------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Senators Question Handling of Cole Case
China: Bush Threatens World Peace
China warns of new nuclear race
Czech Temelin plant to shutdown for two months
Vow on Ballistic Arms Made as Leader Awaits Bush Move on Policy
S. Korean President Applauds North
North Korea Promises to Extend Moratorium on Missile Tests
E.U. Says North Korea Won't Stop Arms Exports
Bush Tells N Korea No Missile Tests
US to Talk With Nations on Defense
Oliver North Commentary
China: Bush Threatens World Peace
Russia, India Cautious Over Bush Arms Plan
Russia: US Must Collaborate on Nukes
Officials, Activists: U.S. Eyes Deep Nuclear Cuts
Services agree on plan to clean up Fort Dix plutonium
NEW RESOURCE CENTERS OPENING FOR ENERGY WORKERS
Energy Dept. Considers New Design
Still MAD
The Bush Doctrine

MILITARY
Hurry Up and Shield
U.S. Team Inspects Peru Plane
Mexico Targets Police Corruption in Drug War
Kosovo Peacekeepers Shot at Near Serbian Boundary
'Stronger' U.S. Commitment Preserves Peace Taiwan
Washington Angry Over Losing Rights Seat
U.S. May Withhold U.N. Payments
U.S. Is Voted Off Rights Panel of the U.N. for the First Time
Members of U.N. Human Rights Council
China´s bigger navy
In Moving to Shun China, Bush Team Trips Over Itself Again

OTHER
Letter from Robert Redford re: Artic oil
Ford seeks environmental leadership role
Mining Deep Underground Stirs Protest Above
Bush To Revise Forest Road - Ban Rules
Study Finds a Decline in Natural Air Cleanser
Utility Plans to Put Limits on Its Plants
F.B.I. Denies an Effort to Hinder Alabama's Bombing Inquiry
FBI Helped Mob Boss, Witness Says
3 Charged With Giving Lucent Secrets to China
Peru Court Rules Judge Can Stay on Berenson Case
Bush to Create New Terrorism Office

ACTIVISTS
GOP Convention Protester Acquitted
N.Y.U. Embraces 7 Students It Once Barred
Protest Vote Moves Into Second Place in Peru Polls
2 Anti - Nuclear Activists Sentenced


-------- NUCLEAR

Senators Question Handling of Cole Case

New York Times
May 4, 2001
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/04/world/04COLE.html

WASHINGTON, May 3 - The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Navy's top admiral came under sharp questioning on Capitol Hill today for not punishing the commander of the destroyer Cole, who failed to follow certain security guidelines before the ship was attacked by suicide bombers last October.

In a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, senior lawmakers suggested that the Navy and other military services might have relaxed accountability standards for commanding officers, citing the case of the submarine Greeneville as another example.

"Military personnel in positions of responsibility must be accountable for their actions or failure to act, if we are to maintain the order and discipline essential to successful military operations," said Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, who is chairman of the committee. "Has that changed?"

Army Gen. Henry H. Shelton, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said no. "Everybody in the chain of command could have done better," he said. "However, I think that as you look at that chain, there was no dereliction and there was certainly no criminal intent or any criminal actions or anything else that warranted punishment."

The Navy's initial inquiry into the Cole bombing found that the captain and crew of the warship were lax about following a number of strict security procedures before a skiff packed with explosives exploded alongside it in Aden, Yemen, killing 17 sailors and severely damaging the ship.

The Cole, like all warships at sea, filed a detailed security plan before it stopped in Aden to refuel, based on guidelines set by the Joint Chiefs of Staff for dealing with "shipboard terrorist threat conditions."

Under the threat condition in Aden - bravo, the third highest - the ship's crew was required to follow at least 62 separate measures. But investigators found that the commander, Cmdr. Kirk S. Lippold, failed to follow about half of those procedures, including 12 that might have prevented or mitigated the explosion.

For instance, the ship's watchmen did not properly identify and monitor harbor boats coming near the destroyer, and Commander Lippold did not order the crew to prepare fire hoses that could have been used to repel attackers. The investigation raised the possibility that Commander Lippold be disciplined for his lapses.

But Adm. Vern Clark, the chief of naval operations, argued that while Commander Lippold's actions were not entirely satisfactory, they "did not rise to the level of punitive action."

That conclusion was upheld by William S. Cohen, who was defense secretary at the time and said that responsibility for not preventing the suicide attack extended throughout the Pentagon, citing shortcomings in training, intelligence, equipment and security support for the Cole's crew.

But some Mr. Cohen's decision has been somewhat controversial in Congress, where some lawmakers have questioned whether the military has become too hesitant to discipline commanders for serious mishaps that occur on their watch.

Today, Senator Warner cited the example of the submarine Greeneville, whose chief officer escaped a court martial although his vessel rammed a Japanese training ship near Hawaii and killed nine people. The officer, Cmdr. Scott Waddle, received a reprimand last month and will resign with his full rank and pension.

In questioning Admiral Clark today, Mr. Warner described strict accountability as "an integral part of command," and asked whether the Navy's handling of the Cole or Greeneville cases had weakened "that doctrine that has been at the heart of our Navy since its very inception."

Admiral Clark replied: "It is my view that we have, in this case, held all of the parties accountable for their actions. There are some who believe that because they were not punished somehow they were not held accountable, and I do not agree with that."

Explaining why he decided not to punish Commander Lippold, Admiral Clark said that one of his main criteria was whether any of the procedures Commander Lippold ignored could have prevented the attack.

"All of the endorsers in the chain of command and those that reviewed this investigation above me agreed with my conclusion that they would not have changed the outcome," he said.

General Shelton and Admiral Clark asserted that the services have made strides in improving security on American ships and other military installations around the world since the Cole attack.

Asked why some of those actions had not been taken earlier, General Shelton said the military had become "fixated" with protecting large bases, while failing to pay more attention to smaller installations or movable ones, like destroyers.

"It was a matter of not having ignored it, but probably not having paid as much attention to our vulnerabilities, to the seams that the terrorists could find for the in-transit units that we probably should have been paying attention to," General Shelton said.

-------- china

China: Bush Threatens World Peace

MAY 04, 07:03 EST
Associated Press Writer
By JOE McDONALD

BEIJING (AP) - China's state press accused President Bush on Friday of threatening global peace with his missile-defense plans, saying he would ignite an arms race and destroy disarmament efforts.

``The United States is taking a dangerous course,'' said the China Daily newspaper. ``The United States ... is apparently attempting to seek absolute military supremacy and even greater global hegemony.''

The attack came a day after China, in its first official response, called on Bush to scrap plans unveiled Tuesday in a speech in Washington.

Beijing urged Bush to preserve the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which severely restricts such defenses. The treaty was signed only by Washington and Moscow, but China calls it an important arms-control standard.

Bush is considering a system that could be rushed into operation as early as 2004, possibly using weapons on ships or planes as well as on land to shoot down missiles in flight.

The plan ``will trigger a new arms race and destroy what has been achieved so far with international disarmament efforts,'' the China Daily said.

The main Communist Party newspaper People's Daily and other state newspapers published reports on foreign opposition to the Bush plan. ``Bush's speech receives criticism from every country,'' said a headline in the Guangming Daily.

U.S. allies Britain and Canada have stopped short of endorsing the plan. Sweden, Germany and others expressed deep concern, fearing the plan could jeopardize global security. Australia has said it would let Washington use its communications facilities for such a defense if requested.

China worries that missile defenses could blunt the deterrent effect of its small nuclear arsenal.

Chinese leaders also worry that Washington might extend protection to Taiwan. Beijing claims the island, ruled separately since 1949, as its territory and has repeatedly threatened to capture it by force.

The China Daily on Friday ridiculed Bush's stated goal of defending against such ``rogue states'' as North Korea or Iran.

``Such an excuse is too fragile to convince others. It hasn't even convinced the American people,'' said the newspaper.

The comments added to unusual personal criticism Thursday of Bush by the People's Daily. It called him a ``weak president'' and said he was taking aggressive foreign policy steps to combat the stigma of his controversial election victory.

``The Bush administration's behavior in the past 100 days has illustrated that an ultra-self-centered `America first' attitude is gaining more ground in U.S. foreign policy,'' the China Daily said.

It noted Bush's decision to back out of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions and decision to rethink support for South Korean overtures toward North Korea.

--------

China warns of new nuclear race

By ANTON LA GUARDIA and MARCUS WARREN
Friday 4 May 2001
http://www.theage.com.au/news/2001/05/04/FFXPTDGE9MC.html

China has warned President George W.Bush that his quest for a "son of Star Wars" anti-missile shield could provoke a global nuclear arms race.

A day after Mr Bush committed America to building a global missile defence, governments across Europe and Asia reacted cautiously to Mr Bush's remarks that the United States needed "a new framework that allows us to build missile defences to counter the different threats of today's world."

They did, however, welcome Mr Bush's plan to begin extensive consultations next week among allies and other interested parties such as Russia and China, whose reactions loom as the greatest challenges for the President.

Strongest criticism of the plan came from Beijing. "The US missile defence plan has violated the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, will destroy the balance of international security forces and could cause a new arms race. Therefore, it has been widely condemned by the international community," said China's official Xinhua news agency, reflecting official thinking.

But Russia, which has threatened in the past to tear up a host of arms-control treaties if Washington pressed ahead with missile defence, took up Washington's offer of dialogue. Adopting a surprisingly conciliatory tone, Moscow said it was ready to begin negotiations to ensure "strategic stability".

On Tuesday, Mr Bush unveiled his vision of a sophisticated missile defence system to protect America and its allies from nuclear-armed rogue states who "hate democracy". But he gave no details of his missile defence plan.

He suggested there would be a multitude of overlapping systems that could intercept missiles in space or upon re-entry to the atmosphere. Later, he said, there could also be "boost-phase" defences to shoot down missiles within seconds of being fired.

The President said the ABM treaty, long regarded as the cornerstone of nuclear disarmament, was a relic of the past. He signalled that it must either be renegotiated or discarded.

Mr Bush was at pains to woo Russia, holding out the prospect of developing missile defences jointly with Moscow.

With its small strategic nuclear force of about 20 intercontinental ballistic missiles, China has most to lose if the US succeeds in developing even a partially effective missile shield. Beijing would either have to greatly increase its nuclear forces or use decoys if it is to retain the credibility of its deterrent.

Russia, however, has about 6000 warheads. Even with the reduction to 3500 warheads under the Start II Treaty, Moscow could still overwhelm any conceivable missile defence system.

Having failed to enlist Europe in the attempt to stop the project, President Vladimir Putin has abruptly changed tactics and says he is ready to hear Washington's proposals. Moscow may now calculate that missile defence is inevitable and is trying to extract maximum diplomatic advantage for its acquiescence.

Russia said the ABM treaty was "inseparable" from the series of interlocking disarmament agreements, but said it looked forward to discussions with Washington. President Bush was urged "not to move unilaterally".

At the United Nations, Secretary-General Kofi Annan called on the nuclear powers to engage in negotiations toward legally binding agreements that "are both verifiable and irreversible."

-------- czech republic

Czech Temelin plant to shutdown for two months

CZECH REPUBLIC: May 4, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10707

PRAGUE - Problems with a rotor in one of the turbines has forced a complete shutdown of the controversial Czech Temelin nuclear power plant, officials said yesterday.

CEZ , the firm which runs the power plant, told Reuters late in the afternoon yesterday that the reactor will be shut down within hours and will be restarted at the beginning of July at earliest.

CEZ said work on replacing one of three low pressure rotors in a turbine has started and that it is possible there has been damage to a high pressure component of the turbine.

The plant was expected to be shut in June for other maintenance. CEZ originally planned the plant to be commercially launched in May.

The current deadline is set for end-September and CEZ officials said Yesterday's closure should not effect that date.

The $2.6 billion plant was built just over 50 km (31 miles) from the border of neighbouring Austria. Austrian protesters have staged border blockades demanding its closure, and a series of minor failures forced repeated shutdowns since it was first launched for testing operations last October.

Austria says the station, which combines a Russian VVER-1,000 reactor with a U.S.-made control system by Westinghouse, may be unsafe.

But a recent Czech-led independent commission, which included observers from the EU, Austria and Germany, gave it high marks in an environmental impact study.

-------- korea

Vow on Ballistic Arms Made as Leader Awaits Bush Move on Policy

Friday, May 4, 2001
By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38504-2001May3?language=printer

SEOUL, May 3 -- North Korea will launch no ballistic missiles until at least 2003, its leader told European officials today, unilaterally extending a moratorium on the missile testing that rattled leaders in the United States and Asia three years ago.

Kim Jong Il said he will "wait and see" if the Bush administration wants to resume progress toward better relations before deciding whether to resume the missile tests, Sweden's prime minister, Goran Persson, told reporters after meeting with Kim in Pyongyang.

Fear of a missile attack by North Korea or another small, hostile state has been a major factor in the U.S. interest in building a missile defense system. On Tuesday, President Bush reaffirmed his intention to proceed with such a shield.

According to Persson, Kim also said his pending visit to South Korea, eagerly sought by Seoul, would similarly depend on the next move by the U.S. administration, which has said it is reviewing policy toward the North but in the meantime has taken a hard-line approach.

"We have a clear message that Kim Jong Il is committed to a second summit," following the historic meeting between leaders of North and South Korea last June, Persson said. But he quoted the North Korean leader as saying he first wanted "to see what the [Bush] policy review ended up with."

Kim's promise to extend the pause in ballistic missile testing renews a pledge he made to the United States in September 1999. That came in negotiations following the Aug. 31, 1998, launch of a Taepodong ballistic missile that passed over Japan.

The launch spooked Japan, surprised the United States and helped fuel discussion of a missile defense system.

In the 1999 negotiations, the United States said it would continue to ease economic sanctions against North Korea, and Pyongyang promised to stop testing missiles as long as talks continued with the United States, with which it has long sought closer ties.

But Bush froze those discussions when he took office, causing many analysts here to question whether North Korea would resume the tests. Kim's answer to those questions was given to Persson and other European Union officials in the first visit by a Western head of government to the Stalinist nation.

"If Chairman Kim Jong Il said that the North Korean missile launch moratorium will remain in effect until at least 2003, we would welcome such a statement," a State Department official said, speaking on condition of anonymity, the Reuters news agency reported.

Bush administration officials say that despite the hold announced on negotiations with North Korea, contacts have not been completely cut off. Low-level talks between U.S. and North Korean officials have taken place in New York in recent weeks to maintain contacts, administration officials said.

The European delegation flew from Pyongyang to Seoul today, where Persson was to brief President Kim Dae Jung.

The South Korean leader has seen his "sunshine policy" of improved relations with North Korea frozen while the Bush team mulls policy changes. Officials here are eagerly awaiting Kim Jong Il's promised visit to Seoul to resume the momentum of last year toward ending the half-century-long standoff between North and South.

"South-North relations are at a standstill," South Korean Foreign Minister Han Seung Soo acknowledged in an interview today in Seoul. "We are waiting for the early conclusion of the U.S. government policy review toward North Korea. Until that is done, the uncertainty overhanging this issue will not be cleared."

"On our part, we are trying, but North Korea is waiting for the end of the policy review" also, Han said. "One cannot go alone. We hope when [the United States] concludes its policy review, it will resume negotiations" with North Korea.

Some analysts see Persson's visit as a bid by Europe to move into a void left while Bush ponders his policy. Publicly, all sides have denied there is any competition between the United States and Europe.

"It's a good thing they're going," a U.S. diplomat said earlier this week. "The more voices that are saying virtually the same thing to North Korea, the better."

"We welcome their visit," Han said. "The EU has been trying to encourage North Korea to be a responsible member of the international community. They know they are not the major players in the peace effort in this part of the world. Their role will be complementary."

Persson said the EU-North Korean dialogue "must not be seen as something that can replace the American dialogue. Both are needed."

The EU delegation, which met with Kim for five hours today, expressed "very grave concern" about North Korea's missile program, Persson said. According to the Associated Press, Kim agreed to send officials to Europe this summer to discuss opening talks about its widely criticized human rights record.

Persson also said he was bringing a note from Kim to the South Korean president.

The EU officials said they were impressed with Kim Jong Il, echoing other Westerners who have met the once-reclusive leader.

"He was very articulate, spoke without notes," said Chris Patten, another member of the EU delegation. The talks were "surprisingly open and free-flowing." After their talks in the morning, the Europeans and Kim raised glasses of French wine at a hall in an official guest house.

Thirteen of the 15 EU states have established diplomatic relations with North Korea, still one of the world's most isolated places.

The EU itself may establish relations with Pyongyang next week, according to diplomatic sources. Sweden, whose prime minister led the delegation to Pyongyang, currently holds the EU's rotating presidency.

Staff writer Steven Mufson in Washington contributed to this report.

---------

S. Korean President Applauds North

MAY 04, 07:03 EST
Associated Press Writer
By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - North Korea's decision to extend a moratorium on missile tests until 2003 could spur a resumption of dialogue between the North and the United States, South Korean President Kim Dae-jung said Friday.

Kim spoke at a news conference with the head of the European Union, Goeran Persson, who was in Seoul to discuss efforts to end the decades-old enmity on the divided Korean peninsula.

Persson, Sweden's prime minister, flew to Seoul from Pyongyang Thursday after talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. Kim made the missile moratorium pledge, but said there would be no inter-Korean summit as long as Washington is reviewing its policy on the North, the European delegation said.

``To win the North Korean promise to maintain its missile moratorium until 2003 is an achievement bigger than we had expected,'' Kim Dae-jung said. ``I believe it will have a positive effect on resuming U.S.-North Korea dialogue.''

The promise to adhere to a moratorium that began in September 1999 was a significant advance in a reconciliation process that has lapsed amid U.S.-North Korean tension.

Earlier this year, the North threatened to end the moratorium in a show of displeasure with what it perceives as a hardline policy by President Bush.

At a March meeting in Washington with Kim Dae-jung, Bush voiced skepticism about the communist North and said he would suspend talks with Pyongyang pending a policy review.

North Korea, along with China and Russia, is also upset over U.S. plans for a missile defense system designed to thwart any attack by what Washington calls ``rogue nations,'' including the North.

The freeze in U.S.-North Korean ties prompted the 15-nation European Union to pursue a more prominent role as a facilitator of inter-Korean dialogue. European officials, however, have said they do not intend to supplant Washington's critical role in resolving the Cold War-era conflict.

``We will not replace the United States. It's not possible,'' Persson said. ``It's nothing we want to do.''

Persson urged North Korea to stick to accords it made with the United States, including the missile moratorium and a 1994 deal in which it agreed to shelve its suspected nuclear weapons program in exchange for the U.S.-led construction of two nuclear reactors to meet its energy needs.

``So far we have seen too little action to be sure about the character of the (negotiating) partner we have in North Korea,'' Persson said.

The two Korean leaders pledged to work toward reconciliation and eventual reunification at a summit last year. At that time, Kim Jong Il also said he would visit Seoul for another meeting with his South Korean counterpart.

----

North Korea Promises to Extend Moratorium on Missile Tests

New York Times
May 4, 2001
By DON KIRK
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/04/world/04SEOU.html

SEOUL, May 4 - South Korea's president, Kim Dae Jung, today hailed a pledge made on Thursday by North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, to maintain his nation's moratorium on missile testing until 2003 as a "quite unexpected" dividend of talks with a high-level European Union delegation. He also expressed the hope that it would lead to renewed dialogue between the United States and North Korea.

By extending the moratorium, Kim Jong Il was apparently signaling that he might still be open to an agreement with Washington on missiles if the Bush administration were to seek such talks.

North Korea shocked the world in August 1998 by firing a ballistic missile over Japan without warning.

The North agreed on the moratorium in September 1999, but fear of the potential of North Korean missiles has provided the Bush administration with one of the central arguments for its plans to build a missile defense shield.

At a news conference here this morning, Kim Dae Jung repeatedly emphasized his interest in drawing the United States back into negotiations with North Korea as a result of the mission to Pyongyang this week led by the Swedish prime minister, Goran Persson, the president of the European Union.

Noting that the Bush administration continues to review its policy on North Korea, Mr. Kim said that "improvements in South-North Korean relations must proceed with improvements in U.S.-North Korean relations."

"We very much hope the U.S.- North Korean dialogue will resume very soon," he added.

Mr. Kim's remarks underlined the deep anxiety shared by him and his top advisers as a result of his meeting with President Bush at the White House in March. At that meeting, Mr. Bush expressed deep skepticism about Kim Jong Il's intentions and the difficulties of verifying any agreement with North Korea on stopping the production, sale or testing of missiles.

Both Mr. Kim and Mr. Persson today gave the impression that the European Union mission may have been a turning point in the process of reconciliation between the two Koreas, which has been stalled since the meeting in Washington.

Mr. Persson said that Kim Jong Il "wished to confirm his willingness to hold a second summit meeting with Kim Dae Jung," although no date was confirmed.

"He wants to wait and see about the American policy review before he decides," Mr. Persson said.

He indicated, however, the difficulties of translating the sense of optimism into deeds.

"The message we got yesterday was constructive and we really hope it will be carried out in action by the North Korean side," he said, "but so far we have seen too little of action to be sure of the character of the talks we had in North Korea."

Last fall, Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright became the most senior American official to visit North Korea. At that time, it appeared that the United States and North Korea might reach an accord to shut down the North Korean missile program and that President Clinton might visit Pyongyang before leaving office.

President Bush, by contrast, made clear during Kim Dae Jung's visit to Washington that he was skeptical about North Korea's sincerity and the value of any accord. Since then, the North Koreans have repeatedly attacked American policy and insisted on the withdrawal of the 37,000 American troops in South Korea.

----

E.U. Says North Korea Won't Stop Arms Exports

May 4, 2001
New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-SKorea-EU.html

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- Europe's top security official on Friday tempered upbeat assessments of a mission to North Korea, saying Northern leader Kim Jong Il views the export of missile technology as a means of earning foreign currency.

Wrapping up a trip to North and South Korea, European Union officials also acknowledged that their efforts to help end the decades-old enmity between the two nations were supplementary to Washington's.

``We will not replace the United States. It's not possible,'' said Swedish Prime Minister Goeran Persson, the current EU head.

The United States views North Korea as a major threat to international efforts to curb missile proliferation, and Javier Solana, the EU security affairs chief, said the communist nation has not renounced its right to export missile technology.

''(Kim Jong Il) claims that the export of (missile) technology is part of trade and that if he finds people who want to buy it, he will sell it,'' said Solana, who was part of the EU delegation making the trip.

The mission led by Persson left South Korea on Friday after arriving Thursday from the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, where Kim Jong Il pledged to extend a moratorium on missile tests until 2003.

Persson's adviser, Lars Danielsson, was heading to the United States to brief U.S. officials on the North Korean trip. Solana said a similar briefing will be given to Japanese officials as well.

The pledge to extend the moratorium, which began in September 1999, was a significant advance in the reconciliation process on the divided Korean peninsula.

Government contacts between the two Koreas ebbed after President Bush decided to suspend talks with North Korea while awaiting a policy review.

``To win the North Korean promise to maintain its missile moratorium until 2003 is an achievement bigger than we had expected,'' South Korean President Kim Dae-jung said.

``I believe it will have a positive effect on resuming U.S.-North Korea dialogue,'' said Kim, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year for his efforts to reconcile with the North.

However, Kim said nothing about the sale of missile technology, which has been a major source of foreign currency for the impoverished, reclusive North.

``The answer was much more negative'' when discussions in Pyongyang turned to missile technology sales, Solana said.

Last month, a state-run research center in South Korea said North Korea has exported at least 540 missiles to Iran and other Middle Eastern countries since 1985.

Libya was among the latest customers, buying 50 North Korean Rodong-1 missiles with a 625-mile range for $7 million apiece, said Lee Jae-wook of the Korean Institute for Defense Analyses.

Lee said he based his research on data from Seoul's Defense Ministry and the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.

Under former President Clinton, talks on curbing the North's missile program stumbled over the communist state's demands for compensation in exchange for abandoning its program.

Analysts say Washington will find it hard to persuade Kim Jong Il to give up his missile capabilities outright because he considers them central to his goal of creating a powerful state.

``He will almost certainly consider these capabilities central to his own historic mission and therefore to his notion of his own identity,'' Stephen Bradner, an adviser to U.S. forces in South Korea, wrote in a recent paper.

-------

Bush Tells N Korea No Missile Tests

May 4, 2001
New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-NKorea.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration urged North Korea on Friday to maintain a moratorium on missile tests.

``The nature of the regime, the conventional forces, the missile exports, the missile developments, all these events in North Korea have been of serious concern to the United States and remain of serious concern,'' State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

``We need to figure out how best to deal with that,'' he said.

Boucher's remarks followed a statement by Javier Solana, the European Union's top security official, that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il views the export of missile technology as a means of earning foreign currency.

The Clinton administration reached an agreement with Pyongyang to freeze its nuclear weapons program in exchange for energy supplies and then aimed for curbs on missile development and exports.

After the Bush administration took over in January it suspended negotiations with North Korea and said it was reviewing U.S. policy. At the same time, the administration cited North Korea's programs as a major reason for developing a defense against missile attack.

Critics of the suspension argued that continuing negotiations might help reduce the threat.

``We will conduct our review in a thorough manner and we'll anticipate completing it in a timely fashion,'' Boucher said Friday.

The State Department spokesman also cautioned North Korea.

``We've said before that maintaining the missile launch moratorium is really essential for any future process in our dialogue. If North Korea does maintain this moratorium, that would be constructive,'' Boucher said.

At the same time, he said the Bush administration supports South Korea in its efforts to ease tensions with North Korea through negotiations.

In fact, Boucher said, the administration favors a second summit meeting between Kim Jong Il and the South Korean President Kim Dae-jung.

-------- missile defense

US to Talk With Nations on Defense

May 4, 2001
New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Missile-Defense.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz portrayed the Bush administration vision for missile defense as a new approach for new times, as he prepared on Friday for talks with nations skeptical about the idea.

Meanwhile, world reaction to the idea continued with China criticizing it and Russia welcoming the chance to talk about it.

``The nature of what we are trying to do with missile defense is entirely different ... the nature of the threats today ... are entirely different,'' Wolfowitz said in a luncheon speech to the American Jewish Committee.

Wolfowitz is among the senior officials President Bush will send around the world in three teams next week to discuss what Bush on Tuesday called ``our common responsibility to create a new framework for security and stability.''

Scheduled Asian stops are to Japan on Monday, South Korea on Tuesday and Wednesday and India on Friday, the State Department said. The following week there will be visits to Australia, Singapore and China.

Though schedules for the rest were still being confirmed Friday, other planned stops include Brussels, London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Copenhagen, Moscow, Warsaw and Ankara, the Pentagon said.

In his first public response to Bush's speech on missile defense earlier this week, Russian President Vladimir Putin urged the United States to work with Russia on arms issues and welcomed Bush's indications he would consult other countries on the defense system.

``First, we should not destroy the established system of international security, and second, we must act together to perfect it,'' Putin said.

Bush described the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which bans such systems, as outdated. Russia, however, says the treaty is a foundation of world security and should be preserved.

Also on Friday, China's state press accused Bush of threatening global peace with his missile defense plans, saying he would ignite an arms race and destroy disarmament efforts.

Britain and Canada have stopped short of endorsing the plan. Sweden, Germany and others expressed deep concern, fearing the plan could jeopardize global security. Australia has said it would let Washington use its communications facilities for such a defense if requested.

--------

[I hesitated to include this, but just wanted to make people aware that this convicted liar who promoted arms sales between Iran and Iraq, and smuggled arms to Contra "freedom fighters" during the Reagan administration, and whose successful business is in building security systems for homes, is not the person I would trust to make decisions about missile defense. You should send a letter to the Editor of the Washington Times (mail to: letters@washingtontimes.com) in response to this editorial -- they're very good about publishing well-written refutations. et]

Oliver North Commentary

May 4, 2001
Oliver North
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/north-20010504.htm

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Emerson Smith, the U.S. Naval Academy's legendary boxing coach, used to admonish my fellow pugilists and me that "the best defense is a good offense."

That's great advice for those who enter a boxing ring. It also works for football, basketball, wrestling -- and most other athletic endeavors. It's a fine maxim for Marines and those who fight on conventional and even unconventional battlefields. But when it's nuclear war, depending solely on offense -- with no defense -- can be a formula for disaster.

On May 1, 2001, on his 102nd day in office, George W. Bush, the man pundits derided for an inadequate understanding of foreign-policy issues, the president they scorned for lacking a mandate, the commander in chief they critiqued for his mangled syntax, told our allies, our adversaries and the American people that it is time to "re-think the unthinkable."

The scientists and strategic thinkers who devised the "unthinkable" had a different name for it. They called the approach "Mutually Assured Destruction," or "MAD." Proponents, and there are many, claim the strategy resulted in a half century of relative peace -- and ultimately the collapse of the Soviet Empire. That, of course, ignores the reality of what transpired over the years since 1949, when the Soviets, with the help of spies like Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, built and detonated their first nuclear device -- triggering a prohibitively expensive and misnamed "Cold War."

It was anything but a "Cold War" for the nearly 100,000 Americans who died in Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, the Persian Gulf and countless other skirmishes over the past 50 years. All of us with gray hair remember "fallout shelters" and air-raid drills with teachers rushing schoolchildren into the hallways to crouch with our backs to the wall and faces covered to protect against the blinding flash that would change life as we know it on this planet.

But as long as there were only a few powers (the United States, the USSR, Great Britain and France) that could afford the extraordinary cost of building nuclear weapons and the means of delivering them over great distances in a short period of time, the "balance of terror" held. And as long as the leaders of these nations believed that the risk of annihilation was too high to start a nuclear war, then an offense without a defense was a risk we could afford. That's no longer the case.

We now know that, by 1980, Israel, communist China, North Korea, Libya and Iraq either had, or were in the process of developing, nuclear weapons -- and the means of delivering them. On June 7, 1981, the Israelis, aware that Saddam Hussein was intent on constructing a nuclear device, launched an air strike against Iraq's Osirak nuclear facility near Baghdad. The "international community" condemned Israel's pre-emptive attack. But at the White House, intelligence reports about a two-bit, tin-horn dictator building nuclear weapons galvanized those in the Reagan administration already at work on developing an alternative to "offensive deterrence."

By the time Ronald Reagan announced his Strategic Defense Initiative on March 23, 1983, it was evident that, despite highly touted "nonproliferation agreements" and Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties, the threat of a nuclear attack on the United States and our allies was actually increasing. That didn't prevent the Soviets, the "nonaligned movement, " Ronald Reagan's political opponents and most of the so-called mainstream media from assailing SDI and the president for embracing what they derisively nicknamed, "Star Wars."

The name stuck, but work on SDI quietly continued and, shortly after Bill Clinton became president in 1993, he was presented with a highly classified briefing on the critical need for developing and deploying multi-tiered, national- and theater-based, ballistic missile defenses. He was shown how vulnerable U.S. forces and Israeli civilians had been to primitive Iraqi Scud ballistic missiles during the Gulf War. Further, the CIA and DIA presented detailed intelligence on a virtual explosion in new nuclear weapons and missile threats from North Korea, communist China, Pakistan, India, Iran, Iraq and Libya -- and what we should be doing to redress these risks.

High on the list of concerns: the need to abrogate or at least renegotiate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty with Moscow. The Oxford-educated, Rhodes scholar all but ignored the CIA's warnings and the Pentagon's recommendations. Instead, massive defense cuts were followed by the sale and theft of sensitive U.S. weapons technologies -- and notwithstanding the growing threats -- by Bill Clinton's decision last Sept. 2 to defer deployment of any missile defenses. Three weeks later, the Russians tested the mobile and silo-based models of their new 6,200-mile-range Topol-M ICBM.

As expected, left-leaning critics in Congress, pacifists in the press and the old blame-America-first crowd have rounded up all the usual suspect arguments: that President Bush is accepting "unproven " technologies; that "the science of missile defense is untested"; that "scrapping the ABM treaty will create a new arms race"; and that "we can't afford" to protect ourselves from incoming weapons of mass destruction.

The opponents of ballistic missile defense belong to the Rodney King school of strategy, howling in unison: "Can't we all just get along?"

The answer is no. And until we can, the best defense against an incoming warhead will have to be a good defense. Now is the time to build one.

--------

China: Bush Threatens World Peace

May 4, 2001
New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-China-US.html?searchpv=aponline

BEIJING (AP) -- China's state press accused President Bush on Friday of threatening global peace with his missile-defense plans, saying he would ignite an arms race and destroy disarmament efforts.

``The United States is taking a dangerous course,'' said the China Daily newspaper. ``The United States ... is apparently attempting to seek absolute military supremacy and even greater global hegemony.''

The attack came a day after China, in its first official response, called on Bush to scrap plans unveiled Tuesday in a speech in Washington.

Beijing urged Bush to preserve the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which severely restricts such defenses. The treaty was signed only by Washington and Moscow, but China calls it an important arms-control standard.

Bush is considering a system that could be rushed into operation as early as 2004, possibly using weapons on ships or planes as well as on land to shoot down missiles in flight.

The plan ``will trigger a new arms race and destroy what has been achieved so far with international disarmament efforts,'' the China Daily said.

The main Communist Party newspaper People's Daily and other state newspapers published reports on foreign opposition to the Bush plan. ``Bush's speech receives criticism from every country,'' said a headline in the Guangming Daily.

U.S. allies Britain and Canada have stopped short of endorsing the plan. Sweden, Germany and others expressed deep concern, fearing the plan could jeopardize global security. Australia has said it would let Washington use its communications facilities for such a defense if requested.

China worries that missile defenses could blunt the deterrent effect of its small nuclear arsenal.

Chinese leaders also worry that Washington might extend protection to Taiwan. Beijing claims the island, ruled separately since 1949, as its territory and has repeatedly threatened to capture it by force.

The China Daily on Friday ridiculed Bush's stated goal of defending against such ``rogue states'' as North Korea or Iran.

``Such an excuse is too fragile to convince others. It hasn't even convinced the American people,'' said the newspaper.

The comments added to unusual personal criticism Thursday of Bush by the People's Daily. It called him a ``weak president'' and said he was taking aggressive foreign policy steps to combat the stigma of his controversial election victory.

``The Bush administration's behavior in the past 100 days has illustrated that an ultra-self-centered `America first' attitude is gaining more ground in U.S. foreign policy,'' the China Daily said.

It noted Bush's decision to back out of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions and decision to rethink support for South Korean overtures toward North Korea.

--------

Russia, India Cautious Over Bush Arms Plan

May 4, 2001
New York Times
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-arms-ru.html?searchpv=reuters

NEW DELHI, India (Reuters) - Russia and India picked a careful path through questions on President Bush's nuclear vision Friday, stressing the need for consultations before scrapping the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty.

``We believe that in such a delicate area as security we cannot make any unthought-out steps and we cannot destroy what is already working well in the interests of international stability and security without guarantees that other proposals may work better,'' said visiting Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov.

He spoke at a joint news conference with his Indian counterpart, Jaswant Singh, who said the ABM treaty should not be abrogated or amended unilaterally.

``The widest possible discussions must take place if any amendment is envisaged in the 1972 treaty,'' said Singh.

Both countries welcomed this week's offer by Bush to make unilateral cuts in nuclear weapons. But both were non-committal on Bush's call to replace the landmark treaty signed between Moscow and Washington in 1972 in order to deploy a missile defense system.

Russia believes the ABM treaty, which severely limits such defenses, is crucial to arms control. It has warned that departing from the pact would upset the nuclear balance and could threaten security by setting off a new arms race.

Reacting to Bush's proposal was a balancing act for India, which has traditionally strong ties with Russia.

India has also enjoyed a dramatic thaw in relations with Washington since its nuclear tests of 1998 and this week praised Bush's vision of a break from the Cold War theory of ''mutually assured destruction'' that kept the balance of power.

Singh said India welcomed the U.S. promise to consult with other nations on the issue and its offer to make deep cuts in its nuclear arsenal. But he stopped short of supporting Bush's National Missile Defense proposal.

Ivanov said Russia would be able to ``convey a more specific position'' on the anti-missile shield plan only after consultations with Washington and further information.

``However, we are not just going to listen to what he said...because we do have something to say,'' he said, noting that Russian President Vladimir Putin had already come up with suggestions of his own.

Putin has proposed nuclear cuts to 1,500 warheads or lower, but through a verifiable arms accord rather than unilateral reductions. The United States has 7,295 deployed warheads compared with Russia's 6,094.

-------- russia

Russia: US Must Collaborate on Nukes

May 4, 2001
New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Russia-US.html?searchpv=aponline

MOSCOW (AP) -- President Vladimir Putin on Friday urged the United States to work with Russia on arms issues and welcomed President Bush's indications he would consult other countries on a controversial missile defense system.

``First, we should not destroy the established system of international security, and second, we must act together to perfect it,'' Putin said.

It was Putin's first public response to Bush's announcement this week that he intends to move ahead with a nationwide system designed to shoot down missiles aimed at U.S. territory.

Bush described the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which bans such systems, as outdated. Russia, however, says the treaty is a foundation of world security and should be preserved.

Putin welcomed Bush's willingness to discuss the issue, saying, ``We have noticed in the U.S. president's statement that our U.S. partners plan to consult with the international community on these crucial issues, including consultations with Russia.

``We are very much counting on this dialogue being constructive.''

Putin said he agreed with Bush that times had changed in some ways. ``It is difficult not to agree with the president of the United States in this sense, that the world is changing rapidly and new threats are appearing,'' he said.

``I agree that we must think about this and resist these threats with sensible actions,'' he said during ceremonies to sign agreements between Russia and the Central Asian nation of Uzbekistan.

The United States and the Soviet Union signed the ABM treaty on the theory that it would discourage a first-strike nuclear attack by either side. Without defenses, an attacker would face certain annihilation in a retaliatory strike -- the principle of mutual assured destruction.

Missile defense advocates argue the United States faces a greater threat in coming years from attacks involving a few missiles that could be launched by so-called rogue states such as North Korea. The old Cold War framework focusing on the United States and the Soviet Union, which broke up in 1991, is outmoded, they say.

Bush is considering a system that could be rushed into operation as early as 2004, possibly using weapons on ships or planes as well as on land to shoot down missiles in flight.

But Russia has resisted U.S. efforts to negotiate changes in the ABM treaty, which allows each side only a limited system of interceptor missiles protecting either the capital or an intercontinental missile launch site.

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

Officials, Activists: U.S. Eyes Deep Nuclear Cuts

May 4, 2001
By Carol Giacomo, Diplomatic Correspondent
Reuters
http://news.excite.com/news/r/010504/19/politics-arms-usa-missiles-dc

WASHINGTON - The United States, as part of its redesign of nuclear strategy, is considering reducing its nuclear arsenal to 1,500 warheads from the current 7,000, according to U.S. officials and arms control activists.

Officials also say that the Bush administration, which begins formal missile defense consultations next week with key countries, hopes the discussions with European allies can produce a statement of "understanding," if not of support for its plans, when NATO foreign ministers meet in June.

The debate was launched on Tuesday when President Bush presented his case for building a national missile defense system and eventually withdrawing from the 29-year-old Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

In a speech that some said represented the most fundamental attempt to change nuclear strategy in decades, Bush also vowed to move quickly to reduce America's nuclear forces.

He did not provide specifics. But U.S. sources said he was considering what one official called "quite drastic" unilateral reductions down to a level of 1,500 nuclear warheads.

The official confirmed a Washington Post report that the Pentagon might shift some nuclear targets from Russia, which has a declining inventory of warheads, to China, which has a growing cache.

But he played down the impact of such a decision, saying it was a logical consequence of changing nuclear structures and should not cause an uproar.

BEYOND START

The United States has 7,295 deployed strategic nuclear warheads, while Russia has 6,094, according to the Arms Control Association, an advocacy group.

These numbers include only deployed long-range weapons, and when stored and tactical warheads are added in, Russia has about 20,000 and the United States about 10,000, analysts say.

Both countries have decreased their arsenals under the START-1 disarmament treaty and have promised to go as low as 3,500 under START-2, which has not taken effect.

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton and former Russian President Boris Yeltsin agreed that a subsequent START-3 treaty should aim to reduce their respective arsenals to between 2,000 and 2,500 warheads each, but negotiations over that have yet to begin.

Many analysts see unilateral cuts as a sweetener to make it easier for U.S. allies and key nuclear countries Russia and China to acquiesce to Bush's main national security priority -- deploying defenses to protect against potential missile attacks by North Korea, Iran or Iraq.

The idea of a significant reduction in nuclear weapons that would not take years of negotiations with the Russians is, on its face, broadly appealing.

But arms control advocates fear that Bush's unilateral approach will erode the system of arms pacts that for decades has bound the United States and Russia legally and through strict verification to fulfill and not reverse their promises.

Although there has been debate among Bush advisers over just how low the U.S. reductions should go, independent arms expert Joe Cirincione said negative reaction to Bush's speech made the administration team "more inclined to go lower on the nuclear numbers."

NUMBERS GAME

"I think the bidding (within the administration) has been between 1,000 and 2,500 ... but I think the (final) number will be about 1,500, and that's a breakthrough," said Cirincione, who is with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

"It's a good compromise figure. It doesn't require them to fundamentally change the nuclear doctrine. They can still execute all their major force options, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff have indicated in the past they could go as low as that," he said.

A U.S. official said, "I think it would have to be lower than 2,500 (warheads) to have the kind of impact the president's looking for."

In an effort to sell Bush's ideas to a still skeptical world, one high-level U.S. team will begin an Asian round of talks in Japan on Monday and a second will focus on Europe, starting at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Tuesday.

A senior U.S. official said because the subject was still under discussion in Washington, next week's missions were not expected to present a firm proposal for weapons reductions.

Besides, "we don't know how the president's commitment to provide (anti-missile) protection for our allies would be manifested completely," he added.

It is likely that arms cut details will be made public before NATO foreign ministers meet in Budapest on May 29 and 30, he said.

At that time, Washington would like to have the concluding communiqu De reflect allied "understanding" of -- if not support for -- Bush's missile defense plans, although it is impossible to say if that can be achieved, the official said.

Next week's talks "are part of a process" that is likely to continue for many months, he said.

The goal of the missions is to engage world leaders in "thinking in new ways" about how the Cold War's end affects the international security environment, the official said.

"We want to build support. Of course, we recognize that there is a lot of skepticism still, (but) we do see a different attitude (with Europe accepting as) inevitable that the United States will move ahead" with missile defense, he said.

Russia's new willingness to discuss missile defenses is a "positive sign," but talks with Moscow will not be easy, he added.

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

Services agree on plan to clean up Fort Dix plutonium

Friday, May 4, 2001
Philladelphia Inquirer
http://inq.philly.com/content/inquirer/2001/05/04/city/PSERVICES.htm

FORT DIX - The Army, Navy and Air Force have agreed on a plan to clean up a 41-year-old plutonium spill at the former Bomarc missile site at Fort Dix.

Lt. Col. Robert Griffin, an Air Force environmental official based at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois, confirmed yesterday that representatives of the three branches this week signed a $6.5 million plan to truck 8,500 cubic yards of plutonium-tainted soil, steel and cement across military land to the adjacent Lakehurst Naval Air Station, where a disused railroad spur is to rebuilt.

The waste would then travel by rail to a storage facility in Utah. The proposal has been nearly a year in the making. The Air Force, which is in charge of the plan, needed Army and Navy agreement to use their land.

--------

NEW RESOURCE CENTERS OPENING FOR ENERGY WORKERS

May 4, 2001
ENS
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-04-09.html

PADUCAH, Kentucky, The Labor Department will open resource centers across the country to notify energy workers of available benefits under a new program for workers who have been exposed to radiation.

Labor Secretary Elaine Chao announced the new centers after touring the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Kentucky on Thursday.

The Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act provides compensation and medical benefits for workers suffering from specified illnesses as a result of their exposure to radiation, beryllium or silica. The Act's provisions become effective July 31, 2001.

"My sole concern is for the workers who have been wronged by their government in the service of their country," Chao said. "They not only gave their labor - many of them gave their health."

"We are striving to have the energy workers' compensation program up and running as quickly as possible in an attempt to meet the statutory deadline," added Chao. "We will be opening a Paducah resource center to help workers and families know about the benefits that may be available and to file their claims. We will open at least nine centers throughout the country."

Chao visited the Paducah plant to see the cleanup efforts at the facility first hand. She also met with local union leaders and families who have been affected by workers' radiation exposure.

The Labor Department's nationwide outreach program will include the resource centers, a toll free call center, a website with downloadable claim forms, site visits, and a Department of Labor team to consult with the Department of Energy in its continuing former workers' program.

Eligible workers may receive lifetime medical coverage and a one time $150,000 payment.

-------- nevada

Energy Dept. Considers New Design

By H. JOSEF HEBERT,
Associated Press Writer
Friday May 4
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010504/pl/yucca_nuclear_1.html

WASHINGTON (AP) - The government is considering a revamped, cooler design for storing thousands of tons of nuclear waste in Nevada with the changes adding nearly $12 billion to the overall cost of the project.

The new design and cost estimates were outlined in a series of documents released Friday by the Energy Department in advance of a recommendation later this year on whether to proceed with the project.

The changes address concerns raised more than a year ago by a nuclear waste advisory board that the concentration of waste - more than 70,000 tons - could generate too much heat under previous designs and cause safety problems, especially if water were to contact waste packages.

With the changes now being considered the total cost of the project at Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert was estimated to be $58 billion, about 26 percent more than estimated only three years ago, and nearly twice the cost given in the early 1990s.

About $6.7 billion already has been spent on the project, mostly for scientific studies and construction of an access tunnel at the site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham (news - web sites) is expected to make a recommendation to President Bush (news - web sites) toward the end of this year on whether the Yucca Mountain is suitable for burying the nuclear industry's used reactor fuel, which will remain highly radioactive and toxic for thousands of years. The wastes are now stored at reactor sites in 31 states.

Critics, including most Nevada officials, have charged that 20 years of scientific study have shown that the location has too many technical problems. Some contend it will never be approved.

``There are still many unanswered questions,'' said Sen. Harry Reid (news - bio - voting record), D-Nev., responding to the documents released Friday.

``The report clearly demonstrates there is ample scientific basis for making a decision to dispose of used nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain,'' countered Joe Colvin, president of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry trade group.

The hundreds of pages of new documents make no recommendations on site suitability and contain no scientific bombshells on what has been a decades long effort to find a place to store the used reactor fuel at commercial nuclear power plants.

``There are no conclusions drawn from any of these reports as far as the suitability of the site,'' emphasized DOE spokesman Joe Davis.

The department's nuclear waste office will formally determine whether the Yucca Mountain project should proceed later this year with President Bush expected to make a decision probably in early 2002, according to administration officials.

But Friday's documents confirmed that after 20 years of study, the scientists are still making substantial changes in their design for the underground repository where 70,000 tons of waste would be kept in end-to-end canisters more than 600 feet below the surface.

``The final design has not been chosen and won't be chosen for some time,'' said Allen Benson, a spokesman for the DOE's Yucca Mountain Project Office in Nevada.

But because of concern over heat accumulation from the waste, the department now is considering a variety of measures - including putting waste canisters farther apart - to keep the repository above the boiling point.

The latest design, compared to one tentatively recommended in a 1998 interim report, also now includes expensive titanium ``drip shields'' over the waste canisters to keep away water deposits.

Finally, the designers are now considering keeping the repository accessible for possibly as long as 300 years instead of shutting it in shortly after all the wastes are deposited. This provides greater flexibility to deal with unforeseen circumstances, some scientists have argued.

Together, these changes have added $11.6 billion (in constant 2000 dollars) to the cost of the project from an estimate given in 1998. The cost, which would total $58 billion for the entire project over a 100-year life cycle, could be even higher if the site were left open longer than 100 years, as is being contemplated, officials said.

-------- us nuc politics

Still MAD
'Mutually Assured Destruction' hasn't gone away, and neither has its logic.

By Michael Kinsley
Friday, May 4, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42017-2001May3?language=printer

It used to be the left that ridiculed MAD, the nuclear strategy of "mutually assured destruction." The antinuclear movement of the early 1980s blindsided the political establishment like the anti-global-trade movement of the past couple of years. Ronald Reagan's original "Star Wars" proposal was an act of political jiujitsu, attempting to co-opt public fear of the nuclear standoff on behalf of military hardware instead of treaties or (worse) unilateral disarmament.

This didn't work -- mainly because the hardware didn't work. But strategic defense, and ridicule of MAD, became essential elements of the American conservative theology. The flame of faith was kept alive through the cold 1990s by movement monks at Washington think tanks and devotional conferences around the world. Silent prayers were said in the offices and boardrooms of defense contractors throughout the land.

Now, the second coming. President Bush doesn't pretend or imagine, as Reagan did, that strategic defense can be an "invisible shield" that would free us from all physical danger of nuclear attack (and thus, if we wished, from all moral danger of having to threaten one). Nevertheless, in his speech Tuesday, he twice described the "grim premise" of MAD as a historical relic.

It is not. As long as we have no Reaganesque perfect shield, we still live in the world of MAD. And as long as we live in that world, MAD complicates the case for strategic defense in ways Bush does not acknowledge. MAD is underappreciated. It is not simply a matter of the nuclear powers agreeing to hold each other hostage. In fact "agreeing" has almost nothing to do with it. The 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which is getting so much attention, did help make the nuclear stalemate somewhat less costly and nerve-racking. But the stalemate itself -- our ability to destroy any other nation in the world, and at least one other nation's ability to destroy us -- would exist without the ABM treaty and will exist even if we walk away from it.

Furthermore, under the theory of MAD, we leave ourselves vulnerable in certain ways not because we have no choice, and not because we've agreed to do so, and not because protecting ourselves might upset the Europeans, but because it is in our own unilateral self-interest. Specifically, it is important to be vulnerable to a "second strike" -- that is, a retaliatory strike by an arsenal crippled by your potential "first strike." Why? Because you don't want anybody with nukes pointed at you to think they have to use'em or lose'em. As long as they can rain cataclysmic damage on us by striking second, they have no more incentive than we do to strike first.

The concern in the 1980s was that strategic defense would never be good enough to protect against a massive first strike, but might be good enough to protect against a crippled second strike. If America had the ability to strike first and then be invulnerable, any nuclearized enemy in a crisis would face the choice of either starting a nuclear war or accepting defeat. The approach of such American invulnerability might even cause such a crisis, as other nuclear powers faced the prospect of being effectively demoted out of the nuclear club.

It's true that the world is different now. Russia is hardly the enemy that the Soviet Union was, and there are new -- or at least newly noticed -- threats from so-called rogue nations and kooky dictators. But that also does not change the basic logic of MAD.

President Bush says he wants to negotiate radical mutual reductions in the nuclear arsenals of the United States and Russia. Good luck to him, by all means. But is he prepared to negotiate away our ability to launch a damaging first strike? If not, any defense that might work even against a crippled retaliation is a danger to the United States as well as to Russia.

And then there's China -- a major unofficial target of the whole Star Wars II enterprise, and leading contender for the starring role in Cold War II, which hopeful ideologues are penciling in for later in this decade. If that should happen, the perverse-but-solid safety-from-vulnerability logic of MAD will apply in full force. So we can't have a perfect invisible shield. And we don't, or shouldn't, want an imperfect invisible shield good enough for Round 2 against Russia or China or any other grown-up nuclear power. It would be nice to have a strategic defense system just good enough to snare an incoming nuke from an Iraq or Afghanistan -- and no better. But even that dream defense would work only if the bomb is delivered via ICBM, which may be less likely than BMW or UPS.

There's no good reason for theological objection to strategic defense. But when you add up all the situations where it can't or shouldn't be allowed to work, factor in the odds that it won't work at all, and start thinking about the cost, its theological enthusiasts seem to be making a leap of faith the country needn't follow.

Michael Kinsley, editor of Slate (www.slate.com), writes a weekly column for The Post.

----

The Bush Doctrine

By Charles Krauthammer
Washington Post
Friday, May 4, 2001; Page A25
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42023-2001May3?language=printer

On Tuesday, President Bush proposed a revolution in American nuclear strategy. He did not just promise a missile defense for the United States. He proposed something far larger. He proposed, to paraphrase his predecessor, the end of arms control as we know it.

No more will we spend endless years deliberating with Russia to determine the number, size, configuration, speed and weight of every warhead, submarine and bomber in the American and Russian nuclear arsenals. No more will we tailor either our offensive or defensive forces to the needs and requirements of Russia.

The new Bush Doctrine holds that, when it comes to designing our nuclear forces, we build to suit. We will build defensive missiles to suit our needs. We will build offensive missiles to suit our needs.

Indeed, we will un-build to suit our needs. The most striking part of Bush's speech is his pledge to "move quickly to reduce our nuclear forces." The new administration "will lead by example." It will not wait for START III or IV or any other piece of parchment that we would, absurdly, have to beg the Russian Duma to ratify.

Nor does the Bush administration fear an "arms race." If the Russians react to our doctrine by wasting billions building nukes that will only make the rubble bounce, let them.

We have a huge offensive arsenal left over from the Cold War. It is not generally understood that its massiveness was not designed to deter a Russian nuclear attack. To deter that, a minimal deterrent of, say, 1,000 weapons -- rather than the 12,000 we once had or 7,000 we have today -- would have sufficed. Why the excess? To overawe the Soviets and deter them from launching a conventional attack on Europe.

We could not match the Warsaw Pact armies on the ground. So we built a monstrous nuclear force as a way of saying: Cross the line in Germany with your tanks and risk massive nuclear retaliation.

This was called extended deterrence. It has no relevance to the world of today. There is no Soviet Union. There is no Warsaw Pact. There is no Red Army. There is no line in Germany. Hence, no need for so many offensive weapons.

Until now, we held on to them as arms control bargaining chips. But the Bush Doctrine abolishes arms control: If there is to be no more bargaining, there is no need for chips.

What we need instead are weapons to deal with a threat that did not exist 30 years ago when we abjured defenses in the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty: the development of nuclear-tipped ICBMs by such rogue regimes as Iraq, North Korea and Iran.

For reasons of delicacy, Bush spoke of the need to "replace" rather than abrogate the treaty, which remains the Linus blanket of an entire generation of arms controllers. No matter. He made it clear that we will blithely ignore it.

That is important because we cannot otherwise test and engineer effective defenses. Arms control advocates have argued: Why destroy the ABM treaty for a system that does not work? It was a lovely catch-22: The reason it didn't fully work was because of slavish adherence to the ABM treaty.

For eight years, the Clinton people held back and dumbed down defense technologies to make them ABM treaty-compliant. They tested rockets made deliberately too slow, on systems made deliberately immobile, equipped with sensors blind to information coming from space -- because fast, mobile, space-informed systems are banned by the ABM treaty. The Bush administration will now let technologies prove (or disprove) themselves unhindered by such absurdities.

Sure, to placate the critics we will be consulting and assuaging and schmoozing everyone from Tokyo to Moscow. But in the end, we will build a defense to meet the challenge of the missile era. If others don't like it, too bad.

The Bush Doctrine announces an international posture for America that might be called soft unilateralism. It is not in-your-face. It is not defiant. It is deliberate and determined. When President Bush the Elder made clear in 1990 that the United States was prepared to fight for Kuwait even if America had to do it alone, the world followed.

Multilateralism follows unilateralism. It did then, it will now. Everyone knows that we are entering a new era of missile warfare. Everyone knows that the inevitable next step is to build defenses against it. But all are afraid to break with the certainties of the past, no matter how irrelevant that bipolar Cold War past is today.

Yet when we lead, they follow. Within hours of Bush's speech, the Russian foreign minister issued a conciliatory response, pointing out that Russia had itself "outlined a complex program" for anti-missile defense.

If we build it, they will come along.


-------- MILITARY

Hurry Up and Shield

The New York Times
May 4, 2001
PUBLIC INTERESTS
By GAIL COLLINS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/04/opinion/04COLL.html?searchpv=nytToday

If you want to estimate the Bush missile shield's chances for success, consider the Army beret crisis.

The Army chief of staff, Gen. Eric Shinseki, had a vision of the Army of the future. He called it the Objective Force. All of its parts would be able to move fast and work together in the field without turf battles. And as a first step toward this marvelous goal, the general felt a pressing need for . . .

HATS.

Yes, General Shinseki decided our soldiers might feel more like members of the Objective Force if they all wore the same headgear, specifically black berets. When the general thought of black berets, he thought of the need to "maintain relevance for the evolving strategic environment."

The rest of us, of course, think of Monica Lewinsky, but that's why nobody named us chief of staff.

The general wanted every single soldier under a beret by June 14, the Army's first birthday in the new millennium. This week, when he was being yelled at by the House Committee on Small Business, and having what must have been the worst day of his life that did not involve bullets, he said he believed that making the beret switchover a sort of birthday celebration would "demonstrate that the Army could accomplish this change effectively and quickly."

Will you be surprised, people, to hear that it demonstrated exactly the opposite?

The Department of Defense was given eight months to acquire 1.3 million black berets. Since there was only one medium-sized American contractor with the critical beret- making machinery in hand, many of the orders wound up being placed overseas, outraging American small businesses, not to mention the House Small Business Committee.

The overseas suppliers, who were in Canada and England, had their factories elsewhere. Before you knew it, just as the spy-plane hostage drama was playing out, the Army was receiving crate after crate of berets that had been manufactured in China.

Everybody went crazy. "Somebody should be punched for this," said Representative Bill Pascrell of New Jersey, conjuring up the "image of our guys and gals in uniform, taking off these berets to wipe their brows, and reading `made in China.' "

Eventually, the Army promised that no American soldier would ever go off to war, or even to K.P. duty, wearing a chapeau of Chinese origin. If you have any innovative ideas about what to do with 618,000 surplus berets, drop a note to the Defense Logistics Agency.

The moral of this story is that when it comes to the Pentagon, speed kills. When you hear the president promise to have some sort of a missile shield in place by 2004, remember that there is nothing so disaster-prone as a large military organization attempting to do something really, really fast.

This week a Senate subcommittee held hearings on the Defense Department's promise to quickly train 32 special National Guard units to respond to domestic terrorism. None of them are functioning, and the office created to manage the program has been disbanded. An audit found that in an attempt to get the units up and running, people were being trained to operate nonexistent equipment.

"This was fast-tracked, and as a result some of the things that might have been done, that would have been done, did not take place," said Lt. Gen. Russell Davis.

And over at the Senate Armed Services Committee they were having hearings on the Osprey, the Marines' revolutionary new aircraft that keeps exhibiting a deeply undesirable tendency to fall out of the sky. A Pentagon expert reported that the Osprey was "frightfully immature," and had been rushed into service too fast.

Meanwhile, President Bush was making his long-awaited defense speech, vowing to turn the missile shield into a rush order. The administration, which does not want to race to judgment on reducing the level of arsenic in the drinking water, is perfectly cool about blowing $100 billion on a system that nobody has figured out how to build.

Mr. Bush's leap of faith seems to be predicated on the assumption that if you tell the military to get cracking, that will make something happen. And if you believe that one, I've got a warehouse of Chinese berets to sell you.

-------- drug war

U.S. Team Inspects Peru Plane

MAY 04, 06:49 EST
Associated Press
By RICK VECCHIO
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=CSA&STORYID=APIS7BP8HR0E

IQUITOS, Peru (AP) - U.S. and Peruvian investigators on Thursday inspected the bullet-riddled wreckage of an American missionary plane shot down last month by Peru's air force, killing a U.S. woman and her baby.

A U.S. delegation, headed by Assistant Secretary of State Rand Beers, accompanied by at least four Peruvian air force officers, spent 40 minutes examining the burned-out, single-engine Cessna, downed April 20 after it was mistaken for a drug smuggling flight.

The plane, scorched black, was propped up just in a floating hangar near this Amazon River city, 620 miles northeast of the capital, Lima.

The plane was peppered with bullet holes, mostly in the fuselage and pontoons. Portions of both wings were left melted and jagged and the interior was completely gutted from fire that broke out in the cabin during the attack.

The inspection team, totaling nearly two dozen men and one woman, most wearing civilian clothing, ignored questions shouted by a reporter from an adjacent dock and focused only on the plane.

Missionary Veronica ``Roni'' Bowers, 35, and her 7-month-old daughter, Charity, were killed when a Peruvian jet fired on the plane.

Bowers husband, Jim, 38, and their 6-year-old son, Cory, survived unhurt. The pilot, missionary Kevin Donaldson, 42, was seriously wounded by gunfire to his legs, but was able to crash-land the plane on the Amazon.

``Mr. Beers and the others say they're not leaving any stone unturned,'' the pilot's father, Rich Donaldson, 66, said after the officials climbed into four Peruvian Navy vessels and speed away.

``They want to find out what went wrong and make sure it doesn't happen again, and that's all we can ask for,'' Donaldson said.

An American surveillance plane manned by a CIA-contracted crew alerted Peru's air force to the Cessna's presence, U.S. officials have said.

But the officials say the American crew plane urged the Peruvian pilot not to open fire because of mounting evidence the aircraft was innocent.

Washington has suspended a 9-year-old joint program with Peru to force or shoot down suspected drug flights pending the outcome of the investigation.

Peru is a major producer of coca, the main ingredient of cocaine.

Larry Hultquist, 52, a fellow missionary with the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism, said he is anxious to see the investigation concluded and the drug interdiction improved, not only to prevent future tragedies but to see counter-narcotics efforts resumed.

``As far as I'm concerned, if they resolve this and restart the flights, that's fine with me,'' said Hultquist, a Wyoming resident who began his missionary work in Peru 14 years ago.

``I hope this doesn't adversely affect it so that the bad guys win.''

The U.S.-Peruvian air interdiction program is widely credited with breaking what had been a free-flowing supply line for drug production in the early 1990s, when Peru was the world's leading producer of coca, a title it no longer holds.

Traffickers flew the coca into Colombia, where drug cartels processed it into cocaine for export, mostly to the United States.

Peru's air force says it has shot down 38 suspected drug planes since 1990. No information was released on how many people were killed in the shoot-downs.

Another 64 planes have been forced to land. Of that number, 42 were searched, with an unspecified of narcotics seized.

----

Mexico Targets Police Corruption in Drug War

May 4, 2001
New York Times
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-mexico-.html

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The new Mexican government is moving fast to stamp out police corruption as part of its war on drugs and wants to extradite key drug suspects to the United States, the country's attorney general said on Friday.

Rafael Macedo de la Concha said widespread corruption and impunity crippled Mexico's fight against drug trafficking in the past, but that President Vicente Fox, who took office last December, was determined to clean up the security forces.

The government's great dream was to end corruption, but it would take a long time to establish whether it had been brought under control, Macedo said.

``The great reality is that we are working intensely,'' he said in a meeting with foreign correspondents in Mexico City. ''We are advancing, but there is much to be done.''

Macedo, a former army general, said the government wanted to extradite more suspects to face trial in the United States.

He said Everardo ``Kitty'' Paez, an alleged gunman for the Tijuana drug cartel led by the Arellano Felix brothers, could be extradited ``very soon.''

Corruption inside Mexico's federal police force and army has undermined repeated attempts at greater cooperation with U.S. authorities in the campaign against the drug cartels.

But Fox, whose election ended 71 years of rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, has pledged to work closely with the U.S. government, and Mexican police have made a string of arrests of prominent alleged traffickers in recent weeks.

During a visit to Washington on Thursday, Fox announced the arrest of Adan Amezcua, dubbed along with his two brothers as Mexico's ``kings of amphetamines'' and accused of smuggling huge quantities of synthetic drugs into the United States.

-------- kosovo

Kosovo Peacekeepers Shot at Near Serbian Boundary

May 4, 2001
New York Times
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-balkans.html

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (Reuters) - U.S. and Russian peacekeepers came under suspected ethnic Albanian guerrilla fire near the boundary between U.N.-governed Kosovo and the rest of Serbia on Friday, the NATO-led peacekeeping force said.

A joint U.S.-Russian peacekeeping patrol managed to escape without injury after being pinned down by small arms fire around 0940 GMT near the village of Gornje Karacevo in eastern Kosovo, the peace force said in a statement.

The peacekeepers returned fire, then ``broke contact,'' said Major Jim Marshall, a spokesman for American forces in Kosovo.

The shooting came from a post-war buffer zone ringing Kosovo where ethnic Albanian guerrillas are believed to be based.

``There are strong indications that this small arms fire was from Albanian extremists,'' said Colonel Dan Nolan, chief of staff for American forces in Kosovo.

Last month, a Russian peacekeeper was shot and killed in a similar attack nearby. Moscow blamed the guerrillas.

Violence involving ethnic Albanian guerrillas has killed more than 30 people in the Presevo Valley adjoining Kosovo since it began early in 2000.

A similar guerrilla group emerged in neighboring Macedonia this year. Macedonian forces for a second day on Friday bombarded rebel bastions in the country's northeastern mountains south of Kosovo.

The attack on the peacekeepers in Kosovo took place as they were marking the administrative boundary with Serbia proper.

As part of a campaign to subdue the guerrillas, NATO has begun allowing Yugoslav forces to return to the previously demilitarized three mile-wide Ground Safety Zone, section by section.

The guerrilla group known as the Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac operate in a part of the zone known as Sector B, just east of Kosovo. NATO has not yet said when Yugoslavia will be allowed to retake control of Sector B.

``In general, they (the guerrillas) have established positions in the ground safety zone in preparation for what they see as a fight when the reduction of the zone occurs,'' Marshall said.

Lieutenant General Thorstein Skiaker, head of Kosovo peacekeepers, condemned the attack in a statement and called on ''extremists'' to lay down their weapons and negotiate.

``Any attack on KFOR soldiers is totally unacceptable and I condemn this action in the very strongest terms,'' Skiaker said. ''Launched as it was from a position of sanctuary, across the administrative boundary, makes it all the more cowardly.''

-------- taiwan

'Stronger' U.S. Commitment Preserves Peace Taiwan

May 4, 2001
New York Times
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-taiwan-.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Taiwan's government spokesman said on Friday a stronger U.S. commitment toward the defense of the island was not destabilizing and instead helped to preserve peace and the status quo in the Taiwan Strait.

Su Tzen-ping, director-general of Taiwan's Government Information Office, told a forum at the American Enterprise Institute that Taipei welcomed President Bush's recent comments that the United States would do ``whatever it takes'' to defend Taiwan, as well as his move last week to offer the island the biggest weapons package in a decade.

``I think the stronger commitment of the U.S. is good to preserve peace in the Taiwan Strait,'' Su said on a visit to Washington.

Bush's moves on Taiwan appeared to fit in with a harder line being taken by the White House on China, which regards Taiwan as a renegade province.

Bush has said that China would be treated as a ``strategic competitor'' rather than as the ``strategic partner'' of the previous Clinton administration.

Subsequent incidents have put further strains on the relationship, including a standoff between Beijing and Washington over a U.S. surveillance plane that collided with a Chinese fighter jet on April 1.

The administration on Friday ordered a review of all government contacts with Beijing, including at the State and Defense departments.

The United States and Taiwan have not had diplomatic relations since 1979, when Washington switched recognition to Beijing.

But ties between the two are strong, resting on the Taiwan Relations Act that obliges the United States to provide the island with weapons to defend itself but is ambiguous about whether U.S. forces would be used in its defense.

Bush's ``whatever it takes'' comment appeared to depart from that ambiguity, although China-watchers, the White House and even Taipei and Beijing all have different interpretations of its significance.

STRENGTHENS HAND OF PRO-INDEPENDENCE GROUPS?

Some were concerned the comment could destabilize the delicate cross-Strait situation by promoting pro-independence sentiment in Taipei. Beijing has threatened to attack Taiwan if it declares independence.

Su dismissed that idea, saying, ``It seems that we have to face the reality that a declaration of independence would have unwished consequences (of a possible military confrontation).

``At the moment, there is a consensus that for Taiwan to maintain the status quo is the best choice,'' he said.in Taiwan that had not declared independence but also was not integrated with ``the authoritarian regime in Beijing.''

``In keeping peace in the Taiwan Strait, we can preserve a way of life in Taiwan. In this connection, we are preserving the status quo. So the commitment from the U.S. is also to preserve peace to prevent military intervention from the other side.''

China has deployed an increasing number of missiles targeted at Taiwan across the Strait and has rebuffed calls to resume talks stalled since July 1999 because Taipei refuses to recognize the ``one-China principle'' beforehand.

Beijing also ignores Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian, whose Democratic Progressive Party is in favor of independence. Chen is expected to make stopovers in New York and Houston at the end of May and may meet members of Congress.

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

Washington Angry Over Losing Rights Seat

New York Times
May 4, 2001
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/04/world/04DIPL.html

WASHINGTON, May 3 - American officials, lawmakers and independent human rights groups voiced dismay and indignation today that the United States had lost its seat on the United Nations Human Rights Commission.

The critics of the decision offered several factors that contributed to the American defeat, including a campaign by rights- abusing nations to avoid scrutiny, resentment toward the Bush administration for unilateral stances on issues like global warming and missile defense, the growing independence of the European Union and a failure by United States diplomats to do the proper legwork before the vote.

The State Department issued a statement saying it was "greatly disappointed in the outcome of the vote." The Human Rights Commission remains an important forum but would be diminished by the absence of the United States, the statement said. "Our commitment and resolve to address human rights problems around the world is a matter of U.S. policy; it will not be affected by this vote."

In Congress, leaders from both parties expressed outrage that nations whose records have long been criticized by the United States apparently banded together with European nations to quell Washington's voice.

A spokesman for the House speaker, J. Dennis Hastert, said today's action might force lawmakers to reconsider a carefully wrought agreement worked out between the Senate and the Clinton administration to pay outstanding American dues to the United Nations. The House is expected to take up the issue for the first time next week as part of the State Department authorization bill.

"This really hurts the credibility of the U.N. in the Congress," said Mr. Hastert's spokesman, John P. Feehery.

Although the vote of the Economic and Social Council, which has authority over the human rights commission, was carried out by secret ballot, lawmakers speculated that nations like Cuba and China - both annual targets of American criticism - had conducted behind-the-scenes lobbying against Washington. Others pointed to the unraveling of an understanding with Europe that the United States would retain one of the three seats reserved for Western nations.

"This is a deliberate attempt to punish the United States for its insistence that the commission tell the truth about human rights abuses wherever they occur," said Representative Henry J. Hyde, Republican of Illinois and the chairman of the House International Relations Committee. "This commission includes some of the world's premier human rights violators."

Representative Tom Lantos, a California Democrat who is the co- chairman of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, said, "It is absurd that rogue states and chronic human rights abusers such as Libya, Sudan and Cuba remain on the commission and sit in judgment on the human rights practices of others while the United States now stands on the sidelines."

Senator Jesse Helms, the North Carolina Republican who, as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee was a major architect of the agreement to end the United States' arrears, said it came as "no surprise that a few European countries maneuvered - in a secret vote - to eliminate the United States from the United Nations Human Rights Commission."

But the defeat did catch some administration officials by surprise. American diplomats had received more than 40 written assurances from nations that they would support a seat for the United States, a Republican Congressional official said.

Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, a former American ambassador to the United Nations, said the administration's failure so far to place a diplomat in her old post, had left the United States vulnerable to diplomatic ambushes. "Somebody wasn't watching the store," Dr. Kirkpatrick said. Without the leadership of an ambassador, she said, there is an atmosphere in which "no one is responsible."

Some analysts viewed the vote as a response to the administration's positions on a number of issues - from a treaty on land mines to the International Criminal Court - that have drawn criticism, especially in Europe. The fact that three European nations - France, Sweden and Austria - secured the Western seats signaled a snub of Washington by the European Union, officials said.

But others said the Economic and Social Council was heavily weighted toward developing nations that resent the United States' annual criticism against other nations or fear such scrutiny themselves.

---------

U.S. May Withhold U.N. Payments

May 4, 2001
New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-UN-Human-Rights.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The ejection of the United States from the U.N. Human Rights Commission has infuriated lawmakers, and some are calling for withholding $650 million in payments to the United Nations.

``This decision is ludicrous,'' House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, said Friday. ``What they've done is thrown out the world's oldest democracy and put a country with the world's worst human rights record in its place, Sudan.''

At the White House, spokesman Ari Fleischer called the U.S. ouster from the panel ``a disappointment,'' but said it ``will not stop this president or this country from speaking out strongly on matters of human rights.''

The panel itself has lost prestige, Fleischer indicated, as it ``may not be perceived as the most powerful advocate of human rights in the world,'' given its inclusion of Sudan and Libya, two nations the panel has accused of human-rights violations, and exclusion of the United States.

The House is scheduled to vote next week on an $8.2 billion State Department authorization bill that contains $582 million in back dues for the United Nations -- long a contentious issue in Congress. The bill also includes $67 million to rejoin UNESCO 17 years after the United States left over concerns about political polarization and mismanagement.

Now, those payments could be in jeopardy.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., said he and other lawmakers are ``very seriously considering amendments that would reflect our dramatic loss of faith in the United Nations' structure. Withholding funds is the best way to reflect such a loss of faith.''

And there's ``a real possibility'' such amendments could succeed, said Rep. Benjamin Gilman, R-N.Y., former chairman of the House International Relations Committee.

``I think there's going to be a severe reaction in the Congress,'' Gilman said. In addition to cutting U.N. money, he said, ``someone approached me last night on the floor (of the House) about withholding aid from countries that voted against us.''

Even Gilman's own endorsement of paying back dues is wavering: ``I've been supportive of paying the delinquency, but now I'm not too sure I want to rush into it.''

The United States had held a seat on the human rights panel since it was created in the 1940s. It lost that seat through a secret vote Thursday in which France, Sweden and Austria were chosen for the three spots allocated to Western countries.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms, a frequent critic of the United Nations despite being an architect of the back-dues payment agreement, said, ``The absence of the United States will mean that the victims of human rights abuses will no longer have a spokesman to defend their hopes for liberty and freedom.''

Former Secretary of State and U.N. Ambassador Madeleine Albright said the expulsion was a reflection of ``short-term anger that has long-term effects, and I think it's very unfortunate. It's a serious blow, but it's as much a blow to the U.N., ... which has sidelined itself on human rights issues.''

To Kim Holmes of the conservative Heritage Foundation, the ouster was ``an intentional slap at the United States.'' A number of countries, including allies, he said, ``are unhappy with the Bush administration and looking for a way to signal their displeasure.''

Allies have expressed distress over the Bush administration's rejection of the Kyoto global warming treaty and its decision to move ahead on a national missile defense system despite their opposition, among other things.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher demurred from that view, saying, ``I wouldn't throw this into an entire critique of U.S. foreign policy by everybody in the world or anything like that.'' Instead, Boucher blamed regional solidarities and vote swapping. The United States campaigned ``very actively for membership'' and got more than 40 assurances of support before winding up with only 29 votes, Boucher said. ``As far as who the dozen or so were that told us they would support us and didn't vote for us, I don't think we know at this point.''

The latest dispute comes at a time when the post of U.N. ambassador in New York remains vacant. The White House announced nearly two months ago that Bush would nominate longtime career diplomat John D. Negroponte to the post, but the nomination has yet to be submitted to the Senate.

Some administration critics have suggested the absence of an envoy at the United Nations may have contributed to a lack of vigilance in detecting that a move was afoot to deny the United States a seat.

--------

U.S. Is Voted Off Rights Panel of the U.N. for the First Time

New York Times
May 4, 2001
By BARBARA CROSSETTE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/04/world/04NATI.html

UNITED NATIONS, May 3 - In a move that reflected a growing frustration with America's attitude toward international organizations and treaties, the United States was voted off the United Nations Human Rights Commission today for the first time since the panel's founding under American leadership in 1947.

The ouster of the United States from the commission while nations like Sudan and Pakistan were chosen for membership was certain to generate further hostility to the United Nations among conservatives in Washington.

The unexpected move, which came in a secret vote, was apparently supported even by some friends of the United States. The vote also served notice that a bloc of developing nations opposed to American policies is becoming much stronger and more effective, and that Washington can no longer expect to be elected automatically to important panels.

Four nations competed today to fill three Western vacancies for three- year terms on the 53-member commission. The secret vote is conducted among the members of the Economic and Social Council, which oversees the Geneva-based commission and is made up of different members than the commission, although there can be some overlap, as there is now. France had 52 votes out of a possible 54 today, Austria got 41 and Sweden 32. The United States trailed with 29 and was eliminated.

"It's an unequivocally devastating blow," said William H. Luers, president of the United Nations Association of the United States, the largest American support group for the organization. He said he feared the effect on a Congress with many critics of the organization.

"It couldn't be worse," he said. "All the conservatives in the administration will see this as proof that we are in an organization full of enemies."

Also elected to the commission today were Bahrain, Korea, Pakistan, Croatia, Armenia, Chile, Mexico, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Togo and Uganda. One-third of the seats on the commission - which meets annually to survey human rights practices, pass resolutions critical of abusers and assign monitors - are open to election every year.

President Bush, addressing the American Jewish Committee tonight, made one of his strongest statements yet of the country's defense of human rights and religious freedoms, dwelling on Sudan and China, but did not address the decision on the Human Rights Committee.

Amnesty International USA called the removal of the United States from the commission "part of an effort by nations that routinely violate human rights to escape scrutiny." Amnesty accused members of commission of failing to do their job, succumbing instead to political and economic pressures.

"The U.S. was among the few nations willing to actively push for condemnation at the U.N.H.R.C. of the brutal human rights violations committed by nations like China," it said.

At Human Rights Watch, Joanna Weschler, the group's representative at the United Nations, said the commission was becoming "a rogues' gallery of human rights abusers." But she added: "It wasn't just enemies. It was friends as well who voted the U.S. out of the commission."

Friends of the United States in Europe and elsewhere have grown increasingly impatient, disappointed and annoyed with actions by Washington.

And in recent years, critics of the United Nations in Congress have played down American involvement in world organizations generally, rejected a host of treaties and agreements and built up a huge debt in overdue payments to the United Nations budget. More than $580 million of that debt is still tied up in the House of Representatives despite an agreement worked out in December to lower American dues.

Then came the Bush administration's rejection of the Kyoto pact to reduce global warming and a decision to develop a missile shield that many other nations saw as a threat to the 1972 antiballistic missile treaty and to arms control in general.

Madeleine K. Albright, who was the United States ambassador to the United Nations before becoming secretary of state, said in an interview that it was "beyond belief" that at the end of the day Sudan was a member of the commission and the United States was not. Sudan has been accused of a broad array of human rights abuses during its civil war, including slavery.

"It's really a bad decision, and it is not only going to harm the ability of the United Nations to function on human rights issues because the United States was the one who was depended upon to introduce some of the resolutions, but I also believe that it will harm the United Nations," Dr. Albright said. "It's one of those things where decisions are made out of some kind of short-term pique or something like that, and it hurts very much at a time when the United Nations needs very much to have American support."

Today, Singapore's ambassador to the United Nations, Kishore Mahbubani, who is currently a member of the Security Council, said it was not American human rights policies that led to this vote, but the overall perception of American inattention to the organization.

He said the United States would have to be better at the active campaigning and political horse-trading that other nations employ to gain places on important committees and other bodies. The administration has not yet sent an ambassador to New York. Although John Negroponte, a career diplomat, has been named to the job of United Nations ambassador, his name has not yet been sent to the Senate for confirmation.

Representative Nita M. Lowey, the New York Democrat who is co-chairman of the bipartisan United Nations working group and ranking Democrat on the House foreign operations subcommittee, said in a statement today that what happened was an embarrassment to the United States.

"President Bush has dragged his feet in getting key foreign policy officials confirmed," she said. "It is unacceptable that we still have no U.N. ambassador, and this vote is a painful blow to to our global leadership on human rights and democracy. The U.S. commitment to human rights has fallen victim to the administration's laissez-faire attitude toward diplomacy and foreign policy."

The acting United States ambassador to the United Nations, James B. Cunningham, said today that the outcome "won't, of course, affect our commitment to human rights issues, in and outside the United Nations."

Jean-David Levitte, the French ambassador, attributed the overwhelming vote for France to its policy of approaching human rights issues with cooperation and dialogue rather than confrontation, a system he said worked well with China. France and other European nations did not back an American resolution at the just-concluded six-week annual session of the Human Rights Commission that would have held China up to public criticism.

But, Mr. Levitte said, that did not mean that France was prepared to go soft on human rights issues in the commission, where the French often back American moves on other issues. "We need the U.S. engagement in the U.N., and we need the U.S. in the Human Rights Commission," he said. "My hope is that what happened will not trigger bitter feelings in the U.S. Congress and a new fever against the U.N."

In Washington, Representative Christopher H. Smith, Republican of New Jersey and vice chairman of the House International Relations Committee, who took part in the recent annual commission meeting in Geneva as part of the Bush administration's delegation, said he was "disappointed but not surprised" by today's action.

"In Geneva, there was a great deal of animosity about the United States bringing the resolution on China," he said. "This seems to me to be a retaliation in part for standing side by side with Israel and standing out on China. This to me is payback for our principled positions."

Mr. Smith backs a Congressional call for American action in voting countries that abuse rights off the commission if the panel's credibility is to survive.

Felice Gaer, director of the Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights in New York and a member of the United Nations Committee Against Torture, said the American delegation at this year's Human Rights Commission meeting, did a lot of good in pressing for criticism of countries like China, Iran and Cuba. But when it came to issues like children's rights and the outlawing of "disappearances," the United States took an aggressively negative stand.

William vanden Heuvel, a former merican deputy representative at the United Nations who is now chairman of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute in Hyde Park, N.Y., said today's vote would have "serious repercussions" on the Human Rights Commission, which Mrs. Roosevelt helped to create. He said, moreover, that to have all three new Western seats filled by members of the European Union was questionable. But he also said the United States had to face a new reality.

"There are so many people in so many countries who are so angry at the United States for not living up to its word," he said, after a briefing for ambassadors here before the vote in the Economic and Social Council. "We're advised too by our representatives how various members of the United Nations are increasingly finding the United States an untrustworthy partner."

--------

Members of U.N. Human Rights Council

New York Times
May 4, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-UN-Human-Rights-Box.html

Here is a list of members of the U.N. Human Rights Commission by region. Members elected Thursday are in parenthesis. The United States was not re-elected.

Africa:

Algeria, Burundi, Cameroon, Congo, Kenya, Libya, Nigeria, Senegal, (Sierra Leone), South Africa, (Sudan), Swaziland, (Togo), (Uganda), Zambia.

Asia:

(Bahrain), China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, (Pakistan), (South Korea), Saudi Arabia, Syria, Thailand, Vietnam.

Latin America:

Argentina, Brazil, (Chile), Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Guatemala, (Mexico), Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela.

Western Europe and others:

(Austria), Belgium, Canada, (France), Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain, (Sweden), United Kingdom.

Eastern Europe:

(Armenia), (Croatia), Czech Republic, Poland, Russia.

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

China´s bigger navy

May 4, 2001
Inside the Ring
Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
Notes from the Pentagon.
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010504-23142470.htm

China is moving ahead with plans to buy two more guided-missile destroyers from Russia, according to U.S. intelligence officials. Negotiations for the additional Sovremenny-class ships were detected two weeks ago, the officials told us.

China already has two of the high-technology destroyers, which are equipped with supersonic SSN-22 Sunburn anti-ship cruise missiles. The intelligence officials said that Russia will build two more Sovremennys for the Chinese navy and that the ships will be delivered in the next two years.

The construction is set to begin soon at a shipyard in St. Petersburg -- where the first two ships were built.

U.S. Navy intelligence officials have said the addition of the Sovremennys and their missiles represents a major leap in Chinese naval firepower.

The ships were ordered after the March 1996 Taiwan Strait crisis, when Chinese forces fired missiles north and south of Taiwan. President Clinton then dispatched two aircraft carrier battle groups to the area to show Beijing that Taiwan had an ally in the United States.

The additional ships -- the most advanced in the Chinese Navy -- are an anticipated response to the Bush administration´s recent approval of new arms sales to Taiwan.

The administration, for its part, said the Sovremennys, along with other purchases of Su-27 and Su-30 fighters and Kilo submarines, prompted the approval of four U.S. Kidd-class destroyers and diesel submarines to Taiwan. Both weapons systems will be equipped with Harpoon anti-ship missiles.

Waddle´s defense

What would have happened in a Pear Harbor courtroom if the Navy had court-martialed Cmdr. Scott Waddle? We´ll never know for sure, but his civilian defense attorney, Charles Gittins, told us he planned to expose large gaps in Navy regulations and submarine operating procedures.

Mr. Gittins said he planned to focus on the civilian VIPs onboard the attack submarine USS Greeneville on Feb. 9 and the fact Cmdr. Waddle was ordered to sea just to put on a show for them.

"Scott was ordered to go to sea in violation of Navy directives requiring distinguished visitors to be accommodated during normal training only," the lawyer said.

A seaman technician told investigators he had tracked the Japanese fishing boat Ehime Maru, but did not tell the skipper because he was intimidated by civilians crammed on the periscope stand. Minutes later, Cmdr. Waddle ordered the planned emergency surfacing. The steel hull sliced into the unsuspecting fishing boat. Nine of the 35 Japanese passengers and crew members were killed.

"Our defense of Waddle would have been a straight-up legal defense, seeking to demonstrate intervening acts of greater negligence," Mr. Gittins said. "Those are, the negligence or intentional failure of the fire-control technician to report a 4,000-yard, closing surface contact and the negligent and deficient design of the Ehime Maru that provided for no reserve bouyancy so that the vessel sank like a rock."

Investigators criticized Cmdr. Waddle´s periscope scan, calling it too brief and too shallow to spot the oncoming boat.

"There are no governing regs for the duration of a periscope search or for when or how much a sub commander should raise the vessel in heavy seas to facilitate a periscope search," Mr. Gittins said. "(The preliminary investigator) acknowledged that these are things that are judgment calls based upon a commander´s experience, training and knowledge and the circumstances as he understands them. That precludes conviction for dereliction of duty."

"I envisioned a great merits defense at a court-martial and an opportunity to make law and the potential that the Navy could not find five court-martial members (a military jury) who would convict Scott Waddle under these circumstances."

With a court-martial decision pending last month, Mr. Gittins spoke to the office of Adm. Thomas Fargo, Pacific Fleet commander.

"I made it clear that if he was sent to court-martial, Scott would do what was necessary to defend himself and they should not expect a court-martial case to be resolved with a plea bargain," Mr. Gittins said.

Adm. Fargo eventually decided Cmdr. Waddle´s punishment would be administrative. Cmdr. Waddle plans to retire before Oct. 1 after 20 years of service and is now job hunting on the West Coast.

Haikou, R.O.C.

The 24 crew members of the U.S. Navy EP-3E surveillance air raft almost didn´t get released when a charter Continental Airlines jet arrived to pick them up.

The Continental pilot in charge of the pickup, Capt. Tom Pinardo, accidentally wrote down the destination of the flight as "Haikou, R.O.C." -- the designation used by Taiwan.

Capt. Guy Greider, another pilot on the rescue flight, wrote about the political glitch in an e-mail. Before the jet could leave, "we had a problem," he stated. "A U.S. military general who was on the scene to assist the transfer came storming up the stairs and demanded to speak with the captain. . . . The general said the entire mission was now in jeopardy."

The pilot had put the R.O.C. designation on a document called a general declaration required of all international flights.

"The initials ROC stand for Republic of China which is Taiwan!" Mr. Greider wrote. "The Chinese were very upset over this." China considers democratic Taiwan a breakaway province.

The pilots fixed the problem with a pen. He crossed out ROC and replaced it with "P.R.O.C." and "that seemed to satisfy them," Mr. Greider said of the People´s Liberation Army troops.

Continental spokesman Dave Messing confirmed the account.

Beret battle

The Army has given the Rangers an exclusive color of berets (tan). The Pentagon is forbidding soldiers from wearing Chinese-made berets. The controversy over the Army´s universal black beret is over, right? Wrong.

Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett, Maryland Republican and a House Armed Services Committee member, and other lawmakers yesterday announced they will introduce legislation that would prohibit the Army from issuing berets of any color to general Army personnel.

"Berets should be reserved for members of the special units who earn them -- the Rangers´ black berets, the Special Forces Green Berets and the airborne´s maroon berets," Mr. Bartlett said.

Also backing the bill are Rep. Duncan Hunter, California Republican; Rep. Walter B. Jones Jr., North Carolina Republican; and Rep. James A. Traficant Jr. , Ohio Democrat. Congressional aides say the bill faces an uphill fight for passage, since Congress traditionally gives the services the prerogative to make changes in attire.

The Pentagon announced Tuesday night that it would not allow Army soldiers to wear any of the 618,000 berets it ordered from a British company that operates a low-wage factory in communist China.

A spokeswoman for the Defense Logistics Agency, which handled the contract, said the agency will accept all 618,000 berets, although some are still in production. No decision has been made on how to dispose of the $4 million in wool berets, she said.

Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough are Pentagon reporters. Gertz can be reached at 202/636-3274 or by e-mail at bgertzwashingtontimes.com . Scarborough can be reached at 202/636-3208 or by e-mail at rscarboroughwashingtontimes.com .

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In Moving to Shun China, Bush Team Trips Over Itself Again

New York Times
May 4, 2001
By DAVID E. SANGER and STEVEN LEE MYERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/04/world/04MILI.html

WASHINGTON, May 3 - For the second time in eight days the White House tried today to explain miscues in its China policy, insisting that President Bush and his national security team had decided weeks ago to evaluate all government contacts with China case by case, despite a memorandum to the contrary written by a top assistant to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

The memorandum, issued and then retracted within hours by the Pentagon on Wednesday, had ordered the suspension of military exchanges and contacts with the Chinese armed forces. Today Mr. Bush himself tried to clarify the policy, while spokesmen at the White House and the Pentagon tried to explain how a seemingly clear directive from the President was turned on its head inside Mr. Rumsfeld's office.

Mr. Bush declined to discuss that issue today, but said: "We're going to review all opportunities to interface with the Chinese. If it enhances our relationship, it might make sense. If it's a useless exercise, and it doesn't make the relationship any better, then we won't do that."

In a telephone interview this evening, Mr. Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said that she discussed the memo with Mr. Rumsfeld when he arrived at the White House on Wednesday for a meeting on another subject. "He immediately said that it was a mistake," Ms. Rice said. "He himself rescinded it."

While the confusion itself seemed minor, it came after a series of miscommuniciations that suggest an administration that prides itself on discipline and clear messages may be having trouble with both.

A week ago President Bush declared that the United States would do "whatever it takes" for Taiwan's defense, appearing to end decades of deliberate presidential ambiguity about how far the United States would go on the island's behalf. Mr. Bush's aides later said there was no change of policy, and the president, in later interviews, added important caveats to his commitment, saying Taiwan must not declare independence or provoke China into attacking.

The argument over whether Mr. Bush had misspoken or was signaling a new tilt toward Taiwan had just died down when the memorandum, dated April 30 and signed by Chris Williams, a senior adviser to Mr. Rumsfeld for policy matters, directed the United States armed forces to suspend contacts between their own civilian and military officials and their Chinese counterparts "until further notice."

The White House and the Pentagon insisted today that Mr. Williams had simply misunderstood Mr. Rumsfeld. At the Pentagon, Adm. Craig Quigley, the spokesman, said the writer of the memo thought he was putting out the results of a review of contacts ordered by Mr. Rumsfeld in March, and "he was simply incorrect in his interpretation of the secretary's intentions."

But the timing of the error was, in the words of one administration official, "particularly awkward." In the space of a week the White House rattled the Chinese on its Taiwan policy, announced it was proceeding with a missile shield that China believes is intended to contain its nuclear arsenal, and suggested that carefully nurtured contacts with China's Army would be cut off.

The Pentagon has had only a handful of military exchanges this year, including a visit to China by the commander of American forces in the Pacific, Adm. Dennis C. Blair, visits by students from the Air War College and the National Defense University, and a port call by the Blue Ridge, the command ship of the Navy's Seventh Fleet.

Since Mr. Rumsfeld's review began, at least one Chinese scholar has lost an invitation to a security conference at the Pentagon's Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies in Hawaii. Two officials said Mr. Rumsfeld himself had ordered the center not to play host to the scholar.

Tonight Mr. Bush raised another issue in the increasingly tense relationship with Beijing: religious persecution. Speaking to the American Jewish Committee, he said: "We hear alarming reports of the detention of worshipers and religious leaders. Churches and mosques have been vandalized or demolished. Traditional religious practices in Tibet have long been the target of especially harsh and unjust persecution. And most recently, adherents of the Falun Gong spiritual movement have been singled out for arrest and abuse."

"China aspires to national strength and greatness," he said. "But these acts of persecution are acts of fear - and therefore of weakness."

At the heart of the dispute over the China memorandum was the question of whether Mr. Rumsfeld was trying to take a harder line against China than the White House does. The Pentagon disputed an account by Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, the Republican chairman of the Senate's Armed Services Committee, who said on Wednesday that he had discussed the suspension of military contacts with Mr. Rumsfeld and heartily endorsed the idea.

A Pentagon spokesman, Bryan G. Whitman, said today that Mr. Rumsfeld had never discussed the specific issue of contacts with the senator.

In a second interview today, Senator Warner said he misspoke, and had not in fact discussed this with Mr. Rumsfeld. "If there is an error," he said, "it is mine, and I accept it."

The White House was eager to make the point today that it is not the only institution to put out erroneous information.

Ari Fleischer, Mr. Bush's press secretary, told reporters: "This morning, I happened to flip through some newspapers and I noticed there was a major newspaper in Washington that had six corrections and one clarification in it today. There was another major newspaper in New York that had nine corrections in it."

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-------- environment

Letter from Robert Redford re: Artic oil

Date: Fri, 4 May 2001
From: radman <resist@best.com>

I've never circulated this kind of email before. But I am so appalled by President Bush's plan to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to massive oil development that I feel I must do whatever I can to help stop it.

To me, the Arctic Refuge represents everything spectacular and everything endangered about America's natural heritage: a million years of ecological serenity... vast expanses of untouched wilderness... an irreplaceable sanctuary for polar bears, white wolves and 130,000 caribou that return here each year to give birth and rear their young. For 20,000 years -- literally hundreds of generations -- the native Gwich'in people have inhabited this sacred place, following the caribou herd and leaving the awe-inspiring landscape just as they found it. Our own presidents going back to Eisenhower have kept a bipartisan promise to safeguard this world-class natural treasure. But not THIS president. It is a sad day indeed when our president and congressional leaders would sacrifice America's largest wildlife refuge for the sake of a possible six-month supply of national energy. A six-month supply! We could save that little oil by improving the fuel efficiency of cars and light trucks by a mere one mile per gallon.

Only one group of Americans will benefit from the destruction of the Arctic Wildlife Refuge: the oil giants. Everyone else loses. Arctic wildlife populations will decline, the Gwich'in people will see their land marred by pipelines and poisoned by oil spills, you and I will become even more dependent on oil, and the planet will suffer catastrophic global warming from the burning of even more fossil fuel.

Unless we get millions of Americans to lodge a protest right now, this nightmarish scenario may well come to pass in the next two months. The Republican energy bill, which would fulfill the president's promise to drill the Arctic Refuge, is moving through Congress today. House and Senate leaders may also try to sneak through the Arctic drilling provision by attaching it to a "must-pass" appropriations bill. These votes will be decided by the moderates in both parties. We must reach those moderates and hold them accountable.

Here's what you can do: go to <http://www.savebiogems.org/arctic>

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has set up this new website to make it extremely easy for you to send messages of protest to your senators and represenative. It will take you only a minute.

I've been on NRDC's board for 25 years, so I know how effective they are at waging and winning environmental campaigns. Last year, NRDC used web activism to help generate a million messages of protest to Mitsubishi and stopped the company from destroying the last unspoiled birthing ground of the Pacific gray whale.

We'll win this time too if each of us does our part for the Arctic Refuge. Please visit <http://www.savebiogems.org/arctic> right now. And forward my message to your family, friends and colleagues. Congress cannot ignore millions of us.

If we let them plunder our greatest wildlife refuge for the sake of oil company profits, then no piece of our natural heritage is safe from destruction. Please go to <http://www.savebiogems.org/arctic> and help keep the Arctic wild and free.

Sincerely yours, Robert Redford

----

Ford seeks environmental leadership role

USA: May 4, 2001
Story by Tom Brown
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10703

DETROIT - Ford Motor Co., which has vowed to cut emissions of greenhouse gases from its popular but gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles, sought to burnish its environmental image again yesterday, saying the fight against global warming is its single biggest corporate challenge.

"There will be many ways to judge Ford in this first decade of the 21st century, many measures of success," Ford said in its second annual so-called "corporate citizenship" report. "None will be greater than our response to the issue of climate change."

But Ford, the world's No. 2 automaker, declined to address President Bush's decision to withdraw the United States from the 1997 Kyoto treaty aimed at fighting global warming, a move that upset environmentalists and the European Union. In a conference call, Ford executives expressed doubts about the effectiveness of Kyoto, a position similar to those held by Bush and shared with General Motors Corp.

While saying there was sufficient scientific evidence that global warming is a problem, the company also said it thought the Kyoto treaty and current U.S. fuel economy regulations were flawed ways of addressing the problem.

A leading environmental group welcomed the report as a sign that Ford was taking its role in global warming seriously. Dan Becker, director of the Sierra Club's global warming project, said cars and light trucks account for about one-fifth of the greenhouse gases generated in the United States every year.

"The single biggest step to curbing global warming is making cars go further on a gallon of gas," Becker said. "Ford is a big part of the problem. They're trying to become part of the solution, and they deserve credit for that."

In its report, Ford estimated that yearly greenhouse gas emissions from its vehicles and manufacturing plants totaled the equivalent of 400 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, which scientists have identified as one of the leading man-made causes of global climate change.

Becker said if Ford were a country it would rank as the 10th largest source of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.

THE "GREEN" CHAIRMAN

Ford Chairman Bill Ford, great-grandson of the Detroit automaker's founder, is a lifelong environmentalist, and efforts to portray Ford Motor Co. as an environmentally aware "green" company have been made ever since he took over in January 1999.

In a letter included as part of Yesterday's 88-page report on the environment and other issues, Chairman Ford said global warming "stands out from other environmental issues because of its potentially serious consequences and its direct relationship to our industry."

He said nothing specific about ways of fighting emissions of carbon dioxide from polluting internal combustion engines. But in a speech to a Greenpeace Business Conference in London last October, Ford said the days of such engines were numbered, after a 100-year reign, and that they will be replaced by clean fuel cell technology.

A fuel cell creates energy through an electrochemical process, similar to that in a battery.

Martin Zimmerman, vice president of governmental affairs for Ford, said in a conference call Yesterday that the Kyoto agreement sets an unrealistic timetable for reducing emissions of gases linked to global warming, and excludes developing nations where such emissions are likely to increase.

The Bush administration cited similar reasons when it announced in March it would not support Kyoto. GM has also expressed doubts about the Kyoto targets.

In its first corporate citizenship report, issued in May last year, Ford conceded that its SUVs created a "dilemma" for the company and stated a goal of being at the cutting edge of efforts to improve fuel economy and reduced greenhouse gas emissions

Ford later committed itself to improving the fuel economy of its SUVs by 25 percent over five years, and has repeatedly said that it plans to cut carbon-dioxide emissions from its cars and trucks.

In Yesterday's report, the company admitted, however, that its 2001 model-year cars and trucks would post a poorer performance in terms of overall fuel economy than its model year 2000 vehicles, due to the addition of the Land Rover SUV business.

GM and DaimlerChrysler AG have also committed to increasing the fuel economy of their vehicles, but have not given specific targets.

--------

Mining Deep Underground Stirs Protest Above

New York Times
May 4, 2001
By FRANCIS X. CLINES
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/04/national/04MINI.html

WEST FINLEY, Pa. - People in these pristine hills speak of "the longwall" digging endlessly 500 feet and more beneath them, a prodigious coal mining machine that has been extracting the lucrative Pittsburgh seam for 30 years in a continuation of this state's long history of reliance on King Coal.

The whirling blades of the longwall, which does not leave behind the support pillars of earlier, more labor-intensive mining methods, have produced years of mile-long caverns 7 feet high and 1,000 feet wide that remain invisible to the life above until the inevitable subsidence occurs. Then the topography drops 3 or 4 feet as the longwall's wake becomes clear, often as cracked houses, altered streams and disappearing water wells, effects long accepted as the cost of underpinning the state economy.

But lately, residents here in Greene and Washington Counties have been organizing through litigation and newsletters against the longwall in a feat as earth-defying in its way as the high-speed mechanism tirelessly crisscrossing below.

"If people in the rest of the state knew about these houses and streams, they wouldn't tolerate it," said Ed Perry, assistant supervisor of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service in State College, Pa., who complains that the longwall has been wreaking an environmental disaster as it chews its way toward West Virginia.

The ground-level complaints, focused lately on some tilted and cracked houses, extend as well into the deep woods, where only a few critics like Mr. Perry have been marking the longwall's progress. But the state is beginning to pay attention, having ordered a private study to measure what has been happening to streams, springs and wetlands as the longwall burrows below.

"There's no debating that subsidence does occur," said Ted Kopas, spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Protection, which licenses the mining. "But we want to be able to document with scientific information longwall's effects on water resources, on the streams, wetlands and buffer areas. There's considerable debate about that."

Environmentalists and other critics who are trying to rally the public say the damage has been devastating to water resources as well as hillside houses that can be severely tilted, cracked and wrenched as they subside.

But coal company officials insist the damage from ground-level subsidence has been repairable and within legal bounds. The companies maintain that they have complied with state laws requiring them to compensate homeowners and protect the environment. Critics, however, say that state watchdogs give the industry free rein.

For weeks now, the immediate ground-level symptoms of longwall mining - housing cracks and water supply losses - have been the talk of Laurel Run hollow in Waynesburg, 10 miles to the east where the extractors have been burrowing round the clock beneath a pastoral setting. Homeowners, who are presented with a range of damage-control compensation and buyout options by the company, question why they must tolerate any change at all, particularly without public hearings. But the company emphasizes that mining rights, usually sold by earlier owners at the turn of the century, always stipulated the owner's obligation to acknowledge the company's undermining rights.

"There's nothing like spring water," lamented Dick Patterson, a 64- year-old cattle farmer at the top of the hollow who has been told he will lose all seven of his prime springs when the longwall soon goes through. He will have to buy water that he now gets free, he noted, whenever a municipal hookup is built. Meantime, water will be trucked in at the mining company's expense, small comfort to Mr. Patterson and his neighbors.

"I already had a nervous medical condition before this thing came underneath and now I'm overwhelmed," said Jerry Jewell, disturbed to see his house subsiding six inches more at the front than at the rear. "I took a company offer," he said of an undisclosed lump sum for repairs by which he chose to stay in the house and admittedly gamble, like other owners, that the cost of finally resetting his house right would not be extravagant.

"It's a-cracking again," warned Mr. Patterson, studying the excavation wounds around Mr. Jewell's house. "You'll never see the end of it."

To the contrary, the mining company, Consol Energy Inc., insists that 30 years' experience shows few scars will remain soon after the machines move on.

"I understand the emotional aspect of the debate if I'm a homeowner," said Thomas F. Hoffman, Consol vice president, who insisted the effect was "sort of like having your bathroom and kitchen done at the same time." Mr. Hoffman maintained, however, that most damaged houses were either well repaired or bought at a fair price unless homeowners resist through lawsuits so that unsightly standoffs dot the countryside. Otherwise, "There are just no long-term effects visible."

A state study in 1999 concluded that 59 percent of undermined structures were damaged and 70 percent of the damage claims were resolved, with the fate of the others not known, according to the Department of Environmental Protection.

"The longwall's been pretty disastrous," Mr. Perry said. "The sediment from longwall mining is a major pollutant of streams," said Mr. Perry, who is conducting a federal study of more than 100 local streams.

Chief among them lately is Enlow Fork, a principal feeder creek here, where Mr. Perry, an aquatic biologist, has done wildlife research for years. As miles of longwall mining crisscrossed beneath, he said he had found serious disruption of the life of the creek bed, which dropped 3 feet as the surrounding land subsided. Thick sediment now covers cobble and gravel breeding grounds for various species, he said, while wide, stagnant pools have appeared, ballooning far beyond a healthy stream course of riffles, glides and runs. The creek's food chain is being stifled by sediment and reduced oxygen levels, Mr. Perry has concluded.

Consol Energy insists any damage is temporary and may even be a boon. "Change is not necessarily bad," Mr. Hoffman maintains.

"One can have changes that are in fact an enhancement," Mr. Hoffman said in an interview, contending the pool effect might prove a benefit during droughts. And while fracture lines from undermining can detour a stream underground, Mr. Hoffman maintained that roiled sediment reseals the cracks so that "the stream will in effect heal itself."

Environmentalists are apoplectic at such pronouncements as the longwall wends its way through the Pittsburgh seam, one of the richest in the nation, which yields 23 tons of coal per minute and is estimated to have 50 years worth of coal yet to be mined.

"This just keeps going on and on," said Joe Turner, director of the Raymond Profitt Foundation, a private, nonprofit environmental group in Langhorne, Pa., that is suing the federal government for what it says is failure to enforce basic environment laws. "In West Virginia, at least you can see the strip mining damage to the mountain tops from the air, but here the damage is happening from underground. Where and when does it end?"

But coal extraction and the risk of subsidence are almost as old as Pennsylvania, Mr. Hoffman noted. Most residents have long accepted its economic benefits, he maintained, except for "a small group of people" now trying to mount a modern fight against an economic fact of life that, he said, was two centuries old.

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Bush To Revise Forest Road - Ban Rules

New York Times
May 4, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Forest-Rules.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Environmentalists and the timber industry -- on opposite sides of a sweeping Clinton-era road ban in many national forests -- both found fault with a Bush plan announced Friday to maintain the protections while a revision is crafted.

The regulation, which covered an area more than twice the size of Ohio, was a key piece of the Clinton administration's environmental policy. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman said the Bush administration will let the ban take effect May 12, but it wants to revise the rule to address what she said was a lack of local input.

Environmental groups and a former Clinton administration official were quick to complain. Many felt the new rule could poke holes in otherwise solid forest protections and prompt the return to a system that produced gridlock.

They were anxious to see the specifics of the administration's amended rule, expected next month.

Michael Francis, The Wilderness Society's national forest program director, said the administration may be ``sugar coating'' their attempt to overturn the policy.

``We are better off than we were before, but we are only better off for a little while,'' he said.

Timber industry representatives said they didn't want the rule to take effect because its development was flawed. One official said it was in the environmental groups' best interest to make it seem that they are losing out.

``They know that they prevail if there's gridlock,'' said Chris West, vice president of the American Forest Resource Council. ``The opportunity for this to be tied up in the courts -- and for the decision never to be finalized at the local level -- is to their benefit.''

Much of the 58.5 million acres of federal forests set aside in the road ban are in the West, although they spread from Alaska's Tongass National Forest to Florida's Apalachicola National Forest.

Conservationists don't want to see road-building on those lands because they harm the environment and allow increased access for timber and mining interests, among other reasons.

Those industries and some recreation groups say they aren't opposed to the ban in theory. But they argue it may needlessly endanger valuable forest resources when they can't be reached to undertake efforts to prevent severe wildfires or the spread of insects and disease.

The administration was vague on the specifics of what would come next. Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth said he hoped the rule would institute a process to make decisions on a forest-by-forest basis, using individual plans that are regularly revised by agency officials.

Bosworth said he expected the new rule would allow input from local leaders, community members and Forest Service officials throughout the country.

As the Bush administration revises the rule, the Clinton policy is being weighed in courts nationwide and may be blocked judicially.

The state of Idaho and timber company Boise Cascade are seeking an injunction in federal court in Boise, Idaho.

In a court filing Friday, the administration reiterated that it planned ``to maintain the protections embodied in the current rule'' while it protected roadless area ``values and conditions.'' It said it does not favor an injunction blocking implementation of the ban.

Idaho Attorney General Al Lance said the state planned to move forward with its suit, despite Friday's developments.

``The roadless rule, as it was promulgated by the Clinton administration, is patently illegal,'' he said. ``No amount of window dressing will change that fact.''

In an interim decision, U.S. District Judge Edward J. Lodge rejected a call to immediately block the Clinton policy. But he said there was ``strong evidence'' the rule-making process was hurried and that the Forest Service was not prepared to produce a ``coherent proposal.''

Bosworth wouldn't say whether an amended regulation would increase logging, though he thought about 9 million acres of the nearly 60 million acres included in the road ban were considered suitable for logging under current forest plans.

With the new revisions, ``local supervisors working through their local planning processes may be able to make some adjustments,'' he said. But ``it would depend on what the amendment to the rule said.''

Former officials were less optimistic.

``My greatest fear is this will simply revert us to a process that led us, rather than to resolution, to more conflict,'' said Jim Lyons, who oversaw the Forest Service as an agriculture undersecretary in the Clinton administration.

------

Study Finds a Decline in Natural Air Cleanser

New York Times
May 4, 2001
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/04/science/04CLEA.html

Scientists say they have detected wide swings and, most recently, a sharp drop in atmospheric concentrations of chemicals that naturally purge the air of many kinds of contaminants and methane, a powerful heat-trapping greenhouse gas.

The scientists say they suspect that the decline is related to human activity, because the biggest drop was measured in the northern hemisphere, where most industry and other human activity is concentrated.

The researchers, who described their work in today's issue of the journal Science, said there were still many uncertainties involved in calculating amounts of the molecules.

"It's a surprise as well as cause for deep concern," said Dr. Ronald G. Prinn, the study's lead author and chairman of the department of earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "If we don't understand it and it's going down, we'd better find out what's going on."

The chemicals are hydroxyl radicals, which are created as ultraviolet light knocks hydrogen atoms from water molecules in air in the presence of ozone, a highly reactive form of oxygen.

The radicals vanish almost as quickly as they are created, usually in less than a second, chemically reacting with an array of air pollutants, including such undesirables as carbon monoxide, methane and sulfur dioxide. They are also a major ingredient in smog.

The puzzle is particularly complicated because the amount of radicals can be affected by the rates at which they are created and destroyed. One of many possible influences, atmospheric scientists say, is an increase in haze, which could block ultraviolet light and impede the reaction that creates the molecules.

It is important to clarify what is going on, Dr. Prinn said, because the potent molecules attack some things that are almost indestructible, most notably methane, which many scientists have identified as a significant contributor to global warming.

Another target of the radicals is sulfur dioxide, which is emitted by smokestacks, volcanoes and other sources. The hydroxyl radicals are thought to purge more than half the sulfur dioxide added to the air.

Experts in atmospheric chemistry who were not involved in the study said it offered important hints about hydroxyl radicals, but they emphasized the difficulties in measuring something that comes and goes so quickly and varies mile by mile.

Dr. Ralph J. Cicerone, an atmospheric chemist and chancellor of the University of California at Irvine, said he doubted there was a way to confirm that the hydroxyl radicals were exhibiting wide swings.

Nonetheless, Dr. Cicerone said, the study sharpened a fuzzy picture of an essential atmospheric ingredient.

"This is a terrifically important question because hydroxyl radicals are the central chemical in the lower atmosphere for processing everything," he said. "For 25 years, people have been struggling to measure it."

Indeed, the study, like several other recent efforts, did not rely on direct measurements of the radicals but of a synthetic gas, methyl chloroform, which the radicals destroy.

Companies stopped manufacturing and using methyl chloroform, a solvent, in the mid-1990's under agreements aimed at restoring the ozone layer high in the atmosphere.

The amount remaining in the air is declining, mainly as it is destroyed by hydroxyl radicals, so the rate of destruction can be an indirect measure of hydroxyl radicals.

Using this method, researchers estimated with a substantial margin of error that the average amount of hydroxyl radicals in the atmosphere rose 15 percent from 1979, when methyl chloroform measurements began, to 1989. After 1990, the amount of radicals appears to have dropped sharply. The concentration in 2000 was 10 percent below that of 1979.

But the technique adds another level of uncertainty, said Dr. Stephen A. Montzka, a research chemist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It is still possible that the changes in methyl chloroform levels are not coming from reactions with hydroxyl radicals, but are a result of continuing but undetected releases of these chemicals.

"It's the best barometer of hydroxyl radicals that we have," he said. "But there are still big potential sources of error."

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Utility Plans to Put Limits on Its Plants

New York Times
May 4, 2001
By NEELA BANERJEE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/04/business/04GREE.html?searchpv=nytToday

Citing a growing concern about global warming, the Entergy Corporation, one of the nation's largest electric power generators, announced yesterday that it planned to cap its emissions of carbon dioxide over the next five years.

Entergy's decision comes weeks after President Bush reversed a campaign pledge to regulate the carbon dioxide emissions of power plants - a reaction, many analysts said, to pressure from the utility industry.

Opponents of emission controls argued that the cost would damage the industry and the economy.

But industry experts and some environmental advocates said yesterday that Entergy's shift showed that the industry's views on climate change were not monolithic.

"It is incumbent upon every individual and business to take voluntary initiatives to limit greenhouse gas emissions and reduce the risks we face today," said J. Wayne Leonard, the company's chief executive. "Entergy's program will demonstrate that companies can do the right thing while remaining competitive and profitable."

Entergy, which is based in New Orleans and operates plants in six states, took pains to note that its decision was not meant as a slap at the Bush administration.

The company's plan would cap its carbon dioxide emissions at last year's levels over the next five years, despite plans to significantly increase its power generation. About 17,500 megawatts of the electricity that Entergy generates in the United States is from fossil fuels, and it expects to increase that capacity by 5,000 megawatts over the next five years, mainly by building natural- gas-fired plants.

The company estimated that it released about 50 million tons of carbon dioxide last year. Without the cap, new plants would add 5.5 million tons to its emissions. The pledge does not affect Entergy's nuclear plants, including the Indian Point 3 plant in New York, or its foreign holdings.

Entergy shares rose 20 cents yesterday, to $40.45, on a day when power company stocks generally were lower.

The company plans to work with Environmental Defense, an advocacy group based in New York, to develop its emissions reduction program. It will also be the first American power company to join the Partnership for Climate Action, a group including DuPont, BP Amoco and Royal Dutch/Shell, that has pledged to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by at least 80 million metric tons annually by 2010.

Entergy is still trying to figure out how it will cut emissions. The company said that 80 percent of the reductions would come from its operations and the remainder from trading emissions credits - essentially paying others not to pollute.

Utilities in the Energy Department's Climate Challenge program sought to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases by 47.6 million metric tons by last year. Industry experts say Entergy's plans up the ante and may prompt other power companies to take similar steps.

A spokesman for Entergy said Mr. Leonard had been studying arguments about climate change for some time but decided to cap the company's emissions after listening to scientists at a conference on global warming that Entergy sponsored in New Orleans last September.

Environmental advocates offered cautious praise for Entergy's decision, with one activist noting that global warming is a crucial issue in Louisiana.

"We're so low in the water here in Louisiana that we will be among the first and worst affected as seas rise," said Gary Groesch, executive director of the Alliance for Affordable Energy in New Orleans.

-------- police

F.B.I. Denies an Effort to Hinder Alabama's Bombing Inquiry

New York Times
May 4, 2001
By KEVIN SACK
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/04/national/04CHUR.html

BIRMINGHAM, Ala., May 3 - The F.B.I. acknowledged today that it did not give secretly recorded audiotapes and other relevant evidence to Alabama officials in the early 1970's when the state reopened its investigation of the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church. The tapes played a decisive role in the conviction this week of Thomas E. Blanton Jr., a former Klansman who lived free for nearly 38 years after the bombing and for 24 years after state prosecutors concluded they did not have enough evidence to charge him.

But an F.B.I. spokesman here strongly denied any deliberate effort to thwart the state's investigation in the 1970's, as was suggested today by Bill Baxley, then Alabama's attorney general, in an Op-Ed article in The New York Times.

Instead, the spokesman, Craig D. Dahle, attributed the lack of cooperation to a combination of possible factors, including changes in personnel and filing systems, the bureau's unwillingness to expose confidential informers and lingering distrust between federal agents and Alabama law enforcement that dated from the days of Jim Crow.

"I can emphatically say they were not purposefully withheld," Mr. Dahle said of the tapes. "There's no reason we would have done that."

Throughout the South in the 1950's and 60's, and particularly in Birmingham, state and local law enforcement sometimes earned the enmity of the Federal Bureau of Investigation by colluding with the Ku Klux Klan to resist desegregation efforts. Mr. Baxley, who reopened the state's church bombing investigation almost immediately after taking office in 1971, said in an interview today that he had worked diligently to overcome the F.B.I.'s skepticism.

"I went in knowing they had every reason to distrust a Deep South law enforcement officer in a race-based case," said Mr. Baxley, who was considered a new breed of Alabama prosecutor.

Mr. Baxley said he had lobbied for years to gain access to the F.B.I. files and had succeeded only after Jack Nelson, a reporter for The Los Angeles Times, threatened to write that the bureau was stonewalling.

It was thus crushing, Mr. Baxley said, to discover only two years ago that he had not been provided evidence that could have been used to indict Mr. Blanton and a suspected accomplice, Bobby Frank Cherry. Mr. Cherry was indicted along with Mr. Blanton last year, but a judge ruled him incompetent to stand trial after he was found to be suffering from vascular dementia.

"The bottom line," Mr. Baxley said, "is the F.B.I. handed Tom Blanton a get-out-of-jail-free card that was good for 24 years, and they handed one to Cherry that may be good for more than that."

The tapes, he said, would have been enough to convict: "We would have slammed them."

Four black girls died in the explosion at the church, on Sept. 15, 1963, one of the deadliest acts of the civil rights era. In short order, the F.B.I. pinned the attack on a Klan cell in Birmingham and identified four members as suspects, though others were also thought to be involved. But the F.B.I. director at the time, J. Edgar Hoover, chose not to refer the case for federal prosecution, ostensibly because he did not think a conviction could be won in Birmingham on circumstantial evidence.

Mr. Baxley won the indictment and conviction of the suspected ringleader, Robert Chambliss, in 1977. Mr. Chambliss died in prison eight years later. Another suspect, Herman Cash, was never charged, and died in 1994. Mr. Blanton was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted on Tuesday in a state trial where state and federal prosecutors cooperated well. Prosecutors have won permission to get a second psychiatric evaluation of Mr. Cherry.

Mr. Baxley's lead investigator in the 1970's, Bob Eddy, said today that he had never specifically asked the F.B.I. for the secretly recorded tapes or for documents pertaining to them because he did not know of their existence. Mr. Eddy, though working for the state, was allowed by the F.B.I. to set up an office at its headquarters here for eight months in 1977 to review papers from the bureau's 90-volume, 10,000-document case file. Because the bureau was not actively reinvestigating the bombing, Mr. Eddy was left largely to his own devices.

As one man searching so voluminous a file, Mr. Eddy said, he did not ask to view every document, but instead requested information selectively. The documents he requested were almost always provided, he said, and when they were not he assumed the reason was that the F.B.I. needed to protect an informer. But he also said he was never told about the tapes while discussing the church bombing with F.B.I. agents who originally investigated the case.

"If it had been a federal prosecution in the 70's, I have to believe the bureau would have been more forthcoming," said Doug Jones, the United States attorney here, who was the lead prosecutor in the Blanton trial. "I just think the feds thought that Alabama really wasn't up to it."

Even if Mr. Eddy had been able to review the full F.B.I. case file, it is possible he would not have discovered the tapes. One of them, which was recorded by an F.B.I. microphone planted in Mr. Blanton's kitchen, was discovered only last year by Bill Fleming, the lead F.B.I. agent in the latest investigation.

Mr. Dahle said there was not a single report in the F.B.I. case file that referred directly to the so-called kitchen tape. But, he said, Mr. Fleming came across an administrative inventory sheet that documented the 1981 transfer of some evidence from one location in the F.B.I.'s Birmingham office to another. Mr. Fleming could tell from the numbering on the sheet that the evidence related to the bombing, and when he searched for it he found the tape, Mr. Dahle said.

After the virtually inaudible recording was electronically enhanced, agents discovered that it captured Mr. Blanton talking to his wife about "the bomb" and about attending a Klan meeting "to make the bomb." Two jurors have told The Birmingham News that the kitchen tape was the most convincing evidence against Mr. Blanton.

Mr. Baxley and Mr. Eddy also never discovered tapes of clandestine recordings made by Mitchell Burns, a Blanton friend who had become an F.B.I. informer. Those tapes also have Mr. Blanton making vague references to his bombing activities, including an assertion that "they ain't going to catch me when I bomb my next church."

Mr. Dahle said he assumed those tapes were not handed over because of Mr. Burns's informer status. But Mr. Baxley said that as far as he knew, the F.B.I never asked Mr. Burns for permission to turn over the tapes. "That may well be," Mr. Dahle responded. Mr. Burns voluntarily testified on Saturday in Mr. Blanton's trial.

Mr. Dahle also said it was possible that the agents in the Birmingham F.B.I. office in the 1970's simply did not know about the tapes.

"I guess there's a question," he said, "of whether we knew of them or knew of their significance at the time."

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FBI Helped Mob Boss, Witness Says

May 4, 2001
New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Philly-Mob.html

PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- The FBI bailed Joseph ``Skinny Joey'' Merlino out of a $15,000 gambling debt at the same time it was gathering evidence against him, a witness testified Friday at the trial of the reputed Philadelphia mob boss.

Merlino had borrowed the money from Philadelphia mob boss Ralph Natale and lost it all during a gambling trip to Las Vegas, mobster-turned-informant Ronald Previte testified.

``Some of it was Ralph's money and he needed to pay Ralph back,'' Previte said.

Previte said Merlino asked him for a loan in 1997. Previte, then a mob captain leading a double life as a cooperating witness, approached the FBI about Merlino's request. FBI agents decided to give Previte $15,000 to give to Merlino, Previte said.

Merlino's attorney, Edwin Jacobs Jr., confirmed Previte's story but said Merlino repaid the money.

A spokeswoman for the FBI did not immediately retirn a call seeking comment Friday.

Merlino is on trial with six other reputed mobsters for murder, attempted murder, extortion, drug trafficking and other offenses.

Previte, who had been informing for the FBI since 1992, agreed to begin wearing a wire in 1997. He testified that he would meet FBI agents in a hotel, get the recording device strapped to his body, attend a mob meeting and then return to the hotel to be debriefed and return the equipment.

But at certain social functions, he could not wear the wire because ``there was a lot of hugging and kissing,'' Previte said. The burly Previte said he heard that other people were calling him the ``Fat Rat'' after his cooperation with the FBI became public in 1999.

-------- spying

3 Charged With Giving Lucent Secrets to China

New York Times
May 4, 2001
By SIMON ROMERO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/04/business/04LUCE.html

The F.B.I arrested two employees of Lucent Technologies and an executive at another New Jersey technology company yesterday on charges that they conspired to steal Lucent trade secrets and pass them on to a telecommunications company controlled by the Chinese government.

The three men had formed a venture that planned to sell technology developed by Lucent that allows companies to handle traffic on advanced communications networks, according to a complaint filed by federal prosecutors in United States District Court in Newark.

The venture, ComTriad Technologies, received $1.2 million in financing from the Datang Telecom Technology Company, a maker of communications equipment based in Beijing, in exchange for a 51 percent stake in the company, the complaint said. Datang is a public company with shares traded on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, but it is controlled by China's government.

The arrests underscore concern over industrial espionage at a time when new technologies have made it easier to transfer proprietary information. But technology also makes such efforts easier to detect: prosecutors are basing their case on e-mail traffic monitored by the F.B.I.

"In the information age, it is difficult to imagine anything more dangerous to a company's business interests," Robert J. Cleary, the United States attorney in Newark, said yesterday.

Lucent, the nation's largest maker of communications equipment, said its internal security department became suspicious of the employees in February.

Called into the case, the F.B.I. obtained the Lucent engineers' e-mail, the complaint said. Investigators found that the men had transferred the source code, or programming language, for a Lucent product called PathStar to the password-protected Web site of their new venture in January.

The two Lucent employees, Hai Lin, 30, of Scotch Plains, N.J., and Kai Xu, 33, of Somerset, N.J., were arrested yesterday at their homes by special agents of the F.B.I. Both men are Chinese citizens who work at Lucent as product engineers. Yong-Qing Cheng, 37, a naturalized American citizen and resident of East Brunswick, N.J., was arrested at the offices of Village Networks, a technology company in Eatontown, N.J., where he is a marketing manager.

The three men are charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Judge Stanley R. Chesler of the United States District Court in Newark ordered the men held until a bail hearing scheduled for Tuesday, by which time he directed them to obtain private lawyers. The men did not enter pleas on the charges.

Some Chinese-American leaders expressed concern about the attention that officials drew to the arrests, which come at a delicate time in relations between China and the United States, after the confrontation last month over an American surveillance aircraft that was forced to land at a Chinese military base on Hainan Island.

"It's too early to make any judgment of innocence or guilt of the individuals involved, but one has to wonder why such a fuss is being made over this specific case, when the F.B.I investigates thousands of cases of espionage each year," said Henry Tang, chairman of the Committee of 100. The group, based in Manhattan, addresses public policy issues of concern to Chinese-Americans and relations between China and the United States.

Officials from the Chinese Embassy in Washington could not be reached for comment on the charges. Neither could executives of Datang in Beijing.

Datang, which focuses mainly on wireless technology, has several business relationships with Lucent, including the marketing of some of Lucent's products in China. Lucent's largest operation abroad is in China, where it has 3,400 employees.

Pathstar, the electronic device that the Lucent engineers are suspected of having sought to reproduce at their new venture, is about the size of a TV set. It allows companies to manage voice and data traffic efficiently on Internet-based communications networks. Pathstar generated about $100 million in sales for Lucent last year.

But the company discontinued production of Pathstar in January in response to the financial weakness of the small communications companies that were its main customers. Since then, Lucent has transferred some of Pathstar's technology to other products, a spokeswoman for the company said.

In their jobs at Lucent, Mr. Hai and Mr. Kai were members of a team that had sought to enhance the commercial effectiveness of Pathstar. They were not employed by Bell Labs, Lucent's in-house research organization, where the technology was originally developed.

According to the government complaint, the aim of ComTriad, the defendants' venture, was to become the leading data-networking company in China - "the Cisco of China," as the men described it in their e-mail messages, referring to Cisco Systems, a Lucent rival. Its founders hoped to raise more money through public offerings of stock, the F.B.I. said, based on e-mail it had intercepted.

"It's prevailing logic in some intelligence organizations to give $1 million to engineers at a competitor to get a technology in two days instead of spending $20 million to develop it over two years," said Ben I. Venzke, chief executive of IntelCenter, a Washington company focused on security issues. "It's not clear what the motivation was in this case, but the mathematics make sense."

-------- terrorism

Peru Court Rules Judge Can Stay on Berenson Case

May 4, 2001
The New York Times
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-peru-be.html

LIMA, Peru (Reuters) - A Peruvian court retrying jailed American Lori Berenson on terrorist charges threw out on Friday a defense motion to have its presiding judge removed on grounds of bias and links to Peru's corrupt ex-spy chief.

The defense alleged that in a 1999 newspaper interview, court president Marcos Ibazeta had opposed a retrial for Berenson, sentenced to life imprisonment in 1996 as a leader of the leftist Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) rebels.the motion was technically inadmissible as it was based on information available before the trial began in March. They did not rule on whether Ibazeta had shown bias.

Ibazeta, who is running for Peru's human rights ombudsman and has faced accusations of links to the Andean nation's fugitive spy chief, voted for considering the motion.

Defense lawyer Jose Sandoval said he would appeal to Peru's Supreme Court, which would have two weeks to make a ruling.

``This should have been handled differently ... Ibazeta should not be on a tribunal when there are doubts about him,'' he told reporters outside the courtroom in a Lima jail.

Sandoval has said he delayed presenting his appeal against the judge while he verified his information.

Last year, Peru overturned Berenson's conviction by a hooded military judge, saying new evidence suggested she had links with the MRTA but was not a rebel leader. Human rights groups slammed the original trial as a parody of justice.

The New Yorker, who faces a possible 20-year sentence, denies all charges in the trial whose verdict is expected May 21-25. She says her conviction was an example of human rights abuses under hard-line ex-President Alberto Fujimori.

Berenson, 31, has won sympathy in the United States, but she has little support in Peru where rebel violence -- now greatly reduced -- has killed about 30,000 people.

Berenson's lawyer and family have alleged repeated violations of due process in her retrial.

Ibazeta denied links to ex-spy chief Vladimiro Montesinos, who allegedly used bribes to control Peru's courts.

Countering Sandoval's allegations that a transcript of a conversation revealed Montesinos' trust in him, Ibazeta quoted another recorded excerpt in which he said the ex-intelligence chief described him as part of ``a group of enemies.''

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Bush to Create New Terrorism Office

New York Times
May 4, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bush-Terrorism.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush has drafted an executive order that would create an umbrella office on terrorism to coordinate the government's response to any biological, chemical or nuclear attack, a congressional source familiar with the plan said Friday night.

The office would exist under the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and Vice President Dick Cheney would oversee the creation of a national terrorism response plan, the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The office would be at the helm of more than 40 federal agencies that provide emergency services and personnel.

Currently, the Justice Department has responsibility for reacting to a terrorist attack.

White House officials declined to comment on draft order, first reported by NBC News.

Bush's plan is separate from legislative efforts in Congress to reorganize the nation's anti-terrorism response. The Senate Intelligence Committee is holding hearings on the matter next week. Several emergency management agencies will testify.

Andrea Andrews, a spokeswoman for Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Shelby, R-Ala., said the president's plan is a ``step in the right direction.''

``There is a consensus that something that needs to be done to coordinate all the agencies that have jurisdiction in this area,'' Andrews said.

The federal government has received several indicators that the nation is not prepared to deal with the calamity created by a terrorist attack.

Last spring, a secret exercise to determine how a medium-sized city would cope after a terrorist detonation of a weapon of mass destruction showed that Cincinnati's hospitals, police and other services were woefully unprepared for such an attack.

The findings were presented to then-Attorney General Janet Reno, then- Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre and senior FBI officials at two sessions at the Pentagon. They immediately ordered the formation of interagency working groups to study the problems that might arise from a major terrorist attack.

The resulting study and other government studies suggested that the nation's emergency groups were too splintered to respond to a problem quickly.

Sen. John Warner, R-Va., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Friday that the nation's cities would be overwhelmed by the probable injuries.

``Supposing someone used one of these things (bio-weapon) and we required hospitalization of 1,000 people, what community has got the ability to put together quickly the medical teams, the other equipment needed to take care of 1,000 people?,'' Warner said at a meeting Friday.

``We are unprepared, and we are determined here in the Senate to bring together, all of us, put our minds to work with those in the administration and see what we can do to prepare America.''


-------- activists

GOP Convention Protester Acquitted

New York Times
May 4, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Convention-Protests.html

PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- A man police accused of being a ringleader of the protests at the Republican National Convention last summer was acquitted Friday of the two misdemeanor charges against him.

Terrence McGuckin was found guilty in November of disorderly conduct and obstructing a highway and was placed on three months' probation.

He appealed the decision, and requested a jury trial.

Common Pleas Court Judge Gary Glazer ruled during the trial Friday that prosecutors had not presented enough evidence to convict McGuckin.

McGuckin was arrested Aug. 2 and charged with a dozen misdemeanors in the sometimes-violent protests that shook the city the day before. His bail was set at $500,000, and he spent 10 days in jail.

The other charges were subsequently dropped.

``I think they've proven that they wasted everybody's time, including their own,'' said McGuckin, a 20-year-old freelance graphic designer and member of the Philadelphia Direct Action Group, which organized training sessions for activists in Philadelphia during the convention.

Assistant District Attorney David E. Desiderio declined to comment.

Of nearly 400 arrests during the July 31-Aug. 3 GOP convention, about a dozen have resulted in convictions. About 100 activists accepted plea agreements last fall, reducing misdemeanor charges to summary offenses.

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N.Y.U. Embraces 7 Students It Once Barred

The New York Times
May 4, 2001
By EDWARD WONG
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/04/sports/04NYUU.html

Sixty years is a long time to wait. It was long enough for Evelyn Maisel Witkin to stew over the pain that New York University caused her in her senior year, long enough for her to write letters to administrators, to avoid reunions and to tell her story to her children, and then to her grandchildren.

She was one of seven students suspended for three months in March 1941 for standing up for what she still feels was a just cause: protesting the university's complicity in discrimination against black athletes.

The university has never made amends to the students. Never, that is, until tonight, when N.Y.U. will honor the group known as the Bates Seven at an annual campus dinner for student athletes and also display photos and documents on the bigotry that led to the protest movement.

In 1940 and 1941, Ms. Witkin and six fellow students helped lead thousands of classmates in denouncing a little-known but widespread practice in college athletics known as the "gentlemen's agreement." If a game was scheduled between two schools and one of them objected to black athletes participating, the opposing team would keep the black players out of the contest.

Southern schools were usually, though not always, the ones who made the request, historians say, and many northern universities, from Harvard to Rutgers to the University of Michigan, complied.

But Ms. Witkin, a biology major, and other students took action when they learned in the fall of 1940 that Leonard Bates, a star fullback on the N.Y.U. football team, would not be allowed to play in a November game at the University of Missouri.

They began circulating petitions, wore buttons and picketed the university administration, chanting, "Bates must play!" It was at the time the largest protest against the gentlemen's agreements, and it took place nearly two decades before the start of the mass civil rights movement.

The university resisted. Not only did it comply with Missouri's request to leave Mr. Bates at home, but it also eventually retaliated, suspending seven of the protest movement's leaders when they objected to decisions by N.Y.U. to hold a basketball player and track stars out of athletic events.

Most of the seven eventually graduated, and they went on to become novelists, scientists and teachers. But in the six decades since, many of them have harbored bitter feelings toward the university, feelings that are apparently on the ebb now that the school is recognizing them.

"I was very surprised because I had given up expecting anything to happen," said Ms. Witkin, who is 80. "Sixty years is a long time. But it's nice to know they're going to do something. It was something that meant a lot to us at the time."

The recognition is a result of a letter-writing campaign begun last year by Ms. Witkin, a professor emerita of genetics at Rutgers, and Donald Spivey, a history professor at the University of Miami. Jeffrey T. Sammons, a history professor at N.Y.U., also lobbied administrators.

The university is not calling the recognition an apology, but rather a tribute to students who suffered for what they believed in. John Beckman, an N.Y.U. spokesman, said the university decided not to apologize for actions administrators took in 1940 and 1941 because "we can't put ourselves in their shoes, and we can't turn back the hands of time."

"Fundamentally, what we want to do is embrace these members of our community and hold them up as models of people who fight for an important cause," he said. "I would call it an acknowledgment of good work and courage shown by members of our community."

In addition to Ms. Witkin, the former students to be honored are Anita Krieger Appleby, Jean Borstein Azulay, Mervyn Jones, Naomi Bloom Rothschild, Robert Schoenfeld and Argyle Stoute. With the possible exception of Mr. Stoute, whom the university could not locate, all are still alive. Five of them will be attending the dinner, and a friend will stand in for Mr. Jones, who lives in England and is recovering from a minor stroke.

Ms. Rothschild, 80, said this is the first positive acknowledgment that she has received for her activism.

"When it happened, I got no support from the school, no support from my family," she said. "For all these years I felt slightly guilty that maybe I had done the wrong thing. Now I maybe see that I didn't do anything wrong."

Six decades is long enough to blur memories, but many of the seven students still recall that New York University in the fall of 1940 was a campus brimming with causes: pro- Communist rallies, pacifist demonstrations, protests against fascism in Spain. One historian said it was then one of the most radical campuses in the country. But it was the plight of a single athlete that galvanized the largest student movement that year.

Students first learned of the university's decision to withdraw Mr. Bates from the game at Missouri when several football players showed up at a student council meeting to discuss the situation, said Ms. Azulay, who was the council's vice president. For many, it was the first time they had heard of a gentlemen's agreement.

Ms. Azulay and others quickly began circulating petitions. On Oct. 18 about 2,000 students picketed the administration building, and "Bates must play!" became a rallying cry.

It was not the first time that N.Y.U.'s compliance with the gentlemen's agreement had caused controversy. In 1929 the university decided to withdraw a black halfback, Dave Myers, from a game against the University of Georgia, causing consternation among some faculty and students.

The concept of a gentlemen's agreement arose in the late 19th century, when schools in the South began playing universities in the Northeast, said Charles Martin, an assistant professor of history at the University of Texas at El Paso, who is writing a book on the history of discrimination in college sports.

Many states in the South had laws prohibiting black athletes from competing alongside whites. The gentlemen's agreement was aimed at getting northern schools to follow that system when they played southern teams on the road and sometimes even at home.

"The northern schools would be gracious hosts and yield to the wishes of their southern opponents, not willing to embarrass them," Mr. Martin said.

Rutgers, for example, kept Paul Robeson, a star football player and later a prominent stage actor, from playing in at least one game, Mr. Martin said. Harvard did the same with a lacrosse player, he said. In 1939 Boston College agreed to withdraw its star running back from the Cotton Bowl after the bowl committee and B.C.'s opponent, Clemson University, objected to his participation, Mr. Spivey said.

As for Mr. Bates, the students at N.Y.U. gathered more than 4,000 signatures in his support. But the football team left the train station on Oct. 31, 1940, without him. It lost to Missouri, 33-0.

Students rallied again after hearing that Jim Coward, a black basketball player at N.Y.U., was barred from the team. The uproar continued in February 1941 when students learned that three black runners would be kept out of a track meet against Catholic University. The facts in those cases are still in dispute.

The following month, a dean and a faculty committee suspended the seven students for three months for circulating a petition without permission.

They were juniors or seniors, and some had to take summer classes to graduate in the fall. Mr. Stoute never got a degree, nor did Mr. Jones, who returned home to England to fight in World War II.

"I would call it a very happy occasion," Mr. Jones, 79, said of tonight's tribute from his home in England. "It's good to know that things do move on."

After World War II, many universities, including N.Y.U, began dropping the gentlemen's agreement as pressure from students and politicians mounted.

"This brings attention to a most important but seemingly under-represented, little-known chapter in collegiate athletics," Mr. Sammons, the N.Y.U. history professor, said. "Sometimes, sport can, instead of challenging what is discriminatory, contribute to it and make it stronger, at the expense of fair play."

The dinner tonight, with its speeches and toasts, will be a kind of reunion for the former students. Many will bring their children and grandchildren. But the central figure of the events 60 years ago, Leonard Bates, will not be there.

He is listed as deceased in the university's alumni database. Mr. Spivey spoke with him in 1988, and it was very likely one of the last times Mr. Bates talked about his days at N.Y.U. He graduated from the school of education in 1943, then went on to serve in the military. He returned to New York and worked as a guidance counselor in the public school system.

Mr. Spivey told Mr. Bates that he was trying to track down the Bates Seven to interview them. Mr. Bates replied, "If whenever you do find them, tell them, `Thank you.' "

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Protest Vote Moves Into Second Place in Peru Polls

May 4, 2001
New York Times
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-peru-le.html

LIMA, Peru (Reuters) - Peru's centrist presidential candidate, Alejandro Toledo, still tops opinion polls ahead of a runoff due next month, but his rival, Alan Garcia, has been overtaken by the number of voters planning to spoil their ballots or leave them blank, pollsters said on Friday.

According to the latest surveys, protest voters who reject both Toledo and Garcia, a leftist former president -- many believing neither is honest or can be trusted -- have shot up and now represent as much as 35 percent.

That puts them not far behind Toledo, who said on Friday he was concerned by the high level of blank votes, although much could change before the election, expected on June 3.

``Blank votes are at 35 percent, in second place, behind Toledo. The number of blank votes has risen 10 points in a week,'' Manuel Torrado, head of pollsters Datum, told Reuters.

He declined to say how much Toledo and Garcia polled in his survey, conducted April 28-30 among 2,000 respondents, because Datum was conducting polls for a private client.

But two new polls of just the Lima area by the University of Lima and the National University of Engineering (UNI) gave Toledo 34.7 percent and 37.8 percent respectively.

The University of Lima put Garcia at 23.6 percent and the number of blank or spoiled ballots at 32.1 percent, while UNI had 25.1 percent for Garcia and 27.6 percent voting ``blank.''

Analysts say the rise in protest votes is hardly surprising. Toledo is dogged by allegations of sleaze, and Garcia has long been overshadowed by corruption allegations and the legacy of his economically calamitous 1985-1990 government, which turned Peru into an international financial pariah.

VOTING WITH EYES CLOSED, NOSE HELD

Lourdes Flores, who was squeezed out of the race by Garcia in the first round of voting on April 8, has said she would vote with one hand over her eyes and the other holding her nose -- summing up the disgust many voters feel for both candidates.

Interviewer Jaime Bayly, who has used his television show to highlight charges that Toledo fathered a daughter whom he refuses to recognize and that he tested positive for cocaine after reportedly being seen in a hotel with three women, says Peruvians have to choose between ``the electric chair and the gas chamber.''

``It seems we're seeing a repeat of the voting in the first round,'' said political analyst Santiago Pedraglio.

Toledo, who rose to prominence last year leading protests against former President Alberto Fujimori, scored 36.5 percent support in the first round, compared with Garcia's 25.79 percent, according to official results from just over 99 percent of the ballots counted.

``What is worrying is the undecided votes,'' said Toledo ``I think that to reduce this, it would be very useful for the economic teams to set out their proposals and for presidential candidates once and for all to debate. I'm suggesting May 18.''

Garcia's American Popular Revolutionary Alliance party has proposed a debate on May 20.

``Of course (the blank votes) is worrying ... but I expect Garcia's message to cut the number of undecided,'' said Cesar Zumaeta, a senior APRA member.

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2 Anti - Nuclear Activists Sentenced

New York Times
May 4, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-BRF-Anti-Nuclear-Protest.html

MADISON, Wis. (AP) -- Two anti-nuclear activists were sentenced to prison Friday for damaging an antenna the Navy uses to communicate with nuclear submarines.

Bonnie Urfer and Michael Spong admitted using a handsaw to cut down three wooden poles supporting the 28-mile antenna. The damage disabled the link to the Navy's Trident submarines for a day.

The activists argued that cutting the poles was permissible under national and international law because the antenna is part of an illegal weapons system. But a jury found them guilty of willfully damaging government property.

Urfer was sentenced to six months in a federal prison; Spong was given a two-month term. Each was ordered to pay $7,492 restitution.

Protesters have frequently targeted the site, contending the antenna, part of the Navy's ELF system, raises the risk of nuclear warfare.

Project ELF, named for its extremely low frequency radio waves, uses an antenna network to transmit coded messages to submarines in deep waters around the world.


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