------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
U.S.-Russian Nuclear Nonproliferation Program
U.N. Iraq inspector plans U.S. talks
Russia's Skeletal Missile Plan
China Crisis
Justice Department can best serve ill nuclear workers
Downwinders Dying Before Getting Relief
PLANS FOR LAYOFFS CONFIRMED AT PIKETON PLANT
Incinerator resumes operation after shutdown
DOE workers assured of payment

MILITARY
Powell set to visit France, Balkans next week
Ex-soldiers sue over stress
350 soldiers sue over the stress of war
U.N. human rights official enters Myanmar
35 reported dead in Colombia clashes
Afghans try opium-free economy
Mexico arrests suspected drug lord
NEWARK: PASSENGER ACCUSED OF SMUGGLING
South Dakota
Yugoslav Chief Says Milosevic Shouldn't Be Sent to Hague
U.N.: Worldwide polio eradication 99% complete
UN VETO REVEALS CONTEMPT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
U.S. fighter crashes into sea near Japan
Nixon opening

OTHER
Wind power to grow 39 pct this year - consultancy
Countries added to mad cow risk list
New Zealand faults U.S. on warming
Australian Coral Reef Snag for Hit Show 'Survivor'
EU Urges U.S. to Reconsider Global Warming Treaty
Study of Coal Waste Ponds Is Criticized
SUIT ON BALLAST WATER
MANHATTAN: THIRD OIL SPILL
Bush trades global-warming concerns for profits
Parliament approves animal-testing ban
States
Another long expensive summer
Changing the subject
Human rights a divisive issue
Tear down the wall
U.S. warns Mexico, others on trade
FTAA Information
Inquiry on Officers' Presence at a Massage Parlor
Verniero Rebuffs Request for New Testimony
Town Official Suggests Plan to Put Police in the Schools
Alienation Is a Partner for Black Officers
Supreme Court Roundup:
Ex-LAPD officer pleads guilty to federal charges
States
Bush demands return of spy plane crew
Tensions rise between China and US
China 'to allow access to US crew'
Waiting game for US plane
Economy alters political weather
EP Jeebies
Spy plane dispute may affect Taiwan
China silent on U.S. spy plane, crew
Bush demands return of plane, crew
U.S.-China military incidents
Stress added to U.S.-China relations
Kin awaits word on spy plane crew
Navy releases names of crew members
No Easy Way Forward With China
Delicate Passage With China
Bush Demands 'Prompt' Return of Plane and Crew
American Embassy Officials Wait to See Plane's Crew
Bush Says Time Has Come for Chinese to Return Plane and Crew
Military Analysis: 'A Dangerous Game'
Bush: Time for Chinese to return plane, crew
U.S. diplomats meet with spy plane's crew
Rising hostilities boost risks in spy-plane incident
U.S. crew in good health, diplomat says
Bush has options if China hardens stance
Americans were ordered to destroy all spy trappings
Bush demands prompt release of crew
Beijing blames U.S. for plane collision
'Bumper cars in the air´
No caving, please, to the cave men
Taliban rule out bin Laden handover
Inspector testifies in embassy trial
Testimony cut in U.S. terror trial
American woman on trial in Peru denies notes
Businesses: Terrorists have changed their targets

ACTIVISTS
the up side
Arrested Protesters Released
Man sets himself alight for family
Disabled son motive for fiery protest
Border bikers' club runs on passion for doing good
Greenpeace activists leave oil rig
Oil spill kills birds in Denmark
Real Brockovich Wins Court Battle
Hale House's Management of Buildings Is Criticized
Vermont
Socialist Party Local Endorses HLS Campaign, ALF Raid
"Flood Bush" email stalls White House server
Peace group schedules Y-12 rally


-------- NUCLEAR

U.S.-Russian Nuclear Nonproliferation Program Eliminates 4,500 Warheads

USEC Report to Senate Foreign Relations Committee
April 3, 2001
BUSINESS WIRE

BETHESDA, Md. - Success of Megatons to Megawatts Implementation Continues

In a report to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, USEC Inc., a private sector company that serves as the U.S. government's executive agent implementing the historic Megatons to Megawatts program, documented the continuing success of the $12 billion, 20-year program that converts Russian nuclear warhead material into fuel for nuclear power plants. The report states that, to date, the equivalent of more than 4,500 nuclear explosives have been eliminated by conversion to nuclear fuel, which is purchased by USEC at no cost to U.S. taxpayers.

Now in the seventh year of the agreement, the governments of the United States and the Russian Federation are 40 percent ahead of the original schedule in converting 500 metric tons of nuclear weapons-derived highly enriched uranium (HEU) into low-enriched uranium (LEU) fuel. USEC purchases the LEU fuel, ships it to the United States and sells it to its utility customers for use in commercial nuclear power plants.

"Since 1994, at the direction of the U.S. government, USEC has successfully implemented the Megatons to Megawatts agreement," said USEC President and CEO William H. Timbers. "To date, approximately 113 metric tons of HEU have been converted into LEU, the equivalent of more than 4,500 nuclear weapons--thus eliminating enough nuclear explosives to destroy every large city in the world.

"The success of this agreement reflects the close cooperation of the U.S. government, the Russian Federation, USEC and Russia's executive agent, Tenex. We are proud to play a pivotal commercial role in reducing the threat of nuclear weapons. USEC's purchases make this program commercially self-sustaining, at no cost to the U.S. government," Timbers added.

The Executive Summary of the report, Implementation of the U.S.-Russian HEU Purchase Program, follows. To access the report through the USEC website, go to www.usec.com, click News Room, then Recent News. To obtain a printed copy of the report, call USEC Corporate Communications, (301) 564-3391. Implementation of the U.S.-Russian HEU Purchase Program by USEC Inc. Report to the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, March 28, 2001

Executive Summary

This marks the seventh successful year for USEC as the U.S. executive agent for the 1993 government-to-government Russian Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) Purchase Agreement. As called for in this nuclear nonproliferation agreement, USEC and the Russian executive agent, Techsnabexport (Tenex), signed a contract in 1994 that governs the commercial implementation of the 1993 agreement.

This 20-year, $12 billion contract facilitates the conversion of 500 metric tons of nuclear weapons-derived HEU into low-enriched uranium (LEU) fuel purchased by USEC for use in commercial nuclear power plants. The program has come to be known as Megatons to Megawatts.

Russian shipments to USEC of weapons-derived LEU commenced in June 1995. Since then, USEC has received 84 shipments of 2,203 cylinders containing 3,303 metric tons of LEU-- an amount sufficient to meet U.S. nuclear fuel demand for two years.

These seven years of implementation of the Megatons to Megawatts program clearly demonstrate that both the U.S. and Russian partners have been successful in making this 1993 agreement work. In doing so, the partners have reduced the threat to world stability posed by the proliferation of nuclear weapons and materials. The results are impressive. As of March 2001:

1. Approximately 113 metric tons of Russian warhead HEU have been converted to LEU fuel and purchased by USEC for use by its electric utility customers.

2. The 113 metric tons of HEU is the equivalent of more than 4,500 nuclear weapons--enough nuclear explosives to destroy every large city in the world. The conversion of this material eliminates its potential use as a nuclear explosive.

3. USEC and Tenex are 40 percent ahead of the original 1993, 20-year schedule to convert a total of 500 metric tons of HEU to LEU. This is equivalent to an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 nuclear warheads.

4. No taxpayer dollars are required for this program. USEC pays Russia hundreds of millions of dollars a year for these purchases--a total to date of about $2 billion. Russia vitally needs this hard currency to help offset the falling value of the ruble, to meet the terms and goals of the HEU agreement and for trade purposes.

5. USEC and Tenex have established a strong, flexible, responsive and cooperative working relationship.

6. USEC and Tenex reached agreement in May 2000 on new market-based commercial terms that would begin January 1, 2002, when the current terms expire. The new terms are under review by the respective governments.

These achievements demonstrate that the Megatons to Megawatts program is working. Government nonproliferation and national energy security objectives are being met and sustained by commercial transactions. Implementation of the contact requires continuing interaction and responsiveness. USEC does not act unilaterally in this process. As executive agent for the government, USEC is subject to an ongoing consultative process that includes direction from the Administration before acting on contract matters.

USEC has proven itself to be highly effective as executive agent under sometimes difficult circumstances. In fact, it has not been smooth sailing during the past seven years of implementing this agreement. A number of contentious issues have emerged, ranging from the appropriateness of USEC's privatization to issues of over payment for, and disposition of, the natural uranium portion of the deal.

Still, the agreement has been a success story, and USEC is uniquely positioned to continue as the sole U.S. executive agent. USEC's global customer base, domestic enrichment operations, unique market experience, financial resources and continuing commitment have all contributed to the strong foundation that is essential to support the continuing implementation of this unique and challenging program.

USEC Inc., a global energy company, is the world's leading supplier of enriched uranium fuel for commercial nuclear power plants.

CONTACT:

USEC Inc. Charles Yulish, 301/564-3391 Elizabeth Stuckle, 301/564-3399

-------- iraq

U.N. Iraq inspector plans U.S. talks

InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 4/3/2001
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406615199

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Hans Blix, the chief U.N. weapons inspector for Iraq, will meet top officials of the Bush administration for the first time this week, U.N. officials said Monday.

He is scheduled to hold talks with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice on Tuesday afternoon and Secretary of State Colin Powell on Wednesday morning.

The United States is reviewing its policy toward Iraq and Blix hopes to get a briefing on President George W. Bush's thinking, said Ewen Buchanan, spokesman for the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission which Blix heads.

Blix also plans to update U.S. officials on the commission's preparations to resume weapons inspections, he said.

``This is part of his consultations with leading members of the U.N. Security Council,'' Buchanan said. ``He's already been to Beijing, Moscow, London and Paris.''

Under council resolutions, sanctions imposed after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait cannot be lifted until U.N. inspectors certify that the country's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons have been destroyed.

Inspectors left Iraq in December 1998, just ahead of allied airstrikes launched to punish Iraq for blocking inspections, and Iraq has barred them from returning.

Powell has proposed a revision of U.N. economic sanctions against Iraq to permit more consumer goods to reach Iraqi civilians while trying to deny President Saddam Hussein weapons material.

-------- missile defense

Russia's Skeletal Missile Plan
Outline of European Shield Brings Little Response From West

Washington Post
Tuesday, April 3, 2001; Page A12
By Peter Baker Washington Post Foreign Service
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18226-2001Mar30.html

MOSCOW -- For months, it has been Russia's answer to U.S. missile defense plans: a limited anti-missile system that would protect European countries left out of Washington's vision. With a flourish, President Vladimir Putin finally presented a written proposal at a Kremlin ceremony in February.

NATO Secretary General George Robertson politely accepted the plan and promised to study it, but back in the West, the Russian proposal has been greeted by puzzled looks and head-scratching. For all the buildup, the plan turns out to be just four pages plus a diagram.

A copy, not released publicly at the time but provided by the Defense Ministry in response to a request last week, reveals a plan long on generalities and short on specifics. It offers little technical evaluation and no cost estimates, development timetables or organizational structures. Instead, it provides a theoretical framework for how a mobile European-based system might be developed using Russian technology.

In the nearly six weeks since receiving it, NATO has not even bothered to schedule the briefings Putin offered. The plan is "a constructive approach to a problem that Russia and NATO have in common," a NATO spokesman said diplomatically. But he added, "The proposal was very much lacking in detail."

Russian officials said the document was intended to be a starting point and expressed frustration that the West Europeans have not called. "I don't know why," said Vice Adm. Valentin Kuznetsov, the chief treaty negotiator for the Defense Ministry. "Either they're afraid or they haven't worked out their own attitude toward the document. We are ready to go to Brussels at any moment."

Missile defense has become a central issue dividing Russia and the United States, especially since President Bush took office in January vowing to move forward with an even more ambitious program than President Bill Clinton had considered. The Robert P. Hanssen spy scandal and a subsequent back-and-forth round of diplomatic expulsions has exacerbated the tension between the two countries.

But several analysts said they believe the West is missing out on an opportunity to engage Russia, arguing that Putin's missile defense plan, however inadequate, represents an opportunity to defuse the international conflict, at least somewhat.

The counterproposal, they said, amounts to more than a political ploy to appeal to skeptical U.S. allies in Western Europe; it could be a face-saving attempt by Putin to become part of a joint solution instead of simply an opponent.

"It's a very clumsy attempt to find a compromise, and not very successful in my view," said Pavel Podvig, a military analyst at the Moscow-based Center for Arms Control, Energy and Environmental Studies. "But still, it is very clear that this is part of the message that Putin is sending: 'We do want to be together with the West, with NATO and even with the United States.'"

If the Russians were part of a Europe-wide missile defense plan, they would be less hostile to a U.S.-based system, said Nikolai Sokov, a former Russian arms control negotiator, especially because development of such a program could mean money for the Russian military-industrial complex.

"Let's be frank: To a large extent, this is a matter of money," said Sokov, now a scholar at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California. "If the Russian defense industry is on board with contracts, they will be able to suppress more traditional, straightforward security concerns expressed by the military."

The Russian document given to NATO on Feb. 20 states that its aim "is to ensure the strategic and regional stability in Europe by concentrating efforts to create an all-European system of defense from non-strategic ballistic missiles." Unlike the U.S. plan, it targets short- and medium-range missiles instead of intercontinental weapons.

The concept rests on a three-step process: evaluating any missile threats against European states; developing a missile defense concept; and determining deployment of antimissile units. The Russians suggest mobile batteries that can be shifted to protect particular regions when they come under threat.

The proposal envisions creating a single database with the characteristics of all known non-strategic ballistic missiles, opening a joint center with the Europeans to share information from launch warning systems similar to one envisioned earlier with the United States, and testing new equipment using existing Russian facilities. Ground radar would be used at first, but satellite detection systems could be developed in the future.

A diagram included with the plan suggests a multi-layered shield, with one type of system targeting missiles at a height of 90 miles and smaller batteries within the larger umbrella aimed at enemy missiles at a height of 18 miles.

Analysts say the Russians have in mind as a model their own air defense systems, the S-300 and the soon-to-be-completed S-400, essentially Moscow's equivalent of the U.S. Patriot system that was used in the Persian Gulf War against Iraqi Scud missiles. However, those systems were designed to be more effective against enemy aircraft than missiles.

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

China Crisis -- Superpower Standoff and Psychological Stability

Yahoo News
Tuesday April 3
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/010403/0619.html

LOS ANGELES--(ENTERTAINMENT WIRE)--April 3, 2001--An untested president, a superpower standoff in a climate of political and economic uncertainty -- this is the stuff of a political thriller, but unfortunately, it is not fiction and has the potential to bring back dormant fears of nuclear confrontation in the United States not seen since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

This according to psychologist and media commentator Robert R. Butterworth, Ph.D., who has conducted numerous surveys on the effect of nuclear-war fears on young people.

This crisis began early Sunday when an unarmed EP-3 surveillance plane collided with a Chinese fighter jet and made an emergency landing on Hainan Island in southern China.

Butterworth, in comparing the results of his last political survey with one he conducted in 1989 with Texas teen-agers and a March 1988 election survey of teens in 41 states, found a marked decrease in concern over nuclear war but a growing preoccupation with economic issues.

``In my 1988 survey, 18 percent of youths polled felt that concerns over nuclear war should be a top worry for a presidential leader. It dropped to 13 percent in 1989, and in my 1992 study only 1 percent of young people believed nuclear war was the most important world issue. The developments in the last few days with China, however, could heighten anxiety over war and change these numbers,'' said Butterworth.

``This crisis with China is really part of a one-two punch to the psychological stability of the nation. First, we have a teetering economy undermining economic stability and consumer confidence, and now we have a superpower confrontation that could awaken long-dormant fears associated with basic survival.''

Since 1984, Butterworth has helped radio, TV and print media find answers, providing insight to enhance understanding of psychological issues. Butterworth has conducted extensive surveys focused on children and youth, social and political issues, and trauma.

Butterworth's comments, observations and op-ed articles have appeared in most of the major newspapers in the United States and worldwide. He is seen quite often on NBC, CBS and ABC network news, especially during monumental events involving children and violence and during disasters and youth tragedies, exploring psychological reactions to breaking news.

Contact:

International Trauma Associates, Los Angeles Robert R. Butterworth, 213/487-7339 (24 hours) 213/388-5167 (fax) robert@drbutterworth.net (e-mail)

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

Chao to senators:
Justice Department can best serve ill nuclear workers

Tuesday, April 03, 2001
By Katherine Rizzo Associated Press
http://www.starnews.com/data/wire/out/0403ap_l325ghg009.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Labor Secretary Elaine Chao is sticking to her demand to be relieved of running a new benefits program for job-sickened nuclear workers, saying her agency "does not now have the capacity to do this work."

In a letter Monday to some Capitol Hill critics of her position, Chao acknowledged opposing views but said she remained convinced that the Justice Department has special experience with radiation victims that make it the best place to run the nation's newest entitlement program.

"The Department of Justice has the foundation on which to administer this program, and it would be inefficient, duplicative, and slow to attempt to establish a similar capacity at DOL while Americans wait for these benefits -- many of whom are elderly and suffering," she wrote.

A bipartisan group of House and Senate members who were instrumental in creating the new program have been lobbying the White House to reject Chao's request, saying the Labor Department could get $150,000 checks and medical benefits moving quickly to their sick and dying constituents.

Among those trying to sway the administration was a House Republican with particularly strong connections to the Bush White House: Rep. Rob Portman, R-Ohio.

"I do not believe there are any new developments ... to justify moving the jurisdiction of this program from the Labor Department," he wrote.

Portman was a campaign insider who helped drill Dick Cheney for his vice presidential debate, is a longtime Bush family friend, and is Speaker Dennis Hastert's liaison to the White House.

Portman's Cincinnati-area district includes the defunct Fernald foundry where uranium dust was vented into the atmosphere, exposing both workers and the plant's neighbors.

Opposing Portman's position are two House influential colleagues: the chairmen of the committees in charge of Justice Department and Labor Department issues.

Labor overseer John Boehner, R-Ohio, said he agreed with Chao that people dying from diseases contracted because of their Cold War-era work for the government would be best served by the Justice Department.

On the Senate side, Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, led the charge on behalf of expanding the Justice Department's radiation compensation program to take in the new group.

The government is supposed to be ready July 31 to take applications from nuclear weapons program workers exposed to health-robbing levels of radiation, beryllium or silica, and from the surviving relatives of deceased workers.

Those found to be eligible are supposed to get medical coverage and $150,000 payments beginning later this year.

When the program was created, congressional negotiators couldn't agree on which agency should run it.

Congress passed a law that let the White House pick the program's home, then appropriated $60.4 million for the Labor Department to put the program together.

Those who want the Labor Department in control cite several reasons, mainly the desire for appeals panels to reconsider claims initially rejected. The Labor Department already has those; the Justice Department doesn't.

Chao and her backers said the Justice Department's special experience with radiation cases makes it the logical place to put the new program.

Others countered that the Labor Department handles compensation programs that process hundreds of thousands of medical claims annually, while the Justice Department runs a single program that handles a few hundred cases each year.

The new program was modeled after a Labor Department program that already handles claims from federal workers with chronic beryllium disease and other occupational illnesses.

The compensation program signed into law last year is for those who were on the payrolls of private companies when they worked for the nuclear weapons program.

The Energy Department preliminarily identified 317 sites in 37 states where exposed workers might qualify for benefits.

--------

Downwinders Dying Before Getting Relief

BY ELECTRA DRAPER
April 3, 2001
THE DENVER POST

DURANGO, Colo. -- A coalition trying to hold the U.S. government to its promise of monetary relief for sick uranium miners and those caught downwind of nuclear testing has a serious problem with its leaders.

They keep dying.

"Since the coalition was founded in January 1999, we've lost four of our leaders," says Lori Goodman of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act Reform Coalition. "The latest to die was Carol Dewey of Dove Creek, a downwinder."

Dewey was 52 when she died in January. As a youth, she had spent a weekend camping in southeastern Utah. It was the wrong weekend. She was downwind of a nuclear testing site in Nevada. She died of a rare and extremely aggressive form of thyroid cancer.

The hardest part for Dewey, Goodman says, was telling her cousin and camping companion years later what she had learned about the consequences of their ill-timed outing. Her cousin had been pregnant at the time and later had a child with a serious birth defect.

Two generations had been imperiled by a desert picnic. But there was no way for them to know that back then.

"They were deceived. They were experimented on," says Goodman, who also works with Dine Care, a private nonprofit agency concerned with environmental issues on the Navajos' Four Corners reservation. "They still think they're dealing with a bunch of hicks and Indians."

The Four Corners' 4,000 mines provided the United States with much of the uranium that built the nuclear arsenal for the Cold War. The industry was the region's bread and butter for decades, but it also poisoned many thousands of people here. The inhabitants call this the "National Sacrifice Area."

Dewey, like roughly 3,500 others, was deemed eligible by the government for one-time compensation of up to $100,000 under a 1990 law, called RECA for short, that was amended last year. Congress just increased payment amounts by $50,000 and expanded eligibility to cover previously excluded workers, such as mill workers and some of those who smoked cigarettes.

However, the government hasn't made good on even the first act. Roughly 300 of those whose claims were approved have never been paid (100 of them eligible since 1990), and the program is out of money. The Justice Department has issued IOUs.

Many IOU holders have gone to their graves without compensation, and many others didn't live long enough to even see a piece of paper.

The Navajo Nation provided many, perhaps one-quarter, of the workers in the uranium mines and mills of western Colorado and New Mexico, eastern Utah and Arizona. And Navajos are at a particular disadvantage in dealing with the U.S. government in the aftermath.

Many don't speak English. Many Navajo homes -- some agencies estimate as high as 80 percent of rural residences -- are without telephones, electricity, televisions or any other means to stay abreast of the issue.

And, because the earlier law excluded lung-cancer patients if they smoked, it excluded Navajos who used tobacco ceremonially, however infrequently.

-------- ohio

PLANS FOR LAYOFFS CONFIRMED AT PIKETON PLANT

The Columbus Dispatch
Tuesday, April 3, 2001
Associated Press

Confirming numbers long expected, USEC said yesterday that it expects to lay off 526 workers on June 1.

The layoffs will affect 296 production workers at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon; the rest will be salaried employees, the company said.

The company is ending production at Piketon and consolidating its operations in Paducah, Ky.

The layoffs are in line with numbers predicted when the federal government arranged to pay to put the Ohio plant in a cold standby status, making it possible to reopen the production line in the future.

The plan meant continued employment for about 1,200 of the plant's workers.

-------- tennessee

Incinerator resumes operation after shutdown

Oak Ridger
Tuesday, April 3, 2001
The Associated Press
http://www.oakridger.com/stories/040301/new_0403010013.html

OAK RIDGE -- The government's toxic-waste incinerator is back operating after a four-month shutdown for maintenance and repairs.

The Department of Energy incinerator burns low-level radioactive wastes, as well as some wastes containing hazardous chemicals such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).

Mark Musolf, a spokesman for Bechtel Jacobs Co., said the incinerator began burning wastes shortly after noon Sunday following a warm-up period that lasted several days.

"Maintenance work during the outage went as planned, and we're ready to take another large bite out of DOE's inventory of waste," Musolf said.

Bechtel Jacobs is the department's environmental manager in Oak Ridge.

An electrical problem with the incinerator's emissions scrubber system was detected during the restart operations, but it was corrected late last week, Musolf said.

During the maintenance period, workers replaced the refractory brick lining in the main kiln and prepared wastes for the upcoming burn session.

The 12-year-old incinerator originally was scheduled to burn about 2 million pounds of waste this fiscal year, which concludes Sept. 30, but that total has been scaled back to about 1.4 million pounds.

The incinerator also was shut down for a month last fall because of problems with its kiln.

DOE and its contractors currently are seeking new operating permits for the facility, and a trial burn -- to demonstrate its capabilities for destroying pollutants -- is scheduled for mid-May.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state Department of Environment and Conservation will have representatives on hand during the test operations.

Most of the waste left over from the Cold War is expected to be eliminated by the end of 2003, and the incinerator will be closed then.

IT Corp. operates the incinerator under a subcontract to Bechtel Jacobs.

-------- washington

DOE workers assured of payment

Hanford News
Tue, Apr 3, 2001
By Annette Cary Herald staff writer
http://www.hanfordnews.com/2001/0403.html

The Department of Energy is committed to meeting deadlines for payments to Cold War workers who fell ill after working at Hanford or other DOE nuclear sites, said Kate Kimpan of the Office of Worker Advocacy.

But several of the approximately 400 people who attended a meeting Monday in Richland were skeptical after hearing her comments.

"We need something now, not years from now when I die or don't have no nose left," said Ray Samson, a former lineman at Hanford who lost part of his nose to cancer after inhaling radioactive material.

"How many more of these people won't be here in a year?" asked former worker Ken Staley. "Since October, I've planted three of them with beryllium, cancer or other (diseases)."

There is reason for concern, said Dr. Tim Takaro of the University of Washington's Former Hanford Worker Medical Monitoring Program, which sponsored Monday's free seminar.

"I think it's going to be an uphill battle -- bureaucratically and politically," he said. "This is not the same administration that enacted the bill" to compensate nuclear workers for work-related illnesses.

The Clinton administration legislation requires the federal government to have forms available July 31 for workers to begin filing claims.

However, the Bush administration is considering switching the program from the Labor Department to the Justice Department, where just 14 people now do similar work.

Union officials and some political leaders -- including Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash. -- believe the switch will cause delays in the program.

Takaro said former workers will have to keep pressure on their elected representatives if they want to benefit from the workers' compensation program.

Plans call for DOE to provide records of workers' radiation dose histories for all the years worked at nuclear facilities. The program is aimed primarily at those exposed to radiation during the Cold War years, but those who worked earlier or more recently at Hanford also are eligible.

Radiation doses for workers who developed cancer would be compared with radiation risk tables to determine the likelihood it was caused by exposure to radiation. More than 30 cancers would be considered, including leukemia and cancers of the thyroid, breast, bone, brain, colon, ovary and stomach.

Workers who qualify would receive $150,000 tax-free. If they are deceased, their survivors would receive the money.

Payment for lost wages would not be available from the federal government but might be available from the state worker compensation program.

Workers would also have future medical expenses covered, including drugs, treatment and transportation, with no co-payment or deductible under the federal program, Kimpan said.

However, some workers are worried their dose radiation records are incomplete, leaving them with too little documented exposure to show their cancer was caused by working at Hanford. Policy on how much leeway to allow in compiling dose information will be guided by an advisory board that has not been appointed.

Jack Fix of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory said Hanford dose records have been validated in a number of research projects.

"They are not perfect, but I'm amazed how dang good they are, considering they were done by hand," Fix said.

External dose records are available for every worker for every year of Hanford employment, and they give specific numbers rather than just noting they fell below 10 percent of the regulatory limit, he said.

However, Takaro said getting accurate dose records for construction workers may be difficult. They may have been in and out of jobs on the Hanford site and not enrolled in the dosimetry program, he said.

Also, there were financial incentives for not wearing dosimetry badges when they entered contaminated areas, he said. If their dose got too high, they would no longer be allowed to do that work, he said.

The workers' compensation program also would cover berylliosis, caused by exposure to the metal beryllium used at Hanford, and silicosis, caused by exposure during nuclear tests in Nevada and Alaska.

Although claims for the federal compensation program cannot be filed yet, workers or their survivors should contact the worker advocacy project to get on its mailing list. The number is 877-447-9756.

Former workers also may sign up for free screenings for Hanford-related health problems. Construction workers may call 800-866-9663, and nonconstruction workers can call 800-419-9691.


-------- MILITARY

Powell set to visit France, Balkans next week

USA Today
04/03/2001 - Updated 07:46 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-04-03-powelltrip.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - Secretary of State Colin Powell will visit Bosnia, Macedonia and Kosovo next week after a meeting in Paris with European diplomats on the overall situation in the Balkans, a Bush administration official said Tuesday.

The meeting in Paris on April 11 will involve representatives of the United States, Russia, France, Britain, Germany and Italy, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Powell plans to visit the three Balkan regions the next day and is likely to meet with U.S. troops stationed in Kosovo and Bosnia.

In Macedonia, he is expected to offer assurances of support for the Macedonian government in its effort to put down an uprising by ethnic Albanians that began last month.

NATO-led forces in Kosovo have been attempting to cut off infiltration by Kosovo Albanians who support the insurgency in Macedonia.

In Bosnia, the Muslim-Croat federation has been under strain because of pressure from Croat hard-liners who are attempting to carve out a separate Croat state.

Powell is expected to call for renewed support for a 1995 agreement under which Bosnia was divided between the Muslim-Croat federation and a Serb Republic.

The trip will be Powell's third abroad since taking office. He visited Mexico on Feb. 16 and traveled to the Middle East and Europe at the end of February.

-------- britain

Ex-soldiers sue over stress

Australian News Network
03apr01
From AFP
http://news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,1860462%255E401,00.html

HUNDREDS of ex-soldiers in Britain are to sue the Ministry of Defence over their stressful experiences in the Falklands, Northern Ireland, Bosnia and Gulf War conflicts, their lawyer said today.

Some 350 ex-servicemen have already signed up for what is expected to be one of the largest group actions in British legal history, and their solicitor believes thousands more could follow.

"We are seeking financial compensation, but if we succeed, it will have various implications for ex-service personnel and for the armed forces generally," said Mark McGee, who is preparing the case.

The former soldiers say they accept that traumatic situations are an inevitable part of life in the forces.

But they allege that the defence ministry failed to ensure they received adequate treatment to prevent those situations resulting in post-traumatic stress disorder, which can cause psychological and physical problems over many years.

Mr McGee told the BBC: "The claim is based on an alleged failure by the MoD (Ministry of Defence) to prepare military personnel adequately for their inevitable exposure to horrific or terrifying experiences ... and afterwards to deal with the predictable psychological consequences of that exposure."

He said the case was due to begin in February next year and would last around five months.

An MoD spokesman said: "The MoD does acknowledge that some members of the armed forces may, as a result of their service, be subjected to traumatic experiences and may suffer stress as a result.

"The MoD does have a duty of care to ensure that service personnel receive proper treatment during the period of their service.

"Should we fail in this respect, and the individual suffers some loss or damage as a result, then the person may be entitled to compensation."

--------

350 soldiers sue over the stress of war

By Michael Smith, Defence Correspondent
03/04/2001
http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/04/03/ncomp03.xml

AT least 350 former soldiers are suing the Ministry of Defence for failing to prepare them for the horror of war in a case that could result in compensation payments of more than £35 million.

The soldiers, who served in locations including the Falklands, the Gulf, the Balkans and Northern Ireland, also claim that they suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder that was not properly treated.

Linder Myers, the solicitors representing the majority of the men, said many of the cases had been before the courts for some time but were now being combined into two group actions. The first group relates to those who served before May, 1987, when Crown Immunity from such claims was removed.

The second group is those who suffered from PTSD after 1987. The numbers could increase as Linder Myers is required by the courts to publicise the actions in order to give other soldiers the chance to come forward.

The trial date has been set for February and servicemen who wish to make a claim must come forward before Nov 2, the court has ruled. The case follows concern by Adml Sir Michael Boyce, Chief of Defence Staff, and his predecessor Gen Sir Charles Guthrie that a "culture of compensation" could paralyse the Armed Forces.

Alex Findlay, a former Scots Guardsman who suffered PTSD after serving in the Falklands, received £100,000 in an out-of-court settlement in 1994. If that level of compensation was paid to all those making claims, the total would amount to many millions.

The Ministry of Defence said it accepted that "some members of the Armed Forces may be subjected to traumatic experiences and may suffer stress as a result".

-------- burma/myanmar

U.N. human rights official enters Myanmar

USA Today
04/03/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-04-03-myanmar.htm

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) - The first U.N. human rights official allowed into Myanmar in five years met Tuesday with a top general at the start of a groundbreaking visit that signals the ruling military junta's increasing openness.

Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, a Brazilian politics professor, said he had a "very pleasant" meeting with Lt. Gen. Khin Nyunt, Secretary One of the ruling State Peace and Development Council. He earlier called on Foreign Minister Win Aung.

Pinheiro is due to meet with pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been kept under virtual house arrest since Sept. 22 after defying a travel ban.

In brief comments to reporters, Pinheiro described his visit as "exploratory." He added that the schedule for his meeting with Suu Kyi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her democracy struggle, was not yet set.

Pinheiro was named U.N. human rights representative in February, replacing Rajsoomer Lallah, a Mauritian judge who resigned in November, claiming he did not have the resources to carry out his task. His predecessor, Japanese professor Yozo Yokota, resigned for similar reasons.

The junta never allowed Lallah, who took the job in 1996, to visit the country, accusing him of being unfairly critical of the regime. But the Foreign Ministry said last week that Pinheiro was being welcomed because he seems to be "pragmatic and non-biased."

The junta has showed signs in recent months that it is prepared to forge a reconciliation with Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy party, which has long been a target of its repression.

It was reported late last year that junta leaders have been holding secret talks with Suu Kyi. Also, the state media has stopped its almost-daily diatribe against Suu Kyi and the NLD.

The current military regime took power in 1988 after crushing a pro-democracy uprising. In 1990, it held national elections that were overwhelmingly won by the NLD, but the generals refused to hand over power. During the last decade, hundreds of NLD activists have been jailed.

Lallah, Pinheiro's predecessor, had said in a report to the U.N. General Assembly before quitting that the human rights situation had deteriorated in 2000, with the military government suppressing all opposition political activity and engaging in "inhuman treatment" of opposition members and ethnic minorities.

The regime, which has faced intense Western criticism, has also been facing quiet diplomatic pressure from its co-members in the 10-country Association of Southeast Asian Nations to show flexibility.

-------- colombia

35 reported dead in Colombia clashes

InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 4/3/2001
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406615254

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - Thirty-five fighters were killed over the weekend in heavy clashes in northern Colombia between guerrilla and right-wing paramilitary troops, reports said Monday.

According to villagers' accounts, 20 paramilitaries and 15 guerrillas died in the fighting in northern Cordoba province, Col. Jairo Ovalle of the army's 11th Brigade based in the region, told reporters.

Troops were trying to enter the area to verify the account of clashes between the rightist United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, and the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the country's strongest guerrilla group.

Authorities in the area had recovered only three bodies by early Monday.

The FARC reportedly is trying to reassert itself in the cattle-ranching province that was largely cleared of rebel influence by the paramilitaries, private armies financed by local landowners who had grown tired of guerrilla extortion.

The area where the clashes were reported is also a strategic corridor for the arms and drug smuggling that has fueled the South American country's 37-year conflict.

-------- drug war

POPPY BANNED
Afghans try opium-free economy
Taliban turns the world's largest supplier of opium into a wheat grower.

Christian Science Monitor
TUESDAY, APRIL 3, 2001
By Scott Baldauf (baldaufs@csps.com)
Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

SORKH ROD, AFGHANISTAN - Last year, Mahgul and her family cultivated one acre of wheat and five acres of opium poppy, just as farmers on this land have done for generations.

The fields of white, pink, and purple opium flowers grow so well here that Afghanistan had become the world's biggest supplier of the narcotic base.

As much as 80 percent of the opium used by heroin addicts from Amsterdam to Haight Ashbury could be traced to Afghan farmers like Mahgul - until now.

Today, her family's entire plot - and all the farmland for miles around - is covered in lush green wheat, on the order of the ruling Taliban government. Once the annual source of 3,500 tons of opium, Afghanistan has nearly eradicated all poppy under cultivation in the 2001 growing season.

The implication for opium supplies - and heroin prices - globally can't be overstated. The ban's impact on the income of Afghans is just starting to be felt.

While Mahgul knows her family will make no profits from growing grain instead of opium, she supports the Taliban's total ban on opium this year. "We were poor before the ban, and we will be poor after the ban," she says, standing among the knee-high stalks. "But at least we will have something to eat."

This move by the ruling Taliban is made even more astounding, given that it is facing a five-year civil war with the Northern Alliance of Mujahideen fighters, a two-year drought, no international drug-control funding, no international recognition, and no money of its own to compensate farmers. It is hard to say what has motivated the Islamist movement to push for an outright ban at this time. Local opium prices have already risen 10-fold since last spring. And for this year at least, there's a negative effect on thousands of farmers who have relied on opium as a livelihood and a way of life.

"We did a great job, and now it is time for the world community to respond," says Maulvi Amir Muhammad Haqqani, an Islamic scholar and head of the Taliban's drug control group in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, a major opium hub. "This is an urgent situation for our farmers. They are looking for something else to meet their needs, like fertilizer and seeds to start over."

To be sure, there is much skepticism that the Taliban's decree is anything more than a mirage to gain international recognition and aid. Some diplomats say that there are enough stockpiles of opium within Afghanistan to supply the world for more than a year. In its latest report on the world's top drug-producing states, the US State Department proclaimed Afghanistan to be "the world's largest opium producer after another year of major increases." The report noted that a previous promise to reduce poppy cultivation by one-third fell far short.

But even this report noted that it had no direct evidence that the Taliban's ban on opium was not being followed this year. "While there have been some credible reports of scattered enforcement actions," the State Department report said, "it will not be possible to assess the extent of any eradication or reduction in cultivation until mid-2001."

Bernard Frahi also had his doubts. As regional director for the United Nations Drug Control Program, he had been involved in negotiations with the Taliban for years, and had seen only minor results. But now that UNDCP observers have surveyed some 85 percent of the country's known opium-growing areas, he is confident that Afghanistan's opium ban is legitimate.

"The first year, in 2000, they only decreased opium by 10 percent, and we said it's not enough. Now they've banned it outright. What are we going to say to that?" asks Mr. Frahi in Islamabad, Pakistan. "We have to recognize it as a major result."

Opium has long been a constant in this part of the world, but it was only in the past 23 years of war that Afghanistan became such a major supplier of the world's illicit drugs. After the Soviet invasion of 1979, warlords and Islamic mujahideen grew massive plots of opium to help fund their war effort. Once the Soviets were ousted in 1989, a sophisticated network of opium cultivation, distribution, and marketing was well in place, and seemingly impossible to remove.

All that changed in 1995, with the advent of the student-led Taliban movement, whose stated goal is to create the world's purest Islamic state. Since Islam's leader, the Prophet Muhammad, preached explicitly against drug addiction, the Taliban have long stated their desire to eradicate opium production. But it was only in the past two years that the Taliban rulers started acting on it.

"It shows that the Taliban has total control in Afghanistan, and this is incredible," says Ahmed Rashid, author of "Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia." But the ban comes at a significant cost to Afghan farmers, adds the Lahore, Pakistan-based journalist, who covered 20 years of Afghan war. "In farming communities, opium was the banking system. All borrowing and lending was done through opium. By banning poppy cultivation, you have destroyed the grass-roots banking system" that allowed Afghan families to weather the hard times, and to advance themselves in good times.

The penetration of opium into the everyday business of ordinary Afghans is striking. In the prosperous trading city of Jalalabad, the entire local economy was - and arguably still is - fueled by the opium trade. Nangarhar province, which includes Jalalabad, has excellent conditions for crops: rich soil, plenty of irrigation, and hot summers that produce some of the best-quality opium poppy resin in the world. Here, farmers grew 24 percent of the nation's total opium, and sold their produce to a network of dealers and distributors who passed it on for processing into heroin and for sale to Europe, America, and beyond.

Opium had become such a part of normal commerce that many farmers used opium as a form of currency to buy their groceries at the market, to purchase additional acres of land, or to fund their children's education. Some would promise shopkeepers and wheat merchants a portion of their future opium crop in return for cash to pay for food in the past few months before harvest. This suited the merchants fine, since the price of opium generally remained stable. Afghanistan's currency, the Afghani, does not: At present, $1 equals 80,000 afghanis, and devaluations are common.

The poppy ban is likely to wreak havoc on local economies across Afghanistan. One effect, perhaps unintentional, is that the price of a kilo of opium resin has risen from $30 last year to about $400 this spring. Many farmers, who owe debts on crops they are not allowed to grow anymore, are consequently defaulting on their loans.

Some, like Noorajan, a young farmer in the dusty but irrigated district of Sorkh Rod, near Jalalabad, say they will pay off their debt, no matter what.

"I borrowed around 200,000 afghanis in cash to help me buy a small piece of land for my own. Now my creditor tells me I owe him 1.2 million afghanis," he says, squinting into the sun. "It will take a lifetime to pay it off, but I will work it off with my sweat."

Others have fled the country, joining the 150,000 drought and war refugees fleeing into Pakistan early this year.

"Those people who owed money, they have left the country," says Ali Rahman, a wheat merchant in Jalalabad. Mr. Rahman says he never dealt in opium himself, but he occasionally accepted opium payments from farmers when it was legal to do so. "We are totally affected by the ban on poppy. We don't expect to make our debts back."

Muhammad Amir, another wheat merchant, says that many farmers were willing to accept the Taliban's decree this year in hopes that the international community would respond. "If the world community doesn't give aid soon," he says, "we will request the Taliban to reconsider its ban and bring back the poppy."

But Maulvi Haqqani, the Taliban drug control officer in Jalalabad, says that any rumors that the Taliban would reverse the ban are fabrications, and that in any case, the Taliban government won't change its opium decree.

"We are all Muslims and our country is Muslim," he says, stroking his henna-colored beard. "And when the authority of a Muslim land asks the community to obey a religious decree, even if they are starving or facing a difficult situation, they have to obey and they have to be patient."

---

Mexico arrests suspected drug lord

InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 4/3/2001
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406615235

MEXICO CITY (AP) - A top lieutenant of a drug trafficking gang once known as the Gulf cartel and 19 of his subordinates have been arrested, a presidential spokeswoman said Monday.

Gilberto Garcia was arrested last week in a raid that also netted 35 rifles, 36 pistols and several grenades. He and the other suspects have not yet been formally charged, said the spokeswoman, Martha Sahagun.

The arrests mark Mexico's new administration's first major success in apprehending a purported high-ranking drug lord. Last week, police arrested several lower-ranking members of the Tijuana-based Arellano Felix cartel.

President Vicente Fox took office Dec. 1 vowing to wage war against traffickers. Soon after, alleged drug lord Joaquin ``El Chapo'' Guzman escaped from a maximum security prison.

Garcia was arrested in the Gulf coast state of Tamaulipas, where he allegedly shipped cocaine and marijuana for the gang's leader, Osiel Cardenas, Sahagun said.

Cardenas revived the Gulf cartel _ whose name comes from Mexico's northern Gulf coast, where it is most active _ after its founder, Juan Garcia Abrego, was arrested and extradited to the United States in 1996.

Cardenas, like Abrego, also is wanted in the United States. Abrego was sentenced to 11 life terms in 1997 for drug trafficking, conspiracy, money laundering and operating a continuing criminal enterprise.

---

NEWARK: PASSENGER ACCUSED OF SMUGGLING

New York Times
April 3, 2001
Metro Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/03/nyregion/03MBRF.html

A Canadian stripper bound for Los Angeles from Newark International Airport was arrested yesterday as she tried to smuggle $1.5 million worth of the drug Ecstasy into the country disguised as children's Lego toys, according to United States Customs officials. Gayle Cabacungan, 24, of Vancouver, was charged with conspiracy to smuggle narcotics. The 78,771 Ecstasy pills were concealed in two gift-wrapped boxes and were discovered in a routine search of luggage from a flight from Amsterdam and Copenhagen, officials said. Ms. Cabacungan was ordered held pending a bail hearing. Ronald Smothers (NYT)

---

South Dakota

USA Today
04/03/01
States
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Pierre - The warden at the women's prison has developed a program on educating young people on how their peers become prisoners. Duane Russell hopes to stress that alcohol and drug use are the main reasons people their age get in serious trouble. At the warden's urging, several inmates have volunteered to speak to youth groups.

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

Yugoslav Chief Says Milosevic Shouldn't Be Sent to Hague

New York Times
April 3, 2001
By STEVEN ERLANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/03/world/03YUGO.html

BELGRADE, Serbia, April 2 - President Vojislav Kostunica said today that Yugoslavia should not extradite former President Slobodan Milosevic to The Hague to face war- crimes charges, even if the United States again threatens to withhold foreign aid.

"It should never happen," Mr. Kostunica said in an interview. "I think that it's possible to do everything so that it should never happen."

In the negotiations before Mr. Milosevic's surrender to the police early Sunday morning, he sought and received written assurances that his arrest on domestic charges of corruption and abuse of power was not a precursor to a transfer to The Hague.

Mr. Milosevic's arrest was an important event, said Mr. Kostunica, who defeated Mr. Milosevic in elections in September. "Its meaning is to make public all the violations of the law and rights committed by the old regime led by Milosevic, so people can have a complete, clear picture," he said. "There will be no hide- and-seek - everything will come out. If we speak of the need for social catharsis, then the most important is this one."

Speaking personally, he said, the arrest of Mr. Milosevic ends "a very painful period in our lives and in the lives of all these states, a period of lost years." He said he was reminded of a book by the Yugoslav writer Borislav Pekic, who long lived in exile, about his time in jail in the 1930's for involvement with a pro- democracy group, called "The Years Eaten by Locusts."

"I think about what this country might have been and the sort of lives we might have lived - it lasted too long," he said.

He also said that what he considers misguided Western policy, including sanctions and isolation, helped preserve Mr. Milosevic's rule, not shorten it.

Mr. Kostunica criticizes the tribunal at The Hague that prosecutes war crimes in the countries that made up the larger Communist-era Yugoslavia. He contends that it is political and accuses it of practicing selective justice, following shaky rules of law and being biased against Serbia - with little inclination to indict Croats, Bosnian Muslims, ethnic Albanians or NATO leaders for alleged war crimes. Still, Mr. Kostunica said, "one should make certain compromises" and cooperate with the tribunal.

Yugoslavia will investigate war crimes and help The Hague to do so, he said, and Mr. Milosevic should be brought to trial on war crimes charges, too - but before domestic courts. Officials of The Hague tribunal say Yugoslavia, as a member of the United Nations, is obligated to turn over any indicted people on its territory, including Mr. Milosevic. Any domestic trial on war crimes charges must still end with his extradition, Carla Del Ponte, the chief prosecutor, has said.

The tribunal's current indictment against Mr. Milosevic, brought by her predecessor, covers the actions by Serbian troops against Kosovo Albanians in 1999. Ms. Del Ponte said today that she was getting ready to sign a new indictment of Mr. Milosevic for the war in Bosnia from 1992 to 1995, though she could use a few more months to prepare the case; her aides say she expects Mr. Milosevic in The Hague this year. Mr. Milosevic is widely blamed for supporting Serbian aggression in Bosnia and in Croatia as Yugoslavia split apart a decade ago.

Mr. Kostunica said he also supported a draft law on cooperation with the tribunal that would allow the extradition of those indicted, both Yugoslav citizens and non-citizens, after a rapid judicial procedure.

But the case of a former president is different, Mr. Kostunica argued, saying most members of the democratic coalition that ousted Mr. Milosevic agree. Even the Serbian prime minister, Zoran Djindjic, who was a strong supporter of the early arrest of Mr. Milosevic, has publicly opposed extraditing Mr. Milosevic to The Hague. Serbia is the dominant entity in the current Yugoslavia.

"It's not legitimate," Mr. Kostunica said. "Other presidents are not being sent to The Hague. I must make some compromises, but there is a line I cannot cross. Even among those people in the Serbian and Yugoslav governments who don't think about legitimacy but about what might be politically useful, the prevailing view is that it would be unacceptable."

He understands the view in Washington that the arrest of Mr. Milosevic just before a March 31 deadline, in order to retain the flow of American aid, is proof that "pressure works."

"But that is incorrect thinking, even when Milosevic was in power," he said.

It was not international pressure that brought down Mr. Milosevic, he said, but the Serbian people themselves, by their votes and demonstrations. "If pressure did not work with Milosevic in power, and now he is no longer in power and we are having a horrible situation in Serbia, what is the sense of such threats now?" he said.

Mr. Kostunica described a bad economy and infrastructure and a ruined system of judicial and political institutions, all of which must be reconstructed, and an unstable regional environment.

The future of Yugoslavia itself is uncertain, with Serbia's tiny sister republic, Montenegro, pressing for independence. And Mr. Kostunica described "dangers from all sides," including Kosovo, southern Serbia and Macedonia, where ethnic Albanian militants are fighting for independence. Albania itself is not especially stable, he noted.

He wants to work with NATO and the NATO-led peacekeepers in Kosovo, he said. "But soldiers with arms should take some risks," he said.

"It seems that only the lost lives of Serbs, Albanians and Macedonians are acceptable, but not the slightest scratch is acceptable for KFOR soldiers," he said, referring to the NATO-led peacekeeping force. He understands the fear Washington and the peacekeepers have of becoming targets of Albanians in Kosovo, he said, as in Vietnam. "But more must be done, because NATO becomes responsible for what it has not done," he said.

An independent Montenegro would produce more regional instability, he said, noting that more refugees live in Serbia - about 800,000 - than the 650,000 people in Montenegro. But he strongly opposes a moratorium or delay on Montenegro's deciding its future, saying Serbia would suffer from any further period of uncertainty.

Yugoslavia does not need more pressure and conditions from the United States and international groups, he said, "but patience, to let us cope with these problems, especially when one considers that the stability of Yugoslavia and Serbia is very important for this unstable region."

What Yugoslavia needs "is something that from the beginning of the American republic is called self-rule and self-government," he said. "How can our people and courts become competent to deal with questions like war crimes unless you're given a chance?"

---

U.N.: Worldwide polio eradication 99% complete

USA Today
04/03/2001 - Updated 09:31 AM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2001-04-03-polio.htm

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) - A United Nations-led program to eradicate polio worldwide has reduced the number of cases of the crippling disease by 99% since 1988, figures released Tuesday showed.

The Global Polio Eradication Initiative recorded only 3,500 cases of polio in 2000, a drop from the 350,000 cases recorded in 1988, the initiative said in a statement issued in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.

The group attributed the success to a campaign that includes national immunization days and house-to-house visits by vaccination teams. Last year, the group said it immunized 550 million children under 5 years old in 82 countries.

Polio is a crippling and sometimes fatal disease that attacks the central nervous system.

"Victory over the polio virus is within sight," said Dr. Gro Harlem Bruntland, director-general of the World Health Organization. We must now close in on the remaining strongholds of the disease."

The polio virus can now be found in only 20 countries, mainly in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. They include Afghanistan, Angola, Bangladesh, Benin, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Ivory Coast, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Nepal, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, Somalia and Sudan.

"The key now is urgently accessing and vaccinating the children we haven't been able to reach because of war, isolation and lack of infrastructure," said Carol Bellamy, executive director of UNICEF.

The eradication initiative is a joint project of the WHO, the U.N. Children's Fund, Rotary International and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The initiative's goal is to eradicate polio worldwide by 2005. To meet the goal, the project needs $1 billion to ensure delivery of more than six billion doses of oral polio vaccine in the next four years.

--------

UN VETO REVEALS BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S CONTEMPT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

By Stephen Zunes
The Progressive Response
3 April 2001
Vol. 5, No. 11

(Excerpted from an FPIF Global Affairs Commentary, posted at: http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/commentary/0104veto.html.)

The U.S. veto of a UN Security Council resolution calling for the deployment of unarmed monitors to the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip demonstrates the new administration's contempt for human rights. The United States was the only country to vote against the resolution, which came before the Security Council on March 28 after five days of tortuous negotiations that moderated the wording of the original draft. Still, this was not enough for the U.S., which cast its first veto of a UN Security Council resolution in five years. The call for international monitors has grown over the past six months as reports by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the Israeli group B'tselem have documented a pattern of gross and systematic human rights violations by Israeli occupation forces against the Palestinian population. These have included detention without charge, torture, extrajudicial killings, rocket and mortar attacks against civilian targets, demolition of Palestinian homes, restrictions of movement, and numerous acts of collective punishment.

Bush administration officials claim that monitors should not be deployed without Israel's consent. However, the monitors would not be going to Israel. Instead they would be assigned to Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory and areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority, so no Israeli consent is required. The recently vetoed UN resolution did not call for a peacekeeping force but rather for a team of monitors to observe and report on human rights abuses.

It's particularly disappointing to human rights activists that most congressional Democrats have declined to criticize the Republican administration's action at the UN. Even members of the Human Rights Caucus in the House of Representatives have not questioned the veto. With no pressure coming from Capitol Hill, the Bush administration will have little incentive to change its anti-human rights stance in the Middle East and elsewhere.

It will be very difficult for the United States to speak out against human rights abuses in Iraq, Iran, China, or any other country as long as it protects its allies from international criticism or scrutiny. Global leadership requires that principles sometimes must be placed above ideology. Otherwise, the United States will find itself with fewer friends and a growing number of enemies in an increasingly violent world.

Stephen Zunes <zunes@usfca.edu> is Middle East and North Africa editor for Foreign Policy In Focus and an associate professor of Politics and chair of the Peace & Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco.

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

U.S. fighter crashes into sea near Japan

USA Today
04/03/2001 - Updated 07:43 AM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001-04-03-fighter.htm

TOKYO (AP) - A U.S. F-16 fighter crashed into the sea off northern Japan during a training flight, but its pilot ejected safely, the U.S. military and Japan's Self Defense Agency said.

The fighter plunged into the sea about 12 miles northeast of the U.S. Air Force base in Misawa, northern Japan, said defense agency official Hitoshi Kato.

The pilot, drifting on a life craft, was rescued by a Japanese navy helicopter about 30 minutes after the crash, he said. Misawa is 350 miles northwest of Tokyo.

Kato and U.S. military officials in Misawa said the pilot's condition was not immediately known. The U.S. military refused to identify the pilot.

The accident followed a spate of other accidents involving U.S. military aircraft.

On Sunday, an EP-3E Aries II reconnaissance aircraft landed on a Chinese island after it collided with a Chinese fighter jet that was shadowing it. U.S. officials said the Chinese fighter rammed the spy plane's left wing, damaging an engine. China insisted the U.S. plane created the collision.

The Chinese fighter that collided with the American plane crashed into the sea and the pilot was missing.

On March 26, an Army RC-12 crashed in a forest about eight miles from Nuremberg, Germany, killing the two pilots on board. The same day, two F-15 jets crashed in the Scottish Highlands. Each pilot was killed.

---

Nixon opening

Washington Times
April 3, 2001
Inside the Beltway
John McCaslin

If you're patient enough, Uncle Sam will let you read almost anything.

Thirty years after the fact, the National Archives and Records Administration on Thursday will open approximately 100,000 pages from the Nixon presidency, the majority being National Security Council materials.

The newly declassified documents highlight some of the most significant foreign-policy initiatives of the Nixon administration, including the opening to China and the end of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

Included are memoranda of secret negotiations between Henry Kissinger and North Vietnam's Le Duc Tho. Mr. Kissinger at the time was assistant to the president for national security affairs.

Other memoranda consists of myriad conversations between President Nixon and world leaders, including Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev.

-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

Wind power to grow 39 pct this year - consultancy

DENMARK: April 3, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10355

COPENHAGEN - Worldwide installed wind power capacity will soar 39 percent this year following a rise of 15 percent in 2000, a Danish industry consultancy said in a report yesterday.

The United States is seen as a driving factor behind the growth, with installation of wind turbines poised to rise eightfold to 1,440 megawatts in 2001 from 180 MW last year, accounting for around a quarter of all installed megawattage this year, the report said.

"The trend for wind energy to be preferred over other technologies for new generating capacity is continuing."

Next year, however, wind power growth will slow to a mere 10 percent, with the U.S. market forecast to install 950 MW, the report added.

"There is still uncertainty about the U.S. situation beyond 2001, including the question as to how the Bush government will react to the climate issue," BTM Consult said.

In 2003, 2004 and 2005 growth rates for new installed wind power capacity are forecast to stand at respectively 16 percent, six percent and 20 percent, the consultancy said.

"The new forecast shows an average growth rate of 17.6 percent for the period 2001-2005 and reflects moderate growth in Europe until offshore really takes off," it said.

In 2000, wind turbines generating 4,495 MW were installed, with Germany and Spain as frontrunners.

"In 2000 Germany again took the lead as the single most important market with the installation of 1,665 MW," BTM said.

Spain also took a major step towards meeting its renewable energy goals with the installation of 1,024 MW of new wind generating capacity, the report said.

The world`s largest wind turbine manufacturers are Danish Vestas Wind Systems with a 2000 world market share of 17.9 percent, Spain`s Gamesa (in which Vestas holds a 40 percent stake) 13.9 percent, German Enercon 13.7 percent and Denmark`s NEG Micon and Bonus Energy with respectively 13.4 and 11.5 percent.

German-Danish Nordex , whose stocks were launched in an IPO on Germany`s Neuer Markt yesterday, came in with a 8.3 percent market share last year - up from 7.8 percent the year before.

-------- environment

Countries added to mad cow risk list

InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 4/3/2001
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406615220

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - Mad cow disease likely exists in Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and five other countries because of imports of possibly infected live cattle and byproducts, according to a European Union report released Monday.

The report by the EU's scientific committee also added Albania, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia and Lithuania to countries whose cattle herds could be harboring bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease.

The disease has been confirmed in Britain, Germany, France, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland.

Most Eastern and Central European countries were placed on ``at risk'' list because of their ``significant amounts'' of imported live cattle and meat-and-bone meal from EU countries that suffer from mad cow disease, the report said.

Mad cow disease is believed linked to a brain-wasting illness in humans, known as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. The human form has killed some 80 Europeans since the mid-1990s, mostly in Britain.

---

New Zealand faults U.S. on warming

InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 4/3/2001
By PAULINE JELINEK Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406612610

WASHINGTON (AP) - Fallout continued Monday over the Bush administration's rejection of a global warming treaty, with New Zealand's foreign minister urging the United States to start working on the problem ``as soon as possible.''

``This is a real problem. It has to be addressed,'' said Phil Goff, minister for foreign affairs and trade.

``We would expect the United States to remain involved and to work with the international community to find a solution ... to the problem of global warning,'' Goff told reporters as he left a meeting with Secretary of State Colin Powell at the State Department.

The U.S. decision has drawn condemnation across the globe, especially from the 15-nation European Union. An EU delegation arrived in Washington Monday to press the administration to stick to its commitments.

The delegation, headed by Kjell Larsson, Sweden's environment minister, and Margot Wallstroem, the EU's environment commissioner, is expected to meet Tuesday with Christine Todd Whitman, the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, among others.

Bush last week said the United States would not implement the worldwide agreement, which was negotiated in 1997 in Kyoto, Japan, and had been signed but not ratified by the United States. The Kyoto protocol calls for countries to agree to legally binding targets for curbing greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels.

The Bush administration said it is seeking an alternative to Kyoto that would include poorer, underdeveloped countries that are now exempt from Kyoto commitments.

Earlier this year, Bush asked for more time to review the arguments for alternate fuel strategies and renewable technologies. Other nations were taken aback by the sudden reversal.

``It was somewhat of a surprise to us that the Kyoto protocol was declared dead in that way,'' Goff said.

``While we respect the review that is occurring ... we would hope the United States would become engaged again as soon as possible,'' he said, adding that ``every nation in the world is going to have to make a contribution'' to the environmental effort.

Goff said he was in Washington on behalf of small Pacific island nations, where many people live less than a meter above sea level. They would be among the first to suffer from a rise in water levels caused by global warming.

---

Australian Coral Reef Snag for Hit Show 'Survivor'

Yahoo News
Tuesday April 3
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010403/re/survivor_australia_dc_1.html

SYDNEY (Reuters) - The hit television show ``Survivor'' is in trouble once again with authorities in Australia who are investigating whether contestants illegally removed coral from the Great Barrier Reef.

In the latest episode, broadcast last week in the United States, two contestants were flown to the ecologically sensitive reef and returned with pieces of coral as souvenirs for other cast members.

It is illegal to take coral from the World Heritage listed reef without a permit. Penalties include fines of up to $52,800.

``We'll prosecute in the normal way if they've broken the law,'' Gregor Manson, director of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, told Reuters Tuesday.

Manson said the authority had also had complaints from viewers in the United States about aircraft in the CBS network's reality show flying too close to seabird rookeries on the reef.

``We've got an investigation under way to ascertain whether contestants on the show have done anything untoward,'' Manson said.

Australia's air force was reprimanded by a government minister last week for giving Survivor contestants a free ride on an air force transport plane, a publicity stunt which cost taxpayers about $150,000.

The show outraged animal rights activists in February when a cast member was shown slaughtering a wild pig.

The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park covers the biggest coral structure in the world and is home to complex coral reef systems and wildlife habitats.

---

EU Urges U.S. to Reconsider Global Warming Treaty

Yahoo News
Tuesday April 3
By Patrick Connole
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010403/wl/environment_warming_dc_1.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - European leaders declared the Kyoto climate change treaty very much alive on Tuesday, but Bush administration officials maintained that the international pact to cut greenhouse gas emissions remained dead in their eyes.

Meetings between top aides to President Bush and senior European Commission officials in Washington ended in a stalemate. The Europeans vowed to finalize and ratify a final climate treaty by next year while the Americans -- who have rejected the Kyoto treaty on cutting emissions of greenhouse gases -- said they would sort out still-vague alternatives.

The United States, the world's biggest producer of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, has been harshly criticized by Europe and Asia for dumping the proposed Kyoto treaty on the grounds that it would harm the U.S. economy.

Scientists widely believe that burning coal and oil produces emissions that trap heat in the earth's atmosphere. Warmer climate can trigger harsh weather changes, such as melting polar ice caps and an ensuing higher sea level.

Frustrated European Commission officials said they held out hope that the new White House would eventually see the logic in joining the world fight against climate change.

The Kyoto treaty is due to take effect next year after at least half of the 110 nations which signed it ratify it. The pact aims to cut carbon dioxide emissions by major industrialized nations by an average 5.2 percent from 1990 levels by 2012.

While acknowledging it would be difficult to effectively curb global warming without U.S. participation, the Europeans said it was their responsibility to do just that.

``We are prepared to go on alone, to go on without the United States,'' said Kjell Larsson, minister of the environment for Sweden, the current holder of the rotating European Union presidency. ``We cannot allow one country to kill the process.''

U.S. ``Optimistic'' About Solutions

Environmental Protection Agency administrator Christine Todd Whitman said she told EU officials the Bush administration was ``optimistic'' that a constructive way could be found to adopt ``market-based incentives and other innovative approaches to global climate change.''

However, the matter of the Kyoto treaty, which was nearly a decade in the making, remained unchanged.

``The Kyoto Protocol is unfair to the United States and to other industrialized nations because it exempts 80 percent of the world from compliance,'' Whitman said in a statement.

The White House has launched a Cabinet-level review of U.S. climate change policy to consider future actions on greenhouse gases, she said.

``Global climate change is a serious issue that this administration is committed to addressing by working closely with our friends and allies,'' she added.

The stance taken by Whitman and White House economic adviser Gary Edson did little to calm international outrage.

``We are disappointed,'' Larsson said. ``There were no signs there were differences (within) the administration.''

That means it is now up to the European Union to take the leadership role in finalizing terms of the treaty, he said.

Bush Sees Economic Harm

The Bush administration said last week that the cost of curbing emissions from coal-burning power plants and cars is too great a burden on the economy. The pact is also unfair, Bush aides say, because it does not hold developing nations such as India and China to strict emissions standards.

Last week, the U.S. Energy Department projected that carbon dioxide emissions would grow nearly 35 percent by 2010, mostly from developing nations.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard said his government would stick to the treaty but preferred an approach that would bind developing nations to strict emissions limits.

EC officials privately scoffed at U.S. claims.

``The claim that this could jeopardize the U.S. economy is a bit of a strange argument because the fight against climate change can be a boon for new technology and that is good for the economy,'' said one EC source.

In Berlin, Germany's environment minister said Washington should not block the Kyoto treaty even if it no longer agrees with it. Germany is hosting a United Nations-backed meeting this summer to map out how the Kyoto pact can be implemented.

The U.S. government said it would send a representative to the Bonn meeting, but has not identified whether it will be Whitman, Wallstrom told reporters.

The Clinton administration, which helped draft the Kyoto treaty, never submitted the document to the U.S. Senate for ratification because of strong opposition. But many lawmakers have criticized Bush's abandoning the treaty, saying the administration must offer other options.

The issue of global warming is especially alarming to small island nations. On Monday, New Zealand asked the United States to cooperate with the rest of the world on global warming, especially for the sake of small Pacific nations where many people are at risk from rising ocean levels.

---

Study of Coal Waste Ponds Is Criticized

New York Times
April 3, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/03/science/03DAMS.html

HUNTINGTON, W.Va., April 2 - A government panel looking into the hazards of containment ponds for coal mine waste was criticized today by a leader of a citizens group, who said hearings should be held closer to the people who live hear the impoundments.

"You've done everything wrong," the leader, Doyle Coakley of Richwood, W.Va., told a committee appointed by the National Research Council to conduct a study financed by Congress.

The committee was formed after the bottom fell out of a 75-acre waste pond operated by the Martin County Coal Corporation near Inez, Ky., in October. The pond apparently collapsed into an abandoned underground mine, then spilled into tributaries of the Big Sandy River, part of the border between West Virginia and Kentucky.

Mr. Coakley, who is vice chairman of the Citizens Coal Council, said, the meeting should not have been held in a Huntington hotel.

"Half of the people in Martin County, Ky., have never been in a Radisson Hotel, and they'd be intimidated if they did come here," Mr. Coakley said. "We would like to see somebody besides coal company representatives on this committee."

More studies of the problem are not necessary, he said.

"Building a sludge pond over an old coal mine is plain stupidity, or else total disregard for the people who live below it," Mr. Coakley said. "Wasn't one Buffalo Creek enough?"

He was referring to a 1972 disaster in which a dam broke on Buffalo Creek in West Virginia, killing 125 people.

David R. Wunsch, the New Hampshire state geologist and leader of the National Research Council subcommittee studying coal waste impoundments, said the purpose of the review was to look into the issue in general, not to investigate the Martin County spill. It is possible to expand the committee to include residents of the coal fields, Mr. Wunsch said.

---

New York Times
April 3, 2001
National Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/03/national/03BRFS.html

SAN FRANCISCO: SUIT ON BALLAST WATER Three environmental groups filed a federal suit to seek controls over ships' discharge of ballast water. The plaintiffs - the Center for Marine Conservation, San Francisco Baykeeper and the Pacific Coast Federation of Fisherman's Associations - assert that the practice, permitted under the Clean Water Act, introduces invasive species that cost the economy billions of dollars a year. The Environmental Protection Agency has said it is trying to address the problem. Evelyn Nieves (NYT)

NEW ENGLAND

RHODE ISLAND: LEAD-PAINT SUIT ADVANCES A judge gave the state attorney general the go-ahead to sue paint companies for health damage caused by lead paint. The suit, closely watched by other states and counties, seeks compensation for the costs of eliminating the paint and caring for sickened children. Industry lawyers had argued that the state lacked the authority to bring such a suit, which is modeled on nationwide tobacco litigation. Carey Goldberg (NYT)

---

MANHATTAN: THIRD OIL SPILL

New York Times
April 3, 2001
Metro Briefing
Tara Bahrampour (NYT)
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/03/nyregion/03MBRF.html

The Coast Guard yesterday reported the third small oil spill off the coast in 10 days. It installed containment walls to protect the Shooter's Island bird sanctuary, hours after the spill of 150 gallons of oil during a cargo transfer from the tank barge Josephine Gellatly to the motor vessel Brasilia, said Coast Guard spokeswoman Martha LaGuardia. Oil can endanger sea and bird life if left untreated, but the Coast Guard said it had not yet found evidence of affected wildlife. A spill on March 23 polluted part of Long Island's north shore; a few days later a spill affected another stretch of the same shore.

---

Bush trades global-warming concerns for profits

USA Today
04/03/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/columnists/wickham/2001-04-03-wickham.htm

At the beginning of the last century, Theodore Roosevelt sent 16 battleships on an around-the-world cruise. His "gunboat diplomacy" awakened the world to this nation's military might and signaled the end to a century of American isolationism.

Last week, George W. Bush - another GOP president - started to rebuild the walls of "fortress America" when he announced the withdrawal of this nation's support for the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement to reduce the worldwide emissions of the greenhouse gases that are thought to cause global warming.

Bush's decision is "smokestack diplomacy." In rescinding the backing the Clinton administration had given the Kyoto treaty - which has strong support among this nation's European allies - Bush said the reductions in carbon-dioxide emissions required by the agreement would hurt the U.S. economy.

That sounds more like an excuse than a reason.

Unemployment last month was a paltry 4.2%. Since February of last year, 1.8 million jobs have been created in this country, indicating that the U.S. economy remains strong at its core. Bush's opposition to the Kyoto Protocol understandably riles much of the rest of the world, as well as many in this country. While the United States is home to approximately 6% of the globe's population, it produces 25% of the greenhouse gases that are causing dangerous shifts in the world's climate. Bush's "to-hell-with-them" approach to the worries other nations have about the impact of our gluttonous production of greenhouse gases is a narrow-minded retreat into a new era of isolationism - one that is defined not by disengagement but political chauvinism.

Bush's abandonment of the Kyoto Protocol followed an announcement that he will break his campaign promise to force power plants to reduce their carbon-dioxide emissions. Bush said his reversal is driven by a looming energy crisis; but it's more likely a reward to the coal industry that helped him win the Democratic stronghold of West Virginia in the presidential election. When it comes to the fruits of his victory, Bush is more inclined to place the interests of his corporate supporters ahead of the voters. That's understandable, given that most people who went to the polls cast their ballots for Democrat Al Gore.

And so, too, is Bush's treatment of this nation's allies. During his campaign for the presidency, Bush promised to strengthen relations with our friends abroad - relationships he claimed had been weakened by Bill Clinton's mismanagement of foreign affairs. But instead of making good on this commitment, Bush has put the short-term interests of his energy-industry cronies ahead of the nation's long-term foreign-policy concerns.

Rather than lead this nation by telling people of the need to reduce the greenhouse gases we produce now so the world won't be wracked by calamitous climate changes later, Bush resorts to isolationist rhetoric and action. Instead of worrying about the devastating effects the uncontrolled emission of greenhouse gases will have in the 21st century, Bush circles his wagons in defense of the 20th century energy-production techniques that belch poisonous gases in the atmosphere.

Friday, the Bush administration dug in its heels deeper by rebuffing a call by Latin American countries for industrialized nations to cut their production of greenhouse gases - a decision that no doubt strained relations with those nations. But the more troubling damage done by Bush's bad environmental policies is to our relationship with our European allies, which, in this post-Cold War era, are less likely to give the United States blind allegiance - or accept its political slights.

What passes for an environmental policy in the Bush administration is actually a plan to expand the profits of domestic energy companies at the risk of a worldwide climate catastrophe. These temperature changes, in the long run, pose a greater threat to Americans than the economic turndown that Bush pretends to fear.

---

Parliament approves animal-testing ban

USA Today
04/03/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-04-03-animal-ban.htm

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - The European Parliament voted Tuesday to ban sales of all new cosmetic products tested on animals, including makeup, shampoos and shower gels.

Pending approval from the 15 European Union member nations, the legislation would immediately prohibit cosmetics for which alternative testing exists. By January 2005, the ban also would apply to all new cosmetics using animal-tested ingredients, even if alternative tests have not been developed.

"Those products should no longer be sold," said German socialist member Dagmar Roth-Behrendt, who wrote the bill.

The ban also would apply to imported products. The 8,000 animal-tested cosmetic ingredients already on the market would not be affected.

The 626-member European Union assembly meeting in Strasbourg, France, easily approved about 30 amendments to strengthen EU rules on cosmetics. The Parliament also passed an amendment to label animal-tested products rather than those using alternative methods such as clinical cell or bacterial testing.

The European Parliament and the European Commission have been wrangling over the issue since they postponed a 1998 plan to ban animal-tested products because companies lacked alternative methods.

The only EU countries that ban cosmetic animal testing are Britain, Austria and the Netherlands. Most of Europe's cosmetic testing is done in France and Italy.

The European cosmetic industry, with annual sales around $39 billion, has opposed the ban, arguing that they still do not have many alternatives to animal testing.

The legislation goes the 15 EU governments for consideration and return to the Parliament for a final vote.

---

USA Today
04/03/01
States
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Alaska

Anchorage - Researchers still don't know why three wolves in Denali National Park and Preserve died last month after being darted to fit radio collars. Doug Smith, a National Park Service biologist who oversees wolf research at Yellowstone National Park, said it's unlikely the wolves died from too much tranquilizer. The Park Service has appointed a panel to review the deaths.

Arizona

Tempe - Archaeologists excavating an ancient Hohokam village found 21 rare dog-shaped figurines made by an ancient Southwestern culture. Including 15 figurines found more than a century ago, the Tempe site has now yielded more than half of the world's known guanacos, as the statues are known. The figurines' significance to Hohokam culture isn't known.

Washington

Tacoma - The state hopes Caspian terns will make a home on a barge anchored in Commencement Bay this spring. The housing aid from the Department of Fish and Wildlife is prompted by an ulterior motive. Officials want to avoid a mass migration south to the mouth of the Columbia River, where terns would feed on threatened salmon and steelhead smolt.

Wyoming

Cody - Game and Fish officials will ask the public how $484,000 in federal funds should be spent on wildlife projects. Under consideration are proposals to track trumpeter swans from the Yellowstone area and initiate monitoring for reptiles and amphibians.

---

Another long expensive summer

Washington Times
EDITORIAL • April 3, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20010403-775743.htm

If just-released reports about last summer´s gasoline price spikes have any predictive value, get ready for another expensive summer driving season. The same factors that led to the problem last year inadequate reserves, difficult-to-comply-with "reformulated" gasoline requirements still exist and are just waiting to put the arm on us again.

"We are beginning the driving season with very little stock cushion," Energy Information Administration Director John Cook said. Nationwide, gasoline stocks are almost 10 percent below their 1999 levels at 194 million barrels. Yet U.S. oil refineries are operating at or near their maximum capacity, according to the American Petroleum Institute. OPEC´s decision to cut crude oil production will not help matters at all.

But perhaps the most important factor is that the chemical used to make the "reformulated" gasoline, which is required in many areas by federal law to curb tailpipe emissions from motor vehicles, has become both more scarce and more costly to produce, because a key ingredient, methanol, is derived from natural gas. As the price of natural gas for home heating and similar uses shot up this winter, there was less incentive to divert natural gas production into manufacturing the additive Methyl Tertiary Butyl Ether, or MTBE.

MTBE is an "oxygenate" that supposedly helps reduce automobile emissions. It also contaminates groundwater, however, and has become a significant public health threat as the Environmental Protection Agency finally admitted last year.

This is disturbing news in its own right, but much more alarming in view of the economic slowdown of the past several months. Our society runs on energy, and any significant rise in fuel costs means that it will cost more to manufacture, transport and deliver goods, to drive to work, to shop everything.

We can´t do much about our OPEC friends, but that doesn´t mean there aren´t things we could do, right now, to address the problem before it even becomes a problem. For one thing, the federal mandate regarding the fuel additive MTBE should be reconsidered, if not dropped entirely. That´s because MTBE works, in effect, by adding oxygen to the fuel being burned thereby reducing harmful combustion byproducts. However, this only works meaningfully in much older vehicles typically those vehicles built before the early 1980s, which lack the sophisticated engine management systems of newer cars.

Second, immediate steps need to be taken to increase domestic crude oil production including exploration/drilling in the barren wasteland that environmental activists disingenuously refer to as the "pristine" and "untouched" Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR). This vast tract of land in a remote area of Alaska is more of a perpetually frozen peat bog than the lush Garden of Eden described by environmentalists.

Whether we experience another energy crisis this summer ultimately comes down to two things: Whether, on the one hand, we continue to embrace an emissions-reduction stratagem of extremely dubious value and with many shortcomings; and whether we will allow a handful of extremists on the fringe of the environmental movement to shunt the rest of us into the poorhouse.

---

Changing the subject

Washington Times
April 3, 2001
Inside Politics
Greg Pierce
News and political dispatches from around the nation.
http://www.washtimes.com/national/inpolitics.htm

California's electricity crisis cast a pall over the Democratic state convention in Anaheim last weekend, the Los Angeles Times reports.

"The convention locale, in the heart of once-reliably Republican Orange County, spoke volumes about Democrats' near-control of the state political scene. But the dimmed lights inside the convention hall, a conservation measure imposed by management, spoke volumes, too," reporter Mark Z. Barabak writes.

"So Democrats spent the weekend doing their best to change the subject and point their fingers at someone else: President Bush," the reporter wrote.

"A scant 70 days into his term, Bush was lambasted for everything from his fractured syntax to the controversial way he took office, thanks to the 5-4 decision of a bitterly divided U.S. Supreme Court. One speaker after another attacked the president for barring funds for international family planning programs, rolling back worker safety rules, reversing his campaign pledge to limit carbon dioxide emissions and suspending new arsenic restrictions for drinking water."

Missouri Rep. Richard A. Gephardt, the top House Democrat, was on hand to do his part, saying: "This is a president who, in every way, is doing what wealthy special interests want."

However, national party Chairman Terry McAuliffe did raise the subject of energy shortages -blaming the problem on Mr. Bush: "His attitude is pretty easy to sum up. Bush to California: Drop dead."

Bush's blasphemy

"When Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine Todd Whitman told reporters last week, 'No, we have no interest in implementing [the Kyoto] treaty,' she unleashed a hysteria in Europe unmatched even by the United Kingdom's current troubles with foot-and-mouth disease," writes Philip Stott, professor of biogeography at the University of London and co-author of "Political Ecology: Science, Myth and Power."

"It was as if George W. Bush had pressed the nuclear button. Why?" Mr. Stott asked in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal.

"The reason is simple. In Europe, 'global warming' has become a necessary myth, a new fundamentalist religion, with the Kyoto protocol as its articles of faith. The adherents of this new faith want Mr. Bush on trial because he has blasphemed.

"Nobody will understand this in the U.S. if they fail to grasp that 'global warming' has absorbed more of the emotional energy of European green pressure groups than virtually any other topic. Even biotechnology fades into insignificance by comparison. Americans must also understand that the science of complex climate change has little to do with the myth. In the U.S., the science is rightly scrutinized; in Europe, not so."

The science of "global warming" is deeply flawed, Mr. Stott added, but this fact is "drowned out in the warming waffle now emanating so shrilly from Europe. Yet, because the science is so flawed and uncertain, why should anyone sign up to a treaty that clearly will not work? To put it simply: The idea that we can control a chaotic climate governed by a billion factors through fiddling with a couple of politically selected gases is carbon claptrap."

-------

The Dioxin Deception
Cancer-Causing Dioxin in the Food Chain
Industry & Government Coverup

purefood.org
April 3, 2001
Tamara Straus, AlterNet
http://www.purefood.org/toxic/dioxin.cfm

The causes of cancer are contested. Certainly there is evidence that the disease can be passed down from generation to generation. There is also, of course, proof that smoking can cause lung cancer and a diet high in salt and sugar can cause stomach cancer. But there is no way to predict with certainty who will get cancer or why. And so the wives' tales proliferate: deodorant causes breast cancer; stress causes brain cancer; repression causes colon cancer.

However there is one general connection that has been proved but remains buried. It is the connection between dioxin and cancer. Dioxin is formed when chlorine-containing chemicals, like plastic or industrial waste, are burned, or when pulp or paper are bleached. The chemical then becomes airborne, settling on plants that are eaten by animals, which, in turn, are eaten by humans. Humans retain dioxins in their fatty tissue through both meat and dairy consumption. And once dioxin is lodged in the body there it remains.

Scientists have known the dangers of dioxin for a long time. When the US Environmental Protection Agency completed its first health assessment of dioxin in 1985, it reported that more people will get more cancer from dioxin than any other chemical on earth. The assessment was intended to form the basis of all future EPA regulations of dioxin emissions.

But, according to a report released on April 3 by the Center for Health, Environmental and Justice, the paper and chlorine industries pressured the EPA to reconsider publishing its assessment -- and have succeeded in burying, waylaying and buying off government officials ever since. CHEJ's report, "Behind Closed Doors," is among the most damning studies ever written on how the chemical industry has influenced policy makers and concealed vital health information from the public.

Behind Closed Doors reveals that year after year the publication of the EPA's report on dioxin has been stalled due to pressure from the chemical industry. Tactics have included:

- funding alternative scientific panels, which downplay the health threats of dioxin

- pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into the campaigns of President Bush and former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman (who now runs the EPA)

- influencing the negotiations of the United Nations Treaty on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPS), which is intended to eliminate the proliferation of dioxin and other pollutants

- suing the EPA on the grounds that its guidelines for classifying dioxin as a "known human carcinogen" are false

- squelching community groups and anti-dioxin activists

- and attempting to prevent local governments, such as the California counties of San Francisco and Marin and the cities of Oakland, Berkeley, San Francisco and Palo Alto, from passing resolutions to phase out dioxin sources.

"If you start telling people that every child born in this country has dioxin in their body," said Gary Cohen of the Environmental Health Fund, a partner of CHEJ, "if you show them the list of health effects and that every mother is passing dioxin on to her child, if you say we are all being exposed to hundreds of thousands of chemicals -- it's an explosive issue. And the chemical industry, particularly the chlorine section of the chemical industry, will be in trouble."

So you might say it is in the chemical industry's interests to keep scientific studies of dioxin poisoning under wraps. Among the key findings of "Behind Closed Doors" is the role the American Chemical Council and the Chlorine Chemistry Council have played in preventing a final release of the EPA's dioxin assessment.

Chiefly, the report shows that the ACC and CCC have manipulated the Science Advisory Board of the EPA's dioxin committee through money. The CHEJ's research on the November 2000 dioxin committee shows that a third of its members received funding from 91 dioxin-generating companies, like Dow and DuPont.

One panel member, John Graham, the director of the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, who has a long history of working for the chemical industry, told National Public Radio last year that the chances of getting cancer from dioxin and getting killed in a car crash were both 1 in 100, which put dioxin "on par with common risks." However, the EPA's 2000 draft report on dioxin health risks reports that the "chemical is 10 times more likely to cause cancer than previously estimated," according to a May 18 New York Times article.

Of course, the EPA's report has not been released, so the EPA scientist who talked to the Times spoke on the condition of anonymity. But he also mentioned that the EPA's data showed that "dioxin might alter [human] development and that it might affect thyroid secretions." Other known health risks of dioxin documented by the EPA and CHEJ include attention deficit disorder, learning disabilities, weakened immune system, birth defects and endometriosis, which often results in infertility.

Health activists had hoped that the EPA would publish its dioxin report during the Clinton administration. As Cohen put it last fall, "if the report is not released before November or if Gore does not win the presidency, it will never see the light of day."

For that reason, "Behind Closed Doors" was released the same day Whitman met with top EPA scientists and policy officials to talk about the future of the dioxin reassessment. But given that, according to CHEJ, Whitman did much to deregulate the chemical industry's environmental standards while governor (reducing, for example, air and water pollution violation fines from $40 million to $11 million in eight years), and that, according to Newsweek, the American Chemistry Council raised over $350,000 for Bush's campaign, further stalls are likely.

So Americans will remain in the dark. Still, there is evidence of a growing movement against the chemical industry. On March 26, Bill Moyers' PBS special "Trade Secrets" exposed how chemical companies hid damaging information about vinyl chloride, one of the most potent sources of dioxin.

This unearthing of years of chemical industry documents by Moyers, as well as the reports of CHEJ and other groups may well lead to a public outcry and class action lawsuits. In which case, the chemical industry will find itself embroiled in scandal similar to the one the tobacco industry faced during the last decade.

For more information on the health risks of dioxin, go to the Center for Health, Justice and the Environment (http://www.chej.org).

Organic Consumers Association - Home 6101 Cliff Estate Rd., Little Marais, MN 55614, about us Activist or Media Inquiries: (218) 226-4164, Fax: (218) 226-4157 If you support this web site, send a tax-deductible donation to OCA

http://www.purefood.org

-------- imf / world bank

Human rights a divisive issue
Activists want them included in trade pact; business says 'no way'

Montreal Gazette
Tuesday 3 April 2001
SUE MONTGOMERY The Gazette
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/pages/010403/5024859.html

If a deal like the Free Trade Area of the Americas, which will be discussed this month in Quebec City, can protect business's right to make profits, why can't it also include protection for human rights, activists ask.

Because you'd never get a trade agreement, and if you did, it would be unworkable, says Thomas d'Aquino, head of the Business Council on National Issues, Canada's foremost business-lobby group.

Trade, the environment and anything else that needs to be regulated, must have its own set of regulations, he said.

"What is this idea that everything has to be in a trade agreement?"

But in a speech in Washington in February to the Organization of American States, Prime Minister Jean Chretien said the FTAA cannot be about trade alone.

"It is not a contract among corporations and governments," he said. "First and foremost, it is an agreement among - and about - people. It must be holistic in nature. It must include improving the efficiency of financial markets, protecting labour rights and the environment, and having better development co-operation.

"It must include engaging the private sector, international financial institutions and civil society in a dialogue directed at encouraging greater corporate responsibility."

Responsibility, but not accountability.

And with that slight difference in wording, the two camps - business and globalization critics - part ways.

On the one side are businesses saying a code of conduct, written up and enforced by a company, provides sufficient guidelines.

Being good corporate citizens, they say, makes good business sense.

If you pollute the environment or abuse your workers, consumers will not buy your products. But such a code should be voluntary, they argue.

"If we are responsible, it is we who take the initiatives," said d'Aquino, who speaks for about 150 CEOs of Canada's largest corporations, including Bombardier, Nortel and the Royal Bank.

"It's not a group of people holding us accountable whether we want to be accountable or not."

In the opposite camp are labour, environmental and human-rights leaders saying such codes, where they even exist, not only are public-relations ploys, but lack independent verification and enforcement.

The Canadian government, argues human-rights lawyer Craig Forcese, should follow Britain's lead and assign a minister to a corporate social-responsibility portfolio.

"On the whole, Canada has been lagging behind in terms of regulating and putting it on the agenda," he said.

If government, public employees, courts, police forces and armies and other institutions that affect citizen's lives can be held accountable, so, too, should corporations, argues the newly formed Canadian Democracy and Corporate Accountability Commission.

Former NDP leader Ed Broadbent, who used to head the Montreal-based human-rights group, Rights and Democracy, sits on the commission. He sees no reason why human rights can't be included in trade agreements.

Experience has shown that such agreements can have a negative impact on human rights, Broadbent says.

Governments Hamstrung

For example, intellectual-property rights protected by the World Trade Organization restrict a country's ability to provide cheaper generic drugs, making it more difficult for government's to fulfill their legal obligations under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

"Right now there is nothing saying the human-rights law should trump the trade agreement," Broadbent said.

The same would hold true for labour, according to the Canadian Labour Congress.

The FTAA should include provisions requiring parties to enforce their own legislation as well as the International Labour Organization's core labour standards, the CLC says.

Left up to business itself, argue human-rights, labour and environmental activists, any kind of corporate accountability would lack transparency and be unenforceable.

A survey of Canada's largest international businesses conducted five years ago found that the vast majority either do not have or were not willing to talk about international codes of conduct.

Forcese, the lawyer who headed the survey, said he doubts much has changed in the years since the study was conducted.

He points to the failure of the Canadian retail sector to conclude a code of conduct - something that already exists in the United States and Britain.

Another indicator is the International Code of Business Ethics, which was introduced by the private sector in 1997 and endorsed by Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.

At the time, 14 companies signed on and at last count, there were 15 signatories. One of them, Calgary-based Talisman Energy Inc., is being accused by human-rights groups of contributing to the killing of Christians in the southern Sudan, through its oil revenues to the Sudanese government.

"I'll let you draw your own conclusions," Forcese said.

Philanthropic News

It is simple enough to check out a company's social-responsibility code by going to its Web site, which, by and large, describes the philanthropic activities of a corporation.

Bombardier, in its "Corporate Social Commitment," explains that its non-profit foundation hands out student bursaries as well as supporting several charity and relief organizations and missionary works.

It also has a code of conduct for personnel that deals with such things as conflict of interest, says spokesman Michel Lord.

"They don't address all of the questions raised by anti-globalization interest groups," he said. "But we believe we are good corporate citizens."

Such codes, Forcese and others charge, are used more for public relations to paint an image of good corporate citizenship rather than as a binding commitment.

And without some sort of accountability written into trade deals, citizens must rely on a business's sense of responsibility to respect international human-rights, environmental and labour standards.

"Business people from Canada feel these deals should be exclusively about their rights and are quite uninterested in ensuring that the rights of women and men working in their corporations are protected," Broadbent said.

------

Tear down the wall
Legitimate, peaceful protesters will be squeezed out of the picture by over-the-top security measures, says civil liberties lawyer

Organization: Community Network
The Globe and Mail,
Tuesday, April 3, 2001
By A. Alan Borovoy

FYI: A. Alan Borovoy is general counsel to the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and author of The New Anti-Liberals.

In anticipation of violence at this month's international trade conference in Quebec City, the governments of Canada and Quebec have lost their sense of proportion.

On the one hand, there is questionable hawkishness. Commenting on the security measures being put in place -- construction began on a miles-long metal and concrete fence this weekend, passes will be required to enter the conference perimeter, and more than 6,000 police officers armed with pepper spray and plastic bullets will be on hand -- Quebec Public Security Minister Serge Ménard reportedly said, ". . . if you want peace, prepare for war." This was the kind of language used by former U.S. president Harry Truman when he faced Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. In view of the fact that the contemplated "enemies" in Quebec City are largely unarmed, domestic protesters, rather than well-armed foreign dictators, Mr. Ménard's rhetoric appears, at the very least, misconceived.

On the other hand, there is questionable dovishness. Recently, Canada's International Trade Minister Pierre Pettigrew attempted to meet with a protest group that has been threatening civil disobedience against the conference. According to the press, Mr. Pettigrew wanted to hear the group's concerns about the proposed trade deals. While it's generally commendable for the government to talk to its critics, there could well be long-term problems with doing so here. To eagerly seek out, in this way, those who advocate such law-breaking, is not exactly the most felicitous way to encourage public respect for the law.

In view of the violent confrontations at similar trade conferences in Vancouver, Seattle, Prague, and Windsor, some amount of defensiveness is understandable. But Mr. Ménard and Mr. Pettigrew appear to have gone overboard.

Even more troubling is their apparent neglect of another constituency: those who are planning lawful protests. Without violent or obstructive tactics, it is usually legal to demonstrate. In all the apprehension over protecting the conference from unlawful disruption and attempting to pacify the unlawful disruptors, the authorities have evinced relatively little concern for the plight of the lawful demonstrators. What is being done to accommodate their claim to a viable protest? Indeed, the cards seem to be stacked against this group. With all the miles of fence, they will likely get nowhere near the conference. This could effectively emasculate their planned demonstrations; it could transform their hoped-for dialogue into a hopeless monologue. The alternative "people's summit" is no remedy. It will be too far away. Viable protest generally requires that the intended targets see and hear the protest activity. This means that these demonstrators must be able to subject the conference participants to their political and social censure. The farther away the protesters are, the less they will be able to do this. While it is appropriate to keep them far enough away so that they cannot physically intimidate, they must be sufficiently close in order to politically castigate.

Consider the double standard: Wealthy companies can buy access to the conference; lawful protesters are exiled from the area. Not only are the logistical needs of lawful protesters being downplayed, but so are their understandable fears.

While our governments are quick to provide assurances of police involvement, they are less reassuring about police restraint. Yet, at some of the other trade conferences, it was the police who reportedly instigated a number of the violent encounters. Without apparent provocation, the police reportedly waded into certain groups of protesters, assaulting many in their path. Some of these interactions involved controversial tactics, such as the use of pepper spray and the strip searching of arrested demonstrators. Moreover, it is said, at some of these other conferences, the police confiscated signs that threatened nothing more than the sensibilities of certain leaders.

In their obsessiveness with security, our governments have done little to assure the public that the police will respect the constitutional and legal rights of the protesters. In this regard, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) called on the political authorities to give the attending police written guidelines reminding them of their legal obligations -- in particular, their duty to use no more force than is reasonably necessary to uphold the law.

This message cannot be conveyed too often. The CCLA also urged both governments to publicly reveal enough about the logistical planning to demonstrate that protection will be provided not only for the security of the conference but also for the integrity of the protests. Our governments were asked to indicate not only how the police will achieve effectiveness, but also how they will avoid excessiveness.

The CCLA sent letters to both the federal and Quebec governments asking them to publicize their plans "at least in general outline" at the earliest possible moment. The idea was to give the public every opportunity to scrutinize them and to comment on how adequately they would protect all of the vital interests at issue. Although the CCLA letters were sent well before the end of February, neither government has replied with anything but an acknowledgment that the letters were received. The important issue now, however, is not our government's compliance with the traditional norms of etiquette; it is their responsiveness to the democratic rights of their citizens.

The eyes of the world will be on Quebec. Canadians want to believe that their country will set an example for how a democracy can welcome accredited delegates at a conference and legitimate protesters in the streets. Fairness to both must be the goal. As a result of government obsessions, the rights of the latter appear to be wallowing in neglect. A. Alan Borovoy is general counsel to the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and author of The New Anti-Liberals.

---

U.S. warns Mexico, others on trade

InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 4/3/2001
By MARTIN CRUTSINGER AP Economics Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406614159

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration warned Mexico, Colombia, South Africa and Taiwan on Monday that it had ``serious concerns'' about their failure to open telecommunications trade.

The White House set June deadlines for Mexico and Colombia to resolve U.S. complaints. If the disputes have not been resolved by then, the administration said it would consider pushing ahead with cases in the World Trade Organization.

The administration set no deadlines for Taiwan or South Africa, but officials said they would be pushing both countries to make significant progress in the next few months.

The opening of telecommunications markets under WTO rules has been a ``driving force in opening up world markets to high-technology trade and investment,'' U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick said in a statement releasing the annual review of telecommunications trade practices.

``These agreements have sparked increased competition and a dramatic growth in global networks, benefiting U.S. and foreign suppliers alike,'' Zoellick said. ``Vigorous monitoring and enforcement of these trade agreements is critical to ensuring competitive opportunities for U.S. operators.''

The administration gave Mexico until June 1 to make progress in enforcing new regulations designed to allow foreign companies to compete with Telefonos de Mexico, the telecommunications giant also known as Telmex. The new deadline marked the latest development in a long-running fight between Telmex and American companies.

The Bush administration said that unless Mexico meets the June 1 deadline it would ask for a WTO hearing panel, the next step in pursuing trade sanctions through the WTO.

The Clinton administration had indicated in December that it would request the appointment of a three-member hearing panel, but the Bush administration put that effort on hold to give the government of new Mexican President Vicente Fox more time to resolve the issue.

The White House said Colombia was refusing to license new providers of international communication services, in violation of a WTO agreement. If Colombia has not rectified the situation by June 25, the administration will consider bringing a WTO case.

The administration accused South Africa's dominant telecommunications provider, Telkom, of violating the WTO agreement by refusing to allow foreign companies to have access to its network to offer such services as high-speed Internet access.

The administration said Taiwan needs to carry through with commitments it made to open up its telecommunications market by July 1. Taiwan's membership application to the WTO is pending, along with that of China.

The report also reviewed complaints brought by U.S. companies against Germany, Italy, Spain, Britain and Japan, but it did not list those countries for possible WTO cases.

The annual report on telecommunications trade is required under a 1988 trade law which sets up a process by which the administration must formally respond to complaints about foreign trade barriers brought by the U.S. telecommunications industry.

-------

FTAA Information

The Progressive Response
3 April 2001
Vol. 5, No. 11
Editor: Tom Barry

The Progressive Response (PR) is a weekly service of Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF)--a "Think Tank Without Walls." A joint project of the Interhemispheric Resource Center and the Institute for Policy Studies, FPIF is an international network of analysts and activists dedicated to "making the U.S. a more responsible global leader and partner." We encourage responses to the opinions expressed in PR and may print them in the "Letters and Comments" section. For more information on FPIF and joining our network, please consider visiting FPIF's website: http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/

I. Updates and Out-Takes

SUMMIT OF THE AMERICAS

(Editor's Note: The prospects for formalized hemispheric economic integration do not look good as the third Summit of the Americas approaches: Canada and the U.S. have a trade dispute brewing as do Canada and Brazil. And some Latin American countries, led by Brazil, have expressed their unwillingness to meet the U.S. schedule of completing an FTAA agreement by 2003. When Bush travels to Quebec City, he will come without the fast-track authority he would need to accelerate new trade deals. President Bush has repeatedly asserted his commitment to free trade but he seems clueless about how to build a political majority to support further economic integration. With an economic downturn taking hold in the U.S. and concerns mounting that international business dealings be connected to social and environmental norms, the future of regional and international free trade regimes doesn't look promising. In this issue we offer two analyses of FTAA, excerpted from a new FPIF policy brief and global affairs commentary. See Free Trade Area of the Americas at: http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/briefs/vol6/v6n12ftaa.html and FTAA and Women at >http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/commentary/0103femftaa.html.)

FREE TRADE AREA OF THE AMERICAS
By Karen Hansen-Kuhn

As leaders of 34 Western Hemisphere countries gather in Quebec City, Canada in April 2001, President George W. Bush hopes that the third Summit of the Americas will mark a step toward fulfilling his father's dream of a creating a free trade area stretching from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. For a variety of reasons, this goal seems increasingly out of reach.

When, at the first Summit of the Americas in Miami in December 1994, President Bill Clinton proposed establishing a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) linking all of the hemisphere's economies (except Cuba's) by the year 2005, he held out Mexico as the model of economic reform and NAFTA as the model trade agreement. Just ten days later, however, the Mexican peso experienced a massive devaluation. Stunned observers watched as billions of foreign investment dollars flowed out of the country. That, coupled with the austerity and adjustment conditions attached to the bailout package financed by the U.S. Treasury and the International Monetary Fund (IMF)--particularly the requirement that interest rates be maintained at very high levels--led to further devaluation and sent the Mexican economy into a deep depression.

The economic crises and public discontent have dampened congressional enthusiasm for free trade agreements, as demonstrated by the defeat of the Clinton administration's request for fast-track authority in 1998. Since then, further efforts to introduce fast track--or, as Bush's Trade Representative Robert Zoellick calls it, "trade promotion authority"--have stalemated, with a bloc of congressional Democrats insisting that any agreement must include labor and environmental standards and Republicans vowing to block any accord that includes a linkage.

Recently, the Business Round Table has indicated its willingness to support the inclusion of labor and environmental issues in trade agreements. This is happening in large part because of corporate concerns that other trading partners, particularly the European Union, are gaining ground in trade talks in this hemisphere. In a February 2001 report, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) said: "FTAA negotiations should be accelerated and completed by the end of 2003. Speed is important because of the EU's ongoing negotiations with major South American countries." Although the NAM does not favor enforceable labor and environmental standards, it seems likely that the business community will push for some language on those issues in order to gain sufficient Democratic votes to grant the president fast-track authority and accelerate trade talks.

Many of the region's governments believe that an FTAA would serve to ensure sustained access to U.S. markets by reducing tariffs and preventing trade disputes. The FTAA, like NAFTA, would also provide member countries a seal of approval and thereby, they hope, help to stimulate foreign investment. Brazil, in particular, continues to express ambivalence about the FTAA, suggesting that it would be better to promote Latin American integration first and then consider negotiations with the behemoth of the North.

As with NAFTA, the USTR proposals for the FTAA would result in greater rights for investors, without establishing any corresponding responsibilities. The USTR's position is that investors should have the right to move funds into and out of countries without delay--meaning that provisions such as capital controls or performance requirements to ensure that investments serves to promote development goals would be illegal under an FTAA.

NAFTA includes weak side-agreements on labor and the environment, in which the three countries commit not to break their own laws on those issues, but not even these meager measures are being considered under the FTAA. Washington suggested even weaker language, calling for countries to strive to ensure that labor or environmental standards are not lowered in order to attract investment. Most Latin American governments, however, have rejected even those ideas as inappropriate in trade talks, fearing that any efforts to raise such standards would lead to disguised protectionism. Instead, they have relegated discussion of those issues to unenforceable summit declarations and action plans.

In an outline of its objectives leaked last year, the FTAA services negotiating group stated its goal to liberalize all services in all sectors--i.e., commercial services such as tourism, data processing, and financial transactions, as well as public services at all levels of government. The USTR supports further liberalization of trade in services, promoting a top-down approach in which all services not specifically excluded would be included in the trade deal. This approach could lead to the privatization of such public services as health and education--particularly if a government has opened the door to commercialization of the services by allowing some aspects to be subcontracted to private service providers. The USTR proposal calls for the inclusion of energy services, something excluded from NAFTA, and it fails to address the possible environmental consequences of such a move.

According to Alternatives for the Americas: Building a Peoples' Hemispheric Agreement, which was prepared by activists and scholars from the hemisphere, labor, environmental, and other relevant social issues must be included in the negotiation process. The resulting agreements should affirm such internationally recognized accords as the International Labor Organization Conventions, the United Nations Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and the Inter-American Convention on Human Rights. Additionally, any consensus reached on these issues must be included within the text of the FTAA agreement, not in unenforceable side agreements.

Language regulating investments should also be changed to balance investors' needs for clear rules with the development objectives of national economies. Governments should retain the right to impose performance requirements on foreign investors and should be allowed to protect small- and medium-scale producers and other key economic sectors in order to promote national development priorities. Each country's right to maintain food and nutritional security (for example, by excluding basic grains from trade-liberalization measures) should also be guaranteed. Likewise, governments must be free to regulate without having to compensate foreign investors for "economic harms." Until such time as the substantive rules reflect greater balance between granting broad new rights to corporations and imposing concomitant responsibilities, the investor-state mechanism has no place in the FTAA.

FTAA & WOMEN
By Marceline White

For women, new trade agreements such as the FTAA present particular challenges. According to the United Nations, women constitute more than 70% of the world's poorest citizens. Women are disproportionately poor due to social and cultural discrimination, which limits their access to education, technological training, credit, and land. In addition, women are not hired for many jobs for which they qualify; they are considered "secondary" wage earners and are usually the last workers hired and the first fired. Finally, women still do the bulk of "reproductive" work--caring for their families, preparing meals, and keeping the household clean and functioning. This invisible work means that women have less time to gain new job skills, to seek new jobs, or to simply relax and pursue leisure activities.

Although women have a large stake in the outcome of trade talks, trade negotiators ignore women's specific needs and concerns when devising new agreements. To date, no trade negotiators have studied how new trade rules might affect women differently. Consequently, the FTAA agreement is likely both to widen the gender gap between men and women and to increase poverty for many women in the Americas. These concerns are even more pressing if the U.S. succeeds in its efforts to move the timetable for the negotiations forward--from the established date of 2005 to 2003. This "fast-tracked" timeline would impede countries' abilities to thoroughly analyze the implications of any sectoral commitments.

If the U.S. proposals are indicative, women's equity will be lauded in the Summit of the Americas declaration, while being undermined at the negotiating table. Below are some of the gender-specific concerns raised by the summaries of the U.S. negotiating proposals for the FTAA:

Farmers

The agriculture proposal ignores the issue of food security, a key concern for women living in poverty in the region. It also ignores recommendations to allow countries to provide special protections for small farmers (30 to 40 million Latin American women are responsible for household farming activities). Female seasonal laborers are likely to be much poorer than others and to compete against one another for jobs, thereby driving down wages. In addition, casual and seasonal work forces poor women laborers to spend more time seeking employment.

Agriculture agreements under the FTAA may increase food insecurity in Latin America and the Caribbean. Currently, there are more food subsidies and supports for developed countries than for developing ones. The FTAA is likely to increase dependence on food imports and decrease countries' self-sufficiency, unless U.S. negotiators agree to include a "food security box" to ensure that countries have the capacity to protect rural communities and the resources to provide basic foods to the poor.

Producers and Consumers of Services

The U.S. proposal's failure to call for a provision ensuring basic health, education, water, energy, and other social services opens the door for privatization programs that are likely to result in layoffs and cuts in services that will disproportionately affect women.

The public service sector has historically been associated with more highly skilled and waged jobs for women. Privatization of social zervices has already been mandated for many indebted countries through the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Those privatization plans have disproportionately affected women. Between 1990 and 1995, after Nicaragua agreed to an IMF privatization plan, over 250,000 public sector workers lost their jobs, particularly in the health and education fields. More than 70% of those laid off were women. New privatized jobs in the health care and education sector in Nicaragua tend to command lower wages and increasingly casual, temporary, or contractual labor with few benefits.

Water may also be privatized as part of the FTAA, with serious health implications for women and children. Worldwide, women and girls spend an estimated 40 billion hours every year hauling water from distant and frequently polluted sources. If privatization raises the cost of water, women may either ration clean water or substitute unclean water. Recent IMF-led water privatization in Cochabamba, Bolivia, led a mother of five to choose between food and water when her water bill rose from $5 to $20 a month. That $15 increase had previously been the means to feed her family for a week and a half.

Marceline White <mwhite@womensedge.org> is the director of the Global Trade Program at Women's EDGE.

Sources for More Information on FTAA:

Organizations
Alliance for Responsible Trade
Email: karen@art-us.org
Web: http://www.art-us.org/

Center for International Environmental Law
Email: sporter@ciel.org
Web: http://www.ciel.org/

Common Frontiers
Email: comfront@web.ca
Web: http://www.web.net/comfront/

Institute for Policy Studies
Email: saraha@igc.org
Web: http://www.ips-dc.org/

Red Chile por un Comercio Justo y Responsable
Email: alianzacj@ctcinternet.cl
Web: http://www.comerciojusto.terra.cl/

Red Mexicana de Acción frente al Libre Comercio
Email: rmalc@laneta.apc.org
Web: http://www.rmalc.org.mx/

World Wide Web
Hemispheric Social Alliance
http://www.asc-hsa.org/

Official FTAA site
http://www.ftaa-alca.org/

Summit of the Peoples of the Americas
http://www.peoplessummit.org/

United States Trade Representative
http://www.ustr.gov/

-------- police

Inquiry on Officers' Presence at a Massage Parlor

New York Times
April 3, 2001
By ROBERT HANLEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/03/nyregion/03PROS.html

LODI, N.J., April 2 - The Jersey City Police Department said today it was reviewing the actions of several of its officers who turned up inside a spa here that promotes itself as a massage parlor but that prosecutors called a thriving center of prostitution.

The Jersey City officers were among 21 off-duty officers, most of them from Hudson County, who law enforcement officials said were in the Ultima Spa last Thursday when it was raided by detectives from the Bergen County Prosecutor's office. None were charged with crimes.

For months, local officials have complained that the spa, which has occupied a brick warehouse on the southern end of town since the mid- 1990's, was actually a brothel, and have called on the Bergen County prosecutor to close it.

Fourteen workers at the spa, including the owner and several young women, were arrested on prostitution charges. But the reverberations from the raid were quickly felt in nearby Hudson County when it became known that so many local police officers were among those inside. Because the officers were not arrested, their names were not released.

A spokesman for the Jersey City police, Sgt. Edgar Martinez, said the department's internal affairs unit was reviewing the presence of some of its officers.

Mayor Gary Paparozzi of Lodi and a councilman, Joseph C. Piparo, said they were upset that the Bergen County prosecutor, William H. Schmidt, never answered a year of written appeals asking for a crackdown. The Lodi police were barred from participating in the inquiry by Mr. Schmidt's office, the mayor said.

Mr. Schmidt said gathering enough evidence to charge the spa's owner, Luke Hoffman, 37, of New Milford, N.J., was "difficult and time-consuming."

Mr. Hoffman's lawyer, Robert Rosenberg, called his client the "victim of overzealous prosecution by the prosecutor's office."

He added, "There was no prostitution and there was no illicit sex."

---

Verniero Rebuffs Request for New Testimony

New York Times
April 3, 2001
By LAURA MANSNERUS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/03/nyregion/03TROO.html

TRENTON, April 2 - Justice Peter G. Verniero refused a legislative committee's request today that he return to answer questions about whether he misled the committee two years ago in his confirmation hearings for the State Supreme Court.

The State Senate Judiciary Committee, which is investigating whether Mr. Verniero ignored or covered up evidence of racial profiling by the state police when he was the state's attorney general, sent a letter this morning to his lawyer giving the justice until 6 p.m. to answer its request that he clarify testimony he gave last week in a 13-hour session.

In a letter tonight, the lawyer, Robert A. Mintz, said Mr. Verniero "testified truthfully and as completely as he could in 1999" and "respectfully declines your invitation to appear again." A nine-page written response from Mr. Verniero to the committee was attached.

The letter was addressed to the committee chairman, William L. Gormley, who said last Wednesday in a blistering conclusion to Mr. Verniero's testimony that day that he thought Mr. Verniero had misled the committee during his confirmation hearings.

Mr. Verniero said during his confirmation hearings that his office had begun gathering "the underlying data" on profiling only after a highly publicized shooting of three men by two troopers on the New Jersey Turnpike in April 1998.

Mr. Verniero has consistently maintained that the state police had failed to deliver statistics on traffic stops and searches while assuring him that profiling was not a problem. He has also said he did not see the statistics until they were presented to him in March 1999.

In response to the committee's increasingly hostile questions last week, he said he could not recall most of the documents showing that a disproportionately high number of drivers searched in traffic stops were black or Hispanic.

In the current hearings, some witnesses have testified that statistics about profiling were available to Mr. Verniero as early as December 1996. Some have said he was made aware of them in meetings with officials from his own office and the state police. Tonight, two state lawyers who were involved in the profiling issue testified that they were told only in February 1999 that the Justice Department was investigating the state police.

That investigation started in 1996, after a State Superior Court judge in Gloucester County found a "de facto" policy of singling out black and Hispanic motorists for stops on the turnpike. As soon as the Justice Department notified Mr. Verniero, then the newly appointed attorney general, of the inquiry, he and the state police undertook a damage-control campaign. The inquiry was not disclosed until spring of 1999, when the state was forced into a settlement.

Meanwhile, several internal audits were forwarded to Mr. Verniero's office but did not reach federal investigators who had requested the information.

Deborah L. Stone, who oversees appeals for the attorney general's office and worked on the Gloucester County case, testified that she had not known of the internal audits while the case was on appeal.

Ms. Stone said she had always suggested that the case was weak and that the disclosure of evidence going back to 1995 "totally undermined our appeal."

---

Town Official Suggests Plan to Put Police in the Schools

New York Times
April 3, 2001
By JANE GROSS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/03/nyregion/03SAFE.html

GREENBURGH, N.Y., April 2 - After 2 of 10 school districts in this Westchester town shut down in recent days because of Columbine-like threats, the town supervisor, Paul J. Feiner, today offered superintendents a cost-sharing plan that would put uniformed police officers into schools that wanted them.

The proposal, inspired by threats in Edgemont and Hastings-on-Hudson, met with mixed reactions from the school superintendents who convened in Town Hall here for a question-and-answer session with Mr. Feiner, Chief John Kapica of the Greenburgh Police Department and Timmy L. Weinberg, a member of the Town Council.

Mr. Feiner said before the meeting that he expected widespread resistance from superintendents, who are fearful of hurting the image of their upscale districts by acknowledging a risk that "nobody wants to admit." His modest hope, the supervisor said, is to win over one or two administrators and let their districts be models for others.

The most vocal proponent of the plan was the superintendent of the Ardsley school system, Stanley Toll, who said it might give "parents and kids an extra layer of comfort in these difficult times." Dr. Toll, who last year suspended several students who called themselves the Trench Coat Mafia and made e-mail threats to classmates, said that his school board and families he had sounded out were "reasonably positive about the concept."

By contrast, John D. Russell, the Hastings superintendent who evacuated three schools last week after a bomb threat, said that a regular police presence was "not consistent with the values of our district" and "changes the tone and tenor of a school." Dr. Russell said he would take Mr. Feiner's proposal to his school board but was not inclined to participate.

Dr. Russell noted that a police officer on the campus of Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., was unable to stop the carnage there in 1999. Chief Kapica countered by saying that last month in El Cajon, Calif., the officer assigned to Granite High School subdued a student who had wounded five people and was bent on further destruction.

But Chief Kapica and the two Greenburgh elected leaders made it clear that the main mission of officers at schools would be to prevent violence by acting as counselors and confidants to the students. "We're not the Gestapo coming into your schools to click our heels, pat and frisk kids and look in their lockers," Chief Kapica said. "This is meant to open lines of communication."

Under the proposal, the salary and benefits for one or more additional police officers, members of local departments, would be shared by the Town of Greenburgh, the villages within it and the participating school districts, according to a complicated formula.

The total cost of the program will depend on how many districts participate, how many officers they want and the officers' wages. Each participating district would be eligible for a federal grant that could provide $125,000 over three years to offset expenses.

Mr. Feiner had originally considered using plainclothes officers, assuming that it would soften objections of suburban parents who are not accustomed to schools with metal detectors, locked toilets and armed guards. But the federal grant requires that so-called community resource officers be in uniform.

Most of the superintendents and police officials at today's meeting asked about financing, training and supervision of officers and the timetable for grant applications, but did not reveal their opinions of the plan. Dr. Russell was the only one to speak in opposition. Besides Ardsley, two districts indicated tentative support: Edgemont and Elmsford.

---

Alienation Is a Partner for Black Officers

New York Times
April 3, 2001
By C. J. CHIVERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/03/nyregion/03POLI.html

One night last December, Officer Eric Josey was driving his Acura Legend on East 138th Street in the South Bronx. He had just completed a tour patrolling Harlem, and had changed into a sweatshirt and jeans. A jacket concealed his 9-millimeter pistol.

Stopping in traffic, he glanced in his rear-view mirror and saw two men rushing for his car. They were carrying guns. In the instant Officer Josey had to react, he reacted like a cop. He reached for his pistol, pushed open his door and turned his 6-foot-2- inch, 225-pound frame to face what he thought was a carjacking. But his gun snagged on his jacket liner, he said, and the men were upon him.

One pointed a pistol at his head. Someone swore and ordered him to the ground. Vehicles and men swarmed all around. Officer Josey realized what was happening. He was being stopped by the police.

"I'm on the job!" he shouted, using police jargon for announcing he was an officer. The plainclothes detectives, a Bronx narcotics team, looked flummoxed - until one found Officer Josey's silver badge under his clothes.

It was in the long moment that followed, as the narcotics team's red taillights faded down the street, that Officer Josey, standing beside his idling car, heart pounding, anger rising, saw more clearly than ever the New York Police Department's capacity to alienate black men, including its own.

"I can't be any more clear about this," he said. "I almost lost my life. If I had gotten my gun out, I would have been dead, and for no other reason except I am black."

For more than 25 years, the department has been unable to integrate a significantly larger proportion of black men into its ranks. In 1974 male black officers formed 7.7 percent of the ranks. The proportion is now 9.2 percent, an increase dwarfed by the advances of Hispanics and women.

Throughout much of this period, the department's leadership has said that diversifying the ranks is a priority, and that doing so can improve the force, deepen public trust and ease the persistent tension between black men on the streets and officers on the job.

In many respects, the difficulties the department has encountered have been tied to larger social forces, including competition for a finite population of qualified black men from private business. But to the black men in uniform, one of the department's deepest problems is the department itself.

Speaking from an accumulation of personal experiences, a wide variety of black officers and detectives say the department has struggled with integration in part because of bungled recruiting efforts, an insincere commitment and promotion rules that leave few black men at the top.

And they say these problems are compounded by the type of policing that led to the shooting of Amadou Diallo in 1999 and the stopping of Officer Josey, which tend to cement the department's poor reputation among the young black men it most hopes to recruit. Moreover, they say, these tactics, heralded by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and police officials as a prime factor in the city's crime decline, have eroded the morale and enthusiasm of what is perhaps the greatest asset in its diversity recruiting effort - its black officers.

"Even those of us who have a zeal for recruiting, and who think the best way to fix this job is to get more blacks to the Police Academy, even for us, there are things that haunt us," Officer Josey said. "We talk about it all the time, about how the department treats black men on the street, and when we see it first-hand it haunts us even more."

The Community Notoriety Outweighs Ads

In many ways, Police Officer Raymond S. Skeeter is the face the department wants on its recruiting effort. He is a 15-year veteran and a former Police Academy instructor. A Harlem native, he has a master's degree in public administration and moves comfortably through the city's black middle-class circles when in civilian clothes.

But as a recruiter, he finds that his blue uniform can instantly make him and his peers outsiders. "A lot of blacks look at us, like, why are you even here?" he said.

Two years have passed since an all-white team of officers fired 41 bullets at Amadou Diallo, killing him at his doorstep. In this time, the department has undertaken several efforts to spur its diversification.

It has spent more than $20 million in two advertising campaigns and in nearly doubling the recruiting staff. It has printed new pamphlets stressing community service, often with photographs of black officers. It has studied lists of past applicants, looking for minority candidates. Community affairs officers have set up hundreds of recruiting stands in minority neighborhoods.

Howard Safir, the former commissioner, who ordered the first campaign, said the drive to attract more city residents would increase the proportion of minority police officers, who make up 34.8 percent of the force. "We are at our highest percentages ever, and we intend to continue them," Mr. Safir said last year.

The department has also recruited more minority officers through its cadet corps, a program resembling R.O.T.C. that assists college students with tuition in exchange for future police service. And police officials are working with the Board of Education to create a law enforcement high school, from which it will recruit future officers.

"These are substantive efforts," said Yolanda B. Jimenez, deputy commissioner for community affairs.

There have been successes. Recent academy classes have had more Hispanics, Asians and women. The impact can also be seen in the department's changing demographics. The proportion of white male officers dropped from 61.4 percent in 1995 to 58.6 percent last year, and the current academy class is 47.6 percent white, inspiring the mayor to call it the first "majority minority class."

But the progress has largely missed black men, who form 10.8 percent of the current academy class and 9.8 percent of last October's graduating class - barely different from their percentages in the department.

Police officials give a variety of explanations for the difficulties, including a recently strong economy, which they say lured potential recruits away, and extensive news media coverage of police shootings of unarmed black men and allegations of racial profiling.

The officials also say that the shortage of male black recruits seems tied to recruiting standards. Applicants must be 21 to 34 years old, have completed two years of college and live in the city or a band of nearby counties.

Police officials say the college requirement, added in the mid-1990's, has become a problem because only a small percentage of that region's black men attend college. Andrew A. Beveridge, a sociology professor at Queens College, recently analyzed the city's demographics for The New York Times and found that blacks make up about 20 percent of the 21-to-34-year-old men in the recruiting area, but less than 10 percent of those with the required college work.

And the black men with college experience are being actively recruited by the corporate world, which generally offers more than the department's $31,305 starting salary.

"Since the educational standards went up, we seem to have written ourselves out of the market," said Capt. Timothy J. Hogan, who runs the department's recruiting division.

But the department faces an impediment of its own making, apparent almost wherever it turns: its own reputation.

"Everywhere we go, there is at least one person who has a derogatory comment about the N.Y.P.D., and that person is almost always an African-American," Officer Skeeter said. "We don't get it nearly as much from Hispanics, and just about never from whites. Out there on the streets, young blacks are as wary of us as can be."

The sentiment is strong enough that it appears to create peer pressure as well. In a survey by The New York Times and Quinnipiac University, 64 percent of young blacks said that if they considered joining the department their friends would disapprove. For whites, the number was 43 percent.

Hispanics were more narrowly divided, with 45 percent expecting approval, 46 percent expecting disapproval and 9 percent undecided.

While recent polls have shown that the department receives high approval ratings from residents of many ages, this narrower look, at 18- to 26-year-olds, showed that fear and mistrust of the police contribute to the department's difficulties in diversifying. The poll was conducted in January with 721 young city residents. Its margin of sampling error is plus or minus four percentage points.

Many other divergent opinions, divided along racial lines, were apparent in the responses. For instance, 47 percent of white respondents said they thought the police favored whites over blacks, while 77 percent of blacks thought so. Similarly, 36 percent of whites and 71 percent of blacks said they thought officers were more likely to use deadly force on blacks than on whites.

The negative impressions among young black men were strong enough that many said life as a New York police officer would be socially isolating. When discussing the idea of attending the Police Academy, some invoked the image of Uncle Tom.

"My friends would be like, `How are you going to join them, man, the way they treat people?' " said Peewee Grant, 20, a security guard in Queens who said he had been stopped and frisked by the police 8 or 10 times in the last four years. "`You want to be part of that, a Tom?'"

Chief James H. Lawrence Jr., the department's chief of personnel, said that one of the problems in combating these impressions is that recruiters canvass the city for applicants without enough community support.

If the department received consistent help from social clubs and churches, sports leagues and politicians, Chief Lawrence said, it could hire more young black men.

"I don't think enough people have a sense of participation," he said. "I think that is what we really need."

Many black officers agree, but said the recruiting efforts, while apparently sincere, were insufficient. And they said that sometimes the department appeared almost comically clumsy, like the recent practice of distributing recruiting brochures from stands in station houses.

"We can put out all the applications we want in the precincts, but blacks are afraid to go in and get them," Officer Skeeter said. "In this city, the last place in the world a black man wants to be is inside a police precinct."

And there have been times, black officers said, when the department's apparent unease has come from the top.

Detective Jacqueline Parris, president of the Guardians Association, a black fraternal group, recalled how little the brass seemed to know about its own recruiting operation at a moment when it realized it badly needed more black men.

As Diallo protests raged, she said, Mr. Safir's staff summoned her to a meeting at which they pressed her for advice on recruiting minority officers. Upset, she told them that for years blacks who had passed the entrance exam had been turned down for little reason. The blacks the department sought, she said, already had applications in the recruiting files.

"It's that simple," she said, "all they had to do was just look in the drawer."

Recruiters pored over the old test lists, found applicants who had not been hired and urged them to try again. The results can be seen in the academy's two recent classes, which have a slightly increased proportion of black men.

Detective Parris says the current police commissioner, Bernard B. Kerik, has improved communications with black officers. But as the department recruits anew, she said, he has little to work with. The drawer full of old applicants is empty.

"For the next classes," Detective Parris said, "we'll be starting from scratch."

Inside the Force Many Questions About Commitment

The agenda was straightforward when the City Council called the department's leadership to a hearing in March 2000. Three committees wanted to know how the department had spent more than $10 million on a recruiting campaign and yet faced plunging overall numbers of academy applicants.

Councilman Bill Perkins of Manhattan asked Mr. Safir, then the commissioner, if the more than $1 million the Council had earmarked for the creation of a diversity recruitment unit had been used for that purpose. Mr. Safir responded that the diversity unit had not been formed, because of concerns that an explicit focus on minority recruiting might violate antidiscrimination laws.

The Council members grew restless. The money was gone, but the diversity unit did not exist? And the police officials cited no laws, no court decisions, no advice from other agencies?

To ease the tension, Commissioner Safir agreed to give the Council a written analysis of the legal opinion.

"I think it's incredible," Mr. Perkins said, before Mr. Safir cut him off.

"We will provide the opinion," the commissioner said. "And then you can decide on the adjective, whether it's incredible or not."

A year later, the opinion has not arrived.

For many black officers, the tone and outcome of the exchange illustrates the department's uneven efforts to attract more black men. On one hand, department leaders have extolled the virtues of diversity. On the other, through what black officers see as bureaucratic bungling or even veiled hostility, leaders have signaled that recruiting black men, and improving the equal opportunity record, is no priority at all.

Consistently, the department - whether through principled disagreement or otherwise - has resisted initiatives intended to bring more black men into the ranks.

Officer Skeeter recalled that the department's recruiters wanted to work a Kwanzaa festival inside the Javits Convention Center two years ago. But a chief effectively ordered them not to attend. "We called down there and told them we wanted to go, and needed money to pay the admissions fee," he said. "The answer came back, `You want to go to that, you can set up outside in the street.' "

The recruiters skipped the event.

Similarly, many black officers said the department injured its credibility when Mr. Safir fired Officer Yvette Walton in April 1999, the same afternoon she appeared at a City Council hearing and testified that she had witnessed the Street Crime Unit routinely violate the rights of minority civilians.

Officer Walton was being investigated at the time for possibly abusing sick leave. But black officers said the meaning of her abrupt firing was clear: Don't test the system.

"That was the classic," said one senior police officer. "One day you fire one of us who speaks out about racism. The next day you wonder why more blacks won't join."

A judge ruled last fall that Officer Walton's dismissal was illegal.

Another example that raised questions of the department's sincerity involved the city's Equal Employment Practices Commission, the agency that audits city departments on their record of diversification and compliance with antidiscrimination law.

In 1995, the commission began a routine audit of the department. Its 1997 report shows that the department repeatedly frustrated the auditors. In one case, the department took 19 months to provide answers. In others, it did not answer at all.

"From the outset," the commission wrote, police officials claimed its requests "were burdensome and unnecessary." The commission was also concerned that minority applicants who passed the entrance exam seemed to be failing the hiring steps - background checks, medical and psychological exams - at a higher rate than whites. And it noted that a senior police official claimed that independent reviewers had examined those processes four times, but the department never provided copies of those reports.

Asked about the reports three months ago, the department said it could not find them.

The commission also recommended that the department conduct studies to determine whether its selection processes were skewed against minority applicants. In a written response, Mr. Safir agreed to do them. They have never been done, the department now says.

Mr. Safir, in an interview last week, said that recruiting black men was "very high on the list of priorities," but that he did not know why his staff did not do the studies or send the legal opinion to the Council. He said there were probably valid reasons for the inaction. "In the overall scheme of things, I don't think it is significant," he said.

Others said the inaction raised questions about the department's commitment.

"The department has taken an attitude - perhaps it picked this up from the public - that it has three priorities: fighting crime, fighting crime and fighting crime," said Frank R. Nicolazzi, a commission official. "It seemed that our auditors' experience was that equal employment was not receiving a significant amount of attention."

Two Departments A Double Standard Of Policing

For Officer Josey, life as a police officer has undeniable benefits, offering a measure of respect and financial security and access to the close-knit culture of America's most storied police department. And there have been rich intangibles: the excitement of arrests he made in Harlem's 28th Precinct, the pride he felt as a Police Academy instructor, the challenge he feels now as he trains for the department's Emergency Service Unit.

But he also has real misgivings about his department, from his sense that black men have little chance at promotion to his belief that minority neighborhoods are policed one way and white neighborhoods another, even accounting for relative crime rates.

This tacit double standard, he said, is what led to his being stopped at gunpoint last December, and caused him to file a complaint with the Civilian Complaint Review Board. "I've been around long enough to know that there are two police departments here, the one above 110th Street and the one below it," he said. "Some of the routines you see above Central Park - the stop-and- frisks, the boxed-in cars, the buy-and-busts at the doorways - would not be tolerated in the white neighborhoods."

Senior police officials declined to comment in detail on Officer Josey's complaint, saying only that it was under investigation. But the officials have broadly defended their tactics, noting that the numbers of police shootings have declined sharply for several years, as have the number of lawsuits alleging brutality. They also rebut the contention that the department engages in racial profiling,

And while they acknowledge that police aggressiveness has fueled some animus in minority neighborhoods, they also note that those neighborhoods are much safer than they were a decade ago.

"What the department has done is put out more resources where crime is occurring," Chief Lawrence said. "The upside of that is the reduction in crime in many neighborhoods where minorities live."

But Officer Josey's feelings were echoed repeatedly in recent months in extended interviews with dozens of male black officers and detectives. Some, like Officer Josey, are active members of the Guardians or 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, two fraternal groups. Many are not.

These officers almost invariably said that the satisfactions of the job were undercut by the department itself. All but three of the several dozen officers interviewed, for instance, said that at some point in their careers they been unnecessarily stopped or hassled, when in civilian clothes, by their white peers. Many spoke of being repeatedly asked to produce identification at night on subway platforms. One officer says he is pulled over in his car at least twice a month. Officer Skeeter said a police cruiser once ran him off the road in Central Park.

"For every African-American who has had this type of thing happen to them, getting stopped, getting frisked, there are probably 200 who have been verbally harassed," said one senior black officer. "The verbal attitudes have more of an effect than dragging people out of their cars, because there is so much of it."

These repeated observations - by undercover narcotics officers, by senior supervisors, by veteran patrolmen and near-rookies in some of the department's roughest precincts - echo those noticed by William J. Bratton, Mr. Giuliani's first police commissioner, who said he held several focus groups with black officers in the mid-1990's, and never found a male black officer who had not had a bad encounter with the Police Department when in civilian clothes. Their experiences, recounted repeatedly, together create a portrait of a troubled segment of the police ranks.

Differing emotions pulse through these men. Some talk of anger, others of shame and bewilderment. One said the department was chiefly interested "in the maintenance of white supremacy." Most were circumspect.

One theme, though, was constant: regret.

It was regret chiefly that an institution in which they saw such promise had failed to integrate and elevate significantly more black men, even after a generation of saying it was trying.

And there is a sense that the future looks much like the past. There are important trends: declining percentages of black male supervisors; the makeup of recent academy classes lagging far behind the black representation in the city.

Lt. Eric Adams, president of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, summed up a common sentiment: "I see that in 26 years we've picked up 1.5 percent more black men," he said. "You know what this tells me? It tells me that in another 26 years we'll pick up another 1.5 percent. That's the pace, and the people who run the department seem comfortable with it."

They also said that greatest cost of such powerful disappointment is that the department may have lost the enthusiasm of the very officers most qualified to integrate the job.

Captain Hogan, the recruiting section's commander and a retired police officer's son, says his recruiters sense the loss. He said that with so few black men being promoted in the department, it is often hard to recruit even the sons and nephews of black police officers. For white officers, intergenerational succession is a robust tradition.

"We just don't see the same number of the children of black cops wanting this job," he said.

Officer Skeeter said the phenomenon was one of the strongest indicators of the department's failure; even its own black officers steer their children away, an outcome that he said puts an asterisk beside the city's steep decline in crime in recent years.

"Most minority officers I speak to say they would never let their kids come on this job," he said. "They don't think they've been treated fairly by the department, and wouldn't ever want their children facing the same thing."

---

Supreme Court Roundup:
Court Allows Some Police Interrogation Without Counsel

New York Times
April 3, 2001
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/03/national/03SCOT.html

WASHINGTON, April 2 - A sharply divided Supreme Court ruled today that because the constitutional right to counsel is "offense specific," the police can question a suspect without a lawyer present even if the suspect has already been charged with a closely related crime and is being represented by a lawyer.

The 5-to-4 decision cut back on, but stopped short of overruling, a 1986 decision that protected defendants from further interrogation once they invoked their right to counsel after being charged with a crime. A waiver of the right to counsel is not considered valid if the police initiate further questioning, the court ruled in that case, Michigan v. Jackson.

The question for the court today was whether the same rule applied when the new interrogation was not about the original crime but about one closely related to it - in this case, a double murder committed in the course of a burglary.

The defendant, who had been charged with a 1993 burglary and was free on bail, had denied knowing anything about the murders. But two years later, after he confessed to his father that he had been the killer, the police arrested him and questioned him, obtaining a written confession without his lawyer being present.

The defendant, Raymond Levi Cobb, was advised of his rights and waived them under the Supreme Court's Miranda rule to decline to answer questions and to have a lawyer present. The waiver of rights was valid and so was the confession, the court ruled today in an opinion by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist.

The decision, Texas v. Cobb, No. 99-1702, overturned a ruling by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. In March 2000, that court set aside Mr. Cobb's murder conviction, for which he had been sentenced to death, saying that the confession had been obtained in violation of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel as defined by the Supreme Court in 1986.

"Once the right to counsel attaches to the offense charged, it also attaches to any other offense that is very closely related factually to the offense charged," the Texas court held. Since 1986, most state and lower federal courts have concluded that the right to counsel as defined in Michigan v. Jackson also applied to separate but factually intertwined crimes.

The American Bar Association's Model Rules of Professional Conduct, the relevant portion of which has been adopted by all 50 states, provides that a person known to be represented by a lawyer cannot be questioned "about the subject of the representation" without the lawyer's permission.

In a dissenting opinion today, Justice Stephen G. Breyer quoted the bar association's explanation of the rule as "to prevent lawyers from taking advantage of uncounseled laypersons and to preserve the integrity of the lawyer-client relationship."

Chief Justice Rehnquist responded to this point in his majority opinion. "Every profession is competent to define the standards of conduct for its members," he said, "but such standards are obviously not controlling in interpretation of constitutional provisions." The chief justice added, "The Sixth Amendment right to counsel is personal to the defendant and specific to the offense."

He said, "It is critical to recognize that the Constitution does not negate society's interest in the ability of police to talk to witnesses and suspects, even those who have been charged with other offenses." Moreover, because "defendants retain the ability under Miranda to refuse any police questioning," the decision would "have no impact whatsoever" on defendants' ability to protect their Sixth Amendment rights "in all but the rarest of cases."

The dissenters vigorously disagreed. The decision "will, on a random basis, remove a significant portion of the protection that this court has found inherent in the Sixth Amendment," Justice Breyer said.

He said it would enable the police to manipulate their questioning of a suspect in the common situation where a single course of criminal conduct could be defined as a series of separate crimes.

Chief Justice Rehnquist's majority opinion was joined by Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony M. Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Justice Kennedy, joined by Justices Scalia and Thomas, also wrote a concurring opinion that essentially called for overruling Michigan v. Jackson. Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David H. Souter joined Justice Breyer's dissent.

There were also these other developments at the court today:

Sexual Predators

Accepting an appeal by the State of Kansas, the court agreed to decide what a state had to prove about the mental and emotional characteristics of a violent sexual predator before it could confine the offender to a open-ended term of civil commitment after the conclusion of an ordinary criminal sentence. The case is Kansas v. Crane, No. 00-957.

The Kansas Supreme Court ruled last year that the state must prove as a matter of constitutional due process not only that the offender was suffering from a mental or emotional illness, was dangerous and was likely to repeat his crimes, but also that he could not "control his dangerous behavior."

This additional requirement, Kansas said in its Supreme Court appeal, would make it very difficult to apply its Sexually Violent Predator Act to a large number of sex offenders for whom "volitional impairment" was not part of their clinical diagnosis.

Christian Science Clinics

Without comment, the justices rejected a constitutional challenge to a federal law that permits adherents of Christian Science, who reject conventional medical care, to receive Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement for some nonmedical services provided in clinics run by the church.

After an earlier version of the law, which referred explicitly to Christian Science, was struck down by a federal appeals court five years ago as violating the separation of church and state, Congress amended the law to make it "sect neutral."

But 23 sanitariums affiliated with the church still qualify and, according to the taxpayer group that challenged the law, these are the only clinics that qualify. The United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, in St. Louis, held last year that the new law met constitutional objections. The case was Children's Health Care is a Legal Duty v. McMullan, No. 00-914.

---

Ex-LAPD officer pleads guilty to federal charges

USA Today
04/03/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2001-04-03-lapd.htm

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A former officer who is a key figure in the city's police corruption scandal pleaded guilty to federal charges Monday in a deal that requires him to cooperate with prosecutors.

Nino Durden, 32, pleaded guilty to three counts of conspiring to violate civil rights and one count of possessing a firearm with an obliterated serial number. One of the crimes he admitted to was shooting and crippling an unarmed gang member, then helping plant a gun on him and lying in court to convict him.

"Just wanted to tell the truth, your honor," Durden said softly when U.S. District Judge Christina A. Snyder asked him what made him agree to the plea.

On Friday Durden pleaded guilty to six charges in state court, including conspiracy to obstruct justice, perjury, filing a false report and grand theft.

Durden's plea deal was hailed by prosecutors as a breakthrough in a scandal that came to light more than a year ago when ex-officer Rafael Perez, caught stealing drugs from a police evidence room, made a deal with prosecutors and implicated other officers in a wide range of misdeeds.

Durden, who is free on bail, was Perez's partner. Durden's crimes are punishable by up to 35 years in prison, but under federal sentencing guidelines he will more likely face between four and six years, Assistant U.S. Attorney Mary Andrues said.

Durden and Perez have both now admitted to the most notorious of the allegations to emerge from the Rampart scandal - the Oct. 12, 1996, shooting that left Javier Francisco Ovando a paraplegic.

Ovando was unarmed, but the officers planted a sawed-off rifle next to him and testified against him at trial, claiming he burst into an apartment where they were conducting surveillance.

Ovando was convicted of assault and sentenced to 23 years in state prison, but was released after three years and received a $15 million settlement from the city.

Durden also said he and Perez framed another man on a weapons charge, falsely claiming he had a loaded handgun, and that they threatened to arrest a couple if they did not reveal the location of $1,300 hidden in their motel room. Durden and Perez later stole the money.

In cooperating with prosecutors Durden could implicate former colleagues including Perez. Perez has an immunity deal with the Los Angeles district attorney, but federal prosecutors recently concluded it does not protect him from federal prosecution, an argument Perez's attorneys dispute.

More than 100 convictions have been set aside because of allegations of wrongdoing by members of the Rampart police station's anti-gang unit. In the one case against Rampart officers that has gone to trial, three officers were convicted of conspiracy but the convictions were overturned by a judge on grounds that the jury misinterpreted evidence.

---

USA Today
04/03/01
States
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Arkansas

Paragould - Local police officers will be issued 9mm HS 2000 semi-automatics as their standard pistol. Weapons used by city police have been as varied as Glocks, Berettas, SIGs, Ruegers and Colts. Capt. Dewayne Watson said the advantage of having a standard pistol is that, in an emergency, an officer could pick up another's gun and know how to use it.

D.C.

City police have launched Papering Reform 2001 to eliminate some administrative duties that keep officers away from patrols and lead to higher overtime. One change saves officers from appearing personally to present charges to a prosecutor before a case is pursued. Instead, officers can swear to the charges in their district stations.

Maine

Orrington - HoltraChem Manufacturing has gone out of business, leaving a previous owner of its plant to negotiate with the state over disposal of 80 tons of mercury. State environmental officials got a verbal agreement from Mallinckrodt to assume oversight of the facility.

Minnesota

St. Paul - Seventeen children and four teachers were taken from a day care center to hospitals as a precaution after a carbon monoxide detector went off. No children or teachers were admitted. Fire officials said a furnace may have caused the problem.

Montana

Geraldine - This small town and as many as 30 others could be required to install disinfectant systems at their sewage lagoons. The requirement comes after the state said it had misinterpreted 30-year-old federal water quality standards.

-------- spying

Bush demands return of spy plane crew

Australian News Network
03apr01
From AP
http://news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,1860208%255E401,00.html

US President George W. Bush today demanded China ensure the prompt return of 24 US spy plane crew members and the release of their crippled plane "without further damaging or tampering".

But China said there would be no access allowed to the airmen until tomorrow at the earliest.

Mr Bush said: "Failure of the Chinese government to react promptly to our request is inconsistent with standard diplomatic practice, and with the expressed desire of both our countries for better relations."

The plane - a turbo-prop EP-3 surveillance plane - made an emergency landing on the Chinese island of Hainan after it collided with a Chinese fighter jet.

US officials assume the plane has since been boarded by the Chinese military, but said they had no concrete information on the extent to which the plane, laden with high-tech surveillance equipment, might have been searched.

The United States considers the aircraft to be sovereign US territory and not subject to search or seizure.

China has blamed the collision on the American pilot, saying the US plane veered into one of its F-8 fighters.

As tensions grow, the United States is keeping three Navy destroyers in the vicinity of Hainan island instead of having them continue their journey home from the Persian Gulf.

It has also sent three diplomats to the island in hopes of meeting with the crew.

Mr Bush said: "Our priorities are the prompt and safe return of the crew and the return of the aircraft without further damaging or tampering."

Later, he sidestepped questions on whether the crew members were viewed as hostages or whether he believed the accident to be a provocation by China.

"My reaction is that the Chinese must promptly allow us to have contact with the 24 airmen and women that are there and return our plane to us without any further tampering," he said.

At the State Department, spokesman Richard Boucher said: "We see this as an accident, as a midair accident. That's what we know."

As to the condition of the crew members, he said: "What we've been told is that they're safe and that they're well. And we appreciate that, but we need to speak to them directly for us to find anything more out about the conditions and the situation."

Despite Mr Bush's demand for prompt access, China indicated there would be none before Tuesday night, China time, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.

"We find it very troubling about the lack of speed. We continue to press for prompt access," he added.

At the Pentagon, spokesman Rear Adm. Craig Quigley said the spy plane's left engine and left wing were damaged. The plane is from an electronic reconnaissance squadron whose home base is Whidbey Island Naval Air Station in Washington state.

The Chinese fighter involved in the collision with the American plane crashed into the sea and the pilot is missing. The other fighter returned safely.

The United States offered to help China in locating its missing aircraft and pilot, but the offer drew no response from Beijing.

The episode creates a serious diplomatic situation for both nations.

Anti-American sentiment in China still remains high two years after the mistaken bombing by an American warplane of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia.

Chinese officials have also been wary of Mr Bush's intentions after statements by administration officials suggesting he may take a harder line toward China than did former President Bill Clinton.

China also opposes Bush's advocacy of a missile-defence system and has adamantly opposed Taiwan's request to the United States for the sale of four destroyers equipped with the Navy's most advanced anti-missile radar system.

Mr Bush was nearing a final decision on the sale of the destroyers and other military hardware to Taiwan and was expected to announce his decision within a few weeks.

---

Tensions rise between China and US

Australian News Network
03apr01
By China correspondent LYNNE O'DONNELL
http://news.com.au/newspulse/pulseframe/0,4711,1858720^401,00.html?

AN American spy plane remained stranded in southern China last night amid rising tension between the two countries as the US blasted Beijing for denying access to its 24 crew members.

US ambassador to China Joseph Prueher said it was "inexplicable and of great concern" that the crew of the EP-3 plane had been held in communicado for more than 30 hours since being forced to land on Chinese soil after a collision with a Chinese aircraft.

Two Chinese planes were tailing the US surveillance aircraft at the time of the incident. One of the Chinese F-8 fighter jets crashed with the likely loss of its pilot.

Three senior US officials last night arrived on Hainan island to discuss reclaiming the state-of-the-art US Navy surveillance aircraft and repatriating the crew members.

Admiral Prueher said he had had "modest" contact with Chinese officials since meeting a Chinese deputy foreign minister within hours of the collision on Sunday.

Washington had despatched Brigadier General Neal Sealock, defence attache at the US embassy in Beijing, naval attache Captain Bradley Kaplan and an official from the US consulate-general in Guangzhou to Hainan in an effort to free the plane and crew.

The incident comes at a sensitive time in relations between Washington and Beijing, as President George W. Bush must decide this month whether to sell sophisticated weaponry to Taiwan, which China regards as its sovereign territory.

Washington has asked China to assist with any necessary repairs to the stranded aircraft and allow the plane and crew to return to their base in Okinawa as soon as possible.

Reflecting US concerns about the hi-tech radar and radio tracking equipment on the plane, a senior official of the US military command, Lieutenant Commander Sean Kelly, warned China not to tamper with the craft.

"The entire aircraft is considered sovereign US territory and the Chinese are not to seize, inspect or board it without US permission," he said, adding: "As far as we know, they have not boarded the plane."

The head of the US Pacific Fleet, Admiral Dennis Blair, blamed the collision on a dangerously aggressive game of cat and mouse in which the Chinese jet fighters baited the larger, slower US craft.

"Big airplanes like this fly straight and level on their path, little aeroplanes zip around them," Admiral Blair said. "Under international airspace rules, the faster and more manoeuvrable aircraft has an obligation to stay out of the way of the slower aircraft. Its pretty obvious who bumped into who."

The Chinese Foreign Ministry would refer only to a statement released late on Sunday night that put the blame for the collision squarely with the EP-3.

"The direct cause of the damage and crash of the Chinese jet was that the US plane suddenly veered into the Chinese jet, which was against flight rules," Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao was quoted by official media as saying. "Therefore, the US side should bear all the responsibility."

He charged the US plane with violating Chinese airspace when it landed "without permission" at Lingshui airport on Hainan, where China's military has a heavy presence.

China regarded as normal procedure the practice of following US surveillance planes, Mr Zhu said, while conceding that the collision had occurred in international airspace.

Admiral Blair said that while tailing surveillance planes was not unusual, Chinese pilots had become increasingly aggressive in recent months and that the US had complained to Beijing about "a pattern of increasingly unsafe behaviour".

---

China 'to allow access to US crew'

Australian News Network
03apr01
From AAP
http://news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,1860806%255E401,00.html

13:50 (AEST) A TOP Chinese official today told Foreign Minister Alexander Downer that Beijing would allow immediate consular access to the crew of a US Navy spy plane forced to land in China.

Mr Downer said he had spoken today to General Zhang Wannian, China's second most senior military official, who is on a visit to Australia.

General Zhang, vice-chairman of China's Central Military Commission, had said consular access would occur immediately.

"He told me that China would allow consular access to the Americans immediately consistent with diplomatic norms and that this matter would be resolved by diplomatic means," Mr Downer said.

Mr Downer, who also spoke separately today with the United States Ambassador to Australia, urged the US and China to calmly resolve the incident.

The US Navy turboprop EP-3 surveillance plane made an emergency landing on the Chinese island of Hainan after it collided with a Chinese fighter jet on Sunday.

"We obviously very much hope that this tragic accident can be resolved very quickly and diplomatically and in a calm and appropriate way," Mr Downer said.

Australia has expressed its concern for the missing pilot of the crashed Chinese plane and the hope he would be found.

It was important for Australia to try to do what it could to help the resolution of incidents in the Asia-Pacific region, Mr Downer said.

Prime Minister John Howard said today he had sympathy with the US wanting its surveillance plane and 24 crew back from a Chinese airport without interference.

Mr Howard said the incident in which the US plane and a Chinese fighter collided in mid-air was clearly an accident and the US plane had not been acting offensively.

---

Waiting game for US plane
The Navy crew is reported safe, but concern grows over the technology aboard.

Christian Science Monitor
TUESDAY, APRIL 3, 2001
write a letter to the editor (oped@csps.com)
By Robert Marquand Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2001/04/03/fp1s2-csm.shtml

BEIJING - It's a tense standoff that's reminiscent of a bygone cold-war era, when US spy plane pilot Francis Gary Powers was shot down over Russia in 1960.

Chinese officials yesterday appeared to be playing a waiting game. At press time, US officials had not yet been allowed to make contact with the crew of a Navy spy plane, loaded with eavesdropping technology, that made an emergency landing on the island of Hainan on Sunday.

In Washington, President Bush said "I'm troubled by the lack of a timely Chinese response," and three US destroyers were ordered to stay in the sea near Hainan.

The Chinese have no reason to rush their response, say sources in Beijing, and a careful and calibrated silence over what they see as a downed spy plane off their shores sends a multilayered message of "great power" toughness to the US - at a time when relations are not at their best.

"If the Chinese do not take action to resolve this quickly and cleanly, within the next day or so, it could easily escalate into an even larger diplomatic incident which will negatively impact the relationship in significant ways," says Bates Gill, a China expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "The ball is in their court to resolve this."

But China may not move quickly. "Clearly, this is an opportunity for the Chinese to force the US to take them more seriously. They have long resented American reconnaissance flights in this area, which are essentially designed to gain military intelligence" about China, says Stephen Walt, a professor of international relations at the John F. Kennedy School Government at Harvard University.

Both US and Chinese officials have stated repeatedly that surveillance missions and interplay between military aircraft above the South China Sea have been routine. Partly, the cause of the friction between the US and China is a dispute over what is and is not Chinese airspace in the South China Sea. But this incident highlights a more intense level of intercepts between aircraft on the two sides.

"The intercepts by the Chinese fighters over the past couple of months have become more aggressive to the point that we felt that they were endangering the safety of Chinese and American aircraft," US Pacific Fleet commander Adm. Dennis Blair told reporters in Hawaii.

The Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy issued a statement yesterday saying that the intercepting jets were from a Chinese Navy air unit that took off from Lingshui airfield - the same base where the American EP-3 landed. In the past year, according to the report, Chinese jets have 13 times encountered US aircraft in a manner designed to "get close to and confront" US planes, with one Chinese commander "inserting his plane into the formation of the US craft and coming within eight meters of a plane." The center's director, Frank Liu, says the information was obtained by calling "people" in and around Hainan Island and the Lingshui airbase.

Such accounts are impossible to verify, though sources say they "fit the pattern" of recent months.

But the immediate concern of US officials is contacting the crew, and protecting the sensitive equipment on the EP-3. It is not yet known whether the equipment on the plane was disabled or destroyed by the crew, who evidently shut down the electrical systems on the aircraft when it landed.

Some sources say that military personnel who fly sensitive reconnaissance missions are trained to quickly immobilize the computer systems and radar telemetry on the aircraft.

In the case of the forced landing of the EP-3, which suffered damage to its left wing and the outside (No. 1) engine of four turboprops, the flying crew would have been in an emergency crisis. But many of the 20 or so other personnel would have had 70 to 80 miles of flying time, plus time on the ground, to render the equipment useless.

"I think it's very unlikely that [the crew] would have been able to disable or destroy critical intelligence assets so completely that the Chinese could get nothing from it," says Dr. Walt. "If the Chinese have an opportunity to explore the plane at leisure, I'm sure they will find something."

The three US diplomats in Hainan are close enough to the Lingshui airbase so that "if they were given permission" they could contact the crew immediately. "Under the generally accepted norms of international law, our aircrew is immune to PRC jurisdiction,"Ambassador Prueher told reporters here yesterday.

"It is inexplicable and unacceptable and of grave concern to the most senior leaders in the US government that the aircrew has been held incommunicado for over 32 hours, and the Chinese so far have given us no explanation for holding the crew," Prueher said.

This incident comes at a delicate time. "There are so many things going on in the US-China relationship right now - from newly detained scholars, to human rights, to Taiwan arms sales," says Thomas Gold, China expert at the University of California, Berkeley. "On the one hand, the Chinese foreign ministry is trying to make nice with the Bush administration, which still does not have a working East Asia team. At the same time, the White House says publicly it wants to lean toward Japan, and be a competitor with China. We are seeing in this incident that part of the Chinese leadership that is taking this confrontational language, and approach seriously. They don't trust the US - on Taiwan, on anything."

---

Economy alters political weather
From tax cuts to environmental protections, an economy in flux changes the calculus of policy battles.

Christian Science Monitor
TUESDAY, APRIL 3, 2001
By Peter Grier (grierp@csps.com)
Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2001/04/03/fpcon-natl.shtml

WASHINGTON - After years of dealing with a blue-sky fiscal era, Washington is suddenly worried about the return of the politics of hard times.

This doesn't mean the US itself is about to break out the bottles of red ink. So far, the government surplus is projected to remain strong for years to come.

But an unsettled economy is unsettling voters - and thus, inevitably, politicians too. Prospects for everything from George W. Bush's tax cut to his budget plan and beyond are changing like the weather on a blustery day, as Republicans and Democrats compete to see which party can appear to do the most to respond to recession concerns.

"In politics, you always want to get out in front of any particular problem," says Dennis Goldford, chairman of the political science department at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.

The clearest example of this new dynamic is the current partisan sparring over the timing of tax cuts.

Senate Democrats are almost gleeful over what they think is the cleverness of their proposal for a one-off $60 billion tax rebate for 2001. Their thinking goes like this: The Bush administration has long argued that economic weakness is a big reason why the nation needs tax relief now. That means the White House can hardly oppose the rebate - even if it siphons away support for Mr. Bush's much more expensive 10-year rate-cut plan.

Maybe so. But Democrats have gotten into trouble when trying to throw the GOP into a tax-cut briar patch before.

In 1980, Democratic counteroffers to Ronald Reagan's tax plan resulted in the final package becoming bigger. That could happen again - Bush has said he will support retroactive tax relief, even as he continues to insist that economic conditions warrant passage of his more expansive plan.

"Part of building confidence in our economy is [to] not only give consumers a boost, but to have a plan that reduces rates for the long term, so that people who make investments ... will have certainty," said Bush at a press conference last week.

Shifting on environment

Tax cuts aren't the only subject where economic uncertainty has changed the tenor of the debate, however. Take the environment.

Bush has defended his reversal of his campaign promise to move toward limits on carbon-dioxide emissions by saying, among other things, that rising energy costs have changed the situation since November.

"We are now in an energy crisis," Bush told reporters at last week's briefing-room appearance.

And references to possible hard times have even cropped up in carping about congressional procedure. With debate on the president's budget coming in the Senate, minority leader Tom Daschle (D) of South Dakota has complained that his party is being kept in the dark about both budget details and Republican plans for the debate's timing.

"I don't know of anything that has greater ramifications for our country and for our economy ... than that debate," said Senator Daschle last Thursday.

But in their references to a slump in the economy, both parties risk striking a tone that could annoy voters.

Strictly speaking, voters are not automatically put off by politicians who sound an alarm about national problems, say some analysts. The reaction is all in how they ring the bell.

In this view, Jimmy Carter got in trouble not for pointing out that the US was in an energy crisis, but for implicitly blaming Americans' behavior as a major cause. Reagan prospered not by ignoring stagflation and big deficits, but by expounding his belief that the American people would naturally be able to overcome any obstacle in their path.

In politics, "you can either treat people as victims, or as heroes," says George Edwards, director of the Center for Presidential Studies at Texas A&M University in College Station. "Heroes is better."

The slump as a selling point

Using economic uncertainty as a selling point for a particular legislative agenda similarly carries some risk. That's because the US economy is so big and complex that its reaction to changes in fiscal policy can be unpredictable.

Consider this scenario: Bush's tax cut passes Congress and is signed into law - yet the economy continues to sink, and enters a prolonged recession. The administration might argue that without the tax cut, things would be worse. But voters might remember that the tax cut was sold as a solution to a problem that persisted anyway.

Politically, that scenario "is one of the worst things that could happen to him," says Thomas Mann, a governmental scholar at the Brookings Institution here.

Not that Bush or any other president should - or would - stand idly by without proposing solutions during an economic downturn. There's a reason the parties are competing to appear responsive to worries about the business cycle: Voters want them to.

And with the Republican margin of control in Congress so narrow, the smallest strategic mistake by either party heading into midterm elections could prove decisive.

"The elections of 2002 are centrally important," says Dr. Goldford of Drake. "They could determine the fate of the Bush presidency."

---

EP Jeebies

Slate - Today's Papers
By Scott Shuger
Tuesday, April 3, 2001

The USAT lead, about the Navy aircraft and crew sitting silent on China's Hainan Island, says "US-CHINA STANDOFF HEATS UP." Also, the paper fronts the Senate's passage of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill, which would, if the House goes along, ban soft money from political campaigns. The WP, NYT, and LAT all lead with the reform bill and front the plane in China.

The papers all note that yesterday President Bush demanded that China immediately release the Navy plane and its crew. The NYT assesses him as "looking tense" when he made his statement, and the paper quotes an unnamed administration official saying that each hour that goes by without China's returning the plane and crew "only makes things worse." But the papers also note the administration's conscious effort not to ratchet up. Both USAT and the LAT observe that U.S. officials have not harshly condemned China, and that three U.S. warships initially in the region have moved on. The NYT quotes an unnamed senior administration official as saying of the Chinese "we have to give them some time to come up with the right decision." There's a smattering of less patient quotes in the sheets from members of Congress.

The WP says nothing has been heard from the plane's crew since it sent an initial Mayday radio call after its collision with a Chinese fighter. However, USAT and the NYT describe a later transmission from the plane after it landed saying it was about to be boarded by Chinese military personnel. The WP cites an AP report, based on a remark of a Chinese sailor, that the crew had been moved to a "military guest house," and says that the U.S. has been assured they were in good condition, although in "military custody." The U.S. ambassador is quoted saying U.S. diplomats would be seeing the aircrew on Tuesday.

The coverage includes much discussion about whether the Chinese should have and/or have had access to the intelligence equipment on the Navy EP-3. The coverage quotes the U.S. ambassador to China saying that the plane has "sovereign immune status" that bars its boarding or detention. And the NYT says that several experts in international law agree. But the Post mentions that in 1976 when a Soviet pilot defected in his fighter plane to Japan, the plane was only returned after being disassembled and inspected by U.S. experts. USAT has U.S. officials assuming the plane has been boarded. The WP has the CIA director saying, "If we were in a similar situation, we'd probably be on that plane, too."

The coverage notes that intelligence mission aircrews generally have a plan for destroying sensitive data and equipment, but the consensus is it's not clear how much could have been accomplished before the plane landed. The LAT runs a good fronter on some of the intricacies of the process, pointing out that such devices as destruction grenades and burn bags aren't much good on planes, for safety reasons. The NYT has perhaps the strongest authoritative statement indicating the likelihood of information compromise, quoting an unnamed senior Pentagon official saying, "You could not possibly neutralize everything on this aircraft that would be of interest to a foreign nation without destroying the aircraft itself." Although the WP at one point mentions North Korea's 1968 capture of the intelligence ship Pueblo, the paper doesn't mention that not all sensitive material or equipment was destroyed in time by its crew. Nor does anybody mention that classified material was left behind in the Iranian desert after the U.S.'s aborted attempt to rescue hostages in 1980.

---

Spy plane dispute may affect Taiwan

InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 4/3/2001
By WILLIAM FOREMAN Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406614963

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) - The dispute between the United States and China over a collision between an American spy plane and a Chinese fighter may make Washington more sympathetic to Taiwan's requests for advanced weapons, a Taiwanese defense official said Monday.

Beijing is lobbying the United States not to agree to sell this island high-tech destroyers and other defensive arms during negotiations in Washington that are expected to wrap up in a few weeks.

The collision Sunday between a U.S. surveillance plane and a Chinese jet fighter over the South China Sea made front-page news in Taiwan on Monday and was the main topic of a legislative hearing on defense issues. Taiwan broke away from China amid civil war in 1949, and Beijing has given the island a choice: eventual unification or war.

On Monday, Taiwanese Ministry of Defense official Kao Yang told lawmakers a new U.S.-China feud might benefit Taiwan, which feels threatened by the Chinese military buildup. America is one of few nations that defies China and sells Taiwan weapons.

``If both sides take a hard-line position on the (collision) issue, it might have a positive influence on our arms talks,'' Kao said. ``If they resolve it quickly, we're not sure yet whether that will be in our interests or not.''

But political scientist Philip Yang warned that serious U.S.-China disputes, especially ones about military issues, can haunt Taiwan in the long run. When the two sides patch up relations, Washington might make concessions on Taiwan to please Beijing, he said.

``China will definitely use the dispute over the collision as a bargaining chip,'' said Yang, who teaches at the National Taiwan University.

But Yang said he doubts the Bush administration would cave in to Chinese pressure and strike items off Taiwan's weapons wish list so as not to increase tensions. He also didn't think the incident would prompt Washington to sell Taiwan more weapons than it had planned.

``That reaction would be too extreme and would excessively accelerate tensions,'' he said.

Most likely, Bush will delay a decision on the arms sales, Yang said.

Although Chinese war games or other potentially threatening events often cause Taiwan's jittery stock market to plunge, the island's bourse was relatively unaffected Monday by the collision, dealers said.

By midday Monday, news about a school firebombing that killed a principal and a child outside Taipei replaced the U.S.-China collision story at the top of cable TV newscasts on Taiwan.

Andrew Yang, a defense expert at the Chinese Council of Advanced Policy Studies, a Taipei think tank, said the collision came at the worst possible time for Taiwan.

``This is a very important, sensitive moment,'' he said.

The analyst said he doubted the incident would directly affect U.S.-Taiwan arms talks.

But he said it would feed China's argument that the situation in the region is already tense and that selling arms to Taiwan makes things worse.

``This incident is a symbol of the potential tension between the United States and China in the South China Sea,'' Yang said.

---

China silent on U.S. spy plane, crew

InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 4/3/2001
By MARTIN FACKLER Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406614759

LINGSHUI, China (AP) - Twenty-four Americans and their spy plane were confined to a military base on a tropical Chinese island under a blanket of secrecy Tuesday, still out of contact two days after a collision with a Chinese warplane. American diplomats were heading to the site.

Reporters who visited the base where the EP-3 made an emergency landing Sunday found a complex of new, white-tiled buildings. Its palm-lined driveway looked like the entrance to a tropical golf resort. The island of Hainan _ 2,700 miles south of Beijing _ is a favorite of sun-loving tourists.

The U.S. plane was standing empty on a runway, according to a Chinese sailor reached by telephone at an adjacent naval facility. The sailor, who refused to give his name, said the 24 crew members had been moved to a military guest house.

``We don't know anything for sure about their location,'' Adm. Dennis Blair, commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Command told CNN. ``We've received different reports from officials in the Chinese government, no independent confirmation.''

The Chinese pilot and the Chinese warplane, meanwhile, were missing.

It wasn't clear whether Chinese experts had tried to examine the EP-3's sophisticated surveillance equipment. U.S. officials said the plane shouldn't be boarded without permission.

A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said standard procedure would call for the EP-3 crew to destroy as much of the plane's sensitive surveillance equipment as possible.

In London, a military expert said China could sell any information it obtained to the Russians, giving them access to ``one of the most sophisticated intelligence-gathering airplanes in the world.'' ``It's catastrophic for the U.S. if the Chinese have managed to gain access to the aircraft and if they've managed to obtain access to the computers and the hard disks,'' said Paul Beaver of Jane's Information Group, publisher of the respected Jane's Defense Weekly.

On Monday, armed guards detained at least six reporters near the base on Hainan (pronounced HEYE-nahn), including one who climbed a hill to get a glimpse of the aircraft.

U.S. Ambassador Joseph Prueher, speaking in Beijing, said American officials were being denied contact with the crew, and President Bush demanded their ``prompt and safe return.''

``We had one message from the crew after it landed,'' Blair told CNN. ``The crew told us that they had in fact landed safely. That's the last communication that we've had with them.''

In Washington, U.S. officials said the United States was keeping three Navy destroyers in the vicinity of Hainan. The ships were en route home from the Persian Gulf and had visited Hong Kong.

Bush said he was dismayed that diplomats had not been given access to the crew. Three U.S. diplomats flew to Hainan island and were making their way to the base.

Chinese leaders appeared to be trying to decide on a response _ not an unusual tactic for a government that takes its time in making major decisions. Beijing issued no new information after a statement Sunday blaming the collision on the U.S. plane.

Few Chinese seemed to doubt the official explanation blaming the U.S. plane. Comments posted on Web sites said Beijing should hold the aircraft and its crew as a bargaining chip to extract U.S. concessions or dissect the plane to learn its high-tech secrets.

In Hong Kong, about 100 people protested outside the U.S. Consulate. They demanded that U.S. diplomats come out to accept a petition, and shouted insults when they didn't.

``It's not the first time the U.S. has invaded Chinese territory,'' said Yau May-kwong, 50, a shipping container operator. ``It's a barbaric act.''

In Paris, Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan said he hoped the dispute wouldn't strain U.S.-Chinese relations.

``The American side has explained time and again to our ambassador that this incident will not influence the general interests between China and the United States,'' Tang said.

The U.S. ambassador, however, complained that top officials weren't involved in diplomatic contacts.

``It is inexplicable and unacceptable and of grave concern to the most senior leaders in the United States government that the air crew has been held incommunicado for over 32 hours. The Chinese so far have given us no explanation for holding this crew,'' Prueher said at a news conference.

Hainan, considered a sleepy, tropical backwater that has become a haven for smugglers, gangster and drug traffickers, is an

unlikely focus for an international diplomatic struggles, Hainan more recently has tried to earn an honest living through tourism. A sign outside the airport in Haikou, the island's capital, welcomes visitors in English to the ``Hawaii of China.''

Due to its proximity to Vietnam and the South China Sea, where China and its neighbors have competing claims, the island also is dotted with military facilities. That made Hainan a likely target for American surveillance.

The U.S. military says its plane was on a routine surveillance flight when two Chinese F-8 fighters intercepted it Sunday morning. The EP-3 collided with one of the fighters about 60 miles southeast of Hainan.

The unarmed propeller-driven EP-3 took off from the Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan, with a crew of 22 Navy personnel, one Air Force officer and one Marine. The crew is based at Whidbey Island Naval Air Station in Washington state.

---

Bush demands return of plane, crew

InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 4/3/2001
By TOM RAUM Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406615080

WASHINGTON (AP) - In a tense standoff with China, President Bush demanded the prompt return of 24 U.S. spy plane crew members on Monday and the release of their crippled plane ``without further damaging or tampering.'' China said there would be no access until Tuesday at the earliest.

Bush, reading a sober statement at the White House, said, ``Failure of the Chinese government to react promptly to our request is inconsistent with standard diplomatic practice, and with the expressed desire of both our countries for better relations.''

The emergency landing of the turboprop EP-3 surveillance plane on the Chinese island of Hainan after it collided with a Chinese fighter jet early Sunday brought a new chill to already frosty U.S.-Chinese relations just as Bush was nearing a decision on an arms-sale package for Taiwan that Beijing has opposed.

U.S. officials assumed the plane had been boarded by the Chinese military after its emergency landing on the island in the South China Sea, but they had no concrete information on the extent to which the plane, laden with high-tech surveillance equipment, might have been searched.

The United States considers the aircraft to be sovereign U.S. territory and not subject to search or seizure.

China blamed the collision on the American pilot, saying the U.S. plane veered into one of its F-8 fighters.

Navy spy planes fly routinely off China's southeastern coast to monitor military activity, especially any that might threaten Taiwan, and they are often shadowed in turn by Chinese fighter planes.

As tensions grew on Monday, the United States ordered three Navy destroyers to remain near Hainan island instead of continuing their journey home from the Persian Gulf. Later, Pentagon officials said the three ships no longer were needed and proceeding with their original plan to return home via Guam.

The United States sent three diplomats to the island in hopes of meeting with the crew.

``Our priorities are the prompt and safe return of the crew and the return of the aircraft without further damaging or tampering,'' Bush said on the White House lawn.

Later, during a picture-taking session in the Oval Office with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Bush sidestepped questions on whether the crew members were viewed as hostages or whether he believed the accident to be a provocation by China.

``My reaction is that the Chinese must promptly allow us to have contact with the 24 airmen and women that are there and return our plane to us without any further tampering,'' said Bush, facing the most difficult foreign situation of his young presidency.

At the State Department, spokesman Richard Boucher said, ``We see this as an accident, as a midair accident. That's what we know.''

As to the condition of the crew members, Boucher said, ``What we've been told is that they're safe and that they're well. And we appreciate that, but we need to speak to them directly for us to find anything more out about the conditions and the situation.''

Later Monday, a spokesman in Honolulu at the U.S. Pacific Command headquarters, Lt. Cmdr. Sean Kelly, said that names and hometowns of crew members won't be released until contact has been made with the crew. Of those being held, 22 are Navy, one Air Force and one Marine.

Despite Bush's demand for prompt access, China indicated there would be none before Tuesday night, China time, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. That would be Tuesday morning in Washington.

``We find it very troubling about the lack of speed. We continue to press for prompt access,'' McClellan said.

At the Pentagon, spokesman Rear Adm. Craig Quigley said the spy plane's left engine and left wing were damaged. The plane is from an electronic reconnaissance squadron whose home base is Whidbey Island Naval Air Station in Washington state.

The Chinese fighter that collided with the American plane crashed into the sea and the pilot was missing. The other fighter returned safely. The United States offered to help China in locating its missing aircraft and pilot, but the offer drew no response from Beijing.

The episode created a serious diplomatic situation for both nations.

Anti-American sentiment in China still remains high two years after the mistaken bombing by an American warplane of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia.

Chinese officials have also been leery of Bush's intentions after statements by administration officials suggesting he may take a harder line toward China than did former President Clinton.

China also opposes Bush's advocacy of a missile-defense system and has adamantly opposed Taiwan's request to the United States for the sale of four destroyers equipped with the Navy's most advanced anti-missile radar system. Bush was nearing a final decision on the sale of the destroyers and other military hardware to Taiwan and was expected to announce his decision within a few weeks.

In related developments:

_Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said it was ``hard to imagine'' that the larger, relatively slow-moving turboprop-driven U.S. plane had initiated the collision. As to access to the crew, ``under international law, that should have happened long ago,'' Shelton told a group of newspaper editors.

_Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., urged calm after talking about the situation with Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. ``To lower the temperature is the right way to proceed. This is a delicate matter now. We need to make sure that we deal with it quickly and in an appropriate way,'' Lott said.

_Joseph Prueher, the U.S. ambassador to China, said in Beijing that it was ``inexplicable and unacceptable and of grave concern to the most senior leaders in the United States government that the air crew has been held incommunicado for over 32 hours. The Chinese so far have given us no explanation for holding this crew.''

_Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., chairman of the House International Relations Committee, said the situation ``will only be defused by China's immediate release'' of the crew and equipment. Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., said the Chinese ``always test a new president and I'm glad to see that the president is taking a tough stand.''

---

U.S.-China military incidents

InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 4/3/2001
By The Associated Press
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406614429

U.S.-China military incidents:

April 1, 2001: A U.S. Navy surveillance plane collides with a Chinese fighter jet sent to intercept it over the South China Sea and makes an emergency landing in China. The Chinese government says the fighter crashed and its pilot is missing.

May 7, 1999: U.S. jets strike the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during the 78-day NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. The bombing kills three Chinese and injures more than 20. The United States says it was an accident and expresses ``regrets and profound condolences.''

March 1996: China test fires missiles in the Taiwan Strait during Taiwan's first direct presidential vote. The exercises prompt the United States to send two aircraft carrier groups to the region to help protect the island.

---

Stress added to U.S.-China relations

InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 4/3/2001
By ROBERT BURNS AP Military Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406614397

WASHINGTON (AP) - The collision of an American spy plane with a Chinese fighter jet adds a new dimension to the tension between the United States and China over the future of the island of Taiwan.

The incident, even if resolved quickly, could influence debate within the Bush administration on the kinds of advanced weaponry to sell to Taiwan. The president is expected to decide this month whether to grant Taiwan's request to buy new destroyers equipped with Aegis radar, a deal China strongly opposes.

That decision will depend on ``how the Chinese are acting,'' Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Monday. Shelton said he had not yet made a recommendation to President Bush.

The incident Sunday in which a Chinese fighter jet collided with a U.S. Navy EP-3E Aries II electronic surveillance plane over the South China Sea comes at a particularly sensitive point for U.S.-China relations.

In addition to the issue of arms sales to Taiwan, there also is tension over China's detention of visiting American scholars, the recent defection of a high-ranking Chinese army officer and U.S. plans to build a national missile defense. The Bush administration also is reviewing U.S.-China military relations.

Bush is trying to walk a fine line by keeping the pressure on China for U.S. access to the crew without using rhetoric or taking actions that would escalate the situation ``into something it's not, and that is a crisis,'' said a senior U.S. official who discussed the matter on condition of anonymity.

After lengthy discussions with his foreign policy team, Bush decided to refrain from calling President Jiang Zemin, taking pains not to suggest the White House was in crisis mode.

Navy spy planes routinely fly along China's southeastern coastline to monitor military activity, including a continuing buildup of land-based ballistic missiles that target Taiwan. It's also routine for Chinese fighter planes to intercept the U.S. reconnaissance planes and approach to within a safe distance.

In recent months, however, the Chinese pilots have flown so close _ approaching to within 10 feet of U.S. surveillance planes, according to one Pentagon official _ that American officials complained, said Adm. Dennis Blair, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command.

Putting the best face on the situation, Blair said that by resolving the matter quickly the Chinese government could demonstrate ``this is not a Cold War mentality any more'' and the two countries can have a constructive relationship. ``This could be a positive,'' the four-star admiral said.

Anthony Cordesman, a military analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, said Monday he doubts that the incident was a provocation authorized from Beijing.

``I find it difficult to believe that anybody would task a fighter pilot to do anything this reckless,'' Cordesman said. ``It was a remarkably inept action on the part of the Chinese fighter pilots.''

Doug Paal, who was an Asia specialist on the National Security Council during the Reagan and first Bush administrations, said he believes the incident caught Beijing's leaders by surprise, and that this explains _ at least in part _ the sluggish Chinese response to U.S. requests for access to the crew.

Paal believes the incident will have no immediate impact on the Taiwan issue, although that remains the central source of strain in the U.S.-China relationship.

China considers Taiwan a renegade province and reserves the right to reunite it with the mainland, by force if necessary. The United States is committed to providing Taiwan with a sufficient defense.

Tensions over Taiwan rose to a new level in 1996 when China fired missiles across the strait toward Taiwan in an act calculated to influence the island's first direct presidential election. In response, the United States sent two aircraft carriers to the area. Official military-to-military relations between the United States and China were severed, then gradually restored until the May 1999 U.S. bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, which again threw relations into a tailspin.

---

Kin awaits word on spy plane crew

InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 4/3/2001
By DANIEL SMITH Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406614761

OKINAWA CITY, Japan (AP) - On Okinawa, it's personal. While Beijing and Washington tussle over a U.S. spy plane and its 24 crew members, colleagues in Japan worry and wait.

``Of course people are worried _ they've got 24 individuals,'' said Robert Graham, 38, a civilian consultant who does business on Kadena Air Base in Okinawa.

The unarmed EP-3 spy plane left Kadena on Japan's southernmost island Sunday on a surveillance flight, collided with a Chinese warplane in the South China Sea and made an emergency landing on China's Hainan island.

The EP-3 crew _ 22 Navy personnel, one Air Force officer and one Marine _ are members of Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron One, based at Whidbey Island Naval Air Station in Washington state, the Navy said Monday.

They were on temporary assignment in Japan, where nearly 50,000 U.S. troops are stationed under a security treaty, about half of them on the island of Okinawa.

Chinese officials have assured the United States the crew is safe, U.S. officials said. But Beijing has been vague, saying only that China has made ``proper arrangements'' for the crew.

``We're not getting much from the base,'' said Harry Haney, who runs a nightclub catering to U.S. servicemen at Kadena. ``Most of my information is coming from television.''

The spy plane collision is the latest in a string of high-profile incidents involving the U.S. military on Okinawa.

Long-simmering tensions between the American troops and their hosts flared in January, when a Marine was accused of setting fire to a restaurant and a bar. Japanese officials protested the U.S. military's refusal to hand him over to local police until prosecutors filed charges against him a month later.

In February, the commander of U.S. forces on Okinawa, Lt. Gen. Earl Hailston, was forced to apologize following reports that he called local leaders ``wimps'' and ``nuts'' when they complained about U.S. military conduct.

More trouble came with the Feb. 9 collision between a U.S. submarine and a Japanese fishing vessel that killed nine Japanese. The accident had no direct link to Okinawa, but it inflamed anti-U.S. military passions here.

---

Navy releases names of crew members

InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 4/3/2001
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406615091

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Navy on Monday released the names of the 24 members of the crew of the EP-3E Aries II electronic surveillance plane that landed in China after colliding with a Chinese fighter jet.

The crew are members of Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron One, based at Whidbey Island Naval Air Station, Wash.

They include 22 members of the Navy, one Air Force senior airman and a Marine Corps sergeant.

Here are the names, ranks and home of record:

NAVY
Ensign Richard Bensing of Brandon, Fla.
Aviation Electrician's Mate 3rd Class Steven Blocher of Charlotte, N.C.
Cryptologic Technician Seaman Bradford Borland, whose home of record was not listed.
Aviation Electronics Technician 2nd Class David Cecka of Leavenworth, Wash.
Lt. (j.g.) John Comerford of Palos Verdes Estates, Calif.
Cryptologic Technician Operator 1st Class Shawn Coursen of Valdosta, Ga.
Cryptologic Technician Collection Seaman Jeremy Crandall of Poplar Grove, Ill.
Cryptologic Technician Interpretive 1st Class Josef Edmunds of Davis, Calif.
Cryptologic Technician Interpretive 2nd Class Brandon Funk of Showlow, Ariz.
Aviation Electronics Technician 2nd Class Scott Guidry of Satellite Beach, Fla.
Cryptologic Technician 2nd Class Jason Hanser of Billings, Mont.
Lt. Patrick Honeck of La Mesa, Calif.
Lt. (j.g.) Regina Kauffman of Warminster, Pa.
Aviation Machinist's Mate Senior Chief Nicholas Mellos of Ypsilanti, Mich.
Aviation Electronics Technician 2nd Class Ramon Mercado of Moreno Valley, Calif.
Lt. Shane Osborn of Norfolk, Neb.
Lt. (j.g.) Richard Payne, whose home of record was not listed.
Cryptologic Technician 2nd Class Kenneth Richter of Staten Island, N.Y. Lt. Marcia Sonon of Lenharstville, Pa.
Lt. (j.g.) Jeffery Vignery of Goodland, Kan.
Aviation Machinist 2nd Class Wendy Westbrook of Rock Creek, Ohio
Cryptologic Technician 3rd Class Rodney Young of Katy, Texas MARINE CORPS
Sgt. Richard Pray of Geneseo, Ill.

AIR FORCE
Senior Airman Curtis Towne of Haywood, Calif.

---

No Easy Way Forward With China

New York Times
April 3, 2001
By DAVID SHAMBAUGH
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/03/opinion/03SHAM.html

WASHINGTON - The most recent crisis in Chinese-American relations is escalating tensions with every passing hour and threatens to spiral the relationship out of control if not appropriately handled by the Chinese side. The Bush administration, for its part, has acquitted itself well so far by invoking international law and customary practice for dealing with such incidents.

The White House, the United States Pacific Command and American diplomats in China have been clear and reasonable in their expectations, moderate in their language and steady in this first international crisis for the new administration. By contrast, the Chinese government has obfuscated, has been accusatory and caustic in its official statements, and threatens to deepen the crisis by dragging it out and not acting cooperatively.

The Chinese have finally agreed to permit members of the American Embassy staff to have access today to the plane's crew - as they are required to do under bilateral treaties and international law. But, significantly, China has not indicated how it intends to proceed from then on in this delicate matter.

Beijing's silence is worrying. It likely indicates deep divisions at the top of the government, the Chinese military and Communist Party, and it suggests that at least one faction is calling for drastic action. The worst outcome would be for the American crew to be charged with espionage and infringement of Chinese sovereign air space, in which case there would probably be a show trial with forced "confessions," followed by release of the crew - but not necessarily of the plane. Such a course of action would incalculably damage bilateral relations and would affect the balance of power in Asia and the Pacific.

Of course the plane was spying on China, as EP-3 reconnaissance aircraft regularly do every day by patrolling up and down the Chinese coastline. But this has been going on for much of the past half-century.

If the worst case did come to pass, it would not be unlike the Pueblo incident in 1968, in which North Korea seized an American spy ship and held its crew of 82 for 11 months. The Chinese side would attempt to satisfy hard-line domestic opinion and factions through humiliation of the American "hegemon," as the United States is regularly called in Chinese official and public circles, while ultimately American priorities would lie with regaining a healthy crew.

There are undoubtedly factions in the Chinese military, internal security services and Communist Party elite who are arguing for such extreme action. They may finally feel an opportunity to pay Washington back for a long list of incidents they see as aggression: the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999; the boarding and inspection of the Chinese ship Yinhe, which was suspected of carrying poison gas to Iran, on the high seas in 1993; Americans' work to deny Beijing the Olympic Games for 2000 and 2008; annual condemnations of China's human rights record; and other perceived affronts.

This is the backdrop of the sense of aggrievement felt by many in China. None of it excuses the Chinese government's current behavior in this crisis, but it helps to explain the dynamics at work in the Chinese leadership.

In this context, Beijing has watched the new presidency of George W. Bush with deep suspicions. The administration's rhetoric about China being a "strategic competitor" and the statements by senior American officials that China needs to be "checked" combine in the Chinese mind with the administration's professed desire to strengthen American alliances all around China and proceed with global missile defense despite strong Chinese protests to create what many in China conclude is tantamount to a new policy of containment.

Perhaps Beijing's greatest fear is that Washington will proceed in the weeks ahead to provide Taiwan with a robust package of arms and military equipment. Regardless of the outcome, the current crisis will undoubtedly fuel the hawkish atmosphere in Washington in support of these sales.

The Sino-American relationship has experienced some severe shocks over the dozen years since the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, but it has nonetheless exhibited an ability to live with a certain degree of tension and mutual suspicion without deteriorating into a new cold war. This is because there are powerful reasons for the two powers to remain positively engaged, and powerful constituencies on both sides for doing so. An adversarial relationship helps neither side, although it is pushed by conservative elements and defense industrialists in both countries.

Yet one senses that with the current crisis, relations are at a defining moment. Despite the visit to Washington last week by Qian Qichen, China's vice premier, and the generally conciliatory tack he took, Beijing has not gained a sure footing with the Bush administration. It could decide to defuse the crisis through releasing the plane and crew, thus stabilizing relations, or it could push the relationship into a new stage of hostility.

Ultimately, the crisis will be resolved against the backdrop of domestic Chinese politics, the ongoing leadership succession process, the insecurity apparent in the government's recent handling of the Falun Gong movement and other nagging domestic issues. Also in play are the staunch conservatism in the party-military establishment and the popular nationalistic desire for "payback" against the American hegemon. This combination of indigenous variables does not augur well for a quick and peaceful resolution.

David Shambaugh is the director of the China Policy Program in the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

---

Delicate Passage With China

New York Times
April 3, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/03/opinion/03TUE2.html

After less than three months in office, the Bush administration finds itself unexpectedly embroiled in an awkward military and diplomatic encounter with China. If mishandled by either Washington or Beijing, the midair collision of an American spy plane and a Chinese combat jet over the weekend could seriously disrupt relations. Both sides should work to contain the damage and resolve the problems as quickly as possible.

The Sunday morning collision of the American EP-3E reconnaissance plane and a Chinese jet fighter closely monitoring its movements over the South China Sea may well have been an accident rather than a deliberate effort by the Chinese pilot to bump and disable the American aircraft. Even apprentice pilots know that ramming another plane in flight can have lethal results for both aircraft. In this case, the Chinese plane crashed into the sea. The damaged American plane landed on China's Hainan Island.

President Bush was right yesterday to register a strong protest of Beijing's failure to give American diplomats immediate access to the 24 crew members and to insist on the return of the plane and its crew as soon as possible. Encouragingly, the State Department said it had received word that a meeting between the diplomats and the crew could come today.

The purpose of American military flights along China's coastlines is no secret to Beijing. The cold war's end did not eliminate Washington's need to monitor the military activities and communications of Russia and China. In recent months China has extended its air defense operations farther from its coastline and sent its planes dangerously close to American aircraft. But as long as the American planes remain in international air space, there is no justification for China to confront them.

In this case, the exact route of the EP-3E and its location when the Chinese fighter first intercepted it are in dispute. American officials insist that Chinese air space was not violated. We trust that claim is correct. An intentional breach of Chinese air space would be needlessly provocative, given the range of American electronic equipment.

It is unrealistic to expect the Chinese not to inspect the aircraft and its sophisticated electronic gear. If the roles of the two countries were reversed, Washington would not hesitate to look over an important piece of Chinese military equipment that showed up on American soil. Nevertheless, the United States should be allowed to repair and remove the plane at the earliest possible date.

The uninformative and uncooperative stance taken by China's leaders as this incident began to unfold may reflect pressure from Chinese military officials unhappy with the Bush administration's tougher rhetoric on China and its hints of high-tech arms sales to Taiwan. With the Communist Party nearing critical decisions on China's next generation of leaders, President Jiang Zemin may feel he cannot afford to look weak to senior generals. Similar pressures may also be behind China's recent detention of two American scholars. But Mr. Jiang must stand up to anti-American nationalists, or the improved relations he favors with Washington will suffer.

This is also an important moment for a new American president and his foreign policy advisers. They need to be cautious about positioning American warships in international waters near Hainan Island. The presence of the ships could harden China's response. Presuming that Beijing tries to bring this affair to a quick and satisfactory resolution, Washington should respond by signaling that it accepts the collision as a regrettable accident, not a reason to throw relations with China into a deep chill.

---

Bush Demands 'Prompt' Return of Plane and Crew

New York Times
April 3, 2001
By DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/03/world/03PLAN.html

WASHINGTON, April 2 - President Bush demanded today "the prompt and safe return" of the crew members and the American spy plane that made an emergency landing in China on Sunday, and he warned that China's continued silence about when the fliers would be returned could harm relations between the two countries.

Mr. Bush, looking tense, issued his strong statement in a brief appearance on the lawn outside the Oval Office. "Our priorities are the prompt and safe return of the crew and the return of the aircraft without further damaging or tampering," he said.

He took no questions and returned to the West Wing, where throughout the day his top aides sequestered themselves in a series of emergency meetings focused on what one official called "the many mysteries of this whole bizarre encounter."

Chief among the issues they debated is whether Chinese authorities had decided to confine the crew for an indefinite period or were, alternatively, holding them incommunicado while the often fractious military and political leaders argued among themselves about what to do next.

"I think they were more confused in Beijing than we are in Washington," a senior defense official said.

Mr. Bush's statement, his aides said, was drafted after an early morning briefing by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. It was intended to make clear to President Jiang Zemin that Beijing's relationship with the new administration was on the line.

"Failure of the Chinese government to react promptly to our request," Mr. Bush said, "is inconsistent with standard diplomatic practice and with the expressed desire of both our countries for better relations."

An administration official said the Chinese had "already missed an opportunity to improve relations by announcing right away that they would return the crew." Each hour that goes by, he said, "only makes things worse."

By both Chinese and American accounts, the crew landed safely after colliding with one of two Chinese fighter jets that were closely tailing the spy plane. A senior American official said the crew's last transmission to Kadena air base in Okinawa, Japan, where the plane took off on Sunday morning on its reconnaissance mission, "suggested that a group of Chinese military had surrounded the plane, and it appeared that they were about to board the aircraft." Nothing has been heard from the crew since.

The Navy EP-3E Aries II plane was described by another official as still standing on the tarmac at an airfield on the island of Hainan, in full view of American spy satellites. Its left wing and one of the four engines that power its propellers appeared to have been damaged in the collision, the official said.

Pentagon officials said they believed that the plane's commander had tried to destroy some codes and data just before the plane was surrounded and apparently boarded by armed Chinese guards at the military air base in Hainan.

Far more complicated would be the destruction of the equipment, which would represent a potential intelligence bonanza for China.

"You could not possibly neutralize everything on this aircraft that would be of interest to a foreign nation without destroying the aircraft itself," one senior Pentagon official said. The official added that "it's a foregone conclusion" that the Chinese boarded the aircraft and have been studying its sophisticated surveillance equipment.

Pentagon officials said the commander would not have been expected to ditch the plane in the sea to protect the equipment and data on board, particularly because the United States is not at war with China.

The Chinese fighter that the United States says clipped the spy plane's wing crashed into the ocean, and its pilot is believed to be missing. Mr. Bush repeated an offer this morning to "provide search and rescue assistance to help the Chinese government locate its missing aircraft and pilot." The Chinese have not requested such help.

Chinese authorities insist that the American plane violated its air space. Washington said it was in international air space.

Mr. Bush and his aides are acutely aware that the incident will be viewed as a first test of the president's ability to handle an international confrontation with a major power. The president refused to take questions on the incident, telling a reporter who pressed him at an afternoon event to "give it a rest." But Mr. Bush may have also been hoping that the situation will resolve itself.

This morning, Chinese officials told the American ambassador in Beijing, Adm. Joseph Prueher, that American military attaches and diplomats who arrived in Hainan over the weekend might be able to visit the crew late Tuesday, local time.

A spokesman for the State Department, Richard A. Boucher, said that "to tell us that we may have access tomorrow is not a complete response." He noted later that the Chinese had said nothing about when the crew or the plane will be released.

"We haven't spoken to them," Mr. Boucher said. "We haven't had the access that we think we need and we think that we deserve."

In the White House, debates broke out about how Mr. Bush should deal with a country whose top leaders he has never met, a place he visited once, as a student 25 years ago. Several years ago, President Bill Clinton and Mr. Jiang installed a hot line between the White House and the leadership compound next to the Forbidden City. But Mr. Bush's aides are apparently reluctant to use it.

Tonight a senior administration official said that Mr. Bush had sought to "issue a strong statement to the Chinese about what we are looking for, without overreacting."

"It's a challenging situation for them," he added, "and we have to give them some time to come up with the right decision."

In their effort to avoid a sense of crisis White House officials were careful never to refer to the crew members as hostages.

Other China experts in the administration speculated that Mr. Jiang might not want to spend his limited political capital by intervening to order the crew's release. A State Department official said Mr. Jiang might be particularly hesitant because he knows that Mr. Bush decides this month on selling advanced weapons and radar to Taiwan. Mr. Jian, the official said, "may not want to be seen doing us a favor" if he thinks Mr. Bush approves selling the most advanced technology.

Such speculation today was born chiefly of frustration at how little the Chinese have said, here and in Beijing, to American officials. "It's been a nonresponse," a senior administration official said.

In Paris, Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan of China said although the collision was the responsibility of the United States, he hoped that diplomatic damage would be limited.

Several experts in international law said American officials were on solid ground in arguing that the Chinese should not board or tamper with the spy plane, provided that the collision occurred, as the Navy says, more than 12 miles off the coast of Hainan in what is widely accepted as international air space.

The Chinese claim large parts of the South China Sea as sovereign territory. But other nations dispute the claims.

"Spying itself is not illegal," said Ruth Wedgwood, a professor of international law at the Yale University Law School. "China may not like it. But you can use the high seas for any purpose you wish. Territorial seas are different. That is not considered a so-called innocent passage. But on the high seas, ships can do whatever they want."

---

American Embassy Officials Wait to See Plane's Crew

New York Times
April 3, 2001
By CRAIG S. SMITH
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/03/world/03CHIN.html

SANYA, China, Tuesday, April 3 - Two American Embassy officials arrived here on Monday, but have not yet been allowed to visit the crew of the American surveillance plane that made an emergency landing at a Chinese military base on Sunday after a midair collision with a Chinese fighter jet. They are expected to meet the crew later today.

With tensions over the incident rising, in China and Washington, American officials warned today that further delays in sending the crew home and returning the plane could damage the two countries' already fragile relations. Today began the third day that China had held the crew incommunicado, casting a cold war pall over China's dealings with the Bush administration.

The American officials, Brig. Gen. Neal Sealock, the defense attaché, and Capt. Bradley Kaplan, the naval attaché, came from Beijing to meet with the crew members and arrange their return home and the repair and return of the EP-3E aircraft, which is stocked with sophisticated spying equipment. The plane landed at Lingshui Air Base, about 40 miles from this resort town.

The Americans were met by a Chinese official in Haikou on the northern end of this tropical island of Hainan and driven to the south of the island, where the military airfield is. But the officials were apparently unable to meet with the crew, and checked into a nearby resort hotel on Monday evening. They declined comment. Ted Gong, an American consul in nearby Guangzhou, had already arrived on the island. Richard Boucher, the State Department spokesman, said on Monday that the Chinese have said "that we will have access to our people tomorrow."

But by midmorning today, the embassy officials were still awaiting word from the Chinese.

After the three envoys spent the morning getting haircuts, General Sealock indicated there was no meeting scheduled any time soon and said, "The message we want to send is that we are here, we're ready and we want to get in to see them as soon as possible."

He added that the American Embassy was sending a press officer to Hainan island to handle inquiries, an indication that the process might not be a short one.

The American ambassador to China, Adm. Joseph W. Prueher, said the United States had had no contact with the crew since they radioed that they had landed safely at the base.

The pilot of the Chinese jet that collided with the American plane remained missing at sea after apparently ejecting from his aircraft, Chinese state media reported.

China has charged that the larger, slower EP-3E turned suddenly and collided with the Chinese F-8 jet.

American officials have dismissed the charge, saying that smaller, faster jets bear responsibility for keeping out of the path of larger aircraft. They say that Chinese jets sent to track American surveillance aircraft have become increasingly reckless in recent months and that the United States had already complained about the risks of a collision.

Anger over the incident continued to mount among young Chinese, many of whom equated the loss of the Chinese pilot to the death of three Chinese journalists after American warplanes bombed the country's embassy in Belgrade two years ago. Chinese students attacked the American Embassy and consulates in China after the bombing, and American- China relations shuddered to their worst state in 10 years.

The country's government-monitored Internet chat rooms and bulletin boards have become China's most freewheeling forum for discussion of current events, an easy barometer of opinion among the country's best-educated young people.

They were jammed today with furious denunciations of American imperialism, and many called for retribution.

While the most inflammatory comments were blocked or deleted, the government monitors allowed much of the vitriol to get through.

"We strongly demand the U.S. government make a public apology," wrote a college student on one Web site. "Otherwise Bush should bring plenty of bodyguards when he comes to visit China."

On a bulletin board on the People's Daily Web site, the Communist Party's official mouthpiece, a self-described "member of the China Shock Brigade," called on students to attack the American Embassy in Beijing.

"How they deal with the American aircraft will be a test for the Chinese government," Xiao Fengxian wrote. "Tough or weak, ordinary people will wait and see."

Someone wrote, "We want the Chinese government to stand up against the United States. The American military crew should be used in an exchange that will benefit China, and China should never return the plane. Chinese air force engineers should quickly learn its secrets."

---

Bush Says Time Has Come for Chinese to Return Plane and Crew

New York Times
April 3, 2001
By CRAIG S. SMITH
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/03/world/03CND-CREW.html

HAIKOU, China, Wednesday, April 4 - Two American officials met here today with the detained crew of an American spy plane that collided with a Chinese jet on Sunday morning and sounded a positive note about how the crew members are being treated.

After the talks, which lasted about an hour, one of the officials, Brig. Gen. Neal Sealock, said: "My counterparts here have given me some access. I have seen the entire crew. They are all in good health and are being well taken care of. Their spirits are high and we're going to get them home as soon as possible."

Hours after that meeting, President Bush delivered a brief statement in Washington in which he used tougher language than before. He said he hoped the Chinese would "keep this accident from becoming an international incident" and expressed the fear that, if China refuses to cooperate, Sino-American relations would suffer lasting damage.

Speaking with reporters gathered just outside the White House, the president voiced thanks and relief over news that the crew members are in good health and good spirits and said it is time for China to send them home. And, he said, "It is time for the Chinese government to return our plane."

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, speaking to reporters in Key West, Fla., said he was pleased at the news that American diplomats in China were able to meet with the crew.

"I am encouraged by the fact that the meeting is taking place," Mr. Powell said shortly before 1 p.m. "It shouldn't have taken this long to happen, but now that it has happened, I hope this starts us on a road to a full and complete resolution of this matter. If we resolve this rather quickly, then hopefully it will not affect the overall relationship between the United States and the People's Republic of China."

Asked whether the incident would affect a pending decision by the Bush administration on whether to sell high-tech weapons to Taiwan, the Secretary declined to respond directly.

Indications of a possible meeting came late Tuesday when the five American diplomats abruptly left a luxury hotel here in the tropical capital of Hainan in the company of armed Chinese military police.

General Sealock was wearing his full Army uniform when he left the hotel at about 9:40 p.m. Tusday Chinese time (9:40 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time) accompanied by Ted Gong, a diplomatic consul at the Guangzhou Consulate. They were driven off in a military police convoy.

The two were among five American diplomatic officials who had talks for about two hours with Chinese officials at the Hainan provincial goverment compound in Haikou. After those talks, three of the American officials returned to their hotel.

The Chinese had promised access Tuesday evening to the 24 crew members, who were detained after their plane collided with a Chinese jet fighter and had to make an emergency landing at a Chinese air base at Lingshui, on the southern coast of Hainan.

The American officials spent early part of Tuesday in Sanya, a town near the Lingshui air base, but at about 2 p.m. they were told to leave for Haikou, which is on the island's northern coast and is at least a three-hour drive away.

An hour or so later, reporters staking out the road to the air base saw two buses with darkened windows depart under police escort, fueling speculation that the crew members were being moved to the island's capital, a drive of several hours through Hainan's rugged interior.

Earlier Tuesday, the United States Ambassador to China, Adm. Joseph Prueher, said in an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America" program that it was assumed the Chinese were examining the plane.

"There is little doubt that they have been over the airplane," the ambassador said. "It's been there. We are sure that the crew is not on the airplane and we have every reason to think that the Chinese have been all over the airplane."

CNN later quoted an unnamed Pentagon official as saying the Chinese had removed equipment from the plane. Mr. Powell, asked about that report, said he could not confirm it.

In Beijing, a Chinese government spokesman asserted that the United States was entirely at fault in the collision. The spokesman, Zhu Banzao, quoted President Jiang Zemin as saying that the American aircraft violated international law by intruding on China's airspace and landing on the island without permission.

"The responsibility fully lies with the American side. We have full evidence for that," Mr. Zhu quoted the Chinese president as saying.

"China is the victim," Mr. Zhu said.

He reiterated Chinese demands that the United States stop surveillance flights off the coast of China. He would not say whether Chinese officials had gone aboard the American plane, but asserted that China had the right to investigate the accident.

"If this plane is sovereign American territory, how did it land in China?" Mr. Zhu said. "There's no question of immunity at all. Therefore China has all rights to handle this case."

The Pentagon said today that the very term "spy plane" is inappropriate, since the craft was engaged in "routine surveillance and reconnaissance," in the words of Rear Adm. Craig Quigley. "Spies take part in espionage," the admiral said, by way of contrast.

Admiral Quigley said this incident should end through diplomatic means, rather than military ones. Asked whether the crew members were considered "prisoners, hostages, captives or guests" at this point, he replied, "The term is ambiguous at this point."

The admiral said that, if a foreign aircraft encountered sudden distress and had to land in American territory without prior clearance, he believes the United States would consider the craft "a sovereign piece" of the country it came from and would resist the temptation to board and examine it.

Up until today the American officials had had very little contact with the Chinese since they arrived Monday from the mainland. Officials said privately that they did not know what to expect, and that all negotiations over the arrangements had been conducted from Beijing, with the local officials just waiting for calls from the central government.

With tensions over the incident rising, American officials warned on Monday that further delays in sending the crew home and returning the spy plane could damage the already fragile relations between the two countries.

The incident has cast a cold-war pall over China's dealings with the Bush administration. The United States is keeping three warships in the area to maintain pressure on Beijing.

General Sealock, the defense attaché, and Bradley Kaplan, the naval attaché, came from Beijing to meet with the crew members and to arrange their return home and the repair and return of the EP-3E aircraft. The pilot of the Chinese jet that collided with the American plane remained missing at sea after apparently ejecting from his aircraft, Chinese state media reported.

China has charged that the larger, slower EP-3E turned suddenly and collided with the Chinese F-8 jet, one of two that had been sent to track the American spy plane as it approached Chinese airspace.

American officials have dismissed the charge, saying that smaller, faster jets bear responsibility for keeping out of the path of larger aircraft. They say that Chinese jets sent to track American surveillance aircraft have become increasingly reckless in recent months and that the United States had already complained about the risks of a collision.

Anger over the incident continued to mount among young Chinese, many of whom equated the loss of the Chinese pilot to the death of three Chinese journalists after American warplanes bombed the country's embassy in Belgrade two years ago.

---

Military Analysis: 'A Dangerous Game'

New York Times
April 3, 2001
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/03/world/03MILI.html

TAIPEI, Taiwan, Tuesday, April 3 - The collision between a Chinese fighter and an United States Navy intelligence plane over the weekend was more than a random accident. It also reflected an increasingly dangerous rivalry between the Chinese and American militaries.

After decades of keeping watch over its own skies, China's Air Force has begun in recent years to range farther out above the waters beyond its borders. The United States, in turn, has expanded its intelligence- gathering in the region, as Washington's security interests have increasingly turned eastward and away from the cold war theaters of Europe and the Soviet Union.

One result is that Chinese military aircraft are coming into precariously close contact with American forces running reconnaissance operations in which they monitor radar signals, electronic communications and the activities of Chinese shore- based units and ships. Under normal circumstances, American spy planes can benefit from the scrambling of adversaries' fighters; it can be another opportunity to gather intelligence about their defense.

This game was a familiar one to American and Soviet cold war intelligence planners. And the American military, which does not tolerate such close surveillance of United States territory, regards these operations as entirely routine.

But the Chinese, who lost an F-8 fighter in the collision, are acutely sensitive about their borders and airspace. They are new and apparently reluctant players in this hazardous cat-and-mouse contest.

"They are the new kids on the block, and they are playing a dangerous game," said David M. Finkelstein, a specialist on the Chinese military. "The game is only as safe as the experience factor of their pilots."

There are several reasons for China's shift in strategy. After years of operating with a second-rate air force, China has managed to acquire warplanes that have the reach to operate over the ocean.

China's changing economy is another factor. Its booming enterprises are no longer clustered in the interior, but along the coast. That has made China's strategists more attentive to the need to patrol the sea lanes and islands off the mainland.

Then there are tensions with Taiwan, which China regards as a maritime province. In an effort to bully Taiwan into accepting Beijing's sovereignty, China has been marshaling a large missile, naval and air force near the Taiwan Strait. Beijing flexed its muscles by firing missiles off the coast of Taiwan in 1995 and 1996.

Equally important has been China's attitude toward the American reconnaissance efforts. Shifting its attention to Asia, the American military sees Beijing as a rival, if not a potential enemy. And it has stepped up its spy patrols off the Chinese coast in recent years, former officials say.

For the United States military, such intelligence operations are seen as virtually routine. The American and Russian air forces played the reconnaissance game during the cold war. They send spy planes near the other side's naval battle groups and along the other side's coast full of electronic reconnaissance and other spying gear. The episodes often ended when the adversary scrambled its fighter planes and shooed the intelligence aircraft away.

But in the new arena of the South China Sea, United States, a global power with long experience in gathering intelligence and shadowing rival militaries, is up against an emerging regional power that is moving out of its shell and does not like the old spy etiquette.

After the American Navy EP-3 electronic spy plane collided with a Chinese F-8 and was forced to make an emergency landing at Hainan, Washington told Beijing that international law prevented China from inspecting the spy aircraft and required that it return it and the crew.

But the Chinese military seems to be playing by its own rules. It has not said what it will do with the aircraft and may have entered the plane right after it landed. That could represent one of the few times that the target of an American intelligence mission managed to acquire a spy plane intact.

China's military flights in the South China Sea are a major departure from its air force's early days. Before the 1958 Taiwan crisis over Matsu and Quemoy, the Chinese could not even prevent Taiwan from flying over its territory.

After that crisis, China regained control over its airspace. The commander of China's Air Force, Wang Hai, later proclaimed that Beijing had embraced a new doctrine in which it would be able to carry out offensive as well as defensive operations.

At first, the new doctrine was mostly talk. But gradually China began to acquire military equipment that gave it an offensive punch, though one with a pitifully small reach compared with the United States'.

As tensions heated up over Taiwan in the mid-1990's, it began sending its aircraft over the Taiwan Strait. Now, China has acquired more than 50 SU- 27 fighter planes from the Russians, as well as 10 SU-30 attack planes and S-300 surface-to-air missiles.

That has given China effective control of half of the Taiwan Strait.

China has also sent F-8 planes to Hainan. The aircraft is based on a design that the Soviets rejected and that China obtained before its alliance with the Soviet Union collapsed. It looks like a huge MIG-21.

Chinese pilots carry out much less training than their American counterparts. The pilots are guided by radar controllers on the ground, unlike American pilots, who have much more autonomy. And the pilot of the ill-fated F-8 may simply have gotten too close for his own good to the lumbering American spy plane, which Navy officials now say was 80 miles southeast of Hainan when it was intercepted and inside international airspace.

The Chinese plane may have simply played the game badly, but the Chinese military seems to feel that it is Washington's fault for starting the game in first place. Adm. Dennis Blair, the head of the United States Pacific Command, sought to reassure Beijing that Washington would have expeditiously returned the crew and aircraft had the tables been turned and a Chinese spy plane had made an emergency landing at an American base.

"We are waiting right now for the Chinese government to give us the kind of cooperation that's expected of countries in situations like this," Admiral Blair said on Sunday.

An earlier incident, however, indicated how differently the Chinese think about these matters and how sensitive they can be to the presence of American forces near their forces.

In 1994, the American aircraft carry Kitty Hawk was steaming west of Japan when two of its S-3 antisubmarine aircraft began to monitor a Chinese submarine. The Chinese were not happy. Several fighters zoomed out to intercept the S-3 planes, and the Chinese later not only protested the episode but also suggested that they would take action next time. The commander of the Kitty Hawk battle group was an up-and-coming naval officer: Dennis Blair.

---

Bush: Time for Chinese to return plane, crew

USA Today
04/03/2001 - Updated 08:50 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-04-03-china-bush.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush warned China on Tuesday that it risks damaging relations with the United States unless it quickly releases the American crew of a damaged Navy spy plane. "It is time for our servicemen and women to return home. It is time for the Chinese government to return our plane," Bush said at the White House. Bush said he wanted to give China time to respond to the weekend episode to help prevent the stalemate from escalating into a full-fledged crisis. But, the president said in a statement, such a grace period was quickly running out.

He said he had talked to Army Brig. Gen. Neal Sealock, the U.S. Embassy defense attache in Beijing who participated in a meeting earlier in the day with the 24 crew members - 21 men and three women - on China's Hainan island.

"The general tells me they are in good health, they suffered no injuries and they have not been mistreated. I know this is a relief to their loved ones," Bush said.

"The crew members expressed their faith in America, and we have faith in them," the president said. "They're looking forward to coming home and we are looking forward to bringing them home."

Despite the president's appeal, there were few indications China was ready yet to give back either the crew or the equipment-laden aircraft.

Aides said the president wanted to be careful not to inflame the situation further by issuing hard demands or a timetable for the release of the crew. His statement was intended to be firm but patient, aides said.

Richard Armitage, the deputy secretary of state, was summoning China's ambassador, Yang Jiechi, to discuss the matter, a senior U.S. official said.

Officials said Bush's national security team was considering a range of options in the event China does not act quickly. The options, which the officials said have not reached Bush's desk, include canceling Bush's planned trip to Beijing - announced just last month during a White House visit by China's deputy prime minister - and withdrawing some diplomats from China.

Bush made his public remarks several hours after a U.S. diplomatic team met with the crew. Secretary of State Colin Powell said of that meeting, "I hope that is the beginning of an end to this incident."

The EP-3E Aries II electronic eavesdropping plane made an emergency landing on the tropical island after colliding with a Chinese fighter jet that had shadowed it over the South China Sea.

Several U.S. officials said the Chinese wanted a government apology before allowing the crew to leave China. The U.S. ambassador said he didn't expect to make one.

"This accident has the potential of undermining our hopes for a fruitful and productive relationship between our two countries," Bush said. "To keep that from happening, our servicemen and women need to come home."

China blamed the American plane for causing the collision and said it landed illegally on Chinese territory. The Chinese fighter that collided with the Navy spy plane crashed and its pilot remains missing.

Chinese President Jiang Zemin urged the United States to stop surveillance flights off the country's coasts. A Pentagon spokesman, Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, said he doubted that would happen.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman also dismissed U.S. claims that the plane was sovereign American territory and therefore Chinese officials had no right to board it. He refused to say whether they had done so already, although U.S. officials in Washington said they believed that had occurred.

At a news conference in Key West, Fla., Powell said he hoped China would return both the crew and the airplane soon.

"Let's get back to other matters and put this behind us," Powell said. He expressed concern that it took more than two days for China to permit American officials to speak directly to the crew.

"It shouldn't have taken this long to happen," he said. "But, now that it has happened, I hope this starts us on a road to a full and complete resolution of this matter."

The U.S. ambassador to Beijing, Joseph Prueher, was asked in an interview with CBS' "The Early Show" whether he would have a problem apologizing for the incident.

"As a matter of fact, I do have a problem with it and I think our government would have a problem with it as well," he said.

A senior U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the spy plane's crew said in a message as it prepared for its emergency landing that they had begun destroying sensitive intelligence-collection equipment and information, in accordance with standard procedures.

Prueher told ABC's "Good Morning America," "We have every reason to think the Chinese have been all over the airplane," which is crammed with sophisticated surveillance equipment.

The EP-3E Aries II is from Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron One, whose home base is Whidbey Island Naval Air Station, Wash. The crew consisted of 22 Navy personnel and one each from the Air Force and Marine Corps.

Robert Blocher of Charlotte, N.C., whose son Steven, 24, was one of the crew members, said Tuesday he was concerned about how the Chinese were treating the crew.

"I think any news we get now is going to be good news," he said in the kitchen of his home. "The thing I worry about is that if they are in isolation, I'm wondering what's going through their minds."

---

U.S. diplomats meet with spy plane's crew

USA Today
04/03/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-04-03-china-powell.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - American diplomats met with the crew of a stricken American spy plane Tuesday on an island in southern China where it made an emergency landing. "I hope that is the beginning of an end to this incident," said Secretary of State Colin Powell. The Bush administration hoped the delayed meeting - two days after the U.S. surveillance plane collided with a Chinese fighter jet - would lead to the end of the standoff with the Chinese government. "I hope that this meeting will lead to the rapid release of all of the members of the crew back to the United States so they can be returned to their families," Powell told reporters.

Speaking at a news conference in Key West, Fla., Powell also said he hoped that the Chinese would also permit the "rapid return of our aircraft."

He said he did not see the incident as necessarily damaging U.S.-Chinese relations. Still, Powell complained that the Chinese had waited too long to permit a U.S. team to visit the crew members.

"I'm encouraged by the fact that that the meeting is taking place. It shouldn't have taken this long to happen. But, now that it has happened, I hope this starts us on a road to a full and complete resolution of this matter."

"Hopefully, it will not affect the overall relationship" between the United States and China, Powell said.

He also said the incident would have no bearing on President Bush's decision, expected later this month, on the composition of an annual arms package for Taiwan.

Powell said the meeting between two U.S. officials and all 24 crew members was expected to last about 40 minutes.

"I hope that it is the beginning of the end to this incident," he said.

Earlier Tuesday, Chinese President Jiang Zemin called for an end to U.S. surveillance flights off China's coast. China has blamed the collision on the United States.

Powell did not address those Chinese concerns. U.S. officials continue to call the collision as an accident. China blames the United States.

Bush, who said Monday that China was not responding quickly enough to U.S. requests, declined comment on the situation during a trip to Wilmington, Del. But White House officials indicated he might have more to say after the diplomats' meeting with the plane crew.

The U.S. ambassador to Beijing said earlier Tuesday that the United States wants a diplomatic solution to the standoff but would offer no apology.

"I've been a Navy pilot for 35 years, and I think the assertions they (Chinese officials) described for the collision are extremely unlikely, including where the fault lies," Ambassador Joseph Prueher said from Beijing in an interview with CBS' "The Early Show."

"We really want to work this out through diplomatic channels," Prueher, a retired admiral, said. Asked whether he would have a problem apologizing for the incident, which has ratcheted up tensions between the two nations, Prueher replied:

"As a matter of fact, I do have a problem with it and I think our government would have a problem with it as well." He criticized "these assertions ... from the Foreign Ministry and the message I have been getting for the last two nights as we have been talking to the Chinese" - that the United States is to blame.

China is holding the U.S. spy plane and its 24 crew members. U.S. military officials say the Chinese undoubtedly boarded the plane and examined its sophisticated equipment. Chinese officials have said the crew members are safe.

U.S. and Chinese diplomats were meeting Tuesday morning but there was no indication that a U.S. meeting with the crew was imminent.

A senior U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the spy plane's crew said in a message as it prepared for its emergency landing on Hainan Island on Sunday that it had begun destroying sensitive intelligence-collection equipment and information, in accordance with standard procedures.

"The facts are, our aircraft was operating in international airspace and was on a routine surveillance mission when the collision occurred," Prueher said.

"The responsibility fully lies with the American side," Chinese President Jiang Zemin was quoted by Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao. "We have full evidence for that."

The United States is demanding that China return the crew and their EP-3E Aries II surveillance plane, which made an emergency landing on Hainan after the collision with a Chinese fighter jet.

Prueher, interviewed on ABC's "Good Morning America," said, "We have every reason to think the Chinese have been all over the airplane," which is crammed with sophisticated surveillance equipment.

Bush gave no indication how the United States might react if China delays or refuses outright.

"Failure of the Chinese government to react promptly to our request is inconsistent with standard diplomatic practice, and with the expressed desire of both our countries for better relations," Bush said Monday.

The Navy late Monday released the names of the crew; they included 22 members of the Navy, one Air Force senior airman and a Marine Corps sergeant.

In one of its last communications from the plane, the crew told U.S. authorities the aircraft was being boarded by the Chinese. The United States considers the aircraft sovereign U.S. territory and not subject to search or seizure.

In Beijing Tuesday, Chinese officials said they have a right to conduct an investigation, but did not say specifically whether that included a right to inspect the aircraft.

The EP-3E Aries II is from Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron One, whose home base is Whidbey Island Naval Air Station, Wash. It has a permanent detachment at Misawa Air Base in Japan.

The plane landed on the Chinese island of Hainan after it collided with a Chinese fighter jet that was shadowing it. U.S. officials said the Chinese fighter rammed the spy plane's left wing, damaging an engine. China insisted the U.S. plane created the collision.

The Chinese fighter that collided with the American plane crashed into the sea and the pilot was missing. A second fighter tailing the American plane returned safely.

"The Chinese must promptly allow us to have contact with the 24 airmen and women that are there and return our plane to us without any further tampering," Bush said Monday.

Anti-American sentiment in China still remains high two years after the mistaken bombing by an American warplane of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia.

White House officials said Bush decided not to telephone Chinese President Jiang, not wanting to suggest the White House was treating the situation as a crisis.

Chinese officials have also been leery of Bush's intentions after statements by administration officials suggesting he may take a harder line toward China than did former President Clinton.

China also opposes Bush's advocacy of a missile-defense system and has adamantly opposed Taiwan's request to the United States for the sale of four destroyers equipped with the Navy's most advanced anti-missile radar system. Bush was nearing a final decision on the sale of the destroyers and other military hardware to Taiwan and was expected to announce his decision within a few weeks.

---

Rising hostilities boost risks in spy-plane incident

USA Today
04/03/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/2001-04-03-edtwof2.htm

It's too early to know whether China's failure to release a U.S. spy plane and its 24-member crew results from clumsiness or intentional brinkmanship. Whether by accident or design, though, the fallout is clear: By adding to a growing climate of Washington-Beijing estrangement, the incident invites dangerous exploitation by hard-liners on both sides of the Pacific.

Even before the U.S. spy plane collided with a Chinese fighter Sunday, Washington had criticized recent acts by China. Its fighters have been making close passes at U.S. planes for several months. A new buildup of missiles aimed at Taiwan has been found, reminiscent of its missile firing near the island coast in 1995 and '96. And it has improperly detained two U.S.-based scholars, a citizen and a permanent resident.

China, for its part, has been angered by the December defection to the USA of a high-ranking military officer, U.S. talk of missile defenses and prospective U.S. sales of weapons to Taiwan, which the Bush team is to approve sometime in April. China has responded to the plane incident hostilely, too, refusing to let the crew contact the U.S. and accusing it of territorial violations.

Monday, President Bush called China's response troubling and demanded that the crew be put in U.S. contact immediately. With U.S. warships lingering in the area, things could quickly go downhill if China continues posturing instead of unwinding the crisis calmly. This would leave China with much to lose.

Most imminently, U.S. supporters of Taiwan can benefit greatly from China's belligerence as they try to convince the Bush team to sell Taiwan ship-borne radar that it could use as part of a missile defense against China.

China has warned against such a step, and presumably its U.S.-watchers know brinkmanship feeds the arguments of its enemies. So why has it been jockeying aggressively?

Perhaps to test a new U.S. president. This is routine international fare at which China has occasionally succeeded. For instance, Ronald Reagan in his first year in office responded to China's threat of worsened relations with a special document on improved China ties and a pledge to reduce arms sales to Taiwan, though he later hardened his views.

Another explanation might be that there are deeper forces at work. Top Chinese leaders, preparing for retirement, have been whipping up nationalist support in an effort to ensure their behind-the-scenes power.

But they can hardly mistake the obvious risks. Taiwan supporters have the Bush team's ear to a degree that they did not have Bill Clinton's, and the plane crisis is no small matter. An already-tense relationship could feed the Taiwan arms debate, launching both sides into uncharted waters.

China needs, therefore, to calibrate its response more wisely than it has to date. The consequences of not doing so are perilous - for both sides.

---

U.S. crew in good health, diplomat says

USA Today
04/03/2001
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001-04-03-crewok.htm

HAIKOU, China (AP) - American diplomats met Tuesday night with the crew of a fallen U.S. spy plane, nearly three days after it made an emergency landing at a Chinese military base after colliding with a Chinese fighter jet. An American diplomat said they were in good health but gave no indication when they would be released. Army Brig. Gen. Neal Sealock, the U.S. Embassy defense attache, was allowed to meet late Tuesday with the 24 crew members. It was their first contact with an American official since their EP-3 surveillance plane landed on the tropical Chinese island of Hainan after a collision with a Chinese fighter jet.

"They are in good health," Sealock said of the American servicemen and women. He said U.S. officials were working for their release, but gave no indication that would happen immediately. "Our goal is to get them home as soon as possible," Sealock said.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell called Tuesday for the "rapid" return of the crew and the sophisticated surveillance plane as he welcomed the meeting with the crew. President Bush had complained about Chinese delays in allowing the meeting.

"I'm encouraged by the fact that the meeting is taking place. It shouldn't have taken this long to happen," Powell said in Key West, Fla. "But, now that it has happened, I hope this starts us on a road to a full and complete resolution of this matter."

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao said the crew's fate would be decided in light of a Chinese investigation. Asked at a Beijing news conference when the crew would be released, Zhu replied: "I don't know."

China demanded the United States apologize for the collision, which it blamed on the American plane. The pilot of the Chinese fighter parachuted out and remains missing.

Zhu refused to say whether Chinese officials had boarded the plane, which is packed with hi-tech surveillance equipment. But he dismissed U.S. claims that the plane is sovereign American territory and therefore cannot be boarded.

"If this plane is sovereign American territory, how did it land in China?" Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhu said. "There's no question of immunity at all. Therefore China has all rights to handle this case."

Zhu said China has a right to conduct "an investigation" into the collision.

Zhu said Washington should "admit its mistakes" and "make an explanation to the Chinese government and people on this incident instead of raising this or that demand or try to shirk its responsibilities."

Chinese President Jiang Zemin, who expressed "great concern" for the Chinese pilot, was quoted by Zhu as saying, "The responsibility fully lies with the American side. We have full evidence for that." Jiang called for an end to U.S. surveillance flights off China's coast "so as to prevent similar accidents from happening again," Zhu said.

U.S. military officials say the Chinese undoubtedly boarded the plane and examined its sophisticated equipment. U.S. Ambassador Joseph Prueher, interviewed on ABC's "Good Morning America," said: "We have every reason to think the Chinese have been all over the airplane."

The collision occurred about 60 miles southeast of Hainan, a popular tourist destination 400 miles west of Hong Kong. The U.S. military says the EP-3 was on a routine surveillance mission in international air space. After its left wing and left-most of its four engines were damaged, the pilot put out a distress call and landed at the nearest air field on Hainan.

U.S. officials have complained that China is slow in responding to diplomatic contacts. It's not unusual for China's secretive bureaucratic system to take a long time to make decisions, especially where the military or national security concerns are involved.

U.S. officials say China did not respond to an offer to help in the search for the missing Chinese pilot.

A sailor at a facility adjacent to the Lingshui base said Monday the plane was standing empty on the runway and the crew had been taken to a military guesthouse.

China says the American pilot caused the crash by suddenly veering into the Chinese jet, one of two sent up to follow the plane into Chinese airspace. U.S. military authorities say it was more likely that the faster, lighter Chinese plane brushed against the lumbering propeller-driven EP-3E, which is about the size of a 150-seater commercial jetliner.

In a second day of protests in Hong Kong, about 20 people marched on the U.S. consulate, chanting for the United States to "stop spying in China." About 100 people demonstrated there on Monday.

---

Bush has options if China hardens stance

Washington Times
April 3, 2001
By Bill Sammon THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-200143231030.htm

President Bush has a wealth of diplomatic and economic levers to wield against China if the communist nation refuses to heed Mr. Bush's call yesterday for the release of U.S. service members and their downed plane.

Analysts of Sino-U.S. relations said Mr. Bush's options range from recalling the U.S. ambassador to severing trade with China and encouraging Taiwan to halt investment in the Chinese mainland.

But most experts expressed optimism that relations between the U.S. and China will not deteriorate to that point. They predicted that if China makes good on its promise to grant access to the crew members by today, tensions will cease to escalate.

"The political settlement that we want should be forthcoming in less than 48 hours," said retired Rear Adm. Eugene Carroll, vice president of Center for Defense Information. "I just think by that time the Chinese will have their act together."

But if they don't, Mr. Bush can up the ante by taking an even tougher stance on China.

"After a reasonable period of time, not to exceed 72 hours, the United States has no choice but to take the offensive and recall our ambassador, or threaten to do so," Adm. Carroll said. "The Chinese ambassador should be summoned and apprised of the consequences of failure to respond.

"And then, in 72 hours, we go public and we start twisting the diplomatic and economic screws," he said.

But James Lilley, former U.S. ambassador to China, said Chinese failure to comply with Mr. Bush's demands could create support for the sale of advanced U.S. weapons to Taiwan.

Mr. Bush is expected to decide by the end of the month about what to approve on the list of weapons that Taipei has requested.

"If, in fact, they turn nasty and continue to hold the pilots, then it seems to me, their cause is set back," Mr. Lilley told The Washington Times. "So it seems to me it serves their interest to get the guys out of there and get the plane out of there as soon as possible."

The president can apply additional diplomatic pressures behind the scenes, ask the United Nations to condemn China's recalcitrance, or even threaten economic sanctions.

"Here's our real lever: Suspend all trade with China," Adm. Carroll said. "China's got a huge trade surplus with us that they just absolutely have to have.

"They also have active trade with Taiwan and investment from Taiwan. All of that could be taken away if they do not come to their senses and resolve this aircraft and crew situation."

China's detention of U.S. service members is the first big foreign policy test of the fledgling Bush administration. The president is trying to walk a fine line between assertiveness and aggression while avoiding the outbreak of a new Cold War.

"On both sides, we need to keep this in proportion," said Dr. Gerrit W. Gong, Asia director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"There are a lot of other issues coming up between us and China, and we need to deal with this one on its merits, in a narrow way, frankly because we want to get our people and our plane back.

"We don't want it to escalate and become a big international standoff," he added. "Because if we do that on our side, it's possible the Chinese will do it on their side and it will become very, very complicated. And I don't think we need to use an incident like this to restart the Cold War."

Mr. Lilley agreed and warned that the Chinese might be tempted to exploit the accident by condemning the U.S. for spying on China.

"They can make you look bad," he said. "They've got the plane, they've got the claims of spying and violations of their sovereignty. They're holding the cards, and they've got you on the defensive. It would be very logical for them to exploit that."

In China, public sentiment against the U.S. is already high. Still stinging from America's accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Chinese citizens are being told Sunday's incident occurred after the U.S. plane strayed into Chinese airspace. The U.S. disputes that claim.

Mr. Lilley emphasized the president's most pressing priority is to "get the crew out right away, because that's the hottest issue right now in terms of the American public. If they're held there, the atmosphere will deteriorate here very fast."

Although the Bush administration has made clear that Chinese officials should not inspect the American spy plane, most analysts of Sino-U.S. relations fear such an examination has already occurred.

"They obviously want to see what they can find out about it while it's there," Dr. Gong said. "And it's in our interest to try to limit that and so there's going to be a little bit of 'to-ing and fro-ing' on this issue."

---

Americans were ordered to destroy all spy trappings

Washington Times
April 3, 2001
By Rowan Scarborough THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-20014323151.htm

The Navy's EP-3E Aries II carries eavesdropping devices so sophisticated the 24-member crew was under orders to destroy equipment and documents once the spy plane was headed for an emergency landing inside hostile territory.

"If the crew of the EP-3 did what they were supposed to, there should be no equipment or data for the Chinese to exploit," said a naval aviator familiar with the surveillance plane's operations. "There would have been a destruction plan for just this type of incident, in which each crew member would be responsible for the destruction and disabling of certain equipment or publications."

"These guys had to fly over 50 miles to Hainan Island to make an emergency landing, so they should have had plenty of time to do what they had to do," the aviator said.

Another naval source said the plane is equipped with shredders and that one of the first items destroyed before landing in China would have been code-encryption software disks.

"I hope they had time," this source said, referring to the time it took the four-engine plane, its wing and one engine damaged, to limp 70 miles to shore.

Asked if the crew destroyed onboard computers and electronics, Cmdr. Rex Totty, a Pacific Command spokesman, said, "It is a matter of policy. We do not discuss the disposition of classified equipment or material."

The EP-3E, driven by four turboprop engines, routinely patrols over the South China Sea unescorted. Its radome-protected array of antennas soaks up radio and telephone conversations as well as radar, microwave and infrared emissions.

It is routine for Chinese fighters to scramble and watch the EP-3E as it lumbers well outside China's internationally recognized 12-mile airspace. What is new, say naval aviators, is how close the Jian-8 fighters came to the Boeing-737-size airplane.

The collision sent one fighter crashing into the sea Saturday night and forced the damaged EP-3E to execute a rush landing at the Lingshui naval air base.

"These guys usually go without [fighter] support because we've never had a reason to believe the 'Chi-Coms' would do anything other than rattle their sabers. It's just a game of cat and mouse," said the naval aviator, who asked not to be named. "I'm sure this guy did not mean to hit our EP-3E and had he not, this never would have happened."

He added, "Let there be no doubt - the guys in that EP-3 knew when, where, how many, and who was launching from China as it happened. Their own sensors would be able to tell them what was happening probably better than any search radars from other aircraft or ships."

The Navy operates 12 land-based EP-3Es, whose 105-foot-long airframe is the same as the Lockheed-Martin-built P-3C Orion submarine hunter that patrols the oceans for hours at a time.

States a Navy publication: "With sensitive receivers and high-gain dish antennas, the EP-3E exploits a wide range of electronic emissions from deep within hostile territory."

Retired Rear Adm. Phillip D. Smith, a career P-3 pilot, said the surveillance plan can travel 3,000 miles and stay airborne 12 hours per mission.

"The Navy, like any military organization, collects as much intelligence as it can from possible threats," the former two-star admiral said. "The EP-3 is extremely valuable. It is the only Navy airplane that today has the intelligence collection mission."

Officers in the naval aviation community yesterday were debating two issues: Should U.S. Pacific Command, which oversees American forces in the region, have dispatched fighter escorts to protect the EC-3? And should the American crew have bailed out instead of delivering the valuable military asset into the hands of China's People's Liberation Army?

A Marine Corps pilot, citing reports that China has been more aggressive in shadowing EP-3Es, said protection was in order.

"This should have prompted [Pacific Command] to take steps to prevent what happened," the pilot said.

But Cmdr. Totty, the command spokesman, disagreed.

"I don't understand why an escort would be necessary," Cmdr. Totty said. "We have a history of conducting these missions that go back many years . . . We're not at all convinced this was a hostile event. We are treating it like an accident and, until there is evidence to show otherwise, we are treating it as an accident."

Adm. Smith agreed.

"He was doing a regular peacetime mission in international airspace and it would be a waste of taxpayer money to put fighters on such an airplane unless it was a time of high tension."

The former admiral also said there is a debate in the naval community on whether the crew should have ditched the plane and bailed out. But he said such a decision could have meant certain death for the crew since survival in cold seas would be measured in hours, not days.

"I have some friends who have faulted them," Adm. Smith said. "I would have to know a lot more details before making a judgment like that."

---

Bush demands prompt release of crew

Washington Times
April 3, 2001
By Bill Gertz and Bill Sammon THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-200143232732.htm

President Bush called on China yesterday to "promptly" release the 24 U.S. service members held at a military base in southern China and to return their EP-3E airplane intact.

"My reaction is the Chinese must promptly allow us to have contact with the 24 airmen and women that are there and return our plane to us without any further tampering," Mr. Bush told reporters after a meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. "I sent a very clear message, and I expect them to heed the message."

"Our priorities are the prompt and safe return of the crew and the return of the aircraft," Mr. Bush said.

China, which is blaming the United States for the collision between an F-8 jet interceptor and the U.S. turboprop aircraft, refused for more than a day to let any American officials see the crew.

Early this morning, CNN reported that the U.S. ambassador to China told reporters that U.S. officials will see the crew "this evening," China time. No exact time or circumstance was specified.

Adm. Joseph Prueher added he was not pleased that China had delayed access as long as it had -almost two days.

The crew, in one of its last communications from the plane, told U.S. authorities that armed Chinese soldiers were boarding the aircraft, a senior U.S. official told the Associated Press, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Pentagon officials said intelligence reports reaching Washington indicate the 22 sailors, one airman and one Marine were taken off the electronic-eavesdropping aircraft that made an emergency landing on Hainan Island on Sunday morning. The collision downed the Chinese aircraft.

Earlier, the president said he was "troubled" by China's handling of the incident and offered this blunt statement: "Failure of the Chinese government to react promptly to our request is inconsistent with standard diplomatic practice, and with the expressed desire of both our countries for better relations."

In Lingshui, a sailor at a base near the aircraft told AP that the EP-3 crew was taken off the plane and sent to a "military guest house." Pentagon officials could not confirm the account.

The EP-3, a version of the Navy's P-3 aircraft, was seen sitting empty on a runway at the island airfield.

Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. Craig Quigley said three U.S. warships, kept in the region for a day in case China needed assistance in locating the downed pilot, were ordered home.

"They were given permission to proceed," Adm. Quigley said. "The Chinese did not respond to the offer for assistance."

The ships had not hung around as a show of force, he said. "That wasn't the motivation," he said.

No U.S. forces in the Pacific are on alert as a result of the standoff, Adm. Quigley said. "We are very much looking for a diplomatic outcome of this," he said.

Also early today, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told reporters in Canberra that a Chinese military official had told him Beijing would give immediate access to the crew of the U.S. plane.

Mr. Downer said Zhang Wannian, vice chairman of China's Central Military Commission, had given the assurance during talks today in the Australian capital.

"He told me that the Chinese side would allow consular access to the Americans immediately, consistent with diplomatic norms and that this matter would be resolved through diplomatic means," Mr. Downer told reporters.

China's foreign minister, Tang Jiaxuan, said yesterday in Paris that he hoped the confrontation over the crew and aircraft would not disrupt U.S.-Chinese ties.

"The American side has explained time and again to our ambassador that this incident will not influence the general interests between China and the United States," Mr. Tang said.

The incident set some Internet chat rooms in China abuzz. One Internet comment described the missing Chinese F-8 pilot as a national hero and called the 24 Americans on Hainan "devils."

Mr. Downer said he had taken the impression from Mr. Zhang that "there was no question in his mind" that the collision was a deliberate act.

Adm. Prueher told reporters in Beijing yesterday that "it is inexplicable and unacceptable and of grave concern to the most senior leaders in the United States government that the air crew has been held incommunicado for over 32 hours. The Chinese so far have given us no explanation for holding this crew."

As for the EP-3, Adm. Quigley said the four-engine surveillance plane "is a piece of American property."

"And a piece of American property is a piece of American territory that under international law . . . is considered the property of the parent country that should not be subject to search or seizure or confiscation without the specific invitation of the owning nation," Adm. Quigley said.

The aircraft could produce an intelligence windfall for the Chinese military, although security procedures for EP-3 crews call for destroying sensitive documents and disabling hardware in the event of an emergency.

Asked if the administration plans tougher action, Adm. Quigley said: "A lot depends on how today goes. If we're allowed to gain access and it is clear they're being well-treated, then we can start talking about sending repair crews in to repair the plane and get everybody on board and fly away."

Another Pentagon official said the Chinese government's handling of the incident was unacceptable.

"We're getting indications that we may be seeing them in the next few days," said one Pentagon official. "That is unacceptable. We want immediate access and the return of the crew and airplane."

House International Relations Committee Chairman Henry J. Hyde, Illinois Republican, yesterday described the dispute as part of a pattern of Chinese actions.

"Since the beginning of the year, the People's Republic of China has detained a number of American citizens and permanent residents, including a 5-year-old boy who was held apart from his family for four weeks," Mr. Hyde said. "Responsible members of the international community do not arbitrarily detain citizens of other nations."

Mr. Hyde also said this incident would not alter U.S. policy on other issues with China.

"The Beijing government is terribly mistaken if it believes these actions will influence the U.S. decision - due later this month - to permit the sale of defensive weapons to Taiwan," Mr. Hyde said.

At the other end of the Capitol, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott also called for release of the crew and aircraft "as soon as possible."

According to Pentagon intelligence sources, the incident is becoming a "worst-case" scenario.

The Chinese military has told its government that the entire episode was a U.S. provocation, a position that is expected to make resolving the affair more difficult, said one defense official.

"They've made up a big story that the Americans did this deliberately and that is going to make it hard for anyone to back down," the official said.

The incident comes a week after a confrontation between U.S. and Chinese ships in the Yellow Sea, in which a Chinese frigate came within 100 yards of a U.S. ocean-survey ship and aimed its gun-control radars on the unarmed American vessel.

The run-in between the ships came within a 200-mile zone that China claims as an "Economic Exclusion Zone," but outside the internationally recognized 12-mile limit on territorial waters.

The 200-mile zone that Beijing has claimed was proposed by the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea.

The treaty explicitly allows for even armed warships to travel through the zone, provided the activities are not "prejudicial to the peace, good order or security" of the country, according to the National Council for Science and the Environment.

Japan criticized China for encroachments by its warships and research vessels on Japan's zone in August. China would not promise that it would not happen again.

• Dave Boyer and Carter Dougherty contributed to this article, which is based in part on wire service reports.

---

Beijing blames U.S. for plane collision

Washington Times
April 3, 2001
By Calum MacLeod THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-200143215450.htm

BEIJING - China's foreign minister yesterday repeated Beijing's claim that an American spy plane deliberately knocked down a Chinese fighter, feeding a frenzy of anger on Chinese Web sites . "It was not our plane which hit the American plane, but the other way around," Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan said in Paris after meeting with French President Jacques Chirac.

"The American side has explained several times to our ambassador that the incident will have no impact on the general state of relations between China and the U.S. I hope an adequate solution can be found to this question," Mr. Tang said.

A U.S. Navy spy plane made an emergency landing in Chinese territory yesterday after colliding with a Chinese military jet over the South China Sea. All 24 U.S. crew members were reported safe on the island province of Hainan.

Reaction among the Chinese public was swift and damning. Leading news Web sites were flooded with angry comments demanding that China punish the United States for challenging Chinese sovereignty.

"Salute our brave pilots," said one. "The South China Sea is our territory. We must teach the Americans a lesson and let them know China is not Iraq."

"Do not forget the U.S. bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia," wrote another in reference to the 1999 incident from which Sino-U.S. relations have barely recovered.

China's leading English-language state newspaper today derided U.S. explanations that the midair collision was an accident, and drew parallels with the 1999 Belgrade bombing, which Washington blamed on outdated maps.

A mocking cartoon accompanying the article in the China Daily depicted the EP-3 spy plane at Lingshui airport with a speech bubble coming from the cockpit saying: "It might be due to another map error."

The article said the incident revealed "U.S. arrogance in managing bilateral relations."

But some analysts in Beijing called for reason to prevail.

"If both sides keep blaming the other, then there will be problems resolving this incident," professor Jin Canrong of the Institute of American Studies in Beijing told The Washington Times. "There is a gap in the stance of both governments, who must sit down together and find the real reason for the collision."

Headlines yesterday in newspapers across China blamed the United States for the accident and showed concern about the state of relations between China and the Bush administration.

"Sino-U.S. relations: Adding frost to snow," said the front-page headline in the Chinese-language daily Ming Pao. The article characterized the incident as the most serious diplomatic friction ever between China and the United States.

In Hong Kong, about 100 people protested outside the U.S. Consulate. They accused the American plane of improperly flying over Chinese territory and said officials in Washington were too cowardly to admit it.

"I'm furious," said one of the demonstrators, Chan Chi-yan, a 70-year-old retiree. "Chinese people cannot be insulted."

In Taiwan, the collision was the lead story of hourly television newscasts and made front-page headlines in all the main newspapers, which ran large photos of EP-3 surveillance planes and maps of the plane's flight path.

Taiwan is of prime concern to all the actors in this drama. Before its mission was cut short, the spy plane is likely to have been monitoring military signals indicating missile buildup on the Fujianese coast off Taiwan.

Beijing views the island republic as a renegade province to be recovered by force, if necessary. Sunday's collision comes just two weeks before President Bush must decide whether to override mainland Chinese objections and sell Taiwan the advanced weapons its military says are necessary to ensure its survival.

The Japanese government appealed for China and the United States to settle the dispute quickly for the sake of East Asia's fragile security.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda said Japan hopes the United States and China will "swiftly and smoothly" resolve any differences over the accident.

• This article is based in part on wire service reports

---

'Bumper cars in the air´

Washington Times
EDITORIAL • April 3, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20010403-798705.htm

The collision over the weekend between a Chinese fighter plane and U.S. surveillance aircraft was quite unfortunate. Beijing demonstrated, after the unintentional NATO bombing of a Chinese embassy in Kosovo, that it hardly takes accidents lightly. In fact, Beijing ratchets up the tension from these situations, presumably to prompt Washington to take a more obliging stance towards China.

China is responding to the recent airplane accident, which occurred over international air space on Sunday, in its signature style. Beijing rebuked the U.S. crew for landing their plane at a Chinese naval air base on Hainan Island "without permission from the Chinese side," even though U.S. pilots were forced to make an emergency landing. And China has refused to allow the 24-member crew to communicate with U.S. officials.

The United States and China have given contradictory accounts of what happened in the air. But the two sides agree that a U.S. Navy EP-3 surveillance plane and a Chinese naval F-8 fighter jet, modeled after a Russian MiG, collided over the South China Sea. The Chinese plan crashed and its pilot is missing.

Chinese fighter jets have been shadowing U.S. surveillance planes flying close to Chinese air space since the 1970s. But U.S. officials said that lately the Chinese have used a more aggressive and treacherous approach that has prompted them to complain to Chinese officials. "It´s not normal to play bumper cars in the air," Adm. Dennis Blair, head of the U.S. Pacific Command, said he told Chinese officials.

Adm. Blair maintains that one of the two Chinese fighters tracking the U.S. plane bumped into one of its wings. Beijing, meanwhile, said that it was the U.S. plane that veered towards it fighter, and is demanding restitution from the United States for the crashed plane. Because the U.S. surveillance plane is significantly more stable than the Chinese fighter jet, the more likely scenario is that the Chinese jet collided with the U.S. plane.

President George W. Bush apologized unnecessarily to the Chinese for the accident. The unarmed U.S. plane was flying in international air space without violating either law or protocol. Mr. Bush has fortunately toughened his rhetoric since making the apology, calling on Beijing to arrange the "prompt and safe return" of the U.S. crew members and their plane. "I´m troubled by the lack of a timely Chinese response to this request for this access," he added. The president should remain firm in urging China´s respect for the crew and U.S. sovereignty over the plane. "It´s catastrophic for the U.S. if the Chinese have managed to gain access to the aircraft and if they´ve managed to obtain access to the computers and the hard disks," Paul Beaver of Jane´s Information Group, publisher of the respected Jane´s Defense Weekly, told Reuters.

Mr. Bush demonstrated sound judgment in deciding to refrain from contacting Chinese leaders himself to avoid the appearance the White House is in a crisis mode. There is no reason to believe the plane accident should lead to any substantive damage in U.S.-China relations. And the White House should resist any efforts by Beijing to leverage the current situation to win U.S. concessions, particularly as regards Taiwan.

---

No caving, please, to the cave men

Washington Times
April 3, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/national/pruden.htm

The Chinese are wily and usually woolly, brash to the point of recklessness, but they're as transparent as a plate of rice noodles.

The old guys running the store in Beijing are peasants, after all, still as uncomfortable in the traps of diplomatic manners as roosters dressed up in socks and suspenders, with little of the sophistication and polish and none of the elegance and elan of the Chinese in Taiwan and Singapore. They often behave like redneck thugs.

This is not necessarily the explanation of why they're acting like warlords over the bumping and seizure of the U.S. reconnaissance plane near Hainan Island over the weekend, but it's a clue to understanding why they're going about making whatever point they're trying to make with bluster and bloviation.

The Beijing government is unhappy with the United States about several things at the moment, some clearly important and some that appear trivial in American eyes but not to the Chinese, for whom face is important and who sometimes behave like backwoods bumpkins as if they don't know any better. Often they don't.

They appear to be angry over, in an order best known to themselves, (1) the possibility if not probability that the United States will sell an advanced radar system to the Republic of China on Taiwan, which would make successful aggression against the island far more difficult than it might otherwise be; (2) the defection of a senior general to the United States who brought with him a lot of secrets and insights into the current thinking of the Chinese military; and (3) maybe even over the continuing demonstrations at the embassy on Connecticut Avenue by members of the Falun Gong, whose devotion to push-ups, knee-bends and deep breathing appears to pose great peril to the Beijing government.

The embassy's long-suffering neighbors in Kalorama have noticed, sometimes with bemusement and sometimes with irritation, the escalation of one-upsmanship on the avenue. The Falun Gong, which Beijing purely despises, set up its posters and banners on a little tuft of parkland at the front door of the embassy, and lately the embassy has begun to answer with its own posters and "news bulletins" on the sidewalk opposite the Falun Gong. The result is a war of the purple passage: "Falun Gong Respectfully Requests Chinese Government Stop Murdering Innocent People" vs. "Falun Gong is Bad Cult Who Show No Respect for Chinese People." It's reminiscent of the Great War Between Imperialist Running Dogs and Glorious Socialist Peoples in the years of the Cultural Revolution. The mainland Chinese love to speak in Capital Letters, though something clearly gets lost in the translation.

It's tempting to put 2, 2 and 2 together - the continuing aggravation with Russia, North Korea and China - and come up with a solid 6, but the sum may be considerably less than the accumulation of the parts. The incident over Hainan Island may not be the harbinger of the resumption of the Cold War at all, but merely the routine hazing of a new president. Hicks or not, the mainland Chinese can read the newspapers and they've heard all the jokes, the liberal ranting and the Democratic raving about Dubya and maybe they've swallowed it whole and concluded that they could take him without popping a sweat. If so, they're likely to see what his Democratic detractors have seen, a backbone closer to steel than to spaghetti.

If there's no hysteria in Taiwan, there's no justification for it anywhere else. Chinese war gaming and troop movements often provoke sell-offs on Taiwan's jittery stock market, just like war scares frighten investors on Wall Street. That hasn't happened. And by noon yesterday, the news of a firebombing of a school in a suburb of Taipei had replaced the China plane collision as the top news of the day on Taiwan television.

The people who measure Beijing best read it as a mild early draft of the story. Kao Yang, an official of the Defense Ministry in Taipei, told legislators that an intensified U.S.-China feud would be a boon to Taiwan, which makes it unlikely that Beijing would pursue a feud because bumpkin or not, the mainland Chinese are practical above all else. "If both sides take a hard-line position, it might have a positive influence on our arms talks. If they resolve it quickly, we're not sure yet whether that will be in our interests or not."

The test of George W.'s steel would come later, after the two sides patch up their quarrel and the wet noodles in his administration make their usual argument that weakness is more persuasive than strength and the United States should make the concessions, like a wronged but over-eager lover sending flowers after a spat. But rednecks and thugs nearly always make lousy lovers. George W. gets it.

Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Times.

-------- terrorism

Taliban rule out bin Laden handover

InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 4/3/2001
By KATHY GANNON Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406615258

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) - Afghanistan's Taliban have ruled out any possibility of handing over suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden to any country _ including one that would try him under Islamic law, a Taliban official was quoted as saying Monday.

``Delivering Osama to a third country would just pave the way for the United States to arrest him and no one should expect the Afghan government to do this,'' the Nawa-e-Waqt newspaper quoted the Taliban's foreign ministry spokesman Faiz Ahmed Faiz as saying.

The Taliban were sanctioned by the United Nations in 1999 and again in January to press a demand that they hand over bin Laden for trial, either in the United States or a third country. The charge against the former Saudi businessman is terrorism.

On Washington's 10 Most-Wanted List, bin Laden is accused of masterminding the 1998 bombings of two U.S. Embassies in Africa that killed 224 people.

He has denied the charge and the Taliban, who have given him refuge, say the United States has not provided proof to substantiate their accusation.

Bin Laden also is the leading suspect in the suicide bombing last year of the USS Cole that killed 17 American sailors.

There has been considerable speculation in recent months that the Taliban religious army that ruled 95 percent of Afghanistan may be willing to hand over bin Laden to a third country if he could be guaranteed a trial under Islamic law.

But according to the Nawa-e-Waqt newspaper, one of Pakistan's leading Urdu-language daily newspapers, there is no chance of that happening.

``Osama is a mujahed (holy warrior) who fought against the communists to help the Afghan nation,'' Faiz was quoted as saying, referring to the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan by the former Soviet Union.

The Taliban spokesman also accused the western media of sensationalizing bin Laden and creating a monster of him.

``Osama is not such an important person as he as been portrayed by the West. He could not hurt anybody,'' said Faiz.

The U.N. sanctions have limited travel by Taliban officials, frozen their assets overseas as well as those of bin Laden. Sanctions also have seriously restricted the national airline, Ariana. It cannot make international flights and the U.N. sanctions committee has not allowed the airline to service those aircraft used for its domestic routes.

The Taliban have warned that the refusal to allow Afghanistan maintain its aircraft endangers the lives of thousands of civilians, who travel within the country on Ariana Airlines.

---

Inspector testifies in embassy trial

InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 4/3/2001
By PAT MILTON Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406614473

NEW YORK (AP) - A Pakistani immigration inspector testified Monday that one of four men accused of bombing U.S. embassies in Africa aroused his suspicion on the day of the attacks because the man's passport photograph did not match his face.

Mohamed Sadeek Odeh was detained in Pakistan on Aug. 7, 1998, the day of the bombings on the U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, that killed 224 people, including 12 Americans.

Sohail Anjum, an immigration inspector at the Karachi Pakistan International Airport, said that Odeh immediately seemed suspicious.

``The passport picture had a beard, but the man in front of me did not have a beard and he looked lighter,'' he said.

``He couldn't look me straight in the eyes. His eyes were downcast,'' he said. ``It was an absolute mismatch. This passport did not belong to him.''

Anjum said he showed the passport to a supervisor, and Odeh was later detained.

Odeh, 36, and three others are on trial in federal court on conspiracy charges in the embassy attacks. Prosecutors are expected to finish presenting evidence this week.

An FBI agent testified earlier in the trial that Odeh allegedly confessed after his arrest to having stayed days before the bombing in the same room as an explosives expert who led the terrorism cell in Nairobi.

He also allegedly said that men who ordered him to leave the country in the first week of August had given him a razor to shave his beard so that he would not seem Muslim when he traveled.

Odeh and Wadih El-Hage, 40, could get life terms if convicted. Mohamed Rashed Daoud Al-'Owhali, 24, and Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, 27, could face the death penalty.

The men offer varying defenses. Al-'Owhali says his confession was coerced. Mohamed says he didn't know what the explosives were intended for. El-Hage says he never joined any terrorism conspiracy. Odeh says he knew nothing of the plots and is being prosecuted because of his association with other suspects.

---

Testimony cut in U.S. terror trial

InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 4/3/2001
By LINDA DEUTSCH AP Special Correspondent
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406614726

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A judge on Monday barred a French magistrate's testimony that he believed an man on trial in an alleged bombing conspiracy was in the ``higher echelons'' of a terrorist cell linked to Osama bin Laden.

U.S. District Judge John Coughenour ruled that Jean-Louis Brugiere, an investigating magistrate from Paris, could only testify on factual matters, not opinions.

The ruling came after Brugiere gave testimony outside the jury's presence in the trial of Ahmed Ressam.

Ressam was arrested Dec. 14, 1999, when he arrived at Port Angeles, Wash., from Canada. Prosecutors say Ressam, an Algerian, was carrying bomb-making materials in his car as part of a conspiracy targeting West Coast sites around the time of the millennium celebrations.

Coughenour ruled that Brugiere's opinions would be prejudicial to Ressam if the jury heard them because of Brugiere's background. Bruguiere helped to put Venezuelan terrorist Carlos the Jackal behind bars and was the first to link Libyans to the sabotage of French and American airliners, including the 1988 bombing of PanAm Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

``The force of his reputation would carry the risk that jurors would not focus on the hard facts,'' Coughenour said.

Defense attorney Tom Hillier said that introducing Bruguiere's views on radical Islamic terrorism would only serve to ``unfairly reinforce stereotypes.''

``What the government is doing is injecting this hugely controversial and prejudicial evidence for no reason,'' Hillier said, noting that Bruguiere has been criticized by human rights groups as being overly zealous.

In his appearance Monday, Bruguiere outlined the interlocking connections of a terrorist cell in Montreal with others in Turkey, London and Afghanistan. He offered the opinion that Ressam rose in the power structure of a group linked to bin Laden after he returned from Pakistan, having presumably trained in terrorist camps in Afghanistan.

``Ressam took a more higher echelon role in the group,'' Bruguiere testified.

Bin Laden, a Saudi billionaire living in Afghanistan, is blamed for several attacks on U.S. targets, including the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya that killed 224 people, including 12 Americans. He has also been linked to the Oct. 12 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen in which 17 American sailors died.

Ressam's defense said he was an unwitting courier for others and did not know of everything that was found in his car.

---

American woman on trial in Peru denies notes

USA Today
04/03/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-04-03-berenson.htm

LIMA, Peru (AP) - A New York woman on trial for alleged collaboration with leftist guerrillas in Peru said Tuesday that notes written in Spanish in the margins of a rebel manuscript resembled her handwriting but insisted she had never seen the document.

In the toughest cross-examination yet by the presiding magistrate, Lori Berenson also was instructed to write a series of numbers for comparison with a seating chart of Congress that she allegedly sketched to help plan a thwarted takeover of the legislature.

"I saw some letters that are similar to my handwriting but it is not mine," she said, after being shown the rebel manuscript page-by-page. "I've never seen this document before."

A secret Peruvian military court convicted Berenson, 31, of treason in 1996 and sentenced her to life in prison for allegedly helping Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement rebels plan to seize Congress to exchange hostages for imprisoned rebels.

But after years of pressure from the United States, which said her trial was unfair, Peru's highest military court overturned the conviction in August, leading to the new civilian trial that began two weeks ago on the lesser charges of "terrorist collaboration."

Prosecutors are seeking a 20-year sentence for Berenson, a former Massachusetts Institute of Technology student.

They charge she rented a house in Lima in 1995 as a hide-out for the rebels and collected information on Congress accompanied by the wife of the group's top commander.

Berenson, who denies the charges, maintained she did not know her housemates or the rebel leader's wife were members of the group, also known as the MRTA. She says she hired the woman as a photographer for an article that required interviews with lawmakers.

"The MRTA is everywhere and you are surrounded by those who are at the highest levels of the organization," magistrate Marcos Ibazeta asked her. "This is pure coincidence?"

Berenson said on Tuesday that she never entered the top floor of the house, where a cache of explosives and weapons were stored, out of respect for her housemates' privacy.

She moved into a separate apartment that she shared with the rebel leader's wife. Both women were arrested on a bus in November 1995, hours before authorities raided the house.

Fourteen rebels were captured after an 11-hour gun battle, including high-ranking rebel leader Miguel Rincon. Berenson said she knew him as a historian by a different name and that she had agreed to let him rent the top floor.

Ibazeta also referred to Berenson's earlier testimony that she came to Peru in 1994 after serving as a private secretary to a top Salvadoran guerrilla leader during peace negotiations that ended El Salvador's civil war

---

Businesses: Terrorists have changed their targets

USA Today
04/03/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-04-03-terrorist-targets.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - Security has improved so much at official U.S. installations abroad that terrorists are turning to softer targets such as American businesses, relief workers and tourists, terrorism experts told a House subcommittee Tuesday.

Terrorists always follow the path of least resistance, the experts said. As the government tightened security at overseas military bases, embassies and ships after recent attacks, they said, it's easier for terrorists to kill and kidnap American civilians.

"A Hamas training manual expounds that it is foolish to hunt a tiger when there are plenty of sheep to be had," Frank Cilluffo, a policy analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the House Government Reform national security subcommittee. Hamas is a militant Palestinian Islamic group.

The State Department counted 392 international terrorist attacks in 1999, of which 169 targeted U.S. interests, said Robert Littlejohn, vice president of the International Security Managers Association.

To counter that, the government ratcheted up security and terrorists looked for easier targets, Cilluffo said. Most global abductions occur in Latin America, and 40% are employees of U.S. businesses, he said.

"The increased risk to businesses is in many ways an ironic, negative byproduct of governmental efforts," he said. "In addition, business now increasingly symbolizes the United States."

In another terrorism hearing, three former lawmakers told a Senate Judiciary subcommittee that a possible strike inside the United States is the nation's top security concern. They suggested grouping the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Coast Guard, the Border Patrol and the Customs Service into one Cabinet-level agency to respond to such an attack.

Currently, the government has anti-terrorist units scattered across 50 agencies, with no chain of command if a terrorist act happens, said former Sens. Gary Hart of Colorado and Warren Rudman of New Hampshire and former Indiana Rep. Lee Hamilton, members of the Commission on National Security/21st Century.

There's just too much for agencies to do, and there's little coordination, Hart said. In 1999, 475 million people came into America, along with 125 million vehicles, 16.5 million trucks and 5 million maritime containers, any of which could have constituted a terrorist threat, he said.

"The volume and velocity of the challenges to these separate agencies, and added on to that the terrorist threat which each of these individual numbers represents or could represent, simply overwhelms the maze of 40 or 50 agencies trying in some way or the other to deal with this problem," Hart said.

Americans really don't understand terrorism because it is such a cowardly act, and lawmakers will find it hard to generate enthusiasm in Congress for such a radical reorganization, said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

Plus, a proposed Homeland Security Agency name has a "Third Reich" sound to it, she said.

"Such an agency will be created because it has to be created, and what it's called will be up to Congress," Hart said.

Americans won't realize how unprotected they are unless government leaders press the issue, using examples like the World Trade Center and the Oklahoma City bombings, Hamilton said.

"In my home state of Indiana, where you have a reservoir that furnishes water to the entire city of Indianapolis and it's totally unprotected," said Hamilton, holding up a small glass of water. "All you've got to do is step up to the reservoir and toss an item of this size down that reservoir and you bring down the entire city."

-------- activists

the up side

From: "GLAISYER, HEATHER" <0015445@mail1.tay.ac.uk>
Tue, 3 Apr 2001
Reply-to: v-nv-mobilize@yahoogroups.com

Anti-genetic campaigners in Sussex are celebrating after plans for a farm scale trial of genetically modified oil seed rape were scrapped. After talking to locals, a demo in the nearby town of Hailsham, and visits to the farm, the farmer pulled out saying he was afraid of the spread of foot and mouth (even though there have been no cases in Sussex). Protesters believe it may be because he was none too popular in his village as at the parish council meeting only four out of sixty people voted in favour of the trial.

* Across the pond the campaign against genetically modified crops is gaining momentum. Recently anti-GM pixies chopped down over 1,200 genetically engineered Poplar and Cottonwood trees at Oregon State University. An archive of anti-biotech direct actions can be found at http://tao.ca/~ban/ar.htm

---

Arrested Protesters Released

Organization: Community Network
From: "Edward Pickersgill" <Lab@assets.net>
Tue, 3 Apr 2001

There were 84 arrests at the demonstration in Ottawa on Monday, April 2nd. By the end of evening news it was being reported that all of those arrested had been released. Clearly this was a demonstration of a certain kind with demonstrators climbing over crowd control barriers, reading statements and being arrested. Not my cup of tea but under a regime of diversity of tactics I can certainly accept their right to conduct their demonstration. I don't feel any need to castigate them for having an approach which I believe to be a waste of time and energy.

In the bigger picture I suppose that if the Canadian government had folded in front of this PR then some potential Quebec City demonstrators might have decides to stay home because the government was becoming reasonable, etc.

More significant than all that to me is George W. Bush removing the U.S.A. from the Kyoto Protocol and the renewed protectionism of the U.S. government on softwood lumber, statements that water north of the U.S./Canada border belongs to the monied interests below that border, and the Bush indications leaning towards upgrading the armaments in Taiwan.

Opponents of the FTAA will not find many more occasions for the kind of protest/arrest/release without charges thingie that happened in Ottawa on the 2nd of April. The world is about to find out that George W. Bush has been prepping his consciousness by remaining consistent towards inmates on death row in Texas and is now, two months in, taking that consciousness to the big show.

Edward Pickersgill in canada

------

Man sets himself alight for family

Australian News Network
03apr01
http://news.com.au/newspulse/pulseframe/0,4711,1858477^2,00.html

A PAKISTANI man set himself on fire outside the main entrance to Federal Parliament yesterday to protest against an immigration decision denying his wife and child entry to Australia.

But the 48-year-old, who was last night in a critical condition, did not know a fresh visa application had been successful.

Witnesses, including school and tour groups, watched as the Canberra resident poured flammable liquid over himself about 1.30pm and used a cigarette lighter to ignite the fuel.

Australian Protective Service officers rushed to douse the flames with a fire extinguisher as he sank to the marble floor of Parliament's Great Verandah.

Paramedics and security guards gave the man first-aid before rushing him to Canberra hospital. From there he was flown by helicopter to the burns unit at Sydney's Concord hospital.

The Daily Telegraph understands his protest was unnecessary - the case concerning his family had been reviewed after intervention by Sports Minister Jackie Kelly and their entry had been granted. The protester had simply not been informed of the review.

Immigration Minister Phillip Ruddock last night would not confirm the visa but agreed the application had been reviewed.

The man is said to live with his brother in outer suburban Higgins in Canberra. He was granted permanent residence several years ago and had been fighting to get his family in ever since.

Witness Tony Devereaux from Melbourne said the incident looked like a movie stunt.

"All I saw was the flames," he said. "The man was ... engulfed in flames."

Another witness said he was sitting on the balcony above the front entrance when he first heard the screaming.

"From the waist up he was well and truly alight ... I watched him for a good couple of minutes," the witness said.

"He was rolling around on the ground ... but he stopped moving by the time anybody went out there with a fire extinguisher - I thought he was gone. He did not say anything, he just screamed."

The main entrance of Parliament House was sealed off as forensic police examined charred fragments of clothing, plastic bags and a blue cigarette lighter scattered on the ground.

One witness said the schoolchildren aged 10-12, watched in shock before teachers ushered them away.

"I think they were more stunned than anything, but the teachers got them away very quickly," the witness said.

Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock last night expressed his "deep regret" about the case.

"I am shocked and dismayed that someone would take this sort of action and wish to convey my sympathy to the man's family in Pakistan," he said.

The man was alight for about 30 seconds before he was doused by guards.

Security controller Mike Lucas said the man was spotted outside the main entrance but he was not acting suspiciously.

"Someone pulling out a water bottle and pouring it over their head on a hot day is not regarded as suspicious," he said.

---

Disabled son motive for fiery protest

Australian News Network
03apr01
From AAP
http://news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,1860510%255E2,00.html

A PAKISTANI man who set himself on fire outside Parliament House has been trying to bring his handicapped son to Australia, it emerged today.

But it was the son's disability that could prove a stumbling block to the family being reunited, Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock admitted.

The revelation came as Democrats leader Meg Lees launched a scathing attack on the Government's immigration policy.

Australia's treatment of asylum-seekers was appalling and internationally condemned, she said.

Shuharyar Kiyani, 48, yesterday doused himself in petrol and set himself alight in front of visitors to Parliament House in Canberra.

Mr Ruddock said he had been fighting for permission to bring his wife and handicapped child to Australia.

Mr Ruddock said the immigration program required taking into account health issues such as handicaps, which could cost the community hundreds of thousands of dollars.

"If there are places within the split family refugee program, there would still have to be consideration given to the potential cost for the community for the child," he said.

"Those costs go to many hundreds of thousands of dollars.

"It is only in circumstances where there are compelling circumstances, where approval of people who fail health assessment can be given."

Mr Kiyani arrived in Australia as an asylum-seeker in 1996.

Applications by his wife and child to join him here had been refused on health cost grounds, but after an inquiry it was decided to proceed with a new application, which is still being processed.

Mr Ruddock said he did not think the handicapped child was the reason the first application was refused, but it would be a stumbling block to approval in the future.

He said he could not confirm the immigration application was the reason Mr Kiyani set himself on fire, but said a link was quite possible.

"I don't know that it was related with the dealings he has been having with my department over some time, but it's quite possible that it could well have been," he said.

Asked about yesterday's incident, Australian Democrats leader Senator Lees criticised Australia's treatment of asylum-seekers.

"I think it's disgraceful, the way in which people are being treated when they come here for asylum, having already suffered trauma, often torture, where in their own countries they are not safe," she said.

She said the Government must lift standards in its treatment of asylum-seekers.

"We have to remember that the majority of those people coming in, from countries like Afghanistan, are going to be found to be genuine refugees," she said.

"And it is an appalling introduction to this country to be locked away behind barbed wire fences.

"So I can just again say to the Government that this treatment is appalling and indeed internationally we are condemned for it."

She added: "If you look at the treatment that these people are suffering in my home state, in Woomera, it isn't just when they are in detention centres.

"It's the way in which they are treated when they get out, the lack of support.

"They are certainly not made to feel, in any sense of the word, welcome."

A report in the Sydney Daily Telegraph today said a fresh visa application for Mr Kiyani's family had in fact been approved, but he had not been told.

But a spokesman for Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock today denied that report.

"His second application has not yet been decided," he said.

Mr Kiyani was airlifted to the burns unit of Sydney's Concord Hospital and remained in intensive care overnight.

He suffered third degree burns to 60 per cent of his body.

---

Border bikers' club runs on passion for doing good

Christian Science Monitor
TUESDAY, APRIL 3, 2001
By Howard LaFranchi Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2001/04/03/fp7s1-csm.shtml

MEXICALI, MEXICO - Straddling their mean bikes and sporting thick boots, goatees, and sunglasses, members of the Renegade Motorcycle Club can seem like pretty tough hombres.

But the smile on the club's skull logo hints at a different personality.

Mixing a passion for motorcycles with a desire to do good, the young men (and a few women) of the "Renegado Moto Club" in this parched town bordering Calexico, California, have formed an unorthodox service organization.

In their own small way, the Renegados demonstrate not only how people who don't necessarily fit into the Rotary set can be drawn into charity work, but also how communities benefit when a broader group of citizens is included in community service.

The Renegados - whose duespaying members range from businessmen to day laborers -are "a little more into partying, and a little less organized" than other service clubs, "but their heart is in the same place - they get into serving their community," says Francisco Rueda Gómez, a Mexicali councilman and candidate for the Baja California legislature.

Instead of the tie tacks and lapel pins that their forebears in local Kiwanis and Rotary clubs wore, the Renegados wear jean vests with the club logo and copious tattoos. But the weekend charity work they do - raising money for terminally ill patients, helping support youth activities, and providing security at a fundraiser rock concert - isn't too different from what service clubs have always done.

With membership in many traditional fraternal orders and service clubs falling off, the Renegade model might be something for other organizations to watch.

Mr. Rueda, a Lions Club member, notes what he considers a main factor in the Renegados' appeal. "Their door is wide open," he says. "They're not exclusive."

The club counts a customs broker, a construction worker, small-business owners, teachers, and day laborers among its 100 or so members. About a dozen hail from across the border, in Calexico. One of the newest inductees is a Mexican-born construction worker who lived almost all his life in Los Angeles until a felony conviction got him deported - and into the arms of a new family, the Renegados.

"We meet on Fridays, ride on Sundays, and in between we do things for people," says Miguel Baltazar, the club's treasurer and a motorcycle shop owner.

When a family was burned out of their home, the Renegados raised money to buy basic essentials. When a local boy required a liver transplant, they helped with some of the expenses.

"I guess we've got a reputation," Mr. Baltazar adds, "because now we have people who need something coming to us."

When Andrés Gallegos needed security for the charity rock concert he was planning, the Mexicali radio station announcer went straight to the Renegados' club house, a sagging former garage near the town's foul New River. "They helped us provide a good but safe atmosphere," Mr. Gallegos says. "There was no trouble, with those guys in charge."

Mexicali's image of bikers hasn't always been so glowing. Before the Renegade club, which is 15 years old this month, there were the "Vagos," or Vagabonds. "They were trouble," Gallegos recalls.

Maybe the fact that Mexicali's mayor, architect Victor Hermosillo, is also a biker, has helped widen the Renegados' acceptance, though the mayor belongs to a different club. Whatever the reason, the Renegados find few doors closed when they offer to help.

When the bikers wanted to visit a home for the children of poor single mothers and spend a Saturday playing with the kids, the director of the 50-bed boarding school welcomed them. "It's really a good thing when people volunteer to do something like this," says Sister María Elena Velásquez, director of Mexicali's Casa Pacceli. "It ends up doing good for all involved."

Sergio Galindo knows what Sister María Elena is talking about. A Mexican citizen born in Jalisco but raised in Los Angeles, Mr. Galindo got into trouble in 1994 with the gang he ran with in California, and ended up in prison. Though he says he had nothing to do with the murder that witnesses associated him with, Galindo was deported - and landed in Mexicali.

Sporting tattoos that cover his torso, Galindo says the Renegados have given him a family in a country he didn't know until nine months ago. And the community work helps him feel like he's giving something back.

"The people I hung out with in L.A. didn't do this kind of stuff, but here, I'm really into it," he says. "It just makes you feel good."

---

Greenpeace activists leave oil rig

InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 4/3/2001
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406615014

INVERNESS, Scotland (AP) - Nine environmental activists on Monday gave up their overnight occupation of a U.S. oil exploration rig on Scotland's east coast, police said.

The activists were not detained, police said. Seventeen other members of the group Greenpeace were arrested Sunday before reaching the rig in Cromarty Firth, an inlet of the North Sea 20 miles north of Inverness.

The activists, who painted ``Oil Kills'' on the rig in big, white letters, declared their action a success because their occupation of a rig leased to the Houston-based oil giant Conoco halted its departure for a North Sea drilling operation.

They accused Conoco of contributing to global warming by not investing in environmentally friendly fuels, such as vegetable oil-based substitutes for diesel. Conoco, which leases the rig from Aberdeen, Scotland-based Transeocean Sedco Forex, called the conduct by protesters ``dangerous and irresponsible.''

---

Oil spill kills birds in Denmark

InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 4/3/2001
By JAN M. OLSEN Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406615037

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) - With at least 1,000 ducks, swans and seagulls already dead, hunters combed oil-soiled Danish beaches Monday to destroy birds coated in oil and beyond saving after a tanker collision.

More than 200 people working on land with forks, spades and pitchforks, and 200 more working from the sea have scooped up nearly half the 764,000 gallons of oil that spilled into the Baltic Sea after a freighter and oil tanker collided Wednesday off Denmark.

Some 59,000 gallons remained on 12 miles of soiled beaches and the rest was believed to have sunk.

On Monday, a Finnish tanker, the Tervi, connected a line to the damaged tanker to pump the remaining fuel from the Baltic Carrier, which had been carrying 9.7 million gallons of oil.

The spill has stained the islands of Moen, Bogoe and Falster, which are on the migration route for numerous birds, including eider ducks, long-tailed ducks and goosanders.

Workers installed a floating barrier to keep the oil from entering a bird sanctuary on the island of Moen that is home to about 10,000 birds.

The Danish Forest and Nature Agency sent 20 hunters to search more than 75 miles of coastline to kill oil-coated birds deemed beyond saving.

``We have counted at least 1,000 dead birds,'' agency spokesman Finn Jensen said, adding it is too early to determine how many birds may have died. ``It is hard to tell, but 2,000 is a realistic estimate.''

Knud Flensted of the Danish Ornithological Society said he fears the number of dead birds could rise as much as five times that because many might not die immediately.

``It is worse than I had expected,'' Flensted said. ``In the two weeks that follows the accident, we will see birds _ dead or dying _ in the whole region.''

The collision took place in a busy ship traffic lane between Denmark and Germany when the German-owned tanker apparently turned suddenly and hit the Cypriot sugar freighter Tern.

A preliminary report by the Danish Maritime Authorities said the year-old, double-hulled tanker may have had a steering problem. A final report was to be released later.

Up to 160,000 vessels sail through inner Danish straits every year.

---

Real Brockovich Wins Court Battle

Yahoo News
Tuesday April 03
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/eo/20010403/en/real_brockovich_wins_court_battle_1.html

You'd think people who saw her big-screen biopic would have gotten the message by now. Don't mess with Erin Brockovich.

A Los Angeles lawyer was found guilty Monday of trying to blackmail the fast-talking buxom blonde, whose legal crusade was the inspiration for the hit movie starring the Oscar-winning Julia Roberts in her Oscar-winning role.

A Ventura County, California, jury convicted 53-year-old John Reiner on two counts of attempted extortion and one count of conspiracy to commit extortion.

After the verdict was announced, a defiant Reiner shook his head while his distraught wife broke down in tears. Reiner later addressed reporters outside the courtroom against the advice of his lawyers and said he was innocent of the charges.

"I did not commit any extortion or any unlawful action," Reiner said.

In an epilogue worthy of a Hollywood sequel, Reiner had tried to extort $310,000 from Brockovich by threatening to tell the tabloids that the suddenly famous legal aide was an unfit mother and had an affair with her boss, attorney Ed Masry (played in the movie by Albert Finney).

For their part, Brockovich and Masry denied the allegations. Masry added that although they both feel for Reiner's family, they were pleased by the jury's decision.

"Ever since we've become celebrities, it seems like every time we turn around somebody is suing us or trying to get money from us," Masry told the Los Angeles Times. "We've become marked targets."

Reiner, Shawn Brown (Brockovich's first husband) and ex-boyfriend Jorg Halaby (the biker in the movie) were arrested April 26 after Brockovich and Masry hooked up with the Ventura County District Attorney's Office and the FBI for a sting operation.

The two former paramours and Reiner met with Brockovich and Masry in Masry's office, where the trio signed an agreement stating they would keep quiet about the alleged Brockovich-Masry affair. In return, Brown received a $280,000 check, while Halaby got $30,000 in hush money.

That's when the feds burst in and spoiled the party. A hidden camera caught the whole extortion plot on tape.

Without citing a reason, the D.A.'s office eventually dropped the charges against Brown and Halaby.

During the weeklong trial, prosecutors put both Brockovich and Masry on the stand to deny the allegations against them. The FBI videos were also played. Defense attorneys, however, maintained that Masry was trying to set Reiner up and said their client thought the transaction was a legitimate business deal. The jury didn't buy it and, after three days of deliberations, came back with the guilty verdict.

"Justice was served," said Deputy District Attorney Michael Frawley. "I would sure hope that he never practices law again."

Reiner, whose license to practice law was temporarily suspended by the State Bar of California, likely will be disbarred with the conviction. He faces up to three years in prison when he's sentenced May 2.

Defense attorney William Genego said he'll probably appeal.

Meanwhile, Brockovich is still facing more courttime thanks to a lawsuit brought by hubby number two. Steven Brockovich is suing over comments his ex-wife made last year to People magazine and the Star supermarket tabloid, saying he failed to pay child support.

He claims in his suit that he has complied with all his court-ordered child support payments.

In his pal's defense, Masry says the lawsuit is "just another attempt by a whole group of ex-husbands, etc. to try to get money from this successful woman." Brockovich says she has no intention of paying her ex one dime.

---

Hale House's Management of Buildings Is Criticized

New York Times
April 3, 2001
By TERRY PRISTIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/03/nyregion/03HALE.html

In 1996, Hale House, a charity that earned a national reputation for providing shelter to unwanted babies, paid $560,000 in cash to buy a seven- story building bordering Central Park on 110th Street in Harlem.

At the time, Dr. Lorraine Hale, who assumed control of the charity after her mother, Clara, died in 1992, said she wanted to turn the 22,000- square-foot building into a training center, to be called the Thomas and Clara Hale Academy.

But the building remains untouched, and Hale House has no definite plans for developing it. One real estate broker estimated that it might be worth as much as $2 million on today's market.

"What is a shame is that nothing is happening," said Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, the president of Cityscape Institute, a civic group that is trying to improve the appearance of 110th Street. "It's an example of good intentions that somehow don't get off the ground."

Hale House has come under attack in recent days for failing to live up to the agreement it reached with the city in the late 1980's to convert two abandoned buildings in Harlem into shelters for homeless people recovering from drug addiction. Instead, the buildings, at 315 West 113th Street and 300 Manhattan Avenue, were rented to working people and retirees who did not meet the residency requirements.

The empty 110th Street building on a prime stretch of Harlem real estate, coupled with criticism about the two converted buildings - first reported Sunday in The Daily News - has raised questions about whether the 30-year-old charity has been taking on more than it can handle.

Jesse DeVore, a Hale House spokesman, said the organization had underestimated the challenge of operating shelters for the homeless. "Our real strength is taking care of the children," Mr. DeVore said. "When you go with parents, it's a totally different world."

In a statement, Hale House said that many of the early tenants in the converted buildings refused to pay rent, causing the organization financial hardship. "Hence we were forced to readjust our original mission," the statement said.

At a news conference yesterday, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani praised Hale House, saying, "They do exceptionally good, wonderful work." He said it was premature to draw "any negative conclusions."

Jerilyn Perine, the city housing commissioner, said Hale House had received some state financing for shelters but had never signed a contract with the city to perform services for the homeless or received operating funds. "They are guilty of being somewhat naïve and overly optimistic and not providing the diligent oversight that they should have," she said. "But we don't believe that they set out to fail in their original ambitions."

She said the current tenants in the buildings would not be asked to leave, and the city will make sure that they are receiving the protections they are entitled to under city rent stabilization laws.

Although Hale House is not focusing its attention on the 110th Street property right now, Mr. DeVore said, the group has been talking to developers.

One developer who has not heard from Hale House recently is Coke- Ann Wilcox, the owner of the Maidstone Arms, an upscale East Hampton inn. In 1997, Ms. Wilcox offered to buy the property from Hale House for about $600,000 and turn it into a boutique hotel. Ms. Wilcox said she told the group she could help it find a suitable location for the proposed academy elsewhere in Harlem. She said her offer was rejected.

Ms. Wilcox said the hotel she planned could serve families visiting Columbia University students or patients at nearby Mount Sinai Hospital. The idea was endorsed by Ms. Rogers, who said it could also provide wedding and banquet services.

"A bed and breakfast on Central Park North would honor the street with a wonderful use," Ms. Rogers said, "and help integrate uptown and downtown."

---

USA Today
04/03/01
States
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Vermont

Burlington - Authorities are preparing for an influx of anti-globalization protesters later this month. The Burlington area is expected to be a staging area for protesters taking a four-hour drive to Quebec City, where they will oppose a proposed new Free Trade Area of the Americas. Heads of state and trade ministers from 34 countries in the Western Hemisphere are expected to gather in Quebec.

-------

Socialist Party Local Endorses HLS Campaign, ALF Raid

Greg Payson of the Socialist Party gave me a copy of the following statement...

April 3, 2001

The Local Executive Committee of the Morris and Central NJ Local of the Socialist Party of New Jersey, stands in solidarity with those who protested against Huntingdon Life Sciences laboratories in East Millstone on April 2nd.

Huntingdon Life Sciences, a UK-based animal research laboratory specializing in toxicology testing, has become the target of an extensive and hard-hitting campaign in England. and now in New Jersey. The company routinely pumps lethal doses of toxic substances into the stomachs of beagles, monkeys, rats, mice, rabbits, and other animals.

Hntingdon Life Sciences has been besieged since 1997, in which undercover video of company laboratories in both the United Kingdom and East Millstone, NJ facilities shows workers cutting apart a live monkey, and punching and violently shaking puppies. The videos led to a $50,000 fine for violations of the Animal Welfare Act at the US facility, and Cruelty to Animals charges at the UK lab.

The Socialist Party's national platform is clear in our opposition to animal testing and cruelty.

"The Socialist Party recognizes the rights of animals to live lives free from unnecessary pain and suffering, and the responsibility of people to protect those rights...We call for a ban on animal experimentation. ." 2000 Platform, Socialist Party, USA

We support those arrested while protesting, as well as those who risked their lives and freedom in order to liberate 14 beagles from Huntingdon on April 1st.

It is a sad day in New Jersey when laws protecting the property of such an industry are more important than the lives of these animals.

We call on Judge Jeffrey C. Green to Release the protesters on their own recognizance and to grant 10% bond.

Central and Morris Local, SPNJ c/o 28 White Meadow Ave Ave, Rockaway, NJ 07866 SPNJ (973) 664-0558

Animals whom we have made our slaves, we do not like to consider our equals.

Charles Darwin, Metaphysics, Materialism, and the Evolution of Mind

All the arguments to prove human superiority cannot shatter this hard fact: in suffering, the animals are our equals.

Peter Singer, author of Animal Liberation

Wetlands Preserve Environmental and Social Justice Activism Center

Direct Action in Defense of the Environment and Animal and Human Rights 161 Hudson Street, NY, NY 10013 Phone: (212) 966-4831 Fax: (212) 925-8715 Email: adam@wetlands-preserve.org

Call or email us for information on our year-round internship program (Academic credit can be arranged with many schools).

Affiliated with Rainforest Relief.

One Struggle, One Fight....For the Earth and Human and Animal Rights!!!

-------

"Flood Bush" email stalls White House server

Guardian Unlimited
Tuesday 03 Apr 2001
Julia Day

The White House has been stalled by an email campaign organised by FoE along with new environment friends BP and Shell protesting Bush withdrawal from Kyoto Protocol Email Letter here: http://www.foeeurope.org/climate/letter.htm

Oil giants BP and Shell have joined a Friends of the Earth email campaign pleading with President George W Bush not to renege on the Kyoto Protocol climate-change treaty.

The campaign is believed to have stalled the White House internet server, which can only handle 150 messages a minute.

So far, 33,000 emails have been sent to the White House as part of FoE's bid to make the US stick by its commitment to prevent global warming.

At present, 1,000 emails an hour are being sent to President Bush.

The email is being dispersed across the globe as recipients pass it on to friends and colleagues.

An FoE Europe spokesman said more than 200 members of the European Parliament and 140 European Commission members have sent the email, as well as BP and Shell employees using their work computers.

FoE will tomorrow send out emails to some of the 10m people that signed an email petition in the run-up to the climate change summit in the Hague.

Spanish, French, Russian and Japanese versions of the emails are being sent out this week.

The organisation says the "Flood Bush" campaign may be even bigger than the Hague campaign.

------

Peace group schedules Y-12 rally

Oak Ridger
Tuesday, April 3, 2001
by Paul Parson Oak Ridger staff
http://www.oakridger.com/stories/040301/new_0403010035.html

Who profits from death?

Those companies involved in nuclear weapons production do, according to officials with the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance.

The organization will attempt to spread that message on Sunday during its annual April march and rally at the Y-12 National Security Complex.

"It's important to keep raising the issue of nuclear weapons production," said Ralph Hutchison, coordinator for the alliance. "Corporations are making massive profits off of nuclear weapons production."

According to Hutchison, those companies include BWXT Y-12, who manages Y-12 for the Department of Energy, and "household name" establishments like Honeywell -- the makers of both heaters and products for the nation's weapons stockpile.

The Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance was also one of several activist groups that recently spoke out against the proposed modernization of Y-12. Updating the facility would include the construction of a new storage area for highly enriched uranium and a special materials complex.

Hutchison said his organization is expecting a big turnout for this year's event. More than 130 people participated last April and 17 protesters were arrested for blocking the entrances to the plant.

This year's event begins at noon in A.K. Bissell Park with a "bring your own" picnic lunch. The march to Y-12 is expected to begin around 1 p.m. with the rally scheduled for 2 until 7 p.m.

In addition to the Y-12 event, there will be a day-long workshop on "Building a Nonviolent Community" beginning at 9 a.m. Saturday at the Church of the Savior, 934 N. Weisgarber Road in Knoxville.

For more information, call the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance at (865) 483-8202 or visit the group's Web site at www.stopthebombs.org


------- OneList (submissions from subscribers)

------- Depleted Uranium Keeps On Killing!