------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Nuclear arms risk still high, Nunn says
U.S. Watching Change at Russian Nuclear Energy Ministry Closely
Bush Puts U.S. Nuclear Aid to Russia Under Review
Helms urging Bush to renounce global test-ban treaty
US military tries to plan for rise of Asia
U.S. Will Review Its Aid to Russia
Arms Control Nominee Defends Shifting View
Campaigners fail to block UK nuclear waste dumping
The peace movement has a blind spot: China
Chinese Nuclear Power Industry Offers Big Opportunities
A decade later, mysterious ailments linger
France's La Hague plant no stranger to protests
German atomic waste ends controversial odyssey
At Iraq's Backdoor, Turkey Flouts Sanctions
Japan's TEPCO says likely won't use MOX for now
Engage North Korea
U.S. Missile Defense Compromises Global Security
Awaken, dragon
President's stands on Arctic Refuge, missile shield troublesome
Putin puts KGB crony in charge of cutting military
FOREIGN AFFAIRS Code Red
Aid for nuclear workers headed for Justice Department
Laser Project Hits a Snag; Court Hints At Conflict
HARTFORD: MILLSTONE LAWSUIT DISMISSED
New nuclear plant possible in Georgia
Report cites possible K-25 exposure sites
DOE workers comp may leave Labor

MILITARY
Hundreds of refugees from Burma Stranded in Guam, USA
Myanmar gives green light to U.N. rights visit
Drug users won't buy Howard's message
Drug Research Inadequate, White House Panel Finds
Air Force plane attacks Iraqi artillery site
Russian Expert Warns Against Militarization of Space
Latin American nations endorse Annan
UN Group: Guatemala failed promises
Europeans to revive Mideast resolution in U.N.
UNITED NATIONS
Second Body Found Near F - 15 Crash
Missile movements

OTHER
Bush, Schroeder disagree on Kyoto pact
EU to Lobby Russia, China, Japan, Iran on Climate
Bush ready to pull US out of Kyoto
CHECKING AN EPIDEMIC
Free Trade for Timber
Need for Wilderness
A More Assertive Europe
Facing Obstacles on Arctic Oil, Bush Says He'll Look Elsewhere
U.S.D.A. Says North Carolina Pig Didn't Have Foot-and-Mouth
U.S. Stance on Warming Puts Whitman in Tense Spot
Dioxin in Food
Environment minister gets Bush-whacked
Killing Tomorrow for a Few Megawatts Today
Europe warns Bush of global warming
USDA rushes to train more dogs
Blair discusses cattle vaccinations
Despite fast reaction, USA appears vulnerable
Kyoto rebuff highlights Schroeder visit
President supports oil drilling in Alaska
Attack of the killer tomatoes
Major Victory for Biotech Giant Monsanto
LAPD say officer cooperating with corruption probe
A Theft That Made Very Little Cents
Too Soon to Predict Fallout on Verniero Testimony
That Russian Espionage Tape Was Not Quite All It Seemed
Bomb Case Debate Focuses on Penalty Phase

ACTIVISTS
CANADIAN SECURITY INTELLIGENCE SERVICE REPORT
Police repression biggest threat at Quebec City
ANTI-SWEATSHOP RALLY AT GWU
April 11th day of action goes INTERNATIONAL!
Exploring nature's many faces
Masked rebels grab spotlight in Mexico's Congress
10,000 Israeli Arabs Protest in Sympathy With Palestinians
Mad-cow faces made at protest
Street vendors protest in Bolivia
Mexico begins planning Chiapas peace
Protests shut Venezuela university
Peace in sight, Zapatista declares


-------- NUCLEAR

Nuclear arms risk still high, Nunn says
He urges U.S. to help Russia shield arsenal

Atlanta Journal-Constitution
FRIDAY • March 30, 2001
Don Melvin
http://www.accessatlanta.com/partners/ajc/epaper/editions/friday/news_a34c425264af4202003a.html

Washington --- Former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn, in his first major policy address since agreeing to lead Ted Turner's Nuclear Threat Initiative, argued forcefully Thursday that the world's risk of nuclear catastrophe has not diminished since the end of the Cold War.

"The most significant, clear and present danger to the national security of the United States is the threat posed by nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction," Nunn said in a speech at the National Press Club.

"Nothing else comes close. The public perception of the threat is low; the reality of the threat is high. There is a dangerous gap between the threat and our response."

But the threats of the post-Cold War era, Nunn said, are much different than those the country faced before. Instead of being concerned about a deliberate Soviet nuclear attack or an invasion of Europe, today's policy makers must worry about accidental missile launches, unpaid Russian nuclear scientists selling their know-how to rogue states and the vast amounts of Russian nuclear, biological and chemical weapons that are poorly secured, he said.

Those threats, Nunn said, make a compelling case for the United States to continue helping Russia make its nuclear weapons and materials safer.

"I am puzzled as to recent rumors which indicate that budgets for these essential threat-reduction programs may be seriously reduced," he said. "If true, this would be heading backward."

News reports have said the National Security Council, which has been critical of some of the programs, has initiated a review.

Thursday, President Bush confirmed that his administration is reviewing the nonproliferation programs to determine their usefulness. "We want to make sure that any money that is being spent is being spent in an effective way," Bush said.

The review comes at a time of increased tension between Russia and the United States. Moscow and Washington recently ousted some of each other's diplomats in a spy controversy. But Bush denied that the review signifies a new chill. "It's in our nation's best interest to work with Russia to dismantle its nuclear arsenal," he said.

The program Nunn wants to save is officially known as Cooperative Threat Reduction. Initially proposed by Nunn, a Georgia Democrat, and Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, it is more commonly known as the Nunn-Lugar program.

Under the program, the U.S. government works with Russian officials --- whose cash-strapped government has neither the wherewithal nor the political will to accomplish the task on its own --- to make the former Soviet arsenal safer.

In the past 10 years, Nunn said, the United States has worked with Russia to persuade Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus to give up the nuclear weapons they inherited from the Soviet Union.

This eliminated more nuclear weapons than those contained in the nuclear arsenals of China, France and the United Kingdom combined, he said. The cooperative program has destroyed hundreds of missiles, more than 80 bombers and 18 nuclear submarines and deactivated thousands of warheads.

The United States also has helped the Russians secure their nuclear weapons and materials to prevent thefts and accidents, helped them convert nuclear weapons facilities to civilian purposes and helped nuclear scientists find new jobs.

Nunn said he welcomed the president's review of the programs. "I believe that they can be better coordinated and made more effective," he said.

But reducing funding for them would be a mistake, he said. "No investment pays a higher dollar-for-dollar dividend in national security than investment in threat reduction," he said. "None."

More than 1,000 tons of highly enriched uranium and at least 150 tons of weapons-grade plutonium exist in Russia, and many storage sites are poorly secured. Thousands of scientists are still without jobs.

Nunn, who was chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, announced in January that he will continue working to reduce the global nuclear threat. He is co-chairman and chief executive officer of the Nuclear Threat Initiative --- a group newly created by Atlanta billionaire Ted Turner to reduce the threat of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction.

Turner has promised to give the group $250 million over five years.

Charles Curtis, the initiative's president and chief operating officer, said this week that the organization's initial directions will not be firmly set until its board meets in late April.

But Nunn said Thursday that the new group plans to work with the government.

"We're not going to go off and do something our government doesn't know about," he said.

In any event, he added, the government must do the "heavy lifting" of threat reduction while the new initiative tries to fill in the gaps.

---

U.S. Watching Change at Russian Nuclear Energy Ministry Closely

Russia Today
Mar 30, 2001
http://www.russiatoday.com/news.php3?id=324886§ion=default

WASHINGTON -- (Agence France Presse) The United States is closely watching Russian President Vladimir Putin's cabinet changes, but has focused interest on his replacement of controversial nuclear energy minister Yevgeni Adamov, a senior U.S. official said Thursday.

"We think that the atomic energy ministry has been tolerating if not supporting the transfer of sensitive technologies to Iran," the official said, speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity.

"Whether the change in leadership stops that or not we'll have to see ... it's hard to say, but we'll be obviously watching carefully because we think that ministry has not been acting consistantly with the kind of assurances that we've been getting from Putin," the official said.

Despite pledges from Putin and other top Russian officials, including Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and newly named Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, that Moscow intends to abide by its nuclear non-proliferation agreements, Washington and others have accused the ministry of violating those vows.

The United States is most concerned about past and possible future transfers to Iran, which it terms a "rogue state," and has threatened to impose sanctions on Moscow should it continue them.

"Putin and company assure us that Russia intends to stand by its non-proliferation commitments and yet we see an atomic energy ministry that we think has been tolerating if not supporting transfers of sensitive technology to Iran," the U.S. official said.

"We'll see if this leads to greater control," he said, refering to Adamov's replacement, Alexander Rumyantsev, who has been head of the Kurchatov Institute, Russia's main nuclear research establishment, since 1994.

In addition to the U.S. concerns about Adamov, the environmental lobby Greenpeace has accused the minister of illegal nuclear deals.

Last month the anti-corruption committee of the Russian Duma detailed alleged illegal activities by Adamov, accusing him of having interests in at least 10 commercial enterprises in Russia and abroad.

Washington is also watching to see the impact on the Russian military of Putin's replacement of former defense Igor Sergeyev with his close ally, Ivanov, the former national security advisor, the official said.

"Sergei Ivanov going to the defense ministry gives Putin more control and a certain level of civilian control over the defense apparatus," he said, declining to comment on what the United States expected from those changes. (2001 Agence France Presse)

---

Bush Puts U.S. Nuclear Aid to Russia Under Review

Russia Today
Mar 30, 2001
http://www.russiatoday.com/news.php3?id=324887§ion=default

WASHINGTON -- (Reuters) President George W. Bush said on Thursday the United States was reviewing its aid to Russia's nuclear arms reduction program to make sure the money was well spent but intended to keep working with Moscow on the matter.

Bush told a news conference it was in the United States' interest to continue cooperation with Russia to reduce the risk of nuclear arms proliferation following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

"We're reviewing all programs ... related to de-escalating potential nuclear problems," Bush said. "We want to make sure that any money that is being spent is being spent in an effective way."

"We fully intend to continue to cooperate with the Russians," he added. "It's in our nation's best interest to work with Russia to dismantle its nuclear arsenal."

Since 1991, the United States has provided aid to Russia and other former Soviet republics to help them destroy nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction and to set up safeguards against the proliferation of those weapons.

The New York Times reported on Thursday that the White House had ordered a comprehensive review of such aid to Russia, intended in part to prevent weapons or materials from being sold to, or being stolen by, rogue states or terrorist groups.

RELATIONS STRAINED

The review comes at a time of somewhat strained U.S.-Russian relations following the arrest last month of Robert Hanssen, an alleged spy for Moscow within the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Hanssen's arrest led Washington to expel four Russian diplomats and to call for the withdrawal of 46 others. Moscow retaliated by demanding the withdrawal of 50 U.S. diplomats.

Criticized by some for taking a Cold War-style hard line toward Moscow, Bush last week told reporters he believed the United States and Russia could have "good, working" relations despite the spy spat.

Former Sen. Sam Nunn, who along with Indiana Republican Sen. Richard Lugar sponsored the 1991 law under which Washington provides much of its threat reduction aid to Russia, said any effort to cut it would be a step backward.

"I am puzzled as to recent rumors which indicate that budgets for these essential threat reduction programs may be seriously reduced. If true, this would be heading backward," Nunn said in a speech at the National Press Club.

Nunn is co-chairman of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a foundation funded by media magnate Ted Turner that aims to reduce the risk and spread of weapons of mass destruction.

He said Russia has more than 1,000 tons of highly enriched uranium, and at least 150 tons of weapons-grade plutonium, enough to build at least 60,000 nuclear weapons.

"Many storage sites are poorly secured. Thousands of weapons scientists are still without a steady paycheck, and terrorist groups and rogue states are trying to exploit that situation," Nunn said.

"I welcome the president's review of these (aid) programs, and I believe they can be better coordinated and they can be made more effective," Nunn said.

"Russia has to have help," he said. "Unless we help, unless the international community helps, that will not be their top priority in a period of economic distress."

---

Helms urging Bush to renounce global test-ban treaty

San Jose Mercury News
Friday, March 30, 2001, in the San Jose Mercury News
BY JONATHAN S. LANDAY Mercury News Washington Bureau
http://www0.mercurycenter.com/premium/nation/docs/treaties30.htm
http://www.sltrib.com/03302001/nation_w/84168.htm

WASHINGTON -- Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair Jesse Helms is calling on the Bush administration to repudiate an international treaty banning nuclear test blasts and lay out a new policy for testing U.S. nuclear weapons.

Helms' March 12 letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell, obtained by the Mercury News, did not say whether that new policy should include resuming nuclear tests after a nine-year moratorium.

But some arms-control proponents interpreted it that way.

``Jesse Helms seems to be suggesting that the Bush administration move toward a resumption of testing,'' said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers, a Washington arms-control group. ``If you connect all the dots together, he certainly is pointing in that direction.''

The Republican senator from North Carolina made his appeal to Powell in a letter that also called for opposing a global ban on land mines, a treaty creating an international criminal court and agreements with Russia that conservatives say limit the Pentagon's ability to develop anti-ballistic-missile defense systems.

Helms' letter comes as the Bush administration pursues an internal review of U.S. nuclear weapons and arms-control policies. With his influence over the Senate's foreign-policy agenda, his views could strengthen the hands of opponents of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, such as Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Some congressional conservatives, nuclear weapons scientists and others say the United States should resume nuclear test blasts so it can develop a new generation of warheads with explosive yields small enough that they could be used without producing large amounts of radioactive fallout.

The GOP-controlled Senate refused to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in October 1999 in a major foreign-policy setback for former President Clinton.

Bush has taken an ambiguous position on whether he intends to seek a new vote. He has expressed opposition to the treaty, but declined to take a final stand pending completion of the nuclear review. In the meantime, he said, the United States would abide by a 1992 moratorium on nuclear test explosions.

That position was reiterated Thursday by John Bolton, a critic of the test-ban treaty and other arms-control accords, during a confirmation hearing before Helms' committee on his nomination to be the State Department's top arms-control policy-maker.

Quoting from Powell's testimony at his own confirmation hearing in January, Bolton said, ``We believe there are still flaws with the treaty.'' But he said, ``We do not foresee any need for testing in the foreseeable future.''

The Bush administration's position has dismayed arms-control advocates and the European allies. They worry that repudiation of the treaty by the United States, the world's leading nuclear power, could lead other countries to resume testing, undermining the entire international system intended to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. The United States was the driving force behind the treaty during the Clinton administration.

---

US military tries to plan for rise of Asia

Christian Science Monitor
FRIDAY, MARCH 30, 2001
By John Dillin Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2001/03/30/fp3s1-csm.shtml

WASHINGTON - This could be the Asian century. And for the United States, that could be a challenge.

American defense and intelligence planners, looking 15 to 25 years ahead, see a rapidly growing Asia flexing its economic, military, and diplomatic muscle. Relations between the US and several nations in Asia could become seriously strained.

Asia's prospects during the next two decades will likely revolve around five key players - China, Japan, India, Russia, and the US. All could play decisive roles

• China, booming in both low-tech and high-tech manufacturing, will be at the heart of Asia's future. As China's influence expands, its efforts to regain Taiwan and dominate the South China Sea could exacerbate relations with the US.

• Japan, the most technologically advanced in Asia, could find itself in a tight spot. Its proximity to an assertive China and its dependence on imported oil may force Japan to move away from the US and shore up its relationships with rising regional powers like India.

• Russia, with a shrinking population and weakened economy, could become a smaller but still important player in Asia. Its rich Siberian petroleum deposits may tempt oil-hungry China to put new pressure on Russia's Asian borders.

• India, a budding economic powerhouse with increasing high-tech skills, could develop into China's most serious Asian rival. By 2050, it is expected to become the world's most populous country.

• The US, the dominant maritime power in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, could face new competition. China and India may both become serious blue-water rivals by 2025.

The Pentagon is reassessing the US military's requirements for the next two decades in light of changes taking place in Asia and elsewhere. Strategist Andrew Marshall heads the study.

Changing military terrain

Unclassified government reports indicate that America's military needs will change significantly - and soon - primarily because of Asia.

America's military - bristling with 7,000 heavy Abrams tanks, 12 aircraft-carrier battle groups, and thousands of short-range, high-performance fighter aircraft - was designed to wage an all-out war with the Soviet Union. If the US had to assert its military strength in Asia, its military needs would almost certainly be quite different.

Short-range fighters aren't very practical if one has no place to land them. And American air bases in Asia, unlike Europe, are few and far between. As a 1999 study headed by Mr. Marshall concluded: "Planned tactical aircraft, such as the FA-18, F-22, and Joint Strike Fighter, are relatively short-range and would be of little use in most Asian scenarios considered."

Meanwhile, the US Army's heavy tanks, which might have been a great advantage on the Northern European plain against the former USSR, would be out of place in Asia, where the US is unlikely to be in a major land war.

This is why some US strategists - as well as President Bush - say it is time to rethink the role of the military before pouring billions into new weapons like the F-22 fighter, or aircraft carriers like the just-christened USS Ronald Reagan.

Several long-range scenarios could bring about rising tensions in Asia. One that requires little speculation is Asia's growing thirst for petroleum.

China's boom, as well as India's, is expected to be fueled for the next 25 years by traditional energy sources - oil, natural gas, and coal.

The Central Intelligence Agency estimates that by 2015, three-quarters of all Mideast oil will go to Asia, while only one-tenth will go to Western nations. US supplies will come increasingly from the Atlantic Basin.

While some oil will move southward from Russian Siberia to China, Middle Eastern oil will in all likelihood be the most plentiful and strategically critical for China, India, and Japan.

To reach China and Japan by ship, this Mideast oil travels by ship from the Persian Gulf across the Indian Ocean, then through the choke point of the Strait of Malacca (or, alternatively, through the Straits of Sunda or Lombok in Indonesia). Finally, it crosses the South China Sea.

Who's in charge at sea

Currently it is Western sea power that assures that this oil flows freely, despite pirates, Middle Eastern unrest, and other dangers. But how long will China, Asia's strongest power, be willing to leave its lifeline in the hands of others, particularly the US?

Already the Chinese are expanding naval forces with the help of Russia.

India, until now heavily focused on its stormy relations with Pakistan, is also likely to spread its sails in the next two decades. One possibility, say Pentagon planners, would be for India, like China, to strive for an expanded Navy that could eventually dominate the Indian Ocean.

The US could find itself displaced in both the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea.

The Chinese and Indian spheres of influence could not only nudge out US military influence in the region, but could also isolate Japan, whose oil lifeline could fall under the sway of China.

Smaller nations, such as the Philippines, South Korea, and Vietnam, could also feel dominated by China.

None of this scenario is written in stone, of course. As a recent study sponsored by the CIA notes: "Estimates of development in China over the next 15 years are fraught with unknowables."

It adds, "China's ambitious goals for reforming its economy will be difficult to realize." Those goals include "restructuring state-owned enterprises, cleaning up and transforming the banking system, cutting the government's employment rolls in half, and opening up the economy to greater foreign competition."

Yet a number of US military planners say it is time to get ready for changes in Asia, however things develop.

Marshall's Pentagon group won't complete its study until later this spring. But his 1999 report, "Asia 2025," hints at the direction the group may take.

The US, it suggested, should emphasize a maritime strategy in Asia, with a "premium" on both naval and air forces.

These assets should be configured to deal with future threats against them that may include long-range precision weapons able to devastate nonstealthy targets like aircraft carriers. This means US ships and bases will need highly accurate and mobile antimissile defenses.

It's also likely that there will be greater threats to US forces from weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, biological, and chemical) as they proliferate to smaller states, or even terrorist groups, in the next 20 years.

---

U.S. Will Review Its Aid to Russia for Stopping Spread of Weapons

International Herald Tribune
Friday, March 30, 2001
Judith Miller New York Times Service
http://www.iht.com/articles/15179.htm

The White House is starting a comprehensive review of all U.S. aid programs to Russia set up to stop the spread of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, according to a senior administration official.

The broad review, started by National Security Council officials who have previously been critical of some of these programs, is likely to significantly change how Washington spends more than $760 million a year trying to dismantle former Soviet nuclear, biological and chemical complexes and prevent unconventional weapons and hazardous materials from being either sold to "rogue states" and terrorist groups or stolen by them.

The senior official said that several of the programs, such as the Department of Energy's $173 million program to strengthen the security and accounting for fissile material at nuclear-weapons storage sites, appeared to be "very effective." Others, several administration officials said, may not be money well spent, like the more than $6 billion long-term effort to help Russia and the United States dispose of 34 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium each. Programs deemed ineffective could be sharply reduced or even scuttled, officials said.

The review comes at a time of growing tension between Russia and the United States, fueled by the administration's discovery of a suspected Russian spy in the top ranks of the FBI, its determination to build a defensive shield against nuclear missiles and its criticism of Russia for selling nuclear technology to Iran.

The administration's adoption of what it calls a "realistic" or "unsentimental" approach to Russia has prompted Russian officials to accuse Washington of being out of step with the times, intent on reviving Cold War policies and abandoning the Clinton administration's effort to treat Russia as a partner.

Hence, the Bush administration's review risks exacerbating tensions with Russia at a time of great internal change there. It could also fuel concerns among Democrats and other critics of President George W. Bush's more conservative stance toward Russia that the administration might use the review to punish Moscow for selling sensitive technology to Iran or to justify deep cuts in nonproliferation programs.

The senior administration official stressed Wednesday that the review was aimed at improving the quality, effectiveness and transparency of the nonproliferation programs. Its goal, the official said, is not to punish Russia or undermine U.S. commitment to helping it safeguard dangerous weapons material and prevent the theft, diversion or sale of unconventional weapons and expertise.

"This is not a challenge to Russia or an effort to dismantle nonproliferation programs," the official said. "This is about enabling the progress we've made to continue and making nonproliferation programs even more effective. We want to strengthen nonproliferation."

Under examination are dozens of programs run mainly by the Pentagon and the Departments of Energy and State that have poured millions of dollars into Russia and the former Soviet republics since the Cold War. Most were created by the Clinton administration, but a few began as congressional initiatives backed by former President George Bush.

The wide-ranging programs have tried to help Russia dismantle its vast unconventional weapons complexes, safeguard nuclear and other hazardous materials and prevent the former Soviet scientists who produced them from selling their products and skills to unfriendly countries and terrorist groups.

The review is parallel to a broad review of Russia policy begun by the White House recently, but separate from it. The nonproliferation review will be conducted by senior officials at the National Security Council and is expected to last six to eight weeks, officials said. The programs will continue in the meantime, they added.

Officials said the review was also separate from the across-the-board cuts in fiscal 2002 budgets that the Office of Management and Budget has asked agencies to make to accommodate Mr. Bush's proposed tax cuts.

According to the review's "terms of reference," portions of which were read to a New York Times reporter, it will explore, among other things, the "cost-benefit ratio" of each major program and how well it serves America's national interest, whether Russia and other countries should shoulder a larger share of its cost and whether the program should have a "sunset" provision to ensure that it does not continue after its objectives have been met.

It will also evaluate whether Russia has been sufficiently supportive of the program and examine whether there are other programs that might better serve nonproliferation goals or better ways of coordinating the programs.

While the official was reluctant to discuss the administration's attitudes toward specific programs, he said that the "scorecard" of the Department of Defense's Cooperative Threat Reduction programs, which received $458 million from Congress in this fiscal year, was "pretty impressive."

By the end of 2000, an administration official said, those programs, among other things, had deactivated 5,288 missile warheads; destroyed 419 long-range nuclear missiles and 367 silos; eliminated 81 bombers, 292 submarine missile-launchers and 174 submarine missiles, and sealed 194 nuclear test holes and sites in Russia and other former Soviet republics.

The impending review received a strong endorsement Wednesday from an influential Democrat who helped pioneer nonproliferation programs with post-Communist Russia. Former Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia said that any new administration "should take a comprehensive look at programs to reduce the threat of weapons, matériel and know-how coming out of the Soviet Union."

---

Arms Control Nominee Defends Shifting View

New York Times
March 30, 2001
By JANE PERLEZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/30/world/30ARMS.html

WASHINGTON, March 29 - In a lively confirmation hearing for the senior arms control official at the State Department, Democratic senators expressed surprise and skepticism today that the views of the nominee, John R. Bolton, were so different - and more moderate - from those of the past.

Was this "confirmation conversion?" Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, asked as Mr. Bolton, the nominee for under secretary of state for arms control and international security, appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Not at all, replied Mr. Bolton, most recently senior vice president for policy research at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research organization. "I've actually changed my mind from time to time."

At issue was a long list of statements and writings by Mr. Bolton on hot-button topics like Taiwan, the United Nations, the Kosovo conflict and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

The committee chairman, Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina, had promoted Mr. Bolton for the State Department post and described him today as "a brilliant thinker" and "the kind of man with whom I would want to stand at Armageddon."

The Democrats had other impressions. Barbara Boxer of California reminded the nominee that he had once said on videotape, "There's no such thing as the United Nations." He had also said, "If the U.N. Secretariat building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference."

Mr. Bolton reassured the senators that in George Bush's presidency he had worked at the State Department and had helped build the coalition for the Persian Gulf war against Saddam Hussein.

Mr. Bolton had characterized supporters of the test-ban treaty as "misguided individuals following a timid and neo-pacifist line of thought." In his testimony today, he was not quite so blunt. He quoted General Powell as saying that the administration would not ask Congress to ratify the treaty but that "we will continue to examine the elements of that treaty as part of our overall strategic review."

-------- britain

Campaigners fail to block UK nuclear waste dumping

UK: March 30, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10310

LONDON - Anti-nuclear campaigners failed in a bid to block the discharge of radioactive waste at two British nuclear weapons plants yesterday.

The campaigners said the Environment Agency, which is responsible for regulating the disposal of radioactive waste, had failed to investigate the possible health risks before letting the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) plants go on dumping dangerous material.

The UK-based Nuclear Awareness Group were challenging a ruling of December 1999 which allowed the AWE to discharge limited amounts of radioactive waste into the environment at its Aldermaston and Burghfield sites, west of London.

The Environment Agency said the court's decision confirmed that it had acted in the public interest.

"The regulatory system ... has offered the public unprecedented levels of access and scrutiny to the process of determining discharge limits at Aldermaston," it said in a statement.

-------- china

The peace movement has a blind spot: China

The Age
By KEITH SUTER
Friday 30 March 2001

China enjoys a charmed life. Except for some of its human-rights policies (such as the occupation of Tibet), it receives little criticism for its militaristic policies. Western peace groups (quite rightly) criticise the United States over its policies (such as the proposed national missile defence system) but they are not so vocal over China. This is not to suggest they should go soft on the US - but they should be equally hard on China.

China has increased its defence spending by more than 10 per cent a year for the past 13 years. This year's figure (announced in early March) is 18 per cent. And yet China faces no outside threat.

Three decades ago, veteran American journalist Harrison Salisbury wrote about a coming war between the then Soviet Union and China over their joint border (based on land Beijing claimed the Russians stole at the end of the 19th century). However, it is hard to imagine that Russia, whose gross national product is less than that of the state of California, has the military capacity or appetite to take on China.

There is, of course, periodic Chinese sabre-rattling against Taiwan. In July 1999, China said it was ready to smash any attempts to separate Taiwan from China. In short, China is under no threat of attack, but is threatening Taiwan.

A second reason Western peace groups should be more vocal about China is that all the nuclear weapons growth is now in Asia: in Pakistan, India, North Korea and China. The US, Russia, France and Britain have all reduced their nuclear ambitions. The Cold War in the North Atlantic is over, but a Cold Peace has evolved east of the Urals.

The most recent nuclear tests have all been conducted by Asian countries. The Chinese and North Korean missile tests have provided ammunition for US politicians to support their claims for some form of missile defence system. Thus, China's military ambitions add to US fears, which will lead to increased US military preparations, which will lead to increased Chinese military preparations, and so on.

Therefore, China is missing an opportunity for peace. President Bush can only maintain current levels of military expenditure if there are threats to justify them. Americans no longer fear that the Russians are coming. Less aggressive Chinese behavior would undermine Bush's threat-mongering.

But China is missing this opportunity by its dogmatic military policies. Its nuclear arsenal is estimated at between 275 and 400 warheads.

Instead, China should have a peace offensive. First, it should reduce its military expenditure. It does not face any threat of invasion and it needs the money for civilian projects. Although China has had more than two decades of strong economic growth, it is still a poor country in terms of individual living standards.

Second, China will not solve its problem with Taiwan by force - the threat of force only makes the problem worse. The essence of the Taiwan issue is that country thinks it can proceed on its own. It can thrive economically without mainland China, and the new generation of rulers has no direct links back to the mainland.

In due course, when China has also acquired democracy and a free-market economy, Taiwan may want to rejoin the mainland. In the meantime, China's military force is both angering Taiwan and eroding China's own civilian economic development - and so postponing reconciliation.

Peace groups should ensure they scrutinise China's military policies as diligently as they do those of the US and the other nuclear powers. China's military policies need to be brought in from the cold.

Dr Keith Suter is senior fellow with Global Business Network Australia.

E-mail: opinion@theage.fairfax.com.au

--------

Chinese Nuclear Power Industry Offers Big Opportunities

Xinhua News Agency
Friday, March 30, 2001

SHANGHAI, Xinhua via COMTEX -- China's expanding nuclear power industry is offering big opportunities for nuclear designers, manufactures and services worldwide, according to industrial sources at a nuclear exhibition opened Friday.

The Fourth International Exhibition of Nuclear Power Industry has attracted dozens of nuclear businesses worldwide.

Westinghouse, which has recently merged its nuclear department with the British nuclear fuel company BNFL and the nuclear power department of ABB, staged a strong presence at the event, together with its partners in Japan, the Republic of Korea and Spain.

James W. Veirs, deputy head of Westinghouse's Department of Nuclear System, said his company is keenly watching China's rapidly growing economy and its nuclear power plan, and is trying its best to take part in China's nuclear power projects.

Over the past five years, China embarked on the construction of four nuclear power plants in Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Guangdong, with a total installed capacity of 6.6 million kilowatts.

The figure is three times over the combined capacity of the first phase of the Qinshan plant in Zhejiang and the Dayawan plant in Guangdong that had already gone into operation.

Yet nuclear power currently accounts for only 1 percent of the county's power supply, compared to 21.9 percent for the United States, 33.4 percent for Japan and 77.4 percent for France.

China's coastal areas, which witnessed rapid economic growth over the last two decades, are showing great enthusiasm towards nuclear power.

Li Guangjun, an official from Taizhou city in Zhejiang, said the city is very likely to embark on a nuclear power plant in the next few years, because it is facing a serious power shortage and has a good site for a nuclear power plant. Authoritative sources said China has basically acquired the technologies of pressurized water reactors and reported rapid progress in raising the local contents of nuclear power equipment.

In the future, the sources said, China will raise higher demands on foreign partners in the advancement of technologies and technology transfer. Veirs said the key to getting nuclear power contracts in China is safety, reliability and economical competitiveness.

He said Westinghouse is ready to transfer the latest nuclear reactor technologies and operation management method to China, and will form into a closer partnership with Chinese research institutions and manufacturers.

-------- depleted uranium

A decade later, mysterious ailments linger

Savannah NOW
March 30, 2001
By Mary Landers, Savannah Morning News
http://www.savannahmorningnews.com/smn/stories/033001/LOCstormsyndrome.shtml

For America and her allies, the Gulf War was close to casualty-free.

Of the 697,000 American troops in the Gulf theater, fewer than 200 were killed in action.

That was during the war.

But after the last SCUD missile was fired, thousands of soldiers started complaining about the effects of their service. They felt sick.

Savannahian Chris Ondriezek was one of those vets.

Polite and soft-spoken, Ondriezek is proud to have been part of the Army 7th Corps, which helped clear a path for troops coming behind it. Mostly, he spent his four months in the Gulf driving, pulling guard duty and blowing up left-behind Iraqi artillery.

He was 27 then and recently divorced. Now he's 37, remarried and back in civilian life in the city where he grew up.

The tidy mobile home he shares with his wife and 4-year-old daughter off Quacco Road is crammed with photos of Ondriezek dressed in green camouflage against a sandy background, smiling at the camera. A small American flag that went everywhere he did in Iraq and Saudi hangs framed by the front door.

He'd do it over again in a minute, he says, but he's convinced that something over there made him sick. Maybe it was exposure to chemicals when America blew up an Iraqi weapons depot. Maybe vaccines.

Ondriezek's back hurts. He gets migraines. He's developed a Jekyll and Hyde personality that got him fired from his last job, his 12th since he left the Army in October 1991.

"I don't dream anymore," he said. "I don't know what happened. I don't know what I lost, but I lost something."

Sherri Craig's story is a common one, too. The 42-year-old Hinesville special-ed teacher and mother of two spent eight months in the Gulf. As a quartermaster officer, she traveled from the desert to town, buying supplies for the 724th Support Battalion out of Fort Stewart.

Even though she felt the ground shake from SCUD missile hits, she never felt in immediate danger. The worst part was spending her first Christmas ever away from her parents.

But now she's certain her joint pain, memory problems and a peculiar burning in her stomach are related to something she encountered in the Gulf -- the near-constant smoke from burning oil wells or the anti-chemical warfare pill called pyridostigmine bromide she had to take even though word among the troops was that the drug wasn't FDA approved. In fact, the drug was approved, but for a different use -- the treatment of a neuromuscular disease called myasthenia gravis. Troops were given PB in the hope of moderating the effects of nerve agents.

"If you didn't take it, you were in violation of a direct order," she said.

Ondriezek and Craig may never know why they feel sick.

Ten years after the war, the only consensus about Gulf War syndrome is there's no consensus.

The U.S. government has spent $155 million on the question. Scores of researchers have looked at dozens of possible causes. And the research isn't confined to the United States -- British, French, Czech, Saudi, Canadian, Norwegian and Kuwaiti troops are among those that have reported chronic illnesses with symptoms similar to those of American Gulf War veterans.

But you won't find "Gulf War Syndrome" as a diagnosis in most medical texts.

Distinguished review panels including the National Institutes of Health, the Presidential Advisory Committee and the Special Investigative Unit have concluded the illnesses observed in Gulf War veterans don't constitute a unique disease.

An expert committee at the non-governmental Institute of Medicine only put a point under the question mark. The panel culled through 1,000 published studies of occupational, clinical and terrorist exposure to agents considered suspects in Gulf War Syndrome.

Its conclusion, announced in September, was a colossal shoulder shrug.

"When it comes to the long-term health effects of these substances, the bottom line is that we simply don't know enough to say whether there is a connection between exposure to these agents, or combinations of these agents, and specific health outcomes that remain long after the exposure," the chair of the committee, Dr. Harold C. Sox Jr., said at a news conference in Washington.

That conclusion doesn't mean some Gulf War veterans aren't sick.

"The data indicates that although there's real illness (among Gulf War vets) there's no unique disease that affects all Gulf War veterans," said Dr. Emily Foster, a staff physician at the Ralph H. Johnson VA Medical Center in Charleston. "Studies suggest there's no single cause or underlying disease."

But the common symptoms of what's now called Gulf War Illnesses -- including headaches, fatigue, joint pain, memory lapses -- are more common among Gulf War vets.

"There's no question the studies have shown Gulf War veterans suffer symptoms two-three times more frequently than service members not deployed to the Gulf," Foster said.

Veterans see their own experience as clear evidence.

Ondriezek and Craig both explain their illnesses this way: They weren't sick, they went to the Gulf, they got sick.

But where vets see cause and effect, researchers demand more proof.

And that's the source of a lot of frustration.

Researcher Katie Lucas, who's part of a Johns Hopkins University study of Gulf War Illnesses, recognizes that.

"I think a big part of the problem is communication," she said. "No one has told (vets) the process of what scientists have to be shown before they'll believe something."

Hurried doctors and VA bureaucracy don't help either.

"When you go to the doctor, either private or VA, doctors don't have enough time to sit down and say, 'You're sick but I don't know what you have. It's a puzzle we're trying to figure out.' "

Instead, some vets get the same treatment as Ondriezek, who said for some of his complaints he's been tossed a bag of Motrin and told to get on his way.

Or Craig. She's had stomach pain for years, but only this week was seen at the VA medical center in Charleston.

"If you go to the clinic here (in Savannah) they'll see you, but I don't think they know what to do. I think they're putting a Band-Aid on it." Craig said.

Foster said she does treat the symptoms, so Gulf War vets can get relief even if they never know why they feel sick.

Veterans' advocates would like to see a lot more of that.

The Department of Veterans Affairs keeps a clinical database called the Gulf War registry for vets who believe they have an illness connected to their service. Vets undergo a physical before they're placed on the registry, Foster said. About 550 of those physicals have been done at VA Medical Center in Charleston, the closest VA hospital to Savannah.

Nationwide, 81,000 vets are in the registry, but only about 3,000 vets have had claims for undiagnosed illness approved.

Ondriezek and Craig are on the registry. But Ondriezek's not really sure what's happening with his disability claim and feels frustrated by the apathy and bureaucracy.

Pat Eddington sympathizes.

Eddington runs the National Gulf War Resource Center, a suburban Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that educates and lobbies for better healthcare for Gulf War veterans.

"The bottom line is that an awful lot of Gulf War veterans are being hosed by the VA when they file Gulf War Illness claims," Eddington said.

His organization contends that there are flaws in many of the studies that find no evidence of Gulf War Illnesses, that the Pentagon has hindered researchers by refusing to release information about what substances soldiers were exposed to, and that treatment is too low a research priority.

"We're concerned with making sure ill vets are compensated and above that, making sure that people get the right treatments," Eddington said.

So Ondriezek and Craig wait.

Foster treats what she can.

Eddington lobbies.

And the research continues.

One good thing may have come from the Gulf War experience, according to Lucas.

"If there's a lesson that's been learned for the military it's how when they think of their enemies it's not just the Saddam Husseins," she said. "They have to think about the environmental things that can affect the troops."

Health reporter Mary Landers can be reached at 652-0337 or landers@savannahnow.com

Investigate further

The American Legion site offers a comprehensive, easy-to-read question and answer page about Gulf War Illness at www.legion.org/gulftoc.htm

The National Gulf War Resource Center, a nonprofit that lobbies for better healthcare for Gulf War veterans, operates a site at www.ngwrc.org

The full text of an Institute of Medicine study called "Gulf War and Health: Volume 1. Depleted Uranium, Pyridostigmine Bromide, Sarin, and Vaccines" can be found at http://books.nap.edu/catalog/9953.html

Other post-war syndromes

The Gulf War isn't the first conflict to spawn suspected illness among soldiers.

A 1996 study reported in the well-respected Annals of Internal Medicine took a historical look at post-war syndromes.

After the Civil War, soldiers complained of "irritable heart" -- symptoms included shortness of breath, chest pain, fatigue, headache, diarrhea, dizziness and disturbed sleep.

In World War I similar symptoms were called "soldier's heart" or "effort syndrome" because symptoms were made worse by exertion.

The explanation at the beginning of the war was that soldiers' heavy marching packs compressed their chests. In World War II the effort syndrome was attributed to psychological causes. But its physical manifestations -- fatigue, diarrhea, headache and forgetfulness -- were acknowledged.

After Vietnam, veterans were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder -- again with similar symptoms. That disorder was initially called post-Vietnam syndrome.

Exposure to Agent Orange was another concern, one over which scientific controversy continues. Chronic physical symptoms have generally not been linked to the effects of exposure to that herbicide in Vietnam, the researchers wrote.

They concluded that although war syndromes have recurred since at least the Civil War, no single underlying cause unrelated to stress links the syndromes.

They also noted that research into these syndromes is hampered by poor record-keeping during wartime, media coverage afterward and the need to rely on soldiers' memory of events.

Resources for Gulf War vets

* Researchers at Johns Hopkins University are looking for study participants who have fatigue and at least two other symptoms that began after their Gulf War service. Service in the Gulf must have been on the ground. Travel expenses will be paid to and from Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. For participants not well enough to travel alone, expenses for a travel companion are also covered. Participants will receive a $100 stipend. Active duty service members participating will receive $50 per blood draw; one draw per participant is anticipated.

Interested veterans can call (877) 800-9516 or check the Web site at www.med.jhu.edu/gws for more information.

* Veterans who think they have a Gulf War-related illness can get a full physical exam from the Veteran's Administration. Call (843) 577-5011 ext. 7300 for an appointment in Savannah or Charleston.

* A Gulf War veterans' information help line is operated by the Department of Veterans Affairs at 800-749-8387.

-------- france

France's La Hague plant no stranger to protests

FRANCE: March 30, 2001
Story by Matthew Green
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10321

PARIS - France's La Hague nuclear reprocessing plant, the source of atomic waste rumbling in a train across Germany amid widespread protests, has long been a favourite target of environmental groups.

One of only two commercial reprocessing sites in the world, the plant has proved a high-profile bugbear for activists who have used every means from chaining themselves to railway tracks to filing lawsuits to block its shipments.

The plant sits at the centre of a multi-billion dollar reprocessing web, taking in spent fuel from Germany, Japan, Belgium, Switzerland and the Netherlands before sending back the recycled fuel and waste produced to its country of origin.

German demonstrators have mounted the fiercest opposition, turning out in their hundreds to occupy railway track to opppose the train that left on Monday with the first shipment from La Hague to Germany since 1997.

Demonstrators fought pitched battles with police during protests against the previous shipment to Germany, which has since agreed to phase out nuclear reactors by 2025.

Protests have been more muted in France, which has one of the world's largest nuclear industries and generates around 75 percent of its power from atomic reactors.

Smaller demonstrations have greeted ships taking waste to Japan from La Hague, both at the French port used for the shipments and in countries along the sea route.

The environmental group Greenpeace has played a prominent role in protests at the plant, sending divers to block an undersea pipe discharging waste in June last year.

A court ruled earlier in March in favour of a case brought by Greenpeace that a shipment of Australian nuclear waste could not be unloaded because it did not have proper authorisation.

Mindful of public fears, Cogema, the state-owned firm that runs the plant, pledged in October 1999 to end its culture of secrecy and try to eliminate radioactive emissions from La Hague.

Not all the shipments have provoked the kind of outcry seen in Germany. A Cogema spokesman said three similar waste shipments had moved unopposed through Belgium in the past year.

"In Germany there is a political question, so you must differentiate between Japan and Belgium, and the situation in Germany."

-------- germany

German atomic waste ends controversial odyssey

GERMANY: March 30, 2001
Story by Alastair Macdonald
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10305

GORLEBEN, Germany - A massive show of force by German police yesterday thwarted planned blockades by anti-nuclear activists and allowed delivery of a cargo of radioactive waste after a four-day odyssey from France.

After skirmishes all along the 500-km (300-mile) rail route from the French border, the last short stretch by road to the Gorleben storage facility, south of Hamburg, was completed in a dawn raid that surprised weary and outnumbered eco-activists.

Water cannon and tear gas deployed at times this week and familiar from earlier shipments of reprocessed German waste from France were not needed, though mounted officers and the odd baton were used to keep some of the several thousand demonstrators at bay.

A few wept in front of the massed ranks of the law as trucks bearing the six containers reached their goal. Yet as they straggled off in the cold morning rain from the woodland site near the river Elbe, there was also a sense of achievement.

In delaying the cargo for a day with their sit-ins and occasionally violent assaults on police lines, tying up as many as 15,000 officers in one of Germany's biggest peacetime security operations, they said they were swinging the economics of electricity generation away from nuclear power.

"It has been a great success," a Greenpeace spokesman said. "They have to accept that (it is) not politically viable."

"I'm sorry we couldn't stop it. The police were everywhere," said 18-year-old Rangna from Hamburg, shivering with cold and fatigue as she stared over high wire fences at the "Castor" waste container wagons drawn up at the warehouse. "But it's been a success. We're making it too expensive for them."

Police estimated their costs at some $50 million. But the head of the police union sought more money, saying officers deserved a bonus for long hours served in cold weather and tough conditions.

READY FOR NEXT TIME

The government coalition, which includes the Greens, said the first transport since a ban three years ago was a vital part of last year's agreement to phase out nuclear power by around 2025. Without their own facilities, German reactors must send spent fuel to France for reprocessing.

Environment Minister Juergen Trittin, a Green who once led protests at Gorleben, called the shipments "unavoidable". But the phase out plan is taking far too long for many activists.

Otto Schily, the interior minister, who was himself arrested at anti-nuclear demonstrations in the 1980s, promised to use the full force of the law against the violent minority.

Trittin took a softer line. "I respect the overwhelming majority who demonstrated there," he told parliament.

Peaceful local demonstrators blamed young anarchists for the violence but criticised police for over-reacting and vowed to be back next time. About two transports a year are now planned.

"They can beat us off the streets and blast us with water cannon," said Annette Peich, 44, who lives near the Dannenberg railhead. "But we'll be back next time with new tactics."

Even the police confessed surprise at covering the last 20 km (12 miles) stretch of road from Dannenberg in just 80 minutes. During the last shipment from France in 1997, it took many hours to drag and water-cannon thousands from the road.

This year the biggest disruption was caused by just a handful of eco-warriors, including a 16-year-old local girl, who chained and cemented themselves to the rails. Freeing them caused much of the day-long delay in reaching the rail depot. (Additional reporting by Andreas Moeser and Folkert Lenz).

-------- iraq

At Iraq's Backdoor, Turkey Flouts Sanctions

New York Times
March 30, 2001
By DOUGLAS FRANTZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/30/world/30TURK.html

HABUR, Turkey - Deep in the dusty southeastern corner of Turkey, closer to Baghdad than to Istanbul, a line of 200 aging tanker trucks stretches for half a mile along the highway as drivers wait to unload Iraqi diesel fuel at a depot run by the Turkish government.

The trucks are returning from Iraq with full tanks on the last leg of a journey that openly flouts the United Nations economic embargo against Baghdad. It is sanctions- busting smuggling regulated and taxed by the Turkish government and tolerated by the United Nations and the United States.

Estimates on the volume of Iraqi oil and diesel fuel passing through Habur Gate, the only legal crossing between Iraq and Turkey, range from $300 million to $600 million a year. Western diplomats calculate that the illicit business puts $120 million a year in the pocket of President Saddam Hussein.

"This trade is outside the sanctions system," said a senior Turkish government official, who spoke on the condition his name not be used. "But I would say it is indispensable for Turkey, and we are sensitive not to allow it to help Iraq acquire weapons of mass destruction."

There is, however, no way to monitor what Iraq does with the revenue.

Western diplomats say the trade has increased as oil prices have climbed. They justify turning a blind eye because the money helps the battered economy in this volatile region of Turkey, an important American ally. The trade also is the chief source of income for northern Iraq's Kurdistan Democratic Party, which opposes Mr. Hussein.

Because of the political considerations, the smuggling continues and underscores a quandary confronting the Bush administration as it shapes its sanctions policy.

The United States and Britain have been under pressure from other members of the United Nations Security Council to ease the sanctions. One contention is that the borders are porous anyway; experts say illegal goods and oil flow overland from Jordan and Syria and by boats in the Persian Gulf. Another argument is that the sanctions have inflicted the most damage on the Iraqi people and neighboring countries.

Turkey has been hard hit by the embargo. Iraq was not only a major trading partner, but also a conduit for getting Turkish agricultural products into the Middle East. Turkish officials say the embargo has cost the economy $35 billion to $40 billion, and the country's current economic crisis has increased pressure to expand trade with Iraq.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is trying to develop sanctions that will allow more consumer goods into Iraq and tighten the rein on Mr. Hussein's ability to buy weapons. But any attempt to loosen controls is likely to face opposition from hard- liners at the Pentagon and conservative Republicans in Congress.

Edward S. Walker Jr., assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs, traveled to Ankara this month to assure Turkish officials that the administration is studying ways to reduce the impact of sanctions on Iraq's neighbors. "It's going to mean that we're going to have to change the way we deal with the border," Mr. Walker said.

Iraq is allowed to sell oil under United Nations supervision only through a pipeline to Ceyhan on Turkey's Mediterranean coast, and by ship through Mina al Bakr, a Persian Gulf port. Proceeds go into an account administered by the United Nations to buy food, medicine and other goods and pay war reparations.

To gain more control over its oil revenues, Iraq has been sending oil through an unauthorized pipeline to Syria. It also increased sales of low- grade fuel oil and diesel fuel to the truckers who ply their trade through Habur Gate.

Turkish and Western government officials as well as truckers said the oil and diesel fuel were sold by Iraq to the Kurdistan Peoples Party, despite its opposition to Baghdad. The party is an independent force that controls the border on the Iraqi side.

Masoud Barzani, the head of the Kurdish party, marks up the price, adds a tax and resells it to truckers. The revenue helps Mr. Barzani cement his control over the border area and makes it relatively prosperous, diplomats said.

A 31-year-old Turkish truck driver said he paid 14 cents a liter for diesel fuel in Iraq, including a 2-cent tax. He said he often waited at least three days to load because the lines were so long.

Once loaded, truckers said, 2,000 or more trucks are often lined up at the border because Turkey allows only 450 tankers a day back into the country. Turkish officials said the limit was necessary so trucks can be inspected for other smuggling.

The volume of tankers remains far below pre-embargo levels, and the landscape is dotted with thousands of rusting tankers, described by an official as "martyrs to the embargo." Officials estimate that 40,000 to 50,000 trucks now haul oil and diesel fuel from Iraq into Turkey.

By 1999, the illegal trade accounted for a quarter of Turkey's diesel fuel consumption, and that was when the government stepped in to institutionalize the smuggling with new regulations. Truckers who had made at least a trip a month were limited to one every three months. Instead of selling diesel fuel on the open market, they were required to unload at the government depot in nearby Silopi and pay taxes.

The government profited two ways - by taxing the fuel and reselling it to distributors at a higher price. The depot collected $74 million in taxes in its first four months in late 1999, but officials said more recent figures were not available.

Customs inspections were also toughened. The diesel fuel or oil is weighed and tested and matched against a computerized list to make sure that the driver has not exceeded the allotted number of trips. Empty tankers and trucks hauling goods to Iraq also are inspected to make sure any Iraq-bound material complies with the sanctions.

"With our controls, it is almost impossible to get anything through," Abdullah Erin, the deputy governor who runs the customs gate, said as he strolled through a lot filled with trucks awaiting examination.

Mr. Erin and Huseyin Baskaya, the provincial governor, insisted that the trade operated within United Nations sanctions. Mr. Baskaya even said he was establishing a company to take part in the business, with profits earmarked for civic projects.

It is fiction. A senior Turkish official in Ankara acknowledged that the trade was outside the sanctions, though he defended its economic necessity.

The truckers chafe at the restrictions and taxes. They can earn $2,000 to $3,000 a year, a good income in the southeast, but it often must support several large families.

Any relaxation of sanctions would be welcomed in the region, where unemployment exceeds 60 percent. After years of civil war between the Turkish government and Kurdish separatists and the effects of the embargo, the biggest hope many see is opening the border, something unlikely to happen in the near future.

"Turkey is a loyal friend of the United States, and absolutely the embargo should be lifted so we can begin to make a living," said Kutbettin Arzu, an official with the Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Diyarbakir, the regional capital.

In the meantime, the line of trucks continues to run from Iraq to the Turkish depot in Silopi.

-------- japan

Japan's TEPCO says likely won't use MOX for now

JAPAN: March 30, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10309

TOKYO - Tokyo Electric Power Co Inc (TEPCO) yesterday said for the first time it probably would not be able to load controversial MOX fuel at its Fukushima No 1 nuclear power plant because of political opposition.

TEPCO had initially been expected to take advantage of regular maintenance closures due from April 3 to load the fuel, a blend of uranium and plutonium recycled from spent nuclear fuel that can be used in conventional reactors.

But in February, Fukushima Prefecture Governor Eisaku Sato refused to allow the use of fuel at the plant, saying he believed there was still deep-seated public distrust in Japan's nuclear industry.

The governor cited two nuclear accidents in 1999, including a fatal accident at a plant in Tokaimura, 140 km (90 miles) north of Tokyo, for the public's opposition.

In the Tokaimura accident in September 1999, three workers at a plant privately operated by JCO Co Ltd set off an critical nuclear reaction that took 20 hours to bring under control. Two died and thousands of residents had to be evacuated.

"We are facing an extremely tough situation," TEPCO President Nobuya Minami told a news conference yesterday, acknowledging the opposition to the use of MOX fuel in Fukushima.

He said the company would likely say in its maintenance report of the plant's nuclear reactor three unit - to be presented to the Trade Ministry on Friday - that it planned to load uranium fuel rather than MOX.

But he added that the report would have a footnote saying the use of MOX fuel had not been entirely ruled out.

"Our current plan basically calls for using conventional uranium fuel," he said.

Minami reiterated that TEPCO had not given up hope of eventually using MOX.

"Our biggest task is to promote our plan to use the fuel, and we will keep trying hard to gain the approval of the local people," he said.

In February, TEPCO said it would freeze plans to construct new power plants with the exception of nuclear power plants, amid a decline in power demand coupled with ongoing deregulation in the power market that has led to an increase in competition.

At Thursday's news conference, Minami said the company would proceed with plans to construct nuclear power plants, citing environmental concerns.

Unlike thermal power plants, nuclear reactors do not emit carbon dioxide.

Minami said TEPCO would continue to stick to the terms of the 1997 Kyoto climate pact on carbon dioxide emissions despite a U.S. decision to abandon the treaty designed to fight global warming.

The United States said on Wednesday it had effectively abandoned the 1997 Kyoto treaty.

"We believe that the treaty is very important from the viewpoint of environmental protection and global resources. We must preserve the target," Minami said.

Resource-poor Japan uses nuclear power to meet one-third of its energy needs. It currently has 51 reactors.

-------- korea

Engage North Korea

Washington Post
Friday, March 30, 2001; Page A29
By John F. Kerry
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14614-2001Mar29.html

One of the major questions facing the United States and its allies is how to deal with the ballistic missile threat posed by North Korea. Pyongyang has already demonstrated its capacity to launch a 500-kilogram warhead to a range of at least 1,000 kilometers, and it is known to be interested in developing a longer-range missile capability. North Korea's proliferation of missiles, missile components, technology and training to Pakistan and Iran further magnifies the need to end Pyongyang's missile program.

We have no hope of reducing the missile threat -- or dealing with a number of critical issues -- unless we constructively engage North Korea. A reversal by the Bush administration puts that policy of engagement at risk and is troubling news for all those concerned with our interests on the Korean peninsula. Two days before President Bush met with South Korean President Kim Dae Jung, Secretary of State Colin Powell stated that the Bush administration would "pick up" where the Clinton administration left off. Two days later Bush directly told President Kim the opposite, and announced publicly that we would not resume missile talks with North Korea any time soon. Many of us were left wondering what had changed in the space of two days.

America's foreign policy interests in the region remain a high priority -- as they have been from the time we lost nearly 60,000 lives there a half-century ago ago.

The Clinton administration left a bargaining framework on the table that could, if pursued aggressively by the Bush administration, go a long way toward reducing the threat posed by North Korean missiles and missile exports.

Our South Korean allies -- on the front lines and under no illusions about the regime in North Korea or its leader, Kim Jong Il -- want us to move quickly to resume the missile talks. President Kim firmly believes that Washington and Seoul must continue their efforts to open up North Korea. We should listen to him carefully.

Secretary Powell has asserted that some of the things put on the table by the Clinton administration are "promising," but that monitoring and verification "are not there." He says the news administration plans to do a comprehensive policy review before deciding when and how to engage North Korea.

We can all be sympathetic to the Bush administration's desire to study the proposals left on the table by the previous administration. But even while analyzing new proposals, what better way to test the possibilities than by maintaining an open dialogue? That way we avoid losing a window of opportunity -- and even sending the wrong signal to Pyongyang -- by delaying too long.

Over the past eight years, North Korea has taken previously unimaginable steps. It has agreed to freeze its existing nuclear energy program under supervision and permit inspection to determine the past operating history of its reactor program just prior to the delivery of key components of light-water reactors. When the United States suspected North Korea was violating the agreed framework by building a new reactor in an underground site, North Korea agreed to allow American inspections -- proof that monitoring and verification agreements can be negotiated with North Korea. By the eleventh hour of the Clinton administration, we were discussing proposals to prevent North Korea from developing missiles capable of striking the United States and to bring a halt to North Korea's lucrative missile exports.

We should be encouraging Pyongyang to continue on this path. Delaying missile talks is a mistake. In fact, delay -- and Secretary Powell's lukewarm endorsement of the agreed framework -- could send a negative signal about the nature and direction of our policy.

While the Clinton administration moved faster in the missile talks than some believe prudent, nothing has been agreed to that ties the hands of the Bush administration. Negotiations have simply begun, and proposals are on the table. Nothing precludes this administration from making new proposals on monitoring and verification -- indeed, it should. But that cannot happen if discussions are in limbo.

North Korea's missile capability is an important question not only with regard to security on the Korean peninsula but also to our own debate on national missile defense. The Bush administration points to the North Korean missile threat as a major reason why we need to proceed with such a defensive system. This makes its hesitant approach on missile talks with Pyongyang all the more puzzling. If we can reduce or eliminate the threat posed by North Korea's missile program, why wouldn't we push ahead? Not only would we have greater security but we'd be able to examine national missile defense options that may be less costly and damaging to the arms control regime established by the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

There is little to lose and much to gain by returning to the bargaining table. There is considerable risk in leaving the North Korea missile threat to chance.

The writer is a Democratic senator from Massachusetts and a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

-------- missile defense

U.S. Missile Defense Compromises Global Security

International Herald Tribune
Friday, March 30, 2001
Tang Jiaxuan Los Angeles Times Syndicate
http://www.iht.com/articles/15150.htm

BEIJING Every state has the right to security and each government has the obligation to protect its nationals. But how to exercise this right and acquire security in its real sense is a question worth serious deliberation.

As globalization progresses, countries are becoming increasingly interdependent. This is as true in the security area as it is economically.

Security is mutual and indivisible. No country can exist in isolation, nor can it resolve all the security issues it faces single-handedly. True security is based on global security and on the extensive cooperation of the international community.

A military edge cannot guarantee security. Unilateralism will only lead to greater insecurity.

The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and missiles is a complex problem that can be tackled only through global cooperation. Setting up a national missile defense system would not contribute to solving this problem, but only further aggravate it.

Since the end of the Cold War, the international community has made considerable progress in nonproliferation. It is therefore neither wise nor advisable to build a so-called missile defense system, whose effect is questionable, at the expense of the international arms control and nonproliferation system after so many years' efforts, including those of the United States.

Some people describe the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty as part of the "Cold War mentality" and hold that it should be discarded. This view is neither fair nor just. Like all the other arms control treaties, the ABM treaty reflects the interdependent relationship among contracting parties in security matters. This relationship did not disappear with the end of the Cold War, but rather is becoming even stronger in the era of globalization. The ABM treaty is effective. It is not outdated.

Just as the ABM Treaty cannot be viewed in isolation, neither can a U.S. missile defense program. Offense and defense are always indivisible. Enhanced defensive capabilities, to a large degree, mean improved offensive capabilities as well.

This is particularly true for the United States, the only superpower. The United States possesses the biggest nuclear arsenal and the most sophisticated conventional weapons in the world, and it pursues a deterrence policy based on first use of nuclear weapons. A missile defense will severely impede the nuclear disarmament process and render any U.S. initiative on the reduction of offensive nuclear weapons meaningless.

People cannot but ask what on earth is the real intention behind U.S. insistence on developing a missile defense system in defiance of the international community. Is it really to defend against the missile threat from the few so-called "problem states," or for greater military advantage over other big countries?

Recently there has been relaxation of tensions in the Asia-Pacific region. All parties should cherish this hard-won state of affairs and create conditions for continued relaxation. Theater missile defense would only add complex and confrontational factors to the detriment of regional stability.

Some in the United States clamorously advocate incorporating Taiwan into the U.S. theater missile defense system or providing anti-missile weapons or technologies to Taiwan. This is a most dangerous tendency. If the United States chose to do so, it would put Taiwan under the American umbrella of military protection and restore, de facto, the U.S.-Taiwan military alliance. It would surely inflate the arrogance of the forces for Taiwan's independence, jeopardize stability in the Taiwan Straits, endanger the peaceful reunification of China and lead to serious regression in China-U.S. relations.

China has no intention of threatening U.S. security, nor does it seek such capabilities. China has always exercised great restraint in the development of nuclear arms. China has always pursued a policy of no first use, and keeps a small but effective nuclear force only for the purpose of containing other countries' possible nuclear attacks. This policy will remain unchanged.

China and the United States shoulder common responsibility for maintaining world peace and security. A cooperative and constructive relationship between China and the United States will have a crucial impact on world stability.

China and the United States have long engaged in fruitful cooperation over nonproliferation. China is ready to continue on this path. But we also look forward to serious and pragmatic dialogue with the Bush administration on missile defense and related issues.

The writer, foreign minister of China, contributed this comment to the Los Angeles Times Syndicate.

-------

Awaken, dragon

Excite News
By Steve Park
March 30, 2001
The Johns Hopkins News-Letter Johns Hopkins U.
http://news.excite.com/news/uw/010330/university-58

(U-WIRE) BALTIMORE -- We are often told how complex and shrewd Chinese foreign policy can be. From the times of Sun Tzu, Chinese leaders have been credited for their subtle strategies, leaving their opponents with no choice but to follow their wishes. But in recent years, China seems to have lost that. Its diplomatic tactics have been the most crude and unpersuasive forms of coercion.

This could not be more true for Theater Missile Defense (TMD), a system that will defend the U.S.'s allies against a variety of long, medium, and short-range missiles. Ever since the Bush administration's decision to finally build the systems of Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), Beijing has been bulking, threatening, screaming, warning or doing just about all the things a communist regime can do.

In the last eight years, the U.S. has condoned, if not nurtured, Beijing's habits as Clinton called China a "strategic partner" in the 21st Century. They had a rough time. They are trying something new called "market socialism." They need help from their new American friends. Well, they got it. The U.S. granted China Most Favored Nation status (MFN) without complaining about Tibet. The U.S. turned away when its citizens were unjustly accused and jailed by Beijing. The U.S. forgot about what was stolen at Los Alamos. Most generously though, the U.S. began to think twice about missile defense, for it "threatened" China. After all, upsetting China was something Clinton's America was simply not willing to do. But now that a new administration has decided to pursue missile defense, it would be fitting to evaluate some of Beijing's claims -- starting with how TMD threatens China.

If any missile defense program is of any real threat to China, then it is National Missile Defense (NMD) not TMD. While TMD is designed to shoot down enemy missiles approaching American allies using improved version of the Patriot missiles and ship-based low and high altitude missiles, NMD is intended to defend against inter-continental ballistic missiles capable of striking North America. According to the Department of Defense's figures, China has no more than 20 missiles that can strike the continental United States, each capable of carrying only a single nuclear warhead. By contrast, the U.S. has up to 6,000 nuclear weapons that could potentially hit China. So far though, even 20 nuclear warheads have been enough to deter the U.S. from getting into a serious argument with China. A case in point was what General Xiong Guangkai of the People's Liberation Army reportedly said during the 1996 Taiwan Strait crisis. "You (Americans) are not going to threaten us again because, in the end, you care a lot more about Los Angeles than Taipei." Nevertheless, with an effective NMD the U.S. could risk the tradeoff.

Consequently then, anyone can figure out that China opposes TMD because it reduces their leverage on its neighbors -- Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. Beginning with the possible Aegis cruiser sales to Taiwan, Beijing is afraid that TMD will neutralize its secret formula for swift victory, 300 short-range missiles aimed at Taiwan. Furthermore, with an aging navy and outdated air force, China fears it will lose its status over South Korea and Japan if TMD can block its hundreds of ballistic missiles. Beijing is pulling a frantic dragon-like act, precisely because Chinese leaders want our allies to remain vulnerable to any attack they may choose to launch. Most recently, Bill Gertz of the Washington Times reported that the Pentagon has discovered yet another Chinese missile base. Rightly, this news is yet another testimony to Beijing's grand design, which by the way, doesn't include having neighbors who can counter their deadly missiles.

To this, many China engagers and anti-SDI advocates would beg to differ. They argue that even with TMD, the U.S. will not be able to defend its allies against all possible missile attacks. This is true. After all, no shield can assure a soldier that he won't be cut by a sword. Even if TMD is 120 percent operational, the U.S. will still need to keep troops in Korea and Japan. Similarly, no matter how many missiles TMD can shoot down, America will still need the airfields in Kunsan, naval base in Yokosuka and access to Taiwan straits. But then again, those who oppose TMD are missing the point. TMD is a proof of the U.S. military commitment to our allies. Our missile defense provides them with a possibility of being in war without having its highly populated cities turned into sea of blood. Sure, at the end of the day TMD might not have been able to shoot down all the enemy missiles, but it offers three million people in Taipei, 12 million in Seoul and 11 million in Tokyo, along with 100,000 American troops in the area, a chance to survive.

Despite the high security stakes, many Americans today oppose or could care less about TMD. For instance, such ignorance is perfectly well entrenched in Congress as a bi-partisan opinion. Just about this time in 2000, Taiwan was the test ground for Chinese missiles when it was about to elect Chen Shui-bian as its new president. As the tensions mounted, many concerned senators and congressmen such as Senator Grassley of Iowa wrote a letter criticizing China -- not for its missile attacks, but for fertilizer. He felt that what China had done (in regards to fertilizer trade) was "completely contrary to the free trade principles at the heart" of the World Trade Organization. Welcome to the post-Cold War U.S. politics. When it comes to selling goods to China, our statesmen are ready to play hardball. But when it comes to defending democratic Taiwan from Chinese missile attacks, well, that is a whole different ballgame.

Never mind that few American businesses are actually making any money in China, or that the dreams of huge profits alone are enough to keep the advocates of "trade at all costs" on the road to appeasement. Nor is it easy to overlook the fact that it has been more than 10 years since the China engagers have promised that trade will somehow make China more democratic and humanitarian. Since l998's vote to approve MFN for China, Beijing has not shown even the slightest bit of interest in being democratic or humanitarian. They have beaten and arrested dissidents, democracy activists and Falun Gong members. They have deployed and fired misssiles across the Taiwan straits. They have been caught stealing nuclear secrets. They have assisted rogue nations with missile technology. If anything, Beijing's to-do-list is long and running.

The U.S. has to be fair when dealing with China, especially when considering the need to improve relations with China. Likewise, the American public must recognize that the People's Republic of China is no evil empire. But that same standard must also be applied to evaluating how many promises Beijing and China engagers have delivered. Those in Congress who stood up year after year to claim great benefits from engaging China should be required to explain exactly what those benefits have been. The corporations that are making sales in China in exchange for the liberty of the Chinese citizens need to be held accountable. Those in Beijing who want to be our "strategic partner" must now speak the truth. So far, all we can see are burned American flags, oppressed democrats, a threatened Taiwan and ever-growing Chinese nuclear arsenal aimed at the U.S. and our allies. Nap time is over. We must ask China to back off, starting with missile defense.

---

President's stands on Arctic Refuge, missile shield troublesome

Excite News
March 30, 2001
By Chris Himmel
The Miami Hurricane U. Miami
http://news.excite.com/news/uw/010330/university-240

(U-WIRE) CORAL GABLES, Fla. -- Two months have passed since George W. Bush's inauguration as the 43rd president of the United States and already his policies are endangering the welfare of America. From the day that he took the office, Bush has made it quite clear that he's in favor of oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northern Alaska.

He believes that it's important for the U.S. to become as self-sufficient as possible when it comes to dredging oil, even though scientists have said that the amount of oil in the Refuge would satisfy the nation's energy needs for a mere six months.

I wonder whether it is worth the destroying the last bit of undisturbed wildlife area in our country. To money-hungry individuals, however, the profits from petroleum sales would be reason enough to destroy the area and all life in it.

The president recently announced that the Environmental Protection Agency will not mandate U.S. power plants to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide. The policy marks a major setback in a global struggle to control global warming in the new century.

But the president argues that the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions would harm the national economy, because of the costs associated with reduction efforts. Again, I question his actions. The president must believe this to be a better alternative for our country than a future where all of the Pacific and East U.S. coastal cities will be permanently submerged under water as a result of the melted polar ice caps.

Bush's foreign policies are also of great concern to me. His ideas about foreign relations have placed the U.S. on the road toward a future military conflict with Russia, the only other country on Earth capable of blowing us to kingdom come.

His desire to build a missile defense "shield" to protect the U.S. and Europe from so-called "rogue" nations like Iraq and North Korea has caused relations with Russia to deteriorate because they see the U.S. missile defense mechanism as a threat to the military balance of power that has existed between both countries for decades.

As a consequence of the president's ongoing policy, a new Russo-U.S. nuclear arms race may develop. Even with Russian President Vladimir Putin trying to find a middle ground between both of our countries via a joint U.S.-Russian missile shield that would defend both countries and Europe from rouge attacks, the president continues to give the impression that he's focused on the U.S.A. building the missile defense shield at all costs.

The idea of a possible nuclear holocaust resulting from the president's unwillingness to compromise is a scary thought because unless the president backs off from his rhetoric, Americans will have to get used to sleeping every night with the fear of a potential nuclear war.

-------- russia

Putin puts KGB crony in charge of cutting military
On Wednesday, President Putin replaced defense, interior, and nuclear energy chiefs.

Christian Science Monitor
FRIDAY, MARCH 30, 2001
By Fred Weir (fweir@online.ru) Special to The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2001/03/30/fp7s1-csm.shtml

President Vladimir Putin has begun sweeping Boris Yeltsin-era relics from his government in what experts say is a carefully planned campaign to consolidate the supreme power he theoretically won in elections a year ago.

It is often said that power in Russia flows from the bureaucracy, not the people. Each new leader must painstakingly enforce his personal authority by placing loyalists in all the top jobs, a process that can take years, before accumulating enough real power enact his political program.

"Putin has spent a year studying the apparatus and lining up his candidates," says Alexei Zudin, deputy director of the Center for Political Techniques, an independent Moscow think tank. "This is just the beginning. He will be removing the old Yeltsin appointees, bite by bite, for some time to come."

Not by accident, Wednesday's cabinet purge focused on the security forces, vaulting Putin cronies into control of the defense and interior ministries - which between them bear responsibility for the faltering war in Chechnya. After 18 months of fighting, Russian troops have managed to occupy but not pacify the breakaway republic.

A string of car bombings in Russian towns near the Chechen border last weekend killed 25 people and demonstrated that the separatist rebellion may be rapidly mutating into a classic terrorist struggle, recognizing no territorial or social limits.

"The Chechen war has shown the urgent need for military reform," says Franz Sheregi, director of the independent Center for Social Forecasting in Moscow. "To begin this process, Putin needed to appoint a defense minister who is unconnected with the military hierarchy and completely loyal to the Kremlin."

Mr. Yeltsin's defense minister, the career officer Igor Sergeyev, was replaced by Sergei Ivanov, an old friend of Mr. Putin's and an 18-year veteran of the Soviet KGB's external intelligence service. A fluent English speaker and former head of the Kremlin's security council, Mr. Ivanov is regarded as a tough-minded security hawk who won't flinch from the herculean task of modernizing Russia's bankrupt, demoralized, and incompetent military.

A year of bureaucratic infighting has stalled plans to slash the armed forces from 1.2 million to 850,000, restructure them in favor of combat units, and gradually phase out the highly unpopular conscription system.

"Basically, a lot of generals have to be fired," says Irina Kobrynskaya, an analyst with the independent National Project Institute in Moscow. "Sergeyev was part of the military old-boy network, and couldn't do it. Ivanov is a civilian - or rather, he's KGB - but he's from outside. He can make the hard decisions."

The Kremlin also appointed Russia's first-ever female deputy defense minister, though probably not with any idea of striking a blow for downtrodden Russian women. Most analysts believe Lyubov Kudelina, former deputy finance minister with a background in law enforcement, has been enlisted to crack down on the corruption that is said to be rife in upper military echelons.

Interior Minister Vladimir Rushailo, rumored to be a protégé of exiled tycoon Boris Berezovsky, was replaced by Boris Gryzlov, head of the pro-Kremlin Unity party's parliamentary caucus. In that job, Mr. Gryzlov has shown a readiness to reverse his own positions to suit Putin.

Mr. Rushailo was "promoted" to head the security council, an advisory body whose authority depends on the president's favor.

"Probably Rushailo will go out with the next round of sackings," says Mr. Zudin. "The fact that he is being given another position shows that Putin is doing this systematically, taking his time and acting cautiously."

In another key change, Nuclear Energy Minister Yevgeny Adamov was sacked - and not offered any consolation job. His post was given to a professional scientist, Alexander Rumyantsev. Earlier this month, in a move that may have been approved by the Kremlin, Mr. Adamov was accused of corruption, nepotism, and illegal export of atomic technologies in a report issued by the Duma, the lower house of parliament. Further dramatic power shuffles which will "attract public attention" are in the wind, Putin said in a national address Wednesday.

Looking ahead, experts say Putin is likely to expand his personal beachhead in the state bureaucracy through strategic appointments of former colleagues and political allies to top posts. And that probably means many more veterans of the KGB and its post-Soviet successor, the Federal Security Service (FSB), will be planted in high offices.

"Power is passing to the FSB because it is the only viable political force in Russia today, and the only place where serious professional administrators can be found," says Mr. Sheregi. "Putin knows that a major impulse will be needed to implement his political goals, and for that he needs capable, loyal, and determined people.

"It carries the risk of increasing authoritarianism, but it also feels like a fresh wind after a decade of stagnation under Yeltsin," Sheregi adds.

---

FOREIGN AFFAIRS Code Red

New York Times
March 30, 2001
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/30/opinion/30FRIE.html

So I came home the other night, and one of my daughters was doing her homework and asked me to remind her which were the good guys: the North Koreans or South Koreans? That triggered a dinner table discussion of the cold war and the Cuban missile crisis. I explained that I vividly remember listening to the radio during the Cuba crisis and that our school had regular drills where we had to hide in the basement during a simulated nuclear attack.

Oh, my daughters said to me, we have those kinds of drills, too. When I asked them to explain, it quickly became apparent that the threat they were practicing for was not a nuclear attack, and not just a bad storm, but an attack by an armed student or intruder shooting up their public schools. We have "code red" and "code blue," my daughters, ages 12 and 15, said. Code blue means all students must remain in their classroom or go immediately there. Code red means a total "lockdown" - all students must remain in their classroom or rush to the nearest classroom. Teachers must lock their classroom doors, move students into the safest corner, keep them silent and cover the window of their classroom door with paper, so no gunman can see if students are inside.

There you have it: My kids aren't quite sure whether North Korea or South Korea is on our side, but they know the difference between code red and code blue. I grew up terrified of another superpower with a nuclear missile. They grow up terrified of a super-empowered angry person with an automatic weapon. I knew the threat to my life came from Moscow. They have no idea which student might be carrying a gun or a knife.

Which brings me to the latest news: What is it that we and the Russians are actually spying on each other about? This whole espionage affair seems straight out of Mad magazine's "Spy vs. Spy" cartoon. The Russians are spying on us to try to find out why we are spying on them. I mean, be honest, is there anything about the Russians today you want to know?

Their navy is rusting in port. Their latest nuclear submarine is resting on the bottom of the ocean. We know they're selling weapons to Iran and Iraq, because they told us. And their current political system, unlike Communism, is not exactly exportable - unless you think corruption, chaos and K.G.B. rule amount to an ideology. Khrushchev threatened to bury us. Putin threatens to corrupt us.

I was friendly with one of the Russian diplomats who was sent home for spying. He was very smart, very likable and never asked me for anything except to pick up the bill for lunch. He spent most of our meetings complaining about how stupid his government was. Maybe it was all an act, but it was sure delivered with enthusiasm.

Which brings me back to my daughters' schools. While what threatened me when I was their age - the Soviet Union - is different from what threatens them - a troubled student - they have one big feature in common: they have no simple cures. When authority is lost at the state level, or at the home level, it's not easy to recover. Such nations, and such families, become ungovernable, and threaten us by their weakness, not their strength. Children or countries without a sense of direction, but with easy access to weapons, are dangerous.

How you pull a country like Russia away from becoming an angry, failed state, acting out on the world stage, and make it a responsible member of the world community has no easy formula. And how you pull a lost young person away from becoming an angry assassin and make him instead a responsible member of the local community has no easy formula.

Kids now grow up in diverse and fractured homes, and dealing with the most disturbed ones requires multiple approaches. Head Start alone, or midnight basketball alone, or more testing alone, won't do it. So it is with countries. How a country like Russia builds the rule of law, an honest civil service and the habits of a modern democratic society is so much more complex a task than simply importing textbooks, holding elections or bringing Russia into the G-7.

Which brings me back to my dinner table. About the only thing we do know for sure is where the cure has to start. It has to start in the home, the basic building block for any community or country. Nothing good will happen in your state house, or in your school house, if it does not start, and is not sustained, in your own house.

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

Aid for nuclear workers headed for Justice Department

Evansville Courier & Press
03/30/01
By The Associated Press
http://www.courierpress.com/cgi-bin/view.cgi?200103/30+NUKGZ033001_latestnews.html+20010330

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is a step closer to shifting agency control of a new compensation program for sick Cold War-era nuclear weapons plant workers, a move critics say will delay badly needed payments.

The Office of Management and Budget has drafted an executive order that would move the program from the Labor Department to the Justice Department. The shift is supported by Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, who says the Justice Department is better suited to oversee the program.

Richard Miller, a lobbyist with the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International Union who helped negotiate the compensation program's provisions, said he feared such a move would make it impossible for dying workers to quickly get the checks and medical benefits they've been promised.

"What they have just done is pour cement boots over this program," Miller said Thursday.

The proposed order, which must be signed by President Bush to take effect, would amend an order by President Clinton, who put the Labor Department in charge, and defy Congress, which last year appropriated money to the Labor Department.

The program calls for payments of $150,000 plus medical care to workers with cancer or incurable lung disease because of their Cold War-era exposure to radiation, beryllium or silica.

The lawmakers who designed the program wanted the Labor Department to run it on the theory that experience with black lung and other compensation programs would let it prepare quickly to evaluate medical claims by the nuclear workers.

Despite assuring senators in February that the Labor Department was up to the task, Chao said she "soon found that the department does not have the experience or expertise in radiation cases to adequately serve these workers."

Chao's position is supported by the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, one of the fathers of a Justice Department-run program that compensates miners who got sick while digging uranium ore.

Other lawmakers feel differently. Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, said the new program is expected to generate about 2,500 successful claims a year, versus only about 360 claims in the miners' program.

"Can such a huge increase of work be handled and the injured workers still get their benefits in an efficient manner? Many of these people don't have time to wait. They're sick now and can't wait while the government tweaks its bureaucracy," he said.

"The best plan is to send this program through the biggest pipeline, and I think that's Labor."

-------- california

Laser Project Hits a Snag; Court Hints At Conflict

New York Times
March 30, 2001
By JAMES GLANZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/30/science/30NIF.html

A federal judge has temporarily barred backers of an Energy Department laser project from citing an expert panel's evaluation, a decision suggesting that the panel may have been improperly stacked with people who have a stake in the project.

Congress saved the project last year, when it was nearly $1 billion over budget and years behind schedule, after a panel of technical experts found that many technical and managerial problems had been corrected. The project's budget for the current fiscal year was nearly tripled to $199 million.

But on Wednesday, Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, issued a preliminary injunction barring the Energy Department, which operates the project at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Northern California, from offering the panel's report in continuing lobbying efforts before Congress.

The department says the laser project, called the National Ignition Facility, will help ensure the reliability of the nation's nuclear stockpile without actual nuclear tests, by simulating conditions close to those in bombs. Opponents say the project was built only to give Livermore weapons scientists a mission after the end of the cold war.

The suit was filed by the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington and a local organization critical of the laboratory. It charges, in effect, that the department filled the panel with scientists who had a financial and professional stake in the laser, in violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act.

"This court injunction suggests that D.O.E.'s review is not independent and is not even legal," said Senator Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat who opposes the project, referring to the Department of Energy. "We should not continue to pour money into N.I.F. without a rigorous, independent review."

Darwin Morgan, a spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Agency, a semiautonomous agency within the department that handles the project, denied that panel members had conflicts of interest.

"The merits of the case have not been decided yet," Mr. Morgan said.

But Dr. Thomas B. Cochran, director of the nuclear program at the defense council, which brought the suit, said the injunction could be significant, since Congress withheld $69 million of the 2001 money until the Energy Department could certify, sometime after this March 31, that the project's revised schedule and cost estimates were sound and that it could meet its technical goals.

The injunction, which also covers a second review panel formed this year, means that the findings may not be offered in support of the project during the certification and indicates that Judge Sullivan believes that the plaintiffs in the suit are likely to prevail.

But Judge Sullivan also ruled that if Congress decided to request the reports, they could be sent with a disclaimer saying that they might be in violation of the statute.

-------- connecticut

HARTFORD: MILLSTONE LAWSUIT DISMISSED

New York Times
March 30, 2001
Metro Briefs
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/30/nyregion/30MBRF.html

A State Superior Court judge has thrown out a lawsuit by antinuclear groups to stop the $1.3 billion sale of the Millstone nuclear power complex to a Virginia company. The Connecticut Coalition Against Millstone failed to establish legal standing to pursue its claims in court, Judge Peter Emmett Wise ruled Wednesday. The coalition failed to prove that it would be harmed financially if Northeast Utilities sold the Waterford plant to Dominion Resources Inc., Judge Wise found. (AP)

-------- georgia

New nuclear plant possible in Georgia

Atlanta Business Chronicle
March 30, 2001
Erin Moriarty Staff Writer
http://atlanta.bcentral.com/atlanta/stories/2001/04/02/story2.html

Though it has been almost three decades since the federal government licensed a new nuclear power plant, Southern Co. may seek permission to build one in Georgia or Alabama.

Southern Co. is considering applying for a federal license to build a new plant on the site of one of its existing nuclear power plants, said Lou Long, vice president of technical services for Southern Nuclear Operating Co. The Atlanta-based utility is one of a handful of power companies contemplating building nuclear plants in the midst of the California energy crisis and a new round of pro-nuclear legislation in Washington, D.C.

The move marks a major shift in the energy industry, since no licenses to build nuclear power plants in the United States have been granted by the federal government since 1975. More than 100 nuclear power plants have been built in the United States, but the 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania -- which was a near-meltdown -- squelched the momentum of the industry.

Now, soaring fossil fuel prices and a new political climate in the nation's capital appear to be resuscitating the nuclear industry.

Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., has introduced legislation to spend $240 million over the next five years to promote developing more nuclear power plants and dealing with increasing levels of nuclear waste from the nation's existing power plants. Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Ala., also has introduced legislation to promote nuclear energy through research and tax incentives.

Meanwhile, Vice President Dick Cheney has said his energy policy team is studying the future of nuclear energy.

Yet while politicians are touting nuclear power as a remedy for the nation's energy woes, the problem of dealing with mounting levels of highly toxic nuclear waste remains unresolved -- a prospect that worries many industry watchdog groups and environmentalists.

Process streamlined

Adding to the political momentum, the U. S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which regulates everything from nuclear power plants to nuclear waste, has streamlined the licensing process for new nuclear power plants. Requests from utility companies are evaluated individually and are not awarded through competitive bidding.

The commission now allows companies to get early approval of a possible site for a nuclear power plant and to apply for pre-approved designs for nuclear reactors. The new processes will be more efficient for companies seeking to build nuclear power plants, said Thelma Wiggins, spokesperson for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's trade association.

In addition to several pre-approved designs, another new type of reactor is being tested in South Africa by Chicago-based Exelon Corp. (NYSE: EXC).

Southern growth

If Southern Co. were to apply for a license to build a new plant, it would use one of the pre-approved designs, Long said. Nonetheless, developing the required documentation and going through the federal review process for a new plant could take several years and cost as much as $6 million, Long said.

In order for a new nuclear plant to be competitive, it would have to cost about $1,000 per kilowatt, or $1 billion for a 1,000 megawatt plant, said Michael Jones, spokesperson for Southern Nuclear Operating Co.

Southern Co. (NYSE: SO) operates two nuclear power plants in Georgia and one in Alabama, each of which has two nuclear reactors. Industry-watchers predict that Southern Co. would be most likely to apply for a license to build a new nuclear reactor at Plant Vogtle near Augusta, since that plant was originally licensed for four reactors, although only two were built.

"There's ample room at Plant Vogtle for some additional units, but all our sites are very big in terms of land area," Long said, noting that many other issues such as water supply would be factors in the decision.

Nuclear energy currently generates more than 20 percent of the electricity used in Georgia and Alabama, but Long said the company is cautiously examining whether nuclear energy could play a bigger role at Southern Co.

"The price of [natural] gas has doubled and tripled and it's susceptible to periods of volatility when the demand is high. And coal plants bring along some environmental issues," Long said. "Nuclear's big advantage these days is that its fuel prices are low and stable and there are no greenhouse gases and emissions."

Southern Co. has a representative on the committee that is studying options for new nuclear power plants at the Nuclear Energy Institute. The Nuclear Energy Institute believes that nuclear power could satisfy the nation's growing appetite for electricity, which it expects to grow 50 percent by 2020.

The institute also believes that nuclear production could help meet electricity demand in California. The increase in nuclear generation over the past two years would have been enough to meet the power needs of all the residential consumers in California, according to a report from U.S. Department of Energy.

Waste woes

But while utilities are contemplating building more nuclear plants, so-called "high-level" nuclear waste from existing nuclear plants is piling up.

Nationwide, there were 42,900 metric tons of nuclear waste from power plants -- or "spent" nuclear fuel, as it is called -- at the end of 2000.

These spent nuclear fuel rods, if stacked end to end about five yards deep, would more than cover a football field, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute. Some parts of this nuclear waste, which is thermally hot and highly radioactive, are so hazardous they will have to be kept in isolation for at least 10,000 years.

By the end of the decade, the amount of spent nuclear fuel is expected to grow to 64,300 metric tons and there is still no consensus on where this waste will be stored long term. Critics of new nuclear plants argue that the nuclear waste issue should be resolved before building more waste-producing plants.

"It's irresponsible to push for a new generation of nuclear plants when we haven't cleaned up from the past generation of nuclear plants," said Glenn Carroll of Georgians Against Nuclear Energy (GANE).

Southern Co.'s Long contends that the company is handling its own waste responsibly.

Carroll believes that Southern Co.'s efforts would be better spent on managing existing nuclear waste and researching other forms of energy.

"The progressive and positive leadership role we vitally need Southern Co. to play is to develop energy conservation and efficiency in tandem with using natural Southern renewable energies -- wind, solar and biomass," Carroll said. "The future of the nuclear industry is in figuring out how to deal with the waste. Until we deal with nuclear waste, it's just wrong to propose for new nuclear plants to be built."

Many environmental groups, such as Georgians for Clean Energy, agree that investing in alternative forms of energy, rather than new nuclear power plants, would be a safer and more environmentally sound alternative.

"It's the only form of energy that if there's a major meltdown of a plant it will cause between 700 to 100,000 immediate deaths and between 4,000 to 610,000 injuries per reactor," said Pamela Blockey-O'Brien, a Douglasville resident who closely follows the nuclear industry and has served as a delegate to the United Nations' special sessions on nuclear disarmament. "We have the equivalent of a nuclear bomb with a slow burning fuse in our back yards that is constantly releasing radioactivity to air, water and soil."

Long-term problem

The nuclear waste dilemma dates back at least to 1982 when the government established a fee for nuclear utilities, and in return, promised that the U.S. Department of Energy would begin disposing of their nuclear waste by 1998.

However, the government has not yet assumed this responsibility because its chosen site for a national storage facility, Yucca Mountain, Nev., has faced fierce opposition and has been tied up for a decade in research, as well as political, legal and environmental battles. The government's national repository is not expected to open until at least 2010.

With no immediate resolution in sight, some environmentalists fear that the nuclear industry -- especially with the gleam of new nuclear plants in its eyes -- could bury the nation in a nuclear waste problem that may never be resolved.

"It's all about money for utility companies," Blockey-O'Brien said. "They don't care because they're going to die before the waste issue is taken care of and it will passed on to generations and generations and generations."

-------- tennessee

Report cites possible K-25 exposure sites

From: magnu96196@aol.com
http://www.oakridger.com/
by Paul Parson Oak Ridger staff
March 30, 2001

Workers in four facilities at the Oak Ridge K-25 Site in the 1950s and 1960s had a high potential for exposure to radioactive materials, a report states.

The Department of Energy report outlines several key activities and facilities associated with the possible exposures. Those are unpacking, feeding, and sampling of uranium trioxide in building K-1131; collecting ash for uranium recovery and cleaning tower filters in buildings K-1131 and K-1420; uranium recovery from ash in buildings K-1231 and K-1410; and maintenance and repair of a fluorination tower and associated equipment in buildings K-1131 and K-1420.

A total of nine site-specific reports were released this week and represent the fifth installment of a comprehensive effort begun by DOE in September 1999 to address worker concerns associated with the historical use of recycled uranium at the gaseous diffusion plants in Oak Ridge, Paducah, Ky., and Portsmouth, Ohio.

The reports provide a general understanding of the flow and characteristics of recycled uranium at individual sites. They identify where recycled uranium and trace amounts of other radioactive contaminants could have concentrated or been released, including historical periods, activities and concentrations, which may be useful for identifying potential worker exposure.

Thousands of historical records were retrieved and analyzed to compile the data used in these studies. Based on this information, DOE officials say they have a good preliminary understanding of the characteristics and trace contaminants in the major streams of recycled uranium.

-------- washington

DOE workers comp may leave Labor

Hanford News
Fri, Mar 30, 2001
By Annette Cary Herald staff writer
http://www.hanfordnews.com/2001/mar35.html

The Office of Management and Budget began circulating a draft executive order of a plan Thursday that critics believe would slow compensation to former nuclear workers who fell ill from chemical and radiation exposure at Hanford and other Department of Energy sites.

"That move puts cement boots on the project and pushes it into deep water," said Richard Miller, a policy analyst for unions representing nuclear workers in the Midwest. "That really is a one-sided declaration of war against the implementation of the program."

The Bush administration is proposing the compensation program be moved from the Labor Department to the Justice Department. The Clinton administration had given Labor authority to handle the program because it has a large staff devoted to other workers' compensation claims and seemed well equipped to handle the ongoing medical claims of former nuclear workers.

Justice has been administering another comparatively small program to give one-time payments to miners who fell ill after providing the nation's nuclear program with uranium and those harmed by nuclear tests.

The Justice program, which has a staff of 14, has handled 3,900 uranium miner claims in 10 years, paying money on 1,705 of them, Miller said. It's also handled claims of some downwinders, such as those who lived downwind of the Nevada nuclear bomb tests, bringing total claims to about 9,000 in a decade.

In contrast, the Labor Department runs a worker compensation program that handles 242,000 claims a year under the Longshore and Harbor Workers Act, the Federal Employees Compensation Act and a third Black Lung beneficiary program, according to the AFL-CIO.

It's uncertain how many sick nuclear workers or their survivors might qualify for the new program among the 600,000 who have performed nuclear work for DOE. However, the AFL-CIO estimates 25,000 claims could be paid over 10 years.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated the program would cost $1.6 billion over 10 years. It would cover medical expenses and allow workers to claim compensation for lost wages or $150,000, whichever is more.

"There is only one government agency that has the capacity and expertise to deal with a program of this magnitude, and that is the Department of Labor," wrote AFL-CIO President Edward Sullivan in a letter to Labor Secretary Elaine Chao.

Chao favors turning over the program to the Justice Department.

Whichever agency runs the program has just two months until it must announce draft regulations for the program. In two more months, it would need to be accepting claims from former nuclear workers.

The proposed change in agencies worries U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash.

"The Department of Labor is the only agency with the experience and infrastructure necessary to administer this program," Murray wrote in a letter to the Labor secretary Thursday. "The Department of Justice has already conceded it is ill positioned to properly administer the program."

In hearings in September, Justice Department officials told a congressional subcommittee the department had neither the staff nor the procedures in place to handle claims programs that determine eligibility for medical cost reimbursements. As a result, when medical benefits were extended to uranium miners, responsibility for handling the claims was turned over to the Labor Department.

Hastings is concerned that moving the nuclear worker compensation program from Labor to the Justice Department would cause a delay, said spokesman Todd Young.

"He believes it's best to get this up and running as soon as possible," Young said.

U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., pointed out that the Labor Department not only has experience in helping injured workers, but also has a network of regional offices across the country where workplace claims are handled.

"The Department of Justice, by contrast, possesses none of this infrastructure or expertise," he wrote in a letter to the Labor secretary.

The nuclear workers compensation program was modeled after the Federal Employees Compensation Act, which the Labor Department administers.

"The program is not intended as an apology payment like the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (for uranium miners), which the Department of Justice manages," Murray wrote in her letter to Chao.

Among those who support moving the nuclear worker compensation program to the Justice Department is U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.


-------- MILITARY

-------- burma/myanmar

Hundreds of refugees from Burma Stranded in Guam, USA

From: "McCracken, Philip (TAD)" <Philip.Mccracken@fta.dot.gov>
Fri, 30 Mar 2001

announcement for posting:

Hundreds of refugees from Burma (mostly north/northwest) are currently stranded on the Pacific island of Guam, pending approval for asylum in the US. Their circumstances there are difficult, but one case is especially so. MIss Hnaing Cin Par is a young political pro-democracy refugee from the Chin State. Due to apparent communications problems, she is being detained, by herself, in the Department of Corrections jail, for the Immigration Service. A lawyer is working on her asylum case, but in the meanwhile, she is completely isolated and reportedly very upset and depressed by her situation. To provide some encouragement to her, please take a moment to write a card or note with some cheerful message, and send it to her care of her lawyer. Cards and letters only, please; no packages!

Address: Miss Hnaing Cin Par, DOC Guam, c/o Mr. Charles Kinnunen Esq., 153 Martyr St., Agana 96910, Guam. The postage for Guam is the same as within the United States (34 cent stamp for a letter, 20 cent for a postcard.) == message from Project Maje.

From: Mirante MAJE Paisley <maje@hevanet.com>
Subject: interpreters needed

announcement for posting:

There is an urgent need for volunteer interpreters to visit Guam in order to help refugees from Burma who are stranded there, by translating during their asylum interviews with US immigration officials. The US immigration department is willing to speed up the process of bringing approved Burma refugees from Guam to the mainland, but the refugees have to go through interviews first, and are having to provide their own interpreters. There are currently hundreds of refugees from Burma (mostly the north/northwest) in difficult circumstances on Guam. The main need is for interpreters who can translate between spoken English and Chin (various dialects) but intepreters who can fluently translate between English and Burmese would be most appreciated too, as well as Kachin/English speakers. These are not paid positions, but hospitality would be provided on (warm, sunny) Guam for stays of a week to a month. They are trying to complete the processing by late May. IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN VOLUNTEERING TO INTERPRET ON GUAM: Please contact as soon as possible, Dr. Zo T. Hmung <CFCoalition@hotmail.com> ==message from Project Maje

---

Myanmar gives green light to U.N. rights visit

CNN
March 30, 2001
http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/southeast/03/30/myanmar.approves.visit/index.html

YANGON, Myanmar -- Myanmar's military government has approved the visit of the new U.N. human rights envoy to the country in the first week of April.

"We have given the green light to the visit of the new U.N. special rapporteur," a senior Myanmar Foreign Ministry official said.

Diplomatic sources in Yangon said Brazil's Paulo Sergio Pinheiro would meet representatives of both the military government and the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD), including its leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

The NLD won Myanmar's most recent elections in 1990 by a landslide, but has never been allowed to govern.

Aung San Suu Kyi has been held in de facto house arrest since September, with access to her tightly controlled.

But international governments have welcomed news that the government has held several meetings with Suu Kyi to try to find common ground.

Pinheiro succeeded Rajsoomer Lallah of Mauritius, who resigned in November after four years in the job. Lallah was never allowed to visit Myanmar.

Lallah's last report, in October, accused the military government of torturing, raping and executing civilians, particularly members of ethnic minority groups.

The United States' annual report on global human rights released last month, grouped Myanmar with Cuba and North Korea as the world's three worst countries for human rights abuses.

-------- drug war

Drug users won't buy Howard's message

The Age
Friday 30 March 2001
By PETER ELLINGSEN
http://www.theage.com.au/news/2001/03/30/FFXXE11EVKC.html

Advertising can change attitudes, at least for a while, but it does not alter long-term behavior. It deals in illusions, a representation of life, rather than the real thing. It can graft glitter on to a banality, like margarine, but it is cumbersome with something as complex and deeply rooted as drug addiction.

Despite this, the Federal Government is spending $27.5 million on a media blitz to turn young people off drugs. Graphic depictions of overdose death are the stick, to scare, while images of parents talking straight to their kids are the carrot, meant to provide a way out. "Drugs destroy families," is the message, and while one can sympathise with the intent, the rationale is disappointing.

It is not just that hard-drug use for those most likely to become addicted is not a "consumer choice", susceptible to spin; it is that marketing is no answer to the sickness and sadness that lies behind much addiction. Does anyone really think an ad will suddenly enable parents to communicate with their kids, or kids to suddenly trust their parents? It is like trying to change your life with a pill or a seminar. Still, the Prime Minister seems to believe that gritty anti-AIDS and anti-drink-driving ads are a template for dealing with hard drugs.

But are these a valid or good comparison? Alcohol kills 10 times more people than heroin, but overwhelmingly not on the road, and drink-driving, while deplorable, is not an addiction. As for AIDS, by implying that each unprotected sexual encounter was fatal, the 1980s Grim Reaper ads exaggerated the threat to the point where they contributed to a return to unsafe sex. This is also a danger with the drugs campaign.

As Professor Margaret Hamilton, director of the Turning Point Alcohol and Drug Centre, has pointed out, heroin, providing it is pure and hygienically injected, is physiologically less harmful, even over an extended period, than tobacco, which kills more than 18,000 people a year, or about 50 a day, in Australia. Death from heroin overdose is real, but not automatic. About 1 per cent of Australia's 89,000 dependent users die of overdose each year, most of them because they mix heroin with other drugs.

And who are they? As Hamilton, one of the more liberal experts to survive as an adviser to Howard, says, they are the lonely, the unconnected, and the poor. Most of the 300,000 or so said to have tried the drug do not become dependent - that is, lose control of their heroin use and suffer withdrawal. Heroin is a threat, but demonising it is not the answer. As Hamilton observes, "worrying about heroin allows Australia to avoid pressing issues".

Those issues were well documented in last year's national survey into the mental health of young people, which found drug abuse was linked to mental disturbance, which, in turn, was linked to poverty, family breakdown and a lack of services.

Howard's "balanced response to the drugs problem", however, focuses on crime prevention, law enforcement, education and rehabilitation. Two years ago the Law Council of Australia agreed this was a fruitless course, and in a report, Dealing with Death - A Theory of the Bleeding Obvious, made clear that, despite spending 80 per cent of its more than $600 million anti-drug budget on law enforcement, government had failed to stem heroin use or overdose death. (Overdose is down now because of a heroin drought brought about by supply problems.)

Even the Australian Bureau of Criminal Intelligence could not claim success for prohibition. "Law enforcement efforts are having only a limited effect on the amount of heroin offered at street level," it reported, adding: "...It is a serious concern and it is obvious that current policies are not working."

As for education, another of Howard's priorities, Hamilton has said drug education on its own achieves, at best, neutral results. "What we have to accept is that drug use will prevail no matter how much we spend on education to prevent its use," she has noted.

Rehabilitation, the last of Howard's priorities, is neglected to the point where, in Victoria, methadone, by far the biggest treatment for heroin addiction, is unavailable to many of the state's estimated 20,000 dependent users. This is because of a shortage of GPs willing to prescribe the drug, and a lack of Medicare funding for doctors to spend time with patients.

The Law Council report found Australian drug policy to be driven by ideology rather than evidence, and called for a "reversal of prohibition". Sadly, the reverse is happening. The unwinnable war goes on, with the small victories that could be had, through heroin trials and provision of better services, going begging.

Instead, we have the values of the marketplace imposed on human vulnerability. The money Howard is spending on his media blitz could have paid for about 16,000 treatment places. No one doubts the practical advice offered in the ads may prove useful to some, but rather than try to change perceptions, as the corporate sector likes to do, would it not have been more useful to try to change the circumstances that feed addiction?

It is no mystery what they are. As former Family Court judge John Fogarty, who has written three reports on child protection, says, unless social and economic inequities are addressed, the street will continue to claim more kids.

Peter Ellingsen is a staff writer.
E-mail: pellingsen@theage.fairfax.com.au

---

Drug Research Inadequate, White House Panel Finds

New York Times
March 30, 2001
By FOX BUTTERFIELD
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/30/national/30DRUG.html

The quality of data and research on what works to reduce the supply and demand for drugs is so poor that no accurate assessments can be made, a report commissioned by the Clinton White House and released yesterday has concluded.

The report, by 15 economists, criminologists and psychiatrists assembled by the National Research Council, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, took no position in the heated debate on whether to give more attention to drug enforcement or drug treatment.

But the experts recommended a series of steps to increase government financing for research into drug control policies and for better ways to gather accurate data.

Otherwise, Charles F. Manski, the chairman of the committee and a professor of economics at Northwestern University, said in an interview, "We are concerned that 10 to 20 years from now we will still be in the same position, still having these same fruitless debates forever."

Professor Manski added, "The bottom line message is, we simply don't know enough to know the effects of current enforcement policy."

The study was financed by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy and commissioned in 1998.

In a statement yesterday, the acting director of the Bush White House drug control office, Edward H. Jurith, said, "We will pay close attention to the report's findings, particularly the need for improved data and research in the area of law enforcement."

But Mr. Jurith added that drug control "is not a perfect science." In fact, he said, "significant progress has been made in drug research in recent years," citing with approval several studies that the committee criticized as flawed.

The experts found that even what might seem the simplest measures of success in the battle against illegal drugs are unreliable.

For example, it has long been widely accepted that successful programs to reduce the supply of heroin or cocaine from abroad, along with tougher law enforcement on the streets, tend to drive up the price of the drugs.

But the committee found that the data used to measure drug prices, obtained from the Drug Enforcement Administration when it makes arrests, vary enormously from place to place and year to year.

Similarly, the report said, studies of whether drug treatment works and whether it is more cost-effective than enforcement are flawed because they do not use the scientific method of comparing randomized groups - for example, comparing one group of prison inmates who have participated in a treatment program with another group of inmates who have not.

The report noted that the $30 billion spent in 1999 by federal, state and local governments to combat illegal drugs was twice the American cost of the Persian Gulf war of 1991.

The report also said that the number of people arrested in drug offenses in 1998, 1.6 million, was three times greater than in 1980, and the number of people incarcerated in state prisons on drug charges in 1998, 289,000, was 12 times the number in 1980.

------- iraq

Air Force plane attacks Iraqi artillery site

USA Today
03/30/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-03-30-iraq.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - A U.S. Air Force F-15E warplane attacked an anti-aircraft artillery site in southern Iraq on Friday in response to what U.S. officials called recent Iraqi attempts to shoot down U.S. and British pilots.

The U.S. strike was the first in southern Iraq since American and British planes attacked several air defense sites around Baghdad on Feb. 16.

Friday's attack was near the city of As Samawah on the Euphrates River, about 130 miles south of Baghdad, officials said.

U.S. and British planes regularly patrol the skies over southern and northern Iraq to enforce "no fly" zones meant to prevent Iraqi forces from attacking rebel Kurds in the north and Shiites in the south.

Friday's strike was announced by U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Fla., which is responsible for U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf area. The announcement said precision-guided weapons were used against the anti-aircraft artillery site but did not specify the weapon or give any indication of damage inflicted.

The U.S. aircraft involved in the strike returned safely from the mission, Central Command said.

-------- space

Russian Expert Warns Against Militarization of Space

Russia Today
Mar 30, 2001
http://www.russiatoday.com/news.php3?id=324947

MOSCOW -- (BBC Monitoring) Text of report in English by Russian news agency ITAR-TASS.

Maj-Gen Vladimir Belous, Professor at the Academy of Military Sciences, speaking here on Thursday [29 March] at a news conference dealing with the military and technical aspects of the U.S. plans to establish a National Missile Defense (NMD) system and possibilities for Russia's actions in response, said he believed that the deployment of NMD would inevitably lead to militarization of outer space.

"There are no technologies in the world so far to fight intercontinental ballistic missiles without orbiting combat weapons," he said.

"The militarization of outer space would upset all international agreements on the peaceful uses of outer space and would actually lead to the dismantling of the 1972 antiballistic missile defense treaty. Besides, the orbiting of weapons would be conducive to a race of offensive nuclear arms and would lower the threshold of responsibility in making major decisions about the use of military force. This is why Russia would have to look for adequate responses to future challenges. It has such a capability," the scientist emphasized.

Source: ITAR-TASS news agency, Moscow, in English 1140 GMT 29 Mar 01

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

Latin American nations endorse Annan

InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 3/30/2001
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406559710

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Latin American and Caribbean countries in the United Nations endorsed Kofi Annan for a second term as U.N. secretary-general Thursday, adding to the global support for his re-election.

Annan already had the backing of the 53-nation Africa Group and the five Nordic nations. On Monday, the 50-nation Asian Group virtually ruled out fielding a challenger, all but clearing the way for his election to another five-year term.

The 22-nation Latin America and Caribbean Group at the United Nations met Thursday and issued a statement praising Annan's ``brilliant performance'' as U.N. chief.

By tradition, the secretary-general's job rotates every 10 years by region, and it is now Asia's turn to propose a candidate. But Africa's decade was disrupted when the United States Annan's predecessor, Egypt's Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

Annan, 62, who is from Ghana, has won high marks for his leadership and reform efforts at the United Nations. He announced his candidacy last week and immediately won a key endorsement from President Bush.

Annan's his term expires Dec. 31, and the General Assembly is expected to vote on a successor this fall.

---

UN Group: Guatemala failed promises

InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 3/30/2001
By WILL WEISSERT Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406561168

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) - The promises made in the sweeping 1996 peace accords which ended 36 years of civil war in Guatemala have been put on hold and may never be fulfilled, a U.N. spokesman says.

The peace process ``is frozen, it is frustrated,'' Juan Pablo Corlazzoli, a spokesman for the United Nations Mission to Guatemala, told the Associated Press in an interview late Wednesday.

Thursday was the seventh anniversary of an agreement on human rights signed by the government and leftist rebels. That pact helped lead to the 1996 peace treaty between the leftist guerrillas and the army. About 200,000 Guatemalans were killed during more than three decades of fighting.

The peace pact included 250 measures aimed at undoing centuries of repression of Mayan Indians _ who make up 60 percent of Guatemala's population _ and easing the country's staggering poverty. Four years later, however, less than half of those goals have become a reality.

Promised _ but still unseen _ are land reform and agricultural subsidies, new election laws, the overhaul of Guatemala's justice system and laws guaranteeing the protection of human rights.

MINUGUA, as the mission is commonly known, is charged with monitoring the implementation of the peace process, but Corlazzoli said his organization has been unable to force Guatemala's government to live up to its word.

``It's difficult to verify something that is not happening,'' Corlazzoli said.

The peace accords called for all of its measures to be enacted by the end of last year, but on Dec. 13 Guatemalan President Alfonso Portillo unveiled a new schedule extending the deadline until the end of 2004.

Corlazzoli said the new deadline was little more than a stall tactic.

As if to illustrate the problems still facing Guatemala's poor and Indian population, about 400 people left homeless by the war marched promised.

``They told us there would be money to build houses, but up to now they haven't lived up to those promises,'' said Vicente Concua, a protester who said he represented hundreds of homeless.

---

Europeans to revive Mideast resolution in U.N.

USA Today
03/30/2001 - Updated 01:09 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/mideast/2001-03-30-unres.htm

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - European members of the Security Council plan to resume negotiations on a resolution calling for a "mechanism" to protect Palestinian civilians in Israel's ongoing conflict, the council president said. The 15-member council came close to agreement on a European draft resolution earlier this week, but the United States said it had problems with the text, provoking the Palestinians to demand a vote on a tougher resolution backing a U.N. observer force in Israel. The four European nations abstained from the controversial vote, which ended with a U.S. veto.

"I hope very much that sometime in April we'll be able to bring this resolution to the vote and adopt it," said Volodymyr Yel'chenko of Ukraine, on Thursday. His country is joining Britain, France, Norway and Ireland in trying to revive the compromise draft.

The Palestinians were able to secure the minimum nine votes for the resolution that called for observers. The United States exercised its veto privilege because Israel opposes any international force, arguing that it could escalate the violence and further destabilize the region.

The European draft does not mention a U.N. observer force. Instead, it asks Secretary-General Kofi Annan to consult the Israelis and Palestinians on setting up "a protection mechanism" for Palestinian civilians. It also calls for an immediate cessation of violence and a resumption of Mideast peace negotiations.

Acting U.S. Ambassador James Cunningham, said the European draft is still on the table and "we'll continue to work on it."

"There is a great deal in that draft that we do support," Cunningham said.

Generally, the five permanent council members try to refrain from vetoing resolutions since they can inflame passions on the ground and anger U.N. members resentful that they alone can essentially dictate U.N. policy. The United States has only vetoed five resolutions since May 1990, all dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. The last was in 1997.

The Palestinians, who enjoy overwhelming support from developing countries, would almost certainly win easy approval for a resolution calling for U.N. observers in the 189-nation General Assembly, where no vetoes are allowed. But General Assembly resolutions are not legally binding - unlike Security Council resolutions.

--------

New York Times
March 30, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/30/world/30BRIE.html

UNITED NATIONS
MEASLES KILLS 900,000

More than 30 million children still get measles every year and 900,000 die, accounting for more than half the 1.6 million childhood deaths that could be prevented with vaccinations, said the World Health Organization and Unicef. The agencies hope to halve the deaths by 2005 by giving all infants at least one dose of vaccine. Immunizing a child costs 26 cents. Barbara Crossette (NYT)

MONITORS IN CONGO

United Nations military monitors began moving into areas of Congo after warring armies completed a nine-mile pullback from battle positions, the first step to winding down Africa's largest war. The observers, backed by troops, will verify the disengagement, but will not enforce the peace, United Nations officials said. Barbara Crossette (NYT)

ANNAN SUPPORTERS

Latin American and Caribbean nations endorsed Secretary General Kofi Annan for a second five-year term. Mr. Annan is already backed by African, Asian and Mideast nations as well as President Bush, making him virtually impossible to beat. His term ends on Dec. 31. Barbara Crossette (NYT)

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

Second Body Found Near F - 15 Crash

New York Times
March 30, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Military-Crashes.html

LONDON (AP) -- Searchers recovered a second body Friday near the wreckage of two U.S. Air Force F-15s that crashed on a Scottish mountain peak, police said.

The body, which has yet to be identified, was found close to the summit of Ben Macdhui in the Cairngorm Mountains, where the two jets crashed Monday, Grampian police said.

The body of one pilot of the single-seat jets -- Lt. Col. Kenneth John Hyvonen, 40, from Michigan -- was found Tuesday.

The body found Friday was believed to be the second pilot, Capt. Kirk Jones. A formal identification was to be conducted by medical officers.

The two aircraft vanished 45 minutes after taking off at midday Monday from Lakenheath air base, 75 miles northeast of London.

High winds, heavy snow and the threat of avalanches hampered the recovery operation throughout the week. At 4,300 feet, Ben Macdhui is the tallest summit in the Cairngorms.

Air accident investigators were still working at the crash sites, where a cordon had been set up to preserve evidence, police said.

The Air Force has not released Jones' home state, but the Arizona Republic newspaper reported that he graduated from Arizona State University.

Hyvonen, commissioned in 1984, was assistant director of operations of 48th Operations Support Squadron.

------

Missile movements

March 30, 2001
Inside the Ring
Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
Notes from the Pentagon.
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-2001330212916.htm

North Korea's military is on the move near the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separating the country from South Korea, causing jitters among some Pentagon intelligence officials. "Something is going on," one official familiar with reports of the activities told us. According to intelligence reports based on reconnaissance aircraft flights, the most visible activity has been recent movements of SA-2 surface-to-air missile batteries to locations along the DMZ. The missiles are part of the North's air-defense system geared to repulsing U.S. air strikes in a conflict. The activity is getting more attention than usual because of Pyongyang's reversion to hard-line anti-U.S. rhetoric in its official government radio broadcasts and publications. Earlier this week, the official newspaper Rodong Shinmun stated that "it is the invariable strategy of the U.S. imperialists to stifle [North Korea] by means of war and invade and dominate Asia."

Army commodes

The Army has become so cash-strapped, some bases are being told to put off repairs indefinitely, even for such unit necessities as the commode. With President Bush refusing, at least for now, to ask Congress for emergency readiness money, all the services are looking for ways to save money. At Fort Lee, Va., a training base for cooks and logisticians, the cutbacks are running deep. "Recent budget reductions have forced us to implement drastic cost saving measures at Fort Lee," says an internal Army memo we obtained. "The impact is that [directorate of engineering and logistics] will only be authorized to respond to and repair emergency service orders - those affecting health, life, safety or causing property damage." Broken items that will be repaired: natural gas leaks, broken water pipes, loss of heat in winter, hot water heaters and "complete failure of air conditioning system in summer." More importantly to soldiers, here's what won't be fixed: "Commodes/urinals will not be repaired as long as one functional commode/urinal is available in a facility. Leaking sinks, broken screens, loose doorknobs, broken thermostats and similar problems will not be repaired. DEL sincerely regrets the inconvenience this will cause to our facility customers. If and when the budget situation improves, customers will be notified and routine repairs will resume." Said one Army official to this column, "Evidently, we can't even afford to fix the toilets these days. Hope this doesn't affect our readiness posture."

The 'unders'

The White House has been holding up an announcement of its civilian picks to run the Air Force, Army and Navy until the Pentagon settles on who will be nominated as service undersecretaries. We are told the undersecretary front-runners are Albert E. Smith, executive vice president for Lockheed-Martin Space Systems Co. in Denver, for the Air Force; and Matt Fong, an Air Force academy graduate and former Republican U.S. Senate candidate, for Army. We are told a female aviator is in line for the Navy job. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld wanted a space expert at the Air Force since his own blue-ribbon commission recommended that that service become the executive agent for running the military's various space programs. The defense secretary views space as another potential battlefield, like the open seas and regional hot spots. The Washington Times has reported that Gordon England (Navy), James G. Roche (Air Force) and retired Army Brig. Gen. Thomas E. White (Army) are Mr. Rumsfeld's choices as service secretaries.

Panel envy

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has established more than 10 study groups to recommend how to reform the military, top to bottom, for the 21st century. Here's some of the big players. Andrew Marshall, who directs the Pentagon Office of Net Assessment, is heading the strategy group, with help from former protege Andrew Krepinevich and former Senate staffer Chris Williams. David Gompert of Rand is heading conventional forces. Retired Air Force Gen. James McCarthy is lead man on transformation, intelligence and space, aided by retired Air Force Gen. Larry Welch, retired Marine Gen. Carl Mundy and Paul Kaminski, acquisition czar in the Clinton Pentagon. Financial management is headed by Stephen Friedman, retired chairman of Goldman Sachs. Quality of life and morale is run by retired Adm. David Jeremiah, with help from various retired generals and admirals. Ballistic missile defense is led by Stephen Cambone, who is on Mr. Rumsfeld's personal staff.

Bush wars

Two newspaper articles this week - one in the New York Times and one in The Washington Post - reported how policy splits are emerging in the Bush administration, supposedly between hard-liners and moderates. And of course the Pentagon was portrayed in the articles as a bastion of right-wing zealots, while the alleged voices of reason, correctness and moderation are located in the State Department. Pentagon officials tell us the word has come down from Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that there will be no engagement or counterattack with unnamed officials at State who appear to be behind the verbal thrusts. "The Pentagon is taking the position that we don't leak; we don't reveal our differences; we don't undercut State and NSC; we don't take our quarrels public," said one official. Some feel the turn-the-other-cheek strategy is doomed to fail, as the Pentagon loses more and more ground in the policy debates. And we are told that the State Department is very happy with the notion that the Pentagon will not be fighting back. The most important issue in the debate is over personnel appointments. State officials are trying to portray the appointment of Doug Feith, as a senior assistant defense secretary, and Peter Rodman, as undersecretary for policy, as bad for moderates. Mr. Rodman, of course, worked for Henry Kissinger before working for Ronald Reagan. One of the major disputes now under way is arms sales to Taiwan. Although no presidential decision has been made, holdover officials from the Clinton administration are scrambling to block sales of advanced weaponry in order to avoid upsetting ties to Beijing. Most of the new administration's working-level policy-makers are still not in place due to delays in background checks and security clearance adjudication, sidelining key personnel from the dispute. One option being considered: Delay a final decision on several big-ticket items, such as Arleigh Burke-class destroyers equipped with Aegis battle management systems, until later in the year. Adm. Dennis Blair, commander-in-chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, said the president is considering an offer to the Taiwanese of several older Kidd-class destroyers that are less capable than Aegis-equipped ships. If China then continues to build up its 300 short-range CSS-6 and CSS-7 missiles opposite Taiwan, the United States would then sell Aegis ships that can be used for future missile defenses, Adm. Blair told the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this week. The Taiwanese, we are told, appear more anxious to win approval for diesel-powered submarines that would be assembled and outfitted in the United States than for the Aegis ships, which will take up to eight years to deploy.

Intercepts

• Defense officials tell us accused Moscow spy Robert P. Hanssen may have compromised the SIPRNET - the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network. Officials are investigating whether, with Mr. Hanssen's help, the Russians may have placed secret entrance points allowing covert access to the SIPRNET, the Pentagon's backbone router for secret-level data and intelligence and military communications. • The White House has tapped Kenneth Juster as the next Commerce undersecretary for export administration, a key job in guarding against American military know-how falling into the hands of China, Iran and other potential adversaries. Mr. Juster was more than a loyal State Department aide during the administration of President Bush's father. He penned a long article in Foreign Policy in 1994 on how the media created the "Iraqgate" scandal and damaged Mr. Bush's 1992 re-election chances. Mr. Juster was vindicated when the Clinton Justice Department concluded there was no evidence of any criminal conduct. What the media trumpeted as a scandal was merely a foreign policy initiative, via agriculture credits, that failed to moderate Saddam Hussein's behavior. • Sen. Mike DeWine, Ohio Republican, has introduced legislation to make life easier for Guard and Reserve members. His bill, which is supported by Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, Mississippi Republican, would give tax deductions for non-reimbursed travel expenses for weekend soldiers and sailors. The bill is backed by the Reserve Officers Association of the United States. • Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough are Pentagon reporters. Gertz can be reached at 202/636-3274 or by e-mail at gertz@twtmail.com. Scarborough can be reached at 202/636-3208 or by e-mail at scarbo@twtmail.com.


-------- OTHER

-------- environment

Bush, Schroeder disagree on Kyoto pact

Planet Ark
USA: March 30, 2001
Story by Patricia Wilson
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10311

WASHINGTON - U.S. President George W. Bush and a "straightforward" German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder disagreed over an international global warming treaty yesterday in an otherwise "constructive" White House meeting.

"There was a lot of agreement.... We agreed on practically everything except for one thing and that was no surprise to you - the Kyoto protocol," Schroeder told reporters as the two leaders sat side-by-side in the Oval Office.

Bush defended his rejection of the treaty aimed at reducing emissions linked to global climate change, saying it was more important to keep the U.S. economy on track but pledging to work with Germany and other European allies "to find new ways of thinking" about greenhouse gases.

"Our economy has slowed down in our country," Bush said. "We also have an energy crisis. And the idea of placing caps on carbon dioxide does not make economic sense for America."

The two leaders met a day after the administration said Bush unequivocally opposed the Kyoto pact. Schroeder asked the United States last week to abide by the agreement, which the European Union calls integral to relations with Washington.

The United States is the biggest producer of man-made carbon dioxide emissions, which many scientists say is the main greenhouse gas causing global warming. The gases are emitted by power plants, automobiles and other industrial operations.

The 1997 Kyoto treaty aims to reduce major industrialized nations' emissions by an average of 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2012 to avoid disastrous weather changes.

"They didn't fight about this," a senior U.S. official said after the meeting. "The chancellor knew our position, we knew his position, and so the emphasized what we do agree on, which is that greenhouse gas is an important issue, we're going to work together and we simply will agree to disagree on Kyoto."

ALLIES "ANGRY"

But Frank Loy, the lead negotiator for climate change issues under former President Bill Clinton, called Bush's decision "a total, unmitigated disaster."

"They're (allies) very angry for several reasons ... on a personal level since they put in enormous amounts of effort. They assumed there would be changes (with Bush), but not a withdrawal," Loy said.

Schroeder, speaking through a translator, said the Bush administration would have to take a decision on the protocol at an international climate conference in Bonn this summer and suggested the United States might opt out of the treaty without repudiating it.

"The president, and his government will be called upon to take a decision as to how they want to play it ... whether they will, on the one hand, give an opportunity to others to still continue with what they think is right by not voting against it," he said.

A senior State Department official speaking on condition of anonymity said the United States had no intention of repudiating the treaty.

"If you've signed a treaty but haven't ratified it, you're just obligated not to undermine the purposes of the treaty which is a very broad obligation which means we don't do anything that directly threatens the purpose of the treaty," the official said.

"STRAIGHTFORWARD" MAN

Schroeder said his meeting with Bush took place in a "very, very friendly spirit" and that the U.S.-German relationship could "take the strain" of the dispute over global warming.

"It was a very, very pleasant impression I had, indeed," Schroeder said. "It was wonderful to see the degree of openness that we had, the frankness we had in the meeting, and also the level of agreement that there was between us."

Bush described Schroeder as a "straightforward person" and said they had gotten "to the point." He praised Germany's role in helping bring peace to Macedonia and stabilization to the Balkans.

The two leaders also discussed U.S. plans to deploy a missile defense system, designed to guard against attacks by "rogue" states, which has upset Russia, Germany's other major partner outside the European Union.

While Germany wants Washington to take Russia's opposition seriously, Berlin's resistance has softened. It says if Washington is determined to proceed, it wants a stake in the technological advances and economic benefits. Bush said the United States would be willing to share.

"In terms of whether or not, you know, we develop a technology that will help make Europe more peaceful or America peaceful or the Middle East more peaceful, whatever it is, I'd be more than willing to discuss the technologies and share technologies with our friends."

---

EU to Lobby Russia, China, Japan, Iran on Climate

Russia Today
Mar 30, 2001
http://www.russiatoday.com/news.php3?id=325659§ion=default

BRUSSELS -- (Reuters) The European Union will send a diplomatic mission to Russia, China, Japan and Iran to gauge support for a 1997 pact on global warming that the United States has dumped, Belgium's energy minister said on Friday.

The meetings, on April 6-11, will follow emergency talks with White House officials in Washington on Tuesday where the EU hopes to bring the United States back on board the so-called Kyoto protocol on cutting the pollution blamed for climate change, Olivier Deleuze told Reuters.

"We will do a tour of these countries that have a very important role in this affair and we will ask them if they perceive the American position in the same way as us and how they see a solution," Deleuze said in a telephone interview.

Deleuze said he would be in the delegation along with Swedish Environment Minister Kjell Larsson and Margot Wallstrom, head of environmental affairs at the EU's executive Commission.

Bush's announcement on Wednesday that he would not support the Kyoto deal, which aims to bind developed countries into trimming their emissions of "greenhouse gases" implicated in global warming, shocked governments around the world.

Deleuze, whose country takes over the rolling six-month presidency of the EU in July, called Bush's decision a "political scandal and a catastrophe for the environment".

"It's a scandal because (Bush's position) is like saying: 'We'll take the wealth and leave our children to sort out the mess'," said Deleuze, a Green Party member of Belgium's coalition government.

A member of Deleuze's private staff will travel with Larsson and Wallstrom for a meeting in Washington on Tuesday with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency chief Christine Todd Whitman, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, and Gary Edson, an adviser to Bush on international economic affairs.

Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel is due to visit Washington separately on April 4 for talks with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, among others.

Deleuze said the EU would try to see whether Kyoto could be salvaged by adapting it in a way the United States would accept.

"We need to see what the U.S. basic philosophy is on the issue because the statement, 'We don't want the Kyoto Protocol,' could be interpreted in many different ways."

Deleuze said that ahead of Tuesday's meeting the EU had no way of knowing if U.S. concerns could be accommodated by making cosmetic changes or if Washington was completely rejecting the notion of reducing its emissions under an international deal.

"A minimalist scenario could be just to change the name of the agreement. A maximalist scenario would be they say: 'We don't want any binding multilateral regulations on greenhouse gases'. Where they (U.S. authorities) are between these two is what we have to see."

---

Bush ready to pull US out of Kyoto

Australia News Network
30mar01
From ROY ECCLESTON in Washington
http://news.com.au/newspulse/pulseframe/0,4711,1847213^401,00.html

THE US has infuriated Europe and environmental groups by effectively killing the Kyoto Treaty, the international agreement to cut greenhouse gases blamed for potentially catastrophic climate change.

Instead, George W. Bush ordered his cabinet to come up with an alternative plan that would require all nations to tackle the "serious problem" of global warming, without damaging the US economy. Australian Environment Minister Robert Hill said the treaty would fail if the US walked away and, if it did so, Australia would not sign.

But he said he would continue trying to persuade the Americans to take part during talks in the US next month.

Greens senator Bob Brown said the US move would send shockwaves around the world and called on John Howard to phone Mr Bush and ask him to reverse the decision.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said: "The President has been unequivocal. He does not support the Kyoto Treaty." He added that the US Senate had already voted 95-0 to oppose it. But he denied the US had pulled out of the treaty, which the Clinton administration signed in 1997, because it had not been ratified.

Until 55 nations ratify it - and only one has - "there's nothing to withdraw from, because there's no treaty in effect". But Mr Fleischer made it clear the US, which emits about a quarter of the gases blamed for global warming, had no interest in working within the treaty framework.

Mr Bush's main concern - one shared by Australia - is that developing nations such as India, Brazil and China are excluded from the binding reductions in emissions while advanced industrial nations face significant cuts.

"To exempt most of the world is not a treaty the President thinks is in the interest of this country, or would get the job done," Mr Fleischer said. "It's important to include the world in the treaty, not exempt most of the world."

Japan, Germany, the European Union and green groups responded with dismay. EU environment commissioner Margot Wallstroem said it was "very worrying" if the US intended to withdraw from the agreement.

Friends of the Earth said Mr Bush had opted to "rat" on the treaty just as the world was "tottering on the brink of climate disaster".

And German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder planned to argue the case for the Kyoto deal when he met Mr Bush today.

But he is unlikely to have much success, given the unilateral approach to foreign policy favoured by the Bush administration.

Environmental Protection Agency chief Christie Whitman reportedly has warned Mr Bush that the US risks damaging its international and domestic reputation unless it takes global warming seriously.

But Ms Whitman, whose concerns are backed by Treasury secretary Paul O'Neill, looks to have lost out to the energy lobby and economic hard-heads.

The Washington Post reported that the White House had sought legal advice on whether it could withdraw its signature from the agreement, which commits the US to significant cuts in carbon dioxide and methane emissions.

While the US would need to cut its 1990 levels by 7 per cent by 2010, it is in fact increasing them - as are most other developed nations. Australia claims to be on track to meet its target.

The decision follows Mr Bush's move earlier this month to exclude carbon dioxide from a list of pollutants he had promised to reduce. This followed lobbying from the US coal industry.

---

CHECKING AN EPIDEMIC
Europe's second thoughts
Britain will decide this weekend on vaccinating, instead of killing, livestock.

Christian Science Monitor
FRIDAY, MARCH 30, 2001
By Peter Ford (fordp@csps.com) Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2001/03/30/fpcon-intl.shtml

Write a letter to the editor (oped@csps.com)

PARIS Every evening, night after night, the television news in Europe carries the same scenes. Truckloads of sheep are tipped like rubble into gargantuan pits in Britain. Piles of bloated cows are burned on bonfires in France.

So far, European governments have been struggling to contain the continent's outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease by killing and destroying all diseased animals and also healthy ones at risk.

But a groundswell of public revulsion at the mass slaughter, echoed by many animal-health professionals, is forcing officials to consider a long-rejected alternative: vaccination.

The result: a clash of arguments about science, ethics, exports, and efficiency that goes to the root of the way European farmers and consumers feel about their animals and their food.

The Dutch government has already launched an emergency vaccination program. Ten outbreaks of the highly infectious disease have overwhelmed the country's limited facilities for slaughter and disposal, so vets are vaccinating herds so as to set up "fire breaks" around infected areas.

The British government will make up its mind by the weekend, after stubbornly rejecting vaccination since the first case of foot-and-mouth was reported five weeks ago. Some 750,000 cattle, sheep, and pigs have been marked for slaughter, but the disease is still spreading. Some 750 cases had been reported by yesterday.

The government's chief scientist said last week that "the epidemic is out of control," and warned that as many as half of Britain's 55 million head of livestock might have to be culled.

In France, where two outbreaks have occurred, and in Ireland, where one farm is affected, programs of mass slaughter of animals at risk appear, so far, to have contained the disease.

The chief problem with vaccination is that current tests cannot distinguish between the antibodies found in an infected animal and those in a vaccinated one. That means that countries that routinely vaccinate lose their disease-free trading status, and their meat and livestock exports are either banned or severely restricted by other countries.

"Vaccination as a policy would be very much the last resort, because the cost and lost trade would be enormous," European Union Health commissioner David Byrne told the European Parliament earlier this month.

Foot-and-mouth is endemic in many parts of the world, including Africa, where cattle show few signs of infection and herdsmen take it for granted. Humans are not affected by the disease, and animals rarely die from it, but in the highly bred races found on European farms today, animals that catch the disease never produce more than 90 percent of the meat and milk they would otherwise have done.

"That 10 percent is a farmer's profit margin," points out Bernard Vallat, director-general of the Paris-based World Organization for Animal Health that sets international animal health regulations.

"Foot-and-mouth is in no way a public health problem and hardly an animal health problem," French Agriculture Minister Jean Glavany told reporters earlier this week. "It is an economic problem. It is better to pay the price of slaughter [of healthy animals] than the price of lost exports; that is an extraordinarily rational economic calculation."

Such sums, however, do not convince everyone. "The question is whether it is ethical to kill thousands and thousands of animals purely on trade grounds," says Pierre Choraine, executive director of the Federation of Veterinarians of Europe. "More and more professionals are questioning this approach."

"People are so concerned because it appears that the government wants to block vaccination so as not to lose export markets," says Emma Parkin, an official with the Soil Association in Britain, the body that oversees organic agriculture in that country. "It's repugnant to destroy healthy animals."

Science may hold out a solution. Researchers have developed new vaccines that can be distinguished from infection antibodies, but the diagnostic tests needed to spot the difference reliably "are still being validated, and they are probably two years away," says Dr. Vallat.

But the discovery of such vaccines, he points out, "has reignited the debate" about vaccination that ended 10 years ago, when the European Union discontinued vaccination throughout the Continent, so as to achieve the same optimum "foot-and-mouth free without vaccination" status that the United States, Uruguay, Canada, Australia, and some 50 other countries around the world enjoy.

Preventive vaccination on a wide scale has its drawbacks, experts point out. The vaccine does not take effect for four to seven days, it is not always 100 percent effective, and it wears out after nine months or so.

European officials are still dead set against mass vaccination; there are 300 million head of livestock in the 15 European Union member countries, posing a nightmarish logistical problem, not to mention the costs and export implications.

But British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has taken personal control of the battle against the disease in Britain, yesterday discussed with farmers' leaders the possibility of targeted vaccination of cattle in the two worst-hit regions of England so as to halt the spread of infection.

That would block exports from those regions for at least 12 months, but Mr. Blair has more than agricultural economics on his mind.

Britain's meat and food exports that would be at risk total $1.9 billion a year; losing that would be a dreadful blow to the British economy, and especially to cattle farmers still reeling from the effects of "mad cow" disease.

But Britain's annual revenue from tourism tops $11.5 billion every year, and the pictures of smoking pyres illustrating stories of the closed-off countryside are turning tourists off worldwide.

The British Tourist Authority reports that the number of visitors to Britain in March this year is down by 30 percent from March of last year.

Even for farmers, the economics of vaccination may begin to look attractive as foot-and-mouth continues to run rampant. "Emergency vaccination ... would at worst result in 12 months loss of the export trade," argues a report by Lawrence Woodward, an agricultural researcher in Britain.

The government, he argues, should consult farmers, "to determine if they would accept this financial loss rather than the enormity of the proposed regional cull."

---

Free Trade for Timber

New York Times
March 30, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/30/opinion/L30TIMB.html

To the Editor:

Former President Jimmy Carter's allegation that Canadian timber producers have unfair advantages (Op- Ed, March 24) is wrong. Canada does not subsidize its lumber industry. Tenure holders of its public forests bear costs beyond timber fees, like reforestation levies and road construction.

American industry's allegations of a subsidy were investigated by the Commerce Department three times in 20 years, and twice they were unsustainable. Once, they were abandoned when both countries decided that a negotiated solution was preferable.

Canadian provinces have policies limiting cuts, requiring forest regeneration and safeguarding the environment. Auburn University in Alabama ranks the provinces above American states in protecting their land.

Moreover, protectionism has a price. Research shows that restrictions on Canadian imports are like a $1,000 tax on each home built in America. Free trade is the answer to this dispute.

MICHAEL KERGIN Ambassador of Canada Washington, March 28, 2001

---

Need for Wilderness

New York Times
March 30, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/30/opinion/L30FORE.html

To the Editor:

The sudden resignation of Michael P. Dombeck, the chief of the Forest Service, is cause for alarm (news article, March 28). The Clinton administration's rules that bar road building on about 60 million acres are the most important conservation effort since Theodore Roosevelt and Congress established the Forest Service.

President Roosevelt understood that our American identity depends on the existence of vast wilderness areas with no roads. Let us hope that President Bush understands this as well. RENÉ GEORG VASICEK

New York, March 28, 2001

---

A More Assertive Europe

New York Times
March 30, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/30/opinion/30FRI2.html

Yesterday was a timely moment for President Bush to meet with Germany's chancellor, Gerhard Schröder. Only a day earlier, the White House announced its ill-advised rejection of the Kyoto treaty on global warming, upsetting Germany and other European countries where climate change is a passionate political issue. Mr. Schröder urged Mr. Bush to cooperate with countries that want to work within the treaty at a conference to be held in Bonn later this year.

Germany and many of its European Union partners have gained a new sense of confidence on the world stage, built on Europe's improving economy and its growing political and commercial integration. Mr. Schröder epitomizes this new independence.

Europe may seem like familiar territory to Bush administration officials, many of whom dealt with the continent during the cold war years when European leaders were more deferential to Washington's wishes than they are now. Administration policy makers must adjust their thinking to Europe's new mood or risk conflicts over the environment, arms control, NATO and trade.

The Kyoto treaty, which calls for sharp reductions in the emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide by 2012, is a good example. While the treaty is imperfect, and the Senate has been opposed to ratification, the issue is far too important for Washington simply to walk off in a huff. The Bush administration should try to improve the treaty, not kill it. America is the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Mr. Bush should heed Mr. Schröder's pleas for faster emissions cuts.

Europe is also concerned that the administration's missile defense plans could overturn arms control agreements and unnecessarily increase tensions with Russia. Germany, in particular, wants to prevent a return to a cold war atmosphere in Europe. With Washington's antimissile plans still evolving, it was possible to defer open disagreement this week. But the administration should respond to European concerns by engaging in active diplomacy with Russia, and China, on this issue in the months ahead.

Europe's new assertiveness can help advance American policy goals, as demonstrated by this week's constructive mission to Macedonia by Europe's top foreign policy official, Javier Solana. But careful diplomatic coordination will be needed to keep trans-Atlantic relations on track.

---

Facing Obstacles on Arctic Oil, Bush Says He'll Look Elsewhere

New York Times
March 30, 2001
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/30/politics/30BUSH.html

WASHINGTON, March 29 - Faced with strong opposition in Congress to his plans for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, President Bush said today that he was prepared to exploit oil and gas resources elsewhere in the nation on land that was not federally protected.

And Mr. Bush said that if he could not wring enough fuel out of the United States, he would look to Canada and Mexico to address current domestic shortages.

"It doesn't matter to me where the gas comes from, in the long run, just so long as we get gas moving into the country," he said.

It was the first time the president had suggested that he might not soon achieve his goal of extracting oil from the Arctic refuge in Alaska, although the oil and gas industry is lobbying Congress intensely for the right to drill there.

In a half-hour news conference in the White House briefing room, punctuated by easy banter with reporters, Mr. Bush took an assertive pro-business stand on a variety of domestic policy issues, including energy, the environment, taxes and regulation.

"We will not do anything that harms our economy," the president declared in a blunt defense of his recent environmental actions, including his decision not to seek lower power-plant emissions of carbon dioxide, his withdrawal of President Bill Clinton's stricter limits on arsenic in drinking water and his refusal to participate in an international agreement on climate change.

Mr. Bush said his administration would tighten the arsenic limits after a review of water standards. And he defended his administration's first steps to overrule Clinton administration orders, saying his actions were consistent with his bedrock belief that the economic health of American companies would take priority during his tenure.

"Because, first things first, are the people who live in America," Mr. Bush said, explaining his desire to fire up the American economy, even if it meant disappointing other nations seeking a commitment to reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases that many scientists believe lead to global warming.

"We'll be working with Germany; we'll be working with our allies to reduce greenhouse gases," he said. "But I will not accept a plan that will harm our economy and hurt American workers."

His approach so far, he suggested, provides a clear signal of how he will govern.

"People are beginning to learn what my administration is like," he said.

Mr. Bush said that world leaders were getting to know him, too - and would be reassured in the process.

"I'm sure there were some concerns initially, because they didn't know me," he said, just before sitting down with Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany to discuss, among other things, global warming. "And they heard all kinds of rumors about what our administration would be about. And now I have the chance to sit down and talk to them, face to face. I'm a pretty straightforward fellow."

True to his word, he said later in front of Mr. Schröder that the global warming treaty "makes no economic sense."

For much of his news conference, the second of his fledgling administration, Mr. Bush displayed a firm set of views on energy policy and the economy, and he seemed most determined to convey his desire to increase the nation's gas and oil supplies. Using language that has built in a steady crescendo from the final days of his presidential campaign, Mr. Bush declared the nation today to be in the throes of an energy crisis.

"Circumstances have changed since the campaign," he said. "We are now in an energy crisis. And that's why I decided to not have mandatory caps on CO2, because in order to meet those caps, our nation would have had to have had, you know, a lot of natural gas immediately flow into the system, which is impossible. We don't have the infrastructure able to move natural gas."

Mr. Bush later amended his declaration of an energy crisis, holding it chiefly to California, where the state's program to deregulate the power industry has led to rolling blackouts.

"And we need a full affront on an energy crisis that is real in California and looms for other parts of our country if we don't move quickly," Mr. Bush said.

The notion that the nation is in the grip of an energy crisis is not universally accepted. The United States consumes a quarter of the world's energy but still pays among the lowest prices, leading some critics to suggest that Mr. Bush's eagerness for aggressive oil and gas exploration is rooted in his ties to the industry and its millions in campaign contributions.

Mr. Bush's warnings of a critical energy shortage did not include any recommendation that Americans adopt measures to conserve energy.

Mr. Bush has long advocated oil drilling in the Alaska Arctic refuge, which environmentalists consider a jewel of federally protected lands. But over the last few weeks, Congress has begun to squelch this plan through its budget resolutions.

Those who favor the drilling had estimated that finding gas there could yield $1.2 billion in energy revenues next year. But both the House and Senate omitted this figure from their budgets, signaling that they do not expect such revenues to materialize because they do not expect the drilling to be approved.

Mr. Bush said that if plans to drill in the Arctic refuge were stymied, he would look for oil sources in Canada's adjacent Northwest Territories.

Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, said that Mr. Bush's remarks today reflected his realization that there was too much political opposition in Congress to allow the drilling.

"He recognizes that A.N.W.R. isn't going to pass," Mr. Reid said, using the initials for the refuge. "The American people don't want it."

Ari Fleischer, Mr. Bush's spokesman, said that Mr. Bush was not conceding defeat on the Alaska drilling. Mr. Fleischer acknowledged that achieving the goal through the budget looked like a dead end, but that the president would look for other vehicles.

But Mr. Bush seemed to sense the enormous political obstacles to drilling in Alaska. "There's a lot of other areas we can explore," he said. "There's gas in our hemisphere, and the fundamental question is, where's it going to come from? I'd like it to be American gas."

But the president remained firm in his larger goal.

"I'm interested in getting more energy supply, so that businesses can grow and people can heat their homes," he said. "We've got a shortage of energy in America."

---

U.S.D.A. Says North Carolina Pig Didn't Have Foot-and-Mouth

New York Times
March 30, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/30/national/30WIRE-FOOT.html

WASHINGTON -- Tests on a pig from a North Carolina packing plant suspected of having foot-and-mouth disease turned out negative, the Agriculture Department said Friday.

Another sample taken from a separate market was being tested.

"This is something that is not uncommon," said department spokesman Kevin Herglotz. About 700 such tests are done annually, according to the department.

The United States has not had a confirmed case of foot-and-mouth since 1929, but federal and state officials frequently test animals that exhibit symptoms similar to those caused by the disease, including blisters on the hooves and mouth.

Samples of dead hog tissue had been sent to federal agriculture officials to be tested for the disease, a spokesman for the state Department of Agriculture said. The suspicious case was in Martin County.

Tissue samples from a dead hog were flown Thursday night from Robersonville Packing, to a USDA lab in New York, department spokesman Jim Knight said.

"We're testing for foot-and-mouth. We have a suspected foreign animal disease outbreak," he said.

Knight said a state agriculture inspector at the packing plant in Robersonville, 78 miles east of Raleigh, saw dead animals and became concerned because of heightened awareness in the state about the disease.

The state inspector contacted a USDA inspector who agreed samples should be taken. They were flown to the isolated federal lab on Plum Island, in the Long Island Sound, the only facility where foot-and-mouth testing is done.

Another sample was taken from a Sampson County market, southeast of Raleigh, and sent to the federal lab, Knight said.

He said the packing plant and the Sampson County market may both have been served by the same trucking company. "The hauling equipment may have been to both locations," he said.

The Robersonville plant was quarantined.

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U.S. Stance on Warming Puts Whitman in Tense Spot

New York Times
March 30, 2001
By DOUGLAS JEHL
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/30/national/30WARM.html

MONTREAL, March 29 - Three weeks ago, Christie Whitman, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, returned from a meeting in Italy to report that she had had "varied success in buying us time to fully engage" in international negotiations on global warming.

Today, at another international gathering, Mrs. Whitman seemed to have had less success still.

With the White House having abandoned any pretense of support for the most far-reaching international treaty intended to tackle the problem, she heard mostly dismay and disappointment from counterparts who called the stand an enormous setback on an issue that should allow little room for patience.

"Kyoto clearly is not perfect, but Kyoto is what we've got," a top Canadian negotiator on the issue, Paul Fauteux, said outside a meeting of environment ministers here. In criticizing the American opposition to the treaty, which was approved in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997, Mr. Fauteux said: "We would rather work from what we've got than to call it quits. Climate change is a critically important problem, and it's too important to start from scratch."

For her part, Mrs. Whitman tried to put a forward-looking outlook on the American position. In private meetings, and in brief remarks to reporters, she said President Bush was "absolutely committed to full engagement with the international community" on global warming.

But as for any alternative to Kyoto, which would require industrialized countries to reduce emissions of so-called greenhouse gases, Mrs. Whitman had little more to say than that the United States intended to propose "other solutions."

For Mrs. Whitman, the former New Jersey governor, the day's appearance could not have been easy. In a confidential memorandum to President Bush after her trip to Italy, she had explicitly recommended that the administration avoid being seen as opposed to the Kyoto accord.

And when that advice was overruled, administration officials sympathetic to her position said, she had asked in vain at the State Department and the White House for specific instructions about what more she might tell American friends and allies about what the new administration position might be.

Citing "other commitments," Mrs. Whitman left the two-day environment ministers' conference this afternoon, choosing not to remain for a news conference scheduled for Friday that is likely to lay bare even further the raw mood of other delegates, from 34 other countries in the Western hemisphere.

"Her position has to be very uncomfortable," said one high-level delegate, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Mexico's environment minister, Victor Lichtinger, was among several delegates who said he had no doubt that the American abandonment of the Kyoto accord would greatly complicate efforts to find common ground on the issue.

"I'm certainly disappointed," Mr. Lichtinger said this morning after a private meeting with Mrs. Whitman. "Without the United States, it is difficult. It is a very important issue, and that's why we need to push, we need to react, we need to keep the United States in the process."

The meeting was part of preparations for a Summit of the Americas, an annual gathering of heads of state from around the Western Hemisphere, which is scheduled for next month, so global warming was not the only issue on the agenda. Delegates said discussions had been cordial, and a spokeswoman said Mrs. Whitman had been pleased with the open session and with one-on-one meetings with other delegates, who included representatives from Canada, Belize, Chile, Colombia, Chile and Panama, as well as from Mexico.

"It all went very well," said the spokeswoman, Stephanie Bell.

Still, the fact that the meeting followed so quickly after this week's reaffirmation of the American position seemed to have given an unusually tense air to what might otherwise have been an uneventful gathering. At a picture-taking session that was the only time the meeting was open to the news media, David Anderson, the Canadian environment minister, quickly cut off reporters' efforts to question Mrs. Whitman about the American position.

"The agreement was that we would wait in our seats, we would talk with one another, and there would be an opportunity only for photographers to take pictures," Mr. Anderson said somewhat dryly.

Mr. Anderson said before the session that he feared the American position would undermine the climate-change battle altogether. "This is unraveling," he said, The Globe and Mail reported. "We have to try our best to keep this together."

Today, the Canadian Government issued a statement reiterating that sense of urgency. "Climate change is a critical global problem requiring global solutions," he said. "The science behind climate change is increasingly compelling and the human impacts increasingly evident."

Of the 35 countries at today's session, only Canada and the United States would be obligated under the Kyoto accord to specific cuts in emissions of the gases believed to contribute to global warming. At least initially, developing countries like Mexico and Brazil would be exempt from such an obligation, a factor that Mr. Bush has identified as one of the treaty's major weaknesses.

The Mexican delegate, Mr. Lichtinger, said that his country and others would "make an effort" to reduce their emissions, but that they believed the United States, Canada and Europe should take the lead.

In her remarks to reporters, Mrs. Whitman did not say when she believed a Cabinet-level review of global warming policy that is under way in the administration might be completed. But she said Mr. Bush was "confident" that process would lead to a better approach than the one hammered out in Kyoto.

"We can work together with our international friends and allies and neighbors and come up with market-based incentive solutions that can get us to the end of the day with this issue," she said.

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Dioxin in Food
Scientists Find 22 Times the Recommended Maximum Level in Food

ABC News
03/30/01
The Associated Press
http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/living/DailyNews/dioxin010330.html

HOUSTON, March 30 - From their food, Americans are exposed to 22 times the suggested maximum level of dioxin, says a new study

The study says levels of dioxin - among the most toxic substances on Earth - remain high in the U.S. food supply although they have declined in the environment.

In food samples from around the country scientists at the University of Texas School of Public Health at Houston found no decline from test samples taken more than a decade ago.

Through food alone, Americans are getting 22 times the maximum dioxin exposure suggested by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the study based on the scientists' work said.

Worse for Nursing Infants

Among nursing infants, that level is 35 to 65 times the recommended dosage.

"It means we still have to tighten up and clean up our environment more than it is right now," said Dr. Arnold Schecter, who directed the study. "We have to reduce the highly toxic, persistent chemicals in the environment."

Meat and dairy products are considered the biggest sources. Dioxins concentrate in animal fat, and the best way to avoid them is to eat more fruits and vegetables.

"This is just one more reason for having less animal fats in our diets," Schecter told the Houston Chronicle in today's editions. "Blood samples from pure vegans, who consume no animal products, show that they have less dioxins in their bodies than average Americans."

Broiling Can Help

Broiling was the most effective cooking method of reducing dioxins, Schecter said.

Dioxins are a family of 219 toxic chemicals found in the environment mostly as a byproduct of industrial processes such as smelting, bleaching of paper pulp and manufacturing of some herbicides or pesticides.

Burning of plastics and toxic waste at high temperatures by medical waste incinerators or kilns can also produce dioxins.

Contained in Agent Orange, dioxins are a toxic chemical known for causing various forms of cancer. Occasional natural occurrences, such as volcanic eruptions or forest fires, can also produce them.

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Environment minister gets Bush-whacked

Montreal Gazette
Friday 30 March 2001
LYLE STEWART Freelance
http://www.montrealgazette.com/editorial/pages/010330/5004048.html

I would have paid to see the look on David Anderson's face this week after George W. Bush neatly amputated both of our environment minister's legs.

Here was Anderson, thinking he was doing right by the U.S. president by meeting in Montreal this week with environment ministers from Latin America in an effort to persuade them to sign on to what he understood to be the U.S.-Canada position on the 1997 Kyoto climate-change treaty. Anderson had already suffered political damage in the environmental community by promoting the plan - known as the Montreal Statement - whereby rich countries could avoid reducing carbon emissions by paying for reforestation in poor nations. The notion is called carbon sinks, and while there's nothing wrong with planting trees, environmentalists scorn the idea for missing the real target on global warming.

Then Bush sinks the treaty altogether, largely so he can get a few more senators on board for his tax-cut plan. As they say in soon-to-be flooded seaside cities, there goes the neighbourhood.

'Short-Sighted Idiocy'

Anderson mumbled Wednesday that he was "unhappy" over Bush's action. I would have preferred a little stronger language. "Enraged" would be good. "Apoplectic" would be even better. "Astounded at such incredible short-sighted idiocy" would have been best.

Europeans had no problem denouncing the shift. French Environment Minister Dominique Voynet called it a scandal, and added "provocative and irresponsible" for good measure. British Environment Minister Michael Meacher put it in context, saying climate change was "the most dangerous and fearful challenge to humanity over the next 100 years. If temperatures rise six degrees, then parts of the world are going to become uninhabitable, have droughts on a scale that we have never seen, tornadoes and floods and extreme weather conditions."

I'll give Anderson credit for at least thinking all of those things. But in the Chretien cabinet, smooching American butt is rule No. 1. And Anderson is not one to break the rules. Thus, our environment minister was trying to save face yesterday by signing on to the U.S. dodge that the Kyoto treaty isn't good enough because only 38 countries were bound by it to reduce climate-change emissions. Not mentioning those 38 are the ones, the U.S. above all and Canada close behind, that are responsible for global warming in the first place.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer explained yesterday Bush does not support the Kyoto treaty because "it is not in the United States's economic best interest." What was meant by that statement is Kyoto is not in the best economic interests of the oil cartel that now has one of its own in the White House.

Bush's decision also reverses an explicit pledge he made during last fall's election campaign to seek major reductions in U.S. power-plant carbon-dioxide emissions. At a time when power companies are making windfalls gouging electricity consumers in the new wonderland of deregulation, there's just too much at stake, apparently. The Washington Post notes this reversal follows intense lobbying by coal and oil companies, and by congressional conservatives skilled in policy tradeoffs.

To paraphrase Bush Sr., don't even bother trying to read his lips.

It's not that anyone should be surprised. A look at Texas would provide plenty of background if you wanted to understand the Bush-league approach to the environment. The determination to open up a protected Alaskan wilderness on the Yukon border for oil exploration is par for the course.

It's apparent, from unguarded statements and leaked memos, that the Liberal government would have preferred to see Democrat Al Gore as president. But it's with this administration our government will be trying to forge a Free Trade Area of the Americas in Quebec City next month.

Curry Favour

And there's nothing, it appears, that will dissuade the Liberals from engaging in self-defeating and undignified attempts to curry favour in Washington, such as Jean Chretien's craven sprint to the White House in January. And we continue to play the useful idiot for the U.S. on international issues, such as attempts to regulate biotechnology, propandize free-trade ideology or, until David Anderson was doomed to a wheelchair, by weakening the Kyoto treaty on global warming. Never mind the U.S. likes free trade only when it suits its "economic best interest," and turns rabidly protectionist when it isn't, as with the softwood-lumber trade. The United States will always act in its own interest, to the exclusion of all others.

- Lyle Stewart is a Montreal writer. His E-mail is l.stewart4@sympatico.ca

---

Killing Tomorrow for a Few Megawatts Today

Environmental News Service
By Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D.
03/30/01
Healing Our World: Weekly Comment
http://ens-news.com/ens/mar2001/2001L-03-30g.html

We have a beautiful mother Her green lap immense Her brown embrace eternal Her blue body everything we know. -- Alice Walker

The modern day American system of governance has an attribute that the founding fathers of our country may not have anticipated. Today, the primary qualifications for assuming public office seem to be personal wealth and a vested interest in major industries. So, the people making life or death decisions for the American people, their children, and the children of tomorrow, are increasingly becoming the least qualified to be making those judgments.

The last few weeks have seen members of the new presidential administration deciding that levels of arsenic pollution that have been endorsed by the World Health Organization are too low for Americans.

People whose last science class was years ago in college are telling the world's health professionals that since such controls would be a burden to polluting industries, they will not be implemented.

President George W. Bush (Photo courtesy the White House)

President George W. Bush, who believes global warming is a fad, has gone against the scientists and leaders of the world by directing the United States to leave the negotiating table for the Kyoto Protocol greenhouse gas limitation agreement. He has told the world that the U.S., the largest producer of the planet's greenhouse gases, refuses to be part of the solution because it would hurt our economy.

The U.S. has less than five percent of the world's population, yet we produce nearly 25 percent of the world's waste, hazardous substances, and greenhouse gases.

The president also closed the White House special offices on AIDS policy and race relations and, in a move that has stunned women's groups, announced he will not reopen a special White House office on women's issues.

In the wake of President Bush's decision to renege on his campaign promise to require coal burning power plants to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, he has imperiled our health and compromised the future of people all over the world.

The door has now been flung wide open for energy companies to increase investments in a form of fuel that most of us had hoped was on the way out. The U.S. government is embracing coal, the dirtiest form of fuel, and energy producers around the country have begun expanding this archaic, filthy form of power generation.

Moving coal at Niagara Mohawk's Dunkirk steam station in New York. This coal-fired station produces 600,000 kilowatts of 60 cycle power. (Photo by David Parsons courtesy National Renewable Energy Lab)

http://www.nrel.gov

Over 55 percent of the nation's electricity is generated by the burning of coal. Yet more than 600 coal fired power plants around the country don't meet the air quality standards mandated by the Clean Air Act. In fact, they are specifically exempted from the mandates of the 1990 law, passed during the administration of President George Bush, the present President's father.

A large percentage of the coal used in these plants comes from strip mines on Indian Reservations that are so huge, they can be seen from Earth orbit. Since 1974, the Mojave Generating Station and the Navajo Generating Station in Arizona have been polluting the world's air. The Mojave Generating Station alone uses 18,240 tons of coal per day at full load. Combined, the two plants require 12 million tons of coal a year and are the largest polluters in the country. Astronauts saw the pollution cloud from these coal fired plants from the Moon!

Black Mesa, Arizona, home of the Hopi Indian Reservation and several thousand Navajo is a classic example of the abusive ethic that is destroying our world. Because the Peabody Group wants to expand its coal strip mine, the U.S. government has been leading the forced relocation of the native people who remain at the site, a place they have inhabited since the U.S. Army tried to wipe them all out in 1863.

The coal-fired Navajo Generating Station near Page, Arizona (Photo courtesy of Northern Arizona University)

http://www.cpluhna.nau.edu/Change/power_generation.htm

Nearly 12,000 native people have been forcibly moved from their tribal lands to a contaminated site in New Mexico, home of the largest radioactive waste spill in U.S. history. Efforts continue to remove the remaining 3,000 people, mostly elders, from Black Mesa. This is but one rarely mentioned legacy of coal.

Coal fired power plants emit more toxic pollution than any other form of energy production. For every megawatt hour of electricity produced, coal generates 2,071 pounds of carbon dioxide, 13.8 pounds of sulfur oxides, 4.8 pounds of nitrogen oxides, and 3.2 pounds of particulate matter.

By comparison, natural gas emits 1,205 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour, 0.008 pounds of sulfur oxides, 4.3 pounds of nitrogen oxides, and negligible particulate matter.

Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that is contributing to global warming, trapping in heat from the Sun and raising global temperature.

Some scientists say that within 50 years, all the world's glaciers may melt. This, combined with a predicted 10.5 degree increase in global temperature over the next century, could raise sea level around the world as much as 10 feet over the next 1,000 years. This process has begun in our lifetimes, and certainly in our children's lifetimes, and we may see many coastal cities around the world obliterated.

Volcanoes, sea spray, rotting vegetation and plankton emit sulfur dioxide (SO2). But the largest amounts of it come from the burning of coal and oil. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says that high concentrations of SO2 can result in breathing impairment for asthmatic children and adults who are active outdoors. Short term exposures of asthmatic individuals to elevated SO2 levels can result in reduced lung function.

Effects associated with longer term exposures include respiratory illness, alterations in the lungs' defenses, and aggravation of existing cardiovascular disease. Individuals with cardiovascular disease or chronic lung disease, as well as children and the elderly, are particularly at risk.

SO2 is also a primary component of acid rain. The pollutant travels hundreds or thousands of miles from where it is emitted and falls with rain, forming sulphuric acid that kills life in lakes and streams, kills forests, eats through paint on cars, and destroys buildings. Outdoor sculptures all over the world are being eaten away by acid rain exposure.

Cherokee Station coal powered plant Denver, Colorado. (Photo by Warren Gretz courtesy National Renewable Energy Lab)

In 2000, the Environment News Service reported that coal and oil fired power plants released almost nine million pounds of toxic metals and metal compounds into the air in 1998, many of which are known or suspected carcinogens and are neurotoxic, affecting the nervous system.

A report released by the Harvard School of Public Health in May 2000 said that two coal fired plants in Massachusetts were responsible for affecting 32 million people in New England, New York, and New Jersey. The report said that the two plants were responsible for an estimated 43,000 asthma attacks and 159 premature deaths per year.

Between 1988 and 1997, SO2 was decreasing in the U.S. thanks largely to the Clear Air Act and the fact that no new coal fired plants were being built. That situation is surely to change with the new Bush administration's rollbacks of pollution controls.

Many analysts are seeing these environmentally destructive policies as payback for the huge contributions made to the Republican campaigns by industry. For example, electric utility companies gave a record $16.4 million to Republicans, says the Center for Responsive Politics. They gave $6 million to Democrats.

The chairman of the Peabody Coal Group, one of the nation's largest coal companies, contributed $250,000 to the Republican National Committee.

Don't be fooled by rhetoric from our greedy industrialist leaders that coal is cheap and that it can be made "green." The faulty arithmetic used by politicians conveniently omits the costs of increased health care and environmental destruction from the equation. If the true costs of coal were figured in, it would rival nuclear power as the most expensive form of power plant fuel. And coal can't be made very green with today's technology.

Many environmental analysts continue to insist that serious energy conservation efforts in the U.S. could eliminate any energy crisis and the need for new power plants. Sadly, serious conservation efforts are not encouraged in a land where the country's health is measured by the rate of industry expansion and the consumption of goods, most of which require electricity.

Now more than ever before, it is important for your voice to be heard. Write President Bush and your local legislators and put them on notice that you will not tolerate creating a healthy, favorable climate for business and industry while the climate of our planet and the health of our children is trashed.

Tell your elected representatives that you personally are working to change our nation's priorities and that you no longer put the acquisition of goods and the consumption of resources as your reason for living.

Tell them that you have no use for a system that creates a robust economy by polluting the earth, the air, the water, and our bodies. Tell them that you are, as of this very minute, no longer working for the greedy three percent of the population that gets rich because we demand cheap goods and services and work hard to buy them.

Tell them that your top priority is now the health and happiness of your family and the restoration of your connection to the natural world. If we told all these things to our elected leaders, it would scare them to death - and hopefully into action.

RESOURCES

1. Read about the details of the toxic coal industry in an Environment News Service article at: http://ens.lycos.com/ens/aug2000/2000L-08-15-06.html

2. Read about the plight of the Hopi and Navajo people as they fight for their survival against the Peabody Coal Company in Healing Our World articles at: http://www.jps.net/jackieg/articles/may03-1999g.html. For the current status of this crisis, visit the Action Resource Center at: http://www.arcweb.org/campaigns/big_mountain/.

3. For a thorough, and chilling, summary of the Bush administration's recent assault on the environment, see the "Seattle Times" special report.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/SeattleTimes.woa/wa/gotoArticle?document_id=134279046&zsection_id=268448413&text_only=0

4. Read about the dangers of sulfur dioxide at: http://www.epa.gov/oar/aqtrnd97/brochure/so2.html

5. See the Harvard study at: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/press/releases/press05042000.html

6. Find out who your Congressional representatives are and e-mail them. If you know your Zip code, you can find them at: http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/ziptoit.html

7. Contact President Bush at: president@whitehouse.gov. Tell him that this assault on the environment and on our health must stop.

8. Use your voice at the Act For Change website operated by Working Assets. There, you can easily send email messages on a variety of issues to the right people.

http://www.workingforchange.com/activism/category.cfm?CategoryId=5

[Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D. is a writer and teacher in Seattle. He can be found preparing for the birth of his son, wondering how to keep him healthy in this troubled world. Send your thoughts and ideas to him at: jackie@healingourworld.com and visit his web site at: http://www.healingourworld.com]

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Europe warns Bush of global warming

InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 3/30/2001
By PAUL GEITNER AP Business Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406559340

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - European officials warned President Bush on Thursday that U.S. relations with the rest of the world could suffer if he sticks by a decision to pull out of an agreement on reducing global warming.

``This isn't some marginal environmental issue that can be ignored or played down,'' European Union Environment Commissioner Margot Wallstroem said at a news conference. ``It has to do with trade and economics.''

Bush administration officials announced Wednesday that they would not implement the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, under which countries agreed to legally binding targets for curbing heat-trapping ``greenhouse'' gases, which are mainly carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels. The move reversed a position Bush took during last year's presidential campaign.

While stressing it was too soon to discuss ``tactics to punish the United States,'' Wallstroem said she will go to Washington next week with an EU delegation to seek clarification of the Bush administration's position.

``I don't think this is the time to start to threaten, but we must be clear about the political implications,'' Wallstroem said.

Dutch Environment Minister Jan Pronk, chairman of the last U.N. climate conference, left Thursday on an unscheduled trip to Washington to try to salvage the Kyoto agreement.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, in Washington on a previously scheduled visit, also pressed the EU case in a meeting with Bush on Thursday.

``Nobody should be relieved from his responsibility for climate control,'' he later told reporters in a press conference at the German Embassy.

Bush defended his stance by saying stricter limits now on greenhouse gas emissions could further weaken the U.S. economy and worsen energy shortages plaguing parts of the country.

``We will not do anything that harms our economy, because first things first are the people who live in America. That's my priority,'' he said on Thursday, adding that he remained open to dialogue on a ``realistic, common sense environmental policy.

``And I'm going to explain that to our friends,'' he added.

Speaking at a meeting of Western Hemisphere environment ministers, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine Whitman said the government still wants to work with other nations to combat global warming despite its rejection of the Kyoto Protocol, which she called ``deeply flawed.''

European officials, however, expressed annoyance that Washington would risk wrecking an agreement thrashed out over years by more than 100 nations because of its current domestic woes.

``It is not acceptable that national economic worries mean that the world cannot act against a global threat,'' said the Danish Minister of Energy and Environment, Svend Auken, visibly angry.

British Environment Minister Michael Meacher also warned of repercussions, although he ruled out the threat of sanctions.

``I certainly don't think we should despair or try to ostracize the U.S. as a pariah. This is not the end of the story. There is clearly a power struggle going on in Washington and we have to keep hammering on,'' he said.

Others are already suggesting countermeasures, ranging from an e-mail blitz of the White House to pickets outside Exxon, Texaco or Chevron gas stations. Some have suggested the EU could hold up resolution of trans-Atlantic trade disputes.

Critics contend that a U.S. withdrawal would probably doom the pact, since the United States emits about a quarter of the greenhouse gases warming the planet.

``It is clear that to have the United States on our side would make an enormous difference,'' said Swedish Environment Minister Kjell Larsson. ``It would indicate the arrogance of power if the United States were to discontinue the Kyoto process.''

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USDA rushes to train more dogs

InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 3/30/2001
AP Farm Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406561033

WASHINGTON (AP) - More specially trained dogs are on the way to U.S. airports in coming months to sniff out products and people that could carry foot-and-mouth disease into the country.

The Agriculture Department will add 60 beagles to the 50 it now has to inspect baggage for contraband food products, officials said Thursday. It is expected to take up to 18 months to have all the new dogs and human handlers in place.

Airlines also are being asked to make special announcements to their passengers about foot-and-mouth disease, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman said. Travelers are supposed to disclose whether they have been on a farm and are barred from bringing many food products into the country because of the diseases and pests they can carry. People visiting affected farms can bring the disease in on their shoes.

``We are asking that the traveling public be very careful if they've been in an area where an infection has occurred,'' she said.

The department's beagles are spread among 21 airports. Each dog typically costs about $13,000 a year for training and upkeep.

Veneman and veterinary officials expressed confidence in U.S. controls for foot-and-mouth disease but said they are ready to combat the virus if it does come into the country

``Our systems have worked well and we are confident they will continue to work very well,'' Veneman said.

State and federal veterinarians are meeting this week outside Washington to work on coordinating their emergency response plans. The United States has been free of the disease, which is endemic to much of the world, since 1929.

``We're looking to ensure that we have all the gaps covered and we believe we do,'' said Bill Hillman, Idaho's state veterinarian and president of the U.S. Animal Health Association.

While harmless to humans, the disease spreads so quickly that it can devastate livestock, as is now happening in Britain. The virus can be carried on clothing and footwear as well as meat products. The United States has temporarily banned all imports of livestock and raw meat from the European Union.

``We want to make sure we have every avenue guarded that we can to keep this virus from coming in,'' said Richard Breitmeyer, California's chief veterinarian.

President Bush's 2002 budget, to be released next month, will include a ``substantial'' increase in spending for the department's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Veneman said. She did not specify the amount of the increase but said she is confident that the inspection service now has the resources it needs to deal with foot-and-mouth.

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Susan Combs and the Texas cattle industry have asked the Bush administration to create a special commission to coordinate with USDA and federal agencies responsible for regulating travel and airlines.

``We think there is a need for increased surveillance on international travel,'' said Ross Wilson, vice president of the Texas Cattle Feeders Association.

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Blair discusses cattle vaccinations

InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 3/30/2001
By JILL LAWLESS Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406561430

LONDON (AP) - Prime Minister Tony Blair met farming leaders Thursday to discuss whether to vaccinate some dairy cattle against foot-and-mouth disease _ a move some say could build a bulwark against the fast-spreading epidemic, but which others dismiss as a dangerous distraction.

National Farmers' Union president Ben Gill said after the 90-minute meeting that a decision on vaccinating should be made within a day or two, and Blair's spokesman said the government must make its choice within 48 hours.

Gill said inoculating animals was an imperfect solution that could be used to buy time while officials slaughter livestock in hopes of stopping the disease.

``Vaccination is not the solution in itself,'' he said. ``It is part of the policy to take out the animals either infected or on the neighboring farms. That remains the key objective, (vaccination) is a means to allow us to deliver that policy. ... It is there as an option.''

Gill said there were some hopeful signs. ``Yesterday for the first time more animals from infected farms were slaughtered than were actually reported ... that is an important development,'' he said. There have been 742 cases confirmed so far.

On Wednesday the European Union granted Britain permission to vaccinate up to 180,000 dairy cattle to create a barrier around the hardest-hit areas of Cumbria in northwestern England and Devon, in the southwest.

``These exceptional circumstances warrant an exceptional response,'' the EU said in a statement.

European governments have resisted vaccination because inoculated animals carry similar antibodies as those infected with the disease _ meaning countries that vaccinate lose their disease-free trading status on world markets.

``Generally speaking, the problem with vaccines is that they don't protect completely against infection,'' Chris Bostock, director of the Institute for Animal Health, told The Independent newspaper.

``They protect against clinical signs so you won't know that an animal has been infected. It can be replicating the virus and acting as a source of infection for animals that haven't been infected.''

Others argue mass vaccination could replace the government's program of mass slaughter, which has condemned 750,000 animals, many healthy, in a bid to stop the spread of the disease.

Peter Kindersley, an organic farmer and founder of Dorling Kindersley books, was taking the government to court Thursday in an attempt to halt the mass cull.

``The scientific strength of the case for the alternatives to the mass slaughter of healthy livestock, such as vaccination, has been all the more compelling by the shortcomings of the government's present efforts,'' Kindersley said as he lodged his papers at the High Court on Tuesday.

Slaughter remains the government's main weapon against the disease, which is harmless to humans but is dreaded by the livestock industry because of the potential economic damage.

Seven army butchers began killing sheep Wednesday at a disused airfield in Great Orton, Cumbria, where thousands of livestock are being buried in a pit the size of two football fields.

Blair's Labor Party government is facing increasing pressure from opposition lawmakers to postpone the national election, set for May 3, in order to focus on the fight against the disease.

However, a survey conducted by the MORI polling firm and published in The Times newspaper Thursday suggested the crisis has scarcely dented Labor's commanding electoral lead.

There have been limited outbreaks in other parts of Europe: one in the Irish Republic, two in France and, with three new cases Thursday, 10 in the Netherlands. Fear over the disease has led some nations to issue bans on meat and livestock imports from affected countries.

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Despite fast reaction, USA appears vulnerable

USA Today
03/30/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/2001-03-30-nceditf.htm

In Britain, foot-and-mouth disease has turned the pastures of Cumbria into open-air slaughterhouses. Hundreds of thousands of animals are being killed and burned in greasy pyres, or buried in vast graves. The nightmarish scenes provoke one question: Could it happen here? The discomfiting short answer is yes.

Although the USA has been free of the disease since 1929, veterinary experts acknowledge that luck has played a big role. The growth of travel and international trade is creating new vectors for infection. And even a moderate outbreak could cost billions of dollars, upsetting state and regional farm economies for years.

Against that, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is undermanned and underequipped. Officials point to almost 2,000 inspectors and millions of doses of vaccines in storage. The USDA regularly revises its contingency plans and maintains close relationships with state agencies and universities. It has boosted spending on protection programs.

The USDA's assertive response to Britain's current travails has been satisfying. And it has worked well for 70 years. But past isn't prologue, especially given the globalization of the food chain. In Britain, the latest outbreak may have been sparked by meat smuggled in from an infected country. Despite the increased manpower and training, few believe the USDA can find and seize every contraband sausage.

And should an outbreak occur, the nation's ability to respond is untested. After seven decades, responses are bound to be rusty. Private vets, for instance, have little experience with the disease. In Italy, a 1993 outbreak was spread inadvertently by a vet who failed to take proper precautions, even though he recognized the ailment. The USDA has hundreds of vets across the nation helping keep watch. But that's not many against a susceptible animal population of close to 165 million sheep, cattle and swine, especially if a farmer, wary of a costly federal quarantine, delays reporting the symptoms.

A missed or delayed diagnosis could be disastrous. Slow reaction is blamed for the enormous scale of Britain's battle. A study of possible outbreaks in California's South Valley released earlier this year concluded that a week's lag in identifying and containing a foot-and-mouth outbreak could cost $8.5 billion in just four counties.

Lack of vaccine is another problem. Federal planning calls for the slaughter of infected animals and vaccination of healthy animals in a ring around the outbreak. But the USDA maintains only 1 million to 2 million doses of vaccine in a quickly accessible form. In some states, that might not be enough to treat every animal in a large outbreak. Nebraska alone has about 5 million at-risk animals in its pens and pastures.

Some experts at the independent U.S. Animal Health Association also fear that the USDA lacks the manpower to test and vaccinate hundreds of thousands of animals quickly. And it warns that the USDA's two main labs are inadequate to handle the workload.

Local authorities need to prepare more thoroughly, too. Ultimately, however, the responsibility is the USDA's. Its aggressive response to the remote risk of mad cow disease has been reassuring. But the threat of foot-and-mouth disease is far more substantial, while our response ability is limited and inexperienced. Given all that, the USDA's confidence sounds excessive.

------

Kyoto rebuff highlights Schroeder visit

Washington Times
March 30, 2001
By David R. Sands THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-200133022112.htm

Greenhouse gas proved the major source of indigestion yesterday as President Bush held his first face-to-face meeting with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

The Oval Office meeting came a day after the Bush administration made clear it would not implement the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the international pact designed to cut industrial pollution and other emissions that treaty backers say promote global warming.

The German chancellor was the first European leader to meet with Mr. Bush after the decision, which met with harsh criticism in Europe and Japan.

The two leaders finessed potential disputes over a U.S. plan to build a missile defense system and an EU proposal for a continental defense force separate from NATO, but could only agree to disagree on the Kyoto clash.

"We have different opinions, and we are happy to admit to you that we have different opinions regarding this," Mr. Schroeder said through a translator at the White House.

"The president and his government will be called upon to make a decision as to how they, to put it casually, want to play it," Mr. Schroeder said. Germany will play host this summer to a new round of negotiations on greenhouse gas emissions.

Mr. Bush yesterday cited America's energy woes and its sagging economy as factors in his decision to reject the global warming accord negotiated by the Clinton administration. U.S. critics say the treaty would unfairly exempt developing countries from the stricter emission controls that American companies would have to observe.

Administration officials also argue that rejecting the treaty was a recognition of political reality. A 1997 Senate resolution condemning key parts of the accord passed on a 95-0 vote.

"I will consult with our friends," Mr. Bush said yesterday with Mr. Schroeder at his side.

"We will work together, but it's going to be what's in the interest of our country first and foremost. And the idea that somehow we're supposed to get enormous amounts of natural gas on line immediately to conform to a treaty that our own Senate sent a very overwhelming message against - and that many other countries haven't even signed - makes no economic sense or common sense," Mr. Bush added.

Many of Mr. Schroeder's European counterparts were far less diplomatic yesterday, slamming the U.S. decision as wrong on the merits and a worrying example of the new administration's indifference to international opinion.

"We have to make it very clear to the U.S. that this is not some marginal environmental issue that can be ignored," said EU Environmental Commissioner Margot Wallstroem at a news conference in Brussels yesterday. "This is extremely worrying."

France's minister on the environment, Dominique Voynet, called the U.S. decision "completely provocative and irresponsible," and warned Washington against trying to "sabotage" efforts by other countries to continue discussions on the pact.

Both Mr. Bush and Environmental Protection Agency chief Christie Whitman said yesterday the United States plans to stay engaged on international efforts to control greenhouse gases despite the Kyoto decision.

A senior White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity after the Bush-Schroeder meeting, said the two leaders had been able to "bracket" the dispute over Kyoto.

"There was no attempt to hide or obfuscate the disagreement, but it did not infect the rest of the meeting," the official said.

The German chancellor told reporters he was able in his talks with Mr. Bush to clear up some American "misunderstandings" over the proposed European military force, which some in the administration warn could ultimately become a rival to NATO.

The German chancellor also defended Germany's relatively low level of defense spending, saying Berlin had contributed to European security by aiding the former East Germany and by promoting democracy in Russia and European unification.

The German leader yesterday greatly muted past criticisms of the U.S. missile defense idea.

Mr. Schroeder said it was far too early in the development stage to take a "lump sum view" of the U.S. plan, but he also noted there was a "potential upside" to the system if it promoted international disarmament efforts.

---

President supports oil drilling in Alaska

Washington Times
March 30, 2001
By Joseph Curl THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-2001330231414.htm

President Bush yesterday said that if Congress does not open the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge to energy exploration, the United States will be forced to rely even more heavily on foreign sources for oil and natural gas.

"There's gas in our hemisphere, and the fundamental question is: 'Where's it going to come from?' " Mr. Bush said in a 50-minute, hastily called press conference at the White House.

"I'd like it to be American gas," the president said, but he sounded resigned to looking elsewhere.

"It doesn't matter to me where the gas comes from, in the long run, just so long as we get gas moving into the country, so long as we increase supply of natural gas," he said.

Mr. Bush's proposal to solve the country's energy situation, which he again called a "crisis," came in a wide-ranging press conference in which he:

• Expressed pleasure that the House on Wednesday "passed a realistic, commonsense budget to the Senate" -namely, his budget outline.

• Called on Israelis and the Palestinians to end the "escalating violence," but said "this nation will not try to force a peace settlement in the Middle East. It requires two willing parties to come to the table to enact a peace treaty that will last."

• Said he supports "efforts on the Hill to provide immediate tax relief," but said that it must be coupled with "long-term relief as well."

• Dismissed reports that he and former rival Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who he soundly defeated in the Republican Party presidential primaries, personally dislike each other. "This is Washington, D.C., gossip. . . . I respect John McCain. I like him a lot."

• Vowed to sign a bill reforming campaign finance laws "if it improves the system."

During his presidential campaign, Mr. Bush repeatedly called for exploration of the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), which holds as much as 16 billion barrels of oil - larger than the 10-billion-barrel reserve in nearby Prudhoe Bay.

But congressional Republican leaders this week omitted from their pending 2002 budget resolutions any revenues from drilling in ANWR in an apparent attempt to avoid a losing battle. Drilling in the reserve is strongly opposed by environmentalists, Democrats and some Republicans concerned about keeping the reserve free from oil exploration.

Mr. Bush said he still believes opening the refuge to exploration is key to freeing America from dependence on foreign oil. In lieu of that, though, America must seek oil and natural gas from Canada, Mexico and unprotected U.S. federal lands.

"I think it's important for us to open up ANWR. . . . Whether or not the Congress sees it that way is another matter. That's not going to deter me from having, for example, the interior secretary look at all lands, that are not to be fully protected, for exploration."

"If the Congress decides not to have exploration in ANWR, we'll work with the Canadians," he said.

Mr. Bush said he had talked to Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien about importing Canadian natural gas and exploring the Northwest Territories, which neighbors ANWR.

"We've got to plan to make sure that gas . . . flows freely out of Canada into the United States. There's a big, vast region of natural gas, and it's important for us to explore and encourage exploration and work with the Canadians to get pipelines coming out of the Northwest Territories to the United States," he said.

Mr. Bush also said he had spoken to Mexican President Vicente Fox about supplying the United States with energy.

Plans to drill in ANWR would call for using just 2,000 acres of the 19 million acre refuge - equal to putting a Dulles International Airport in a tract of land as large as South Carolina.

But a House Republican leadership source said yesterday that Mr. Bush would have difficulty getting the House to approve oil exploration there.

"It's definitely an uphill pull," the source said. "Environmental votes are always tough in the House."

And a Senate Republican leadership aide conceded yesterday that Republican lawmakers do not know if they have enough votes in the Senate to approve drilling in ANWR.

But the Senate aide added, "We're going to work as hard as we can to get the votes to make sure we can explore ANWR for its natural resources. If Senator [John] Kerry [Massachusetts Democrat] and other Democrats believe we can rely on wind power, they're mistaken."

The Senate last year voted 51-49 in favor of drilling in ANWR as part of a broad budget resolution. But a change in the Senate makeup - now split 50-50 - since then has dimmed prospects of the project.

Still, White House spokesman Claire Buchan said Mr. Bush had not conceded congressional defeat on the ANWR plan. "He hopes they're going to pass it."

Much of the United States' untapped reserves of oil and natural gas lie offshore, off the coasts of California and Florida, but Congress has imposed a moratorium on drilling in those areas.

Without tapping new energy sources, the nation faces a grim future.

Mr. Bush said that the United States needs to wage an all-out assault on "an energy crisis that is real in California and looms for other parts of our country, if we don't move quickly."

Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer said earlier this month that the nation imports 57 percent of its oil today, up from 36 percent in 1973, when Americans suffered through an oil crisis.

"By 2020, under current projections, we'll only produce approximately half of what we produced in 1970," he said. Demand for oil will grow by one-third and projections show the United States will import 64 percent of its oil.

Mr. Bush said the nation's energy shortage is hurting every aspect of the economy and putting a severe burden on Americans.

"We are now in an energy crisis. We have an energy shortage. . . . When you couple high energy prices with consumer debt, a lot of folks are in a squeeze," he said.

The crisis has prompted the president to move to protect Americans and businesses from policies that would be too costly, including flip-flopping on an earlier campaign promise to force the nation's power plants to dramatically reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

The president said he backed away from limiting emission levels because that would add to the energy crisis and damage the faltering economy.

"We will not do anything that harms our economy, because first things first, are the people who live in America. That's my priority. And I'm worried about the economy, I'm worried about the lack of an energy policy, I'm worried about rolling blackouts in California."

"It's in our national interests that we develop a strong energy policy with realistic common-sense environmental policy," he said.

Mr. Bush was relaxed and self-deprecating during his second full-blown press conference, which he again chose to conduct in the cramped White House briefing room.

At one point, Mr. Bush said Americans should not "misunderestimate" his tax plan. As reporters tittered, he corrected himself with a laugh and said, "Just making sure you were paying attention."

He also granted a presidential pardon for an offending reporter whose beeper went off during the conference - strictly forbidden during Bush events.

"Don't worry about the beeper violation," said the president, who has sought to change the partisan tone in Washington. "It's a new approach."

• Dave Boyer contributed to this article.

-------- genetics

Attack of the killer tomatoes

Washington Times
March 30, 2001
Henry Miller
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20010330-635671.htm

Eleven senators from both parties have asked the president to create a "biotechnology coordinator" who would ensure that policy at a veritable alphabet soup of government agencies is consistent and sensible. But dogs bark, cows moo and regulators regulate, and the Bush administration will have a difficult time crafting and implementing needed regulatory reform. A biotech coordinator would have to be part diplomat and part Lord High Executioner.

Current federal regulatory policy is relentlessly negative toward biotechnology. The FDA last year repudiated its 20-year commitment not to discriminate against gene-spliced products, by abandoning its 8-year-old policy on new plant varieties which applied irrespective of whether the plant arose from gene-splicing or "conventional" genetic engineering methods. The agency now requires that all gene-spliced foods come to the agency for pre-market review.

Characteristically, the EPA has been the worst of all. The agency´s oversight is flagrantly unscientific and discriminatory, focusing on the most precise and predictable techniques of biotechnology while ignoring genuinely hazardous products. A regulation under the Toxic Substances Control Act that regulates products made with the most precise techniques of the new biotechnology has halted critical research into gene-spliced microorganisms that might be used to clean up oil spills and toxic wastes.

In addition, EPA issued a regulation rammed through in the last hours of the Clinton administration that would require the review of the testing of gene-spliced crop and garden plants that have been modified for enhanced pest- or disease-resistance. These genetically improved plants, such as corn, cotton, wheat and marigolds, would be subjected to the same sort of lengthy, hugely expensive review as chemical pesticides. EPA´s policy is so potentially damaging and outside scientific norms that it has galvanized the scientific community: Eleven major scientific societies representing more than 80,000 biologists and food professionals published a report warning that the EPA policy would discourage the development of new pest-resistant crops and prolong and increase the use of synthetic chemical pesticides.

The government has been busy creating mischief internationally as well. The "Cartagena Biosafety Protocol," finalized last year under the auspices of the United Nations´ Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), established a global scheme for regulation of biotechnology products. It embraces the bogus "precautionary principle," which holds that every new technology should be proven absolutely safe before it can be used. This erects an almost insurmountable barrier against new products because nothing can be proved totally safe.

The protocol will hobble the work of academic researchers and small, innovative companies, ultimately delaying or denying the benefits of the "gene revolution" to much of the world. U.S. government negotiators collaborated aggressively in crafting these unscientific and illogical regulations, in spite of the Senate´s explicit unwillingness to ratify the CBD itself.

Similarly, with full U.S. support and collaboration, three panels of the Codex Alimentarius Commission, the United Nations agency concerned with international food standards, are now working toward holding biotech-derived food and food ingredients to standards that are unscientific, far beyond those that any other products can or should meet, and that will prevent all but a handful from having a fair chance to compete in the marketplace.

The flawed Cartagena Protocol and Codex rules are worrisome for two reasons. First, they legitimatize the flawed precautionary principle, offering cover to incompetent, overzealous or corrupt regulators who wish to obstruct research and development or to create trade barriers to certain products. Second, once this United Nations-based international oversight becomes established and regulators taste unaccustomed (and unwarranted) power, there is little likelihood that the regulations will be rolled back or eliminated.

Even with good intentions, the Bush administration will find it difficult to rationalize this public policy chaos. The new secretary of agriculture, Ann Veneman, has spoken of the importance of agbiotech, but her praise of agbiotech "products that make farmers more productive and consumers more healthy and satisfied" falls far short of a commitment to bring about needed regulatory reform.

EPA Administrator Christie Whitman will find biotech issues arcane, but will get little constructive help from her deputy, Linda Fisher, who actually crafted many of the agency´s flawed biotech policies during the previous Bush administration. She and the EPA career staff have defended wrong-headed policies like a dog with a favorite bone.

The international miasma may be the most difficult problem of all. It should be met uncompromisingly. The Bush administration´s mantra should be that good science trumps everything else; that arbitrary, capricious, unscientific policies will not be tolerated whether they originate in Brussels, Washington or U.N. headquarters.

There are plenty of empirical data and scientific theory to support regulatory policies that focus on the actual risks of products, instead of merely on the use of certain in this case, superior techniques. What we need now is the political will to insist on them.

Henry Miller is a fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. He is the author of "Policy Controversy in Biotechnology: An Insider's View."

---

Major Victory for Biotech Giant Monsanto
Farmer Liable For Growing Biotech Crops

Friday, March 30, 2001
Washington Post
by Marc Kaufman

A judge yesterday ordered a Canadian farmer to pay the biotechnology giant Monsanto Co. thousands of dollars because the company's genetically engineered canola plants were found growing on his field, apparently after pollen from modified plants had blown onto his property from nearby farms.

The closely watched case was a major victory for companies that produce genetically modified crops and have been aggressively enforcing agreements that require farmers to pay yearly fees for using their technology.

But the decision in a federal court in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, was a significant setback for farmers who fear they will be held liable if pollen from neighboring farms blows onto their fields, transmitting patented genes to their crops without their knowledge or consent. Dozens of similar lawsuits have been filed against farmers around the United States, but the Canadian case is the first to go to trial.

The case also highlights growing tension between farmers and large agricultural biotechnology companies, whose high-tech crops are transforming the traditional ways growers tend their fields.

"I've been using my own seed for years, and now farmers like me are being told we can't do that anymore if our neighbors are growing [genetically modified] crops that blow in," said Percy Schmeiser, 70, the farmer from Saskatchewan who was sued by Monsanto. "Basically, the right to use our own seed has been taken away."

Genetically engineered corn, soybeans, cotton and canola have become widely used in the United States, and recent evidence suggests that their pollen can spread to conventional crops. That means any farmer whose neighbors grow engineered varieties could find himself in the same situation as Schmeiser -- especially farmers of easily windblown canola and corn.

A Monsanto spokeswoman in Winnipeg, Manitoba, said yesterday that the decision will help protect the intellectual property rights of the company and of thousands of farmers who pay for its technology.

"This is a clear win for Monsanto, and this is very good news for us," said Trish Jordan, manager of public and industry affairs for Monsanto Canada. "What the judge found was that Mr. Schmeiser had infringed on our patent, and awarded us damages."

In his ruling, federal Judge W. Andrew MacKay concluded that a farmer does not have the right to grow crops with a patented and genetically modified gene unless he has an agreement with the company that owns the patent. MacKay also ruled that it didn't matter whether the farmer took advantage of the patented gene. In this case, Schmeiser did not.

The Monsanto canola contains a gene that protects the crop from the herbicide Roundup. With Roundup Ready canola, farmers can spray the herbicide more widely and control weeds more easily.

Seed companies representing Monsanto, and similar biotechnology companies, sell their modified genes to farmers under an agreement that they use them for only one season. Traditionally, farmers have stored their best seeds and replanted them.

Monsanto communications director Lori Fisher said yesterday that seed companies that license Monsanto technology will help farmers remove unwanted genetically modified plants in their fields. She called the Schmeiser case unusual and said that farmers support the company's effort to protect its patent.

But a spokeswoman with the National Farmers Union, which represents 300,000 small farmers and ranchers in the United States, said the organization has been following the Schmeiser case with apprehension.

"We're extremely concerned by what liabilities may unfold for the farmer, particularly with cross-pollination of genetically modified plants," she said.

Margaret Mellon, director of the agriculture and biotechnology program of the Union of Concerned Scientists, called the ruling "stunning.

"This means that people who are in the neighborhood of genetically modified crops will have to pay royalties to the companies for products they never purchased and got no benefits from," she said.

The decision prohibits Schmeiser from using his seed again and requires him to pay Monsanto about $10,000 for its user fees and up to $75,000 in profits from his 1998 crop. MacKay told the farmer and company that he would impose a financial settlement if they couldn't work one out.

Schmeiser is a fifth-generation farmer in Bruno, Saskatchewan. In his trial last summer, he acknowledged he was aware that Roundup Ready canola had gotten into his crops in 1997. He said he used seeds from that crop for his next year's planting -- as he traditionally did -- but with no intention of taking advantage of the genetically modified plants' engineered trait.

Representatives of Monsanto Canada received reports from nearby farmers in 1998 that they believed Schmeiser was using Roundup Ready canola without an agreement. Private investigators collected samples from Schmeiser's fields and confirmed the presence of the modified canola.

They reported that the crop was made up almost entirely of genetically modified plants. Schmeiser denied that, and third-party tests found the presence of modified canola to be significantly less. He became something of a hero in farmer and anti-biotech circles for his fight against the company.

-------- police

LAPD say officer cooperating with corruption probe

CNN
March 30, 2001
CNN's Charles Feldman
http://www.cnn.com/2001/LAW/03/30/lapd.corruption/index.html

LOS ANGELES (CNN) -- A former Los Angeles police officer is cooperating with state and federal officials in what could be the breakthrough authorities have sought to jump-start an otherwise-stalled corruption probe, CNN has learned.

Various sources say the Rampart Division officer is likely to provide information that backs up aspects of what former officer Rafael Perez has alleged about officers in the division, involving everything from planting evidence to robbery, beatings and shooting unarmed innocent suspects.

Perez is a former officer who has made allegations about widespread police misconduct in return for leniency after his arrest for the theft of cocaine from a police evidence locker.

Three recent arrests

Most recently, according to the Los Angeles Times, allegations by Perez led to the arrest last Friday of three former police officers in connection with the 1998 beating of a reputed gang member and an ensuing cover-up.

Charges were filed against Shawn Gomez, Manuel Chavez and Ethan Cohan, the Times reported, citing sealed court documents. As part of confidential agreements, Gomez pleaded no contest to filing a false police report in connection with the incident, and Chavez pleaded no contest to assault, the Times reported. The two men, who have resigned, were released on their own recognizance and scheduled to be sentenced in July.

An arrest warrant was issued for Cohan, who is charged with assault with a deadly weapon, perjury, filing a false police report and conspiracy, the newspaper said.

No connection has been made between the case against the three former officers and the breakthrough cited by authorities.

News conference scheduled

For federal officials, the breakthrough marks their first case involving an officer from the division's troubled former anti-drug and anti-gang division. Sources said they hope to add a significant new voice to Perez's testimony, bolstering his contention that a culture of corruption grew within the Los Angeles Police Department.

A joint news conference involving the U.S. Attorney's office, FBI, and Los Angeles County District Attorney's office is expected Friday afternoon.

Perez's allegations have led to state charges against eight officers, including an attempted murder charge against his former partner Nino Durden. The scandal has led to more than 100 criminal convictions being overturned and the city of Los Angeles signing a consent decree with the U.S. Justice Department requiring federal oversight of the police department's management and training policies.

---

A Theft That Made Very Little Cents

Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 17:08:48 -0600
Bizarre News - Lewis behind the barricade

NEW JERSEY - A crime that literally made very little cents for a thief, has ended up costing taxpayers thousands of dollars. Michael Monroe was charged with stealing 58 cents, from a parked car in Greenwich, New Jersey, in 1999. According to officials, it had already cost taxpayers $16,000 to keep Monroe in prison before his trial started on Monday in Warren County Superior Court. After a three day trial, he was acquitted of burglary and trespass, but found guilty of theft. As he had already spent 95 days in prison, he was set free with time served.

---

Too Soon to Predict Fallout on Verniero Testimony, Politicians Say

New York Times
March 30, 2001
By IVER PETERSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/30/nyregion/30TROO.html

TRENTON, March 29 - Peter G. Verniero's problems with the State Senate Judiciary Committee jumped into the political arena today, a day after his marathon testimony about racial profiling, but it was unclear what, if any, fallout he would face.

Mr. Verniero's testimony, dominated by lapses of memory that left some onlookers confused and others angry, drew much criticism today. But senators on the committee refused to guess about the future of Mr. Verniero's career as a justice on the New Jersey State Supreme Court, a post he ascended to by a single vote after serving as Gov. Christie Whitman's attorney general.

Mr. Verniero's status there is safe, barring resignation or impeachment, until September 2006, when he must be renominated by the governor and confirmed by the State Senate to win lifetime tenure. But the senators used the question of Mr. Verniero's future to underscore their unhappiness with his testimony.

"At this point, I don't want to get into his career," said Senator William L. Gormley, a Republican of May's Landing, the committee chairman and the driving force behind the racial-profiling inquiry. "But as of right now I truly believe he misled us, and I would give him the opportunity, if he chooses, to come back and disprove my conclusion."

Senator Norman M. Robertson, a Republican of Little Falls and a member of the committee, agreed. Mr. Robertson said he could not tell what his thinking would be five years from now, when Mr. Verniero would need to be reconfirmed.

"That crystal ball is pretty cloudy," he said. "But I will say I am thoroughly disappointed with what happened when he was attorney general, and that is going to be part of my thinking when the time comes."

News coverage of Mr. Verniero's testimony was generally negative this morning, with a focus on the number of times he said he could not remember the details of key documents and meetings while he was attorney general from 1996 to 1999, with The Star-Ledger counting 300 such occasions.

Mr. Verniero's lawyer, Robert A. Mintz, said he was surprised by the tone of the coverage, and added that Mr. Verniero has not yet had time to consider the return appearance Mr. Gormley evidently wants.

"I think it is important to acknowledge that he came before the committee voluntarily and in the hope that his testimony would be helpful," Mr. Mintz said.

So far, only a handful of Democrats in the State Assembly have called outright for Mr. Verniero's resignation or impeachment, and one of the leaders of this movement, Assemblyman William D. Payne of Newark, conceded that the effort to remove Mr. Verniero had gained very little support.

Mr. Payne, who is black, is angry with Mr. Verniero for what he believes is the former attorney general's failure to curb racial profiling when the problem first came to light. Bret D. Schundler, the mayor of Jersey City, complained that Mr. Verniero mislead the Judiciary Committee and unfairly maligned the state police.

"New Jersey troopers were simply doing what they were told, yet they have been made into the bad guys here," Mr. Schundler said in a statement.

"Mr. Verniero should step down from the court and he should apologize to the men and women of the New Jersey State Police," Mr. Schundler added.

The Judiciary Committee has scheduled two last days of testimony for Monday and Tuesday, when they will hear from New Jersey's current attorney general, John J. Farmer Jr., and from motorists who believe that they were singled out for traffic stops because of their race.

If Mr. Verniero returns for a second day of testimony, Mr. Gormley said today, he will probably face renewed scrutiny on several unresolved questions, particularly on the timing of the indictments of two troopers involved in a 1998 New Jersey Turnpike shooting for falsifying arrest records. The question involves whether Mr. Verniero released the indictments for falsification of records before a second indictment for the shooting itself was ready, in order to generate publicity for himself at a time when his Supreme Court nomination was pending.

-------- spying

That Russian Espionage Tape Was Not Quite All It Seemed

New York Times
March 30, 2001
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/30/world/30RUSS.html

MOSCOW, March 29 - The Russian-language voice-over on an audio tape provided by Russia's domestic intelligence service and broadcast on state television contained information involving allegations of espionage that did not exist on the actual recording.

In its effort to prove that American military attachés here have engaged in espionage, the Federal Security Service (known by its Russian initials F.S.B.) released an audio tape purporting to show that a Russian scholar accused of spying gave an American naval officer here information about the armaments on a Russian intelligence ship, the Liman.

The tape consisted of a conversation in English between the scholar, Igor Sutyagin, and the American, Capt. Robert Brannon, accompanied by a voice-over in Russian that was presented as a translation of the conversation.

A closer examination of the broadcast today revealed that the Russian translation does not comport with the actual conversation. Most importantly, the central allegation made in the voice-over cannot be heard on the tape recording.

The narrator in the Russian voice- over said Mr. Sutyagin provided Captain Brannon with a description of the armaments on board the ship as it prepared to sail for the Balkans during NATO's 1999 military campaign.

But the only thing that can be heard on the tape relating to this point is Captain Brannon's mentioning the name of the Liman at the beginning of a sentence that was cut off in the televised segment.

It was not known today whether the tape contained further information about the Liman after that point.

A spokesman for the news program Vesti, part of the Radio and Television of Russia network, which presented the broadcast, said today that its reporter, Aleksei Overchuk, received the tape and a translation of it from the Federal Security Service.

The spokesman, Aleksandr F. Chernov, said he did not know whether the reporter had tried to verify the transcript by comparing it with the actual conversation in English on the tape. The reporter, Mr. Overchuk, did not return phone calls today.

Mr. Chernov said Mr. Overchuk told him the translation transcript provided by the Federal Security Service was an "official document" from the "investigation material" in the Sutyagin case.

"Since we did not have enough time" to play all of the taped material that the Federal Security Service said it had, Mr. Chernov said, "we took only part of it and then used a montage - just several opening phrases and a few more to have it as background that could be voiced over by the translation."

Asked whether he was concerned that the broadcast had aired a Federal Security Service version of the conversation that did not comport with the audio tape, Mr. Chernov said, "The translation was provided by the F.S.B. But we did not take everything from them. We do not need documented proof," and he added, "it was clear the F.S.B. would not give us undocumented material, as they could easily be caught at it."

The difference between the Russian narration and the actual conversation beneath it raised concerns among Mr. Sutyagin's friends and supporters that the Federal Security Service had taken the opportunity of the broadcast about alleged American espionage to strengthen its case against Mr. Sutyagin, who is on trial for espionage and treason, charges that stem from his role in contributing to a book on Russia's strategic nuclear arsenal and in providing consultant services to foreign organizations on Russian military affairs.

Mr. Sutyagin, a researcher at Russia's Institute of U.S.A. and Canada until his arrest in 1999, has defended himself by saying that as a scholar he never had access to classified information and only provided materials gleaned from open sources.

The bulk of the 44-second audio recording consists of friendly chat between Captain Brannon and Mr. Sutyagin. Captain Brannon asks, "Have you received the fax I tried to send you?" Mr. Sutyagin replies that he has received the fax and then adds, "the best was that envelope."

Associates of Mr. Sutyagin said he frequently received materials on United States military policy from military attachés, something that could not be construed as improper, they said.

-------- terrorism

Bomb Case Debate Focuses on Penalty Phase

New York Times
March 30, 2001
By ALAN FEUER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/30/world/30TERR.html

A hearing in the embassy bombings trial lurched from arcane legalisms to abstract philosophy yesterday as a defense lawyer, a federal judge and a prosecutor debated whether the bombing of the American Embassy in Kenya should be thought of as an act of war or an act of terrorism.

The defense lawyer defined terrorism as violence committed for political ends and suggested that established governments did it routinely. The judge questioned whether a terrorist bombing could, in fact, be comparable to a government military strike. And the prosecutor emphatically tried to cut the discussion short, saying it had little relevance.

David P. Baugh, a lawyer for the defendant, Mohamed Rashed Daoud al-'Owhali, opened the debate.

"Whenever you try to coerce a political result by bombing and killing people, that is classified under the federal code as terrorism," he said. "Unfortunately, we do it, they do it, everybody does it."

Minutes later, the prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, responded: "This is not warfare. This is terrorism."

The lawyers had come to Federal District Court in Manhattan to argue, out of the hearing of the jury, whether the defense should be granted subpoenas to help prepare for the death penalty phase of the bombings trial, in which Mr. al-'Owhali and three other men have been charged in a terrorist conspiracy to destroy two American Embassies in East Africa in 1998.

While Mr. al-'Owhali's lawyers did not concede his guilt yesterday, the fact that they were already looking ahead to their death penalty arguments suggested that they felt there was a good chance that their client would be convicted. A unanimous verdict among all 12 jurors would be needed to impose a death penalty.

Mr. Baugh asked Judge Leonard B. Sand for permission to subpoena the United States military for detailed information about the damage caused by air strikes in Iraq in the years after the Persian Gulf War.

Mr. Baugh wants to make what could be a highly unusual argument against execution: it cannot be maintained that Mr. al-'Owhali showed a remorseless or reckless disregard for life because the United States does essentially the same things with its attacks against countries.

Judge Sand refused to sign the subpoena yesterday, although he did order Mr. Baugh to submit another draft requesting less detailed information, leaving open the possibility that he might sign it in the future.

The judge signed other subpoenas sought by Mr. Baugh that would force more than a half-dozen major news organizations to provide photographs of the destruction caused by the post-Gulf War attacks, the 1989 invasion of Panama, the bombing of Muammar el-Qaddafi's headquarters in Libya in 1986 and other major American military strikes.

The judge refused to sign a subpoena for former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, but he did approve subpoenas for private organizations that track American military operations against Iraq.

Mr. Baugh said that because the game of terrorism and counter-terrorism is fought according to ruthless rules, the prosecution should not be able to argue without debate that Mr. al-'Owhali's role in the embassy attack was so far beyond the norm that it merits the death penalty.

"I am saying, your honor, that the United States has alleged that my client is showing reckless disregard," Mr. Baugh said. "I am saying that reckless disregard in this area is as routine, as everyday, as water."

-------- activists

CANADIAN SECURITY INTELLIGENCE SERVICE REPORT

PERSPECTIVES
a CANADIAN SECURITY INTELLIGENCE SERVICE publication

Report #2000/08
ANTI-GLOBALIZATION - A SPREADING PHENOMENON

August 22, 2000

This paper uses open sources to examine any topic with the potential to cause threats to public or national security

INTRODUCTION

1. Shock and surprise were widespread in the wake of the disruptive protests and associated violence that characterized the Seattle World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Conference, 29 November-3 December, 1999. Yet the demonstrations were not something new, nor was the principal target - multinational corporate power - an unexpected focus. Opposition to corporate globalization has been growing for several years, a trend underscored by increasing media attention since 1995. Security agencies at Seattle, however, were caught off-guard by the large number of demonstrators and scope of representation, combined with the use of sophisticated methods and technology that effectively shut down the Conference.

2. Prior to Seattle, the most recent associated event occurred six months earlier, on 18 June, 1999, when protests known as 'J18' were organized to coincide with the G8 Economic Summit in Cologne, Germany. The focal point was the City of London, where a march of 2000 people degenerated into a riot in which 42 people were injured and damage was estimated at one million pounds sterling.(1) But the activities were not confined to London; cities in North America and Europe also were involved, and in most cases financial districts were targeted.

3. Bringing together a broad spectrum of interests and agendas, J18 incorporated both people and technology. While the former demonstrated on the streets, the latter featured in cyberattacks against business institutions. For five hours, at least 20 companies were subjected to more than 10,000 attacks by hackers(2). Adding a sense of insult to injury, the Internet was the means by which the concept of J18 originated, and by which the event was ultimately orchestrated.

4. Neither J18 nor the WTO protest in Seattle, or its counterpart, A16, the International Monetary Fund/World Bank (IMF/WB) demonstration five months later in Washington, DC, were unique, one-off events. As exemplified by further protest activity at the Organization of American States (OAS) Ministerial Meeting in Windsor, and the World Petroleum Conference (WPC) in Calgary, similar incidents can be expected to occur in various forms and with varying degrees of intensity, aiming at the same target - corporate power - for the foreseeable future. Reminiscent of the Vietnam and anti-nuclear protest era of the '60s and '70s, the activities are global in scope, international in locale, and have involved sites in Canada on several occasions.

SITUATION

5. Meetings of international monetary, trade and environmental organizations, which in the past incited little or no protest interest, are now drawing the attention of thousands of anti-globalization activists. Representing a broad spectrum of groups, lobbyists, and overlapping networks, including some violent extremists whose presence raises security concerns, they share a mutual antipathy - that of multinational corporate power. Often described as more influential and stronger than government, some corporations boast budgets larger than the gross domestic product (GDP) of many nations: '...of the top hundred economies, fifty-one are multinationals and only forty-nine are countries.'(3)

6. Alleged abuse of corporate power by multinationals is the basic focus of protest activity. Large corporations with international undertakings stand accused of social injustice, unfair labour practices - including slave labour wages, living and working conditions - as well as a lack of concern for the environment, mismanagement of natural resources, and ecological damage. Anti-globalization demonstrations have achieved worldwide support partly because the target, per se, its representatives, and its effects are global in nature. Major brand names, among them Nike, Starbucks, McDonalds, and Shell Oil, are principal targets, ironically because their massive advertising campaigns designed to engender public prominence have been successfulŃand that status is being used to highlight the charges brought against them.

7. Protest objectives extend beyond the claimed corporate impropriety, however. Multinational economic institutions, such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Bank (WB), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), are seen as establishing, monitoring, and rendering judgements on global trade practices, and are viewed as the spearheads of economic globalization. These institutions, considered to be the servants of corporate interests, exercising more power than elected governments and interested only in the profit motive, have increasingly become principal demonstration targets. Underlying the anti-globalization theme is criticism of the capitalist philosophy, a stance promoted once again by left-of-centre activists and militant anarchists.

8. The global parameters have encouraged disparate groups and individuals to participate in the demonstrations. In Seattle and Washington, for example, the wide variety of parading malcontents evoked the eclectic ambience of a 'protest county fair.' Circumstances also have promoted the involvement of fringe extremists who espouse violence, largely represented by Black Bloc anarchists and factions of militant animal-rights and environmental activists. The melding of various elements and establishing of strange-bedfellow ties at individual demonstrations have contributed both to the impact and the unique character of the events.

DISCUSSION

The Issues

9. The growing trend toward anti-globalization activism is directed, first, against 'big business' - multinational corporate power - and, second, against 'big money' -global agreements on economic growth. Allegations of exploitive labour and human-rights abuses reach back to the mid-1990s when a number of corporations producing major brand name products, such as Nike sneakers, Gap jeans, and Starbucks coffee, were accused of union-busting, sweatshop working conditions, and child labour practices on a global scale. Among other well-known multinationals, McDonalds, Monsanto, and Shell Oil were indicted for similar faults. The litany of castigation ranges across a broad spectrum, including paying low wages, offering minimal health benefits, depleting old-growth and rain forests, using unsafe pesticides, bio-engineering agriculture crops, violating animal rights, and colluding with violent and repressive regimes.

10. Accusations against the multinationals continue - students still gather in Eugene, Oregon, the home of Nike, to protest the corporate giant's Third World labour practices - but increasingly they are being supplemented by demonstrations against such institutions as the World Trade Organization (WTO), International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank (WB). Protagonists claim these establishments promote and facilitate corporate power and that elected governments are being overshadowed in the political arena by global economic institutions and their efforts to direct and expand economic growth. Activists, however, are divided in their anti-globalization position. The larger segment supports restructuring corporations to reflect accountability and transparency; the smaller segment, while also supporting these objectives, actively promotes the total demise of global structures including the WTO. Anarchist activists and some environmentalists fall in the latter category.

11. The philosophy of capitalism also is under attack, facing charges that it is ignoring the social welfare of individuals, and destroying cultures and the ecology in the quest for growth and profit. As prominent corporate names come under fire, making for good publicity and media attention, groups such as animal-rights activists and environmental protection advocates vie for an opportunity to share the spotlight, many making similar claims about exploitation. Some observers term the situation the Ňrise of the New New LeftÓ(4) and draw comparisons to the 1968 Parisian 'summer of the barricades.' The unifying elements on this occasion, however, are the powers of the corporations, name-brands, globalization, and the interests of capital, in opposition to the welfare of workers, exploitation of the ecology, and a range of collateral issues. Many factors are involved, with certain incidents cited as triggers, among them the death of Nigerian activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, and the campaigns against Kathy Lee sportswear, Wal-Mart, Mattel and Disney, and Shell and Chevron Oil Companies, which draw attention to the claims of the protesters and give substantive meaning to the demonstrations.

12. In her book, No Logo, Canadian Naomi Klein claims...corporate investment in the Third World was seen...as a key to alleviating poverty and misery. By 1996, however, that concept was being openly questioned, and it was recognized that many governments in the developing world were protecting lucrative investments - mines, dams, oil fields, power plants and export processing zones - by deliberately turning a blind eye to egregious rights violations by foreign corporations against their people.(5)

Further, she states:

At the heart of this convergence of anticorporate activism...is the recognition that corporations are much more than purveyors of the products we all want; they are also the most powerful political forces of our time....So although the media often describe campaigns like the one against Nike as Ňconsumer boycotts,Ó that tells only part of the story. It is more accurate to describe them as political campaigns that use consumer goods as readily accessible targets, as public-relations levers and as popular-education tools.(6)

13. Although multinational corporations and international trade institutions are the subjects of criticism, not all observers share a negative perspective. Many commentaries are published which speak in favour of beneficial and positive accomplishments, especially in relation to the international institutions. The concept of free trade is just one topic which has been favourably addressed:

Global free trade promotes global economic growth. It creates jobs, makes companies more competitive, and lowers prices for consumers. It also provides poor countries, through infusions of foreign capital and technology, with the chance to develop economically and, by spreading prosperity, creates the conditions in which democracy and respect for human rights may flourish.(7)

14. One relatively small but vocal and violent protest element is the militant anarchist faction, often identified as the Black Bloc. Considered to be exponents of a virtually defunct philosophy, anarchists received a fillip for their cause in 1995 when the Unabomber's political manifesto was published. Paradoxically, the manifesto identified technology as a major source of the world's ills and called for the violent destruction of the system, especially the Internet, which in large measure has contributed to promoting the anarchist message worldwide. Although some members of the anarchist milieu believe that a peaceful, ethical approach should be followed, many defend the use of violence as the only means to achieve the classic anarchist society based on small independent communities that function without elected leaders.

15. While most demonstration participants and members of protest groups seek to conduct their activities in a peaceful, legitimate manner, militants and extremists have other ideas. The radical, extremist participants represented at the demonstrations - whatever their cause - believe the standard forms of protest - marching, rhetoric, and placard-waving - have failed to achieve anything of importance. They believe it is necessary to undertake 'direct action' by inflicting damage on those corporations that extend the reach of global trade and technology at the expense of the Earth and its poorest citizens. Some of the more aggressive frequently resort to climbing and rapelling techniques to scale buildings and other lofty sites to conduct sit-ins or hang banners for publicity purposes. Extremists - often anarchists, animal-rights supporters, or environmentalists - indulge in such violent actions as smashing windows, setting fires, or trashing shops and fast-food outlets.

16. No matter the fundamental viewpoint, pro or con, involving globalization, concerns on the part of law enforcement and security agencies are very real. While individuals and groups have a right to legitimate protest, including non-violent demonstrations whatever their size, they do not have the right to close down political meetings. Writing in the The Ottawa Citizen, two professors from Carleton University have said:

Democracies have the right and the responsibility to protect free expression and lawful assembly. This includes rights for activists and critics. It also includes the rights of elected officials to assemble and express their views. The tyranny of small groups, minorities or even majorities to prevent the exercise of such rights by trying to shut down meetings is unacceptable in a democracy.(8)

Groups

17. Diversity is a major characteristic of anti-globalization protests and demonstrations, which are often described as 'multi-generational, multi-class, and multi-issue'(9). Participants represent a variety of issues and not all are pursuing globalization as their primary target. For some protesters, anti-globalization is a principal concern, but for others it is merely a shared goal, with the demonstrations simply a means to an end. That is, the combination of groups and participants coming together creates a powerful impression and an impact out of all proportion with their individual strengths. The melding of the various groups into one large body implies power, and attracts attention and publicity, which, in turn, draws more and more participants. Many groups and individuals take part largely because of the attention and publicity which are generated, almost in the manner of self-generating growth. Seattle and Washington reflect how large the antagonistic audience has become, and the lengths to which participants will go in their desire to shut down or impede the spread of globalization. It is an issue with significantly more supporters from the left than the right, and features a large component of youth.

18. To some degree, participation at protests and demonstrations depends upon the subject of the targeted meeting or conference. Labour had serious concerns about the proposals scheduled to be discussed at Seattle's WTO Meeting - consequently labour was well represented, well organized, and contributed to the protest funding arrangements. The WB/IMF Meeting in Washington, however, was of less interest to labour, drew a much smaller number of labour supporters, and prompted a much lower labour profile. The OAS meeting in Windsor also raised labour's concerns, but when it became evident that some of the more contentious issues were not on the agenda, interest waned. As well, because Windsor is largely a labour town , it did not behoove labour organizers to create a bad impression. Differences of opinion do exist and schisms do impact on attendance and activity at demonstrations; during the OAS Conference in Windsor, for example, labour representatives attempted to prevent the more violent protesters from storming police barricades.

19. Protesters represent a broad spectrum of causes and goals - environmentalists, animal-rights supporters, union members, human-rights activists, anarchists, even the White supremacist milieu. But with the exception of large and prominent organizations, e.g., Greenpeace, the names or titles of groups are not significant. Many groups are merely splinters, have few members, are formed briefly for the need of the moment, change their names frequently, or are located in a specific region; in many cases, individuals are members of several groups at the same time or espouse various causes. Of more importance are the causes and motivations, per se, which are represented by the various groups and which provide an indication of the likely type of protest activity that might be expected at a demonstration.

20. Some relatively well-known organizations and causes often are represented at anti-globalization demonstrations: the AFL-CIO, appearing on behalf of labourŐs interests, and People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), one of several animal-rights support groups. Similarly, Rainforest Action Network, Earth First!, and the Sierra Club advocate environmentalism, and Global Exchange, Direct Action Network, Nader's Group, Radical Roots, and Global Trade Watch uphold the human-rights banner. Two organizations which have materialized in recent years and play a significant role are the California-based Ruckus Society, and the Calgary-based Co-Motion Action. Both specialize in training protesters and organizing and managing demonstrations, aspects discussed in greater detail below (see: Tactics and Technology).

21. The more militant and violent protesters belong to extremist elements associated with many of the causes, especially environmentalist, animal-rights, and anti-abortion activists. Extremists currently achieving the most notoriety are found among anarchists and members of the Third Position. The former are represented in part by the Black Bloc, the Anarchist News Service, the Black Army Faction, and Anarchist Action Collective. Individuals identified as members of the Black Bloc were believed responsible for much of the violence in Seattle and, to a lesser extent, in Washington. The Black Bloc is a loosely organized cluster of anarchist affinity groups and individuals, estimated in North America to number a few hundred, who come together to participate in protests and demonstrations(10). The Third Position, largely a European phenomenon but spreading rapidly to the USA, is a curious mixture of xtreme Left and Right political motivations which include the use of violent means of protest(11).

Tactics and Technology

22. While diversity has contributed to modernizing and strengthening protests and demonstrations, new tactics and technology, collectively and individually, have radically changed the face of protest activity and generated renewed life in the reality of demonstrations. Gone are old-style gatherings confined to waving placards and banners, declaiming speakers, and moderate, controlled marches in specific locations. Not unlike the massive and often vigourous Out of Vietnam and Ban the Bomb protests of the '60s and '70s decades, todayŐs demonstrations, resurrecting the anarchist theme of 'direct action,' employ a host of novel methodologies that have given a whole new complexion to the nature of the protests. The development and implementation of new tactics are a direct result of the impact of new technology and the ability of organizers to use it to their best advantage.

23. Creating the foundation for dramatic change, the Internet has had a profound impact - in part by enabling organizers to quickly and easily arrange demonstrations and protests, worldwide if necessary. Individuals and groups now are able to establish dates, share experiences, accept responsibilities, arrange logistics, and initiate a myriad of other taskings that would have been impossible to manage readily and rapidly in the past. International protests and demonstrations can be organized for the same date and time, so that a series of protests take place in concert. The Internet has breathed new life into the anarchist philosophy, permitting communication and coordination without the need for a central source of command, and facilitating coordinated actions with minimal resources and bureaucracy. It has allowed groups and individuals to cement bonds, file e-mail reports of perceived successes, and recruit members.

24. Anti-globalists aim by force of numbers to shut down targeted meetings and, in the process, paralyze free movement in a host city. In the short term, they carry an economic impact, a form of sabotage long endorsed by environmental activists. In the months prior to a campaign, activists attend extensive training and educational courses associated with proposed protests and demonstrations. By organizing counter summits to run concurrently with international events, as was done during the June, 2000, World Petroleum Congress in Calgary, activists ensure involvement. Pre-event lectures include highly emotive subjects, such as the execution of activist Ken Saro-Wiwa by the Nigerian government in 1995, and human-rights conditions in Bolivia and Guatemala. Idealism plays a large role, with protesters becoming more and more knowledgeable about their subject and sophisticated in their methodology, using travelling 'road shows' and teach-ins to increase their effectiveness.

25. The new protest phenomenon has been characterized by the broad range of interests which have come together to conduct the demonstrations with minimal dissension. 'Reclaim The Streets,' a UK-based initiative that originated with street parties or 'raves' in the mid-1990s, is a tactical concept that protesters have adopted to promote their causes en masse(12), and which gave rise to the massive gatherings at Seattle and Washington. The methodology has been remarkable in terms of organization, especially because a central 'director' is not evident and, in part, the resulting lack of infighting has been the secret of success. Like the Internet itself, the anti-globalist movement is a body that manages to survive and even thrive without a head. However, radical elements and extremists are taking advantage both of the absence of a controlling element and the events themselves to indulge in violence, which is not the stated intent of demonstration participants.

26. One of the more impressive innovations has been the method of organizing, arranging, and directing the operational and administrative activities associated with the demonstrations - accomplished effectively without the obvious influence of central authority, command, or control. In many ways, the system is very similar to that advocated by anarchists of the libertarian socialist philosophy. Activities begin with like-minded individuals who gather in affinity groups across the country, plan their roles, and travel to the site of the demonstration. Once at the site, they join with other like-minded affinity groups to form clusters and to select a spokesperson who attends the daily spokescouncil. At the latter, discussions are held and information passed concerning operational and administrative activities - arrangements for accommodation, feeding, legal advice, types of actions to be implemented. Locations are chosen for certain activities and agreements reached concerning the types of protest actions to be undertaken, although complete agreement is not always achieved - the more militant or extremist elements usually do as they please.

27. Some clusters undertake specific taskings and responsibilities, such as securing food, transportation, and accommodation, making legal arrangements, and forming into working groups to cope with the range of logistical, administrative, and operational requirements necessary for a successful protest (e.g., media, training, legal, transportation, issues, permitted actions, scenarios, propaganda, medical, fundraising, communications). Prior to the Washington IMF/WB demonstration, a number of affinity groups met several months in advance, as did representatives of the spokescouncil and the working groups. Some sponsors, representatives of labour organizations, and a broad range of causes formed coalitions for the purpose of 'mobilizing' participants. Again, the availability of the Internet permitted them to share ideas, experiences, and problems from a global perspective.

28. Cellphones constitute a basic means of communication and control, allowing protest organizers to employ the concepts of mobility and reserves and to move groups from place to place as needed. The mobility of demonstrators makes it difficult for law enforcement and security personnel to attempt to offset their opponents through the presence of overwhelming numbers. It is now necessary for security to be equally mobile, capable of readily deploying reserves, monitoring the communications of protesters, and, whenever possible, anticipating the intentions of the demonstrators. In some cases, the extremist elements, e.g., Black Bloc anarchists, have used the ranks of moderate protesters as shields to prevent law enforcement personnel from viewing violent activities and from getting into position to stop the damage.

29. Protesters have learned to employ both kerosene and vinegar-soaked rags for anti-tear gas and anti-pepper spray purposes, and to use a combination of chicken wire, PVC pipe, and linked arms to create almost immoveable street barricades. As well, a technique which harks back at least three decades to anti-nuclear and Left and Right Wing demonstrations in Great Britain, the renewed use of ball bearings and marbles against police horses has been suggested. Among the use of new technologies, Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is the preferred means of encrypting communications on the Internet. As well, the anti-globalists have adopted media-savvy techniques developed and refined by environmental activists. For example, during the 26-30 March, 2000, BIO 2000 biotechnology conference held in Boston, protestors against genetically modified food set up the 'Boston Independent Media Centre,' which posted photos, stories and audio clips on its Web site throughout the week of protests.

30. The Ruckus Society, a Berkeley, California-based group formed in 1995, has made a specialty of training protesters to meet the challenges encountered in demonstrating effectively, e.g., the placement of banners and individuals in critical locations, overcoming obstacles, and evading security controls. Ruckus played a leading role in preparing demonstrators participating at Seattle and Washington, and previously trained environmentalists in civil disobedience in Alberta and British Columbia. Representatives were present in Windsor and Calgary, prior to the OAS and WPC conferences, to teach demonstrators various improved protest techniques(13). An offshoot Canadian group, Co-Motion Action, conducted a training camp in Banff to prepare protesters for the World Petroleum Congress. Among direct action and civil disobedience lessons taught are use of the Internet, cellphones, video cameras, scaling walls, climbing trees, creating human blockades, scouting sites, and forming plans to combat police tactics(14).

Funding

31. Financial and material support of protesters and demonstrations, partly self-generated and partly raised by contributions from interested parties, is fundamentally a matter of initiative and imagination. Again, the Internet facilitates protest activities, offering a fast, simple, and inexpensive method of communication for organizing, motivating and encouraging attendees, sharing experiences and ideas, and soliciting funds. Many participants make their own way to demonstration sites, securing their own transportation, food, and accommodation; frequently, attendees share their capabilities and facilities and are assisted by like-minded groups and individuals at the demonstration location. Some funding originates with the large and better-known protest organizations such as the Direct Action Network and the Alliance for Global Justice(15). Protesters attending demonstrations considered to be in the interest of labour are often provided funds, transportation, meals, and lodging by labour unions and affiliated groups.

32 The San Francisco-based human-rights group, Global Action, provides an example of the cooperative and collegial relationships which exist in support of demonstration organizers and participants. A nine-person protest team conducted a 20-city tour using shared and borrowed vehicles prior to the Washington IMF/WB demonstration. The tour was arranged by e-mail correspondence, which also facilitated the team's housing and food during the journey. In return, the team conducted meetings, teach-ins, rallies and promotional activities to encourage attendance in Washington.

33. Funds are raised variously by solicitation, sales of badges, T-shirts, and other paraphenalia which publicize the range of protest movements. Other sources of funding are training courses, such as those run by The Ruckus Society and Co-motion Action, which charge $125.00 per attendee but request that participants pay as much as they can afford(16). Fundamentally, the protesters and the actual demonstrations do not of themselves require huge financial support. Much of what is undertaken is improvised and ad hoc, and does not result from the efforts of large self-interested lobbies or conspiracies. The closest approximation to organized support is that represented by labourŐs activism, which has included publicity and the provision of buses to transport participants.

Implications for Canada

34. A member of many of the organizations that have been subjected to, or are targeted for, protest actions (WTO, IMF, WB, OAS, WPC) at home and abroad, Canada is a favoured venue for international conferences. Governments at all levels in Canada make a practice of inviting and encouraging organizations to hold their meetings and conferences at various locations across the nation. The concept is good for business and serves to raise Canada's democratic profile in world affairs. Paradoxically, however, Canada's positive image could be marred by the occurrence of protests and demonstrations, and especially by associated unfavourable media coverage. Similarly, some authorities suggest Canada's reputation and interests abroad could suffer if the country is identified as a member of institutions targeted by foreign protests and demonstrations.

35. Although the majority of demonstrations are intended to be pacific, violence does occur and protests can be disruptive and expensive. While security agencies must know the nature of the opposition they are facing and be prepared, they must be careful of the form and extent of their response. Excessively draconian procedures could have a deleterious effect and provide the protesters with propaganda material to be used against the government and security elements. Further, care must be taken that security does not create the atmosphere of an armed camp which restricts and inconveniences the movement of conference attendees and irritates local business interests. Ultimately, security forces and policy makers also must recognize the possibility of increased levels of violence on the part of some extremists who may become frustrated by the protective measures in place at targeted conferences and meetings.

OUTLOOK

36. Anti-globalization protests and demonstrations will continue. In fact, many non-associated groups will seize on the anti-globalization theme as a convenient rationale to participate in demonstrations, making it difficult to accurately forecast security needs. Conference organizers, security agencies, and law enforcement personnel will have to accept that reality and the inherent challenge, which will demand adequate contingency planning. Sound intelligence arrangements will be crucial to the successful implementation of precautionary measures, especially to avoid errors of over- or under-commitment of resources and to preclude draconian responses or steps which would promote violent reactions from protesters. Extremist fringe elements will seek any excuse to indulge in aggressive tactics or resort to destructive activities. Clashes amongst demonstrators and between protesters and security peronnel have become a standard feature of many conference demonstrations, and some anarchist groups are calling for more violent involvement.

37. North America, Europe, and the United Kingdom will likely be the most affected areas, largely because the majority of targeted meetings and conferences are scheduled there. Prominent locales such as London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, and Prague are attractive to delegates, media, and protesters alike, as were Washington and Seattle. Within relatively easy travel distance, even for trans-atlantic journeys, they are readily accessible, offer a wide range of amenities, and possess excellent communications. As well, such major capital cities have a cachet that enhances the impact of media coverage and encourages the presence and extraordinary actions of demonstrators.

38. Distance and remote location remain factors in curtailing the presence of demonstrators to some degree, but are not sufficient to ensure security or constrain the influence of pressure groups. For example, early in May, the annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank at Chiang Mai, Thailand, was overwhelmed by 4,000 protesters demanding an end to policies they claimed punished the poor. Inspired by events in Washington and Seattle, protesters caught police by surprise when they stormed security barricades.(17) The July G-8 Summit on Okinawa was peaceful, largely because heavy security precautions combined with high costs for transportation, accomodation and logistic support to deter the presence of large numbers of protesters. Nonetheless, a day prior to the conference, thousands of people staged protests across Japan and students marched in Tokyo, shouting 'Smash the summit.' (18)

39. While location will have an influence on the number and type of demonstrators present at a conference, the purpose and nature of the gathering will be a much more decisive factor. Significant meetings, especially those featuring senior government or corporate leaders, such as G-8 Summits and IMF meetings, will attract large numbers of peaceful protesters, as well as those predisposed to violent activities. As well, the lack of obvious achievement by principals during a preceding conference, such as failure to approve debt relief for poor countries, may serve to mobilize thousands more protesters and trigger a wave of anger and outrage at subsequent events. Representatives of lobby groups who were present on Okinawa voiced their disatisfaction with the outcome and claimed their frustration will lead to protests 'that will eclipse events in Seattle.'(19)

40. The Internet will continue to play a large role inthe success or failure of globalization protests and demonstrations. Groups will use the Internet to identify and publicize targets, solicit and encourage support, organize and communicate information and instructions, recruit, raise funds, and as a means of promoting their various individual and collective aims. The Internet remains a major source of protest motivation and planning; it will require careful monitoring by conference planners to determine the intentions and goals of demonstrators, and to forestall unexpected incidents.

41. Continued presence and use of large numbers of security forces, fencing, and similar restrictive measures could dampen the enthusiasm of protesters and might gradually reduce the size of some gatherings, as could adverse weather conditions. But, as demonstrated by extremist animal-rights and environmental activists, security measures could prompt a rise in the scale of violence from smashing windows to arson attacks, the use of explosive devices, and even physical threats against individuals, including posting warning letters purported to contain contaminated razor blades. The situation is paradoxical: the interest of targeted institutions and their membership in holding meetings on Canadian soil could wane if faced with stringent security precautions and movement restrictions. Conversely, Seattle-type disturbances and interference could similarly engender a loss of interest in using Canadian venues for international conferences and meetings which might prove attractive to demonstrators. Nonetheless, it has been established that antiglobalists are organizing against a number of international meetings in Canada, including the April 2001 Summit of the Americas in Quebec City. Given the virulent anti-globalization rhetoric directed against the Organization of American States (OAS), the threat of Summit-associated violence in Quebec City cannot be ruled out.

ENDNOTES
1. The Globe Mail, 1 Dec 1999.
2. The Sunday Times, 15 Aug 1999.
3. The Ottawa Citizen, 20 Apr 2000.
4. Minneapolis Star Tribune, 21 May 2000.
5. Naomi Klein. NO LOGO. Alfred A. Knopf, Canada, 2000, p.338.
6. IBID, p.339.
7. 'After Seattle', William Finnegan. The New Yorker, 17 Apr 2000, p42.
8. The Ottawa Citizen, 1 Jun 2000.
9. Time. 26 Apr 2000, p.21.
10. 'NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND', David Samuels. Harper's Magazine, May 2000, p.37.
11. 'Neither Left, Nor Right', Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report, Winter 2000, p.40.
12. Klein, Op. Cit., p.311.
13. Calgary Herald, 15 Apr 2000.
14. The Globe Mail, 12 May 2000.
15. Time, 24 Apr 2000, p.21.
16. The Globe Mail, 12 May 2000.
17. The Globe Mail, 8 May, 2000.
18. CNN.Com, 21 July, 2000.
19. Reuters, 23 July, 2000.

Perspectives is a publication of the Requirements, Analysis and Production Branch of CSIS. Comments concerning publications may be made to the Director General, Requirements, Analysis and Production Branch at the following address: Box 9732, Stn. ŇTÓ, Ottawa, Ont., K1G 4G4.

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Police repression biggest threat at Quebec City

From: "Edward Pickersgill" <Lab@assets.net>
By Judy Rebeck
Fri, 30 Mar 2001

From ZNet

Not since the War Measures Act, thirty years ago, has there been a greater display of the armed might of the state in Canada than there will be in Quebec City during the Summit of the Americas on April 20-22. And not since the War Measures Act, when the army occupied the city of Montreal after two public officials were kidnapped by the FLQ (Quebec Liberation Front) thirty years ago, has there been a greater need for people of conscience to speak out against the repression of dissent.

If there is violence in Quebec City, it will almost certainly come from the police not the demonstrators. For the last few weeks, hints of evil intent by "a small number of violent groups," has been used by the RCMP and Quebec's Public Security Minister Serge Menard who announced just yesterday yet another 1,000 police to add to the extraordinary army of 5,000 already in place for the meeting of leaders of the Americas.

Not a single group organizing for Quebec City is planning violence of any kind. Most of the groups in a somewhat naďve attempt to avoid police repression have written in their basis of unity that they renounce all violence. There are two organizations that refuse to renounce violence in advance because they think that in some struggles violence is sometimes necessary, for example the Zapatistas in Mexico.

Neither of these groups is planning violence in Quebec City. As they see it Quebec City is different from Seattle. Breaking windows at Starbucks, as a symbol of transnational corporate domination can be justified, in their view. Breaking windows in a small café in Quebec City cannot. As far as I can see, humour and imagination rather than violence will be the weapon of choice of demonstrators in Quebec City.

The anarchist groups that security forces are most worried about have been distributing flyers door to door in Quebec City encouraging residents to "adopt a demonstrator." You can check off whether you want an anarchist, a feminist, a trade unionist, a student or whatever with cute little graphics beside each check off. They are calling their activities a "Carnival Against Capitalism." Sounds threatening doesn't it?

In the 1960's the police used to talk about "outside agitators" causing problems in otherwise peaceful demonstrators so that they could justify riding in on horses clubbing young people whose only crime was opposing the war in Viet Nam. The strategy of creating the evil few to repress the many is a very old one. Don't buy it. You can find out what is being planned yourself. Start with the independent media site at www.cmaq.net.

The biggest challenge to the wide variety of groups organizing to protest the FTAA will be to remain united in face of state attempts to divide them. The movement got diverted after Seattle in a divisive debate about tactics. The tactic used by anti-globalization protesters is non-violent civil disobedience. In the best tradition of Gandhi, demonstrators put their bodies on the line. In the direct action training taking place in numerous cities across Ontario and Quebec, students are learning how to remain calm and peaceful in face of police provocation. The police on the other hand, learn how to intimate and frighten demonstrators so that only those willing to be dragged to jail will remain to face down the Darth Vadar-like terror of the riot squad.

In Windsor last summer in what seems now like a dress rehearsal for Quebec the massive police presence led to completely unprovoked brutality against peaceful demonstrators. Police used pepper spray indiscriminately on protesters who were doing nothing more sinister than hanging a banner on a fence. Residents of Windsor became furious when they realized that their city was turned into an armed camp to protect them from 2,000 peaceful, youthful demonstrators who were in general better behaved than the police.

Like in Windsor, there is a 10 foot high fence with a concrete base virtually surrounding the old city to keep demonstrators far away from where 34 leaders of the Americas are meeting. And like in Windsor, major attempts are being made to stop activists from coming in to Canada from the United States. The police build-up and rumours of violence are also an attempt to frighten away people who might find common cause with the protesters but are not willing to take a risk to protest. The claims of the Canadian government that the Summit of the Americas will focus on strengthening democracy ring pretty hollow in face of the fact that no-one is permitted to even see the documents that the leaders will be discussing.

Most anti-globalization activists assume that the FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas) will have all the odious elements of NAFTA, including the infamous Chapter 11, which allows corporations to sue governments if laws or regulations interfere with profit.

In a recent report journalist Murray Dobbin finds that more than half of the corporate law suits so far involve challenges to health or environmental measures and that almost half are challenges to municipal or state government regulation.

No one really knows what's in the FTAA agreement because the documents are secret. On April 2, protesters in Ottawa will use direct action to attempt to liberate the documents from the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. The training for that action will be held in the Parliament Buildings in full view of television cameras.

There may be the odd person in Quebec who gets frustrated enough to throw a rock at the police or threw a window but that is not the reason for the massive police build-up. The biggest challenge to the anti-globalization movement in Quebec will be not to get diverted by these age old police tactics of divide and rule and keep their eyes on the prize, the growing opposition to undemocratic trade deals that seek to codify corporate rule over democratically elected governments.

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!!ANTI-SWEATSHOP RALLY AT GWU!!

From: "Bernard Pollack" <pollack@gwu.edu>
Fri, 30 Mar 2001

Wednesday, April 4th at 12:30 PM
Outside Rice Hall (On Eye Street, NW - between 21st and 22nd streets). Foggy Bottom Metro. Wash, DC.

Demand that the George Washington University ensure that its clothes are not made in Sweatshops!

Join the GW Action Coalition, the DC Metropolitan Labor Council (an AFL-CIO affiliate representing 150,000 workers), the Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance, the GW College Democrats, Greens, Socialists and Anarchists, and other area students and residents!

Come rally to pressure the GWU administration to join the Workers' Rights Consortium (WRC), a sweatshop verification agency representing over 75 US universities that ensures that clothes bearing the colleges' logo are NOT MADE IN SWEATSHOPS!

The GW Administration has blocked students' efforts to negotiate on this manner, and now it is time to mobilize to show the administration that students and citizens are serious about using the WRC as a tried-and-true mechanism to protect human rights everywhere!

The rally will include speakers from the local labor community, GW students, and students from all around the country who are mobilizing to tell GWU to catch up to this effective WRC (which includes American and Georgetown). Contact Todd Tucker (tnt@econjustice.net; 202-337-4719) or Dan Calamuci (mooch@gwu.edu, 202-223-4159) for more information and to volunteer in organizing!

Please forward

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April 11th day of action goes INTERNATIONAL!
Stop the latest Citi merger

Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001

APRIL 11TH DAY OF ACTION AGAINST CITIGROUP RALLIES ACTIVISTS AROUND THE PLANET!

In this Post - 1. April 11th Day of action update 2. Article NY Newsday on fight to stop Citi merger 3. Take Action! Support Inner City Press's Effort to Stop the Citigroup/European American Bank merger

NOTE - This list serve usually puts out between 2-3 emails a month. In the next 2 weeks leading up to the April 11th Day of Action there will be a number of separate posts to allow attachments of various campaign materials. We are doing this rather than sending multiple attachments with a single post because we don't want to discriminate against people who cannot receive multiple attachments. We apologize for the increase in traffic but hope you find the materials useful.

APRIL 11TH Day of Action Against Citigroup

People around the world are uniting to demand an end to Citi's destruction of ecosystems and communities around the world! Take action for a global economy where principles come before corporate profits by confronting CITIGROUP!

We've been hearing reports from people all around the world gearing up for April 11th. In cities across the U.S. and Canada where many activists are connecting their actions to the mobilization to stop the upcoming Free Trade Agreement of the Americas and the campaign to target Canada's largest bank Toronto-Dominion. We have also heard from activists in South Africa, Brazil, Ecuador, Ireland, Belgium, Switzerland, Australia, India and Germany all working on confronting Citigroup's destructive practices.

What are you doing on April 11th in your community? Join the fight to transform the global financial system!

Let us know what you are organizing! Even if its just a few folks handing out flyers in front of a Citi office the more cities where people take action the harder it is for Citigroup to ignore this campaign.

Rainforest Action Network has organizing materials such as template flyers to hand out in front of Citi offices, sample press releases and background info on Citi's destructive practices. Much of it is (or will be soon) available at www.ran.org and we can also provide electronic and hard copies. Contact Rainforest Action Network:

NY - Beka Economopoulos beka@ran.org, 917-560-3609/888-840-6416 or SF - Patrick Reinsborough organize@ran.org, 415-398-4404/800-989-RAIN

Whether its civil disobedience, mass credit card cut-ups, teach-ins, shareholder activism, demonstrations, phone zaps, fax blasts, press conferences, guerrilla theater, informational pickets or whatever - take action against CITIGROUP on April 11th.

Citi has over 1200 branches and offices around the US and offices in over 100 countries around the world. Find your local subsidiary at:

<http://www.citibank.com/branches/ <http://www.citifinancial.com/branchlocator/ <http://www.salomonsmithbarney.com/

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QUICK ACTION NEEDED! FILE A COMMENT TO STOP THE LATEST CITI MERGER

Citigroup on February 12, 2001, announced its intent to acquire European American Bank, an institution with 97 branches here in New York. Citi has filed applications with the Federal Reserve, OCC and New York Banking Department to acquire EAB. All of these applications are subject to the Community Reinvestment Act, requiring a review of Citigroup's practices in low- and moderate-income areas.

In connection with Citigroup's applications last fall to acquire the high-interest rate lender Associates First Capital Corporation, the OCC (and FDIC) said they couldn't "get to" the Associates predatory lending issues, because Citi's applications weren't subject to CRA. Well, Citi's EAB applications ARE subject to CRA. The Fed didn't have any comment period of any kind of Citi-Associates -- but has one now, on Citi-EAB.

A possible strategy / campaign is to comment on Citi's EAB applications, asking the Fed and OCC to now closely review Associates, CitiFinancial (into which Associates is being merged), and Citi's other subprime units. There are also, from a New York perspective, some "straight CRA" issues: Citi's still-deficient prime rate lending in low- and moderate-income areas; Citi's arguable evasion of a commitment it made to the New York Banking Department in 1998, to improve its lending in "majority minority" census tracts in New York (which Citi has complied with only be making a slew of $1,000 home improvement loans, much smaller than the loans, even home improvement loans, it makes in other areas); and the branches that Citi would close, if it acquires EAB.

With the clock running, and with an indication that if we want a hearing, it would need to be requested as early in the process as possible, Inner City Press / Community on the Move on March 12 filed comments on Citi - EAB, with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the OCC, and the NYBD. In the last week, some groups have asked how a "non-New York" group would comment, and have asked that a draft comment be prepared and circulated. I've taken a shot at it: below is a draft comment, to the Fed and OCC, on Citi - EAB, raising Associates issues (including the FTC suit). The Fed's comment period runs (for now) until April 2; not sure of OCC comment period, which will be controlled by when Citibank, N.A. published newspaper notice.

--Matthew Lee, Esq. Executive Director Inner City Press/Community on the Move & Inner City Public Interest Law Center Mail to: P.O. Box 580188 Mount Carmel Station Bronx, NY 10458 Tel: 718-716-3540 Fax: 718-716-3161 Web: <www.innercitypress.org>

March __, 2001

Federal Reserve Bank of New York Attn: Ms. Betsy Buttrill White, Senior Vice President 33 Liberty Street New York, NY 10045-0001 [Fax number: 212-720-1608]

Office of the Comptroller of the Currency Attn: Mr. Richard Erb, Licensing Manager 250 E Street, SW Washington, DC 20219 [Fax number: 202-874-5293; E-mail: <Largebanks@occ.treas.gov>]

RE: THE APPLICATIONS OF CITIGROUP, INC. AND CITIBANK, N.A. TO ACQUIRE CONTROL OF EUROPEAN AMERICAN BANK

Dear Ms. Buttrill White, Mr. Erb, others:

On behalf of _____, this is a timely comment opposing the applications of Citibank, N.A. and Citigroup, Inc. ("Citi") to acquire control of European American Bank ("EAB").

Public hearings should be held on Citi's applications to acquire EAB. On March 6, 2001, the Federal Trade Commission sued Citi, and its recently-acquired subsidiary, Associates, for predatory lending: deception of consumers, "packing" of credit insurance, and "flipping" of high-cost loans. Citigroup's Delaware bank, Associates National Bank, has a rare Needs to Improve rating under the Community Reinvestment Act. And Citibank's normal interest rate lending disproportionately excludes African-Americans and Latinos.

For example, in the New York City Metropolitan Statistical Area, Citicorp Mortgage made 1236 conventional home purchase loans to whites, and only 56 such loans to African Americans, and only 58 to Latinos. Meanwhile, Citicorp Mortgage denied 14.9% of applications from African Americans, versus a 4.5% denial rate for whites. Citicorp Mortgage denies African Americans 3.31 times more frequently than whites (other lenders in New York deny African Americans 2.0 times more frequently than whites). On New York's Long Island, where Citigroup substantially overlaps with EAB, Citicorp Mortgage's 1999 denial rate disparity between African Americans and whites for conventional home purchase loans was 6.26. For more, see <www.innercitypress.org/citieab.html>.

It is foreseeable that Citi would close a number of the EAB bank branch it is applying to acquire. Bloomberg News of February 12, 2001, reported: "Citigroup said it plans to close some branches after completing the acquisition in mid-2001." In 1996, Citibank closed dozens of branches, in low-income sections of New York: see, e.g., "Citibank's Quiet Branch Closings And Switch to ATMs Stir Outrage," American Banker, February 12, 1996; "Bank Won't Give in On Closings," N.Y. Daily News, January 24, 1996. A hearing should be held at which community residents and others can testify about the prospective effects of Citigroup's proposal, and Citigroup's practices more generally.

A recent Senate investigation into money laundering has found, for the umpteenth time, that Citigroup has insufficient controls in place to prevent money laundering. See, New York Times of March 3, 2001, March 3, 2001. As matters concerning (and injuring) the public interest, consider that Citigroup is extensively involved in standardless "resource extraction," much of it environmentally destructive, through such units as Citicorp Petrolease, Inc., Phibro Energy Production, and Phibro Commodities. In Indonesia, Citigroup is involved with one of the most notorious palm oil companies, London Sumatra (LonSum). This company is currently in the process of clearing and planting 372,000 acres of new palm oil plantations, despite resistance from local indigenous communities, and despite its devastating effect on orangutans. For more, see <www.ran.org>. Since November, 2000, Australian "natural resources" company BHP Ltd. has appointed Citi's Salomon Smith Barney to advise on its U.S. coal operations, including possible mine acquisitions. BHP's possible targets include U.S. steaming coal mines owned by the Peabody Group, the world's largest coal company, and the No.2 U.S coal company, Arch Coal Inc.

Citigroup's SSB has served as advisor and done underwriting for problematic projects like the Three Gorges dam in China, for the World Bank and controversial projects like the proposed Chad - Cameroon oil pipeline, and for the genetic engineering firms Deltagen, Orchid BioSciences, and Genecor International. Citigroup's SSB has acted as lead underwriter, not only for presumptively predatory mortgage loans, but also for Wackenhut Corrections Corp.'s initial public offering of the private prison-based REIT, Correctional Properties Trust. Given increasing public awareness of, and opposition to, such practices, Citigroup's involvement must be considered in connection with the notice, under not only the "managerial resources" factor, but also (prospectively), the financial resources and ability factors -- as does the potential financial ramifications of the FTC's March 6, 2001, predatory lending lawsuit.

Citigroup's SSB has its own involvement in predatory lending, as an underwriter and warehouse lender. For example, in 1998 Salomon Brothers Realty Corp. provided warehouse lines of credit of $775 million to subprime lender New Century Mortgage Corporation. New Century disproportionately targets its high interest rate loans at people of color: in the Philadelphia MSA in 1999, New Century made 134 refinance loans to whites, and 61 to African Americans, a ratio of 2.2 to one. The aggregate industry made 42,476 refinance loans to whites in this MSA, and 5301 to African Americans, a ratio of 8.01 to one. New Century is over 3.5 times more likely to target its (high interest) refinance loans to African Americans in this MSA than is the industry aggregate.

For further example, SSB was the underwriter for the subprime mortgage backed securities issuances Centex Home Equity 1999-4 and 2000-A. Centex targets people of color with its troubling, high interest rate loans. For example, in the New York City MSA in 1999, for African Americans, Latinos and whites, the aggregate industry made 20.2% of its refinance loans to African Americans. For Centex Credit Corp., the targeting is clear: a whopping 56.3% to African Americans. What standards do SSB and Citigroup have for working with subprime lenders? Apparently none.

Citigroup is a corporation without standards. We support, and direct the agencies to, <www.innercitypress.org/citieab.html>, for further analysis of the negative effects of Citigroup's proposal. Public hearings should be held on these applications, and the applications should be denied.

Sincerely,

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Exploring nature's many faces

Christian Science Monitor
FEATURES, ARTS & LEISURE MOVIES
FRIDAY, MARCH 30, 2001
By David Sterritt Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2001/03/30/fp17s2-csm.shtml

Write a letter to the editor (oped@csps.com)

The world of nature has inspired many a documentary, but it's unlikely that any previous week has brought nonfiction movies with more contrasting approaches than two opening today.

Julia Hill was a freethinking member of the Earth First! organization when she decided to translate her ideas into action. Packing some possessions, she climbed into the branches of a 1,000-year-old California redwood tree and declared her intention to stay there until she could be sure a timber company wouldn't cut it down. Her sojourn lasted two years.

Loggers reacted with indignation, proclaiming their right to pursue business as usual. Environmentalists rallied around her, seeing her act as a courageous maneuver aimed at promoting their nature-friendly cause.

Butterfly gestures in the direction of balance and objectivity, allowing loggers and other skeptics to criticize Hill's actions. But the movie is a celebration of her ideas, serving more as a nature-loving polemic than an impartial news report. Hill spent much of her time in solitude, but she had quite a few visitors during her vigil, one of whom was director Doug Wolens, who interviewed her throughout the two-year period and occasionally spent entire days on her 180-foot-high perch. These were committed butterflies, indeed.

Keep the River on Your Right: A Modern Cannibal Tale is darker in tone and deeper in what it reveals about certain aspects of human nature. It centers on Tobias Schneebaum, a New York artist with a passion for far-flung corners of the globe.

An ethnological expedition to Peru in the 1950s put him in contact with an indigenous community unknown in the West, and Schneebaum settled with them for a year. One night he marched off with them on what he thought was an exploratory journey, only to discover that they were bent on killing and cannibalizing another tribe. He had no choice about being present during this, and the experience changed his life - and other people's perceptions of him - in ways he never could have expected when he left his Greenwich Village home.

Touching on many facets of Schneebaum's life, from his homosexuality to his gifts for painting and music, this study by David Shapiro and Laurie Gwen Shapiro is disturbing but consistently fascinating.

• 'Butterfly,' not rated, contains vulgar language. 'Keep the River on Your Right,' rated R, deals with violence, sexuality.

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Masked rebels grab spotlight in Mexico's Congress
"It's our hour," say Zapatistas, in push for indigenous-rights bill.

Christian Science Monitor
FRIDAY, MARCH 30, 2001
By Wendy Patterson Special to The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2001/03/30/fp7s2-csm.shtml

Write a letter to the editor (oped@csps.com)

MEXICO CITY - The Zapatista rebel march that began Feb. 25 ended in triumph this week, with a milestone appearance before Mexico's Congress to plead for passage of an Indian-rights bill.

When they departed from their jungle stronghold in Chiapas state, the 24 masked men and women did not know if they would be allowed to speak in the halls of government. But they won this, and took the opportunity to make a peaceful overture.

The rebels acknowledged President Vicente Fox's actions in meeting Zapatista demands to restart peace talks. This week the president closed the last three of the government's seven military bases in the Zapatista region, which has been occupied by tens of thousands of soldiers since 1995.

"His orders have been a sign of peace. We too will give orders of peace to our people," said a Mayan woman who calls herself Comandante Esther, addressing the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies.

Rebel leaders say the appearance marks a transition for the Zapatistas - from guerrilla movement to political force. Notably absent from the Zapatista delegation before Congress was Subcomandante Marcos, the rebels' well-known, charismatic leader and main military strategist.

The appearance also put Mexico's nascent civil rights movement in the spotlight. But many were not applauding.

The Zapatistas addressed a half-full chamber, after many legislators boycotted Wednesday's extraordinary session. Earlier, the president's own conservative National Action Party (PAN) narrowly lost a vote to scuttle the appearance.

Comandante Esther, a short Indian woman in sandals, was the first to take the podium, with a huge Mexican flag behind her and an array of national and international press and colorfully dressed indigenous leaders in attendance.

Referring to Marcos' obvious absence, Comandante Esther said, "Subcomandante Marcos is just that, a subcomandante. We are the comandantes, those who command. We gave him the mission to bring us here.... Now it's our hour." Esther also said that Marcos has been ordered "not to make any military advances."

The Zapatistas staged a brief armed uprising in 1994, in which about a hundred, mostly rebels and soldiers, were killed. A cease-fire was declared almost immediately, but low-intensity hostility, largely Instigated by paramilitary groups, has continued.

Esther, and the three male rebel leaders who spoke after her, spent much of their impassioned speeches decrying centuries of ill-treatment of the nation's indigenous peoples, who suffer disproportionately high levels of illiteracy, unemployment, malnutrition, and infant mortality.

Although the rebels had said they would not reinitiate official peace negotiations until their other demands - the passage of the bill and the release of all of their political prisoners - were met, a TV news program reported Wednesday that the rebels' designated negotiator had already had an initial meeting with the president's envoy to restart talks.

The president, in office since Dec. 1, has bent over backwards with friendly appeals to the Zapatistas. He welcomed the rebels on their two-week trek through Mexico. He supported their appearance before Congress, and announced to the nation that he was willing to bet his political capital on achieving peace in Chiapas.

But Fox, whose election overthrew the 71-year domination by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), cannot count on the support of his own party. "The great paradox is that the PAN is not supporting the president [on this bill] - and the PRI is," says Carlos Elizondo Mayer-Serra, director of the independent think tank Center for Economic Research in Mexico City.

Mr. Elizondo says the PRI has nothing to lose in supporting the bill now - since it can't pass without PAN's support - but if it gets closer to passage, they may change their vote. "It's all politics," he says.

Based on the San Andrés peace accords signed in 1996, the bill proposes allowing indigenous groups to govern themselves at the local level and promote the use of their own languages, customs, and systems of justice. It would also allow them greater control over their land.

But the parameters of these proposed expansions of Indian autonomy have yet to be defined and are at the heart of the congressional debate. Those opposed to it - principally PAN deputies - say it will balkanize the country and won't protect nonindigenous minorities living in indigenous municipalities. Others say it would sanction abuse against women, already prevalent in some Indian communities.

Esther touched on those objections in her speech. "Those who say this proposal will balkanize the country forget that the country is already divided," she said, adding that the rich live very different lives from the nation's 40 million poor.

Political observers say the bill faces an uphill battle: Because it would require constitutional amendments, the bill would need a two-thirds majority in the Senate and the Chamber, plus a majority of the country's state legislatures, for passage.

Fox, who has said improving the lot of Mexico's indigenous is a key objective of his presidency, reiterated again Wednesday his recognition of the Indians' plight.

"Peace ... is only a starting point for our country to pay this enormous debt we have to 10 million indigenous who live in extreme poverty," he said speaking before the Chamber of Transport and Tourism.

After their speeches, the Zapatistas announced they would return Thursday to Chiapas. The Zapatista's task now is to organize at the grass-roots level, says Federico Estevez, political analyst at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico. "It's like a civil rights movement," says Estevez. "It's like Martin Luther King - that's exactly what it's like."

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10,000 Israeli Arabs Protest in Sympathy With Palestinians

New York Times
March 30, 2001
By DEBORAH SONTAG
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/30/world/31CND-MIDEAS.html

SAKHNIN, Israel, March 30 - In the Israeli-Arab community, life is divided into before and after last October, when Israeli police shot dead 13 Israeli Arabs during tense, raucous demonstrations. For many, hope died then that Israeli Arabs would ever be accepted as full citizens of Israel with equal status and rights.

Arab citizens make up 18 percent of Israel's population of more than 6 million, and for decades the Arabs have been caught between two worlds, neither fully Israeli or Palestinian.

Today, the first major rallies by Israeli-Arabs since October took place in this town north of Nazareth and throughout Israel. Israeli officials tensed, but, with the Israeli police under strict orders to remain completely on the outskirts of the villages, the demonstrations, while vividly pro-Palestinian, ended peacefully.

The Jewish establishment, eager to keep the Israeli-Palestinian conflict outside the borders of Israel proper, breathed a great sigh of relief. The calm in Sakhnin, where more than 10,000 Israeli-Arabs gathered, contrasted strikingly today with one of the bloodiest days of streets protests in the West Bank and Gaza for some time.

At least five Palestinians were killed in clashes with Israeli security forces during mass protests at the edges of several Palestinian cities. The Palestinian anger was fueled by Israeli air strikes in response to several terror bombings in Israel, by intensified fighting in the divided West Bank town of Hebron after an Israeli baby was shot dead by a Palestinian sniper, and by fears that Israel was planning to retake some Palestinian lands.

The Aksa mosque in the Old City of Jerusalem, a flashpoint that has been quiet for months, was the scene of renewed violence today after Muslim prayers concluded.

In contrast, the mood of the demonstrators in Sakhnin was peaceful but it did not bode well for relations between Arabs and Jews inside Israel. Most of the demonstrators were gloomy about the prospects for reconciliation, and some were militant. At the high school, Arab youths unfurled a huge Palestinian flag while Israeli and American flags were burned. In the streets, some chanted, "Hezbollah, take revenge for us," and "We raise a drink to you, Iraq." In October, after the Palestinian uprising erupted in the West Bank and Gaza, many Jewish Israelis were horrified by the militancy of Israeli Arabs, their identification with Palestinian anti-Israeli sentiments, and by what was seen as the violent nature of their demonstrations. Israeli Arabs in turn were horrified by the killings of their young men, who were card-carrying Israeli citizens fluent in Hebrew and Arab.

Darwish Aburaya, an Israeli Arab sitting today under a wreath of orange flowers on a monument to the young men killed by Israeli police, said, "After October, the wound is forever."

Wearing T-shirts with pictures of those killed, the marchers today passed by the town's cemetery, chanting, "Martrys, lie down comfortably, we will continue the struggle for you."

An Israeli official inquiry into the killings last October is under way, but many Israeli Arabs do not trust the proceedings. Tensions have run so high in the courtroom, where where some grieving parents attacked Israeli police officers as they were testifying, that the hearings are now going to be closed.

Mohammed Ganayiam, 37, a school principal, stood today in a dusty cemetery at the center of town."In the past, there used to be hope that coexistence between Jews and Arabs inside Israel was possible," he said. "We were great believers in dialogue."

"Now I am afraid," he continued, "that things are so bad that conversation, if it were possible, would only make things worse. We increasingly see our fate as linked to our Palestinian brothers. Only after they get their rights will we get ours."

Israeli Arabs marked today as their 25th anniversary of Land Day, a date in Israel commemorating a large protest against land expropriations in 1976 that marked the Arabs' emergence from a relatively docile population into a political force. On that date, Israeli forces first put down an Israeli-Arab demonstration with bullets, killing six Arabs.

"I was 14 in 1976, and I saw everything," Mr. Ganayaim said. "But then the years passed and we began to think of it as a one-time event. Until October.

"Now we despair that after all these years, we're back in the same place," he said. "At my school, the youths are not thinking about anything else but fighting the battle that we should have won for them."

Anxious about the Land Day demonstrations, Israeli police negotiated terms with Arab community leaders to lay the groundwork for a peaceful occasion. The Arab leaders promised quiet if the police stayed outside their towns, which they did. And the police pledged not to interfere if the leaders kept the Arab protests from spilling onto the highways, which the leaders also did.

Earlier this week, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon met with Arab political leaders and said that he wanted to "turn a new page" in the government's relations with the Arab community. He surprised them by promising that his government would not seize any Arab-owned land inside Israel. He stunned them by asking for their thoughts about building a new Arab town. No new Arab city has been built since Israel's founding in 1948.

But the goodwill that Mr. Sharon generated inside a closed-door political meeting did not trickle down to the street, where there was a lot of anti-Sharon chanting.

Several contingents of Jewish Israeli leftists participated in the marches inside Israel. Yehudit Zaidenberg, a kibbutznik who belongs to a feminist peace group, said that she felt a strong need to keep the rift between Israeli Arabs and Jews from widening.

"They're citizens just like me," she said. "I feel ashamed a lot of time by my government and my people. It's terrible that Israel has fallen into this situation. We've lost so much ground. Coexistence is now like a dirty word."

But Tarik Abooksa, an Arab Israeli who teaches English in a village near Sakhnin, lamented, "We had so many Jewish acquaintances. There was a high percentage of understanding between us and these Jewish people. But now, even the leftists, inside of them, they don't trust us because we're Arabs. We've lost all hope."

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Mad-cow faces made at protest
Ministers face activists riled up over environment

Montreal Gazette
Friday 30 March 2001
CATHERINE SOLYOM The Gazette
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/pages/010330/5003859.html

In what looked like a costume dress rehearsal for the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City, yesterday's demonstration downtown was peaceful and colourful - but above all, loud.

With 34 environment ministers from across the Americas holed up inside the Omni Hotel to prepare for the April summit, costumed demonstrators outside used bugles and beating drums to belt out their case against the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas.

The dozen riot police cordoning off the hotel didn't even flinch.

"They don't want to listen to us so we have to make ourselves heard," said Greenpeace campaigner Eric Darier. "It's a very powerful reminder that the people outside matter and that they have to protect the environment."

Dressed in orange coveralls, Darier was perhaps the most subdued of the 300-strong crowd, which included folks dressed up as a variety of endangered species - from eagles and sharks to polar bears and some genetically modified animal/vegetables.

There were also about 30 mad cows, identifiable by black-and-white garb as well as their anger over the spread of agribusiness through free trade.

"Factory farming is an environmental nightmare and animals have the right to live free of cruelty, as do humans," said Janet Lalumiere, dressed up as a cow with her 5-month-old son, Noah, as a calf. "I'd like my son to grow up in an environment that considers all animals equally. Maybe that's too much to ask, but a lot has been achieved by masses working together."

The masses buried the Multilateral Agreement on Investment in 1996 and ran the World Trade Organization out of Seattle, activists recalled.

But now environmental and social activists are up against an agreement they are calling a "NAFTA times 34." They've come armed with precedents of how trade agreements have so often trounced environmental legislation:

- The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade dolphin/tuna dispute: in the early 1990s, the U.S. was forced to weaken its legislation on fishing techniques that endangered dolphins, so that Mexican tuna could be sold in the U.S.

- Hormone-treated beef: the European Union refused to accept some meat imports from North America on the basis that they were carcinogenic. The EU lost at the World Trade Organization in 1999 and pays Canada and the U.S. $120 million in compensation.

- Toxic waste: A NAFTA tribunal awarded a U.S. company, Metalclad, $16.7 million in compensation in 2000 after a Mexican municipality vetoed a toxic-waste dump. The case is now being appealed in the B.C. Supreme Court.

In short, protesters said legal instruments to protect the environment, like the environmental side agreement signed with NAFTA, were useless and could not be counted on if and when the FTAA comes into force.

Environment Minister David Anderson couldn't be counted on either, they said. Anderson seems to be giving up on the Kyoto protocol to lower green-house-gas emissions now that U.S. President George W. Bush has pulled out, and he has neglected to sign the biosafety accord negotiated in Montreal last year or effectively protect endangered species, said Greenpeace's Darier. "It's disgusting that a minister of the environment is more in favour of free trade than protecting the environment."

Still, some protesters said trade agreements did not have to be environmental disasters. Maude Barlow, of the Council of Canadians, said: "We're not against trade, but we wonder what it would be like if the economy served the people, not the other way around."

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Street vendors protest in Bolivia

InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 3/30/2001
By VANESSA ARRINGTON Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406561454

LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) - Police used tear gas Thursday to scatter thousands of street vendors who paralyzed this city with flaming blockades on major downtown streets, protesting threatened restrictions on their work. There were no reports of injuries or arrests.

About 18,000 protesters flooded streets near City Hall, burning boxes and paper at intersections to protest a plan by Mayor Juan del Granado to allow street access only to vendors who received city permission before 1994.

The mayor says the measure aims to bring some order to the streets, which are now crowded with peddlers. There are nearly 100,000 street vendors in Bolivia's capital, La Paz, and more than 50 percent are likely to be affected.

Talks between city officials and protest leaders were under way. Unless there's a change, the plan is expected to take affect in April.

The gridlock from the road blockades stretched across the city.

``This is total disorder,'' said Col. Romulo Vargas, one of many police officers dressed in riot gear and toting tear gas. ``All they are doing is causing chaos.''

``We are selling things in the street because there is no other work,'' said Aleja Quinteros, 48, a mother of six who sells vegetables near the city's market zone. ``We have no other options.''

The protest came amid growing criticism of the government by groups ranging from unions to coca farmers. The street vendors have promised to support those groups in their aim to destabilize the government with marches and protests next month.

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Mexico begins planning Chiapas peace

InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 3/30/2001
By ALEJANDRO RUIZ Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406561447

GUADALUPE TEPEYAC, Chiapas (AP) - As soldiers completed their withdrawal from two bases in southern Chiapas state on Thursday, President Vicente Fox said an address to congress by masked Zapatista rebels was proof that Mexico is a true democracy.

``Today, fortunately, we have a democracy. We've had it since July 2,'' Fox told a meeting of businessmen in Mexico City, referring to the day he was elected to end a 71-year string of presidents from the same party.

As 24 rebel commanders prepared to leave Mexico City and return to Chiapas after a month-long march through Mexico, Fox's peace negotiator, Luis H. Alvarez, visited the southern state to check on the last two army bases Fox has ordered closed.

The Zapatistas have demanded he close seven particularly sensitive bases in the southern state as a prerequisite to restarting peace talks. The other five have already been shut.

Alvarez said the Guadalupe Tepeyac base and the nearby Rio Eusebio barracks, both located deep in the jungle near the Guatemala border, have been 80 percent dismantled.

A small group of soldiers sat on the grass and in their vehicles outside the bases on Thursday, waiting to hand over the remaining buildings to the federal Social Development Secretariat, which will turn them into community centers for the local Tojolabal Indians.

Alvarez said that handover would occur in the next few days.

Following the relatively good-natured congressional session Wednesday in which the rebels _ without their military leader, Subcomandante Marcos _ argued for passage of an Indian rights bill, Fox declared that the peace dialogue had been reopened for the first time since it stalled in 1996.

Alvarez told local news media that he had had his first meeting since Fox appointed him Dec. 1 with the rebels' liaison, Fernando Yanez, late Wednesday.

The rebels have asked that Yanez and Alvarez oversee the fulfillment of three rebel demands _ the closure of army bases, the release of Zapatista prisoners and the passage of the bill _ before formally setting a date for renewed talks that will presumably culminate with the rebels laying down their arms.

The rebels staged a brief armed uprising in January 1994 to demand greater democracy and Indian rights.

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Protests shut Venezuela university

InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 3/30/2001
By FABIOLA SANCHEZ Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406559697

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - Students and professors claiming to support President Hugo Chavez's leftist government occupied key buildings at Venezuela's biggest university Thursday to demand a ``revolution'' in higher education.

Hundreds of students set up makeshift tents at the state-owned Central University of Venezuela and vowed not to budge until the school's leadership is replaced. They began their protest Wednesday by tossing tear gas canisters at security guards and vandalizing offices.

University President Giussepe Gianneto canceled classes at the 51,000-student campus.

``I'm not going to resign because I was legitimately elected'' by the university's professors, Gianneto said. ``I'm not going to talk with these protesters. They are violent youngsters.''

Dozens of students held a counter-demonstration to demand that the protesters be evicted and classes resume. Chavez's government also condemned the protests and appealed for dialogue.

The protesters say the university's leadership belongs to a conservative elite frequently criticized by Chavez. They are demanding that the government overhaul the university's establishment using the same tactics Chavez has employed to oust Venezuela's once-powerful conservative political elite.

Since his 1998 election, Chavez has replaced the constitution, Congress and Supreme Court with a series of elections and referendums. The president says he is dismantling a corrupt ``oligarchy'' and returning power to the poor.

The protest coincided with strikes by public school teachers and by oil, steel and electricity workers, all demanding pay raises or overdue pay. Citing the threat of violence, Chavez has deployed National Guard troops at major oil installations and highways across the country.

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Peace in sight, Zapatista declares

Washington Times
March 30, 2001
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-2001330213327.htm

MEXICO CITY - Zapatista negotiator "Comandante German" said yesterday that peace is in sight now that dialogue between the leftist insurgents and the government is under way.

"Peace is on its way, dialogue has formally restarted," said the founder of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), who was named yesterday as the insurgency's point man in the peace process.

He made the comments after holding informal talks with an adviser to President Vicente Fox only a day after the masked rebels set the markers for the peace process at a historic appearance before the Mexican Congress.


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