mandelli's study echoed other scientific reports that have so far failed to find a link between depleted uranium weapons and the illnesses now affecting soldiers: Hodgkin's lymphoma and leukemia.

A Balkans Syndrome scare broke out in January when it was reported that at least seven Italian servicemen had died from leukemia after exposure to depleted uranium-tipped ammunition used by NATO forces in the Balkans.

Mr. Accame said the Italian commission needed to widen its study to include at least four tumor-suffering soldiers exposed to depleted uranium while serving with UN peacekeeping forces in Somalia.

-------- india / pakistan

FBTR passes 53-day continuous operation test

The Hindu
Thursday, March 22, 2001
By R. Prasad
http://www.indiaserver.com/thehindu/2001/03/22/stories/0222000u.htm

CHENNAI, MARCH 21. The Kalpakkam-based Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR) achieved a major milestone when the fast- breeder test reactor (FBTR) was synchronised with the Tamil Nadu grid and was in continuous operation at full power capacity for 53 days from October 28 to December 21, 2000. It was actually synchronised with the grid on October 6, 2000 and was in operation on and off till February 4, 2001. Nearly 7.4 lakh units of electrical energy were generated during the 53 days of continuous operation.

Speaking to TheHindu on its achievement, Mr. R. P. Kapoor, Associate Director, Reactor Operation & Maintenance Group, IGCAR, said the fast-breeder technology developed indigenously was put to test for power generation and it demonstrated the ability to operate in a sustained manner when connected to the grid. This has been the first time that the reactor, steam supply system, turbine generation system and its auxiliaries have worked continuously at full capacity for 53 days. During the first synchronisation with the grid in 1997 the reactor was in continuous operation only for 12 days.

``Running continuously for 53 days at full power capacity has boosted our confidence to go in for the prototype fast-breeder reactor. We can now be assured that all systems connected to the turbine and generator are functioning satisfactorily,'' said Mr. Kapoor. ``And we can now come up with optimal design to get an economically workable reactor based on the feedback from this test run.''

The achievement gains special significance considering the fact that the fuel - mixture of plutonium carbide and uranium carbide - is a unique mixture used for the first time in the world and was developed indigenously.

The grid synchronisation and the continuous run comes in the wake of IGCAR preparing itself for the likelihood of starting the construction of the fast-breeker nuclear power plant prototype by the end of this year.

Fast-breeder reactor is a second-generation technology and uses plutonium (Pu-239) produced in the first-generation pressurised heavy-water reactors. The fast-breeder reactor in turn is a crucial link in converting the naturally occurring thorium (Th- 232) to uranium (U-233) fuel for the third-generation reactors.

India has one of the largest reserves of thorium in the world and third-generation reactors using U-233 are capable of producing nearly five times the coal equivalent in terms of energy produced in the country.

---

Discoverer of heavy hydrogen

The Hindu
Thursday, March 22, 2001
http://www.indiaserver.com/thehindu/2001/03/22/stories/08220007.htm

SCIENCE DEVELOPS by a series of revolutions. Each revolution gives rise to a new way of working which is followed by a period - what Thomas Kuhn, the historian of science, calls ``normal science'', when scientists work to fit their world picture into the new framework.

Few American scientists realised this better than G. N. Lewis (The Hindu, Dec. 28, 2000) who taught Harold Urey at Berkley and encouraged his interest in pursuing the relation between physics and chemistry. Harold Urey was born on April 29, 1893 in Walkerton, Indiana (U.S.). His father, a school teacher, died when the boy was six years old. His progress in school was marked with difficulty. After receiving the high school diploma in 1911 and some three months' teacher training, he taught in country schools in Indiana and later in Montana. He entered the University of Montana in 1914 and graduated with a degree in Zoology (1917).

Urey took a job as research chemist with the Barreet Chemical Company near Philadelphia. In 1919 he returned to the University of Montana to teach biology for two years. He then entered the University of California, Berkley. His teacher G. N. Levis (1875-1946) encouraged his interest in atomic and molecular structure. In a short time, he earned his Ph.D. in Chemistry (1923). He proceeded to Copenhagen for further studies at Niel's Bohr Institute for Theoretical Physics, where he augmented his knowledge of physics.

Urey's career in academic positions was spread amongst three institutions: John Hopkins (1924-29), Columbia University (1929- 45) and University of Chicago (1945-58). The last phase from 1958 of his long and active academic life were spent in the University of California, La Jolla, as professor emeritus till the age of 88 (January 5, 1981).

Between 1923 and 1929, Urey published 20 scientific papers on some aspects of atomic structure and molecular band spectroscopy. His book in collaboration with Arthur Ruark ``Atoms, Molecules, and Quanta'' appeared in 1930 and remained for a long time one of the standard textbooks.

Discovery of heavy hydrogen

As early as 1919 Otto Stern (Nobel Laureate, 1943) had sought unsuccessfully for a heavy isotope of hydrogen to account for the discrepancy in the atomic weight of hydrogen. At Columbia University, Urey made a determined search for this isotope, in collaboration with his colleagues F. Brickwedde and G. Murphy, by the controlled evaporation of liquid hydrogen from 4 litres to 1 milli litre. Spectrospic examination of the residue showed a clear line corresponding to the isotope with twice the mass of hydrogen, which he named deuterium.

Urey received the 1934 Nobel Prize for Chemistry, for his discovery of heavy hydrogen. In his Nobel lecture, he said ``it is my expectation that the next few years will witness the separation of the isotopes of the lighter elements in sufficient quantities for effective research in chemistry, physics and biology. If this can be effected, the work on deuterium is only the beginning of a very interesting scientific development.''

Urey's discovery accelerated isotope research and found practical applications. For example, deutrium can replace hydrogen in water molecules to produce ``heavy water'' used as a moderator in nuclear reactions; it can also be used to trace biochemical reactions in living tissue.

In 1942 the U.S. Government organized the Manhattan Project for developing the atomic bomb. At Columbia full-scale work was begun on the separation of the fissionable lighter isotope of uranium 235 from the much more abundant Uranium 238. Urey was asked to head the project. The experience was unhappy, though the project was successful.

After the war, Urey left Columbia for Chicago to build the Institute for Nuclear Studies (which became later the Enrico Fermit Institute). For a while, Urey, still suffering from the trauma of the war period, tended to drift seeking new fields to conquer. He took up problems concerning the past history of the earth and the planetary systems. Urey became interested in the moon, many of his later papers concerned the possible character of its formation and past history.

Work on planetary science

From 1958, Urey moved to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at la Jolla, where he continued to teach and do active research in the field of geochemistry and planetary science. He explored the possibility of producing organic chemicals by passing electric sparks through a mixture of hot gases. These experiments simulated the early composition of the earth's atmosphere.

Urey was a warm, helpful guide to his students: his house was known for its hospitality. His other interests were - Greek and Hindu sculpture, raising orchards. He coined the name `chemical physics' by founding in 1933 the ``Journal of Chemical Physics'', published by the American Institute of Physics.

Besides the Nobel Prize, Urey received numerous awards: 25 honorary doctorates; Gibbs Medal (1934), Dary Medal (1940), Franklin Medal (1945), Kepler Medal (1971), Priestly Medal (1973), member or fellow of some 25 prestigious academies.

(H. W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York 1987)
R. Parthasarathy

--------

A slowdown in foreign relations?

The Hindu
Thursday, March 22, 2001
By K. K. Katyal
http://www.indiaserver.com/thehindu/2001/03/22/stories/02220008.htm

NEW DELHI, MARCH 21. To say that the current political crisis will impinge on the conduct of external relations is to stress the obvious. However, the impact may vary from case to case, from country to country - for instance, it may not mean the same thing in India's dealing with the U.S., as in its ties with Pakistan.

In New Delhi's diplomatic cocktail circuit, the conversation, these days, invariably revolves round the fallout of the tehelka (this word is fast becoming part of the international vocabulary) expose on the stability of the NDA Government, decision-taking on key issues, the prospects of a viable alternative, the chances of another general election. All of a sudden, a whole range of questions, which were nowhere in the reckoning, have become topical. Among the points, particularly noted, is that, for the first time, the defence and external affairs are to be handled by one Minister - Mr. Jaswant Singh. In the past, Prime Ministers held the charge of the foreign office (Jawaharlal Nehru never contemplated the appointment of a whole-time External Affairs Minister), and on one occasion, foreign relations and commerce were combined in the hands of Mr. P. Shiv Shanker. The preoccupation with domestic matters, it is noted, will come in the way of the Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee's visits abroad. He was to reschedule his trip to Japan (put off due to the Gujarat tragedy) and the one-month parliamentary recess was thought of for that purpose. That would not be possible now because of the situation here as also the political troubles of his Japanese counterpart, Mr. Mori, in what is described, in a lighter vein, as a case of Asian solidarity.

Business as usual?

Mr. Jaswant Singh's plan to visit Washington for talks with the new Secretary of State, Mr. Colin Powell, from April 5 to 7, is an instance of the business continuing as usual. But the prolongation of the pause in India's dealings with Pakistan, or the conspicuous absence of any move to make use of the ceasefire in Jammu and Kashmir, is a case of a slowdown.

The importance of Mr. Singh's trip to the U.S. is not to be underestimated. Not just because it will be part of the dialogue architecture, mentioned in the vision statement on the evolution of the India-U.S. relations, but also because it will be the first formal contact with the new policy-makers in Washington. Because of his role in the protracted discussions with the American side on security and non-proliferation during the Clinton presidency, he represents continuity and, thus, will be in a position to provide positive inputs to the new U.S. administration.

An element of uncertainty is inherent in any transition anywhere and, as such, there were reasons for speculation on the course of India-U.S. relations under the Bush administration. The sense of uncertainty was heightened by reports from Washington last month. The U.S. Secretary of Defence, Mr. Donald Rumsfeld, criticised Russia for supplying nuclear power reactors to other countries and, in doing so, he clubbed India with North Korea and Libya, the three recipients who were perceived as posing a security threat to America. Then there was the remark of the State Department spokesman, opposing Russia's supply of uranium fuel for the Tarapur atomic power reactor. On its part, India made no secret of its criticism of the U.S. air strikes on Iraq.

Sanctions issue

Luckily, this did not cause any damage to Indo-U.S. ties, with New Delhi preferring to wait for contacts with the new administration after it settled down. The fact that a new U.S. ambassador and a new Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia are yet to be named did not go unnoticed. Mr. Singh's meeting with Mr. Powell has to be seen in this context - and it is just as well that it has not been delayed because of the developments in New Delhi. If it results in the U.S. decision to lift the remaining sanctions against India, its value will be particularly high.

As regards the ceasefire in Jammu and Kashmir, the three-month extension from February 26 has spared New Delhi the predicament of taking a crucial decision at the present juncture. Had it been a one-month extension, as was the case on previous occasions, the Centre would have been required to make up its mind on the next phase now. And with all kinds of pressures from within - from the RSS and others of the Sangh parivar - it would not have been in a position to consider the issue dispassionately. The ceasefire will be in place till the end of May and there is, thus, enough time to consider possible new moves.

India's discomfiture

As of now, there is no urgency on issues related to dealings with Pakistan. Last month, New Delhi showed a measure of flexibility on the SAARC summit process. It agreed to have a meeting of the standing committee (of foreign secretaries) which could well be a prelude to the activation of summit-level contacts. This process will be taking its course - in any case, the standing committee meeting is billed for May.

The Pakistani side gets an opportunity to gloat over India's political discomfiture. They are entitled to derive comfort. But, in doing so, Islamabad tends to regard the developments here as a vindication for the military coup and for the adventurism that led to the demise of democracy in Pakistan. Not a very encouraging trend for the restoration of an elected set-up there.

-------- korea

North Korea Invites EU to Dialogue on Missiles

Excite News
By Peter Starck
March 22, 2001
http://news.excite.com/news/r/010322/17/international-northkorea-missiles-dc

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (Reuters) - North Korea invited the European Union for talks on its controversial missile program Thursday, saying the new Bush administration was trying to avoid the issue.

Deputy Foreign Minister Choi Su-hon said he presented new ideas to Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson for a dialogue between North Korea and the EU on the North Korean missiles, which Washington says could reach U.S. territory equipped with warheads.

He did not elaborate.

The threat of long-range missile attack from so-called "rogue states" such as North Korea is behind U.S. plans -- questioned in many European capitals -- for a high-tech defense shield intended to destroy inbound missiles long before they hit their targets.

Last October, then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright visited the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, to work out a deal under which North Korea would stop producing and selling ballistic missiles in exchange for foreign assistance in launching satellites.

"During the visit of Mrs. Albright, much progress had been achieved in missile talks. At that time, we had proposed very reasonable ideas," Choi told Reuters in an interview.

"We made it clear that we are quite willing to solve the missile issue through this process," he said, speaking through an interpreter.

"But the new administration in the United States, they are trying to avoid discussions on this matter," he added.

President Bush took office in January, succeeding Bill Clinton, who said only a week before leaving office that he expected the incoming administration to seal a missile deal with North Korea within a few months.

Earlier this month, Colin Powell, the new secretary of state, said the United States might ask North Korea to negotiate a reduction in the size of its armed forces and that Washington might also want to change some provisions in a Clinton-era agreement that froze North Korea's nuclear program.

EU WANTS DIALOGUE

While Washington stalled, "many countries from the European Union expressed new interest to have a dialogue," Choi said.

Choi, on a two-day visit to Stockholm, met Persson for half an hour and said the Swedish prime minister was "warmly welcome" to visit North Korea -- an invitation eagerly sought by Sweden, which hopes the EU can contribute to the process of reconciliation between North and South Korea.

"As regards the suggestions raised by European Union countries, I informed Sweden as the presidency of the European Union ... that we are willing to have a dialogue on the missile issue with the European Union, too," he said.

Diplomats say the EU may wish to tread such a path cautiously to avoid a widening rift in already fragile transatlantic relations caused by differences over NMD and lingering European fears that Bush may scale back the U.S. military presence in trouble spots such as the Balkans.

Choi said North Korea's military buildup was "to defend our national dignity and national independence.

"There are so many missiles and nuclear weapons deployed around the Korean peninsula which are targeted against our republic. We have prepared to counter any kind of attacks," he said.

He also pointed to North Korea's commercial satellite capacity and said it had the rockets needed to launch them into space.

"In 1998, we launched a satellite with our own technology. We have prepared to launch satellites, something like a telecommunications satellite, a weather observation satellite, and we have the satellites and the carrying means for these satellites," Choi said.

-------- missile defense

U.S.-Russian Relations Slide in Putin's First Year

Russia Today
Mar 22, 2001
http://www.russiatoday.com/news.php3?id=318002

MOSCOW -- (Agence France Presse) A year after taking office, Russian President Vladimir Putin is faced with growing acrimony in the U.S.-Russian relationship over spy scandals, anti-missile defense and arms sales to Iran.

Washington's plans for a national missile defense (NMD) system and Moscow's arms sales to Iran, considered by the United States to be a dangerous "rogue" state, had already damaged bilateral ties.

But the U.S. expulsion of dozens of Russian diplomats, following the revelation that FBI veteran Robert Hanssen worked as a double agent for 15 years, seems to underline U.S. President George W. Bush's tougher policy on Russia, led by a former KGB agent.

Even though Hanssen was finally arrested on February 18, the affair was a slap in the face and a major setback for U.S. intelligence, triggering the expulsions and counter-measures from the Russians.

The time of friendly gestures -- such as Putin's pardon last December of U.S. national Edmond Pope, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for spying -- has been quickly forgotten.

Bush has said he would pursue the NMD project, a plan which his predecessor Bill Clinton was happy to delay when faced with Russian hostility and European concerns about a resulting arms build-up.

Moscow, worried by the prospect of a change in the strategic status quo, has repeatedly complained that NMD would violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty, rendering it null and void, and has proposed that a similar European project was the only alternative.

Russia's recent warming ties with Iran, long cast aside by Washington as a rogue state attempting to develop its nuclear arsenal, have also put U.S.-Russian ties in jeopardy.

The dispute caught fire in November, when Moscow announced it was scrapping a secret agreement struck with the United States under which it was to end conventional arms sales to Iran by December 31, 2000.

Last week, Iranian President Mohammad Khatami signed a series of agreements with Putin during a state visit to Moscow, paving the way for future defense deals and further collaboration on the controversial Bushehr nuclear reactor.

Khatami's four-day visit was seen as cementing economic and military ties between Iran and Russia, all to Washington's extreme displeasure, particularly the prospect of significant technology transfers.

Beyond strategic issues, the former Cold War superpowers also have been at odds over several smaller issues.

The arrest of former Kremlin aide Pavel Borodin in New York, wanted by Swiss authorities on money laundering charges, has been heavily criticized by Russian authorities.

Taken into custody on January 17, the aide will remain in a New York jail until his extradition hearing, set for April 2.

Russia's foreign ministry on Thursday criticized the U.S. State Department for planning a meeting with a separatist Chechen official, identified only as I. Akhmadov. The exact date of the meeting was not exactly clear.

NASA voiced its disapproval when the Russian space agency insisted Wednesday it would honor its 20-million dollar contract to send U.S. businessman Dennis Tito to the International Space Station (ISS).

The incident, which has also drawn the opposition of Russia's Western partners in the project, has created an icy climate in which it could be difficult to launch a positive dialogue between Moscow and Washington.

Putin travels to Stockholm on Friday for the two-day EU summit, looking for a warmer reception from his European counterparts than that which he has received from Washington.

---

Chinese Envoy to Discuss Taiwan With Bush

Associated Press
March 22, 2001 Filed at 6:19 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/politics/AP-US-China.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Acknowledging areas of difference, President Bush told a Chinese leader Thursday that the United States will support the military needs of rival Taiwan and push for human rights reforms in Beijing.

``Our relationship will move forward, but it would certainly be a lot easier to move forward in a constructive way when (the) people with whom we conduct our affairs honor religious freedom within their borders,'' the president said at the top of an hourlong meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Qian Qichen.

The leaders shied away from specifics, but did not deny their nations had many differences: Chinese opposition to Bush's missile defense plans, potential U.S. arms sales to China nemesis Taiwan and allegations of human rights abuses by Beijing.

``I look forward to committing to this distinguished leader that (despite) any disagreements that we will have we will conduct ourselves with mutual respect,'' Bush said, with a nod to his guest. ``I'll be firm -- and I suspect he will be firm -- in our opinions, but we'll do so in a respectful way. It is in our nations' best interests that we have good relations with China.''

According to advisers, Bush reassured Qian in private: ``Nothing we do is a threat to you, and I want you to tell that to your leadership''

Preparing for the Oval Office meeting, Qian had talked to top administration officials about Iraqi sanctions, Chinese and North Korean missile proliferation and obstacles preventing China from joining the World Trade Organization.

``Where we have shared interests, we can advance our relationship forward. Where we disagree, we can have very good exchange of views,'' Qian, seated side-by-side with Bush in arm chairs, said through an interpreter.

After days of hesitation from his aides, Bush confirmed that he will visit Beijing in the fall as part of a broader Asian trip. He recalled visiting the nation in 1975, when he was about 28 and his father was U.S. ambassador to China.

``I look forward to my return,'' he said. ``I can't wait to see the change, the contrast between when I was a younger fellow and now when I'm kind of an older guy.''

Though silent on the issue with Bush, Qian warned Tuesday that Chinese-American relations would suffer a ``very serious'' blow if Taiwan receives permission to buy four U.S. destroyers equipped with advanced Aegis radar systems. The self-governing island, which China considers to be a renegade province, wants to buy the destroyers but the administration has offered no hint if the request will be approved.

Under the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, U.S. policy is to meet Taiwan's legitimate defense needs.

``We have obligations under the Taiwan Relations Act, and we'll honor those obligations. No decision has been made yet as to the sale of weapons to Taiwan,'' Bush told reporters. ``I'll do what I think is in the best interests of our relationships and the best interests of conforming to obligations we have.''

Qian and Bush privately discussed the issue of arms sales, but not the destroyers specifically, according to a senior administration official, who briefed reporters on condition that he not be identified.

On human rights, Bush seconded the remarks of Secretary of State Colin Powell, who complained hours before the Oval Office session about China's detention of a U.S.-based scholar. Powell said it was ``particularly outrageous'' that the woman's 5-year-old son, a U.S. citizen, was taken from her and held for a month before being released.

``I look forward to discussing this with our honorable guest and will do so,'' Bush told reporters.

Bush raised the matter and was told by Qian that the woman may not have known she violated Chinese law, according to the senior U.S. official. ``They will look into it and get back to us,'' the official said.

Bush spoke more broadly about human rights, saying: ``It'll come as no surprise to our Chinese guest that I'm a believer in religious freedom, and I will make as stately, as politely and as clearly as I can that ours is a nation that respects religious freedom; ours is a nation that honors religious freedom.''

-------- russia

Experts Expect Russia to React in Kind

Washington Post
Thursday, March 22, 2001; 12:28 PM
By Charles Babington Washington Post Staff Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43111-2001Mar22?language=printer

Russia is likely to complain and expel some U.S. diplomats in response to yesterday's White House decision to oust about 50 suspected Russian intelligence officers working in the United States, experts said today. But the Kremlin has powerful incentives to limit the fallout, they said, because it wants good relations with the West when dealing with missile defense issues, NATO expansion, Chechnya and Russia's economic problems.

"If I had to bet, I'd say this is going to be self-contained," said James M. Lindsay, a foreign policy scholar at the Brookings Institution. "The Russians will decide at the end of the day it's not worth it" to escalate the feud into a major diplomatic confrontation.

Above all, Lindsay said, the Russians "want to have influence over the kind of missile defense system the United States will have." Russia is deeply concerned about the Bush administration's plans to build some form of missile shield, which Moscow says could tempt the United States toward bellicose actions threatening Russia's security.

The Kremlin also wants enough influence in Washington and other Western capitals to limit NATO's expansion into former Soviet territories and to dampen criticism of Russia's policy in the breakaway republic of Chechnya, he said.

Leon Aron, director of Russian studies at the American Enterprise Institute, had a similar view. He said the Bush administration is in danger of focusing its Russia policy too narrowly on "spies, missiles and nuclear proliferation." Russia, he said, certainly cares about those issues, but it also faces major domestic challenges such as its shaky economy.

If President Vladimir Putin believes he can engage Washington on these broader issues, Aron said, he'll be more likely to limit Russia's reaction to rhetoric and the expulsion of a few U.S. officials, while keeping diplomatic channels open.

"If we provide a wider context, if we show we care about Russia's progress toward democracy and a free market, then this will be a not very cheerful, but not terribly significant, episode," Aron said.

Both Aron and Lindsay said the Bush administration's actions were firm but justified in light of the espionage case involving FBI agent and accused Russian spy Robert P. Hanssen. U.S. officials probably can make that argument convincingly to Putin, they said, although the Russian president will have to express strong objections.

"There will be a lot of hot air, definitely," Aron said.

Lindsay said Kremlin officials probably realize that an overreaction to Bush's decision could play into the hands of Washington hardliners who advocate tougher stands against Russia.

"Easily, if you let the more testosterone-filled voices on both sides have their way, you can get this ratcheting up" of difficult relations, Lindsay said. The Russians "probably will do a tit-for-tat [expulsion of some U.S. officials], but not up the ante."

Join Charles Babington for a Live OnLine discussion of politics Friday, beginning at 1 p.m., at washingtonpost.com.

-------- south africa

S.Africa awards contract for nuclear power plant

Excite News
March 22, 2001
http://news.excite.com/news/r/010322/08/energy-safrica-nuclear

JOHANNESBURG, March 22 (Reuters) - South Africa on Thursday awarded a UK-German-South African consortium a contract to design a plant to provide fuel for the country's Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) project.

NUKEM Nuklear GmbH of Germany, British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) and local firm Engineering Management Services will design a fuel fabrication plant to produce the praphite spheres or "pebbles" used in the PBMR reactors, PBMR said in a statement.

"This should greatly reduce the risk of having sufficient qualified fuel available when our demonstration plant starts operations in 2005," said PBMR Chief Executive Dave Nicholls.

PMBR no details on the value of the contract.

The project to develop a commercial PBMR is being led by a consortium involving South African electricity utility Eskom, the Industrial Development Corp , BNFL and U.S. Exelon Corp.

PBMR is a design for a new generation mini-nuclear reactor with a capacity of 110 megawatts against the 1,000 or so megawatt capacity of most modern nuclear power stations.

In the PBMR helium is used as a coolant and the energy transfer medium is used to a closed gas turbine and generator system.

The feasibility study into the fuel fabrication facility is expected to be complete later this year. The PBMR concept is based on prototype reactors that operated in the U.S. and Germany between the late 1960s and 1980s.


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

More senators weigh in against Labor Department proposal

ohio.com
Thursday, March 22, 2001
BY KATHERINE RIZZO Associated Press Writer
http://www.ohio.com/bj/news/ohio/docs/017902.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Senators who painstakingly negotiated to get money and medical care for contaminated nuclear workers were trying Thursday to convince the secretary of labor they understand what has to be done to make the new program work.

Congress gave the Labor Department $60.4 million to set up the program, but Labor Secretary Chao doesn't want to do it. She has asked the White House to give that responsibility to another agency.

That has alarmed those mostly closely involved in creating the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program.

Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., one of the main authors of the law creating the new entitlement, sent Chao a letter laying out the reasons lawmakers want her agency to have control.

The new program was modeled after a large worker compensation program that the Labor Department already runs, he wrote.

The law's authors ``believe that the Department of Labor is uniquely suited to administer the energy employees' program because it has vast experience in helping injured workers and a network of regional offices across the country where DOL claims personnel administer payments for injuries, illnesses and medical benefits related to the workplace,'' he wrote.

Chao wants the Justice Department to take control of the new program. In a letter to the White House and again in a telephone conversation with Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, Chao said she believes the Justice Department has better experience in this type of program.

``She believes it can be handled more efficiently at DOJ because they have the infrastructure,'' said Labor Department spokesman Stuart Roy.

Justice administers a program that gives one-time payments to sick uranium miners, millers and people who were downwind of nuclear tests. Eligibility is determined by the length of time people spent at any of the affected places.

If Chao succeeds in moving the new program out of her department, it would mean that workers who contracted chronic beryllium disease while on the government payroll would ask the Labor Department for benefits. Those who contracted while employed by a government contractor would have to go elsewhere to have their claims evaluated.

Thompson's letter asked for an efficient program to do right by ``brave, hardworking men and women who helped this nation win the Cold War'' and were put in harm's way.

An aide to Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said that senator was supporting Thompson's effort. In addition, a bipartisan group of House members, Voinovich and Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, sent letters lobbying to keep the Labor Department in charge of the new program.

------

Nuclear worker plan draws complaints

USA Today
01/03/22
http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20010322/3164067s.htm

Lawmakers of both parties are complaining about Labor Secretary Elaine Chao's efforts to shed responsibility for a new program to compensate sick nuclear weapons workers. In a letter to the White House, Chao asked that the Justice Department be put in charge of the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program. Congress set up the program last year amid revelations that workers in the U.S. nuclear weapons program often were exposed to high levels of radioactive and toxic substances. Congress gave responsibility for the program to the Labor Department.

Chao said that Justice, which runs a program that pays benefits to sick uranium miners, is better suited to handle the initiative. But a bipartisan group of lawmakers in both the House and Senate argue that Labor, which typically reviews medical benefit claims for federal workers, is better equipped to run the program for weapons workers. They say that any change will delay payments to ailing workers, who are scheduled to receive checks in four months. ''Cancer is killing my constituents right now,'' said Rep. Ted Strickland, D-Ohio. ''This will, in my judgment, inevitably result in a delay.'' -- Peter Eisler

-------- arizona

Arizona Highways

01/03
http://www.mccainphoto.com
http://www.arizonahighways.com/MonthlyFeatures/grwkend.html

On a spring jaunt to Tucson, our kids got to trigger nuclear conflagration and check out where the president of the United States dined - all before lunch. Aiming a bit off the beaten path to avoid crowds (and overstimulated offspring), this time we bypassed such popular venues as Old Tucson and the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum to unearth plenty of easygoing family fun.

Admittedly, the weekend's beginning was anything but auspicious. "You mean it only has one missile? How boring," my 10-year-old carped as we drove from Phoenix to the Titan Missile Museum in Sahuarita, a leftover reminder of the Cold War about 30 miles south of Tucson. "It's like an art museum with only one painting," he whined.

But it's some painting. This remains the last of 54 missile sites completed by 1964 across the United States. Each featured a nine-story silo housing a 103-foot, 330,000-pound missile that could launch in one minute and wipe out a large city - though what most impressed our kids was that Star Trek: First Contact was filmed there.

Entry fees of $4 for children and $7.50 for adults bought us use of required hard hats and the grand tour. Donning our hats, we descended into the inner workings of the vast underground missile center, clanking down flights of metal stairs ("55 steps down - 110 coming up," joked guides Jim Chaffins and Bob Brubaker) past 6-ton metal doors into the inner sanctum of the control room. Our son, chosen to sit in the commander's chair, threw us a gleeful grin as he turned the key to activate a simulated launch. The trip blasted off to a dynamite start.

Next, we stopped at south Tucson's Mi Nidito, a much-lauded landmark where then-President Clinton lunched during a 1999 stopover in Arizona. Amid a cheery blend of folklorico art, plants, Mexican flags and murals (as well as photos galore of Clinton, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Congressman Jim Kolbe), we munched on huge helpings of beef flautas, birria tacos and chicken enchiladas and sipped orchata - a sweet, nutmeg-tinged south-of-the-border non-alcholic drink.

Fortified, we headed a few miles north to the Tucson Children's Museum, a whimsy-packed mix of clever, kid-entrancing interactive displays. Youngsters romped through a mockup of a submarine control room, a pretend newsroom - where participants can see themselves on TV - and a music room rocking with a cacophony of banging drums, gongs and cowbells. Even our 12-year-old sophisticate laughed with delight as she tried a step-in bubblemaker that encased her in a giant, shimmering globe. This adventure costs $3.50 for children and $5.50 for adults, but on the third Sunday of any month the museum is free to all.

Deciding we needed a little downtime, we drove to the city's northern edge for a break at Fort Lowell Park, the site of a fort during the Apache wars. With wide fields for Frisbee-throwing, swings, ramadas, a pool and playground, this added up to the perfect spot for an alfresco family snack.

On Wednesdays through Saturdays, parents can add an educational note at no cost with a run through the park's free small museum. The onetime commanding officer's quarters and the fort's kitchen are packed with photographs of Indians and soldiers, weapons and artifacts. We walked down what remains of an allée of cottonwoods planted in another century to shade the 150 men and 100 horses who guarded against Apache raiders.

Refreshed, we headed a few miles east to Trail Dust Town, a re-creation of an old Western town, complete with a train for rides, stockade, 108-year-old carousel, shady gazebo and a cheery assortment of art galleries, restaurants and shops.

The kids eagerly panned for "gold," slurped ice cream cones and caught a rehearsal of a reenactment of an Old West-style shoot-out. The preteen browsed trinket and antique shops featuring everything from moccasins and stuffed armadillos to John Wayne toilet paper. We were disappointed to learn most of the entertainment starts in the evening with the dinner hour, but enjoyed an ambling afternoon before heading off for dinner at the nearby Gaslight Theatre.

From the garish posters outside to the eye-popping red velveteen wallpaper lining its walls, it's clear the Gaslight Theatre, a 25-year-old local institution, lays on the corn with a trowel. We enjoyed pizza, fried mushrooms and sarsaparilla from Little Anthony's Diner, a popular Tucson restaurant next door, while hooting through Sergeant Preston of the Mounties . . . or Yukon Count on Me, a lively rendition of vaudeville patter, hoofing and singing, all backed by a live band. We ended up howling at achingly awful jokes. The show would never make Letterman, but the cast's exuberance proved infectious, as the audience sang along, booed, cheered, laughed and pelted the villain with popcorn. The experience costs $6 for kids; $13.95 for adults, plus the price of dinner.

After a night at the Wayward Winds Lodge in a rather spartan but spanking-clean suite with a kitchenette, we headed to the Blue Willow for breakfast. This cozy restaurant cum knickknack shop with its cinnamon-colored stucco walls, flowers and fountains offers fabulous food. The shaded patio proved perfect for a spring morning as we feasted on waffles topped with fresh fruit and real whipped cream.

Going to Reid Park Zoo (one of the few attractions open on Sunday morning) didn't rate as our kids' idea of a hip time, but ended up charming all.

We fed giraffes from a bale of hay, their great heads, with kissy-poo lips and twitchy ears, looming near to nibble from eagerly outstretched hands. "Look, they're sharing and taking turns," I said, ever on the alert for a teachable moment, as a young giraffe ambled off to allow another to step up, so to speak, to the plate. "He's probably full," snorted our 12-year-old cynic.

Whether petting an Aldabra tortoise or stroking an iridescent Columbian rainbow boa at a docent display on reptiles, the kids acted like, well, kids, not Pokemon-packing, mall-roaming consumers. In an unguarded moment, our son even cooed, "It's Bambi!" as a baby nyala pranced by.

Zoo admission is $4 for adults, 75 cents for children 5-14, and free for the little ones.

On a roll with biology, we drove about 30 miles north of Tucson for an afternoon at another world. The Biosphere 2 Center's geodesic glass domes and quonset huts bustled with activity like an otherwordly Oz set in the sagebrush. One of the largest ecological laboratories in the world, this air-tight greenhouse covers 3.15 acres. The $200 million center, founded in 1987, boasts partnerships with 28 universities offering 18 credits for a semester's stay to students from around the country.

For younger students, tours reveal artificial tide pools, estuary marshes, lagoons, rain forests and savannas - big-scale science experiments teeming in a giant climate-controlled test tube. Our tour guide, Gilbert LaRoque, described how scientists created a La Niña experiment in which they inflicted a 27-day drought, followed by a 40,000-liter flood to measure how plant stomata reacted.

Antediluvian efforts aside, it's great fun to spot butterflies frolicking in the sun, donkey-dung sea cucumber or a quartet of neon-yellow tang darting through the nearly 1 million-gallon "ocean." Tours of this living laboratory run from 9 A.M. to 4 P.M. daily, and admission varies from $12.95 for adults to free for children younger than 5.

Peeking into one of the rooms at the Biosphere's 27-room hotel (actually a renovated Motorola executive retreat), I discovered where to stay next time we're in the area. Huge rooms, featuring a wet bar, sitting area, private patio and panoramic sweep of window, offer dreamy seclusion. A swimming pool, pond, tennis court and most of the Biosphere grounds beckon for evening strolls. Overnight packages include accommodations, all tour tickets and breakfast and dinner at the quite competent Canada del Oro restaurant.

A bit worn out from our action-packed sojourn, we headed home to Phoenix. All agreed a weekend that included trips back in time to both the Cold and Apache wars, giant bubbles, pink flamingos, munching where the president ate and a foray into our biological future rated as a great escape indeed.

WHEN YOU GO

Location: 115 miles southeast of Phoenix.
Weather: March average high, 73°; average low, 45°.
Phone Numbers: Area code is 520; 800 series numbers are toll-free.

Lodging: Wayward Winds Lodge, 707 W. Miracle Mile, 791-7526; Biosphere 2 Center Hotel, State Route 77 at Mile Marker 96.5, Oracle, 896-6200 or (800) 828-2462.

Restaurants: Blue Willow, 2616 N. Campbell Road, 327-7577; Canada del Oro, Biosphere 2 Center, 20 miles north on State 77, 896-6200 or (800) 828-2462; Little Anthony's Diner, 7010 E. Broadway Blvd., 296-0456; Mi Nidito, 1813 S. Fourth Ave., 622-5081.

Attractions: Titan Missile Museum, 30 miles south of Tucson on Interstate 19 to Exit 69, 625-7736. Tucson Children's Museum, 200 S. Sixth Ave., 792-9985. Fort Lowell Park and Museum, 2900 N. Craycroft Road, 885-3832. Trail Dust Town, 6541 E. Tanque Verde Road, 296-4551. Gaslight Theatre, 7010 E. Broadway Blvd., 886-9428, reservations recommended. Reid Park Zoo, 1100 S. Randolph Way, 791-4022. Biosphere 2 Center, 20 miles north on State 77, 896-6200 or (800) 828-2462.

Additional Information: Metropolitan Tucson Convention & Visitors Bureau, 130 S. Scott Ave., Tucson, AZ 85701; 624-1817 or (800) 638-8350; www.visittucson.org.

The preceding was published as "Weekend Getaway" in the March 2001 issue of Arizona Highways. For full details on the monthly great weekends, subscribe to the magazine by calling toll-free (800) 543-5432.

-------- california

LITTLE NOTICED ACCIDENT AT SAN ONOFRE NUCLEAR POWER REACTOR IS KEY STORY BEHIND CALIFORNIA BLACKOUTS

NEWS FROM NIRS

For Immediate Release
March 22, 2001
Contact: Michael Mariotte or Paul Gunter 202.328.0002

A significant accident February 3 at Southern California Edison's San Onofre-3 nuclear power reactor is a major cause of the rolling blackouts that have plagued California this week.

According to published reports, California has lacked up to 800 Megawatts (MW) of power during the blackout periods. When running at full power, San Onofre-3 produces 1120 MW of electricity. Had the reactor been operating, the blackouts almost certainly would not have occurred.

The accident occurred when a circuit breaker fault caused a fire-that lasted nearly three hours-a loss of offsite power, and a reactor scram. A related failure of an oil pump resulted in extensive damage to the plant's turbine. The reactor is expected to be shutdown for repairs for at least three months. Although the utility claims no radiation was released and no nuclear safety issues were involved, the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission sent a Special Inspection Team to the plant site to investigate the accident. The NRC met with SCE officials today to go over their findings. That team's report is expected to be publicly released soon.

"This serious accident, which has gone virtually unnoticed in the daily attention given to California's electricity problems, highlights the vulnerability of electrical systems that rely on nuclear power, and is a clear demonstration why atomic reactors can never be counted on to meet our energy needs. Not only have nuclear plants always been too costly, they are too unreliable as well," said Michael Mariotte, executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS), a Washington-DC based nuclear watchdog group. "When one of these large reactors goes down-and as reactors age, they will go down more often-large amounts of replacement power are needed-but are not always available. This situation is likely to worsen as time goes on, not improve."

In January, California's electricity shortage was prompted in part by a storm which washed large amounts of kelp into the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant's water intake system, forcing those two reactors to reduce power to 20% to avoid a potential meltdown accident.

"Using nuclear power to meet electricity needs is a lot like playing Russian Roulette," said Paul Gunter, chief of NIRS' Reactor Watchdog Project. "Most of the time you'll win, but when you lose, the results can be catastrophic."

NIRS was among the organizations that opposed California's deregulation law from the beginning, and supported a 1998 referendum that would have repealed that law. But California utilities spent $40 million to defeat the referendum, thereby ensuring their steady march toward bankruptcy.

"At the time, Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison were eyeing some $25 Billion in 'stranded costs' charged under the deregulation scheme to California ratepayers to pay for San Onofre and Diablo Canyon," explained Mariotte. "Much of that money seems to have been distributed to their holding companies, and has not been used for the benefit of Californians. And the bailout certainly hasn't made their reactors any more reliable, nor any safer."

"Anyone who believes nuclear power is a way out of California's (or the nation's) energy problem should simply consider how much electricity could have been provided by safe, clean renewable energy and energy efficiency programs for the $25 Billion California spent on its unreliable nuclear reactors," concluded Gunter. "The choice is clear: we can meet our energy needs economically, or we can have nuclear power. We can't have both."

Nuclear Information and Resource Service 1424 16th Street NW, #404, Washington, DC 20036. 202.328.0002; f:202.462.2183 nirsnet@nirs.org; www.nirs.org

-------

Lawrence Livermore shows off discoveries

March 22, 2001
http://www.contracostatimes.com/community/vt/stories/science_20010322.htm

Lawrence Livermore shows off discoveries The all-day event for 500 dignitaries highlighted recent advancements By Peter Felsenfeld TIMES STAFF WRITER

LIVERMORE -- Local scientists showed off their latest high-tech discoveries Wednesday at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory's "Science Day" event.

The 500 invited dignitaries -- including Department of Energy officials, fellow scientists, city representatives and business leaders -- were treated to a full day of speeches and demonstrations highlighting advancements in medicine, computing and weapons-related research.

"This is an opportunity for us to celebrate the good science that goes on at the labs, and to share with colleagues and community leaders some of our wonderful projects," said spokeswoman Susan Houghton.

The theme of the event was "Scientific Supercomputing," which Houghton said encompasses many laboratory departments.

Lab director Bruce Tarter and Gen. John Gordon, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, the Department of Energy agency that oversees the lab, welcomed the invitation-only crowd to the day's festivities.

Visitors were led on a tour of the Forensic Science Center, where center director Brian D. Andresen and his staff demonstrated the newest chemical detection technology.

The center participates in criminal investigations, often involving advanced DNA analysis, and helps local governments identify chemicals that surface in a variety of situations. For example, the principal of a local school once approached center scientists after finding vials of an unknown substance on school property.

Lab Deputy Director Pat Grant said the principal feared the chemicals were a new drug. However, the lab identified the liquid as vitamin B12, probably used by athletes for performance enhancement.

Scientists from the lab's medical division presented new technologies to combat cancer and other diseases.

Advancements include radar-based medical diagnostic technology designed to assess head injuries and a probe to instantly identify a suspicious lump in a woman's breast.

The laboratory is also developing technology to unclog blocked arteries in the brain that cause strokes and glucose sensors to help combat diabetes.

Afternoon presentations included discussions on how the lab's super computers simulate climates and help scientists study issues such as global warming as well as how the lab's large-scale computer simulations contribute to the study of earthquake phenomena.

"So often the good work we do is eclipsed by problems and controversies," Houghton said. "It's easy to forget the good science that has and always will go on here. This is what the lab is all about."

Peter Felsenfeld covers the national labs. Reach him at 925-847-2184 or pfelsenfeld@cctimes.com.

-------- nevada

REID CALLS ON ADMINISTRATION TO SWIFTLY COMPENSATE NEVADA'S SICK NUCLEAR WORKERS

senate.gov
March 22, 2001
http://www.senate.gov/~reid/press/01/03/2001322D43.html

Washington, D.C. - Today, in response to changes proposed by the Bush Administration, Nevada Senator Harry Reid vowed to ensure that Nevadans exposed to dangerous radiation and other deadly substances during the cold war are swiftly compensated for their sacrifice. Earlier this week Department of Labor Secretary Elaine Chao asked the White House to pass her responsibility for this program to the Justice Department, which will further delay the process.

"Many of Nevada's Cold War heroes are sick and dying right now," said Harry Reid. "We should treat these men and women with dignity, and honor their service without further delay. As one of the authors of the legislation that created this program, I was closely involved in the debate over which agency should administer this program. Not only would it be ill-advised to move this program to the Department of Justice, but it would create unnecessary delays for these sick Cold War veterans, many of whom do not have the luxury of time."

Last year, Congress authorized more than $60 million for the Department of Labor to establish the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program to compensate nuclear weapons laborers for their work-related cancers. This program is critical to the thousands of men and women who worked at nuclear facilities around the country during the Cold War, including the Nevada Test Site. Within four months, the Labor Department is supposed to start taking applications from sick nuclear workers who are eligible for federal compensation under the new program.

This afternoon Senator Reid and Senator Ensign sent a letter to President George W. Bush asking for his quick intervention in this matter.

"Clearly the President has no intention of delaying justice or prolonging the suffering of Nevada's Cold War veterans. I urge President Bush to work with Secretary Chao and fulfill our commitment to these workers in a timely manner," Said Senator Reid.


-------- MILITARY

Cold War Adversaries Gather in Cuba

Associated Press
March 22, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Cuba-Bay-of-Pigs.html

HAVANA (AP) -- President Fidel Castro sat alongside ex-CIA operatives, advisers to President Kennedy and members of the exile team that attacked his country four decades ago as former Cold War adversaries examined the disastrous Bay of Pigs landing Thursday.

Dressed in his traditional olive green uniform, Castro arrived in the morning as the protagonists sat down to discuss the 1961 invasion of Cuba by CIA-trained exiles that shaped four decades of U.S.-Cuba politics.

The Cuban president personally greeted former Kennedy aide and American historian Arthur Schlesinger, but made no public statement. Participants at the meeting -- which was closed the media -- said Castro was still with the group at mid-afternoon.

Thomas Blanton of the National Security Archive at George Washington University called the three-day conference that began Thursday ``a victory over a bitter history.'' Participants went behind closed doors to discuss their roles and examine newly declassified documents about the April 17-19, 1961, event.

In one document released Thursday in connection with the conference, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev warned Kennedy in a letter sent the day after the invasion began that the ``little war'' in Cuba ``could touch off a chain reaction in all parts of the globe.''

Khrushchev issued an ``urgent call'' to Kennedy to end ``the aggression'' against Cuba and said his country was prepared to provide Cuba with ``all necessary help'' to repel the attack.

Trained by the CIA in Guatemala, the 2506 Brigade was comprised of about 1,500 exiles determined to overthrow Castro's government, which had seized power 28 months before.

The three-day invasion failed. Without U.S. air support and running short of ammunition, more than 1,000 invaders were captured. Another 100 invaders and 151 defenders died.

Other key American figures attending were Robert Reynolds, the CIA station chief in Miami during the invasion; Wayne Smith, then a U.S. diplomat stationed in Havana; and Richard Goodwin, another Kennedy assistant, who with Schlesinger considered the invasion ill-advised.

On the Cuban government's side were Vice President Jose Ramon Fernandez, a retired general who led defending troops on the beach known here as Playa Giron, and a host of other retired military men.

The group will visit the Bay of Pigs on the island's south-central coast on Saturday.

---

China Asserts U.S. Scholar Confesses Security 'Crimes'

New York Times
March 22, 2001
By ERIK ECKHOLM
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/22/world/22CND-BEIJING.html

BEIJING, March 22 - A government spokesman said today that Gao Zhan, a United States-based sociologist who has been held incommunicado since Feb. 11 for unspecified "activities damaging state security," had openly confessed her crimes. But the spokesman, Sun Yuxi of the Foreign Ministry, refused to say what she had confessed to, only noting that the investigation was continuing.

Mr. Sun also said Ms. Gao's husband and their 5-year-old son, who were held separately for 26 days without relatives in China being notified and with no access to a telephone or a lawyer, had been treated in a lawful and humanitarian manner.

The son is an American citizen, while the parents are permanent residents of the United States. American officials have protested to the Chinese for their failure to uphold an agreement under which the embassy must be notified within four days whenever an American citizen is detained for any reason.

The father, Xue Donghua, says he told his captors that the son was an American and specifically asked that the embassy be contacted. He says he also implored the state security agents to let the boy stay with his grandparents in Beijing while his mother and father were in custody.

The boy was kept under watch in a state children's center and never saw any relative during the 26 days until he was released, along with his father, on March 8. On Wednesday a senior State Department official in Washington described the boy's treatment as "clearly outrageous."

Mr. Sun asserted today that the parents had not asked for such notification "so there is no question of China's violating bilateral consular agreements." He said the boy was not detained, but rather, "with the consent of his legal guardian, was sent to a kindergarten and received good care."

Ms. Gao, 40, holds an American doctorate in sociology and is a one-year faculty fellow at American University in Washington, D.C. Fellow scholars and her husband said Wednesday that her research had focused on women and families in China and Taiwan. Fellow scholars are mystified by the unexplained Chinese allegations.

---

Scholar accused of harming national security

USA Today
03/22/2001 - Updated 08:38 AM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-03-21-scholar.htm

BEIJING (AP) - A U.S.-based scholar detained for nearly six weeks in China is accused of harming national security, the Foreign Ministry said Thursday.

The United States has asked for the release of Gao Zhan, a Chinese-born political scientist at Washington's American University. She was detained Feb. 11 at the Beijing airport at the end of a family visit.

Her husband and 5-year-old son were detained with her. They were held for 26 days before being allowed to return to the United States. Gao is held at an undisclosed location.

"Gao is suspected of activities that undermine state security. She admits to her criminal acts," Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi said.

He would not give details, but said an investigation was still under way.

The vague, sweeping charge has been leveled at dissidents and activists seeking independence for Tibet and the Muslim region of Xinjiang in the northwest.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher urged China to release Gao immediately.

Word of Gao's detention came as President Bush prepared to meet Thursday with Vice Premier Qian Qichen.

New York-based Human Rights in China asked Bush to appeal to Qian for Gao's release.

Gao is the third Chinese-born researcher in as many years to be detained during a visit home. A Stanford University expert on China's military arrested in 1998 was sentenced last month to 10 years imprisonment on espionage charges. In 1999, a librarian from Dickinson College in Pennsylvania was detained for six months while doing research on the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution.

Gao has taught and written about Chinese politics and society. She has traveled twice with a study group to Taiwan, the island democracy that Beijing views as a breakaway province.

Her son, Andrew, is a U.S. citizen.

Sun, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, confirmed that Chinese authorities did not inform the U.S. Embassy of the case.

A consular treaty requires notification when an American is detained, but Sun said Andrew was never formally detained.

"Her son was not detained, but rather cared for in a kindergarten. The child's parents did not demand that the Chinese side notify the embassy, so there is no question of violation of the consular treaty," Sun said.

A U.S. Embassy official said the treaty requires notification for detention of any kind - even of children in the custody of authorities while their parents are detained by police. The official asked not to be identified.

Gao's husband, Xue Donghua, said in a statement released by Human Rights in China that police refused to let him see his son unless he gave them damaging information about his wife.

Xue said police refused to let Andrew stay with his grandparents, and that the boy was traumatized by the long separation.

Sun said Andrew's legal guardian consented to sending him to the state school.

U.S. diplomats in Beijing declined to discuss the case but said they believed Human Rights in China's report was accurate.

-------- drug war

Yabba Dabba Scooby Doo

Slate
Friday, March 23, 2001
By Michael Brus
http://slate.msn.com/cx/Spin/01-03-19/Spin.asp_3FShow_3D3/23/2001

The government tripled jail sentences for selling ecstasy. Acting on a bill passed by Congress, the U.S. Sentencing Commission mandated as much jail time for ecstasy dealers as for dealers of powder cocaine and heroin. (The minimum penalty for dealing 800 ecstasy pills was raised from 15 months to five years.) A study last year found that ecstasy is used by 3 percent of eighth-graders and 8 percent of 12th-graders.

Commission's spin: We're not going to jail teen-agers at clubs, just the dealers.

Defense lawyers' spin: Sometimes they're the same. Ecstasy is far safer than heroin and cocaine. This is a political decision.

---

War council to fight drugs battle

Australian News Network
22mar01
By JOHN FERGUSON
http://news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,1824202%255E421,00.html

A WAR council with sweeping powers to oversee the drugs crisis will herald a new era in the battle to save young Victorians.

Premier Steve Bracks used the historic drugs summit yesterday to detail plans for a new independent drug body, which will focus on prevention and education.

It will be set up with similar powers to the influential body VicHealth.

Flanked by his 131 parliamentary colleagues and Opposition members, Mr Bracks made a passionate plea for all Victorians to join the fight against drugs.

He stopped short of adopting the full model proposed by former chief commissioner Neil Comrie, but hailed the special sitting of Parliament a success.

Mr Bracks told the joint sitting: "This is our problem and we must tackle it together."

He said the extra focus on prevention would include a $2.4 million drug awareness program aimed at young people.

Opposition Leader Denis Napthine endorsed the joint sitting, saying he strongly supported the push for a greater focus on prevention.

He also advocated an annual joint sitting on drugs. "The Liberal Party . . . offers the Government its full support in doing just that," he said.

Mr Comrie, who sparked the special sitting after revealing his plans in the Herald Sun, was last night optimistic the war council - whose members have not been revealed - would be a success, but said it must have sweeping powers.

"We all understand the problem, it's now time to get on with it and to start delivering on some of the things we have spoken about," he said later.

"The only way to do that in a meaningful way, in my view, is to have some authority which sets the standards, monitors performance and makes sure the money that is committed to this is actually committed to areas of the highest priority," Mr Comrie said. He said a 10-year strategy that was above politics was needed to win the fight against drugs.

Parliament heard from several of the state's leading experts on the drugs crisis, detailing the strengths and weaknesses of existing drugs policy.

Mr Bracks revealed the new Premier's Drug Prevention Council would include people from a broad range of non-political backgrounds and be supported by its own network of staff.

It would report to parliament through the Drugs and Crime Prevention Committee and be funded by the Government.

"We'll work with Neil Comrie, David Penington and others on the form of (it)," Mr Bracks said.

"I think it's an appropriate way to go because we have to range across the whole of Government and reporting to the Premier and reporting to the Parliament . . . is the right step to take."

"A statutory authority similar to the ombudsman, which Mr Comrie was proposing, I don't think would optimise the efforts we want out of all government departments to make sure their programs are directed to assist in the prevention of young people taking drugs."

The council will establish links among business, philanthropists and the community and advise the Government on drug education and prevention.

Mr Comrie spoke about the dangers of politics taking over the debate, adding that better education programs were needed for schools and special advisers should be placed in every school.

He believed every MP knew there was a great opportunity to fight the drug problem.

"However, the political process has effectively stifled progress down this path," Mr Comrie said.

"Instead, we have been using a great deal of our time and energy arguing about treatment models such as supervised injecting facilities, heroin trials and legalisation/decriminalisation."

Professor David Penington, who was at the centre of the last joint sitting on the drug debate in 1996, reminded MPs of what he saw as the failure to act.

"Five years ago I warned in this House that unless we took a new approach to cannabis, including a realistic and strong health-based campaign against excessive and harmful use, more young people would start on cannabis then move to heroin," Prof Penington said.

"It was becoming cheaper than cannabis. Sadly this is exactly what has happened."

Prof Penington's model for an independent body mirrored the Bracks Government's agenda.

"Like VicHealth, it should report to the Premier, and annually to the Parliament," he said.

Catholic Archbishop George Pell said the heroin problem was only the "tip of the iceberg" in terms of community problems.

Dr Pell suggested a tough advertising campaign could help to counter the effects of modern society on the young. He said that, unless society took responsibility for problems facing families, then social problems could intensify.

"If family breakdown worsens it will cancel out the gains of even the best social programs," Dr Pell said.

School principal Andy Hamilton, of Heatherhill Secondary College in Springvale, said schools faced ad hoc funding.

"This approach must cease," Mr Hamilton said.

Prof Margaret Hamilton, head of the Turning Point Alcohol and Drug Centre, warned it was crucial that the community was not left to feel lost and disempowered by the drugs tragedy.

VicHealth chief Rob Moodie said partial victories over road and smoking-related deaths showed inroads could be made.

---

Court Curbs Drug Tests During Pregnancy

New York Times
March 22, 2001
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/22/politics/22SCOT.html

WASHINGTON, March 21 - The Supreme Court ruled today that hospital workers cannot constitutionally test maternity patients for illegal drug use without their consent if the purpose is to alert the police to a crime.

The court's 6-to-3 decision did not resolve a 10-year-old lawsuit brought against the city of Charleston, S.C., by women who were arrested, under a cooperative program between a public hospital and the police department, after a positive urine test for cocaine.

The question of whether any of the 10 plaintiffs actually consented to the tests remains to be decided in the lower courts.

But the majority opinion by Justice John Paul Stevens was a strong statement that the facts of the women's pregnancy and of possible danger to their fetuses through illegal drug use did not change the basic constitutional analysis: in the absence of either a warrant or consent, the drug tests amounted to unconstitutional searches.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote a separate concurring opinion. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote a dissenting opinion that was joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice Clarence Thomas.

The court overturned a 1999 decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., that regardless of whether the women provided informed consent, the warrantless drug testing program was justified by the "special needs" of stopping drug use by pregnant women and getting the women into treatment.

Justice Stevens said that the "special needs" exception to the Fourth Amendment, which the court has recognized in limited circumstances to justify drug testing for health and safety purposes, did not apply to a program that was so directly connected to law enforcement.

"The central and indispensable feature of the policy from its inception was the use of law enforcement to coerce the patients into substance abuse treatment," Justice Stevens 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," he continued, "the immediate objective of the searches was to generate evidence for law enforcement purposes in order to reach that goal."

And that was the constitutional problem, Justice Stevens said: because law enforcement "always serves some broader social purpose or objective," a statement of a worthy ultimate goal could not suffice to insulate a particular law enforcement program from constitutional scrutiny.

The "stark and unique fact" of this case, Justice Stevens said, was that the cooperative program between the hospital and the police "was designed to obtain evidence of criminal conduct by the tested patients that would be turned over to the police and that could be admissible in subsequent criminal prosecutions."

Although the legal issue before the court today in Ferguson v. Charleston, No. 99-936, was a narrow one, the case touched on deeper questions about medical privacy in general and the rights of pregnant women in particular. (Crystal Ferguson was one of the women tested.) The hospital of the Medical University of South Carolina and the Charleston police devised the drug-testing program in the face of growing concern about the fate of "crack babies" born to cocaine-using mothers.

At the time, the late 1980's and early 1990's, jurisdictions around the country were considering various novel legal theories for prosecuting pregnant women for behavior that endangered their fetuses, to the concern of many medical professionals who warned that the most direct effect would be to frighten women who were using drugs away from prenatal care.

Organizations including the American Medical Association and the American Public Health Association filed briefs with the court on behalf of the plaintiffs that made that argument. Justice Stevens took explicit note of the briefs, saying that in light of them, "it is especially difficult to argue that the program here was designed simply to save lives."

Before Charleston first modified and then dropped its program after several years, 30 women were arrested, with nearly all the charges dropped after the women agreed to enter treatment. Some who tested positive for cocaine during labor were taken to jail in handcuffs or leg shackles shortly after giving birth. The hospital did not test all its maternity patients, only those who met certain criteria, many of which correlated with poverty.

In his dissenting opinion, Justice Scalia said the fact that the public employees and officials who participated in the program might now face damages for violating the women's constitutional rights "proves once again that no good deed goes unpunished." He said the program served a legitimate medical purpose, and the fact that it served a law enforcement purpose as well should not take it outside the ambit of the court's "special needs" doctrine.

The court has applied that doctrine a handful of times, to justify the drug testing of student athletes, customs agents and railroad workers involved in train accidents. Justice Stevens said those precedents differed from the case today in several important respects. The health and safety justifications were "divorced from the state's general interest in law enforcement," he said, while "the invasion of privacy in this case is far more substantial than in those cases."

Four months ago, in a decision that foreshadowed the court's wariness about giving the special needs doctrine too expansive a scope, the court ruled by the same 6-to-3 majority that an Indianapolis roadblock program designed to detect drugs being transported in cars was unconstitutional. Although the city justified the program on the ground of safety, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote for the court in Indianapolis v. Edmond that it was too closely connected to ordinary law enforcement to be able to skirt ordinary constitutional requirements.

Lynn Paltrow, a lawyer who represented the plaintiffs in the lower courts, said today that the decision was "a victory for all patients who are entitled to expect that when they go to the doctor they will receive medical care and not a search for police purposes." Ms. Paltrow is executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, a program of the Women's Law Project in Philadelphia.

Priscilla J. Smith, a lawyer with the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy in New York who argued the Supreme Court appeal, said the decision would "stop an erosion of the privacy rights of pregnant women by recognizing that concern for the fetus doesn't override pregnant women's rights."

Another lawyer in the case, Catherine Weiss, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's reproductive freedom project, said, "You can't just mouth the words `drugs' and `pregnant woman' and get out from under all the strictures that apply to ordinary law enforcement."

One unusual aspect of the case was that while the plaintiffs drew support from many civil liberties and medical organizations, not a single friend- of-the-court brief was filed on behalf of the city.

The hospital had argued throughout the litigation that the women had signed forms that provided consent to the urine tests and validated the sharing of the information with the police. The plaintiffs' lawyers said today that the women were not told in advance about the drug testing and provided no valid consent.

When the case was tried in Federal District Court in Charleston, the jury found that the women had consented to the tests. The appeals court did not decide that question because it found that the tests were valid under the "special needs" doctrine regardless of whether there was consent. So the case now returns to the appeals court for determination of whether the women had consented.

-------

Nation waits for insanity to stop in the drug war

USA Today
03/22/2001 - Updated 08:11 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/e98/shapiro/527.htm

WASHINGTON - The drug war is stuck in heavy traffic.

The Oscar marathon may showcase the scene from Traffic in which Michael Douglas, playing the nation's drug czar, begs his staff for "some new ideas" - and is rewarded with the sounds of silence.

This fatalism about drugs is not just a creation of Hollywood. A new poll finds that 74% of Americans believe "we are losing the drug war." Similarly, nearly three-quarters of respondents to the survey, conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, agree that "demand is so high we will never stop drug use."

Yet when asked about anti-drug strategies, the public still clings to the hard-line nostrums of the late 1980s such as "stopping drug importation" (a priority for 52%) and "arresting drug dealers" (49%).

"What comes through is the frustration of it all," says Andrew Kohut, the director of the Pew research center. "People don't think what's happening now is working, but they pick the same strategy and tactics when they're asked what to do."

A small note of moderation was added to the drug debate Wednesday, when the Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision that a Charleston, S.C., hospital could not test pregnant women for drug abuse without their consent and then hand positive results over to the police. Before the public hospital ended this draconian program in 1994, women were dragged off to jail in handcuffs right after giving birth.

"Why wasn't the Supreme Court decision a unanimous 9-0?" asks Garrett Epps, a constitutional law professor at the University of Oregon. "When you go to your doctor and the cops then arrest you for using drugs, it doesn't seem a hard issue that your Fourth Amendment rights were violated."

Epps is the author of a new book on a 1990 Supreme Court decision that banned the use of peyote in the rituals of the Native American Church, To an Unknown God: Religious Freedom on Trial. He argues, "This push toward a 'naked society' suggests that there's no social norm that won't be trumped by the drug war. We think of ourselves occupying a free society, but the sphere of personal freedom is constantly dwindling."

Next Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in its first medical-marijuana case, The United States vs. Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative. Even though nine states have legalized the use of marijuana for medical purposes since 1996, the status of those who supply the drug to patients remains in limbo.

The Oakland case grows out of a law-enforcement effort, coordinated by Clinton administration drug czar Barry McCaffrey, to go after the cooperative after voters in California approved medical marijuana in a referendum in 1996.

"If the court treats this as a drug case, we may have a problem," says Robert Raich, one of the lawyers for the co-op. "That's why we see this as a states' rights case."

The Supreme Court has become increasingly sympathetic to states' rights arguments, especially in cases involving the federal government's regulatory powers. But for all its attraction to state sovereignty, the politicized high court in the medical-marijuana case may find it hard to look beyond the passions aroused by the drug war.

A semicomic definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing and expecting a different result. By that standard, the nation's drug war may be operating on the fringes of lunacy.

About the only other arena in which the federal government has so dramatically and so stubbornly maintained an ineffective policy is the 4-decade-old economic embargo against Cuba.

It is telling that Bill Clinton developed the moxie to discuss the inequities of mandatory sentences for drug crimes and the disparity between the penalties for possession of cocaine and crack only after the 2000 election. In fact, the rigid drug policies of his administration seemed motivated primarily by political calculation and Clinton's fear of reminding the nation that he was the first president to admit to smoking marijuana, although, of course, he "didn't inhale."

In theory, George W. Bush has the freedom to bring to the anti-drug effort the same innovative conservative thinking that he has demonstrated in education policy and in trying to mobilize religious institutions to deliver social services. But aside from a few stray comments by Attorney General John Ashcroft about "reinvigorating the war on drugs," the administration has been strangely silent on the issue and has yet to appoint a drug czar.

The St. Petersburg Times reported Thursday that Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has been pushing his own drug coordinator, Jim McDonough, for the White House post. While not confirming any discussions with the White House, McDonough, a former aide to McCaffrey, took pains in a lengthy phone interview Thursday to sketch out his philosophy of the drug war.

McDonough reflects the no-surrender school of fighting drugs when he says, "Making drugs legal is the most ridiculous idea since they said that the Titanic was unsinkable." But he also takes a more moderate stance in emphasizing that "the immediate crying need is on treatment." He advances a welcome proposal for "an annual system that should review the egregious cases where sentencing is all out of proportion to the crime." But, in the next breath, he reiterates his chilling Florida proposal to provide state tax breaks to companies that agree to mandatory drug testing of all employees.

The creators of Traffic are right: There has to be a better way of reducing drug abuse without further jeopardizing personal freedom. But when it comes to new ideas, the nation is waiting. The Bush administration is in charge.

--------

Medical Hallucinogens?
Researchers Studying Possible Medical Use of LSD, Peyote, Psilocybin

ABC News
01/03/22
By Robin Eisner
mailto:Robin.Eisner@abc.com
http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/living/DailyNews/hallucinogen010322.html

NEW YORK, March 22 - Could 'shrooms or LSD help the mentally ill?

STORY HIGHLIGHTS Hallucinogens Among Oldest Drugs Trials Must Be Rigorously Designed Critics: Risks Outweigh Benefits

At Harvard, a psychiatrist is studying whether the hallucinogenic cactus peyote creates any long-term memory or attention problems in the American Indians who take the drug as part of religious rituals.

A University of Arizona psychiatrist is poised to begin researching whether taking the hallucinogen psilocybin under controlled circumstances may help people suffering with obsessive compulsive disorder.

And another Harvard psychiatrist is in the beginning phases of designing a protocol that may employ LSD or another hallucinogen to see if it helps terminally ill people suffering from depression and pain.

With some support from the private New Mexico-based Heffter Institute, these researchers, along with others in the United States and abroad, represent a small movement of scientists looking at the possible medical benefits of hallucinogens for some psychiatric conditions.

Hallucinogens Among Oldest Drugs

Hallucinogens are among the oldest known group of drugs that have been used for their ability to alter human perception and mood, according to the Drug Enforcement Agency. They have been used for medical, social and religious practices.

More recently, synthetic hallucinogens have been used recreationally, with hippies from the '60s, such as the now deceased ex-Harvard psychology professor Timothy Leary, first promoting their use with the famous slogan, "Turn on, Tune in, Drop Out."

Today, hallucinogens are deemed drugs of abuse by the DEA, with no known medical benefit. Approximately 8 percent to 10 percent of high school seniors tried a hallucinogen in the past year according to a University of Michigan study of drug use.

It remains unclear how these drugs exert their action in the brain, but anecdotal evidence and some earlier studies indicate they may help a variety of psychiatric conditions, says David E. Nichols, founder of the Heffter Institute, in Santa Fe, and professor of medical chemistry and molecular pharmacology at Purdue School of Pharmacy in West Lafayette, Ind.

Nichols says there is some indication these drugs work on the serotonin pathway in the brain, the same target of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor drugs Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft, used to treat depression, anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder.

He founded the institute in 1993 to help give scientific credibility to medical research on hallucinogens. After years of fund-raising, the institute now has enough money to help scientists do serious research.

Trials Must Be Rigorously Designed

"Since opinions are so strongly held about hallucinogens, it is essential that any studies in this area be performed with the most rigorous modern methods and great care to have an impartial approach," says Dr. Harrison Pope, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, who is leading the four-year peyote study in American Indians.

Funded largely by the National Institute of Drug Abuse and Heffter, Pope's group will be comparing three populations of American Indians - peyote users in religious ceremonies, alcoholics, and local tribespeople - to see if peyote use is associated with cognitive problems.

Pope is also developing a trial to follow up on studies from the '60s and '70s suggesting that hallucinogens helped ease anxiety and depression in the terminally ill and also reduced their need for pain medication.

"The challenge is to design the study in such a way that if the drug shows benefits, skeptics are convinced, and if it doesn't help, proponents of hallucinogenic use don't challenge the research as inadequate," Pope says.

These studies take time to develop to get that scientific imprimatur. They also need to get review, by local medical institutions and governmental regulatory authorities. The DEA and the FDA is still reviewing a protocol by Dr. Francisco Moreno, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Arizona in Tucson, hoping to study a chemically synthesized psilocybin for obsessive-compulsives. His hospital gave him permission to start the study.

A protocol of psilocybin and depression in Switzerland also is undergoing revision before it is submitted to the government authorities there, Nichols says.

Critics: Risks Outweigh Benefits

Some scientists, however, question the potential risks of these studies.

The problem with this kind of research is that when average people hear or read about them in this preliminary stage they might think these drugs could be good for them now, says Una McCann, associate professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. "But it remains unknown until the studies are finished," McCann says.

Dr. Gregory Collins the director of the Alcohol and Drug Recovery program at the Cleveland Clinic, in Cleveland, Ohio, believes the risks outweigh any benefits.

"Some of these drugs have been shown to have long-term consequences in healthy people," Collins says. " I would be reluctant to try them in the mentally ill."

Nichols, however, defends the research. "I think we will find some medical benefit of these drugs," Nichols says. "There is no other drug class that doesn't have some medical utility."

-------- space

Station Commander Ends 4.5 Weightless Months

New York Times
March 22, 2001
National News Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/22/national/22NATI.html

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., March 21 (AP) - The first commander of the International Space Station surprised his doctors and even himself by walking off space shuttle Discovery today and celebrating the end of his 4.5 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.

The only complaints of the commander, Capt. William M. Shepherd of the Navy, were that everything felt heavy and his balance was a little off.

A team of doctors and fire-and- rescue technicians rushed to the space shuttle after its predawn landing to help Captain Shepherd and his Russian crewmates, Yuri P. Gidzenko and Sergei K. Krikalev.

The doctors expected the three to be nauseated and possibly even to weak to move. But all three walked away on their own, alongside their four shuttle crewmates.

The shuttle commander, Capt. James D. Wetherbee of the Navy, guided Discovery to a 2:31 a.m. touchdown. The shuttle returned 13 days after it lifted off on a mission to deliver a fresh space station crew and five tons of equipment.

---

Final death burn for famed Russian space station

USA Today
03/22/2001 - Updated 08:28 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001-03-22-mir.htm

KOROLYOV, Russia (AP) - After 15 years in the heavens, Mir started its return home on Thursday, it's cargo-ship engines putting the aging space station on course for a fiery plunge into the South Pacific. Engines of the attached cargo ship Progress fired for 21 minutes as Mir circled the globe just below the Equator, over the Indian Ocean. Mission Control said that Mir's flight was stable and the computer-controlled system was maintaining the station's course. This burn - and a second scheduled 90 minutes later - were meant to slow Mir and put it in an elliptical orbit.

A final 23-minute blast, scheduled around 8 a.m. Moscow time and midnight Eastern time, was to hurl the station into the waters between Australia and Chile.

If all went well, Mir would fall harmlessly into the sea. If not, the consequences of 27 tons of blazing debris tumbling from the sky were frightening.

It was the first time that Progress engines had been fired for such a long period and tension was palpable as the deorbit entered its critical phase. But the chief of Mission Control, Vladimir Solovyov, put the chances "that everything will be all right at 98-99%."

The death of Mir marked the end of a proud chapter in the Russian space program; it proved that long duration space flight was possible. Its passing came with much wistfulness, and some protest. About 15 demonstrators briefly rallied Thursday outside Mission Control, holding up a portrait of Yuri Gagarin, the Russian who was the first man in space.

"Don't Give Up the Russian Space Industry," the sign read. But Mir was doomed. The impoverished Russian government could not afford to keep it in orbit - and in good repair - while fulfilling its obligations to the construction of the international space station.

Inside Mission Control near Moscow, the mood was strictly professional. Controllers bottled up regrets over Mir's demise as they pored over charts and figures in preparation for crucial commands that would power the final descent early Friday.

"All the emotions we feel, we will only be able to express them tomorrow after the sinking of the station," said Andrei Borisenko, the shift director at Mission Control. "Today we are working without emotion and doing our jobs."

On its last day, the aging space station soaked up the sun's energy to power its fickle batteries and stabilize its alignment.

Its target area was 120 miles wide by 3,600 miles long, and centered roughly at 44 degrees south latitude and 150 degrees west longitude. Most of the 143-ton craft would burn up during re-entry - temperatures were expected to reach more than 5,400 degrees Fahrenheit.

But the remaining chunks, the equivalent of 20 Volkswagen Beetles, were expected to reach the Earth's surface, scattered over a long swath. Some 1,500 fragments of 40 pounds or more were expected to fall over the zone.

Space officials said debris would be traveling so fast that it could smash through a block of concrete six-feet thick.

Vsevolod Latyshev, a spokesman at Mission Control, said Russia would make no effort to recover the debris. "What for?" he asked quizzically.

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.

But Mir was by far the heaviest spacecraft ever dumped, and its size and shape made it difficult to exactly predict the re-entry.

A fleet of fishing boats in the zone insisted on staying put because the tuna were biting, said Wayne Heikkila, general manager of the Western Fishboat Owners Association.

Thirty-five space buffs and scientists were in the South Pacific to chase the plunging station; participants were optimistic that they would catch sight of Mir in a 200-second window of opportunity.

And Taco Bell set up a 40-by-40 foot vinyl target - emblazoned with the company's logo and the words "Free Taco Here!" - 10 miles off Australia. In the extremely unlikely event that Mir hit the target, the company promised free tacos to all 281 million Americans.

But to Russians, Mir's demise was no joke. Mir came to symbolize the Soviet Union's fading technological prowess. It was launched in 1986 - just five weeks before former Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev embarked upon perestroika, the reforms that doomed the Communist empire, and just two months before the Chernobyl atomic reactor exploded in the world's worst nuclear accident.

The orbiter had circled the Earth 86,320 times as of Thursday, space officials said. Named after the Russian word that means both peace and world, Mir housed 104 astronauts in its lifetime. Sixty-two of them were from other countries, including seven Americans. Thirty-eight other Americans visited Mir when space shuttles docked there.

But NASA would have nothing to say about Mir's ending, according to spokeswoman Kirsten Larson. It was tracking the space station's return to Earth.

The space travelers performed about 23,000 experiments, growing wheat, building semiconductors, studying the effects of long-term weightlessness on humans.

But in its last years, Mir became something of an orbiting lemon. In 1997, an oxygen-generating canister caught fire, a supply ship crashed into the station, its computer system broke down and its power failed.

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

---

Mir's pioneering legacy

USA Today
03/22/2001 - Updated 02:12 AM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/2001-03-22-edtwof2.htm

Space station Mir's expected incineration in a "controlled" de-orbit over the South Pacific on Friday is a fitting demise for an aged pioneer crippled by the passage of time. It will go out in a fiery spectacle that purges the infirmities of its recent past and recalls its trailblazing youth.

In recent years, the pride of Russia's space program made news by catching fire, spinning out of control and losing the capability to regenerate its oxygen. But its 15-year run of achievements far outweighs those failures, nearly matching those of the U.S moon landings.

Twenty-thousand-plus experiments taught scientists the ins and outs of growing wheat without gravity.

A cosmonaut who lived on board for 438 days proved that man could live in space long enough to safely reach Mars.

A succession of crews from a dozen nations helped foster international cooperation in spacefaring that bears a legacy today in the International Space Station.

But Mir was really about something more. It was about swagger and daring, an example that should spur the exploration of space. That was particularly true of decisions to keep the space station in orbit and fully manned more than a decade past its expected life. Those billion-dollar choices were more about Russian pride than any cold policy analyses.

And they paid off. The International Space Station is filled with Mir-inspired innovations. Some are complicated: computer integration, high-tech docking sensors and wireless communications spurred by Mir's glitches. Others are mundane: movable foot stands for spacewalkers making repairs, and extra outdoor lighting.

Astronauts are even trained differently as a result of Mir - with more general "handyman" skills. Those lessons were already at work on the International Space Station this week when a fire alarm went off and a computer system failed to react as programmed.

Cowboy qualities like those that kept Mir aloft, seemingly stripped from today's U.S. space program, will one day put a colony on Mars and send spaceships from Earth to other solar systems.

Mir, in its youth and at its death, fired the spirit to get those jobs done.

---

Mir's Marvelous Orbit

New York Times
March 22, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/22/opinion/L22MIRR.html

To the Editor:
Re "When Mir Descends" (editorial, March 20):

You speak of Mir as a symbol of Russia's accomplishment in space. Yet no matter who built it in the 20th century, in the centuries to come when the destructive and wasteful nationalism we see today has given way not just to a profit-driven economy but, one hopes, to reason-driven global cooperation, Mir will be seen as the harbinger of the exploration of space, of the universe and of the great unknown beyond our single planet.

You say it costs at least $250 million a year to keep Mir aloft. That money would be well spent keeping Mir flying until such time as it can be retrieved, dismantled and brought back to Earth for the amazement of future generations of space-traveling citizens so they can see where it all started. Save Mir now.

SAMUEL W. GELFMAN Los Angeles, March 20, 2001

---

Mir's destruction set for tomorrow

Washington Times
March 22, 2001
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-200132221438.htm

Russia's Mir space station crossed the final frontier yesterday, falling to the point at which its planned destruction no longer could be called off, a duty officer at Russia's mission control said.

Mir's orbit fell to within a few hundred yards of the 137-mile altitude from which mission control will turn on its steering controls, so that it can fire the craft's engines to slow it down and send it crashing to Earth tomorrow.

"This is it, this is the frontier," the duty officer said.

The 15-year-old station has outlived its life span five times over, giving Russia by far the world's most extensive experience in long-term manned space flight. It will be the largest man-made object ever to strike the Earth.

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

Kofi Annan to Seek 2nd U.N. Term

Associated Press
March 22, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-UN-Annans-Future.html

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced Thursday he will seek a second five-year term, saying his top priorities will be to fight poverty and promote peace and human rights worldwide.

After months of speculation and leaks in recent days, Annan officially let the world in on the worst-kept secret at the United Nations.

``There is a great deal still to be done to make the United Nations -- this indispensable organization -- into an effective instrument humanity needs in this new century to fulfill the hopes for peace, development and human rights,'' Annan told a news conference.

``If asked, I am ready to serve.''

Last week, the secretary-general, who is from Ghana, got a strong endorsement from the 53-nation African group at the United Nations.

Immediately after Thursday's announcement, he also received warm praise from the United States, which lobbied successfully five years ago to deny his predecessor, Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt, a second term.

``We think he has done an excellent job,'' Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters in Washington. ``He's been a very, very effective secretary-general. And in due course, we will announce our specific position with respect to supporting him or voting for him. ''

Annan is to meet Powell and President Bush on Friday.

With Annan's hat in the ring, the two key questions now are whether Asian nations also will submit a candidate -- and who will get the support of the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France, the five veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council.

The next secretary-general must be approved by both the 15-member Security Council and the 189-member General Assembly.

By tradition, the secretary-general's job rotates every 10 years by region, and it's Asia's turn to propose a candidate. But Africa's 10-year term was split after Boutros-Ghali was denied a second term. And a quiet campaign has been under way for months to pressure Annan to stay because he is highly regarded by many nations.

Annan said the decision to seek another term was a difficult one, considering what he said were the ``exhausting claims'' the job had taken on his family and personal life.

But he said he was inspired by the sacrifices U.N. peacekeepers and aid workers make every day and gratified by the support of member governments.

Before stepping down in January, U.S. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke called Annan ``an international rock star of diplomacy'' and said he was the best secretary-general in the 55-year history of the United Nations.

``He's the right man at the right time and I hope that the Asians will understand and look for good candidates for five years from now,'' Holbrooke said Thursday.

China's deputy U.N. ambassador Shen Guofang said last week that some Asian delegations want an Asian secretary-general. But diplomats said the region is divided on a candidate, with no obvious front-runner.

Possible candidates include Sri Lanka's President Chandrika Kumaratunga; former Thai Foreign Minister Surin Pitsuwan; Bangladesh's Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and the country's U.N. Ambassador Anwarul Chowdhury; and Singapore's U.N. Ambassador Kishore Mahbubani and former Ambassador Tommy Koh.

Annan, who celebrates his 63rd birthday April 8, is the seventh secretary-general and the first to be elected from the ranks of United Nations staff. He was the U.N. undersecretary-general for peacekeeping when he was tapped for the top job. His current term expires Dec. 31.

In backing Annan, the Africans cited his vision for the 21st century, endorsed by more than 150 world leaders at last September's Millennium Summit. They pledged to send every child to primary school, deliver millions from destitution and halt the spread of AIDS and other major diseases by 2015.

Asked what he hoped to achieve with a second term, Annan said he would ``follow aggressively'' the summit agenda.

The African ambassadors also singled out Annan's leadership in reforming the United Nations, overhauling peacekeeping, getting U.N. bodies to work together, reaching out the business community and giving the world body ``a public face.''

But Annan has also faced criticism for trying to negotiate with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein over access to suspected weapon sites and for promoting a new policy of ``humanitarian intervention'' to prevent major internal human rights violations, which many countries said would violate their sovereignty.

---

Annan to seek second term as secretary-general

USA Today
03/22/2001 - Updated 12:11 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-03-22-annan.htm

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - After months of speculation, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced Thursday that he will seek a second five-year term at the helm of the world body.

"If asked, I am ready to serve," Annan said, officially letting the world in on the worst-kept secret at the United Nations.

Last week, the secretary-general, who is from Ghana, got a strong endorsement from the 53-nation African group at the United Nations. The group urged him to run and pledged to campaign for him.

With Annan running, the two key questions now are whether Asian nations also will submit a candidate, and who will get the support of the five veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council - the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France.

By tradition, the secretary-general's job rotates every 10 years by region, and it's now Asia's turn to propose a candidate.

But Africa's 10-year term was split after the United States successfully lobbied to prevent Annan's predecessor, Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt, from taking a second term. And a quiet campaign has been under way for months to pressure Annan to stay in the job for another five years, because he is highly regarded by many nations.

Before stepping down in January, U.S. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke called Annan "an international rock star of diplomacy" and said he was the best secretary-general in the 55-year history of the United Nations, a view echoed by representatives of several other key countries.

Nonetheless, China's deputy U.N. ambassador Shen Guofang said last week that some Asian delegations want the next secretary-general to be an Asian. The Asian group is expected to meet again within the month, he said.

But diplomats said the region is divided on a candidate, and there is no obvious leading contender.

According to one key diplomat, the five permanent council members all will support Annan for a second term. But there will be no outright endorsement until the council sees whether any other candidates emerge to challenge him.

Annan, who celebrates his 63rd birthday on April 8, is the seventh secretary-general and the first to be elected from the ranks of U.N. staff. He was the U.N. undersecretary-general for peacekeeping when he was tapped for the top job. His current term expires Dec. 31.

In backing Annan, the Africans cited his vision for the 21st century that was endorsed by more than 150 world leaders at last September's Millennium Summit. They pledged to send every child to primary school, deliver millions from destitution and halt the spread of AIDS and other major diseases by 2015.

The African ambassadors also singled out Annan's leadership in reforming the United Nations, in overhauling U.N. peacekeeping, in raising often ignored critical issues, in getting U.N. bodies to work together, in reaching out to the business community and voluntary organizations - and in giving the world body "a public face."

But Annan has also faced criticism for trying to negotiate with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein over access to suspected weapon sites, and for promoting a new policy of "humanitarian intervention" to prevent major internal human rights violations. Many countries opposed the concept as an infringement on their sovereignty.

-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

Democrats Offer Alternative Energy Plan

New York Times
March 22, 2001 Filed at 5:14 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Energy-Democrats.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Senate Democrats said they want to limit the use of petroleum for transportation and force automakers to build more fuel efficient cars, offering an energy policy Thursday that contrasts sharply with President Bush's plan to drill for oil in Alaska's wildlife refuge.

Both proposals are given relatively little chance of getting through Congress. Lawmakers, however, are under growing pressure to quickly address energy problems amid concern about power shortages, soaring electricity costs and gasoline price spikes this summer.

A GOP energy bill and proposals from the White House have emphasized energy production. The Democrats' legislation focuses heavily on using less energy, promoting efficiency and developing renewable energy sources.

``We cannot drill our way out of this problem and we cannot use our coming energy challenges as justification for an all-out assault on the environment,'' said Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota.

The Democratic legislation proposes tax incentives for more efficient appliances and for renewable energy such as solar and wind power. It would streamline approval for gas pipelines and power transmission lines, and give industry a tax break to build a natural gas pipeline from Alaska's North Slope.

In an attempt to rein in growing energy demand by motor vehicles, the bill would, for the first time, limit the amount of petroleum that could be used for transportation. It is a novel way to try to force automakers to improve fuel efficiency, especially in their fleets of popular sport utility vehicles.

``Unless we can deal with vehicle efficiency, we will not be able to control consumption,'' said Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M.

Despite their offer of help in getting to market the large amounts of natural gas on Alaska's North Slope, Democrats remain opposed to drilling for oil or gas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in the northeastern corner of the state.

``It would have no impact on oil prices,'' Daschle said.

Development of the energy reserves is a critical element of Bush's energy strategy. The refuge could hold as much as 16 billion barrels of oil, larger than reserves in neighboring Prudhoe Bay, although the oil would not be available for a decade.

Bush has acknowledged that opening the Arctic refuge to drilling may be a hard sell in Congress. This week the House Budget Committee refused to include $1.2 billion in anticipated revenues from lease sales in the refuge in its five-year budget blueprint because there is no assurance Congress will approve the drilling.

Senate Democrats have pledged to block legislation that lifts the refuge's protection.

Energy problems such as the current electricity crisis in California and the Northwest can be addressed without ``soiling our environment,'' said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.

But the Democrats' proposal to get automakers to boost fuel efficiency is likely to be just as difficult to pass.

``I'd be surprised if anything this drastic would be enacted into law,'' said Rep. Martin Frost, D-Texas. He joined a half dozen House Democrats who on Thursday criticized Bush's energy proposals for not focusing enough of conservation.

About 12 million barrels of oil a day are used for transportation, or more than two-thirds of the country's total petroleum demand. Fuel efficiency from automobiles reached its peak in 1986 and has declined in recent years, largely because of the growing popularity of sport utility vehicles, which generally are more fuel hungry.

The Bush administration and many lawmakers oppose increasing federal fuel economy standards. The Clinton administration never argued for higher fuel economy requirements despite demands to do so from environmentalists.

Democrats now are seeking to approach the issue a different way: leaving those standards alone but proposing that the growth of petroleum use for transportation be capped at 5 percent over the next eight years.

Republicans, in their energy legislation presented last month, did not broadly address motor vehicle energy use beyond proposing tax credits for the purchase of ultra-efficient vehicles. Their proposal focused heavily on incentives for production, including a call to drill in the Arctic refuge.

A presidential task force on energy, led by Vice President Dick Cheney, is expected to announce its recommendations soon. It is expected to emphasize broad measures to increase oil and gas development, especially on federal lands; ease regulations on refineries, pipelines and power plants; and offer incentives for expanding power production from nuclear and coal-burning plants.

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., has said he will not consider an energy bill until after the White House sends its proposal to Capitol Hill.

-------- chemicals

Study of Chemicals in Americans Shows Encouraging Trends

New York Times
March 22, 2001
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/22/health/22TOXI.html

The most comprehensive study yet of the levels of potentially harmful substances in Americans has some encouraging findings, and sometimes surprising ones.

The results published yesterday by federal health officials showed, for example, that nonsmokers' exposure to cigarette smoke is one fourth what it was in 1991, as measured through levels of cotinine.

The levels of mercury in children in the new study were lower than expected, and well below federal limits. But mercury concentrations in women of child-bearing age were higher than expected, though not above current limits.

Also, because the study is the first to measure a wide range of chemicals in the body instead of relying on estimates, it sets the stage for a major shift in the way agencies concerned with the environment, food and health determine the risks posed by the byproducts of the industrial age.

"Right now we spend over a billion dollars a year monitoring water, hundreds of millions of dollars monitoring air and looking at foods for pesticides and the rest," said Dr. Richard J. Jackson, the director of the National Center of Environmental Health, which undertook the study. The center is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"But until now," Dr. Jackson said, "we haven't had the tools to look at one of the most important monitoring targets of all: the human body."

The study examined blood and urine from 3,800 children and adults representing a cross section of the population. It found traces of 11 heavy metals; 6 compounds left after exposure to pesticides; 4 compounds that indicate exposure to phthalates, an ingredient of some plastics and cosmetics; and cotinine, an indicator of exposure to cigarette smoke that is produced when the body breaks down nicotine.

The researchers said the drop in the level of cotinine proved the effectiveness of the restrictions on smoking in public places in the last decade.

Many scientists, environmental and medical, agreed that the study represented a substantial advance by directly measuring 27 chemicals and metals in thousands of samples of blood and urine.

Previous surveys of this sort, conducted sporadically from the 1970's to the 1990's, looked only at lead, cadmium and cotinine.

The new approach has been made possible by the rising sensitivity of laboratory tests using ever smaller amounts of blood and by the advent of computers powerful enough to analyze such an abundance of data, Dr. Jackson said.

He said the survey would be conducted annually and steadily expanded, so that in three years, 100 metals and compounds would be measured.

Dr. Lynn R. Goldman, a pediatrician and professor of environmental health at Johns Hopkins University who has worked on chemical risks at the Environmental Protection Agency, said: "This is extraordinarily important because you can really hang your hat on it. You finally have firm exposure numbers, not models and estimates and layers of assumption."

She pointed to the findings on mercury as an example of how the work would help clarify where to focus public health efforts.

"As a pediatrician," Dr. Goldman said, "this says I don't need to be as concerned about parents' giving fish to their children, but I do need to be giving advice about consumption during pregnancy."

The authors emphasized that they were drawing no conclusions about whether the substances - including heavy metals, pesticides and ingredients in cosmetics and plastics - had any impact on the nation's health.

The study showed that some industrial chemicals that were rare in the environment were absorbed more readily by the body than similar ones that were more common, providing clues that could avert mistaken regulatory crackdowns on the wrong compound, the scientists said.

The central finding of this sort relates to the phthalates, common ingredients in many plastics and cosmetics that have been the center of a tug of war between industry - which asserts they are safe - and some environmental groups - which point to laboratory studies showing potentially harmful effects.

The study found that breakdown products left by the most common phthalates used by industry were much rarer in urine samples than those of one of their less abundant cousins, diethyl phthalate.

The explanation could lie in the uses of diethyl phthalate, which is an ingredient in many soaps, lotions, perfumes and other products that are applied to the skin, Dr. James L. Pirkle, the deputy director for science at the laboratories that ran the study, said.

He said the Centers for Disease Control had begun a separate research project to test whether the compound is absorbed through the skin.

The report, posted yesterday on the Web site of the environmental health center, (http://www.cdc.gov/ nceh/dls/report), prompted a flood of reaction.

Some representatives of the chemical industry said the results could help dispel unfounded fears about some chemicals.

But some private environmental groups pointed out that the findings raised questions about how to set the appropriate limits for chemicals, particularly because they can interact when combined in unpredictable ways.

"It's time to adopt the precautionary principle in regulating toxic chemicals," said Ann Platt McGinn, a senior researcher studying chemical risks for the Worldwatch Institute, a private group.

-------- environment

Arsenic and Old Laws

New York Times
March 22, 2001
By CHUCK FOX
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/22/opinion/22FOX.html

ANNAPOLIS, Md. - The Bush administration said this week that it intends to withdraw new drinking water standards designed to protect the public from arsenic pollution. This rash move could threaten the health of 13 million Americans whose drinking water has elevated levels of arsenic.

The administration now says "scientific indicators are unclear," implying that the new standard was not justified. I was in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency office that developed these new standards under rigorous scientific review. Arsenic exposure is closely linked to lung and bladder cancer and many other adverse health effects. The Environmental Protection Agency approved the new permissible standard for arsenic in drinking water of 10 parts per billion in January, after a decade's worth of work and a lengthy public process. The old standard of 50 parts per billion was established in 1942, long before new research on arsenic's effects.

The National Academy of Sciences completed the most recent analysis of arsenic in 1999, concluding that the old standard was more than 100 times less protective than other drinking water standards. The academy did not recommend a new number. But it urged the federal government to move quickly to revise the World War II-era rule to protect public health. Even Congress expressed frustration with the slow pace of revising the arsenic standard, and in 1997, Congress directed the E.P.A. to set a new arsenic standard.

Now the Bush administration has justified its sudden reversal on arsenic by suggesting that there was no "consensus" on a specific numeric standard. Unfortunately, there rarely is consensus on such numbers. The 10 parts per billion standard for arsenic, however, is widely supported by drinking water utilities, states, scientists, public health officials and environmentalists, though not by the mining industry, some Western states and some scientists. Regulators always strive for consensus, as I did. But it is simply not possible to achieve absolute consensus in this case, so we opted for the scientifically sound standard that would protect public health.

If the E.P.A. ultimately rescinds the new standard, there may be no standard whatsoever for arsenic. Under the new rule, all communities would have to be in compliance with the new standard within five years. But if that rule is repealed, there is a question as to whether the old standard would automatically go back into effect five years from now.

Communities need time to plan capital investments to improve drinking water quality. They need certainty in a regulatory environment. By reversing course, the E.P.A. would cause serious delays in their planning processes. Approximately 3,000 communities throughout the country, many of them in the Southwest, are in need of federal guidance in upgrading their water systems. But it could be many years before the agency makes another decision on arsenic levels.

The Bush administration apparently will go back to the drawing board and try to find a new consensus. While I have great faith in the agency's staff, the mining industry and public health professionals are not likely to agree. The questions facing the agency a few years from now will be fundamentally the same that exist today. We answered those questions with a commitment to public health protection. I certainly hope that the new administration will approach this issue in the same manner.

Chuck Fox is a former assistant administrator for water at the Environmental Protection Agency.

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Republicans' Budget Plans Ignore Arctic Oil Drilling

New York Times
March 22, 2001
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/22/politics/22ALAS.html

WASHINGTON, March 21 - President Bush's plan to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration suffered a double blow from Republicans in Congress today.

In a newly released budget for 2002, Republicans on the House Budget Committee declined to include any anticipated revenue from oil drilling in the Alaskan refuge, saying the issue would mean too big a fight for the budget process to deal with.

The chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico, indicated that he expected to follow suit, since at least one Republican on that committee, Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, opposes drilling in the refuge.

That likely decision to leave the drilling provision out of the budget significantly complicates a bid by Frank H. Murkowski, the Alaska Republican who heads the Senate Energy Committee, to open the coastal plain of the refuge to exploration. Instead of needing 50 votes to get such a provision passed as part of his energy bill - a hurdle difficult enough - he would need to muster 60 votes to lift Senate budget rules and simply get it to the floor.

But Mr. Murkowski said in an interview that he planned to retain the provision in his bill. He maintained that there was strong support for it, that it was in the budget that President Bush will propose next month and that it would be among the recommendations being developed by a White House energy task force.

Mr. Murkowski also said he would find creative ways to get the contentious provision passed. "There are some other ways to skin the cat," the senator said.

"And as far as I'm concerned, for those who want to filibuster, Nero fiddled while Rome burned," he said of what the Bush administration has described as a growing energy crisis.

The move to leave the drilling provision out of the House budget proposal, and the likely decision to leave it out of the Senate proposal as well, illustrate the leverage that Republican moderates can exercise on environmental issues.

President Bill Clinton stood in the way of previous efforts to open the refuge to exploration, leading proponents of drilling to believe that the change in administrations offered them their best opportunity, particularly given Mr. Bush's strong support. But the Republican drilling foes are proving a major obstacle.

In addition to a number of Senate Republican moderates who oppose oil exploration in the refuge, 13 House Republicans sent a letter last Thursday to the chairman of the House Budget Committee, Representative Jim Nussle of Iowa, asking that he keep the provision out of the budget.

"We strongly believe this area should be preserved," they wrote. "A vote to the contrary would be very divisive within the Republican Party and harmful to those of us who represent constituents who oppose drilling."

But the proposal has brought a ferocious lobbying war on Capitol Hill and, as Mr. Murkowski made clear, is far from dead. President Bush and Senate Republican leaders alike argue that opening a slice of the refuge to oil exploration would make the United States less dependent on foreign oil.

Just today, Arctic Power, an Alaska group whose sole aim is to achieve drilling in the refuge, announced the creation of a coalition, the Energy Stewardship Alliance, to push for the measure. The new umbrella group includes oil companies, trade groups, transportation associations, the Teamsters' union and the United States Chamber of Commerce.

The newly formed coalition announced that it would sponsor television and radio advertisements in the Washington area over the next six days. "We can balance our need for energy and our concern for the environment," the advertisements say. "That's why 75 percent of Alaskans support energy exploration in A.N.W.R.," the initials by which the refuge is known.

Environmental groups, which say preservation of the refuge is their top priority, voiced only cautious optimism over today's turn of events. One reason is that there are countless ways to circumvent Senate rules. A popular way is to attach contentious pieces of legislation to year-end appropriations bills that must pass to keep the government running and are therefore difficult to block. It does not hurt Mr. Murkowski's cause that Senator Ted Stevens, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, is another Alaska Republican.

"There are unfortunately numerous ways they could try to defy the will of the American people by sneaking a drilling provision on legislation that would be difficult to filibuster," said Adam Kolton, director of the Alaska Wilderness League, which opposes drilling in the refuge.

Still, today's developments place a substantial hurdle in Mr. Murkowski's way.

Mr. Domenici, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said he would not account for the drilling proposal within the budget blueprint if there was Republican opposition within his committee. With the Senate split 50-50 between the two parties, one vote can be enough to doom a bill.

"I'm not going to put it in if it's going to fail, and Murkowski knows that," Senator Domenici said. "I need to make sure all the members of the committee want it."

At least one, Senator Snowe, steadfastly opposes opening the refuge to oil drilling.

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Foot-and-Mouth Disease Now Reported in Ireland

New York Times
March 22, 2001
By BRIAN LAVERY
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/22/world/22CND-IRISH.html

DUBLIN, March 22 - Ireland confirmed its first case of foot-and-mouth disease today, in a herd of sheep on a farm on the border with Northern Ireland.

Government officials responded by beginning the slaughter of 3,000 sheep and 1,000 cattle in a one-kilometer area surrounding the farm to prevent the disease from spreading. As many as 16,000 animals from the area may eventually be killed, officials said.

The Netherlands also confirmed its first case of the disease today. And in Belgium, the agriculture ministry canceled a weekend meeting of some 800 European veterinary experts at a horse clinic because of fears over the spread of foot-and-mouth disease.

Since the first case of foot-and-mouth disease was discovered in England in late February, Ireland has been on red alert. Soggy doormats soaked in disinfectant greet visitors at the exits to Dublin Airport. The national rugby team postponed a game against Wales, staying at home to avoid picking up the disease. Across the country, tourist attractions have been closed, and public events canceled, even St. Patrick's Day parades.

That all proved for naught this morning, with the confirmation of a case of foot-and-mouth on a farm in County Louth.

Ireland is gripped by the fear of a nationwide outbreak, similar to what is devastating Britain's agriculture and tourism industries. The disease is thought to have most likely reached the Irish Republic from a farm across the border with Northern Ireland, where one case was confirmed on March 1. Foot-and-mouth disease spreads quickly among hoofed animals, and can also be carried on the soles of shoes or the tires of vehicles. Under the right wind conditions, it can travel airborne for short distances.

Ireland's agriculture minister, Joe Walsh, assured the parliament today, "There's no reason to believe that we cannot confine this outbreak to this region." Mr. Walsh banned the movement of all animals near the farm, and halted all exports from Ireland of animal products and animals susceptible to foot-and-mouth disease.

Mr. Walsh said he expected the European Commission to impose export restrictions only on products originating in the County Louth area, rather than across Ireland.

All this still pales in comparison to the epidemic in England, where 20 new cases of the disease were confirmed today, for a total of 455 since it was first detected last month. Officials there have slaughtered nearly 300,000 animals to prevent the spread of the disease. Raging pyres across the countryside consume the carcasses, which may or may not have been infected.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair continued to press ahead with his plans to hold a general election on May 3, despite warnings from the agriculture ministry that the disease would continue to rage through August.

Professor Roy Anderson, an epidemiologist, told the Reuters news agency, "I think everybody is in agreement - the government, the farming community and the independent scientific advice - that this epidemic is not under control at the current point of time."

The sharp damage already done to the British economy by foot-and-mouth disease now threatens Ireland as well. Before today's outbreak, the Irish Tourist Board predicted losses of $800 million in an industry worth $4.5 billion in annual revenue, according to the board's spokesman, John Brown.

Industry sectors such as catering, transportation and entertainment are suffering similar fates. The Irish Hotels Federation expects that one-third of the 60,000 jobs in the hotel industry will be lost as a result of the disease. In the first two weeks of March, cancellations and a drop-off in reservations caused losses of more than $50 million.

The first three months of the year only account for 15 percent of the tourism business, Mr. Brown said. "The big problem for us, and the big losses, are to come. We are now in the situation where people make up their minds about where to go on holiday" over the summer, he said.

Along with anxiety, there is disappointment that Ireland's vigilance, which was imposed as soon as the disease was reported in England, has not paid off. Irish politicians tried to impart the sense of a national effort, and a citizen's responsibility to help prevent the disease by following official guidelines and by traveling as little as possible.

"We're all in a state of shock," Raymond O'Malley, a representative of the Irish Farmers' Association in County Louth, told the Irish broadcasting network RTE. "We were all hoping against hope that this wouldn't happen."

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U.S. Inquiry Into Meat Safety in New York and New Jersey

New York Times
March 22, 2001
By CHRISTOPHER DREW with BUD HAZELKORN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/22/nyregion/22MEAT.html

Federal and Congressional investigators are examining possible lapses and misconduct in meat safety regulation in New York and New Jersey, federal officials say.

They say they have found evidence of unsanitary conditions in some plants, raising concerns about whether enough is being done to protect consumers from new threats of illness.

The investigators are looking into a variety of issues and incidents that could have compromised safety. Over the last two months, for instance, criminal investigators for the Agriculture Department have placed some meat inspectors under surveillance to check allegations that they often failed to show up for work, allowing some plants in the New York City region to operate without proper inspection, the officials said.

The department's investigators and the Senate Agriculture Committee are also looking into whether proper safeguards were taken last summer during a lengthy refrigeration failure at the West 14th Street meat market in Manhattan, which serves many local stores and restaurants. Investigators say they are also exploring allegations that top inspection officials in the region have stifled the efforts of a few inspectors to call attention to unsafe practices.

This week, the Agriculture Department's Food Safety and Inspection Service, which employs the inspectors and is in charge of meat and poultry safety, began its own review.

On Tuesday, the service began sending teams of inspectors from Nebraska into plants in New York and New Jersey to check conditions, and industry officials said they had already shut down one plant at the 14th Street market for rodent infestation. Officials in Washington said yesterday that they had also temporarily reassigned George J. Puchta, the inspection service's Northeast district manager, pending the completion of the investigations.

The primary investigation is being run by the Agriculture Department's inspector general, Roger C. Viadero, who is expected to appear before the Senate Agriculture Committee at a hearing today.

The federal officials have emphasized that the investigations are at an early stage, and that at the moment they have no evidence that consumers were harmed by tainted meat. No one, they said, has been charged, and final conclusions could be months away.

Mr. Puchta did not return repeated calls for comment. Thomas J. Billy, the administrator of the inspection service in Washington, released a statement saying that the review involved "a very small number" of plants, and that consumers should not be alarmed.

"I believe that the F.S.I.S. work force and the vast majority of the plants we inspect work very hard to ensure the safest meat and poultry products possible for the American public," Mr. Billy said.

The federal inspection service has about 300 meat inspectors in New York and New Jersey, each making rounds at several meat processing and packing plants daily. Their job is to ensure that large and small companies are processing steaks, Italian sausages and all other meat in chilled and clean areas.

An examination of government documents and interviews with current and former inspection officials suggest that Mr. Puchta, who has been in charge of inspections in the New York region for more than two decades, has long had a questionable record in cracking down on safety violations.

Dr. Robert Bartlett, who was the director of the inspection service's program review office from 1979 to 1994, said Mr. Puchta, 68, had blocked several efforts during those years to force him to clamp down on unsavory plants.

"George Puchta thought that we were kind of tough on him," said Dr. Bartlett, a veterinarian. "What I tried to explain to him was we were actually trying to help him because his program wasn't working as well as it should have."

Dr. Bartlett said Mr. Puchta had once suggested that given the difficulties of operating in such a congested setting, meat companies in New York City should not be held to the same sanitary standards as processors elsewhere. "I said, `George, the standards are the same whether you are in Iowa or North Dakota or New York,' " Dr. Bartlett said.

The New York region is being investigated while the inspection agency's effort to revamp its inspection methods and requirements is the subject of sharp debate. As part of a modernization effort, the agency has turned over much of the responsibility for meat safety and sanitary processing plants to the plants themselves, requiring the meat companies to create comprehensive plans to keep germs from spreading.

But critics, including Mr. Viadero, the inspector general, have said that the changes have been carried out poorly and that many plants have been allowed to get by with inadequate safety plans.

The service changed its approach over the last three years as a way to ward off relatively new pathogens, like E. coli O157:H7, which can ravage children and the elderly. As a result, inspectors spend less time poking and sniffing meat and more checking temperature records to see if safe practices are being used.

But in a report last summer, Mr. Viadero said his inspectors had concluded that the loose construction of the program had led to reductions in government oversight to "beyond what was prudent and necessary for the protection of the consumer."

In interviews, longtime meat inspectors said the sanitary problems at plants in New York and New Jersey could be due partly to these difficulties. But officials in Washington and several former meat inspectors said some of the allegations were more peculiar to New York and reflected concerns about Mr. Puchta's willingness to clamp down on a variety of questionable activities.

Government officials said one allegation is whether some inspectors failed to show up for work at times or falsified logs to indicate that they worked overtime when they had not. If the allegations are true, plants may have operated extra hours without the normal inspections.

Mr. Puchta joined the agency as an inspector in 1961 and became the area supervisor in charge of plants in New York City and northern New Jersey in the mid-70's. In 1997, he was promoted to district manager for the Northeast region, which includes eight states.

Dr. Bartlett and other former inspection officials said in interviews that they sympathized with Mr. Puchta to some extent because some businesses at the 14th Street market and in parts of the Bronx and Brooklyn were housed in antiquated buildings that were extremely hard to keep clean.

In fact, while at one time almost 300 meat companies were located near the junction of 14th Street and the West Side Highway, now there are only about four dozen. Many have moved to new warehouses at Hunts Point in the Bronx, and others have closed as developers convert much of the neighborhood, known as the meatpacking district, into luxury condominiums.

Velmer Chipps, who conducted several reviews of New York plants for Dr. Bartlett's review program in the 1980's and 1990's, said that at times it appeared that plant owners had been tipped off that the reviewers were coming.

Roger Etzig, another former review official, said one review trip in the mid-1980's ended abruptly when Mr. Puchta told him that he had shut down a number of plants so that the reviewers could not go into them.

In 1995, Mr. Chipps said, he insisted on going into a plant in the Bronx that one of Mr. Puchta's inspectors had just shut down. Mr. Chipps said that he had found a variety of contaminants inside the plant, and that Mr. Puchta "got mad" at him.

In a written response at that time, Mr. Puchta asserted that Mr. Chipps had focused on trivial problems and spent an inordinately long time conducting his inspections.

The examination of meat inspections in the metropolitan area began with a relatively modest check into an emergency refrigeration failure in the 14th Street market. One hot day last July, a pipe ruptured in the century-old refrigeration system at the Manhattan market, forcing at least nine wholesalers to scramble for blocks of dry ice to try to keep their beef and pork from spoiling. Owners said they initially had hurried to ship products to restaurants and stores, and later had to throw out some meat that had spoiled.

Some companies went without normal refrigeration for five days. And after an anonymous tipster alerted some of Mr. Viadero's agents to the potential health hazard, they went out to check whether the meat inspection service had been on top of the situation.

Senior inspection service officials said that they did not think any spoiled meat had been shipped to customers during the refrigeration failure. One business owner, Joe Nemecek, has said he had to throw away $10,000 worth of spoiled food, and other owners said they would not have risked ruining their reputations by shipping questionable goods.

But a government report also says that when agents from the inspector general's office went to the market to check what was going on, one of the meat inspectors became "belligerent" with the agents.

Officials said the inspector general and the Senate Agriculture Committee were trying to determine how much time had passed before the region's inspectors initially responded to the cooling failure.

John J. Calcagno, the president of the Greater New York Meat Trade Institute, said yesterday that merchants at the 14th Street market had spent a lot to update their plants, and it was "an out-and-out lie" to call the plants substandard. He defended Mr. Puchta, saying that when it came to safety, "no way in hell would George ever compromise."

The Senate committee in Washington is also reviewing several cases in which meat inspectors in the New York area claimed that they had been ignored, or even retaliated against, after reporting possible improprieties involving other inspectors.

Top inspection service officials denied that any retaliation had occurred. But Keith Luse, the committee's staff director, said his staff took the allegations of retaliation "very seriously."

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World Briefing

New York Times
March 22, 2001
Suzanne Daley
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/22/world/22BRIE.html

THE NETHERLANDS: FOOT-AND-MOUTH CASE The Dutch government confirmed the country's first case of foot-and-mouth disease and quickly banned all exports of livestock, reinstating a nationwide halt on transporting animals that had been lifted just two days earlier and extending it to cover chickens. Tests showed that four cows had contracted the disease on a farm near Olst, in the eastern part of the country. Also, Britain's outbreak of the disease worsened, reaching 435 confirmed cases, an increase of 40 in one day.

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Five Britons' Mad Cow Deaths Traced to Butchering Methods

New York Times
March 22, 2001
By WARREN HOGE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/22/world/22BRIT.html

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

The five people died between August 1998 and October 2000 in Queniborough in Leicestershire - the largest cluster of victims from the same locality in an 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 the meat of 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 the one detail common to all five cases was that the victims had consumed meat from one of four Main Street butchers who used small abattoirs 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 was 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 the war but had become so rare with succeeding 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 lived in the area.

"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 animal 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 current foot-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 had reached their conclusions. Their search narrowed down to the butcher shops after discarding other possible causes including cattle feed, water supply, dentistry and body piercing.

Asked by a member of the audience what the likelihood was of other villagers' coming 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 likelihood of this set of circumstances happening again is very, very small."

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U.S., Cautious on Mad Cow, Seizes Flock of Sheep

New York Times
March 22, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/22/health/22SHEE.html

GREENSBORO, Vt., March 21 - The federal government today seized 234 sheep suspected of carrying a variety of mad cow disease and said it would soon take possession of a second such flock, of about 140 sheep.

Veterinarians for the Agriculture Department say both flocks or their forebears may have been exposed to the disease before they were brought from Belgium and the Netherlands in 1996, during a window in government-imposed import restrictions resulting from the emergence of mad cow disease in Europe.

The owners of the flocks - one in this little northern Vermont town, the other in Warren, Vt., some 60 miles to the southwest - have argued that the sheep are healthy and that the government, rather than keeping mad cow disease out of the United States by effectively regulating the supply of animal feed, is sacrificing them in order to protect the image of American agriculture.

The action today was the first in which the government had used threat of force to take animals that it fears may have the inevitably fatal brain disorder. About 25 agents from the Agriculture Department, some of them armed, traveled muddy back roads to the Skunk Hollow Farm here, owned by Houghton Freeman, a philanthropist who is heir to an insurance fortune. The sheep from Mr. Freeman's farm are being taken to a government laboratory in Ames, Iowa, where they will be killed and their brains tested.

Mr. Freeman and the owners of the other flock, Linda and Larry Faillace, are to be paid fair market value for their sheep. The animals, of the East Friesian breed, are bountiful producers of milk, which the owners use to make specialty cheeses.

But officials learned in 1998 that some sheep in Europe had been exposed to feed contaminated with the infectious agent that causes the disease and that the Vermont sheep might have been so exposed before they were imported two years earlier, said Linda Detwiler, a senior government veterinarian.

The Faillaces produced records that they said showed that neither flock had eaten tainted feed in Europe. But last July the Agriculture Department said tests on four sheep culled from Mr. Freeman's farm showed signs of the illness.

Ms. Detwiler said today that the government was still uncertain whether the animals had mad cow disease or a more common and less dangerous sheep illness called scrapie. Unlike mad cow, scrapie is not believed to pose a threat to humans.

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Democrats blast Bush for assault on environment

USA Today
03/22/2001 - Updated 04:06 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-03-22-demsenergy.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Senate's top Democrat accused President Bush on Thursday of using the country's energy problems "as justification for an all-out assault on the environment."

Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., made his strongest criticism of the Bush administration's energy proposals to date as he and other Democrats unveiled proposed energy legislation that would focus heavily on conservation efforts as well as incentives for energy development, mostly on private lands.

"We cannot drill our way out of this problem," said Daschle, "and we cannot use our coming energy challenges as justification for an all-out assault on the environment."

Bush has made clear that the energy proposals being developed by a special task force, will focus heavily on incentives for production, easing regulatory barriers for energy development and opening more public lands to drilling including national monuments and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.

Last week, Bush announced that he no longer wants to regulate carbon dioxide from power plants, a leading heat-trapping "greenhouse" gas linked to global warming, because he said to do so would aggravate the country's energy problems.

"Drilling in our national monuments would be a monumental mistake," declared Daschle, who added that the Democratic energy blueprint would reduce carbon dioxide levels over the next decade by relying less on fossil fuels.

The Democratic energy package would provide tax incentives and other measures aimed at promoting energy efficiency and development of renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power. It also calls for streamlining approval for gas pipelines and power transmission lines, and would give industry a tax incentive to build a natural gas pipeline from Alaska's North Slope.

But it also includes a measure, expected to be highly controversial, that would cap the amount of petroleum that could be used for transportation. The broad restriction is aimed at getting the auto industry to produce more fuel efficient vehicles, especially sport utility vehicles and light trucks.

The Democrats' bill joins one already unveiled by Senate Republicans. The GOP measures focuses more heavily on production including incentives for nuclear energy development, wider use of coal for electricity generation and drilling in the Arctic refuge - a step strongly opposed by environmentalists.

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., has said he will not consider an energy bill until after the White House sends its proposal to Capitol Hill. No floor action on energy legislation is expected until late summer at the earliest.,

After receiving an interim report from his energy task force, Bush said this week that there is "no quick fix" to dealing with what he and his top aides repeatedly have called an energy crisis. He has said the issue is one of too little supply amid growing demand and has voiced strong support for finding ways to boost supplies, including expanded production on federal lands including protected federal monuments and the Arctic refuge.

"We do believe more can be done on the supply side," said Sen. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, the ranking Democrat on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. But he said it is "foolhardy" to largely ignore conservation and efficiency programs and incentives for renewable energy sources.

"Republicans seem to believe the only way we can solve our energy crisis is by soiling our environment," complained Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

Unlike the GOP energy legislation introduced by Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, last month, the Democrats' bill has little in it to promote nuclear power, nor any provisions to squeeze more electricity production from coal burning power plants. Both are expected be major parts of Bush's energy package to be unveiled in the coming weeks.

The Democratic plan "will increase domestic production of energy, reduce demand by improving energy efficiency and promote the use of clean, renewable sources of energy, bringing our energy system into balance in a way that protects our environment," said Daschle.

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Foot-and-mouth disease spreads to Ireland

USA Today
03/22/2001 - Updated 09:52 AM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001-03-22-foot-mouth.htm

DUBLIN, Ireland (AP) - The first cases of foot-and-mouth disease have been confirmed in the Republic of Ireland, Prime Minister Bertie Ahern said Thursday.

Two cases were confirmed in County Louth, about 50 miles north of Dublin, Ahern told the Irish Parliament. One case of foot-and-mouth disease previously had been confirmed across the border in Northern Ireland.

"All we can hope now is to confine it to the immediate area," said Tom Parlon, president of the Irish Farmers Association.

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

The discovery in Ireland comes a day after confirmation of cases in the Netherlands, quashing hopes that the livestock disease could be bottled up in a small corner of France, the only other place in continental Europe where it has been identified since it erupted in Britain a month ago.

Britain's foot-and-mouth count climbed to 435 cases by early Thursday. Roy Anderson, a University of London scientist who studied the pattern of the disease for the government, said foot-and-mouth would not be eliminated before August.

Anderson told the British Broadcasting Corp on Wednesday that the epidemic was more severe than the last major foot-and-mouth crisis in 1967, which saw 2,000 individual outbreaks and almost half a million animals slaughtered.

The government vowed Wednesday to speed up the process of destroying slaughtered animals - 275,000 of whom have been killed so far - and denied accusations it had covered up the outbreak.

Dutch veterinarians, meanwhile, planned to vaccinate herds of cattle against the disease, a strategy so far avoided by European Union members because of fears it would strip them of their disease-free status in world markets. Inoculated animals bear the same foot-and-mouth antibodies as infected animals.

The Netherlands imposed a three-day ban on the movement of livestock, fodder, and dairy products after the cases were confirmed Wednesday in three farms near the German border Wednesday. About 18,000 animals were marked for destruction. Other suspected cases were being investigated in the southern province of Brabant.

Animal carcasses were being hauled away from the farms for rendering rather than being burned in fields. But faced with the overwhelming task of disposing of the carcasses, the Agriculture Ministry said some animals in 1,000-yard rings around the contaminated farms will be vaccinated rather than killed.

Newspapers said inoculations had begun, using emergency supplies that have been in storage for years. The ministry had no immediate confirmation.

The European Union in Brussels quickly imposed a ban on livestock exports from the Netherlands and on some exports of meat, dairy and animal products.

That could be a severe blow for the Netherlands, a country with 16 million people and 120 million barnyard animals and one of the world's most intensive farming sectors.

In Britain, hundreds of parks, pathways and attractions were closed in the wake of the disease, devastating the rural economy. Opposition politicians also urged Prime Minister Tony Blair to postpone local council elections in England.

But Prime Minister Tony Blair insisted rural Britain was open for business and said elections would be held as planned in May. Full-page ads sponsored by the government urged Britons to return to the pubs, hotels and stately homes in safe areas of the countryside.

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Environmental Abyss

New York Times
March 22, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/22/opinion/L22FLOR.html

To the Editor:
Re "E.P.A. to Abandon New Arsenic Limits for Water Supply" (front page, March 21):

The Bush administration's inexplicable rolling back of a new drinking-water standard for permissible levels of arsenic is part of a new era in environmental degradation.

More arsenic in our water is the gift to the mining industry. The president's reversal of a commitment to regulate carbon dioxide benefited the coal industry. Can the timber and oil industry's covetous aims on wilderness areas be far behind?

JAMES J. FLORIO Newark, March 21, 2001 The writer was governor of New Jersey, 1990-94.

---

Brazil declares risk from spill contained

Washington Times
March 22, 2001
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-200132221438.htm

RIO DE JANEIRO - Brazil's environmental chief, Hamilton Casara, said yesterday that oil seeping from a sunken platform in the south Atlantic posed no environmental risk and had been contained.

The world's largest offshore platform owned by state oil company Petrobras keeled over in 4,500 feet of water on Tuesday in a disaster that claimed 10 lives.

The P-36 platform contained 66,000 gallons of crude oil and 264,000 gallons of diesel.

---

Light in the darkness

Washington Times
EDITORIAL • March 22, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-house-200132218259.htm

The Bush administration has begun taking important steps towards addressing the continuing energy crisis in California, which already is taking a toll on the nation's economy and the wealth, if not actual health of its citizens. Both Mr. Bush and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham addressed the crisis this week, and their remarks, displaying an open-eyed view of both the crisis and its potential solutions, are worth repeating.

Even as blackouts were rolling across California on Tuesday, Mr. Bush was meeting with his energy task force. Acknowledging the problem, Mr. Bush said that "there are no short-term fixes."

Mr. Abraham agreed, "America faces a major energy supply crisis over the next two decades," which if not met, "Will threaten our nation's economic prosperity, compromise our national security and literally alter the way we live our lives."

Mr. Abraham pointed out that "During a two-week period this past January, Californians lost an estimated $2.3 billion in wages, sales and productivity." They weren't the only ones.

According to an estimate by the National Association of Manufacturers cited by Mr. Abraham, "soaring fuel prices between 1999 and 2000 cost the U.S. economy more than $115 billion - shaving a full percentage point off our Gross Domestic Product." This augers ill for the future, because as Mr. Abraham noted, "This nation's last three recessions have all been tied to rising energy prices." Moreover, rising energy costs will continue to hit citizens in their pocketbook, whether in raised fuel bills, lost earnings, layoffs, or failures in new job creation. The secretary also cited Intel CEO Craig Barrett, who recently said that he couldn't spend billions on a new manufacturing plant in California "as long as California is a Third World country."

Mr. Abraham seconded Mr. Bush about the roots of the crisis, saying "America's current energy supply crisis is not due to some inevitable neo-Malthusian depletion of resources. The United States . . . [is] blessed with a rich abundance of natural resources. It's political leadership that has been scarce." He said that the energy strategy of the Clinton administration was essentially, "You can't find it . . . you can't transport it . . . and even if you get it, we don't want you to use it." As a result, the secretary said that America faces many challenges including, "Rising demand . . . tightening supplies . . . an aging power infrastructure."

So what can be done? Mr. Bush said fundamentally, "We need to reduce demand and increase supply." To that end, solutions involve "good conservation . . . exploration for oil and gas and coal, development of energy sources that exist within our 50 states," and "good foreign policy," which involves working with suppliers everywhere.

Mr. Abraham elaborated, citing a need to "balance energy exploration and environmental protection," which could be put into good effect in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, where an estimated 10.4 billion barrels of oil await use. The secretary also pointed out that ideological opposition, especially the extreme sort currently on display in California, must be overcome. New power plants desperately need to be built, and renewable sources will meet only a fraction of current, and estimated, needs. Lastly, the secretary said that price controls are only an answer if the question is, "How can we produce more scarcity."

Blackouts will continue to roll across California, but for the first time in a long time, a bright light of political will to deal with the energy crisis is burning within the White House.

-------- land mines

Study Optimistic on Safer Land Mines, but Says Push Is Needed

New York Times
March 22, 2001
By JAMES GLANZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/22/national/22MINE.html

New technologies will soon be available to replace the deadliest and most indiscriminate land mines with safer, more effective alternatives, according to a Congressionally mandated study by the National Research Council released yesterday.

But without a redoubled development program and increased financing, some of the replacements will not be ready by 2006, the date the United States has set for deciding whether to agree to an international treaty banning the use of the deadliest land mines.

The treaty, which has been signed or agreed to by 139 nations but not by the United States, would ban land mines that explode automatically when a person is near them.

The report found that so-called "man-in-the-loop" systems, which would require a conscious decision by a soldier before a mine could explode, could be ready before 2006.

But only a major new effort by the Pentagon could bring the "man-in- the-loop" capability to more complex systems in which antipersonnel mines are combined with anti-tank mines by 2006, the report said. Those "mixed" systems use antipersonnel mines to keep enemy soldiers from deactivating the anti-tank mines and opening corridors for an armored attack. Automatic mixed systems are used extensively by the United States in South Korea; they are a principal reason this country has not yet agreed to the treaty.

"Mine technology has been a Cinderella; it has been underfunded," said Dr. George Bugliarello, chairman of the research committee that made the study and chancellor at Polytechnic University in Brooklyn.

The report, mandated in legislation sponsored by Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, emphasized that some technologies that are expected to be available after 2006, like advanced sensors and nonlethal weapons involving nets or electrical shocks, could be safer and more effective militarily than land mines.

In the treaty, informally called the Ottawa Convention, weapons that do not explode automatically are defined as not being land mines.

"The report is encouraging because it shows that a mine-free military is within reach," Senator Leahy said. "What we need now from the Pentagon are the will and the resources to get it done."

Steve Goose, program director of the arms division at Human Rights Watch in Washington, which supports ratification of the treaty, said the report mainly showed that the Pentagon should re-evaluate the military's need for antipersonnel land mines.

Still, Mr. Goose called the committee's findings encouraging.

"They do validate that there are things out there that can replace anti-personnel land mines," he said.

Man-in-the-loop systems, said Gen. Larry G. Lehowicz, a research committee member who is a vice president at Quantum Research International in Arlington, Va., involve some sort of hand-held monitor that would alert a soldier that a land mine had been tripped. The soldier, presumably in visual contact with the minefield, would detonate the mine only if the intruder was an enemy soldier - not a civilian or a friendly soldier, for example, said General Lehowicz, who is retired from the Army. Lt. Col. George Rhynedance, a Pentagon spokesman, said that the report was still under review and that the Pentagon was waiting for a policy on land mines to be developed by the Bush administration.

"We are continuing to research all avenues on the antipersonnel land mine program," Colonel Rhynedance said.

-------- police

Attorney General Was Alerted to Profiling, Predecessor Says

New York Times
March 22, 2001
By IVER PETERSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/22/nyregion/22TROO.html

TRENTON, March 21 - The chief justice of New Jersey's Supreme Court, Deborah T. Poritz, told investigators that she had "flagged" racial profiling as an issue for Peter G. Verniero to watch as he prepared to succeed her as state attorney general in 1996, according to interview notes released today by the State Senate Judiciary Committee.

The sketchy notes, posted on the committee's Web site, say that Judge Poritz told committee investigators that state police officials had adamantly denied that troopers were practicing racial profiling, though they acknowledged that better records of traffic stops were needed.

The chief justice's indication that Mr. Verniero, who now serves alongside her on the Supreme Court, had been told about racial profiling upon taking office, three years before he finally acknowledged its existence, is likely to add to the fever of speculation surrounding his handling of the issue as he prepares to testify before the Senate committee on Wednesday. The committee is investigating the state's response to allegations of racial profiling that began surfacing in 1996.

Mr. Verniero's critics say that he hid his awareness of racial profiling by the state police under his command until he was nominated for the Supreme Court in 1999, three years after the chief justice says that she briefed him. But Mr. Verniero has never denied knowing of the allegations of racial profiling, and has instead insisted that proof of its existence "crystallized" in his mind only after the April 1998 wounding of three black and Hispanic men by state troopers on the New Jersey Turnpike prompted his office to examine turnpike stops, searches and arrests.

According to the interview notes taken by Michael Chertoff, the committee's special counsel, Judge Poritz told investigators that racial profiling "was an issue she flagged" for Mr. Verniero in 1996, after a state court threw out the evidence seized in several South Jersey traffic stops and arrests on grounds that the stops were racially tainted and therefore illegal.

The notes make plain that Judge Poritz, who was attorney general from 1994 to 1996, was concerned, as Mr. Verniero says he later was, that the statistics cited in the decision as proof of profiling were unreliable.

The notes indicate that the chief justice said she was not aware of the issue until that ruling, in the so- called Soto case.

"No one told her racial profiling was a real issue," Mr. Chertoff's notes read. "Told absolutely and adamantly (after Soto) by NJSP that they did not profile." NJSP stands for the New Jersey State Police.

She also said, according to the notes, that her discussion with Mr. Verniero focused in large part on the decision to appeal the Soto ruling.

"Discussion with Verniero" the notes read. "Generally briefed him about Soto. Told him she made the decision to take the appeal and why. Took appeal because concerned about some of legal rulings, adequacy of statistical analysis by Public Defender, NJSP adamantly denied racial profiling, needed better records and understanding of what was going on."

But the Soto case was only one of several issues that Mr. Verniero and his predecessor found time to discuss during his transition, and while she said that she told Mr. Verniero of the case and its implications for the state police, she did not recall "making a specific list of `hot issues.' "

Calls to Judge Poritz's court office and her spokeswoman were not answered tonight. Mr. Chertoff would not comment on the notes.

The notes are posted at http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/nj.

Unlike the 29 other witnesses interviewed by the Senate committee so far, Judge Poritz was not deposed under oath.

In the notes, the chief justice appears to say that she decided to appeal the Soto decision even though she was unsure of the arrest statistics on which it rested. The state dropped the Soto appeal in 1999, and has since thrown out many other criminal cases on grounds that they, too, were tainted.

The Soto decision, in March 1996, produced "lots of discussion over several days," and "trusted staff people," the notes say, were concerned about the precedent it set of throwing out evidence based on racial statistics. The notes say Ms. Poritz, then attorney general, "took statistics home and sought advice from mathematicians about statistical modeling."

The tone of the interview notes suggests that she flew into a whirl of activity over racial profiling as soon as the Soto case disclosed that there was a problem. But testimony by Mr. Verniero's subordinates over the last two days has established that his senior aides were studiously avoiding looking at the data on racial profiling that the police had begun compiling and that his subordinates were discouraged from releasing information too easily.

---

Voters Replace Sheriff Who Was Fatally Shot

New York Times
March 22, 2001
National News Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/22/national/22NATI.html

DECATUR, Ga., March 21 (AP) - Voters have picked a replacement for a sheriff-elect who had promised to reform the department but was killed before he could take office.

The replacement, Thomas Brown, 48, the interim DeKalb County sheriff since the shooting of Sheriff-elect Derwin Brown in December, received more than 80 percent of the votes in the election on Tuesday.

Thomas Brown, who is not related to Derwin Brown, said deputies were eager to shake reports of corruption that have dogged the department for 30 years.

Derwin Brown, who defeated Sheriff Sidney Dorsey in a runoff in August, had pledged to fire 38 department employees when he took office Jan. 1. He was shot 11 times in his driveway on Dec. 15.

Two men were charged last week with lying to police investigating Derwin Brown's death. And on Sunday another man was killed in the driveway of a former deputy. The police said they could not definitively link the shootings.

---

KUWAIT: POLICEMAN ADMITS KILLING

New York Times
March 22, 2001
World Briefing
Agence France-Presse
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/22/world/22BRIE.html

A police officer was arrested in the assassination of the editor of a Kuwaiti magazine, the authorities said. The officer, Ziab Khaled al Azmi, admitted that he had killed the editor, Hedayet Sultan al Salem, on Tuesday in retaliation for an article he considered derogatory toward women from his ancestral tribe, the al Awazem. The influential ethnic group holds eight seats in Kuwait's 50-member Parliament.

---

BROOKLYN: FORMER OFFICER TO PLEAD

New York Times
March 22, 2001
Metro Briefs
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/22/nyregion/22MBRF.html

A former police officer who is accused of being part of a robbery gang plans to plead guilty today to several charges, including robbery and conspiracy to commit murder, according to papers filed by the United States attorney's office. The former patrolman, Jamil Jordan, 28, and his partner at the 77th Precinct in Brooklyn, Anthony Trotman, held up drug dealers, robbed jewelers, lied on the stand about their actions and plotted to kill a detective, prosecutors have said. Mr. Trotman pleaded guilty in January to robbery and conspiracy to commit murder. (AP)

---

Tracking Abusive Police

New York Times
March 22, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/22/opinion/L22COPS.html

To the Editor:
Re "A Way to Find the Bad Cops," by Bob Herbert (column, March 19):

Police Commissioner Bernard B. Kerik should be commended for his efforts to track patterns of civilian complaints. This is a giant step for a police department that has historically trivialized many of the complaints against it.

Mr. Kerik is right; not all complaints against the police are valid. But those complaints substantiated by the Civilian Complaint Review Board are valid and should not only be tracked but should also lead to consistent and meaningful discipline for the offending officers.

CLAIRE SHUBIK Cambridge, Mass., March 19, 2001 The writer was an investigator for the New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board, 1996-98.

---

Louima to get $9M in police lawsuit

USA Today
03/22/2001 - Updated 11:14 AM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/nation/2001-03-22-louima.htm
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/nyregion/AP-Police-Torture-Lawsuit.html

NEW YORK (AP) - A $9 million tentative settlement has been reached in a lawsuit brought by Abner Louima, the Haitian immigrant tortured in a police station in 1997, sources close to the case said Thursday.

Under the proposal, Louima would receive payment from the city and the Police Benevolent Association but would drop his demand for reform in the way the New York Police Department deals with officers accused of crimes, the sources told The Associated Press.

The sources, who insisted on anonymity, confirmed a report about the agreement in Thursday's Daily News.

The proposed settlement was being circulated this week among lawyers to get signatures from their clients. Barring any disagreement, the parties will meet Wednesday in federal court to finalize the deal.

An attorney for Louima, Sanford Rubenstein, and a PBA spokesman, Joe Mancini, declined to discuss the case, citing a gag order. An attorney for the city, Lawrence Kahn, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

If finalized, the settlement would close one of the ugliest chapters in the department's history; the resulting scandal sparked angry protests and led to convictions of six officers.

In three criminal trials, Louima testified about an ordeal stemming from his arrest in a street brawl outside a nightclub on Aug. 9, 1997. Charges against Louima were later dropped.

The prisoner was handcuffed and taken to the precinct. Once there, Officer Justin Volpe - mistakenly believing Louima had punched him - sought revenge by sodomizing Louima with a broken broomstick and threatening to kill him if he reported it.

Volpe, who pleaded guilty, is serving 30 years. A jury found a second patrolman, Charles Schwarz, guilty of pinning Louima down during the assault; four other officers were convicted of lying to authorities about what happened.

Louima sued for $155 million in 1998, claiming officers at Brooklyn's 70th Precinct conspired to create a "blue wall of silence and lies to obstruct justice." The suit charged police and officials with the powerful PBA with condoning an "environment in which the most violent police officers believed they would be insulated" from prosecution.

The assault - combined with the 1999 death of African immigrant Amadou Diallo in a hail of 41 police bullets - fueled a series of demonstrations alleging widespread use of excessive force by officers, especially against minorities. Diallo's family has filed an $81 million wrongful death suit against the city; that case is pending.

---

Parts auctioned for fraction of value

Washington Times
March 22, 2001
By Jim Keary THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/metro/default-2001322221139.htm

Metropolitan Police Department officials last year illegally disposed of about $300,000 worth of new automobile parts as junk without proper documentation or authority.

Documents obtained by The Washington Times under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that most of the parts classified as "obsolete" actually were usable by the police department.

The parts were trucked out of the department's garage and sold at auction, netting $4,511 - about 1.5 percent of the original cost of the parts.

As a result of inquiries by The Times, Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey yesterday asked the department's Office of Professional Responsibility and the D.C. inspector general to investigate the disposal of the car parts.

"If there is a rat, we will find it. If it is criminal or if it is administrative, someone is going to answer," Chief Ramsey said.

"I want to get to the bottom of this, I want to see what is going on and if it is legit. I'm taking this as far as I need to go."

D.C. law requires that excess or old government property be inventoried and delivered to the Department of Administrative Services for disposal. No inventory of the parts could be located and the parts were taken directly from the department to auction, The Times found.

The police department now must buy new parts from the private firm that maintains its vehicles -and pay about 8 percent more than the cost of the disposed parts.

The disposed parts - most still in the manufacturers' factory boxes - were loaded onto pallets and trucked to Colonial Auction Services Inc. in Upper Marlboro, Md., where they were auctioned off March 17 of last year for as little as $10 for a pallet.

An incomplete list of bidders provided by Colonial to the police department shows the parts were sold to 10 persons who hailed from Raleigh, N.C., to Nitro, W.Va. At least one buyer is identified with a false company name and address.

"We bought two [pallets] for $10 [each]. There was a lot of money in those boxes," said Keith Stathers, owner of Keith's Used Cars in Nitro. "They throw away a lot of good stuff, the government does."

Mr. Stathers said a friend bought the parts under his name and wanted the pallets for five sets of brake pads and an exhaust system. He said the rest of the parts were sold as scrap.

Colonial sold all of the parts for $5,190 and sent the department $4,511, after deducting $160 for hauling and $519 for its commission.

Colonial has been barred from bidding on contracts with the Metro transit system because its owner falsified auction documents in the early 1990s. Many charities refused to use Colonial after a 1998 Charles County probe found the company had lost "hundreds of thousands of dollars" for government agencies and eight charities.

Eric Coard, the police department's senior executive director of corporate support, testified before the D.C. Council on Oct. 18 that the fleet's inventory was $300,000 less than expected. He blamed a nearly $1 million cost overrun on fleet maintenance.

The Washington Times first reported that the cost overrun was caused by mismanagement of fleet maintenance after the police department contracted with Serco Corp. to repair police vehicles.

Mr. Coard told the council that the contract was underfunded rather than mismanaged.

Parts lists provided by the police department show that most of its $320,000 inventory was for cars and trucks still being used.

This newspaper requested the department's inventories of parts before Serco was hired in September 1999, the inventory of disposed parts and the inventory after the disposed parts were purged.

The Times also requested documents that authorized disposal of $300,000 worth of public property. The inventory list provided was a parts list spreadsheet prepared by Serco, rather than the department. It is not dated or signed.

Brender Gregory, the police department's director of business services, said the requested documents do not exist.

Miss Gregory,, who is directly in charge of fleet maintenance, later said the parts inventory was inside the memory of an old computer but could not be accessed. She also said the parts inventory provided by Serco was inaccurate.

Miss Gregory said the department had authority through a law allowing it to dispose of vehicles through auctions during fiscal years 1998 and 1999. The law did not allow for disposal of automobile parts.

Miss Gregory later said the parts should have been disposed of through the Department of Administrative Services.

She said that the former interim fleet manager, Lt. Clarence Major, failed to document the parts inventory and the sale of the parts and was responsible for deciding what parts to sell as scrap.

Lt. Major retired last year and is now a sergeant with the D.C. Public Housing Authority Police. He said yesterday said that, when he became interim director in November 1999, the parts already had been placed on pallets, and he assumed they were not useable. He said he requested through Mr. Coard's office that the parts be sold at auction.

"They were stacked up all over the place and Serco wasn't using them," Sgt. Major said. "That stuff was not being utilized; it was just sitting in the way."

He said he realized the normal process of disposing of government property would be too lengthy, so he proposed the auction. He said Mr. Coard's office approved sending the parts to auction.

"It wasn't something that was happening in the dark of night. Everyone knew about it," Sgt. Major said.

Miss Gregory said Sgt. Major and a Serco parts representative determined what was obsolete.

But an employee for Addison Auto Park, which operates the parts room and sells parts to Serco, said representatives from the parts companies decided what parts were obsolete.

The Addison employee, who identified himself only as Ben, made his comments in the presence of Miss Gregory and Sgt. Anthony Medoro, the police department's current interim fleet manager.

Miss Gregory fired the former fleet manager, Claude Willis, in February. He was fired the same week that The Times reported that small repairs to vehicles were being deferred by Miss Gregory because of a lack of funds.

-------- spying

Bush Ends CIA's Role As Middle East Broker
Request of Palestinian Security Chief Is Turned Down

By Alan Sipress and Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, March 22, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A39492-2001Mar21?language=printer

The Bush administration has pulled the plug on the CIA's high-profile role as a broker between Israeli and Palestinian security services, urging the two sides to cooperate directly, a senior administration official said yesterday.

The decision comes despite requests from top Palestinian officials for a continuation of the agency's role in exchanging intelligence and quelling terrorism.

"There has been a change," the official said. "Our experience is that the best security talks are those that occur between Israelis and Palestinians directly."

Limiting the CIA's involvement is part of a broader reappraisal by the Bush administration of the U.S. approach to the Middle East conflict, which includes a more hands-off stance toward Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

In meetings this week with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, President Bush and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell made clear that they would not engage in the kind of detailed bargaining that was common during the Clinton administration. U.S. officials repeatedly said Israelis and Palestinians must act to defuse a six-month wave of violence and then resume peace talks.

The CIA's withdrawal from its exceptional role -- which has included passing intelligence information and complaints, pressing for closer coordination and arbitrating disputes over how to address specific threats -- could sever an important communication link between local security services. But the agency's involvement had been waning even before the Bush administration decided to end it.

Israeli and Palestinian security officials have begun to take tentative steps toward cooperation, including a meeting last weekend between Israeli Shin Bet security head Avi Dichter and Palestinian intelligence chief Amin Al-Hindi. It was one of the first high-level meetings between the security services since the outbreak of Israeli-Palestinian clashes in September.

When the CIA assumed its role at Israel's request four years ago, the agency did so reluctantly. Intelligence officials now say they are pleased to be relieved of the task. "No one here is upset about missing out on the opportunity to engage," said one senior American intelligence official.

The involvement of the CIA station in Israel in some of the most contentious issues dividing Israeli and Palestinian police forces has provoked concern on Capitol Hill.

But Palestinians have continued to urge agency involvement. They view it in part as a way to improve ties with the United States and secure a counterbalance to Israeli security demands. Some Palestinian officials also see it as a way to avoid direct security cooperation with Israel, which remains unpopular among much of the population in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

During a visit to Washington a month ago, Jibril Rajoub, the Palestinian security chief in the West Bank, asked CIA Director George J. Tenet to resume the agency's active role, but he was turned down.

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat made a similar request to Powell in Ramallah a few days later during the secretary of state's tour of the Middle East. Powell also refused, repeating the administration's position that it would no longer be as deeply involved in managing Israeli-Palestinian relations.

The CIA will remain active in Israeli and Palestinian areas, continuing its traditional role of reporting on developments and maintaining bilateral relations, especially its long-standing ties to Israeli intelligence.

The agency also has developed links to Arafat's security services since at least 1996, when Tenet, then deputy CIA director, met his Palestinian counterparts, officials said. The Clinton administration then stepped up covert aid to help the Palestinians develop a more professional security operation.

The agency's involvement as an intermediary began in early 1997 after Arafat severed security cooperation with Israel to protest the expansion of a Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem. Israel asked the CIA to serve as an intermediary, and the agency became a messenger, passing Israeli intelligence about activities by Islamic militants to Palestinian officials. In some cases, the Palestinians were asked to preempt specific threats, but often the goal was to make sure Arafat's officers were abreast of extremist activities.

A role for the CIA was formalized at the 1998 negotiations at Wye Plantation in Maryland. Without naming the agency, the agreement directed the CIA to join in a process designed to root out militant Palestinian cells, control weapons smuggling and develop information about suspects.

Many of those tasks were never fulfilled. But U.S. intelligence officers continued to preside over talks between Israelis and Palestinians, at times helping to resolve disagreements over security cooperation.

Tenet, meanwhile, assumed a remarkably public profile for a CIA director, traveling to the region at least 10 times, often to persuade the sides to improve their coordination and to urge the Palestinians to move more forcefully against extremists.

------

California's Electric Shock

"Slate Magazine" <delivery@slate.com>
Slate - Today's Papers
By Scott Shuger
Thursday, March 22, 2001, at 4:58 a.m. PT

USA Today, the Washington Post and New York Times lead with yesterday's expulsion by the U.S. government of a number of Russian diplomats suspected of spying and the likelihood (based on official sources) that as many as 50 in all will soon be sent packing on such grounds. The Los Angeles Times fronts the story, but leads instead with something nobody else fronts: Claims made by the California state electrical power operator that from May through last month, wholesale electricity suppliers have overcharged California by about $5.5 billion. Included are allegations that last August the average markup during peak usage hours was 100 percent. The suppliers deny the allegations. The state organization says taxpayers and utility companies should get refunds.

The leads view expelling the Russians--the WP says they include the handlers of recently arrested spy suspect Robert Hanssen--as in part a reaction to Hanssen's activities. And the stories anticipate that Russia will counter-expel some U.S. spies-in-pinstripes, observing that this is all something of a spy scandal ritual. But the papers note that the numbers of those rejected far exceed those kicked out after the arrest of Aldrich Ames. They see something larger also afoot. Both the WP and USAT report a longstanding concern among U.S. intelligence types that the number of Russian intelligence officers operating in the U.S. has just grown unmanageably large, with the Post saying there are even more in the U.S. now than during the Cold War. USAT, the LAT and NYT see the move as representing the Bush administration's taking a sterner tone than its predecessor toward Russia. The NYT detects "a sharp souring," the LAT a "sharp decline" in Russo-American relations. The WP, mindful of President Bush's recent tough stance on negotiating missile policy with North Korea, and his push for a missile defense shield that's ruffling not just Russia, but also China and some European countries, states that the expulsions reflect a "pattern of hard-line foreign policy choices by the Bush administration."

Despite the leads' suggestion that in large part the expulsion of the Russian diplomats is an attempt to control their numbers, none of the papers address the process involved in their admission in the first place, leaving the reader wondering why the U.S. has to wait for a spy scandal to thin the herd.

---

Agreements on Evidence Speed Up Terror Trial

New York Times
March 22, 2001
By ALAN FEUER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/22/nyregion/22TERR.html

When the embassy bombings trial opened on Feb. 5, lawyers on both sides of the case were predicting that it would last for up to 10 months. It now appears, however, that the trial in Federal District Court in Manhattan might finish much earlier.

The government could rest its case as early as the end of next week, lawyers involved in the trial said yesterday, and the defense could do the same a few weeks after that.

While trying to forecast the length of a trial as complex as this one is extremely difficult, defense lawyers have said that the quick pace is due to their willingness to let the prosecution present voluminous forensic evidence without much argument. The forensic evidence has ranged from twisted metal posts to burned- out axle parts, mostly related to the physical effects of the bombings of the United States Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania on Aug. 7, 1998.

Federal prosecutors refused yesterday to discuss their trial schedule, but it seems clear that the agreements they have reached with the defense are largely responsible for speeding things up.

Not a day goes by without a lawyer rising to his feet to inform the jury that if such-and-such a witness were called, testimony would show where a piece of carpet was discovered, or where a chunk of metal was found.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation keeps detailed logs of every piece of evidence as it passes from one agent's hand to another's. Without the agreements - and there have been dozens of them - the jury would have had to listen to dozens of agents detailing the so-called chain of evidence.

Aside from the forensic evidence, the defense lawyers have agreed to several other matters that were apparently not worth arguing about. They have agreed, for example, that some pictures of the defendants - Wadih El-Hage, Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, Mohammed Saddiq Odeh and Mohamed Rashed Daoud al- 'Owhali - are authentic. They have acknowledged that English translations of particular Swahili and Arabic documents are accurate without putting up a fight.

The benefits the agreements have afforded the government are fairly obvious: they have let a detailed description of the damage caused by the bombings, and other evidence, into the case without the time and expense of flying expert witnesses to Manhattan from around the world.

(In the five-month World Trade Center bombing case, by contrast, such agreements were far fewer, leading to weeks of testimony about things like a sulfuric acid stain on a pair of shoes.)

By the same token, the defense has acknowledged that neither side is served when jurors are buried in mountains of minutiae. The lawyers have said they would rather have the jury awake, alert and focused on the significant evidence, or lack of it.

There is expected to be a hiatus - as long as two weeks - after the prosecution rests and before the defense begins its case. None of the defense lawyers would talk about how long their individual presentations would take or how long the defense case as a whole would take.

But some did say that there had been problems: it has not been easy, they said, trying to persuade Kenyan and Tanzanian witnesses to testify on behalf of their clients, who have been accused of playing a role in the deaths of scores of their fellow countrymen.

---

Russia Warns It Will Reply in Kind to Ouster of Envoys

New York Times
March 22, 2001
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/22/world/22CND-RUSSIA.html

MOSCOW, March 22 - Russia said today that the expulsion of 50 Russian diplomats accused of spying in the United States was a hostile act that would lead to the expulsion of American diplomats here.

In a statement to CNN tonight, Foreign Ministry Igor S. Ivanov said the Bush administration's action would force Moscow to make an "adequate" response and that "you will not have to wait long."

At the same time, Moscow accused the Bush administration of another "explicitly unfriendly act" by inviting a senior representative of rebel forces in Chechnya for high-level consultations in Washington.

"Official contacts with Chechen terrorists are one more explicitly unfriendly act towards Russia" that is "raising questions about the true motives of the American side," the foreign ministry said in a statement.

The State Department formally announced today that it had ordered four Russian diplomats to leave the United States within 10 days and 46 more to leave by July 1. The White House said the expulsions were connected with last month's discovery that a senior F.B.I. counterintelligence officer, Robert Philip Hanssen, had been spying for Moscow since 1985.

With these initiatives, the Bush administration, just two months in office, appears to have decided on a muscular demonstration of disapproval over longstanding grievances with Moscow. More than a year ago the Clinton administration privately sought Russia's agreement to reduce the number of active intelligence operatives in the United States, but Moscow responded by expelling an American diplomat, Cheri Leberknight, for what it said was espionage activity.

In Washington Mr. Bush's senior advisers say the administration's overall Russia policy is still under review. But a series of disputes involving American plans to build an antimissile shield, Russian arms sales to Iran, NATO expansion, conflict in the Balkans and sanctions against Iraq have significantly undermined the generally cooperative spirit that marked America's dealings with Russia in the first decade after the Soviet collapse. Human rights violations by Russian military forces in Chechnya have also deeply troubled Western governments, along with some domestic policies of President Vladimir V. Putin, a former K.G.B. officer, who has brought pressure to bear against the independent news media.

Some Russian officials asserted today that the United States maintains a far larger diplomatic presence in Russia and in former Soviet republics, where new American embassies have opened to multiply the espionage activities for Central Intelligence Agency officers working under diplomatic cover.

A foreign ministry statement tonight said Moscow had protested to the United States ambassador, James F. Collins, "the absolutely groundless decision of the American side to expel a group of Russian diplomats from the United States."

The Russian protest "stressed that this hostile act, aimed at increasing tension in Russian-American relations cannot, naturally, remain without consequences and will receive an appropriate response."

The statement did not say precisely what its response would be, but a number of senior Russian officials said Moscow would be forced to expel American diplomats in retaliation. However, some officials suggested that Mr. Putin would take a more measured approach, to emphasize that Moscow has been seeking to resolve its disputes with the new administration in Washington through dialogue.

"I would advise our president not to respond in kind to the United States," said Vladimir P. Lukin, a deputy Parliament speaker who served as Russia's ambassador to Washington in the early 1990's. "I would advise him to continue our positive dialogue with European countries," he continued. "If the United States prefers to indulge in fireworks instead of diplomacy right now, I don't think we should respond with fireworks here."

Mr. Putin travels to Sweden on Friday where he will attend a summit meeing of European leaders. The Bush administration's action may also have caught European leaders unawares. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany told a group of Russian editors this week that Western nations were not preparing to take a markedly tougher line toward Moscow.

"There won't be any toughening," Mr. Schröder said. "We are basing ourselves on the fact that a policy of friendship and partnership must be realized in relation to Russia."

One Kremlin official said that after last week's consultations in Washington between Sergei B. Ivanov, Mr. Putin's national security adviser, and his White House counterpart, Condoleeza Rice, "there were slight hopes for a constructive approach with the new administration, but now I am afraid that has disappeared." The official expressed doubt that Russia would react in kind by expelling as many as 50 American diplomats, but he added it was certain that there would be a strong response.

"Some of your diplomats should be packing their bags," he said.

Sergei Prikhodko, a senior aide to Mr. Putin, said, "Any kind of spy-mania campaign and hunting for enemies are a cold-war era replay deserving of regret."

The speaker of the Russian Parliament, Gennadi Seleznov, who just returned from Iraq and a personal meeting with Saddam Hussein, whom he praised as a clear thinking statesman, said on Russian television that if Washington expels a large number of Russian diplomats, "Believe me, we will find adequate reason to expel exactly the same number of American diplomats."

Mr. Lukin, the former envoy, recalling that President Reagan had expelled 80 Russian diplomats for spying in 1986, said: "One should remember that Reagan did it for the sake of turning Russia into more or less what Russia is now, and Russia now, with all of its unpleasant features, is basically a democratic country, a non-Communist country and a country that gets along with other democratic countries." He characterized the Bush administration actions as childish.

News of the diplomatic expulsions followed a State Department announcement Wednesday that a senior American official would meet with Ilyas Akhmadov, described as the foreign minister of the separatist Chechen leadership, against which Moscow has waged a 17-month military campaign. Russian officials complained Wednesday that such a meeting would only encourage the rebellion, while American officials said they are looking into ways to encourage a political settlement of the conflict that has killed tens of thousands of civilians.

Mr. Putin made no public comment today. In an interview with four Russian newspapers on Wednesday, he gave no hint that he was aware of the impending American decision. But asked about the increasingly contentious atmosphere between Washington and Moscow, Mr. Putin said, "I think we should cut out the theatrics."

"New administrations always revise the policies of their predecessors," he said, adding that he still considered the Untied States as "one of our major partners."

"The American president said recently that Russia was neither an enemy nor a friend of the United States," Mr. Putin said, adding, "I take this as a positive signal. We've heard it, and we treat the United States in the similar manner."

---

U.S. Orders First Expulsions of 50 Russian Diplomats

New York Times
March 22, 2001
By JAMES RISEN and JANE PERLEZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/22/world/22CND-SPY.html

WASHINGTON, March 22 - The United States has told Russia to send four of its diplomats home within 10 days and withdraw 46 other diplomats by July 1, a senior State Department official said Thursday. In response, Russia's foreign minister said his country would respond in kind.

The United States linked the expulsion of the first four with the arrest in February of an F.B.I. agent on charges that he spied for Moscow for more than 15 years.

Soon after the first expulsions were announced President Bush said Thursday it "was the right thing to do."

"I was presented with the facts. I made the decision," Mr. Bush said. "And having said that, I believe that we'll have a good working relationship with the Russians."

Condoleeza Rice, Mr. Bush's national security adviser, said the expulsions came after Moscow ignored several warnings that its spy presence was "out of line."

"The United States believes that the Russian military presence was out of line with what should be a very fruitful and indeed excellent relationship," she added.

In Moscow, Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov said Washington's move was political and that Russia was "forced to take adequate measures" in response. Asked when Moscow would retaliate against American diplomats, Mr. Ivanov replied, "You won't have long to wait."

In Washington, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell met with the Russian ambassador, Yuri V. Ushakov, Wednesday afternoon and issued the order that the diplomats leave, the officials said, describing them as intelligence officers working undercover as diplomats.

It was unclear whether the the total numbers include one or two Russian diplomats who have already left the country in recent days, apparently in anticipation of the American move.

The decision to order the expulsions was reached after weeks of sensitive internal debate within the administration over how best to respond to the espionage case involving F.B.I. agent Robert Philip Hanssen. Mr. Hanssen, a 25-year employee and a counterintelligence expert, was arrested on Feb. 18 and later charged with spying for Russia. The government alleges that Mr. Hanssen began spying for Moscow in 1985 and handed over many important American intelligence secrets.

American officials acknowledge that it was Mr. Hanssen who volunteered to supply information, but they blame the Russians for taking him up on the offer for many years, through intelligence officials working undercover as diplomats at Russia's embassy in Washington.

The latest move appears to be the largest diplomatic expulsion order since 1986, when the Reagan administration demanded a series of steep reductions in the Soviet diplomatic presence in the United States. The retaliatory measures taken following the arrest of the C.I.A. officer Aldrich Ames in 1994 were comparatively minor. According to a former Americam intelligence official, only one Russian diplomat - the chief of the Russian intelligence station in Washington - was expelled then. In response, the Russians expelled the C.I.A.'s station chief in Moscow.

The tone of the Bush administration's statements on Russia has become increasingly hostile, suggesting a sharp souring of their relations. Just last weekend, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld accused Moscow of heavy involvement in spreading weapons to dangerous nations, while his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, said that the Russians "seem to be willing to sell anything to anyone for money." Russian officials angrily responded that the charges were reminiscent of the cold car.

American officials said they expected the explusion order to prompt a similar retaliation against American diplomats in Russia, particularly C.I.A. officers operating under diplomatic cover. After a major espionage case, "this is not an uncommon diplomatic sanction," said Sen. Bob Graham, Democrat of Florida and vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. "I think we will soon be hearing that the Russians will similarly be asking members of the U.S. mission in Moscow to leave. Normally these things end up being a tit-for-tat situation."

Such a series of retaliatory moves could hurt the United States relatively more than the Russians, however, since the number of C.I.A. case officers operating in Russia is much smaller than the number of Russian intelligence officers working in the United States. "For the United States, I think it could be very costly," said one former U.S. official familiar with Russia policy.

As a result, the C.I.A. has frequently opposed explusion of Russian diplomats, out of a fear of launching a "PNG war," in which both sides declare groups of diplomats "persona non grata."

The expulsion was ordered less than a week after the first visit to Washington by a high-level Russian government official since President Bush took office. Sergei B. Ivanov, the head of President Vladimir V. Putin's security council, met with General Powell and the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, last week, as the administration was considering whether to order the explusions. A State Department official said that the Hanssen case was discussed during General Powell's meeting with Mr. Ivanov last week.

The expulsion decision seems to represent a departure from the Clinton administration's more accommodating approach toward Russia. It follows years of growing frustration at the F.B.I. about the revival of Russian intelligence and its expanding presence in the United States.

The number of Russian intelligence officers working in this country declined briefly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, American officials believe. F.B.I. and C.I.A. officials now estimate the Russian intelligence presence in this country back near cold war levels.

For the most part, Russian intelligence officers are based at the Russian Embassy in Washington, the Russian Consulate and United Nations Mission in New York, and the Russian Consulate in San Francisco, American officials say.

According to the official Winter 2000 Diplomatic List published by the Department of State, the Russian Embassy in Washington had 114 diplomats, as well as officials stationed in six other locations around the city. In comparison, the British Embassy lists 76 diplomats.

Some former American officials said they believe the Bush administration chose one of the most aggressive diplomatic options available to them as they deliberated how to respond to the Hanssen case. For example, the administration had to consider whether to target a small number of senior Russian officials or larger numbers including lower-level diplomats, one former American official observed.

Instead of acting immediately after Mr. Hanssen's arrest, the Bush administration took its time to make its decision because "it needed to make a hard assessment of the costs and benefits," another former official observed. "The temptation is to be tough," he said.

---

Russian Diplomats Ordered Expelled in a Countermove

New York Times
March 22, 2001
By JAMES RISEN and JANE PERLEZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/22/world/22SPY.html

WASHINGTON, March 21 - In a retaliatory move, the Bush administration has ordered a number of Russian diplomats to leave the country in the wake the arrest last month of an F.B.I. agent on charges that he spied for Moscow for more than 15 years, American officials said today.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell met with the Russian ambassador, Yuri V. Ushakov, this afternoon and issued the order that the diplomats leave, the officials said, describing the individuals as intelligence officers working undercover as diplomats.

American officials said that General Powell presented the Russian ambassador a list of four or five Russian diplomats who were ordered to leave. In addition, General Powell told the ambassador that the United States wants another 40 or more diplomats to leave over the next several months in order to reduce the Russian intelligence presence in the United States. In all, the Bush administration's actions could affect close to 50 Russian diplomats, officials said.

It was unclear whether those numbers include one or two Russian diplomats who have already left the country in recent days, apparently in anticipation of the American move. The action is to be officially announced on Thursday, officials said.

The decision to order the expulsions was reached after weeks of sensitive internal debate within the administration over how best to respond to the espionage case involving F.B.I. agent Robert Philip Hanssen. Mr. Hanssen, a 25-year employee and a counter-intelligence expert, was arrested on Feb. 18 and later charged with spying for Russia. The government alleges that Mr. Hanssen began spying for Moscow in 1985 and handed over many of the most sensitive American intelligence secrets.

Today's was one of the most far- reaching diplomatic expulsions ordered by the United States in many years, and it appears to be a much larger response than the retaliatory measures taken following the arrest of the C.I.A. officer Aldrich Ames in 1994. According to a former U.S. intelligence official, only one Russian diplomat - the chief of the Russian intelligence station in Washington - was expelled. In response, the Russians expelled the C.I.A.'s station chief in Moscow.

The expulsions were ordered after a rhetorical clash between Russia and top officials of the Bush administration over comments by senior Bush aides who accused Russia of selling dangerous weapons technologies. Russian officials angrily responded that the charges were reminiscent of the cold war.

Government officials said they expected the decision to prompt a similar retaliation against American diplomats in Russia, particularly C.I.A. officers operating under diplomatic cover. "This is not an uncommon diplomatic sanction," said Sen. Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat and vice chairman of the Senate intelligence committee. "I think we will soon be hearing that the Russians will similarly be asking members of the U.S. mission in Moscow to leave. Normally these things end up being a tit-for-tat situation."

Such a series of retaliatory moves could hurt the United States relatively more than the Russians, however, since the number of C.I.A. case officers operating in Russia is much smaller than the number of Russian intelligence officers working in the United States.

As a result, the C.I.A. has frequently been opposed to forcing Russian diplomats to go home, out of a fear of launching a "PNG war," in which both sides declare groups of diplomats "persona non grata."

A spokesman at the Russian Embassy, Yuri I. Zubarev, said that "we are not commenting on intelligence issues."

The expulsion was ordered less than a week after the first visit to Washington by a high-level Russian government official since President Bush took office. Sergei B. Ivanov, the head of President Vladimir V. Putin's security council, met with General Powell and the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, last week, as the administration was considering whether to order the explusions.

But it follows years of growing frustration at the F.B.I. about the revival of the Russian intelligence presence in the United States. The number of Russian intelligence officers working in this country declined briefly after the collapse of the Soviet Union. F.B.I. and C.I.A. officials now estimate the Russian intelligence presence is now back close to Cold War levels.

For the most part, Russian intelligence officers are based at the Russian Embassy in Washington, the Russian Consulate and United Nations Mission in New York, and the Russian Consulate in San Francisco, officials say.

Tobi Gati, a former assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research, described the explusions as "a bold statement" that showed the Bush administration was "not going to look the other way" at increased levels of Russian intelligence officers in the United States. According to winter 2000 Diplomatic List published by the Department of State, the Russian Embassy in Washington had 114 diplomats, as well as officials in six other offices around the city. By comparison, the British Embassy lists 76 diplomats.

As the administration was deliberating how to handle the retaliation, officials had to consider whether to target a small number of senior Russian officials or larger numbers including lower-level diplomats, one former American official observed. They picked the aggressive move of targeting a large group.

"For the United States, I think it could be very costly," he said. The administration could have taken a softer approach, perhaps by suggesting that the Russian intelligence presence be reduced, he said.

The Bush administration had taken a while to make these moves because "it needed to make a hard assessment of the costs and benefits," another former official said."The temptation is to be tough," he said.

---

Russian spies in U.S. up 40%

USA Today
03/22/2001 - Updated 06:47 PM ET
By Jack Kelley, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-03-22-russianspies.htm

WASHINGTON - The number of Russian intelligence officers conducting espionage in the USA has risen at least 40% in the last five years to Cold War-era levels, senior U.S. officials say. There are nearly 140 Russian spies in the USA, up from fewer than 100 in 1995, the officials tell USA TODAY. Much of the increase appears to be among Russian military intelligence officers who are trying to steal military and trade secrets and recruit Americans as spies, the officials say.

Thursday, the State Department ordered the expulsion of 50 Russian diplomats, including six of the 140 known spies. Officials said the expulsions were in retaliation for Moscow's co-opting of FBI agent Robert Hanssen, who was arrested Feb. 18 and charged with spying for nearly 15 years.

"It was the right thing to do," President Bush said of the expulsions. In Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said Russia will expel the same number of U.S. diplomats as those ordered out of Washington, CNN reported.

Russian defectors and FBI surveillance have helped identify Russian spies in the USA, officials say. Russian Embassy officials declined to comment. Nearly all the spies have diplomatic immunity and can't be arrested. Officials say they are hesitant to do that because it often results in expulsion of U.S. intelligence officers in Russia.

Most of the Russian spies are working out of the Russian Embassy in Washington, the Russian Mission to the United Nations in New York, the Russian Consulate in San Francisco, and various trade missions in the USA, U.S. officials say.

The spies, who are disguised as businessmen, are particularly active on Capitol Hill, where they are trying to steal national security secrets, and in Boston, Boulder, Denver and Silicon Valley, where they are after high-tech information, says former FBI counter-terrorism official Harry "Skip" Brandon.

"Commercial technology is their big target," Brandon says. "They're trying to pick out products under research and development, like avionics and communications technology."

U.S. officials say nearly 140 Soviet spies operated in the USA during the Cold War era. That fell to 120 when the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, and fewer than 100 in 1995.

The number began to increase in 1996 after then-president Boris Yeltsin appointed hard-liner Alexander Lebed as his security chief. Lebed called for an increase in spying.

The increase has continued under Russian President Vladimir Putin, a KGB veteran, who has vowed to rebuild Russia into a superpower.

"The Russian government has embarked on a sort of post-post-Cold War foreign policy which places a lot of emphasis on defending Russian greatness," says Paul Bremer, former U.S. ambassador for counter-terrorism during the Reagan administration. "Often, the climate of espionage is driven by bilateral relations. As long as relations remain strained, we'll continue to be a target of very aggressive Russian espionage."

---

Russia to expel American diplomats

USA Today
03/22/2001 - Updated 06:47 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-03-22-russians.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - Russia will expel American diplomats in numbers equal to those Russians ousted from the United States, a Russian official confirmed to USA TODAY Thursday. Meanwhile, President Bush sought to keep U.S. relations with Russia on an even keel after ordering the expulsion of more than 50 diplomats suspected of undercover intelligence activities.

Six Russians assigned to Moscow's embassy in Washington were directly linked by U.S. officials to the case of Robert Hanssen, a longtime FBI agent arrested a month ago on charges of selling secrets to Russia. Two of the six have already left the United States; the four others must depart within 10 days.

At the same time, Bush ordered the Russian diplomatic contingent sharply reduced, officials said. A total of 46 Russians, at the embassy and at consulates across the country, have until July 1 to leave, they said.

"I was presented with the facts. I made the decision. It was the right thing to do," Bush said.

It's a long-standing practice for U.S. and Russian intelligence officers to be posted in overseas embassies as diplomats. But after a gradual reduction in the Russian contingent, a buildup began in 1997, and the Bush administration decided to reverse it, inspired by the Hanssen case.

"I'm confident we can have a good relationship with the Russians," Bush said after addressing the National Newspaper Association. "We've got some areas where we can work together."

Along the same lines, Condoleezza Rice, his assistant for national security, called the expulsions an isolated incident.

"We expect to have a fruitful and beneficial relationship with Russia," Rice said. "We see Russia as a potential partner in many parts of the world and we look forward to getting on with a positive agenda."

Reducing the compliment of disguised intelligence agents "has been an issue that has been on the agenda for some time with the Russian government," Rice said.

Asked if the Kremlin might retaliate, the White House official replied: "I certainly hope not. This should go to the end of it."

In Moscow, Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov left no doubt it was not the end of the matter.

"Naturally, as it has before, Russia will firmly and steadfastly defend its national interests and will adequately respond to this unfriendly step by the United States," Ivanov said in Moscow as he somberly read a statement on government-controlled ORT television.

"At the same time, the Russian leadership assumes that in Washington, the policy and logic of those who try to push mankind and the United States (back) into the epoch of the Cold War and confrontation won't prevail," he said.

Complaining about the public way the Bush administration went at the situation, Ivanov said, "If anyone had any questions or doubts, this could easily have been settled along ... special channels and by special contacts."

Sen. Bob Graham, R-Fla., vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he assumed Russia would make a request "for some of our most experienced to leave."

---

U.S. expels 56 Russians in spy answer

Washington Times
March 22, 2001
By Ben Barber THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-2001322231038.htm

The United States yesterday ordered 56 Russian diplomats expelled as suspected spies in apparent response to the disclosure that FBI agent Robert Hanssen is accused of spying for Russia for 15 years, a diplomatic source said.

"Six of the Russian diplomats are to leave immediately and 50 others are to be given some time before they must leave," said the diplomat, speaking on strict condition of anonymity.

A Bush administration official confirmed that six diplomats who are suspected spies will be expelled and more would be asked to leave voluntarily.

"We're going to have people kicked out over there," the official said in anticipating a repeat of the tit-for-tat spy expulsions that took place in the 1980s.

Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee said four to six Russians suspected of spying already had left the country.

Russian Ambassador Yuriy Ushakov was summoned to the State Department yesterday, according to the diplomat, and was informed by Secretary of State Colin Powell of the decision to expel the Russians.

State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said he was instructed late yesterday by Mr. Powell, who was meeting with the Chinese Vice Prime Minister Qian Qichen, not to discuss the issue of any expulsion of Russian diplomats, which was first reported by CBS News.

Mr. Powell is to speak to reporters today around noon after meeting with the Australian foreign minister and may discuss the Russian expulsions then.

The diplomat, who also performs an intelligence function, said he had spoken to "people who should know" and learned the Russians were ordered to leave.

A U.S. official also told the Reuters news agency the expulsions were to take place, in part in retaliation for the Hanssen spying case.

An expulsion of all those either ordered or asked to leave would be the biggest since President Reagan threw out 80 Soviet diplomats in 1986.

Mr. Hanssen, a veteran FBI counterintelligence agent, is accused of turning over to the Russians countless invaluable secrets, including the names of U.S. agents and a secret tunnel that had bugged the Soviet - now the Russian -Embassy on Wisconsin Avenue above Georgetown.

The FBI has complained loudly within the government about the growing problem of Russian intelligence activities that have taxed the FBI's limited resources to track officers.

"It is known they're sending more and more people," the official said. "The number of intelligence people here now is equal to the all-time high under the Soviets."

The expulsions represent a new, tougher national security policy by the Bush administration, the official said.

John L. Martin, former chief of the Justice Department's internal security section, said the action looks like a combination of expulsions and requests for Moscow to voluntarily withdraw intelligence personnel.

The move-countermove spying scenario has developed in the last few years after a period of post-Cold War calm on such activities.

In December 1999, the United States ordered the expulsion of a Russian diplomat after the FBI detained him in connection with a listening device found hidden at the State Department.

The Russian claimed diplomatic immunity after he was caught listening to the device and was questioned by the FBI, U.S. officials said. He was declared persona non grata.

At the time, the expulsion capped a series of three espionage cases involving Russia and the United States in a month.

They all came against a backdrop of tense relations between the two nations on a host of issues, including the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty and the Russian crackdown against secessionist-minded Chechnya.

A week before the U.S. expulsion of the diplomat, Russia expelled a U.S. diplomat in Moscow after accusing her of attempting to obtain secret military information from a Russian citizen.

Like the Russian Embassy employee here, the U.S. diplomat, identified as Cheri Leberknight, a second secretary in the American Embassy's political section, could not be charged with a crime because of diplomatic immunity.

A month earlier the U.S. Navy said it had charged an enlisted man with passing secrets to Russia in 1994.

Petty Officer 1st Class Daniel King, 40, was taken into military custody Nov. 5, 1999, and had confessed to disclosing classified information to Russia.

"U.S.-Russian relations are certainly not at their best at the moment, and when relations deteriorate you tend to get these tit-for-tat retaliations," Ariel Cohen, a research fellow in Russian and Eurasian Studies at the Heritage Foundation, said at the time.

"Such spying incidents - and the timing of the arrests - is more a symptom of troubles in the relationship than a cause of them," he said.

In July 1999, The Washington Times reported that U.S. officials were so concerned about the level of recent Russian espionage efforts in the United States that Ambassador James Collins warned Moscow to cut back or face a new round of expulsions or cuts in diplomatic positions.

Mr. Collins said the Russian espionage presence in the United States was returning to "Cold War levels," The Times reported.

Russian public and official sentiment have turned sharply against the West in recent months, opposing NATO's air war in Kosovo against Russia's traditional ally, Serbia, and rejecting growing criticisms in the West of the government's aggressive military campaign against the breakaway republic of Chechnya.

• Bill Gertz contributed to this report.

--------

Spy climate: Chilly, but not cold

CNN
March 22, 2001
By CNN's Douglas Herbert http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/03/22/russia.coldwar/index.html

LONDON, England (CNN) -- When spies are sent packing, the first casualty of U.S.-Russian relations is usually diplomatic restraint.

Hours before news broke of the U.S. decision to order more than 40 Russian diplomats out of Washington -- the biggest mass expulsion since 1986 -- Russian President Vladimir Putin was downplaying strains in the bilateral relationship.

"Let me reiterate, I wouldn't want to overdramatise anything here," Putin told Russian newspaper reporters on Wednesday, in a retrospective interview ahead of his first anniversary in power this Sunday.

He added: "We have disagreements (with the U.S.) on several aspects of international life, most importantly, security issues" but "we are counting on a positive dialogue with our American partners."

By Thursday afternoon in Moscow, the Kremlin's conciliatory tone had turned a bit more shrill.

"Any campaigns of spymania or searches for an enemy are only worthy of deep regret and are a relapse into the Cold War era," said Sergei Prikhodko, a Putin foreign policy adviser, in remarks picked up by Russia's Interfax news agency.

The expulsions are technically the aftermath of last month's arrest by U.S. officials of a 25-year FBI agent, Robert Hanssen, accused of spying for the Soviet Union, and then Russia, for 15 years.

But they come against a backdrop of growing irritants in U.S.-Russia relations which, taken together, suggest a chilling of relations between the former Soviet-era adversaries as they seek a new strategic footing.

'We've always had dips'

Spy shenanigans and finger-wagging rhetoric have been staples of U.S.-Russian relations for decades, to be sure.

Recent misunderstandings - such as Russian differences with the U.S. over the 1999 Kosovo campaign, the Chechen war and NATO expansion - have been treated in the context of a generally improving relationship.

There are doubts whether that is still the case.

"We've always had dips (in the relationship), even during the Yeltsin period, but there are so many things coming together now," said Stephan de Spiegelire, a senior policy analyst at RAND Europe, based in the Netherlands.

De Spiegelire does not see the makings of a Cold War comeback in the latest machinations between Russia and the United States.

Rather, he discerns a fundamental rethinking of priorities in both countries. On both sides, he says, there has been a shift towards greater pragmatism in foreign policy, accompanied by a downgrading of the importance each country attaches to the other in the diplomatic pecking order.

"They are willing to play hardball on certain issues, but they don't want to take it so far that it will lead to a collapse in the relationship ... there is an upper threshold to how far they will allow it to go." He notes a recent goodwill visit by Sergei Ivanov, head of Russia's national security council, to Washington.

For Putin, the realignment is most evident in his overtures to Western Europe, where he has pitched a joint European missile shield as a strategic alternative to the U.S. project.

Putin has also paid personal visits to former Soviet-era allies such as Cuba, Vietnam, Mongolia and China, part of a broader strategy to reassert Russian influence on the global stage.

In a move that riled U.S. officials, Putin and Iranian President Mohammad Khatami agreed in Moscow earlier this month to step up trade in conventional weapons and nuclear energy cooperation.

Ongoing sparring match

The pact was the first of its kind between the countries since Iran's Islamic revolution of 1979. It followed earlier statements by Tehran's ambassador to Moscow that his country could buy up to $7 billion in weapons from Russia in coming years, giving a much-needed boost to Russia's beleaguered defence industry.

Prikhodko's "Cold War" comment on Thursday was but the latest volley in an ongoing rhetorical sparring match between Washington and Moscow.

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld accused Russia last weekend of abetting the spread of banned weapons to nations with shady credentials.

Russia, meanwhile, denounced on Thursday as an "explicitly unfriendly act" a U.S. plan to meet a rebel envoy from the separatist province of Chechnya.

Russia has refused to recognise the envoy, Ilyas Akhmadov, nominally Chechnya's foreign minister. The republic has fiercely resisted Russian attempts to stamp out a rebel insurgency.

In his otherwise conciliatory interview Wednesday, Putin took exception to plans by the new U.S. administration of George W. Bush to build a national missile defence shield that would obliterate incoming enemy missiles from the safe remove of outer space.

Russia contends the shield would violate the terms of the 1972 anti-ballistic missile treaty, signed by both countries. A Bush administration official recently dubbed the treaty "ancient history."

Mark Galeotti, a Russian specialist at Keele University, in England, notes that for all their talk of post-Cold War rapprochement, Moscow has been actively ramping up its intelligence activities in Washington since the mid-1990s, when Yeltsin reversed an early policy of cutbacks.

"I regard Putin as a symptom of a general shift away from the original sense that with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Moscow and Washington were going to construct a more harmonious relationship," Galeotti said.

More than anything, Galeotti said Putin and Bush are "being tested and testing themselves."

"Putin is an intensely pragmatic man, not an ideologue," he said. "He will push as far as he can and, similarly, Bush clearly wants to show his own strengths and his political machismo."

---

Spy Row May Fuel Bush Inclination to Ignore Russia

Russia Today
Mar 22, 2001
http://www.russiatoday.com/news.php3?id=317836

LONDON -- (Reuters) The latest U.S.-Russian espionage row does not signal a return to the Cold War but it may reinforce the new Bush administration's inclination to neglect Russia, analysts say.

Washington's decision to order out nearly 50 Russian diplomats as suspected spies, the biggest mass expulsion since before the collapse of the Soviet Union, revived memories of superpower confrontation that are far from today's reality.

Since taking office in January, President George W. Bush and his advisers have been keen to convey a different message -- that Russia matters increasingly little and ties with Moscow are no longer central to Washington's world view.

While Bush has met or plans to meet the leaders of Europe, Japan, South Korea and China, U.S. officials have pointedly said he has no plans for a full summit with President Vladimir Putin, only talks in the margins of international gatherings.

"Russia acts as if the United States still viewed the world through the prism of its relations with Russia. Russia does not lie at the center of U.S. foreign policy, nor can it," said Thomas Graham, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

"The administration will be inclined to deal with Russia as part of clusters of other states... There is very little that the administration believes it can resolve by dealing solely or primarily with Russia," Graham said.

COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE NEGLECT

Senior Bush administration officials have signalled that Washington no longer sees Moscow as central even in traditional areas of great power diplomacy such as arms control, although it still has the only nuclear missile force of comparable size.

Bush has said he aims to cut the U.S. nuclear arsenal unilaterally to match its own security needs rather than negotiate mutual reductions with Russia by treaty.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has dismissed the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty limiting missile defenses as "ancient history". Some Bush advisers advocate abandoning rather than trying to renegotiate it.

Washington's main worries about Russia now are the risk of "loose nukes" -- nuclear weapons being stolen from the ex-Soviet arsenal -- and a leakage of arms technology to "rogue" states.

Underlying the changed approach are disillusionment with the results of the former Clinton administration's policy of political and economic engagement with Moscow, and intelligence forecasts of a continuing steep decline in Russian power.

"As you look into the future, Russia looks more like sub-Saharan Africa than it does like Europe. There is a major disconnect between Putin's policies today and Russia's vastly reduced resource base," a senior intelligence official said.

Diplomats said some European allies are worried by the Bush administration's perceived tendency to neglect Russia. Germany and France have both counselled against ignoring or humiliating Moscow. Even Britain is reported to have misgivings.

Some American critics say a policy of malign neglect would be counter-productive to U.S. international security aims.

"The initial attempt to downgrade American relations with Russia strikes me as verging on the petty. Russia is a still a major military power and has influence in parts of the world we care about," said James Rubin, who was State Department spokesman under the Clinton administration.

"I fear this administration is shooting itself in the foot by adopting a rhetorical stance vis-a-vis Russia when it could pursue the same policies more effectively by showing Russia a little respect," he told Reuters in an interview.

NMD, NATO ENLARGEMENT

Rubin, now teaching at the London School of Economics, said relations with Moscow had been tense in the late Clinton era because of Russia's Chechnya crackdown, deep hostility to NATO's Kosovo war and ties with states seen by Washington as dangerous.

Putin's courting of Iran, North Korea and China, and support for Iraq, appeared to be an attempt to counter Russian weakness in its dealings with the United States, he said.

U.S. anger at the level of Russian intelligence activity in Washington had been brewing in the last 18 months of the Clinton administration, another former official said.

Rubin said U.S.-Russian ties had withstood previous espionage expulsions but would face bigger tests in the coming months over Bush's plans for a comprehensive missile defense, and a possible further enlargement of NATO.

Much would depend on whether the administration sought to consult and reassure Russia, without giving it a veto, or whether it chose to brush Moscow aside.

"You can shove this down Russia's throat -- what are they going to do? But you're not going to create the real security that you want if you down have the depth and comfort level of relationship with Russia," Rubin said.

Clinton had managed to win Russian acquiescence to NATO's Bosnia intervention, continued sanctions on Iraq and the first wave of NATO enlargement by building a respectful relationship with ex-President Boris Yeltsin, he argued.

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Supersecret NSA said to be falling behind in tech advances

SiliconValley.com
Thursday, March 22, 2001
http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/news/tech/050194.htm

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. National Security Agency, which uses satellites and electronic listening posts to gather intelligence globally, is falling behind in technology, causing deep concern in the spy community, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said Thursday.

Rep. Porter Goss, the Florida Republican who chairs the panel, said the NSA, once a leader in technology, is now lagging behind the fast pace of advances and is unable to cover all necessary targets for gathering information and data.

``NSA is the number one concern in the intelligence community right now in terms of capability,'' Goss told the Defense Writers Group.

``It is true that there are targets that we cannot cover today that we used to be able to enjoy coverage on, because of technology.''

NSA, probably the most secretive of the U.S. intelligence agencies, uses an array of technology to monitor communications around the globe.

It had an edge during the Cold War because it had computer power that no one else could match, Goss said.

``NSA is an agency that has served the country brilliantly. It is now out of date.''

However, he added that there were ongoing efforts to turn the agency around and bring it up to speed technologically, including through some ties with the private sector.

``So yes there is a huge effort to create the equivalent of the new 800-pound gorilla,'' he said.

The United States also is underinvested in spies with good language capabilities, Goss said, noting that the Central Intelligence Agency reduced its presence in Africa and closed stations there in the early 1990s.

``Africa is a place that needs all the attention it can get,'' he said. ``To have a reduced flow of good accurate information coming out of the continent of Africa over the past 10 years I think has reaped a bitter harvest.''

-------- terrorism

Terror Suspect Held Secretly for 4 Months

New York Times
March 22, 2001
By BENJAMIN WEISER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/22/world/22ARRE.html

A new suspect in a global conspiracy to kill Americans abroad has been held secretly in New York City for more than four months since his arrest in Africa last fall, court records show.

The defendant, Mohamed Suleiman al Nalfi, was taken into custody in Kenya after he was lured from his home in Sudan, his lawyer said yesterday.

"He was tricked into leaving the Sudan," said the lawyer, Marion A. Seltzer.

The arrest of Mr. al Nalfi is apparently a breakthrough for the government in its efforts to round up what it says are terrorists led by the Saudi exile Osama bin Laden. Mr. al Nalfi's arrest in November came before the beginning of the embassy bombings trial now under way in Federal District Court in Manhattan.

Mr. al Nalfi is not charged with any role in the embassy attacks, but a new indictment accuses him of being an early associate of Mr. bin Laden's and of forming a Sudanese jihad group at the request of Mr. bin Laden's military commander.

The indictment also charges that Mr. al Nalfi was told by the commander in 1992 or 1993 to have his group ready to travel on short notice to Somalia to participate in the effort to expel American and United Nations forces from that country. Prosecutors have accused Mr. bin Laden's group of training the fighters who carried out the attack on American troops in Somalia in 1993, an assault that killed 18 American soldiers.

In court on Friday, when asked how he pleaded to the charges, Mr. al Nalfi said, "I am not guilty."

The government has not said why it kept Mr. al Nalfi's arrest secret for so long, but in the past, prosecutors have worked quietly, sometimes for many months, to win cooperation from terrorism suspects, and filed public charges only after negotiations have broken down.

Ms. Seltzer refused to discuss the reasons for the secrecy, but said that her client was going to trial.

"He's obviously not cooperating with the government," Ms. Seltzer said. "This man is an impoverished businessman. He is not a terrorist."

Ms. Seltzer said her client was involved in fighting Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the late 1980's, and may have had some contact with Mr. bin Laden's organization in that effort.

But he "never harbored any hostility toward the United States or its citizens," she said. "He's not part of the jihad. He denies the charges."

A man with the same name as Mr. al Nalfi has been cited several times in testimony at the embassy bombings trial by Jamal Ahmed Al-Fadl, one of the government's chief witnesses.

Mr. Al-Fadl, who broke with Mr. bin Laden in 1996 and agreed to cooperate with the American authorities, testified that a Sudanese man named Mohamed al Nalfi was his relative and had been a member of Mr. bin Laden's group.

On one occasion, Mr. Al-Fadl testified, Mr. al Nalfi helped to smuggle weapons from Sudan to Egypt on the backs of camels.

Ms. Seltzer said in a brief phone interview yesterday that she believed her client was the same man referred to by Mr. Al-Fadl in court. But she denied any assertion that her client was involved in any terrorist activities against the United States or its citizens.

The testimony also suggested that Mr. al Nalfi himself broke with Mr. bin Laden at some point.

Mr. Al-Fadl acknowledged under cross-examination that after leaving Mr. bin Laden's group, he considered trying to have Mr. bin Laden assassinated, and thought it could be carried out by a Sudanese group led by Mr. al Nalfi. It was not clear whether that group was the same group that the indictment says Mr. al Nalfi established in Sudan.

In court on Friday, Ms. Seltzer charged that Mr. al Nalfi "was brought to this country against his will."

"He was basically kidnapped by the F.B.I.," she told Judge Leonard B. Sand.

Ms. Seltzer said yesterday that Mr. al Nalfi, while in Sudan, had received a plane ticket and an invitation to Amsterdam, where he thought he was being offered a job.

He agreed to go, but he never reached Amsterdam, she said.

When his plane landed, apparently in Kenya, she said, Mr. al Nalfi was taken into custody and turned over to the F.B.I.

An F.B.I. spokesman, James M. Margolin, said yesterday, "It is the position of the F.B.I. that the process by which Mr. al Nalfi was brought to the United States was lawful." He would not comment further. Herbert Hadad, a spokesman for the United States attorney's office in Manhattan, declined to comment.

-------- activists

WANTED: RESEARCH EXPERIENCE IN CONSERVATION BIOLOGY

Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001
From: mbdb@full-moon.com

Degreed couple (BS ecology/Ph.D. anthropology) seeks research experience focused on the conservation of endangered or marginal species. Available for immediate short or longer term employment in settings worldwide (both have US and EU residency). Paid experience preferred but will consider working for stipend or on volunteer basis if accommodation provided.

We would bring the following skills and special attributes to such a position:

BS, ECOLOGY: has broad-based course work in ecology and the environmental sciences; advanced skills in radio communication, including equipment design and maintenance; extensive mapping, map reading, and radio direction finding experience; familiarity with several European languages and willingness/ability to quickly learn more.

Ph.D., ANTHROPOLOGY: has well-developed writing and editing skills; solid background in ethnographic, archival, and legal research; experience in applied and field based research in culturally diverse settings; skills in research design and a range of methodologies; good communication and people skills.

BOTH: are computer literate; trained in basic statistics; skilled photographers; experienced in wilderness environments; comfortable living/working in cross-cultural and/or culturally sensitive contexts; willing to live and work in remote areas or under rustic conditions.

In summary, we are available immediately and are negotiable as to the terms, duration, and location of employment. If you have anything to offer either directly or tangentially related to the above, please e-mail us. Also, please forward this message to anyone you feel may be interested.

M. Bolton D.Buchholtz

------

World Briefing

New York Times
March 22, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/22/world/22BRIE.html

IRELAND: STUDENTS DEMONSTRATE Holding signs reading "We Want to Learn" and "We'd Rather Be in School," several hundred students marched on Parliament to protest a continuing teachers' strike that will close 600 high schools across the country through most of next week. The teachers, who have refused to supervise or grade graduation examinations, have signaled a willingness to end their six-month-old pay dispute by reconsidering a court recommendation that would allow their union to negotiate with the government. Brian Lavery (NYT)

TURKEY: HUNGER STRIKER DIES A prisoner who had joined about 2,000 others in a hunger strike last November to protest new jails with tighter security became the first to die, according to the Human Rights Association. The prisoner, Cengiz Soydas, who had taken only small amounts of sugar and water, died in a prison near Ankara. In December, paramilitaries raided 20 jails to break the hunger strike, resulting in the death of about 30 prisoners, some of whom self-immolated, and two soldiers. (Agence France-Presse)

THE AMERICAS

MEXICO: REBELS REJECT TALKS The Zapatista rebel leader, Subcommander Marcos, rejected an offer from President Vicente Fox to meet to discuss the possibility of restarting talks aimed at ending the seven-year conflict. In a rally at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, Subcommander Marcos said President Fox had not fulfilled rebel demands to close certain military bases near Zapatista strongholds in the southern state of Chiapas. In an effort to lure the rebel leaders into a meeting, President Fox on Tuesday had said he would comply with rebel demands for troop withdrawals. Ginger Thompson (NYT)

ARGENTINA: UNIONS STRIKE A 24-hour national strike by dissident unions and some student groups to protest government austerity policies crippled much transportation of goods around the country. The effectiveness of the strike was hard to measure because stormy weather in and around Buenos Aires kept many people at home. Clifford Krauss (NYT)

ASIA

INDIA: GOVERNMENT AT A STANDSTILL Parliament was paralyzed for the sixth day because of revelations of corruption in the ruling coalition by journalists posing as arms merchants. The opposition Congress Party has called for Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to resign and said it would organize a nationwide series of protests. Celia W. Dugger (NYT)

ZAMBIA: CRACKDOWN ON MEETINGS Police broke up a meeting of civic and church leaders who were debating whether to hold a referendum on amending the constitution to allow President Frederick Chiluba to seek a third term. Organizers were told that the gathering of about 100 people, in the capital of Lusaka, was illegal because they had not obtained a permit. With opposition to a third term increasing, the police have stepped up enforcement against public meetings and demonstrations. Henri E. Cauvin (NYT)

---

Zapatistas spurn Fox on immediate talks

Washington Times
March 22, 2001
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-200132221438.htm

MEXICO CITY - Mexico's Zapatista rebels snubbed President Vicente Fox's call for immediate talks, saying yesterday that the government had not yet met its conditions.

"There are only declarations and promises. Nothing has changed," rebel leader Subcomandante Marcos told a crowd at a major university in Mexico City.

Mr. Fox said Tuesday that he was sending the Zapatistas a letter inviting them to talks and announced he was trying to meet their conditions for negotiations aimed at expanding Indian rights.

He said he would shut the last of seven army bases the Zapatistas had demanded be closed, free all Zapatista prisoners held on federal charges and press Congress to pass an Indian rights bill he submitted in December.

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Earth First vs. Earth worst
As planet degrades, Greens need to learn to fight smarter

By Eugene Linden
MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR
March 22

President Bush has caved to pressure from energy industry interests (code for campaign donors) and backed off a Sept. 29 pledge to take action on the threat of human-caused climate change. Bowing to pressure from the mining industry, Bush has also dismantled federal standards on arsenic levels in drinking water. Score two big wins for the corporate Browns in their long-standing rivalry with the Greens in this latest game in the World Environmental League.

Greens need to toss their play book and find a legitimate way to level the playing field.

THIS SHOULD NOT be a surprise, since the Browns are pros playing for money, while the greens are amateurs playing for effete liberal ideas like the viability of the planet. Those who protect nature always seem to be playing touch football while their opponents play tackle and buy the ref. This is true in the global warming division of the league in the U.S., and every division ‹ deforestation, biodiversity, oceans, etc. ‹ in the developing world. What is surprising is that the great majority of Greens would not have it any other way.

This is not strictly an American problem. Not too long ago, I listened as a highly motivated group of environmentalists discussed plans to fund a pilot project on ecotourism in Quintana Roo, Mexico. The idea was to point the way towards nature-friendly projects in this beautiful but vulnerable stretch of Caribbean coast. I should have been swept up by their idealism, but I wanted to tear my hair. Twelve years earlier, I had visited this very area and heard highly motivated Greens discuss similar plans to raise money to fund pilot projects in ecotourism. In the interim, highly motivated developers have built real hotels, destroying mangroves, killing reefs, and fouling once-clear sinotes in the process. There are no pilot hotels.

DANCE OF DESTRUCTION

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This was but one episode of a pas de deux of destruction now playing throughout the developing world. While Greens concoct pilot projects and scrupulously honor ³process,² developers develop, loggers log, and poachers poach. When a builder in Quintana Roo or Phuket, Thailand covets a piece of beachfront property, he does whatever necessary to get the necessary approvals, produces an environmental impact study that suggests that sewage is good for coral reefs, and then builds. When environmentalists find some natural treasure, they hold conferences, fund surveys and censuses, seek consensus with locals, and then, maybe, end up with a protected area, but no money for protection. A Green-run airline would have pilots perpetually training for flights that were forever delayed.

EXPLOITERS¹ ADVANTAGE

When they need it, exploiters have an ace in the hole: corruption. Payoffs and muscle, ubiquitous in decisions affecting natural areas in the developing world, utterly trump the law-abiding, bureaucratic approach of Greens.

Mario Villanueva, the governor of Quintana Roo, accused of taking mordida to approve hotels, has gone on the lam, but the damage is done. When, during the Asian financial crisis, Greens asked then-Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin to support making new loans to Indonesia contingent on environmental reform, he replied that the time to talk about environment was when the country was back on the path to prosperity. Wrong: it was when Indonesia was richest that its corrupt politicians and generals were the most destructive.

Things are no better now, though, as free-lance loggers, squatters, and poachers take advantage of the country¹s instability to invade the nation¹s protected areas and remaining forests.

RISING AWARENESS, DWINDLING CLOUT

As we watch forests disappear, fisheries die, and creatures go extinct, the burden of proof lies with those who would protect nature rather than those would exploit her.

Little wonder that decades of mounting environmental awareness have produced so little in the way of facts on the ground. The decline of earth¹s ecosystems has only accelerated despite a geometric growth in the number of environmental groups around the world. Perhaps the most aggravating aspect of this danse macabre is that even its victims accept it as the way it should be. As one environmentalist told me, ³Of course we have to do an assessment; how else can we make the case for what to save and where to put boundaries?²

He¹s right. But, doesn¹t it seem strange that even as we watch forests disappear, fisheries die, and creatures go extinct, we continue to agree that the burden of proof lies with those who would protect nature rather than those would exploit her? Greens do their studies before entering an area, while if a company is building a pipeline in Kamchatka or a road in the Amazon, they make their plans first and let others worry about environmental impact. The practical reality is that once a development project is announced, with all its promise of jobs and profits, it is very difficult to halt.

BILLS COMING DUE

Still, what seems like common sense today, may go down in history as collective madness as the bills start coming due for the destruction of earth¹s life support systems. Greens need to toss their play book, and find a legitimate way to level the playing field.

The huge reservoir of environmental awareness in the rich consuming nations offers enviros a powerful weapon to bring to bear on corporations, financial institutions, and international lending agencies that control the flow of money to the developing world ‹ a point made by activists at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland. This is a useful step.

And please, no more pilot projects.


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