------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Nuclear sub in Gibraltar set for departure
Sub Commander's Fate Soon Decided
Despite China, Okinawans Tire of U.S. Military
Fleet commander expected to decide Waddle's fate
Nuclear power is not the answer
Depleted uranium: WHO responds
Germany approves nuclear waste shipments to UK
Sure, the US has a rainy-day fund. But is it enough?
Norway's nuclear sewage used as fertiliser
Where Will Bush Set the Nuclear Trigger?
Learning What Fuel to Burn
Need for nuclear is passé
Nuclear power earns fresh look, despite past woes
Is nuclear power making a comeback in America?
'Atomic tourism', can Oak Ridge be less than conscious?
NRC to meet Dominion on missing fuel rods at Millstone
Plutonium fuel scoping meeting
Both sides see gains in DOE site ruling
Uranium plant workers can't sue their employer
Coolling towers at Xcel
UT-Battelle seeks safeguard against nuclear liability
Amendment would add DOE waste proposed West Texas dump
Changes Studied After WIPP Mixup

MILITARY
Colombia plunging into 'barbarity' - ombudsman
Colombia Rebels in Attack
Busloads of oil workers feared kidnapped
Panel requests longer jail terms
Russia to press ahead with Iran nuclear plant
Poland unveils plan to modernize aircraft to meet NATO standards
Study confirms damages by Navy in Vieques
Annan says Angola rebels still a problem
U.N. searches for possible slave ship amid mystery
Foes fight war by plundering gems, metals

OTHER
Fuel cells promise clean power for cars, tomorrow
PCB Worries Are Spreading From Hudson to Its Shores
Cattle Disease Poses Threat to Run Wild
Whitman Says She and Bush Agree on Environment
E.P.A. Backs Wetlands Rule Set by Clinton
Lead-Reporting Rules Are Upheld
PROTECTION SOUGHT FOR SAWFISH
Mexico's Water Problem
Bush upholds EPA lead-reporting rules
Foot-and-mouth 'probable' in U.S.
Interior rebuffs Jeb Bush on energy
Bush Discusses Trade Vision
Bumps in the road for Bush's trade agenda
Bush says he'll fight for trade deal
Brassieres, billboard await delegates
Calls for Verniero's Impeachment Are Unfounded
Memories of Cincinnati
15 Dead in Ohio: Cincinnati's Black and Blue
Audit shows police hit by false repairs
Revealing radar-trap location is OK
Chiefs Recommend Spy Plane Plan
China Under a Magnifying Glass
U.S. team arrives in China for spy plane talks
Bush to Tackle Delicate Issue of Resuming China Spy Flights
U.S. Weighs Surveillance Flight Options
Federal Web sites can track visitors
The Spy Who Lost Me
Fear Stifled Defense Case, Lawyer Says in Terror Trial
U.S. vows hard line on China
Malaysia 'safe´

ACTIVISTS
Peltier Statement: FTAA
Protests Stall Planned Chicago Gas Shut-Offs
MANHATTAN: ENVIRONMENTAL PROTEST IN MIDTOWN
'Brutal' attack against students in Ethiopia
Sovereign corporations & FTAA!!
Protesters storm US Air Force base
Delegates held up at border
The voice of an "anticapitalist manifesto"


-------- NUCLEAR

Nuclear sub in Gibraltar set for departure

SPAIN: April 17, 2001
Story by Chris Brown
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10517

MADRID - A British nuclear submarine controversially moored in Gibraltar for nearly a year has been repaired and is set to leave in early May, officials said yesterday.

The presence of HMS Tireless in the British colony has angered environmentalists, politicians and Spaniards living nearby.

It has been docked in Gibraltar since last May after developing a leak in the cooling system of its nuclear reactor.

The British Forces in Gibraltar said a test carried out on the cooling system yesterday had been successful.

"This test has confirmed the success of the repair work conducted...and the way is now clear for the final preparations for departure from Gibraltar," it said in a statement, adding that the submarine was expected to leave in early May.

Gibraltar, a tiny rocky peninsular off Spain's southern coast, has been a British colony for almost 300 years, but Spain claims the territory and refuses to recognise the locally elected government.

-------

Sub Commander's Fate Soon Decided

New York Times
April 17, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Submarine-Collision.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Navy Cmdr. Scott Waddle is likely to receive punishment short of a court martial for his submarine's deadly collision with a Japanese fishery training vessel off Honolulu, defense officials said Tuesday.

Adm. Thomas Fargo, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, is expected to decide Waddle's punishment shortly, the officials said. Last Friday Fargo received a report from a three-admiral Court of Inquiry which recommended against court martialing Waddle, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The officials said they believe Fargo is likely to punish Waddle under Article 15 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice in a private proceeding known as an ``admiral's mast.'' That would be a non-judicial administrative proceeding that would exclude the possibility of a prison sentence, although Fargo could force Waddle to retire at a lesser rank, dock his pay or give him a letter of reprimand, the officials said.

Rear Adm. Charles H. Griffiths Jr., who conducted a preliminary investigation into the Feb. 9 collision, told the Court of Inquiry last month that although Waddle made errors, he did not act with criminal negligence.

Waddle, who was relieved of command of the USS Greeneville immediately after the collision pending the outcome of the Navy's investigation, has said he is prepared to submit his retirement papers.

Fargo's decision is especially sensitive given strong feelings in Japan that Waddle was to blame for failing to detect the Ehime Maru before his submarine surfaced rapidly in a demonstration of emergency procedures. Navy officials have acknowledged that the demonstration was done only for the benefit of 16 civilians aboard, three of whom were seated at the sub's controls at the time of the collision.

The bodies of four students, two teachers and three crewmen from the Ehime Maru are believed to be entombed in the 190-foot ship, which lies some 2,000 feet below the surface in waters off Honolulu.

---

Despite China, Okinawans Tire of U.S. Military

New York Times
April 17, 2001
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/17/world/17OKIN.html

NAHA, Japan, April 12 - For 56 years, Okinawa, 1,000 miles southwest of Tokyo, has been a home away from home for the United States Marines, and the linchpin of American defense strategy in the Far East.

But even in a week of high-stakes military drama between the United States and China, Japan's traditional rival, few Okinawans saw any need for the overwhelming American presence here - 18,000 marines and other military personnel occupying about a fifth of the island.

In fact, the collision of a Chinese fighter jet and a Navy spy plane that began its mission at the Kadena Air Base here provided yet another in a string of incidents - from a fatal accident involving an American nuclear submarine to the felonious behavior of soldiers - that has fueled a strong sense that the Americans are a nuisance, and simply unwanted.

"Every time there is a problem with the U.S. military, whether it actually happens here or not, we feel it," said Hideharu Oyodomori, who owns a beauty salon near here.

Washington considers Okinawa well situated to provide an essential base of operations in a region where security concerns - underscored by the standoff with China - are gaining importance. It is a base that the United States shows no intention of relinquishing.

But even before the spy plane incident, other troubles had already generated mounting political pressures on the Japanese government to scale back the Marine Corps presence here and to apply stricter rules governing marine behavior.

On Jan. 9, a 21-year-old marine was arrested after he was reported to have lifted the skirt of a high- school girl and trying to take her picture. The incident occurred in the same town, Kin, where three marines raped a 12-year-old girl in 1995, an event that galvanized Okinawan opinion against the Americans.

One week after the Jan. 9 arrest, there were two arson incidents in Chatan, and a marine was later arrested in connection with those attacks.

Less than a month after that came the sinking of a Japanese fisheries research boat off Hawaii after it was hit by an American nuclear submarine, killing nine Japanese civilians.

The submarine accident had no direct link to Okinawa, but fanned the anger of politicians here. In the space of a few weeks, the Okinawan prefectural assembly and the municipal assemblies of both Kin and Chatan denounced the Americans' behavior. The regional assembly even demanded, for the first time, a reduction in the marine presence.

In the midst of all this bad news, the Marine commander for Japan, Lt. Gen. Earl Hailston, inadvertently stoked local anger when an e-mail message to his officers was leaked and published in a local newspaper. It denounced Okinawan political leaders who "falsely claim to be our friends," calling them nuts, "and a bunch of wimps."

For Gov. Keiichi Inamine, a conservative politician who has long been considered a supporter of the United States presence in Okinawa, General Hailston's remark was the last straw.

"In a way, we had been reserved about demanding a reduction of the marines and other U.S. military forces," he said in a recent meeting with Japan's foreign minister. "But we can no longer bear it."

Alternately gruff and impassioned, General Hailston, a former F- 18 pilot, said in a telephone interview that he had made a mistake, but argued that his men were being unfairly branded.

"Our incident rate and overall behavior, if ever matched, is never exceeded within the D.O.D., and certainly not in the Marine Corps," he said. "I have 17,000 active duty marines on this island. I have 20-plus thousand throughout the region. If you come into contact with them you will discover that I have 17,000 of the best ambassadors possible, and I am very proud of them."

Invoking the threat of war in Korea and alluding to everything from China's rising power to the need to protect vital sea lanes, General Hailston repeatedly pleaded the strategic importance to both Japan and the United States of the American presence here.

"The U.S. arrived in Okinawa 56 years and 14 days ago," he said. "That's an awfully long association, and with that association you come to feel part of your surroundings.

"What brought us here is the strategic location of the island. Uniquely, it offers a place where we can react to any kind of situation from humanitarian emergencies to major theater warfare."

But in numerous interviews, Okinawans often questioned the need for the marine presence, even though few people said they were in a hurry to see them leave, or even expected that they would live to see the day.

"We live in peace and are secure enough without needing the American military here," said Masatoshi Uehara, a 41-year-old butcher at Naha's sprawling central market. "We don't want to relive the mistakes of the past by becoming involved in another war."

Mr. Uehara's opinion reflects the pacifism of many native Okinawans, who remain deeply scarred by the stories of brutal fighting between American and Japanese forces in the closing days of World War II. Approximately 107,000 Okinawans died in the combat, including one-quarter of the civilian population.

Still, for many Okinawans, reservations about the American bases come down to their seeming domination of the landscape and the nuisances that creates: the thudding clatter of helicopter blades, the roar of jets taking off and landing, and the lumbering trucks that aggravate the traffic congestion here.

"I have friends in Tokyo and Yokohama, and they have bases near them too, but not the same overwhelming presence that we live with here," said Mr. Oyodomori, 37, whose beauty salon is in the small town of Chatan, a favorite shopping and drinking hangout of American troops where one can barely make out the ocean for the military surplus stores, raunchy bars, fast food joints and storefront churches.

Syoko Tomoyose, a 37-year-old homemaker, lives in a house just a few yards from the fenced-in confines of Futenma Air Base. "We moved here six years ago from Urasoe City, but with all the noise here our younger son has been having constant problems," she said. "He reacts with fright to the least little noise, and has trouble sleeping."

As if on cue, a huge green American helicopter wheeled overhead, momentarily drowning out the conversation.

American military officials say they are doing everything possible to limit such inconveniences, halting flights between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m., for example, moving artillery training off the island, and conducting small-arms firing drills only in the daytime.

Despite these efforts, there is a feeling of powerlessness among residents. "This is a small place, and Okinawans are very weak," Kinuko Tanaka, Ms. Tomoyose's neighbor, said wearily.

But if Okinawans feel powerless, they are also deeply ambivalent. Their mixed feelings about both Japan and the Americans here result from a number of factors, from the island's takeover by Tokyo, in 1879, from the relatively long relationship with the United States, which controlled the island outright from 1956 to 1972.

In a rarity for nearly monoethnic Japan, Okinawans still speak their own language, and cherish their own culture, one rendered even more distinctive by the admixture of American influences, from Spam and Blue Seal ice cream to rock 'n' roll and Americanisms in speech.

"People living near the bases feel the most opposition," said Seizaburo Miyagi, a 65-year-old survivor of the war who spoke in his small tatami factory. "Of course you will hear some people speak out against the Americans, but everyone doesn't feel that way."

---

Fleet commander expected to decide Waddle's fate

USA Today
04/17/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-04-16-waddle.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - Navy Cmdr. Scott Waddle is likely to receive punishment short of a court martial for his submarine's deadly collision with a Japanese fishery training vessel off Honolulu, defense officials said Tuesday.

Adm. Thomas Fargo, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, is expected to decide Waddle's punishment shortly, the officials said. Last Friday Fargo received a report from a three-admiral Court of Inquiry which recommended against court martialing Waddle, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The officials said they believe Fargo is likely to punish Waddle under Article 15 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice in a private proceeding known as an "admiral's mast." That would be a non-judicial administrative proceeding that would exclude the possibility of a prison sentence, although Fargo could force Waddle to retire at a lesser rank, dock his pay or give him a letter of reprimand, the officials said.

Rear Adm. Charles H. Griffiths Jr., who conducted a preliminary investigation into the Feb. 9 collision, told the Court of Inquiry last month that although Waddle made errors, he did not act with criminal negligence.

Waddle, who was relieved of command of the USS Greeneville immediately after the collision pending the outcome of the Navy's investigation, has said he is prepared to submit his retirement papers.

Fargo's decision is especially sensitive given strong feelings in Japan that Waddle was to blame for failing to detect the Ehime Maru before his submarine surfaced rapidly in a demonstration of emergency procedures. Navy officials have acknowledged that the demonstration was done only for the benefit of 16 civilians aboard, three of whom were seated at the sub's controls at the time of the collision.

The bodies of four students, two teachers and three crewmen from the Ehime Maru are believed to be entombed in the 190-foot ship, which lies some 2,000 feet below the surface in waters off Honolulu.

-------- canada

Nuclear power is not the answer

Montreal Gazette
Tuesday 17 April 2001
Letter to the Editor
http://www.montrealgazette.com/editorial/pages/010417/5022800.html

Canadians are right to recognize that the U.S. withdrawal from Kyoto has provided a golden opportunity to take the lead on climate change (Gazette, April 3, "Opportunity for Canada") and wrong to suggest the answer, as Fred Nagy argues (Letters, April 11), is "building thousands of atomic power plants."

Aside from the impracticality and expense of such a massive nuclear construction program, the proliferation dangers this would present would be unacceptable.

In order for nuclear power to make an impact on climate change, approximately two new reactors would have to be built every day for 60 years worldwide. The waste from these reactors would easily provide enough commercial plutonium to make many hundreds of crude nuclear weapons.

Thousands of uranium-enrichment plants would also be needed to provide reactor fuel, each such facility also gaining the tangential capacity to manufacture atomic bombs.

Support for a wide-scale nuclear- power program would nullify Canada's role as a leader in global peacekeeping.

New energy technologies such as solar and wind power are ready and waiting, lacking only the financial and political commitment to ensure success.

Even more simply, every Canadian (and American) can help reduce carbon-dioxide emissions today by adopting affordable energy-efficiency measures that will not only wean us from our wasteful energy habits but save us money while cleaning up our air and water.

Linda Gunter Communications Director, Safe Energy Communication Council Washington


-------- depleted uranium

Depleted uranium: WHO responds

From: "Daniel Fahey" <duweapons@hotmail.com>
Tue, 17 Apr 2001

Le Monde diplomatique
April 2001

Letter

Depleted uranium: a reply by the World Health Organisation

The article headlined "Deafening Silence on Depleted Uranium" by Robert James Parsons is misleading and often inaccurate. WHO has certainly not "cast a veil of silence over the chemical and radiological hazards of depleted uranium." On the contrary, WHO is concerned to know whether diseases in potentially exposed populations have increased. In search of answers, WHO has undertaken a number of activities-publications, meetings and missions to affected countries-the results of which are reported to the press and public regularly and transparently.

The WHO Fact Sheet on Depleted Uranium (www.who.int/inf-fs/en/fact257.html) is consistent with all major reviews recently conducted on possible health effects of exposure to depleted uranium (DU). From the beginning, the scientific review process undertaken to produce the forthcoming WHO monograph on DU addressed both the chemical and radiological toxicities of DU.

In April WHO held a joint meeting with Iraqi experts to discuss how to proceed with a field investigation. A WHO fact-finding mission on DU and health in Kosovo took place in January; its report is available at www.who.it/docs/durptmar01.pdf

The radiation protection norms used by WHO are solidly rooted in science, i.e. about fifty years of epidemiological and biological studies of the effects of ionizing radiation published by the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (2000), the United States National Academy of Sciences Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation VI Committee (1999) and by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (2000).

The 1959 Agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is a standard United Nations inter-agency agreement and does not affect the impartial and independent exercise by WHO of its statutory responsibilities, nor does it place WHO in a situation of subordination to IAEA. More information on the WHO-IAEA Agreement is available at: http://www.who.int/inf-pr-2001/en/state2001-05.html

Sincerely yours,
Gregory Hartl

Spokesperson, World Health Organization.

-------- europe

Germany approves nuclear waste shipments to UK

GERMANY: April 17, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10514

HANOVER, Germany - German authorities said last week they had approved the shipment of six cargoes of nuclear waste from a power plant in the western state of Hesse to a reprocessing plant at Sellafield in northwest England.

The announcement came days after German anti-nuclear activists clashed with police as they tried to hold up the first transport in three years of nuclear waste from Germany to a French reprocessing centre at La Hague.

Thousands of demonstrators also protested two weeks ago when Germany took back the first cargo of reprocessed waste from France since the German government banned the shipments in 1998 over concerns about radioactive leaks.

Although several of Germany's 19 nuclear power plants said their temporary storage facilities were nearly exhausted, France had refused to take in any more German waste until the country started accepting back what had already been reprocessed.

The Federal Office for Radiation Protection in the northern town of Salzgitter said its permission for the six cargoes from the Biblis plant in Hesse was valid until July 31.

The office said it had so far granted permission for 49 cargoes this year of nuclear waste to both Sellafield and La Hague.

The office said it had not yet been determined when exactly the shipments from Biblis would take place, saying that was up to the plant's managers and the transport firm.

-------- missile defense

Sure, the US has a rainy-day fund. But is it enough?
Bush's budget sets aside $1 trillion for unspecified needs - like a national missile defense - over 10 years.
Critics say it won't cover looming expenses.

Christian Science Monitor
TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2001
By Francine Kiefer (kieferf@csps.com)
Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2001/04/17/fp2s2-csm.shtml

WASHINGTON - When President Bush goes on the road to sell his tax cut, he likes to tell his "grandmother" story.

It's one he heard from a woman in Council Bluffs, Iowa, when he was touring there earlier this year. The grandmother stood up and told him that she had baked a lot of cookies in her day, and that every time she set a plate of them on the table, they quickly disappeared.

Her point - as well as his - is that money left lying around in Washington will be spent. Which is why it's not surprising that when the president hands Congress a plate with $1 trillion on it, and no particular instructions on how to spend it, lawmakers are ready to finish the portion and demand seconds.

In this case, the plate of cookies is what's known as the contingency reserve - money set aside to cover unspecified needs and emergencies over the next 10 years. It's a highly novel approach to a budgeting process that usually allocates every penny to a specific program, and it's possible only because the United States is enjoying an unusual period of budget surpluses.

The reserve, a sort of rainy-day fund, clearly serves a political purpose: helping to sell the Bush tax cut as affordable. As the president likes to point out, his budget covers the country's everyday expenses, as well as puts money aside for unanticipated ones. Even after that, he says, "there's still money left over." Tax-cut money.

But critics of the president's budget say his rainy-day reserve is more like a bailing bucket with a hole - inadequate to handle the torrent of anticipated expenses ahead.

"If you look at the claims against this reserve, they are actually much larger than the reserve itself," says Richard Kogan, a budget specialist at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington.

As outside experts go over the fine print of the budget, one week after its release, they point to a number of looming costs not covered by the contingency fund:

• A prescription-drug benefit. The White House designates $153 billion in its reserve for a limited drug benefit, called an "immediate helping hand." But the Congressional Budget Office estimates that a full drug benefit will cost at least $400 billion over 10 years. Neither Democrats nor Republicans on the Hill believe the Bush proposal is anywhere near adequate.

• Social Security. As Bush's own budget document points out, the nation's pension system is "unsustainable in the long run." To deal with that challenge, the president's budget adopts the now-conventional wisdom that money collected from Social Security payroll taxes should be spent exclusively on the retirement program - the so-called "lock box" principle. He also provides about $600 billion over 10 years for changes in the system.

But that's overshadowed by cost estimates of another Bush proposal. He advocates allowing workers to divert 2 percent of their 12.4 percent payroll tax to private retirement accounts - a move that would cost the government $1 trillion, according to some estimates.

• Defense spending. Because the president has ordered a sweeping review of the nation's military needs, the defense budget is hardly concrete. One item not budgeted for at all - neither in the reserve fund nor in the discretionary part of the budget - is a national missile-defense system, a big-ticket item high on the president's agenda. No one really knows how much it will cost, though "hundreds of billions" is the phrase most commonly used.

• Everything else - including the emergencies for which the contingency reserve was partly conceived: funds to help drought- or storm-plagued farmers, funds to help with natural disasters such as tornadoes, hurricanes, or earthquakes. It's impossible to predict exactly what such disasters could cost, but in the agricultural community alone, the federal government spent $25 billion in special assistance over the past three years.

So, can the reserve fund handle all these pressures?

"It isn't big enough," says Washington budget specialist Stan Collender flatly. "Next question?"

Not surprisingly, the White House disagrees. Office of Management and Budget Director Mitchell Daniels acknowledges that looming problems like Social Security and Medicare could easily swamp projected surpluses - the very surpluses that feed the contingency fund. But he says these costs can be tamed by reforming the programs.

The reserve fund can accommodate social spending, defense, and agriculture, "if you don't let discretionary spending run wild in the meantime," says Mr. Daniels.

And that, of course, is the challenge when you hand Congress a plate of cookies labeled "contingency fund."

• Staff writer Dante Chinni contributed to this report.

-------- norway

Norway's nuclear sewage used as fertiliser

BBC NEWS
Tuesday, 17 April, 2001,
From: aiindex@mnet.fr

Radioactive waste from a nuclear reactor in Norway has been wrongly fed into a town's sewage system for nine years, some of it ending up as farm fertiliser, officials revealed on Tuesday.

The nuclear waste from the research plant was pumped into the sewers in Halden, south-east Norway, after what amounted to a plumbing mistake.

The Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority (NRPA) said the waste water was wrongly linked to the sewage system when it should have been pumped straight into the sea.

But officials insist there has been no risk to human health - even though some of the sewage sludge was turned into fertiliser - as the nuclear material had only very low levels of radioactivity.

Ecologists are demanding radiation tests for local farmers.

"It is frightening that IFE has so little control over its emissions," said nuclear physicist Nils Boehmer of campaign group Bellona.

The mistake was made in 1991 and was not rectified until 1999.

NRPA scientist Sverre Hornkjoel said the contaminated water had been used to cool the 42-year-old reactor, operated by the Institute for Energy Technology (IFE).

He blamed the mistake on council officials, but said the nuclear industry took final responsibility.

"The municipality made the howler, but it is still IFE which is responsible," Mr Hornkjoel said. "In principle, this is a serious incident, but the emissions were very small."

The plant at Halden is part of an international project to test fuel rods, run by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

IFE spokesman Viktor Wikstroem said the cooling water had undergone tests before leaving the reactor, and was below the safety limit.

"Our annual emissions are 4,000 times lower than what you and I and everyone are exposed to each year," Mr Wikstroem said.

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

Press Luncheon: Where Will Bush Set the Nuclear Trigger?
Experts Evaluate Options for President's Nuclear Policy

US Newswire
17 Apr 10:14
http://www.usnewswire.com/topnews/Current_Releases/0417-111.html

To: Assignment Desk, Daybook Editor
Contact: Paul Fain or
Rich Hayes, 202-223-6133,
both of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

News Advisory: Current U.S. nuclear weapons policy is both obsolete and dangerous. Thousands of U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons stand ready to launch at a moment's notice. Yet a preemptive Russian "bolt from the blue" is no longer a realistic threat. A mistaken Russian launch due to a false warning of attack is a far greater threat to U.S. security.

Congress and the Bush administration both see the need for change. Congress required the new administration to conduct a full review of U.S. nuclear policy, which the White House expects to complete this summer. The review, which will determine U.S. nuclear policy, posture, and arsenal size, will have serious implications for global security. Come hear experts in the field discuss the major issues at stake, including:

-- At whom does the United States target its nuclear weapons, and why? -- What country is the biggest threat: the faltering Russian Bear, North Korea, China? -- How does national missile defense fit into future U.S. policy? -- How many nuclear weapons does the United States need and must they be on alert? -- Should future U.S.-Russian arms reductions be binding or carried out informally? -- Should U.S. nuclear weapons be used to deter chemical and biological weapon threats?

WHAT: Press briefing on U.S. nuclear policy (sandwiches and drinks will be served)

WHO: Bruce Blair, president, Center for Defense Information and former Air Force missile launch officer

Tom Collina, global security director, Union of Concerned Scientists

Steve Fetter, professor of public affairs, University of Maryland, and participant in 1994 Clinton administration nuclear posture review

WHEN: 12:30 p.m., Wednesday, April 18, 2001

WHERE: Union of Concerned Scientists 1707 H Street, N.W. -- Sixth Floor (across from the Metropolitan Club) Washington, D.C.

NOTE: This briefing is for journalists only.

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

Learning What Fuel to Burn

New York Times
April 17, 2001
By BURTON RICHTER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/17/opinion/17RICH.html

STANFORD, Calif. - Like nearly all scientists, I believe that global warming is the most serious environmental threat on the horizon for our grandchildren, and that carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning is a major contributor to it. Yet I agree with President Bush that we must go slow on regulating carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. That is why we have to fall back on research on alternative energy sources and on energy conservation - the two approaches that will help us achieve some reductions in carbon dioxide emissions in the near term. But Mr. Bush's proposed budget cuts for research and conservation move in precisely the wrong direction.

It is clear that the earth's temperatures are rising, and world energy use is projected to double in the next 50 years, making the problem much worse. But something else is also evident: We are simply not ready to regulate carbon dioxide from power plants - the leading source of industrial carbon dioxide emissions. There is no technology to do it with our present mix of fuels, despite the fervent wish of many environmentalists. What we need instead is a long-term strategy to reduce the use of carbon-based fuels.

Only nuclear power generation, which does not emit carbon dioxide, is available now as a large-scale alternative. Hydropower and wind and geothermal energy are clean but naturally limited. Biomass energy from growing and burning plants emits no net carbon dioxide (carbon in the plant comes from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere), but will be limited by the availability of water for growing crops. Solar energy is useful at the moment only for small- scale applications because no practical system yet exists for storing it for use at night or in bad weather. Natural gas, more efficient at producing energy than coal, is currently in short supply.

Given these existing constraints, government should support research and development of new ways of producing and using energy - more efficient power sources for transportation, like fuel cells, for example; carbon-free energy sources, like more advanced nuclear power plants and effective solar power systems; underground gasification of coal. We should also be promoting efficiency regulations on things that use energy - for example, air conditioners. The Bush administration's decision to reduce air conditioner efficiency goals last week was a senseless reversal.

The president has also promised a long-term energy strategy, and it is in the long term that the government can make a greater difference. The fundamental, harder job is to tilt the economic playing field in our market economy to make carbon-free energy more attractive to both producers and consumers. The genius of the market system lies in its ability to mobilize the best of our industrial capacity to pursue new approaches in the hope of economic gain.

A sensible way to tilt the field is with a carbon tax that would decrease the profits of users of carbon- based fuels and increase them for users of alternatives. An added excise tax on vehicles based on their fuel efficiency would also help achieve this goal. In fact, expanded economic incentives, like tax breaks, for the deployment of more efficient systems of all types would help us move faster toward curbing our dependence on carbon- based fuels.

Some say such policies would damage our economy. I doubt it. Some businesses would be hurt, but when the automobile replaced the horse, livery stables, blacksmiths and buggy manufacturers were hurt while the economy boomed. But in a democracy like ours, it is hard to do anything that goes against vested interests until a crisis is upon us.

The scientific community knows the global warming crisis is here, and the longer we wait the harder it becomes to fix the problem. The effects will be felt more strongly by our grandchildren than by us, and they are too young to do anything about it. It will require effective political leadership to get us moving in the right direction. Mr. Bush's cuts for both conservation and research on carbon-free energy are not a good sign. The government needs to reverse course before more crucial time is lost.

Burton Richter, director emeritus of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1976.

---

Need for nuclear is passé

USA Today
04/17/2001 - Updated 03:09 AM ET
By Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins
http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/2001-04-17-ncoppf.htm

The nuclear industry wants to resuscitate its product. Sorry - it already died of an incurable attack of market forces.

Overwhelmed by huge construction and repair costs, the industry achieved less than 1/10th the capacity and 1/100th the new orders that proponents predicted, the greatest disappointment in industrial history. Only centrally planned energy systems (Russia, Taiwan, the Koreas, Japan) still propose nuclear plants.

"If a thing is not worth doing," said economist John Maynard Keynes, "it is not worth doing well." Even ignoring risks - proliferation, waste storage and disposal, and uninsurable accidents - nuclear power is uncompetitive and unnecessary.

After a trillion-dollar taxpayer investment, the energy delivered to consumers by nuclear power is little more than that delivered by wood and waste. Globally, nuclear power produces less energy than renewables. In the 1990s, its capacity rose by 1% a year vs. 17% for solar cells and 24% for wind power.

Enthusiasts claim hypothetical new reactors might deliver a kilowatt-hour of electricity for 6 cents vs. 10-plus cents for post-1980 plants. (Nearly 3 cents pays for delivery to customers.) But super-efficient gas plants or wind farms cost 5 cents to 6 cents; co-generation of heat and power often 1 cent to 5 cents. The cost of saving a kilowatt-hour through efficient lights, motors and other electricity-saving devices is under 2 cents. They're all getting cheaper. So are the next winners: fuel cells and solar cells - where a pound of silicon can produce more electricity than a pound of nuclear fuel.

Efficient use is the nation's largest and fastest-growing energy source: bigger than oil, growing 3.1% a year. Just electricity efficiency can save four times' nuclear power's output, at one-sixth its operating cost.

Those faster, cheaper, safer options emit little or no pollution, and most are climate-safe. But replacing power from coal-fired plants with nuclear power, as usually proposed, is the least-effective solution to global warming. Why? Suppose delivering a new nuclear kilowatt-hour cost 6 cents, while saving a kilowatt-hour through efficient use cost 3 cents (both assumptions favorable to the nuclear power industry). Then the 6 cents spent on the nuclear kilowatt-hour could instead have saved two kilowatt-hours through efficiency investments. That's a two-for-one savings.

Nuclear salesmen scour the world for a single order; makers of alternatives enjoy brisk business. Let's profit from their experience. Taking markets seriously, not propping up failed technologies at public expense, offers a stable climate, a prosperous economy and a cleaner and more peaceful world.

Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins are co-CEOs of the Rocky Mountain Institute.

---

Nuclear power earns fresh look, despite past woes

USA Today
04/17/2001 - Updated 03:08 AM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/2001-04-17-nceditf.htm

On the surface, nuclear power has had a bad couple of decades. The last permit for a new power plant was issued in 1979. The last new plant went online in 1996. Because of attrition, the number of reactors in service has fallen almost 10% in the past decade.

Yet despite that, the amount of energy generated by those plants has been increasing quietly to almost 20% of the nation's total supply today, from 11% in 1979, with hardly a peep about health or safety problems. So despite some raised eyebrows, the Bush administration is on the right track in reviving nuclear as a potential energy source.

Vice President Cheney, who is fashioning an energy policy due next month, is already championing a return to nuclear power. While several questions would need answers first, the current energy crunch proves the nation needs more power. Why not give nuclear a new hearing?

The debate has been largely foreclosed since 1979, when a reactor at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island leaked radioactive steam into the atmosphere. And it was hammered shut after the 1986 meltdown at the Soviet Union's crude Chernobyl reactor, an event that killed 40 and exposed hundreds of thousands more to harmful radiation levels.

For all of that, with shortages causing energy prices to spike, the United States cannot afford to reject any potential source of safe, clean, affordable power. And although the nuclear industry still has much to prove and much to live down, it also has made considerable progress toward resolving at least a few of its worst first-generation problems.

Among them was the lack of uniformity among power-plant designs. Unlike France, Canada and other nations, the United States imposed few limits on reactor design. This allowed American utilities to custom-build their plants, with calamitous results.

Because each plant was different, operators were unable to share the cost of training personnel or of developing expensive modifications. Federal regulators meanwhile were swamped by the variety. Costs skyrocketed, and amid constant stories about construction flaws, unreliable federal oversight and inadequate safety design, public confidence plummeted.

The learning curve has been steep and punishing: 22 plants closed since 1971; plans for 124 others canceled. Through the 1970s and 1980s, the industry rarely ran above 60% of capacity, and investors, taxpayers and ratepayers shelled out billions for partially built plants that were abandoned, and finished plants that never went online.

Today, though, remaining plants are running at almost 90% capacity and producing energy at just over half the cost of natural gas, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry lobby. And they do so while producing virtually none of the gases that cause climate change. This makes them, like alternative energy sources such as the sun and wind, an attractive alternative to plants that burn dirty, costly fossil fuels.

The industry has had less success with its other major millstone: waste disposal. Nuclear plants have generated about 35,000 tons of radioactive waste, most of it stored at the plants in special pools or canisters. But the plants are running out of room, and even if approval is granted this year, a permanent storage facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada won't open for a decade or more while construction and permitting are completed. Still to be resolved are questions about the transportation of waste, Yucca's capacity and what to do in the interim.

Anxiety over storing spent fuel (which can remain radioactive for tens of thousands of years), combined with lingering fears of a catastrophic accident, continues to inspire strong resistance to nuclear plants. Even in California, where energy prices are jumping 50%, a recent Los Angeles Times poll found opposition to more nuclear power plants running almost 2 to 1.

In response, the industry points out that other industries are even more dangerous. No one has ever died as a result of an accident at an American nuclear power plant. But 54,000 have died in civil-aviation plane crashes. Whether such comparisons are fair or not, the fact remains that since 1979, the industry has had an admirable, even enviable, safety record.

Ultimately, of course, the marketplace will decide when nuclear energy returns to favor. And it doesn't seem that will be any time soon. Construction costs are still far too high; it's cheaper and faster to build natural-gas plants. Any Bush plan will also need to fully address the waste issue. That's essential to any expansion of capacity. Still, the nation's energy demands invariably require a mix of energy sources, and there's no compelling reason nuclear shouldn't be a candidate.

------

Is nuclear power making a comeback in America?

USA Today
04/17/2001 - Updated 07:23 PM ET
By John Omicinski, Gannett News Service
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-04-17-nukepower.htm

WASHINGTON - Condemned by greens and badly burned by the near-meltdown at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island plant in 1979, nuclear power has been politically incorrect - a no-no for decades, although it continues to provide 20% of the nation's electricity.

But nuclear power's status as orphan child in the U.S. power family may be about to change.

As Californians prepare to swelter in the dark this summer because they lack power plants that should have been built years ago, other regions worry the ailment may be catching.

With national power demand likely to grow by 25% in the next decade, even groups as liberal as the Council on Foreign Relations suggest new nuclear power plants may be necessary to beef up the U.S. power grid.

"The impact of reactor accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl (Ukraine 1986) may well be fading," says the CFR's Strategic Energy Policy, done in conjunction with the James A. Baker III Public Policy Institute at Rice University.

Total U.S. energy independence is unrealistic, says the report, and nuclear power would have the salutary side effect of countering OPEC's oil tyranny and reducing greenhouse gases.

Former Secretary of State Baker's connection with the study lends credence to widespread reports that Vice President Dick Cheney's energy panel will call for building many new nuclear plants. Cheney's energy policy study is likely to be released within a month.

Though he has made millions on oil, Cheney is an unabashed fan of nuclear power.

"I think it's one of the ways to deal with the whole question of global warming," Cheney said this month on NBC's "Meet the Press." About 65 power plants a year will have to built to match demand for power, Cheney said, "and some of those ought to be nuclear."

But Americans are split on using nuclear energy for power generation.

In a poll done March 5-7 by Gallup, 46% favored nuclear energy, 48% opposed. The same poll seven years ago saw 57% back nuclear power.

There are anomalies in the picture, however.

Vermont, considered a warren of rabid environmentalists, gets 86% of its electricity from nuclear plants, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute. The next biggest nuclear users are South Carolina, at 56.7%; and New Hampshire, 52.2%.

The fiery Three Mile Island and Chernobyl accidents still have a strong hold on public perceptions, said Kathleen B. deBettencourt, director of the Environmental Literacy Council, so nuclear power still faces high hurdles.

"But with every rolling blackout, whether in California or New York, nuclear power will look more attractive," she said. High natural gas prices also will improve nuclear power's profile.

Enthusiasm for a revival of nuclear power is far from unanimous, however.

"Expanding nuclear capacity and exploiting domestic sources' oil and gas will not succeed in the long run," said former Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II, president of Citizens Energy Corp., in a dissent from the panel's report.

Politically, the question now may be "Who leads the 'Al Gore Greens?' "

Will the anti-utility movie "Erin Brockovich" spill over into real life the way Jane Fonda's "The China Syndrome" did? The latter, a story of an out-of-control meltdown, had a powerful effect on the nuclear debate, even though the core-seal worked well and no radioactivity was released in the Three Mile Island accident. As a result of anti-nuclear publicity and politicians' fear of discussing it, no nuclear power plant has been ordered since 1978.

That's a long time, and clear evidence of the psychological and financial damage that Three Mile Island and Chernobyl did to an energy movement that after World War II promised Americans clean, cheap energy in abundance - forever.

Engineering classes overflowed with students ready to get in on the ground floor of the Atomic Age.

But now, said the council's report, a "precipitous drop" in nuclear engineering students and program curtailments and shutdowns at some colleges and universities may retard any nuclear power comeback.

Some 103 nuclear power plants operate in the United States. And while energy analysts paid little attention - worrying more about the rising price of oil and natural gas - nuclear power has become more efficient, replacing about 11% of oil's place in the power spectrum.

The nuclear industry reports that, in 1999, it reached a milestone in power pricing when its costs dropped to 1.83 cents per kilowatt-hour, lower than coal's 2.07 cents and oil's 3.18 cents.

-------

'Atomic tourism' After New York Times report, can Oak Ridge be less than conscious?

Oak Ridger
Tuesday, April 17, 2001
Richard D. Smyser
http://www.oakridger.com/stories/041701/opE_0417010034.html

Proud "muddy boot" veterans of Oak Ridge's earliest years who have resented and protested suggestions that our town should consciously soft-pedal its nuclear history;

The still relatively new Oak Ridge Heritage and Preservation Association which in recent months has been raising local consciousness to the value of saving what remain of some of the more significant original community structures, like what once was the Wildcat Den at the Turnpike and Robertsville Road and the Alexander Motor Inn (originally Guest House);

Officials of the American Museum of Science and Energy who, despite the excising of "Atomic Energy" from the museum's name years ago, have continued to emphasize local nuclear history in museum exhibits-- both nuclear plants and the town;

Selma Shapiro who has also been a stalwart for saving our past at her unique Children's Museum in its own historic building -- the former Highland View Elementary School -- up off West Outer Drive;

Joe Valentino, who though relatively new as director of the city's Convention and Visitors Bureau has enthusiastically sensed the tourism possibilities in Oak Ridge's rightful designation as one of the prime locations of what has now been hailed as the greatest event of the 20th century -- the coming of the nuclear age;

And The Oak Ridger in numerous news articles and editorials (and, modestly, columns) too:

All of the above take a bow. You have been ahead of your time, if that can properly be said of those who have been prescient in recognizing the contemporary value in what happened here now getting close to 60 years ago.

Timely and prestigious Exhibit A of this foresight: The front page of the Saturday, April 7, New York Times which features an article headlined "Preserving the Birthplaces of the Atom Bomb" and written by Patricia Leigh Brown.

Times writer Brown details the growing efforts, led significantly by federal government officials themselves, to assure that the sites where the World War II urgent Manhattan Project happened are not just saved but as nearly as possible made available for public visits, granted that some are still dangerously contaminated. She quotes Dr. F.G. Gosling, the Department of Energy's chief historian: "The department realized that if no one stepped in, we would essentially eliminate the physical property of the Manhattan Project."

The Times article also quotes Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "The Making of the Atomic Bomb": "Many people think that the Manhattan Project was 30 people building a bomb at Los Alamos, but it was 150,000 -- an effort comparable at the time to the race to the moon. It's our past. Not to preserve it is to censor it."

At very least half of Rhodes' "150,000" were here in Oak Ridge, the community's population peaking at 75,000 at the height of plant and community construction here in 1944 and 1945.

Much emphasis in the Times article is on preserving the B reactor at the Hanford site in Washington. This is the reactor that produced the plutonium for the Nagasaki bomb, the second to be dropped on Japan (Aug. 9, 1945), the double blow just three days apart ending World War II. The Times also mentions the proposal to designate "a fragment of the building in Oak Ridge that provided uranium isotopes for the Hiroshima bomb (Aug. 6, 1945)."

This would be near the East Portal to the Y-12 Plant area where, through the electromagnetic process, E.O. Lawrence's powerful calutrons produced that crucial U-235 in the early months of 1945.

The B reactor at Hanford would never have existed, of course, but for what likely is the pioneer nuclear historic preservation site -- the Graphite Reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory which, talk about being ahead of its time, has been open to visitors as a National Historic Landmark for 30-plus years.

This was the pilot project which, after completion in less than a year, went critical in November 1943 and signaled the feasibility of proceeding with the reactors at Hanford.

The Times article says Keith A. Klein, manager of DOE's Richland office, estimates $10 million beyond the current cleanup costs at Hanford to make the B reactor "museum ready."

And while U.S Sen. Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, is a proponent ("I don't want the country to forget what it took to win a war and what this community gave up to win it"), U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, Democrat of neighboring Oregon, told the Times, "I don't see how you can justify spending federal funds to preserve a facility at Hanford and elsewhere where close communities are still at risk."

As discussed at a meeting of the Oak Ridge Reservation Local Oversight Committee just last week, also proposed by DOE for preservation is the so-called "Roosevelt Platform" at K-25 (Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant) from which President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was to view K-25 on a visit never made because FDR died in April 1945, just four months before Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Here also opposition has arisen. The Times quotes Ralph Hutchinson of the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance. Because of hazardous wastes there, Hutchinson says, a wiser commemoration "would be a green field and a marker."

Hutchinson's negative view to the contrary, the most currently locally significant aspect of Brown's Times report is her reference to the "growing interest in atomic tourism." On the Web, she writes, is atomictourist.com which "directs atom age buffs" to historic nuclear sites. And this summer, she reports, "the Smithsonian Institution is offering a tour of Manhattan Project landmarks in New Mexico."

Further, Brown writes, "The most compelling landmarks may be the Manhattan Project towns themselves. Like Richland (Wash.) and Los Alamos, Oak Ridge was once a top secret creation of the government omitted from maps until 1949. Today visitors can take 'atomic train' trips that start at the old guard station and offer scenic views of the K-25 Gaseous Diffu sion Building, an engineering marvel that spans over 44 acres."

The effort to save the B reactor at Hanford, Brown notes, has been spearheaded by the B Reactor Museum Association, many of whose members worked at Hanford.

Numerous former K-25, Y-12 and ORNL workers, of course, volunteer at Valentino's Oak Ridge Convention and Visitors Bureau's Visitors Center and at the American Museum of Science and Energy too. Friends of Oak Ridge National Laboratory has for several years now been providing guides for the museum's bus tours of the Y-12, ORNL and K-25 areas.

But in the name of "atomic tourism," might these volunteer numbers swell?

And sometime in the not too distant future -- and thanks significantly to earlier efforts and urgings of the local "atomic tourism" pioneers mentioned above -- might the Smithsonian Institution also be sponsoring tours of "Manhattan Project Landmarks in Tennessee"? -- RDS

Richard D. Smyser is founding editor of The Oak Ridger. You can reach him by e-mail at rdsandmps@aol.com

-------- connecticut

NRC to meet Dominion on missing fuel rods at Millstone

Excite News
April 17, 2001
Reuters
http://news.excite.com/news/r/010417/09/utilities-nrc-millstone

NEW YORK, April 17 - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said it will meet with Dominion (D) on April 23 to discuss the search for two spent nuclear fuel rods apparently missing at the Millstone 1 nuclear power plant in Waterford, Conn.

Dominion of Richmond, Va., recently took over ownership of the Millstone facility from Northeast Utilities (NU) of Berlin, Conn.

Late last year, Northeast Utilities reported that a review of records revealed two spent fuel rods, previously believed to have been stored in the spent fuel pool at the permanently shutdown Millstone 1 plant, could not be located.

Nuclear power plants use slender metal rods filled with enriched uranium pellets in the reactor to generate heat, which creates steam used to produce power. There are thousands of these rods in use in the reactor when it is in operation.

Upon its use in the reactor, the fuel is considered highly radioactive. Once removed from the reactor, it is placed in the spent fuel pool for storage.

In the case of Millstone 1, the apparently missing rods are about a half-inch in diameter and 158 inches long.

Northeast Utilities launched a search for the fuel rods, including visual inspections of storage racks in the circulating-water spent fuel pool using remote-controled cameras, personnel interviews and a further review of records. The company also formed an independent review team to augment its investigation.

But so far the company has not been able to find the rods, NRC said in a statement issued late Monday.

When Northeast Utilities announced the rods were missing, several environmental and community groups, which have opposed nuclear power and Millstone in particular, used the loss as another example of why the station should be permanently shut.

Northeast Utilities has a long history of nuclear problems that began in the mid-1990s when Millstone 1 was shut in 1995.

By 1996, regulators had closed all of Northeast Utilities nuclear reactors (Maine Yankee and Millstone units 2 and 3) except Seabrook in New Hampshire because of safety concerns.

Finally, after absorbing about $1 billion in power replacement costs associated with the Millstone shutdown and a record-setting $2.1 million fine, Northeast Utilities was allowed to restart Millstone units 2 and 3 in 1998 and 1999.

In an effort to spur competition, Northeast Utilities was required to sell its stake in all of its generating facilities, including the nuclear reactors, as part of the deregulation of the electricity industry in New England.

Dominion, which helped Northeast Utilities restart Millstone units 2 and 3, bought the entire complex for $1.28 billion earlier this month.

In addition to Millstone, Dominion also operates the North Anna and Surry nuclear stations in Virginia.

Scott DiSavino, New York Power Desk, +212-859-1622, fax +212-859-1758, e-mail scott.disavino+reuters.com

-------- georgia

Plutonium fuel scoping meeting

Savannah Morning News
Tuesday, April 17, 2001
Community calendar
http://www.savannahmorningnews.com/smn/stories/041701/LOCcalendar.shtml

April 18

Will be held from 7-10 p.m. at the Coastal Georgia Center, 305 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. Meeting is required by law to gather input on the scope of what should be considered in an environmental impact statement on transporting and using plutonium as fuel in commercial nuclear reactors and making this fuel at a facility on the Savannah River. Call: (912) 201-0354.

-------- kentucky
Both sides see gains in DOE site ruling
A federal judge said workers' compensation laws usually immunize employers from negligence claims. But there are other aspects.

The Paducah Sun
Tuesday, April 17, 2001
By Joe Walker jwalker@paducahsun.com--270.575.8650
http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/news2001/nn11150.htm

Paducah, Kentucky - Lawyers disagree on the significance of a federal judge's ruling barring current and former Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant workers from suing their employers for job exposure to radiation and toxins.

Lead defense lawyer Bob Tait of Columbus, Ohio, called the decision a big victory for former plant contractors Union Carbide and Martin Marietta (later Lockheed Martin), while plaintiffs' attorney Bill McMurry of Louisville described it as a setback that shouldn't change the ultimate outcome of the case.

On March 30, U.S. District Judge Joseph McKinley Jr. threw out the claims because state workers' compensation laws generally immunize primary employers from negligence arising from regular business. Although one notable exception is a deliberate intent to hurt workers, there was no basis for that claim in the Paducah case, the judge wrote.

"The allegations ... even if true, are insufficient to invoke the exception," the ruling said.

Tait, who represents the contractors in several similar suits in Paducah, said defense attorneys will seek to apply McKinley's ruling in those cases.

"It's a very significant development to the extent that it establishes, as a matter of law, that these former employees can't sue their employers," Tait said. "In a nutshell, what that means is that anyone who worked for both Union Carbide and Martin Marietta is essentially no longer a plaintiff in the case as it deals with that particular defendant."

Tait said the decision does not apply to a whistle-blower lawsuit because it claims an entirely different premise. That suit, which touched off a Washington Post expose and Justice Department investigation, alleges plant contractors conspired to defraud the federal government by obtaining huge performance fees while covering up worker and public exposure.

In his ruling, McKinley denied other defense motions to dismiss claims, including one that time had run out. Those victories give the plaintiffs confidence to still win the case, McMurry said.

"The most significant result, in our opinion, is the court's refusal to grant the defendants' motion to dismiss based on the statute of limitations ...," he said. "Obviously, that (workers' compensation law ruling) is disappointing, but at the same time, we firmly believe that Union Carbide (and other contractors) will ultimately be held accountable for their misconduct, whether or not it's their own employees who are compensated."

The negligence suit, filed in Paducah in 1999 a few months after the whistle-blower action, seeks $10 billion on behalf of current and former workers at the plant, which enriches uranium for use in nuclear fuel. McMurry said the recent ruling does not bar claims against Union Carbide by Martin Marietta employees who never worked for Union Carbide. Carbide was the contractor at the plant from its opening in 1952 until 1984, when Martin Marietta took over.

Tait agreed, but said there is only one defendant left in the action who worked for Martin Marietta and not Carbide.

The ruling also does not hinder claims against General Electric, DuPont and other firms for allegedly supplying highly radioactive feed material to the plant, or claims by workers' families against any of the defendants for "having been exposed to their material in their homes," McMurry said.

Workers' compensation laws generally immunize employers because injured or sick workers are entitled to benefits from employers or their insurance companies, Tait said.

Some cases, such as the late Joe Harding, who claimed he was poisoned by the plant, have resulted in paltry workers' compensation benefits. Plaintiffs' attorneys in similar suits have said that protecting employers against negligence claims is unfair because workers' compensation is generally inadequate.

---

Uranium plant workers can't sue their employer, judge says But ruling allows claims against other companies

Courier & Journal
Tuesday, April 17, 2001
By James Malone, The Courier-Journal
http://www.courier-journal.com/localnews/2001/04/17/ke041701s13097.htm

PADUCAH, Ky. -- A federal judge has ruled that Kentucky's workers' compensation law bars uranium plant workers from suing their own employer under a $10 billion lawsuit against two former plant operators.

But U.S. District Judge Joseph McKinley, in a 38-page ruling on the suit, denied motions to dismiss it, clearing the way for some present and former Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant workers and their families to proceed against companies other than their employer that were involved in the plant's nuclear fuel work.

''It is a big step,'' William McMurry, a Louisville lawyer who helped file the class-action case in 1999, said yesterday. ''We're delighted.''

Workers have brought claims against the Paducah plant's two former operators, Union Carbide and Martin Marietta -- later Lockheed Martin -- and against a number of outside contractors, including General Electric and E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., that shipped material to the Paducah plant.

The lawsuit alleged that workers were unknowingly exposed to radiation and ''assaulted'' by radioactive material brought to the plant as part of an ill-fated program to revitalize spent fuel taken from nuclear weapons reactors.

Under McKinley's ruling earlier this month, employees of Lockheed Martin, which operated the Paducah plant from 1984 to 1999, can pursue claims against Union Carbide, which operated the plant from 1952 to 1984, for dangerous or hazardous substances that were Union Carbide's responsibility. The plant now is operated by U.S. Enrichment Corp.

But the ruling appears to close the door on the claims of workers who were employed by both companies, or those who worked for Union Carbide and left before Lockheed Martin took over. However, McMurry said they may still have claims against outside firms that manufactured, processed or shipped reprocessed radioactive fuel to Paducah.

Lockheed Martin spokesman Hugh Burns said he had not seen the ruling and did not have a comment on it. A Union Carbide spokesman could not be reached.

Government reports have acknowledged the spent fuel sent to Paducah contained highly radioactive traces of plutonium and neptunium that escaped or leaked into the environment during the process to clean and replenish the fuel.

The plutonium and neptunium collected in workplace dust and debris and possibly was tracked home on workers' clothing, exposing family members.

Plant contractors knew about the dangers and concealed it from workers, the suit alleged. But McKinley ruled that absent evidence such concealment was deliberate, the workers' argument was insufficient to allow their claims to proceed.

McMurry said it's unclear how many workers might be affected by the ruling, but he conceded the number of claims would be reduced.

In another part of his ruling, McKinley overruled defense arguments that a one-year statute of limitations barred claims. The defendants said they told workers about the radiation dangers in the early 1990s, but the workers disputed that.

McKinley said the primary issue in the case ''is the extent of the parties' respective knowledge of the exposure -- and those facts are very much in dispute here.''

-------- minnesota

Coolling towers at Xcel Energy's Prairie Island Nuclear Plant in Red Wing, Minn., are surrounded by the flood waters of the Mississippi River
The river expected to crest Wednesday.

Tuesday, April 17, 2001.
(AP Photo/Jim Mone)
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/p/ap/20010417/us/midwest_floods_mp103.html
-------- tennessee

UT-Battelle seeks safeguard against nuclear liability

Oak Ridger
Tuesday, April 17, 2001
http://www.oakridger.com/stories/041701/new_0417010015.html

CHATTANOOGA -- The University of Tennessee and its partner in the Oak Ridge National Laboratory want some help from Congress in protecting their assets if fined for violating nuclear safety regulations.

The university and Battelle Memorial Institute, both nonprofit institutions, have run the laboratory in a partnership since last April and would be liable for any fines levied by the Department of Energy.

Currently, seven nonprofit groups are exempted from such fines by law. A UT-Battelle spokesman earlier this year had indicated that the nonprofit company was included in that exemption. However, the spokesman said today that is not the case, and extension of the exemption status to include UT-Battelle is being sought. Battelle and UT are lobbying to be included in that legislation.

Meanwhile, Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, is trying to remove those exemptions, but his proposed amendment would cap their liability for fines.

Alan Parker, UT's deputy general counsel, said the argument for a cap is simple. Not-for-profits make less money than for-profits, he said.

"Primarily, I think the argument is you don't want to subject the assets of Battelle and the University of Tennessee to potentially very large civil penalties," Battelle associate general counsel Guy Cunningham said.

Lawmakers have talked about limiting the size of fines for nonprofits to the incentive fees they are paid above the costs of running the laboratories. The General Accounting Office argues that nonprofit groups should not be exempt because they get incentive fees.

UT-Battelle receives $7 million for running ORNL.

-------- us nuc waste

Amendment would add DOE waste to that allowed in proposed West Texas dump

Apr. 17, 2001 at 22:51 CDT
By The Associated Press
http://www.star-telegram.com/news/doc/1047/1:STATE34/1:STATE340417101.html

AUSTIN -- An amendment approved Tuesday in the Senate Natural Resources Committee would allow the U.S. Department of Energy to ship low-level radioactive waste to a proposed dump in West Texas.

Sen. Teel Bivins, R-Amarillo, pushed through the amendment to a proposal by Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, that would set up a dump in agreement with a compact involving Texas, Maine and Vermont.

"The reality of this issue is that a compact waste site is not economically viable on its own," Bivins said, explaining why his amendment added the federal agency. "You've got to have a greater waste stream."

Bivins' amendment calls for the federal site to be separate, at least a quarter-mile, from the compact site.

"The responsible thing to do is have a compact site," Duncan said. "Members will have to make a decision whether we actually need this federal waste to make the compact work. I believe we don't. There are those who believe we do."

"We entered the compact many years ago for the purpose of limiting" the amount of waste, Duncan said. He said the amendment "opens the door to not limiting it."

Bivins said his proposal allows the importation of low-level radioactive waste. Duncan said the amendment would allow hazardous waste and low-level radioactive waste.

Bivins' amendment specifies that the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission would decide on limits for the federal waste, taking into consideration such factors as risk to humans and the environment.

Bivins said the risk from the federal waste could be no greater than the risk from the compact waste.

"The problem is that compact waste in many cases is very compact and pretty highly radioactive," Bivins said. He said "a great majority of the DOE waste is dirt that is very low in radioactivity."

"My goal has been simply to provide a compact waste site because that takes care of all of our problems in Texas and it honors our commitment to Maine and Vermont," Duncan said.

Duncan said he had made it clear to Bivins' office that he was concerned the amendment could interfere with getting the compact approved this year.

Bivins said the issue isn't new. "This has been around for two sessions."

The comittee passed Duncan's bill 4-0 and Bivins' amendment 3-1, with Duncan casting the only no vote.

The bill's next move would be to the full Senate.

--------

Changes Studied After WIPP Mixup

Albuquerque Journal
Tuesday, April 17, 2001
The Associated Press
http://www.abqjournal.com/news/307523news04-17-01.htm

CARLSBAD - The U.S. Department of Energy is looking at how shipments to a federal nuclear waste repository near Carlsbad are inspected after a misidentified waste container arrived at the dump.

The container was one of 14 inside three large shipping casks sent from the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory on March 24 to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.

The container held graphite debris, which is allowed to be stored at WIPP. Repository officials, however, expected it to carry materials from a light-metals waste stream.

Kerry Watson, assistant manager of the DOE's Carlsbad field office, said Friday that the container would remain at WIPP because its contents already had been identified and the proper information on it could be obtained.

Watson said the current state permit that covers such hazardous waste might have to be changed but that no request for modification would be done until further evaluation.

The error occurred in Idaho, where workers did not catch a one-number difference in container identification numbers, Watson said.

"The checks that are required to be done (at WIPP) were done," he said. Regulatory authorities were notified and the Idaho lab filed paperwork necessary to begin assessing the mixup, he said.

WIPP, which opened in March 1999, stores materials contaminated from contact with plutonium during defense research, such as laboratory gloves, protective clothing, residues and equipment from nuclear labs. The waste is stored 2,150 feet underground in rooms excavated in ancient salt formations east of Carlsbad.


-------- MILITARY

-------- colombia

Colombia plunging into 'barbarity' - ombudsman

04/17/2001
By Amira Abultaif
Reuters
http://www.abcnews.go.com/wire/World/reuters20010417_3874.html

BOGOTA, Colombia, April 17 (Reuters) - Colombia's government-appointed ombudsman accused far-right militias on Tuesday of plunging the country into "barbarism" after gunmen slaughtered 40 peasants during an Easter raid, torturing some and slicing one woman open with a chain saw.

In one of the worst massacres of civilians this year in Colombia's long-running war, gunmen of the outlawed Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, known here as the AUC, stormed the remote town of Naya in southern Cauca Province and killed the civilians because they suspected them of aiding leftist rebels.

Ombudsman Eduardo Cifuentes, speaking to reporters after visiting the town some 240 miles (400 km) southwest of Bogota, described a horrifying scene of mutilated bodies. He told of a 17-year-old girl whose arms had been chopped off.

"One woman had her abdomen ripped open with a chain saw," said Cifuentes, whose role is to monitor human rights issues. "We have returned to the most barbaric era. ... Some of the bodies showed signs of torture and some had their throats sliced."

"These signs show us the absolute degradation of the conflict and the depth of tragedy suffered by part of the Colombian people,"

Families who fled the village on foot and on mule spoke of neighbors who had been tortured and killed.

TWO MILLION DISPLACED PEOPLE

Colombia is locked in a 37-year-old war pitting Marxist guerrillas against the army and the AUC. About 40,000 people -- mostly civilians -- have been killed in fighting in the past 10 years alone. Two million others have been forced to flee their homes.

The Naya massacre also drew condemnation from the state security forces, which human rights groups charge have links to the 8,000-member AUC. The groups charge the military has allowed the AUC to wage a dirty war against the rebels.

"I think, and pardon my language, that these people have orgasms when they kill," Army Gen. Francisco Rene Pedraza told El Espectador daily.

In a separate massacre, hundreds of FARC rebels on Easter Sunday stormed the village of La Caucana in northwestern Antioquia province and killed 28 people after accusing them of collaborating with the AUC, local authorities.

The 17,000-member Marxist-inspired FARC, which stands for Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, is the hemisphere's largest rebel force.

In Geneva, United Nations human rights chief Mary Robinson on Tuesday condemned the rising number of massacres by both rebels and the AUC against civilians and called on the government to tackle "alarming" links between paramilitary groups and members of the state security forces.

----

Colombia Rebels in Attack

New York Times
April 17, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/17/world/17COLO.html

BOGOTÁ, Colombia, April 16 - Hundreds of leftist guerrillas stormed a village controlled by far-right militias on Sunday in an attack that left nine people dead and four others wounded, the authorities said today.

Houses and cars were burned in the raid at the village, La Caucana, in Antioquia Province. The government attributed the raid to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

Col. Jairo Ovalle of the army said 400 rebels were in the attack. The rebels said villagers had collaborated with the militias, who had fled to the mountains, Colonel Ovalle said.

Colombia is locked in a 37-year war that has killed nearly 40,000 people in the last decade. The conflict pits leftist rebels against the army and outlawed right-wing militias.

Peace talks between the government and the 17,000-member rebel force have failed to end the conflict.

---

Busloads of oil workers feared kidnapped

USA Today
04/17/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-04-17-oil-workers.htm

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - Suspected leftist rebels intercepted buses carrying about 100 oil employees of a U.S.-owned oil company in Colombia and appear to have abducted the workers, officials said Monday.

The workers are Colombian employees of Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum, said Jose Munoz, chief of the DAS state security agency in eastern Arauca state.

The rebel National Liberation Army, or ELN, was suspected of stopping the buses carrying workers home from the Cano Limon oil field, Colombia's second-largest field, Munoz told The Associated Press.

Company officials in Bogota were not available for comment. The ELN had not claimed responsibility.

In a radio interview, the army commander in the region near Colombia's eastern border with Venezuela, Gen. Carlos Lemos, said the convoy of eight vehicles were intercepted about 10 miles outside the state capital, also called Arauca.

Troops and warplanes were trying to track down the buses, the general added.

The ELN, active in the area, has carried out mass abductions before to raise ransoms and to pressure the government for concessions in peace talks.

Guerrillas frequently bomb pipelines as part of an extortion scheme and to protest what they call foreign exploitation of Colombia's natural resources.

The Cano Limon field, operated jointly by Occidental and Colombia's Ecopetrol state oil company, has been dormant since February as a result of more than 60 pipeline bombings since January.

When fully operating, the field produces about 120,000 barrels of crude oil daily.

-------- drug war

Panel requests longer jail terms

The Washington Times www.washtimes.com
Published 4/17/01
Jerry Seper THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010417-39767400.htm

The U.S. Sentencing Commission has called for increased penalties for high-dollar fraud offenders, sexual predators and drug smugglers who deal in Ecstasy and methamphetamine as sanctions that will go into effect in November absent action by Congress.

The commission also voted for stiffer penalties for those convicted of money laundering, agreeing to link underlying criminal conduct to the sentencing process.

The new guidelines were made public yesterday.

Commissioners said they placed a priority on economic crimes, with the commission passing new amendments to consolidate existing guidelines on theft, fraud, tax offenses and property destruction to increase the penalties for high-dollar frauds or thefts and to reduce unwarranted sentencing disparity.

"The economic crime amendments result from several years of extensive research conducted by the Sentencing Commission in which the experience of countless professionals was consulted," said commission Chairman Judge Diana E. Murphy. "Because approximately 20 percent of all federal defendants are subject to these economic guidelines, it was especially important that we address this area."

In approving the new package of amendments involving economic crimes, the commission conducted numerous interviews with public officials, and gathered testimony from expert witnesses.

Under the new guidelines, a person convicted in a $500,000 investment fraud would be subject to a sentence as high as 63 months compared to a sentence as low as 27 months under the old guidelines.

The commission, in taking action to stiffen the penalties for money laundering, agreed to link the underlying criminal misconduct that generated the laundered funds. Commission officials noted, for example, that a money launderer convicted of laundering $94,000 from the sale of 5 kilograms of cocaine would now received a sentence of 151 to 188 months compared to the old guideline numbers of 63 to 78 months.

The commission also adopted guidelines related to the Protection of Children from Sexual Predators Act of 1998, voting to increase the penalties in any case in which the defendant engaged in a "pattern of activity involving the sexual abuse or exploitation of a minor."

The new guidelines, according to the commission, target high-risk sex offenders who are convicted of sexual abuses and have a prior felony conviction for sexual abuse.

In response to the Ecstasy Anti-proliferation Act of 2000, the commission voted for a permanent amendment that would increase the guideline sentence for trafficking Ecstasy a party drug that has become very popular among young users. The new amendment increases the sentence for trafficking 800 pills by 300 percent from 15 months to five years. It increases the penalty for selling 8,000 pills from 41 months to 10 years.

"The commission shares Congress´ concern about the serious threat posed by the illegal importation, trafficking and use of Ecstasy and the danger this drug poses to the youth of America," said Judge Murphy. "For this reason, the commission has made responding to the directives contained in the Ecstasy Anti-Proliferation Act one of its highest priorities."

The commission also adopted an amendment that "more appropriately targets" felons who unlawfully enter the country, amended the sentencing guidelines for counterfeiting and enhanced the penalties involving acts of domestic terrorism.

An independent agency, the commission was organized in 1985 to develop a national sentencing policy for federal courts. Its sentencing guidelines structure the courts´ sentencing discretion to ensure that similar offenders who commit similar offenses receive similar sentences.

The commission must send its amendments to Congress by May 1. They take effect Nov. 1 unless Congress passes legislation disapproving them.

-------- iran

Russia to press ahead with Iran nuclear plant

Planet Ark
RUSSIA: April 17, 2001
Story by Karl Emerick Hanuska
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10518

MOSCOW - New Atomic Energy Minister Alexander Rumyantsev committed Russia yesterday to completing work on Iran's Bushehr nuclear power station, but was non-committal on plans to build a second reactor there.

The United States, which opposes the sale of nuclear technology to what it considers a "rogue state", had expressed alarm at suggestions that Moscow could build more reactors for the Islamic republic.

"If we are lagging behind schedule on the construction of the first Bushehr nuclear power plant, then we will catch up," Rumyantsev, who replaced Yevgeny Adamov late last month, told a press conference.

"We must fulfil our contractual obligations," he said. The minister repeated Russia's view that the 1995 Bushehr contract did not violate Moscow's international treaty undertakings as the nuclear cooperation was of a strictly civilian nature.

Russian specialists were in talks on constructing a second reactor at Bushehr, he said. But Itar-Tass news agency quoted him as saying that "no documents have yet been signed".

Moscow analysts said Adamov had been sacked for his "excessive enthusiasm" in reaching deals with Iran, which only aggravated Russia's already fraught ties with the United States.

Washington has slammed Russian sales of nuclear technology to Iran and has cited potential nuclear proliferation to justify its desire build a $60 billion national missile defence shield that has been strongly denounced by Russia.

Russia insists it is only providing technology with civil uses, but the United States fears it will help Iran develop nuclear weapons. Rumyantsev said he expected both sides to find a compromise on the issue.

Washington has also sharply criticised Moscow's decision to ship nuclear fuel to India's Tarapur reactor, but Rumyantsev said Russia intended to build a nuclear power station on the sub-continent, despite international concerns.

"India is our strategic partner. We want to ensure that there are no reproaches (from the international community) in this regard," he said.

Rumyantsev, previously the head of one of Russia's top nuclear laboratories, also backed a plan to earn billions of dollars by importing nuclear waste for treatment.

He dismissed the fears of environmentalists by saying Russia had the technology to handle the waste safely and would earn substantial income from the work.

-------- poland

Poland unveils plan to modernize aircraft to meet NATO standards

Tuesday April 17, 11:34 PM
AFP
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010417/1/n2og.html

Poland on Tuesday unveiled a multi-billion-dollar plan to replace its obsolete Soviet aircraft over the next five years with new fighter jets, cargo planes and helicopters that will meet NATO standards.

Defense Minister Bronislaw Komorowski confirmed that Poland has launched a tender for multi-role combat fighters to replace its aging MiG-21s in a contract worth up to 3.5 billion dollars (4.0 billion euros).

New transport aircraft and helicopters are also slated for purchase.

Poland will also have to modernize its air command management system in order to "fully integrate" it into NATO by 2006, said Komorowski.

Warsaw, which joined the defense alliance in 1999, also wants a NATO air command base to be located on its territory, he said.

The defense minister said the government needs to adopt a special law to finance the purchase of the combat aircraft, which will cost about 0.05 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) per year and should be fully paid for by 2015.

"The appeal for offers is for the purchase, lease or transfer of 16 aircraft by 2003 and purchase of another 44 aircraft in the following years," said Komorowski.

Poland should acquire 16 modern fighters before 2003 and 60 before 2006 to meet its commitments to NATO.

Information on the tender was sent to the US, French, British and Swedish governments.

Poland has received offers to lease or buy the US F-16, the British-Swedish Gripen and French Mirage 2000-5.

Poland's fleet of combat aircraft includes 114 obsolete MiG-21 and 99 Sukhoi SU 22 planes, and 22 MiG 29s that would require modernization to meet NATO standards.

Business and investment offsets offered by the aircraft manufacturers "will have an important impact on the choice" Poland makes, said the minister.

Bids are due by the end of May and the government hopes to make a selection by the end of July.

Poland also intends to negotiate with Spain's CASA on the purchase by 2006 of 6-10 of its C295M midsize transportation aircraft, said Komorowski.

A contract could be signed within two months if CASA agrees to privatise Poland's PZL-Okecie aviation company and make at least 200 million dollars of business offsets, he added.

Several Polish-built versions of the Russian AN28 small transport plane will also be purchased.

Military officials also said they hope to acquire large transport aircraft and Polish-built transport helicopters.

Poland will also modernize its air defense system, including deploying new anti-aircraft missiles, said officials.

-------- puerto rico

Study confirms damages by Navy in Vieques

From: "Cumpiano, Flavio" <cumpiano@hugheshubbard.com>

Press statement
April 17, 2001 from James W. Porter, Ph.D., Professor of Ecology, University of Georgia:

"Our ecological investigations on Vieques show destruction to coral reefs from bombing activity there. In addition, we have discovered the existence of thousands of barrels and compressed gas cylinders sunk onto the coral reefs of Vieques. We have now demonstrated that toxic substances are leaking from the underwater bombs, and that this toxic material is now found in living marine organisms on the reef. The containers are rusting and are fragile, but some are still intact. This sensitive environmental area lies within the bombing impact area, with the consequence that even so called "green" munitions can break them open. The risks posed to human and environmental health by any further disruption of this site are unacceptable".

For information on Dr. Porter's report, you may contact Paul Weiss (Office of Resident Commissioner Acevedo Vila) at (202) 321-4326 and (202) 225-5038.

San Juan, Puerto Rico - Revelan informe oculto sobre daños causados por la Armada miércoles, 18 de abril de 2001

Por Mildred Rivera El Nuevo Día

EL COMISIONADO residente en Washington, Aníbal Acevedo Vilá, divulgóa yer los hallazgos de un estudio que evidencia daños a la vida marina de Vieques causados por los bombardeos, y denunció que el gobierno anterior sabía la información antes de aceptar la directriz presidencial y no la divulgó.

Además de los daños y la contaminación a los arrecifes de coral, fuente de alimento de los peces, el estudio constató la permanencia de bombas sin explotar y cilindros con contenido desconocido en el fondo del mar. Esto último podría provocar una explosión si son impactados mientras la Marina hace sus prácticas con balas vivas o inertes, aseguraron Acevedo Vilá y el profesor James Porter, quien hizo el estudio.

Acevedo Vilá le envió una carta al secretario de la Defensa, Donald Rumsfeld, alertándole sobre los hallazgos del estudio y reiterando la petición de que las prácticas militares se detengan hasta que finalicen los estudios de salud que hacen el Gobierno de Puerto Rico y el de Estados Unidos. Copia de la carta se le envió a la directora de la Agencia Federal de Protección Ambiental (EPA por sus siglas en inglés), Christine Todd Whittman; al secretario de Salud, Tommy Thompson; y al secretario del gabinete presidencial, Andrew Card. Las prácticas están pautadas para iniciar el 27 de abril.

La investigación, que costó $28,000, fue parte de los preparativos que hizo la pasada administración para demandar al Gobierno federal para detener los bombardeos. La misma le fue encomendada a Porter, profesor de la Universidad de Georgia, por el ex secretario de Justicia, José Fuentes Agostini.

PORTER, QUE acompañó a Acevedo Vilá en la conferencia de prensa ofrecida ayer, confirmó la información y aseguró que después de entregar los resultados de su estudio al Gobierno de Puerto Rico, Fuentes Agostini le dijo que no podía hablar sobre el mismo con nadie.

Acevedo Vilá señaló que en el Departamento de Justicia no hay evidencia alguna del contrato para hacer el estudio ni de los resultados. Explicó que mediante su oficina se enteró del estudio cuando buscaban más información sobre Vieques y que su ayudante Paul Weiss contactó al investigador.

Porter, profesor de Ecología y Ciencias Marinas en la Universidad de Georgia, indicó que fue contratado por Fuentes Agostini entre marzo y abril de 1999 y entregó el primer informe preliminar el 6 de diciembre de ese año. El 16 de febrero, Porter informó de sus hallazgos mediante carta al ex gobernador Pedro Rosselló. La directriz presidencial se emitió el 31 de enero de 2000.

El estudioso explicó que visitó Vieques dos veces durante su análisisy que encontró daños a los arrecifes de coral, que eran más serios mientras más cerca del área de tiro de la Marina se encontraban.

Porter dijo que en un lado de las barcazas había 100 barriles y en el otro había más de 1,000. Aunque no estudió el contenido de esos barriles, Porter dijo que algunos estaban abiertos y otros estaban filtrando, y que eso podía ser material tóxico.

EL PORTAVOZ de la Marina, Jeff Gordon, dijo que el informe sobre los daños ambientales que causan los bombardeos en Vieques "es interesante" y afirmó que hace un año le solicitó a Porter copia dele studio.

"El profesor no ha compartido los estudios con la Marina. Nadie quiere compartir los estudios con la Marina", se quejó.

Gordon agregó que "el área de tiro (de la Marina) es sólo el 3% de (el terreno de) Vieques y ha sido blanco de tiro por 60 años". Asimismo aseguró que la Marina está trabajando con la EPA para cumplir con los estándares federales.

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

Annan says Angola rebels still a problem

USA Today
04/17/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-04-17-angola.htm

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Rebels in Angola are still receiving supplies from abroad and raising cash through illegal diamond sales, despite U.N. sanctions imposed to help end the country's protracted civil war, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a report Monday.

Sanctions "seem to have contributed to efforts aimed at eroding the military capability of UNITA," a rebel group that has been fighting the government for more than two decades, Annan said.

However, he said, there were "worrying signs" that unidentified planes have been ferrying supplies to the rebels "and that representatives of UNITA continue to raise funds through the illicit sale of diamonds," even though their access to diamond-producing areas has been curtailed.

Annan asked the Security Council to extend the mandate of the U.N. mission in Angola by another six months, saying fighting is still raging despite reported rebel losses and some tentative steps toward peace by the government.

"The armed conflict in Angola has continued unabated, leaving much of the country insecure," Annan said. He said more than 2.8 million people have been driven from their homes since a 1994 U.N.-brokered peace accord collapsed in 1998.

The government and UNITA, a Portuguese acronym for the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, began fighting after Angola gained independence from Portugal in 1975. A 1993 arms and fuel embargo on UNITA was expanded to include diamonds exports after the peace deal fell apart.

Annan praised the government of President Jose Eduardo dos Santos for measures he said would enhance peace efforts. Still, the fighting continued, he said, urging UNITA to abandon its insurgency.

The armed conflict has taken a disastrous toll on civilians, often victims of "serious and recurring human rights abuses" by UNITA as well as government forces, the report said.

U.N. peacekeepers left Angola when the fighting resumed in 1998, and a small U.N. office was set up the next year.

---

U.N. searches for possible slave ship amid mystery

USA Today
04/17/2001 - Updated 02:22 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001-04-17-boat.htm

COTONOU, Benin (AP) - Puzzled authorities tried to determine whether a ferry that pulled into port Tuesday was a ship suspected of smuggling child slaves that was believed wandering for days in Africa's Gulf of Guinea. The arriving ship carried women and children - but apparently not the dozens of captives officials had expected.

The U.N. children's fund kept up an alert for the possibility that there was a second ship actually carrying the slaves that might try to dock somewhere along the western African coast.

"We have asked our offices in Malabo and elsewhere in the region to remain vigilant and not to demobilize," said Zachary Adams, UNICEF official in Cotonou, Benin's commercial capital. Malabo is the capital of nearby Equatorial Guinea.

"A boat has arrived here in Cotonou and we have no details of another, but we have to be prepared for the possibility."

The 200-foot-long ferry that arrived in Cotonou bore the name of the vessel that officials had been hunting - the Etireno - but it appeared freshly painted white, with the signs of another name, "NORDBY," still visible underneath.

A number of unaccompanied children found on board were taken to a shelter where they were fed and allowed to rest before being interviewed by police, Adams said.

An anxious search had begun Thursday, when it was reported that the Nigerian-registered MV Etireno had clandestinely slipped out of Cotonou with 100-250 children on board being smuggled into slavery. It was reportedly wandering in the Gulf of Guinea for days after being turned away from ports in Gabon and Cameroon.

The ferry pulled into Cotonou shortly after 1 a.m. with a crowd of Cabinet ministers, soldiers, police, journalists waiting. It was found to be carrying women and children and a few men.

The passengers, nervous and exhausted, said no child slaves had been aboard, as did the vessel's 40-year-old Nigerian captain, Lawrence Onome. "I have not committed any offense that will warrant my arrest," Onome said. "I am not into child slavery, they can't prove it. It is one thing to say, and one thing to prove."

He said the name of the ship had been changed from Nordby to Etireno in 1999, though he admitted he didn't have documents to prove it.

"I don't know what to think," said Nicolas Pron, a senior UNICEF official in Benin.

Passengers and crew on the arriving ferry told journalists that the vessel left Benin on March 27 and arrived in Gabon's capital, Libreville, April 2. But authorities in Gabon detained the boat and its passengers, who were taken onshore by canoes for four days, apparently because they did not have proper documents. The boat left Gabon April 6 for Douala in Cameroon, where it arrived April 12, passengers and crew said.

The mystery - or one of several - Tuesday was whether the ferry that arrived overnight was indeed the suspected slave ship, or whether another might still be at sea.

Social Protection Minister Ramatou Baba Moussa said the Etireno may have been confused with a possible second ship, whose name and current location remained a mystery.

Benin and U.N. officials said port authorities in both Gabon and Cameroon had reported turning away a ship with anything from 100 to 250 suspected child slaves aboard. It was believed that the smugglers had been planning to sell the children as unpaid domestic or plantation workers in Gabon, a relatively prosperous country southeast of Benin.

Benin initially issued arrest warrants for the Etireno's Nigerian owner, captain and crew as well as for three Benin businessmen. U.N. officials in Cotonou earlier speculated that the Etireno's captain, a Nigerian with a criminal past, could have thrown his human cargo overboard.

Benin, a small country of 6 million people, has a history of slave trading. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, it was known as the Slave Coast for its role as a center of the trans-Atlantic trade.

Despite efforts to stamp out child-trafficking, it remains a serious problem in West and Central Africa, where desperately poor parents are sometimes willing to give up their children for as little as $14 to smuggling rings that promise to educate them and find them jobs.

Boys are then typically resold to cotton and cocoa plantations for as much as $340 in countries like Gabon and Ivory Coast. Girls often end up as domestic workers or prostitutes.

---

Foes fight war by plundering gems, metals

The Washington Times www.washtimes.com
Published 4/17/01
Betsy Pisik THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010417-94478470.htm

NEW YORK -- The nations fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo are busy plundering its mineral riches in a "self-financing war," according to a new report issued yesterday by a U.N. panel.

The group recommends that the Security Council slap an arms embargo on Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi and attempt to stop the sale of diamonds and precious metals likely looted from Congo.

The report also expressed concern about the activities of Angolan, Namibian and Zimbabwean soldiers but noted that those governments declined to cooperate with the experts.

The panel, whose visit was authorized by the Security Council in June 2000, found "mass-scale looting" of stockpiled minerals, coffee, timber, livestock and money by the armies of Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi.

Military and government officials then export the diamonds, gold, and a composite mineral called coltan to line their own pockets and enrich a network of shell companies owned by well-connected associates.

"Key individual actors including top army commanders and businessmen on the one hand, and government structures on the other, have been the engines of this systematic and systemic exploitation," said the report.

President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda and Paul Kagame of Rwanda are, at the very least, politically involved, according to the panel of experts, which spent close to seven months in the region.

"They received this information, they were aware, and they decided not to act," said Safiatou Ba-N´Daw of Ivory Coast, who headed the expert panel.

The report, written by five experts, goes so far as to say the two leaders "are on the verge of becoming godfathers of the illegal exploitation of natural resources and the continuation of the conflict."

Mr. Museveni´s son and sister-in-law are heavily involved in trading and transportation, the report says. The Security Council, which authorized the panel´s investigation, will take up the matter on Friday.

Meanwhile, the U.N. efforts to get a Congo peacekeeping mission up to strength faltered over the weekend, when Rwandan-backed rebels refused to allow a contingent of 120 Moroccan U.N. peacekeepers to land in the northern part of the country. It was the first major obstacle since the United Nations began deploying there in recent weeks.

Also yesterday, Congo closed its western border with the Republic of Congo, citing unspecified security concerns. Kinshasa and Brazzaville, the respective capitals, face each other across the Congo River, and rebels have been known to slip easily back and forth.

But the expert panel´s report makes clear that the fighting, particularly among rebel factions, is concentrated in mineral-rich areas, rather than along geographic boundaries that would support Rwanda´s claim that it is trying to prevent insurgents from entering its territory.

Fighting has been heavy in copper and cobalt-producing Katanga province, as well as diamond-rich Mbuji Mayi. Both areas are far removed from the eastern border.

The 56-page report outlines how soldiers would, and presumably still do, order local farmers and even children into the mines to extract diamonds or other minerals, loot manufacturing plans and private property, and carry the booty home in military convoys that are not taxed or even examined.

The raw materials were often shipped to industrialized countries for processing, including Belgium, China, Denmark, Japan and the United States.

"Almost all the belligerents are in one way or another benefiting from the conflict," said Miss Ba-N´Daw at a press conference yesterday. "The only losers are the Congolese people."

Even the wildlife is not safe. The report notes that the numbers of elephants, okapis and gorillas have dwindled in areas controlled by Rwandan and Sudanese rebels.

The report does not spare the Congo government, which has created beneficial monopolies on diamonds and awarded lucrative mineral concessions to sympathetic governments, such as Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe.

The expert panel chastises the World Bank for failing to notice Uganda´s increased exports were likely a result of its incursions into Congo. It says that bank officials had been notified of increased exports of diamond and gold in a country not known for producing much of either.

Miss Ba-N´Daw was joined on the panel by one American, former Treasury official Mel Holt, as well as representatives from Cameroon, Switzerland and Senegal.

-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

Fuel cells promise clean power for cars, tomorrow

Planet Ark UK:
April 17, 2001
Story by Neil Winton, European Auto Correspondent
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10512

LONDON - While politicians try to save the world from car pollution, the fuel cell promises to do the job for them.

But not just yet.

The internal combustion engine, which has reigned supreme for more than 100 years, still has room for improvement. Diesels now deliver economy, sophistication and power that could only be dreamed of 10 years ago.

And while the big car manufacturers invest huge sums to perfect the fuel cell, hybrid power - a conventional internal combustion engine boosted by an electric motor - looks likely to be the interim technology which will boost fuel economy and keep environmentalists and politicians off the industry's back.

Promising pollution-free power that doesn't consume scarce resources, the hydrogen powered fuel cell car should, in theory, have the range and performance of an internal combustion engine, and the only by-product, water vapour, shouldn't trouble environmentalists.

The first fuel cell-powered buses should be appearing in Europe next year, and the first car in 2004.

Both vehicles will be from German automotive powerhouse DaimlerChrysler as a result of its collaboration with Ballard Power Systems of Canada.

MASS PRODUCTION NOT IMMINENT

According to automobile industry analyst Neal McAtee of Morgan Keegan in Memphis, Tennessee, although the first fuel cell-powered cars may be on the road within three years, mass production is not imminent.

"It will probably be eight to 10 years before manufacturers offer cars that you can go and buy in the store," said McAtee.

He said the huge cost of a hydrogen dispensing infrastructure is a bar to progress. Until that is solved, gasoline or methanol will have to be used to produce hydrogen on board the fuel cell cars.

Fuel cells work by combining hydrogen and oxygen via a catalyst which converts chemical energy into electrical power to feed an electric motor.

Until hydrogen is available on tap, it has to be produced in the car using fossil fuels like petrol, methanol or diesel, which will still emit carbon dioxide, but only at about half the rate of conventional engines. The process eliminates dangerous pollutants like oxides of nitrogen, sulphur and diesel particulates.

DaimlerChrysler expects the first fuel cell-powered car in 2004 and chief executive Juergen Schrempp has said about 10 percent of all cars could be fuel cell powered by 2020.

FUEL CELL CAR IN 2004

"Our first car should be ready in 2004 and it will be a compact to be offered in some markets," said Johannes Ebner from DaimlerChrysler's fuel cell project.

DaimlerChrysler has not revealed exactly which of its cars will take the fuel cell, although industry experts expect this will be the little A class.

DaimlerChrysler buses will lead off with fuel cell versions subsidised by the European Union in 2002.

Fuel cell technology still has many technical and operational problems to overcome.

"There are major technical problems and we are working hard to fulfil targets but I think we can manage this," Ebner said.

"Don't forget that the internal combustion engine has had 100 years of development and there's still room for further improvement. We will start with a version that is acceptable and then work hard to improve it."

DaimlerChrysler has yet to decide whether methanol or gasoline will be used to make hydrogen.

Jim Hossack, consultant with AutoPacific in Santa Ana, California, believes that fuel cell cars won't be available to mass market buyers until close to 2020.

"There's no certainty; there is the age old problem of scheduling inventions. This can be treacherous," said Hossack.

He said hybrids are viable in many markets but not in the United States, where fuel taxes are lower and gasoline cheaper than in Europe.

Japan's Toyota Prius and Honda Motor's Insight are hybrids already on sale in the United States and Europe.

OIL SHOCK NEEDED TO INTEREST UNITED STATES

The low price of petrol in the United States means there is little enthusiasm for fuel-efficient vehicles using diesel, gasoline direct-injection engines, or batteries.

"If the price of fuel doubles or availability becomes an issue, that would change the whole environment. But at today's prices hybrids do work but they are not commercially competitive," Hossack said.

Despite a lack of enthusiasm for fuel-efficient cars in the United States, the world's manufacturers are scrambling to build frugal cars, albeit in different ways.

According to Automotive News Europe, Volkswagen and BMW of Germany are developing turbocharged diesels, while Renault and PSA Peugeot Citroen of France, Fiat of Italy, General Motors Europe and Ford Europe are developing hybrids which should start appearing in 2003.

All car makers are looking to fuel cells for long-term solutions.

But don't write off the internal combustion engine yet.

A report from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said cars in 2020 will use one third less fuel than now.

Morgan Keegan's McAtee said the automobile industry's move to 42 volt electrical systems from 12 volts in the next couple of years promises big cuts in fuel use and emissions.

AutoPacific's Hossack agrees.

"The internal combustion engine can't reign supreme for ever, but it will be supreme for the next 10 years. Probably not for the next 100 though."

-------- environment

PCB Worries Are Spreading From Hudson to Its Shores

New York Times
April 17, 2001
By ROBERT WORTH
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/17/nyregion/17DRED.html

For 25 years, environmental groups and state officials have concentrated on the problems posed by toxic PCB's in the Hudson River, but now they are starting to focus on dozens of contaminated spots in landfills and backyards in the upper Hudson Valley.

More than six times as many PCB's were dumped on land as in the river, according to two separate investigations conducted by environmental groups and based on state records. Although the chemicals are not as dangerous on land as they are in the river, where they become concentrated in fish and river sediment, they are seeping into groundwater in a number of places, and may be leaking into the Hudson in a few, according to state officials.

Thirteen of the approximately 40 sites have been designated as a "significant threat to the public health or environment" by the state's Department of Environmental Conservation, and many others contain PCB's and other toxic materials in concentrations above the level the federal government classifies as hazardous. The sites are scattered on either side of the river along a 40-mile stretch between Albany and Glens Falls.

These areas and others around the country could become a huge liability for the General Electric Corporation, which dumped the chemicals into the river over the course of three decades from two electric capacitor plants in Fort Edward and Hudson Falls. That, environmentalists say, is why the company has spent an estimated $60 million fighting the federal Environmental Protection Agency's $460 million proposal to dredge PCB's, or polychlorinated biphenyls, from the Hudson River bottom. The public comment period on that proposal is to end today.

"G.E. realizes that the Hudson River cleanup will be a precedent-setting case that could ultimately require them to spend billions cleaning up toxic sites throughout the Hudson River basin, as well as elsewhere throughout the country," said Walter Hang, the president of Toxics Targeting, an Ithaca, N.Y., environmental research and advocacy group that is expected to release a report today on PCB contamination in the Hudson Valley.

In addition to its Hudson Valley PCB sites, where G.E. has already spent an estimated $160 million on studies and shore cleanup, the company signed an agreement in 1999 to clean up PCB spills in Pittsfield, Mass., at a possible cost estimated by the government of $300 million to $700 million. Last fall, the company filed a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Superfund law under which the federal environmental agency would order its dredging action.

Mark Behan, a spokesman for G.E., said, "We reach cleanup decisions based on what we consider best for the community and the environment at each location."

Mr. Behan added that the company reached an agreement with New York State to clean up seven of the land-based PCB dump sites in 1980, and said that in the other cases, G.E. was not liable because it did not do the actual dumping, though the chemicals may have come from its plants.

Donald Morrison, a dairy farmer whose land is a few hundred feet from the Hudson River in Moreau, N.Y., has long believed that G.E. should be forced to dredge the PCB's from the river. But like many people in this area, Mr. Morrison is also worried about the PCB's that were dumped on land. He has a 1999 letter from the state saying that tests have confirmed PCB contamination on his land, and he has been unable to sell it or get insurance or even a bank loan as a result, he said.

The unfenced 25-acre field next to Mr. Morrison's farm contains 40,000 to 90,000 pounds of PCB's dredged from the river that are seeping into the groundwater and possibly into the Hudson, according to the state. Mr. Morrison's cows graze nearby, and his corn grows next to a sign that warns of buried PCB-contaminated material in another adjacent field that is fenced.

In addition, Mr. Morrison's land is regularly flooded by the Hudson. The state has found high levels of PCB contamination in some flood plain areas along the river, and has asked the federal environmental agency for help in assessing the problem, said Michael O'Toole, the director of the agency's Division of Environmental Remediation.

Although the state has taken some steps to contain pollution at the sites, it delayed a full cleanup on most of them for more than a decade in hopes that the E.P.A. would address them in its proposal for the river, said Jennifer Meicht, a spokeswoman for the D.E.C. Now that it is clear that will not happen, the state must finish cleaning up the sites or force G.E. or other responsible parties to do so. But it cannot clean the sites until the legislature appropriates new money for the Superfund program, which is now broke.

It is hard to say what kind of health risks PCB's pose on land. The federal environmental agency has focused on the river because it has determined that eating fish or drinking water contaminated with the chemical poses a cancer risk, said Douglas Tomchuk, a project manager for the agency's Hudson River PCB site.

Some people in the Hudson Valley believe that they have been poisoned by exposure to the chemical, though there have been no studies to determine health effects in the area. One of Mr. Morrison's daughters, Mary Beth, 33, has deformed fingernails, which are one of the symptoms of PCB poisoning, said Dr. David Carpenter, a professor at the SUNY School of Public Health in Albany who has done research on the chemical's health effects.

The levels of land-based PCB contamination have declined since the mid-1970's, when some roads and parking lots that had been sprayed with PCB oil decades earlier still stank of the chemical on hot days.

"One day I was driving with the car window open, and the smell of PCB's came through the window," said Ward B. Stone, the state wildlife pathologist who was one of the first to discover the chemical in fish in the early 1970's.

Mr. Stone followed the smell to a South Glens Falls motel, where PCB's had been sprayed on the parking lot years earlier.

The town supervisor had paved over the parking lot, but more than a decade later, tests by state inspectors found PCB's along the edge of the pavement at 13,000 parts per million. (Federal law considers anything above 50 parts per million to be toxic waste.)

The motel was cleaned up two years ago by state officials

---

Cattle Disease Poses Threat to Run Wild, U.S. Finds

New York Times
April 17, 2001
By ELIZABETH BECKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/17/national/17FOOT.html

WASHINGTON, April 16 - The first comprehensive exercise about how the nation would contain foot- and-mouth disease showed that an outbreak could be stopped only with the combined strength of all federal disaster agencies, including the military, Agriculture Department officials have said.

After decades of relying largely on state and local governments to help contain animal diseases, the Department of Agriculture asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency to develop a plan to combat this one as forcefully as if it threatened human lives, said Clifford Oliver, director of the Agriculture Department's office of crisis planning.

"We were coming to the realization that state and local government would be overwhelmed and the U.S.D.A. would be overwhelmed if foot-and-mouth broke out," Mr. Oliver said.

With Britain, one of the most advanced agricultural nations, enduring an epidemic of foot-and-mouth disease and British troops belatedly called in for mass burials of hundreds of thousands of slaughtered animals, American farmers and ranchers began lobbying their state agriculture chiefs for better planning. Those officials recently urged Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman to find out what the rest of the government could do to contain an outbreak.

The federal Catastrophic Disaster Response Group, which normally worries about bioterrorism or industrial disasters, organized the tabletop exercise for the Agriculture Department on Wednesday, bringing together representatives of 26 agencies, including the Departments of Defense, Commerce, Interior, Energy and Health and Human Services, Mr. Oliver said.

The exercise confirmed fears that without the entire government working to contain it, the disease would spread like wildfire if it ever reached this country.

"They made it very very clear in the first 15 minutes of the exercise that the possibility of the spread of foot-and-mouth disease is very real and we need to be better prepared," said a participant who would not allow his name to be used.

Mr. Oliver said, "For the first time we asked this group to look at a biological event that doesn't affect humans, only animals."

The situation was played out like a military war game, with agency representatives acting out how they would react if foot-and-mouth broke out in Iowa. Participants said that the computer-generated model could not be controlled and that the disease spread to three states within 60 days, requiring 50,000 people to contain it.

The virus that causes the disease could pass through the intestines of birds feeding on the carcasses of dead animals. When those birds fly to adjoining farms, they could spread the disease through their feces, far ahead of containment efforts, the exercise showed.

With the explosion of world trade making the spread of the disease to this country more likely and with the routine movement of animals around the nation making the containment more difficult, several participants said the exercise showed how an outbreak here could quickly become a national emergency.

"You would see the National Guard called out to kill thousands of animals in the first days and deployed to control traffic and keep thousands of people out of the area," another participant said.

A representative from the United States Geological Survey was especially troubled by questions about how wildlife like deer, bison and wild pigs would be treated if they roamed near the infected areas.

"If the disease infected a herd of white tail deer in the state of Virginia, would they be slaughtered, too?" the representative asked.

---

Despite Appearances, Whitman Says She and Bush Agree on Environment

New York Times
April 17, 2001
By MELINDA HENNEBERGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/17/politics/17WHIT.html

WASHINGTON, April 16 - The Environmental Protection Agency's new administrator, Christie Whitman, had no trouble connecting with her audience at a recent meeting of the Business Roundtable, a group of corporate executives, as she promised that the agency's history of "banging heads" was a thing of the past.

And her bluntly antiregulatory message undercut the notion that Mrs. Whitman was at least a moderately gung-ho green who had been hung out to dry by her president.

That impression had taken hold after President Bush, responding to pressures from the energy industry, broke a campaign pledge to put a cap on power plants' emissions of carbon dioxide, right after she had talked up his intention to control that greenhouse gas. Then, after she urged him "to appear engaged" on controlling global warming, the administration decided instead to write the obituary of the Kyoto Protocol, the international treaty on climate change.

Even some environmental advocates were starting to pity Mrs. Whitman's supposed isolation.

"It's been a pretty rough ride," said Greg Wetstone of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "She's probably suffered one of the most immediate and embarrassing eviscerations of a new cabinet secretary ever."

Mr. Wetstone said he had been willing to re-evaluate the Bush administration if it regulated carbon dioxide, "which is amazing because I'm a little cynical from doing this for a long time."

"I felt like such a fool," Mr. Wetstone said.

Like other environmentalists, he seemed to assume that Mrs. Whitman felt the fool, too. But in a recent interview in her office, she argued that she had felt nothing at all after learning of the president's reversal.

"It had nothing to do with me personally," she said. Conceding that she "had been in a different place" at first, she said she had come to accept the president's view that such regulation would be too costly to the economy and to consumers.

"He was right, all things considered," Mrs. Whitman said. "We're in an energy crisis, no two ways about it."

She never considered resigning, she said.

"New Jersey was good training; we've got a lot of cranky people," she said. "I just decided to do the best I could on the facts and stay away from reading the columnists."

Yet she would leave, she said, if she ever truly felt "out of sync" with the president; "that hasn't happened yet," she said firmly.

Allies in New Jersey say she differs with the president less on policy than on the politics of decisions that have been viewed as unfriendly to the environment. And friends suggest that Mrs. Whitman is in general far less liberal than her reputation, earned mainly on the basis of her support for abortion rights.

"She's done some very socially conservative things; her record is not liberal," said her best friend, Nancy Risque Rohrbach, director of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, who has known Mrs. Whitman, 54, since their first year out of college, when they were both working for the Republican National Committee. "She defies labels."

Environmentalists in New Jersey would agree; groups pushing for more environmental regulation generally considered her "good on the green, bad on the brown," because she expanded the state's open space, but cut enforcement of air and water quality standards, abolished an environmental prosecutor's office and eased reporting rules for companies that handle toxic materials.

In the interview, she defended a proposed 6.4 percent cut in the Environmental Protection Agency's budget, though environmentalists say it will probably mean layoffs among those responsible for enforcing environmental standards. "We haven't been cut," she said. Only superfluous congressionally mandated programs were being trimmed, she said.

At the meeting of the Business Roundtable, a closed event that a reporter seemed to have been invited to by accident and then was asked to leave before a question-and-answer period began, Mrs. Whitman seemed completely comfortable echoing Mr. Bush's pro-business philosophy.

She opened her chummy talk this way: "I hope you all had a successful day today and did the appropriate lobbying with the right senators."

"When the president says he wants to look at government as a partnership" with private enterprise, "he really means it," she told the executives, though it is hard to imagine who among them might have remained unconvinced of his sincerity on this point.

She sounded thoroughly opposed to regulation when she said, "While it's true that mandatory controls may have been necessary in the beginning, attitudes have changed, and we recognize that at the E.P.A."

Of her decision to review the Clinton administration's regulations cutting the amount of naturally occurring arsenic that would be allowed in municipal drinking water, she said she "did that with no pressure from the White House, no pressure from interest groups." The Clinton rule, which environmentalists say is necessary to protect the public's health, was opposed by the mining industry and some municipalities, which argued that its costs were prohibitive.

Mrs. Whitman has said elsewhere that once the administration studies the matter, it may well adopt a more stringent arsenic standard than the one adopted under Mr. Clinton.

But at the Business Roundtable, she said explicitly that she was concerned about how cutting arsenic levels might affect business: "The impact is enormous on small and mid-sized water companies. We are going to take another look and see what it is we have to do to avoid unintended consequences."

Environmentalists are increasingly disillusioned. As Dan Weiss, former political director of the Sierra Club, put it: "Another day, another environmental standard wrecked. This is worse than under Reagan."

Paul Begala, a former Clinton aide who worked for Gov. Jim Florio of New Jersey in his losing campaign against Mrs. Whitman in 1993, said he had not been surprised by decisions. "She always struck me as the consummate country club politician," Mr. Begala said. "I never had a sense she had any passion except for tax cuts, so I guess she fits right in with this administration. It's, `Let them drink Perrier.' "

But Ms. Rohrbach suggested that the former governor was not only tough enough but also ambitious enough to handle the criticism.

"Long ago, when we were young, she knew she wanted to be governor," Ms. Rohrbach said.

Though she is naturally reserved, it was Christie Todd who asked her future husband, John Whitman, out on their first date, because she needed an escort to the Nixon inauguration. Mr. Whitman's grandfather, Charles S. Whitman, became governor of New York in 1915. And both John and Christie were so sure of her political future that Mr. Whitman's drive to succeed in business was in part fueled by a desire to "put the kids through school and still be able to fill in for Christie when she ran for office," Ms. Rohrbach said.

In the interview, where Mrs. Whitman was crisp and correct, keeping on her wool jacket after noting that it was 89 degrees outside, the worst part of her job now, she said, was actually "being away from my husband after 27 years." Mr. Whitman is a financial consultant in New Jersey.

Asked to characterize her tenure so far, she had to laugh. "A roller coaster, shall we say?"

In nearly every talk she gives, Mrs. Whitman says she grew up caring for the environment because she was reared on a farm - an extremely lovely farm, in Oldwick, N.J. Her father, Webster B. Todd, was a wealthy Republican state chairman and her mother, Eleanor Schley Todd, was vice chairwoman of the Republican National Committee.

Though it is unclear where Mrs. Whitman expects to go next, for now she seems determined to stick around and figure something out.

Meanwhile, she is asking environmental advocates to wait and see what proposals this administration may yet come up with before judging it, and her, too harshly. "He desperately wants to be proactive," she said of the president. "He hates being on the defensive."

As, of course, does Mrs. Whitman. For the record, she is not accepting condolences for her career just yet. "If one more person says, `You have the toughest job in the cabinet, . . .' " she says, near the end of an hour- long interview. And for the first time, she showed real exasperation.

---

E.P.A. Backs Wetlands Rule Set by Clinton

New York Times
April 17, 2001
By DOUGLAS JEHL
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/17/politics/17WETL.html

WASHINGTON, April 16 - The Environmental Protection Agency said today that it would leave in place a Clinton administration rule that would expand protection for tens of thousands of acres of wetlands across the United States.

The decision is a big defeat for developers, who have contended for years that the action would impose restrictions far beyond those authorized by Congress. A challenge to the rule by the National Association of Home Builders is pending in Federal District Court in Washington.

The rule was to have taken effect on Feb. 17, but had been set aside for 60 days as the Bush administration reviewed last-minute regulations issued by the Clinton administration.

The E.P.A. has said that the action would close a loophole that in the last two years permitted the destruction of 20,000 acres of wetlands and the channeling of 150 miles of streams without environmental review.

Much of that lost 20,000 acres was in North Carolina and Virginia, said Derb S. Carter Jr., a senior lawyer with the Southern Environmental Law Center, an advocacy and litigation group in Charlottesville, Va.

The new rules require developers to obtain permits under the Clean Water Act before carrying out earth- moving activities that have been protected from regulation. Those activities include many routinely used in construction of housing developments, like the digging of artificial lakes that many developers favor and the gouging of streams with manmade channels, a practice used to limit the presence of wetlands to be governed by environmental restrictions.

"Wetlands" is a collective term that refers to marshes, swamps, bogs and similar areas, all of which filter and cleanse the nation's water, help to retain floodwaters and provide natural habitats for many species of fish, birds and other wildlife.

In announcing the decision today, Christie Whitman, the environmental agency's chief, said the action reflected a commitment by the Bush administration "to keeping our waterways clean and safe."

"In addition to serving as habitat for wildlife, wetlands help filter and protect our country's water supply," she said. "Today's action will help preserve our wetlands for ourselves and for future generations."

Within an hour after that announcement, the White House took the unusual step of issuing a statement that declared, in part, that President Bush "applauds E.P.A. Administrator Whitman's decision to move forward with regulations to protect our wetlands."

The statement put Mr. Bush on record in support of the decision, but may have also been intended as a more particular endorsement of Mrs. Whitman, who had been on the losing end of an internal administration debate last month on the direction of global-warming policy.

Duane Desiderio, a staff vice president for the homebuilders' association, expressed disappointment at the wetlands ruling. But Mr. Desiderio predicted that the courts would uphold the developers' challenge, as they have twice since 1997 in striking down efforts to close the legal loophole. "The government is like a child that touches a hot stove and burns its hand, but keeps coming back," he said.

Until now, the Bush administration had sided with industry in reversing several environmental rules issued by the Clinton administration, including one that would have toughened the standard for naturally occurring arsenic in drinking water. Today's ruling brought qualified cheers from environmental groups.

"It's interesting how we count the victories these days, in terms of things that they didn't roll back, as opposed to any kind of progress moving forward," said Joan Mulhern, legislative counsel for the Earth Justice Legal Defense Fund. "Still, this is an important victory."

Environmental groups have become increasingly vocal in recent weeks in trying to portray the new administration as hostile to the environment. With the 31st anniversary of Earth Day coming on Sunday, they are preparing to intensify their criticism this week in a national advertising campaign.

The administration faced a deadline of Tuesday for a decision on the wetlands rule. Some environmentalists suggested that the decision's timing and outcome might have come in part to minimize negative political fallout surrounding Earth Day commemorations.

Under the Clean Water Act, discharges into the waters of the United States require a permit. In 1997, a federal district judge ruled that a 1993 regulation should not have covered certain discharges even if those involved activities contributing to the loss of wetlands.

That decision was affirmed in June 1998 by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The E.P.A. regards the uncertainty about the scope of the decision as having contributed to the destruction of wetlands. The agency said the action today would protect wetlands "by moving forward with a rule clarifying what discharges are subject to environmental review."

Daniel Rosenberg, a staff lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the decision today represented "a victory on its face."

But Mr. Rosenberg added, "The real key is going to be whether they vigorously defend this rule against the industry challenge and implement it on the ground, and we are still very concerned about the potential for them to ultimately weaken the rule based on a sweetheart settlement to industry challenges."

---

Lead-Reporting Rules Are Upheld

New York Times
April 17, 2001 Filed at 7:33 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-EPA-Lead.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration is pushing ahead with new regulations requiring nearly 10,000 more businesses to inform the government and nearby residents about lead released into the environment.

The rules, issued during the last two weeks of the Clinton presidency, are aimed at reducing cases of lead poisoning, which has been linked to learning disabilities in children and high blood pressure and nervous disorders in adults.

Environmental Protection Agency chief Christie Whitman said Tuesday the new administration had concluded the regulations were needed after weighing the health implications against industry complaints about the paperwork required. The rules are effective immediately.

``Poisoning from exposure to lead still harms too many children each year in America,'' Whitman said. ``I am confident this action is an important step toward protecting the health of children and expanding communities' right to know.''

Environmental groups welcomed the announcement from an administration they have criticized for rolling back several other Clinton decisions, including measures to reduce arsenic in drinking water and to force mining operations to post bonds equal to estimated cleanup costs.

Still, Allen Mattison of the Sierra Club got in some criticism, saying, ``This is more of a case of Bush deciding he will not stand in the way of a real protection and trying to claim that's environmental leadership.''

The new regulations require manufacturing or processing plants that emit at least 100 pounds of lead or lead compounds a year to report the releases annually to the government. That includes everything from makers of wiring and pipe fittings to battery makers and electronics recyclers.

The first reports for 2001 will be collected and included in the government's next annual Toxics Release Inventory a year from now. The data on toxic releases and their origins is made available to the public through several sources, including the EPA's Internet site.

Current regulations require a facility to report any lead or lead-compound emissions if the facility processes more than 25,000 pounds annually or uses 10,000 pounds a year. EPA officials estimated the regulations would mean at least a sixfold increase in the 1,878 industrial facilities currently reporting lead emissions.

Bush, in a statement, called the decision ``an important and responsible approach'' to keeping the public informed about lead in their communities. He also instructed Whitman to provide technical assistance to small businesses that must now comply with the more stringent lead-reporting rule.

Health experts said the increased data will give them a wealth of new material for linking sources of lead pollution to cases of lead poisoning and retarded development.

``The new rule doesn't help enforce health standards, but it provides a first step so we know how much lead is out in the air,'' said Tarek Rizk, a spokesman for Physicians for Social Responsiblity. ``The next step is to begin to monitor chronic disease and how the exposures may begin to impact our health.''

Lead has been classified as a probable human carcinogen, meaning it causes cancerous tumors in rats and mice but has not been formally tested in humans.

In the past several years, lead- and zinc-processing plant smokestacks have belched into the air most of the quarter billion pounds or more of lead released into the environment annually in the United States.

Though it mostly enters the environment from smokestacks, the lead often ends up in water. It enters the body through soft tissue and sometimes gets stored in bones and teeth.

Seventy-three trade groups had asked Whitman in a letter last month to rescind the new reporting requirements.

``This rule has been the subject of enormous controversy with respect to both its scientific basis and the manner in which EPA complied -- or failed to comply -- with laws protecting small business,'' said Jane Luxton, an attorney representing a coalition of 30 trade groups in the metals industry.

Tom Sullivan, director of the legal foundation for the National Federation of Independent Business, said it will file suit next week in U.S. District Court in Washington challenging the new regulations.

``It's the equivalent of being told the day after tax day that you no longer can fill out the 1040EZ -- you instead have to fill out a full set of complex tax documents -- but from an environmental perspective,'' Sullivan said. ``It's going to harm small business.''

The regulations had been approved by the EPA on Jan. 8 but were among dozens of new standards issued in the last weeks of Clinton's presidency that Bush agreed to review upon taking office.

---

PROTECTION SOUGHT FOR SAWFISH

New York Times
April 17, 2001
National Briefing
Andrew C. Revkin (NYT)
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/17/national/17BRFS.html

The Commerce Department proposed declaring as endangered the smalltooth sawfish, a motorboat-size denizen of Southern coastal waters that was once so plentiful that it was harpooned for sport. Now it is only rarely seen, in a few spots near the Florida Keys and Everglades. The fish, cousins of sharks that reach lengths of 21 feet, use a tooth-studded snout to slash smaller fish. The snout has proved their undoing, biologists say, because it snags readily in gill nets. The American population has dropped 99 percent in the last century.

---

Mexico's Water Problem

New York Times
April 17, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/17/opinion/L17MEXI.html?pagewanted=print

To the Editor:
Re ``Mexico Grows Parched, With Pollution and Politics'' (news article, April 14):

The Mexican water problem will shortly become ours when we are flooded with people who are dying of thirst. Your article paints a very dismal future and does not mention a key factor: overpopulation.

Until countries like Mexico seek ways to balance their population with their natural resources, we can look to wars over water rather than oil. Mexico's new president, Vicente Fox, would be wise to face the population problem with courage.

SY WEISS Nokomis, Fla., April 14, 2001

---

Bush upholds EPA lead-reporting rules

USA Today
04/17/2001 - Updated 12:55 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/washphoto.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration is upholding regulations issued in the last weeks of Bill Clinton's presidency requiring thousands more businesses to report their releases of toxic lead into the environment, administration officials said Tuesday. The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said an announcement on the decision would be made Tuesday afternoon at the White House by the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Christie Whitman.

The new regulations, bitterly opposed by industry groups, will require any manufacturing or processing facility that emits at least 100 pounds of lead or lead compounds a year to report the releases to the government.

Current regulations require a facility to report any lead or lead compound emissions if the facility processes more than 25,000 pounds of them annually or uses 10,000 pounds a year.

EPA officials estimated the regulations would require at least 9,800 more industrial facilities to be included in the government's annual Toxics Release Inventory. The collection of data on toxic releases and their origins is made available to the public through several sources, including EPA's Internet site.

The regulations had been approved by EPA on Jan. 8 but were among dozens of new standards and rules issued in the last weeks of Clinton's presidency that Bush agreed to review upon taking office.

Lead exposure has been linked to developmental disorders and learning disabilities in children and high blood pressure and nervous disorders in adults.

An initial EPA proposal in 1999 called for lowering the threshold to the release of 10 pounds annually. That had been based on studies finding that lead persists indefinitely in ecosystems and also remains in human bone for more than 25 years.

Environmental groups welcomed Tuesday's pending announcement from an administration they have criticized for rolling back several other Clinton environmental decisions, including measures to reduce arsenic in drinking water and increase pollution bonds on hard-rock miners in the West.

"This is more of a case of Bush deciding he will not stand in the way of a real protection and trying to claim that's environmental leadership," said Allen Mattison of the Sierra Club.

Jeremiah Baumann of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, a grass-roots environmental group, called the decision a "first step," saying the administration will still have to "vigorously defend against the lawsuits that have already been filed" on the issue.

---

Foot-and-mouth 'probable' in U.S.

USA Today
04/17/2001 - Updated 12:13 AM ET
By Jim Drinkard, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-04-16-footandmouth.htm

WASHINGTON - Federal emergency officials are preparing for a U.S. outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, a prospect they see as highly likely. About 75 federal officials from agencies ranging from the Agriculture Department to the CIA met Wednesday to review plans for addressing an outbreak of the highly infectious animal virus. The group also included officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Army's biological warfare office, the Coast Guard, the Interior Department and the Food and Drug Administration.

FEMA official Bruce Baughman said the plans call for treating an outbreak much the same as a natural disaster, in which states take primary responsibility and call on federal resources as needed. "We are certainly treating it like it's a probable likelihood," he said.

Others present at the meeting said the chances that the disease will spread to the United States were described as very high, fueling an intensive planning effort. Until now, the government has focused in its public statements on efforts to keep the disease from reaching the United States.

At last week's meeting, officials described arrangements for earth-moving equipment to bury thousands of animal carcasses, and the drafting of emergency orders that could suspend some environmental regulations to allow quick burial of afflicted livestock.

Inquiries about the government's assessment of the risk of a U.S. outbreak of the disease were referred to Cliff Oliver, who is heading emergency response plans for the Agriculture Department. Telephone calls to his home Monday night were unanswered.

Later, USDA spokesman Kevin Herglotz described the meeting as a standard planning session and said his department does not believe an outbreak is inevitable.

"I was in the military for 10 years. We did mock exercises every month. That didn't mean war was imminent," he said. Herglotz didn't attend the meeting but says he was briefed on it.

Foot-and-mouth disease affects pigs, cattle and other cloven-hoofed animals but is not generally harmful to humans.

The United States has not had a case of foot-and-mouth disease since 1929. In England, the current outbreak began in February and quickly spread.

Cases also have been confirmed in the Netherlands, France and Ireland. Recent outbreaks have occurred in Saudi Arabia, Argentina, South Korea and Taiwan.

The U.S. government has added hundreds of inspectors at airports and ports in an effort to keep the disease out, but the battle is made more difficult because of booming global travel and trade.

Contributing: Anita Manning and Mark Memmott

------

Interior rebuffs Jeb Bush on energy

04/17/2001
By Jonathan Weisman, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-04-17-jebenergy.htm

WASHINGTON - President Bush's Interior secretary has rebuffed a personal appeal from the president's younger brother and decided to move forward with plans to auction 6 million acres of oil-and-gas-rich seabed in the Gulf of Mexico.

Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who is up for re-election next year, still might have a shot at derailing the auction, which has the state's environmentalists and powerful tourism industry incensed. But for now, the brewing Bush vs. Bush showdown seems to be favoring the former oilman in the White House.

Interior Secretary Gale Norton informed the younger Bush in a letter last week that the administration plans to post notices of the sale of leases off the coasts of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana in July. Interior officials disclosed the letter on Tuesday.

"I must consider our nation's energy needs and appropriate management of the American public's natural resources," Norton wrote.

In January, Jeb Bush fired off a strongly worded letter to the department that requested cancellation of the sale. That put his older brother in an awkward position: As the president pushes for oil and gas drilling in protected regions of Alaska and the Rockies, his brother wants him to halt the sale of energy leases that has been planned for five years.

The Interior Department estimates that the area holds 396 million barrels of oil and 2.9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. However, energy industry officials say the area holds 1.9 billion barrels of oil and 7.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The industry estimates translate into a three-month supply of oil and gas, based on current U.S. consumption.

The planned sale "is infinitely more important" than Bush's proposed oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, says Matthew Simmons, an energy investment banker close to the administration. The department must issue an environmental assessment in June before making a final decision in October. But environmentalists say the letter is a strong indication that the sale would go forward.

Both sides dismiss a fraternal rivalry. "The administration appreciates the concerns expressed by Gov. Bush," White House spokesman Scott McClellan says.

"This is not a pitting of one Bush against another," says Jeb Bush's spokeswoman, Elizabeth Hirst. "This is the governor fighting for the people of his state."

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

Bush Discusses Trade Vision

Associated Press
April 17, 2001

WASHINGTON - President Bush is promising to fight vigorously for a free-trade zone spanning North and South America and bracing for a battle with skeptics at home and abroad.

He was laying groundwork for the plan in a Tuesday speech at the Washington headquarters of the Organization of American States, which promotes cooperation in the Western Hemisphere.

The appearance was part of Bush's run-up to the 34-nation Summit of the Americas this week in Quebec City, Quebec. The proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas will be the focal point of the summit, which opens Friday amid threats of anti-globalization demonstrations.

Thousands of protesters are expected for the summit, and the largest security force in Canadian history will be in place. Critics of the proposed pact fear it will increase pollution, drive jobs to other countries and compromise worker safety.

Bush wants lawmakers to grant him ``fast-track'' negotiating authority, which would allow him to negotiate a trade deal to submit to Congress for an up or down vote, without alteration.

He has long said he wants to establish the trade zone, which would cover 784 million people on two continents, and he declared Monday at a meeting with Chilean President Ricardo Lagos: ``I believe we can get it done.''

He admitted, ``It's going to require a lot of hard work and effort to do so.''

``I certainly would like to have what they call fast-track authority. Most presidents have had it,'' Bush said. ``It's important for the president to fight for the right to be able to negotiate trade agreements without amendment. I believe we are making progress toward regaining that power for the president.''

Bush had suggested during the presidential campaign that the next U.S. president would look weak attending the summit without fast-track authority, but he has yet to submit legislation formally requesting the approval.

The meeting with Lagos opened a busy presidential schedule designed to promote Bush's first multination summit and its goals of expanding trade, strengthening democracies and improving the quality of life throughout both American continents.

Thursday, he meets with Argentine President Fernando de la Rua.

His first international gathering offers Bush a chance to articulate a trade agenda and demonstrate competence on foreign affairs after a presidential campaign that raised questions about his foreign-policy credentials.

Already, trade ministers agreed to launch the new trade zone in 2005 and begin talks in 2002 on removing tariff barriers. The Bush administration lost a bid to move up the starting dates.

At a meeting with Bush this month, lawmakers warned they are under pressure from the same union and environmental interests who fought unsuccessfully to block the North American Free Trade Agreement among the United States, Canada and Mexico.

In his Oval Office remarks Monday, Bush did not rule out compromise with Democrats.

``People are always trying to get me to put my cards on the table,'' he said when asked if there was wiggle room in his position.

Some Latin American countries, particularly the largest, Brazil, have opposed pushing for an early agreement because they want more time to strengthen their own industries before exposing them to international competition.

Others fear the hemispheric trade zone could lead foster a U.S. imperialism.

-----

Bumps in the road for Bush's trade agenda
Leaders from 34 countries meeting in Quebec will consider a trade deal for the Western Hemisphere.

Christian Science Monitor
TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2001
By Ron Scherer (ron@csmonitor.com)
Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2001/04/17/fp2s1-csm.shtml

NEW YORK - At first glance, it seems like this could be a big year for George W. Bush to advance his free-trade ideals.

But as he stares down a blockbuster lineup of international trade meetings - including one in Quebec City next weekend - reality may hit the president faster than a Texas hot sauce.

Congress remains deeply divided over the wisdom of further opening up trade. The social-justice activists and labor leaders who helped to torpedo trade talks in Seattle in November 1999 have not gone away. And even President Bush's own administration is contemplating protectionist measures for the steel industry - a move that would prompt criticism from Tokyo to Brussels.

"It will be very difficult - harder than the tax cut," says Bill Frenzel of the Brookings Institution in Washington. "It's going to take the president going to the bully pulpit."

During the campaign, Bush gave general outlines of his views, which included eliminating trade barriers from Alaska to Cape Horn. Now, he'll get his chance to elaborate. At the meeting in Quebec, Bush and 33 other hemispheric leaders will be deciding how to move forward on a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). This concept would open up borders in the Western Hemisphere to free trade by January 2005.

"It has the potential to be as acrimonious as NAFTA," says Fritz Mayer, associate professor of public policy at Duke University's Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy in Durham, N.C.

Later in the year, world trade leaders will meet in Qatar to try to resurrect the trade talks that failed in Seattle in 1999. This time, however, there will be fewer demonstrators since getting to the Middle East nation is not going to be easy.

Fast-track authority

But if any of these efforts are to advance without great delay, Bush has to win "trade promotion authority" (TPA), an agreement by Congress to expedite consideration of any trade agreement. This would make it more difficult for a dissenting senator, for example, to mount a filibuster.

"Having that authority shows commitment by the White House and the Congress," says Jeffrey Schott of the Institute for International Economics in Washington and the author of a soon-to-be published book on FTAA.

To get TPA passed, Mr. Frenzel, a former congressman, says that the Bush administration may have to give Congress more time to look at any new trade agreement as well as offer more formal ways to be part of the process. "Congress has always felt left out of the negotiation process," says Frenzel.

In addition, Frenzel says Bush may have to find ways to win over moderate Democrats since not all Republicans will back the president. This may mean including national security, environmental, and labor issues in the negotiations.

At the Quebec meeting, unions will be arguing that the FTAA is a NAFTA clone. "We think NAFTA is a failed model of trade and development," says Thea Lee, assistant director of public policy at the AFL-CIO.

Despite the high stakes, it's not clear how high a priority the trade legislation is compared with education, a tax cut, and deregulation. "Publicly, the business community is saying it wants this to happen, but privately it's saying this is not a high priority," says Bruce Stokes, a trade expert in Washington at the Council on Foreign Relations. "Are the political advisers going to spend limited political capital on something that is not a high priority?"

Still, some trade analysts see pressure building to get the process moving. "While we are sitting on our hands, Mexico, Canada, and the European Union are doing regional free-trade agreements, and we are not involved. We are losing out as countries get special access to one another," says Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs, International in New York.

FTAA basics

The FTAA concept would encompass a region with 800 million people. It would involve large, rich countries such as Canada and the US, poor countries like Haiti, and small ones such as St. Kitts & Nevis (pop. 39,000).

The idea of an FTAA is not new. It started in 1994 in Miami, and since then the hemisphere's trade ministers have met five times to try to develop a framework. Twelve working groups have been set up.

But Latin American diplomats say the US is mistaken if it thinks the FTAA means only more exports for US companies. "There has to be a willingness to discuss agricultural subsidies and antidumping," says Juan Gabriel Valdes, Chile's ambassador to the United Nations. "We need to see commitment and political will."

But Jeanne Archibald, a former general counsel of the US Treasury, is one who's optimistic a deal will eventually get done. "I think everyone realizes they can do better by working together," says Ms. Archibald, now at Hogan & Hartson, one of the leading Washington law firms involved in trade issues.

But Ms. Lee of the AFL-CIO maintains there will be plenty of opposition from labor. And, she observes, it's still several years until negotiations will be concluded. "Our goal right now is to convey as strongly as possible our concerns."

Key meetings
April 20-22: Summit of the Americas in Quebec City
July: Group of Seven/Eight summit in Genoa, Italy
Mid-October: Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shanghai, China
Nov. 9-13: World Trade Organization ministerial in Qatar

---

Bush says he'll fight for trade deal

USA Today
04/17/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-04-17-ftaa.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush said Monday he will "fight for the right" to establish a free trade area stretching from Alaska to Chile, previewing the case he will take to a 34-nation summit this week.

"I believe we can get it done," Bush said four days before leaving for the Summit of Americas in Quebec City. "It's going to require a lot of hard work and effort to do so."

The proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas, getting skeptical reviews from Congress and some Latin American countries, will be the focal point of the summit, which opens Friday amid threats of anti-globilization demonstrations.

The largest security force in Canadian history has been assembled to separate presidents from protesters. Bush's proposed free-trade zone, which would cover 784 million people on two continents, is expected to become a source of much of the unrest.

The president has been frustrated at home by Congress' reluctance to grant him "fast-track" negotiating authority. The legislation would allow him to negotiate a trade deal to submit to Congress for an up or down vote, without alteration.

"I certainly would like to have what they call fast-track authority. Most presidents have had it," Bush said in a picture-taking session with Chile President Ricardo Lagos. "It's important for the president to fight for the right to be able to negotiate trade agreements without amendment. I believe we are making progress toward regaining that power for the president."

The meeting with Lagos opened a busy presidential schedule designed to promote Bush's first multination summit and its goals of expanding trade, strengthening democracies and improving the quality of life throughout both American continents.

His first international gathering offers Bush a chance to articulate a trade agenda and demonstrate competence on foreign affairs after a presidential campaign that raised questions about his credentials abroad. Polls show Americans approved of the way he handled his first foreign policy test, the detention by China of a 24-person U.S. spy plane crew.

In advance on the summit, trade ministers agreed to launch the new trade zone in 2005 and begin talks in 2002 on removing tariff barriers. The Bush administration was rebuffed in its attempts to move up the starting dates.

Bush had suggested during the presidential campaign that the next U.S. president would look weak attending the summit without fast-track authority, but he has yet to submit legislation formally requesting the approval.

In a meeting with Bush this month, lawmakers warned they are under pressure from the same union and environmental interests who fought unsuccessfully to block the North American Free Trade Agreement among the United States, Canada and Mexico.

After the meeting, GOP lawmakers said they are considering some sort of monetary sanctions, or fines, that could be used instead of trade sanctions to bind America's trading partners to its own labor, human rights and environmental standards.

In his Oval Office remarks Monday, Bush did not rule out compromise with Democrats.

"People are always trying to get me to put my cards on the table," he said when asked if there was wiggle room in his position.

Some Latin American countries, particularly the largest, Brazil, have opposed pushing for an early agreement because they want more time to strengthen their own industries before exposing them to international competition.

Chile, a strong U.S. ally on trade, is seeking a separate pact with the United States after President Clinton failed to deliver on his 1994 promise to expand NAFTA to take in Chile.

Chile also wants to buy 16 F-16 fighter jets from the United States, despite a long-standing ban against the sale of such high-technology planes within Latin America. Bush said he remains open to discussing the sale with Chile, which called it a "peaceful nation," and a senior adviser said after the meeting that the Bush administration wouldn't stand in the way of the sale.

---

Brassieres, billboard await delegates

The Washington Times www.washtimes.com
Published 4/17/01
Mark Blanchard THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010417-73498731.htm

QUEBEC CITY -- President Bush will be greeted by a massive police presence, a 12-foot-high fence festooned with brassieres and a giant billboard trumpeting the Quebec provincial government´s nationalist goals when he visits for a trade summit this week.

As many as 20,000 people from across the United States and Canada are gathering to protest the Summit of the Americas, where 34 hemispheric leaders will discuss plans to expand NAFTA into a hemispheric Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).

Anti-globalist activists have spent months preparing to get their message across.

"This is a serious thing we´re doing, " said Joyce Kingsford, a volunteer with the New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, Women´s Center, which is collecting 300 bras with anti-FTAA messages emblazoned on them.

"They´re an article of clothing that´s completely distinct and only women wear, " she said.

To keep the bras and the protesters away from the leaders, summit organizers have erected a huge barricade of concrete blocks and chain-link fencing. Nicknamed the "Wall of Shame" by Canadian media, it is almost 12 feet high and stretches more than 21/2 miles through the city.

The protesters hope to hook their brassieres onto the fence peacefully, but other activists are bracing for civil disobedience. They have been holding "teach-ins" across North America, training for the possibility of violent clashes, tear gas and injuries.

"We respect the diversity of tactics and acknowledge there are a variety of ways to advance the debate," said Jaggi Singh, an activist who was arrested for leading protesters at the 1997 Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation summit in Vancouver.

"It didn´t start with Seattle, and it isn´t going to stop with Quebec," Mr. Singh added. "Hopefully, we can continue this resistance against capitalist globalization way beyond Quebec."

Summit organizers say some protesters pose a "real threat" to the leaders´ safety and have obtained 6,000 police officers to help with security here. "We hope we´re wrong," said Florent Gagne, head of the Quebec Province police force. "But I think we have to be realistic and look at what has happened in other cities."

Summit organizers clearly want to avoid another "Battle in Seattle," where protesters shut down a World Trade Organization meeting amid tear gas and rubber bullets in November 1999. Protesters also tried to shut down meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in Washington last April.

As in those cities, protesters from across the continent are expected to converge on Quebec. But that means U.S. residents will have to cross the Canadian border. To help them cross without incident, activists in Kingston, Ontario, have organized an Anti-FTAA Border Caravan a slow-moving convoy meant to disrupt the traffic on Canada´s busiest highway, while picking up more supporters on the way to Quebec City.

"It is legal direct action, " said Dave Silburn, a member of the People´s Community Union. "Driving at the minimum speed , we hope to reduce trade in half at that speed. It´s a demonstration of how people with freedom of mobility and freedom of expression can cross borders the corporations, governments and bankers who are meeting in Quebec City, " he added.

Once here, the protesters will have to compete with another angry message this one from Quebec´s separatist government.

The province has rented a huge electronic billboard, similar to those in New York´s Times Square, to tell the world Quebec is a nation that wants nationhood.

It sought to raise the issue directly with summit delegates, but Canada´s federal government turned down Premier Bernard Landry´s request to speak to them since he is not the leader of a country.

-------- police

Calls for Verniero's Impeachment Are Unfounded, His Lawyer Says

New York Times
April 17, 2001
By IVER PETERSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/17/nyregion/17TROO.html

TRENTON, April 16 - Justice Peter G. Verniero today rebutted a State Senate committee's demands for his impeachment, saying the committee's charges about how he handled the racial-profiling issue rested on "unfair inferences, misleading references and unfounded conclusions."

The rejoinder, prepared by Mr. Verniero's lawyer, Robert A. Mintz, came in response to a letter from Senator William L. Gormley, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, to the General Assembly speaker, Jack Collins, on Tuesday. The letter said discrepancies in comments that Mr. Verniero, a former state attorney general, made during his confirmation hearings for the State Supreme Court two years ago and testimony at the committee's recent hearings on racial profiling by the state police showed that he had made false statements under oath and deserved to be removed from office.

Mr. Collins alone can decide whether impeachment will begin, and he said he would reply to the committee as early as this week.

Mr. Mintz said in the 44-page response that the Senate committee had failed to make its case on five major points. He wrote that Mr. Verniero did not deceive the committee on the status of a federal civil rights investigation into racial profiling in New Jersey. Mr. Mintz also wrote that Mr. Verniero was correct in saying that his 1999 report on the issue was based on data collected only over the previous year, and not on older statistics that the committee maintains should have alerted him to the problem.

Nor did Mr. Verniero lie, Mr. Mintz wrote, when he testified recently that there had been a continuing investigation into racial profiling. Mr. Verniero also told the truth, Mr. Mintz said, when he told minority legislators as the attorney general that he could not produce comprehensive data on traffic stops by the state police. Finally, the letter said, Mr. Verniero did not withhold evidence of profiling from defendants trying to block the use of contraband seized from their cars on the grounds that they were victims of profiling.

The document "demonstrates that the committee's own record fails to support its allegations," Mr. Mintz said today in an interview. "It shows that Justice Verniero was truthful and candid before the committee, and any person who reads it will come to the same conclusion."

Mr. Mintz also included a detailed discussion of the laws governing impeachment and suggested that the Assembly could not, under the State Constitution, take the Senate committee's report as the basis to begin proceedings. It was required to conduct its own investigation before deciding whether to go ahead, he wrote. "This would have to include factual investigation as well as legal analyses of whether the alleged conduct would constitute an impeachable offense," Mr. Mintz wrote.

Mr. Gormley said that he had not had a chance to study Mr. Mintz's letter, but that a quick review told him that the committee's charges had not been answered.

"I think it's time to define these issues a little bit better," Mr. Gormley said. "No one is accusing Peter Verniero of being the person responsible for racial profiling. That's not what this is about. What this is about is, did he give honest testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee? We say that he did not, and based on my initial review of what he sent today, that has not been refuted at all."

---

Memories of Cincinnati

New York Times
April 17, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/17/opinion/L17CINC.html

To the Editor:
Re "Old Wounds in Cincinnati," by Arthur Allen (Op-Ed, April 14):

I was raised in a suburb of Cincinnati and left, intentionally, as a young adult. My town was called racially diverse, but African-Americans lived on only one side. A classmate was shunned by her family after she dated and then married an African-American. Another denied her Jewish faith as a teenager, admitting years later that she did so to fit in. The stories go on and on and, I am sure, are not unique to Cincinnati.

Cincinnati is a beautiful city and cherished as a good place to raise children. But I think that its citizens need to ask themselves how they want their children to grow up - relishing and recognizing differences or building walls of sameness, and scarring some of those children who are "different."

DEBORAH BLATT New Rochelle, N.Y., April 15, 2001

------

15 Dead in Ohio: Cincinnati's Black and Blue

Tim Wise,
AlterNet
April 17, 2001

Sometimes, folks don't even bother hiding their racism. Take Keith Fangman, President of the Cincinnati Fraternal Order of Police (FOP). In the wake of this past week's uprising to protest the killing of Tim Thomas and fourteen other black men by his colleagues since 1995, Fangman said:

"If we give one inch to these terrorists in the form of negotiations, then we've got no one to blame but ourselves when we turn into another Detroit or Washington D.C."

Now, he could have said that negotiating with the "rioters" would turn Cincinnati into another Boulder, Colorado, or Carbondale, Illinois, or East Lansing, Michigan, or Eugene, Oregon, or State College, Pennsylvania, or Storrs, Connecticut, or Pullman, Washington, or Tucson, Arizona -- all sites of major riots by drunken white college students in recent years. But he didn't. He picked Detroit and D.C. -- two places that haven't had any riots lately, but which both have a lot of black people. And that, after all, was his point.

Now frankly, for any representative of the official "Police Corruption and Brutality Protection Union" (commonly known as the FOP) to refer to those who rebel against cop violence as terrorists, is, well, precious. I think the old saying "takes one to know one" probably applies here. Oddly enough the only "terrorists" in evidence in Fangman's town are the Klansmen he and his pals protect every Christmas season when they erect their lit cross in Fountain Square. The rights of a 135-year old paramilitary hate group apparently count for more to Cincinnati authorities than the lives of young black men.

To hear police representatives tell it, blacks in Cincinnati still have no rights that a member of the FOP is bound to respect. In seeking to justify the deaths of the 15 black males, Cincinnati Police Sergeant Harry Roberts noted that those killed were all "criminals who resisted arrest," leading one to wonder just what is the allowable punishment for "resisting arrest" in Ohio nowadays? I mean damn, I knew the death penalty was still popular with most folks, but execution for running away from a cop?

And as for the "criminals" whose lives have been snuffed by the Cincinnati police, they include not only Tim Thomas -- whose rap sheet was filled with traffic offenses like not wearing a seatbelt (the savage!) -- but also Roger Owensby Jr., who had no criminal record, but whose "attitude" convinced police to arrest him for "disorderly conduct" and apply a deadly chokehold in the process. And then there was Lorenzo Collins, a mentally handicapped and emotionally disturbed young man whose shooting was explained as necessary since he was wielding a solitary brick and threatening to throw it at police -- fifteen of them who surrounded him before dropping him in a hail of bullets. Sounds like a fair fight. Or Michael Carpenter, who was shot in the back of the head during a traffic stop. Or Courtney Mathis, a "menace to society" all of twelve years old who borrowed a relative's car and who was shot to death for trying to flee after being pulled over.

Apparently the Cincinnati police have a hard time distinguishing between children and hardened criminals. Following the funeral for Thomas on Saturday, cops opened fire with rubber bullets and beanbag ammunition, shooting a seven-year-old black girl during a demonstration and march.

But hey, as the FOP's official slogan boasts, they're just "building on a proud tradition." A tradition that reaches all the way back to 1915, to a time when many a proud member of this proud organization proudly and rather openly engaged in the murder of African Americans by joining in anti-black riots and lynchings. In the first forty years of the twentieth century, about half of all blacks who were killed, were killed by law enforcement, including, one can be sure, many a dues-paying member of the FOP's Aryan brotherhood in blue.

In recent years the Cincinnati police in particular have been building on a proud tradition of racism that has finally resulted in a lawsuit filed by the ACLU and a local coalition of African-American leaders. Among the dozens of racist actions prompting the suit, perhaps the most egregious involves a pregnant mother of two and her husband who were detained and handcuffed at gunpoint in front of their children, even as the officers involved explained to them that they were looking for two adult males driving a similar kind of car.

But rather than focus their attention on weeding out those officers who engage in racist and brutal practices, the FOP prefers to concentrate on such important tasks as boycotting movies whose stars are supportive of Mumia Abu-Jamal. Seeing Mumia killed and picketing Rage Against the Machine concerts have been among the group's top priorities in recent years. And even though the FOP rejected racial profiling at their September 2000 National Board Meeting, they insisted on the legitimacy of "criminal profiling," the definition of which apparently still includes race as a factor of suspicion.

And of course there are those who think this is just fine. On many a chatroom bulletin board one can find any number of angry whites, defending the actions of the police and chastising the black community in Cincinnati in only the most thinly concealed racist terms.

"Most cop killers are black," comes the cry from some -- an argument that is both historically false and irrelevant. Even if true, who but the most racist, unfeeling soul could use such a "fact" to justify killing someone whose skin color happened to match that of the offending group? In fact, by this logic of "rational" discrimination or rational murder, blacks would have far greater reason to kill white police officers than these officers would have to kill black people. After all, most of the cops who have killed blacks have been white. But somehow I doubt that those who think statistical models should be used to justify unequal treatment would appreciate the use of the one to which I'm alluding here.

"Police put their lives on the line every day," say others, "and we shouldn't second-guess them when they have to use deadly force." But police are actually half as likely to die on the job as farmers, fishermen, truckers, construction workers or miners. And a lot less likely to die from being police officers than black folks are, just from being black. Whether from police violence itself, or inadequate health care services, the excess mortality rate for African Americans is far higher than that of police, yet rarely is there much sympathy for how often black people "put their lives on the line every day" just trying to survive in this country.

"Notice that we whites don't go riot every time something bad happens to us," comes the mantra from still others, followed by the predictable, "and look at what animals those blacks are -- they burn down their own neighborhood!" True enough, whites don't riot over things like police brutality, mostly because we aren't often the victims of it; but also because we are too busy rioting over other things -- like the outcomes of sporting events or crackdowns on underage drinking. Yep, at over twenty college campuses since 1995, white students have taken to the streets in their own neighborhoods and gone absolutely ape-shit: burning furniture and cars in giant bonfires, hurling bottles and rocks at police, and smashing glass in business windows. 1500 people at Colorado University, 1500 at Penn State, 500 at the University of New Hampshire, 300 at the University of Oregon, and over 10,000 at Michigan State in 1999.

And yet, when whites riot (and don't even get me started on Woodstock '99 again), not only do we not call them "terrorists," cops rarely if ever shoot them with rubber bullets or spray them at point-blank range with mace. Although many arrests were made and harsh sentences handed out in the wake of the Michigan State riot two years ago, coverage was still largely sympathetic, with media asking "what made good kids do bad things?" and focusing on the otherwise "straight arrows" who got caught up in the moment. Hell, in that particular riot, white students were caught actually trying to pry a loaded shotgun from a police car (before trying to push the vehicle into the fire) -- an act that surely would result in death number sixteen were a black Cincinnatian to try it, but which, in East Lansing, only prompted a brief volley of tear gas, in order to disperse the crowd.

And most telling of all, in the wake of the two most serious white college riots -- Colorado and Michigan State -- police and residents in the riot zone actually reached out to students in an attempt to "understand their frustrations" more fully. According to Boulder officials, the riots led to a greater attempt by police to improve their relations with students; and in East Lansing, local residents launched a campaign to "adopt" entire dorm floors, invite students to backyard barbecues and let the kids know "that we appreciate them in the community," according to one neighbor. I will swallow my keyboard if anything like that happens in Cincinnati.

After all, in Cincinnati there's plenty of room for Klan crosses in public parks, racist baseball team owners like Marge Schott, and blowhards like Keith Fangman and the FOP, but no room apparently for civilian review of the police, accountability for cop violence, or a real challenge to institutional racism at the highest levels. It will be up to the folks in the streets to change that.

Tim Wise is a Nashville-based writer, lecturer and antiracism activist. He can be reached at tjwise@mindspring.com. A version of this article originally appeared in Z Magazine.

---

Audit shows police hit by false repairs

The Washington Times www.washtimes.com
Published 4/17/01
Jim Keary THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/metro/20010417-1138940.htm

Serco Management Services Inc., a private contractor hired to manage the D.C. police department´s fleet operations, has charged thousands of dollars worth of questionable repairs to the city, according to a new General Services Administration audit.

Some of the repair bills topped $4,000 for police cruisers scheduled to be sold at auctions for about $1,000.

The audit also found that Serco invoices for simple repairs seemed unusually high. Serco invoices show that the police department paid $56.08 to replace windshield wipers, $157.99 to replace a light bulb, $252.63 for an inspection, oil change and lubrication, $187.47 to replace a $36 battery, $186.55 to remove snow chains, $80.12 to replace a blown fuse and $1,940 for a front brake job and front-end alignment.

Some invoices showed the department was charged labor costs of up to 20 minutes to "walk around a car." Other invoices showed it took up to 24 minutes to top off the radiator, oil and windshield washer.

The GSA audit was critical of Metropolitan Police Department officials who allowed Serco to do repairs that should have been deferred repairs that, in some cases, exceeded the value of vehicles. The GSA said the police department could have saved money if it hired certified mechanics to monitor the $3.5 million Serco contract.

"A mechanic could help control costs by making decisions on what non-target repairs are absolutely necessary for the safe operations of the vehicle, but at the same time disapproving repairs that may be put off until a later time if the budget is running tight," said Robert L. Hobson, audit manager for the GSA inspector general. "These type decisions would be made to manage costs to comply with the contract ceiling levels."

Executive Assistant Police Chief Terrance B. Gainer said yesterday that the department must improve its management of fleet services.

"When you repair a car in January that you plan to dump in June, it may seem to be shortsighted. But it may have been a good decision at the time," Chief Gainer said.

"The chief has recognized that we need to continue to make improvements in the way we manage the fleet. Privatization alone is not the answer. We still need the right amount of midlevel management and a liaison between the sworn side of the house and operations. We fell short of that in the past."

The audit was requested by Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey after The Washington Times reported in October that the $3.5 million Serco contract had cost overruns of $900,000. The GSA found that the costs increased from $3.5 million to $4.8 million during 2000, which was an actual cost overrun of $1.3 million. Serco invoices reviewed by auditors showed that the department´s 1996 and 1997 model cars, which were slated to be sold at auction for about $1,000 each, received repairs of up to $4,475 between February and December 2000. The police department has been replacing all of its cars that are 5 years old.

According to the audit, the police department paid $158,548 to repair 328 cars that were sold. More than $1,000 was spent on each of 40 of the old police cars, and $4,000 or more was spent on each of seven of the old cars.

The GSA said while Serco was repairing the older cars, new police cars sat unprepared and unused. Serco claimed its crews could stripe and install emergency equipment on only two cars per day.

"Promptly placing the new cars in service would not only yield savings from avoiding repairs to older cars they would replace, but also the MPD officers will benefit from the use of safer and more reliable equipment while on patrol," according to the audit.

The Times found last October that about 100 new police cars sat unused because the vehicles had not been prepared for service. More than 30 of those cars were found parked in an unsecured field in Southwest with tall grass growing into the cars´ axles.

The GSA faults the police department´s upper management for failing to have qualified people overseeing the Serco contract. Since Serco came onto the scene, the police department has gone through a series of managers.

The former fleet manager, Robert Rose, and his boss, former business services manager Tom Burse, were suspended in September 1999 by Eric Coard, chief executive director of the corporate support, for failing to properly inspect police vehicles.

After an internal investigation, both Mr. Rose and Mr. Burse were exonerated when documents showed they had complained to Mr. Coard when the inspections and registrations were not completed.

Mr. Burse and Mr. Rose were reinstated and Mr. Coard received a minor reprimand.

Former Police Lt. Clarence Major replaced Mr. Rose as interim manager although he had no fleet experience. Then Claude Willis, a former D.C. Department of Public Works manager, was hired by Mr. Coard as manager in May 2000.

Mr. Willis was fired two months ago, and the department is now seeking a qualified fleet manager.

--------

Revealing radar-trap location is OK

Montreal Gazette
Tuesday 17 April 2001
http://www.montrealgazette.com/editorial/pages/010417/5022798.html

Letter to the Editor

As a traffic reporter at an all-news radio station, I strongly disagree with those who say that I should not mention the location of radar traps. If I'm doing 120 km/h on the highway and suddenly someone jams on the brakes in front of me to avoid a speeding ticket, it's extremely dangerous.

I have no problem with the use of photo radar, but if you're going to put a police cruiser on the highway in a place that will distract drivers and possibly cause accidents, it is my obligation to report it. Police even call me to tell me where the traps are.

Keep in mind that my reports reach maybe 5 per cent of the Montreal listening audience. The other 95 per cent don't hear my reports, and they're the ones getting nailed.

But I will concede that if I got a call from the Surete du Quebec or the Montreal Urban Community police telling me to stop giving away radar-trap locations, I would - reluctantly.

Joel Gordon 940 News Montreal

-------- spying

Chiefs Recommend Spy Plane Plan

By Robert Burns
AP Military Writer
Tuesday, April 17, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010417/aponline194928_000.htm

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. military chiefs are recommending a two-step approach to resuming surveillance flights near China - beginning along the eastern coast, then extending south to the area where a Navy spy plane collided with a Chinese fighter jet, defense officials said Tuesday.

This phased approach was agreed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has not yet made his final recommendation to President Bush, officials said. The officials discussed the matter on condition they not be identified and cautioned that the president's decision is likely to depend in large part on the outcome of talks in Beijing.

The future of U.S. surveillance flights is on the agenda of a meeting Wednesday between U.S. and Chinese officials, following the collision April 1 of a U.S. Navy surveillance aircraft and a Chinese fighter jet that was shadowing it off China's coast near the southern island of Hainan.

China blamed the EP-3E Aries II for the collision; the United States insisted China's fighter was at fault.

No surveillance flights have been flown in that region since the collision, but they are expected to resume soon.

ABC News reported Tuesday evening that in recommending a phased approach to resuming surveillance flights, the joint chiefs also held out the possibility that armed U.S. fighters could be called on to escort the surveillance planes if China causes problems.

Officials told The Associated Press that fighter escorts were unlikely, but they could not rule it out. These officials said that if fighters were used, they more likely would be land-based U.S. fighters in South Korea or Japan, rather than fighters aboard an aircraft carrier.

The joint chiefs' recommendation that surveillance be resumed first off China's eastern coast apparently reflects reports that, according to Pentagon officials, Chinese fighters from bases in that area have been less aggressive in their intercept tactics than those in the south.

In the view of many Pentagon officials, escorting surveillance flights in international airspace would undermine the administration's argument that the safety of such flights is protected by international law and custom. The Navy planes, loaded with intelligence-gathering equipment including listening devices that monitor Chinese military communications, have flown the length of the Chinese coastline about twice a week. China considers such flights an infringement on its sovereignty.

The surveillance missions last up to 12 hours, meaning fighter escorts would have to be refueled if they were needed throughout the mission. That, in turn, would require aerial tanker flights.

Also, defense officials, speaking privately, suggested such escorts could prove to be counterproductive since they would be seen in Beijing as unnecessarily provocative.

James Lilley, a former ambassador to Beijing, said in an interview Tuesday that while he does not know what the administration intends to do he would not recommend using fighter escorts off China's coast.

"The best thing is to do it without that," he said. "The Chinese would consider it provocative." On the other hand, if Chinese fighters again harass U.S. surveillance aircraft in unsafe ways - as U.S. officials assert was the case on April 1 - then Lilley believes other measures may be needed.

Anthony Cordesman, a defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said continuous fighter escorts would be impractical and expensive. An alternative, he said, would be to use escorts only on certain portions of the surveillance route, such as in the Hainan area.

Cordesman believes that if China does not stop harassing U.S. surveillance planes, "the United States may well have to do something to demonstrate its resolve" - possibly using escorts for a short time.

Chinese fighters frequently intercept U.S. surveillance aircraft off the Chinese coast - usually at safe distances and without incident. The two jets that shadowed the EP-3E Aries II on April 1 carried the Israeli-made Python air-to-air missile, which China bought from Israel many years ago.

Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, a spokesman for Rumsfeld, said Tuesday, "We're not in favor of such capable weapons systems being proliferated to a variety of nations around the world. That's a good missile, and its capabilities are considerable."

Quigley declined to discuss a Washington Post report that the administration was considering sending an aircraft carrier or Aegis-type warship into the South China Sea to provide protective cover for surveillance flights.

"Any sort of particulars of details as to how we would carry out the flights, again, it would not be something we would discuss," Quigley said.

The only U.S. aircraft carrier in the western Pacific is the USS Kitty Hawk, which is headed toward Guam to conduct exercises. Quigley said the Kitty Hawk battle group has received no orders to reverse its course and head back toward the South China Sea. Its home port is Yokosuka, Japan.

The United States has conducted military surveillance flights off the coasts of China and Russia and in other parts of the world for decades. In the case of China, such surveillance provides clues to possible changes in Chinese military deployments and provides technical data on Chinese air defense radars.

On the Net: http://www.defenselink.mil

------

China Under a Magnifying Glass

New York Times
April 17, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/17/opinion/L17CHIN.html

o the Editor:
Re "China and the United States" (editorial, April 15):

The United States should indeed try to have a productive relationship with China. But this can be achieved only by dealing realistically with the country, instead of wearing rosy glasses and seeing, for instance, changes in China's long-term strategy toward Taiwan where there are none.

China's natural position as a great power is not in dispute. Its acute sensitivity on national pride can be respected. A real great power, however, should not constantly have to teach other nations a lesson. A principled insistence on the rule of law is the best approach.

To appease China after its quasi- hostage-taking behavior is counterproductive; it can only spoil China.

YULON LIANG East Hanover, N.J., April 15, 2001

•To the Editor:

The spy plane incident has re focused the view of China as a totalitarian state that acts internally as an oppressor of individual rights, an indication of the lack of true rule of law (front page, April 14). It has also made clear that China's reactions to external forces are warped by the intransigence of a regime that would not hold power if the people had a true choice of leadership.

Does the United States wish to further the legitimacy of such a regime for primarily economic reasons? Perhaps it would be better to treat China the same way we treat Cuba. We should not develop better relations simply as an expediency for trade if doing so compromises our value of opposition to dictatorial regimes.

RICH WILLIAMS Petaluma, Calif., April 14, 2001

•To the Editor:

The polemics after the safe return of the American spy plane crew from China underscore the philosophical divergence between realists and idealists (front page, April 15).

Realists maintain that our national interests are best served through hard assessments of the threats posed by potential adversaries. Idealists hold that increased communication and the peaceful resolution of conflict best serve our interests.

China has modernized its military, disseminated anti-American propaganda to its people and regularly practiced diplomatic brinkmanship - hostile signs for the realists. But China has also privatized many of its industries, Western popular culture has become widespread, and subtle democratic progressivism has been detected - signs of reform for the idealists.

To say the least, difficult decisions loom for the Bush administration.

JAMES T. WINDLE Bellevue, Wash., April 15, 2001

•To the Editor:

At a recent news conference, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said that China's pilots were not following common practices for military pilots flying in times of peace and that the United States formally protested on Dec. 28, but the close encounters continued (news article, April 14). What this confirms is that the air collision over the South China Sea was not an accident, but an act of aggression by the Chinese military sanctioned by the government.

The United States has an annual trade deficit with China of about $80 billion, which China is using to finance a growing war machine. American businesses that produce goods in China for export to the American consumer need to put patriotism on a par with profit by returning this production to American soil.

JOHN R. BYERS Scarsdale, N.Y., April 14, 2001

•To the Editor:

While it is vital to promote economic cooperation between China and the United States (editorial, April 15), critical factors in solidifying a stable and lasting relationship are mutual respect and understanding between the people of the two countries.

One of the most effective ways to achieve these goals is through the appreciation of the arts and cultures of the two nations. Both sides should significantly increase efforts in that regard through education, entertainment, mass media and exchanges. The United States, with its superior economic means, should lead this initiative.

BELL YUNG Pittsburgh, April 15, 2001 The writer is a professor of music at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Hong Kong.

---

U.S. team arrives in China for spy plane talks

USA Today
04/17/2001
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001-04-17-uschina.htm

BEIJING (AP) - U.S. negotiators arrived Tuesday for talks aimed at winning the return of a spy plane held by China after a mid-air collision with a Chinese fighter jet. Military officials dominate the eight-member American team for talks that begin Wednesday. Six members are military officers or Defense Department officials, the U.S. Embassy said. The team is led by Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Peter Verga.

The team includes an expert on the EP-3E surveillance plane and Army Brig. Gen. Neal Sealock, the U.S. Embassy military attache. Sealock was the chief contact for the spy plane crew during 11 days in captivity on a Chinese island.

China has not disclosed the identities of its negotiators.

The talks are likely be contentious after both sides staked out uncompromising positions in the angry aftermath of the April 1 collision.

China blames the U.S. pilot, while Washington says the Chinese fighter pilot caused the crash by flying too close to the bigger, slower American plane. The fighter pilot is presumed dead after China's military called off an intensive search on Saturday.

China held the 24-member spy plane crew for 11 days on Hainan island in the South China Sea while demanding an apology from Washington.

Their release Thursday angered some Chinese, who wanted more concessions from the United States.

The Bush administration has already dismissed a key Chinese demand - the end of U.S. surveillance flights near its coasts.

China also is demanding that the United States take sole blame for the collision, which destroyed the Chinese F-8 fighter jet.

The $80 million Navy EP-3E is still at a military airfield on Hainan, where China is believed to be studying its surveillance equipment. In Wednesday talks, the United States has said it will press for the damaged plane's return.

After working in near silence to win the crew's release, U.S. officials have begun giving their version of events. They say the nimbler Chinese jet slammed into one of the EP-3E's four propeller engines before swinging into the U.S. plane's nose.

The impact broke the Chinese jet in half, U.S. diplomats have said.

The Chinese government has launched an intense propaganda campaign, lionizing pilot Wang Wei as a hero of national defense. President Jiang Zemin on Monday declared Wang a "Guardian of the Air and Sea," and called on Chinese to emulate his dedication to the communist state.

A memorial Web site has been created for Wang. It has space for leaving words of condolence, lighting an online "candle" and making virtual offerings of flowers, wine and incense.

"Salute! to the hero in our hearts," said one message. "The Chinese people will remember you always," said another, signed "War Spirit."

Already declared a "revolutionary martyr," Wang was described by Jiang as an "outstanding representative of the new generation of revolutionary soldiers," state-run China Central Television reported.

The report identified Jiang as head of a Communist Party commission that runs the military, a reminder of the president's role as commander in chief of the armed forces.

Communist Party officials and villagers in Wang's hometown of Huzhou - a small town in eastern China's Zhejiang province - staged a rally over the weekend. Those attending pledged to learn from Wang's "patriotic spirit" and to turn "tragedy into strength," Xinhua said.

"Wang Wei's heroic deeds are the most moving, most real and most inspiring to us," the military's main newspaper, the Liberation Army Daily, said Monday.

-------

Bush to Tackle Delicate Issue of Resuming China Spy Flights

New York Times
April 17, 2001
By DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/17/world/17PLAN.html

WASHINGTON, April 16 - The White House said today that President Bush would personally decide when to resume reconnaissance flights along the Chinese coast and whether the planes, which have previously flown unescorted, should be protected by American fighter aircraft.

How and when to resume the flights is emerging as a sensitive issue. Mr. Bush is not likely to come to any conclusions, aides say, until after American military officials meet with Chinese officials in Beijing on Wednesday to review the causes of the midair collision on April 1 that resulted in the loss of a Chinese fighter jet and its pilot and the emergency landing of an American EP-3E Aries II and its crew of 24.

But even more delicate than when the flights resume is how the Navy will conduct them.

Pentagon officials say it will probably be too risky to send the slow- moving EP-3E's with a fighter escort, a move that would probably appear provocative to the Chinese. Moreover, military officials warn that sending an escort along could result in a clash, even an inadvertent one, with Chinese fighters chasing the reconnaissance plane.

"That's not a situation we're eager to provoke," one administration official said. But today, at a briefing for reporters, Mr. Bush's spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said no decision had been made.

"The secretary of defense will be making a recommendation to the national security team for the president and to the president" on the spy flights, he said, including "other associated missions that may or may not go along with those flights."

At the Wednesday meeting in Beijing, the Chinese are expected to demand an end to the surveillance flights, even though they take place over international waters. American officials say they will not give in on their right to fly the missions, and will insist on establishing rules with the Chinese to keep the Chinese and American planes a safe distance from each other.

But it is far from clear that the Chinese will agree to such rules, or that they will agree to even discuss the matter on Wednesday.

"I think it's dependent on the attitude that the two sides bring to the occasion," Richard Boucher, the State Department spokesman, said today. "We look forward to the Chinese bringing a nonpolemical attitude to it and see what we can do there."

The American delegation will be led by the Defense Department, although the State Department will also be represented. It will be headed by Peter F. Verga, a deputy undersecretary of defense for policy. Among the other Americans will be Brig. Gen. Neal Sealock, the Beijing- based defense attaché who often met with the American crew during its 11-day detention on Hainan island, which ended last Wednesday.

The United States had proposed that the two countries discuss the incident at a regularly scheduled meeting of the Military Maritime Commission, which Washington and Beijing created in 1998 to increase communications between their militaries. The commission is scheduled to meet in San Francisco on April 23. But the Chinese rejected that suggestion, preferring to discuss the standoff in a separate forum.

"I don't know if it will be the first of many meetings," said a senior State Department official. "We'd like to have a meeting and resolve the issues and move on. Among the things that we want, we have an $80 million airplane, which is ours, and we think the Chinese have a responsibility to return it to us. We have questions about their aggressive tactics when our planes are flying in international airspace. They undoubtedly have questions about these matters."

Because the session in Beijing - held there at Chinese insistence - will be the first since the crew's release, American officials say it may be an indicator of the immediate future of China's interactions with the United States.

The senior official said if the meeting was more "shrill, from their point of view, then maybe the Chinese have not made up their minds what kind of relationship they want with us."

The Chinese will undoubtedly also be looking for signals. They are acutely aware that the Bush administration will decide within weeks what kind of arms to sell to Taiwan. If the administration goes ahead with selling the most sophisticated goods on Taiwan's wish list, China is likely to take a far harder line on the American presence off its coast.

But American officials say that even a decision to sell Taiwan the less advanced Kidd-class destroyers could well be interpreted by Beijing as a significant upgrading of American aid to the island, which China regards as a renegade province.

"You can't make a decision like this based on what the Chinese will think, or even on whether our relations with Beijing are going through a good phase or a bad phase," said a senior official involved in the decision. "All you can do is make the judgment based on Taiwan's defense needs."


---

U.S. Weighs Surveillance Flight Options
Broader Steps Considered, Reflecting Ire at Beijing

Washington Post
Tuesday, April 17, 2001; Page A01
By Steven Mufson and Thomas E. Ricks Washington Post Staff Writers
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A24803-2001Apr16?language=printer

The Bush administration is considering sending an aircraft carrier or an Aegis radar-equipped warship to the South China Sea to ensure the safety of continued U.S. surveillance flights off the coast of China, Pentagon officials said yesterday.

The proposals, which were prepared for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, are among a range of responses the administration is considering in advance of Wednesday's meeting between U.S. and Chinese officials in Beijing to discuss the April 1 collision of a U.S. Navy EP-3E Aries II surveillance plane and a Chinese F-8 interceptor over the South China Sea.

Many senior administration members continue to fume about the 11-day standoff over the detained 24-member crew of the Navy plane and over China's failure to return the plane itself. "There's a desire to have China pay a price. That will be manifested with some tangible actions here," an administration official said.

The most likely actions include granting visas to prominent Taiwanese politicians to visit or transit in the United States, limiting military-to-military contacts, cutting off or downgrading other official exchange programs, imposing limits on technology transfers, delaying approval of satellite launches and opposing Beijing's bid to host the 2008 Olympic Games.

One senior official said the administration was unlikely to seek limits on trade, which would be temporary pending China's admission to the World Trade Organization, but that "most other things are on the table and under review."

The Bush administration is also moving closer to a decision on what to include in a package of arms to Taiwan. China vehemently opposes the arms sale, since it regards the island of 23 million as its own and has vowed to reunite it with the mainland.

The Taiwan arms sale likely will be discussed at a meeting today between Rumsfeld and other senior administration officials, including Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, that also will take up the issue of how to protect future American surveillance flights off the Chinese coast.

If Wednesday's meeting in Beijing goes well, officials said, the United States might simply resume the flights without any special escorts. But other options include sending an aircraft carrier with fighter jets that would fly in the general vicinity of the reconnaissance planes or dispatching an Aegis radar-equipped U.S. warship to the region to track Chinese fighter jets that might intercept the U.S. reconnaissance flights.

One option that was considered, but discarded, was a more aggressive proposal to first send U.S. fighter jets along the flight path usually flown by the reconnaissance planes. An official familiar with that option said he didn't know why it was dropped, but another official said the priority was to establish the right to reconnaissance flights rather than make a confrontational gesture.

"We've made quite clear that we think that a productive meeting can set the basis for further relationship and, on the other hand, a polemical meeting would give us some indication of how they might or might not intend to proceed with the relationship," State Department spokesman Richard A. Boucher said yesterday.

Boucher said that China told U.S. Embassy officials in Beijing over the weekend that it would "take a non-polemical and straightforward approach" to the meeting, where a Pentagon-led delegation and Chinese officials are supposed to review blame for the collision and ways to avoid future incidents. One former U.S. military official said the Pentagon planned to show videos showing the Chinese fighter pilot who died in the collision making dangerously close runs in earlier interceptions.

"Right now what they are discussing are contingencies" in case the Wednesday meeting in Beijing doesn't go well, said a military planner.

Flights would probably resume shortly after the meeting, U.S. officials said.

Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, the senior Pentagon spokesman, declined to comment on Pentagon planning for how to handle the resumption of the reconnaissance flights. "We're going to keep doing it," he said, "but by the same token we're not going to announce the schedule or the details of how."

The Joint Chiefs of Staff are scheduled to meet today to discuss how to resume the flights, a Pentagon official said.

While the United States hasn't flown any reconnaissance flights near China since the April 1 collision, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said yesterday, "they could resume at any time, whenever the president makes the determination."

One potential casualty of the collision could be a plan for China to launch a Loral satellite. In the contract, China said it would cancel the deal if approval is not received by July 8.

Loral has said it could lose as much as $180 million if the deal falls through.

In another potential irritant in relations between Washington and Beijing, former Taiwanese president Lee Tenghui will visit his alma mater, Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., from April 30 to May 4 despite China's opposition, an administration official said.

In addition, the current Taiwanese president, Chen Shuibian, is expected to be given a transit visa to go through New York on May 21 and 22 on his way to Caribbean countries, the official said.

A visa to Lee, then Taiwan's president, in 1995 set off months of tension between the United States and China, which maintains that such visits violate a 1979 U.S. pledge to downgrade official relations with Taiwan when it established diplomatic relations with Beijing.

Most people close to the administration continue to expect the U.S. arms package to Taiwan to include submarines, anti-submarine planes and Kidd-class destroyers, and other upgrades in systems and software. The administration is likely to put Aegis-equipped destroyers into production, which takes several years, without making an immediate sale to Taiwan, and could link a future sale to Chinese behavior, particularly whether it ends its missile buildup on the coast near Taiwan.

A final decision on the Taiwan arms package is expected no later than April 24, the day before Taiwan is supposed to be informed of the contents.

The only U.S. aircraft carrier currently in the vicinity of China is the USS Kitty Hawk, which recently rounded Singapore and is steaming toward Guam. Navy officials said yesterday that they had received no orders yet to turn the ship around, and they expect it to reach Guam by the end of this week unless it receives new orders.

According to the Web site of the 7th Fleet, the Navy has three Aegis-equipped ships available in the western Pacific: the USS Vincennes, the USS Cowpens and the USS Chancellorsville.

The administration announced the members of the U.S. delegation to attend the Wednesday meeting in Beijing.

The group will be led by Peter F. Verga, deputy undersecretary of defense for policy support, and will also include the head of the State Department's China office, James Keith, and the U.S. military attache in Beijing, Gen. Neal Sealock.

---

Federal Web sites can track visitors

The Washington Times www.washtimes.com
Published 4/17/01
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010417-951444.htm

People who log onto dozens of federal government Web sites may be unknowingly tracked despite a privacy policy forbidding it, investigators say.

In one case, a government contractor was even given ownership of all the information collected from a Web site, said the congressional report released yesterday.

The scope of the problem hasn´t been nailed down. For example, the report said the National Aeronautics and Space Administration hasn´t determined how many Web sites it operates so officials don´t know how many might be gathering the information.

The report, culled from audits of 16 agencies, found 64 federal Web sites used files that allow them to track the browsing and buying habits of Internet users.

The departments of Education, Treasury, Energy, Interior and Transportation used such unauthorized files, as did NASA and the General Services Administration, the report said.

It did not estimate how many people may have visited the sites. But the company Jupiter Media Metrix, which tracks Internet usage, says government sites are popular. The company estimates 3.5 million visitors clicked on the Education Department´s Web pages in March and 2.2 million went to NASA sites.

Ari Schwartz, senior policy analyst for the Center for Democracy and Technology, which follows privacy issues, called the report troubling.

"Generally when we think about privacy and the government, we want to make sure that the government is transparent and does protect privacy over and above the rest of the Internet and the rest of the private and nonprofit sector," Mr. Schwartz said.

His organization was one of several that signed a letter yesterday urging the Bush administration to promptly fill a post created by President Clinton to see that agencies adhere to privacy policies.

The new report was released by Sen. Fred Thompson, Tennessee Republican, the chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee. He said he was upset by the findings and planned to introduce legislation that would establish a commission to examine government privacy practices.

Congress ordered all agency inspectors general to investigate the use of unauthorized tracking devices after the General Accounting Office reported in October that about a dozen agency Web sites were using the technology even though the Clinton administration issued a memo restricting the practice in June.

The only time agencies are supposed to be able to use such software is when there is a compelling need and agency heads say it is OK. In those instances, the Web sites must explicitly tell Internet users about the practice.

Contractors operating Web sites on behalf of the government also must abide by the policy.

The White House referred questions to the Office of Management and Budget, where spokesman Chris Ullman would say only that the policy remains in effect and the issue is "something that we certainly are keeping an eye on."

Eleven Energy Department Web sites used the unauthorized files, known as "cookies," prompting Inspector General Gregory Friedman to say the department "cannot provide reasonable assurance" the privacy of Web site visitors will be protected.

GSA Inspector General William Barton found that a contractor managed the business operations of an agency site that used the tracking technology. The agreement gave the contractor ownership of all the information about the Internet users who visited the site.

Of the agencies surveyed, the Transportation Department was most likely to use the tracking files, according to the report. It had them on 23 Web pages, but the devices have since been removed, according to John Meche, the agency´s deputy assistant inspector general.

"Protecting Web privacy is an ongoing challenge because Web sites are constantly revised or reconfigured," Mr. Meche said in his report.

NASA Inspector General Roberta Gross found three Web sites using unauthorized files. But she indicated the number could be even higher. Ms. Gross said NASA does not inventory its Web sites and is unable to reliably determine how many it owns or whether they are in compliance with government policies.

--------

The Spy Who Lost Me

by Michelle Delio
Apr. 17, 2001 PDT
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,43088,00.html

British intelligence officers have developed a rather worrying tendency of forgetting that they are carrying a computer, leaving a trail littered with lost laptops.

The British Defense Ministry has reported 205 laptops missing since 1997 -- most of which contained classified information. That's an average of 51 lost laptops per year.

The latest was reported missing on Monday. This one reportedly contained data about new weapons systems. Its owner left it in the back of a taxi.

To combat this spate of missing-in-action machines, the Defense Ministry plans to outfit their absent-minded workers with secret-agent-style briefcases that protect national secrets by automatically destroying the contents of lost laptops' hard drives.

Thieves have been blamed for some of the laptop losses, but the majority of the missing machines were simply mislaid by tipsy or distracted agents.

Several dozen other laptops were lost when their owners forgot them on public transportation.

An agent with MI6, Britain's international intelligence agency, lost her computer after getting drunk in a London tapas bar. She believes she may have left it in the bar.

"For the life of me, I really can't understand how the British seem to lose so many laptops with sensitive information on them," said William Knowles, a senior analyst with security firm C4I and the moderator of the InfoSec security news mailing list.

"When I travel with a laptop I watch it better than some of my fellow travelers watch their children. And my laptop isn't packed with national defense secrets."

The Ministry did not respond immediately to a request for comment, but said in a press release that it plans to protect its laptops by purchasing 15,000 thief-proof briefcases, each priced at 1,000 pounds apiece (about $1,438).

The cases open only when supplied with the proper codes. Hopefully, those forgetful agents will manage to remember the codes, since the cases have a built-in electronic self-destruct mechanism that erases a laptop's hard drive if the case is opened by force.

The briefcases also have a tracking feature that allows a computer gone astray to call home for help. And while the machine waits for rescue, the case will shield it from damage by rain, cold, heat and bombs.

The Ministry of Defense has not said who will be supplying them with the cases. This information might be useful, since the U.K. isn't alone when it comes to losing important laptops, Knowles said.

The U.S. State Department recently lost two laptops with information on weapons of mass destruction, one owned by an agent in the Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, which contained highly sensitive encryption information.

It was lost in April 2000, when it disappeared from the State Department's headquarters.

Another, which contained nuclear secrets, also mysteriously vanished from the department's offices in December of 2000, prompting then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to impose strict new security procedures at the State Department.

But British defense workers and security agents seem to have a goal of setting a world record for laptops-on-the-loose.

Pentagon officials had to warn the Ministry of Defense to tighten up their security after a laptop -- containing details of a warplane being designed in tandem with the United States -- was snatched last May from a British navy officer while he was fumbling for change at the Paddington train station.

Some of the laptops have been recovered, and it doesn't appear that any have been sold or given to enemies of the British Empire, unless you count the country's tabloid press.

"I believe that most people, upon discovering that they have stolen or found a laptop with classified information, do return it to the Ministry," said Ian Murray, a London lawyer.

"But, with roughly about half of those lost machines, we have heard reports of people trying to sell the contents to our tabloid press. I suspect that several of the thefts were carried out in the hopes of getting money for the computer's contents from the tabs," said Murray, whose firm was anonymously approached on several occasions by would-be clients asking him about the penalties for selling lost computers to the newspapers, rather than turning them in.

"I advised them that they should simply give whatever they had found back to the Ministry, as there was a chance that some poor sod's job was on the line," Murray said.

The Ministry attempts to keep its laptop losses private, but Murray says there are sometimes "obvious, understated but rather frantic" notices in the back of British newspapers, offering rewards for the return of lost laptops.

"One Ministry of defense laptop that was pinched ended up at a pawn broker, who returned it after seeing an ad, and another was recovered after the British Security Services placed an ad in the Times as a student begging for return of the laptop with 'vital research notes' to the 'academic' that lost it, in return for a reward. That computer was recovered on March of 2000," said Knowles.

Recently, the Mirror, a British tabloid, has begun running its own ads offering rewards for missing Ministry machines.

The Mirror retrieved and eventually returned the laptop that contained the plans for the British-U.S. fighter plane to the Ministry of Defense.

"All of this does rather make you wonder about the basic common-sense abilities of the people who are carrying our nation's secrets around in their briefcases," said Murray.

Murray believes the Ministry could have solved the missing laptop problem far more cheaply by simply handcuffing its agents to their old briefcases.

"I advise the use of handcuffs not out of meanness, but for their own good. Because, and mark my words, one of those witless agents is going to blow his computer or himself up whilst using one of the high-tech spy briefcases," Murray said.

-------- terrorism

Fear Stifled Defense Case, Lawyer Says in Terror Trial

New York Times
April 17, 2001
By BENJAMIN WEISER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/17/world/17TERR.html

A lawyer for a defendant in the embassy bombings trial told a federal judge in Manhattan yesterday that his client's defense was being compromised because he could not find experts willing to testify about the United States' intervention in Somalia in 1993. He said the experts were scared off because of the terrorism allegations in the case.

The lawyer, Sam A. Schmidt, also said that he could also not find Somali witnesses to fly to New York to testify, and that neither he nor his investigators were willing to risk traveling to Somalia because of the violence and anarchy there.

"If we are talking about academics," Mr. Schmidt told Judge Leonard B. Sand of Federal District Court in Manhattan, "I can tell you that I have had people not return my calls, tell me, `Forget it,' tell me: `Who do you represent? I'm not going to associate myself with those people.' "

Mr. Schmidt made his assertions as he failed to persuade Judge Sand to approve a subpoena ordering CNN to make available a hard-to-find videotape on Somalia that Mr. Schmidt said was crucial to his client's defense.

His client, Wadih El-Hage, is one of four men accused of participating in a terrorism conspiracy that prosecutors say was led by Osama bin Laden and included the 1998 bombings of the United States Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and the killings of 18 American soldiers in Somalia in the fall of 1993.

The defense opened its presentation yesterday in court after more than two months of government testimony and and other evidence, but the most lively debate, over the CNN subpoena, did not take place until after the jury had been sent home.

In turning down Mr. Schmidt's request for the CNN videotape, Judge Sand cited First Amendment grounds, saying, "First and foremost is the obligation to demonstrate that the recourse to the news media is indeed the last resort."

Mr. Schmidt had contended that the tape was not available elsewhere. He said that the tape was sold to CNN for $100 by a freelance photographer in Somalia, and showed a July 1993 American attack on supporters of the Somali warlord Muhammad Farah Aidid that killed dozens of Somalis. Mr. Schmidt said the tape was critical to showing why Somalis might have acted in what he suggested was a defensive manner later that fall in the attacks on the American soldiers.

"It not only shows that this other group of people, not bin Laden's group of people, had a real motivation and the ability to attack Americans," Mr. Schmidt said, but also that "the manner of the attack made it warfare."

Before the judge ruled, he held a brief closed session, attended by a CNN lawyer, at which Mr. Schmidt disclosed why he had such an urgent need for the subpoena, which was filed only recently. Although Judge Sand had a court stenographer read a partial transcript of the closed session afterward in open court, Mr. Schmidt's precise reason for seeking the subpoena was kept confidential.

Neither Mr. Schmidt nor the CNN lawyer, David A. Schulz, would comment on the reason afterward.

Earlier in the day, the first defense witness, a British forensic chemist, questioned the thoroughness of the F.B.I.'s testing of clothing that the government says was found in a gym bag carried by another of the defendants, Mohammed Saddiq Odeh, when he was first arrested in Pakistan.

Prosecutors say Mr. Odeh denied any role in the embassy attacks but admitted that in the days before the Aug. 7, 1998, blasts in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, he stayed in the same Nairobi hotel room as a man said to be an explosives expert who helped to build the bomb.

An F.B.I. agent has already testified that TNT was detected on the clothing in the bag, which included a pair of pants, a shirt and a piece of cloth, but that no measurements were taken of how much explosive matter was present.

The chemist, John Lloyd, asked why the F.B.I. did not measure the amount of explosive residue.

"The more explosive it is, the more significant the evidence is likely to be," Mr. Lloyd said. "Without too much difficulty, they could have been calibrated to determine the amount of explosive" found on the items.

---

U.S. vows hard line on China

The Washington Times www.washtimes.com
4/17/01
Joseph Curl
http://asp.washtimes.com/printarticle.asp?action=print&ArticleID=20010417-91869

The United States will take a hard line against China in talks beginning tomorrow, telling the communist country that U.S. surveillance flights will soon resume and insisting on the return of a Navy plane damaged when a Chinese jet slammed into it over international waters.

An eight-member U.S. delegation, which left Washington yesterday for Beijing, also plans to "ask tough questions to the Chinese about the manner in which they have dangerously intercepted United States reconnaissance flights," Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer said yesterday.

"It is dangerous to operate in that manner. And for the safety of not only our American crews but for the Chinese crews involved, it is important that tough questions be asked," he said.

While Mr. Fleischer said during a press briefing his comments "did not give any indication" whether Chinese officials would be told reconnaissance missions will resume, a senior Bush official confirmed that U.S. representatives would deliver precisely that message.

The spokesman, however, said President Bush is awaiting a recommendation from Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld on resumption of surveillance flights off the coast of China.

The Chinese are expected to demand an end to the flights, which typically take place 50 miles or more offshore in international airspace.

The United States has four primary issues on its agenda for the meeting, one of which is "to make the case that plane is United States property and the United States would like to have the plane returned," Mr. Fleischer said.

The other three agenda items, he said, are: providing a "clear understanding to the Chinese about the cause of the accident from our point of view"; discussing how air accidents can be avoided in the future; and asking "tough questions" about Chinese behavior while intercepting U.S. surveillance flights. The American representatives also will make clear the U.S. position that the Navy EP-3E reconnaissance missions adhere to international law.

"The United States will always reserve the right to operate over international waters and international airspace to protect the needs of our neighbors, to promote regional stability and secure peace; which is why our nation, and many other nations, fly reconnaissance missions, " Mr. Fleischer said.

"And so long as these flights are over international waters and in international airspace, they´re in accord with international law."

The State Department, meanwhile, said the United States will not negotiate on U.S. reconnaissance missions.

"The flying of these flights is an important part of our national security," said spokesman Richard Boucher. "It´s an important part of stability in Asia. It´s a decision that we make, where to fly, as long as we´re in international airspace, when to fly, as long as we´re in international airspace, and that we will continue to make those decisions on our own."

The U.S.-China meeting comes as Mr. Bush mulls whether to provide ships with sophisticated anti-missile radar to Taiwan. The president is bound by U.S. law to provide the island nation, which China views as a renegade province, with the means to defend itself.

The talks in Beijing are expected to take "a couple of days," Mr. Boucher said. They are taking place in Beijing because of "the insistence of the Chinese government," Mr. Fleischer said.

The U.S. delegation will be led by Peter Verga, deputy undersecretary of defense for policy support. Mr. Verga is known in the Pentagon as a quiet troubleshooter who has been involved in sensitive negotiations in the past with Australia over joint defense cooperation.

The State Department is sending James Keith, director of the office of China affairs, and James Moriarty, a political counselor at the U.S. embassy in Beijing.

The U.S. military will be represented by Rear Adm. Steven Smith, Pacific Command´s director for plans and policy; Brig. Gen. Neal Sealock, the military attache in Beijing; Navy Capt. Phil Greene, regional director for China and Asia Pacific on the Joint Staff; Capt. John Orem, a pilot and EP-3E requirements officer in the Navy´s air warfare division; and Navy Cmdr. Raul Pedrozo, a specialist in ocean policy.

China has pledged to take a nonconfrontational tone during the meeting, although Pentagon officials told The Washington Times on the condition of anonymity that they have the opposite expectation.

"We have heard from the Chinese that they intend to take a non-polemical and straightforward approach to this meeting," said Mr. Boucher, the State Department spokesman. "We look to the Chinese to address these issues with us in a straight manner, not in an accusatory manner, not in a shrill manner."

Meanwhile, House Republicans are continuing their efforts to block normal trade relations with China, despite release of the detainees.

A spokesman for Rep. Duncan Hunter, California Republican and lead sponsor of legislation banning permanent normal trade status, said this most recent incident shows China is not deserving of the status.

"This is a snapshot of a larger picture, and that is hard-liners continue to control China, " said Michael Harrison, Mr. Hunter´s spokesman.

Rep. Thomas G. Tancredo, Colorado Republican and co-sponsor of the measure, said a number of his colleagues are rethinking their positions on trade. In spite of consistent annual support of favorable trade status granted by Congress, "things have gotten worse," Mr. Tancredo said. "So the message we should get is that we must have been doing something wrong."

China detained 24 Navy crew members for 12 days after their plane made an emergency landing on Hainan island in the South China Sea. The U.S. plane was severely damaged after a Chinese fighter slammed into it while trying to perform a maneuver known as "thumping, " in which the jet slips in front of the EP-3E and rattles it with jet exhaust.

The EP-3E pilot, Lt. Shane Osborn, said over the weekend that the Chinese pilot, Wang Wei, approached within 3 to 5 feet twice and clipped the $80 million plane´s propeller on the third pass. The Chinese jet quickly disintegrated as the badly damaged American plane plunged 8,000 feet in a roll before Lt. Osborn could regain control.

Meanwhile, the Chinese government yesterday restated its claim that the unarmed U.S. plane caused the April 1 crash by ramming Mr. Wang´s plane.

President Jiang Zemin declared Mr. Wang a "Guardian of the Air and Sea," and called on the Chinese to emulate his dedication to the communist state.

Already declared a "revolutionary martyr," Mr. Wang was described by Mr. Jiang as an "outstanding representative of the new generation of revolutionary soldiers," the government´s Chinese Central Television reported.

Audrey Hudson and Bill Gertz contributed to this article.

---

Malaysia 'safe´

The Washington Times www.washtimes.com
4/17/01
Embassy Row
James Morrison
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010417-8511502.htm

Malaysia is upset with a State Department warning to Americans to avoid traveling to resort islands off the eastern state of Sabah because of terrorist threats.

Tourism Minister Abdul Kadir Sheik Fazdir yesterday said he plans to meet with U.S. Ambassador Lynn Pascoe to explain that the islands of Sipadan and Pandanan are safe for tourists.

"I´ll also invite him to visit Sabah to see for himself the situation here, with all expenses paid by the Malaysian government," he told reporters in the Sabah state capital, Kota Kinabalu.

"Actually, Sabah is a safe destination for tourists."

Defense Minister Najib Razak has also complained about the warning issued April 9.

"There is no truth to it. The islands off Sabah are secure. We have placed a lot of security personnel on these islands," he said.

The State Department warned that Americans "should be aware of the persistence of threats" from the Abu Sayyaf terrorists, who are based in the nearby Philippines. They kidnapped foreign and Malaysian tourists last year in raids on the resort islands.

"The Abu Sayyaf terrorist group continues to have a presence in the southern Philippines and remains a security threat to areas of Malaysia close to that part of the Philippines," the department said.

The warning said, "There is a concern that the Abu Sayyaf terrorist group may take additional action against U.S. citizens and other foreigners."

Mr. Razak said he has ordered additional troops to the islands to ensure the safety of visitors.

He also said the number of tourists visiting Sabah and its nearby islands has increased since the kidnappings last year.

-------- activists

Peltier Statement: FTAA

From: "LPDC" <lpdc@idir.net>
Tue, 17 Apr 2001
In Solidarity, the LPDC

STATEMENT OF LEONARD PELTIER ON THE FTAA
Dear Brothers, Sisters, Friends and Supporters,

I know many of you are already familiar with the FTAA, NAFTA, the WTO, the IMF and the World Bank. I know many of you are working hard to expose what these organizations and agreements are all about and how they are taking over the world and violating human rights, labor rights, Indigenous rights, environmental protections, and sovereignty rights, in each and every place they set foot. Therefore, what I would like to address is the bigger picture - the real roots of the FTAA and ways which we can obstruct it.

Where did the FTAA get its start? Not in a conference room and not in an office. The FTAA is a continuation of the imperialism that began thousands of years ago in Europe with the domination of Indigenous Peoples whose self-subsisting land and way of life were taken away so that greedy feudalists could reign. Ever since, Indigenous Peoples have been forced into submission, if not obliteration, in the name of civilization and progress all over the globe. Here we are in the 21st century, and the world has far from benefited. I do not need to explain the Earth's devastation, the overwhelming poverty, and the wars that have resulted from practices that put profit before the very survival of Mother Earth and the human race.

Advocates of the FTAA would not dare refer to their policies as forms of colonization or feudalism because these practices are now widely scorned. Instead they will justify their actions in the name of "development" for the "poor" countries of Central and South America. Development? What the first peoples of the Americas need is "recovery" not development. Recovery from the very same colonization, domination, and genocide that multi-national corporations want to perpetuate for their own gains today.

Now we must continue, not only to condemn the practices of these trade organizations and policies, but also to implement and support means of self-sufficiency both in our communities and abroad. We must support Indigenous movements like that of the Zapatistas and the Uwa who are fighting to maintain their land base and self-sufficient way of life. We must support the small farmers and farm workers who provide their communities with healthy foods to eat. We must create and support innovative projects on Indian reservations, in inner cities and in third world countries that promote self-sufficiency and better living conditions.

But in doing this, we must unite beyond the boundaries of race, class, belief systems, and age that all too often divide us. If we do not unite, we will be defeated one by one, just as they destroyed the American Indian Movement who fought so hard for Native sovereignty, the Black Panthers, who developed much needed community based programs and struggled for self-determination, the movements in Central America that sought to implement schools, social programs, and land reform, and the unions who fought for humane working conditions. Most important, we must break down the barriers that divide us in our own backyards.

We need to develop a global culture that teaches us, as my ancestors did, to think carefully about the impact our actions and policies will have on Mother Earth, on each other, and on future generations before we act upon them. If we can do this, then surely we can win.

In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, Leonard Peltier

----

Protests Stall Planned Chicago Gas Shut-Offs

New York Times
April 17, 2001
By JOHN W. FOUNTAIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/17/national/17SHUT.html

CHICAGO, April 16 - After a morning of protests today, community activists won a delay in the beginning of shut-offs of natural gas service to customers behind on their utility bills here.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson emerged from a meeting with officials at Peoples Gas, which supplies natural gas to 900,000 customers in the Chicago area, and announced that the utility's officials had agreed to postpone shut- offs for delinquent customers for at least one more day while it negotiated with Mr. Jackson and community leaders. But as snow fell from a gray sky on a cold, windy afternoon, shut- offs for some customers seemed to be only a matter of time.

Community leaders are asking Peoples Gas to delay shut-offs until June 1. They said that would allow more time to seek additional help for the poor from the city and the state. A delay would also give the utility time to resolve problems with any bills that customers contended were inaccurate, said Mr. Jackson, who added that he would meet with company officials again Tuesday afternoon.

Peoples Gas had already delayed shutoffs, which could have begun on April 1 under Illinois regulations, after talks with Mr. Jackson two weeks ago. Since then, officials of the utility said nearly 10,000 of the estimated 24,000 delinquent customers had made payment arrangements. But about 14,800 customers have made no arrangements or payments since December, Desiree Rogers, a spokeswoman for the company, said. Those customers are facing disconnection of service, as are abandoned buildings that still have service.

Ms. Rogers said the utility would make "one more attempt to reach out to those customers either through phone calls or letters" over the next few days. Officials of the utility said it had postponed shut-offs because of "unseasonably cold weather."

Asked whether shutoffs would begin on Wednesday, Ms. Rogers said, "We'll wait to see what the temperature looks like."

In arguing against shut-offs, activists said this afternoon that the issue is not just a matter of residents receiving free gas.

"People with the ability to pay must pay," Mr. Jackson said at the news conference. "Some poor people on fixed incomes - particularly the seniors - just cannot pay the exorbitant energy bill when it has quadrupled. That combined with the costs of their rent, that with higher prescription drug costs and that with food.

"They cannot pay," Mr. Jackson said. "They need some form of debt relief."

Under Illinois utility regulations gas shut-offs are forbidden from Nov. 1 through March 31 or on days when the average temperature is forecast below 32 degrees. But warmer temperatures do not mean that people will not need gas, say activists, who contend that many sick and elderly will be left without hot water and the ability to cook.

"Once you have all these shut-offs, it's going to be hellish," said Bob Vondrasek, who heads the South Austin Coalition, a community group on the city's West Side. "We're focusing on the immediate relief question so people can get over the hump."

---

MANHATTAN: ENVIRONMENTAL PROTEST IN MIDTOWN

New York Times
April 17, 2001
Metro Briefing
Al Baker (NYT)
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/17/nyregion/17MBRF.html

Eight members of an environmental group were charged yesterday with reckless endangerment and disorderly conduct after unfurling a 20-foot-long banner during the morning rush in Midtown. Members of the Rainforest Action Network climbed flagpoles and unfurled the banner reading, "Hey Citi: Not With My Money!" at Citigroup's offices at East 53rd Street and Lexington Avenue. The group said it objected to the bank's loans for projects like mining in Amazon rain forests. Leah C. Johnson, a Citigroup spokeswoman, said, "We share some of their concerns, but we're just not sure what climbing up a flagpole has to do with these concerns."

--------

'Brutal' attack against students in Ethiopia
The riot police cornered many of the protesters

Tue, 17 Apr 2001
From: TEGBAR@JUNO.COM
BBC
By Nita Bhalla in Addis Ababa
http://news6.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/africa/newsid_1281000/1281791.stm

Hundreds of Ethiopian riot police armed with batons and riot shields stormed central Addis Ababa today beating up civilians including women and children.

A wing of the Ethiopian police, known as the 'special forces', were called in to break up a riot which erupted when a peaceful demonstration turned into a violent protest.

The police trapped the demonstrators in a small road

The scenes I witnessed in the Arat Kilo area of Addis Ababa can only be described as brutal.

The riot police arrived at the scene at 1300 local time (1000 GMT), when a group of about 100 civilians outside the Addis Ababa University campus started throwing rocks and bottles at the police.

Riot police

The special forces took charge of a situation, which was beyond the control of the regular police force.

They trapped the rioters along a small road before charging at them from all directions.

As the rioters dispersed, the special force officers pursued them beating them mercilessly, even as the rioters surrendered and pleaded with them to stop.

Some of the demonstrators were left lying on the floor.

Many lay motionless on the ground as the police continued to beat and kick them.

Some of the officers stormed the homes of civilians living and working in the area, looking for more of the rioters, but finding none they began beating women and young children.

As I tried to record the screams of the women, they turned on me and began pushing and shoving me out of the way.

'Bad image'

They snatched my camera as I tried to take pictures of the atrocities, saying that I should not portray Ethiopia to the world in this way.

When I protested, they grabbed the sound recorder and threw it to the ground smashing it to pieces.

The rioters, who were not students, say they sympathised with the week-long boycott of classes by over 3,000 university students.

The students have been demanding the removal of armed police from their campus.

They are also demanding the resignation of the two university vice-presidents who they claim are affiliated to the government.

The ministry of education on Monday gave the students a deadline to return to classes by noon Wednesday or face withdrawal from the university.

The situation in the area has been tense for the past week.

The increasing number of police as well as the constant protests by the students is thought to have encouraged the demonstrators to start attacking the police.

---------

Sovereign corporations & FTAA!!

Tue, 17 Apr 2001
From: "Cleanhudson.org Blame GE!" <kecox@mailbox.syr.edu>

The crux of why we are all opposing the creation of the FTAA!!! --Keegan

April 30, 2001
The Nation Sovereign Corporations
by William Greider

When NAFTA was adopted in 1993, Chapter 11 in the trade and investment agreement was too obscure to stir controversy. Eight years later, it's the smoking gun in the intensifying argument over whether globalization trumps national sovereignty. Chapter 11 established a new system of private arbitration for foreign investors to bring injury claims against governments. As the business claims and money awards accumulate, the warnings from astute critics are confirmed--NAFTA has enabled multinational corporations to usurp the sovereign powers of government, not to mention the rights of citizens and communities.

The issue has exquisite resonance with the present moment. On April 20 thirty-four heads of state gather in Quebec City to lead cheers for a Free Trade Area for the Americas. The FTAA negotiations are designed to expand NAFTA's rules to cover the entire Western Hemisphere. The Quebec meeting should provide good theater but not much substance. Tony Clarke of the Polaris Institute, in Ottawa, says the meeting is intended to be "a face lift for the whole global agenda, by portraying free trade as democracy." Protesting citizens will be in the streets, challenging 6,000 police and Mounties, with an opposite message: Democracy is threatened by the corporate vision of globalization.

Chapter 11 of NAFTA should become a defining issue for FTAA negotiations. Many, including Clarke, vice chairman of the Council of Canadians, believe corporate governance was and is the FTAA's intent. "There is a conquering spirit at the heart of all this," he says, adding that the corporations' attitude is: "We have to get into every nook and cranny of the world and make it ours."

Chapter 11 provides a model of how this might be accomplished. The operative principle is that foreign capital investing in Canada, Mexico and the United States may demand compensation if the profit-making potential of their ventures has been injured by government decisions--"tantamount to expropriation." Thus, foreign-based companies are given more rights than domestic businesses operating in their home country. For example:

§ California banned a methanol-based gasoline additive, MTBE, after the EPA reported potential cancer risks and at least 10,000 groundwater sites were found polluted by the substance. Methanex of Vancouver, British Columbia, the world's largest methanol producer, filed a $970 million claim against the United States. If the NAFTA panel rules for the company, many similar complaints are expected, since at least ten other states followed California's lead. The federal government would have to pay the awards. California State Senator Sheila Kuehl and others have asked the US Trade Representative to explain how this squares with a state's sovereign right to protect health and the environment.

§ In Mexico, a US waste-disposal company, Metalclad, was awarded $16.7 million in damages after the state of San Luis Potosí blocked its waste site in the village of Guadalcazar. Local residents complained that the Mexican government was not enforcing environmental standards and that the project threatened their water supply. Metalclad's victory established that NAFTA's dispute mechanism reaches to subnational governments, including municipalities.

§ In Canada, the government banned another gasoline additive, MMT, as a suspected health hazard and one that damages catalytic converters, according to auto makers. The Ethyl Corporation of Virginia, producer of MMT, filed a $250 million claim but settled for $13 million after Canada agreed to withdraw its ban and apologize.

§ The Loewen Group Inc., a Canadian operator of far-flung funeral homes, lodged a $750 million complaint against the United States, claiming that a Biloxi, Mississippi, jury made an excessive award of $500 million when it found Loewen liable for contract fraud against a small local competitor.

§ Sunbelt Water Inc. of California has filed the largest and most audacious claim--seeking $10.5 billion from Canada for revoking its license to export water by supertanker from British Columbia to water-scarce areas of the United States.

§ Canada's Mondev International is claiming $50 million from the United States because the City of Boston canceled a sales contract for an office building with a shopping mall. Boston invoked sovereign immunity against such lawsuits and was upheld by a local judge and the Massachusetts Supreme Court. The US Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal. So the company turned to NAFTA for relief.

"When just the threat of a Chapter 11 action may suffice to wrest a financial settlement from a government, investors have unprecedented leverage against states," Lydia Lazar, a Chicago attorney who has worked in global commerce, wrote in Global Financial Markets magazine. Mexico, Canada and the United States effectively waived the doctrine of sovereign immunity, she explained, when they signed NAFTA.

As many as fifteen cases have been launched to date, but no one can be sure of the number, since there's no requirement to inform the public. The contesting parties choose the judges who will arbitrate, choose which issues and legal principles are to apply and also decide whether the public has any access to the proceedings. The design follows the format for private arbitration cases between contesting business interests. With the same arrogance that designed the WTO and other international trade forums, it is assumed that these disputes are none of the public's business--even though public laws are under attack and taxpayers' money will pay the fines. The core legal issue is described as damage to an investor's property--property in the form of anticipated profits. The NAFTA logic thus establishes the "regulatory takings" doctrine the right has promoted unsuccessfully for two decades--a retrograde version of property rights designed to cripple or even dismantle the administrative state's regulatory powers. "NAFTA is really an end run around the Constitution," says Lazar.

The fundamental difference in Chapter 11, unlike other trade agreements, is that the global corporations are free to litigate on their own without having to ask national governments to act on their behalf in global forums. Clearly, some of the business complaints so far are more exotic than anyone probably anticipated. These initial cases will set precedents, however, that major global firms can apply later. If nobody stops this process, the national identity of multinationals will become even weaker and less relevant, Lazar points out, since they have status to challenge government as "an open class of 'legal equals.'"

In Canada a private lawsuit was filed recently challenging the constitutionality of Chapter 11, since Canada's Constitution states that the government cannot delegate justice to other bodies. The Canadian government, itself embarrassed by the cases against it, expressed doubt that Chapter 11 should be included in the hemispheric agreement, though it appears to be backing away from outright opposition. In US localities, the cases are beginning to stir questions, but lawmakers and jurists are only beginning to learn the implications.

Does George W. Bush understand what he is proposing for the Americas? Did Bill Clinton and Bush the elder understand the fundamental shift in legal foundations buried in NAFTA's fine print? They knew this is what business and finance wanted. As the public learns more, the smoking gun should become a focal point in this year's trade debate, confronting politicians with embarrassing questions about global governance. Who voted to shoot down national sovereignty? Who crowned the corporate investors the new monarchs of public values?

--------

Protesters storm US Air Force base

April 17, 2001
http://itn.co.uk/news/20010417/world/08nuclear.shtml

"The idea is to get arrested because we want to have a trial about nuclear weapons." - protester Hans Lammerant

Hundreds of anti-nuclear demonstrators have been arrested after storming a Belgian Air Force base where they believe US nuclear bombs are stored.

The campaigners marched to the perimeter of the Kleine Brogel base before breaking down a wire fence and running on to the base.

Police and military personnel, who were outnumbered by the demonstrators, tackled some of them and put plastic handcuffs on them.

Eventually the demonstrators sat down to await arrest.

Kleine Brogel, about 60 miles north east of Brussels, has been the target of demonstrations for several years because antinuclear activists believe US nuclear bombs are stored there.

The Belgian government has never confirmed this.

Hans Lammerant, a spokesman for Forum for Peace Action said 1500 people had taken part in the march and between 800 and 900 people had entered the base.

He said: "They are arresting everyone. They are sitting in big groups on the landing strips.

"The idea is to get arrested because we want to have a trial about nuclear weapons.

"In our opinion they are illegal weapons, so they can never be used without breaking international humanitarian law."

The organisers said in a statement they believed that nuclear weapons were illegal following 1996 advice from the International Court of Justice in The Hague that the use or threat of nuclear weapons in war should be outlawed.

----

A new peace education organization has been created, called the Canadian Peace Institute (CPI). This organization was proposed last June at the annual convention of the Canadian Peace Research and Education Association (CPREA).

Whereas CPREA has traditionally been more focussed on promoting peace research by means of an annual convention and by means of the journal "Peace Research", the new CPI will be more directly focussed on peace education. The opening paragraph of the CPI mission statement reads:

"The Canadian Peace Institute offers an interdisciplinary graduate program challenging students both in and outside the classroom in peace theory and development; students arbitrate alternatives to the aberration of violence and war. Education is virtually the only source of a foundation for peace, to overcome ignorance and intolerance. We have never discovered how to share the planet, or to save it from ourselves, and we must; it is our responsibility to all future generations, and ourselves. Historically, it is students who successfully depose despots peacefully, and affect dramatic, long-term change in establishing equitable and fair governance."

Listserve discussion groups have now been set up for both groups:

a) CPREAdiscussion@yahoogroups.com can be subscribed to at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CPREAdiscussion

Or you can simply send an empty email from your computer to CPREAdiscussion-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

b) CPIdiscussion@yahoogroups.com can be subscribed to at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CPIdiscussion

Or you can simply send an empty email from your computer to CPIdiscussion-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

-------

Delegates held up at border
As an alternative Peoples' Summit opens before the Summit of the Americas, foreign spokesmen say they were questioned and delayed while entering Canada.

Montreal Gazette
Tuesday 17 April 2001
KEVIN DOUGHERTY The Gazette
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/pages/010417/5022492.html

Two of the three foreign spokesmen for the alternative Peoples' Summit, which opened in Quebec City yesterday, were detained for questioning by Canadian immigration officials and granted limited visas to enter Canada.

"I was questioned thoroughly," said Karen Hansen-Kuhn of the Alliance for Responsible Trade in Washington, D.C.

Immigration officials called her aside as she was clearing customs at Ottawa International Airport yesterday when she said she was going to the Peoples' Summit, a gathering of more than 2,000 delegates from across Canada and the Western hemisphere who want to add a social dimension to the Free Trade Area of the Americas.

The FTAA will be the focus of discussions among the 34 heads of state attending the Summit of the Americas starting here Friday.

Hector de la Cueva, Mexican spokesman at the Peoples' Summit, said he was detained Saturday for an hour at Dorval airport and asked repeatedly whether he was going to the Summit of the Americas.

"I said, 'No, I am going to the Peoples' Summit. I wasn't invited to the Summit of the Americas.'"

A third spokesman, Renato Martins of Brazil, had no difficulty entering the country.

Immigration officials did not return phone calls yesterday because their offices were closed for Easter.

Hansen-Kuhn, a slight, soft-spoken woman who was dressed conventionally, said she has crossed many borders and has never had such an unpleasant experience.

"I don't think that I seem like a very threatening person," she said, adding, "It's not normal procedure. They were trying to find an excuse to keep me out."

Immigrant officers also searched her baggage and examined the literature she was carrying.

Hansen-Kuhn's two companions were also put through similar interrogations, lasting about an hour.

De la Cueva added that Antonio Castro and Edouardo Castillo, two Mexican students headed for the Peoples' Summit, had been detained Sunday for at least 24 hours at Toronto's Pearson International Airport.

"I don't know the details," de la Cueva said. "They're still there.

"I don't think this is good for Canada's image," he said, noting that Canadian officials say they welcome input from the Peoples' Summit at the leaders summit.

"It's hypocritical when they say they want to dialogue with civil society."

Both de la Cueva and Hansen-Kuhn showed reporters seven-day visas there were granted, specifying that they are attending the Peoples' Summit and must leave Canada by Sunday.

The Canadian and Quebec governments each contributed $300,000 for the Peoples' Summit, which ends Saturday with a demonstration in Quebec City's Lower Town. Organizers say the event will be peaceful.

On Friday, the Summit of Americas, a gathering of 34 leaders from the Western hemisphere, including Prime Minister Jean Chretien and U.S. President George W. Bush, will begin in Quebec City's Upper Town behind a 3.8-kilometre security perimeter defended by 6,000 police officers.

Henri Masse, president of the Quebec Federation of Labour - one of the organizations planning the Peoples' Summit - advised delegates to the alternative summit to "forget the fence and the concrete blocks," urging them to get to know the people of Quebec City instead.

Masse said the Peoples' Summit wants to have a dialogue with the leaders' summit, which would be an "official, public, structured meeting" rather than simply a social gathering, as the leaders have proposed.

Although the leaders have rejected the idea of substantive talks so far, Masse said, "we think their no is soft. We hope we can talk about the real issues.

"Until it is no, no, no, we will continue to ask."

---

The voice of an "anticapitalist manifesto"

Christian Science Monitor
TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2001
By Ruth Walker (walkerr@csps.com)
Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2001/04/17/fpcon-natl.shtml

TORONTO - Talk about branding.

A Times of London interviewer calls Naomi Klein "probably the most influential person under the age of 35 in the world."

The National Post calls her the "wunderkind of the new New Left" and the "New Noam Chomsky."

Hyperbole, perhaps.

But Ms. Klein's blast against international corporate power, "No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies," is now a bestseller in Britain, Sweden, and on college campuses across Canada.

The author and newspaper columnist will take center stage today as co-chair of the "People's Summit," a countercultural alternative to the official Summit of the Americas, opening in Quebec City on Friday (see story).

Klein is emerging as the leading voice of the antiglobalization movement, and it's tempting to call her the spokeswoman.

But Klein is as hard to label as the "movement of movements" she writes and lectures about. "I'm less a spokesperson for the movement than its most devoted follower," she demurs. "Antiglobalization," she adds is not the best term, either. She prefers to call it "the pro-democracy" movement.

It is precisely the amorphousness and leaderlessness of free-trade opponents that has helped focus attention on the articulate, mediagenic Klein and her work.

And she certainly was in the right place at the right time with the right text. "No Logo" came out just after the 1999 street battles in Seattle. The protests confirmed free trade, once a topic that only a policy wonk could love, as an issue that could galvanize a new generation of political activists as civil rights and nuclear disarmament had inspired earlier generations. The book "gave voice to a movement almost before it existed," Maclean's magazine said in a cover-story profile last month.

Klein's "anticapitalist manifesto," as it has been described, is a polemic against corporate power - the power to invade public space (ads and placement of brand-name products everywhere, including schoolbooks) to limit consumer options (as when big-box retailers drive out local players), and to cut jobs (when work is moved to cheap-labor locations overseas).

In her book, Klein rails mostly against consumer-goods brand names. In today's economy, "brands" have replaced "products." Companies are selling mere image and lifestyle. In this equation, the ratio of corporate substance to corporate power is wildly out of whack.

Klein describes the movement as "a response to the privatization of life - natural resources, health, education" and as "attempts to reclaim democracy from trade agreements." She adds, "What creates the coalitions [against trade pacts] is the ambitiousness of the agreements." Free trade is being put ahead of other social goods, such as local control over environmental protection and labor regulation. She's not opposed to free trade per se, but she suggests that there are other models for it than the current US-led push for a hemisphere-wide trade zone.

She's also skeptical of free trade as an economic panacea: "Like NAFTA before it, the creation of the largest free-trade zone in the world is being sold based on the cure-all powers of trickle-down economics," she wrote in last week's column in the Globe and Mail.

"There's been a dumbing down of politics," she says. "But there's a tremendous hunger to be part of the discussion." She speaks of students and others crowding into university lecture halls on Sunday afternoons to hear policy activists explain water issues or trade-law arcana.

"People want to understand. I think that's really hopeful and exciting," she says.

"It's hard to think of another person writing more colorfully and creatively on these issues," says Boston College sociologist Charles Derber. "She's a fresh voice." While cautioning against granting her "celebrity status," he calls her "part of the emerging class of global public intellectuals," adding that he distinguishes between "public intellectuals" - those "whose writing and thinking is shaping the public view" - and mere "talk-show pundits."

Her work is also informed by a lot of her own on-the-ground reporting on issues like sweatshops in the third world.

Professor Derber compares her to the student leaders of the early 1960s, who, in the early days of the "New Left" movement in the United States, breathed new energy into progressive politics.

"No Logo" has sold nearly 20,000 hardcover copies in Canada since its release in January 2000. Also out in paperback this January, the book has been on the bestseller list here every week. It's been translated into nine languages. Klein's work is less well known in the US, where her column appears in The Nation. But she's enjoyed major success in Britain, where the prestigious Guardian newspaper carries her column and "No Logo" is No. 1 on the Sunday Times bestseller list.

Her book is "obviously touching a nerve," says Nicholas Paschley, trade-book buyer for the University of Toronto bookstore. The book is selling well, he says, despite the fact that this university is "about as tame and politically disengaged ... as you'll find."

That charge is not leveled against Concordia University in Montreal. Rob Green, outgoing president of the student union, reports, "We have 90 buses confirmed filled for the trip to Quebec City."

The police presence at the official summit is being described as the largest in Canadian history, however, and Klein and others are concerned about limits on civil liberties during the summit.

She and other activists have petitioned Prime Minister Jean Chrétien to remove the four-kilometer-long chain-link fence erected in Quebec City to keep protesters out.

Mr. Green, the student leader, suggests that under Canada's Constitution, the level of curtailment of free speech and freedom of assembly anticipated this week would be legal only if the War Measures Act, a provision for a sort of martial law, were invoked.

"The whole movement has been criminalized and presumed guilty," he says.

Klein, too, worries that the extreme elements are becoming the public persona of the movement. But she also sees the movement expanding beyond street protests at summits.

"Recently, police have taken to patting themselves on the back for learning to 'control' mass demonstrations," she wrote last week. "But how will they adapt to a global movement that is already transforming itself into thousands of local mini-movements, all internationally linked? They're going to need a pretty big fence."


------- OneList (submissions from subscribers)

------- Depleted Uranium Keeps On Killing!