------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Australia to Study Nuclear Claims
U.S. Mulls Shift of Nuke Research
Bruce Power closes lease of two nuclear power stations
Chinese believed preparing for a nuclear weapons test
Taiwan deploying 58 Mirage fighters
NATO hopefuls attempt to revive membership bids
U.S. 'Delighted' with Nuclear Talks in India
India Backs Bush Disarmament Plan As Talks Begin
India Is Poised to Benefit From Missile Defense
Report: Israel Documents Confiscated
Iraq Denies Making, Testing Radiation Bomb
Report: Israel Documents Confiscated
NKorea Warns Seoul on Missiles
Missile-defense talks do little to soothe Russians
France, Germany Seek NDM Dialogue with U.S.
Germany's Question: Could U.S. Missile System Be Cooperative?
Diplomatic Effort Fails to Ease Missile Plan Anxiety
US Happy With Missile Defense Talks
U.S., Russians Begin Missile Talks
U.S., India Talk Missile Strategy
Bush proposals aimed at `rogue states': Armitage
Russia Approves Nuclear Fuel Plan But Demands Cash
Russian Satellite Links Cut Relay Station Fire Interrupts Contact
U.S., Russia Open Missile Talks
Russia Approves Nuclear Fuel Plan But Demands Cash
Waste shipment arrives in N.M.
Hope for Los Alamos Fire Victims

MILITARY
DF-31 test readied
NATO Seizes Weapons Truck in Kosovo
Australia probes nuclear test claims
Tell-Tale Silence Indicates US Block of the Bioweapons Protocol
Myanmar: Thailand Made Airstrikes
An Opening to Iran
Iraq Denies Making, Testing Radiation Bomb
House votes to withhold U.N. cash
Lott urges Pentagon to approve takeover by Northrop
Government is covering up UFO evidence, group says

OTHER
Auspine plans A$90mln green energy power plant
UK COMPANY BRINGS FUEL CELL PLANT TO PENNSYLVANIA
STUDENTS TO RACE SOLAR POWERED MODEL CARS
Pressure Mounts to Include Energy
EPA Requires Cleaner Refineries
Bush Pledges $200 Million to New Fund to Fight AIDS
Bush Asks Congress to Grant Him a 'Fast Track' in Trade Talks
FBI Data Given to McVeigh Defense
Ashcroft Delays McVeigh Execution
FBI Chagrined by Missing Evidence
U.S. snubs EU trade-spying team

ACTIVISTS
Robert Redford Blasts White House Green Policies


-------- NUCLEAR

-------- australia

Australia to Study Nuclear Claims

New York Times
May 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Australia-Nuclear-Tests.html?searchpv=aponline
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010511/aponline102118_000.htm

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) -- The government said Friday it would investigate claims that Australian soldiers were used as guinea pigs in British nuclear tests during the 1950s and 1960s.

The troops were exposed to radioactive fallout just hours after bomb tests and tried out different types of clothing to determine what protection they offered against radiation, Professor Sue Rabbitt Roff, a senior research fellow at Scotland's Dundee University, said Australian archive documents showed.

``No doubt it's going to be helpful if this new information that has been revealed is passed to Australian authorities so they can investigate it,'' Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said.

Rabbitt Roff said the document contradicted British government assertions in the European Court of Human Rights in 1997 that no humans were ever used in experiments in nuclear weapons trials.

``This document lists 24 Australian personnel who were used directly for clothing trial experiments to see what sort of clothing would be more protective to men in a nuclear war situation,'' she told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.

``They were asked to wear particular types of clothing and to crawl and walk through ground zero some hours and days after the detonation of nuclear weapons at Maralinga in order to see whether their clothing would give them any sort of protection from the radioactive materials,'' she said.

The British government conducted a series of atmospheric nuclear weapons tests at Monte Bello Island, off Western Australia, and at Maralinga in the deserts of southern Australia.

Opposition leader Kim Beazley described the claims as ``very disturbing'' and called for a full inquiry.

``We've had formal investigations in relation to Maralinga before which to my recollection have not turned up with anything quite like this,'' he said.

Mark Croxford, a spokesman for Veterans Affairs Minister Bruce Scott, said Scott had asked officials to contact Rabbitt Roff for a copy of the documents.

Croxford said the government is compiling a register of people who worked on the tests. The register would be completed midyear and used to begin a study into cancer rates among participants.

Rabbitt Roff said the named servicemen could be tracked to determine if the tests affected their health.

Lawyer Morris May, who represents a group of 30 Australian test victims seeking compensation, said the men had long claimed they were used as guinea pigs.

May said one Australian driver had described how he and a group of British officers had been instructed to walk through an area contaminated by a recent explosion while wearing army issue woolen clothing.

``He found that a bit odd because it was very hot and normally woolen clothing would not be used at Maralinga at that time,'' May told ABC radio.

-------- business

U.S. Mulls Shift of Nuke Research

By John Heilprin
Associated Press Writer
Friday, May 11, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010511/aponline034739_000.htm

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration is considering shifting some critical nuclear research to Russia as part of budget cuts that may shut down small research reactors at three U.S. colleges.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has asked the Energy Department to move work from Michigan to a facility that might take years to equip, a department official said.

"It is troubling to us, obviously," said John C. Lee, chairman of the University of Michigan's Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences.

Lee said proposed research cuts would require his school to decommission its research reactor and test laboratories within three years. The reactor is the only one in the nation capable of testing 10-inch-thick pressured steel vessels that act as a last resort against leakage of radiation from nuclear power plant reactor cores, he said.

William Magwood IV, director of the Energy Department's Office of Nuclear Energy, testified Thursday before Congress on President Bush's proposed 42.5 percent budget cut for nuclear research, from $47 million this year to $27 million in the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.

Meantime, the administration was putting the final touches on an energy package that will emphasize reviving nuclear power to address future electricity needs.

"They think they might have to go to Russia if the University of Michigan closes the reactor," Magwood said after testifying. "I'd hate to see that happen."

He agreed that the Michigan reactor has a unique task, but he said the NRC does not view moving its work to Russia as a national security issue.

Two of the nation's other premier university-run nuclear research laboratories - Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Cornell University - also have told the Energy Department they plan to decommission their reactors unless the government contributes more.

In Bush's budget, all of the research, education and nuclear facilities and materials programs that Magwood oversees would be cut 20 percent, from $277.5 million to $223 million.

"Vice President Cheney is going to come out and say that this is the way we should proceed, but at the same time say, 'Give us less money to make sure we do it right,'" complained Rep. Sonny Callahan, R-Ala., chairman of the House Appropriations energy and water subcommittee.

But Magwood said in an interview that it was appropriate for the Bush administration "to take a pause and have a careful examination of everything we're doing and then move forward."

The University of Michigan already has begun planning for decommissioning its 2 megawatt Ford Reactor and accompanying nuclear labs it operates at an annual cost of $1.5 million. The Energy Department now contributes about $100,000 a year although the NRC has invested close to $2 million in the testing program at Michigan, Lee said.

"The integrity of the pressure vessels is very important for the safe operation of nuclear power plants in this country," Lee said. "This is essentially the last line of defense ... that would protect and contain radiation produced in the operation of a reactor."

-------- canada

Bruce Power closes lease of two nuclear power stations near Kincardine, Ont.

The Canadian Press
http://cbc.ca/cp/business/010512/b051206.html

TIVERTON, Ont. (CP) - Bruce Power announced Saturday that it has closed a deal making it the licensed operator of two nuclear power stations near Kincardine, Ont.

In a transaction worth more than $3.2 billion, Bruce Power will lease the Bruce A and Bruce B stations from Ontario Power Generation until 2018, with an option to extend the lease for up to another 25 years. "This agreement injects private equity into the Bruce facilities and represents a major step towards opening the Ontario electricity marketplace to competition." said Ontario Power Generation president and chief executive officer Ron Osborne in a press release.

Bruce Power is a partnership between British Energy, Britain's largest electricity generator, Cameco Corp., the world's biggest uranium supplier, and the two unions at the Bruce plant - the Power Workers' Union and the Society of Energy Professionals.

"This transaction represents a major step forward in our North American strategy, enabling us to deploy both our existing nuclear operating skills and our experience of trading in competitive markets," said British Energy chairman Sir John Robb.

The two power stations include four operating reactors at the Bruce B station, with a capacity of 3,140 megawatts, and four laid-up reactors at the Bruce A station.

After a condition assessment, Bruce Power decided to start a $340-million program to restart two of the four Bruce A generators, with an operating capacity of 1,500 megawatts.

The restart, to be completed by 2003, is conditional on obtaining regulatory approvals and achieving performance targets for the four working reactors at Bruce B.

About 3,000 Ontario Power Generation employees also transferred to Bruce Power effective Saturday.

Bruce Power is honouring the current collective bargaining agreements of those workers and will safeguard existing pensions and benefits, the company said in a press release.

All the output from the Bruce stations will be sold into the new Ontario electricity market, which is scheduled to open to competition by May 2002, Bruce Power said.

Until then, the output will be sold to Ontario Power Generation under transitional arrangements.

-------- china / taiwan

Chinese believed preparing for a nuclear weapons test

May 11, 2001
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010511-97861857.htm

China is stepping up preparations for an underground test at its Lop Nur nuclear weapons testing facility, according to U.S. intelligence officials. A test could be carried out in the next several days, they said.

Vehicle activity at the test site in the remote western province of Xinjiang was detected by spy satellites last week, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Intelligence reports of the upcoming test coincide with the resumption Monday of U.S. reconnaissance flights near China, which could be used to detect intelligence related to the test, the officials said.

The officials said they did not know if the RC-135 Rivet Joint flight on Monday was looking for electronic signals in eastern China that may be related to the test, but RC-135s have collected nuclear testing information from the Chinese in the past.

China is believed to be working on development of a new small warhead based on the design of the U.S. W-88 nuclear warhead. China obtained secret design information on the W-88 through espionage in the United States, according to U.S. intelligence reports.

Asked about the upcoming test, Sen. Richard C. Shelby, Alabama Republican and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, would not comment directly.

"It´s my judgment the Chinese will benefit immensely from what went on at Los Alamos and Livermore," Mr. Shelby said of Chinese espionage activities at U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories.

"In the years to come, you will see a modernization of their nuclear weapons and a lot of it will be based on our models, including the W-88," he said, noting that when the Chinese succeed in developing their nuclear arms it will be a "quantum leap" in their strategic power.

Test preparations at Lop Nur were first reported by The Washington Times on April 9, after U.S. intelligence agencies detected the first signs of an impending nuclear test in March.

Officials said the upcoming test, which could take place before the end of the month, may be a "subcritical" nuclear test -- a small explosion designed to simulate a nuclear blast.

Other officials suspect the Chinese will carry out a small nuclear test despite their pledge to have stopped all nuclear testing in 1996.

U.S. intelligence agencies suspect China is engaged in covert nuclear testing that relies on small, low-yield underground blasts. The suspicions are based on intelligence reports indicating Beijing´s agents purchased special containment equipment from Russia several years ago that masks the effects of underground nuclear tests.

The last Chinese nuclear-related test took place in 1999, shortly before a senior State Department official delivered an apology to Beijing for the accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, during the NATO aerial bombing campaign.

Meanwhile, the Chinese government yesterday defended its use of aircraft to intercept U.S. surveillance flights near its coast and said they threaten its security.

The surveillance is "a grave threat to China´s security," Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi told reporters in Beijing.

Chinese jet fighters did not challenge the RC-135 flight Monday, but Mr. Sun said sending jets to monitor the planes is "necessary and very reasonable." He said the United States should "learn from the past" to avoid further incidents.

U.S. surveillance flights were halted after the April 1 collision between a U.S. EP-3E aircraft and a Chinese F-8 interceptor. The F-8 crashed and its pilot was killed after the collision. The EP-3E made an emergency landing on China´s Hainan island and the crew was held 12 days before being released.

Mr. Sun said again yesterday that China will not allow the U.S. aircraft to be repaired and flown off.

"Due to the nature of the plane, it will not be allowed to fly back from Hainan to the United States," he said. "The specific means of transporting the plane will be talked about by the sides."

China´s Deputy Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing said Wednesday that returning the aircraft by allowing it to fly out of China would "further hurt the dignity and sentiments of the Chinese people" and cause "strong indignation and opposition from the Chinese people."

This article is based in part on wire service reports.

----

Taiwan deploying 58 Mirage fighters

World Scene
May 11, 2001
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010511-59077.htm

HSINCHU, Taiwan Taiwan´s leader inaugurated 58 French-made Mirage fighter jets and their advanced radar-guided missiles yesterday and urged China to "give up your military threat against us."

Addressing pilots standing in front of the jets´ gray nose cones at this air base in northern Taiwan, President Chen Shui-bian said that by putting into service the Mirage 2000-5s, Taiwan will have a more powerful deterrent to a possible Chinese invasion.

Mr. Chen said that over the past few years, Beijing has sought to expand its air and naval activities along the 100-mile-wide Taiwan Strait, but Taiwan´s air force has protected the island´s skies without provoking the enemy.

-------- europe

NATO hopefuls attempt to revive membership bids

May 11, 2001
By David R. Sands
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010511-14696594.htm

Leaders of 10 Central and Eastern European countries will attempt to revive what they consider a stalled bid to join NATO at a summit in Slovakia´s capital of Bratislava this weekend.

"We are concerned because we don´t see that the serious discussion has even begun in some Western capitals," said Slovakian Foreign Affairs Minister Eduard Kukan.

"We would really like to see a strong signal from the United States to get things started," Mr. Kukan said in a recent interview.

But the 19-nation alliance faces an intensely political internal debate between now and November 2002, when formal invitations to join NATO are to be issued at a summit in Prague.

The United States and its Western allies have their own favored candidates. Russian fears and threats about further NATO enlargement will play a role, and the European Union is embarked on its own military and institutional reforms that could leave several EU countries ready to defer any NATO enlargement next year.

Some favor a "Big Bang" strategy, letting in all or most of the qualifying candidates, while others prefer a far more modest round that could be limited to just one or two preferred applicants.

And some of the most attractive candidates from a political standpoint -- Bulgaria and Romania, most prominently -- face a steep task in fielding and funding the kind of military force that would qualify for admission to the alliance.

Hungary, which joined NATO with Poland and the Czech Republic in the last expansion round in 1999, strongly favors adding new members, particularly on its borders.

But Hungarian Foreign Minister Janos Martonyi said in an interview with editors and reporters of The Washington Times that he, too, sensed a worrisome drift in the NATO-enlargement debate, with the deadline for some crucial preliminary decisions coming fast.

"We would very much like a clear early determination that there will, in fact, be another enlargement round next year," Mr. Martonyi said. "It´s very important that there be no deception or delay."

He said the lack of momentum in the debate is troubling because disappointment among the candidate nations could have serious consequences. "We feel there is a real risk of instability if the decisions are dragged out indefinitely."

The European Union is engrossed in its own internal debates over enlargement, a new European defense force, and potential institutional changes. Germany, which cultivates strong ties with Russia, worries about the fallout from a NATO enlargement that would provoke Moscow.

"The silence you´re hearing over in Western Europe on this issue is really deafening," said John Hulsman, a European analyst at the Heritage Foundation. "And that reflects a clear lack of enthusiasm for enlargement at a time when there´s really no momentous political reason or security threat driving the process."

Top officials from NATO hopefuls Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia will be in Bratislava for the summit. The 10 plan to address a number of regional security issues, but the clear underlying purpose will be to inject new urgency into the NATO question.

Leading NATO powers have all spoken favorably of enlargement in the abstract, but have been careful not to endorse individual candidates. All say Moscow, which is particularly critical of the NATO ambitions of the three Baltic states on its border, has no veto in the process, although Russia´s security concerns will be taken into account.

The United States has been seen as a strong supporter of enlargement, and NATO hopefuls such as Slovakia and Latvia have pressed for a clear statement of support from the alliance´s dominant member.

Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Marc Grossman yesterday traveled to Bratislava to deliver a message from President Bush praising the progress made by the countries attending the conference in meeting NATO military criteria.

"NATO must be open to all of Europe´s democracies ready and able to meet NATO´s obligations," Mr. Bush´s statement read. "No part of Europe will be excluded because of history or geography."

But the president stopped short of endorsing the admission of new members in 2002, and candidate countries now say they hope Mr. Bush will use a trip to NATO´s Brussels headquarters next month to put the United States on record in favor of enlargement.

-------- india / pakistan

U.S. 'Delighted' with Nuclear Talks in India

May 11, 2001
By Sanjeev Miglani
http://news.excite.com/news/r/010511/11/politics-arms-india-usa-dc

NEW DELHI, India (Reuters) - U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage emerged "delighted" Friday from a round of meetings with Indian leaders who welcomed President Bush's new vision of nuclear disarmament.

India, which is building nuclear arms of its own, raised eyebrows last week by supporting the thrust of Bush's proposals.

But it has stopped short of openly endorsing his controversial plan to build a missile defense system that would effectively ditch the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) between Washington and Moscow.

Armitage, on a swing through Asia to win support for the new strategy, said he had delivered a letter from Bush to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee in which the U.S. president accepted an invitation to visit India.

"We were delighted, we are looking forward to a congenial and indeed robust relationship as we move into the 21st century with India," Armitage told reporters outside Vajpayee's home.

The talks took place on a day when India was quietly marking the third anniversary of its nuclear tests, which soured ties between the two countries for more than a year.

Coincidentally, Chinese Prime Minister Zhu Rongji began a visit Friday to Pakistan, which answered arch-rival India's nuclear blasts of May 1998 with tests of its own.

Vajpayee told a meeting of the country's top defense scientists that his government had welcomed Washington's new strategic framework because it held the potential of "lightening the shadow of nuclear terror."

"It is in this context that we have welcomed President Bush's suggestions for steep reductions in nuclear arsenals and a move away from further development of offensive nuclear technologies," he said.

CONSULTATION, NOT CONFRONTATION

India had previously balked at the idea of a U.S. missile interceptor system, partly because of fears that it could spur China to build its nuclear stockpile and suck New Delhi into an arms race with its neighbor.

It is still wary of rushing to back a system on which its Cold War-era ally, Russia, remains to be convinced. And it told Armitage that the ABM, a pact which would severely limit missile defenses, should not be abrogated unilaterally.

A Foreign Ministry spokesman told reporters Armitage had described missile defense as "only one element of the proposed framework," and said India was interested in further consultation on all elements as part of a larger concept.

"As a departure from the norms of the Cold War, the proposed new Strategic Framework, based upon consultation and cooperation rather than confrontation, is a welcome development," he said.

Armitage said the planned defense system was aimed at a few states and said fears of a new arms race were surprising.

"Indeed the missile defense we envisage is one which is directed only against a handful of rogue states, and only against a handful of missiles," he said.

"Indeed if carried to its fullest...a missile defense that works would make unnecessary some states producing, manufacturing ballistic missiles as a response to a threat from a neighbor."

He named Iraq, Iran, Libya and North Korea as rogue states and, pressed further, said there was also concern about Pakistan.

Vajpayee said the world now had a better appreciation of the security imperatives that led him to order the underground tests and reiterated the need for a nuclear arsenal.

"We do believe that a credible minimum nuclear deterrent is a basic security umbrella which we owe to our people," he said.

After India conducted its tests on May 11 and 13, 1998, Vajpayee explained his decision by pointing to perceived threats from the country's nuclear-armed neighbors, China and Pakistan.

India has gone to war three times with Pakistan and once with China. It has consistently accused Beijing of transferring nuclear and missile technology to Islamabad.

----

India Backs Bush Disarmament Plan As Talks Begin

May 11, 2001
By Sanjeev Miglani
http://news.excite.com/news/r/010511/05/politics-arms-usa-india-dc

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee lauded President Bush's vision of nuclear disarmament on Friday as the two nations began talks on Washington's plans to introduce an anti-missile shield.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was due to meet External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh and then Vajpayee, three years to the day after Indian nuclear tests soured relations between the two nations.

Coincidentally, Chinese Prime Minister Zhu Rongji began a visit on Friday to Pakistan, which answered arch-rival India's nuclear blasts of May 1998 with tests of its own.

New Delhi raised eyebrows at home and abroad last week by coming out in support of the Bush plan.

However, it has stopped short of endorsing the controversial plan to build a missile defense system that would effectively ditch the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

"We welcome every move toward lightening the shadow of the nuclear terror under which we live today," Vajpayee said after giving awards to the country's defense scientists, including those involved in building nuclear-capable missiles.

"It is in this context that we have welcomed President Bush's suggestions for steep reductions in nuclear arsenals and a move away from further development of offensive nuclear technologies," he said.

Analysts saw in India's unexpectedly warm response -- which implied support for an anti-missile shield -- a desire to add a strategic dimension to its new friendship with Washington.

India had previously balked at the idea of a U.S. missile interceptor system because of fears that it would spur China to build its nuclear stockpile and suck New Delhi into an arms race with its neighbor.

"A LEAP FORWARD" IN RELATIONS

"The quick and unambiguous support extended by India to certain elements of Mr. Bush's proposals has generated a bit of political heat here," C. Raja Mohan, an influential commentator on geopolitical issues in India, wrote in The Hindu on Friday.

"But it also fuelled speculation that Indo-U.S. relations might be on the verge of a great leap forward."

The U.S. envoy, on an Asian tour to explain and win support for Bush's strategic vision on missile defense, began his meetings on a day when New Delhi was quietly but resolutely marking the third anniversary of its nuclear explosions.

Vajpayee said the world now had a better appreciation of the security imperatives that led him to order the underground tests and reiterated the need for a nuclear arsenal.

"We do believe that a credible minimum nuclear deterrent is a basic security umbrella which we owe to our people," he said.

After India conducted its tests on May 11 and 13, 1998, Vajpayee explained his decision by pointing to perceived threats from the country's nuclear-armed neighbors, China and Pakistan.

India has gone to war three times with Pakistan and once with China. It has consistently accused Beijing of transferring nuclear and missile technology to Islamabad.

This week it conducted a major military exercise along the border with Pakistan, adding to tensions which have run high for years over the disputed territory of Kashmir.

Newspapers quoted the scientific adviser to Vajpayee as saying the wargames were "aimed at seeing how to use a nuclear weapon in a combat situation."

While Armitage started out on his diplomatic rounds in New Delhi, China's Zhu began an 11-day Asian trip in Pakistan. His tour includes visits to Nepal, Sri Lanka and the Maldives, all countries in India's backyard.

----

India Is Poised to Benefit From Missile Defense

Brahma Chellaney IHT
International Herald Tribune
Friday, May 11, 2001
http://www.iht.com/articles/19506.htmhttp://www.iht.com/articles/19506.htm

NEW DELHI The cycle of action and reaction triggered by missile defenses is bound to drive India closer to the United States. The first evidence of that is from India itself. It is one of the few countries to have extended immediate support to President George W. Bush's national missile defense plan.

The plan foreshadows changes not only in nuclear strategy and planning but also in the global strategic landscape. This is underlined by the fact that Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage will hold talks on the Bush plan in New Delhi on Friday, the third anniversary of India's controversial nuclear weapons tests.

The international line-up on the U.S. strategic defense plan may be the precursor of things to come: the United States, its traditional allies and India on one side, China and its three militaristic friends, Burma, North Korea and Pakistan, on the other side, and Russia somewhere in the middle. If Washington manages the strategic defense issue well with Moscow, offering it defensive technology and agreeing to deep nuclear cuts, Russia could move to the U.S. side and become part of the West.

India faces a difficult situation in Asia, one that demands deep strategic engagement with the United States. India's largest neighbor, China, will use U.S. missile defenses as an excuse to further modernize its already expanding nuclear and missile arsenals. India's security will be adversely affected by the increasing trans-Himalayan missile threat and Beijing's continued nuclear and missile transfers to Pakistan. As a result of U.S. missile defenses, China is likely to flout international norms and conventions more openly and to seek new ways to deliver lethal missile blows.

The U.S. missile defense program signifies a new arms race - a race for dominance over outer space. As this race gathers momentum and delivers new weapon systems, the United States will no longer need to retain all its older armaments. America's heavy investment in strategic defense is intended to secure its global dominance for decades to come.

As a vulnerable state living in a dangerous neighborhood, India has to look at missile defenses strictly through the prism of national interest. One of its top priorities should be to build a strategic partnership with the United States on mutually beneficial and level terms. If New Delhi does not forge close ties with the Bush administration, it may be many years before a fresh opportunity presents itself.

Russia, the world's richest country in natural resources, will always remain a natural ally of India, as both have a fundamental commonality of interests. It is the strategic imperative to keep Russia firmly on India's side while wooing Washington that has prompted the Indian foreign minister to ride two horses at once - support for the Bush plan on missile defenses and support for Moscow's stand that the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty should not be unilaterally abrogated. But while India has to work hard to mend the declining relationship with Moscow, those ties cannot come in the way of building an Indian-U.S. strategic partnership that will be critical to Indian security and Asian stability.

U.S. missile defenses will not threaten India's security. They could even yield strategic benefits if New Delhi handles the issue deftly. It must exploit its missile defense support by pushing the Bush team to take a fresh look at the decades-old technology and military sanctions against India. Mr. Armitage's visit and the upcoming tour of the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Henry Shelton, can help lay the groundwork for building ties.

If Washington were to interpret its export-control laws more broadly, it would throw open for sale to India many high-tech commercial items. It also makes no strategic sense for the United States to continue to keep India out of its arms market. Further, there is no reason why Washington should still keep India as a key target of the punitive restrictions of the Nuclear Suppliers' Group.

Missile defenses are likely to help strengthen and expand U.S.-led security arrangements in Asia and other parts of the world. In future, the U.S. could extend a "missile umbrella" to its allies, in the way it presently holds out a nuclear umbrella. An India strategically aligned with America could take advantage of certain missile defense benefits to reduce its own security burden.

The writer, a professor of security studies at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.

-------- israel

Report: Israel Documents Confiscated

New York Times
May 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Israel-Nuclear.html?searchpv=aponline

JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israel's State Archives confiscated papers relating to the country's nuclear secrets from the widow of a former prime minister while she was out of the country, a newspaper reported Friday.

Alarmed by persistent leaks of nuclear secrets to the media, the Defense Ministry ordered the confiscation of documents belonging to late Prime Minister Levy Eshkol, the daily Haaretz said.

The ministry suspected the Eshkol archives might be the source of some of the leaked information, the report said.

The papers were in the possession of Miriam Eshkol but were kept at a Jerusalem government office dedicated to Eshkol's memory. State Archivist Evyatar Friesel took advantage of the widow's absence to have the documents moved to the State Archives, the paper said.

Friesel on Friday refused to comment on the report. Miriam Eshkol could not be reached for comment.

Israel has a nuclear reactor near Dimona in the Negev Desert and is widely assumed to have nuclear weapons, but has always refused to confirm it.

Eshkol became prime minister in 1964 when the nuclear program was said to have been in its early stages.

Last month, Israel announced the arrest of a retired general accused of disclosing classified military information to a reporter. Retired Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Yaacov, 75, a scientist who has U.S. as well as Israeli citizenship, was involved in the nuclear program, the British newspaper Sunday Times said.

In 1986, the Sunday Times published photographs taken by Mordechai Vanunu, a technician who worked at the Dimona facility. On the basis of the photographs, experts said at the time that Israel had the world's sixth-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons.

Vanunu is now serving an 18-year sentence for providing the pictures. The Defense Ministry recently decided to keep Vanunu under surveillance after his release, and to try him again if he again attempts to disclose classified information, Haaretz said.

Defense Ministry spokesman Shlomo Dror said he was not familiar with either the reported confiscation of the papers or the ministry's decision on Vanunu.

However, he said both decisions would be justified to prevent such leaks of sensitive information.

``It is against the law to divulge classified information and anyone who does so should be prosecuted,'' he said.

-------- iraq

Iraq Denies Making, Testing Radiation Bomb

May 11, 2001
By Irwin Arieff
http://news.excite.com/news/r/010511/14/international-iraq-un-bomb-dc

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Iraq denied on Friday it had produced or tested a radiation bomb more than a decade ago, but acknowledged it considered such a weapon and abandoned the effort as impractical.

A letter from Iraq's U.N. ambassador, Mohammed Aldouri -- apparently Baghdad's first public admission it had weighed making a radiological bomb -- said an Iraqi technician had conceived of the idea of the weapon in 1987, when Baghdad was locked in a long war with neighboring Iran.

Radiological bombs are aimed exclusively at humans, intended to cause severe illness and slow death through radiation sickness rather than destroy their targets with explosive power.

Iraq's denial contradicts its own documents given to the U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM) in 1995, which show Baghdad made the weapon and tested it three times.

UNSCOM issued public reports to the Security Council on the bomb in 1995 and 1996, when it was in charge of ridding Baghdad of weapons of mass destruction as required under U.N. Security Council resolutions. Iraq has been under U.N. sanctions since 1990 when it invaded Kuwait.

Aldouri's letter, however, was mainly a reaction to an April 29 New York Times article which quoted from Baghdad's classified documents.

Aldouri, in a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, said Iraqi specialists "explored the technical and practical aspects of this idea, and they ascertained it was not feasible."

"They abandoned it on the grounds that it was not efficacious and would cause soil contamination that it would be difficult to clean up after the expulsion of the invaders. The idea died, and no radiological bombs were manufactured and none were tested," Aldouri wrote.

UNSCOM documents from Iraq give extensive details of the test results and the reasons for pursuing developing of the bomb and then abandoning the project in 1987.

The Iraqi document says the bomb, 12 feet long and weighing more than a ton, was tested three times before being dropped as ineffective. It said Baghdad irradiated a mixture of zirconium, hafnium, uranium and iron in its Tuweitha nuclear power plant 12 miles south of Baghdad to make the weapon. The plant was later bombed in 1991 during the Gulf War.

The mix was chosen in part because its radioactivity dissipates relatively quickly, making such a weapon hard to trace and analyze after use, according to the Iraqi document.

The document, still stamped "top secret" is now posted on the Internet at http://www.iraqwatch.org.

Aldouri's letter dismissed the New York Times report as the work of "the mouthpiece of world Zionism" and accused the United Nations and the United States of "leaking and distorting" the information relied on by the newspaper "for the purposes of the United States-Zionist policy of aggression against Iraq."

Philip Reeker, a State Department spokesman, told reporters on April 30 the experiments with the bomb showed the need for keeping sanctions on Baghdad.

Iraq continued in its efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction "and that's our primary reason that we insist on strong controls to prevent Iraq from acquiring items of concern that would aid them in that goal," Reeker said.

Documents uncovered in 1995 showed that Iraq, after invading Kuwait in 1990, also launched a crash program to test its first nuclear bomb, using highly enriched uranium.

The target date for a test was April 1991. But the Gulf War intervened in January 1991, destroying many Iraqi facilities.

-------- israel

Report: Israel Documents Confiscated

By Jack Katzenell
Associated Press Writer
Friday, May 11, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010511/aponline170810_000.htm

JERUSALEM -- Israel's State Archives confiscated papers relating to the country's nuclear secrets from the widow of a former prime minister while she was out of the country, a newspaper reported Friday.

Alarmed by persistent leaks of nuclear secrets to the media, the Defense Ministry ordered the confiscation of documents belonging to late Prime Minister Levy Eshkol, the daily Haaretz said.

The ministry suspected the Eshkol archives might be the source of some of the leaked information, the report said.

The papers were in the possession of Miriam Eshkol but were kept at a Jerusalem government office dedicated to Eshkol's memory. State Archivist Evyatar Friesel took advantage of the widow's absence to have the documents moved to the State Archives, the paper said.

Friesel on Friday refused to comment on the report. Miriam Eshkol could not be reached for comment.

Israel has a nuclear reactor near Dimona in the Negev Desert and is widely assumed to have nuclear weapons, but has always refused to confirm it.

Eshkol became prime minister in 1964 when the nuclear program was said to have been in its early stages.

Last month, Israel announced the arrest of a retired general accused of disclosing classified military information to a reporter. Retired Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Yaacov, 75, a scientist who has U.S. as well as Israeli citizenship, was involved in the nuclear program, the British newspaper Sunday Times said.

In 1986, the Sunday Times published photographs taken by Mordechai Vanunu, a technician who worked at the Dimona facility. On the basis of the photographs, experts said at the time that Israel had the world's sixth-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons.

Vanunu is now serving an 18-year sentence for providing the pictures. The Defense Ministry recently decided to keep Vanunu under surveillance after his release, and to try him again if he again attempts to disclose classified information, Haaretz said.

Defense Ministry spokesman Shlomo Dror said he was not familiar with either the reported confiscation of the papers or the ministry's decision on Vanunu.

However, he said both decisions would be justified to prevent such leaks of sensitive information.

"It is against the law to divulge classified information and anyone who does so should be prosecuted," he said.

-------- korea

NKorea Warns Seoul on Missiles

By Soo-Jeong Lee
Associated Press Writer
Saturday, May 12, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010512/aponline060249_000.htm

SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korea's state-run newspaper warned Saturday that South Korea will be doomed to "ruin and death" if it participates in Washington's proposed missile defense system.

The Rodong Sinmun accused South Korea of strengthening its military with new U.S. weapons and preparing to join Washington's plan to build a missile shield.

"If the South Korean authorities get involved in the missile defense .... they will get nothing but ruin and death," said Rodong in a commentary carried by North Korea's official foreign news outlet, KCNA.

President Bush's administration plans to deploy a missile defense system capable of protecting the United States and its allies from nuclear attacks by countries like North Korea and Iraq.

China, Russia and North Korea vehemently oppose the plan, warning it would trigger a new arms race.

Earlier this week, South Korean officials thanked visiting U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage for explaining Washington's plans for a missile defense system. But they were careful not to take a stand on the issue.

The United States remains South Korea's most important ally, but Seoul also is courting Chinese and Russian support to improve ties with Pyongyang.

Relations between North and South Korea improved significantly following the historic summit in June between the leaders of the two Koreas.

But North Korea recently suspended most government contacts with Seoul, jeopardizing rapprochement on the divided Korean peninsula. The North Korean move was seen as a protest against the Bush administration's tougher stance toward the communist North.

North Korea says U.S. and South Korean allies are beefing up their militaries to attack the North.

"The South Korean authorities' reckless arms buildup .... is pushing the improving North-South relations and situation on the Korean Peninsula to a grave phase," the Rodong Sinmun was quoted as saying by KCNA. "No one can predict what will happen in the days ahead."

KCNA was monitored in Seoul.

The Korean Peninsula was divided into communist North Korea and pro-Western South Korea in 1945. Their 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.

-------- missile defense

Missile-defense talks do little to soothe Russians

By Jim Heintz
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://inq.philly.com/content/inquirer/2001/05/12/national/MISSILES12.htm

MOSCOW - A high-level American delegation met yesterday with Russian officials to discuss the U.S. plan for a missile-defense system that Moscow opposes.

A member of the delegation said the fact that the two sides were talking showed progress, but a Foreign Ministry spokesman dismissed the discussions as raising more questions than answers, and a top Russian general threatened countermeasures if the United States went ahead with the system.

The missile-defense system is contrary to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which Moscow says is the foundation of global security. The United States argues that a missile defense is needed to protect against nuclear attacks by small "rogue" states.

Despite the opposition, President Bush's speech last week committing the United States to the system was greeted with calm by the Kremlin, with President Vladimir V. Putin welcoming U.S. intentions to consult with other countries on the plan.

But tensions resurfaced this week, with Putin saying no country had the right to ensure its own security to the detriment of others. Russia contends that abandoning the ABM Treaty would set off a dangerous and financially debilitating arms race.

The U.S. delegation, led by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, met at the Foreign Ministry with a Russian interagency committee created to shape the Kremlin's response to Bush's intentions.

Stephen Hadley, a deputy U.S. national security adviser, said the delegation "put forward and elaborated on some of the points the President made."

"We began to give them some answers to their questions," Hadley said. The delegation left Moscow later yesterday.

But Alexander Yakovenko, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, said the talks only underlined Russian concerns.

"The American side has so far failed to produce convincing arguments that would persuade us that it has a clear vision of how to handle international security issues without disrupting the arms-control arrangements that have been established over the past 30 years," Yakovenko said.

Col. Gen. Valery Manilov, first deputy chief of the Russian general staff, said both sides "must jointly find a way out of the mistaken U.S. decision" and said Russia could take countermeasures if the plan went ahead.

"Russia possesses the technical, intellectual and technological potential to asymmetrically ensure the interests of its security and the security of its allies in case of the unilateral withdrawal of the U.S. from the ABM Treaty," he was quoted as saying by the news agency Interfax.

Manilov's remarks suggested that Russia's response to a U.S. system would be to increase and upgrade its nuclear arsenal to have the potential to overwhelm the system.

The core argument of keeping the ABM Treaty, which restricts the United States and Russia to one localized missile-defense system apiece, is that a country will not launch a nuclear strike if it cannot defend itself against retaliation.

----

France, Germany Seek NDM Dialogue with U.S.

May 11, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-france-.html?searchpv=reuters

PARIS (Reuters) - France and Germany declared themselves ready on Friday for a dialogue with the United States on a proposed anti-missile shield in the hope that President Bush was ready to change his views after hearing theirs.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder announced after an informal bilateral summit that Paris and Berlin -- which were both very cool to U.S. envoys touting the new defense plan in Europe this week -- were ready to take up Bush's offer of a dialogue.

``Dialogue means exchanging opinions and can only function if each side is ready to take the other side's views seriously and nothing is decided in advance,'' Schroeder said after dining with France's President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin.

Dialogue also meant each side should be ready to modify its position, he added. Chirac, host to the bilateral meeting meant to focus on EU issues, also expressed support for a dialogue.

The leaders of the European Union's key bilateral partnership also agreed to draw up a common position on EU enlargement before the bloc's summit in Sweden next month and said they would continue discussing their contrasting views on the EU's future.

U.S. CHARM OFFENSIVE

U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz met concern and skepticism in Paris and Berlin this week when he met leaders as part of a charm offensive to win support for Bush's planned departure from conventional disarmament thinking.

German officials said they still had big questions and got few answers about Washington's actual plans. A French spokesman simply said Paris expressed doubts about the high-tech shield.

Wolfowitz insisted in his talks that the system meant to intercept missiles from so-called ``rogue states'' would be good for Washington's allies and did not mean the United States had lost interest in arms control.

Unveiling the project last week, Bush said it was time to ''move beyond'' the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty with Moscow which no longer reflected post-Cold War strategic reality.

But he gave few details on the type of systems envisaged, the timetable, the legal framework or how Washington planned to deal with Russian and Chinese opposition to the idea.

Schroeder praised Bush's speech as ``a great speech'' before stressing how Germany and France interpreted the offer of a dialogue with Washington's allies that the president made in it.

Neither Schroeder nor Chirac gave any other details of their views on missile defense.

On Thursday, the European aerospace group EADS -- formed last year from the merger of France's Aerospatiale Matra, Germany's DaimlerChrysler Aerospace and Casa of Spain -- said it was seeking a role in the controversial missile project.

AGREE TO AGREE ON ENLARGEMENT

On European issues, the leaders announced they would present to the bloc's summit in Gothenburg next month a common position on the EU's program to take in new members from eastern Europe but gave no details.

``We discussed the problem of enlargement and agreed the positions of Germany and France were identical,'' Chirac said without giving any details.

Germany has expressed worries about an influx of low-paid workers from the new members and sought to ban free movement of workers from the candidate countries for up to seven years.

Located further from the old east-west border, France has not shown much concern about this.

The leaders played down differences over the future shape of the EU, an issue where disagreements emerged this week when French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine rejected a plan for a pan- European government presented by Schroeder's party.

France, sensitive about Germany's growing influence since its reunification in 1990, sees the plan as a ploy to undercut the role of member states and water down the EU agricultural policies that clearly benefit French farmers.

In contrast to Germany, where all political leaders have come out clearly for a more federal EU with greater powers for the European Commission and Parliament, the French agree they want the decision-making Council of Ministers to continue its key role.

But the rivalry between conservative Chirac and Socialist Jospin, who are expected to face each other in next year's presidential election, has meant Paris has not been able to present a clear alternative to the proposals coming from Berlin.

----

Germany's Question: Could U.S. Missile System Be Cooperative?

May 11, 2001
By ROGER COHEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/11/world/11GERM.html?searchpv=site01

BERLIN, May 10 - Germany, unconvinced by President Bush's proposals for a missile defense system, today posed what an American envoy, Paul Wolfowitz, called "very, very serious questions" about the project.

After meeting with German officials, Mr. Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, said the questions centered on whether such a system could be built "in a way that is cooperative, rather than confrontational, in a way that enhances stability rather than generating new tensions and new arms races." Like other allies, Germany has been troubled by the Bush administration's determination to move ahead with what is seen in Berlin as an unproven and potentially destabilizing system of deterrence that would involve the scrapping, or at least the adjustment, of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty with Moscow.

The 1972 treaty banned national missile defense, thus preserving the threat of mutually assured destruction, on which cold-war peace was based. But the Bush administration argues that a new post-cold-war world requires new means to keep the peace. The center-left German government does not dispute this principle. But it is worried that the American plans could anger Russia, thereby destabilizing or dividing Europe once again, and be viewed by China as a direct challenge.

Mr. Wolfowitz and a team of United States envoys held talks at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Tuesday and will arrive in Moscow on Friday. The mission was announced last week by President Bush during a speech in which he tried to calm tensions by saying he would listen to the views of allies on missile defense and "take them into account."

Trans-Atlantic friction has increased in recent months not only because of the adjustment to a new administration in Washington by European governments, but also because European officials have felt out of step with President Bush on issues ranging from the environment to new defense strategies.

Mr. Wolfowitz, referring to the problems, said today that he did not think "there is severe misunderstanding." He also reached out to Moscow, saying that Russia was "no longer our enemy" and promising to "build a relationship with Russia in which strategic nuclear weapons are no longer the centerpiece of that relationship."

In Rome, Marc Grossman, the under secretary of state for political affairs and another member of the mission, said, "We need to think through a new kind of relationship with Russia, one in which we don't need to incinerate each other to get along."

Such words will certainly please Western European governments. But Germany, a country for which cold-war deterrence proved effective and ultimately brought about its unification, is attached to the notion that something that has worked should be left alone unless there is certainty that its replacement will work as well.

Earlier this month, Joschka Fischer, the German foreign minister, said: "The ABM treaty worked well. We want control mechanisms that worked very well in the past, should they be replaced, to be replaced only by better ones or more effective ones. We don't want a new arms race."

Today, after a meeting with Mr. Wolfowitz, the chief diplomatic aide to Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, Michael Steiner, said: "We have a number of questions to which we need answers and we don't have them yet. That is why the German position is that we say neither `Yes' nor `No.' "

----

Diplomatic Effort Fails to Ease Missile Plan Anxiety

May 11, 2001
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/11/world/11CND-MISSILE.html?searchpv=site01

MOSCOW, May 11 - After a week of consultations with allies and former adversaries, the Bush administration has failed to overcome deep concerns over whether its proposal to erect a broad array of missile defenses and abandon a key arms control treaty would undermine the strategic balance and promote an arms race.

In Moscow, an American team led by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz was still wrapping up its meeting with top foreign ministry officials today when the ministry spokesman, Aleksandr Yakovenko, announced that the American delegation had not addressed Russia's fundamental questions.

"The United States has been unable to give us arguments to convince us that they see clearly how to solve the problems of international security without damaging disarmament agreements which have stood for 30 years."

It was a message that echoed the skepticism expressed from London to Berlin and Tokyo to Seoul. China, which regards American missile defense as a threat to cancel the effectiveness of its small nuclear missile force, was conspicuously absent from the list of countries consulted so far this week.

Moscow's message today included a new warning from military leaders that "Russia possesses the technical, intellectual and technological potential" to respond to a unilateral American deployment of missile defenses. Prominent Russian foreign policy specialists have hinted that Russia might provide China with technologies to strengthen or expand its nuclear arsenal.

But there were also strong hints today that Moscow was continuing to press in private for a prominent role in missile defense that would bind it more closely with Europe and the United States, a strategy that might leave China more isolated.

In any case, the almost unanimous chorus of alarm in Europe has allowed Moscow to seem less confrontational. Military leaders last week were under strict instruction not to publicly criticize Mr. Bush's speech until promised consultations took place.

As the three American teams fanned out this week, many countries tried to convey receptivity to new ideas on how to confront the threat from so-called rogue nations that are arming themselves with ballistic missiles. But they also emphasized that Mr. Bush continues to withhold critical details about how his missile defense proposal would be accomplished, who would take part and how nations left outside the umbrella might react.

Mr. Wolfowitz acknowledged this problem during his stop in Berlin.

"It is much too early, I think, even for us to ask people to agree with us," he said, "because we have not come to firm conclusions yet ourselves."

Speaking in Helsinki today, Russia's foreign minister, Igor D. Ivanov, who travels to Washington next week to meet Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, said, "We live in hope, and Russia will do everything it can to ensure that as a result of these talks, international security will be strengthened and no harm will be done to anyone's interests."

But he added, "In matters of strategic stability, it pays to act in a way that does not cause any harm."

Though Russian officials made no public mention of the fact that Mr. Wolfowitz was chosen to lead the American delegation here, the diplomatic corps here took note that the White House had sent to Moscow a senior official associated with formulating a harder line toward Russia.

In a March interview with a British newspaper, Mr. Wolfowitz said Russia was one of the worst proliferators of missile technology, adding: "These people seem to be willing to sell anything to anyone for money. It recalls Lenin's phrase that the capitalists will sell the very rope from which we will hang them."

Since those remarks, Mr. Wolfowitz's public comments have been more restrained and constructive. When he emerged from the foreign ministry today, he stood silent as the deputy national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley made a brief statement.

"The fact that we are meeting and opening this dialogue is a sign of progress," Mr. Hadley said. "It is a first step in a consultation process which will continue over the weeks ahead and include discussions and consultations between our two presidents."

This evening, after the Wolfowitz group met with top military leaders here and left for Washington, the Russian general staff issued a harsher statement saying that Mr. Bush's initial approach to missile defense was mistaken and warned that a "unilateral withdrawal" by the United States from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty would set off a Russian response "to ensure the interests of its security and the security of its allies."

A military spokesman, Col. Gen. Valery Manilov, added that Russia continues to press for a joint approach to missile threats in which Russia would take part with "the Americans, the Europeans and other partners."

President Vladimir V. Putin, who has been pressing for an early meeting with Mr. Bush, was silent today. In his only response to Mr. Bush's May 1 speech, the Russian leader said he wants a constructive dialogue with "our American partners." But, he added, "The existing system of international security must not be destroyed, and joint work on its improvement is needed."

Two other Bush delegations visited India and Turkey today. In Ankara, Marc Grossman, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, seemed to suggest that America's missile defense program would cast a broader net of protection than previously stated.

"We hope there will be as wide a participation as possible in the development of such a system," he said. "This is about protecting all countries" and not about making "any country more vulnerable."

In New Delhi, Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage emerged "delighted" from talks with Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, who has applauded Mr. Bush's proposal to make further reductions in nuclear arsenals. But like most leaders consulted this week, he offered no endorsement for the Bush antimissile plan.

For his part, Mr. Armitage said that the American defense shield as now envisaged "is one which is directed only against a handful of missiles" and the shield might actually forestall an arms race by making it unnecessary for "some states" to produce "ballistic missiles as a response to a threat from a neighbor."

It was not clear whether his reference was aimed at China, whose nuclear arsenal is likely to be expanded - something India regards as threatening - in response to missile defenses that would weaken the credibility of China's small nuclear arsenal.

Mr. Armitage also singled out Pakistan today as a possible rogue state. long with North Korea, Iran and Iraq, whose missile programs were of concern to the United States.

While Mr. Armitage was in New Delhi, Prime Minister Zhu Rongji of China was holding consultations with Pakistan's leaders.

----

US Happy With Missile Defense Talks

By Barry Schweid
AP Diplomatic Writer
Friday, May 11, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010511/aponline171434_000.htm

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration says it's getting some positive feedback as it tries to sell its missile defense idea to other nations, but it has yet to convert any opponents.

Senior State Department, Pentagon and White House officials are traveling on a worldwide talk circuit ostensibly to gather advice and information, even as President Bush's commitment to set aside a landmark arms control treaty and proceed with a missile defense program is considered a sure thing.

As a U.S. delegation met with Russian officials in Moscow in an effort to reduce vehement Russian opposition to Bush's plan, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher provided an interim report on the worldwide soundings.

"They've reacted positively to the administration's efforts to discuss the issue with them before we make major decisions," Boucher said. "We obviously appreciate the willingness of the allies to discuss this issue and to engage with us in a constructive and cooperative approach."

But in Moscow, a Russian government spokesman said the talks were raising more questions than answers, and a top general threatened countermeasures if the United States went ahead with an anti-missile system.

A 1972 treaty bars U.S. and Russian national missile defenses. The theory is that potential aggression will be averted because retaliation could be devastating.

Bush has labeled the accord a Cold War relic, a view Boucher echoed Friday.

"We have come to the conclusion this treaty is outdated and not important or relevant to the current strategic situation," he said. "Some part of our discussion will be to discuss the overall strategic thinking and how various elements fit in that context, and whether this one fits or not."

Boucher described the talks, being held from Moscow to Tokyo to Beijing to New Delhi, as "a sincere and real consultation with friends and allies as we go through some very serious and important discussions of strategic thinking with them."

And, Boucher said, "we go forward in deciding together and determining together what's the best strategy to maintain peace and stability in a new age."

Secretary of State Colin Powell has told Congress, however, that the Bush administration would go ahead with a missile defense if it decided one was needed, whatever Russia or other countries might say about it.

The purpose of a missile shield is to protect the United States and, possibly, its allies if North Korea or some other erratic regime fires off long-range ballistic missiles.

At the same time, though, the Bush administration has suspended negotiations with North Korea to freeze their missile development and export programs. Those talks began during the Clinton administration.

Boucher said, meanwhile, that Bush was not on the verge of choosing among the various missile defense schemes. None have been tested successfully, and many are purely theoretical at this point.

"We're not at a stage of going out to announce decisions and ask for support, and that was not the nature of these consultations," Boucher said.

----

U.S., Russians Begin Missile Talks

By Jim Heintz
Associated Press Writer
Friday, May 11, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010511/aponline175753_000.htm

MOSCOW -- Coming to ground zero of opposition to U.S. plans for a missile defense system, a high-level American delegation met Friday with Russian officials to discuss the divisive plan.

A member of the delegation said the fact that the two sides were talking showed progress, but a Foreign Ministry spokesman dismissed the discussions as raising more questions than answers and a top general threatened countermeasures if the United States goes ahead with the system.

Russia vehemently opposes President Bush's intentions to build the missile defense system. The system is contrary to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, which Moscow says is the foundation of global security. The United States argues that a missile defense is needed to protect against nuclear attacks by small "rogue" states.

Despite the opposition, Bush's speech last week committing the United States to the system was greeted with calm by the Kremlin, with President Vladimir Putin welcoming U.S. intentions to consult with other countries on the plan.

But the tensions resurfaced this week, with Putin telling the vast Victory Day gathering at Red Square that no country has the right to ensure its own security to the detriment of others. Russia contends that abandoning the ABM treaty would set off a dangerous and financially debilitating arms race.

The U.S. delegation, led by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, met at the Foreign Ministry with a Russian interagency committee created to shape the Kremlin's response to Bush's intentions.

In Washington, the Bush administration said it was getting some positive feedback from other nations on its missile defense idea. The Moscow visit is part of a worldwide talk circuit which includes Tokyo, Beijing and New Delhi, among other stops.

The talks, State Department Richard Boucher said, are "a sincere and real consultation with friends and allies as we go through some very serious and important discussions of strategic thinking with them."

The U.S. delegation left Moscow later Friday.

But Alexander Yakovenko, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, said the talks only underlined Russian concerns.

"The American side has so far failed to produce convincing arguments that would persuade us that it has a clear vision of how to handle international security issues without disrupting the arms control arrangements that have been established over the past 30 years," Yakovenko said.

Col. Gen. Valery Manilov, first deputy chief of the Russian general staff, said both sides "must jointly find a way out of the mistaken U.S. decision" and said Russia could take countermeasures if the plan goes ahead.

"Russia possesses the technical, intellectual and technological potential to asymmetrically ensure the interests of its security and the security of its allies in case of the unilateral withdrawal of the U.S. from the ABM treaty," he was quoted as saying by the news agency Interfax.

The core argument of keeping the ABM treaty, which restricts the United States and Russia to one tightly localized missile defense system apiece, is that a country will not launch a nuclear strike if it cannot defend itself against retaliation.

Manilov's remarks suggested that Russia's response to a U.S. system would be to increase and upgrade its nuclear arsenal to have the potential to overwhelm the system.

Advocates of the U.S. system argue the ABM is outdated and that concern about small missile attacks is legitimate.

Stephen Hadley, a deputy U.S. national security adviser, said for Americans who lived through the Gulf War and saw the effect of Scud missiles, "the threat has a certain reality and urgency that maybe is not shared."

A leading Russian lawmaker said earlier that the Kremlin should be flexible in its response to the Bush proposal.

"We should not, gritting our teeth, oppose the very idea of NMD," Vladimir Lukin, a deputy speaker of parliament and former Russian ambassador to Washington, told Ekho Moskvy radio. "Our stand should be flexible in this case."

----

U.S., India Talk Missile Strategy

The Associated Press
Friday, May 11, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010511/aponline191429_000.htm

NEW DELHI, India -- A high-ranking U.S. envoy met with Indian officials on Friday to discuss the strategic implications of President Bush's missile defense system.

Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage's one-day visit to New Delhi is part of a larger U.S. effort to seek support of its defense plan from nations in several regions.

"The missile defense that we envision is one that would be directed only at a handful of rogue states and only against a handful of missiles," Armitage told reporters after meeting Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee - who supports the U.S. plan.

Armitage mentioned Iraq, Iran, Libya and North Korea as some of the known."

India, which has two powerful military rivals - China in the north and Pakistan in the west - is one of the few countries that has backed Bush's initiative.

Previous U.S. administrations have been closer to Pakistan than India, but that tilt began to change at the end of former President Clinton's term after Gen. Pervez Musharraf came to power in Islamabad in a military coup.

"What we are endeavoring to work out together is a totally new security regime which is for the entire globe," Jaswant Singh, India's foreign and defense minister, told reporters.

India has pledged no first use of nuclear weapons and promised to conduct no more tests, but rejects the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which it says does not eliminate nuclear weapons, but only restricts them to certain countries.

The United States is easing its sanctions against military contacts with India - imposed by the Clinton administration after New Delhi conducted nuclear tests in 1998, followed by similar explosions by Pakistan.

----

Bush proposals aimed at `rogue states': Armitage

By C. Raja Mohan,
The Hindu,
May 11, 2001
http://www.the-hindu.com/stories/01120001.htm

NEW DELHI, MAY 11. The U.S. today insisted that its proposals for missile defence were not directed at either Russia or China but ``rogue states'' which were acquiring weapons of mass destruction to terrorise and blackmail other nations.

Addressing the press here after a day of consultations with the Indian leadership, the visiting U.S. special envoy, Mr. Richard Armitage, said the missile defence programme was aimed at complicating the political calculus of the so-called rogue states.

While referring to the trends of proliferation in India's neighbourhood and reiterating concerns about Islamabad's programmes to acquire and deploy weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems, Mr. Armitage stopped short of directly naming Pakistan as a rogue state.

Asked to name the rogue states, he referred to Libya, Iraq, Iran, North Korea and other countries ``in your neighbourhood''. Pressed to elaborate, he said ``we have questions about Pakistan which are well known and of which you are equally aware''.

Although the speech on missile defences by the U.S. President, Mr. George Bush, last week made extensive references to nuclear threats from deviant states, Mr. Armitage's readiness to point a finger at Pakistan as ``a potential rogue state'' comes as a major surprise.

The political direction in which Pakistan is headed and its implications for the control of nuclear weapons programme there figured prominently in the Indo-U.S. talks today, but the discussion apparently remained inconclusive.

`New relationship'

Mr. Armitage, who is here to seek support from the Indian Government to the Bush administration's ideas on a `strategic framework' for global security, declared the ``beginning of a new relationship between India and the United States''. He called on the Prime Minister, Mr. A.B. Vajpayee, and handed over a letter from Mr. George Bush accepting the invitation to visit India in the near future. Mr. Bush conveyed his intention ``of working closely'' with Mr. Vajpayee ``to promote common interests in Asia and beyond''.

India is among the few countries which have enthusiastically welcomed Mr. Bush's proposals for moving away from the political premises of the Cold War and building a new global security order. Despite the intense domestic criticism of its effusive support to Mr. Bush, the Government stood its ground and welcomed the American proposals ``as a departure from the norms of the Cold War'' and ``based upon consultation and cooperation rather than confrontation''.

The unexpected political convergence between the Government and the Bush Administration on a new security framework is being seen as the precursor to a more productive political partnership between New Delhi and Washington.

Sanctions' review

Asked about the lifting of nuclear sanctions imposed by the previous administration, Mr. Armitage referred to the current review process in Washington and declared that ``we are on the verge of moving forward in our relationship''. The indications from Washington are that it is only a matter of time before most of the sanctions imposed after India's nuclear tests in May 1998 are lifted.

A Foreign Office spokesman here insisted that it is not the policy of India to seek lifting of sanctions, but pointed to the ``mismatch between sanctions and the new direction of Indo-U.S. relations''.

Mr. Armitage arrived here last night as part of the U.S. effort to consult with ``friends and allies'' in Asia on its plans to build missile defences. He had substantive consultations with the External Affairs Minister, Mr.Jaswant Singh, this afternoon. The two met for nearly an hour before going into a working lunch for the two delegations at the Hyderabad House here.

Mr.Armitage told his Indian interlocutors that Mr. Bush's plan to build a missile defence system is ``only one element of the new strategic framework'' that includes non-proliferation, counter- proliferation and deep reductions of nuclear arsenals.

Mr. Singh, who had strongly welcomed the proposed reductions in nuclear weapons, today reiterated India's hope that the U.S. would pursue its plans ``in a manner that enhances regional and international stability and security''. India also reaffirmed its expectation, expressed during the visit of Russian Foreign Minister, Mr. Igor Ivanov, last week, that the 1972 Anti- Ballistic Missile Treaty between Washington and Moscow would not be abrogated unilaterally by the U.S.

Mr. Armitage also met the Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister, Mr. Brajesh Mishra, and the adviser in the Ministries of External Affairs and Defence, Mr. Arun Singh. The U.S. envoy also called on the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Ms. Sonia Gandhi.

---------

Russia Approves Nuclear Fuel Plan But Demands Cash

May 11, 2001
Reuters
http://news.excite.com/news/r/010511/12/international-arms-russia-plutonium-dc

MOSCOW - Russia approved a treaty to turn plutonium from nuclear weapons into civilian reactor fuel on Friday, boasting of its commitment to arms reduction on a day when U.S. officials were in town pitching missile defense plans.

But Moscow said it needed billions of dollars from Washington and other Western partners to make the swords-into-plough shares program a reality.

Last summer, Russia and the U.S. signed a memorandum to each turn 34 tons of weapons plutonium into reactor fuel over 25 years, but analysts have said new White House incumbent George W. Bush may cut funding for Moscow's nuclear clean-up.

The Russian government said in a statement it had approved the agreement and passed it to parliament to become law.

"The realization of this agreement will clearly demonstrate Russia's adherence to the further development of the nuclear disarmament process and allow the development of Russian-American scientific cooperation," the statement said.

Russia said the agreement foresees large-scale international funding, including the U.S. paying at least $200 million toward building plants to store and salvage the plutonium.

"Russia would not have to begin building or modifying facilities for salvaging plutonium without the creation of an essential international fund, to allow salvaging to go ahead at a rate of two tons of weapons-grade plutonium a year," the government said in a statement.

The project aims to soothe fears that "rogue states" could somehow acquire ex-Soviet plutonium. Through the 1990s, the U.S. spent billions of dollars on programs securing Russian nuclear stockpiles against theft.

But Bush has ordered a review of such financing and Russia's Atomic Energy Ministry said last month that Western partners had only offered about $600 million of the $2 billion needed to build two vital plutonium salvaging plants in Siberia.

The government's decision to pass the bill to parliament for full ratification came as U.S. officials visited Moscow to convince Russia to accept their plans for a missile defense.

Bush says U.S. national security could be threatened by adversaries like North Korea, Iraq and Libya, who he insists could acquire a nuclear capability. The U.S. says stray ex-Soviet nuclear fuel could spark such a proliferation.

Russia, like China, says the U.S. missile shield would wreck the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and also prompt an arms race.

----

Russian Satellite Links Cut Relay Station Fire Interrupts Contact

Reuters
Friday, May 11, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A12625-2001May10?language=printer

MOSCOW, May 10 -- Embarrassed Russian military officials said they lost control of four military satellites for part of the day today when fire ravaged an important ground relay station.

Officials lost contact with the satellites after a 2:30 a.m. fire at a relay station southwest of Moscow, but later in the day military chiefs said the blaze had been brought under control and that they were receiving data from the four satellites.

"At the moment we are reading all information from the satellites [in question]," Nikolai Deryabin, head of the Defense Ministry's press office, told ORT public television.

"The fire has been brought under control, but firefighters are still keeping a close watch to prevent any new outbreak. There will be a round-the-clock watch." Officials had said throughout the day that the overall satellite system was working normally, with ground controllers trying to restore contact via other stations.

"We never lost control over the satellites," Deryabin said. He added that he could not comment on the satellites' specific task, "but they were not the only ones performing such functions."

Some U.S. experts have warned recently that failures by Russia's aging early warning satellite system could lead Moscow to launch nuclear missiles in reaction to a false alarm.

The Russian Tass news agency quoted Defense Ministry officials as saying a short circuit triggered the blaze in the early hours at the relay station near Serpukhov, in the Kaluga region about 120 miles southwest of Moscow.

Firefighters were sent from Moscow to help put out the blaze with specialized foam-making equipment that Defense Ministry crews on the scene lacked.

Anatoly Perminov, head of the military's Space Forces, said the flames had caused substantial damage, but no one had been injured and all secret documents, computer programs, weapons and equipment had been recovered. ORT said the station's main antennas were not damaged.

-------- treaties

U.S., Russia Open Missile Talks

New York Times
May 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Missile-Defense.html

MOSCOW (AP) -- The Foreign Ministry said Friday that U.S.-Russia talks on the Bush administration's plans to scrap the 1972 Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty and develop a national missile defense system have raised more questions than answers.

The talks, which opened Friday, are part of a push by the United States to convince the world it won't start a new arms race.

``The American side has so far failed to produce convincing arguments that would persuade us that it has a clear vision of how to handle international security issues without disrupting the arms control arrangements that have been established over the past 30 years,'' said Alexander Yakovenko, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry.

Stephen Hadley, a deputy U.S. national security adviser, said after the first session that the fact the two sides were talking showed progress.

He said the U.S. representatives had ``put forward and elaborated on some of the points the president made.'' Bush outlined his plans for a national missile defense in a speech last week.

``The Russian side raised some serious and important questions,'' Hadley said. ``We began to give them some answers to their questions.''

A prominent Russian lawmaker said earlier that the Kremlin should be flexible in its response to the Bush proposal.

``We should not, gritting our teeth, oppose the very idea of NMD,'' said Vladimir Lukin, a deputy speaker of parliament and former Russian ambassador to Washington, told Ekho Moskvy radio. ``Our stand should be flexible in this case.''

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, on a visit to Finland, said Moscow was optimistic about the talks' outcome, and he expressed hope that more countries would be consulted.

The high-level American delegation, led by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, arrived at the Foreign Ministry on Friday morning for talks with a Russian interagency committee created to shape the Kremlin's response to President Bush's proposal.

In his speech, Bush committed the United States to building a shield against ballistic missile attack, warning that hostile nations such as Iraq have replaced the Soviet Union as the main threat to the United States and its allies.

Hadley said for Americans who lived through the Gulf War and saw the effect of Scud missiles, ``the threat has a certain reality and urgency that maybe is not shared. That's one of the things we want to talk about.''

ABM treaty is a cornerstone of international security and wants it preserved as a barrier to bigger nuclear arsenals. The treaty bans testing of anti-missile rockets, limits radar capabilities and prohibits the signatories from involving allies in deploying anti-missile rockets.

Russia reacted with surprising calm to Bush's announcement last week that the United States wanted to go ahead with its missile shield plans. President Vladimir Putin welcomed Bush's pledge to consult with other nations on missile defense and urged the United States to work with Russia on arms issues.

U.S. envoys held talks with NATO members and other allies this week, and a delegation headed by U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was holding talks with Indian officials Friday on missile defense and other issues.

``I was honored to present President Bush's thinking on a new strategic framework, which includes many elements, including our willingness to unilaterally reduce our nuclear arsenal below the levels of START II,'' Armitage said after meeting Indian Defense and External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh.

In his speech last week, Bush did not say how far he was willing to cut the U.S. stockpile of 7,200 nuclear weapons. Under START II, the United States already is committed to reducing the arsenal to 3,500, and Russia has sought even deeper cuts.

In Ankara, Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman met with Turkey's prime minister and foreign minister and said the United States hoped to involve as many countries as possible in the missile defense system.

``We would like to see the day when all countries are able to protect themselves from terrorism or blackmail,'' he said.

--------

Russia Approves Nuclear Fuel Plan But Demands Cash

New York Times
May 11, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-arms-ru.html?searchpv=reuters

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia approved a treaty to turn plutonium from nuclear weapons into civilian reactor fuel on Friday, boasting of its commitment to arms reduction on a day when U.S. officials were in town pitching missile defense plans.

But Moscow said it needed billions of dollars from Washington and other Western partners to make the swords-into-plough shares program a reality.

Last summer, Russia and the U.S. signed a memorandum to each turn 34 tons of weapons plutonium into reactor fuel over 25 years, but analysts have said new White House incumbent George W. Bush may cut funding for Moscow's nuclear clean-up.

The Russian government said in a statement it had approved the agreement and passed it to parliament to become law.

``The realization of this agreement will clearly demonstrate Russia's adherence to the further development of the nuclear disarmament process and allow the development of Russian-American scientific cooperation,'' the statement said.

Russia said the agreement foresees large-scale international funding, including the U.S. paying at least $200 million toward building plants to store and salvage the plutonium.

``Russia would not have to begin building or modifying facilities for salvaging plutonium without the creation of an essential international fund, to allow salvaging to go ahead at a rate of two tons of weapons-grade plutonium a year,'' the government said in a statement.

The project aims to soothe fears that ``rogue states'' could somehow acquire ex-Soviet plutonium. Through the 1990s, the U.S. spent billions of dollars on programs securing Russian nuclear stockpiles against theft.

But Bush has ordered a review of such financing and Russia's Atomic Energy Ministry said last month that Western partners had only offered about $600 million of the $2 billion needed to build two vital plutonium salvaging plants in Siberia.

The government's decision to pass the bill to parliament for full ratification came as U.S. officials visited Moscow to convince Russia to accept their plans for a missile defense.

Bush says U.S. national security could be threatened by adversaries like North Korea, Iraq and Libya, who he insists could acquire a nuclear capability. The U.S. says stray ex-Soviet nuclear fuel could spark such a proliferation.

Russia, like China, says the U.S. missile shield would wreck the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and also prompt an arms race.

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

-------- new mexico

Waste shipment arrives in N.M.

Jingle Davis - Staff
Friday, May 11, 2001
http://www.accessatlanta.com/partners/ajc/epaper/editions/friday/local_news_a3bf77be5010405c0005.html

The first shipment of low-level radioactive waste from the Savannah River Site near Augusta arrived safely Thursday at an underground storage facility in New Mexico.

The 1,540-mile journey took almost 40 hours, including the time required for a series of drivers to stop every two hours or 100 miles and inspect the tractor-trailer carrying the waste.

The big rig was equipped with three specially designed silo-shaped containers filled with 60,000 pounds of so-called "transuranic" waste, consisting of tools, protective clothing, rags, masks and other contaminated items. Inside the silos, the material was sealed in steel drums.

"All along the route the Department of Energy worked with many first responders to let them know how to handle it, in case of an accident," said Bill Taylor, spokesman for SRS. He said it would have taken a "catastrophic" accident to expose the contents of the containers. Even then, he said, people would not be at risk unless they inhaled the radioactive waste.

During the next 33 years, SRS plans to spend $1 billion to send about 1,800 similar shipments to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., which includes disposal chambers built in an ancient salt formation almost half a mile underground.

The facility opened about two years ago and already is receiving nuclear-contaminated material from several other sites, including the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The nuclear waste attracted almost no attention Tuesday afternoon as it traveled through Georgia on I-20 and through south Atlanta on I-285.

The waste was exposed primarily to plutonium during the Cold War years when SRS was producing material for nuclear weapons.

----

Hope for Los Alamos Fire Victims

MAY 11,
By DEBORAH BAKER
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=NATIONAL&STORYID=APIS7BTOQQO0

LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) - Behind the yellow caution tape and chain-link fence, in front of the gaping dirt pit that once was the basement, spring has come to the Hemsings' yard.

For Rita Hemsing, the green, thorny shoots pushing their way up from the blackened canes of the rose bushes are reason to rejoice. She feared they hadn't survived the wildfire that destroyed the family's home.

``I'm going to go out there and do a lot of trimming and clipping. I'm going to give them a chance because I really want them back,'' she said.

A year ago, with the Cerro Grande fire ready to roar out of nearby Los Alamos Canyon, Rita and Billy Hemsing and their four youngest children fled their home of 23 years. They returned to a heap of scorched rubble.

The fire left more than 400 families homeless, burned some 43,000 acres and destroyed or damaged 115 buildings at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the birthplace of the atomic bomb.

``In some ways it seems like just a few weeks ago,'' said Rita Hemsing, 54, sitting in their small, rented house on the other side of town.

The Hemsings are still sorting out what they lost in the fire. And they're still replacing everyday items, from muffin tins to garden clippers.

``People think what fun it must be to buy all new stuff. It's not fun,'' she said.

Unlike some fire victims, the Hemsings' losses were fully covered by their insurance company, which immediately began replacing their possessions.

But they feel a lingering sadness at the loss of irreplaceable family memorabilia and heirlooms.

``Sometimes you still get kind of overwhelmed. You don't sleep well for a while,'' Hemsing said. ``You still miss your house a lot.''

Time has helped. So has keeping busy with school volunteer work. A few counseling sessions and countless conversations with other fire victims have reassured Hemsing that her family's recovery process is normal.

``It does get better,'' she said. ``It's just strange how you decide well, OK, you can't change it now. You've got to go on.''

A thick pile of newspaper clippings on the dining room table contains the record of the fire and its aftermath. They will go into a scrapbook, for grandchildren to look at some day.

``It'll be a big part of our family history,'' she said.

Hemsing, who has six children ranging in age from 10 to 24, still can't get used to the blackened mountains that form the city's backdrop. And she can't bring herself to walk the Quemazon Trail, a hiking path near their old house where the family spent many hours.

But her 12-year-old daughter, Renee, has been there with her 6th-grade class to plant ponderosa pine saplings.

``When we first went back there, there was nothing ... just the burnt trees. Now it looks a lot better,'' with plants and grass growing, she said.

The Hemsings will rebuild on the triangular lot at the forest's edge where over two decades they gradually had turned a 900-square-foot fixer-upper into a house big enough for eight people.

``I truly miss having them as close neighbors - especially because James is my computer guru,'' said next-door neighbor Inez Ross, a retired high school English teacher and a writer. ``I really look forward to having them come back.''

Ross' house was spared as the wildfire hopscotched through the neighborhood, taking houses next door, behind, and across the street.

``Some of those neighbors aren't ever going to come back. That's very sad,'' Hemsing said. But her family never seriously considered going elsewhere.

``That's home,'' she said. ``Even though it's going to be strange, it's where we want to be.''

-------- MILITARY

DF-31 test readied

May 11, 2001
Inside the Ring
Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010511-4762672.htm

China is preparing another flight test of its new long-range missile, intelligence officials tell us. Preparations for the latest test of the new road-mobile DF-31 were detected by a U.S. spy satellite in the past two weeks at the Wuzhai Space and Missile Center in central China.

The test preparations are another sign the Chinese are rapidly moving ahead with development of the DF-31. It´s only the world´s second road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile the being deployed by Russia.

China conducted two flight tests of the DF-31 last year. Both were successful. The last flight test was carried out Nov. 4 -- during the first visit to China by Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in what defense analysts said was a calculated political signal.

The DF-31 is believed by U.S. intelligence agencies to be the first Chinese strategic weapon to incorporate stolen U.S. nuclear and missile technology, which was obtained through espionage and illegal technology export.

China or Asia?

The Bush administration is divided over how to disclose the new defense strategy to be announced by the Pentagon in the next several days.

Pentagon policy-makers want to state clearly that the threat to the United States in the coming years will be China. Soft-liners in the State Department and White House National Security Council staff want to follow Clinton administration policy and avoid mentioning China. These officials instead want the more-vague reference to "Asia-Pacific region." The debate has not been resolved.

Officials are struggling over how to declassify the document without revealing too much about how U.S. strategy and forces will shift focus from Russia to China.

Gore holdover targeted

Bush administration officials tell us Vice President Al Gore´s military assistant is now working quietly in the Pentagon to block Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld´s new efforts to bolster U.S. military space policy.

Brig. Gen. Michael Hamel is currently the Air Force´s chief space planner and as a key Gore adviser helped orchestrate the killing -- through line-item veto in 1997 -- of several key Republican space initiatives, including the military´s space plans, we are told.

"Hamel is opposed to the current direction in space espoused by the Bush administration," one official told us.

The one-star general has contacted George Washington University space analyst John M. Logsdon. Mr. Logsdon is working with Leon Feurth, Mr. Gore´s national security adviser, who also is now at the university, to conduct a series of space studies that will seek to "undermine the recent Rumsfeld Space Commission," the official said. Mr. Logsdon wrote an article in an academic journal recently, calling for a halt in efforts to use space for military power.

We are told Mr. Rumsfeld is unaware of this covert political action operation within his own department.

Unique panel

There are more than 20 Pentagon study groups carrying out President Bush´s order for a "top to bottom" review of strategy, weapons and force structure. Most have operated under a strict rule of excluding senior active duty officers from their deliberations.

An exception is the transformation panel headed by retired Air Force Gen. James McCarthy. Maybe it´s the fact that Gen. McCarthy is joined by so many other veteran combatants, such as retired Adm. Stan Arthur and retired Marine Corps Gen. Carl Mundy.

Anyway, Gen. McCarthy has allowed each service to have a designated senior officer sit in on the transformation panel deliberations and briefings. It has also allowed each branch to deliver extensive briefings on why their cherished weapons programs should not be recommended for cancellation.

Senior officials told The Washington Times the panel decided not to recommend cancellations of any major aircraft program. Some Pentagon insiders say the outcome is not surprising, given the panel´s mix of "gray beard" retired officers, some of whom work in the defense industry, and young service advocates.

Each Pentagon panel seemed to have its own definition of what Mr. Bush meant when he said he wanted a "leap" in weapons technology. That multi-interpretation allowed panels to recommend continued development of big-ticket weapons while advocating "leaps" in other areas such as communications and intelligence gathering.

"I really don´t think many people really know what he means by a 'leap´ in technology," said one department insider. "It´s not written down anywhere."

Senate rules

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld went to Capitol Hill last week for a private meeting with Republican senators who shape defense spending each year: Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi, Appropriations Chairman Ted Stevens of Alaska and Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner of Virginia.

Staffs are mum about what was said inside Mr. Lott´s office. But there have been murmurings for weeks that the three are not happy with Mr. Rumsfeld´s closely held "top to bottom" review, his complaints about what he views as excessive congressional oversight, and his reluctance to put Senate staffers in senior budget and policy posts at the Pentagon.

Mr. Warner tells reporters there are no problems. Senate sources say tensions have eased in recent days as news leaked out that Pentagon review panels are not advocating massive cancellations of weapons near and dear to many lawmakers and constituents.

Greek hospitality

The Navy´s criminal investigation arm sent out a message recently on force protection and told of two sailors being assaulted by a gang of eight Greeks after visiting a bar in Souda Bay, Greece, home to a U.S. naval base.

"The victims had left a night club and were walking towards the central taxi stand in Chania when the unidentified group walking down the opposite side of the street crossed to the victims´ side of the street and blocked their path," said the message from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS). "The sailors attempted to go around but were blocked by one suspect and pushed back after a verbal exchange. The suspects fled after pushing one of the sailors through a plate glass door of a local shop. He required 33 stitches."

A Navy spokeswoman at the Pentagon told us the April 19 incident did not reflect a pattern of anti-Americanism. "It´s a liberty incident as opposed to anything else," she said. "It happens all over, wherever we have sailors."

Bartlett´s beret bill

Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett, Maryland Republican, introduced a bill, with 16 co-sponsors, to restrict the Army´s ability to make the black beret standard issue for virtually all soldiers.

Mr. Bartlett initially had talked of sponsoring a bill to ban the Army from issuing berets except to elite units. The final product bans the handouts until the Army certifies to Congress that it has eliminated massive ammo shortages.

A Bartlett spokeswoman said the bill has the same effect as a ban since the Army´s ammo shortfall is measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

"What would you rather have, bullets or berets," said spokeswoman Lisa Wright.

Some lawmakers are upset the Army is spending $30 million on 4.7 million black berets at a time when officers are being told to skip the firing range due to a lack of 9 mm ammunition. The Army last week reversed policy and said no soldier would wear China-made berets.

The bill´s 17 sponsors include Republicans Duncan Hunter of California, Wayne T. Gilchrest of Maryland, J.D. Hayworth of Arizona and Dana Rohrabacher of California.

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

-------- arms sales

NATO Seizes Weapons Truck in Kosovo

The Associated Press
Friday, May 11, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010511/aponline175331_001.htm

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia -- NATO peacekeepers seized dozens of weapons intended for ethnic Albanian rebels in southern Serbia on Thursday, and arrested seven people, officials said Friday.

Among the items seized on Thursday were 52 rocket launchers, a couple of dozen anti-tank weapons, five SAM-7 anti-aircraft missiles, two mortars, various rifles and a significant quantity of ammunition, said Squadron Leader Roy Brown.

"This is one of the biggest seizures in the time we have been here," he said.

The truck was being escorted by three other cars. Brown said it was stopped in the town of Pec, 55 miles west of Pristina, by Italian Carabinieri - a specialized unit within the peacekeeping force.

Carabinieri Col. Emanuele Garelli said the weapons seizure was made following a lengthy investigation, and the weapons were stashed between stacks of lumber.

The weapons were intended for ethnic Albanian rebels fighting in southern Serbia, Garelli added. The truck had traveled from Bosnia to Montenegro and into Kosovo.

The peacekeepers arrested one Bosnian, two Croatians, three ethnic Albanians from Kosovo and an ethnic Albanian from Macedonia, Garelli said.

-------- australia

Australia probes nuclear test claims
Servicemen witnessed the nuclear tests

Friday, 11 May, 2001,
BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/asia-pacific/newsid_1324000/1324771.stm

The Australian Government has said it intends to investigate allegations that soldiers were deliberately exposed to radioactive fallout after British nuclear tests in the 1950s and 60s. Research into Australian archive documents at Scotland's Dundee University indicated that 24 Australian servicemen tested different types of clothing to find out what protection they offered against radiation.

The British Government lied on the issue of whether service personnel had been used deliberately for human experiments during nuclear weapons tests in Australia

Professor Sue Rabbitt Roff Senior research fellow Professor Sue Rabbitt Roff said that the document contradicted statements by the UK Government that no humans were used in experiments in nuclear weapons tests.

Britain conducted a series of tests at Monte Bello Island off Western Australia and at Maralinga in the southern Australian desert.

Mark Croxford, spokesman for Australian Veteran Affairs Minister Bruce Scott, said the minister had asked officials to contact Professor Roff for copies of the documents.

Canberra is compiling a register of people who worked on the tests, to be used for a study into cancer rates among participants.

Ground zero

Professor Roff told Australian ABC radio that the documents showed the British Government had lied over whether servicemen had been used deliberately for human experiments.

Servicemen were made to walk through ground zero

She said the servicemen were asked to wear particular types of clothing as they walked and crawled in the area hours and days after the detonation at Maralinga.

Morris May, a lawyer representing a group of 30 Australian veterans seeking compensation for exposure to radiation during nuclear testing, told the radio his clients had long claimed they were used as guinea pigs.

He said one veteran, a driver, had described how he had been instructed to walk through a contaminated area wearing army issue woollen clothing. No one believed him.

Servicemen were told to crouch moments before a detonation

Two British ex-servicemen recently claimed compensation in the European Court of Human Rights for health problems suffered as a result of witnessing nuclear tests on Christmas Island.

Their case was rejected in 1998 after they failed to prove that the Ministry of Defence had concealed relevant documents. An attempt to re-open the case last year also failed.

-------- biological weapons

Tell-Tale Silence Indicates US Block of the Bioweapons Protocol

The Sunshine Project
Press Release - 11 May 2001
From: Max Obuszewski <MObuszewski@afsc.org>
http://www.sunshine-project.org

After torpedoing Kyoto and the ABM Treaty, the US sets its sights on biological weapons control

(Hamburg and Austin, 11 May 2001) - Efforts to strengthen the international ban on biological weapons are in grave danger of collapse. Today, three weeks of negotiations in Geneva to develop a Verification Protocol to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) closed without any contribution from the US, an indication that Washington has quietly withdrawn its support of the process. The US delegation did not actively participate in the negotiations and - with the exception of an insignificant statement during today´s final session - never contributed a single word.

The silence is a de facto confirmation of recent press reports indicating that the Bush Administration has decided to back away from international biological weapons control, including a story in Chemical & Engineering News stating that Washington prefers not to draw attention to its negative stance after the global protests against the US withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.

International protection against biological weapons - and six years of diplomatic work - are at stake. Signed in 1975, the BTWC bans biological weapons; but contains no means to verify that governments are in compliance.

In the 1990s, revelations came that Parties to the BTWC (including Iraq and the former Soviet Union) violated the Convention by developing offensive biological weapons. Responding to this problem, in 1995 governments began to create a Verification Protocol to make the BTWC enforceable for the first time ever. This important process was scheduled to be completed this year.

Instead of triumph, 2001 may be the year the verification agreement falls apart. Failure would signal that major powers are no longer in agreement against biological weapons. "This could well be the beginning of the end of the global ban on bioweapons" says Jan van Aken of the Sunshine Project. "Failure might re-ignite some countries' interest in weapons of mass destruction."

Previous US positions were problematic and diluted the proposed Protocol's strengths; but according to the Sunshine Project's Edward Hammond, "at least the Americans were engaged and hope could be held out that they would ratify." The new US position is very different. Says Hammond "The US knows that countries will be hesitant to open their biotechnology facilities to mandatory inspections if the US doesn't agree to do the same. So the US hopes that silence is all that is necessary to kill the protocol."

In addition to the resounding hush in Geneva, there are other indications that Washington has lost interest in a global ban on biological weapons. In December, US military officers at a Edinburgh (UK) conference called for renegotiation of the BTWC to allow some so-called non-lethal biological weapons. Susana Pimiento of the Sunshine Project points out that "The increasing interest in certain biological weapons within the US military community is especially frightening considering the Bush Administration's arrogant unilateralism. The US has tossed the Verification Protocol on the same funeral pyre as the Anti-Ballistic MissileTreaty and the Kyoto Protocol."

The remaining negotiating parties in Geneva should press ahead and build a strong Protocol without the many concessions made to the US during recent years. "The world must not allow selfish interests to poke a major hole in global peace and security. It must pressure the US back into the Protocol, and into a strong one", says Hammond.

-------- drug war

Myanmar: Thailand Made Airstrikes

By Aye Aye Win
Associated Press Writer
Friday, May 11, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010511/aponline103908_000.htm

YANGON, Myanmar -- Thai jets fired rockets into Myanmar, injuring six people, including two children, Myanmar said Friday, threatening "appropriate action" against its eastern neighbor.

Thailand dismissed the charge as "totally groundless."

Residents along the mountainous border shared by the two countries said airstrikes had been launched but that the rockets landed inside Thailand and caused no injuries.

The Myanmar government said in a statement that two Thai F-16 fighter jets fired seven rockets, three of which exploded, in eastern Myanmar.

Deputy Foreign Minister Khin Maung Win presented Thai ambassador, Oum Maolanon, with "a strong protest note" on Friday, and warned that Myanmar "reserved the right to take appropriate action to protect its national sovereignty and territorial integrity."

The developments herald a severe strain in relations between the uneasy Southeast Asian neighbors, which have had angry exchanges for years, principally over a dispute involving illegal drugs.

Thailand says the drugs are smuggled in huge quantities from Myanmar's border regions by the pro-Yangon ethnic Wa guerrillas and that Myanmar's military junta does little to stop it. Myanmar, also known as Burma, denies the accusations.

Prapass Jiemchawee, the Thai air force spokesman, said an F-16 flew two routine reconnaissance sorties over the Thai-Myanmar border - the scene of recent armed skirmishes involving Thailand and the Wa guerrillas - but had launched no missiles or bombs.

Loud bangs and shaking heard by Thai villagers were caused by sonic booms, Thai officials said.

Myanmar that in one of the airstrikes, an F-16 fired two rockets near the town of Mong Yawn in eastern Shan State about two miles from the border. Only one rocket exploded, injuring four adults and two children, and killing three cattle, the statement said.

Thailand claims Mong Yawn is a major center for production of methamphetamines by the Wa guerrillas. The ethnic army is reputed to be the largest drug producer in the Golden Triangle.

In the airstrike by the other F-16, two rockets exploded in Kyauket and Gawli, two villages in eastern Karen State and about 500 yards from the Thai border, the statement said. It mentioned no injuries.

-------- iran

An Opening to Iran

By Brent Scowcroft,
Washington Post
Friday, May 11, 2001

Events and decisions that could be critical to the future of U.S.-Iranian relations will occur over the coming months. Presidential elections in Iran are scheduled in June. The current reformist president, Mohammad Khatami, has announced that he will run for reelection. The Iran-Libya Sanctions Act, which prohibits foreign oil and gas investment in Iran in excess of $20 million, expires in August.

What is at stake for the United States in these developments? Dominant political power in Iran is held by a conservative group of Muslim clerics who are repressive at home and support terrorism abroad, who are hostile to the United States and oppose the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and who seek a nuclear weapon and ballistic missile capability. Khatami, who espouses liberalizing the regime, at least domestically, has little authority to make real change, even though his supporters dominate the parliament.

But what has changed in Iran is the attitude of the people themselves. Over the past four years, the Iranian electorate has three times (in presidential, parliamentary and local elections) voted, by majorities of as much as 2 to 1 in favor of liberal change. Sixty percent of the Iranian people are younger than 25, having no direct knowledge of the Iranian revolution and the difficulties with the United States that followed. What is at stake for the United States is no less than the outcome of the struggle between the people of Iran and their harsh masters.

The U.S. challenge is how to assist the Iranian people in having their yearnings reflected in the makeup and policies of their government. Given the complicated internal situation, this is a difficult thing to do. But a signal from the United States showing the desire for a better bilateral relationship might provide encouragement and impetus to reformers and the people who so eagerly seek change. The Clinton administration made a small gesture in this direction last year, lifting a ban on the import of caviar, pistachio nuts and rugs. That gesture was made less effective because of a simultaneous announcement that any contact had to be at the official level. It ended up being not much of a signal.

The United States has placed a variety of sanctions against Iran. Some have been imposed by executive order, some mandated as a result of Iran's support of terrorism, and some imposed by the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act. A soon-to-be-released study by the Atlantic Council of the United States recommends that the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act not be renewed. That is wise counsel. The law has been almost completely ineffective, and the Clinton administration issued a waiver allowing some European investment in the Iranian energy industry. At a minimum, perhaps adjustments could be made that would amount to similar waivers for American firms, providing the basis for treatment equal to that enjoyed by foreign enterprises and reaching out to Iran in a useful but moderate way.

Some will argue that such a unilateral move would be a sign of weakness in light of continued predations by an obnoxious and repressive regime. Such charges miss the central point, which is that an active struggle is underway to determine the future course of Iran. The key is to speak to the people of Iran, not to their oppressors. The next step in that popular struggle is the presidential election in which Khatami is a candidate. While he may in fact be a weak reed in this struggle for liberalization, he is the symbol of reform and the only such symbol available.

A strong win by Khatami would be a significant step in the long struggle to bring Iran out of the shadows. An unrequited gesture by the United States might encourage the forces of moderation at this key moment. It inflicts no cost on the United States, though relaxing sanctions on U.S. firms would result in some economic benefit to Iran. In any event, this is an important moment of opportunity with respect to Iran, and the United States should not fail to take a chance on freedom for Iran.

The writer was national security adviser under Presidents Ford and Bush. He is president of the Scowcroft Group and the Forum for International Policy.

-------- iraq

Iraq Denies Making, Testing Radiation Bomb

New York Times
May 11, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-iraq-un.html?searchpv=reuters

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Iraq denied on Friday it had produced or tested a radiation bomb more than a decade ago, but acknowledged it considered such a weapon and abandoned the effort as impractical.

A letter from Iraq's U.N. ambassador, Mohammed Aldouri -- apparently Baghdad's first public admission it had weighed making a radiological bomb -- said an Iraqi technician had conceived of the idea of the weapon in 1987, when Baghdad was locked in a long war with neighboring Iran.

Radiological bombs are aimed exclusively at humans, intended to cause severe illness and slow death through radiation sickness rather than destroy their targets with explosive power.

Iraq's denial contradicts its own documents given to the U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM) in 1995, which show Baghdad made the weapon and tested it three times.

UNSCOM issued public reports to the Security Council on the bomb in 1995 and 1996, when it was in charge of ridding Baghdad of weapons of mass destruction as required under U.N. Security Council resolutions. Iraq has been under U.N. sanctions since 1990 when it invaded Kuwait.

Aldouri's letter, however, was mainly a reaction to an April 29 New York Times article which quoted from Baghdad's classified documents.

Aldouri, in a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, said Iraqi specialists ``explored the technical and practical aspects of this idea, and they ascertained it was not feasible.''

``They abandoned it on the grounds that it was not efficacious and would cause soil contamination that it would be difficult to clean up after the expulsion of the invaders. The idea died, and no radiological bombs were manufactured and none were tested,'' Aldouri wrote.

UNSCOM documents from Iraq give extensive details of the test results and the reasons for pursuing developing of the bomb and then abandoning the project in 1987.

The Iraqi document says the bomb, 12 feet long and weighing more than a ton, was tested three times before being dropped as ineffective.

It said Baghdad irradiated a mixture of zirconium, hafnium, uranium and iron in its Tuweitha nuclear power plant 12 miles south of Baghdad to make the weapon. The plant was later bombed in 1991 during the Gulf War.

The mix was chosen in part because its radioactivity dissipates relatively quickly, making such a weapon hard to trace and analyze after use, according to the Iraqi document.

The document, still stamped ``top secret'' is now posted on the Internet at http://www.iraqwatch.org.

Aldouri's letter dismissed the New York Times report as the work of ``the mouthpiece of world Zionism'' and accused the United Nations and the United States of ``leaking and distorting'' the information relied on by the newspaper ``for the purposes of the United States-Zionist policy of aggression against Iraq.''

Philip Reeker, a State Department spokesman, told reporters on April 30 the experiments with the bomb showed the need for keeping sanctions on Baghdad.

Iraq continued in its efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction ``and that's our primary reason that we insist on strong controls to prevent Iraq from acquiring items of concern that would aid them in that goal,'' Reeker said.

Documents uncovered in 1995 showed that Iraq, after invading Kuwait in 1990, also launched a crash program to test its first nuclear bomb, using highly enriched uranium.

The target date for a test was April 1991. But the Gulf War intervened in January 1991, destroying many Iraqi facilities.

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

House votes to withhold U.N. cash

May 11, 2001
By Tom Carter
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010511-91611244.htm

The House sought to punish the United Nations yesterday by voting to withhold $244 million in dues next year unless the United States regains its seat on the U.N. Human Rights Commission.

Democrats joined Republicans in a 252-165 vote that reflected bipartisan outrage over a secret U.N. ballot last week that dumped the United States from the commission it founded more than five decades ago.

Adding to insult, lawmakers said, was the makeup of the new commission, which includes some of the world´s most notorious human rights abusers -- China, Cuba, Sudan and Sierra Leone.

"They have taken an irresponsible action, and they are being given an opportunity to rectify it," said Rep. Tom Lantos, California Democrat and a sponsor of yesterday´s measure -- an amendment to the $8.2 billion State Department and foreign operations authorization bill.

"Actions have consequences. Our U.N. friends have an option -- if they would like to get the payment, they will vote the United States back on the commission."

The amendment was co-sponsored by Rep. Henry J. Hyde, Illinois Republican and chairman of the International Relations Committee.

He said yesterday that the secret vote to oust the United States from the Geneva-based human rights commission was a "deliberate attempt to punish the United States from telling the truth.

"It is appropriate that the United States send its own message. To do anything less would be to repudiate our own values."

The amendment does not affect the $582 million the United States is scheduled to pay the United Nations this year -- the second of three annual payments to clear up nearly $1 billion in back dues to the world body.

But it conditions next year´s third and final payment on the U.S. regaining membership in the human rights organization it had held since its inception in 1947 when former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt was chairman.

The Bush administration opposed the measure, saying payments on U.N. arrears should not be linked to human rights issue.

"We didn´t support it; we didn´t feel it was the right approach," Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters after yesterday´s vote.

"The House has acted; we´ll see what happens next," Mr. Powell said.

Rep. Cynthia A. McKinney, Georgia Democrat, said she agreed with the administration.

"How can we expect the United Nations to reform if we go back on our word and refuse to pay," Mrs. McKinney said.

The House approved 282-137 a separate amendment that would withhold U.S. aid from any nation that approves of prosecuting U.S. military personnel in the newly created International Criminal Court (ICC).

Lawmakers also voted 225-193 to provide the funds for the United States to rejoin the U.N.´s Education, Science and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Debate on the most controversial amendment, dealing with abortion and U.S. funding to foreign family planning organizations, will be taken up next week, along with some 22 additional amendments.

A vote on the entire bill could come as late as May 18. The bill funds the State Department, foreign operations, and includes money to upgrade security at embassies around the world.

Rep. Tom DeLay, Texas Republican, who sponsored the amendment on the ICC, said he feared the new court would become a vehicle for political vendettas against the United States.

"We ask a lot of our armed forces. We shouldn´t ask them to sacrifice their constitutional rights merely to serve as pawns for an International Criminal Court that may pursue political vendettas at the expense of individual American soldiers," Mr. DeLay said.

Mr. Hyde, voting in favor of the amendment, said that the ICC´s language and membership requirements are so vague that nations hostile to the United States, like those in Europe that secretly voted the United States out of the human rights commission, could interpret normal U.S. military responsibilities as "a crime of aggression."

"Who decides what is (a crime of aggression), a Chinese court? Maybe flying along the Chinese coast? Why submit our servicemen to this?" he said, referring to China´s recent detention of a U.S. aircrew whose surveillance plane made an emergency landing on Hainan island.

Rep. Christopher H. Smith, New Jersey Republican, agreed.

"Our servicemen would be subject to politically motivated charges," he said. "Rogue states would sit in black robes and judge our servicemen and women."

In voting against the ICC amendment, Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy, Rhode Island Democrat, called the bill a "farce" and a "lie," saying it would have the opposite effect of Mr. DeLay´s intention.

"We are the leaders of the world when it comes to human rights. We should be the leaders of the world in the world court," he said.

The debate on whether to rejoin UNESCO was equally emotional.

The bill as written would provide funding for the United States to rejoin the U.N. organization that identifies World Heritage Sites and funds education and scientific cooperation.

Rep. Tom Tancredo, Colorado Republican, argued for the provision to be stricken, because "no one knows what UNESCO does."

The United States withdrew from UNESCO in 1984 because it was considered a corrupt, ineffective forum for anti-Americanism.

Advocates, including many who were in favor of the U.S. withdrawal in the 1980s, say the organization has reformed.

"It has corrected its ways," said Mr. Lantos, noting that the $130 million required for two years of membership amounts to just "25 cents per person, per year."

Mr. Hyde said UNESCO is funding tourist renovations in Cuba, one of the nations that successfully lobbied to have the United States removed from the human rights organization.

"UNESCO is renovating downtown Havana," he said. "I don´t see why taxpayers from my district should have to pay for that."

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

Lott urges Pentagon to approve takeover by Northrop

May 11, 2001
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010511-82936042.htm

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott entered the fight yesterday over control of the only American producer of big-deck aircraft carriers, urging in a letter to the Pentagon approval of a takeover bid from his home-state shipbuilder.

It is shaping up as a war between the states: Virginia vs. Mississippi.

"I believe the proposed Northrop Grumman-Newport News Shipbuilding merger is in the best interest of the nation, the Department of Defense and the Navy," Mr. Lott said yesterday in a letter to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

In supporting Northrop´s unsolicited $2.1 billion offer this week to purchase Newport News, Mr. Lott took sides in a fierce competition between Grumman and General Dynamics Corp. of Falls Church, which also covets the Virginia manufacturer.

The Mississippi Republican fears lost jobs from his state´s No. 1 employer, Ingalls Shipbuilding, if General Dynamics gains a larger share of all Navy ship contracts. Virginia, on the other hand, could gain workers at Newport News if General Dynamics wins, says an ex-Navy officer.

General Dynamics owns Bath Iron Works in Maine, producer of surface combatants; Electric Boat in Connecticut, builder of nuclear-powered attack submarines; and National Steel and Shipbuilding Co. in San Diego, an auxiliary ship producer. Acquisition of Newport News, also a submarine builder, would make General Dynamics the country´s sole manufacturer of nuclear-driven warships and proprietor of four of the Navy´s six principal shipyards.

Northrop Grumman, for years builder of advanced jet warplanes, this year bought two shipyards from Litton Industries: Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Miss., where amphibious assault ships and surface combatants are assembled, and Avondale Industries in Avondale, La., near New Orleans, a maker of Navy auxiliary and assault vessels.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner, Virginia Republican, has endorsed the General Dynamics deal, announced last month, to buy Newport News which is his home state´s single largest employer. The Navy, to which Mr. Warner has close ties, privately supported the merger as an efficient way to cut costs.

Then Northrop came along this week with its bid to purchase Newport News, prompting Mr. Warner also to write to Mr. Rumsfeld. He requested a meeting "as soon as possible" to discuss how the two offers will affect Newport News, which already has accepted General Dynamic´s merger proposal.

At stake for the winning corporate suitor is a larger share of a Navy ship construction budget of $8 billion to $11 billion annually. The number is expected to grow this decade as the sea service modernizes an aging, 310-ship fleet.

Mr. Lott, who wields considerable influence over the Pentagon´s yearly $296 billion budget, warned Mr. Rumsfeld that a General Dynamics-Newport News marriage would result in non-competitive pricing. A copy of his letter was obtained by The Washington Times.

Mr. Lott quotes a study by the Congressional Research Service that says General Dynamics-Newport News would receive 70 percent of available shipbuilding revenues, 80 percent of design and engineering staff and 95 percent of all research and development funding.

"Significant imbalance that would exist as a result of the General Dynamics-Newport News merger would result in the loss to the government of any competition and the ability to compare prices, quality and innovation in the shipbuilding industrial base," Mr. Lott wrote.

General Dynamics disagrees, saying consolidating nuclear work with one company will save $2 billion over 10 years -- money the Navy needs for other weapon systems.

"We´re disappointed that Northrop Grumman has chosen to interfere in a proposed transaction agreed upon by the respective boards of directors of General Dynamics and Newport News Shipbuilding," General Dynamics´ executives said. "The combination of General Dynamics and Newport News is the only combination that can provide synergies necessary to achieve significant merger-related savings."

Yet the merger may result in shipyards being closed. A retired Navy officer and shipbuilding specialist said in an interview that General Dynamics cannot generate $2 billion in savings without closing Bath or Electric Boat and shifting work to Newport News.

"Newport News is a huge shipyard and they´re under capacity," the ex-officer said. "That´s why Virginia is salivating. They see more jobs."

General Dynamics says it has no plans to close any yards.

The Navy´s shipbuilding allocation traditionally has been driven as much by politics as prices as the sea service sought to keep senators happy in each of the six main ship-producing states -- Maine, Virginia, Mississippi, California, Connecticut and Louisiana.

Senators watch over the yards -- and the jobs created -- as prized possessions and make sure each year´s appropriations bills distribute money to each one.

Newport News is about to begin building the last of the 97,000-ton Nimitz class carriers before the Navy embarks on a new, more futuristic design dubbed the CVNX.

A new issue in the Northrop-General Dynamics battle emerged yesterday. President Bush´s nominee for Navy secretary is Gordon England, until recently a top executive at General Dynamics.

At his confirmation hearing before Mr. Warner´s committee, senators pressed Mr. England to say whether he would recuse himself from decisions such as the Newport News merger deal that could benefit his old employer.

Mr. England declined to give a blanket assurance, saying, "Areas where I have no conflict of interest I would not expect to recuse myself."

Sen. Carl Levin, Michigan Democrat, said his answer was not good enough.

"We need to work with you to exactly define your role in those decisions affecting General Dynamics before in my view your nomination is approved by the full Senate," Mr. Levin said.

Mr. Rumsfeld is now overseeing a far-reaching Pentagon strategy review during which the Navy is fighting off suggestions it dump large-deck carriers in favor of smaller, stealthier flattops.

Pentagon sources say that, to date, no Pentagon study group has recommended such a radical change.

----

Government is covering up UFO evidence, group says

May 11, 2001
By Julia Duin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010510-19816390.htm

The U.S. government has been covering up evidence of extraterrestrial visits for more than 50 years, an array of 20 retired Air Force, Federal Aviation Administration and intelligence officers said Wednesday.

They demanded Congress hold hearings on what they say is long-standing secret U.S. involvement with UFOs and extraterrestrials.

Calling it the "greatest secret of the 20th century," the officials, who termed themselves "witnesses" of UFO-related events, described a series of military investigations they said they saw: crashes of alien spacecraft, bodies of alien beings, secret government documents, even James Bond-style "erasures" of people who knew too much.

"The individuals who have these sightings range from airline pilots and military pilots to police officers, some of the people your lives depend on, on a daily basis," retired Air Force Lt. Col. Charles Brown told a roomful of skeptical reporters.

"They are very reputable, dependable people," he said.

"The field is filled with hoaxes and scams," said Dr. Steven Greer, director of the Disclosure Project, which had gathered the witnesses. "But it doesn´t mean all of it is."

The 20 witnesses, he said, were a fraction of the 400 people who are willing to testify under oathand under congressional immunityabout a secretive portion of the government they say has gone out of control.

UFOs have long fascinated Americans, including several U.S. presidents. Webster L. Hubbell, a former associate attorney general under President Clinton, has described in an autobiography his unsuccessful quest to determine government involvement in the topic.

John Callahan, a former FAA division chief of accidents and investigations, said he was directed by CIA officers to cover up a Nov. 18, 1986, incident involving a UFO and a Japanese airliner near Anchorage, Alaska.

"We were all sworn to secrecy that this event never happened," he said.

Michael Smith, a former U.S. Air Force air traffic controller stationed near Klamath Falls, Ore., in the 1960s and early 1970s, reported seeing a UFO hovering at 80,000 feet one night.

"I was told you keep it to yourself," he said. "NORAD [North American Aerospace Defense Command] called me one night to say there´s a UFO coming up the California coastline. I asked them what to do. They said nothing, not to write it down."

After he was stationed at another military base in Michigan, UFOs were so close to one landing strip, he said, that two incoming B-52s had to be steered around them.

The Disclosure Project, a Crozet, Va.-based research organization that has been gathering government witnesses for several years, says its reason for going public is because the U.S. government has long had information on anti-gravity propulsion systems. These have been retrieved from downed spacecraft, such as those from a purported crash in Roswell, N.M., in July 1947.

These propulsion systems, which would use electromagnetic and "zero point energy state" technology to produce vast amounts of energy without any pollution, would drastically change the world´s oil-based economy. Such energy sources would not require damming the world´s rivers or building power plants, transmission lines or other expensive infrastructures needed to produce electricity for the world´s 6 billion inhabitants.

Such electro-gravitic technology would also allow people to travel totally above the ground, rendering roads obsolete. Several witnesses talked of incredible speeds demonstrated by these crafts, estimated by radar technicians to be more than 10,000 miles an hour. The fastest known speed of a man-made aircraft is 3,000 miles an hour.

But information on extraterrestrial speeds is never made public, said Daniel Sheehan, counsel for Project Disclosure. Even the Vatican Library, he said, has hidden information on UFOs.

Donna Hare, a NASA design illustrator with secret clearance, said UFOs were routinely airbrushed out of high altitude photos of the Earth before being released to the public.

"We always airbrush them out before we release them to the public," one technician told her. Curious, she began asking around the agency.

"A guard told me he was asked to burn some photographs and not to look at them," she said. "And there was another guard guarding him, watching him burn the photographs. He looked at one and it was a picture of a UFO and he immediately was hit in the head and had a big gash in his forehead."

Apollo astronauts, she said, had spotted UFOs, but they "are told to keep this quiet and not to talk about it," she said. One of them, Edgar Mitchell, who walked on the moon as part of the Apollo 14 team, is a witness for Project Disclosure.

Karl Wolf, an Air Force sergeant who was assigned to the National Security Agency, said that mysterious structures were discovered on the far side of the moon when the United States was mapping its surface before the 1969 lunar landing. Those photos too were culled out of the public record.

The Pentagon does not comment on UFOs, except to say they do not exist and that such objects really are high altitude balloons, swamp gas or military aircraft.

Despite the government´s refusal to discuss the issue, several witnesses have also told of being stationed at military bases or near silos containing nuclear missiles when a UFO swung by. Afterward, military officers would discover the missiles had been temporarily deactivated.

-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

Auspine plans A$90mln green energy power plant

AUSTRALIA: May 11, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10773

ADELAIDE - Australian plantation timber group Auspine Ltd said yesterday it was planning to construct a A$90 million, 60 megawatt (MW) biomass power plant to help boost production at its main operations in south-eastern Australia.

Auspine managing director Adrian de Bruin said in a statement that construction of the plant, to be powered by renewable energy sources such as sawmill and wood residues, could begin immediately after a final board decision was made.

The statement gave no specific timing or details on planned feasibility studies, fund raising and final approvals, but said the aim was to have the plant operational by summer 2003.

"The project is of national as well as state significance, providing Auspine with a unique opportunity to extract maximum value from its extensive plantation resources by converting wood fibre, some of which was previously considered waste, into a valuable source of renewable energy," de Bruin said.

The statement said Auspine would also look at constructing a natural gas-fired co-generation plant on the same site, given existing plans for the construction of a natural gas pipeline from Port Campbell in Victoria state to Adelaide.

De Bruin said Auspine planned to significantly boost production at its Tarpeena sawmill, to take advantage of better economies of scale, a move which would mean the company would almost double its own electrical and thermal energy usage.

The new biomass plant would enable Auspine to proceed with its mill upgrade and sell additional power either through power take-off agreements directly with local customers or through dispatch to the national electricity grid, he said.

"The plant would also be modular in design, allowing for further expansion, as more fuel became available," he said.

De Bruin said the project could be the largest single site "green energy" plant in Australia, with an output equivalent to the annual consumption of about 70,000 households.

Auspine said it had a renewable resource base of about 45,000 hectares of plantation that was expanding in volume and value, including mature plantations of up to 30 years of age.

----

UK COMPANY BRINGS FUEL CELL PLANT TO PENNSYLVANIA

May 11, 2001
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-11-09.html

LONDON, England, A United Kingdom company will open a new fuel cell manufacturing plant in Pennsylvania, Governor Tom Ridge announced this week.

Ridge joined ZeTek Power officials in London to announce the company's decision to open its new U.S. fuel cell manufacturing plant in Lebanon County, resulting in up to 330 new Pennsylvania jobs over the next five years.

"This company had lots of eager bidders for its new U.S. plant, but ZeTek picked Pennsylvania," Ridge said. "That's because we have what employers are looking for - a first class workforce, a great jobs climate, a wonderful quality of life and a shared commitment to a clean environment."

Governor Ridge has agreed to provide ZeTek with a $3.7 million financial package, including grants, tax credits and customized job training, to support the company's project.

"ZeTek Power is delighted at the opportunity to expand its U.S. operations to Pennsylvania," said ZeTek Power PLC chair and CEO Nicholas Abson. "Pennsylvania is demonstrating an aggressive and dynamic approach to developing and supporting clean energy industries, and ZeTek Power is proud to be part of these activities and support the vigorous development of this program."

ZeTek Power Corp. is a United Kingdom based manufacturer of fuel cells for stationary and mobile power generation, such as cars. The Lebanon County plant will manufacture alkaline fuel cells, which produce electricity by combining hydrogen and oxygen without the release of carbon dioxide.

ZeTek is the only manufacturer that uses an automated production process.

Governor Ridge was in London to begin a trade mission to four countries in Central Europe that are not now major trade partners with Pennsylvania.

---

STUDENTS TO RACE SOLAR POWERED MODEL CARS

May 11, 2001
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-11-09.html

GOLDEN, Colorado, Forty-two teams of middle school students from across Colorado will gather Saturday to race model cars that run on the sun.

The cars, designed to tap into energy from the sun, are powered only by solar electricity.

Sponsored by the Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Kaiser-Hill, Midwest Research Institute, Battelle and Bechtel, the Junior Solar Sprint gives students the opportunity to show off their engineering and design skills by building and racing the model solar powered vehicles.

Each team starts with a motor and a silicon solar cell, which converts light into electricity. Using any other materials, competitors design and build vehicles no larger than 12 inches wide, 24 inches long and 12 inches high.

The 20 meter race is a double elimination competition with awards going to the five fastest cars. Five design awards also will be given out for technology, craftsmanship and innovation.

The Energy Department began the Junior Solar Sprint 11 years ago to help educate young people about renewable energy and the environment.

The students will compete from 11 am to 2 pm May 12 at NREL's Solar Energy Research Facility in Golden, Colorado. The event is open to the public.

The Solar Energy Research Facility houses 42 laboratories where about 170 employees pursue research in photovoltaics, superconductivity and related material sciences. The Facility itself incorporates a number of energy saving features, making it one of the government's most energy efficient buildings.

-------- energy

Pressure Mounts to Include Energy

By H. Josef Hebert
ssociated Press Writer
Saturday, May 12, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010512/aponline030133_000.htm

WASHINGTON -- As the White House prepares to unveil an energy policy tilted heavily toward production, President Bush is getting pressure, even from some of his strong supporters, to pay more attention to energy conservation.

Some Republican lawmakers and key business lobbyists expressed concern in recent days that unless the president's energy blueprint focuses more on saving energy, as well as producing it, the package will never be approved by Congress.

Congressional unrest over the president's conservation efforts surfaced this week as both Republicans and Democrats hammered the administration for deep cuts in energy efficiency programs in the Energy Department's proposed budget.

"Energy efficiency has to be part of a balanced energy strategy," Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., told Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham at a Senate hearing.

A few days earlier at a similar hearing in the House, Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., said the type of efficiency programs the administration wants to cut have been "extraordinarily successful" and paid for themselves. He cited one study showing $7 million in efficiency investments produced $51 million in energy savings.

The issue of conservation vs. production is expected to be a focus of debate as Congress crafts energy legislation in the coming months.

The Bush budget would cut about $150 million, or more than 40 percent, from research programs to develop more energy efficient buildings, energy conservation programs for industry, and development of more fuel efficient automobile. It cuts in half a program to help the government reduce its energy costs.

Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., chairman of the Budget Committee, also expressed concern about the cuts, but said he was confident money would be increased and that the Bush energy proposals will include "a sizable conservation component."

"We need a balanced approach. We need conservation and we need production," agreed Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska., seeking to blunt a barrage of criticism from Democrats.

Although Bush's energy plan has yet to be announced, environmentalists have already attacked it as focusing too heavily on boosting coal and nuclear programs and drilling for oil and natural gas in off-limits federal acres including an Arctic wildlife refuge.

Vice President Dick Cheney provided fuel to the environmentalists when in a major energy speech he dismissed conservation as "a sign of personal virtue" and not a way to solve long-term energy problems.

Within days the White House maneuvered to back away from the remark.

The administration also has received strong signals from the business community that conservation shouldn't be ignored.

-------- environment

EPA Requires Cleaner Refineries

New York Times
May 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Clean-Air-Settlement.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Environmental Protection Agency settled a case Friday in a Detroit federal court requiring seven petroleum refineries to reduce smokestack pollutants by more than 23,000 tons per year.

Under the settlement, Marathon Ashland Petroleum LLC, of Findlay, Ohio, must spend an estimated $265 million to install pollution control equipment aimed at reducing emissions from smokestacks, wastewater vents, leaky valves and flares at its refineries which account for more than 5 percent of the total refining capacity in the United States.

Those refineries are located in Robinson, Ill.; Garyville, La.; Texas City, Texas; Catlettsburg, Ky.; Detroit; Canton, Ohio; and St. Paul Park, Minn.

The new equipment is intended to help ease respiratory problems like childhood asthma by cutting pollutants such as nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, particulate emissions, carbon monoxide, benzene and volatile organic compounds.

Two states, Louisiana and Minnesota, and Wayne County, Mich., joined the consent decree filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Detroit and announced by the EPA and the Justice Department.

Marathon Ashland also will pay a $3.8 million civil penalty under the Clean Air Act and spend about $6.5 million for environmental projects in communities near the refineries. Minnesota and Louisiana each will receive $50,000 of the penalty under the agreement.

Attorney General John Ashcroft called it ``a victory for the environment.''

The case is part of EPA's national effort to reduce harmful air pollution released from refineries, EPA Administrator Christie Whitman said.

In March, the government reached similar agreements with Motiva Enterprises, Equilon Enterprises, and Deer Park Refining Limited Partnership, which will reduce air pollution at nine refineries across the nation.

``The settlement also is expected to facilitate efficiency upgrades and increased production of gasoline over the next eight years,'' Whitman said.

Also Friday, the EPA and Justice Department announced it had reached a separate settlement filed in U.S. District Court in Benton, Ill., requiring Marathon Ashland to reduce benzene emissions at its refinery in Robinson, Ill.

Marathon Ashland will pay a $1.67 million civil penalty under the Clean Air Act and spend another $125,000 on an emergency response project there.

-------- health

Bush Pledges $200 Million to New Fund to Fight AIDS

New York Times
May 11, 2001
By TERENCE NEILAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/11/world/11CND-AIDS.html

Saying "we have the power to help," President Bush announced today that the United States would contribute $200 million to a new global fund to fight AIDS in developing countries, especially in the hardest-hit nations of Africa.

"In a part of the world where so many have suffered from war and want and famine, these latest tribulations are the cruelest of fates," Mr. Bush said at a Rose Garden ceremony at the White House.

He was flanked by President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and Secretary General Kofi Annan of the United Nations, who has called on rich countries and private philanthropists to contribute to what he hopes will be a $7 billion to $10 billion fund to fight the disease.

Mr. Bush said the "sheer number of those affected and dying is almost beyond comprehension." Africa has about 70 percent of the world's 36 million people infect with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, and 17 million Africans have died of the disease. More than four million people in South Africa alone are estimated to be infected with the disease.

The $200 million contribution was described by Mr. Bush's spokesman, Ari Fleischer, as "initial seed money" and will be in addition to money already requested by the White House from Congress to fight the disease.

Future contributions to the global AIDS fund will be determined in consultation with the White House and the Senate, Mr. Fleischer told Bloomberg News.

Overall United States spending on AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria is more than $800 million a year, according to White House figures, and the United States remains the largest single contributor to anti-AIDS campaigns worldwide.

Calling the United States action "a visionary decision," Mr. Annan said the fund needed contributions from other governments, foundations and the private sector - "all hands on deck," as he put it.

Mr. Obasanjo, the first African president to visit the Bush White House, described the American contribution as "just the beginning, as you have kindly emphasized, for the U.S.," and he challenged others to make contributions.

Later, Mr. Obasanjo, Nigeria's first civilian leader since 1983, was scheduled to hold meetings with the the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Although Mr. Annan and Mr. Obasanjo expressed gratitude to Mr. Bush, while emphasizing that they were a long way from their ultimate monetary goal, some health activists criticized the United States contribution.

"It's criminally small," said David Bryden of the Washington-based Global AIDS Alliance. "The United States has got ample money for this and the money has just got to be found - something along the lines of $2.5 billion."

The Rev. David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, said the administration was not doing enough to increase the overall commitment to help the African continent.

On Wednesday, Mr. Annan met with Senator William H. Frist, Republican of Tennessee, who was a surgeon before entering politics. He was among a group of senators who introduced a bill in early April that would commit the United States to a contribution of $1 billion to fight AIDS over the next two years.

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

Bush Asks Congress to Grant Him a 'Fast Track' in Trade Talks

New York Times
May 11, 2001
By ALISON MITCHELL
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/11/world/11TRAD.html

WASHINGTON, May 10 - President Bush began a difficult battle today to win Congressional support for broad authority to negotiate new trade agreements, sending an outline of his strategy to Capitol Hill.

But Democrats said he had offered no mechanism for enforcing labor and environmental standards that could win over moderates in their ranks and break the long Congressional stalemate over trade policy.

Mr. Bush, in a letter to lawmakers, put at the top of his trade agenda the renewal of legislation that grants the president the right to negotiate trade deals that Congress must accept or reject, but not amend.

President Clinton let such trade authority expire in 1994, rather than take on a contentious issue that divided the Democratic party. He failed to persuade Congress to renew the powers in his second term, when he was defeated by House Democrats and by organized labor, which wanted enforceable provisions protecting workers' rights and environmental standards.

Many Republicans say those provisions have nothing to do with trade, and Mr. Bush has called them veiled efforts at protectionism.

Mr. Bush's task promises to be as difficult as Mr. Clinton's.

Some House Democrats who have provided crucial support in the past for trade said Mr. Bush, despite calling labor and environmental concerns "an important part" of his agenda, had offered nothing of substance to address them. "You can't try to sidestep the issue," said Representative Sander M. Levin of Michigan, an influential Democrat.

In fact, the framework Mr. Bush sent to Congress described actions to promote labor rights and the environmental standards, but linked none of them to trade accords.

He proposed what he called a "labor and environmental toolbox," saying international organizations could take steps to encourage countries to adhere to international labor standards and environmental protection practices.

"The toolbox is empty," complained Representative Robert T. Matsui, a California Democrat who has worked in the past to revive the trade negotiating authority.

In an interview today, Robert Zoellick, the United States trade representative, said the president's outline was intended to provoke discussion and pave the way to drafting legislation, beginning next month. "This is a conscious, next stage of bringing people together," he said.

He said the "toolbox" was intended to generate as much flexibility as possible in solving a problem that has proved intractable.

While the Senate generally approves trade agreements, the House has been a major obstacle. Such trade promotion authority for the president was defeated in 1998 and was pulled from the floor on the brink of defeat in 1997 despite the combined might of Mr. Clinton and Newt Gingrich, who was the speaker of the House.

This time the administration will have to make inroads among two groups: 30 to 40 Republican opponents who are split between conservatives and moderates, and several dozen moderate Democrats.

Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican who supports free trade, conceded today that passing such legislation would require Mr. Bush to use "some of his political capital."

And Representative Richard A. Gephardt, the House minority leader, said most House Democrats were adamant that any legislation contain tough language to ensure enforceable provisions protecting workers rights and environmental standards.

-------- police / fbi

FBI Data Given to McVeigh Defense

MAY 11, 04:16 EST
By P. SOLOMON BANDA
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=NATIONAL&STORYID=APIS7BTPVNO0

DENVER (AP) - Thousands of FBI documents that were mistakenly withheld from Timothy McVeigh's trial could delay the scheduled execution of the man convicted of the deadliest attack on U.S. soil.

The blunder, revealed Thursday when the materials were turned over to the Oklahoma City bomber's lawyers, has embarrassed the government and angered victims and their families.

``We needed this death penalty,'' said Aren Almon Kok, whose daughter came to symbolize the 1995 blast through a photograph of her lifeless body in the arms of a firefighter.

``For someone to make this mistake ... to find them less than a week before he dies ... is unbelievably unfair,'' she said in Oklahoma City.

The Justice Department handed McVeigh's lawyers 3,135 documents it said should have been provided during the discovery phase of his 1997 trial in Denver.

McVeigh, 33, is scheduled to die Wednesday at a federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind.

``The issue really is whether McVeigh is going to decide whether to challenge this,'' said Andrew Cohen, a legal analyst who has followed the case. ``The FBI through its negligence or whatever has given McVeigh the opportunity to control his immediate future.''

Kathleen Treanor, who lost her 4-year-old daughter and in-laws in the April 19, 1995, bombing, criticized the FBI for bungling the case and giving McVeigh the chance to extend his life further.

``I'm appalled,'' she said. ``The FBI knew from the very beginning that this was a huge case. How could they have possibly made a mistake this huge?''

In a letter to McVeigh's attorneys, the Justice Department said the documents consist of FBI reports, including interview notes known as ''302s,'' and photocopies of physical evidence such as ``photographs, written correspondence and tapes.''

The documents came from 45 FBI offices in the United States and one in Paris.

A lawyer familiar with the case told The Associated Press that the materials contain information generated by thousands of phone calls made to the FBI after the bombing. They range from identifying a composite drawing of a John Doe No. 2 to claims of seeing McVeigh elsewhere on the day of the bombing.

Legal analysts said the mistake could delay what would be the first federal execution since 1963, though it was unlikely to overturn McVeigh's conviction.

An attorney for McVeigh said the materials may prompt a request for a stay.

``We're considering all our options,'' McVeigh lawyer Nathan Chambers said after the documents were delivered to his office in Denver.

Chambers spoke to McVeigh about the documents, but he declined to elaborate. ``Mr. McVeigh is going to think about it and decide how he wants to proceed,'' he said.

In a recently published book, McVeigh claimed sole responsibility for the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, which killed 168 people and injured hundreds of others. He has not shown any interest in appealing his conviction or death sentence.

McVeigh's trial judge, U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch of Denver, could not be reached for comment. Court clerk James Manspeaker said the defense would have to go to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, also in Denver, to file a motion to consider new evidence.

If permission was granted, the case then probably would revert to Matsch, Manspeaker said.

The legal standard for granting such a motion requires the court to determine the verdict could have been different if the jury had been allowed to see the documents.

``The prosecution proved everything to me,'' said McVeigh juror Doug Carr, 45. ``If there was something left out that's in those files, I don't think it was that significant.''

McVeigh's former trial lawyer, Stephen Jones, said he wouldn't be surprised if the execution was stayed until the documents are reviewed.

``There could be a benign interpretation and it could all be irrelevant,'' Jones said. ``On the other hand, it could be a malignant failure to turn over.''

The Justice Department said the mistake was discovered after an FBI archivist requested bombing-related materials be sent to the Oklahoma field office.

The department asked defense attorneys to notify them if they believe the documents throw McVeigh's guilt into question.

``While the department is confident the documents do not in any way create any reasonable doubt about McVeigh's guilt and do not contradict his repeated confessions of guilt, the department is concerned that McVeigh's attorneys were not able to review them at the appropriate time,'' the agency said.

Chambers, who has worked on McVeigh's case since December 1998, said he learned about the documents Wednesday, when he received a telephone call from Sean Connelly, a prosecutor in the U.S. attorney's office in Denver.

``Here we are a full six years after the bombing and less than a week before Mr. McVeigh's scheduled execution and these reports mysteriously appear. So it's a cause for concern,'' Chambers said.

The lead prosecutor in the McVeigh trial, Joseph Hartzler, was traveling and unavailable for comment Thursday, Justice Department spokeswoman Chris Watney said.

Hartzler told NBC News, however, that McVeigh is ``a master of self deception and self worship.''

``If he wanted the death penalty he could have stayed in the truck, or walked into the building,'' Hartzler said. ``He doesn't want to die, he's just giving into it because it's inevitable and somehow he thinks this is his way of declaring victory or something.''

The documents also were delivered Thursday to lawyers for bombing co-defendant Terry Nichols, who was convicted of conspiracy and involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to life in prison.

Similar documents formed the basis of a previous, unsuccessful appeal by Nichols, who claimed the papers could have changed the outcome of his trial.

--------

Ashcroft Delays McVeigh Execution

New York Times
May 11, 2001
By DAVID JOHNSTON and DAVID STOUT
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/11/national/11CND-EXEC.html

WASHINGTON, May 11 - Attorney General John D. Ashcroft today ordered the execution of Timothy J. McVeigh delayed until June 11 as lawyers for the Oklahoma City bomber study a mass of paperwork about the case that the government failed to turn over to the defense.

Mr. Ashcroft's announcement, made this afternoon after Justice Department lawyers recommended the postponement, came less than a day after the Federal Bureau of Investigation disclosed that it had discovered thousands of pages of interview reports and other materials about the Oklahoma City bombing that should have been made accessible to defense counsel.

Mr. Ashcroft said his decision was a painful one, given the enormity of Mr. McVeigh's crime and his total lack of contrition, but that "the sanctity of the rule of law and justice" were more important than any one defendant or any one crime, however heinous.

Mr. McVeigh, 33, was to have been executed by lethal injection on Wednesday in Terre Haute, Ind., for the April 19, 1995, bombing of the federal office building in Oklahoma City. The bombing killed 168 people and ranks as the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil.

There had been speculation immediately before Mr. Ashcroft's announcement that he would order a 30-day postponement from next Wednesday's original execution date. It was not immediately clear how he had settled upon a new date one month from today.

Mr. McVeigh's lawyer had said he might seek a delay in the execution, but Mr. Ashcroft's announcement decided the issue. The Justice Department has the authority on its own to stop the execution. The Attorney General said he had directed the Justice Department's Inspector General's office to conduct a full inquiry into the mixup over the documents.

"It is now clear that the F.B.I. failed to comply fully" with an agreement to hand over all documents in the case, Mr. Ashcroft said. "I want justice to be carried our fairly."

He added, "These documents do not contradict" the jury's verdict convicting McVeigh.

Mr. Ashcroft said that despite the fact that the documents in question raise no doubt whatever about Mr. McVeigh's guilt, it would be wrong not to postpone the execution because of the transcendent principle involved: "If any questions or doubts remain about this case, it would cast a permanent cloud over justice."

The bedrock principle that due process must be followed, regardless of the nature of the crime or even the certainty of the defendant's guilt, is a pillar of the American legal system. Most lawyers, whether sympathetic to prosecutors or defense attorneys, would agree that this principle is of paramount importance in death penalty cases.

At the White House this afternoon, President Bush told reporters that he fully supported Mr. Ashcroft's decision.

"This decision is going to create some frustration" among relatives of Mr. McVeigh's victims, the president acknowledged. But he said. "We have a solemn obligation to make sure that the case has been handled in full accordance with all the guarantees of our constitution."

Mr. Bush added, "Mr. McVeigh is lucky to be in a country like this."

The documents were found by bureau archivists in Oklahoma City as they canvassed the agency's 56 field offices in a final search of records related to the bombing in anticipation of Mr. McVeigh's execution, law enforcement officials said.

The Associated Press reported today that some friends and family members of the victims expressed outrage today that the FBI's mistake could force the delay.

"We needed this death penalty," said Aren Almon Kok of Oklahoma City, whose baby daughter came to symbolize the 1995 blast through a photograph of her in the arms of a firefighter. "For someone to make this mistake - to find them less than a week before he dies is unbelievably unfair."

Lawyers for Mr. McVeigh and for Terry L. Nichols, the other person convicted of the bombing, were legally entitled to review the records as they prepared for the two trials, Mr. Ashcroft acknowledged today.

While federal officials have acknowledged that the materials should have been turned over to Mr. McVeigh's lawyer, they said they had concluded that the documents were not material to the case and gave no indication that Mr. McVeigh was wrongly convicted of the bombing. In fact, they said, Mr. McVeigh has admitted carrying out the bombing, has expressed no remorse for it, and up to now has shown no inclination to try to forestall his execution.

Thursday night, the Justice Department spokesman, Mindy Tucker, said in the statement: "On Tuesday, May 8, the Department of Justice notified Timothy McVeigh's attorney of a number of F.B.I. documents that should have been provided to them during the discovery phase of the trial. While the department is confident the documents do not in any way create any reasonable doubt about McVeigh's guilt and do not contradict his repeated confessions of guilt, the Department is concerned that McVeigh's attorneys were not able to review them at the appropriate time."

Nathan D. Chambers, Mr. McVeigh's lawyer, said the F.B.I.'s handling of the documents was "troubling."

"Here we are, six years after the bombing, and less than a week before a scheduled execution," he said Thursday. "I'm frankly astonished that these documents have just appeared at this late date."

Mr. Chambers was interviewed this morning on NBC's "Today" show and he said he needed time to review the documents. He said that Mr. McVeigh

"is aware of the situation, and he is weighing all of his options."

Copies of the materials were also sent to lawyers for Mr. Nichols, who said they too were studying the materials.

Mr. McVeigh, who was convicted in 1997 and subsequently waived further appeals, confessed to the bombing in a recently published book.

The documents consist primarily of what are known in the F.B.I. as 302's, reports filed by agents about their interviews, but they also include photographs, correspondence and tapes, which had not been shared with the defense in the discovery period before Mr. McVeigh's trial.

Law enforcement officials privately blamed the F.B.I.'s antiquated computer system for failing to turn up the additional documents. Because of the unusual nature of the McVeigh case, they said, bureau officials ordered a final manual search for documents from about 40 field offices across the country.

--------

FBI Chagrined by Missing Evidence

New York Times
May 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-FBI-Woes.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- For an agency still reeling from the discovery of an alleged spy in its ranks, the last thing the FBI needed was the disclosure that it withheld evidence from lawyers representing the man convicted of the worst act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history.

Timothy McVeigh was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on Wednesday. Now his lawyers are weighing whether to seek a stay of the execution, which would have been the first federal death sentence carried out since 1963.

Attorney General John Ashcroft put off the execution until June 11 to allow McVeigh's attorneys to review the evidence and ordered an investigation into the FBI's failure to turn over thousands of pages to McVeigh's defense team.

``I know many Americans will question why the execution of someone who is so clearly guilty of such a heinous crime should be delayed,'' Ashcroft said. He said he made his decision so that there would be no lingering questions over the case that ``would cast a permanent cloud over justice.''

The mishap comes a little more than a week after FBI Director Louis Freeh said he plans to retire in June -- two years short of his 10-year term. Law enforcement officials familiar with the case said there was no connection between Freeh's decision to retire and the problem with the McVeigh documents.

The revelation shook the law enforcement establishment -- and people waiting to see closure more than six years after a bomb destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168, including many women and children.

``I'm appalled,'' said Kathleen Treanor, who lost her 4-year-old daughter and her in-laws in the bombing. ``The FBI knew from the very beginning that this was a huge case. How could they have possibly made a mistake this huge?''

The documents mishap also follows the arrest in February of Robert Philip Hanssen, a 20-year veteran agent accused of selling national secrets to Moscow.

Hanssen, a counterintelligence agent with access to highly sensitive information, carried on his alleged spying activities for 15 years without being detected by his bosses. Investigations are underway to figure out how.

Other controversies, from a crime-lab scandal in the 1990s to the botched investigation last year of former Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee, have dogged the FBI in recent years.

The revelation that some 3,135 investigation materials -- including interview reports and physical evidence such as photographs, letters and tapes -- were inadvertently withheld from McVeigh's attorneys is another embarrassment for the FBI.

Law enforcement officials familiar with the documents mishap, speaking only on condition of anonymity, said the mistake resulted from an antiquated records system. The FBI was in the routine process of gathering all documents from the Oklahoma City bombing investigation -- numbering more than 1 million -- from its bureaus when officials discovered that some pages had never been shared with defense lawyers.

``One thing that's overlooked here is that there were thousands and thousands of these statements that have to be stored and catalogued,'' said Andrew Cohen, a legal analyst who has followed the case. ``Certainly you don't want to encourage the government to lose this sort of thing, but in some ways it's a bit understandable.''

As soon as the mistake was discovered, the bureau acted quickly to turn the documents over, the sources said. The Justice Department received the documents Wednesday and sent McVeigh's attorneys copies of everything.

The department says none of the documents creates any doubt about McVeigh's conviction or sentence. McVeigh's lawyers could still ask for a stay of execution so they can examine the materials.

``I think the FBI has given McVeigh the chance to delay his own execution,'' said Cohen. Paul Heath, who was injured in the bombing, said he was taking a wait-and-see approach to the news.

``I'm convinced it wouldn't make any difference to Mr. McVeigh,'' said Heath. ``It does not upset me.''

Last year the FBI was stung by the case of Wen Ho Lee, a former Los Alamos scientist indicted on 59 criminal counts of mishandling nuclear weapons secrets. He spent nine months in solitary confinement in a New Mexico jail. All but one count was eventually dropped.

The FBI also suffered through an embarrassing investigation by its parent, the Justice Department, of its world-renowned crime lab in the mid-1990s.

Spurred by allegations from Frederic Whitehurst, an FBI lab chemist, Justice Inspector General Michael Bromwich investigated the facility for 18 months. He subsequently blasted the FBI facility for flawed scientific work and inaccurate, pro-prosecution testimony in major cases, including the Oklahoma City bombing.

The catastrophe at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, in which 80 people were killed, and a shoot-out with white separatists in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, have also dogged the FBI.

McVeigh has said he carried out the Oklahoma City bombing to avenge the deaths at Waco and Ruby Ridge.

EDITOR'S NOTE -- Karen Gullo covers the Justice Department for The Associated Press.

-------- spying

U.S. snubs EU trade-spying team

May 11, 2001
By Carter Dougherty
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/business/20010511-668816.htm

The Bush administration yesterday rebuffed a delegation of the European Parliament that was visiting Washington to discuss its inquiry into a top-secret American-run surveillance system that many Europeans believe is used for industrial espionage.

Four agencies refused to meet with the legislators, who conceded before cutting short their trip and returning to Europe that they have no proof to substantiate the charges.

"There is no evidence whatsoever," said Gerhard Schmid, a member of the parliament from Germany. "We can´t prove a case."

Carlos Coehlo, the Portuguese parliamentarian who heads the probe, said the 12-member delegation was "concerned and dismayed" by the snub, which he predicted would harm trans-Atlantic relations.

Mr. Coehlo said the group had a "cordial" meeting with members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

The U.S. agencies the departments of State and Commerce, the CIA and National Security Agency -- insisted that the Europeans had come to Washington before any meetings had been confirmed.

The tiff marks an additional burden on U.S. and European diplomats, who have spent the first months of the Bush administration wrestling with trade disputes, disagreements over global warming, and missile defense.

The trip to Washington was an outgrowth of a temporary committee set up by the European Parliament, which has limited powers within the 15-nation European Union, to study an American-run electronic eavesdropping and routing system known as Echelon.

The European Parliament formed the committee to study Echelon in July, and it will issue a draft report by the end of this month.

The U.S. government will neither confirm nor deny the existence of Echelon. It is believed to be run by the National Security Agency in cooperation with Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand.

Though American officials, including CIA Director George J. Tenet, have publicly denied that the United States engages in economic espionage, it has become an article of faith among many Europeans that Echelon is used for precisely that.

Published reports in Europe have contended that Echelon can tap into virtually all electronic communications, from faxes to e-mails to regular telephone calls. Mr. Schmid said parliamentarians wanted to give the U.S. government a chance to respond to these charges, not to pry into American intelligence activities.

"We are not looking for classified information," Mr. Schmid said. "We are not foolish."

Mr. Coehlo said his staff had laid the groundwork for meetings weeks ago, but the U.S. agencies countered that the Europeans had never arranged any meetings.

A State Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said his agency turned down a request for a meeting last week.

"They wanted to talk intelligence," the official said. "That´s not our bailiwick."

The delegation also wanted to talk to the Commerce Department about the links between Commerce´s efforts to promote U.S. business abroad and the CIA, which does economic analysis for other agencies. But spokesman Pat Kirwan said the department never responded to the Europeans´ request.

CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield said that "everything" that U.S. intelligence officials would be able to discuss with a foreign delegation is in the public domain and there was no point in discussing the matter in person.

"We never led them to believe that a meeting with CIA officials would take place," Mr. Mansfield said.

The NSA issued a statement making the same point.

The delegation managed to get a meeting with Justice Department officials, who said they knew nothing about Echelon.

Mr. Tenet told a congressional committee in April 2000 that it is "not the policy or practice of the United States" to engage in industrial espionage, though he did say intelligence agencies do work on issues relevant to U.S. economic interests.

Former CIA Director James Woolsey wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal last year in which he said the United States spies on European companies to prevent them from bribing foreign officials to win contracts.

-------- activists

Robert Redford Blasts White House Green Policies

May 11, 2001
http://news.excite.com/news/r/010511/22/news-environment-redford-dc

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Actor and environmentalist Robert Redford says Interior Secretary Gale Norton, barely three months on the job, already has an "abysmal" record of supporting business interests over public health and wildlife preservation.

Redford, in a letter to Norton made public on Friday, rebuffed her invitation to attend a press event to release a California condor into the wild.

"Sadly, since assuming the Interior Secretary post, you have compiled an abysmal record of capitulating to big businesses at the expense of the nation's public health, public lands and wildlife," Redford said in the letter dated May 10.

Norton, who joined the Bush administration on Jan. 30, previously was Colorado's attorney general and challenged the constitutionality of the Endangered Species Act. She also worked for a conservative western group backing land rights.

Norton invited Redford to attend a condor event after reading a Washington Post story that quoted him criticizing her environmental record. In her May 3 letter to Redford, she said he was "misinformed" about her commitment to environmental issues.

In response to Redford's letter, a spokesman for Norton said the actor's "attacks" did little to advance debate on environmental issues. "Mr. Redford's scurrilous attacks make it hard to improve the tone in which we talk about important issues such as conserving and protecting our cherished environment," said Interior Department spokesman Mark Pfeifle.

"It was hardly an 'Indecent Proposal' for Mr. Redford to spend an afternoon with 'Ordinary People' releasing an endangered bird on the brink of extinction. Unfortunately, Mr. 'Three Days of the Condor' flew the coop," said Pfeifle.

Norton released five California condors into the Ventana Wilderness Area near Big Sur, California, on April 5. She had invited Redford to join her at the Interior Department's next condor release May 22 at the Los Padres Wilderness area in Ventura County, California.

Redford, who starred in the films "Three Days of the Condor" and "Indecent Proposal and directed the film "Ordinary People," criticized Norton for suspending a regulation to toughen environmental protection for gold, silver and uranium mining on federal lands, for inviting proposals to reduce the size of National Monument parks, and to allow oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

"I intend to use what time I have to do what I can to focus on the devastating environmental repercussions of the agenda you and President Bush embrace," he wrote.

The Interior Department manages 436 million acres of federal lands and is responsible for enforcing laws on mining, oil royalties, and threatened species.


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