------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Latest nuclear menace: radioactive tumbleweeds
Bruce Power plans to restart reactors
Moscow Takes Dim View Of U.S. Security Policy
Russia tells Norway no nukes on Kursk
Anderson Co. wants courts clear of petty protest arrests
Senate supports Hanford budget
Fluor switches plans to remove spent fuel from K Basins
False alarm evacuates PFP
Water damage sparks Yucca worries

MILITARY
Chinese missile moves
MYANMAR: U.N. ENVOY MEETS DEMOCRACY LEADER
Marines Link Osprey Crash to Software Malfunction

OTHER
Britain gears up for offshore wind power
FPL to build wind farm to power 80,000 Texas homes
The WTO's Water Monopoly Plans
Drilling Studied in Off-Limits Areas of Rockies
Dutch Farmers Facing Mass Foot-and-Mouth Slaughter
NBC President Lobbies City to Block G.E. Dredging Bill
Pandas Face Competition From Humans in Sanctuary
Agriculture Chief Disavows Plan to Eliminate Test on School Beef
IDAHO: NO INJUNCTION AGAINST ROAD PLAN
The Man Who Chased Verniero Down a Paper Trail
DiFrancesco Urges Justice to Resign in Profiling Furor
MANHATTAN: POLICE OFFICERS FACE SANCTIONS
CREW STILL IN CUSTODY AS U.S., CHINA, DICKER
Recon Games
Standoff Worries U.S. Companies in China
Students' Unease Over Weakness Could Threaten Beijing's Leaders
Chinese Pilot Reveled in Risk, Pentagon Says
Bush Aides Saying Some Hope Is Seen to End Standoff
U.S. and China Using Letters to Come to Agreement
RUSSIA: AMERICAN DIPLOMATS SENT PACKING
Diplomats Have Second Meeting With Crew
Sorry About That
The China Standoff, and Some Ways Out
Italy and Germany Arrest 6 in Failed 2000 Bomb Plot

ACTIVISTS
Sample Press Materials/Citigroup and the FTAA
The anarchist struggle in South America


-------- NUCLEAR

Latest nuclear menace: radioactive tumbleweeds
A Geiger counter is used to check tumbleweeds on the Hanford nuclear reservation for radiation

April 6, 2001
CNN - Associated Press
http://europe.cnn.com/2001/TECH/science/04/06/radioactive.tumbleweeds.ap/index.html

RICHLAND, Washington (AP) -- The Cold War may be over, but Hanford nuclear reservation continues to battle Russian invaders: radioactive tumbleweeds.

Russian thistle is a dead menace here on the windswept desert of south-central Washington. Each winter, the deep tap root on the plant decays, and the spiny brown skeleton above ground breaks off and rolls away.

"Our dream is that we have this place tumbleweed-free," says Ray Johnson, a biological control manager for radiation protection at Fluor Hanford, the contractor managing the U.S. Department of Energy site.

But that's about as likely as a Soviet reunion.

While less than 1 percent of the tumbleweeds corralled and compacted at Hanford are radioactive, the cost of cleanup can run into millions of dollars.

Hanford is the most contaminated nuclear site in the country, built in 1943 for the top-secret Manhattan Project. For 40 years, Hanford made plutonium for the nation's nuclear arsenal, including the atomic bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan. The last reactor was shut down in 1986.

Nasty elements

Russian thistle, a nonnative or invader species, is a particular problem at underground burial sites for radioactive waste, where their tap roots reach down as far as 20 feet (6 meters) and suck up such nasty elements as strontium and cesium.

A stiff winter wind can push the tumbleweed as far away as four miles, and then "we've lost control of our contamination," Johnson says. But most get hung up within a few hundred yards, usually on sagebrush, fences or in stairwells at the buildings scattered across the site.

Two years ago, uncontrolled contamination spread by fruit flies made Hanford a national laughingstock, spoofed by humor columnist Dave Barry and in the syndicated comic strip "Sylvia."

The flies had been attracted to a soil fixative with saccharin in the base that was being sprayed on a contaminated site. They flew to a lunch room, and spread the taint to nearby trash bins, which wound up at the Richland municipal landfill.

Johnson can chuckle about it now, recalling attempts to find the source of the contamination. As crews ran radiation detectors around the lunch room and passed over a fruit fly, "the contamination flew away," he recalls.

The journeys of a few thousand fruit flies cost $2.5 million to clean up.

Integrated program

Riding herd on Hanford's tumbleweeds, and its flying insects, is part of an annual $4 million integrated soil, vegetation and animal control (ISVAC) program, run by subcontractor DynCorp. for Fluor Hanford.

Radiation control specialists survey the tumbleweeds on the 560-square-mile (1,450-square-kilometer) reservation, using Geiger-Mueller counters that click when radioactivity is present. If contaminated tumbleweeds are found, an ISVAC crew disposes of them.

"The weeds are fairly low danger," says Todd Ponczoch, a radiation control technician, using a Geiger counter to scan tumbleweeds along a fenceline. None registered radioactive on a recent trip.

A large, three-pound (1.3-kilogram) radioactive tumbleweed might measure out at 150 millirads, or about 1/100th of the allowable annual dose of radiation per person at Hanford.

Cleaning up

Radioactive tumbleweeds are pitchforked by specially trained and clothed workers into a regulated garbage truck, compacted and disposed of at an on-site low-level waste dump. A trail of paperwork is required as well.

The sites must be satisfactorily cleaned up and covered with six inches of clean soil or gravel.

Nonradioactive tumbleweeds are territory for the Teamsters.

"It's an easy job. It gets us outside," says Joe Aldridge, a Teamster from Richland, as he pitchforks a plant into the garbage truck which can hold about 1,800 pounds (810 kilograms) of tumbleweeds. "Digging ditches is a lot worse."

The uncontaminated tumbleweeds are dumped in an open pit. Up until five or six years ago, the "clean" tumbleweeds were burned and the ash buried. But the state Department of Health put a halt to that practice for fear that some radioactive tumbleweeds might find their way into the mix and disperse contamination into the air.

Preventive measures are also part of the control program, and include backpack, roadside and aerial spraying with herbicide to kill the thistle. Sometimes a bio-barrier -- a costly engineered textile -- is laid down to block the formation of thistle roots.

"What you've got to do is make sure your contaminated areas are tumbleweed-free," Johnson says.

Clearly, this isn't Kansas, where at least two enterprising souls are raising Russian thistles, turning them into tumbleweeds and selling them for home decor. But in the vast, open and uncontaminated portions of the reservation, some areas are simply left to nature.

Even Johnson can acknowledge their rightful place in the world.

"If we didn't have them, the West wouldn't be the West," he says, "and we couldn't sing 'Tumblin' Tumbleweeds."'

-------- canada

Bruce Power plans to restart reactors

Excite News
April 6, 2001
http://news.excite.com/news/r/010406/12/energy-bruce?printstory=1

TORONTO (Reuters) - Bruce Power said Friday it will spend C$340 million ($218 million) over the next two years to restart two nuclear reactors at its Bruce A nuclear power plant in southwestern Ontario, which could supply about 1,500 megawatts of electricity to power hungry users.

Bruce Power, a partnership between British Energy Plc and Canadian uranium producer Cameco Corp., said it will spend C$30 million over the next three months in the first phase of the plan to bring units 3 and 4 of the station back into service by the summer of 2003.

All four units, leased by Bruce Power from Ontario Power Generation, have been laid-up since 1997.

Restarting the two reactors is conditional on a number of factors, including closing of the Bruce transaction, expected by summer 2001, obtaining regulatory approvals and meeting performance targets for the four operational reactors at the Bruce B plant, Bruce Power said.

Saskatoon, Saskatchewan-based Cameco, which supplies about 25 percent of the world's uranium, stands to benefit handsomely from the startup, Bernard Michel, the company's chairman and chief executive, told Reuters.

Cameco owns a 15-percent stake in Bruce Power and will benefit from both the direct sale of the power and from being the exclusive supplier of uranium.

"It is important because it will increase the profitability of our transactions with British Energy. It will be good for Cameco.

The announcement of the Bruce plant startups comes as Ontario readies for the deregulation of its electricity market.

Ontario -- Canada's most populous and the nation's economic engine -- has already pushed back its previous deadline of November 2000 by one year. All indications now point to deregulation starting this fall, although there has been no confirmation from the Ontario government.

In midday trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange, Cameco was off 5 Canadian cents at C$31.70. It has traded in a 52-week range of C$14.80 to C$32.00.

-------- missile defense

Moscow Takes Dim View Of U.S. Security Policy

Radio Free Europe
04/06/01
By Ahto Lobjakas
http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/2001/04/06042001123856.asp

Speaking at a seminar in Brussels earlier this week, Alexander Pikayev of the Carnegie Foundation in Moscow provided a Russian view of the United States' projected National Missile Defense and of perceived changes in U.S. foreign policy. Pikayev warned that progress on NMD could undermine bilateral relations between Washington and Moscow and lead to an increase in nuclear proliferation. RFE/RL Brussels correspondent Ahto Lobjakas reports.

Brussels. 6 April 2001 (RFE/RL) -- The Carnegie Foundation's Alexander Pikayev says the Russian government grossly misjudged the intentions of the new U.S. administration of President George W. Bush.

Speaking 3 April at a seminar organized by the Brussels-based Center for European Policy, Pikayev said Moscow's expectations of improved bilateral relations with the new administration have been far from realized. He spoke of "cold winds" recently emanating from Washington and said the administration had adopted an unexpectedly tough stance toward Russia on a range of strategic issues.

Chief among those issues is the United States' projected National Missile Defense, or NMD, which President Bush has said he is determined to put into practice. Russia has vehemently opposed the plan, saying it violates the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and could lead to another arms race.

Pikayev says the debate on missile defense must be seen in the wider context of the U.S. administration's current review of foreign and security policy:

"[The] debates around anti-missile defense are much more important than the ABM Treaty, and the potential architecture and organization of American antimissile system, because those debates play [an] important role and represent an important part of a broader debate involving such issues as [the] American commitment to cooperative multilateral international legal regimes, American isolationism or interventionism, and the future of some American-led security alliances."

Pikayev says U.S. moves like the decisions to proceed with NMD and pull out of its Kyoto Protocol commitments to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions indicate that the Bush administration is embarking on a course he calls "unilateralist" and "unpredictable." This, he adds, bodes ill for bilateral U.S.-Russian relations as well as for U.S. global relations overall.

Pikayev says that perceived changes in U.S. foreign policy are likely to have a profound effect on existing strategic arms reduction treaties like START 1 and START 2, as well as on the treaty eliminating Europe-based intermediate- and short-range nuclear missiles (INF) and the treaty on reducing conventional forces in Europe (CFE).

"[The] ABM Treaty [and] strategic arms reduction agreements [served] for 30 years as the foundation of bilateral relations between Moscow and Washington. This process survived major crises like [the] war in Afghanistan, [the] end of détente, [the] Star Wars [program] of President [Ronald] Reagan, [the] collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO expansion, [and the] Kosovo operation. During all those crises, strategic arms control, including the ABM Treaty, represented a major stabilizing factor which [made it possible] to maintain dialogue between [the] two [capitals]."

Pikayev says that, instead of further negotiations on arms control, the United States is currently offering Russia what he calls "face-saving" talks on maintaining strategic balance. In addition, he says, growing U.S. unilateralism will have a destabilizing effect in various regions of the world, and could lead to the wider global proliferation of nuclear weapons.

During a discussion of Pikayev's views, Ivo Daalder of the Brookings Institution in Washington defended the United States' right to deploy a missile defense, provided certain important conditions were satisfied.

Daalder said Washington must simultaneously engage in a broader non-proliferation effort in cooperation with Russia as well with its European allies. To this end, he said, the United States should promote arms control talks -- including continued dialogue with Russia on modifying the ABM Treaty -- and use what he called "diplomatic persuasion" to roll back missile programs in countries like North Korea.

Pikayev says he is most concerned about the effects changes in U.S. security policy could have in Asia. As he sees it, mounting U.S. isolationism will erode the security guarantees Washington has so far underwritten in the area. In addition to worrying states like Japan and South Korea, this development could also directly concern Moscow as it falters on maintaining security in Russia's weak and underpopulated Far East.

Moreover, Pikayev says, NMD could lead to a serious arms race in Asia. In his reasoning, China would be certain to increase its arsenal of ballistic missiles in response to the U.S. project in order to boost the credibility of its own nuclear deterrent.

Pikayev says this could spark a dangerous chain reaction elsewhere in Asia:

"India clearly links its own nuclear development with [that of] China. If China goes up [in nuclear warheads], India [will] most likely follow suit. Pakistan would not remain outside because it considers India as [its] primary rival and of course it would have to build up if India continues its [own] build-up."

The Asian ripple effect Pikayev describes could, he says, eventually reach as far west as Iran, Iraq, and Israel. In his view, it could also provoke Taiwan and possibly a future unified Korea to acquire nuclear capabilities of their own in order to meet a perceived Chinese threat.

Pikayev also says that if the U.S. administration carries out its promised reconsideration of its role in the Balkans, the European Union would not at present be able to fill the resulting security void. He says U.S. inaction in Kosovo and Macedonia could lead to a domino effect, possibly involving Greece, Bulgaria, and other Southeast European states.

-------- russia

Russia tells Norway no nukes on Kursk

RUSSIA: April 6, 2001
Story by Daniel Mclaughlin
REUTERS
Additional reporting by Alister Doyle in Oslo
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10428

MOSCOW - Norway challenged Moscow yesterday over a report that the Kursk submarine was carrying nuclear weapons when it plunged to the sea bed last year and received Russian navy assurances that the story was nonsense.

Igor Dygalo, an aide to the commander of the navy, dismissed comments by Russian politician Grigory Tomchin on Norwegian television this week in which he said the Kursk was carrying nuclear arms when disaster struck, killing all 118 on board.

"I categorically deny this information. From the first day of the catastrophe we said there were no nuclear weapons on board the nuclear submarine Kursk," Dygalo told Reuters.

Dygalo said Tomchin - who said yesterday his comments had been misinterpreted by the TV-2 television channel - had no official role regarding the Kursk and that his claims were "linked to his personal analysis and personal fantasy...and do nothing but cause tension in society".

Norway despatched a diplomat to the Russian Foreign Ministry - and heard a similar dismissal of Tomchin's assertions.

"They categorically denied it," Norwegian Foreign Ministry spokesman Karsten Klepsvik told Reuters in Oslo. "We have no basis to take this any further."

The Kursk, one of Russia's most advanced submarines, plunged to the bottom of the Barents Sea in August after two unexplained explosions ripped through it during a training exercise.

Twelve of the victims of Russia's worst submarine accident were recovered last year and Moscow is trying to secure a deal with Western partners to raise the wreck in August or September.

NO SIGN OF RADIATION

Tests around the wreck site have shown no sign of radioactivity from the vessel's two nuclear reactors. Russia says salvaging it will avert any possible environmental damage.

Dygalo said the navy was ready for the $70-million job.

"The navy could fulfil the task as laid out in a government order," he said. "But it is too early to comment on the project itself, with negotiations still going on."

Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said this week Russia would underwrite the salvage plan and that a deal was imminent between the government and a consortium of Western contractors.

Rio Praaning, secretary general of the Brussels-based Kursk Foundation which is trying to gather half the funding from Western donors, said long delays in finalising a deal had pushed back essential work on a special barge, underneath which the main part of Kursk will be hauled back to port.

The forward torpedo bay would first be cut off along with the stern and these would be retrieved later, Praaning said.

He gave no credence to the nuclear weapons story.

"From our close Russian contacts we have had no indication at all that there were nuclear weapons on the Kursk."

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

-------- tennessee

Anderson Co. wants courts clear of petty protest arrests

Knoxville News Sentinel
April 6, 2001
By Frank Munger, News-Sentinel senior writer
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/26992.shtml

OAK RIDGE -- The Anderson County attorney general is again asking police not to send nuclear protesters his way unless there's a serious violation of the law.

"There is no sense playing into their hands by cooperating in civil disobedience to overcrowd our jails and the justice system," Jim Ramsey said in a letter this week to Oak Ridge Police Chief David Beams.

Ramsey was referring to a protest planned this weekend at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge.

The Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance said peace activists from 15 states are expected to participate in the protest against nuclear weapons production. The group said the rally will conclude with nonviolent "civil resistance" to dramatize the "human cost" of weapons manufacturing.

"It is expected that some demonstrators will risk arrest in the civil resistance action," the group said in a press statement.

Ramsey last year dismissed cases against a number of protesters arrested on state charges for blocking the entrance to Y-12 on Bear Creek Road. He said the charges should have been handled by Oak Ridge City Court.

"This office is prepared to prosecute felonies and serious misdemeanors such as assault arising out of these anticipated demonstrations, but we expect the city of Oak Ridge to use its City Court and municipal ordinances to prosecute minor infractions such as trespass or disturbing the peace."

If the city ordinances are inadequate, then maybe the City Council should enact new ones, Ramsey suggested.

"None of this should be coming as a surprise," he wrote to Beams. "It is not always necessary to prosecute just because a person has been lawfully detained."

Oak Ridge Police Capt. Bill Moehl said if a city code violation is appropriate for the action, then police will use the city charges.

However, if protesters violate state law and there is no applicable city ordinance, then police will arrest them and use the state charges, Moehl said.

"We have certain obligations under the law," the officer said.

Frank Munger can be reached at 865-482-9213 or twig1@knoxnews.infi.net.

-------- washington

Senate supports Hanford budget

Hanford News
Fri, Apr 6, 2001
By John Stang Herald staff writer
http://www.hanfordnews.com/2001/0406-3.html

The U.S. Senate wants a nationwide Department of Energy cleanup budget of $6.6 billion, which would make up most or all of an anticipated Hanford money shortage in fiscal 2002.

U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, led a small fledgling coalition of senators from states with nuclear cleanup sites, which convinced the Senate Thursday to unanimously call for an extra $1 billion for DOE's nationwide cleanup budget, according to Murray's staff.

The bottom line is that now both the U.S. House and Senate have called for a DOE cleanup budget of $6.6 billion to $6.65 billion for fiscal 2002, which begins this Oct. 1. That does not guarantee that $6.6 billion will materialize.

First, DOE will unveil its nationwide 2002 cleanup budget on Monday. No one outside of DOE's top leaders knows what the amount will be.

Then the House and Senate will negotiate and pass authorization and appropriation bills. This is when DOE, congressional committees and the full House and Senate haggle over how much will be actually spent where.

The Senate's action on Thursday means it is setting aside $6.6 billion for cleanup work so other senators won't touch it for other projects. This will be the Senate's starting point when it negotiates the cleanup budget with the Bush administration.

DOE is expected to cut its nationwide cleanup budget request to Congress below 2001's level of $6.25 billion. Only clues with no confirmed figures have surfaced on how much DOE wants to cut. Consequently, a mishmash of numbers are floating about with the House and Senate using different figures.

The Senate used an estimate of $5.6 billion for 2002 has the start-off point for its $1 billion increase. U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., led a House effort that used the 2001 figure of $6.25 billion to call for a $400 million increase to $6.65 billion.

Hanford received $1.5 billion in 2001. It needs $1.85 billion in 2002 to meet it legal obligations and $1.9 billion to also accelerate cleanup along the Columbia River. So, Hanford would need most, if not all, of the increase to $6.6 billion to meet its needs. However, DOE cleanup projects in other states are also seeking extra money in 2002.

---

Fluor switches plans to remove spent fuel from K Basins

Hanford News
Fri, Apr 6, 2001
By John Stang Herald staff writer
http://www.hanfordnews.com/2001/0406-2.html

Hanford officials are switching to Plan B to remove highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel from the K Basins, believing it has a better chance of meeting the project's legal deadlines.

The key component is moving all of the K East Basin's fuel to an upgraded K West Basin fuel handling operation.

"The key in the next six to seven months will be how things come together," said Mike Schlender, the Department of Energy's deputy manager for site transition at Hanford.

Last week, DOE approved Fluor Hanford's plan on how to pick up the pace of moving fuel out of the basins.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the lead regulator on the K Basins, also has approved switching plans, although it is skeptical about the chances of meeting legal deadlines.

The K Basins are two indoor, leak-prone, water-filled pools near the Columbia River that hold 2,300 tons of spent nuclear fuel.

Starting with the K West Basin, Hanford is putting the fuel into special canisters, which are then pulled from the pool and sucked dry of all moisture. The canisters, which each hold about 5.5 tons of fuel, are then moved to a huge underground vault in central Hanford.

The first canister was shipped in December. Fluor is now working on its seventh canister.

The K Basins project has had two legal deadlines under the Tri-Party Agreement, which governs Hanford's cleanup.

The K West Basin's 1,210 tons of enclosed intact fuel are to be moved by Dec. 30, 2002.

But the deadline to move the 1,090 tons of fuel in the K East Basin -- most of which is in open-ended containers with corroded and broken fuel -- is July 2004.

Fluor and DOE came up with the new plan because of the slow pace of moving canisters out of K West.

The work has been slow because workers are just learning the processes, according to Fluor and DOE.

"This is a one-of-of kind (operation). The worst thing you can do is rush at the beginning," said Bob Heck, Fluor's vice president in charge of the K Basins.

Fluor and DOE expect to move 24 canisters -- roughly 132 tons over 10 months -- by Sept. 30. That pace is supposed to increase dramatically in October.

But the concerns over pace of work led Fluor to develop the recently approved second plan. The plan's main plank is not to build the same elaborate canister-loading system in the K East Basin that exists in K West and moving K East fuel to the other basin for loading.

Fluor also plans to add a second work shift in a couple weeks, and increase to three shifts in early 2002.

Savings at the K East Basin are to be spent upgrading the K West Basin, supposedly keeping the project's $187 million budget stable in 2001 and 2002, Heck and Schlender said. The actual 2002 budget request won't be known until Monday, when DOE in Washington, D.C., reveals Hanford's cleanup budget.

Doug Sherwood, EPA's Hanford site manager, said although he has qualms whether Fluor will be able to speed up fuel movement sufficiently this fall, the new plan has a better chance of meeting deadlines.

Heck said Fluor aims to begin moving fuel from the K East Basin by Nov. 30, 2002. A month later, Fluor is to have removed the equivalent of what's now in the K West pool from K West.

---

False alarm evacuates PFP

Hanford News
Fri, Apr 6, 2001
By John Stang Herald staff writer
http://www.hanfordnews.com/2001/0406-1.html

A false criticality alarm caused Hanford's Plutonium Finishing Plant to be evacuated Thursday afternoon.

About 400 workers left the PFP complex at 2:45 p.m., staying out until technicians finished determining at 6:20 p.m. that no criticality had occurred, said Erik Olds, a Department of Energy spokesman. Evening shift PFP workers returned to the west-central Hanford complex.

All of the evacuated workers were checked for radioactivity, and no one was contaminated, Olds said.

Technicians found no increased radiation inside the PFP complex after it was evacuated.

A criticality is an uncontrolled nuclear reaction that shoots bursts of potentially fatal radiation. It occurs when the right radioactive substances in the right masses and shapes come close enough to each other under the right conditions.

The PFP's mission is to convert 4.4 tons of plutonium mixed within 19.6 tons of scrap into safer forms. Criticality safety is a major fact of life at the PFP, where plutonium chunks and powders are routinely moved about.

A criticality alarm went off near where workers were installing some plutonium-packaging equipment. No plutonium nor other radioactive materials were in the vicinity of the alarm at that time, Olds said.

DOE had not figured out what tripped the alarm Thursday night.

A criticality alarm screams out a distinct "aawooogah," which tells workers to immediately run through the nearest exits to assemble at preordained rendezvous points.

Some employees were working with plutonium, wearing protective clothing and had to rush out wearing those clothes. Consequently, doorways and pathways will have to be checked thoroughly for radioactive specks that might have been tracked out, Olds said.

Hanford's history records two criticality accidents.

The first took place in 1951 during an experiment on plutonium solutions in an underground concrete test chamber in the sagebrush near the old White Bluffs town site. No one was radiated.

The second criticality accident occurred in 1962 when some overflowing plutonium liquid dribbled into some other radioactive fluids, triggering a blue flash that exposed four workers -- three above Hanford's annual radiation absorption limit of 5 rems.

Problems with criticality safety practices caused the PFP to stop all movement of plutonium in 1997 and 1998, so procedures and training could be overhauled.

The PFP's last full evacuation occurred in 1997 when a chemical tank exploded, exposing 10 workers to fumes. Hanford's last major evacuation took place in January 1998 when a small vial of possibly explosive picric acid was found in the 327 Building. That led to the evacuation of the entire 300 Area.

-------- us nuc waste

Water damage sparks Yucca worries

April 06, 2001
By Mary Manning <manning@lasvegassun.com>
LAS VEGAS SUN

Areas inside the exploratory tunnel at Yucca Mountain that were sealed off for six months developed so much moisture that electrical test equipment in the rooms shorted out, losing valuable data, a Nuclear Regulatory Commission report shows.

Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is the only site being studied to bury 77,000 tons of nuclear reactor and weapons waste. Water is a concern there because the area's mineral-laden ground water could corrode containers holding the waste, releasing radioactivity into the environment.

If the moisture in the tunnel is found to be ground water, the dump project would be in jeopardy.

Federal scientists believe if the moisture is from condensation, it would be harmless. State scientists note, however, that even condensation, if it contains minerals from Yucca Mountain's rock, could be corrosive.

The Energy Department is expected to recommend the site later this year as the world's first high-level nuclear waste repository.

The three research areas were dug out along the 5-mile-long tunnel, which is near the surface, and equipped with probes to measure water inside the rock. They were sealed last August to prevent the dry outside air from entering, to simulate what themountain was like before the tunnel was excavated.

By September scientists realized that the equipment's electricity had failed, including the backup battery power. When they reopened the research rooms in January, they found electrical shorts that appeared to be caused by excessive water.

It was one of several studies focused on finding out the path of ground water through the mountain, which is made primarily of layered volcanic ash. If water has invaded the repository level, 1,000 feet below the surface, within the past 10,000 years, the site could be disqualified as a repository.

The water table at Yucca Mountain is 1,000 feet lower than the site.

So far, none of the studies has definitively shown a problem, but none has ruled out dangerous levels of moisture either.

The report on the failed experiment was included in monthly reports of the NRC's on-site scientists, who are overseeing work by the Energy Department.

The DOE is charged with studying and, if it is found safe, building the repository. The NRC would have to license it before it could open.

DOE researchers reported to the NRC scientists that they had been unable to collect 75 percent of the data they sought on water at the three sites because of power outages in the hundreds of probes.

Humidity levels inside the alcoves jumped above 90 percent last summer, DOE scientists said.

The DOE suspected steamy conditions inside the alcoves had disrupted electrical connections to the probes monitoring the mountain. Although batteries backed up conventional power lines, their supply lasted only about two weeks.

The DOE opened the bulkheads in January, dried the air, better insulated the electronics, then resealed areas. The water monitoring project is expected to continue throughout this year, DOE spokeswoman Gayle Fisher said.

Power was restored to the monitors, but conditions inside the mountain have not returned to normal, according to NRC's technical staff. "They have a ways to go yet," Chad Glenn of the NRC's Las Vegas office, said this week.

The amount of moisture inside the mountain already has raised questions from independent scientists serving on the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board. At a February meeting in Amargosa Valley, the scientists questioned DOE representatives closely about "soaked" drip cloths hanging inside the alcoves.

The scientific panel urged the DOE to chemically analyze the water found on the cloths to determine if it came from condensation or from moisture flowing through the mountain's rocks.

Scientists working for the state of Nevada, which opposes the repository project, are concerned with the lack of information provided after the DOE's power outages.

Water -- even condensation -- could create a film on the metal surfaces of waste containers and shields, causing chemical reactions, said Susan Zimmerman, technical program administrator for the state's Agency for Nuclear Projects. Heat from the buried waste could enhance the chances for such reactions, and the consequences are anyone's guess, she said.

The DOE has been studying Yucca Mountain since 1983. By the mid-1990s scientists discovered more water than expected in the rock.

Engineers now are suggesting multiple barriers to protect people and the environment from escaping radioactivity.

Those barriers include waste packages still being designed, titanium shields to deflect ground water from dripping on the packages and a filler to seal the mountain in 50, 100 or 150 years.

The additional protection against moisture is expected to increase the cost of the dump, which is currently estimated to be about $60 billion.


-------- MILITARY

Chinese missile moves

April 6, 2001
Inside the Ring
Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
Notes from the Pentagon.
http://www.washtimes.com/national/inring-200146212013.htm

U.S. spy satellites are continuing to detect movements of Chinese ballistic missiles from a factory in central China. According to intelligence officials, the latest trainload was spotted outside a factory during one satellite pass. Subsequent photographs revealed they had departed. "They disappeared," said one official. Three earlier shipments of short-range missiles, believed to be new CSS-7s, were traced from the factory in Yuanan, in western Hubei province, to bases at Yongan and Xianyou - two bases within firing range of Taiwan. The missiles are part of a force of 300 short-range missiles opposite Taiwan that U.S. military and intelligence officials say is being built up at a rate of 50 missiles a year. The missile buildup is a key target of frequent U.S. aerial surveillance flights - like the EP-3E aircraft and its 24 crew members now being held captive by the Chinese military in Hainan Island.

Aries in demand

The Navy's EP-3E reconnaissance plane does such a good job of intercepting communications that the nation's highest military officers are clamoring for more. The regional commanders in chief have been pressing the Navy to boost the fleet from 11 to 16. "It has been their most valuable 'intel' collection asset for some time," one insider tells us. Unlike satellites that may be out of position, an EP-3E can be offshore in a matter of hours to listen in on enemy communications. The response from the Navy, which is struggling to maintain a 300-ship fleet, has been "we don't have the cash." A compromise was worked out. Instead of five more, Congress plans to add money to buy three more EP-3Es. The plane is essentially the airframe of the Navy's P-3 submarine hunter, stuffed with sophisticated antennas, receivers and encryption devices. The 24-member crew is trained in electronics, linguistics and communication intercepts. The Navy maintains two Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadrons, one at Whidbey Island, Wash., the other in Rota, Spain. The EP-3Es that cover Asia deploy from Whidbey to a base in northern Japan, then fly to Okinawa for refueling before starting a well-traveled track along the coasts of Vietnam and China. A Navy publication describes the plane this way: "[The EP-3E] provides fleet and theater commanders worldwide with near-term real-time tactical [signals intelligence]. With sensitive receivers and high-gain dish antennas, the EP-3E exploits a wide range of electronic emissions from deep within hostile territory." China has demonstrated it qualifies as "hostile territory."

Iraq moves missiles

Iraq is moving some of its surface-to-air missiles. Intelligence officials said several of Iraq's Russian SA-6 missile systems were moved from areas in northeastern Iraq. The SA-6 batteries are high-priority intelligence targets and knowing their location is a life-and-death matter for the U.S. pilots enforcing air exclusion zones over Iraq. The SA-6 is considered a very effective anti-aircraft missile and is believed to have been the weapon that shot down a U.S. F-117 stealth fighter over Yugoslavia.

Yoda and the Jedis

If you want to research the writings of Andrew Marshall to see where his Pentagon strategy review is likely headed, a security clearance is mandatory. Mr. Marshall, director of the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment, rarely publishes his thinking in unclassified forms. The key, associates say, is to read the writings of his disciples. Or, as one Marshall friend framed it in a "Star Wars" analogy, study the Jedis to learn the teachings of Yoda. One Jedi is Andrew Krepinevich, a former Army officer who worked with Mr. Marshall in the Net Assessment Office, a bastion of futuristic brainstorming. Mr. Krepinevich, who directs the private Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, has taken on added importance. He is working on the Pentagon's future strategy study group headed by Mr. Marshall. It is one of about 12 panels assembled by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to plot a new course for the U.S. military. When Mr. Krepinevich writes, as he did recently, that four Trident submarines should be converted to land-attack missile platforms, it's a good guess that Mr. Marshall endorses the idea. Marshall watchers say his ideas show up in the writings of other proteges, such as Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and James Roche, a retired Navy officer who is in line to be the next Air Force secretary. "There's this whole network of Marshallites out there and that's how his work gets out," says John Hillen, who has participated in Mr. Marshall's yearly military study program at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. Mr. Marshall's ideas showed up in what could be one of the most important defense documents in recent history: George W. Bush's 1999 speech at the Citadel in which he laid out his vision for the military 20 years from now. The speech is growing in importance, not only because Mr. Bush became commander in chief, but also because he and Mr. Rumsfeld are carrying out the far-reaching strategic review the candidate called for in his speech. "The game is to get to what the future war looks like first, before the other guy," says Mr. Hillen, who helped write the Bush speech. "If you guess wrong there is a heavy price to pay." "The most influential mind driving that speech was George W. Bush," Mr. Hillen adds. "He laid out very firmly to us the direction he wanted to go. . . . His guidance to us in the speech was to send a signal to the bright and innovative young majors and colonels who are out there. The signal was 'help is on the way. I'm going to create a military where your ideas and innovations are going to be appreciated and acted on.' "

Space office

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is set to make one of his first organization changes to the Office of the Secretary of Defense. The secretary will announce that he is creating a new undersecretariat headed by an undersecretary of defense for space, information and intelligence. The office, to be known as SI2, will absorb the assistant defense secretariat for command, control, communications, computers and intelligence, known as C4I. The new space office will take charge of the high-profile Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, which now is directed by the Pentagon's weapons-buying official, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition. A leading candidate for the post is Albert E. Smith, executive vice president for Lockheed-Martin Space Systems Co. in Denver. Mr. Smith was identified by us as a top choice for undersecretary of the Air Force. Pentagon officials said he will be "dual-hatted" and hold both jobs. Mr. Rumsfeld last year headed a special commission on space policy that recommended that the Air Force run the military's various space programs. • Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough are Pentagon reporters. Gertz can be reached at 202/636-3274 or by e-mail at gertz@twtmail.com. Scarborough can be reached at 202/636-3208 or by e-mail at scarbo@twtmail.com.

-------- burma/myanmar

MYANMAR: U.N. ENVOY MEETS DEMOCRACY LEADER

New York Times
April 6, 2001
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/06/world/06BRIE.html

A United Nations human rights envoy, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, met with the pro-democracy leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, for one and a half hours at her home, where she has been detained for more than six months. He met previously with leaders of the military junta, who have been engaged in talks with Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi. Seth Mydans (NYT)

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

Marines Link Osprey Crash to Software Malfunction

New York Times
April 6, 2001
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/06/national/06OSPR.html

WASHINGTON, April 5 - In its final report on the crash of a V-22 Osprey last December, the Marine Corps said today that malfunctioning software had caused the aircraft to swerve wildly out of control before plummeting to the ground and bursting into flames, killing all four marines on board.

The report recommended a battery of new tests, improved inspection regimens and the redesign of aspects of the problem-plagued aircraft's hydraulic system before the $40 billion Osprey program would be allowed to proceed.

But the report, whose specific conclusions about the causes of the crash had been expected, did not call for any fundamental changes to the innovative tilt-rotor aircraft, which can take off and hover like a helicopter as well as cruise like an airplane.

For that reason, supporters of the embattled program in Congress, in the aircraft industry and in the Marine Corps cited the report as evidence that the V-22 was aerodynamically sound, contending that the Osprey should be allowed to go into full production. The Marines want to purchase 360 Ospreys to replace their Vietnam-era helicopters.

"This report does show that this mishap is not the result of a technology problem," said Representative Curt Weldon, Republican of Pennsylvania. His district includes an Osprey plant. "It is an important issue that must be addressed," Mr. Weldon said, "but it should not be a showstopper."

Critics of the Osprey asserted that major questions remained about the cost of maintaining the aircraft, as well as its safety - four Ospreys have crashed in the past 10 years, three of them causing deaths. Those critics said there should be more stringent testing and possibly a more sweeping redesign of the Osprey before the program proceeded.

"We should not move forward with the full-rate procurement of an aircraft that may have to undergo a potentially costly redesign and retrofit of its hydraulic system," said Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin. He has proposed a one- year delay on any procurement decisions involving the Osprey.

The V-22 is one of the Pentagon's most troubled programs, having experienced two fatal crashes that killed 23 marines in the past year. The Defense Department inspector general is conducting a criminal investigation into accusations that Marine Corps officers pressured crews at the Osprey's home base in North Carolina to falsify maintenance records.

And a panel of experts, conducting a sweeping review of the Osprey, could propose delaying, scaling back or killing the program. The panel is expected to release its final report this month.

The Marine Corps report gave a detailed account of the crew's final moments on Dec. 11 as the pilot, considered the best in the V-22 squadron, struggled to control his aircraft even as its faulty computer system caused it to lose speed and altitude.

Problems began in the night training mission when a hydraulic line in one of the Osprey's two engine casings burst as the aircraft was approaching the New River Air Station in North Carolina.

The ruptured line caused warning lights to go off in the cockpit, including one on a computer reset button. The pilot, Lt. Col. Keith Sweaney, pushed that button, a standard procedure that should have resulted in no perceptible change in the aircraft.

But instead of resetting the controls, the software changed the pitch of the Osprey's rotors, causing the aircraft to accelerate unevenly.

Not realizing that the reset button was causing the problem, Colonel Sweaney punched it as many as 10 times trying to regain control. Instead, the aircraft pitched and rolled like "a bucking bronco," as one analyst put it. Thirty seconds after the hydraulic line broke, the Osprey's rotors stalled, and it crashed.

The Ospreys have long had problems with their hydraulics lines, which are made of light titanium, which cracks easily. The Osprey uses an unusually high-pressure hydraulic system, which can generate more power in a more compact unit.

An array of recent reports cited problems with Osprey hydraulic leaks that caused engine failures and fires. Last month, an inspection found that all eight of the corps' Ospreys had hydraulic line problems, the report said.

The report concluded that the aircraft's manufacturers, Boeing and Bell Helicopter Textron, should redesign the hydraulic system and the engine casing to prevent hydraulic lines from being so easily frayed.

But the report also asserted that without the software malfunction, the Osprey probably could have limped to a safe landing. The report said that the software had been tested in December 1996 but that those tests did not adequately check the reset system. If they had, the report concluded, the deficiency "may have been discovered."

The software code was written by BAE Systems and was integrated with the Osprey's hardware by Boeing, Pentagon officials said.

Spokesmen for Bell and Boeing said they had not read the report and could not comment on it in detail. But they issued statements saying they would work with the Marines to redesign the aircraft. "While acknowledging there are issues that need to be addressed with respect to the V- 22, the facts confirm our belief in the soundness of tilt-rotor technology," a Bell statement said.

Critics of the program said the Marines and the manufacturers should have responded earlier to the documented hydraulic problems, and should have conducted better tests on the software.

"It's just more evidence that this was a rush-rush program," said Jim Furman, a lawyer representing the families of marines who died last April in an another Osprey crash.

-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

Britain gears up for offshore wind power

UK: April 6, 2001
Story by Andrew Callus
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10417

LONDON - Britain cleared the way yesterday for a 1.6 billion pound ($2.3 billion) offshore wind power investment, the first large scale British attempt to tap the clean energy source.

Built around the windswept UK coastline, 540 sets of blades spinning more than 100 metres above the waves should be supplying one percent of Britain's energy needs by 2004-2005. The Crown Estate, manager of land and territorial waters owned by Britain's Queen, said it was issuing seabed leases to 18 companies at 13 sites that will produce between 1,000 and 1,500 megawatts of power altogether.

The set of projects goes one tenth of the way towards a government plan to see 10 percent of the UK's energy needs produced from renewable sources by 2010, according to the British Wind Energy Association (BWEA), which represents most of the businesses involved.

Offshore wind is more expensive to tap than onshore, but local resistance to noise and to the sight of tall land-based turbines has made it an option worth exploring.

The BWEA believes wind energy blowing across the seas around Britain could supply its electricity needs three times over, and says wind power onshore and offshore already competes effectively with alternatives at between 1.9 and 3.0 pence per kilowatt hour compared with 1.8-2.2 pence for gas.

"We don't need subsidies any more. We are price competitive," said a spokeswoman for the BWEA.

The association already backs a pilot offshore wind project at Blyth on England's northeast coast that began delivering electricity in December last year.

Companies involved in the projects still have to obtain planning permission from the government and other planning bodies, and must gain all consents within three years or lose their lease.

But the UK Department of Trade and Industry aims to set up a "one-stop shop" to help them through other planning hurdles. Developers include global energy names like Enron and Royal Dutch/Shell , British power and construction companies Powergen and AMEC , and smaller specialist companies.

In all, 540 high-tech windmills producing three megawatts of power each will be installed in groups of 30, with the nearest turbine of each sited between 1.5 and 10 kilometres offshore.

More than half will be positioned in the Irish Sea along England's northwest coast between Liverpool and the Scottish border.

Others will spring up on the east coast off East Anglia and in the mouth of the Thames estuary, further north at Teesside, and in the coastal waters of south Wales in the Severn estuary.

Environmental groups Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth backed the plan, but urged the government to catch up with countries like Denmark, where the wind industry already employs 14,000 people.

"After thirty years of opposing industrial abuse of our seas, Greenpeace can at last welcome a move to exploit the fantastic renewable energy resources off our coastline," said Matthew Spencer, head of Greenpeace's Climate Campaign.

"Let's hope this signals a new commitment to developing Britain's renewable energy industry," he said.

----

FPL to build wind farm to power 80,000 Texas homes

USA: April 6, 2001
Story by Eileen Moustakis
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10415

NEW YORK - FPL Group Inc. subsidiary FPL Energy, LLC said Thursday it will build a 278.2-megawatt (MW) wind power plant on King Mountain in Upton, County in West Texas.

The plant will provide enough power to light more than 80,000 homes, the company said in a statement.

Electricity generated by the facility will be sold to Houston-based Reliant Energy , Austin Energy and Texas-New Mexico Power.

FPL Energy currently owns and operates a 1,000-MW natural gas plant in Paris, Texas and the 75-MW Southwest Mesa Wind Farm in West Texas. In addition, the company has two plants currently under construction, a 535-MW gas-fired plant in Bastrop, near Austin, and the 160-MW Woodward Mountain wind facility in the Midland-Odessa area.

In January, the company announced the development of the largest wind power facility in the world, a 300-MW project along the Washington-Oregon border, south of Walla Walla.

The King Mountain project was developed by an affiliate of international wind energy company Renewable Energy Systems LTD (RES), together with Cielo Wind Power LLC of Austin, Texas.

The project will use 214 wind turbines - supplied by Bonus Energy A/S of Denmark - with a rated power of 1.3 MW each.

FPL Group's principal subsidiary is Florida Power & Light Co., which serves approximately 3.9 million customers in Florida.

-------- environment

The WTO's Water Monopoly Plans

By Peter Phillips
06-Apr-2001
http://www.unknowncountry.com/mindframe/opinion/

Monsanto plans to earn revenues of $420 million and a net income of $63 million by 2008 from its water business in India and Mexico.

Monsanto estimates that water will become a multibillion- dollar market in the coming decades.

Imagine, that we are beyond the energy crisis-in that we are used to paying double or triple prices for what in the previous century was a small part of the family budget. But now we are faced with a new shortage that taps another precious resource. Water only comes through the tap four hours a day and we are forced to pay ten to hundred times what we paid in the 90s.

Welcome to the world of privatized water, where fresh water is treated like a commodity, traded and sold in the international market to the highest bidder.

No longer can you assume a God-given right to drink from a mountain spring, but instead you will have to pay a toll to drink from Enron Springs, Monsanto Wells or receive tap water from Bechtel Water Works.

Global consumption of water is doubling every 20 years, more than twice the rate of human population growth. According to the United Nations, more than one billion people already lack access to fresh drinking water. If current trends persist, by 2025 the demand for fresh water is expected to rise by 56 percent more than the amount of water that is currently available.

Multinational corporations recognize these trends and are trying to monopolize water supplies around the world. Monsanto, Bechtel, Enron and other global multinationals are seeking control of world water systems and supplies.

The World Bank recently adopted a policy of water privatization and full-cost water pricing. This policy is causing great distress in many Third World countries, which fear that their citizens will not be able to afford for-profit water.

Last year in a little known case of high scale international water marketing, a supertanker was reported to have filled up with water from Lake Erie and after paying the Canadian Government they shipped the water to Southeast Asia.

Maude Barlow, chair of the Council of Canadians, Canada's largest public advocacy group, states, "Governments around the world must act now to declare water a fundamental human right and prevent efforts to privatize, export, and sell for profit a substance essential to all life.

Research has shown that selling water on the open market only delivers it to wealthy cities and individuals. The finite sources of freshwater (less than one half of one per cent of the world's total water stock) are being diverted, depleted, and polluted so fast that, by the year 2025, two-thirds of the world's population will be living in a state of serious water deprivation."

Governments are signing away their control over domestic water supplies by participating in trade treaties such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and in institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO). These agreements give transnational corporations the unprecedented right to the water of signatory companies.

This international water crisis news story was selected by over 150 faculty and student researchers at Sonoma State University's Project Censored in California as the number one most censored news story for 2000.

Credit for original reporting goes to: International Forum on Globalization: Special Report 6/99, The Global Water Crisis and the Commodification of the World's Water Supply by Maude Barlow

Monsanto's Billion-Dollar Water Monopoly Plans by Vandana Shiva

Peter Phillips is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University and Director of Project Censored. Research for this story is from the book Censored 2001, 25th Anniversary Edition, scheduled for release in March of this year from Seven Stories Press.

Peter Phillips Ph.D. Sociology Department Project Censored

----

Drilling Studied in Off-Limits Areas of Rockies

New York Times
April 6, 2001
By DOUGLAS JEHL
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/06/politics/06DRIL.html

WASHINGTON, April 5 - An energy task force headed by Vice President Dick Cheney is reviewing a draft plan that will open millions of acres of public land to new oil and gas development, much of it in the Rocky Mountains.

Along with the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, which President Bush has already identified as a target, the plan mentions as candidates for new drilling several large tracts in the Rockies with off- limits status that could be revoked by the Interior Department without Congressional approval. These could include parts of the Lewis and Clark National Forest in Montana and Wyoming's Jack Morrow Hills.

In addition, the plan proposes that the administration work with Congress to free at least some of the 17 million acres of federal land in 11 Western states that is under temporary protection from energy development. Congress is studying whether to grant this land permanent protection as a wilderness area.

The 25-page draft report reflects recommendations from nearly a dozen Interior Department working groups created by Gale A. Norton, the interior secretary, administration officials said. A department spokesman, Mark Pfeifle, described the report as "an early draft" whose contents included "numerous options that may or may not be considered." But the breadth and detail of the plan, whose contents were first reported this morning in USA Today, leave little doubt that the group is homing in on lands in the West as a source of new energy supplies.

The focus on the Rocky Mountain West reflects the fact that the region contains the lion's share of onshore natural gas reserves in the lower 48 states, administration officials said. But it also appears to reflect what Mr. Bush himself conceded last week to be formidable opposition in Congress to the idea of permitting oil and gas drilling in the Arctic refuge.

During his presidential campaign, Mr. Bush argued that too much of the country's public land had been placed off limits to development. In a meeting with a small group of reporters last month, Mr. Bush made the point even more directly, saying: "There's a mentality that says you can't explore and protect land. We're going to change that attitude."

Until now, major environmental organizations opposed to the administration's energy plans have devoted the bulk of their time and money to trying to head off the plan for drilling in the Arctic refuge. Now, the environmentalists have begun to shift their battle to the Rockies, where they argue that the quantities of oil and gas available are too insignificant to justify any easing of the current lands protections.

"What they're proposing simply is not necessary," said Bill Meadows, president of the Wilderness Society, a research and advocacy group based in Washington. "There's no need to destroy our nation's wilderness areas, because it will not do anything to address our nation's energy needs."

As evidence of the need to open new Rocky Mountain lands to energy development, officials of the oil and gas industry and members of the Bush administration have pointed to a 1999 study by the National Petroleum Council, a semiofficial body appointed by the Energy Department.

That report concluded that 137 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, enough to supply the United States for at least six years at current rates of consumption, lay beneath public lands in the Rockies that were subject to access restrictions.

Of that total, 29 trillion cubic feet of gas resources were said to be entirely closed to development, and that number would grow by another 10 trillion cubic feet if a forest-protection plan developed by the Clinton administration took effect.

But people opposed to opening new lands to drilling say those numbers obscure that the vast majority of public land is already open to drilling, even if under some restrictions.

Still, in spelling out their goals, the authors of the Interior Department plan made clear that they were not satisfied with the status quo. It called for modifications of "those planning decisions which unnecessarily close or restrict energy development," and said its overall objective was to "enhance land-use planning processes and procedures in a manner which will enhance federal energy development on Department of the Interior and Forest Service administered lands."

Mr. Cheney's task force includes the secretaries of the treasury, interior, agriculture, commerce, transportation and energy, along with the administrator of the environmental protection agency and several White House officials.

Some of the actions described in the report could be carried out by the administration unilaterally, including changes that would ease restrictions on public land that the oil and gas industry saw as obstacles to drilling. But other actions, including changing the wilderness study areas, would almost certainly require Congressional approval.

Its members and their staff have been conducting their review behind closed doors. Juleanna Glover Weiss, a spokeswoman for Mr. Cheney, declined to comment on the recommendations today except to say that the draft plan had "not been formally presented" to the group.

"It's still early in the process," she added, "and we don't expect to have any announcements until later this spring."

---

Dutch Farmers Facing Mass Foot-and-Mouth Slaughter

New York Times
April 6, 2001
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/06/world/06FOOT.html

OLST, the Netherlands, April 5 - Jan Willem Horstmann spent the last 18 years grooming a line of breeding sheep that he sold to farmers for up to $2,000 a head. Today, he made preparations to slaughter them all.

"Eighteen years of work, and it's over," he said. "It's a bad day."

Mr. Horstmann and most other farmers around here have been trapped by the contagion of foot-and- mouth disease, which swept through Britain last month and has now contaminated the Netherlands.

About 45 miles east, in Ochtrup, Germany, Heinz Hewing is waiting in dread. Germany has yet to document an outbreak of foot-and-mouth. But Mr. Hebring and most other German farmers near the border have placed their barns and themselves under a limited quarantine.

"You almost have to count on it coming," said Mr. Hewing, whose small family farm dates from the 13th century. "I don't want it to come, of course. But it is so hard to avoid."

Such is the nature of epidemics in the European Union today, as borders between countries have all but dissolved. It has been years since anybody needed a passport to travel between most countries in Western Europe or since countries tried to restrict cross-border truck traffic.

Now Europeans are desperately trying seal their frontiers to a virus that is devastating to livestock and spreads with frightening speed. They are also in a pitched battle over how to respond. Countries like the Netherlands are pushing for vaccination. Countries that are less exposed want to continue relying on preventive slaughter.

Foot-and-mouth disease can spread by the mud on a person's boots, the meat or milk from contaminated cattle or simply the wind that turns windmills on both sides of the Dutch-German border.

Having devastated livestock in Britain since it appeared there in late February, the disease skipped like a stone over water. It infected just a handful of animals in France, but settled in with a vengeance here. The United States has imposed a ban on imports of European meat.

The question now is whether farmers can stop the virus from spreading further. Besides the lack of internal borders, European farms are often tiny properties nestled back to back in densely populated areas. They are also linked by some of the best rail and highway systems and trade heavily around the continent.

In the last few days, Dutch officials have cordoned off a swath of territory that covers 1,500 small farms and 115,000 animals. Today, they began a slaughter of at least half, and perhaps all, of those animals.

"My own opinion is that they will have to slaughter them all," said Jos Roemaat, a farmer and the general manager of the regional agricultural association.

People have begun living under a de facto quarantine, part of which has been imposed by the government and part of which people have imposed on themselves.

Here in Olst, the police have blocked roads to most farms as well as some residential neighborhoods on the farms' periphery. Though people can enter and leave, they cannot accept visitors, and most farmers stay at home for fear of spreading the virus.

At an elementary school here, de Holsthoek, some children have been kept at home and some have been unable to travel to school because of blocked roads. Those who do attend have to step over a disinfecting mat before entering, and parents are not allowed in at all.

"The fewer contacts, the less danger there is of contamination," said the principal, Mies Karrembeld. "It is really like being in East Germany."

Although Dutch farmers deal with the grim certainty of contamination, the German farmers a few miles east are in a state of near panic with foreboding. In Steinfurt, a one-hour drive from Olst, Alfonz Berning found on Monday night that a number of his young pigs were sick with what looked suspiciously like foot- and-mouth disease. County officials in Steinfurt quickly destroyed all the farm's 95 piglets but initially tried to keep things quiet - "to avoid hysteria," according to Thomas Kubendorff, head of the county council.

But word leaked out quickly, and hysteria spread faster than the virus. By Tuesday afternoon, the entry to Mr. Berning's tiny farm was barricaded by police cars, and television crews were circling in helicopters overhead. On Wednesday, preliminary tests indicated that the pigs did not have foot-and-mouth, though conclusive results will not be ready for days.

In the meantime, trucks carrying feed or produce to Mr. Berning's farm have to drive through a disinfectant spray. The Bernings are allowed to leave if they disinfect their shoes and clothes, but they try to stay home. "You just don't know whether there might be some dust on your jacket," Mr. Berning's son Frank said. "It's like house arrest."

Germany had three other foot-and- mouth scares on Wednesday, involving sheep 50 miles north of Frankfurt. Officials immediately sealed off three small villages to outside traffic and closed schools. Once again, preliminary tests indicated that the animals were sick from something else.

In areas near the German border, farmers now need to obtain official permission before transporting livestock. Many farmers have set up special disinfection procedures and sealed off their barns.

Bernhard Bonekamp, who raises 5,000 pigs in Dulmen, Germany, 22 miles from the border, said the disease appeared to be heading south rather than east. "I think the chances we can avoid this are about 50-50," he reckoned.

Regardless of whether the virus crosses the border, European farmers face a huge policy battle over vaccination. Like the United States and Japan, the European Union has a general ban on foot-and-mouth vaccine, because vaccinated animals have the same incriminating antibodies as those that are infected. Meat from vaccinated animals cannot be exported to the United States or Japan. So the decision to vaccinate essentially prohibits exporting.

In Brussels, the European Commission remains opposed to vaccination in general. Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain came close to allowing vaccination a week ago, but backed away when new evidence suggested that the epidemic's spread in Britain was slowing.

Dutch farmers and political leaders here have come out strongly for vaccination. They have begun vaccinating in the clearly contaminated region, although they are slaughtering as well. But Dutch farmers argue that Europe should vaccinate generally and use "genetic markers" that make it easier to distinguish between the vaccine and the virus.

"The trade between countries is so much higher than it was 10 or 12 years ago," Mr. Roemaat of the farmers' group said. "The liberalization of trade has to be combined with instruments that can be used to provide protection."

A growing number of German farmers supports vaccination, but as a group the farmers are more ambivalent. Some worry about losing valuable exports. Others say the wider spaces in Germany make isolation and preventive slaughtering workable.

"Pigs are one of the few agricultural products in Germany that are not subsidized," Mr. Bonekamp said. "We have the capacity to compete in the export market."

In the absence of policy changes, Dutch farmers remain cloistered and are preparing to slaughter as fast as they can.

"I just found out that my sheep will be destroyed tomorrow morning," Mr. Horstmann said. A lean man who works as a government farm official, Mr. Horstmann raises just a few dozen sheep a year that he sells to farmers for breeding rather than for meat or wool. Males sell for as much as $2,000, about 10 times the price of regular sheep.

For practical purposes, Mr. Horstmann's prize breed is now extinct. He is not even allowed to preserve semen or eggs. "I will have to find a farmer who is willing to let me have one or two of his best sheep - his very, very best - and start again."

---

NBC President Lobbies City to Block G.E. Dredging Bill

New York Times
April 6, 2001
By ERIC LIPTON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/06/nyregion/06DRED.html

General Electric Corporation's battle against a federally required, half-billion-dollar cleanup of the Hudson River in upstate New York has extended into City Hall, with the visit of the president of the company's NBC television network to lobby personally against the plan.

The president, Robert C. Wright, the top executive at NBC and vice chairman of the General Electric corporate board, led a five-member lobbying team that met privately last week with City Council members and their assistants to argue against a bill that endorses the dredging project.

The Council bill calls the cleanup project "long overdue." Although the dredging would occur in an area north of Albany, the resolution notes that the pollution's effect reaches the southern tip of Manhattan.

Mr. Wright and his colleagues contended that removing 2.65 million cubic yards of river bottom, estimated to hold 100,000 pounds of toxic PCB's, would be harmful because the process would stir up the contaminants that otherwise would remain buried. They also challenged suggestions that PCB's cause cancer in humans, participants in the meetings said. The chemicals, polychlorinated biphenyls, were legally dumped into the river by General Electric factories for 30 years.

"It struck me as very unusual," said Councilman A. Gifford Miller, a Manhattan Democrat and cosponsor of the bill. "As a City Council member, it is not often the chief executive officer of a major network comes to see you."

The visit was just one aspect of the company's statewide public relations efforts, estimated to cost tens of millions of dollars, to fight a five-year cleanup proposed by the Federal Environmental Protection Agency. Final action on the proposal would not occur until after a public comment period ends April 17.

Last night, General Electric, based in Fairfield, Conn., sponsored a half-hour commercial on four upstate television stations. Its opposition to dredging is also advertised on billboards, the radio and the Internet and in buses and newspapers.

Company officials said yesterday that Mr. Wright participated in the City Council meetings because of NBC's presence in the city and his senior status on the General Electric board.

"NBC is based in Manhattan; NBC is a constituent of New York City," said Joan Gerhardt, a General Electric spokeswoman. "So it is appropriate that he represented G.E. at this meeting."

But Representative Maurice D. Hinchey, a dredging project supporter, said Mr. Wright should not have lobbied the city.

"He is president of NBC, NBC is a major news outlet and very influential politically," said Mr. Hinchey, a Democrat. "This is a crystal-clear conflict of interest and an outrageous breach of propriety on behalf of the General Electric Corporation and NBC."

Mr. Wright's views on the matter have not influenced the coverage of the story by NBC's news divisions, Ms. Gerhardt said. Since 1997, "NBC Nightly News," "Today" and CNBC have presented at least eight segments on the dredging, most of them including both supporters and opponents of the plan, which has been under consideration for a decade. Two journalism ethics experts -- Tom Goldstein, the dean of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and Alex S. Jones, the director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University -- said yesterday that Mr. Wright's presence did not appear to present an ethical conflict for NBC's news divisions.

"It's no different than The New York Times, The New York Post or any other news organization seeking tax relief from the city," Mr. Goldstein said. "He comes as a corporate citizen."

The G.E. officials -- Mr. Wright,

Stephen D. Ramsey, the corporation's vice president for environmental programs; and Nancy Ward, the corporation's regional manager -- held two private meetings last Wednesday, one with Mr. Miller and Councilman Stanley E. Michels, and a second with John Banks, the chief of staff for Council Speaker Peter F. Vallone. The corporation's lobbyist from Albany, James McMahon, also sat in on the meetings, as did Thomas L. McMahon, his brother.

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Pandas Face Competition From Humans in Sanctuary

New York Times
April 6, 2001
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/06/science/06PAND.html

Ecologists are reporting a troubling trend in the Wolong Nature Reserve, China's largest and most heralded sanctuary for endangered giant pandas: The only mammalian population rapidly increasing there is human.

And these humans' demands for fuel for heating and cooking mean prime panda forest habitat is disappearing more than four times as fast as it was before the reserve was established in 1975, according to a new analysis described in today's issue of the journal Science.

"People usually assume protected areas are protected, but our data indicate that is not always true," said Dr. Jianguo Liu, an ecology professor at Michigan State University who led the research effort.

The researchers used satellite images to chart the changes in forests around the reserve.

If the trend is not reversed, Dr. Liu said, it will inevitably reduce the reserve's capacity to shelter the reclusive animals, which are an icon of the wildlife conservation movement from Beijing to Washington.

"Protecting natural habitat is the first step" in conservation, Dr. Liu said. "If you don't have the habitat, you won't have the population."

Like some other protected areas around the world, including New York's Adirondack Park, the reserve is actually a patchwork of wilderness and rural communities, occupying 500,000 acres of forest-draped mountains in Sichuan Province, on the edge of the Tibetan plateau.

The population growth, a 70 percent rise since the reserve was created, has come despite efforts by the Chinese government to offer payments and other inducements to the residents, mostly ethnic Tibetans, to move out of the protected area.

Longtime residents prefer the rural life, and ethnic minorities are not subject to strict enforcement of China's one child per family policy, Dr. Liu said.

Another influence on population and deforestation rates is tourism, he and other study authors said. Captive pandas being bred at a research center in the reserve attract about 50,000 visitors a year, and that has brought gift shops, restaurants, and workers requiring ever more housing and food.

The loss of the best panda habitat is also accelerating because of an unfortunate coincidence: the most suitable terrain for pandas - relatively flat areas of mixed evergreen and deciduous trees and bamboo -- also happen to be the most popular kind of place for cutting firewood, the researchers said.

Neither cutting crews nor the bears like the steeper mountain slopes.

Although China greatly expanded its network of panda reserves in the 1990s, and millions of dollars are flowing to panda protection projects from private groups and zoos, the findings in Wolong do not bode well for the appealing, bamboo-munching bears in the long run, Dr. Liu said.

The study confirms with data what panda experts and park managers had long felt was happening in Wolong.

"Creating a reserve is just the first step," said Karen Baragona, the panda conservation director for the World Wildlife Fund, a private group. "Pandas need huge tracts of forest to survive, and you've got a country of well over a billion people vying for those same forests."

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Agriculture Chief Disavows Plan to Eliminate Test on School Beef

New York TImes
April 6, 2001
By ELIZABETH BECKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/06/politics/06MEAT.html?pagewanted=print

WASHINGTON, April 5 - Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman has disavowed a departmental proposal to eliminate testing for salmonella in ground beef for the federal school lunch program.

Saying today that she had never approved the change and only learned on Wednesday night that it had been officially published, Ms. Veneman said she was keeping the tests, which the Clinton administration began last year.

"The safety of our food supply, particularly school lunches for our children, is an extremely important issue," Ms. Veneman said today after withdrawing the proposed changes, which had appeared on the department's Web site this week.

The action by the Bush administration also rescinded a part of the proposal that would have allowed schools to serve beef that had been irradiated to kill salmonella and other harmful bacteria. Many consumers and food safety groups object to that process.

By reversing the policy and upholding a regulation from the Clinton administration, Ms. Veneman said she was asserting the pre-eminence of food safety as well as her role in reviewing all policy changes.

"These types of policies should be based on common sense, sound science, and include the participation of all aspects of the food chain," she said.

The testing for salmonella began last June despite protests from the meat industry. Consumer groups feared that a move to drop the testing was part of what they considered the administration's pro-business tilt. Bush officials rescinded a string of Clinton regulations, including one that tightened standards for arsenic in drinking water.

The White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, announced this morning that the salmonella proposal had been withdrawn, saying neither the White House nor Ms. Veneman had approved it.

At a meeting last week, officials of consumer groups told Ms. Veneman that Dr. Kenneth C. Clayton, acting administrator of the Agricultural Marketing Service at the Agriculture Department, was planning to drop the salmonella tests.

"She stopped the meeting when we talked about the school lunch issue and salmonella and said she didn't know anything about it," said Caroline Smith Dewaal, food safety director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

When Ms. Veneman's aides said they knew nothing about it, either, she promised the group that she would look into the issue.

Today the consumer groups praised Ms. Veneman.

"It sounds like she was blindsided on this," Ms. Dewaal said. "I give her very high marks for reversing course on this."

Dr. Clayton is a 20-year career civil servant at the Agriculture Department. When reached by telephone today he said he had been instructed not to discuss any changes in salmonella testing.

Two weeks ago, Dr. Clayton told a gathering of industry officials at the Convention of the American Commodities Distribution Association that his agency would announce new specifications for the program that supplied hamburger for school lunches and other federal programs.

That set off a round of Internet messages that alarmed the consumer groups' leaders, who spoke to Ms. Veneman last Thursday and received her promise that no changes would be made without her approval.

But by Monday the new rules had been posted on the Agricultural Marketing Service Web site, as Dr. Clayton had promised.

Although consumer advocates alerted reporters about the Web site posting, they said they did not call Ms. Veneman.

"We were too disappointed," said Carol Tucker Foreman, director of the Food Policy Institute at the Consumer Federation of America.

Instead, Ms. Veneman learned from reporters on Wednesday night that the proposed rules had been posted and called Dr. Clayton to her office for an 8 p.m. briefing, said her press secretary, Kevin Herglotz, who was at the hourlong meeting.

"She made it very clear to the official that she makes policy and that when she makes policy all parties concerned have to be involved in policy," Mr. Herglotz said.

This morning the proposal was no longer on the department's Web site.

Senator Richard J. Durbin, an Illinois Democrat and a member of the agriculture subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee, said he hoped this reversal meant that the Bush administration would change directions on other health matters.

Salmonella causes 600 deaths a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But testing ground beef for salmonella increased the cost of the meat served in school lunches, and industry officials opposed it.

The testing was imposed after a plant that supplied as much as 45 percent of the ground beef in the school lunch program failed salmonella tests three times. After the rules became effective, salmonella contamination dropped by as much as 50 percent, several studies found.

Ms. Foreman said federal school lunch programs should be at least as safe as fast-food restaurants.

"Increasingly things like ground beef can come from as many as 100 different animals, so you have to have more controls over the safety of hamburger," she said. "McDonald's has recognized that, and so has the government."

Ms. Dewaal said the irradiation part of the proposal was "not the way to garner consumer acceptance of this controversial technology."

"Irradiation can be useful to deal with high-risk products," she said, "but in this case it would have been a disaster because you are not giving people a choice as to whether they are going to be eating it."

Ms. Veneman said today that she would continue reviewing food safety regulations from the Clinton administration. In February she upheld a proposal to increase testing for the potentially lethal listeria bacteria at processors of ready-to-eat meats.

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IDAHO: NO INJUNCTION AGAINST ROAD PLAN

New York Times
April 6, 2001
National Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/06/national/06BRFS.html

A federal judge in Idaho has denied for now a request by the State of Idaho and the Boise Cascade timber company that he issue an injunction blocking the Clinton administration's forest protection plan. The judge said he would reserve any decision until after May 4, the date by which the Bush administration has promised to complete a review of the policy protecting 60 million acres of national forest. Douglas Jehl (NYT)

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Public Lives: The Man Who Chased Verniero Down a Paper Trail

New York Times
April 6, 2001
By CHRIS HEDGES
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/06/nyregion/06PROF.html

MAYS LANDING, N. J. -- Before anyone can reach the desk where State Senator William L. Gormley's secretary sits in his legislative office in the Hamilton Mall, he runs smack into a wall covered with dozens of personal photographs.

There are pictures of Mr. Gormley as a boy with the boxer Jersey Joe Walcott; pictures of his father, a heavyset man who was the county sheriff for more than two decades, with Sammy Davis Jr. (the senator as a teenager stands tanned and jubilant in a suit in the background); and pictures of the senator as a Marine Corps captain and later as a politician with his arms wrapped around a variety of people, most of whom stand awkwardly dwarfed in his embrace.

It is the wall of me. And most interviews with Mr. Gormley, who is overseeing the hearings on racial profiling by the state police, begin there.

"Let's walk around," he said, leaving his office for the wall. "I will take you through the pictures."

"I was raised in a county jail," he said. "My father was the sheriff of Atlantic County for 21 years. The prisoners were obviously embarrassed to have mail sent to the county jail, so my father allowed them to call it Gormley's Hotel. To this day it is called Gormley's Hotel. I lived in the jail. The house was physically attached. We had a steel door you opened to walk into the section where the female prisoners were housed."

As a boy he played sports with the inmates, and when he came home from school at noon, he ate lunch with the judges who worked out of the building. In summers he was sent to live over the family business - a funeral parlor.

"I did not go down to the embalming room," he conceded.

THE worlds of funerals, viewing rooms and hushed and respectful morticians, of mourners and gleaming hearses along with noisy cells, inmates, jail guards and crime, dominated his boyhood. It is, he said, "why I am the way I am today."

The way he is today is mad. As the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has been investigating racial profiling, he has all but crucified Justice Peter G. Verniero of the State Supreme Court, who is accused of ignoring the practice when he was attorney general. Mr. Gormley, a Republican whose committee has procured 100,000 documents and taken 160 hours of depositions, has forced Mr. Verniero to say, 578 times by Mr. Gormley's count, "I do not recall," "I do not remember" or "I do not recollect."

The senator, his voice rising to an excited falsetto as he recounted the testimony, leaned forward until he was about two inches away. He began banging on the table with his hand.

"We had 22 documents where he checked off the cover page and then he said he didn't read it," said Mr. Gormley, dressed in a blue shirt and tie. "When you read his deposition on the 5th and 6th of May of 1999, there were four times you would say he was misleading. He came to our hearings and said he made mistakes those four times. When you have him on the record, those are mistakes. When you have him with material, he says he just signed the cover page. Everything else he can not recollect." The invasion of space, along with his high-octane enthusiasm, is Mr. Gormley's most noticeable trait. Reporters who covered him on the campaign trail, seeing Mr. Gormley about to bear down, held up their notebooks in an effort to put a few inches between themselves and the candidate. As he speaks he grips arms, hugs shoulders and guides people in the direction he is headed with a light touch on the back.

He is passionate about many things, but especially about his father, and he warned that he often lost his composure when asked to speak about him. He frequently quotes advice and aphorisms passed on by Dad.

He insists that he is not pouring hot oil over Justice Verniero because of his own role in pushing through the controversial appointment of Mr. Verniero, but that he is motivated by a desire for disclosure and justice.

"People can construe burned or not burned, but the fact is I did not start this review; there were 100,000 documents," he said, referring to the material that prompted the hearings.

Mr. Gormley, 54, has run for governor, United States Senate and Congress, often making it to within a hairbreadth of winning the primary. He does not dispute those who say he will soon make another attempt at a statewide office.

"The most boring topic in the world: let me tell you about the election I lost and how I could have won," he said. "Nobody wants to hear about a politician's war injuries."

He has, in a career as a state senator that began in 1982, run afoul of the National Rifle Association and Donald Trump, although Mr. Trump is now a political backer. His close relationship with casino owners - he spearheaded the drive to abolish the brief period when casinos were forced to shut down, a move that allowed them to operate 24 hours a day - has left him flush with cash and made him perhaps the most powerful political figure in Atlantic City. The Democrats have trouble finding sacrificial lambs to run against him.

"I am like crab grass," said. "They can't get rid of me so they might as well go along."

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DiFrancesco Urges Justice to Resign in Profiling Furor

New York Times
April 6, 2001
By LAURA MANSNERUS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/06/nyregion/06TROO.html

TRENTON, April 5 - Acting Gov. Donald T. DiFrancesco called today on Justice Peter G. Verniero to resign from the New Jersey Supreme Court, saying that even given "every benefit of doubt," he misled the State Senate about racial profiling in his confirmation hearings two years ago. But Justice Verniero turned aside the request, as he has a growing number of calls for him to quit.

Mr. DiFrancesco said that if the justice did not resign, he would ask his colleagues in the Senate, where he is president, to consider a censure resolution. He said that would not preclude impeachment, which is the only way to remove a justice. But only the Assembly can impeach, and Assembly leaders say they are not prepared to act soon.

In a somber announcement, awaited since the Senate Judiciary Committee asked him in a meeting Tuesday night to urge the resignation, the acting governor said Mr. Verniero "withheld or misrepresented important information" in his 1999 testimony about how he handled allegations of racial profiling while he was state attorney general.

The committee, which has been revisiting those allegations in its current hearings on racial profiling, called for Justice Verniero's resignation yesterday. He testified last week, but said he could not recall many key documents and meetings, and he turned down the committee's request that he return to clarify statements he made in 1999.

Starting in 1996, the year Mr. Verniero took office, internal state police audits showed that black and Hispanic drivers were far more likely than whites to be stopped and searched on the New Jersey Turnpike. But Mr. Verniero, who oversaw the force, did not acknowledge the practice until 1999, on the eve of his Supreme Court confirmation hearings. When the committee asked when he had learned of this evidence, Mr. Verniero said his office had started gathering "underlying data" in 1998, after the wounding of three young men by state police on the turnpike turned racial profiling into a national issue.

Mr. DiFrancesco, who enthusiastically supported Mr. Verniero when he was nominated to the court by Gov. Christie Whitman, said today that if they had known then what they know now, "many senators, including me, would not have supported the Verniero nomination."

His announcement stepped up the pressure on Justice Verniero by Republicans, including the party leaders who rescued his Supreme Court nomination. The entire Legislature is up for election in November. And Mr. DiFrancesco, who is seeking a full term as governor, has himself been criticized in recent weeks over past business practices while he was State Senate president.

Mr. DiFrancesco said he telephoned Justice Verniero today but would not discuss the conversation.

In a statement issued through his lawyer, Justice Verniero said he was not considering stepping down. He said he had testified truthfully both in his confirmation hearings and in his 13-hour appearance before the Senate committee last week.

All 11 members of the committee, which is examining the state's response to racial profiling by the state police, called for Justice Verniero's resignation Wednesday in a strongly worded letter to the acting governor.

Justice Verniero said today that "I misled no one. The committee's conclusions are based on flawed, one- sided and incomplete information," his statement said. "The committee's conclusions are unfounded and unfair."

Since Justice Verniero can be removed from office only by impeachment by the Assembly and conviction by the Senate, attention here is turning to the Assembly, where proceedings would have to originate. The Assembly's next session is May 3, unless Speaker Jack Collins calls a special session.

Mr. Collins has been closeted in redistricting sessions all week, and a spokesman, Chuck Leitgeb, said today that Assembly leaders would not make any decision until the Senate Judiciary Committee issued a report on the hearings. The hearings are scheduled to resume Monday and may extend into the following week.

But the chairman of the committee, William L. Gormley, said tonight that "I'm available to prep them tomorrow if they want to go over the testimony and the issues."

Mr. Collins has called a special session only once since becoming speaker in 1996, and that was for emergency aid after Hurricane Floyd, Mr. Leitgeb said.

No New Jersey Supreme Court justice has ever been impeached, at least since the court was reconstituted as a seven-member panel in 1947, and legal experts say the state Constitution's impeachment provision is ambiguous. It gives the Legislature two years from the time an official leaves office to impeach for conduct "committed during their respective continuance in office." Mr. Verniero resigned as attorney general on May 14, 1999.

But there is doubt among legal experts whether Justice Verniero committed any impeachable offense and, if he did, whether he could be removed from the bench for conduct as attorney general.

Stephen Presser, a law professor at Northwestern University who has written on impeachment, said that in the case of Justice Verniero's testimony, especially since it involved a highly politicized issue, "the impeachment argument is not ridiculous, but it's quite a stretch."

But Professor Presser said that although he could not recall any instance of an official being impeached for conduct in a previous office, "if it's about the character of the person it is relevant."

Justice Verniero could also be denied reappointment after his initial seven-year term, which ends in 2006. Mr. DiFrancesco said today that if he was governor then, he would not renominate Mr. Verniero.

But Mr. DiFrancesco, like many others, said he hoped that Justice Verniero would voluntarily step down soon.

---

New York Times
April 6, 2001
Metro Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/06/nyregion/06MBRF.html

MANHATTAN: POLICE OFFICERS FACE SANCTIONS Police officials said yesterday that three more police officers faced discipline because they failed to help women who were molested after the National Puerto Rican Day Parade last June. The disciplinary charges, which were first reported yesterday in The Daily News, were filed in August but were not made public until this week, when several victims were subpoenaed to appear at administrative trials. In July, officials cited nine other officers for serious mistakes at the parade. Of those, four received letters of reprimand, two retired, two are awaiting trial and one received an unspecified discipline from his commander. Kevin Flynn (NYT)

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CREW STILL IN CUSTODY AS U.S., CHINA, DICKER

Morrock News, Weekend,
Apr. 6-8, 2001
THE MORROCK NEWS DIGEST

The 24 crew members of a U.S. spy plane that made an emergency landing in China got their second visit Friday from a U.S. official, but there was nothing o indicate that they'll be set free soon.

U.S. Defense Attache Neal Sealock met with the 21 menand three women for an hour, said he talked to eachone individually, and pronounced them in good shape and "great spirits."

Spirits in the U.S. Congress were less than great, however, with some representatives calling for a clampdown on trade with China.

President Bush said Friday that diplomatic efforts to get the plane and its crew home were "making progress."

Negotiators for both countries are trying to work out a written statement that would represent a "common understanding" of the incident, in which a Chinese jet and a U.S. spy plane collided over international waters. The Chinese pilot and his plane were apparently lost.

China says the U.S. plane purposely veered into the jet, clipping its tail. The U.S. portrays the spy plane as a lumbering propeller-driven job, packed with heavy surveillance equipment and too slow and awkward to make a quick move against a highly maneuverable jet.

China continues to demand that the U.S. apologize. Bush and his Defense Secretary Colin Powell have both publicly expressed "regret" over the fate of the Chinese plane, but the U.S. continues to refuse to issue an apology.

Chinese Ambassador Yang Jiechi met briefly Friday with Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage at the State Department in Washington.

Chinese President Ziang Zemin, currently touring Latin America, said Thursday that the relationship between the two countries is important.

"I want to emphasize that Chinese and U.S. leaders should manage this situation with maximum interest in bilateral relations in order to find an adequate solution," he said during a stop in Chile.

MIXED METAPHOR OF THE MONTH: In an article in Thursday's Wall Street Journal about the U.S.-China spy plane incident, James Lilley and Arthur Waldron accomplish the rare feat of mixing a metaphor at least four ways: "When the U.S. is not to blame, Beijing should understand that nailing the Chinese flag to a self-serving Chinese military coverup will cut no ice in Washington, and only undermine important Chinese and U.S. long-term interests." All that nailing and ice-cutting and covering up and undermining, my my. -- D.M.

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Recon Games

Slate - Today's Papers
Friday, April 6, 2001
By Scott Shuger
today's papers

Everybody leads with state-of-play coverage of the spy/reconnaissance plane in China. The USA Today headline refers to the intensifying talks between the two sides' representatives, with the story seeing them as edging closer to a diplomatic solutins for freeing the aircrew. The Washington Post's headline says that President Bush's statement of regret (run by everybody) over the apparent death in the incident of a Chinese pilot had helped to "ease China tension." The New York Times headline has "BUSH AIDES SAYING SOME HOPE IS SEEN TO END STANDOFF." The Los Angeles Times, benefiting from its later closing deadline, headlines China's positive reaction to Bush's statement--"VISIT WITH CREW OK'D AFTER BUSH OFFERS 'REGRET'" The Wall Street Journal's headline is the least cheerful: "U.S. EXPRESSES HOPES FOR A SOLUTION, WHILE CHINA SENDS MIXED MESSAGES."

USAT, the WP, NYT, and WSJ mention that U.S. and Chinese diplomats are discussing the possibility of using a pre-existing maritime commission as the vehicle for investigating the air collision and Chinese complaints about coastal U.S. reconnaissance flights. The NYT observes however that to this point, China has been represented in the talks by its Foreign Ministry, which is more supportive of maintaining good relations with the U.S., and less powerful than, the Chinese military, which the paper says, will have to be a party to whatever agreement is hammered out.

The NYT reports that President Bush has "instructed his staff to tone down anti-China rhetoric," and that this was being heeded "even [at] the Pentagon, where anger over the collision runs high." The WSJ "Washington Wire" makes a confirming observation: that during the crisis, hawkish secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld has not been heard from. The Pentagon seems to be venting its animus mainly through briefing reporters on the missing Chinese pilot. An LAT fronter reports that he was "well-known as 'cowboy' who aggressively pursued spy flights," and a NYT fronter is headlined "CHINESE PILOT REVELED IN RISK, PENTAGON SAYS." (Risk-taking jet pilots! Outrageous!) Both stories report that on a previous intercept of a U.S. plane, this pilot held up a piece of paper with his email address on it.

Among the encouraging signs, the WP and LAT note that the Chinese media seem to be moderating the anti-U.S. tone of their coverage, and the authorities are discouraging street protests, something they did not do after the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade two years ago. On the other side of the ledger, the LAT and WSJ go high with reports that the Chinese have already started interrogating the U.S. aircrew, with the LAT saying that U.S. officials "expressed anger" over this, and adding that these officials weren't optimistic about quickly winning the crew's freedom.

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Standoff Worries U.S. Companies in China

New York Times
April 6, 2001
By MARK LANDLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/06/world/06IMPA.html

HONG KONG, April 5 - As the standoff over a midair collision between United States and Chinese military planes enters its sixth day, American businesspeople here are repeating like a mantra, "It's business as usual."

But while Motorola, Procter & Gamble and other companies insist that the dispute need not damage commercial ties with China, a few are starting to acknowledge that it is far from business as usual.

General Motors issued a memorandum on Wednesday warning its expatriate staff in China to take extra precautions in the coming days. The memorandum, signed by the chairman of GM China, Philip Murtaugh, noted that sentiment toward Americans could sour quickly. It advised employees to stay out of crowds and avoid discussing the incident with people they do not know.

"It's a good idea to remind people who are not natives to be a little careful," said Alan Adler, a spokesman for GM China. "There's been no operational change in our business, but it's clearly on people's minds."

Hostility between Beijing and Washington is a recurring nightmare for companies like G.M., which have huge investments in China. The automaker operates a $1.5 billion car plant in Shanghai and a $230 million truck factory in Shenyang. It employs 3,500 people in China, 100 of them expatriates.

Several executives said the dispute was not yet as grave as the one surrounding NATO's accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999, which touched off attacks on American diplomatic missions throughout China. This time, they noted, China has squelched attempts to protest outside the United States Embassy in Beijing.

But the executives said that unless the standoff was resolved quickly, it could spill over into issues like China's entry into the World Trade Organization and Beijing's trade relations with the United States.

"You've already got various members of Congress talking about trying to block China's accession to the W.T.O.," said Frank Martin, the president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong. "Then there is the extension of China's normal trade status, which is coming up for a vote in Congress."

"These are the things we are talking about among ourselves," Mr. Martin said, "and nobody has any easy answers."

Few businesspeople say they believe that Congress will reverse its vote granting permanent normal trade relations to China. But Beijing's entry into the W.T.O. is a thornier issue. It has already been delayed until at least the fall because of squabbles at W.T.O. headquarters in Geneva over the subsidies the Chinese government can pay farmers.

Some executives worry that if the standoff poisons the atmosphere between the United States and China, it could magnify the wrangling over relatively trivial details into a deal- breaking impasse.

"People are getting antsy about the stalled situation in Geneva," said Eden Y. Woon, the director of the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce. "In any multilateral setting, the U.S. usually takes the leadership role. If there is bad blood with China, how will that affect the negotiations?"

In the short run, the tension will probably halt some American investments in China, if only temporarily. China will barely feel the pinch: foreign direct investment in the country has soared, with $2.22 billion of new investment in January, a 22 percent increase compared with figures in the month a year earlier.

An escalating dispute would also damp China's ability to tap capital markets. The Chinese government hopes to issue shares in two major state-owned companies, Bank of China and China Telecom, early next year. But shares of two of the best- known Chinese state companies, China Mobile and China Unicom, plunged in Hong Kong on Wednesday. The market was closed for a holiday today.

For American companies with big operations in China, there is little to do but watch, wait and hope for the best. "We're concerned and we'd like to see this amicably resolved as quickly as possible," said Steve Lyons, a spokesman for Motorola, the semiconductor and cellular phone maker. "We see the Hainan thing as an unfortunate situation that is much more political than economic."

Motorola's concern is understandable. With 12,000 employees and $3.4 billion worth of investments in China, the company has perhaps a greater Chinese stake than any American corporation.

Mr. Adler of G.M. said he was somewhat optimistic that Beijing and Washington could work things out, particularly since the United States secretary of state, Colin Powell, expressed regret over the loss of the Chinese pilot. But he noted that domestic politics on both sides made the situation unpredictable.

Unlike G.M., Motorola and P.& G. have not issued warnings to employees. But a spokesman for P.& G., John Yam, said the company was monitoring the situation and would act if necessary. It employs 4,000 people in China and has plants in Guangzhou, Beijing, Tianjin and Chengdu.

"There have always been ups and downs in the U.S. relationship with China," Mr. Yam said. "But we have a long-term commitment to China."

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Students' Unease Over Weakness Could Threaten Beijing's Leaders

New York Times
April 6, 2001
By CRAIG S. SMITH
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/06/world/06STRE.html

HAIKOU, China, Friday, April 6 - While Washington and Beijing worked to bridge the gap between the regret expressed by President Bush and the apology demanded by President Jiang Zemin over the collision of an American spy plane and a Chinese fighter jet, many young Chinese insisted on Thursday that there could be no middle ground.

"Regret is not enough," said Claire Chen, a senior at the Hainan University law school here, not far from where the plane's 24 Americans are being held. United States diplomats in Beijing said today that American representatives would be allowed a second visit with the crew members this afternoon.

Speaking beneath the whispering palm trees of the university campus as students strolled by through the soft evening air, Ms. Chen said young people across China would protest if the American crew members were released before there was an American apology.

"Students would go into the streets," she said, providing a glimpse of the hard-line attitudes that Mr. Jiang has to appease in resolving the diplomatic dispute.

China's leaders are no doubt mindful of how popular dissatisfaction with weak governments developed into rebellious movements in the past. In 1919, student protests against the government's frailty in negotiations at the Versailles peace conference after World War I led to the May 4 Movement, from which the Communist Party eventually emerged. The Communists came to power to a large extent because of popular perceptions that their forces had taken a strong lead in fighting Japan in World War II while other groups had colluded with or retreated from the Japanese advance.

On the Web site of People's Daily, the Communist Party newspaper, several people have posted messages that express a desire for a strong leader like Mao, revered for standing up to foreign domination.

"We miss Chairman Mao," read a posting by someone who used the name "New Force of Laid-Off Workers." Under the name Road to a Strong Nation, another posting read, "China needs politicians like Chairman Mao who have strategic vision," a thinly veiled criticism of Mr. Jiang, who many Chinese say has failed to articulate a clear vision for China's future.

The spy plane incident has reinforced young people's perceptions of the United States as a careless bully that throws around its weight without considering the views or feelings of people from other nations. On Thursday Ms. Chen repeated a common Chinese complaint that the United States "acts like an international policeman, interfering in situations all over the world."

Those perceptions spread after the NATO bombing of China's Embassy in Belgrade in 1999, an act that most Chinese continue to regard as having been intentional despite Washington's insistence that it was an accident. The Chinese government has done little to dispel those views.

Most Chinese have apparently been led by domestic press reports to believe that the American plane was in Chinese air space when the collision on Sunday occurred.

"This is the second time America has hurt China, and we're very angry," said Huang Zinai, 28, an engineer at a compact disc company who is studying English at the university. "America is fond of war. But the Chinese people, because they have experienced the Japanese invasion, are more concerned with peace."

Many students on the campus echoed Ms. Chen's assertion that there would be larger demonstrations if the government released the crew members before the United States had made an apology.

"The Chinese people won't accept the release of the crew without an apology," Mr. Huang said as he sat near a group of 50 students who had gathered on a broad lawn on Thursday to discuss the incident. "If President Jiang does that, they won't forgive him and I won't forgive him," he said.

A young woman blamed the impasse on the Bush administration's semantic shift from the Clinton administration's characterization of China as a potential "strategic partner" to a characterization of it as a "strategic competitor."

"Now when something like this happens," the woman said, "it is natural for us to be defensive and to be suspicious of America's motives."

On a wall of the university dining hall, Chinese characters written in bold black brush strokes on a large piece of white paper read, "Wipe Out Our National Humiliation, Severely Punish the American Military." Another poster read, "Put the American Military Personnel Involved On Trial."

---

Chinese Pilot Reveled in Risk, Pentagon Says

New York Times
April 6, 2001
By STEVEN LEE MYERS with CHRISTOPHER DREW
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/06/world/06FLIG.html

WASHINGTON, April 5 - The Chinese pilot whose F-8 collided with an American spy plane six days ago had flown so close to American aircraft in recent months that he was photographed clearly. In one picture, he was seen holding a white paper with his e-mail address written on it.

Pentagon officials and two American lawmakers cited the photographs today - and allowed a reporter to view them - to underscore the assertion that Chinese pilots had acted recklessly in previous encounters and most likely caused the collision with the American aircraft, an EP-3E Aries II.

The officials said that the damage to the American craft, which made an emergency landing at a Chinese military airfield on Hainan, strongly suggested that the Chinese pilot had maneuvered his plane too closely underneath the larger, slower spy plane just before impact.

The officials based their account on photographs of the EP-3E released by the official New China News Agency, and on a brief damage report made by the American crew members - after they landed at the airfield and just before armed Chinese troops boarded their plane.

The photographs of the Chinese pilot, identified as Wang Wei, were taken in recent months by a similar American aircraft - a P-3 - during a previous intercept over the South China Sea. They showed the intensity of the air-to-air confrontations between the United States and China, but also a bit of the risky bravado common to fighter pilots worldwide.

In one previous encounter, Mr. Wang flew within 10 feet of an American plane, Pentagon officials said. They explained that Chinese pilots would slip beneath American planes and then shoot up in front of them.

Introducing e-mail into this cold- war-style aerial tag appears to be something of an innovation in the "Top Gun" game of thumbing one's nose at the enemy. Last fall, Russian fighter jets buzzed the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk in the Sea of Japan and then sent e-mail photographs they had taken of the ship.

Confrontations with Chinese pilots had become so frequent that American military intelligence analysts were able to identify the Chinese pilots based on their insignia and tactics. Mr. Wang, identified by the Chinese as a squadron leader though not by his rank, was one of only two or three who, Pentagon officials said, had gone too far in aggressively challenging the American patrols.

"Obviously, he was just being flashy and wanted to show off his stuff," an American official said.

The collision sent Mr. Wang's F-8 plunging into the sea. He reportedly parachuted out, but has not been found and is presumed dead.

In the immediate aftermath of the accident, which occurred late Saturday night eastern time, American officials laid blame for the collision entirely on the Chinese jet. Since then, however, spokesmen at the Pentagon and elsewhere in Washington have tempered their public remarks, saying they do not know for certain what happened in the skies.

They say they will know the sequence of events only after they are able to interview the American pilot and co-pilot.

Other Pentagon officials, however, have strongly disputed the Chinese assertion that the American EP-3E turned abruptly into the path of the F-8. They said the EP-3E turned left 5 to 10 minutes before the collision, as part of a standard change on this surveillance route. They also said it was improbable that the American plane would have banked again, given the standard practice of flying straight and level when foreign jets were nearby.

Those officials said that the evidence suggested two possible explanations for the collision, and they held the Chinese responsible in both cases.

In one scenario, the officials said, it is possible that the F-8 was flying closely beneath the EP-3E - the aerial equivalent of its blind spot - when something caused it to collide with the American aircraft's left wing or propeller.

The Chinese have argued that the American aircraft banked suddenly to the left, into the path of the F-8.

If the first scenario is correct, Pentagon officials said it was more likely that the collision occurred because the F-8's cockpit or tail rose into the aircraft's left wing or propeller, or that it moved close enough to cause an aerodynamic effect that would have caused the American aircraft to lose lift and dip slightly.

In a second scenario, the officials said, the F-8 roared up to the EP-3E from underneath and then pulled vertically into the path of the American craft, clipping its nose dome, which is missing in the photographs shown by the New China News Agency.

The impact of the collision - a relatively glancing blow - would then have sprayed debris into the EP-3E's first and third propellers, the officials said.

Pentagon authorities said Mr. Wang and one or two other pilots had conducted similar maneuvers during interceptions of previous surveillance flights, prompting the American government to register formal protests in December and January. Despite those protests, the challenges continued.

Representative Ike Skelton of Missouri, the senior Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, who has been briefed on the accident by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, said he endorsed the second scenario.

"I think it's pretty good speculation, just knowing what they did before," he said.

In either case, Pentagon officials emphasized, the collision would not have occurred at all if Chinese pilots had not become increasingly aggressive in intercepting American patrols along China's coast.

One official acknowledged that the intensity of the challenges had coincided with an increase in the American patrols last fall. But the officials all maintained that the Chinese were not following established international practices of intercepting foreign aircraft - practices shaped during the cold-war confrontations between the United States and the Soviet Union.

The officials said that even if the American plane had turned or dipped its wing unexpectedly, the Chinese aircraft should never have been close enough for it to matter.

"It's like the bumper sticker: `If you're close enough to read this, you're too damned close,' " one Pentagon official said today.

A former EP-3E pilot, Donald E. Chomiak, who flew two dozen reconnaissance missions off China in the mid-1990's, said the Chinese regularly flew as close as 150 feet away. He said there was no tactical or intelligence reason for an intercepting fighter aircraft to maneuver any closer or roar up from underneath.

If that occurred, he said, the Chinese pilot "was trying to impress or intimidate the American crew, or both."

---

Bush Aides Saying Some Hope Is Seen to End Standoff

New York Times
April 6, 2001
By JANE PERLEZ and DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/06/world/06PREX.html

WASHINGTON, April 5 - Bush administration officials said today that they saw some hope of resolving the standoff with China after Beijing, for the first time, expressed some appreciation of American offers of "regret" for the spy plane incident.

Administration officials said there was talk with the Chinese of formulas that would allow both sides to save face and move toward freeing the plane's crew. The 24 members are being held on Hainan Island, where they made an emergency landing after a collision with a Chinese jet fighter on Sunday.

President Bush added his own public regrets today during an appearance before the annual meeting of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. In response to a question, he delivered a careful statement that included support for deep economic ties with China. The remarks were a signal to Chinese leaders that if they end the incident quickly, he is ready to resume Washington's ordinary - if ambiguous and uncomfortable - relationship.

"I regret that a Chinese pilot is missing and I regret that one of their airplanes is lost," Mr. Bush said. "Our prayers go out to the pilot, his family."

Talks between senior State Department officials and the Chinese Foreign Ministry have progressed from sporadic conversations to what one official called "rolling diplomacy" of round-the-clock talks between the two capitals.

By this afternoon, senior administration officials were suggesting that they use an obscure 1998 pact between China and the United States, the Military Maritime Consultation Agreement, as a mechanism for examining the incident and setting up rules that would keep spy planes and their pursuers apart.

The agreement was intended to establish a way for the two militaries to talk to each other and prevent exactly this kind of incident. So far, however, military officials from the United States and China have met only infrequently, and usually at a relatively low level.

"It's an empty vessel, but it's a forum, and it may help create an opening," said Kurt Campbell, an Asia specialist who, while serving in the Defense Department under President Clinton, helped negotiate the agreement.

It was unclear exactly how the Bush administration hoped to use the agreement. Some suggested convening the two militaries on an urgent basis either just before or just after the release of the 24 crew members, whom the administration calls "detainees," not hostages or prisoners.

American officials say there is some risk in using the agreement, however, because it takes some of the negotiations out of the hands of China's Foreign Ministry, which is heavily invested in good relations with the United States, and gives the role to the Chinese military.

"What can you do?" one senior administration official asked today. "At the end of the day you've got to bring the military along. The crew is being held on a military base." This official described the military as "the most important political constituency in China."

What especially heartened American officials today was the frequency of their contacts with the Chinese, and the fact that the Foreign Ministry appeared to have the go-ahead to negotiate an understanding, even if it will require approval by other political forces in Beijing.

China's ambassador to the United States, Yang Jiechi, returned to the State Department again this morning after receiving a letter on Wednesday night from Secretary of State Colin L. Powell that expressed in writing the United States' regret for the missing pilot and the plight of his family.

But China has yet to formally respond to the letter, which was addressed to Deputy Prime Minister Qian Qichen, the top foreign affairs official.

Mr. Bush has instructed his staff to tone down anti-China rhetoric, and today, for the first time, most of the administration appeared to be heeding that call, even the Pentagon, where anger over the collision runs high.

"The message to the Chinese is, we should not let this incident destabilize relations," Mr. Bush said. "Our relationship with China is very important. But they need to realize that it's time for our people to be home."

Mr. Bush reiterated his administration's characterization of China as "a strategic competitor," adding: "But that doesn't mean we can't find areas in which we can partner. And the economy's a place where we can partner."

But he carefully avoided any apology or statement of American responsibility for the accident. And one of the key objectives for the administration has been to persuade the Chinese to accept statements of regret - orally from the president, in writing and orally from General Powell - rather than a full-blown apology.

A spokesman for the Foreign Affairs Ministry described General Powell's letter as a good first step.

But China experts warned that the Chinese are acutely attuned to the difference between a regret and an apology, and they suspected that even Mr. Bush's words today would not prove sufficient.

"It's very difficult, because the words in Chinese are very specific," said Robert Suettinger, a senior policy analyst at the Rand Corporation. "The Japanese have expressed remorse and deep introspection" over World War II, he noted, "and the Chinese just don't buy it."

The conditions here are different, of course: This was an accident, not an act of war or occupation. But it is also a test of wills between the world's sole superpower and Asia's biggest power. As one State Department official with long experience in Asia said: "We run the risk here of this becoming a strutting contest. That's what we've got to avoid."

Six days after the collision, it was still unclear how long it would take to win the crew's release.

The State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, while careful not to express any overt optimism that a solution was at hand, said today that "intensive discussions" were under way, and that the talks "are at a sensitive moment."

A senior administration official stressed that while the diplomacy was "moving in the right direction," it could turn the other way.

One of the main difficulties for the administration is assessing decision- making processes in Beijing, which one senior official called "complicated at best."

So far the talks are taking place virtually exclusively with the Foreign Ministry in Beijing, which is not considered an especially powerful force in the Chinese bureaucracy. What kind of control China's diplomats will have over a final decision to release the crew is murky; its military will almost certainly have a voice.

And President Jiang is traveling. While he is said to have sophisticated communications, it is unclear whether he is willing to take the political risk of adjudicating between competing forces in his own government.

In words intended to bolster the administration's case, the president of the United States Chamber of Commerce issued a warning today that the incident could lead Congress once again to threaten trade ties with China.

"We want the Chinese government to understand that failure to resolve this matter in the immediate future could and would likely damage the current and potential economic exchange between the companies in our two nations," said the official, Thomas Donohue.

But China may dismiss such warnings because a reduction in trade would hurt American companies as much as they would hurt China.

---

U.S. and China Using Letters to Come to Agreement

New York Times
April 6, 2001
By DAVID E. SANGER with DAVID STOUT
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/06/politics/06CND-POWELL.html

WASHINGTON, April 6 - President Bush and President Jiang Zemin of China are exchanging drafts of a letter that would express regrets for last Sunday's aircraft collision, establish an investigatory body and pave the way toward release of the 24 Americans held in China, administration officials and a senior Senator said today.

Senator John Warner, a Virginia Republican who heads the Senate Armed Services Committee, said after being briefed by administration officials that the language of the letter was to be agreed upon by both presidents as a "common understanding" of the episode.

Thus, there seemed to be a breakthrough in the tension, which began when the American surveillance air craft and a Chinese fighter collided, forcing the American plane to land in China and causing the fighter to crash into the sea, where the pilot is believed to have perished.

"We're moving toward a letter that will contain exchanges of views, first at the level of the ambassador and the foreign minister, but that letter is being reviewed both by our president and the president of China, so it will reflect a common understanding," Senator Warner said.

He said the letter would include an expression of regret for the loss of life of the Chinese pilot but would not contain a United States apology, as demanded by Beijing. "I would say that the question of an apology is not in any way to be incorporated in the letter," he said.

Even as Senator Warner was briefing reporters, a cheerful-looking President Bush expressed optimism about bringing the 24 American crew members home.

"We're working hard to bring them home through intensive discussions with the Chinese government, and we think we're making progress," Mr. Bush told a gathering of business executives in suburban Virginia.

The smiling President drew applause when he said the Americans were being well treated and that their morale was high. He declined to be more specific on what progress was being made, although senior administration officials said a little-known 1998 agreement between the two countries, the Military Maritime Consultation Agreement, might be used as a forum to reach new procedures to prevent similar collisions.

Earlier today, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell hinted that a breakthrough might be near. "There has been movement," Mr. Powell told journalists shortly after 11 a.m. He said the Americans were in good spirits and being treated well. They are staying in Chinese officers' quarters and being served catered food, the Secretary said.

"We are in very intensive negotiations and discussions and exchanging papers," Mr. Powell said. He said the United States Ambassador, Joseph W. Prueher, had been meeting frequently with officials in the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The Secretary said President Bush had been given details of the Americans' situation by Brig. Gen. Neal Sealock, the United States defense attache in China. The crew members were being treated well in every sense, the general reported.

Mr. Powell declined to be too specific when asked repeatedly exactly why he was optimistic. But he did say that American and Chinese diplomats have been exchanging some "rather precise ideas on how to bring this to a conclusion."

As the Secretary spoke, it was already late night in China. Mr. Powell said he expected American officials in China to visit the crew members on Saturday, and again on a regular basis "until this matter is resolved." He said the Chinese had expressed no objection to regular visits.

One possible tantalizing clue to how things are unfolding might have been Mr. Powell's remarks that American and Chinese diplomats are discussing "how to `exchange explanations,' to use the term of art that I gave the other day."

So far, the Chinese Government has demanded a formal apology. The United States has refused, expressing instead its "regret" at the loss of the Chinese fighter pilot. The difference between a formal apology and an expression of regret might seem subtle, even trivial, at first glance. But subtle language can be important in diplomacy, letting each side save face to return to the table another day.

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RUSSIA: AMERICAN DIPLOMATS SENT PACKING

New York Times
April 6, 2001
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/06/world/06BRIE.html

Russia said four American diplomats accused of "activities incompatible with their status" - diplomatic jargon for spying - left Moscow on Wednesday. Their expulsion followed the Bush administration's decision to expel four Russian diplomats accused of espionage. The United States said it would expel 50 Russians after a senior F.B.I. counterintelligence officer, Robert P. Hanssen, was accused of spying for Moscow. Russia has said it will expel 50 Americans. Patrick E. Tyler (NYT)

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Diplomats Have Second Meeting With Crew

New York Times
April 6, 2001
By CRAIG S. SMITH with ERIK ECKHOLM
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/06/world/06CND-CHINA.html

HAIKOU, China, April 6 - Two American officials on Hainan Island in southern China met today for a second time with the detained crew members of the American spy plane and reported that they were "in great spirits."

The United States military attaché, Brig. Gen. Neal Sealock, said at a news conference in Hainan that "the crew is in great spirits," adding, "They are all together and they are looking forward to getting released from their current situation and returning home."

In Washington. the State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, said there was no indication of any kind of mistreatment or new interrogation, although the crew said they had been questioned earlier by the Chinese about the plane's midair collision with a Chinese jet fighter.

In contrast to the officials' initial meeting with the crew early Wednesday morning, Mr. Boucher said that for part of the meeting today no Chinese officials were present and the two American officials met with some individual crew members as well.

General Sealock in Hainan would not take any questions from journalists left immediately after his comments, which were preceded by a statement read by an official from the Hainan foreign affairs bureau. The tone of the news conference was tense, with the Chinese apparently intending to demonstrate their control of the briefing process.

The official in Hainan reiterated China's charges that the spy plane had illegally intruded into Chinese airspace and that the United States should fully accept responsibility for its collision with the Chinese jet fighter and apologize for the incident. The Chinese fighter fell into the sea and its pilot, identified as Wang Wei, is presumed dead.

Today Chinese television presented what it said was the pilot of a second fighter that shadowed the American EP-3E spy plane. The pilot, identified as Zhao Yu, gave China's version of the accident.

"It was directly caused by the collision of the U.S. plane veering at a wide angle toward our plane," he said in remarks translated by CNN. "making it impossible for our plane to avoid it. The U.S. plane severely violated flying rules, so they should hold full responsibility."

Today's meeting with the American crew members was delayed for about y three hours while Chinese and American officials met at the Hainan provincial government compound to set the ground rules for seeing the crew. The Chinese showed new flexibility by letting the meeting with the crew last an hour. The previous meeting lasted only 40 minutes.

After today's meeting ended, five of the seven American representatives returned to their hotel. General Sealock, and the Guangzhou consular chief, Ted Gong, went on to see the 24 crew members.

The crew members have been held incommunicado on Hainan Island as the two governments searched for a face-saving compromise over China's demand for an open American apology.

The incident began when an American eavesdropping plane in international waters near China collided with a trailing Chinese jet. The Chinese jet and its pilot are presumed lost, and the damaged American plane made an emergency landing at a Chinese military airfield, which the Chinese call an illegal infringement.

Thursday afternoon, in the first glimmer of progress toward resolving an increasingly emotional test of wills, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said the United States had taken "a step in the right direction" with Secretary of State Colin Powell's expressions of regret for the collision.

But in public, Chinese officials mainly held to their frosty position. The spokesman, Sun Yuxi, also berated the United States for being "high-handed" and indicated that the American crew members could be visited again only after the United States adopted a more "cooperative approach."

Late in the night here, well after Mr. Sun made his comments, President Bush expressed his regrets for the incident and his deep concern over the fate of the lost Chinese pilot.

Today's 8 a.m. national television news broadcast did not mention Mr. Bush's gesture or the ongoing negotiations, instead describing international condemnation of the American position, but it may be that China's lumbering propaganda apparatus did not have time to issue new instructions to the media.

In the early hours of Wednesday morning, an American military attaché and a consular officer were allowed a meeting with the crew in Hainan. But American officials complain that they have not had a chance to debrief crew members on Sunday's events, even as China demands that the United States accept full responsibility for the collision and unauthorized landing.

"If the United States takes a cooperative approach, we will consider another visit," Mr. Sun said on Thursday. "The United States should admit its mistakes, apologize and explain to the Chinese people. This is the first step."

Mr. Sun also said it was "natural" for the Chinese authorities to interrogate the crew members about the incident because they are the "culprits" who caused it by flying recklessly and then entering Chinese territory without seeking permission.

Both governments say they hope to resolve the incident soon and prevent it from further corroding relations.

American officials appear to be privately resigned to losing whatever secrets and technology on the plane that the crew could not destroy before landing, but the Chinese leaders are aware that tempers in Washington are flaring over the detention of the crew.

President Jiang Zemin and other leaders have played a political balancing act. They have prohibited anti-American demonstrations and stressed their continued desire for good relations with the United States. Yet, even if China's enemies use this incident to harm economic ties or the country's bid to play host to the 2008 Olympics, "nothing is more important than safeguarding the sovereignty and dignity of China," Mr. Sun said.

The leaders are giving vent to the anger many Chinese have expressed at the exposure of routine American spy flights near their shores, and the downing of a Chinese pilot.

University officials around the country were gathered in meetings on Thursday to hear a directive from the Education Ministry instructing faculty and students to "stand fast at their posts to work and study and not take to the street." So far, groups from more than 50 universities and colleges have requested permission to demonstrate against the United States, the directive said, according to a person who saw it.

Mr. Sun repeated China's assertion that the midair collision occurred because the slow-moving American propeller plane swerved suddenly, running into a Chinese fighter that was cruising some 1,300 feet to the side. But he refused to provide evidence of that.

Mr. Sun also sought to buttress China's contention that the American aircraft had entered Chinese territory in an illegal manner, no matter how urgent its plight. Pentagon experts say that they believe that the plane issued a standard "Mayday" alert and that by international custom it then had the right to make an emergency landing.

The Chinese say the aircraft issued no distress signals or requests for permission to land, even though it had time and means to do so, and thus violated international and Chinese laws.

"When the aircraft intruded into Chinese airspace, we did not receive any message from the U.S. side," Mr. Sun insisted.

This, together with the charge that the American plane caused the crash with a reckless move, is the basis on which China says it is holding and investigating the crew. Several times, Chinese officials have said they will not release the crew until an investigation is completed.

But at other times, government spokesmen have suggested that the crew's release will be rapid if the United States will bow to China's political and symbolic demands.

---

Sorry About That

New York Times
April 6, 2001
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/06/opinion/06FRIE.html

I would never do this myself, but if one wanted to be nasty, one could write a column with the following lead:

"China says it wants an apology for the collision of the U.S. surveillance plane with a Chinese fighter jet, which resulted in the death of a Chinese pilot. Well, I say the Chinese are right. We should apologize. But why stop with the plane incident? We should apologize for being the market for $40 billion a year of China's exports. We should apologize for the fact that U.S. companies are among the largest foreign investors in China and have been instrumental in China's economic takeoff. We should apologize for the fact that 54,000 Chinese students study in the U.S. every year, more than any other nationality. We should apologize for the fact that the U.S. has shown restraint in weapons sales to Taiwan. We should apologize for the fact that the U.S. paved the way for China's entry into the World Trade Organization. Yes, we should apologize for all these things and promise to stop all of them immediately."

That would be the nasty approach. If I were trying to be a friend of China's, I would point out that China is behaving as if America were the only country with something to lose if this dogfight is not quickly resolved. China has said that either the U.S. accepts that the incident was all America's fault and apologizes, or the relationship will suffer and America will suffer. That's only half true.

Yes, U.S. interests would suffer from a prolonged crisis with China. But China would suffer just as much. Let's start with the basics: The Chinese Communist Party has struck the following bargain with the Chinese people: You let us continue to rule, even though Communist ideology is no longer functional, and we will guarantee rising living standards. For the Communist leadership to fulfill its side of this bargain it needs a steady inflow of investment and technology from the U.S., and, even more important, it needs access to the U.S. market for China's exports. If China is seen as holding U.S. airmen hostage, the U.S. Congress will move to block everything from China's entry into the W.T.O. to its trade privileges in the U.S. to its possible hosting of the 2008 Olympics.

Moreover, it would be one thing for China to call for an immediate U.N. investigation, or a joint U.S.-Chinese investigation, into this collision - which occurred in international airspace - and if the U.S. is found responsible to demand compensation. No problem. But for China to insist that the U.S. apologize before it has debriefed its own pilots, analyzed the flight recorders or spoken to Chinese military officials, is another way of saying that the rule of law does not matter. All that matters is how China feels. Such brutish behavior, if sustained, will quietly prompt China's neighbors - Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam - to draw militarily even closer to the U.S., and that would be a big strategic loss for China.

Finally, it took America 10 years to rebuild a bipartisan consensus on China after the Tiananmen Square killings, and it could all be exploded by this incident. Since Tiananmen and the end of the cold war, there have been three American camps on China: those who wanted to contain a rising China, as we did Russia; those who believed we could tame China with economic engagement; and those - who eventually became the bipartisan majority - who believed U.S. policy toward China should be to build bridges where possible and draw red lines when necessary. If this current affair is not resolved soon, the U.S. consensus on China will explode and the advocates of containment will triumph.

The press is now yammering that this crisis is a test for America's new leader. That's true. But it's just as big a test for China's old leaders - of whether they really understand the new world they're living in.

Guess what? America is not the only country enmeshed in today's global economy and globalization web. So is China. Secretary of State Colin Powell expressed "regret" about the loss of the Chinese pilot precisely to help those in China who don't want this affair to blow up relations with America. But China too has to behave in a way that enables its U.S. friends to sustain the relationship. China too has an enormous amount at stake in ending this crisis legally, quickly and quietly. Indeed, if one wanted to be nasty, one would say that China has a lot more at stake than the U.S. does.

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The China Standoff, and Some Ways Out

New York Times
April 6, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/06/opinion/L06CHIN.html

To the Editor:

Re "Beijing Steps Up Its War of Words Over Air Collision" (front page, April 5): Why can't we apologize to the Chinese? Aren't we sorry that our plane crashed into theirs and landed on their sovereign territory? If so, why can't we say we're sorry? If not, what does that say about us?

This world is getting smaller and smaller. A few instances of civility and good manners would be helpful.

ELIZABETH MCBRIDE Marfa, Tex., April 5, 2001

•To the Editor:
Re "Managing the Spy Plane Incident" (editorial, April 5):

China's response reflects interest in using the incident to reduce the American presence in that part of the world. Overlooking this fact does not facilitate resolution of the matter.

DANIEL ALROY New York, April 5, 2001

•To the Editor:
Infuriating as the Chinese government's behavior may be, the spy plane incident has presented the United States with an opportunity (editorial, April 5). We are second to none in expressing the importance of the rule of law; here is a chance to put our beliefs into practice.

We should state that if our military personnel are released, we will submit the matter to the World Court, and that if the court determines the United States to be the responsible party, we will provide not only the requested apology but also financial reparations. We would, of course, ask for a reciprocal assurance from the Chinese.

DOUGLAS M. PARKER South Orleans, Mass., April 5, 2001 The writer, a retired lawyer, served in the Nixon and Ford administrations.

-------- terrorism

Italy and Germany Arrest 6 in Failed 2000 Bomb Plot

New York Times
April 6, 2001
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/06/world/06ITAL.html

ROME, April 5 - Italian officials announced today that they had arrested five North African men suspected of having ties to Osama bin Laden, and said they were searching for five others. The German police also said they had arrested a member of an Islamic fundamentalist cell today after raiding eight sites in Hesse and Bavaria.

All the arrests appear to have been connected to a planned bombing that was averted in Strasbourg, France, in December.

According to investigators in Milan, the five North Africans were arrested in predawn raids in Milan and nearby Busto Arsizio as part of a larger operation coordinated with Washington and Berlin.

The suspects are believed to have been involved in helping prepare the attack in Strasbourg, a bombing that was thwarted, the police said, when the Germans arrested four North African men in Frankfurt on Dec. 26. The man arrested today in Germany was believed to have worked with those four men. The five North Africans seized in Italy are being held on charges of belonging to a criminal organization, weapons trafficking and falsifying passports.

-------- activists

Sample Press Materials/Citigroup and the FTAA

From: "Ilyse Hogue" <ihogue@ran.org>
Fri, 6 Apr 2001

In this post:

1. More organizing resources for April 11th and beyond!

There's a bunch new resources up on the RAN website available for download. Check them out and use them to mobilize against the world's most destructive bank in your community!

How the FTAA is a Free Ride for the World's Most Destructive Bank http://www.ran.org/ran_campaigns/citigroup/20g_factsheet.html

Connect your local campaign against Citigroup with the global mobilization against the FTAA or vice versa.

3 flyers for April 11th and a leaflet to hand out to Citi customers http://www.ran.org/ran_campaigns/citigroup/0411.html

32 page organizing manual for students "Kicking Citi Off Campus" http://www.ran.org/ran_campaigns/citigroup/cag.html

2. TIPS ON GETTING MEDIA FOR YOUR LOCAL CITIGROUP ACTION

Attached are sample press materials that you can use to get the word out to the media and to the world about your event on the 11th. They are a template, feel free to adapt as appropriate. If you don't already have a press list, you can try calling up a local non-profit and ask if they'll share a press list with you for your event. If that fails, create your own press list by going through the phone book! Gather contact numbers for local TV, print, and radio outlets, call them up, and ask for fax numbers. You'll mostly want to fax to the "news desk" or the "assignment editor".

The advisory should go out as soon as possible to announce the event to the media. After faxing to the outlets on your list, call up the news desk or assignment editor and ask if they received your fax, and pitch your event to them (often times, you'll need to send it again, faxes get lost in the shuffle all the time).

On the morning (EARLY! 8 or 9am) of your event, you can fax out the press release and do another round of calls. Is this event on their radar screens? Are they sending anyone? This is an opportunity to sell them on how newsworthy your event is. It's part of an international day of action, activists in over 60 (this number getting bigger all the time - we'll send out a final post with confirmed numbers) cities around the world are calling on Citigroup to change their ways, here will be great visuals, folks will be cutting up their credit cards.

Remember, if no media come to your event, that's OK! Did you reach an audience? Did you put pressure on a local Citigroup office? Were there passersby you educated? Did you pass out flyers? There are a number of ways to define success. And you still have a chance of garnering some media coverage after the event by doing follow-up calls to key outlets, or asking local radio stations to do radio feeds (a few sentences about your action) for the afternoon news show. The primary reason folks don't get media stories on their campaigns and events is because they don't do any media work! Keep notifying them when you do something newsworthy, the more they hear about your campaign, the more likely they'll be to cover it in the future.

GOOD LUCK ON WEDNESDAY!

HOW TO TALK ABOUT THE CITIGROUP CAMPAIGN BASIC MESSAGING OVERVIEW.....soundbites included!

Here are three sample primary messages that you can strive to convey in any public outreach or media opportunity.

I. Citigroup is The World's Most Destructive Bank

A.Citi invests in destroying forests, the lungs of the planet

B. As one of the largest funders of fossil fuels Citi is profiting from global warming

C. Citi destroys communities around the world from displacing indigenous forest peoples to redlining and predatory lending in low income communities in the United States.

II. The financial industry needs to embrace social and environmental values.

A. Citi must go "beyond the bottomline" to include environmental and social criteria into their notion of profit

B. People don't want an amoral financial system that puts profits ahead of principles

C. Blind pursuit of short term profits at the expense of the environment, workers and human rights is a "doomsday economy"

III. People/Students are mobilizing against Citigroup

A. People/Students are standing up for their beliefs by Boycotting Citibank credit cards and loans

B. People are exposing Citigroup as the world's most destructive bank

C. Students are always on the forefront of social change movements.

Ideally, we strive to communicate these three messages and their sub-messages in a variety of different ways. "Staying on message" means using different sound bites to present each of the above messages individually or in some combination. It's useful to practice carrying these three messages with a variety of different creative soundbites.

For example:

1a. Citigroup is living richly off of the destruction of our last remaining frontier forests by funding logging operations from California's Redwoods to the rainforests of Indonesia.

1b. Citigroup profits from logging, mining, oil drilling and a host of other activities that wreak havoc on ecosystems and communities.

1c. Citigroup continues to invest heavily in fossil fuels, contributing to global warming, rather than helping solve it.

2a. Students are saying "not with my money" by refusing to sign-up for Citibank credit cards until Citi stops funding destruction.

2b. Students are educating each other about their power to expose Citibank's destructive practices

2c. Students are educating themselves, organizing and taking action to confront Citigroup and the corporate finance industry that is fueling the environmental crisis.

3a. It is the youth that will inherit the problems left behind by Citigroup and the corporate finance industry's blind pursuit of short term profit.

3b. Citigroup presently operates outside of acceptable values of environmental and social responsibility.

3c. Citigroup must find ways to include environmental and social criteria in its definition of profit.

SOME ADDITIONAL SOUNDBITE EXAMPLES:

Students across the country are saying "not with my money" by boycotting Citibank credit cards until they stop funding environmental destruction around the world.

From rainforest destruction to Redlining, from prisons to pollution, Citigroup is living richly off of environmentally and socially destructive activities around the world.

Students are not going to let Citigroup takes their money and uses it for environmental destruction.

Citigroup's irresponsible practices are out of touch with basic environmental and social values.

Citigroup must stop funding destruction and start supporting a sane and sustainable economy.

The battle in America is between the values of Main Street and the values of Wall Street. Students stand for communities and the environment and Citigroup stands for short term profit.

3. CITIGROUP AND THE FREE TRADE AGREEMENT OF THE AMERICAS

GO FOR THE JUGULAR OF CORPORATE GLOBALIZATION - CITIGROUP! STOP FTAA! STOP CITIGROUP! Demand Citigroup release the text of the FTAA!

April 11th Day of Action! April 21st Solidarity with Resistance to the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City

The Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA) is the latest in a wave of sweeping new trade agreements that are intended to restrict the rights of local communities, states and even nations to pass laws regulating corporate behavior. The FTAA would build upon the frame work created by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) to allow multinational corporations to further consolidate their control over the daily lives of people across the Americas.

The text of the FTAA has been kept secret from the citizens of the Americas but representatives of over 500 corporations have been intimately involved in drafting the agreement. It will come to no surprise Giant corporations like CITIGROUP (parent of Citibank, Salomon Smith Barney, and Citifinancial) are writing the rules of the global economy to put their profits ahead of workers, the environment, human rights and future generations.

If you want a world where people control their own lives and corporations and governments go BEYOND THE BOTTOMLINE to put principles ahead of short term profits then join the campaign to confront CITIGROUP. On April 11th and 21st visit your local Citi office and help highlight the nature of corporate rule by publicly demanding they release the text.

To find out about the links between Citigroup and the FTAA check out - http://www.ran.org/ran_campaigns/citigroup/20g_factsheet.html

To find out about the hemispheric wide mobilization against the FTAA check out - www.stopftaa.org

Citi has over 1200 branches and offices around the US and offices in over 100 countries around the world. Find your local subsidiary and ORGANIZE LOCALLY!

<http://www.citibank.com/branches/ <http://www.citifinancial.com/branchlocator/ <http://www.salomonsmithbarney.com/

or contact them directly and ask them: Do you have any social or environmental standards for your investments?

Call Citibank Services 1-888-250-3985 + "0"

Director of Public Affairs Mark Rogers 1-718-248-1092 EMAIL investorrelations@citi.com

Sandy Weill, CEO Citigroup Center 153 E. 53rd St NY, NY 10043

FOR MORE INFO, TO GET AN ORGANIZING PACKET OR TO CONNECT WITH LOCAL ACTIVISTS IN YOUR AREA CONTACT RAINFOREST ACTION NETWORK:

NY - Beka Economopoulos beka@ran.org, 917-560-3609/888-840-6416 or SF - Patrick Reinsborough organize@ran.org, 415-398-4404/800-989-RAIN

FOR MORE BACKGROUND INFO CHECK OUT www.ran.org www.innercitypress.org/citi.html www.citiaction.org

4. ACTION REPORT! Canadian forest activists disrupt Toronto-Dominion's Shareholder's Meeting

Cheers to Forest Action Network for directly confronting Canada's largest bank and building momentum to transform the global financial system!

PRESS RELEASE:

FAN Disrupts Toronto Dominion AGM- One Arrested Report Highlighting TD's involvement with corporate criminals released.

Winnipeg, April 5, 2001, 10:15 AM -- The Forest Action Network (FAN) today revealed the criminal business practices of Toronto Dominion (TD) Bank at the corporation's Annual General Meeting (AGM) in Winnipeg. FAN activists disrupted TD CEO Charles Baillie's speech and were dragged out of the meeting. Around two dozen protesters were present outside and were prevented from entering the meeting, proceeding to sticker the main TD Branch in Winnipeg. The stickers read 'Out of Order' and 'TD Kills Rainforests'. FAN's new report, TD: Banking Away Our Future was released to shareholders inside the meeting. One protester was arrested.

The protest and report are aimed at TD's involvement, through various investments, loans, transactions and consulting with the most shady corporations in the world. Murder, human rights abuses, ancient forest destruction, genetic engineering, World Bank bonds, climate change, chemicals, mining, labour abuses, wasteful consumption, exploitation - TD FUNDS IT ALL!

Examples included in TD Banking Away Our Future:

o TD is guilty of human right abuses and murder by investing in the oil multinational Shell. Shell abuses human rights and causes environmental devastation in the Niger Delta, Nigeria. More than 2,000 protesters were killed by the Nigerian military for their campaign against Shell and for clean air, land and water. Shell admitted to bankrolling the military and its operations. Meanwhile the Niger Delta remains one of the most polluted places on the planet.

o TD is guilty of the destruction of BC's Great Bear Rainforest, the largest remaining contiguous tract of temperate rainforest in the world and home to many endangered and rare species. TD Assets Management owns over $23 million of direct shares in two large logging companies, International Forest Products and West Fraser Timber, both of which. TD Bank is not only one of the largest public investors in Interfor, it is also Interfor's key financial institution. Interfor is the world's largest destroyer of ancient temperate rainforests.

o TD is guilty of funding genetic engineering by supporting corporations such as Novartis and Aventis through the TD Global Biotechnology Fund and other investments. There is growing evidence that genetic engineering poses huge risks to the ecosystems, with the potential to threaten biodiversity, wildlife and truly sustainable forms of agriculture. The risks of biotechnology are not sufficiently assessed and nobody can predict the consequences.

FAN demands that TD customers and investors take responsibility and let TD Bank know that nobody wants to do business with criminal corporations!

For a copy of the report or for updates on the event, call: Robin Greene, Winnipeg: (204) 298-1088 cell Pat Venditti, Vancouver: (604) 739-4782

------

The anarchist struggle in South America

6 Apr 2001
Chekov Feeney
Workers Solidarity No 63
v-nv-mobilize@yahoogroups.com

The South American working class have a long history of brutal repression and heroic resistance. The 1970s and 1980s were a period of intense class war which saw brutal military regimes come to power in virtually every country. Their purpose was to stave off the threat of revolution from the mass-based Marxist parties and numerous guerilla movements. The enthusiastic support of the United States government, who supplied arms, training, intelligence and financial aid, was crucial in allowing these regimes to take power and persist against the popular will.

In the 1980s these military regimes were one by one forced from power by a combination of mass protest and disastrous economic results. This allowed anarchism, which had been an extremely powerful force in South America in the early years of the 20th century, to re-emerge as a living movement. In 1986 the Uruguayan FAU was reformed, after having been crushed by the military coups of 1971 in Uruguay and 1978 in Argentina. Elsewhere although anarchist groups did emerge they were mostly affinity groups, collections of friends, mainly within the punk movement. The attempts at forming broader groupings fell apart quickly. However in the last 5 years many anarchists have started coming together to form real organisations. Militants from Marxist groups who have come to question the failed politics of the geurilleros have also formed an important part of these new movements.

In 1996 the Argentine OSL was formed and in 1999 the Chilean CUAC. The FAG in Southern Brasil has also recently emerged and in Bolivia a number of local collectives have started the process of coming together. These new anarchist groups share a common conception of the need for organisations which are capable of coherent, disciplined action based upon a collectively agreed theory.

Much of the activity of these newly formed anarchist groups has been confronting the legacy of the military regimes. Amnesty laws were passed which essentially pardoned the atrocities commited under military rule. Much of the police and military are completely unreconstructed and their culture of brutality and impunity remains strong. In Argentina anarchists have been active in the movement against police brutality, and have supported the vigil of the mothers and sons of those who disappeared during the military regime. Chilean anarchists have been involved in the popular movement for the punishment of Pinochet. Bolivian anarchists have braved repression to work against the government of Banzer, who was elected president in 1997 after having headed a brutal dictatorship from 1971 to 1978.

Another legacy of the military regimes is on the economic front. The soldiers and the tame civilian governments which succeeded them obey unquestioningly the dictates of the US based International Financial Institutions, the IMF and World Bank. They unleashed a neo-liberal hurricane across the continent. Millions of workers have been fired, denied access to basic services such as housing, health and education, and pushed to the limits of poverty.

Anarchists have been in the frontlines of the resistance to this brutal onslaught. In Uruguay the FAU has participated in mass occupations of land by the homeless, takeovers of factories to prevent closures and other campaigns of direct action. The Argentine OSL has been active in the poorest suburbs of Buenos Aires among marginalised and desperate workers, teaching literacy, and the tactics of direct action and self-organisation. Anarchists have also been active in the trade unions but, due to the mass closures, the union movement has been much weakened. Nevertheless, in Chile, the CUAC have succeeded in creating a strong and growing anarchist influence in a number of unions.

Other areas of anarchist activity include the fight for the rights of Indigenous peoples. In Chile the anarchists have played a big part in the militant campaign of the Mapuche people for their rights and in Bolivia the anarchists supported the uprising of indigenous people and peasants which shook the state in April 2000. Anarchists are once again on the march, their voices are being heard in mass social movements after many years of silence, and their message of self-organisation against capitalism is being listened to by an ever growing number of workers.

Irish Anarchist paper 'Workers Solidarity No 63'
Get this and see more articles on the web at http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/ws/2001.html

Struggles in Ireland http://struggle.ws
International Anarchism http://struggle.ws/inter.html
Zapatista Index http://struggle.ws/zapatista.html

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