------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
IAEA list of world's nuclear power stations
Repaired nuclear sub leaves Gibraltar
Nuclear Fuel Firm Fights for Russia Deal
Nuclear power comes "clean" in US ad campaign
Durakovic's depleted uranium study
Austria says Czech nuclear shutdown confirms fears
New Administration Draws Europe's Ire
EU Delegation Visits Chechnya
To European Eyes, It's America the Ugly
Israel death squad defies call for truce
EU: N. Korea Talks Hinge on Missiles
Missile defense policy flawed
Misapprehensions About Missile Defense
No to Missile Defense
Russian Scientists Nervously Await U.S. Decision
NRC to meet Consumers on possible Mich nuke violation
Yucca Mountain nuclear waste review moves forward
DOE report details threats to site
New burial design may be more dangerous
DOE delays seeking Yucca license:
Dems Criticize Bolton Nomination
When She Talks Arms, Washington and Moscow Listen
US nuclear power industry showing new signs of life
Nuclear Power's New Day

MILITARY
Israelis seize ship loaded with weapons
Israel: Boat With Weapons Captured
Western Officials in Bosnia Town Rescued
Macedonia on verge of declaring war
Macedonia Again Shells Albanians in Hills
U.S. Loses Seat on U.N. Committee
The Underground Military
Air Force to Head U.S. Military Space Efforts
Rumsfeld Makes Air Force Changes
Pentagon Plans Major Changes in U.S. Strategy
Navy wins battle vs. Pentagon to keep big aircraft carriers
Defense Strategy Review Nearly Done

OTHER
BPA to buy 150 MW of wind power in US Northwest
Polluted HK looks to the winds for cleaner power
Calif. Grid Operators Issue Warning
White House energy report stirs industry, greens to act
Pipeline Expansion Approved in West
Montanans Weigh Options on a Toxic Legacy
U.S, Europe plan to dump toxic wastes in Nigeria
White House Debates Fate of Pollution-Control Suits
Foot - and - Mouth Disease Hits Brazil
Water Parasite Could Sicken Hundreds Across Canada
Bush Calls More Open Trade a 'Moral Imperative' for U.S.
Bush Cites Free Trade Benefits
Research: Prison Worker Sensitivity
Cincinnati Police Officer Charged With Negligent Homicide
Man Freed After Wrongful Conviction
Beijing Jails a U.S.-Based Chinese Entrepreneur
U.S. Resumes Reconnaissance Flights Off China's Coast
U.S. Resumes Surveillance Flights Off China
Terror Trial Defendant Stands Firm

ACTIVISTS
Nuclear resisters sentenced to prison


-------- NUCLEAR

IAEA list of world's nuclear power stations

UK: May 7, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10731

LONDON - Below is a list of the number of nuclear reactors operating in 2000, according to the United Nations' atomic watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

country/ number of reactors/ capacity electricity supplied
Argentina 2 935 MW 7.26 percent
Armenia 1 376 MW 33.00 percent
Belgium 7 5,712 MW 56.75 percent
Brazil 2 1,855 MW 1.45 percent
Bulgaria 6 3,538 MW 45.00 percent
Canada 14 9,998 MW 11.80 percent
China 3 2,167 MW 1.19 percent
Czech Rep. 5 2,569 MW 18.50 percent
Finland 4 2,656 MW 32.15 percent
France 59 63,073 MW 76.40 percent
Germany 19 21,122 MW 30.57 percent
Hungary 4 1,755 MW 42.19 percent
India 14 2,503 MW 3.14 percent
Japan 53 43,491 MW 33.82 percent
Korea, Rep of 16 12,990 MW 40.74 percent
Lithuania 2 2,370 MW 73.68 percent
Mexico 2 1,360 MW 7.92 percent
Netherlands 1 449 MW 4.00 percent
Pakistan 2 425 MW 1.65 percent
Romania 1 650 MW 10.86 percent
Russia 29 19,843 MW 14.95 percent
South Africa 2 1,800 MW 6.67 percent
Slovakia 6 2,408 MW 53.43 percent
Slovenia 1 676 MW 37.38 percent
Spain 9 7,512 MW 27.63 percent
Sweden 11 9,432 MW 39.00 percent
Switzerland 5 3,192 MW 35.50 percent
UK 35 12,968 MW 21.94 percent
Ukraine 13 11,207 MW 47.28 percent
U.S. 104 97,411 MW 19.83 percent

Reactors under construction
Argentina 1 592 MW
China 8 6,420 MW
Czech Rep 1 912 MW
Iran 2 2,111 MW
Japan 3 3,190 MW
Korea 4 3,820 MW
Romania 1 650 MW
Russia 3 2,825 MW
Slovakia 2 776 MW
Ukraine 4 3,800 MW.

-------- britain

Repaired nuclear sub leaves Gibraltar

Washington Times
World Scene
May 7, 2001
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010508-79758440.htm

GIBRALTAR -- A repaired British nuclear-powered submarine left Gibraltar yesterday, nearly a year after it docked on Spainīs southern tip.

The HMS Tireless departed with 116 crew members aboard. Its destination was not immediately known.

The Tireless arrived in Gibraltar on May 19, 2000, after a crack was found in its cooling system. Its presence provoked concern and anger from residents and from Spaniards who said they feared an environmental disaster and staged repeated protests demanding the vessel be repaired in Britain.

-------- business

Nuclear Fuel Firm Fights for Russia Deal

By Peter Behr
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 7, 2001; Page E01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A51254-2001May6?language=printer

These should be banner days for USEC Inc., the Bethesda-based company that is the only American supplier of enriched uranium for commercial nuclear power plants.

The price of USEC's publicly traded stock has nearly doubled since December to close at $8.19 on Friday, recovering about half what it lost after the company was spun off from the government in 1998. Prices for the enriched uranium USEC sells have climbed nearly 20 percent in a year, according to UX Consulting Co. data. With support from the Bush administration, the outlook for the nuclear power industry has brightened.

Most important, says USEC, its long-term purchases of nuclear fuel reprocessed from Russian missiles -- a key part of USEC's revenue stream -- are on schedule, eliminating the equivalent of 4,500 Russian nuclear warheads so far while contributing $1.7 billion in U.S. currency to Russia.

"I wonder when we're going to start celebrating," USEC President William H. "Nick" Timbers said plaintively at a conference Thursday at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in the District.

Not yet, it appears.

USEC's handling of its dual missions -- commercial supplier of U.S. reactor fuel and strategic conduit for decommissioned Russian warheads -- is as controversial as ever.

And now there is a new player, the Bush administration.

USEC needs White House approval of a new version of the Russian deal that is widely considered to be vital to the company's financial survival.

If approved by U.S. and Russian governments, it would lower the price USEC pays Russia for the converted warhead material, at least initially.

Profit on the Russian transactions are needed to offset losses on sales of enriched fuels from USEC's plant in Paducah, Ky., according to outside analysts. USEC also proposes to buy some commercial Russian nuclear fuel.

But some of USEC's adversaries and critics hope to block the agreement with Russia.

USEC's financial gain would come at Russia's expense, threatening to undermine the Megatons to Megawatts warhead reduction program, critics say.

Those critics warn that if Russian officials approved the agreement and later became dissatisfied with prices, they might cut deliveries of the reprocessed fuel and threaten the U.S.-Russian agreement to reduce nuclear arms.

"It's highly dangerous from a national energy point of view and potentially disastrous for our nonproliferation agreement," Thomas Neff of MIT Center for International Studies said at Thursday's conference.

Timbers replied that the new pricing plan has been endorsed by USEC's Russian counterpart, and is also supported by senior Russian officials.

"We expect the pricing agreement to become final before 2002," Timbers said recently. "Getting the terms right is very important to the company and its future success."

Neff challenged Timbers on that point at Thursday's conference, citing his own recent conversations with senior Russian officials. "The price is not high enough," he said. "It is not defensible in their political system." USEC is trying to get the Bush administration to help force the Russians to accept the new pricing plan, Neff said.

"We disagree very, very strongly," Timbers replied.

A Bush administration spokesman said no decision had been made on the plan.

Ominously for USEC, one of its sharpest critics, former Harvard professor Richard Falkenrath, is on the Bush administration's National Security Council. He turned down a request for an interview.

Falkenrath has called the privatization of USEC "a dreadful error," arguing that USEC's commercial interests in profiting from the Russian agreement, and U.S. interest in reducing the Russian weapons stockpile as much as possible, were at odds.

Falkenrath has argued that the government should reacquire USEC and resume direction of the Megatons to Megawatts program.

The Bush administration might find that step more trouble than it's worth, said Bob Hoehn, head of the Russian American Nuclear Security Advisory Council. The privatization has "worked pretty well," he said. "It's brought a lot of money to the Russians.

"By and large, people in the National Security Council rank this among the best of the cooperative nuclear programs," Hoehn said. "I'd be shocked if they were preparing to cause the deal to fail. Whether USEC is the right entity to be implementing this deal is a question. At this point, I don't see any clear alternative." But the U.S. utility industry does.

Some of the largest U.S. energy companies, headed by Chicago-based Exelon Corp., would like to replace USEC as the federal government's commercial agent for the Russian program, or share that assignment with USEC. "If that were available, we'd be interested," an Exelon official said.

USEC hasn't shaken off critics in Congress and in labor unions who opposed the company's decision to close one of its two uranium enrichment processing plants last year, a step that USEC says will cut its operating costs substantially. Closing the plant in Portsmouth, Ohio, and abandoning a research project on a new enrichment process, reneged on promises that were part of the government's agreement with USEC when the company was spun off, those opponents charge.

Even some USEC shareholders are complaining, despite the stock's improvement.

Analysts say the higher share price is partly because of the preliminary success of trade complaints that USEC has lodged with U.S. agencies. The company contends that European competitors had been selling nuclear fuel in this country at unfairly low prices, violating trade laws. If USEC wins the final rounds in those cases late this year or early in 2002, the European producers would be socked with penalty duties that could sharply raise the prices they would have to charge on U.S. sales, or force them out of the American market altogether.

That would leave USEC's remaining processing plant and the Russians as the sole suppliers for American nuclear plants, a prospect that upsets influential domestic energy companies and some leading nuclear nonproliferation experts.

The other, more important, reason for USEC's improved stock price is investors' hopes that the company may be taken over, said David M. Schanzer, an analyst with Janney Montgomery Scott in Philadelphia. In spinning off USEC, the government restricted the ability of one investor gaining too much control of USEC's stock. But that restriction comes off in a month.

Anticipating that change, USEC's board recently approved anti-takeover provisions that nettled several institutional investors who took part in a recent company conference call.

One investor asked whether the change was a tactic "to entrench management and let shareholders dangle."

No, Timbers said. The anti-takeover measures are customary tactics, designed to preserve USEC's bargaining power and block coercive moves by a would-be buyer, he said.

The anti-takeover provisions haven't prompted investors to sell USEC shares, however. "The serious players won't be deterred by this," Schanzer said.

At the Carnegie conference, Timbers complained that USEC's role in reducing Russia's weapons stockpile had been ignored, while academics and the media focus on USEC's financial challenges.

"Why do we keep wringing our hands and trying to fix things that ain't broke? Let our shareholders worry about the [USEC's profit] margin," Timbers said.

----

Nuclear power comes "clean" in US ad campaign

USA: May 7, 2001
Story by Janet McGurty
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10727&newsDate=7-May-2001

NEW YORK - When you think of nuclear power, what comes to mind? The looming towers of Three Mile Island? The eerie desolation after the Chernobyl disaster? Or hip young things with cellphones and scooters?

The Nuclear Energy Institute's latest print ad campaign features a young girl with all the accoutrements of her generation - down to shimmering blue nail polish and a glittery stick-on face tattoo.

The sky is blue. The clouds are fluffy and white. The headline reads "Clean air is so 21st century" and it goes on to say "Our generation is demanding lots of electricity...and clean air."

"It's saying those old, green people are so twentieth century," said Barbara Lippert, ad critic for "Adweek Magazine."

Not exactly, counters Steve Kerekes, spokesman for the industry lobbying group Nuclear Energy Institute.

"The purpose of the ads are to remind the American people and policymakers that we are here."

The campaign is part of an effort by the nuclear power industry to ride on coattails of the resurgence in solar and hydroelectric power - the darlings of the clean, green power generation set - to create a triumvirate of emission-free power producers in the minds of Americans.

And they appear to have some degree of success. On the NEI's Web site (http://www.switchonamerica.com), respondents voted an overwhelming "Yes" to the question "Are you willing to use more emission-free electricity, like hydroelectric, nuclear and solar power?"

In the United States, emission-free power sources provide about one-third of all electricity. Of that, nuclear power provides about two-thirds, or about a fifth of all electricity in the United States.

CHENEY FACTOR

"They are lobbying for a share of the Cheney pie," said Linda Gunter, Communications Director with Safe Energy Communication Group, which calls itself an "active watchdog for false, misleading and inaccurate energy advertising."

SECC has done battle with the NEI on advertising before. In 1999, it said as a result of its part in a complaint against NEI advertising, the Better Business Bureau found NEI advertising "inaccurate and misleading" and recommended it should be discontinued.

But the case lost steam when the Federal Trade Commission issued a split decision on whether or not the advertisements were deceptive.

Under President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, former head of energy services company Halliburton is leading a task force on energy strategy. One of the cornerstones of the policy appears to be using a mix of energy sources to prevent power shortages such as the one that has hit California.

"The larger point is that there are pluses and minuses with all energy sources. There is no perfect energy source that has no adverse environmental impact," said Kerekes.

But is the ad campaign effective? Will it convince the American public - which still focuses on the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979 and the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 - that nuclear power is viable?

"Visually and verbally there is nothing new there," said Frank Ginsberg, chairman and chief creative officer of advertising agency Avrett Free & Ginsberg, part of True North Communications.

"That kind of trite and stereotyped visual image does nothing to capture what youth of today is about. They need a new persuasive argument to act on," he said.

"I can see why they are doing it," said Steve Hayden, vice chairman of Olgivy & Mather, part of WPP group.

"It has to have occurred to everyone that the California power crisis and the threat of over other heavily populated parts of the U.S. that it's time to look for new sources of power," he said.

Still, Hayden say, the industry has a long way to go to change its image.

"I sense that the average American's impression of nuclear power plants is shaped by 'The Simpsons,'" he said, refering to the television cartoon show in which Homer Simpson tosses pieces of used nuclear material out of his car window as he heads home from his job at a local nuke plant.

-------- depleted uranium

Here the Durakovic's depleted uranium study in plain text format

From: vlario@yahoo.it
Mon, 07 May 2001
Croatian Medical Journal, 42(2):130-134,2001
PDF version of the article also on:
http://saba.on.to in the uranium-news

FORUM On Depleted Uranium: Gulf War and Balkan Syndrome Asaf Durakovic Nuclear Medicine Division and Clinical PET, King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre, Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

The complex clinical symptomatology of chronic illnesses, commonly described as Gulf War Syndrome, remains a poorly understood disease entity with diversified theories of its etiology and pathogenesis. Several causative factors have been postulated, with a particular emphasis on low level chemical warfare agents, oil fires, multiple vaccines, desert sand (Al-Eskan disease), botulism, Aspergillus flavus, Mycoplasma, aflatoxins, and others, contributing to the broad scope of clinical manifestations. Among several hundred thousand veterans deployed in the Operation Desert Storm, 15-20% have reported sick and about 25,000 died. Depleted uranium (DU), a low-level radioactive waste product of the enrichment of natural uranium with U-235 for the reactor fuel or nuclear weapons, has been considered a possible causative agent in the genesis of Gulf War Syndrome. It was used in the Gulf and Balkan wars as an armor-penetrating ammunition. In the operation Desert Storm, over 350 metric tons of DU was used, with an estimate of 3-6 million grams released in the atmosphere. Internal contamination with inhaled DU has been demonstrated by the elevated excretion of uranium isotopes in the urine of the exposed veterans 10 years after the Gulf war and causes concern because of its chemical and radiological toxicity and mutagenic and carcinogenic properties. Polarized views of different interest groups maintain an area of sustained controversy more in the environment of the public media than in the scientific community, partly for the reason of being less than sufficiently addressed by a meaningful objective interdisciplinary research.

Key words: environmental exposure; leukemia, radiation induced; military personnel; Persian Gulf syndrome; radiation accidents; radiation genetics; radiometry; uranium; veterans; war.

No time can be more unfavorable for philosophy than that in which it is misused on the one hand to further political objectives, on the other as means of livelihood. Some intend to live and indeed do live by philosophy (Primum vivere deinde philosophari). Yet, nothing is to be had for gold but mediocrity, the truth will always be of few men and must equally and modestly wait for those few whose unusual mode of thought may find it enjoyable. Life is short but truth works far and lives long.

(Schopenhauer)

The ostrich syndrome preceded the two syndromes. Yet, denial does not eliminate the fact that veterans of Gulf War and Balkan conflict are sick and dying. While the etiological factors of the clinical entities, known as Gulf War syndrome, are far from being understood, well-described facts still remain. Sharp increase in cancer rate in the Gulf War veterans (1) point to exposure to oncogens and mutagens, among which depleted uranium (DU) has been identified by objective research as one of the agents present in the internal environment of the contaminated veterans. It has been identified as an oncogene-inducing factor by both in vitro and in vivo experimental research (2).

The use of uranium as a warfare agent of mass contamination is not that new. Towards the conclusion of World War II, when Japan launched over 6,000 explosive-laden air balloons to the continental United States, there was a serious concern of a possible use of uranium oxide against US megacities in the form of aerosol for mass contamination.

Depleted uranium as a product of the environment of natural uranium for the reactor fuel and nuclear weapons is partially altered by the extraction of U-235 to about one third of natural uranium content (2). This residue, also known as tails, is a radioactive waste with the current stockpiles of over 600,000 metric tons of depleted uranium hexafluoride (UF6 ). UF6 is an unstable toxic chemical, which forms uranyl fluoride (UO2 F2 ) and hydrogen fluoride (HF) if released in atmosphere. It is identified as toxic substance (3) with serious health consequences if inhaled, by both chemical and radiological properties (1). The United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) governs the use and transportation of depleted uranium for the use and transfer of maximum of 15 pounds at a given time and 150 pounds in a calendar year. Also, the NRC requires detailed documentation of DU intended use, training of personnel, compliance with health, safety, and environmental standards (4). Depleted uranium is an internal health hazard. By its parenteral entry in the extracellular fluid, it gets incorporated in the target sites of its retention - predominantly skeletal tissue and kidneys, where it exerts nephrotoxicity by its effect on the proximal convoluted tubules. It has also been demonstrated that it induces transformation of human osteoblasts into the neoplastic phenotype in cell culture studies (5). In vivo studies reported mutagenic activity in the experimental animals implanted with DU pellets (5). Human data of spatiotemporal models of mapping cancer mortality reported an elevated lung cancer rate in the vicinity of DU processing facilities (6). Some recent reports indicate the increase in urinary excretion of DU in US Gulf War veterans wounded by the shrapnel during the operation Desert Storm (7). Similar findings were reported in the British, Canadian, and US veterans exposed to DU by inhalation during the Desert Storm Operation, where the presence of DU was verified by the methods of neutron activation analysis (8) and mass spectrometry (9). The isotopic ratio of DU and the presence of U-236 - an uranium isotope not found in nature, in Desert Storm Operation veterans opens yet another compartment of Pandora's box. It poses an inevitable question of the origin of DU used in the Gulf war, recently further augmented by the finding of traces of plutonium and other actinides (americium, neptunium) in DU shrapnel. The scientific inquiry into DU as a possible etiological factor in the causology of Gulf war and Balkan conflict illnesses has not been met with unbiased scientific criticism.

No Turn Left Unstoned

Some of the arguments relate to the short range of alpha particles (10), the other to the radiation being too low to induce mutagenic and oncogenic effects. Most of the polemics are in the arenas of extremely polarized interest groups on both sides of the fence, each side conspicuously lacking presence of the actual experts on actinides. The opinions are commonly exchanged in the mass media by the non-experts, and often by non-professionals, inevitably ignoring the complexity of DU interactions with the internal environment of stem and dividing transit cell population (11), basic laws of radiation biology and cellular radiosensitivity to alpha interactions (12,13), and effects of organotropic radionuclides in the human body (14), unskillfully navigating through uncharted seas of low level radiation. As usual, truth is often found between the extremes of Confucian pendulum, easier found in the science textbooks than on the Internet screen, which often lacks the basics of chemical synchronization, mitotic selection, fundamentals of the mitotic cell collection, and uniformity of cell cycle, cell culture, survival curves, and cellular response to radiation. The biological effects of DU do not differ from other alpha and beta internally deposited emitters and have to be considered in the light of cellular radiosensitivity as related to the mitotic cycle, with clear concepts of radiosensitivity and radioresistance in different phases of the mitotic cycle. The intermitotic and dividing cell population in the vicinity of final retention sites of depleted uranium includes pluripotent stem cells, hematopoietic system, intestinal villi crypt cells, intermitotic pool in the bone marrow, and basal cells of the skin. The mechanisms of DU interactions are far from being adequately understood even by the experts. Thus, it is perhaps premature to classify DU as a non hazardous substance, even if the proponents manage to master the basics of the host of factors that determine the biological consequences of internal particulate emitters, including dose-rate effects, linear energy transfer, oxygen effects, relative biological effectiveness, repair mechanisms, and damage recovery. Furthermore, the established concepts of cell survival curves are currently being re-examined in the realm of low-dose radiation (15). Radiation-induced cancer incidence at low dose exposure with BEIR (Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation) and UNSCEAR (United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation) adopted linear non-threshold curves postulate no safe dose for any exposure to ionizing radiation. But, no threshold hypothesis was more conceptualized on mathematical than biological considerations. Reassessment introduces biphasic curve, addressing the mechanisms of damage of radiosensitive cells. It postulated, by the experimental evidence, that a part of the radiation-damaged cell population would become more susceptible to mutagenic alterations as the dose increases from point zero. It also includes the transformation to neoplastic entities. With further increase of the dose, radiosensitive cells would sustain lethal damage with a consequent fall in mutations. At that point, less sensitive cells would start a new rise in oncogenic events, which, after the second peak, would result in a death of the organism (16). Second event theory, although new, has attracted considerable attention. It postulates that two hits can interact with the same cell. The first one creates high sensitivity phase, and the second further damages the cell in its sensitive phase, with both events occurring during cell replication. This is of importance to contamination with uranium isotopes, where the size of a particle determines the delivered dose. DU particle of 0.2 microns in diameter would deliver an alpha dose equal to annual exposure of 2 mSv, rapidly increasing delivery dose by the increased particle size (16). Current reevaluations of the human and animal data recognize a large error of the conventional models of the risk assessment in the low-level exposure health risk evaluation.

Chernobyl Revisited

Recent application of the re-examination of low dose effects applied to Chernobyl accident has identified new relationships between the actual number of cases with malignant alterations and the numbers predicted by the conventional model of radiation risk (17). There is a significant increase in the number of the children with leukemia while being exposed in utero to radionuclides from Chernobyl fallout. The infant leukemia cohort has been reported in Scotland (18), Greece (19), United States (20) and Germany (21). It is being applied to current research on Gulf war legacy, which, unlike multiradionuclide Chernobyl fallout exposure, is a result of a mass contamination with the isotopes of a single radionuclide. Naming of the non-existent syndrome rages in the semantic controversy, which - for the sake of sanity, we may temporarily call Gulf war illness or Gulf war syndrome.

No single thing abides, but all things flow fragment to fragment clinges; the things thus grow until we know and name them. By degrees they melt and are no more the things we know.

(Lucretius)

Whatever the name of the illness, the fact remains that 15% to 18% of several hundred thousand of Desert Storm veterans are sick and over 25,000 are dead, regardless of the official statements of various Departments of Defense and Ministries of Defence that no unique illness can be associated with the Operation Desert Storm (22).

Several criteria of classification of the Gulf war syndrome have been considered, ranging from the terminology such as Haley's factor analysis classification in six syndromes (23), to a broad category of Mucocutaneous-intestinal-rheumatic Desert Syndrome, with three major and 17 minor categories (24), or a neuroimmune syndrome (25) - all distinctly different from postraumatic stress syndrome (PTSD), which was for some time meant to phagocytize the Gulf war syndrome (26).

Probable causology includes chemical, biological, and radiological etiology. All discussion in the literature in a considerable length often lacks objective analytical support, sometime in Swiftian resemblance of a Gulliver's encounter with scientists from an academy proudly explaining their success in the research of extracting sun-beams from the cucumbers. Be as it is, the DU research has been lacking for whatever reason, none being the lack of awareness of its toxic properties and health hazards.

Yesterday, upon the stair I met a man who was not there. He was not there, again, today. I wish that man would go away.

(Unknown)

The present stockpile of DU in excess of 600,000 metric tons as a product of enrichment process is stored as radioactive waste in the form of DUF6 in approximately 50,000 carbon steel cylinders at three main sites in the United States: in the plants at Oak Ridge (TN), Paducah (KY), and Portsmouth (OH). Additional large quantities of DU are being continuously produced. The United States Enrichment Corporation (USEC) estimates production of 85,000 metric tons of DU through 2005, the disposal of which has not yet been determined (27). Over 350 metric tons of DU was used in Gulf war. If only 1 to 2% was released in the atmosphere in the form of submicron or micron size aerosol particles after pyrophoric impact of DU projectiles, a conservative estimate would amount to 3-6 millions grams of airborne aerosols. This presents an inhalation hazard by both alpha and beta emission due to U-238 daughter products thorium-234 (beta 0.26 NV) and protactinium-234 (beta 0.23 MEV), with respective half-lives of 24 days and 6.7 hours. Thorium and protactinium add to internal hazards of DU by beta interactions with orbital electrons, bremsstrahlung radiation of the free electrons, and their interactions with radiosensitive sites.

Que sais-je (Montaigne)

Pragmatic question remains how to integrate all of the objectively verified properties of DU into a maze of Gulf war illnesses. Available data agree in at least one fact: depleted uranium is elevated in the urine of veterans contaminated by either a shrapnel or inhalational pathway. Several methods have been utilized in DU urinary analysis. Inductively coupled mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) demonstrated 0.2-0.33% of U-235 in the urinary concentration of 150 ng/L, whereas the non-exposed veterans contained 0.7-1.0% of U-235, with the urinary concentration of 14 ng/L (28). A rapid detection procedure for DU in metal shrapnel fragments provides a practical method of distinguishing between DU and non-DU shrapnels using pyridylazo dye. It might provide useful guidelines for early therapeutic decisions (29). The ICP-MS protocols have been critically evaluated in comparison with DU alpha spectrometric data (30). The results were in favor of IMP-MS with higher detection sensitivity (30). Kinetic phosphorimetric studies of DU isotopes in pellet-implanted rats have reported quantitative tissue distribution during 18 months after implantation (31). The highest retention was observed in the kidney and tibia, and measurable quantities of DU were found in the heart, brain, striated muscles, lungs, testicles, and lymph nodes (31). The utility of spot collection of urine for bioassay has been reported as a useful kinetic phosphorescence analysis method. It uses creatinine-corrected 24-h samples, suggesting a higher merit in DU bioassay than uncorrected spot sampling (32). The method was correlated with data of urinary excretion of DU in shrapnel wounded veterans (33). Surface ionization mass spectrometry seems the most accurate method, capable to measure DU isotopic composition in low nanogram quantities. The most precise results have been obtained by the mass spectrometers using two and three phase techniques (34). They were originally designed by the Knoll Atomic Power Laboratories and first used in the analysis of DU abundances of U-234, U-235, U-236, and U-238 in accidentally discovered DU contamination in environmental air filters collected at the US Navy training sites in New York States. Specific design of the system provided the detection capacity of one part per trillion, with 1-3% of accuracy. Commercial multi-collector Finnigan MAT-262 is a thermal ionization spectrometer that uses secondary electron multiplier (SEM) with an ion counting system. The results of urine analysis by this method demonstrated DU ratios in the urine of Gulf war veterans contaminated via the inhalation pathway with small but definitive presence of U-236. The data are being carefully re-evaluated and the initial findings repeatedly confirmed, taking into consideration the analysis of background contribution of the electron multiplier systems, filament, vacuum system, separation chemistry, and hydrocarbon background effects. The studies are continuing on the larger groups of British, Canadian, and US veterans.

Although DU shrapnel wounded veterans continue to excrete elevated quantities of uranium isotopes (33), not many casualties are the consequences of shrapnel wounds. Shrapnels are of a lesser importance in understanding DU role in Gulf war illnesses than mass contamination by the inhalation of DU containing dust, initially described as Al-Eskan disease (35). The effects of uranium-embedded particles have been known for almost two centuries (36). The causological correlation between depleted uranium and Gulf war illnesses (37) remains the most important but unanswered question. The studies of DU role in Gulf war illnesses have been not only as diversified as the symptomatology of the illness, bur also inadequately studied (38), not for the want of expertise, technology, patient population, or resources, but rather due to incapability to subscribe to Francis Bacon's Utopian dream of New Atlantis and replace the politician with the scientist.

References

1 Busby C. Science on trial: on the biological effects and health risks following exposure to aerosols produced by the use of depleted uranium weapons. Invited presentation to the Royal Society; 2000 Jul 19; London, UK; given in part to the International Conference against Depleted Uranium; 2000 Nov 4-5; Manchester, UK. Occasional Paper 2000/11. Aberstwyth: Green Audit; Oct. 2000.

2 Durakovic A. Medical effects of internal contamination with uranium. Croat Med J 1999;40:49-66.

3 Meyer MC, Paschke M, McLendon T, Price D. Decreases in soil microbial function and functional diversity in response to depleted uranium. Journal of Environmental Quality 1998;27:1306-11.

4 Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 10 C.R.F. Sect. 0.735-1 (1990). Chapter 1. US Government Printing Office, Washington (DC), USA.

5 Miller AC, Blakely WF, Livengood D, Whittaker T, Xu J, Ejnik JW, et al. Transformation of human osteoblast cells to the tumorigenic phenotype by depleted uranium-uranyl chloride. Environ Health Perspect 1988;106:465-71.

6 Xia H, Carlin BP. Spatio-temporal models with errors in covariates: mapping Ohio lung cancer mortality. Stat Med 1998;17:2025-43.

7 McDiarmid MA, Keogh JP, Hooper FJ, McPhaul K, Squibb K, Kane R, et al. Health effect of depleted uranium on exposed Gulf War Veterans. Environ Res 2000;82:168-80.

8 Durakovic A, Sharma H. Urinary excretion of uranium isotopes in the Gulf War Veterans after inhalational exposure to depleted uranium. In: Moriarty M, Mothersill C, Seymour C, Edmondton M, Ward J, Fry R, editors. Proceedings of Eleventh International Congress of Radiation Re-search; 1999 July 18-23; Dublin, Ireland. Lawrence (KS): Allen Press, Inc; 2000. p. 57.

9 Durakovic A, Dietz KA, Horan P. Quantitative analysis of uranium isotopes in Canadian, US, and and British Gulf War Veterans. Eur J Nucl Med 2000;27:5-75.

10 Uijt de Haag PA, Smetsers RC, Wittox HV, Krus HW, Eisenga AH. Evaluating the risk from depleted uranium after the Boeing 747-258F crash in Amsterdam, 1992. Journal of Hazardous Materials 2000;76:39-58.

11 Terasima T, Tolmatch LJ. Growth and nucleic acid synthesis in synchronously dividing populations of HeLa cells. Exp Cell Res 1963;30:344-62.

12 Kadhim MA, Lorimore SA, Hepburn MD, Goodheard DT, Buckle VJ, Wright EG. Alpha-particle induced chromosomal instability in human bone marrow cells. Lancet 1994;344:987-8.

13 Bergonie J, Tribondeau L. De quelques, resultats de la radiotherapie et essai de fixation d'une technique rationelle. Comptes Rendu des Seances de l'Academie des Sciences 1906;143:983.

14 Burlakova EB, Naiditch V, Reitan JB. Radiobiological consequences of nuclear accidents: contamination, radiobiology, radioecology and health [editorial]. In: Burlakova EB, Naiditch V, Reitan JB, editors. Radiobiological consequences of nuclear accidents: contamination, radiobiology, radioecology and health. Proceedings of the Second International Conference; 1994 Oct 25-28; Moscow, Russia. Radiation Protection Dosimetry 1995;62(1-2):ix-x.

15 Nagasawa H, Little JB. Induction of sister chromatide exchanges by extremely low doses of alpha particles. Cancer Research 1992;52:6394-6.

16 Busby C. Commentary on the Second Event Theory of Busby by A. A. Edwards and R. Cox. Int J Radiat Biol 2000,76:123-5.

17 Edwards AA, Cox R. Commentary on the Second Event Theory of Busby. Int J Radiat Biol 2000;76:119-22.

18 Gibson BE, Eden OB, Barrett A, Stiller CA, Draper GJ. Leukemia in young children in Scotland. Lancet 1988;2:630.

19 Petridou E, Trichopoulos D, Dessypris N, Flytzani V, Haidas S, Kalmanti M, et al. Infant leukemia after in-utero exposure to radiation from Chernobyl. Nature 1996;382:352-3.

20 Mangano J. Childhood leukemia in the US may have risen due to fallout from Chernobyl. BMJ 1997;314: 1200.

21 Michaelis J, Kaletsch U, Burkart W, Grosche B. Infant leukemia after the Chernobyl accident. Nature 1997;387:246.

22 Writer JV, DeFraites RF, Brundage JF. Comparative mortality among US military personnel in the Persian Gulf region and worldwide during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. JAMA 1996;275: 118-21.

23 Haley RW, Kurt TL, Hom J. Is there a Gulf War Syndrome? Searching for syndromes by factor analysis of symptoms. JAMA 1997;277:215-22.

24 Murray-Leisure K, Daniels MO, Sees J, Suguitan E, Zangwill B, Bagheri S, et al. Mucocutaneous-intestinal-rheumatic desert syndrome (MIRDS). Definition, histopathology, incubation period and clinical course and association with desert sand exposure. Intern J Med 1997;1:47-72.

25 Sartin JS. Gulf War illnesses: causes and controversies. Mayo Clin Proc 2000;75:811-9.

26 Nicolson GL, Bruton DM, Nicolson NL. Chronic fatigue illness and Operation Desert Storm. J Occup Environ Med 1996;38:14-6.

27 Byrd Davis M. What's ahead for the nation's depleted uranium hexafluoride? Yggdrasil Institute: Uranium enrichment project 2000 Nov 22. Sponsored by the John Merck Fund. Available at: http://www.earthisland.org/yggdrasil/duf6.html. Accessed January 31, 2001.

28 Ejnik JW, Carmichael AJ, Hamilton MM, McDiarmid MA, Squibb K, Boyd P, et al. Determination of the isotopic composition of uranium urine by inductively couppled plasma mass spectrometry. Health Phys 2000;78:143-6.

29 Kalinich JF, Ramakrishnan N, McClain DE. A procedure for rapid detection of depleted uranium in metal shrapnel fragments. Mil Med 2000;165:626-9.

30 Baglan N, Cossonnet C, Trompier F, Ritt J, Berard P. Implementation of ICP-MS protocols for uranium urinary measurements in worker monitoring. Health Phys 1999;77:455-61.

31 Pellmar TC, Keyser DO, Emery C, Hogan JB. Electro-physiological changes in hippocampal slices isolated from rats embedded depleted uranium fragments. Neurotoxicology 1999;20:785-92.

32 McDiarmid MA, Hooper FJ, Squibb K, McPhaul K. The utility of spot collection for urinary uranium determinations in depleted exposed Gulf War veterans. Health Phys 1999;77:261-4.

33 Hooper FJ, Squibb KS, Siegel EL, McPhaul K, Keogh JP. Elevated urine uranium excretion by soldiers with retained uranium shrapnel. Health Phys 1999; 77:512-9.

34 Dietz LA. Investigation of excess alpha activity observed in recent air filter collections and other environmental samples. Unclassifed technical report. Schenectady (NY): Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory; 1980, January 24. Tech. Rep. No. CHEM-434-LAD; obtained under Freedom of Information Act. Published in Oak Ridge National Laboratory Report DOE/OR/21950-1022, "Responsiveness Summary: Engineering Evaluation/Cost Analysis (EE/CA) for the Colonie Site", p. A70-A89, Jan. 1997.

35 Korenyi-Both AL, Korenyi-Both AL, Juncer DJ. Al Eskan disease: Persian Gulf Syndrome. Mil Med 1997;162:1-13.

36 Gmelin CG. Versuche uber die wirkungen des bartis, strontians, chroms, molibdans, Wolframs, tellurs, titians, osmiums, platins, irridiums rhodiums, paladiums, nikels, cobalts, urans, ceriums, eisens mangans auf den tierishen organismus. Journal fur Chemie und Physik (Halle) 1825;43:110-5.

37 Jamal GA. Gulf War Syndrome - a model for the complexity of biological and environmental interactions with human health. Adverse Drug React Toxicol Rev 1998;17:1-17.

38 Evans HJ. Radiation biology. Alpha-particle after effects. Nature 1992;355:674-5.

Correspondence to:

Asaf Durakovic Nuclear Medicine Division and Clinical PET King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia TAhaideb@kfshrc.edu.sa

-------- europe

Austria says Czech nuclear shutdown confirms fears

AUSTRIA: May 7, 2001
Story by Julia Ferguson
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10728

VIENNA - Austria said on Friday that the temporary shutdown of the neighbouring Czech Temelin nuclear power plant confirmed its fears over the safety of the controversial facility.

The reactor was taken offline last week with a malfunctioning rotor in one of the turbines, and will be reconnected at the beginning of July at the earliest.

The incident is the latest in a string of problems at the $2.6 billion plant, just 50 km (30 miles) from fiercely anti-nuclear Austria's border. It has a Russian VVER-1,000 reactor and a U.S.-made control system by Westinghouse, now owned by British Nuclear Fuels.

"Current events confirm our assumptions that the turbine problems are far more serious than were previously made public," Environment Minister Wilhelm Molterer said.

The latest technical failure underlined the need to discuss unsolved questions, notably the plant's safety and its impact on the environment, he added.

"The key issue here is that we should now use the time aggressively and intently to ensure the Melk agreement is adhered to," Molterer said.

An assessment of the plant's environmental impact was carried out in accordance with a declaration signed in the Lower Austrian town of Melk last year by Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel and his Czech counterpart Milos Zeman.

A Czech-led independent commission, which included observers from the EU, Austria and Germany, gave the plant high marks in their study. But critics say the panel was not independent and pandered to the pro-nuclear power lobby.

The Austrian government is among the critics increasingly frustrated at what they see as insufficient answers by the Czech side to their questions concerning Temelin's safety.

Austria's opposition Social Democrats said the enforced hiatus should at the very least be used to draw up a proper environmental impact study and to define exit strategies.

Environment spokeswoman Ulli Sima said she hoped EU Enlargement Commissioner Guenter Verheugen, who was in Vienna on Friday, would make a clear statement on Temelin and would ensure the Melk declaration was honoured.

"After all, Temelin is a problem for the whole of the European Union," she said.

GASMASK WELCOME

Activists from Austrian environmental group Global 2000 greeted the EU commissioner with gas masks and a banner asking "...and what are you doing about Temelin, Mr Verheugen?"

But the German, speaking later at a news conference, called for "more composure" and said that the Czech side had already made concessions it was not obliged to make as a non-EU member.

"My impression of the Czech side is that they have been acting exceptionally constructively up to now. I know of no case where neighbouring countries have been granted full insight into sensitive technical areas," he said.

Verheugen said the issue of whether Austria would block the Czech Republic's admission to the European Union in protest at the start-up of Temelin, would remain "purely hypothetical".

Membership candidates have to comply fully with EU regulations and standards in all fields and Austria has in the past made thinly veiled threats it may veto Czech entry.

- Additional reporting by Alexandra Zawadil.

----

New Administration Draws Europe's Ire

May 7, 2001
By ROGER COHEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/07/world/07EURO.html

BERLIN, May 6 - Before becoming president, George W. Bush seemed acutely aware of the need for a country as powerful as the United States to show restraint. "If we are an arrogant nation, they will resent us," he said. "If we're a humble nation, but strong, they'll welcome us."

The words appear to have been forgotten. A torrent of hostile articles in Europe has greeted Mr. Bush's first three months in office. Their chief theme has been the arrogance of what the German weekly Der Spiegel recently called "the snarling, ugly Americans."

On its Web site, the respected Munich daily Süddeutsche Zeitung lists seven articles summing up the themes of Mr. Bush's first 100 days. They are not unrepresentative of widespread European views.

The titles include: "Selling Weapons to Taiwan: Bush Throws His Weight Around in the Pacific"; "North Korea: Bush Irritates the Asians"; "World Court: No Support From United States"; "Iraq: Bombing Instead of Diplomacy"; and "Climate Agreement: The United States Abandons the Kyoto Protocol."

There can be little doubt that it was irritation over those and other issues that lay behind the vote last week that ousted the United States from the United Nations Human Rights Commission for the first time, while leaving countries like Algeria and Libya as elected members.

Speaking in Berlin today, Richard C. Holbrooke, the former United States ambassador to the United Nations, described the administration's foreign policy as "unsmooth" and the handling of environmental issues as "disastrous." But he noted that the Bush team is still taking shape and that transitions always involve difficulties.

Certainly, Mr. Bush's predecessor had problems. In their current irritation, European officials appear to have forgotten that the president whose absence they now seem to rue - Bill Clinton - infuriated them in his first year in office by appearing to pay scant attention to the Continent, dithering over Bosnia, and long delaying his first visit.

Those officials, and particularly the French, also seem inclined to overlook the fact that discomfort or irritation with the extent of post-cold- war American power - military, political, economic and cultural - has been running high for some time.

Well before Mr. Bush's arrival in office, France began referring to the United States as a "hyper-power." Other countries, from Russia to China, have also made much of the need for "counterbalances" to American power. In this sense, any missteps by the Republican administration have provided ammunition for a gun already partly loaded.

But Mr. Bush's apparent insensitivity to European concerns on a broad range of issues - he has never visited London or Paris or Berlin - has clearly opened the way for a season of America bashing.

Celebrating the record number of votes - 52 of a possible 53 - won by France in the election that ousted the United States, Jean-David Levitte, the French ambassador to the United Nations, attributed his country's success to a French foreign policy "founded on dialogue and respect."

The message was clear: the embarrassing snub to the United States could be attributed to a seeming absence of "dialogue and respect" in the Bush administration's approach to the outside world.

In their glee at America's discomfort in the vote, the Chinese used language similar to that used by the French. The ousting, for China, showed that the United States had "undermined the atmosphere for dialogue."

The time has arrived for the United States "to enter into dialogue on equal footing with other countries, rich or poor, strong or weak" and to stop using "human rights issues as a tool to pursue its power politics and hegemonism," China said.

Instructions from China on human rights seem certain to raise as many eyebrows in Washington as French tips on diplomacy do. But there is little doubt that Mr. Bush's generally more confrontational stance on Russia and China, his apparently slow learning curve on how much the environment matters to Europeans and his lukewarm support for South Korea's so-called sunshine policy for improving relations with the North have reinforced a European sense that the United States is a power more inclined than before to ride roughshod over its allies.

When Michael Steiner, the chief diplomatic aide to Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany, visited Washington earlier this year, he was surprised to find Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, telling him that he must be aware that the only way to get results from the Russians was to be tough with them.

That was one small example of the ways in which the Bush administration seems to be out of step in its thinking with a European Union disinclined to reopen divisions on the Continent and generally more concerned about the quality of food and the environment than possible security threats from Moscow or North Korea.

But Karl Kaiser, a German foreign policy analyst, said he thought that awareness of those differences was growing in the Bush administration and he questioned whether there was any deep justification for European anxieties.

He noted that Mr. Bush's recent policy speech on a possible missile defense shield was marked by extreme sensitivity to allied and Russian concerns. The antimissile project, Mr. Kaiser went on, is no longer "national" but intended to help all friendly countries; it will be built only after thorough consultation.

"Through this speech, Mr. Bush clearly differentiated himself from the Republican right wing and marked a return to the mainstream of multilateralism," Mr. Kaiser said.

How far such a "return" will go remains to be seen; currents of unilateralism seem far stronger in this administration than in any for some time. But it does seem clear that the speech reflected the concern of Colin L. Powell's State Department - the one office of the Bush administration that has been spared the harsh criticism reserved in Europe for the Pentagon and the White House.

One particular target of European criticism has been President Bush's policy toward China, and particularly his strong expressions of support for Taiwan that have been widely viewed as unnecessarily provocative. Europe, like Russia, has been concerned that America is throwing its weight around in a reckless manner.

But James R. Lilley, a former United States ambassador to China, said that while it was fair to say that, "Until you get your act together, you are going to cause some concern," the Europeans had overstated the dangers.

"The fact is China and Taiwan are moving together economically," he said. "The compelling fact of making money together undercuts the notion of estrangement." No American weapons sales to Taiwan would alter that reality, he said.

In the end, it may be style as much as substance that is causing the growing hostility to the United States. The revival of some cold war language under Mr. Bush and the emergence into clearer view of another America more concerned with itself and quite at ease with the death penalty has come as a shock to many outside the country.

In Britain the other day, The Guardian described America's position on the death penalty as "morally untenable." Of course, that position may be many things, but it is scarcely "untenable," just as America's human-rights record may have blemishes but is hardly comparable to that of Algeria.

That, however, is not the point. The fact is Mr. Bush has contrived to prove his own theory that arrogance provokes resentment for a country that, long before his arrival, was already the world's most conspicuous and convenient target.

----

EU Delegation Visits Chechnya

MAY 07, 13:26 EST
By LYOMA TURPALOV
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=EUROPE&STORYID=APIS7BRDLNO0

GROZNY, Russia (AP) - Ambassadors from European Union nations traveled Monday to Chechnya's capital Grozny as Russian troops and rebels stepped up attacks that have left at least six people dead in the city since Saturday.

Virtually every day over the past week, vehicles have been blown up by mines planted by rebels in Grozny's rubble-strewn streets. Several Russian servicemen were wounded Monday when a mine ripped through a four-vehicle military column on a main Grozny thoroughfare, and three Russian soldiers and a Chechen policeman were killed on Saturday when their truck was blown up.

On Sunday, someone threw a grenade that landed close to three Russian armored vehicles parked near a military checkpoint. The vehicles turned their heavy guns on a nearby residential neighborhood and shot up 10 high-rise buildings. Two residents were killed and three were wounded, witnesses said.

``There was a shootout. It looked like a provocation,'' said Ruslan Minkailov, who lives in one of the buildings.

He said that the two men were killed as they raced across the yard toward their apartment building. Following the shooting, Russian forces looted a food store in the neighborhood, he said.

``I could see perfectly well how they loaded the stuff onto their armored personnel carrier,'' Minkailov said.

A city official accused the federal forces of killing the two men without justification, the Interfax news agency reported.

``The law enforcement bodies have done nothing to identify the culprits and make them answer for their actions,'' mayoral spokesman Ruslan Martagov was quoted as saying.

The head of the pro-Russian Chechen government, Stanislav Ilyasov, complained over local television on Sunday that federal troops were acting illegally and that he personally had trouble getting through Russian checkpoints.

Ilyasov met Monday with the EU delegation, headed by Swedish Ambassador Sven Hirdman, but no details of the meeting were made public.

The EU delegation was also scheduled to meet with Akhmad Kadyrov, the pro-Russian civilian administrator of Chechnya, Grozny Mayor Bislan Gantamirov and Viktor Kazantsev, the general turned presidential representative for Russia's North Caucasus region, said EU press officer Sylvie Kofler in Moscow.

The EU and other western organizations and governments have criticized Russian forces for human rights abuses, including looting Chechen towns and detaining Chechen civilians, many of whom have reportedly not been seen since.

A Chechen policeman, Aslanbek Kukayev, was buried in Grozny on Sunday after his body was discovered on the outskirts of the city. He had been arrested in Grozny in November, during a military sweep, and had reportedly tried to defend civilians whom federal troops were robbing.

In the town of Alkhan-Kala west of the capital, residents gathered in a central square to protest the detention of town residents.

``For 10 years now, we've been living like outcasts,'' said one protester, Isa Tokayev. ``No matter who controls our town, they rob and kill us.

----

To European Eyes, It's America the Ugly

New York Times
May 7, 2001
By ROGER COHEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/07/world/07EURO.html?searchpv=nytToday

BERLIN, May 6 - Before becoming president, George W. Bush seemed acutely aware of the need for a country as powerful as the United States to show restraint. "If we are an arrogant nation, they will resent us," he said. "If we're a humble nation, but strong, they'll welcome us."

The words appear to have been forgotten. A torrent of hostile articles in Europe has greeted Mr. Bush's first three months in office. Their chief theme has been the arrogance of what the German weekly Der Spiegel recently called "the snarling, ugly Americans."

On its Web site, the respected Munich daily Süddeutsche Zeitung lists seven articles summing up the themes of Mr. Bush's first 100 days. They are not unrepresentative of widespread European views.

The titles include: "Selling Weapons to Taiwan: Bush Throws His Weight Around in the Pacific"; "North Korea: Bush Irritates the Asians"; "World Court: No Support From United States"; "Iraq: Bombing Instead of Diplomacy"; and "Climate Agreement: The United States Abandons the Kyoto Protocol."

There can be little doubt that it was irritation over those and other issues that lay behind the vote last week that ousted the United States from the United Nations Human Rights Commission for the first time, while leaving countries like Algeria and Libya as elected members.

Speaking in Berlin today, Richard C. Holbrooke, the former United States ambassador to the United Nations, described the administration's foreign policy as "unsmooth" and the handling of environmental issues as "disastrous." But he noted that the Bush team is still taking shape and that transitions always involve difficulties.

Certainly, Mr. Bush's predecessor had problems. In their current irritation, European officials appear to have forgotten that the president whose absence they now seem to rue - Bill Clinton - infuriated them in his first year in office by appearing to pay scant attention to the Continent, dithering over Bosnia, and long delaying his first visit.

Those officials, and particularly the French, also seem inclined to overlook the fact that discomfort or irritation with the extent of post-cold- war American power - military, political, economic and cultural - has been running high for some time.

Well before Mr. Bush's arrival in office, France began referring to the United States as a "hyper-power." Other countries, from Russia to China, have also made much of the need for "counterbalances" to American power. In this sense, any missteps by the Republican administration have provided ammunition for a gun already partly loaded.

But Mr. Bush's apparent insensitivity to European concerns on a broad range of issues - he has never visited London or Paris or Berlin - has clearly opened the way for a season of America bashing.

Celebrating the record number of votes - 52 of a possible 53 - won by France in the election that ousted the United States, Jean-David Levitte, the French ambassador to the United Nations, attributed his country's success to a French foreign policy "founded on dialogue and respect."

The message was clear: the embarrassing snub to the United States could be attributed to a seeming absence of "dialogue and respect" in the Bush administration's approach to the outside world.

In their glee at America's discomfort in the vote, the Chinese used language similar to that used by the French. The ousting, for China, showed that the United States had "undermined the atmosphere for dialogue."

The time has arrived for the United States "to enter into dialogue on equal footing with other countries, rich or poor, strong or weak" and to stop using "human rights issues as a tool to pursue its power politics and hegemonism," China said.

Instructions from China on human rights seem certain to raise as many eyebrows in Washington as French tips on diplomacy do. But there is little doubt that Mr. Bush's generally more confrontational stance on Russia and China, his apparently slow learning curve on how much the environment matters to Europeans and his lukewarm support for South Korea's so-called sunshine policy for improving relations with the North have reinforced a European sense that the United States is a power more inclined than before to ride roughshod over its allies.

When Michael Steiner, the chief diplomatic aide to Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany, visited Washington earlier this year, he was surprised to find Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, telling him that he must be aware that the only way to get results from the Russians was to be tough with them.

That was one small example of the ways in which the Bush administration seems to be out of step in its thinking with a European Union disinclined to reopen divisions on the Continent and generally more concerned about the quality of food and the environment than possible security threats from Moscow or North Korea.

But Karl Kaiser, a German foreign policy analyst, said he thought that awareness of those differences was growing in the Bush administration and he questioned whether there was any deep justification for European anxieties.

He noted that Mr. Bush's recent policy speech on a possible missile defense shield was marked by extreme sensitivity to allied and Russian concerns. The antimissile project, Mr. Kaiser went on, is no longer "national" but intended to help all friendly countries; it will be built only after thorough consultation.

"Through this speech, Mr. Bush clearly differentiated himself from the Republican right wing and marked a return to the mainstream of multilateralism," Mr. Kaiser said.

How far such a "return" will go remains to be seen; currents of unilateralism seem far stronger in this administration than in any for some time. But it does seem clear that the speech reflected the concern of Colin L. Powell's State Department - the one office of the Bush administration that has been spared the harsh criticism reserved in Europe for the Pentagon and the White House.

One particular target of European criticism has been President Bush's policy toward China, and particularly his strong expressions of support for Taiwan that have been widely viewed as unnecessarily provocative. Europe, like Russia, has been concerned that America is throwing its weight around in a reckless manner.

But James R. Lilley, a former United States ambassador to China, said that while it was fair to say that, "Until you get your act together, you are going to cause some concern," the Europeans had overstated the dangers.

"The fact is China and Taiwan are moving together economically," he said. "The compelling fact of making money together undercuts the notion of estrangement." No American weapons sales to Taiwan would alter that reality, he said.

In the end, it may be style as much as substance that is causing the growing hostility to the United States. The revival of some cold war language under Mr. Bush and the emergence into clearer view of another America more concerned with itself and quite at ease with the death penalty has come as a shock to many outside the country.

In Britain the other day, The Guardian described America's position on the death penalty as "morally untenable." Of course, that position may be many things, but it is scarcely "untenable," just as America's human-rights record may have blemishes but is hardly comparable to that of Algeria.

That, however, is not the point. The fact is Mr. Bush has contrived to prove his own theory that arrogance provokes resentment for a country that, long before his arrival, was already the world's most conspicuous and convenient target.

-------- israel

Israel death squad defies call for truce

07 May 2001
By Phil Reeves in Jerusalem
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=70663

Even as the Israeli government was pondering the call for an immediate and unconditional end to violence issued by the Mitchell Commission one of its death squads was in action yesterday, assassinating another Palestinian militant.

Eye-witnesses said Israeli forces shot dead Ahmed Khalil Assad, 37, pumping more than 20 bullets into his head and torso as he left his home in Artas village, close to Bethlehem, early yesterday.

The Israeli army denied all knowledge, but it rarely comments on its assassinations, which have been repeatedly condemned as illegal by international human rights groups.

The killing of Mr Assad, an activist with Islamic Jihad, comes as Israel and the Palestinians are preparing responses to the draft report of the committee, led by the former US senator and Northern Ireland peacemaker George Mitchell, into the causes of the past 31 weeks of violence, and how to prevent it recurring.

The confidential report, acquired exclusively by The Independent on Sunday, passes no judgement on Israel's assassination policy ­ a policy denounced as "illegal, state-sponsored terrorism" by Dr Hanan Ashrawi, the Palestinian legislator, yesterday.

But the committee is clearly unhappy about Israel's use of lethal force against unarmed Palestinians, and the lack of investigations into the killings.

It calls on Israel to reinstitute mandatory investigations by its military police into the deaths of Palestinians killed by the Israeli armed forces in the occupied territories "in incidents not involving terrorism".

Israel maintains that it is engaged in an "armed conflict short of war", a definition it has used to justify suspending such mandatory investigations.

In reality, many of the hundreds of Palestinians killed by Israeli troops were unarmed.

"By abandoning the blanket 'armed conflict short of war' characterisation, and by reinstituting mandatory military police investigations, (Israel) could help mitigate deadly violence and help rebuild mutual confidence," states the 32-page draft.

Much of the report's importance resides in what it did not say. There is, for example, no mention of Palestinian children being used as human shields ­ a claim repeatedly made by the highly active pro-Israel lobby. Nor is does it present Yasser Arafat as controlling the violence day by day.

The report rejects Israel's claim that the uprising was planned. Nor, it says, was the intifada caused by Ariel Sharon's visit to the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount on 28 September, although this was "provocative". More significant, it says, were the events of the following day ­ the use of live ammunition by Israeli police against Palestinian demonstrators, killing four.

The report also questions Israel's contention that its troops kill Palestinians because they are facing live fire attacks "on a significant scale". It says that, for the first three months of the intifada, most incidents did not involve the Palestinian use of firearms or bombs.

Nor will the Sharon government appreciate the call for a total freeze on building in the occupied territories, and for an end to Israeli blockades in the West Bank and Gaza.

But the findings have not all gone the Palestinians' way. The five-member Mitchell team did not endorse the deployment of an international protection force, a central Palestinian demand, without Israel's approval.

They also called for the Palestinian Authority to condemn, prevent and punish "terrorism". The release of Hamas and Islamic Jihad activists in the early stages of the intifada has been one of Israel's key complaints. Yesterday, near Bethlehem ­ yet again ­ the Israeli army decided on a more direct and bloody solution.

-------- korea

EU: N. Korea Talks Hinge on Missiles

May 7, 2001
New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-US-EU-North-Korea.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A senior European Union official said Monday after talks with Bush administration officials that the EU's fledgling dialogue with North Korea will not survive if Pyongyang continues to export missile technology.

Lars Danielsson, who accompanied Swedish Prime Minister Goeran Persson to North Korea last week, said Pyongyang's missile exports are a ``great concern'' to the EU.

He said EU ties with North Korea cannot ``develop further'' if Pyongyang continues its missile sales. He noted that the United States has placed similar conditions on its dialogue with North Korea.

Danielsson held separate briefings for NSC and State Department officials on Persson's groundbreaking attempt last week to promote reconciliation between the two Koreas, among other goals.

During five hours of talks with the EU delegation, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il pledged to keep a moratorium on missile tests until 2003 but also defended his country's sales of missile technology to Iran, Syria and other countries.

Kim told the Europeans that he sees these sales as a valuable income source for his country. The United States and many other countries see the North Korean sales to be highly detrimental to international efforts to control missile proliferation.

Danielsson said Kim indicated he might agree to curb missile sales if he receives compensation.

According to Danielsson, the U.S. officials with whom he spoke were supportive of the European initiative to Pyongyang.

The Clinton administration and North Korea tried to negotiate a curb on North Korea's missile development and missile exports.

The Bush administration is reviewing the policy. A senior official, asking not to be identified, said Monday it will be weeks or months before the review is completed.

He said there may be a U.S. attempt to broaden the negotiations to include U.S. concerns about North Korea's deployment of 1 million troops near the Demilitarized Zone.

Danielsson said the EU delegation touched on the human rights issue in general terms with Kim. Kim, he said, promised to open a human rights dialogue with the EU. Danielsson acknowledged there is a ``wide gap'' on human rights between the EU and North Korea, widely regarded as one of the world's most repressive police states.

-------- missile defense

Missile defense policy flawed

May 7, 2001
Staff Editorial
Harvard Crimson Harvard U.
http://news.excite.com/news/uw/010507/university-27

(U-WIRE) CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- In a much-needed clarification of his administration?s intentions for an anti-missile system to protect the nation from attack, President George W. Bush last week outlined what he termed a "new framework" for countering missile threats from so-called rogue nations and accidental launches.

The latest plan, which is likely to cost far more than the $60 billion estimate made by the Congressional Budget Office under President Bill Clinton, contravenes the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty with Russia. In addition, the new policy questions whether the policy of "mutually assured destruction," which has guided American nuclear policy for so long, still applies in a world with many nuclear powers. Although the president's overtures to Russia -- which is eager to have a stake in any defense strategy lest its rusting arsenal become irrelevant -- is laudable, his planned abrogation of the 1972 treaty is both alarming and provocative. An even greater worry is Bush's unconcern for the Chinese reaction to his missile defense plans. And we doubt Bush's assurances that a large-scale missile defense is technologically possible without breaking the bank.

Bush reasons that the world has changed since the 1972 treaty was signed. The treaty had relied for deterrence on the absence of missile defenses -- and thus a guarantee of mutual destruction after any first strike -- to keep the peace between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. But in an age when dictators like Saddam Hussein could obtain nuclear weapons, a rogue state could launch an attack and might just be crazy enough to accept the horrible consequences. Bush's arguments on those grounds, however, fall flat. Most terrorists or rogue states lack the missile capacity to attack the United States and would most likely sneak nuclear, chemical or biological weapons into the U.S. through other means -- say, a suitcase in a commercial plane. It is unlikely that a nation such as Iraq, Iran or North Korea would develop and launch a ballistic missile when much less-challenging and easier-to-conceal methods are available.

The focus on missile defenses has also raised significant dangers due to the near-total exclusion of China from the negotiations surrounding the plan. China has been left out of the continuing talks between Washington and Moscow about how the defense system will be structured. In a speech at the National Defense University last Tuesday, Bush stressed the importance of building a relationship between Russia and the U.S., but China, which is important for both military and economic reasons, was ignored.

China is one of the most likely targets for the defenses that Bush has proposed, as its small arsenal of nuclear warheads could be nearly completely countered. Russia's arsenal is far too vast to be defended against, but China -- which would fear an American first strike without the ability to retaliate -- would have a strong incentive to build up its arsenal in order to overwhelm the defenses. A renewed arms buildup could be severely destabilizing, and leaving China out of this process only courts further tension.

Given the abysmal record of the current testing of the American anti-missile system. the best defense against missile attacks would therefore be the small, local shields that are explicitly allowed under the 1972 treaty. Such shields would be able to guard against a few missiles from terrorists or rogue states but could not be used against an arsenal such as China's. But they would not require immense expenditures and have a far higher chance of producing a working, reliable defense for Americans.

Bush's overtures toward unilateral reductions in nuclear weapons are heartening, but the missile defense scheme he has proposed is unworkable and diplomatically dangerous. The 1995 nerve gas attack on a Japanese subway was a warning that the most serious threats to the U.S. in the future will come from terrorists who are unlikely to play by the old rules of military engagement. The president should concentrate on such smaller-scale and regional defenses before playing a needless game of nuclear politics.

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Misapprehensions About Missile Defense

By Fareed Zakaria
Monday, May 7, 2001
The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52452-2001May6?language=printer

In one of the most memorable scenes in the movie "Annie Hall," Woody Allen and Diane Keaton are standing in line at an arty Manhattan movie house while a pompous academic pontificates about Marshall McLuhan (who, incredibly, was considered a serious thinker in the 1970s). Exasperated, Woody finally goes to the lobby and wheels out McLuhan himself, who turns to the professor and announces: "I heard what you were saying. You know nothing of my work. . . . How you ever got to teach a course in anything is totally amazing."

Listening to the debate about National Missile Defense, I wondered what Thomas Schelling would think of it. Schelling is the economist who first seriously applied game theory to politics and international relations, work that should have won him the Nobel Prize (if economists weren't such snobs about political science). A recent Rand Corp. document describes him as having "established the basic conceptual structure of deterrence theory."

In fact, one could go further. Schelling's ideas are at the heart of the counterintuitive logic of mutual assured destruction that has underpinned American nuclear and arms-control strategy for four decades.

Thomas Schelling is now a genial 80-year-old. After having taught for most of his life at Harvard, he moved 10 years ago to the University of Maryland at College Park, where he still teaches game theory and international affairs. I asked him whether he thought President Bush's proposals undermined strategic stability.

"No," he said, "but that's because missile defense is not likely to be as revolutionary as either its proponents or opponents believe. Both sides are vastly exaggerating the scope of this program. The defenses that the United States and the Soviet Union were trying to develop in the 1960s and early 1970s were not really defensive in orientation. They were complements to an offensive force."

They would have made us each feel our forces were protected, and thus we could have become trigger-happy. That's why the ABM treaty banned them. Schelling explained, "The current proposals, to the extent we have any details, are really oriented toward defending the United States against small attacks from rogue states. That's why I don't like the way the president is selling his program as a shield to protect the whole nation. It isn't, and I think we have incurred diplomatic costs around the world because of this rhetorical posturing."

Will Bush's plan trigger a new arms race with Russia?

"I don't see how," Schelling said. "Stability between the United States and the Russians depends on the fact that both sides can inflict unacceptable harm on the other even if one were hit by nukes first. That 'second-strike capability' will be intact, since no defense system we could develop would protect us against Russia's massive arsenal. I think the Russians understand this, which is why they have stopped being so belligerently opposed to missile defense."

What about the ABM treaty and arms control?

"The ABM treaty was wonderful for its time. But maybe it has to be modified because the situation has changed. Arms control doesn't depend on negotiated treaties. It depends on both sides restraining themselves out of self-interest. If you can get good mutual understanding, you can actually move faster without treaties. We now have a pretty good understanding with the Russians about arms reductions. And if we both keep reducing nuclear weapons -- which we should -- how can one say that this is a new arms race?"

What about China?

"Well, Schelling said, tentatively, "I don't think they have the ability to survive an American first strike anyway. If that vulnerability spurs them to build, it would do so with or without missile defense. By the way, one could make the case that over time, stability might be enhanced by the Chinese, like the Russians, having a second-strike capacity. But don't try making that case in Congress."

So should we develop a missile-defense capability?

"If we could develop an effective defense against what North Korea has -- and might have -- it would be worth having. The reality now is that increasingly the concept of deterrence will be used against us. Countries like North Korea will try to develop some nuclear-missile capability so that it deters us in a crisis situation. If we found ourselves in another war on the Korean peninsula, the fact that the North has nuclear weapons and long-range delivery systems complicates American strategy considerably."

Schelling is comfortable with missile defense in theory. His misgivings are practical. "I think we are years away from anything that works well and is cost-effective," he says. "Remember, there are many ways to get nuclear and other weapons into America, missiles being just one of them. And if we do develop some defenses, countries will try other paths. We have to work on many fronts. The opponents of the system are quite right to say that so far, the research and testing has yielded very little. Of course they can't have it both ways. If the system is unworkable, then it can hardly be so destabilizing can it?"

The writer is editor of Newsweek International and a columnist for Newsweek.

----

No to Missile Defense

Monday, May 7, 2001

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52467-2001May6?language=printer

President Bush's insistence on a missile defense system is wrongheaded for several reasons [front page, May 2].

First, NORAD can detect the launch signature of an ICBM anywhere in the world. Who, then, would launch an ICBM attack knowing the United States would turn their country into a crater?

Second, all offensive and defensive weapons systems throughout history have had countermeasures developed against them. Radar saw the advent of stealth, tanks saw the evolution of antitank weapons, etc. Missile defense will be no different.

I anticipate, for example, the development of an ICBM that would use Exocet technology to skim the oceans. Then how useful would a space-based missile defense system be?

Third, it is much more within the limited technological reach of our enemies to place their nuclear weapons in suitcases and trucks. These also would avoid NORAD detection.

Our government already knows all this. So why does President Bush want this system?

RALPH HOMAN
Twin Lakes, Colo.

•Many logical arguments can be made against President Bush's decision to build a missile defense system, but logic has nothing to do with it.

The project is a blatant dividend to the high-tech companies that invested so heavily in America's election campaigns. Logic offers no other reason to spend so much money on such unconscionable idiocy.

GLENN CHENEY
Hanover, Conn.

-------- russia

Russian Scientists Nervously Await U.S. Decision on Fate of Nuclear Program

May 7, 2001
JUDITH INGRAM,
Associated Press Writer
http://www.apbnews.com/newscenter/breakingnews/2001/05/07/russian_nuclear.html

MOSCOW (AP) _ A thief or terrorist trying to get at the seven nuclear reactors at Moscow's Kurchatov Institute will have to break through a sophisticated, dlrs 3 million set of safeguards financed by American taxpayers.

The research center's security system is just one result of a 10-year-old U.S.-Russian program to reduce the threat of weapons of mass destruction. The joint effort has also brought much more dramatic achievements, including eliminating nuclear weapons stockpiles in the former Soviet republics of Kazakstan, Belarus and Ukraine, and deep cuts in Russia's own vast nuclear arsenal.

But some U.S. Congress members are questioning the cost and value of the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. U.S. President George W. Bush has ordered a review _ and that's making Russian nuclear scientists nervous.

On a broader front, trust has been undermined over such issues as NATO expansion, Moscow's ties with Iraq and North Korea, and the Bush administration's missile defense plans. Also, some U.S. officials involved in the arms reduction program are being expelled from Russia as part of a wider, tit-for-tat spy scandal between Washington and Moscow.

``We've achieved very important results, which are visible not just on paper but in the physical (security) systems,'' said Nikolai Ponomaryov-Stepnoi, the vice president of the Kurchatov Institute, named for the father of the Soviet atomic bomb.

Over the past five years, the institute has won contracts to develop security systems for the Russian Navy, one of the institutions that Russian and U.S. officials had considered most vulnerable to theft and potential leaks of weapons-grade nuclear materials.

``The risk of proliferation of nuclear materials is lessening significantly,'' Ponomaryov-Stepnoi said.

The joint threat reduction program was launched in December 1991 in the final days of the Soviet Union with a law authored by U.S. Sens. Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar that sought to seize a rare opportunity to cut strategic weapons arsenals.

The program is aimed broadly at cutting Russia's nuclear arsenal, preventing the leakage of nuclear and biological weapons technology to terrorists or other countries, and destroying stockpiles of chemical weapons.

Those aims are being promoted through more than two dozen separate projects that have cost the United States some dlrs 4.7 billion so far.

``It's a very effective defense by other means: Spending relatively little money, you seriously decrease the military potential of your probable enemy or rival,'' said Ivan Safranchuk, the nuclear arms control project director at the independent PIR institute in Moscow.

According to the Pentagon program's director, Jim Reid, the United States has helped to junk 300 of Russia's intercontinental ballistic missiles, 2,000 nuclear warheads, 52 ICBM silos, 308 submarine launchers, 18 submarines and 42 bombers.

The program helped accelerate Russian disarmament and put Russia on track to meet the Dec. 5, 2001 deadline for arms cuts under the 1991 Start I treaty, which should bring each side down to 1,600 strategic missiles and bombers and 6,000 warheads.

Considering Russia's economic difficulties, ``it would have taxed them significantly to try to use those funds to meet the treaty themselves,'' Reid said.

Other goals have been partially met. Sensored fences, the first step in comprehensive security systems, have been built around more than half of Russia's nuclear weapons storage places, Reid said. The rest haven't been secured, and the Soviet-era protection systems have broken down, leaving potentially serious security breaches.

Two of the highest-profile projects _ to build a fissile materials storage plant in the town of Mayak and a pilot plant for destroying nerve agents stored at Shchuchiye _ have been stalled by U.S.-Russian differences over how they should be run.

The spy scandal hardly helps. An analyst who has seen the list of 50 U.S. diplomats to be sent home by July said about a dozen are involved with the Pentagon's threat-reduction program. He spoke on condition of anonymity.

Scientists at the Kurchatov Institute said they were already feeling the effects, with American partners introducing new financing procedures that could set back some projects.

``I don't know who's pulling the strings, but we already feel that the work is facing difficulties,'' Ponomaryov-Stepnoi said morosely. ``It seems they feel they have to introduce a tougher line.''

The harshest U.S. critics question whether the program should be continued at all, especially in light of Russia's increasing cooperation with such potential nuclear proliferators as Iran.

In general, U.S. aid programs to Russia face increasing American criticism for inefficiency and vulnerability to corruption, and Russians complain that much of the money ended up in U.S. contractors' pockets.

In the arms reduction field, the Russian security service may feel the U.S. monitors are getting too intrusive.

The program gives the monitors ``unique access,'' said Alexander Pikayev, an arms control expert at the Moscow office of the Carnegie Endowment. ``If political relations deteriorate, Russia will be less interested in transparency.''

Gennady Khromov, a Russian negotiator, said the Americans demanded only plutonium from weapons be stored at Mayak. ``But to prove that, we're being asked to strip naked and show everything we have,'' he said.

Reid rejected the criticism, saying there were demonstrated ways of providing those guarantees without revealing Russian secrets.

The National Security Council is supposed to wind up its review of the program in mid-May, according to Reid.

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

-------- michigan

NRC to meet Consumers on possible Mich nuke violation

USA: May 7, 2001
Story by Eileen Moustakis
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10725&newsDate=7-May-2001

NEW YORK - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said Friday it will meet May 8 with Consumers Energy to discuss an apparent violation of NRC rules at the 789-megawatt Palisades nuclear power unit in Michigan.

During an inspection in March, the NRC found the utility had supplied incomplete and inaccurate information when Consumers requested authorization to permanently close off one of two steam lines connected to an auxiliary feedwater pump.

The auxiliary feedwater system is part of a backup system to remove heat from the reactor if the normal feedwater system is lost.

On February 5 of last year, while the plant was shut down for a planned maintenance outage, an underground steam pipe to a steam-driven pump ruptured. The pump was shut down and the leak terminated, however when the pipe was replaced the remainder of the underground pipe could not be fully inspected to verify its "integrity," the NRC said.

The utility decided the steam line was not needed since a second steam pipe was available to provide steam to the pump and requested that the NRC eliminate a requirement that it be tested periodically.

In its request, the utility said its past safety analysis had considered the steam line as available for use in just one situation, that of an unlikely fire in an electrical cable room. Other means of maintaining the reactor in a safe condition were available without using the steam line in question, the utility indicated.

Based on its review of the information supplied, the NRC granted temporary authorization to eliminate the testing requirement and then approved the permanent closing of the steam line.

NRC inspectors, however, subsequently found a second fire scenario which considered the steam line as available for use to maintain the reactor in a safe shutdown condition following a fire.

The apparent violation is the failure of the utility to identify and evaluate the second fire scenario when it requested the change in NRC requirements for the steam line.

No decision on the apparent violations or any enforcement action, such as a civil penalty, will be made at the conference, but would come at a later time, the NRC said.

The plant, in South Haven, Mich., has been shut since March 30 for a scheduled refueling outage.

It is expected to return to the region's power grid around mid-May.

Consumers is a unit of CMS Energy Corp. . In late April, Consumers received regulatory approval to amend the license of the Palisades plant to transfer the plant's operating authority to the Nuclear Management Co. (NMC).

NMC operates and manages the nuclear plants of Xcel Energy Inc. , Alliant Energy , Wisconsin Energy Corp.'s Wisconsin Electric Power Co. and WPS Resources Corp.'s Wisconsin Public Service Co.

-------- nevada

Yucca Mountain nuclear waste review moves forward

USA: May 7, 2001

http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10719&newsDate=7-May-2001

WASHINGTON - Documents released on Friday by the Department of Energy move forward the public comment process to finalize a decision on whether the energy secretary will recommend the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada as the nation's permanent nuclear waste repository this year.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham is expected this winter to offer his recommendation to President George W. Bush on whether to proceed with Yucca Mountain as the repository site, an agency official said.

The nuclear industry wants the site finalized, saying by decade's end some 40,000 tons of used fuel rods from commercial reactors could be stored safely in the Nevada desert.

Environmentalists, many in Congress and a block of Nevada officials want to block the site's use. Concerns about the enforcement of radiation exposure standards, geological positioning of the repository and transportation of waste are among the main reasons for the objections.

DOE spokesman Joe Davis said Friday's document release consists of some 20 years of scientific and engineering data, and opens comment periods for the public on both the science and draft environmental impact portions of the process.

Davis said public hearings would be held in Nevada three times over the next 45 days, starting next Friday, on the science and engineering report.

The Nuclear Energy Institute applauded the science report, saying it showed the long-term performance of the storage system would be safe from exposure for at least 10,000 years. The industry said the estimated cost of finishing the storage process, from building the site to completion, is estimated at $49.3 billion in year 2000 dollars from this year forward.

Some $6.7 billion has already been spent on preliminary investigation and research into the Yucca site through the year 2000, NEI said.

"The science strongly suggests the site is suitable," said Joe Colvin, president and chief executive officer of the NEI.

"Now the project should complete the work leading up to a secretarial recommendation to the president," he said.

Nuclear utilities have complained that industry survival and growth depends on settling the decades-old issue of where to store radioactive fuel waste from commercial power plants.

The Department of Energy, under the law, is supposed to have constructed a site and taken title to the waste.

Opponents of the Yucca project believe nuclear utilities should continue to store spent fuel on-site.

Currently, 103 operating nuclear plants provide 20 percent of the country's power generation needs.

--------

DOE report details threats to site

May 07, 2001
By Mary Manning <manning@lasvegassun.com>
LAS VEGAS SUN
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/text/2001/may/07/511790108.html

The Energy Department's 1,000-page "Yucca Mountain Science and Engineering Report," released Friday, summarizes the research on potential problems with water, earthquakes, volcanoes and nuclear reactions in a proposed repository at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The report does not recommend Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste repository for 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste from commercial reactors and weapons activities.

Instead, it provides information to the public "on the secretary's consideration of the possible recommendation of the Yucca Mountain site as a potential repository for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste."

In late summer or fall, the DOE will schedule public hearings on the report.

Some of its highlights include:

Water flow

Water is important to the study of Yucca Mountain because mineral-laden ground water or rainwater that picks up high volumes of minerals can corrode canisters holding nuclear waste. That could allow radiation to escape into the environment. The report found:

The DOE recognizes that the volcanic rock that makes up Yucca Mountain is riddled with cracks, fractures and fissures. From long, narrow crevices to cracks as small as capillaries, the openings can allow water to flow through the mountain. If water reaches the buried packages, it could react with container materials, causing corrosion and allowing radiation to escape into the environment before 10,000 years. However, the DOE believes heat from the buried wastes will drive water away from the containers.

Chlorine-36, a byproduct of atomic weapons explosions in the Pacific Ocean in the early 1950s as well as a naturally occurring element, was found in soil samples taken at the repository level, raising concern about the speed of water movement through the mountain. The report notes the chlorine evidence is in dispute and is undergoing further study by other DOE scientists.

Rainfall at the proposed desert repository averages about 7.5 inches a year. Monsoons coming every three to seven years can add almost a foot of water to the mountain's surface. The DOE estimates that rainfall, infiltrating the mountain at about 0.18 of an inch a year in normal conditions, could jump to 0.48 inches during monsoon rains. A similar amount and range of infiltration would occur during a glacial period, possible some time beyond 2,000 years from now.

The current water table is about 3,400 feet below the surface of Yucca Mountain. The repository level is about 1,000 feet above the water table. A nuclear waste canister could be buried about 690 feet above the current water table if a repository spaced the waste farther apart to keep the rock cool. In wetter climates, the water table could rise up to 390 feet above the existing water table, so most of the repository would still be 610 feet above the water table during glacial periods. Earthquakes

The danger of earthquakes has been studied, because it could disrupt the burial site of the containers, possibly crushing them and allowing radiation to escape. The report found:

DOE scientists have mapped 39 earthquake faults in and near Yucca Mountain. If nuclear waste is placed inside the mountain, the DOE plans to drill holes for the packages away from any known faults. Although some faults have moved 89 feet at some point, none of them indicates a major quake has occurred in the past 2 million years. The Sundance fault runs within the boundaries of the repository for 2,460 feet, but has not moved in more than 2 million years.

DOE research indicates that an earthquake of magnitude 6.0 or higher would not crush or break open buried containers filled with nuclear waste. Volcanoes

Yucca Mountain is composed of volcanic ash, but it is not a volcano itself. However, an eruption near the site could affect the repository. The report found:

Volcanic activity at or near Yucca Mountain is considered highly unlikely. The last known eruption occurred about 80,000 years ago, producing an ash cloud up to six miles high. The chance of a volcanic eruption in the first 10,000 years of a Yucca Mountain repository is 1 in 6,250, scientists believe. Volcanic ash contaminated with radiation could fall 12 miles away, depending on wind direction.

Even though Yucca Mountain is not a volcano, consultants for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission are studying the chances of an eruption through the repository. While these scientists agree with the DOE that the chance for an eruption is small, they say such an eruption, if it occurred within 1,000 years of the repository's closure, would be a catastrophe. Nuclear criticality

One other danger being studied is the possibility that the nuclear elements would react with each other, creating a chain reaction and contaminating both the air and water. The report found:

Certain types of uranium and plutonium that would be buried in Yucca Mountain could create a criticality, or a chain reaction. Water inside the mountain could enhance the process if nuclear wastes spilled out of a container and piled up inside a storage tunnel.

The chance that nuclear waste could go critical inside Yucca Mountain is one chance in 10,000 over 10,000 years. Those chances would increase dramatically if a volcano erupted through the repository.

---

New burial design may be more dangerous

May 07, 2001
By Mary Manning <manning@lasvegassun.com>
LAS VEGAS SUN
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/text/2001/may/07/511789901.html

Workers burying waste in a proposed repository at Yucca Mountain could be exposed to more radiation if a "cooler" design is used, a supplement to last year's draft environmental impact statement says.

The 86-page supplement, released Friday with a 1,000-page scientific report on the project, adds a possible design that would place the canisters of spent nuclear fuel farther apart -- one that scientists say would keep the mountain's rock cooler over time.

That design would change calculations of how much radiation workers might be exposed to as they bury the waste over the 60 years it should take to build and fill the repository, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Workers could be exposed to a fraction of a higher radiation dose under the cooler design, the supplemental report says.

The current repository design allows the rock temperature to exceed the boiling point and result in two worker deaths. A cooler, more spacious repository would keep the temperature below boiling but result in 2.8 worker deaths, the Energy Department calculated.

The greater danger to workers comes from longer exposure to the waste as they build and monitor more tunnels. Robots would handle the waste containers, the report says.

DOE scientists have calculated that no radiation is expected to escape into the environment for up to 10,000 years, the supplement says. That conclusion reflects the original draft environmental impact statement.

The supplemental report also allows for a larger waste-handling area on the surface of the mountain to prepare for burial of four types of nuclear waste arriving from commercial reactors and defense sites.

The types include commercial spent nuclear fuel -- up to 70,000 tons, most of it uranium metal pellets -- and another 7,000 tons of military wastes such as Navy reactors, liquid wastes transformed into glass blocks and weapons wastes.

The DOE has already received 11,000 public comments on its original draft environmental impact statement, released last August. Comments on the supplement may be submitted at a public hearing, in writing, by fax or via the Internet by June 25:

Public meetings. The DOE will provide information to the public about its "Supplement to the Draft Environmental Impact Statement" from 5 to 9 p.m. at each hearing. May 31 -- 6 to 9 p.m., Longstreet Inn & Casino, Amargosa Valley.

June 5 -- 6 to 9 p.m., Suncoast Hotel & Casino, 9090 Alta Drive.

June 7 -- 6 to 9 p.m., Bob Ruud Community Center, Pahrump.

Internet. Written comments or requests for copies of the documents may also be submitted electronically at the DOE's Yucca Mountain Project website: ymp.gov. Go to "Environmental Impact Statement."

Fax: (800) 967-0739

Mail: Dr. Jane Summerson, EIS Document Manager, M/S 010, U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, Yucca Mountain Site Characterization Office, P.O. Box 30307, North Las Vegas, NV 89036-0307.

----

DOE delays seeking Yucca license:
Budget shortfall may hinder 2010 opening of site

May 07, 2001
By Mary Manning <manning@lasvegassun.com>
LAS VEGAS SUN
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/text/2001/may/07/511790003.html

Lack of funding has pushed back the Energy Department's application for a license to open a high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain by a year and could threaten the proposed project's 2010 opening, a DOE official says.

The Energy Department needs $1 billion a year for the next seven years to get the project through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's rigorous licensing procedure, according to Victor Trebules, the DOE's Office of Project Control.

The DOE, which would build and operate the repository if it is approved, is $98 million short, and as a result, the agency has postponed its plan to file its license request from 2002 to 2003, Trebules said Friday.

Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is the only site being studied to store 77,000 tons of commercial nuclear reactor fuel and defense waste.

"To maintain the 2010 opening, more money is necessary from Congress each year," Trebules told state and local government officials after the DOE released four reports updating scientific information about Yucca Mountain.

This year the DOE received $390 million for scientific studies after requesting $430 million. In 2000 Congress approved $351 million compared to a $409 million request.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., was behind the move to freeze the Yucca Mountain budget for this year, as well as yanking money used to advertise public tours of the project.

Reid, ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, plans to continue trimming DOE funding for Yucca Mountain, committee spokesman David Cherry said.

The Senate Energy and Water Subcommittee meets on Thursday, and Reid plans to question the DOE on the need to increase its budget, Cherry said.

Reid said he will examine the DOE's funding request carefully.

"I'm going to see what I can do," the senator said.

While studies inside the 5-mile-long exploratory tunnel continue, the DOE had planned to spend the extra money for designing a repository with enough detail to satisfy the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Trebules said.

Instead, the DOE funneled money to support ongoing scientific work, and the license request was put on hold, he said.

In addition, more than $11 billion has been added to cost estimates for the repository, bringing the total to $58 billion, Trebules said. The bulk of the increase is $7 billion to install titanium shields to protect buried containers from water moving through the mountain.

Other expenses include $2.7 billion for steel reinforcements to protect machinery and workers inside the repository, $1 billion for regulatory hurdles and management and $1 billion to expand surface facilities, including an extra pool for storing spent reactor fuel until it is prepared for burial.

"What is clear from these new reports is that the overall cost of this proposed repository has ballooned to more than $50 billion and will likely continue to climb as design work continues," Reid said in a statement Friday.

Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said that the rising cost for Yucca Mountain "shows this project is out of control. Yucca Mountain is not the answer to our nation's nuclear waste problem."

In addition, Reid, the assistant Democratic leader, noted no limit for radiation releases from a repository has been set and no specific transportation routes have been proposed.

None of the DOE's reports released Friday addresses effects from transporting the nuclear wastes or what would happen if there were an accident before trucks or trains reached the site. There is no rail line to either the Nevada Test Site or the mountain.

Meanwhile Gov. Kenny Guinn vowed not to let the Legislature remove his $5 million request for state funds to fight the repository on legal and public levels. The bulk of the money would be used to hire the best attorneys specializing in nuclear matters, Guinn said late Friday.

Some of the money would be used to support a nationwide information campaign to explain the dangers of shipping high-level nuclear waste across 43 states.

"We're going to fight back," Guinn said. "We are going to put up the best fight you've ever seen."

With the thousands of pages of documents from the DOE, state officials will analyze the scientific evidence for indications that building a repository will harm the state, the governor said.

"If they take any action that substantially causes harm, the state will be prepared," Guinn said, adding Nevada plans to go to court.

Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa said the DOE ignored earthquake hazards and water in the mountain, forming the basis for the state to take legal action.

"As Nevada's chief legal officer, let me reiterate that this office is committed for the long haul and is preparing to challenge the Yucca Mountain Project with all the resources at our disposal," Del Papa said.

-------- us nuc politics

Dems Criticize Bolton Nomination

New York Times
May 7, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Arms-Control-Bolton.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- John R. Bolton's nomination as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security came under fire Monday from Democrats.

``If ever there was a case of a fox in a chicken coop, it is Mr. Bolton's nomination to be undersecretary of state for arms control,'' said Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D. ``He is the wrong person in the wrong place.''

Republicans were deferring their comments until shortly before the vote, scheduled for Tuesday morning.

Bolton appeared likely to win confirmation despite the criticism from Democrats. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee sent the nomination to the floor on a 10-8 vote, with one Democrat, Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, voting for him. A straight party-line vote in the 50-50 Senate is all it would take, given the tiebreaker vote wielded by Vice President Dick Cheney.

Dorgan said he didn't know Bolton personally, but his views on arms control and other issues he would be handling at the State Department concerned him.

At the same time, Dorgan acknowledged that Bolton's positions appeared to be in sync with those of the Bush administration.

``The expressions he's made about this subject in recent years suggests that he doesn't care a whit about arms control,'' said Dorgan. ``He seems to believe, as this administration does, that arms reductions are not part of the strategy that makes much sense for this country, that treaties, arms control talks, somehow represent a display of weakness, apparently.''

Much of the criticism of Bolton expressed by Dorgan and Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., turned into criticism of Bush's plan to build a national missile defense.

Dorgan said the Bush plan was to ``build a national missile defense system, and if that ignites a new arms race and we see Russia and China building new offensive weapons, so be it, it doesn't matter at all. That is, in my judgment, a pretty thoughtless approach. It does matter.''

--------

When She Talks Arms, Washington and Moscow Listen

New York Times
May 7, 2001
By PHILIP SHENON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/07/politics/07LIVE.html

WASHINGTON - ANYONE in the Bush White House tempted to think that there are issues more important than nuclear cooperation with Russia might want to talk with Rose Gottemoeller about those 70-pound buckets of plutonium.

Ms. Gottemoeller, an expert on the Russian nuclear arsenal, remembered visiting a plutonium storage center in Russia a few years ago, when she was working in the Clinton administration. Inside, she said, she was startled to discover that plutonium was being stored in simple metal buckets.

"Basically they have buckets on the floor with handles on them, and you could walk in and pick them up and carry them out," she said. "Seventy, 75 pounds. They handed one of the buckets to me and said, 'Here, feel it, it's nice and warm.' " And to her astonishment, she remembered, the storage center was largely unprotected from intruders: "There was no perimeter fence. It was chilling."

She offered the anecdote in explaining why Russian nuclear weapons and the facilities to build them still pose such a threat, and why a Democratic Party loyalist has offered herself up as a channel between the Bush administration and Russia at a time when relations between Washington and Moscow have chilled.

Officials in each country have seemed eager to take advantage of her offer, especially as President Bush prepares to sweep away almost three decades of traditional arms control doctrine and begin construction of an extensive antimissile defense shield.

Although Ms. Gottemoeller (pronounced GOTTA-muller) is a lifelong Democrat who had hoped to return to the White House in a Gore presidency, she is widely respected by Republicans. And after returning from a trip last month to Moscow, where she met with senior Russian military officials and diplomats, she found a receptive audience among White House, State Department and Pentagon officials who wanted to know what the Russians were thinking.

"It's dangerous to think about me as a participant in the policy process, because I'm not," she told a visitor to her office at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which she joined last fall after leaving an Energy Department post overseeing nuclear nonproliferation. "I'm a channel that the two sides can choose to use or not use." said Ms. Gottemoeller, 48.

The Russians, she says, are alarmed by the Bush administration's threat to scrap the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, which bans national missile defense systems and which has been a cornerstone of American and Russian defense planning.

They are concerned not so much about that one treaty, she said, as about the possibility that Washington might dismantle the larger framework of arms control agreements that have restricted the number and type of weapons that the two sides can deploy.

"When I've talked to the Russian generals, they're quite confident that they would have sufficient weapons to overcome any defensive system we would build, but they are concerned about an unpredictable meltdown in the overall strategic situation," Ms. Gottemoeller said.

She says she, too, is critical of the American threat to pull out of the ABM treaty. "We've got a long way to go before - in technical terms - we know what we want to do on missile defense, so there's no need to rush into this."

But at the same time, she - and, she suspected, the Russians - found something to like in Mr. Bush's speech last week announcing his plans, especially in his commitment to unilateral cuts in the American arsenal. "I did welcome the notion that it's time to get beyond the cold war," she said.

REARED in Columbus, Ohio, Ms. Gottemoeller was the fifth of sixth children born to an insurance executive father and a mother who stayed home to keep order in what Ms. Gottemoeller described as her "big German Catholic family."

She has been working for the government on Russian technology issues since she was a teenager. When she was a high school senior, her fluency in Russian landed her a part-time job with a government research institute sifting through Soviet scientific journals, looking for anything that might be of interest to the Pentagon.

"I was a language nut," she said. "I was one of those Sputnik babies from the 1960's. In those days, a lot of obscure high schools offered Russian because of Sputnik and the fear that somehow Russia was going to overtake us."

After graduating in Russian from Georgetown University, she went to work at the Commerce Department, where an assignment to a fisheries agency introduced her to her future husband, Raymond Arnaudo. "We were an office romance," she said. "I was in the office in charge of the Soviet fishing fleet. He was in the office in charge of the Western European fishing fleet." The couple - her husband is now a career State Department official - have two teenage sons.

Ms. Gottemoeller joined the Rand Corporation as a defense analyst in 1979, with a specialty in the Soviet military, and remained there until she joined the Clinton administration in 1993. Her first job there was in the National Security Council, where she helped negotiate agreements that led to the removal of the last nuclear weapons stored in the non-Russian republics of the former Soviet Union.

She was admired by others in the Clinton White House for her unflappability, and for her willingness to allow others to take credit for the administration's accomplishments. "I have two slogans," she said. "One, keep your eyes on the prize and don't worry about the nonsense. And two, that you'll be amazed how much you can get done in this town if you don't take the credit."

-------- us nuc power

US nuclear power industry showing new signs of life

USA: May 7, 2001
Story by Richard Cowan
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10730&newsDate=7-May-2001

WASHINGTON - With tight electricity supplies predicted this summer in California, New York and other high-demand states, politicians and federal regulators are taking another look at the nuclear power industry that for decades has been synonymous with "Three Mile Island" and "Chernobyl."

The industry is expected to get a boost this month, when President George W. Bush unveils a national energy strategy that is certain to include nuclear power in a menu for expanding domestic energy production.

The Bush administration has said that the nation's growing thirst for electricity means more than 1,300 new power plants will have to built over the next 20 years to meet demand.

"We know there is great interest in the (nuclear) industry. We're in a time of enormous change right now," Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Richard Meserve told Reuters after testifying Thursday to Congress on the state of the nuclear power industry.

"We're trying to gear up in anticipation" of what could be a flurry of requests for added nuclear capacity, Meserve said. The agency's role is not to promote nuclear energy, but merely to ensure safe operations, he added.

Meserve said he could not predict how many construction applications might fall into the NRC's lap in coming months, or whether nuclear power's 20 percent hold on overall electricity production in the United States might grow appreciably.

What is clear, however, is that powerful interests in Congress are hoping the long-dormant nuclear power industry will blossom after 25 years during which no permit has been issued for building a new nuclear power plant.

Senate Energy Committee Chairman Frank Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska, opened Thursday's hearing by observing, "Four or five years ago, who would have thought we would hear talk of buying and selling (nuclear) plants, and, yes, even building new plants. Today this discussion is happening."

INTERNAL PROBLEMS, OUTSIDE OPPOSITION

Even proponents of nuclear power acknowledge that after decades of trying, nobody has solved a key problem: What to do with radioactive waste from the 103 plants now in operation.

Meserve told senators the lack of a national disposal site will mean a large increase this decade in storage at individual power plants.

That makes people living near the plants nervous and gives nuclear power critics one more argument that the industry cannot swear wall-to-wall safety of its operations.

"The bottom line is, nuclear power is unacceptable, unsafe and unreliable," said Anna Aurilio, legislative director for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.

In an interview, Aurilio criticized the NRC for lax enforcement and oversight of existing nuclear plants and for promoting weaker radiation standards than those sought by the Environmental Protection Agency.

She argues that without government subsidies, the nuclear power industry "would not exist today."

Critics also point to the 1979 accident at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island plant, where the failure of the plant's water cooling system led to the partial melting of a reactor's uranium core. That $1 billion accident effectively halted the U.S. nuclear industry in its tracks.

In 1986, the world's worst nuclear reactor disaster occurred in Chernobyl when Russian engineers initiated an uncontrolled chain reaction in the core of the reactor, which exploded and ripped the top off the containment building.

SIGNS OF REBIRTH

Despite the criticisms from the environmental community, there are some tangible signs the U.S. nuclear power industry is trying to stage a comeback.

According to the NRC, the average capacity factor for light water reactors in the United States was 88 percent in 2000, up from 63 percent in 1989.

There also is "increasing interest," Meserve said, in license renewals to allow plants to operate beyond the original 40-year term. The NRC already has renewed licenses of two plants in Maryland and South Carolina for an extra 20 years.

And recently, the NRC has allowed several plants to increase their output.

Corbin McNeill, chairman of Exelon Corp., which operates 17 nuclear reactors that generate nearly 17,000 megawatts of electricity, told the Senate Energy Committee his company plans to add about 1,000 megawatts of new capacity over the next three years at existing nuclear plants.

Exelon also is touting a new technology, which McNeill claims will help overcome some of the major obstacles to a bigger nuclear industry.

The "pebble bed modular reactor" is a relatively small, 110-125 megawatt reactor that McNeill says is cheap to build at roughly $150 million. That compares to the $2 billion to $3 billion pricetag attached to more conventional reactors.

That, he said, would allow for easier private financing and quicker construction.

But as with everything nuclear, the new technology draws critics, who claim it might create an even more complicated nuclear waste headache and has the potential for more flaws during the manufacturing process.

--------

Nuclear Power's New Day

The New York Times
May 7, 2001
By RICHARD RHODES
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/07/opinion/07RHOD.html?searchpv=nytToday

MADISON, Conn. - Technologies are born, grow, thrive and decline, much as living organisms do. That should not be surprising. Since they derive from human knowledge, their effective application must be learned, and they compete for social and economic territory.

Nuclear power, a product of naval propulsion research, emerged in the United States in the 1950's. Its first use as a commercial energy source came about because it had obvious benefits for pollution control. A Pennsylvania utility, Duquesne Light, built the first commercial nuclear power reactor at Shippingport, Pa., in 1954. The utility had planned to build a coal-fired power plant. When the public objected to further smoke pollution around smoky Pittsburgh, Duquesne switched to nuclear power.

Public acceptance of a new technology is essential to its growth. Nuclear power, associated in the public's mind with nuclear weapons, was probably commercialized prematurely, while its complexities were still being worked out. Its environmental benefits were not fully appreciated in the early decades because air pollution was abating under government regulation in the 1960's and 1970's, and global warming had not yet emerged as the ultimate environmental challenge. When conservation slowed electricity demand after the Arab oil embargo of 1973 and 1974, utilities canceled orders for new power plants, both nuclear and coal. Almost all new plants built since then have been fueled with natural gas.

But the population of the United States is growing, adding the equivalent of one California every 10 years. Demand has caught up with supply even with significant improvements in energy efficiency and conservation, and the United States has become the world's leading greenhouse gas emitter. These factors make a renewal of nuclear power likely.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has begun carefully extending licenses for existing reactors for an additional 20 years; eventually all 104 operating United States power reactors will probably be relicensed. Since they produce no air pollution or greenhouse gases, that's good news. The nuclear industry is consolidating, focusing experience and expertise. Several reactors that have been shut down will probably be restored to operation. Several others that were left unfinished when demand slowed will probably be completed. Two or three new advanced light- water reactors, designs the N.R.C. has already pre-licensed, will probably be built at sites that already have construction permits. One company, Exelon, is considering seeking licensing of a simpler reactor, designed so that it cannot melt down, that uses a bed of billiard-ball-sized "pebbles" of compacted uranium oxide and graphite as its fuel and helium as its coolant and working fluid, passing the fission-heated helium directly into a turbine to generate electricity even more cheaply than burning natural gas. If the pebble-bed modular reactor wins approval from the N.R.C., other utilities may decide to use this technology as well.

Americans are beginning to understand one of the unique benefits of nuclear technology. A majority now say they approve of nuclear power, a shift that appears to indicate awareness that nuclear power does not produce greenhouse gases that lead to global warming. There is less evidence of public understanding of radiation and nuclear waste. Antinuclear activism began in the 1960's with concerns about the disposal of nuclear waste, and disposal continues to be the nuclear industry's Number 1 public-relations problem.

The disposal debate is likely to move to center stage later this year, when the scientists and engineers evaluating Yucca Mountain, north of Las Vegas, as a possible permanent waste repository expect to deliver their final report.

All energy technologies produce waste. Burning fossil fuels - even relatively clean fuel like natural gas - generates waste that cannot be contained within the power plant, as nuclear waste is, but must be released into the environment as air pollution and toxic waste. In the case of coal, burning releases ash that is mildly radioactive, because radioactive uranium and thorium are ubiquitous in the earth's crust, including coal seams. Even renewable technologies like wind power and solar photovoltaics produce waste: manufacturing the materials for the multitude of collectors necessary to gather up such diffuse sources as wind and sunlight requires burning fossil fuels. Thus wind or solar power systems release far more greenhouse gases across their life cycles than does a nuclear system of equivalent output.

The great advantage of nuclear power is its ability to wrest enormous energy from a small volume of fuel. One metric ton of nuclear fuel produces energy equivalent to two million to three million tons of fossil fuel. Waste volumes are comparably scaled: fossil fuel systems generate hundreds of thousands of metric tons of gaseous, particulate and solid wastes, but nuclear systems produce less than 1,000 metric tons of high- and low-level waste per plant per year. The high-level waste is intensely radioactive at first, but its small volume means it can be and is effectively isolated and contained. When a nuclear plant is dismantled (few have been so far), the several hundred thousand tons of concrete, which is mildly radioactive, is buried in the same sort of commercial waste site used for radioactive medical and industrial wastes.

Spent nuclear fuel loses radioactivity steadily; after 500 years it is no more radioactive than high-grade uranium ore. The risk of radioactive waste's seeping past multiple barriers would be small compared to health risks posed by air pollution from burning fossil fuels, which the World Health Organization estimates causes three million deaths a year, with 15,000 deaths annually in the United States from coal particulates alone. Substituting small, sequestered volumes of nuclear waste for vast, dispersed volumes of toxic wastes from fossil fuels could provide an enormous improvement in public health.

The other risk that nuclear power supposedly raises is nuclear proliferation. In fact, no nation has developed nuclear weapons using plutonium from spent power reactor fuel. It's much easier to make weapons from plutonium bred specifically for that purpose. Inspection and proper accounting and control of nuclear materials are the answer to proliferation, not limits to nuclear power.

France once burned coal; that nation's electricity is now 80 percent nuclear, with five times less air pollution and with carbon dioxide emissions 10 times lower than Germany's and 13 times lower than Denmark's. At a conference recently in Japan (another nuclear leader, with 36 percent nuclear electricity), French nuclear industry executive Anne Lanvergeon proposed improving the debate about nuclear power by creating an authoritative world database that would assess the advantages and disadvantages of each type of energy in terms of use of resources and economic, environmental and health impact. Measured against other energy sources, nuclear power would emerge at the top of such a list.

Energy needs in the United States will grow in the coming decades, even with improved efficiency and more strenuous conservation. Nuclear energy needs to be a major component of our energy supply if we hope both to reduce air pollution and limit global warming.

Richard Rhodes is the author of "Nuclear Renewal" and "The Making of the Atomic Bomb."

-------- MILITARY

-------- arms sales

Israelis seize ship loaded with weapons

THE WASHINGTON TIMES
May 8, 2001
By Dan Ephron
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010508-89448552.htm

JERUSALEM -- In a sign that Palestinians are trying to raise the stakes in their 7-month-old battle with Israel, the Jewish state intercepted a ship carrying Katyusha rockets and other heavy weapons from Lebanon to the Gaza Strip yesterday.

Israel announced the seizure hours after its troops killed a 4-month-old baby in Gaza in a barrage of retaliatory fire for mortar attacks started by Palestinians.

Both incidents stoked an already blazing conflict in the Middle East, virtually guaranteeing that an international report with a blueprint for halting the violence would go unheeded.

Israel said its navy had been tracking the vessel since Saturday after a reconnaissance aircraft spotted it leaving northern Lebanon. Israeli ships cut it off in the Mediterraneanīs international waters.

Navy commander Yadidyah Yaari told reporters in a Haifa news conference late yesterday that the ship was brimming with arms, including mortar bombs, Strela anti-aircraft missiles, shoulder-fired anti-tank grenades, land mines and dozens of Katyusha rockets and launchers.

He said a preliminary investigation pointed to a Palestinian group in Lebanon backed by Syria and headed by Ahmed Jibril -- the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) -- as organizer of the shipment.

Mr. Yaari said the arms would have "changed the situation in the balance of powers in our battle with the Palestinians." While Israeli leaders said the shipment was intended for Yasser Arafatīs Palestinian Authority, officials in Gaza denied involvement and pointed out that the PFLP-GC did not belong to Mr. Arafatīs Palestine Liberation Organization.

"We are not responsible for his actions and anyway, Jibril is hostile and a rival to the Palestinian Authority and the PLO," said Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo.

Palestinians have been waging a guerrilla campaign against Israelis in the West Bank and Gaza using primarily automatic weapons and homemade mortar bombs that have a range of about a mile.

More than 400 Palestinians and 80 Israelis have been killed in the fighting.

The Katyusha rockets, which guerrilla groups occasionally fire at Israel from Lebanon, can hit targets up to five miles away and would have brought several Israeli towns near the Gaza Strip into firing range.

Israel has long accused the Palestinian Authority of arranging illegal weapons shipments by sea and through tunnels linking Gaza with Egypt.

Under the 1993 Oslo agreement, Mr. Arafatīs police force is allowed to have a fixed number of automatic rifles but not heavier weapons.

Mr. Yaari said the shipīs crew appeared to be professional smugglers. Their plan was to pack the weapons in barrels and drop them in the sea for Palestinians to pick up.

The PFLP-GC representative in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Hussam Arafat, said it was possible the ship belonged to his group.

"There is a decision by the group to continue to support the steadfastness of our people through providing them with all kinds of fighting material and weapons until Israel withdraws from areas occupied in 1967," Mr. Arafat said.

Earlier yesterday, Israeli troops stationed in Gaza unleashed a torrent of automatic fire at the Khan Yunis refugee camp after mortars fired by Palestinians slammed into Jewish settlements in the Strip.

----

Israel: Boat With Weapons Captured

New York Times
May 7, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Israel-Captured-Weapons.html

JERUSALEM (AP) -- The Israeli navy has seized a fishing boat packed with rockets, mortars, missiles and grenades headed for the Palestinian Authority in the Gaza Strip, the navy commander announced Monday.

The Palestinian Authority denied any connection with the arms shipment.

With the huge array of weapons spread out on a dock at the Israeli port of Haifa, Rear Adm. Yedidia Yaari said the weapons were ``capable of changing the balance of forces in our current fighting with the Palestinians.''

The fishing boat set out from Lebanon on Saturday with a cargo of Katyusha rockets, SA-7 anti-aircraft missiles, a variety of mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and land mines, Yaari said.

Yaari said the Lebanese smugglers on the boat were spotted and stopped Saturday by an Israeli naval vessel during a routine patrol.

The weapons were packed in barrels, which were to be left in the Mediterranean Sea at an agreed upon point, and afterward a second boat was to pick them up and deliver them to the Palestinian Authority in Gaza, the admiral said.

Under interim agreements between the Israelis and Palestinians, the Palestinian Authority is forbidden to have weapons such as rockets and missiles.

The Palestinians are permitted to have weapons such as automatic rifles, which have been used in many of the attacks against Israeli targets.

Palestinian militants have also planted bombs, and in recent weeks, have fired mortars at Israeli targets inside and near the Gaza Strip.

The Katyusha rockets on the boat have a much longer range than the 82 millimeter mortars which the Palestinians have been using against Israeli targets, and would enable the Palestinians in Gaza to threaten Israeli cities such as Ashkelon, officials said.

Yaari said he believed the smuggling operation was undertaken by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, a radical Palestinian group based in Damascus, Syria, and led by Ahmed Jabril.

The Palestinian Authority had nothing to do with the arms shipment, its official News Agency WAFA said in a news release.

``The Palestinian leadership consider this Israeli accusation as an attempt to use it as a cover for the ... killing of the four month-old baby,'' the communique said, in a reference to a Palestinian child killed in the fighting Monday.

Shortly before Yaari presented the weapons, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told parliament that the Palestinian Authority was attempting to smuggle weapons.

Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer on Monday warned that the Palestinians would very soon be using more deadly weapons than the mortars.

``I think that in the next few days, perhaps the next few hours, you will be faced with a reality which will be simply difficult to believe -- what it is that we are confronting,'' he told Israeli army radio. ``I think that quite soon we will be passing beyond the stage of the mortar bombs.''

-------- balkans

Western Officials in Bosnia Town Rescued

New York Times
May 7, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-bosnia-.html

BANJA LUKA, Bosnia (Reuters) - Bosnian Serb police evacuated nearly 300 people including top Western diplomats to safety Monday after they were trapped in a building by rioting Serb nationalists, U.N. officials said.

``This is a sad day for the Serb republic,'' Jacques Klein, head of the U.N. mission in post-war Bosnia who was among the stranded officials, told Reuters by telephone. ``What is the bravery of Serb men...to stone old Muslim women?''

Klein and other officials were trapped by Serb protesters who threw teargas grenades, stones and eggs at Muslim refugees and officials to prevent them inaugurating the reconstruction of a renowned medieval mosque destroyed in Bosnia's 1992-95 war.

A physician in a city hospital said 14 civilians of all communal backgrounds were admitted with injuries. Five buses that brought Muslims to the ceremony were set ablaze and more stoned and damaged.

More than 2,000 Serbs remained in front of the Islamic community building in the northern city of Banja Luka by the afternoon, but tensions appeared to have eased.

``The evacuation of all people has been successfully completed,'' U.N. spokesman Douglas Coffman told Reuters.

U.S. Ambassador Thomas Miller, who was also in Banja Luka on Monday but not among the trapped diplomats, condemned the riots and called on Bosnian Serb officials to put an end to lawlessness and arrest the perpetrators.

``The planned ceremony, which should have been a symbol of peace and reconciliation, has been destroyed by actions of a violent and unruly crowd. Such acts cannot and must not go unpunished,'' Miller said in a statement.

Mustafa Efendi Ceric, the top Islamic cleric in Bosnia, said it was obvious the protests were organized in advance.

``Those who organized today's incident are the same ones who destroyed Ferhadija mosque (in 1993),'' Ceric told a news conference in Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital.

The 16th-century mosque was blown up during a campaign by Serbs to erase symbols of Muslim culture and religion. The Serbs went to war and overran about two-thirds of Bosnia after Muslims and Croats voted for independence from Yugoslavia.

Banja Luka is the heartland of the Bosnian Serb republic, territory from which most Muslim and Croat residents were expelled in violent wartime ethnic cleansing campaigns.

ETHNIC TENSION REMAINS HIGH

A 1995 peace treaty divided Bosnia into highly autonomous Muslim-Croat and Serb entities, but many locals in the Serb republic still fiercely oppose the return of non-Serbs.

A U.N. spokesman said three Serb policemen were slightly injured in the riot which started on Klein's arrival with protesters breaking through police lines, forcing invited guests to take refuge in the building.

Wolfgang Petritsch, the powerful international peace overseer in post-war Bosnia, said he was appalled at the outbreak of violence and labelled it a terrorist attack.

``I am shocked that the Republika Srpska still appears to be a place with no rule of law, no civilized behavior and no religious freedom,'' Petritsch said. ``I hold the authorities responsible for this frightening state of affairs.''

The Muslim representative of Bosnia's inter-ethnic presidency called an urgent presidency meeting to discuss the recent violence, B-H Press agency reported.

The riot by Christian Orthodox Serbs was the second against rebuilding mosques in as many days and underscored the difficulties in restoring multi-ethnic character to Bosnia.

Saturday, Bosnian Serb extremists in the southern town of Trebinje attacked international peace officials, scuttling a similar ceremony for a mosque destroyed during the war.

Bosnia's NATO-led peacekeeping force (SFOR) said stopping rioting was not its job. ``This remains a police issue,'' SFOR spokesman Andrew Coxhead said, but added that SFOR had a significant presence in the area and would react if needed.

A Reuters journalist at the site saw up to 30 SFOR armored personal carriers and four British tanks stationed some 150-200 yards from the building.

British photographer Paul Lowe, in the area since the early hours Monday, told Reuters it had been clear trouble was brewing as local Serbs were drinking heavily in nearby bars.

--------

Macedonia on verge of declaring war

May 7, 2001
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By John Phillips
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010507-7373016.htm

RECICA, Macedonia -- Macedonia officials yesterday debated declaring an official "state of war," granting special powers to military and civilian leaders in response to renewed attacks by rebels believed to have crossed into the country from Kosovo.

Meanwhile, artillery fire from government forces pounded hillside villages where Red Cross officials said civilians were being pressured to remain as human shields by ethnic Albanian guerrillas.

Workers with the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) managed to evacuate 13 civilians from the northeastern villages of Slupcane and Vaksince during a break in firing by besieging Macedonian forces yesterday. But hundreds of other civilians were believed to be trapped in basements and shelters there and in other villages in the province of Kumanovo that were occupied last week by Albanian guerrillas of the National Liberation Army.

Officially only two civilians have been killed in the latest onslaught, but independent Macedonian media say at least seven civilians and several guerrillas have been killed and that three Macedonian soldiers were wounded in a mine explosion.

Macedonian television on Saturday claimed that the fighters were parading civilians on tractor-trailers during the shelling to force the army to hold its fire. There was no confirmation of the report, but the fact it was aired was indicative of the growing outrage among Macedonian Slavs as the countryīs politicians struggle to avoid the slide into full-scale civil war.

A short time after a deadline for civilians to leave passed at midday yesterday, the Macedonian gunners resumed their deadly barrage of the rebel-held areas using 105 mm guns, mortars and heavy machine guns.

Then Mil-124 Hind helicopter gunships clattered over the surrounding fields of wheat and peppers, firing flares in the air to ward off guerrilla missiles before sending 30 mm rockets streaking into houses and forests.

From the village of Recica, reporters and civilians sheltered under umbrellas in unseasonable rain watched the columns of smoke and flames billow from Vaksince, about two miles away.

Macedonian forces lack sufficient experienced infantry troops to capture the villages without inflicting heavy civilian casualties and taking unacceptably high losses, so the fighting could be protracted for several days, Western diplomats said.

On Saturday a team of grizzled police special security troops carrying AK-47 submachine guns took up crouched firing positions alongside journalists and television camera crews watching the destruction of Vaksince from the main Skopje-to-Belgrade railway line on the outskirts of the village behind Macedonian tanks and artillery.

They regaled reporters with a rousing rendition of a regimental song and peered at guerrilla positions through binoculars and telescopes but showed no intention of engaging the NLA fighters directly.

The shelling yesterday was the heaviest so far.

"ICRC is increasingly worried about the precarious situation of hundreds of civilians who remain in these villages," the organization said in a statement.

"We believe people are staying in the villages for a mixture of reasons," said ICRC spokeswoman Annick Bouvier. "Some want to remain to be near relatives. A form of intimidation is [also] one of the reasons."

On Friday, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe also said the guerrillas, many of whom are former members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, were preventing civilians from leaving.

Macedonian state television accuses the fighters of using the people as "human shields." The practice is in strict contravention of the Geneva Convention.

Macedonian television also claimed Saturday that civilians were being forced to pay bribes to the NLA to be allowed to leave. However, an Albanian who left Slupcane on Friday, Nexhat Osmani, said Albanians also were fearful of evacuating because they do not trust the Macedonian police.

"My house was hit by shells, but there were no terrorists inside. The police around the villages are not the ones we know -- they come from outside. People fear they may be arrested as suspects if they leave."

European Union foreign ministers urged Macedonia yesterday not to declare a state of war in response to the attacks by ethnic Albanian rebels and repeated an offer of future EU membership as a reward for stability.

Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski said on Saturday after meeting President Boris Trajkovski and top security officials that consultations would begin on whether to declare a state of war.

"We have discussed this issue very seriously but first we have to consult other political parties before taking a decision," Mr. Georgievski said.

Mr. Georgievski is also acting defense minister and leader of the main Slavic party in the governing coalition.

Asked when such a decision could be taken, the prime minister said: "There is no deadline, it could be Tuesday or Wednesday."

The declaration of a state of war, which requires the approval of a two-thirds parliamentary majority, gives wider rights to the security forces, allows the government to pass decisions without waiting for parliament to turn them into laws and gives the president wider powers to hire and fire top officials, including ministers.

"We are thinking about this not because the army and the police are not able to withstand the attacks, but to give them more room for maneuver," Mr. Georgievski said.

----

Macedonia Again Shells Albanians in Hills

New York Times
May 7, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/07/world/07MACE.html

SKOPJE, Macedonia, May 6 - Macedonian troops attacked ethnic Albanians with heavy artillery today, even as the European Union's security director, Javier Solana, arrived here to support the government but to try to talk it out of declaring war against the Albanians, whom the government sees as rebels.

The government shelled two villages, Vaksince and Slupcane, where Albanian fighters were thought to be massed, 25 miles from Skopje, the capital.

Artillery explosions could be heard in the distance when Mr. Solana landed at Skopje airport this evening, just as they were when he arrived six weeks ago on a previous crisis mission.

Macedonian political leaders managed to convene talks on Saturday on the rights and the role of the ethnic Albanians, who make up a third of the population, thus resuming a dialogue suspended after 10 soldiers and policemen were killed in ambushes in the last week, setting off anti- Albanian riots.

Government shelling of guerrilla positions in the northeast has so far failed to dislodge them, though some may have retreated.

The fighting has revived fears of a widening conflict that major powers hoped had been stifled last month when a government offensive drove back guerrilla forces from hills above Tetovo, in the northwest.

But detonations were also reported today from Tetovo, apparently coming from mountain villages close to the Kosovo border.

An Interior Ministry official said no security forces had opened fire there and accused guerrillas of trying to provoke the army. The government has been saying since Saturday night that it expected new guerrilla action in the Tetovo area.

A team of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which has been able to deliver aid to the two villages under government fire near Skopje, expressed serious concern over the condition of "hundreds of civilians" hiding in the basements and described their situation as precarious.

The government said late Saturday that it would start consultations on whether to declare a state of war, which would give wide-ranging powers to the security forces and the president. The government said Parliament could make a decision on Tuesday.

"Macedonia is a sovereign state and we will decide ourselves if and when we will declare a state of war," a government spokesman, Antonio Milosovski, said at a news conference. "But we will bear in mind suggestions made by Western countries."

European Union foreign ministers meeting in Sweden said they were opposed to such a move. "Rather than talk about a state of war, we should discuss a state of peace," Mr. Solana said before coming here.

Landing at Skopje, he repeated that "we would like as much as possible that the country continues in peace" but acknowledged it was "going through a difficult moment." This would be overcome, with European support, he said.

Mr. Solana went immediately into talks with Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski and President Boris Trajkovski. The NATO secretary general, Lord Robertson, was expected to join them on Monday.

He and Mr. Solana are also to meet leaders of the main political parties.

Speaking for the Europeans, the Swedish foreign minister, Anna Lindh, said, "We strongly condemn the terrorist acts of the Albanian extremists," and added, "We also urged the Macedonian government not to fall into the trap of provocations, which is what they are."

-------- drug war

U.S. Loses Seat on U.N. Committee

New York Times
May 7, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-UN-US-Drugs.html

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- In another embarrassing blow, the United States lost its seat on an international drug monitoring body on the same day it was voted off the U.N. Human Rights Commission, U.S. officials confirmed Monday.

The United States had campaigned for a third term for American representative Herbert Okun, who has served as vice president on the International Narcotics Control Board. But he was voted off Thursday in the same secret-ballot procedure and by the same countries that cost the United States its seat on the human rights commission.

``That, we find, very regrettable,'' U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in Washington on Monday. He said the United States would continue its ``strong support'' for the U.N. anti-drug programs.

The 13-member International Narcotics Control Board monitors compliance with U.N. drug conventions on substance abuse and illegal trafficking.

Boucher would not speculate as to why Okun lost re-election but, coupled with the loss of the human rights seat, he said ``there's something happening out there.''

``Clearly, I think it's fair to speculate there may be issues related to how we handled ourselves, to how we position,'' he said.

Former U.S. drug policy director Barry McCaffrey said American's absence would be felt more by other countries than by the United States.

``It's a great loss to the international community to not have us in a leadership position. We play a dominant role in the research and development of drug treatment programs in the world,'' said McCaffrey, who used to head the Office of National Drug Control Policy in Washington.

``The assistance that we are able to provide the United Nations, the Europeans and former Soviet Union states could be adversely affected,'' McCaffrey told AP.

The 54-member U.N. Economic and Social Council, the main U.N. body responsible for economic and social issues, cast secret ballots Thursday that led to the U.S. ouster from the narcotics board and the Human Rights Commission. The human rights vote spurred calls by some U.S. lawmakers to withhold $582 million in back dues for the United Nations and $67 million to rejoin UNESCO 17 years after the United States left over concerns about political polarization.

``We've put time and energy and money and leadership into these international (drug) programs,'' McCaffrey said, adding that another strike at the United States could ``add to the sentiment in Congress that would say, `Why should we support regional or multinational U.N. operations?' ''

The 70-year-old Okun served as deputy U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 1985 to 1989 and has been on the narcotics board since 1997.

In the corridors at the United Nations, diplomats and U.N. officials said after the human rights defeat that the United States didn't lobby hard enough. The absence of a U.S. ambassador to the United Nations for nearly four months has exacerbated the problem, and many nations -- including the United States' European allies -- are angry at the Bush administration's decision to pull out of an agreement to reduce global warming and to move ahead with a new missile defense system.

The drug control board deals with aspects of legal and illegal drug control, including monitoring government controls over chemicals used in the illicit manufacture of drugs.

It also assists in preventing diversion of those chemicals into illicit traffic and identifies weaknesses in drug control systems.

--------

The Underground Military

William M. Arkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Monday, May 7, 2001; 12:00 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A44024-2001May4?language=printer

The military facility in Iquitos, Peru is not a U.S. airbase, nor does it appear in any list of U.S. military facilities. The Americans providing real-time tracking information to the Peruvian air force are not government or military personnel.

So, who are the gaggle of Iquitos "contractors" employed by a company named Aviation Development Corporation, a company which is located on Maxwell Air Force base in Montgomery, Alabama, but is not a part of the U.S. Air Force? Who are the contractors operating a specially outfitted Cessna Citation V surveillance plane that flies the U.S. flag but does not belong to the U.S. government? Who are the contractors operating from a hangar built by a Peruvian company paid by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers?

They are the fighters in our drug war!

The American people are supposed to believe that Peruvian operations to stem the cocaine flow into the United States are innocuous, but we cannot know who the players are or what they are up to until disaster strikes. When the destroyer USS Cole met disaster in Yemen last October, or the Navy EP-3 was attacked off of Hainan island, we were similarly educated about underground activities of the U.S. military.

In his election campaign, President Bush vowed to reduce the American military presence around the world. It's a particularly tough task when much of the "presence" isn't acknowledged or official. Taken individually, each country like Peru or a Yemen may have a justification for secrecy. But when one adds up all the all the Peru's and Yemen's, it becomes apparent that the U.S. military is increasingly everywhere and nowhere.

Israel: Capital of Classified Bases

At the same time Peru was in the headlines, there were press reports that the United States and Israel had conducted an unusual joint military exercise in the Negev desert. Jane's Defence Weekly called it Israel's "first" exercise with the U.S. Air Force. The Jerusalem Post called it a "marked boost in military cooperation." Neither assertion is true, but that is the problem of an underground military policy. It is hard to know exactly what is going on.

In fact, the United States and Israel have a regular series of military exercises, going under the code names Juniper Stallion, Juniper Cobra, Noble Shirley, and other Juniper variations. A month before March's Juniper Stallion exercise, another American contingent was in Israel for Juniper Cobra, a tactical missile defense exercise which included test-firing Patriot missiles while the U.S. Navy Aegis destroyer USS Porter operated off the coast. The exercise, perhaps coincidentally, ended just five days before the February 16 U.S. and British air attacks against Iraqi air defense sites.

Last year's Juniper Stallion exercise involved the aircraft carrier battle group USS Eisenhower, and was from March 19-26. Eight U.S. aircraft operated from Nevatim airfield in Israel and U.S. Navy SEALs went ashore to train with their Israeli counterparts. During Juniper Stallion 2000, according to the Eisenhower public affairs office, U.S. aircraft were able to drop live bombs at two desert ranges in Israel, giving crews valuable experience given the temporary prohibition from dropping live ordnance on Vieques Island in Puerto Rico.

Juniper Stallion 99, held in August 1999, was an even more extensive, and secret, exercise. U.S. Air Force munitions personnel from Italy were deployed to officially non-existent sites where they inspected and maintained the $500 million worth of ammunition the United States keeps in Israel for wartime contingencies. Their bases, called Sites 51, 53, and 54, don't appear on any map. Their specific locations are classified and highly sensitive.

And it's not just munitions. The United States has "prepositioned" vehicles, military equipment, even a 500-bed hospital, for U.S. Marines, Special Forces, and Air Force fighter and bomber aircraft at at least six sites in Israel, all part of what is antiseptically described as "U.S.-Israel strategic cooperation."

Such cooperation may or may not enhance American security, may or may not be a prudent part of planning to defend a close friend. The extent of U.S. involvement may or may not be known and understood by U.S. decision-makers and the Congress. But the reason for all the secrecy is clear: All around Israel, in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and the Gulf states, the U.S. has newly built up an enormous and yet officially non-existent military presence.

Nervous Hosts

Here is the web we weave: The Germany-based 22nd Fighter Squadron, the main U.S. Air Force unit to participate in the March Juniper Stallion exercise in Israel, returned from a 90-day tour in Saudi Arabia in late November. The squadron's mission flying the southern Iraqi "no-fly" zone during its Saudi deployment warranted a press release and a couple of stories in military newspapers. But it's foray into Israel was--and is--"classified."

If the Air Force issued a press release about the Israel exercise, the 22nd might not be allowed back into Saudi Arabia next time. Not to worry much though. As the Persian Gulf has effectively become an American military protectorate, the U.S. had built up more than a few, officially non-existent facilities and "classified" operations in this part of the world as well. It is secrecy that allows our Saudi hosts to ignore the U.S.-Israel relationship, but also to maintain the fig leaf that they do not permit military bases on their soil.

On the surface, it's all about "containing" Iraq, but underground, tens of thousands of U.S. military personnel (and "contractors") have flooded the entire region: an Army battalion mans the border north of Kuwait City; "expeditionary" air units fly from airbases in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman; an aircraft carrier battle group plies the waters in and around the Gulf, more and more depots fill up with stockpiled weapons and munitions ready to accommodate reinforcing ground and air units.

Waiting for Disaster

After the missionary plane shootdown in Peru, government spokesmen and CIA officials were quick to justify their counterdrug arrangements ("vital," "working," blah, blah blah). Their explanations revealed not only a labyrinth at Iquitos but at least a dozen additional officially non-existent air bases, radars, command centers, and who knows what extending from Honduras and El Salvador down to Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Columbia and back north to Curacao, Puerto Rico, and the Bahamas.

From Central and South America to Israel to the Gulf, more than 200,000 U.S. military personnel (and who knows how many "contractors") are out there worldwide. Since the waning days of the Cold War, the number has declined by about half. Yet about 90 percent of the cuts occurred as a result of reductions in European-based forces, mostly in Germany. In most places outside Europe, there have been significant increases in the underground presence.

After the 2000 election, Colin Powell and other incoming Bush administration foreign policy officials decried U.S. forces being stretched thin. "Our plan," Powell says, "is to ... take a look not only at our deployments in Bosnia but in Kosovo and many other places around the world, and make sure those deployments are proper."

Though Congress has now indicated it will launch a broad review of U.S. drug interdiction efforts, the Defense Department's "strategic review" is not examining the new American realm in any comprehensive way. Will disaster have to strike some else before we get a thoughtful look at the extent of our secret overseas presence and commitments?

-------- space

Air Force to Head U.S. Military Space Efforts

New York Times
May 7, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/world/arms-usa-space.html

WASHINGTON, May 7 (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is putting all U.S. military space operations under Air Force command to tightly coordinate the critical use of space in intelligence, communications and warfare, defense officials said on Monday.

The Air Force already oversees most of the nation's military space efforts, but the officials, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters that Rumsfeld would announce on Tuesday that all such operations would be placed under control of the service.

Even the Pentagon's supersecret National Reconnaissance Organization (NRO), which currently reports to the Central Intelligence Agency, would now fall under Air Force control, officials said.

Rumsfeld is expected to put the coordinated military space program, which would be in addition to the U.S. military's Space Command based in Colorado, under a four-star general.

``This is more than just a reshuffling of chairs in the space business,'' one of the officials told Reuters. ``It emphasizes the critical and growing importance of space to control of combat on the ground.''

The plan, part of a major effort by the Bush administration to update national security strategy and modernize the armed forces for 21st century warfare, is in large measure a response to a report issued earlier this year by a government panel on space.

WEAPONS IN SPACE?

The panel of 12 experts, set up by Congress and previously headed by Rumsfeld, recommended that the United States should prepare to put weapons in space to protect its interests, despite widespread opposition aboard.

The Defense Department announced on Monday that Rumsfeld would ``announce major changes'' to improve the leadership, management and organization of the nation's defense and intelligence space program. It gave no details, including on whether or not the secretary would address the question of future U.S. weapons in space.

In January, the panel, set up to assess the organization and management of space operations in support of U.S. national security, said the president should retain ``the option to deploy weapons in space to deter threats to and, if necessary, defend against attacks on U.S. interests.''

The panel was headed by Rumsfeld until Dec. 28, when he stepped down to prepare for his confirmation hearings after being nominated by then President-elect George W. Bush to be defense secretary.

Any step toward militarizing space would be bound to stir problems with China, Russia and others seeking to bar space-based lasers or other arms for any potential multilayered U.S. missile defense system.

Rumsfeld said last week the United States will study the possible use of sea and space-based assets in addition to ground-based projectiles to shoot down attacking missiles. But he was not specific and stressed that no decisions had been made.

--------

Rumsfeld Makes Air Force Changes

New York Times
May 7, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Rumsfeld-Space.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- In his first major step to restructure the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld plans to create a new Air Force position, to be held by a four-star general, with broad responsibilities for U.S. space forces, defense officials said Monday.

The Pentagon said Rumsfeld planned to hold a news conference Tuesday to announce ``major changes to improve the leadership, management and organization of the nation's defense and intelligence space program.''

The announcement provided no details, but officials familiar with the plan said one change would be to assign broader responsibilities to Air Force Space Command, based at Colorado Springs, Colo., and to put a general in charge of providing the resources to execute space programs and operations.

The officials, who spoke on condition they not be identified, said Rumsfeld did not intend to announce yet who would fill the new post.

In the existing military structure, the four-star Air Force general who is commander in chief of U.S. Space Command -- currently Gen. Ralph E. Eberhart -- also holds the positions of commander in chief of North American Aerospace Defense Command and the U.S. Air Force Space Command.

Under Rumsfeld's plan, the Air Force Space Command job would be split off and made a separate four-star position. Air Force Space Command apparently also would be given broader responsibilities, possibly including additional authority in the areas of acquisition, research and development.

Rumsfeld also plans to make organizational changes in Air Force civilian management of space programs, officials said.

Rumsfeld has made it well known that he believes more emphasis should be placed on organizing, unifying and strengthening the military's efforts in space operations and research. One aspect of this is likely to include the role of satellites in the missile defense system that President Bush has committed the nation to building. Another aspect may be protecting U.S. satellites against attack.

Until shortly after he was nominated by President Bush in January, Rumsfeld was chairman of the Commission to Assess United States National Security Space Management and Organization. Created by Congress, the commission reported its findings and recommendations on Jan. 11 after six months of work.

Rumsfeld resigned from the commission after he was nominated. Congress required that once the commission submitted its report to the secretary of defense, he must inform Congress how he intended to respond. Rumsfeld was using his Tuesday news conference to spell out his response.

The upshot of the commission's report, which naturally reflected some of Rumsfeld's own views, was that defense and intelligence space programs are organized and managed in ways that fail to reflect the growing importance of space to U.S. national security.

The commission said a lack of attention by the government to its satellites and space policy makes the United States ``an attractive candidate for a space Pearl Harbor.''

The United States depends on space more than any other country -- for surveillance and other military operations, weather forecasts, cell phone connections -- yet the White House, Congress and various government agencies fail to make space protection a top priority, the panel concluded.

The commission also said that military conflicts in space are inevitable.

``We know from history that every medium -- air, land and sea -- has seen conflict,'' the commission's report said. ``Reality indicates that space will be no different. Given this virtual certainty, the United States must develop the means both to deter and to defense against hostile acts in and from space.''

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

Pentagon Plans Major Changes in U.S. Strategy
Rumsfeld Envisions Shift In Size, Focus of Military

By Thomas E. Ricks and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, May 7, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52105-2001May6?language=printer

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is set to unveil sweeping changes in U.S. military strategy, including the formal abandonment of the "two major war" yardstick that for a decade has been used to determine the size of the military, Pentagon officials said yesterday.

Rumsfeld is scheduled to meet with President Bush this week, probably Wednesday, to seek final approval for the new U.S. strategy, which appears to involve some of the biggest changes in the U.S. military in a decade. Next week, he is to roll out the strategy publicly, perhaps with a White House announcement followed by congressional testimony, the officials said. The two-week campaign on defense issues will culminate May 25 with an address by Bush at the Naval Academy, which will present "the vision of where we need to go as we move into the 21st century," a Pentagon official said yesterday.

Putting aside the "two major war" approach is more a matter of the size of the military than of planning for war. For about a decade, the military has used the possibility of having to fight wars in two places -- Korea and Iraq are the two examples frequently used -- to figure out the minimum number of troops, airplanes, ships and gear needed. Among other things, abandoning the approach will remove a floor that for years has kept the active-duty military at about 1.4 million people.

Defense officials were guarded about describing what will replace the two-war yardstick. One of those involved in the strategy discussion said that the military should instead make sure it has capabilities to deal with a fast-changing world. This formulation puts less emphasis on preparing for conventional warfare and more on handling murkier situations such as defending Taiwan from a Chinese blockade or keeping open the Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. Cutting personnel also would free up money for the new weapons Rumsfeld wants to buy.

The change in approach promises to affect all the services but appears to have the gravest implications for the Army, the most manpower-intensive service in wartime. The strategy also says the U.S. military needs to focus less on Europe, traditionally the Army's bailiwick, and more on East Asia. The latter, because of its long distances and island nations, has been seen as more of a theater for the Navy and Air Force. It also says the military needs to do a better job of assimilating new information-age technologies and of countering the proliferation of missiles in the Third World.

Only after the overarching strategy is presented will Rumsfeld engage Congress on boosting the defense budget, the official added. "Everyone wants to get the numbers, but you have to do the strategy first, so you have the philosophical underpinning before you start spending money," he said.

But behind the scenes, administration officials already are grappling with three defense budgets simultaneously. They are preparing to ask for a supplement for current spending and also for an amendment to the proposed fiscal 2002 budget before Congress. Additionally, in the coming weeks, Rumsfeld will give the armed services broad guidance that will enable them to begin preparing their fiscal 2003 budgets.

• The Pentagon is expected to ask for approximately $6 billion to $8 billion to supplement current spending of about $296 billion, officials said, with most of the new funds going to readiness and military health care costs. Without a multibillion-dollar supplemental, a congressional source said, "flying hours and [Navy] steaming hours and other essential training missions will have to be curtailed" from July through September, the last quarter of the federal fiscal year.

Rumsfeld said yesterday on NBC's "Meet the Press" that the size of the supplemental is "open" and that he would be "discussing that over the coming week" with Bush.

• The administration is also planning for even bigger increases in the coming years as the Defense Department moves toward the changes Rumsfeld envisions. It isn't clear how those increases will be paid for as the administration also is seeking a huge tax cut and other budget changes.

Officials say the administration is preparing a huge amendment to the defense budget for fiscal 2002, which begins Oct. 1. The administration's "placeholder" budget submitted earlier this year sought $310.5 billion. The amendment is expected to boost that by about $20 billion. This will be presented as "the get-well budget" that prepares the military establishment for the sweeping reforms Bush and Rumsfeld have promised, another Pentagon official said last week.

• Finally, the 2003 budget will aim to implement major changes in the size, shape and use of the U.S. military, officials said. This is the budget in which the agenda for radical military reform that Bush laid out during the presidential campaign would take hold.

"It's being called 'the transformation budget,' " a military officer said last week. It is expected to be one of the most controversial defense budgets ever, and already is provoking anxiety and bitterness in the uniformed military.

Although the 2003 budget wouldn't go into effect until 18 months from now, the armed services will begin drafting it this summer, then negotiate their numbers with Rumsfeld through the fall and with the White House around the end of the year.

The 2003 budget also will be the one that begins to "pay for missile defense," another Pentagon official said last week. That remains a large but unknown price tag. Rumsfeld indicated yesterday on CBS's "Face the Nation" that he wants to fund research in possible missile defense systems ranging from sea-based interception to airborne lasers. "All of those things need to be looked at," he said. "We need to look at the use of sea; we need to look at the use of an airborne system and a space sensor."

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz added on CNN's "Late Edition" that the missile defense costs wouldn't be known until more research is done. He indicated he thought sea-based missile defenses, which would be intended to knock down a missile as it is struggling against gravity and so is most vulnerable, would receive the most emphasis.

Many in the top brass worry that Rumsfeld is going to spend so much on missile defense and his other priorities -- operations in space and intelligence-gathering -- that their own weapons programs will suffer. Those fears have been stoked by Rumsfeld's secretive approach to defense reform, with little information being shared with uniformed military.

"It clearly has alarmed the services," said historian Williamson Murray, who recently briefed Pentagon officials on military innovation, his area of expertise. "I heard a huge amount of squealing."

There is much confusion about what Rumsfeld actually will recommend. He appointed about 20 panels to look at everything from what weapons not to buy to how to change personnel policy to how nuclear weapons are commanded and controlled. Some of those panels have made recommendations that contradict each other.

Rumsfeld said at a recent Pentagon meeting that he plans to "cherry pick" from those recommendations, two Pentagon officials said yesterday, keeping only the parts that fit into the larger strategy he is now ready to unveil.

----

Navy wins battle vs. Pentagon to keep big aircraft carriers

May 7, 2001
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By Rowan Scarborough
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010507-80797860.htm

The Navy has won an early skirmish in a debate the Pentagon referees every time it reshapes the military: Do we still need 97,000-ton aircraft carriers patrolling the seas?

Two Pentagon sources said large-deck carriers originally took a hit in a current defense review ordered by President Bush and being shepherded by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

A draft briefing from a Pentagon panel on strategy -- one of more than a dozen at work on a "top-to-bottom" review -- contained language that appeared to single out carriers as vulnerable to attack, although no specific weapon was mentioned.

But after the first draft was shown to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the worldwide commanders, some protested and the language was struck. "The feeling was it was not appropriate for a document that discusses strategy," said one Pentagon official.

The anecdote is one example of the bobbing and weaving going on inside the Defense Department as, one by one, the study panels named by Mr. Rumsfeld are turning in their recommendations. They are leaving it to him and the Joint Chiefs to make the kind of daring decisions needed to transform a Cold War force into one able to confront a myriad of future threats from cyberspace, terrorists, rogue states and, perhaps, China.

Pentagon sources said a report from the strategy panel, led by Pentagon futurist Andrew Marshall, is being edited for at least a fourth time by Mr. Rumsfeldīs staff. At this point, the report does not endorse any particular weapon system. Nor does it address a central question: Should the United States stick with the Clinton administrationīs overarching requirement for the military of fighting two major regional conflicts at once?

Such a goal is called a "force sizer" since it dictates the number of divisions, ships and air wings. Sources said that eventually the strategy document will have to address whether to ditch the two-war scenario.

"It is walking itself more toward a strategy" during the rewrites, said one Pentagon official.

Sources said the document calls for shifting U.S. military emphasis from Europe to the Pacific. The principal concern is communist China. The Peopleīs Republic is on a campaign to modernize its military and steal U.S. technology through espionage and exploiting Chinese nationals in this country, according to congressional reports.

The sources also say the Pentagon may adopt an approach to arms buying that stresses a weaponīs capability over fielding large numbers. And they expect Mr. Rumsfeld to approve stepped-up financing of accurate cruise missiles able to travel thousands of miles and of umanned radar-evading combat aircraft.

The weapons would be new ways to destroy what the Pentagon calls "anti-access" weapons such as anti-ship cruise missiles, ground-based anti-aircraft missiles and short-range ballistic missiles that threaten land troops.

While Pentagon officials eye Mr. Marshallīs thinking closely, they say the most important study group is the one called "transformation." It is this group of retired senior officers and outside analysts that is recommending which new weapons to keep and which to cancel, the officials said. Sources said the panel recently completed its report.

Pentagon officials praised the panel as the only study group that allowed all the branches to send representatives to give extensive presentations. But it has also been the most secretive. Little of its thinking has leaked to the Joint Chiefs.

The panel is stocked with solid war planners, men who saw combat up close and who are not known for radical thinking. The group was led by retired Air Force Gen. James McCarthy and included retired Adm. Stan Arthur, the top naval commander in the Persian Gulf war, and retired Gen. Carl Mundy, former Marine Corps commandant.

Mr. Bush has said the Pentagon has a window of opportunity to redefine how wars are fought by leap-frogging current technology to a next generation of weapons. On its face, the Bush vision is a mandate to cancel such highly prized systems as the Air Forceīs F-22 stealth fighter and big-deck Navy carriers.

But the Air Force has been waging a strong campaign inside the building to convince the transformation panel, and Mr. Rumsfeld, that buying a planned 339 F-22s for $62 billion will be the technology leap Mr. Bush wants.

"The F-22 has already skipped a generation," said one official, quoting the Air Force sales pitch.

The Air Force advocates paying for new weapons by cutting troop strength, a slap at the Army, which wants more soldiers to handle far-flung peacekeeping missions. The Air Force is also touting the B-2 and B-1B bombers as capable of hitting targets at long distances, a thump at the Navy, which bills carriers as the power projector overseas.

Mr. Marshall, who directs the departmentīs Office of Net Assessment, is skeptical of the survivability of large-deck carriers in future wars.

This initially alarmed Navy aviators who feared the loss of the storied naval carrier battle group. But those who support carriers seem more confident today. Mr. Marshallīs latest draft does not mention carriers. And Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner, Virginia Republican, issued a statement earlier saying Congress would make the final decision. Nimitz-class carriers are constructed by Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia.

Said a Navy officer at the Pentagon: "We are not going to lose big-deck carriers." Cynthia Brown, president of the American Shipbuilding Association, said large carriers have been studied numerous times and always come out the winner.

"I donīt think anybody believes the future of carriers is in doubt because the technical analysis favors large-deck carriers," she said. "In a crisis, the first thing any president asks is, where is the nearest aircraft carrier."

--------

Defense Strategy Review Nearly Done

New York Times
May 7, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Pentagon-Plans.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has nearly finished a comprehensive review of U.S. military strategy and plans to discuss it with President Bush this week, a defense official said Monday.

The outcome of the review, along with conclusions for more than a dozen others still under way, is expected to have important implications for U.S. defense budgets. For that and other reasons, some on Capitol Hill are starting to complain that Rumsfeld has been operating in virtual secrecy.

Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said Monday that Rumsfeld had not talked with him about the developing strategy, and he was surprised by the lack of consultation with him and other leaders of military-related committees in Congress.

``At the end of the day, we in Congress have the final say,'' Skelton said in an interview. '' ... We should be a major part of the entire process. Thus far, we have not been.''

The Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services, John Warner of Virginia, sees it differently.

He said it was by mutual agreement with Rumsfeld that the defense secretary not consult on the details.

``He talks with me on a regular basis on a wide range of issues, but we early on decided there wasn't any real value in me, week-by-week, trying to follow all the groups giving him advice,'' Warner said in an interview. ``We would wait patiently until he finished his work, and when he made decisions, then he would come and brief myself and the committee.''

It is not yet clear how soon Bush will make decisions on key questions raised in the review, such as whether the Pentagon will abandon its basic strategy of structuring U.S. forces to fight two major wars nearly simultaneously, said the defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Many have argued that the two war strategy is outdated, but it is not clear what would replace it.

Bush is expected to address this and other aspects of military strategy for the 21st century in an address to the graduating class at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., on May 25, officials said.

The Washington Post reported in Monday's editions that Rumsfeld is set to abandon the ``two major war'' approach, which was adopted in response to the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s. The idea was that if, for example, U.S. forces had to respond to a North Korean invasion of South Korea, they should have enough remaining forces available to fight elsewhere, such as in the Persian Gulf.

A spokesman for Rumsfeld, Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, denied the Post report.

``There is no such recommendation or decision by the secretary,'' Quigley said. He said Rumsfeld has yet to finish his consultations with U.S. military leaders on how to structure forces for warfighting.

Some in the military leadership have been quietly complaining about not being fully consulted by Rumsfeld.

Skelton's comments Monday seemed to reflect that feeling.

``We have some very able members of Congress that know a lot about the military. We have some very able leaders in uniform that know a lot about their profession. And I would think that we would be a major part of helping devise the strategic thought in this nation,'' Skelton said.

Some have speculated that Bush will opt to reduce the size of the military and use the resulting financial savings to pay for a new generation of aircraft, such as the Air Force's F-22 stealth fighter, and other modernized weaponry in addition to building a system to defend against ballistic missile attack.

Loren Thompson of the private Lexington Institute, who closely follows these issues, said in an interview Monday that he sees no clear sign that the Bush administration has found a way to pay for such projects. He also questions whether Rumsfeld will be able to persuade Congress to go along.

``There is a mismatch between their ambitions for changing the military and their political strategy for achieving those changes,'' Thompson said.

Rumsfeld has more than a dozen other reviews in progress addressing such topics as reshaping U.S. nuclear forces, improving financial management of the Pentagon, transforming U.S. conventional forces, developing a missile defense with global reach, and improving the quality of life for troops.

-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

BPA to buy 150 MW of wind power in US Northwest

USA: May 7, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10724&newsDate=7-May-2001

SAN FRANCISCO - The Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) said on Friday it will buy 150 megawatts of power over 20 years from a proposed wind farm in eastern Washington state in an effort to provide an energy supplement to the region's huge hydro electric dams.

Under a predevelopment agreement, the Portland, Oregon-based agency, which markets electricity from the 29 federally run dams on the massive Columbia and Snake Rivers, said it was working with Washington Winds Inc. to develop and build a 150-megawatt (MW) wind farm, the agency said in a statement.

"This is one of several wind projects BPA is looking to acquire," BPA Acting Administrator Steve Wright said in the statement.

"When the winds blow, we can save more water in reservoirs. When the winds are still, we can release the river's power. Wind farms add to our local renewable resources," he said.

If all regulatory measures are approved, the first wind turbines could begin producing power in late 2002.

Output from the Maiden Wind facility would be enough capacity to serve around 36,000 homes, BPA said.

In recent months, the agency has been forced to reduce output from the region's hydro power dams - which normally provide up to 70 percent of the Northwest's electricity needs - due to one of the worst droughts in the Northwest in decades.

BPA said it also reserved an option to purchase up to another 250 MW of power if environmental reviews succeed.

Washington Winds will secure the necessary permits for the Maiden Wind Farm, while BPA will prepare an environmental impact report.

Boise, Idaho-based Washington Winds Inc., a subsidiary of Pacific Winds Inc., owns and operates over 900 wind turbines in California.

----

Polluted HK looks to the winds for cleaner power

CHINA: May 7, 2001
Story by Kwan Chooi Tow
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10720

HONG KONG - On a wind-swept island on the southernmost edge of Hong Kong, a 50-metre (yard) high metal tube protrudes from barren rock, sensors along its length capturing changes in wind speed and direction each second.

For Leung Wing-cheong, who runs a restaurant catering to visitors to sleepy Po Toi island, the project could spell the end of monthly trips to Hong Kong island to lug back 28 drums of diesel to generate 24-hour electricity for his business.

Environment group Friends of the Earth hopes the wind monitoring station, commissioned by Hongkong Electric Co Ltd, will have much broader benefits - harnessing a clean energy resource for use elsewhere in the increasingly polluted territory.

"We have to load and unload the drums of diesel ourselves. If installing a wind turbine generator is viable, it would be so much more convenient," said Leung, who estimates he spends about HK$8,000 (US$1,025) a month for his energy requirements.

Most of Hong Kong's power comes from local coal and gas-fired plants, with a small amount from China's Daya Bay nuclear plant.

"Wind power is attractive because it can be built very fast and it can be built with a very small investment," said Eric Walker, research coordinator for Friends of the Earth.

At some of the best wind sites in the U.K., the cost of wind power is comparable to that of fossil fuels, he said.

The environment group set up the station on April 24 on Po Toi, whose 20-odd residents are mainly elderly folks who harvest seaweed or run restaurants catering to weekend visitors.

For the next 12 months, the station will collect wind data so that a "wind atlas" of Hong Kong can be compiled.

If the data indicates it is feasible and economically viable, the wind could be used to light up and power Po Toi in two years, Walker said.

But mobilising wind power for use on a large scale throughout hilly Hong Kong may not be viable, said N.Y. Cheung, chief engineer of projects at Hongkong Electric, whose coal-fired plants supplies electricity to Hong Kong and Lamma islands.

"For Hong Kong island, we feel that the potential for using wind power is not great because of the geographical constraints and the scarcity of open space," he said.

A wind farm capable of generating several hundred megawatts of electricity might need about 20 times as much land as a conventional fossil fuel power plant, he said.

The investment required could be between US$3,000-4,000 per kilowatt, versus about US$1,000 per kilowatt for a conventional coal-fired generator, he said.

Wind farms could be located in the rural New Territories, with power transmitted to more densely populated Hong Kong island, but transmission losses could be higher, said Cheung. Another issue is whether wind energy would be reliable enough for domestic and commercial use.

"For us, reliability is the most important factor," Cheung said, adding that users cannot depend on wind energy if it is not available for large periods of the year.

Po Toi residents pay about HK$3 per kilowatt hour for their power, about thrice the tariffs for Hong Kong residents, he said.

"But the cost to Po Toi residents could be a lot higher," said Cheung, referring to other issues such as sound and noise pollution from diesel-powered generators.

Government-owned diesel generators on Po Toi also run for only 12 hours a day.

Cheung estimates Po Toi residents would need just a single wind turbine with a capacity of one or two megawatts, with the the diesel-powered generators serving as back-ups.

"I strongly believe we can use wind power," he added.

-------- energy

Calif. Grid Operators Issue Warning

New York Times
May 7, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Power-Woes.html?searchpv=aponline

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- California avoided rolling blackouts Monday morning by asking large commercial power users to scale back electricity use, but warm weather and a large number of power plants off-line threatened to cause rolling blackouts in the afternoon.

State power grid officials said California was depending on electricity imported into the state.

``If imports stay where they are, we'll be OK for the rest of the day,'' said Jim McIntosh, director of operations for the California Independent System Operator.

The last time California's power crisis caused blackouts was in March.

The California Independent System Operator declared a Stage 2 alert in the morning, as electricity reserves dwindled to close to 5 percent. Stage 3 is the most serious, when the state can order short blackouts across selected areas.

At 11 a.m., grid officials were prepared to order blackouts, but saw enough response to their call for voluntary cutbacks to head off blackouts, officials said.

``There's a strong possibility of blackouts this afternoon,'' ISO spokeswoman Lorie O'Donley said.

ISO officials urged conservation Monday morning because high temperatures in California and the Southwest were pushing up demand for electricity. Temperatures were forecast in the 90s in the Sacramento area.

In addition, several key power plants were closed for pre-summer maintenance, O'Donley said. Those plants normally would provide enough power for about 9.4 million homes.

Among the plants down for repairs are four nuclear power plants.

California was hit with rolling blackouts Jan. 17 and 18 and March 19 and 20.

--------

White House energy report stirs industry, greens to act

USA: May 7, 2001
Story by Patrick Connole and Tom Doggett
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10726

WASHINGTON - A White House task force to develop a new national energy policy is wrapping up its work and sending its recommendations to government printers this weekend, industry and congressional sources said on Friday.

The proposals by the task force, headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, were expected to be unveiled during the week of May 14 by President George W. Bush.

Representatives of the oil, natural gas, electricity, nuclear and coal industries have been lobbying the White House for months to get relief from environmental regulations, access to more federal lands and government support to boost production in their sectors.

Environmentalists expect the lobbying to pay off.

CLEAN AIR ANYONE?

Officials with clean air and conservation groups said the recommendations would likely include encouraging construction of coal-fired power plants, and easing procedures to license new nuclear plants.

"Clearly we expect an attack on the Clean Air Act," said Frank O'Donnell, executive director of the Clean Air Trust. He said utilities have pushed Cheney for changes in "new source review rules" enforced by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Such rules were interpreted strictly under the Clinton administration, leading to federal lawsuits against major power firms like Southern Co for allegedly making improvements to power plants without installing pollution controls.

"They have lobbied trying to weaken new source rules and make retroactive (eliminating the lawsuits)," O'Donnell said.

Utilities say they want federal regulations clarified, to make it possible for companies to plan ahead and invest.

The utilities have long stated their belief that prosecution for clean air violations under the previous administration was uncalled for, because the "improvements" to power plants were for routine maintenance and repairs.

"We're for a comprehensive energy policy that embraces fuel diversity," said Jim Owen, a spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute. He noted that each of the fuels used for powering the nation's generation have significant hurdles.

For coal, Owen said there is a "bewildering overlapping" of environmental rules. For example, nuclear power is hindered by a lengthy relicensing process and storage of waste, while hydropower is grappling with relicensing and confusion about fish conservation programs. And natural gas suffers from a lack of pipelines and new production.

ENERGY IS BIG-TIME

The Cheney report comes amid a flurry of energy-related issues rising to the top of the nation's political agenda.

Two regional Federal Reserve presidents said on Friday the increase in energy prices threatened a turnaround in the economy. Separately, the latest U.S. unemployment report showed the jobless rate jumped to its highest level in two-and-a-half years to 4.5 percent.

A day earlier, Bush ordered federal and military facilities in California to cut power use to help the state stave off rolling blackouts expected on at least 30 days between June and October.

Americans are also seeing soaring gasoline prices. Pump prices rose to the highest level in almost a year and the U.S. Energy Department has warned of more increases to come.

Land and wilderness protection groups fear the White House report will open up drilling in pristine federally owned lands, a move they have promised to fight long and hard.

Industry and congressional sources said they expect Cheney, the former top executive of oilfield services giant Halliburton Co , to recommend drilling access in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.

They also expect relaxed environmental regulations to make it easier to obtain permits for new refineries and pipelines.

To avoid future disruptions in gasoline supplies and to lower costs for refiners, oil firms want the White House report to recommend cutting the number of cleaner-burning motor fuels that are required throughout the country.

Instead of having dozens of so-called "boutique" fuels, the industry wants a specific type of gasoline for each region, and eventually a single cleaner-burning fuel that could be sold anywhere in the country.

The U.S. oil industry also wants to invest in Iran and Libya's energy sector, now off limits due to unilateral sanctions. The White House task force was reviewing the impact of the sanctions on available oil supplies, but it was unclear if the task force will recommend easing the investment curbs.

--------

Pipeline Expansion Approved in West

New York Times
May 7, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-El-Paso-Gas.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Monday approved a pipeline expansion that is expected to provide an additional 230 million cubic feet of natural gas to Southwest markets, including California.

The El Paso Natural Gas Co. plans to convert 785 miles of an existing pipeline that now carries crude oil so that it will carry natural gas to the high-demand California market.

FERC Chairman Curt Hebert said swift action by the agency, which acted on the case after only two months, ``demonstrates our commitment to get needed energy supplies to serve the ever-increasing demand in the West.''

The $154 million project involves a pipeline that runs from McCamey, Texas, to Ehrenberg, Ariz., near the California state line. El Paso is buying the line from All American Pipeline and converting it from crude oil to natural gas.

The line would serve as a loop to El Paso's existing system that serves the Southwest market, including California, the FERC said.

The expansion, which the company has indicated would be completed by August, would add 230 million cubic feet of natural gas capacity to the El Paso mainline, according to FERC and the company.

Natural gas shortages have been cited by industry as a reason for unusually high natural gas prices in California. Last week, spot prices of gas at California's trading hub ranged from about $12 to more than $14 per thousand cubic feet, compared with just under $5 a cubic feet elsewhere.

-------- environment

Montanans Weigh Options on a Toxic Legacy

May 7, 2001
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/07/national/07DAM.html

BONNER, Mont. - Tumbling over boulders and winding through the red rock canyons and grassy meadows of western Montana, the Clark Fork appears to be a classic Western river.

But the Clark Fork has a checkered past. Its beauty hides the fact that along most of its 120 miles in Montana it is contaminated with more than a century's worth of cadmium, arsenic, copper and other toxic mine waste that has washed down from the hard rock mining that began in 1864 at Butte.

The last stop for the mine waste since 1907 has been here, behind the Milltown Dam, creating a huge pile of toxic sludge, six miles upstream from Missoula, a college town known as the Garden City.

In the next few months, the Environmental Protection Agency will decide the fate of this river full of heavy metals.

"I can't see how anyone would think you could just leave 6.5 million cubic yards of toxic waste," said Tracy Stone-Manning, executive director of the Clark Fork Coalition, an environmental group. "The only solution is to get it out."

But for ARCO, the oil company that bought Anaconda Copper Mining in 1977, only to find that it had inherited an expensive mess that is one of the largest Superfund sites in the nation, the only economical solution is to let sleeping dogs lie.

"People in favor of removal grossly underestimate the problem of removal," said Sandy Stash, a vice president at ARCO, now part of British Petroleum, and the head of the cleanup. "You will do more harm than good." The removal of sediment, by ARCO estimates, would cost at least $100 million, take 12 years and disrupt the river for that long.

Large-scale underground mining in Butte ended in the 1950's, when Anaconda took the lid off the "richest hill on Earth," and created a milewide open pit. ARCO closed operations there in the early 1980's.

But the bills for the mess the miners made, much to the dismay of ARCO, are still rolling in. The cost for the cleanup to date is $700 million and is expected to reach $1 billion by the time company leaves, sometime in the next decade. Ms. Stash said profits from the property were negligible for the few years it remained operating.

Many local residents portray the dam as a toxic time bomb. In February 1996, an ice jam 10 miles long and 14 feet thick built up steam and headed down river, a huge frozen missile that many feared would take out part of the dam and unleash the waste.

Instead, the Montana Power Company, which owns the dam, drew down the water level and stranded the ice above the dam. But the water that the power company released churned up four feet of heavy metals that had been at the bottom of the reservoir and flushed it into the river.

The result, county officials say, was a huge fish kill. Though the state limit for copper is 18 parts per billion, tests showed copper levels of 400 parts per billion. The following spring, a count by state fisheries of young rainbow and brown trout showed a decline of 86 percent and a decrease of two- thirds in the number of larger rainbow trout. ARCO officials are skeptical about what Ms. Stash called "the alleged fish kill" because no dead fish were seen.

There are other problems with the 19th-century timber crib dam. Earthquakes are a possibility. Inspectors have found water leaking through cracks. And then there is the arsenic. High levels of the metal from the reservoir behind the dam leaked into groundwater and contaminated the wells of several dozen residents. ARCO drilled a deep new well to create safe water, but there are fears that the arsenic problem will return.

Ms. Stash says that a large rubber dam attached to the present structure will ward off problems from ice jams. And the power company says that the cracks are nothing to worry about, comparing them with cracks in a sidewalk.

Now there is a growing sentiment in Missoula, all along the political spectrum, not only to remove the sediments but to take out the dam as well, a project that ARCO says could cost up to $300 million. The E.P.A. estimates the cost of removal of the sediment at $120 million, the cost of the removal of both dam and sediment at $130 million and the cost of leaving the material and retrofitting the dam at $20 million.

A proposal by Missoula County, called Two Rivers, would also remove another dam on the nearby Blackfoot River and allow the rivers to reconnect after a century apart, which would create a stretch of white water where the Milltown Dam now stands. "The possibilities are outstanding if we can pull this thing off," said Peter Nielsen, an author of the proposal.

--------

U.S, Europe plan to dump toxic wastes in Nigeria, others, says report

Monday, May 7, 2001
http://www.ngrguardiannews.com/news2/nn820701.html

NIGERIA and 11 African countries may have intercepted an alleged design by three European countries and the United States to dump 29 million tonnes of toxic wastes in their respective countries.

The other countries involved are South Africa, Angola, Benin Republic, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Guinea Bissau, Senegal, Zimbabwe and Sierra Leone.

A statistics of toxic waste trade and dumping episodes released recently in Lagos by the National Co-ordinator of the Secretariat of the Basel Convention (SBC) on Trans-boundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes, Prof. Oladele Osibanjo listed the European countries as United Kingdom, Italy, France and Switzerland.

The US, in collaboration with a Norwegian company which serves as a waste broker, was also implicated.

Listed among materials earmarked for dumping in the affected African countries, according to the report, are industrial, chemical and radioactive wastes, pesticide sludge and other categories of unspecified hazardous wastes.

In some instances, the proposal for the dumping was conceived in collaboration with the authorities in some of the affected African countries.

Specifically, about five million tonnes of industrial wastes were planned to be dumped in Angola by an unnamed European country in anticipation that the Angolan government would receive $2 million, apart from a profit turnover of between $5 million and $10 million.

The Angolan authorities, the report alleged, were deceived into believing that the deal, if accepted, would enable the government to create 15,000 new jobs from infrastructural project development in exchange for the toxic wastes storage and disposal by incineration.

The contract deal, according to the report, was later denied by the Angolan authorities which subsequently cancelled the deal.

In 1988, Europe, the US and France had planned to dump five million tonnes of toxic industrial wastes yearly in the Republic of Benin.

"Contract price was $2.50 a tonne with potential earnings of up to $12.5 million yearly to Benin. Although the deal had been concluded, it was denied by Benin government when it blew open. A top minister and some government officials were sacked, and the deal cancelled", the report claimed.

It named Congo as the first country in Africa to officially authorise the dumping of 5.5 million tonnes of toxic wastes in its shores from Europe and US for a fee. The government was to reap about $180 million over a period of eight years had the transaction scaled through.

The contract was, however, cancelled due to negative publicity from local and international media.

Apparently due to ignorance, the government of Equatorial Guinea accepted the dumping of two million drums of mixed chemical wastes from Europe for land dumping in Annobon Island.

Although an advance payment of $1.6 million was made to the Guinean government, the deal was similarly cancelled due to negative publicity, alleged the report.

Also Guinea-Bissau signed a contract agreement to import 15 million tonnes of chemical and other industrial wastes from the United Kingdom (UK)) and Switzerland for a contract fee of $10 per tonne and for a period of five years. The hazardous wastes allegedly, was to be used for land-filling.

Equally highlighted in the report was the planned importation of 1,500 gallons of hazardous wastes to Zimbabwe from the armed forces' agencies in the U.S. The wastes were to be dumped in abandoned phosphate mine pits, although the Zimbabwean government denied knowledge of the deal.

Accordingly, a proposal by Europe and US to allegedly dump 16 tonnes of mercury contaminated wastes, unspecified tonnage of Swiss wastes and 0.5 million tonnes of toxic wastes to South Africa, was jettisoned after the deal was uncovered by the country's journalists.

The Federal Ministry of Environment in collaboration with the United Nations Industrial Organisation (UNIDO), the Secretariat of the Basel Convention, and the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), has unveiled a plan of action for the compilation of an inventory of hazardous wastes in Nigeria with a view to finding ways of disposing them in an environmentally sound manner.

This is due to its concern over the apparent ignorance and the lack of data on the quantity, nature and composition of hazardous wastes dumped or buried in Nigeria.

--------

White House Debates Fate of Pollution-Control Suits

New York Times
May 7, 2001
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/07/politics/07POLL.html

WASHINGTON, May 6 - The Bush administration is considering pleas from coal and electric companies to drop a series of government lawsuits initiated by the Clinton administration to require the utilities to install modern pollution controls on old coal-fired power plants.

The request, which the coal industry says would let it quickly increase its output of power, has touched off a debate within the administration. Christie Whitman, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, which initiated the litigation, is resisting the industry's suggestion, while Vice President Dick Cheney and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham are more sympathetic.

The Bush administration is determined to increase the nation's use of fossil fuels to produce power in response to what it deems an energy crisis.

Mrs. Whitman appears in a relatively strong position in this case, since her agency has reached agreements with some of the defendants, while the Bush Justice Department has recently filed court documents strongly defending the agency's stance.

As governor of New Jersey, Mrs. Whitman had joined some of the E.P.A.'s suits, most of which were brought against plants in the Midwest and South with pollutants that drifted to the East Coast.

The coal industry says that the Environmental Protection Agency's enforcement of the Clean Air Act is preventing investments that would generate tens of thousands of megawatts of electricity from existing coal-fired plants and that the cost of new pollution controls would have to be paid by consumers.

"There is a recognition that plants aren't modernizing because the burden is too onerous," a White House official said today.

Discussions in the administration about the lawsuits have intensified in recent days, with many of the talks taking place in Mr. Cheney's office as the White House completes the report by his energy task force, which is to be printed Monday night.

"The coal industry is pushing very hard to lock this in and make it part of the report," said an environmentalist who has been following the case closely.

Some administration officials said the report might sidestep the environmental controversy and instead include a broad recommendation to overhaul how plants are treated.

The administration is especially concerned with what signals it sends the industry on how it will handle the regulatory process. "Most of industry wants a commitment out of the administration to reform the review process," said an administration official.

At stake are emissions that would cost millions of dollars to control and that account for a significant share of the nation's air pollution.

In court papers filed in February against the Tennessee Valley Authority, government lawyers said: "The coal-fired electric utility industry as a whole remains by far the nation's largest industrial-sector polluter, in 1998 emitting approximately one quarter of all nitrogen oxides and two-thirds of all sulfur dioxide emissions in this country."

Since 1988, the E.P.A. has sued 11 companies over controls at 49 power plants.

The Clean Air Act exempted many older plants from strict emissions controls but required modern controls when owners modified plants in ways that increased emissions.

For years, the agency says, plants evaded the requirements by insisting that certain modifications were merely "routine maintenance." But the agency found that a number of major electric utilities had been modernizing their plants with projects that increased emissions.

The National Coal Council, a federally chartered advisory group made up mainly of industry officials, argues in a report delivered to the administration that the agency's tough new stance on enforcement "has had a direct and chilling effect on all maintenance and efficiency improvements."

If the administration dropped these lawsuits and otherwise softened regulations, the council argues, coal-fired plants could provide an increased capacity of 40,000 megawatts within three years, almost twice the capacity of all new power plants built last year, and 5 percent of the total generating capacity available nationwide.

---------

Foot - and - Mouth Disease Hits Brazil

New York Times
May 7, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Brazil-Foot-and-Mouth.html

SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP) -- An outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease hit southern Brazil just as the government was preparing a massive vaccination campaign, agriculture officials said Monday.

Eleven head of cattle have contracted the highly infectious disease in Rio Grande do Sul state, which borders Uruguay and Argentina, said Agriculture Minister Marcus Vinicius Pratini de Moraes.

``We've been doing everything possible to keep the disease out,'' he said, adding that a state of emergency has been declared in the southern state.

Brazil is home to one of the largest commercial cattle herds in the world, with 160 million head.

Argentina has confirmed 291 cases of foot-and-mouth disease since mid-March and 190 cases have been confirmed in Uruguay in the last two weeks. Both countries are conducting their own massive vaccination campaigns.

Worried that the disease would spread, Brazil said last week it would begin vaccinating 4.1 million cattle in Rio Grande do Sul, the country's prime cattle-raising state, on Tuesday.

The agriculture ministry has for the time being ruled out slaughtering unaffected animals.

``We're only going to destroy those animals that have the virus,'' Pratini said, adding that all cattle within a 15-mile radius of an outbreak will be vaccinated.

Twenty-eight cases of foot-and-mouth disease were detected in Rio Grande do Sul in August. Authorities slaughtered about 11,000 animals, hoping that would stop the spread. But Monday's announcement made it clear that it had not.

The disease is extremely contagious for livestock but is not considered dangerous for humans.

-------- health

Water Parasite Could Sicken Hundreds Across Canada

New York Times
May 7, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/health/health-parasite.html

WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) - The potentially deadly parasite lurking in the water supply of a small Canadian prairie town has undoubtedly affected hundreds of people across the country, a top medical expert said on Monday.

Officials said on Sunday there were 36 confirmed cases of a flu-like illness caused by water tainted with the parasite cryptosporidium in North Battleford, a community of 15,000 located in west-central Saskatchewan.

Dr. David Butler-Jones, the medical officer of Saskatchewan, said the final number of people affected would be much higher and that victims--all of whom had been in North Battleford recently--would be found across the country.

``It will be in the hundreds, almost certainly, but exactly what the number is we're not sure,'' he told CBC television. Although three recent deaths have been linked to the parasite, Butler-Jones said the presence of cryptosporidium had only been confirmed in one case.

The victims had all had serious existing medical conditions before the parasite struck the town, he said.

If a connection is proven between the microscopic parasite and the deaths, North Battleford's water crisis would be Canada's second recent bout of fatalities linked to contaminated water.

Seven people died and more than 2,000 people fell seriously ill last year after E. coli bacteria contaminated drinking water in Walkerton, a small Ontario farming town.

In Ottawa, the minority Conservative party called on the federal government to draw up a national set of enforceable water quality regulations.

``Canadians need to know that wherever they go in Canada there are minimum acceptable standards for drinking water... We need to examine ways to prevent pollution of our water supply,'' Conservative leader Joe Clark told a news conference.

Experts in North Battleford are already concentrating their attention on a sedimentation chamber at one of the town's two water treatment plants, which stopped working properly for one month in March.

Butler-Jones said residents would have to continue boiling their water for several weeks to come.

``I hope we're past the situation where we'll have new cases related directly to the water because the incubation period is now pretty well passed, assuming people have been boiling their water, and we sure hope they have,'' he said.

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

Bush Calls More Open Trade a 'Moral Imperative' for U.S.

New York Times
May 7, 2001
By DAVID STOUT
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/07/world/07CND-BUSH.html

WASHINGTON, May 7 -- Renewing his quest for wider trade-negotiating authority from Congress, President Bush said today that open trade was not just an avenue for greater prosperity but was "a moral imperative" for the United States.

"Free trade agreements are being negotiated all over the world," Mr. Bush told the Washington conference of the Council of the Americas, held at the State Department. "And we're not a party to them. And this has got to change."

Mr. Bush pledged that if he were given the trade-negotiating authority he wants, he would use it "to build freedom in the world, progress in our hemisphere and enduring prosperity in the United States."

This week, Mr. Bush plans to formally ask Congress to give him the authority to negotiate trade deals that could be voted up or down by lawmakers without changes. Chief executives from Gerald Ford to Bill Clinton had such "fast-track" authority, but it lapsed during the Clinton administration.

"I'm counting on the council's help to bring sanity to the United States Congress," Mr. Bush told an audience of some 300 business leaders, ambassadors and government officials.

A group of 61 senators sent Mr. Bush a letter today warning him that they would strongly oppose any new trade agreement that would restrict America's ability to use its laws to protect American companies against unfair trade practices of other nations.

Mr. Bush bemoaned what he called "a new form of protectionism" that has crept into American political thinking. "When we promote open trade, we're promoting political freedom," he said.

The President sounded a theme that has become familiar: American commercial exports are linked to the export of American values of freedom and human rights.

"Americans want to live on a cleaner planet," Mr. Bush said. "We want labor standards upheld and children protected from exploitation.

Americans want human rights and individual freedom to advance. Open trade advances those American values, those universal values."

The "new protectionism," Mr. Bush asserted, "talks of workers while it opposes a major source of new jobs. It talks of the environment while opposing the wealth-creating policies that will pay for clean air and water in developing nations. It talks of the disadvantaged even as it offers ideas that would keep many of the poor in poverty."

"Open trade is not just an economic opportunity, it is a moral imperative," he said. "Trade creates jobs for the unemployed.

When we negotiate for open markets, we're providing new hope for the world's poor. And when we promote open trade, we are promoting political freedom."

"Look at our friends -- Mexico and the political reforms there," Mr. Bush went on. "Look at Taiwan. Look at South Korea. And someday soon, I hope that an American president will end that list by adding, 'Look at China.' I believe in open trade with China because I believe that freedom can triumph in China."

"My administration wants to work with Congress and to listen to what the members have to say," Mr. Bush said. "We've been especially impressed by the fresh, new thinking of many members about how to advance environmental and worker protection concerns in ways that open trade rather than closing trade."

--------

Bush Cites Free Trade Benefits

New York Times
May 7, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bush-Trade.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush sharpened his criticism of trade foes on Monday, denouncing ``a new kind of protectionism'' that he said was thwarting the prosperity and spread of democracy that come with the free flow of goods.

``Open trade is not just an economic opportunity,'' the president said. ``It is a moral imperative.''

The president's address to a hemispheric business group laid the groundwork for his request later this week for broad treaty-making powers. Presidents from Ford to Clinton had authority to negotiate pacts that could be voted up or down by Congress without amendment, but the authority lapsed in 1994.

Free trade critics, including many Democrats in Congress, say they fear that Bush would negotiate deals that drive jobs from America or don't live up to U.S. environmental and labor standards. Though he broke no new policy ground, Bush opened a fresh line of attack by accusing his opponents of undermining their own goals.

``By failing to make the case for trade we've allowed a new kind of protectionism to appear in this country. It talks of workers, while it opposes a major source of new jobs. It talks of the environment, while opposing wealth-creating policies that will pay for clean air and water in developing nations. It talks of the disadvantaged, even as it offers ideas that would keep many of the poor in poverty.''

Bush did not mention his critics by name, but he was aiming at Capitol Hill.

``I urge the Congress to restore our nation's authority to negotiate trade agreements and I will use that authority to build freedom in the world, progress in our hemisphere and enduring prosperity in the United States,'' Bush told some 300 business leaders, ambassadors and government officials who attended the Council of the Americas event.

``I'm counting on the council's help to bring sanity to the United States Congress,'' he said.

A group of 61 senators sent Bush a letter Monday warning him that they will strongly oppose any new trade agreement that would restrict America's ability to use its laws to protect American companies against unfair trade practices of other nations.

The letter cited America's anti-dumping law, which allows the government to impose penalty tariffs against imported products being sold in the United States at unfairly low prices. It also cited a law that allows the United States to impose higher tariffs in retaliation for unfair trade barriers erected by another country against American exports.

``Each of these laws is fully consistent with U.S. obligations under the World Trade Organization and other trade agreements,'' said the letter from the senators.

Among those signing were Senate Republican Leader Trent Lott, Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle and Sen. Max Baucus, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over trade matters.

Bush vowed to negotiate treaties that protect businesses and improve the environment, human rights and the lives of children. ``Open trade advances those American values,'' he said.

His remarks were echoed earlier in the day by Secretary of State Colin Powell, who told the same group that a proposed hemispheric free trade agreement would advance ``worker and human rights over the long run'' while protecting the environment and advancing economic equality.

Powell said the North American Free Trade Agreement is a powerful example of the benefits free trade can bring.

``Did NAFTA hurt democracy in Mexico?'' Powell asked. ``No. Today, Mexico has a president elected from the opposition, the first in 70 years. It has freer labor unions, a freer press and a growing number of active non-governmental organizations.''

The Council holds its annual meeting in Washington every spring but this is the first time in memory a U.S. president has agreed to address the gathering.

At the recent Summit of the Americas in Quebec, hemispheric leaders reaffirmed a commitment to conclude a regional free trade agreement by 2005. Anti-free trade groups sought to disrupt the proceedings, some arguing that free trade puts profits ahead of the needs of workers. Others maintained that NAFTA has not produced any benefits for Mexican workers.

Powell suggested the protesters were on the wrong side of history.

``We need to get out the word, the message about the new world we live in and the opportunities before us. The noisy protesters against globalization, they can't see it,'' he said.

-------- police / prisons

Research: Prison Worker Sensitivity

MAY 07
Associated Press
By JANET McCONNAUGHEY
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=NATIONAL&STORYID=APIS7BR2OFO0

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - A student who interviewed 50 executioners and death row guards says that rather than dehumanizing inmates or hardening their feelings toward them, they think often about their emotions and well-being.

Michael Osofsky was to present his findings to the American Psychiatric Association on Monday, nine days before Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh is scheduled to die.

Osofsky, a Stanford University sophomore who conducted the interviews last year with members of the Louisiana State Penitentiary's execution team, said they often empathize with prisoners waiting to die.

``They considered the philosophical questions of life and death and religion. They questioned their views on the death penalty,'' Osofsky said. ``Ultimately, they did a lot of thinking over what it must be like to be in the shoes of the inmate, the inmate's family, the victim's family, or to be in the roles that each of their colleagues must carry out.''

The study challenges some of the findings Osofsky's adviser and collaborator, Philip Zimbardo, made in 1971, when he flipped a coin to have some Stanford undergraduates act as prison guards and others as inmates.

Some students began acting as brutal thugs, while prisoners became hopeless. Tests before the experiment started found no differences that could explain why some ``guards'' turned sadistic and others didn't.

Zimbardo concluded that prisons dehumanize people, and need to be changed so that they promote human values rather than destroy them.

``Michael's research is unique in discovering that it is not necessary for prison personnel to dehumanize inmates or in this case death row prisoners,'' Zimbardo wrote to The Associated Press.

Osofsky will appear on a panel with Zimbardo, along with his father and collaborator, Howard Osofsky, chairman of psychiatry at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center.

Osofsky said the prison's warden, Burl Cain, ``encourages a system of maintaining security while behaving decently toward the inmates.''

The prison guards ``describe themselves as `soldiers of the court,' meaning they carry out the decisions of the court, judge and jurors according to the legal procedures of our country,'' Osofsky wrote.

He said guards often helped prisoners by encouraging their religious beliefs, giving them cigarettes or taking the time to chat with them.

A death row officer identified as ``Willie W.'' - Osofsky did not use any real names - said he cannot sleep the night after an execution. He asks himself, ``What have we done?'' and ``Did we do enough? How will society judge us in 500 years?''

Guards assigned to the death house during executions, on the other hand, said they usually stop thinking about the execution after they leave the prison.

Being an executioner turned one man into an opponent of the death penalty. Another told Osofsky, ``If it ever gets easy, there's something very wrong with me.''

----

Cincinnati Police Officer Charged With Negligent Homicide

New York Times
May 7, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Shooting-Protest.html

CINCINNATI -- A white police officer whose slaying of a black man touched off three nights of riots was charged Monday with negligent homicide, a misdemeanor.

The indictment was announced exactly one month after Officer Stephen Roach shot 19-year-old Timothy Thomas. The grand jury's options had ranged from murder to no charges.

Roach also was charged with obstruction of official business, also a misdemeanor. If convicted of both charges, he would face up to nine months in jail.

The shooting prompted the city's worst racial violence since the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, Tenn. Dozens were injured during the unrest last month and more than 800 arrests were made before a citywide curfew helped restore order.

The nine grand jurors concluded their work last week. There was no official explanation for the timing of the announcement, though most downtown workers leave the area by evening and the Cincinnati Reds baseball team is on a road trip and won't return to its downtown park until Friday.

Before the indictments were announced, workers boarded up downtown businesses and police went on 12-hour shifts.

"I know they're not going to give us justice today," said Amanda Mayes, 25, who was among several blacks demonstrating at the Hamilton County Courthouse.

The Justice Department announced Monday that it has opened a civil rights investigation of the Cincinnati police department. An agency official speaking on condition of anonymity said authorities would look for illegal conduct, including the use of excessive force.

--------

Man Freed After Wrongful Conviction

New York Times
May 7, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Rapist-Cleared.html

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- A man was freed from prison Monday 15 years after he was wrongly convicted of rape, based partly on testimony from a police chemist now under investigation for incorrectly identifying evidence.

Oklahoma County prosecutors received a written report Monday from California laboratory saying a DNA test showed sperm and hairs taken from the scene of the rape were not from the 39-year-old Jeffrey Todd Pierce.

Former police chemist Joyce Gilchrist testified in 1986 that hair left by the rapist was was ``microscopically consistent'' with Pierce's hair.

Gilchrist, now on paid leave, also testified in the cases of 12 inmates who are on death row in Oklahoma and 11 who have already been executed. Those cases are being re-examined as are hundreds of others she worked on.

Pierce was sentenced to 65 years in prison. His twin boys were 17-months-old at the time of his conviction. Pierce had been married just two years. He and his wife, Kathy Pierce, later divorced.

An FBI report said Gilchrist's testimony in this and at least five other cases ``went beyond the acceptable limits of forensic science.'' Hair and fibers were misidentified in these cases, the report said.

Gilchrist has said the investigation will exonerate her. She ended her career as a police chemist in 1993 for a role as an administrator.

Problems with Pierce's conviction came to light after the case was re-examined under a program meant to put older cases through today's more sophisticated DNA tests.

``Once we determined that the proper procedures were followed, we took immediate action to release him,'' said David Prater, Oklahoma County Assistant District Attorney.

Pierce always maintained the woman mistakenly identified him.

Pierce was arrested 10 months after the attack when the victim picked him from a photo lineup as the rapist.

The woman initially told a police officer she didn't think Pierce was her attacker. Two coworkers testified Pierce was at lunch with them when the rape occurred.

-------- spying

Beijing Jails a U.S.-Based Chinese Entrepreneur

New York Times
May 7, 2001
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/07/world/07CHIN.html

BEIJING, May 6 - Liu Yaping left a comfortable life in the United States to seek out business opportunities in the city where he was born.

A permanent resident of the United States with a home in Weston, Conn., he traveled frequently in the last six years to Hohhot, the capital of the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia, often staying for months at a time.

When he tried to start a company to design Web sites last year, he seemed headed for success. He had good contacts, including influential family members and friends from his school days. He spoke the language. His work experience in America gave him a leg up in Western business practices.

But on March 8, one day before he was to return to the United States for talks with investors, public security officers dragged Mr. Liu off the street and he has been held incommunicado in a military prison ever since, family members and lawyers said.

And, although Mr. Liu is officially charged only with two minor economic crimes, his lawyers say his treatment has been inexplicably harsh. His family and lawyers have been refused permission to see him, although such visits are guaranteed under China's criminal procedure law.

Highly placed friends who have made inquiries have been advised to stay away from a "major case." And Mr. Liu was detained for more than a month before being charged.

More alarming to the family, Mr. Liu's younger brother has been asked to pay two large bills for emergency hospital visits, one of which included a CAT scan of the brain, said his wife, Pei Zhang, a United States citizen. And his family and lawyers fear that he may have been beaten in jail.

Even for China, where courts and the police are sometimes lax in adhering to legal procedures, lawyers here and in the United States find Mr. Liu's treatment mystifying.

"Generally they at least make a pass at following rules," said Jerome Cohen, a professor of law at New York University who is working on the case, "but in this case they are for some reason choosing to violate their own criminal procedure laws."

Mr. Liu, 48, is one of a growing number of Chinese-born United States residents who have found themselves mysteriously detained by the Chinese authorities in the last six months, a trend that Western diplomats say reflects increasingly aggressive behavior by China's security agencies toward this group.

"Usually Chinese high-level judicial agencies tend to be very careful and monitor cases involving green card holders," said Zhang Jianzhong, a Chinese lawyer who is involved in the case. "If there are irregularities, they can apply a lot of pressure. It's not a deciding factor, but it can have an effect."

But he added: "This influence goes up and down with U.S.-China relations. It may not work in his favor now."

Even Mr. Liu's wife, in the United States, and his brothers, in China, are perplexed by the detention, although they suspect that high police officials may be using him to settle old scores. Mr. Liu previously sold elevators to the Public Security Bureau and became enmeshed in power struggles there.

Last month the State Department officially urged American citizens and green card holders who had been born in China to "carefully assess" their risk of detention if they traveled there, particularly if they had publicly criticized the government or had close contacts with Taiwan.

The State Department advisory was prompted by the detention for varying lengths of time of six American citizens and a number of United States green card holders in the last half-year. Most were academics, though some were businessmen.

While the others were picked up by China's Ministry of State Security, which usually deals with espionage, Mr. Liu was detained by China's ordinary police force, the Public Security Bureau.

But such distinctions are not always clear in China: this week the police suddenly told Mr. Liu's Chinese lawyers that they could not visit because the case involved state secrets, even though Mr. Liu is primarily charged with economic crimes.

Under Chinese law, the right to a lawyer is not guaranteed if "state secrets" are involved.

Mr. Liu's current problems began last year, when he and his wife began setting up their company in Hohhot.

The couple had emigrated to the United States in the early 1990's with their son, now 15. While Ms. Zhang and their son are already United States citizens, Mr. Liu did not complete the naturalization process.

In November, traveling on a Chinese passport, Mr. Liu registered a wholly foreign-owned company in Hohhot in his wife's name and began to put together the money committed to the project. In late February the company got its first project, from a government company, Ms. Zhang said.

But on March 8 the Public Security Bureau suddenly seized Mr. Liu and sealed the company bank account, moves that the police later said were necessary because the company had failed to pay taxes and to deposit the required investment money within three months. The bureau confirmed his arrest declined to answer further questions.

But Mr. Zhang, the lawyer, said seizing Mr. Liu and detaining him incommunicado for two months would be highly unusual treatment for such "light crimes."

He said the first enforcement procedure for overdue taxes is delivery of an official notice, which Mr. Liu was handed only after he had spent a month in jail. Normally the notice can be appealed, although that is not possible from prison.

The lawyer added that the usual punishment for failing to put up required investment funds is to revoke the business's license. And he said that in such a case the prisoner is normally eligible for release pending trial. But requests for bail have gone unanswered.

"There are lots of questions about these charges," he said. "It just doesn't make sense. We are trying to handle this conflict so that Mr. Liu can receive his rights under Chinese law."

But so far lawyers and Mr. Liu's relatives in Hohhot, who declined to be interviewed by the foreign press, have come up empty-handed.

Ms. Zhang said she had begun to feel extra urgency about a visit after Mr. Liu's brother, Liu Yaou, who still lives in Hohhot, began receiving the medical bills.

On April 5 he was asked to pay the equivalent of $300 for two hospital visits for an unspecified illness. On April 6 Mr. Liu managed to pass a note out of hospital, saying he was vomiting, slurring his speech and losing his vision. On April 17 Mr. Liu's brother was again asked to pay a hospital bill, this one for about $400. But when Mr. Liu's family calls to inquire about his physical condition, they are told he is in "good health," Ms. Zhang said.

A radiologist who answered the phone at one of the two hospitals that treated Mr. Zhang said his CAT scan had shown a growth on one of the arteries in his brain. Ms. Zhang said her husband, 48, had not previously complained of feeling unwell.

Although such conditions are not generally caused by trauma, Mr. Liu's lawyers nonetheless fear the worst and add that their fears will only be calmed when they are allowed to see him.

`'It's obvious that they don't want anyone to see this man," said Mr. Cohen, the New York lawyer, "so naturally we're worried about his physical condition."

--------

U.S. Resumes Reconnaissance Flights Off China's Coast

New York Times
May 7, 2001
By THOM SHANKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/07/world/07CND-PLANE.html

WASHINGTON, May 7 - The United States resumed reconnaissance flights off the coast of China today for the first time since an April 1 collision between a Navy intelligence-gathering plane and a Chinese fighter bruised relations between the two countries, defense and military officials said.

An unarmed Air Force RC-135 took off from Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan, flew its mission in international air space off the northeastern coast of China during daylight hours there and returned to its base without incident - and without being trailed by Chinese interceptors, officials said.

"There was no reaction from the Chinese," one Defense Department official said today after the RC-135, a military version of the Boeing 707 and designed to snatch communications signals, had landed.

Officials said the Air Force jet was sent without U.S. fighters alongside, indicating that recent suggestions for future reconnaissance flights to include armed escorts had been rebuffed.

China had demanded that U.S. patrols off its coast be halted following the collision of a Navy EP-3E surveillance plane and a Chinese fighter over the South China Sea, resulting in the death of the Chinese pilot and the detention of the 24 American crew members for 11 days after their emergency landing on Hainan Island.

Pentagon officials declined to say when the next patrol would be sent off the coast of China. "We'll continue to fly surveillance and reconnaissance flights around the world when we need to," one military official said.

Technicians sent to inspect the damaged Navy aircraft, which remains on the runway at Hainan, have reported that the plane could be flown off the island after replacing perhaps one or two of its engines and repairing flight-control surfaces, such as flaps and rudders, military officials said today.

Pentagon officials had expressed concerns that the left wing was so badly damaged in the collision that it could not support the load of take-off, and that the plane would have to be taken apart, crated and carried away by barge. But the wing was found to be structurally sound, officials said today.

"The plane is flyable," one military official said. "We know we can change out engines. That's not a simple task, but we can do it in a week."

However, officials in Beijing have not given permission to repair the plane, nor to fly it out of Chinese territory.

Military officials who have been briefed on the review of the Navy spy plane said that the technicians were unable to determine how much information the Chinese had been able to gather from equipment and computer programs that were not destroyed by the crew during the emergency landing.

"The Chinese restricted what the team could do inside the plane," one Pentagon official said, pointing out that the Chinese could have dismantled what was left of the equipment and reinstalled it prior to the arrival last week of the American technicians.

"They reported that it all looked quite orderly," the official said. "It was all spruced up."

---------

U.S. Resumes Surveillance Flights Off China

May 7, 2001
New York Times
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-china-u.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military on Monday resumed intelligence-gathering flights by electronic surveillance aircraft off China in defiance of demands by Beijing that such patrols be halted, a defense official said.

The official said the first such flight since an April 1 mid-air collision between a U.S. Navy reconnaissance plane and a Chinese fighter jet was flown by a big, unarmed RC-135 aircraft in international air space off northeastern China.

The four-engine jet, which flew out of Kadena Air Base on Okinawa, conducted its mission during daylight hours on Monday, the official said. Such planes are packed with equipment to gather information on military operations and communications.

``Today's flight was flown in daylight and was not intercepted,'' the defense official, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters. ``The flight ended just a couple of hours ago,'' the official said at 8 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT), which is 8 p.m. Monday off China.

At the White House, spokesman Ari Fleischer declined to confirm the resumption. ``I'm not going to comment on any military operations,'' he said.

Fleischer added: ``Right from the beginning it has always been the position of the United States that it is our prerogative and right to fly over international airspace to preserve the peace by flying reconnaissance missions but I'm not going to entertain any questions about any specific missions.''

An official at China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs declined immediate comment on the resumption of U.S. reconnaissance

flights off the Chinese coast.

Washington had vowed to resume the missions, which were temporarily halted following the collision between a four-engine turboprop Navy EP-3E surveillance aircraft and the Chinese jet fighter off China's southeastern coast.

The Chinese jet crashed into the South China Sea, killing the pilot. The crippled EP-3E made an emergency landing at a Chinese military base on Hainan Island, where it is still being held by China.

INCIDENT STRAINED RELATIONS

In the incident that strained relations between the two

countries, China held the 24-member U.S. crew for 11 days until Washington said it was ``very sorry'' the Chinese fighter pilot had died in the collision and for landing at Hainan without permission.

A team of aircraft technicians from Lockheed Martin Corp inspected the Navy plane last week, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Sunday he hoped the aircraft could be repaired and flown out of China by the U.S. military.

Pentagon officials said earlier that the flights were likely to resume in international air space off central China and later expand to the south, where defense officials have charged that Chinese fighter pilots are dangerously aggressive in trying to intimidate crews of the lumbering U.S. planes.

Rumsfeld said on Sunday he hoped the Navy surveillance plane could be repaired for flight.

``The preliminary view is that it may be possible to repair it sufficiently to fly it out, but that's not clear yet,'' he said on NBC's ``Meet the Press.''

While he said a final decision had not been made on whether it would be flown from Hainan Island, Rumsfeld added, ``I think that certainly it would be logical it would be flown out.''

Pentagon officials said earlier Beijing had indicated it did not want the plane repaired for flight. One alternative would be to take the aircraft apart for shipment by boat.

Rumsfeld told CBS' ``Face the Nation'' that he expected Beijing would release the $80 million aircraft after holding it for more than a month.

``I would suspect we'll get it back. They wouldn't have allowed an inspection team to go in there if they didn't plan to return the airplane,'' he said.

-------- terrorism

Terror Trial Defendant Stands Firm

New York Times
May 7, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Peru-Berenson.html

LIMA, Peru (AP) -- Lori Berenson, the American on trial on terrorism charges, recognizes her demeanor and uncompromising attitude have hurt her chances of winning acquittal but says she is willing to pay the price.

``If there were an easy way out I might take it, but at this point there is no easy way without compromising my principles,'' the 31-year-old New Yorker said in an interview with The Associated Press.

``I might be in here for a while. It's OK. I'll have to deal with that,'' she said Sunday, glancing around the austere concrete courtyard of the maximum-security Santa Monica prison in Lima, where other inmates chatted with relatives and friends on visitors day.

Berenson has served five years of a life sentence for treason handed down by a secret military tribunal in 1996. She was convicted of renting a house used by leftist guerrillas as a hide-out and for allegedly plotting to take over Peru's Congress to exchange hostages for jailed rebels.

That was overturned last year, and Berenson is six weeks into a retrial by a civilian court on the lesser charges of ``terrorist collaboration.'' The prosecution is seeking a 20-year prison sentence.

Berenson brushed off the view, held by many Peruvians, that she has been insolent during her trial, blaming the perception on the country's macho society and its negative view of strong women.

Many Peruvians consider Berenson's behavior in court to be aloof, obstinate and at times combative. During testimony, she has criticized Peru's legal system, suggested police planted evidence against her and stood unflinching as judges grilled her.

On Monday, Berenson, looking like a graduate student in wire-rimmed glasses and black turtleneck sweater, rolled her eyes as the court reviewed old news reports of her arrest and a January 1996 declaration in which she defended the guerrillas as ``a revolutionary movement.''

Berenson recognizes her refusal to publicly turn on the rebel group she is accused of helping has hurt her chances of acquittal, but she said she has no other option.

``I'm not going to say I did something I didn't do and condemn somebody that I am not in the position to condemn,'' she said.

Pointing to what she called biased judges, antiquated terrorism laws and a public anxious for a conviction, Berenson views her current trial as an ``absurd'' political show that will only lead to a guilty verdict.

``The legal elements are not what are being weighed,'' she said. ``It's so ridiculous, it gets humorous at times. But I really can't do anything about it. Everyone knows what's going to happen.''

Berenson adamantly proclaimed her innocence, saying she had no idea she was surrounded for a year by rebels of the Marxist-inspired Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, or MRTA. But she does acknowledge a certain ``solidarity'' with convicted guerrillas whom she has lived with under harsh prison conditions.

As the trial winds down, with a verdict expected within a few weeks, Berenson's defense attorneys appear focused on laying the grounds for an appeal to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

That commission, a legal arm of the Organization of American States, has already condemned Peru's anti-terrorism courts as unfair.

Peru's legal system does not have jury trials, and verdicts are decided by judges who also have the right to cross-examine defendants and witnesses.

Last week, Berenson's attorney Jose Sandoval asked presiding judge Marcos Ibazeta to remove himself from the case, accusing him of being biased against Berenson and acting more like a prosecutor than a judge. The three-judge panel denied the motion, ruling the deadline for such a measure had long passed.

Berenson accused Ibazeta of grandstanding for the news media and of being a lackey of ex-President Alberto Fujimori's government.

``I'm being tried by Fujimori's laws and by his right-hand judges,'' Berenson said, exhibiting the same mixture of steely defiance and disbelief she has shown through much of the trial.

Some Peruvians, who might concede her first trial was a sham, say Berenson has done little to help herself during the retrial, mainly by refusing to condemn the guerrilla movement.

``Everything seems to indicate that she was involved with the group,'' said Martin Belaunde, president of the Lima Bar Association, who has followed the case. ``She's trying to deny that, but the facts are so overwhelming that I don't think she can deny them in a coherent way.''

The Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, while smaller and far less deadly than Peru's Maoist Shining Path insurgency, is blamed for some 200 deaths since the early 1980s. The group, now all but defeated, used kidnapping, extortion and collecting protection money from narcotics traffickers to finance its operations. It is best known for its four-month hostage siege at the Japanese ambassador's residence in Lima in 1997.

Berenson said she condemns terrorist violence, but added that ``if the MRTA has committed violent acts, they have to explain those acts themselves. I'm not going to do it.''

In the meantime, ``the way I look at it, I've got no way out,'' she said. ``I'm just waiting for this to end.''

-------- activists

Nuclear resisters sentenced to prison

Mon, 7 May 2001
From: Max Obuszewski <MObuszewski@afsc.org>

Nuclear Protesters Michael Sprong and Bonnie Urfer Sentenced to Prison

MADISON, WISCONSIN--This afternoon, Magistrate Judge Stephen L. Crocker of the Western District of Wisconsin sentenced nuclear protesters Michael Sprong and Bonnie Urfer to prison for sawing down three transmission poles at the Navy's ELF facility in Clam Lake, Wisconsin, on June 24, 2000.

ELF stands for Extremely Low Frequency, and the ELF towers send one-way messages to the U.S. fleet of Trident submarines loaded with nuclear warheads. Sprong, 38, of Marion, S.D., received a sentence of two months, with one year of supervised release, and was ordered to pay $7,492.44 in restitution.

Urfer, 49, of Luck, Wis., received a sentence of six months, with one year of supervised release, and was also ordered to pay $7,492.44 in restitution. "When the prosecutor said no one has the right to act above the law, that includes the U.S. government and the Pentagon," said Sprong in his statement to the court. U.S. readiness to wage nuclear war is against international law and constitutes "a war crime and a crime against humanity," he argued.

Before her statement, Urfer showed a film of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, followed by a tape of a 1999 talk by Dr. Steven Younger of the Los Alamos Labs entitled, "Why Are Nuclear Weapons Important: The Los Alamos Perspective." In that tape, Younger told the staff of the labs, "You get people's attention when you threaten the existence of their country."

"Project ELF is part of a system ready and waiting to unleash the equivalent of 85,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs," said Urfer. "I withdrew my consent a long time ago to this mad acceptance of mass extermination. It doesn't matter that U.S. courts legitimize our genocidal weapons of total destruction, I must and I will continue to work for complete nuclear disarmament in the spirit of nonviolence no matter the consequence because it is, for me, the decent and humane thing to do." Urfer is co-director of Nukewatch, a nonprofit organization based in Luck, Wisconsin, that is opposed to nuclear power and nuclear weapons.

The maximum sentence that Judge Crocker could have imposed on each defendant was one year in prison and a $100,000 fine. After hearing the sentence, Sprong said: "I'm surprised. The term of imprisonment is less than I expected. I'm really perplexed by this judge. He's obviously a thoughtful man, and he went up to the edge of the abyss but then concluded that, 'I have to do my job.' We're all looking into the abyss. And either we just say we've got to do our jobs, or we resist these weapons of mass destruction."

For more information, contact Nukewatch at P.O. Box 649, Luck, WI 54853, nukewtch@lakeland.ws, (715) 472-4185.


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