------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
'Hindu bombs' just as lethal as 'Islamic bombs'
Jury: Exxon Should Pay $1.06 Billion
UK Report Says Risks of Uranium Weapons Low
Report: Health Risks of DU Weapons Is Low
Royal Society Report on DU
Missile defense in perspective
Greece Undecided on Missile Defense
Reported U.S.-German Memo Irks Putin
Nations Adopt Treaty to Ban Toxic Chemicals
100 Countries Meet to Ban 12 Toxic Chemicals
Bush's brand-new Day
Extra Credit
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT IN COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS
Cheney Promises More Nuclear Power
All News Not Good for Bush, Cheney
Rephrasing the nuclear power question
Home for spent fuel is key to new US nuke plants

MILITARY
Albanians Lay Aside Weapons for NATO
Yugoslav Rebels Sign Agreement To Disarm
Macedonian Soldiers Face Reality
Macedonia Shells Rebels, Presevo Hopes for Peace
Colombia Bomb Meant for Terror
The Softer Side of Plan Colombia
Doctors Meet on Illegal Drugs
WWII Bomb Defused Near Berlin
Saddam Hussein gets his victory at last
Use of U.S. planes draws anger
Russian Military Plane Crashes
U.S. Seeks Funding For Iraqi Neighbors
Panel Convicts Air Force Physician
Navy developing 'panoramic' view periscope
Draft registration compliance on rise, report says

OTHER
TEXAS PLANS MAJOR WIND ENERGY PROJECT
Congress, Leaders Discuss Energy
Cheney Defends Energy Proposal
Calif. politicians ask for price caps on electricity
Study: Polymer Coating Can Kill Germs
Cancer Doctors See New Era of Optimism
Taliban: Hindus must wear identity labels
China Shows Reporters Forbidden Camp
World Bank Cancels Poverty Meeting
In Mexico, Ashcroft Praises Police Links

ACTIVISTS
Demonstrators Protest in Argentina
Mexican Indians March Against Bill


-------- NUCLEAR

'Hindu bombs' just as lethal as 'Islamic bombs'

Washington Times
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
May 22, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20010522-4317184.htm

Singapore founder Lee Kuan Yew´s comments that Islamic extremism coupled with "a Muslim nuclear weapon that will travel" is a "tinderbox" ("Singapore´s Lee calls China unstoppable," Nation, May 18) must be put in the right perspective. Interestingly, Mr. Lee finds only the "Islamic" bomb to be menacing, and not "Confucian" or "Hindu" bombs. Mr. Lee claims "China is rational, so is India." What is his criterion for rationality? India, for example, has perpetrated abuses against Christians, suppressed Kashmiris and Sikhs, defied the Nonproliferation Treaty and exhibited aspirations of projecting its muscle against its smaller neighbors Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal and beyond the subcontinent into the Indian Ocean. Such behavior hardly can be qualified as "rational." Likewise, nobody, including Mr. Lee, ever spoke of "fanaticism growing in Indonesia" before the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Then, Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, was politically stable and economically growing. Instead of looking at factors such as the lack of the rule of law and real democracy as the root cause of problems besetting Indonesia today, Mr. Lee and others are dogmatic in pointing to Islam for an easy explanation.

ASIM L. ALI Lake Ridge, Va.

-------- business

Jury: Exxon Should Pay $1.06 Billion

New York Times
May 22, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-ExxonRadioactive-Waste.html?searchpv=aponline
http://usatoday.com/news/nation/2001-05-22-exxon-jury.htm

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Exxon Mobil Corp. should pay $1.06 billion because of radioactive contamination on 33 acres of land owned by a former state judge, a jury decided Tuesday.

``The jury sent a clear message to Exxon in particular and the oil industry in general that these radioactive materials should and must be cleaned up immediately,'' Stuart Smith, who represents the landowners, said following the verdict in Orleans Parish Civil District Court.

``Evidence in the record indicates that this is a widespread problem affecting oil fields throughout the United States.''

Exxon Mobil, which will appeal, did not deny there was some contamination on land leased from former Jefferson Parish District Judge Joseph Grefer, who lived near the site.

In dispute was the amount of radium 226 and radium 228, how much the clean up would cost, and when Exxon Mobil first knew there may have been a problem.

Exxon Mobil said trace amounts contaminated less than 1 percent of the property and that it could be cleaned up for $46,000. Defense lawyer Gregory Weiss said the company did not know about the contamination until the late 1980s and offered to clean it up, but the Grefers refused, opting instead to take the case before a jury.

Smith and co-counsel Jack Harang told jurors that Exxon Mobil knew about the potential for contamination since the 1950s but said nothing in hopes of avoiding liability for cleanup costs.

The jury ruled the company should pay $56 million for cleanup and $1 billion as punishment for keeping a lid on the radium problem.

The Grefers' land was leased from the late 1950s until 1992 to Intracoastal Tubular Services, a company contracted to clean Exxon's pipes. Intracoastal was found 15 percent at fault for the contamination, but the jury ruled Exxon Mobil should pay their share because only the oil giant could have known that the crust being cleaned from the pipes was radioactive.

Lawyers said the judgment is expected to be signed in June, at which time Exxon Mobil will appeal.

-------- depleted uranium

UK Report Says Risks of Uranium Weapons Low

New York Times
May 22, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/health/health-uranium.html?searchpv=reuters

LONDON (Reuters Health) - Soldiers exposed to the highest levels of depleted uranium (DU) on the battlefield may have double the risk of developing lung cancer, according to a report from the Royal Society. However, the risks of leukaemia and other cancers from DU is very small even when soldiers have been involved in situations where they have breathed in DU.

The Royal Society set up an expert working party to investigate the possible health hazards of DU following widespread speculation that DU from munitions used in the Gulf War in 1991 and later in Bosnia and Kosovo was linked to ill health among soldiers who served there. The radioactive substance was used to improve the ability of weapons to pierce armoured vehicles.

The team anticipated that soldiers at greatest risk of DU side effects are those who are trapped in a vehicle struck by a DU-containing device or who enter a struck vehicle to try to rescue injured comrades.

These soldiers were likely to inhale DU that would penetrate their lungs and lymph nodes--the organs most sensitive to the substance's effects. At the very least this exposure would increase the lifetime risk of lung cancer among this small group of soldiers by 1 in 1000, or 2%; at worst it could double the lifetime risk.

This means that while in the general population 58 out of 1000 people are expected to develop lung cancer by the age of 75, among soldiers exposed to high levels of DU this number could reach 116.

``There is limited information about the amounts of depleted uranium that soldiers have been exposed to on the battlefield,'' said Professor Brian Spratt, chairman of the Royal Society working group that prepared the report. ``Without additional measurements, it is not possible to rule out a significantly increased risk of lung cancer among a small group of soldiers who may have been exposed to very high levels of depleted uranium extreme situations.''

It is not thought that any British soldier has been in a tank that was hit by a DU device, but some had entered recently hit vehicles.

The risk of developing leukaemias or other cancers after being exposed to radiation by DU is thought to be extremely unlikely, at less than about 5 in a million even for those involved in high-risk situations.

Spratt called for more test firings to be conducted, probably in the US, to help ``sharpen up our figures.''

``We need to understand both the amount of DU that enters tanks and the amount that can be breathed in when DU enters a heavily armoured tank,'' he said. ``Governments who wish to use depleted uranium weapons have a responsibility to understand the possible risks to their own soldiers, and to the soldiers and civilians within the countries where conflicts arise.''

The report also called for soldiers who have been involved in high-risk situations to have regular urine analysis, which can help indicate level of exposure to DU.

The Ministry of Defence is to consider the report and will decide whether to act on the recommendations.

A second report, due out later this year, will cover the effects on health of DU as a heavy metal, the environmental effects of DU and long-term effects of DU on local populations.

--------

Report: Health Risks of DU Weapons Is Low

New York Times
May 22, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/science/science-science-deple.html?searchpv=reuters

LONDON (Reuters) - Levels of depleted uranium (DU) most soldiers and peacekeepers are exposed to are not high enough to increase their risk of leukemia or other cancers, British researchers said Tuesday.

In a new report by an independent academy of leading scientists, they said that in a very small number of soldiers very high levels of the toxic, radioactive element -- used to enhance the ability of weapons to pierce armored vehicles -- could raise their chance of developing lung cancer.

``The main concern of inhalation of depleted uranium is an increased risk of lung cancer,'' Professor Brian Spratt told a news conference launching the Royal Society report.

He said only survivors in a vehicle struck by a DU weapon or colleagues who went in quickly to rescue them would be exposed to levels high enough to seriously damage their health.

``In such circumstances, and assuming the most unfavorable conditions, the lifetime risk of death from lung cancer is unlikely to exceed twice that in the general population,'' the report said.

Fears about the health risks to troops using DU weapons arose after six Italian soldiers died of leukemia following exposure to spent weapons while serving in the former Yugoslavia.

Other European nations including France, the Netherlands, Spain, Belgium and Portugal have also reported an increase in cancer among soldiers in what has been dubbed ``Balkan Syndrome.''

NATO and the World Health Organization say there is no scientific evidence to link the illnesses to the controversial weapons.

CALLS FOR RESEARCH

The Royal Society called for more research, saying there was a lack of scientific evidence about the levels of DU that could occur in different situations and the amounts that might be inhaled by a soldier.

When a uranium-tipped weapon hits an object it produces a weak radioactive vapor.

The report looked at internal exposure to DU through inhalation, ingestion and shrapnel wounds. The scientists also calculated the amount of DU in body organs and tissues and estimated the amount of radiation received by peacekeepers and soldiers.

It concluded that the risks of leukemia and all other cancers are very low for all soldiers.

``Peacekeepers will have relatively low levels of exposure to depleted uranium and an observable increase in leukemia is very unlikely,'' said Spratt.

The scientists called for more test firing of DU weapons to determine the amount of radiation released. They also said the health of soldiers exposed to high levels of DU who served in the Balkan and Gulf wars should be monitored.

``No one denies the theoretical effect, but at the moment there is no clinical evidence that DU is having the effect the concerned individuals are experiencing,'' a British Ministry of Defense spokesman said.

Depleted uranium shells are favored by the United States, Britain and France as the best and cheapest ammunition available to pilots and tank crews.

Some 40,000 rounds were fired in the Balkans by U.S. ground attack aircraft during the Kosovo conflict and in 1995 in Bosnia.

----

Royal Society Report on DU - part 1
Depleted uranium may cause higher risk of lung cancer for some soldiers

Royal Society Media Releases
22 May 2001
From: "Fred Dawson" <fwp_dawson@hotmail.com>
Report can be found at http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/policy/du.htm

Exposure to depleted uranium on the battlefield may cause a doubling of the usual risk of death from lung cancer among a small group of soldiers in extreme circumstances, according to a Royal Society report published today (22 May). But the risks of leukaemias and other cancers from depleted uranium radiation are likely to be very low for all possible battlefield situations.

Professor Brian Spratt, chairman of the Royal Society working group that prepared the report, said: "There is limited information about the amounts of depleted uranium that soldiers have been exposed to on the battlefield. Without additional measurements, it is not possible to rule out a significantly increased risk of lung cancer among a small group of soldiers who may have been exposed to very high levels of depleted uranium in extreme situations."

He added: "Governments who wish to use depleted uranium weapons have a responsibility to understand the possible risks to their own soldiers, and to the soldiers and civilians within the countries where conflicts arise. It is essential that further information about exposures is obtained from the test firing of depleted uranium shells into armoured vehicles to find out if our worst case estimates are feasible.

"Monitoring must be carried out on the urine of veterans who might have been exposed to substantial amounts of depleted uranium in the Gulf or Balkans. There must also be new schemes set in place for improved and timely monitoring of depleted uranium in the urine of soldiers following future conflicts."

The report concludes that the highest levels of depleted uranium that are likely to occur on the battlefield would probably lead to an added risk of dying of lung cancer of 1 in 1000, but soldiers who survive inside a vehicle hit by a depleted uranium shell may experience a doubling in the lifetime risk. The added risk of leukaemias or other cancers caused by radiation from depleted uranium is likely to be less than about 5 in a million for all possible levels of exposure.

The report points out that although the handling of depleted uranium fragments for long periods could be dangerous, the biggest threat is posed by small particles of depleted uranium that might be inhaled after a shell hits a heavily armoured vehicle. Some of this dust could lodge in the lungs or be transported to the lymph nodes.

Studies should be continued into the health of veterans over several decades as the effects of radiation from depleted uranium would take a long time to be seen, the report recommends.

The report considers only the risks associated with radiation emitted by depleted uranium. A second report will be published later this year, dealing with the effect that depleted uranium might have on human health through chemical toxicity effects, and its long-term impact on the environment.

A public meeting about the findings of this first report will be held at the Royal Society in June.

NOTES FOR EDITORS 1. The Royal Society is an independent academy promoting the natural and applied sciences. Founded in 1660, the Society has three roles, as the UK academy of science, as a learned Society, and as a funding agency. It responds to individual demand with selection by merit, not by field. The Society's objectives are to: recognise excellence in science support leading-edge scientific research and its applications stimulate international interaction further the role of science, engineering and technology in society promote education and the public's understanding of science provide independent authoritative advice on matters relating to science, engineering and technology encourage research into the history of science

2. Further press copies of the report The health hazards of depleted uranium munitions: Part I, may be obtained from Bob Ward on 020-7451 2516, or may be found on the Royal Society's web site (http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk). http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/policy/du.htm

For further information contact: Bob Ward Press and Public Relations The Royal Society, London Tel: 020 7451 2516/2508

-------- missile defense

Missile defense in perspective

Washington Times
May 22, 2001
Derek H. Chollet and James M. Goldgeier
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20010522-10502259.htm

Now that Bush administration officials have returned from last week´s globe-trotting to explain why the United States wants to develop a missile defense outside the bounds of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, it is clear that numerous myths remain about what kind of protection such a system will provide. In order to be smart as we proceed down this path, we need to recognize not only what missile defense is, but also what it isn´t.

At best, missile defense is an insurance policy within our overall effort to protect ourselves from weapons of mass destruction. The rest of the tool kit consists of deterrence emphasizing to those who might launch at us that we can destroy them in return; denial preventing technologies from falling in the wrong hands; and diplomacy weaning regimes away from the idea of developing these types of systems.

Each of these four Ds has its place. Missile defense would give us some protection if deterrence, denial and diplomacy fail. As Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has himself admitted, missile defense might work or it might not, but at least we would have done something so that the president had one last card to play in order to protect American lives.

But because missile defense will never be 100 percent effective, we should not make of it more than it is. When defending against tanks, stopping nine out of ten is a pretty good day´s work. Stopping nine out of 10 nuclear-tipped missiles is still a catastrophe. Those who argue that missile defense will allow a president to act confidently in a crisis are just plain wrong. They need to see the movie "Thirteen Days." Why didn´t President Kennedy authorize a strike against nuclear weapons in Cuba in October 1962? Because he knew he might not hit all of them, and a few would be left for retaliation. No president would ever act more boldly because he was confident that missile defense would work. But he would be thankful if he saved even one city from destruction.

Given this reality, we must be clear that missile defense is not a substitute for the three other Ds deterrence, denial and diplomacy. It is not even first among equals. If we had a defensive system in place, it would be our tool of last resort.

If this is so, then how should the Bush administration proceed? It is clear that the administration has no interest in being constrained by a treaty signed with the Soviet Union in 1972. This position is quite reasonable. But it still needs an alternative approach. China and Russia have legitimate worries about any U.S. efforts in space that might enable us to eliminate their satellite capabilities, even as the United States has legitimate worries about defending its own space assets.

Trying to negotiate a new agreement will be difficult. The Russians will want some kind of treaty, if only because a signing ceremony would give them the bipolar moment they crave to remind the world of their status as the other major nuclear power. But it is hard to imagine that if the United States and Russia immediately start to develop a different treaty, then other nuclear powers Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan would not want to be part of it as well.

The Bush administration should therefore not work to create a new treaty right away. It should instead put its political resources into reassuring the world that the system it seeks to develop is purely defensive. But just saying so won´t be enough.

The Bush team needs to take four steps. First, it must show that it recognizes the inherent limits of missile defense, and make clear that this is only one part of a broader U.S. defense strategy against rogue threats one that includes the other three Ds. Second, it should be mindful of the need for greater transparency as it develops a new system, possibly by inviting observers from leading nations to participate in research (in the case of our allies) or observe tests (in the case of China and Russia). Third, President Bush should follow-through on his pledge to lower the numbers of offensive strategic nuclear warheads and go to a level of 1,000-1,500 a number still sufficient to deter any adversary from attacking but low enough to demonstrate that the United States is not trying to develop a first strike capability.

Finally, the administration should pledge that once it has figured out what kind of system to deploy a process that might take years it will work toward a formal agreement with other major powers on rules of the road. To be sure, many of Mr. Bush´s GOP friends will complain about any constraints on U.S. efforts. But if we do not show that we care about some rules to stabilize the nuclear chessboard, we are likely to produce the self-fulfilling prophecy we want missile defense to help us avoid uncertainty and instability.

Derek H. Chollet is a research associate at George Washington University´s Institute for European, Russian and EurTheasian Studies, and served in the State Department during the Clinton administration. James M. Goldgeier is associate professor of political science at George Washington University and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

--------

Greece Undecided on Missile Defense

New York Times
May 22, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Greece.html?searchpv=aponline
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010522/aponline125009_000.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou said Tuesday his government is undecided about anti-missile defenses and would like to see a cut in peacekeeping troops in the Balkans as the region becomes more stable.

Papandreou met with Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet and Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's assistant for national security.

Reviewing the meetings for a group of American reporters, Papandreou said U.S., Greek, Russian and other peacekeepers in the Balkans were promoting stability.

He was also optimistic about the way governments in the region were developing, particularly former Yugoslav republics that he said seem to be evolving into modern, multiethnic societies.

Still, Papandreou said over a scrambled-eggs breakfast, Greece would like to see the Balkan countries ``move into a regional framework for dealing with divisive problems.''

Bosnia may be ready for a reduction in peacekeeping troops and Kosovo could be headed that way in elections ahead, he said.

``In a stable situation, they can deal with their own issues and we can bring the troop levels down,'' Papandreou said. ``Let's start working to create that atmosphere.''

On the Bush administration's missile-shield aspirations, Papandreou said he found senior officials undecided on what kind of program to build.

``What we need here is a real discussion between the European Union and the United States,'' he said.

Papandreou, whose government took the lead during the Cold War in pushing for denuclearization, said: ``I would like to reserve an opinion.''

In an exchange with reporters, Papandreou said his region does not face a threat of missile attack ``but when we are told missiles have a long reach we want to hear what this is about.''

Greece's questions, he said, include whether there is a threat, the nature of the threat and ``do we deal with it with technology or with regional programs and treaties.''

A national missile defense, which is under consideration within the Bush administration, is banned in the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. President Bush has declared the treaty a relic of the Cold War that does not apply to current U.S. defense needs.

-------- russia

Reported U.S.-German Memo Irks Putin

The Associated Press
Tuesday, May 22, 2001
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010522/aponline100123_000.htm

MOSCOW -- President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday reports that the United States and Germany had agreed to withhold financial aid from Russia were a "provocation" aimed at derailing Moscow's cooperation with European nations.

The Russian president's comments followed the publication in Germany of remarks allegedly made by President Bush and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in a classified memo.

The memo, published in the German newsmagazines Der Spiegel and Focus, said Bush and Schroeder agreed to withhold any new economic assistance to Putin's government because of capital flight.

Putin told reporters Tuesday he had no reason to believe the publication, but added "everything that is secret always comes to light."

He described the publication as a "provocation aimed to destroy the positive trend in relations between Russia and the European Union and between Russia and certain members of the European Union."

The newsmagazines said the 10-page memo was written by Germany's ambassador in Washington, Juergen Chrobog, concerning March 29 talks between Bush and Schroeder in Washington. The memo also cited Bush as criticizing Russia for its weapons sales to Iran.

Talks between Schroeder and Putin in St. Petersburg last month failed to bring any progress on the key issue of Russia's Soviet-era debts to Germany, which Moscow wanted to reschedule. The debt accounts for nearly half of the about $48 billion Russia owes to the Paris Club of creditor nations.

"We have certain agreements with the Paris Club, and believe that our creditors are interested in Russia's economy being in a condition which makes it possible to fulfill its obligations," Putin said.

Putin has sought to establish closer relations with the European Union amid a chill in Russia's relations with the United States, which have been strained over Moscow's opposition to the U.S. missile defense plan and Washington's criticism of Russian weapons sales to Iran.

Bush and Putin are to meet for the first time in Slovenia in mid-June.

-------- treaties

Nations Adopt Treaty to Ban Toxic Chemicals

New York Times
May 22, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-environ.html

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Almost 130 nations formally agreed a U.N. treaty Tuesday to ban or minimize use of a ``dirty dozen'' toxic chemicals blamed for causing cancers and birth defects in people and animals.

Environment ministers or senior officials from 127 countries, including the United States which came under renewed criticism for abandoning a climate pact, agreed in Stockholm to the deal to axe 12 persistent organic pollutants (POPs).

``The first global convention of the new century has been adopted,'' Kjell Larsson, the Swedish Environment Minister, said after banging down a wooden gavel. The treaty was adopted without a vote at a conference center.

He urged all nations to ratify the pact quickly.

POPs are mostly pesticides like DDT, later shown to have dangerous side-effects on birds and humans. Larsson noted that the inventor of DDT, Paul Hermann Mueller of Switzerland, won the 1948 Nobel Prize for Medicine.

The poisons linger in the environment for decades and build up in the fatty tissues of people and animals, damaging immune systems, causing cancers or even lowering sperm counts.

Earlier, Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson, whose country holds the European Union presidency, hailed the treaty as a first step to control toxic human-made substances.

``We have to go further,'' he added. ``Dangerous substances must be replaced by harmless ones step by step. If there is the least suspicion that new chemicals have dangerous characteristics it is better to reject them.''

EU Environment Commissioner Margot Wallstrom said new chemicals would be added to the list of outlawed POPs in coming years despite U.S. worries about costs to industry.

``Even though the United States is frightened that new chemicals will be added, this is of course what will happen,'' she told a news conference.

Police guarded the conference center in central Stockholm, but there were no protesters in the bright spring sunshine.

The treaty has the support of environmental groups including Greenpeace and the World Wide Fund for Nature. Greenpeace activists demonstrated Tuesday against lingering emissions in Sweden and Britain.

INUIT, PENGUINS HIT BY POPS

POPs are swept around the world by winds and ocean currents and have been found in Antarctic penguins or Arctic polar bears.

Nine of the POPs are pesticides -- DDT, aldrin, chlordane, dieldrin, endrin, heptachlor, hexachlorobenzene, mirex and toxaphene. They also comprise industrial chemicals PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) and industrial waste products dioxins and furans.

Most will be banned immediately although some exemptions have been agreed -- DDT, for instance, will still be used as an insecticide to control malaria in developing nations.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in a message read to delegates, said the treaty ``will make the world a safer place'' and urged nations to ratify as quickly as possible.

The treaty will be signed by delegates Wednesday and has to be ratified by at least 50 governments before it enters into force. That could take several years.

Larsson hit out at U.S. President George Bush for abandoning the 1997 Kyoto treaty aimed at limiting emissions of greenhouse gases and for coming up with a plan last week to boost production of coal, oil and nuclear power.

``I'm very disappointed that we can't continue to work globally with the Kyoto process,'' he told a news conference.

--------

100 Countries Meet to Ban 12 Toxic Chemicals

New York Times
May 22, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-UN-Dirty-Dozen.html

STOCKHOLM, Sweden -- Saying the world ``must put a stop to the use of poisons,'' Sweden's prime minister on Tuesday welcomed some 500 delegates from more than 100 countries to sign a global treaty banning 12 highly toxic chemicals.

The convention, which was concluded in December in South Africa after five negotiating sessions, won approval from environmental groups as an important step in the fight against hazardous chemicals that are used in industry or created by improper waste disposal.

``We must put a stop to the use of poisons which threaten plants, animals and the environment in which we live,'' Swedish Prime Minister Goeran Persson said in opening remarks. ``If we fail with the environmental issues, then all other political work will be pointless.''

The treaty is aimed at eventually eliminating all hazardous chemicals but lists 12 widely known as ``the dirty dozen'' for priority action. It was slated for formal adoption later Tuesday afternoon, with a signing ceremony on Wednesday.

The chemicals include PCBs and dioxins, plus DDT and other pesticides shown to contribute to birth defects, cancer and other problems in humans and animals.

The treaty has been endorsed by President Bush, giving him an environmental reprieve with European leaders and environmentalists worldwide who have criticized his rejection of the 1997 Kyoto global warming treaty.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency chief Christie Whitman, in Stockholm to sign the treaty, said proposals for alternative measures to address climate change would be forthcoming.

Bush ``is fully prepared and enthusiastic to participate in initiatives that will actually receive ratification,'' she said, referring to the belief that the Kyoto treaty would not have received U.S. congressional approval.

Environmental activsts have welcomed the hazardous chemicals accord but stressed it was only a beginning as they urged quick ratification and implementation, as well as the eventual addition of more chemicals to the list.

Persson also called on his colleagues to quickly ratify the hazardous chemicals accord and give it strong financial support.

``Dangerous substances do not respect international or national borders,'' he said. ``They can only be fought with common strategies.''

Production and use of most of the chemicals will be banned as soon as the treaty takes effect, following ratification by at least 50 countries -- a process expected to take four to five years.

Most of the chemicals covered in the treaty no longer are used in industrial countries like the United States or Sweden.

But they remain popular in developing countries, break down slowly and travel easily in the environment, with traces of many of them found in pristine areas of the Arctic after having been transported by air currents from hundreds of miles away.

Canada, which has taken a leading role in the five U.N. Environment Program-sponsored negotiating sessions that started in 1998 in Montreal, was expected to be the first to offer ratification shortly after signing the treaty on Wednesday.

About 25 countries would be allowed to use DDT to combat malaria in accordance with World Health Organization guidelines until they can develop safer solutions.

The most contentious issues were provisions for an international fund, possibly as much as $150 million, to help developing countries offset the costs of using cleaner alternatives and the possibility for expanding the number of chemicals to be covered.

-------- us nuc politics

Bush's brand-new Day

By Joan Walsh
May 22, 2001
http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2001/05/22/day/print.html
http://a1388.g.akamai.net/7/1388/691/47e49d763fd3bd/www.salon.com/politics/feature/2001/05/22/day/story.jpg

Catholic Worker movement founder and socialist Dorothy Day, who President Bush quoted in a speech at Notre Dame Sunday.

Trying to burnish his "compassionate" image, the president is now quoting Dorothy Day. Who's next -- Mother Jones?

President Bush promised to be a "compassionate conservative" throughout Campaign 2000, but his plan to expand federal funding to faith-based charities appears to be his only attempt to make good on the "compassionate" in that promise. So he needs it, badly.

Bush pitched the plan hard on Sunday, with a commencement speech at Notre Dame, the nation's best-known Catholic university. The speech was a twofer: He got to flack his faith-based plan, as well as reach out to Catholic voters, a group that went for Al Gore last November. (Ronald Reagan made inroads with white ethnics in the 1980s, but since then Catholics have been trending Democratic.) Bush did both with a shameless reference to Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement.

"Any effective war on poverty must deploy what Dorothy Day called 'the weapons of spirit,'" Bush told the crowd.

But the reference to Day rang false, for two reasons. One is that it's hard to imagine Bush finding much common ground with the socialist, pacifist Day, who, before her conversion to Catholicism, was a left-wing Greenwich Village writer who dallied with literary luminaries of the era, including Eugene O'Neill. (She and Bush could have been drinking buddies in their youth, perhaps, but Day's tastes ran more to intellectuals and activists than to frat boys.) Day had an abortion, and later became an unmarried mother before converting to Catholicism in 1924 and starting the Catholic Worker movement, ministering to New York's poor, with Peter Maurin in 1933.

But the other dissonance in Bush's quoting Day is that her Catholic Worker movement refuses to accept government funding for its work, believing such monies inevitably come with strings attached, and that the work is better done voluntarily, out of love, not obligation. In fact, the vast majority of Catholic Worker communities aren't even incorporated, which means they have to turn away monies from many private donors. At the more than 175 Catholic Worker communities today, staff members take a vow of voluntary poverty, to live alongside the low-income people they serve, treating them as "guests," not clients.

And according to Jim Allaire, the webmaster for the Catholic Worker Web site, the phrase "weapons of spirit" isn't even an exact quote from Day herself. "She spoke of the 'primacy of the spiritual' (13 texts) and 'spiritual weapons' (26 citations) but not 'weapons of spirit.'" Allaire, the author of the book "Praying With Dorothy Day," goes on to say: "CW houses don't take government funds from any level of government. In fact, the great majority are not even incorporated. Those that are 501(c)(3) do so for receiving donations that are tax deductible. Having said that, it may be the case that somewhere a CW house does take government funds, but in two cases I know of, the houses that started to accept grants delisted themselves from the CW directory."

Day herself explained the decision not to incorporate this way: "No one asked us to do this work. The mayor of the city did not come along and ask us to run a breadline or a hospice to supplement the municipal lodging house ... No one asked us to start an agency or an institution of any kind. On our responsibility, because we are our brother's keeper, because of a sense of personal responsibility, we began to try to see Christ in each one that came to us ... Ever to become smaller, that is the aim. And to talk about incorporating is somehow to miss the point of the whole movement."

It's clear that Day, who died in 1980, would have been among the religious leaders who oppose Bush's plan to increase federal funding, fearing it will tie them in red tape and dilute work that is better done voluntarily.

So how did the socialist Catholic Worker founder wind up in Bush's speech, anyway? He seems like a guy who's more into Doris Day than Dorothy, and who might have confused "weapons of spirit" with his missile defense shield. If Bush misquoted Day, that's a minor mistake (the White House didn't return calls asking for a citation for the quote). If he tried to appropriate the respect Day commands internationally, to support a program she would oppose, that would be much worse.

Worse still would be if Bush and his staff knew and cared so little about poverty they didn't know or care anything about Day or what she stood for, beyond the fact that she was a Catholic and they need more Catholic votes. Given the fact that Bush's proposed budget gives unprecedented tax breaks to the richest of the rich and crumbs to the poor, the smart money has to be on the last explanation.

About the writer Joan Walsh is the editor of Salon News.

----

Extra Credit

Tuesday, May 22, 2001
Staff writer Valerie Strauss looks at commencement past and current: ...

The country is awash in caps and gowns during this commencement season, as millions of college students undergo graduation rituals that go back many hundreds of years.

• TWO GREAT COMMENCEMENT SPEECHES . . .

Addressing graduates at Howard University's commencement ceremony this month, broadcaster Bryant Gumbel said: "I'll be brief, because I've never known a soul who could recall the words of their commencement speaker beyond a few short years of their graduation."

For most speeches, that may be true, but there have been a few that have made history.

On June 5, 1947, at Harvard University's commencement, where Secretary of State George Marshall chose to tell graduating seniors that the U.S. government was making European economic recovery a major goal of its foreign policy:

"Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos," he said "Any government that is willing to assist in the task of recovery will find full cooperation, I am sure, on the part of the United States government."

Under that Marshall Plan, the U.S. government sent about $13 billion in food, machinery and other products to Europe, revitalizing the economies of 17 countries after the devastation of World War II.

Flash to June 10, 1963, when President John F. Kennedy used commencement at American University to announce the initiation of special test-ban discussions and a U.S. moratorium on atmospheric tests, if the Soviet Union reciprocated. The speech came eight months after the United States and the Soviet Union reached the brink of nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis.

"We do not want a war. We do not now expect a war," he said. "This generation of Americans has already had enough -- more than enough -- of war and hate and oppression. We shall be prepared if others wish it. We shall be alert to try to stop it. But we shall also do our part to build a world of peace where the weak are safe and the strong are just."

On July 25, 1963, the United States and Soviet Union agreed on a limited treaty banning nuclear tests in the atmosphere and outer space and under water.

--

[Compare http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A58037-2001May21?language=printer]

QUOTE:

"To those of you who received honors, awards and distinctions, I say well done. And to the C students, I say to you: You, too, can be president of the United States."

-- President Bush while accepting an honorary award yesterday at his alma mater, Yale University.

By Lloyd Grove With Beth Berselli Washington Post, Tuesday, May 22, 2001; Page C03

---

[To be fair and complete, I decided to include his entire address here. et]

REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT IN COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS,

May 21, 2001
Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/05/20010521-2.html

Listen to the President's Remarks
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/05/20010521-2.ram

THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary
12:05 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT: President Levin, thank you very much. Dean Brodhead, fellows of the Yale Corporation, fellow Yale parents, families, and graduates: It's a special privilege to receive this honorary degree. I was proud 33 years ago to receive my first Yale degree. I'm even prouder that in your eyes I've earned this one.

I congratulate my fellow honorees. I'm pleased to share this honor with such a distinguished group. I'm particularly pleased to be here with my friend, the former of Mexico. Senor Presidente, usted es un verdadero lider, y un gran amigo. (Applause.)

I congratulate all the parents who are here. It's a glorious day when your child graduates from college. It's a great day for you; it's a great day for your wallet. (Laughter.)

Most important, congratulations to the class of 2001. (Applause.) To those of you who received honors, awards, and distinctions, I say, well done. And to the C students -- (applause) -- I say, you, too, can be President of the United States. (Laughter and applause.) A Yale degree is worth a lot, as I often remind Dick Cheney -- (laughter) -- who studied here, but left a little early. So now we know -- if you graduate from Yale, you become President. If you drop out, you get to be Vice President. (Laughter.)

I appreciate so very much the chance to say a few words on this occasion. I know Yale has a tradition of having no commencement speaker. I also know that you've carved out a single exception. Most people think that to speak at Yale's commencement, you have to be President. But over the years, the specifications have become far more demanding. Now you have to be a Yale graduate, you have to be President, and you have had to have lost the Yale vote to Ralph Nader. (Applause.)

This is my first time back here in quite a while. I'm sure that each of you will make your own journey back at least a few times in your life. If you're like me, you won't remember everything you did here. (Laughter.) That can be a good thing. (Laughter.) But there will be some people, and some moments, you will never forget.

Take, for example, my old classmate, Dick Brodhead, the accomplished dean of this great university. (Applause.) I remember him as a young scholar, a bright lad -- (laughter) -- a hard worker. We both put a lot of time in at the Sterling Library, in the reading room, where they have those big leather couches. (Laughter.) We had a mutual understanding -- Dick wouldn't read aloud, and I wouldn't snore. (Laughter.)

Our course selections were different, as we followed our own path to academic discovery. Dick was an English major, and loved the classics. I loved history, and pursued a diversified course of study. I like to think of it as the academic road less traveled. (Laughter.)

For example, I took a class that studied Japanese Haiku. Haiku, for the uninitiated, is a 15th century form of poetry, each poem having 17 syllables. Haiku is fully understood only by the Zen masters. As I recall, one of my academic advisers was worried about my selection of such a specialized course. He said I should focus on English. (Laughter.) I still hear that quite often. (Laughter.) But my critics don't realize I don't make verbal gaffes. I'm speaking in the perfect forms and rhythms of ancient Haiku. (Applause.)

I did take English here, and I took a class called "The History and Practice of American Oratory," taught by Roland G. Osterwies. (Applause.) And, President Levin, I want to give credit where credit is due. I want the entire world to know this -- everything I know about the spoken word, I learned right here at Yale. (Laughter.)

As a student, I tried to keep a low profile. It worked. Last year the New York Times interviewed John Morton Blum because the record showed I had taken one of his courses. Casting his mind's eye over the parade of young faces down through the years, Professor Blum said, and I quote, "I don't have the foggiest recollection of him." (Laughter.)

But I remember Professor Blum. And I still recall his dedication and high standards of learning. In my time there were many great professors at Yale. And there still are. They're the ones who keep Yale going after the commencements, after we have all gone our separate ways. I'm not sure I remembered to thank them the last time I was here, but now that I have a second chance, I thank the professors of Yale University. (Applause.)

That's how I've come to feel about the Yale experience -- grateful. I studied hard, I played hard, and I made a lot of lifelong friends. What stays with you from college is the part of your education you hardly ever notice at the time. It's the expectations and examples around you, the ideals you believe in, and the friends you make.

In my time, they spoke of the "Yale man." I was really never sure what that was. But I do think that I'm a better man because of Yale. All universities, at their best, teach that degrees and honors are far from the full measure of life. Nor is that measure taken in wealth or in titles. What matters most are the standards you live by, the consideration you show others, and the way you use the gifts you are given.

Now you leave Yale behind, carrying the written proof of your success here, at a college older than America. When I left here, I didn't have much in the way of a life plan. I knew some people who thought they did. But it turned out that we were all in for ups and downs, most of them unexpected. Life takes its own turns, makes its own demands, writes its own story. And along the way, we start to realize we are not the author.

We begin to understand that life is ours to live, but not to waste, and that the greatest rewards are found in the commitments we make with our whole hearts -- to the people we love and to the causes that earn our sacrifice. I hope that each of you will know these rewards. I hope you will find them in your own way and your own time.

For some, that might mean some time in public service. And if you hear that calling, I hope you answer. Each of you has unique gifts and you were given them for a reason. Use them and share them. Public service is one way -- an honorable way -- to mark your life with meaning.

Today I visit not only my alma mater, but the city of my birth. My life began just a few blocks from here, but I was raised in West Texas. From there, Yale always seemed a world away, maybe a part of my future. Now it's part of my past, and Yale for me is a source of great pride.

I hope that there will come a time for you to return to Yale to say that, and feel as I do today. And I hope you won't wait as long. Congratulations and God bless. (Applause.)

----

Cheney Promises More Nuclear Power

By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 22, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A60078-2001May22?language=printer

Vice President Cheney went before 375 officials from the nuclear industry this morning to ask for support for President Bush's energy policy and to promise that nuclear power will be an important part of the solution.

Cheney said Bush's policy assumes "very significant" savings from conservation and increased use of renewable energy sources such as sun and wind, but he said they will not be enough to meet the nation's energy needs.

"Bottom line is, we still have inadequate supplies, and the only way to close that gap is to generate more electric power," Cheney said. "Given today's technologies and expectations going forward, that means it's going to be coal-fired, it's going to be gas-fired or it's going to come from nuclear power."

The vice president spoke to the Nuclear Energy Assembly, a conference sponsored at a Washington hotel by the industry's major trade group, the Nuclear Energy Institute.

Cheney, who received a standing ovation, said the nuclear industry is already allowing electricity to be generated "efficiently, safely, with no discharge of the greenhouse gases or emissions."

"We want to, as a matter of national policy, to encourage continued advancements in this industry - improved safety and efficiency in nuclear plants, safe disposal of nuclear waste, and perhaps even technology that reduces the amount of toxicity of waste going forward," he said.

Cheney thanked the executives for their "support for reasonable policies with respect to energy policy going forward."

"There's a lot of talk from some of our critics that somehow it's only focused, for example, on additional supplies of energy - that we didn't look adequately at conservation or renewables," Cheney said. "That's simply not true. I would say anybody who says that hasn't read the report."

Perhaps chastened by the response to remarks last month that were covered in the news media as being dismissive of conservation, Cheney emphasized that more of the recommendations from Bush's energy tax force, which the vice president chaired, "are devoted to conservation and renewables than are devoted to increased supplies."

"If you look at the whole area of financial incentives that we recommend, those have a whole lot more to do with conservation and increased efficiency than they do with trying to subsidize additional production from conventional sources," Cheney said.

The vice president said Bush "recognizes that these are difficult and challenging issues, and there's been plenty of controversy over the years connected with all of these kinds of issues."

"But as he's said to us many times in the Oval Office, he didn't come to town to duck the tough issues," Cheney said.

----

All News Not Good for Bush, Cheney

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 22, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59584-2001May22?language=printer

Dubya is doing less well, to put it mildly, on the energy front. And USA Today has the numbers to prove it:

"An American public stunned by rising gasoline prices and worried about electricity shortages greeted President Bush's energy plan with skepticism, a new USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll shows. The findings suggest Bush faces a major selling job if he expects to persuade Congress to enact the proposals he unveiled last week and convince the public that he is acting in its interest....

"Although Bush says his program will allow Americans to retain the lifestyle they are accustomed to, only 30% of those surveyed said they believe it. Two of three said major lifestyle changes will be necessary to solve the nation's energy woes.

"Nearly half said the Bush plan would not do enough to conserve energy, and 43% said the plan would do too little to increase production. Americans also were split over the Bush proposal to increase the number of nuclear power plants to generate electricity: 49% for and 46% against.

-------- us nuc power

Rephrasing the nuclear power question

Washington Times
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
May 22, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20010522-4317184.htm

Scott Denman, Executive Director of the Safe Energy Commission Council, would have us halt even a discussion of nuclear power based on the fact that recent polling shows that "ixty percent opposes building more reactors" ("Is anyone enthusiastic about nuclear reactors?," Letters, May 12). A reasoned examination of our nation´s options might be more helpful. The U.S. Navy has accumulated over 5400 reactor years of accident-free experience and now operates about 90 nuclear-powered ships. More importantly, every former Navy submariner that I know is very comfortable with the safety of nuclear reactors. Most of them are now working in the commercial power industry. The disposal of radioactive waste, for political rather than technical reasons, is a more contentious issue. The United States decided long ago to prohibit reprocessing nuclear fuel in order to minimize production and the potential theft of weapons-grade material. Yet the French routinely remanufacture nuclear fuel rods, achieving huge reductions in the volume of radioactive waste (by one account, a 97 percent reduction with a breeder reactor, which uses plutonium fuel instead of conventional uranium). Perhaps our policy should be revisited. Instead of polling the public on whether they would like to live near a nuclear reactor, perhaps Mr. Denman should ask: "Would you support building a nuclear power plant within ten miles of your home if it provided you personally with reliable electrical power for two-thirds the cost of a natural gas fired plant, reduced fuel imports and our trade deficit, was invulnerable to market manipulation by OPEC, and would do all of this without producing any air pollutants or greenhouse gases?" I, for one, would enthusiastically replace the conventional power plant nearest to me with a nuclear plant and as soon as possible.

CHIP DRURY Alexandria

-------- us nuc waste

Home for spent fuel is key to new US nuke plants

USA: May 22, 2001
Story by Vibeke Laroi
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10902

SAN FRANCISCO - Before pushing ahead with plans to boost nuclear power in the U.S., the Bush administration needs to find a permanent home for over 40,000 metric tons of existing highly radioactive waste.

So say utilities - stuck holding spent fuel in temporary storage until a central deposit can be found - and environmentalists, who are in rare agreement on the need to contain this dangerous waste before heaping more on the pile.

Although the most highly radioactive spent fuel declines the most rapidly, some of the radiation will stay around for thousands of years.

"The Bush energy plan can urge utilities to build new nuclear plants, but the government needs to look to its own responsibilities on the waste issue," Thomas Neff, senior research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told Reuters.

"The main reason for opposition to nuclear right now is the nuclear waste problem," he said.

Green groups promise to block any new nuclear units partly because of the spent fuel problem, while utilities say lack of a waste dump remains a key barrier to building more reactors.

Last week President George W. Bush laid out a plan to attack "the most serious energy shortage" since the 1970s, calling for, among other things, heavier reliance on nuclear power and recommending speeding the approval process for new reactors and providing tax breaks for nuclear plant purchases.

His energy policy task force said the U.S. could boost its use of nuclear power by doubling the number of reactors at many nuclear sites already licensed by the federal government.

There are currently 103 nuclear reactors operating at 64 sites in 31 states, accounting for some 20 percent of all U.S. electricity generation. Although these sites were designed to host four to six reactors, most operate only two or three.

The reactors have produced about 42,000 metric tons of spent fuel - enough to fill one football field 15 feet (4.6 meters) deep - and continue to generate some 2,000 tons a year.

YUCCA MOUNTAIN

Over two decades, scientists have spent close to $7 billion studying and testing Yucca Mountain, in a remote corner of a nuclear weapons' test site in the Nevada desert, as the nation's permanent underground nuclear waste repository. No country has yet built or operated one.

Yucca Mountain, about 90 miles (144 km) from Las Vegas, is the sole site - of an original nine candidates for a U.S. nuclear waste repository - to undergo extensive studies.

"It is the most studied piece of real estate on the planet," Rod McCullum, senior project manager for used fuel at the trade group Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), told Reuters.

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

Some power generators have sued the federal government for breaking an agreement to store nuclear fuel starting in 1998. If approved, Yucca Mountain could begin storing fuel in 2010.

Although impatient utilities may build new nuclear plants anyway, they are certainly going to put more pressure on the government to solve the waste problem, Neff said.

"The government has been collecting money from utilities for decades now to do something with this waste and it has not done it. So the answer back from the utilities to the Bush enthusiasm about nuclear is, 'Well get your job done guys.'"

So far utilities have put over $17 billion into a nuclear waste fund. Yucca Mountain, designed to store about 77,000 metric tons of nuclear waste, is expected to cost some $49.3 billion to build, excluding money already spent on research.

ENERGY PLAN, STORAGE LINKED

No U.S. nuclear power plants have been licensed since the 1979 accident at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island plant effectively halted the U.S. nuclear industry in its tracks.

It was not a high priority for the federal government to make a decision on the controversial nuclear waste issue when it was assumed nuclear units would shut down after their 40-year licenses expired and store spent fuel on-site, either in water pools or in dry casks, Nancy Messer, an electric utility analyst with Standard & Poor's, told Reuters.

"That sort of left the politicians with an out for not making a hard decision," she said.

But now licenses of most nuclear units are expected to be extended by 20 years, the units have improved their performance and cut operating costs, federal regulators have streamlined the licensing process and standardized nuclear plant designs, and utilities are running out of on-site storage.

"A lot of the dynamics have changed that make it a more business friendly environment," Messer said.

This situation, on top of the Bush administration's desire to boost the nation's nuclear capacity, could put pressure on parties to come together and work out a deal on waste storage.

"A decision could come as a result of this energy policy and the Bush administration's desire to get some movement in the direction of making the environment more compatible for nuclear," Messer said.

But she said any decision would have to include trade-offs and compensation to the state of Nevada.

Environmentalists, many in Congress, and a block of Nevada officials want to block the use of the Yucca Mountain site.

Concerns about the enforcement of radiation exposure standards, transportation of nuclear waste and geological positioning are among the main reasons for the objections.

Opponents say the huge amounts of nuclear waste could contaminate groundwater or be released during an earthquake. Nevada ranks third in the nation for seismic activity.

This winter Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham is expected to offer his recommendation to Bush on whether to proceed with Yucca Mountain as the repository site, after which the president will make a recommendation to Congress.

If the state of Nevada disapproves, as is expected, the decision can be overruled only by a majority vote in Congress.

James Asselstine, managing director of Lehman Brothers, said given the "excellent cost and operating performance" of existing U.S. nuclear units, it is reasonable to consider, as Bush's task force has, looking at additional nuclear reactors.

But several requirements must be met, including public acceptance of building more nuclear units. "Some additional progress in developing a solution to the waste disposal problem is ... probably necessary in order to build sufficient public acceptance," Asselstine said.

-------- MILITARY

-------- balkans

Albanians Lay Aside Weapons for NATO

By FISNIK ABRASHI
Associated Press Writer
MAY 22,
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=EUROPE&STORYID=APIS7C5E7OO0

RANATOVCE, Yugoslavia (AP) - Saying their fight was over, ethnic Albanian rebels in southern Serbia began laying aside their weapons Tuesday for collection by NATO.

Faced by a vastly more powerful army, the fewer than 1,000 rebels occupy a narrow strip of land separating Kosovo province from the rest of Serbia. Their last strongholds are to be taken over Thursday by Yugoslav army troops, moving with NATO backing in a deal to end the insurrection.

But ethnic Albanian rebels in the neighboring country of Macedonia fought on Tuesday, exchanging fire with Macedonian troops in the northwest town of Tetovo and the disputed villages of Vaksince and Slupcane.

The International Committee of the Red Cross expressed concern about the fate of approximately 10,000 civilians it said were trapped in rebel-held villages targeted by Macedonian troops.

Macedonia's security council on Tuesday ruled out talking with the militants. ``We have enough power to combat this terrorism drama,'' said Defense Minister Ljuben Boskovski. ``We cannot respond with flowers against bullets.''

The accord in southern Serbia signed Monday between key guerrilla chiefs and NATO commits the insurgents to disband and disarm by month's end.

Besides handing over his faction's weapons, a rebel leader who goes by the name of Commander Shpetim formally surrendered to the peacekeepers on Tuesday.

``We respect demilitarization,'' said Shpetim - the highest-ranking rebel commander to give up. Others were to follow in the next few days.

But he told a reporter ``we will organize ourselves again to defend our people'' if Yugoslavia reverts to the policies of former President Slobodan Milosevic, alluding to his crackdown on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo in 1999.

Monday's agreement caps a NATO-plan to contain the insurrection by using a former enemy - the Yugoslav army.

Two months ago, NATO lifted a ban on allowing Yugoslav troops into the 3-mile wide buffer zone, monitoring every step to ensure a minimum of force was used, and ethnic Albanian civilians were not hurt.

Milosevic's successors have practiced restraint while slowly re-established their authority among ethnic Albanians in the buffer zone. Local ethnic Albanian leader Riza Halimi has praised the ``new stand by the current authorities.''

Two months ago, the rebels, known as the Liberation Army for Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac had ruled much of the buffer zone, using it to attack lightly armed Serb police. The militants had said they were fighting to throw off Serb rule like their ethnic kin in Kosovo.

The most difficult part of the Yugoslav army's deployment is set for Thursday, when the army takes control of the last chunk now being held by the rebels. But the rebel agreement to disarm and disband diminishes the chances of bloodshed.

Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Nebjosa Covic has promised amnesty to all who lay down their arms. NATO envoy Shawn Sullivan said the agreement ``minimized'' the risk of further bloodshed.

An explosion late Tuesday rocked a town in the buffer zone, Konculj, though its cause was unclear. Rebels in the area said one person was killed.

Further details were not immediately available.

In Brussels, Belgium, Javier Solana, the European Union foreign and security chief, called the agreement an ``important step toward a lasting and peaceful solution of the crisis.''

On Tuesday, a small group of ethnic Albanian rebels stood by a pile of dozens of rifles, mortar tubes and rounds and other armaments on a roadside just inside the buffer zone.

``Can I put on my uniform for the last time?'' said one rebel to an Associated Press Television News cameraman, before donning his black and green camouflage shirt and trousers.

----

Yugoslav Rebels Sign Agreement To Disarm

By Douglas Hamilton
Reuters
Tuesday, May 22, 2001
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A56356-2001May21?language=printer

NEAR VAKSINCE, Macedonia, May 21 -- Ethnic Albanian guerrillas in southern Yugoslavia signed a pact to disarm and disband today, while in neighboring Macedonia heavy fighting raged between the rebels and government forces.

Shefket Musliu, commander of the guerrillas in Yugoslavia's Presevo Valley, signed a pledge that his force "will be demilitarized, demobilized, and disbanded by no later than May 31, 2001, with the help of the international community."

It was unclear if all the Presevo guerrillas would honor the agreement, which was brokered by NATO. But if they do, the deal could end 16 months of sporadic fighting with Yugoslav forces in the valley, which lies just outside NATO-occupied Kosovo. The guerrillas say they are standing up for the valley's Albanian residents, who complain they are oppressed by Yugoslavia's dominant Serb ethnic group.

The agreement was reached as the Yugoslav army prepared, with NATO's approval, to move later this week into a 22-mile strip of land along the Kosovo border that NATO set up as a buffer zone after its forces went into Kosovo, a province of Serbia, in 1999. The zone has since been used as a staging ground for guerrilla attacks on Yugoslav forces in the Presevo area.

Relations between NATO and the Yugoslav army have vastly improved since Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was driven from power last October.

Speculation was mounting that some guerrillas might head south to join their ethnic comrades in Macedonia. Commanders of the ethnic Albanian force in Macedonia, known as the National Liberation Army, denied there was any such plan.

"There is no truth in these reports," Commander Sokoli, one of several regional National Liberation Army leaders, said by telephone. A second commander named Hoxha said, "We have enough soldiers already."

The National Liberation Army denies links with the Presevo Valley group, which goes by its initials in Albanian, UCPMB. But the two ethnic Albanian forces are only 12 miles apart and are widely assumed to cooperate with each other.

NATO officials say more than 170 UCPMB guerrillas have put aside their weapons and crossed from the Presevo Valley area into Kosovo, and their movement appeared to be fracturing. But officials are concerned that a renegade force among them could defy the demilitarization deal.

Guerrillas in Macedonia say a few UCPMB fighters have moved south to the villages that the National Liberation Army has held during nearly three weeks of Macedonian bombardment.

Today, Macedonian tanks, artillery and combat helicopters were in action against the insurgents. Battles were concentrated in and around the villages of Vaksince and Slupcane. The return fire from rebel-held Vaksince was the heaviest reporters had witnessed in 18 days of fighting.

The minaret of the mosque was demolished and shells were exploding around it.

Ending speculation that Vaksince might be empty after two weeks of shelling, rebels in the red-roofed village opened fire on army positions early in the day and kept up machine gun fire until the end of the afternoon.

The neighboring village of Slupcane, already badly damaged by shelling, also came under heavy long-range attack from government forces.

----

Macedonian Soldiers Face Reality

MAY 22, 01:50 EST
By ALEKSANDAR VASOVIC
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=EUROPE&STORYID=APIS7C500300

OPAE, Macedonia (AP) - Huddled against the wall of a bullet-pocked house, Sgt. Nikola Brievski looked up and paused, waiting for the moment to return fire against ethnic Albanian militants 300 yards away.

``I watched the Yugoslav wars and hoped it wouldn't happen in Macedonia,'' the 36-year-old said, emptying his clip at a number of shadowy figures racing for a stand of trees. ``How I was wrong.''

War is slowing spreading in Macedonia's northern villages, where government security forces are struggling to contain ethnic Albanian militants fighting for more rights in this Balkan country of 2 million.

In shootout after shootout, one farmhouse at a time, Macedonia's soldiers and police officers are slowly facing the reality of a conflict on home soil.

Western diplomats and NATO are working frantically to avoid all-out war in Macedonia, fearing that countries with historical and territorial aspirations will jump into the fray. The landlocked Macedonia is sandwiched between Greece, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Albania.

The alliance is also concerned about the safety of its peacekeepers in Kosovo, which borders the northern villages under attack.

``This is insane,'' Brievski said. ``This is like a bad dream.''

Still, the fighting in the single-street village of Opae offers a familiar tableau, reminiscent of other villages in the Balkans where fighting has shattered peace during the last decade. One of several villages linked in a chain of sorts stretching to the mountains bordering Kosovo, Opae has been hit by Macedonians for weeks as troops hoped to deprive the rebels of their support base.

Many homes bore the starburst markings left behind by 105 mm tank shells, but some received individual attention.

Take, for example, the white house situated along a creek and surrounded by stately willows. Several tank rounds landed just inside the living room of that structure, completely destroying a position used by the National Liberation Army as a firing post.

Other debris litters the small community that has changed hands twice since the conflict began here earlier this month. Rotting carcasses of cows and dogs littered one 600-yard street.

Even amid the barrage, soldiers found a tractor to pull a dead animal away.

``Its foul stench bothers us more than their snipers,'' said one captain, Slavko, who agreed to speak on condition that only his first name be used.

Walls were sprayed with the letters UCK, the Albanian acronym for the rebels. Macedonian soldiers sprayed their own graffiti, ``We will squish them all.''

The only villager that seemed to be around was Bedredin Zulfi, 67, an ethnic Albanian, who got trapped in fighting while he was trying to feed his cattle.

``I have fled to Kumanovo after the outbreak of fighting, but someone has to take care of the cows,'' he said, gasping for air after running toward a government position for safety.

The soldiers seemed too busy, however, to even ask him any questions, focused instead on the rebels hunkered down behind the trees.

For fun, a team manning a machine-gun nest glued a Pepsi Cola placard on the sandbags facing rebel positions, proudly displaying their ``Ask For More,'' slogan.

Even as they returned fire, attacks continued in the villages up the chain. In the next village over, Slupcane, Russian-built MI24 helicopter gunships strafed Albanian bunkers and trenches, pounding rebel positions with unguided rockets and 20mm guns.

The next village up the mountain, Vaksince, came under an artillery barrage. Within minutes, a huge explosion rocked all three communities, shaking the earth beneath the Macedonian soldiers.

The Macedonians in Vaksince had just destroyed an ammunition dump - and the soldiers cheered as they watched the heavy smoke curl over the roofs of the destroyed buildings

``This really shook them,'' Brievski said. ``Now they will have less rounds to spend on us.''

Soon, they were forced to take cover once more.

The rebels in Opae, after all, still had lots of ammo left.

----

Macedonia Shells Rebels, Presevo Hopes for Peace

New York Times
May 22, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-balkans.html

KUMANOVO, Macedonia (Reuters) - The Macedonian army began intense shelling of ethnic Albanian rebels late on Tuesday after a day-long lull, but in neighboring Serbia hopes rose that another guerrilla group would lay down its arms peacefully.

Reporters in the northeastern Kumanovo area heard heavy machinegun fire, tank and artillery explosions from around the villages of Slupcane and Vakcince, both rebel strongholds, and further north toward the border.

As darkness fell, tracer bullets crossed the skies and plumes of thick smoke rose from the two villages and neighboring woods.

Army reinforcements moved into the area in trucks and armored personnel carriers. A gunship helicopter was also seen.

The shelling started at around 7 p.m. local time and was the first significant gunfire of the day.

Defense Ministry spokesman Georgi Trendafilov told MIA news agency the insurgents had opened fire first with sniper and mortar fire.

Minutes before, army spokesman Blagoja Markovski had told a news conference in the town of Kumanovo: ``There was no military activity today...I hope that today's peace will last longer.''

Earlier in the day, the rebels freed a Macedonian soldier they captured at Vakcince on May 3, the first day of the latest violence in Macedonia when two other soldiers were killed.

Since then, the army has failed to dislodge the insurgents, who hold a cluster of villages in the hills.

The soldier, who turned 23 on Monday, said the rebels did not mistreat him and shared scarce food with him.

The conflict in Macedonia, which flared in February, poses the biggest threat to stability in the Balkans.

Reporters in the northwestern city of Tetovo, near which fighting flared in March, said they could hear heavy explosions from the Sar mountain range which separates Macedonia from Kosovo.

SOME CIVILIANS SAY EVICTED BY ARMY

Thousands of villagers are still in the basements of their homes -- held there as human shields, the government says, a claim denied by the rebels.

``We have done a rough assessment that around 10,000 civilians are still in those villages,'' said Francois Stamm, head of the Red Cross mission in Skopje.

Asked why they were not leaving, he said: ``There is no single common answer. We cannot exclude there is some pressure by the armed men, also some others are staying in solidarity and a certain number are not leaving because they do not feel like encountering the Macedonian army.''

An ethnic Albanian family from the village of Runica alleged that masked Macedonian troops attacked their remote mountain hamlet in a pre-dawn raid on Monday, evicted them and set fire to their homes, mosque and school.

The Macedonian authorities angrily denied the charge.

There was no immediate way of checking the accounts on the spot. The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) in Kosovo said that 43 civilians from Runica, some of them wounded, had arrived in Kosovo late on Monday after trekking over the mountains.

PEACE HOPES RISE IN PRESEVO VALLEY

In neighboring southern Serbia, prospects for the peaceful return of rebel-held territory to Yugoslav forces brightened when a renegade guerrilla leader was reported detained and dozens of fighters gave themselves up.

But confusion surrounded the exact status of the rebel commander, Muhamed Xhemajli, as NATO-led KFOR peacekeepers denied a report from a senior Serbian government official that they had arrested him and were holding him prisoner at a U.S. base in Kosovo, Camp Bondsteel.

An ethnic Albanian community leader added to the confusion by saying Xhemajli had handed himself over to KFOR along with over 40 of his men.

Xhemajli refused to join the main commander of UCPMB rebels fighting in southern Serbia on Monday in agreeing to disband rebel forces operating in a demilitarized buffer zone along the border with Kosovo by the end of the month.

Yugoslav troops and special police who have been barred from the area are due to move back in on Thursday under a deal brokered by KFOR.

At Camp Bondsteel Colonel Gene Kamena, deputy KFOR commander of Kosovo's eastern zone, said that 74 other UCPMB guerrillas had surrendered to KFOR on Monday, bringing to 360 the number who have handed in themselves and their weapons since Wednesday.

Despite denials by rebels and officials, there has been concern that some UCPMB fighters might leave the Presevo Valley and link up with the National Liberation Army in Macedonia, creating a serious challenge for the inexperienced army there.

-------- colombia

Colombia Bomb Meant for Terror

MAY 22, 20:52 EST
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=CSA&STORYID=APIS7C5GNF80

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - A 500-pound bomb found in Colombia's capital was harmless and probably placed to terrorize the population, the country's interior minister said Tuesday.

On Monday police in Bogata announced they had deactivated the bomb and spared the city an explosion that could have obliterated a two-block area.

Television stations showed authorities picking at the device - a yellow, missile-shaped bomb complete with tail fins - found under a pile of oranges and bananas on the back of a pickup truck.

But bomb experts concluded that the explosive actually had no chance of exploding as rigged.

``Even if they had wanted it to explode, it is impossible ... unless it is dropped from the air,'' Interior Minister Armando Estrada told reporters. ``Its purpose was probably to sow terror.''

Colombia has been on edge about a possible resurgence of urban terrorism. Car bombings this month in Medellin and Cali, Colombia's second and third-largest cities after Bogota, killed eight people.

The bomb found in Bogota was parked in front of the offices of a communist newspaper, Voz, fueling speculation that it was placed by a right-wing paramilitary group battling leftist guerrillas in Colombia's 37-year war.

The paper's director was recently named to a commission charged with drawing up plans to combat paramilitary violence. Estrada said the government was still trying to determine who was behind Monday's scare.

----

Pastrana Takes to the Road to Sell The Softer Side of Plan Colombia

By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, May 22, 2001
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A56857-2001May21?language=printer

VILLA GARZON, Colombia -- Almost the entire town turned out in the morning humidity, gathering under palms in the central square to see a president of their country for the first time. Some chanted angrily. Others cheered the sheer oddity of a motorcade roaring along their pocked streets.

"Never before in this town has there been an event of this magnitude and importance," said Milton Rojas, mayor of this collection of tile-roofed shops, dirt roads and tin-sided houses in Putumayo province, 300 miles south of the capital, Bogota. "We are not alone in this great struggle."

The struggle against coca, which fills Putumayo's lush canyons and plains, has been hampered for years by the government's financial neglect. In place of government help, residents created an economy based on the ready market for coca, turning the province into the world's cocaine heartland and a booming financial concern for the armed groups of the left and right that control many of its towns and villages.

On Thursday, President Andres Pastrana, cabinet ministers and top generals spent an hour here to inaugurate several long-awaited social programs designed to rid the province of coca, the raw material for cocaine, by helping farmers grow legitimate crops. Handing out government checks to at least a dozen poor families, Pastrana announced the impending distribution of $60.9 million for regional roads, schools, health clinics and aqueducts.

"Today Plan Colombia is a reality," the president said during a second stop in nearby Mocoa, Putumayo's capital. "We are here to show the presence of the government . . . to show that we want what you all want -- a Putumayo without coca, a Colombia without coca."

His gesture came at a time of increasing criticism that the U.S.-backed military part of his strategy, which has attracted the most attention so far, has outpaced the part designed to promote social improvement for the region's farmers.

The money announced during the two-day trip is part of Colombia's own contribution to the $7.5 billion Plan Colombia, as Pastrana's anti-drug strategy is known. It marks the start of what is scheduled to be the biggest social investment in the country's history. In Pastrana's vision, about 80 percent of the overall anti-drug strategy will be spent on improving the lives of Colombian farmers in programs managed largely by local governments and nonprofit organizations.

The United States, after lengthy congressional debate over whether more resources should be devoted to strengthening Colombia's social fabric or its military clout, is contributing $1.3 billion, mostly in the form of military transport helicopters, later this year. The plan's European patrons settled on the opposite tack, and have criticized Pastrana for concentrating first on the military and an aerial herbicide-spraying strategy.

Groups of protesters marred many of the president's stops, mostly teachers opposing a measure that might cut education and public health funding to the provinces. Such a move typified for them Pastrana's priorities. They waved signs showing a Colombian flag being subsumed by the Stars and Stripes. "Plan Colombia's achievements," the sign announced. "Pastrana subservient to the gringos," another group chanted over a loudspeaker.

"This will only be negative for us," said Alicia Moscera, a teacher in Villa Garzon, referring to Plan Colombia. "These promises of highways and money for health are a big lie. It will never happen."

While the U.S. military aid has come to define the program, Pastrana describes the larger investment in schools, legal crops and other programs as the key to the strategy's lasting success by imposing a new civic order on a place with a weak government and a tradition of frontier violence.

Putumayo accounts for the majority of Colombia's coca, which makes up about 90 percent of the world supply, and over the years its economy has become almost entirely reliant on the trade. In turn, Colombia's leftist guerrillas and rightist paramilitary groups that profit from serving as intermediaries in and protectors of the drug industry have turned the province into one of the country's most violent.

Much of their military operations nationwide are financed by money made from Putumayo's drug trade. But the Colombian armed forces -- the chief recipients of the U.S. aid package -- have done little to drive the guerrillas and paramilitary units out of areas where the social development programs are expected to take place.

"Today, Putumayo is poorer and more violent -- with more widows and orphans," said Gov. Ivan Gerardo Guerrero, who along with five other southern governors has been a vocal critic of Plan Colombia's aerial spraying and military components. But, he said, "This [social aid] returns something we have recently lost -- our human values."

Overall, the scope of the coca industry is still emerging. A U.N. study released last week shows that there was perhaps 17 percent more coca in Colombia than thought before the herbicide spraying campaign began in December. But the report, which relied on aerial surveillance photos, also indicates that new coca was being planted at a slower rate over the past year.

Since it began, Plan Colombia's aerial spraying has wiped out what the government says is 60,000 acres of coca in the south, or about 6 percent of the country's total. By reducing supply, it has driven up the price by roughly 30 percent and coaxed new farmers into the business while prompting others who lost crops to preserve coca seedlings and wait for a safer time to replant.

The social development portion of the plan was supposed to arrive far sooner to help soften the blow of the lost coca crop and prevent the emergence of new growers. Subsidies to encourage farmers to pull up coca that were scheduled to begin at the beginning of the year have yet to arrive in many areas. The amount of the promised subsidies, supported in part by $81 million in U.S. aid, has shrunk by more than half.

On the surface, the illegal economy appears to be thriving in urban centers. In Puerto Asis, shops are filled with digital cameras, Swiss Army knives and other items unaffordable in most other towns its size. A new dance club, its facade a huge Georgian-style colonnade, is under construction.

But the countryside has been ravaged, especially western Putumayo, where the spraying and violence between the strengthening armed groups has left whole towns feeling abandoned. Many farmers remain reluctant to uproot coca before the government delivers on its promised subsidies. They point to a record of broken promises by Bogota, including a half-built hearts-of-palm factory on Pastrana's tour, and the violent pressures applied by armed groups to keep producing the lucrative crop.

"We believe the word of the people," Pastrana said, referring to pacts signed by thousands of Putumayo farmers to uproot coca crops within a year in exchange for a small subsidy and exemption from the spraying. "I hope that the people of Putumayo believe in the word of the government."

Jose Julian Meneses, a 24-year-old coca farmer from the town of Orito, arrived in Villa Garzon the night before Pastrana's visit. He made the seven-hour drive to hear the president's plan for improving a dilapidated regional road network that makes delivering legal crops to market almost impossibly time-consuming and expensive.

Pastrana's pledge to improve several key highways, which the president said would bring Putumayo into the regional economy, was greeted with cheers. But Meneses said much of what else he saw, including the monthly subsidies to poor families that amounted to roughly $40 each, would not be enough to encourage the kind of fundamental change Pastrana is seeking.

"In terms of the infrastructure, they make a lot of sense, and we need the roads more than anything," Meneses said. "But the money these families are receiving is barely enough to cover the cost of the bus ticket in to pick it up."

-------- drug war

Doctors Meet on Illegal Drugs

MAY 21,
By KEN THOMAS
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=NATIONAL&STORYID=APIS7C4R1MG0

DANIA BEACH, Fla. (AP) - Doctors and drug investigators, seeking a balance between helping patients and preventing abuse, gathered Monday to try to halt the growing illegal distribution of the painkiller OxyContin.

Drug manufacturers said they want to increase awareness about the dangers of the pill, also known by its generic name, oxycodone. The prescription pill, developed to treat chronic pain in cancer patients and those with arthritis and back pain, has grown in popularity among drug abusers.

``We want to make sure that OxyContin and other strong medications remain available to the patients with legitimate needs,'' said Dr. J. David Haddox, senior medical director of Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin tablets.

``And we want to make sure that law enforcement cooperates with the medical community and the public ... to make sure these drugs stay out of the hands of criminals and people who don't need them.''

When used properly, oxycodone is released slowly into the system. But abusers of the drug grind tablets into powder and snort or inject the drug to produce feelings of euphoria.

Florida medical examiners reported that overdoses of the painkiller killed 152 people statewide during the final six months of 2000, more than any other drug.

Overdoses have also been rising in other states; the drug has been linked to at least 59 deaths in Kentucky's mountain region and 42 deaths in Virginia since 1998.

To help curb abuse, Purdue Pharma has mailed thousands of educational brochures to doctors and pharmacists and is distributing special prescription pads to doctors, making it more difficult to forge prescriptions.

Haddox said the recent focus on OxyContin has caused some doctors to become leery of prescribing it even to patients who need it.

``I spoke to a patient the other day whose doctor is no longer prescribing this for him, and he has to drive 100 miles round trip to a pain clinic that will prescribe it for him,'' Haddox said. ``He never abused the medicine. Why should he be punished for that?''

Investigators say the drug is often stolen from pharmacies, obtained from forged prescriptions or wrongly prescribed by a doctor. OxyContin has a street value of about $40 for a 40-milligram tablet, said Charles Chichon, president of the National Association of Drug Diversion Investigators.

-------- germany

WWII Bomb Defused Near Berlin

MAY 22, 23:08 EST
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=EUROPE&STORYID=APIS7C5IN480

BERLIN (AP) - About 5,000 people were evacuated from their homes in a town near Berlin Tuesday as explosives experts defused a U.S.-made 1,000-pound bomb dropped during World War II.

Experts took about three hours to defuse the bomb, which was discovered in a construction site in Oranienburg, to the north of the capital.

More than 50 years after the end of the war, bombs, grenades and other unexploded munitions are still uncovered regularly in Germany. In August, experts defused a massive bomb discovered in a popular city park in Berlin, while Hamburg's red-light district was sealed off in November as another old shell was made safe.

-------- iraq

Saddam Hussein gets his victory at last

THE WASHINGTON TIMES
May 22, 2001
Wesley Pruden
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010522-3745.htm

The Persian Gulf War is finally winding down, a full decade after George H.W. Bush -- ol´ No. 41 -- thought he had popped Saddam Hussein a really stout one on the snout. Saddam, as it now turns out, won.

This was probably inevitable in the life of a man who sits on the world´s largest single lake of crude oil, when everybody in the West wants to drive an SUV over the hill and through the vale to Grandma´s house. All Saddam has to do now to make his victory complete is to march back into Kuwait. Does anyone seriously believe the West could collect its wits, its planes, its tanks and its resolve to do anything about it next time?

Dick Cheney sent another signal Sunday when he told NBC-TV´s talk-show interlocutors that it´s "uncertain" whether the easing of the United Nations´ Swiss-cheese sanctions would require the return of the inspectors Saddam kicked out at the end of the last millennium.

The United States, the veep said, "would continue to demand inspections," but suggested that Washington wouldn´t do anything about it if Saddam continues to give George W. and the West his middle finger. This is essentially the same thing Mr. Cheney told editors and reporters of The Washington Times at a luncheon interview on March 2. On that occasion, his chief of staff, Lewis Libby, called us a few hours later to say that the veep hadn´t meant to say the inspectors were "unimportant." It was just that they were not very important. "We expect the Iraqis to live up to all the United Nations´ resolutions, including getting the inspectors back," Mr. Libby said. But these were just not necessarily Great Expectations.

This time, there was no call-back. What´s important now, the veep says, is "focusing on the military aspects . . . and retargeting the sanctions on the important [weapons] technologies and capabilities crucial here." No one asked him how that could be done without inspectors on the ground in Iraq.

The trouble with the sanctions, the veep says, is that "many of our friends in the region" are unhappy with the sanctions and friends don´t let friends drive dictators to frustration, not if the dictators are sitting on lakes of crude oil. This begs the question of who the friends are in the region, and whether these are "friendships" that can be counted on when inconvenience comes to call. Such friends are perfectly willing to let American blood bail them out when the ground shakes, the wind blows and the rain falls, but when the sun comes out, they´re all too busy stuffing their faces with sausages, cheese and sheep´s eyes to be friends anyone could count on.

It´s sad to see a straight shooter like Dick Cheney squirm and make tortured arguments that nobody can take at face value. He can´t say what´s perfectly obvious, that Saddam Hussein rides in the catbird seat because he has all that oil. America´s allies, less one or two honorable exceptions, will always flinch, cut and run at the first sign of inconvenience. They always have. The Bush administration, as any prudent administration would be, is terrified at the remembrance of what happened to Jimmy Carter.

"America´s friends," in the perfumed phrase of the hour, dress their concerns about Iraqi sanctions in terms of solicitude for Iraqi civilians, and it would be nice if that were true, and maybe occasionally it is. But softening the sanctions, to allow the importation of food and medicines, is meant to be only the first step toward lifting sanctions entirely. Pills today, missiles tomorrow.

Maybe the sanctions were never such a good idea, but that´s not what we were told only yesterday when we were marched up the hill in preparation for being marched down again. We´re told one day that Saddam is the personification of evil, that his evil will not stand, that sanctions are absolutely, positively, unequivocally and unconditionally necessary. The day after that we´re told that well, yes, that´s true, but not necessarily.

Colin Powell was the first to put out the line that sanctions were crucial, but not necessarily important, only a week after he said they were both crucial and important. The administration corrected him, more or less, and the secretary of state got a pass because he said it on his first trip to the Middle East, and was thought easily seduced. But now it looks like the man whose timidity saved Saddam from destruction a decade ago, and who listens closest to apologists for the villains in the Middle East, has prevailed.

The U.N. Security Council will take up the Iraqi sanctions next week, and the United States will, in Mr. Cheney´s words, "continue to demand inspections." But he suggested that the United States would take whatever Saddam offers, which will be scorn and contempt. Who could blame him?

Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Times.

-------- israel

Use of U.S. planes draws anger

May 22, 2001
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010522-1620940.htm

U.S. law provides wide discretion to foreign customers -- such as Israel -- to use American-made weapons -- the F-16 jet fighter for one -- for self-defense.

Israel has been criticized, both at home and from abroad, for using the supersonic F-16s to strike Palestinian security headquarters. It was the first time Israel has resorted to such a high-profile, and potent, American-delivered weapon in its long war with Palestinians.

The Friday night missile attack, in retaliation for a suicide bomber killing five Israelis in a shopping mall, has also brought mooted criticism from the Bush administration.

But legally, arms specialists said yesterday, Israel is free to use the single-engine jet for what it deems as self-protection measures. The U.S. Arms Export Control Act, which sets the general usage rules, states the exported arms may be used for "internal security" and "for legitimate self-defense."

The government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon contends it had to strike the police headquarters to answer a continuing wave of terrorist attacks on Israel civilians. The air raid killed 12 Palestinians.

A Navy aviator familiar with aircraft procurement said the United States typically places few restrictions on how a weapon can be used by a foreign customer. The way the Defense Department does impose limitations is through the configuration of the system itself. For example, F-14 fighters sold to Iran lacked the type of sophisticated radar needed to fire the AIM-54A Phoenix, a long-range air-to-air missile.

The source, who asked not to be named, said he is not sure what limitations, if any, were placed on F-16s sold to Israel.

"Regardless, whatever they have, the Israelis´ capability far exceeds what the Palestinians have," the source said.

The Israeli air force, known for topnotch pilots able to hold their own against American aviators in aerial exercises, has sent the F-16 on prominent missions in the past. In 1981, F-16s bombed Iraq´s Osirak nuclear weapons facility outside Baghdad. Two years later, it dispatched F-16s to bomb Syria.

The F-16 is the backbone of the Israeli air force, accounting for roughly 60 percent of its 385-fighter fleet. Israel purchased the fighters from a yearly pot of $1.8 billion in U.S. military aid.

Senior Bush administration officials are not happy that Mr. Sharon used the F-16 to escalate the level of warfare. But publicly, they decline to condemn Tel Aviv.

Asked on NBC´s "Meet the Press" whether Israel should stop using the fighters, Vice President Richard B. Cheney said Sunday, "I think they should stop. Both sides should stop and think about where they´re headed here and recognize that down this road lies disaster."

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, asked yesterday about the F-16 deployment, said, "We´re asking both sides to not take this up to any higher levels of escalation, and let´s start moving things down."

Later, his spokesman, Richard Boucher, declined to say what, if anything, the department has said to Israel about the F-16 strike.

-------- russia

Russian Military Plane Crashes

MAY 22, 20:59 EST
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=EUROPE&STORYID=APIS7C5GQJ80

MOSCOW (AP) - A Russian military plane crashed Tuesday evening in western Russia, and the fate of the seven people aboard was unclear, emergency officials said.

The An-12 operated by the Russian Defense Ministry took off from a base in the town of Rzhev and lost contact with ground controllers soon afterward, at about 5 p.m. local time, said Viktor Beltsov, spokesman for the Emergency Situations Ministry.

Emergency crews rushed to the area to look for signs of the plane, and found the hull and fragments of the plane about 120 miles northwest of Moscow, Defense Ministry chief spokesman Nikolai Deryabin said on state-run RTR television.

The fate of those aboard was unclear. It had been carrying ``technical cargo,'' Deryabin said.

The cause of the crash was under investigation. Small Russian planes see frequent malfunctions, and the underfunded armed forces have long been short of maintenance equipment.

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

U.S. Seeks Funding For Iraqi Neighbors
U.N. Proposal Would Overhaul Sanctions

By Colum Lynch Special
The Washington Post
Tuesday, May 22, 2001; Page A14
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A58172-2001May21?language=printer

UNITED NATIONS, May 21 -- The United States is proposing that wealthy governments and global funding institutions, such as the World Bank, provide financial assistance to Iraq's neighbors if they suffer reprisals for helping rein in Baghdad's illicit trade in oil and weapons, according to a confidential U.S. paper presented to key Security Council members.

The proposal is part of a broader U.S. campaign to enlist the support of Iraq's neighbors in cutting off Iraqi black market activity. It includes an initiative to win the Security Council's support for a plan to divert a portion of Iraq's oil revenue to an insurance fund for Turkey, Jordan and other neighbors.

Britain, with the support of the United States, presented Russia, France and China this afternoon with a draft Security Council resolution that would overhaul the 11-year-old international sanctions on Iraq. It is aimed at loosening restrictions on ordinary consumer goods while tightening controls on military items and cracking down on smuggling.

In Baghdad, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein immediately dismissed the U.S.-British proposal. "We will reject the so-called 'smart sanctions' which are more stupid than the [current] sanctions," Hussein said in his first public remarks on the resolution.

The U.S.-British proposal does not depend on Iraqi cooperation. But support from the five permanent members of the Security Council, which have veto power over the resolution, is essential. In addition to the United States and Britain, the permanent members are Russia, China and France.

Russia's U.N. ambassador, Gennady Gatilov, said today that Moscow would prefer renewing the current "oil-for-food" program but was prepared to consider proposals from Washington and London to ease the sanctions. The oil-for-food program allows Iraq to export oil and use the proceeds -- under U.N. scrutiny and control -- to buy food, medicine, other humanitarian supplies and spare parts to keep its oil industry running.

U.S., British, French, Russian and Chinese experts are scheduled to begin intensive negotiations Tuesday on the U.S.-British proposal. Diplomats familiar with the discussions said they expected a battle over a list of "dual use" items -- goods with both military and civilian applications -- that Iraq will be able to import only with Security Council approval.

In addition, Russia and France oppose a U.S. proposal to increase an existing U.N. fund that is used to pay reparations to companies and individuals whose property was damaged during Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Last year, the United States agreed to reduce the share of Iraqi oil revenue that goes into the fund from 30 percent to 25 percent. Diplomats said Washington now proposes to go back to 30 percent, in order to build up funds that could compensate Iraq's neighbors for future losses.

Bush administration officials have said the new sanctions policy is heavily dependent on the ability of the United States to convince Iraq's neighbors that they will not suffer.

"One of the most difficult challenges is to provide contiguous states with assurance that they will be helped in the event that Iraq retaliates against them by cutting off trade," says the U.S. paper circulating at the U.N. "Assurances to them may be necessary, including pledges of assistance through international financial institutions and from other states."

The draft resolution asks U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to help establish "specific arrangements" to govern Iraq's trade with its neighbors, subject to Security Council approval. U.S. officials have suggested that those arrangements might include border inspections aimed at stopping sales of Iraqi oil that take place outside of U.N. control.

James B. Cunningham, the acting U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said he hoped that the 15-nation council would vote on the resolution before June 4, when the oil-for-food program is up for renewal.

"We want to lessen the impact of sanctions on the civilian population," he said. "I think we will be in a position to move this week, I hope."

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

Panel Convicts Air Force Physician

MAY 22, 00:07 EST
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=NATIONAL&STORYID=APIS7C4UFM80

BILOXI, Miss. (AP) - A military panel ruled Monday that an Air Force physician disobeyed a direct order when he refused last year to take an anthrax vaccine he said could be dangerous.

Capt. John Buck, who is scheduled to be sentenced Tuesday, could receive up to five years in prison, dismissal from the Air Force and a total forfeiture of pay and allowances.

The panel of 11 officers at Keesler Air Force Base did not rule on whether the vaccine was safe - only on whether Buck disobeyed an order when he refused to take it last October.

The military insists the vaccine is safe and the best weapon against biological attacks. Pressure mounted to immunize soldiers to biological agents in the wake of the Gulf War.

Buck, 32, did not offer any defense. A presiding military judge said last week he could not argue that the anthrax vaccine is an experimental and possibly hazardous drug unlawfully forced on soldiers.

``I can't say we were surprised by the verdict,'' said Buck's attorney, Frank Spinner. ``We were not able to put on our defense.''

Also Monday, Buck's commander rejected his request that he be allowed to resign under a general discharge, which is granted to those with only minor infranctions on their service record. It is a step below an honorable discharge, which is given to those with an exemplary record of service.

There are two other discharges that carry less prestige than general or honorable discharges.

Brig. Gen. Roosevelt Mercer Jr. said the Air Force should be given the full range of options when dealing with any resignation request, not just a request for one particular type of discharge.

Buck later said he was not sure whether he would now submit an unconditional resignation request to the Air Force.

Anthrax is a disease that typically afflicts animals, especially sheep and cattle. Dry anthrax spores, which can be put into weapons, can cause death in humans if inhaled.

Buck has become a key figure in the resistance to the mandatory anthrax program. He and a former Air Force major filed suit May 2 against the Food and Drug Administration and the Defense Department in U.S. District Court in Washington seeking to end the program.

----

Navy developing 'panoramic' view periscope

05/22/2001 - Updated 11:21 PM ET
By Dave Moniz, USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-05-23-periscope.htm

WASHINGTON - In the aftermath of the deadly collision between the submarine USS Greeneville and a Japanese fishing vessel, the Navy is moving to develop a "panoramic periscope" that would provide an instantaneous 360-degree view of the ocean's surface.

The Navy's program has been in the works for several months, but the project was accelerated after the collision Feb. 9.

Nine Japanese citizens were killed when the Greeneville struck the Ehime Maru while performing a rapid-surfacing maneuver for a group of civilian visitors 10 miles off the coast of the Hawaiian island of Oahu.

The Greeneville's skipper, Cmdr. Scott Waddle, said he never saw the 192-foot Japanese vessel despite several sweeps of the ocean with his periscope before he ordered the sub to surface. Waddle was spared a court-martial, but the commander of the Pacific Fleet issued him a letter of reprimand last month that effectively will end his Navy career.

A typical periscope look provides only 30 to 40 degrees of a 360-degree horizon. That makes it necessary for sub commanders to slowly turn the periscope in a complete circle.

The Navy's Office of Naval Research announced Monday that it has signed a $1 million contract with RemoteReality, a Massachusetts company that makes high-resolution imaging cameras, to modify the equipment for submarines. The Navy's goal is to demonstrate the technology by July 2002.

The Navy plans to attach digital cameras with curved mirrors to existing periscopes and project the 360-degree view onto computer screens in the submarine's control room.

If the technology works, the panoramic periscope will afford an instant picture of the seas in every direction for a distance of up to 6 miles. It will be designed so submarine crews can watch the movements of numerous surface ships on a computer screen, and they will be able to click a mouse to focus on vessels of particular interest.

Tom McKenna, a program officer at the Office of Naval Research in Arlington, Va., said Navy officials first looked at the notion of improving periscope scanning 10 years ago. With recent advances in digital cameras and other optical technologies, a 360-degree periscope is now feasible, McKenna said. The Navy is also looking at providing surface ships with similar panoramic surveillance systems, according to Lt. Cmdr. David Street, a colleague of McKenna at the Naval Office of Research.

----

Draft registration compliance on rise, report says

By Andrea Stone,
USA TODAY,
05/22/2001
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-05-22-draft.htm

WASHINGTON - The percentage of young men registering for the military draft, as still required by law, has risen for the first time since 1993, the Selective Service System will report today.

The federal agency told USA TODAY that 87% of males who turned 20 last year had registered, up from 83% in 1999 for men the same age.

The draft - and mandatory registration by 18-year-old males - ended in 1973. But Congress reinstated registration in 1980 to make sure the nation could respond rapidly to the outbreak of a major war.

Under the law, males must register within 30 days of their 18th birthday. But the Selective Service doesn't measure compliance until the year they turn 20, when they are eligible to be drafted.

Women are not required to register even though they can serve in the all-volunteer military. The Supreme Court has said male-only registration is constitutional.

Those who fail to register could face up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. But the Selective Service rarely prosecutes registration-dodgers. Instead, those who don't comply are barred from receiving student aid, job training and federal jobs. Twenty-nine states have similar sanctions, and five states won't renew drivers' licenses. Male immigrants who are at least 18 years old are also required to register and could be denied U.S. citizenship if they don't.

During the buildup to the Persian Gulf War in 1990, registration reached 96%, presumably because of heightened public awareness of the military. But by 1999, the rate had plummeted to the lowest level since the law's enactment.

To reverse that trend, the Selective Service has stepped up efforts to increase awareness of the law. In addition to sending notices to males around the time of their 18th birthday, it has sent high schools a video starring football coach Lou Holtz and actors Sean Astin and Mario Lopez.

New England and the upper Midwest have the highest compliance rates, the new report says. The lowest compliance figures are in the South, where high school dropout rates are higher.

Dropouts "are not attending the social studies classes where high school registrars and guidance counselors are reminding them" to register, Selective Service spokesman Lew Brodsky says.

-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

TEXAS PLANS MAJOR WIND ENERGY PROJECT

May 22, 2001
ENS
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-22-09.html

KING MOUNTAIN, Texas, The second largest wind farm in the world will be constructed on King Mountain in Texas.

FPL Energy, LLC will own and operate the 278 megawatt (MW) generating facility. The output, enough to power 140,000 homes, will be sold to Reliant Energy of Houston, Austin Energy and Texas-New Mexico Power. Over the 20 year life of the facility, it is expected to prevent the release of 20 million tons of carbon dioxide that would be generated by a fossil fueled power plant.

"We are pleased to be enhancing our portfolio in Texas, where demand for electricity is growing and state regulators are encouraging development of a robust wholesale market, particularly in renewable sources and clean burning natural gas," said president Lew Hay.

The King Mountain project was developed by Renewable Energy Systems and Cielo Wind Power of Austin. RES will install the 214 turbines from Denmark's Bonus Energy, which have a rated power of 1.3 MW each. The facility should be operational before the end of this year.

"We are pleased to be a part of the team, along with Renewable Energy Systems," said Walter Hornaday, president of Cielo Wind Power. "Wind power is a cost effective and environmentally sound way to generate power."

Cielo Wind also developed the 107 turbine wind farm near McCamey, which is the largest wind farm now operating in Texas.

-------- energy

Congress, Leaders Discuss Energy

New York Times
May 22, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Energy-Public-Land.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- House Republicans looking for quick ways to help California were told by industry leaders Tuesday that significantly boosting energy supplies from public lands would take at least five years.

At Congress' first hearing on the energy plan President Bush revealed last week, members of a House Resources subcommittee repeatedly questioned witnesses on what could be done to help this summer. Not much, they were told.

``It will take time for any realistic future energy policy to achieve results. There is no simple solution,'' said Earl Sims, a Houston oil consultant representing the Independent Petroleum Association of America. ``Without policy changes, many of which can be initiated by Congress, the nation may not be able to meet its needs.''

Tom Fry, president of the National Ocean Industries Association, which represents oil and other offshore industries, echoed the sentiment.

``When I discuss short-term,'' he said, ``I am thinking in terms of years as opposed to weeks. I have no immediate answers to California's quandaries.''

The industry leaders' recommendations, most of them in Bush's plan and most requiring action by Congress, include opening to drilling a section of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, reducing federal royalties on oil and gas production from federal lands and rescinding former President Clinton's ban on road-building in one-third of the national forests.

Americans use about 19 million barrels of oil and 6 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day -- a point emphasized by Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., who presided over the hearing and is a subcommittee vice chairman.

``Let's be realistic: Renewables can provide but a tiny fraction of our needs anytime soon,'' he said. ``By necessity, then, we must rely upon fossil fuels or nuclear power to alleviate power shortages.''

Even before the hearing, the energy and mineral resources subcommittee's Republican staff had concluded in a memo to panel members there were few quick fixes for boosting supplies.

``Most of the solutions for increasing energy supplies will require five years or more,'' staff director Bill Condit and aide John Rishel wrote. ``Few short-term solutions for increasing energy supplies from federal lands have been identified.''

On the Net: House Resources: http://resourcescommittee.house.gov

--------

Cheney Defends Energy Proposal

New York Times
May 22, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Cheney-Energy.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Vice President Dick Cheney, answering environmentalists and other critics of his energy report, said Tuesday anyone who argues it neglects conservation ``simply hasn't read the report.''

Cheney, addressing a nuclear power industry conference, said more than half the 105 recommendations and most of the financial incentives in the energy plan involve conservation and renewable energy sources.

``There's been a lot of talk from some of our critics that somehow the only focus is on additional supplies. ... That's simply not true,'' declared Cheney.

``Anybody who says that simply hasn't read the report,'' he continued.

Cheney said the upcoming debate on energy will involve ``a fundamental set of decisions that are going to determine the quality of life for our kids and grandkids for years to come.

``These are difficult challenges,'' he said, but President Bush ``didn't come to town to duck tough issues.''

Congressional Democrats and a broad cross-section of environmental leaders have sharply criticized the Bush administration's energy plan as too heavily tilted toward boosting coal, gas, oil and nuclear energy development.

``The plan is built on the misguided notion that we can dig and drill our way out of the current energy challenges,'' said Daniel Reicher, who was assistant energy secretary for renewable and efficiency programs in the Clinton administration.

Echoing the views of many environmentalists, Reicher, now at the World Resources Institute, said the Bush plan has ``no aggressive commitment to energy efficiency and cleaner sources of renewable energy.''

But Cheney maintained that if the recommendations of his energy task force, including 20 involving congressional action, are adopted, ``We assure very significant savings from conservation.''

Still, he added, ``the bottom line is we still have inadequate supplies'' and will have to develop more coal, gas and nuclear energy to meet future electricity needs.

Cheney reiterated his support for nuclear power at the conference, sponsored by the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's trade group.

Currently about a fifth of the electricity in the United States comes from nuclear reactors. Cheney said that portion will decline if it isn't made easier to relicense current reactors and build new ones.

``We want to encourage investment in nuclear power,'' said Cheney.

----

Calif. politicians ask for price caps on electricity

05/22/2001
http://usatoday.com/news/nation/2001-05-22-calif-power.htm

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - California's legislative leaders asked a federal appeals court Tuesday to order federal regulators to cap wholesale electricity prices.

The move by Senate President John Burton and House Speaker Robert Hertzberg came after unsuccessful lobbying by Democratic Gov. Gray Davis and other lawmakers to get the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to impose strict price caps.

"The citizens of California are suffering immediate irreparable harm as a result of FERC's abrogation of its duty to establish just and reasonable rates for electricity," the two Democratic lawmakers wrote to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The lawmakers, joined by the city of Oakland, said the prospect of continued blackouts is "an imminent threat to the health, welfare and safety of every California citizen."

The lawsuit comes after more than a year of soaring wholesale power prices. In December, prices in California reached $200 per megawatt hour, and they have shot up to as much as $1,900 per megawatt hour during peak times since then.

The Bush administration ardently opposes price caps and President Bush has declined Davis' request to urge FERC to impose strict caps.

Last month, FERC did order a one-year cap on electricity during power emergencies, when California's reserves fall below 7.5%. But the agency did not set a price, and state regulators dismissed the plan as inadequate.

Vice President Dick Cheney, chief architect of the administration's energy plan released last week, said capping prices would not increase energy supplies or reduce demand.

"We get politicians who want to go out and blame somebody and allege there is some kind of conspiracy ... instead of dealing with the real issues," Cheney said Sunday.

For the short term, the Bush administration has approved Davis' request to expedite permits for new power plants and has ordered federal buildings in California to reduce energy consumption 10% this summer.

-------- health

Study: Polymer Coating Can Kill Germs

MAY 21, 18:19 EST
By PAUL RECER
AP Science Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/main.html?PACKAGEID=bacteria

WASHINGTON (AP) - A special coating that could be applied to toys, telephones, keyboards, door knobs and even surgical equipment kills most of the common bacteria that cause serious infection, researchers say.

Joerg Tiller of Massachusetts Institute of Technology said the polymer could guard against infections commonly spread by sneezes and dirty hands.

``You could coat any type of surface with this material, and it would be there permanently,'' said Tiller. ``It is chemically attached so that it cannot be washed away.''

In a study appearing Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Tiller and his co-authors said laboratory tests show that the coating, called hexyl-PVP, was able to kill up to 99 percent of Staphylococcus, Pseudomonas and E. coli, all common disease-causing organisms.

Tiller said the coating, applied to glass slides, was tested by spraying the slides with a concentrated solution of the bacteria groups common in household and hospital infections. The results were compared to uncoated glass slides that also were exposed to the bacteria solution.

``The test solution was rather like what happens when you sneeze or cough,'' spraying surfaces with germs, said Tiller.

On the glass slides treated with hexyl-PVP, 94 percent to 99 percent of the Staphylococcus organisms were killed. For Pseudomonas and E. coli, the kill rate was consistently at 99 percent.

Tiller said the polymer kills bacteria by a powerful chemical-electrical action.

``It is a polymer with permanent positive charge,'' said Tiller. ``This positive charge destroys the bacteria cell walls and membranes.''

Tiller said the kill mechanism probably would not allow bacteria to develop a resistance, as can happen with antibiotics, he said.

``It is a chemical kill,'' he said. ``For them to develop resistance, the bacteria would have to change their whole composition, and I don't think this can be done.''

Most of the nation's antibiotic resistance experts were attending Monday's general meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in Orlando, Fla., and could not be reached for comment.

To test the polymer for toxicity, Tiller said the researchers put mouse cells on a coated surface.

``The mouse cells grew, but this is only the first test,'' he said. ``As long as the polymer remains attached to a surface, it should not be toxic'' to humans.

The anti-bacterial coating, said Tiller, could be incorporated into the manufacturing process so that the surface of many products could be permanently sterile.

He said the surfaces would require periodic washing to remove dead bacteria that float out of the air and land on the killing surface.

Tiller and his co-authors hold a patent on the chemical coating but are not involved in any effort to bring the germ-killing technology to the market, he said.

-------

Cancer Doctors See New Era of Optimism

New York Times
May 22, 2001
THE DOCTOR'S WORLD
By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN, M.D.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/22/health/22DOCS.html?pagewanted=all

SAN FRANCISCO, May 21 - When Todd Hendrickson developed an uncommon intestinal cancer in 1997, he traveled to medical centers around the country from his home in Minnetonka, Minn., seeking effective therapy. But five different therapeutic combinations failed as the painful cancer grew to the size of two footballs, spread to his liver and so weakened him that his wife had to lift him out of bed.

"If I had been in Holland at the time, I would probably have used their deal, it was that close," he said in an interview, referring to the country's euthanasia policy.

Doctors told Mr. Hendrickson, a 43-year- old investment banker, to get his affairs in order for his wife and three young children.

Then Dr. Timothy D. Sielaff, a surgeon at the University of Minnesota, offered hope. Dr. Sielaff operated three times over a two- year period, each time removing cancerous tissue from his abdomen. "I would keep cutting to keep Mr. Hendrickson alive so he could keep searching for a medical cure since surgery could not provide one," Dr. Sielaff said.

The search ended last August when Mr. Hendrickson became the first patient with the intestinal cancer known as GIST in a trial of a drug now known as Gleevec at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland. The drug worked within days, has shrunk his cancer by 80 percent and he feels like his old athletic self, he said. But the duration of his remission is unknown since he and his doctors are in uncharted waters.

"For now this stuff is for real," he said, adding, "I am not 100 percent, but I feel the best I have in three years."

This month, the Food and Drug Administration approved Gleevec for a blood cancer known as chronic myelocytic leukemia in which the number of white cells runs amok.

And last week at a meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology here, scientists reported that Gleevec had also worked in about 60 percent of nearly 200 cases with Mr. Hendrickson's type of cancer, known as GIST for gastrointestinal stromal tumor. But it is too early to know how long the remissions will last and how long patients will need to take Gleevec.

The new optimism overshadowed the fact that no one knows whether the cancers will develop resistance to Gleevec. Similar drugs are lacking for the four major cancers - breast, colorectal, lung and prostate.

Rarely do drugs come along to rescue people from the brink of death. Insulin did it for diabetics in the 1920's. In World War II, penicillin and other antibiotics cured systemic infections and tuberculosis. In 1996, the addition of protease inhibitors to other drug combinations allowed many AIDS patients to get off their deathbeds.

So news of cases like Mr. Hendrickson's, and at least one other person who had planned her funeral only to be discharged from a hospice, heighten expectations that similar new drugs will soon follow.

Doctors tend to reveal their emotions cautiously, and to protect against false hopes many have trained themselves to avoid using words like "breakthrough," "cure" and "miracle." Yet many of the 26,000 participants at the clinical oncology meeting were openly caught up in the excitement of patients for whom Gleevec has worked magic so far.

Two of the country's leading cancer experts - the society's president, Dr. Larry Norton of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan, and the president of M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Dr. John Mendelsohn - each spoke of Gleevec as a miracle drug at news conferences. And in an interview, Dr. Sielaff, Mr. Hendrickson's surgeon, described his response as "not much short of miraculous."

"It sounds almost maudlin to say that, but it is true," he added. "It is the thing that oncologists have not seen in a long time."

Medical advances have come at a rapid pace in many fields in recent decades, but in some ways have been slower for cancer. In trials, most therapies have provided only weeks, not years, of extra life, leaving many oncologists frustrated because they can cure only a few cancers.

"It's been gloomy," Dr. Mendelsohn said, and "many oncologists suffer burnout."

Over recent years laboratory and animal experiments on the basic, or molecular, structure and function of cells have provided better understanding of how normal cells can go awry to form cancers. But for much of that time, the understanding was more intellectual than practical.

Many earlier cancer gains have come from accidental discoveries, not planned experiments. Now scientists are using the newer molecular information to design experimental drugs to act as guided missiles that aim to destroy only cancerous cells, sparing healthy ones.

Scientists call it molecular targeting because drugs home in on chemical signals that can turn a normal cell into a cancer. Among the targets are receptors on cell surfaces for growth factors and other proteins that go awry. Gleevec works by hitting a specific molecular target in the cell.

Society is beginning to see the payoff from decades of research, oncologists said, citing two newer licensed targeted therapies for cancer: Herceptin for breast cancer and Rituxan for a kind of lymphoma. Though limited, the successes have given oncologists new confidence that by identifying more molecular targets they can rationally design more drugs to block specific actions in cancerous cells.

Gleevec, for example, inhibits three different proteins involved in the cell's internal signaling system. Many cancer cells divide incessantly because their internal signaling systems have been thrown into hyper-drive by some genetic accident. Gleevec cuts off this signaling by slipping into a pocket on the surface of the signaling protein. This pocket is meant to be occupied by another protein known as ATP. With the pocket jammed, the protein can no longer function.

In the case of GIST, Gleevec hits a receptor protein on the surface of the tumor cells known as c-kit. For reasons that are not fully understood, blocking c-kit leads to the destruction of the tumor cells.

Because of the new understanding of tumors at the molecular level, some experts predicted that cancers would soon be classified by their molecular characteristics rather than the anatomical site of origin as is current practice.

The excitement expressed in the scientific sessions and hallway conversations about Gleevec's benefits for two uncommon cancers transformed the somber mood of past meetings to one of ebullience this year. The public is witnessing a watershed period in medical history, Dr. Norton said, "the beginning of a sea change - and I am speaking conservatively - in the way we practice cancer medicine."

Cancer cells are daunting to treat because they often have a number of genetic mutations. They quickly develop resistance to the drugs that are thrown at them, suggesting that no one drug will ever be much use in itself. The unexpected success of Gleevec has raised oncologists' hopes that other drugs like Gleevec, alone or in combination, may bring down many different types of tumors. If the drugs do not cure the cancer, they may allow people to live with it as a chronic disease.

"Many of us were taught that the cancer cell was so messed up with so many biochemical abnormalities that it was impossible to correct them all and therefore really impossible to kill the cancer cell with medicines that hit specific targets in the cancer cell," Dr. Norton recalled. He added: "The fact is that we know that's not true. We know that we can get very good responses and perhaps even cures with very specific targeted molecules. Imagine what we can do when we start combining them and hitting two or three targets at the same time."

But to other leading oncologists, the enthusiasm was premature.

Each of the two cancers for which Gleevec seems effective strike up to 10,000 Americans each year, far fewer than the major cancers.

In discussing whether Gleevec's seeming success was unique or the beginning of a new era, Dr. Charles Sawyer of the University of California at Los Angeles cited other experts who contend that the more common cancers will be harder to combat because they have five or more genetic targets. Thus, a drug would need to be developed against each one and used in the correct combination for effective therapy.

Dr. William J. Gradishar of Northwestern University and chairman of the society's cancer communications committee warned that "taking a giant leap to say that other drugs in development will work, and work against the major cancers, is just that, a giant leap of faith."

"The most common cancers are tough nuts to crack," Dr. Gradishar warned.

Despite the promise of new biotechnology drugs, "we won't abandon standard therapies" for a long time, Dr. Gradishar said. The effort to develop more powerful new drugs for cancer will require many clinical trials in which scientists try to integrate experimental drugs with older ones, either in combination or in sequence.

One eventual hope is to use the power of the new science of cancer to predict individual susceptibility to cancer and response to therapy. But because scientists need to learn so much to achieve that and other goals, "we should be temperate in our claims to the public" and wary of making predictions, said Dr. J. Michael Bishop, the chancellor of the University of California at San Francisco, who won a Nobel Prize for his cancer research.

Nevertheless, Dr. Mendelsohn, the Houston expert who pioneered the development of an experimental drug, C-225, now being tested against several types of cancer, said the new wave of optimism was "not false enthusiasm."

"It's an expectation, but the benefits won't be delivered in the next few months," Dr. Mendelsohn said.

Dr. Mendelsohn likened the quest for specific cancer treatments to the history of tuberculosis, saying a half century passed between the discovery of the bacterium that causes the infection and the first antibiotics that cure it.

For cancer, Dr. Brian J. Druker, the Oregon Health and Science University researcher who was a pioneer in developing Gleevec, noted that it took 115 years from the first description of the blood cancer in 1845 to the discovery of a genetic abnormality known as the Philadelphia chromosome. It plays a key role in causing the disease. Then it took another 41 years to develop Gleevec as the first effective therapy.

New therapies are coming much faster now. More than 400 experimental drugs are in various stages of human testing for the scores of different cancers, compared with about 20 a decade ago, oncology leaders said, and finding enough patients to enter trials to test the drugs may become a challenge as great as the research.

Treating cancer with the promised drugs will be costly. Novartis, Gleevec's manufacturer, is charging up to $2,400 a month for the drug, although the company has introduced a sliding scale according to patients' incomes.

Some speakers, making comparisons to other sectors of the economy, said the country might have to spend considerably more on health care.

Companies that are developing cancer drugs, particularly the younger, start-up members of the biotechnology industry, are under pressure to keep the price of their stock up. And researchers in universities who receive grants from the National Cancer Institute and other federal agencies also are under pressure to publicize findings to justify public spending.

Thus, much of the hoopla surrounding development of the new cancer drugs, genetic findings and the Human Genome Project reflects a public relations barrage from industry and academe. That was evident at the oncologists' meeting, which has been described as the Super Bowl of cancer meetings.

Such publicity has raised public hopes for quick advances in cancer.

Despite their enthusiasm, many oncologists conceded that cancer most likely would remain the second-leading cause of death in the United States and most other developed countries this decade. The hope is for the decades following.

As Dr. Judy Garber, an oncologist at Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, said: "My mother always responds to the news of whatever the drug of the day is by asking, `Will you still have a job?' And, unfortunately, I think I will."

-------- human rights

Taliban: Hindus must wear identity labels

05/22/2001
USA Today
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001-05-22-talibanids.htm

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Afghanistan's Taliban rulers - already isolated by their harsh brand of Islam and poor treatment of women - announced plans to make Hindus wear an identity label on their clothing to distinguish them from Muslims.

The hardline Taliban regime that controls 95% of this poor Central Asian state plans to enforce the edict soon, Mohammed Wali, religious police minister, told The Associated Press on Tuesday. An exact date was not set, he said.

The law will also make it mandatory for Hindu women to veil themselves - just like Muslim women of Afghanistan, Wali said.

The edict - reminiscent of the yellow Star of David that Jews were forced to wear in Nazi Germany - prompted an angry statement from Hindu-dominated India.

"We absolutely deplore such orders which patently discriminate against minorities," Raminder Singh Jassal, an Indian foreign ministry spokesman, told reporters in New Delhi. "It is further evidence of the backward and unacceptable ideological underpinning of the Taliban."

Archbishop Oswald Gracias, the secretary-general of the Catholic Bishops Conference of India, said the Taliban move "must be opposed by all those who believe in protection of human rights and dignity."

"No religion teaches discrimination against people of other religions," he said.

The decision could further isolate the orthodox Islamic militia, already under fire from the West for alleged discriminatory policies toward ethnic and religious minorities, human rights abuses and poor treatment of women.

In recent years, many Hindus and other members of religious minorities have left Afghanistan because of Taliban policies.

Wali said the latest Taliban edict is in line with Islam. "Religious minorities living in an Islamic state must be identified," the minister said.

The Taliban have not yet decided what sort of an identity label Hindus will have to wear, he added.

There are at least 5,000 Hindus living in Kabul. Thousands of other Hindus live in other Afghan cities, but there are no reliable figures on exactly how many.

The new law will be meant for only Hindus because there are no Christians or Jews in Afghanistan and Sikhs can be easily recognized by their turbans, Wali said. However, at least one Jew is known to live in the Afghan capital of Kabul and there may also be some Christians.

It was unclear whether foreigners living in Afghanistan would be required to wear the identity label.

Anar, an Afghan Hindu in Kabul who uses just one name, said he does not want to wear a label identifying him as Hindu.

"It will make us vulnerable and degrade our position in the society," he said.

But Munawaar Hasan, general secretary of a major Islamic political party in neighboring Pakistan called Jamaat-e-Islami, or Islamic Party, said the move seems aimed to give protection to Hindus.

"The Taliban should win praise for this step," he said. "Providing protection to religious minorities is a must in any Islamic country and this step seems in line with this concept."

The Taliban follow a harsh version of Islam that bars women from most jobs and education, and makes it mandatory for men to wear beards and pray five times a day. All forms of light entertainment, including television and music, are outlawed.

The Taliban drew worldwide criticism when in March they destroyed two ancient statues of Buddha in central Bamiyan, calling it their religious duty.

Most of the Islamic world, including pro-Taliban Pakistan, differ with the Taliban regime's narrow interpretation of Islam and say that it is tarnishing Islam's image.

The Taliban face U.N. sanctions for giving protection to Saudi billionaire Osama bin Laden, wanted by Washington for allegedly running a global terrorist network. The Taliban deny the charge and say the United States has no evidence against him for terrorism.

--------

China Shows Reporters Forbidden Camp

MAY 22, 19:54 EST
By JOHN LEICESTER
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=ASIA&STORYID=APIS7C5FSCG0

MASANJIA RE-EDUCATION-THROUGH-LABOR CAMP, China (AP) - China granted foreign reporters a controlled first glimpse Tuesday into its widely criticized ``re-education-through-labor'' system, decried by the Falun Gong for torture and abuse.

But in closely monitored conversations, inmates said they were not tortured and knew of no abuse.

The Falun Gong spiritual movement maintains that the black metal gates and gray walls of the Masanjia labor camp hide unspeakable crimes. The sect has called the camp ``a living hell,'' where guards shock female Falun Gong followers with electric batons and toss them naked into cells with male prisoners.

In an effort to dispute such claims, Chinese authorities took five foreign media organizations - including The Associated Press - on a three-hour tour Tuesday of parts of the camp, located amid rice paddies on the outskirts of Shenyang, in the northeastern province of Liaoning.

Reporters were shown a neatly kept exercise yard where inmates dressed in blue and white track suits played basketball, a clean dining hall and kitchen where cooks used shovels to stir giant woks of food and rice, a visitation room and an office building. Reporters also were shown sections of a three-story detention center where Falun Gong practitioners sleep in dormitories with perfectly made bunk-beds and are forced to watch educational videos and attend classes aimed at breaking their allegiance to the group.

``Transformed'' followers said they now regard Falun Gong as a cult - which is how the government views the group it banned in July 1999. But other practitioners in the camp said their faith in Falun Gong and Li Hongzhi, the movement's U.S.-based founder, was unshaken.

``I still think it's good,'' said Luo Xiujie, who said she has practiced Falun Gong for five years and was sent to the camp for protesting in Beijing. She said she intends to continue practicing when she is released. ``I've benefitted from it,'' she said.

In one room, a police officer and a follower who said she has recanted pressed an elderly inmate to do the same. The elderly woman, Wang Jinlan, said she had been in the camp since October but still follows ``Master Li.''

``She will come to a realization in the end,'' said Li Qi, the former follower. ``There is hope for everyone.''

Falun Gong attracted millions of followers in the 1990s with its slow-motion exercises and philosophies drawn from Buddhism, Taoism and Li's ideas. Followers say it promotes health, moral living and even supernatural powers.

The government banned the group as a threat to communist rule and public safety, and thousands have been detained in the crackdown. The government accuses Li of controlling followers for his own political and financial ends.

The section of the camp for female practitioners is of one of nine in Masanjia, said its director, Zhang Chaoying. The facility, spread across 4,900 acres with fields and factories, was established 44 years ago and holds more than 3,000 inmates, he said.

He said 483 female practitioners are in the camp, although reporters saw only about a third that number.

Zhang refused to say how many Falun Gong practitioners the camp has held.

A Hong Kong-based human rights group has estimated that 10,000 practitioners have been detained in labor camps across China. Falun Gong has put the figure at 5,000. China's government-run Xinhua News Agency said in February that Masanjia alone has held 1,000 female practitioners and ``successfully re-educated'' more than 90 percent of them.

Su Jing, who heads the women's section, said inmates who violate camp rules can be placed in solitary confinement ``to make them think about what they have done.''

Falun Gong Web sites have labeled Su ``an extremely evil person.'' She was friendly during the visit, and denied inmates have been beaten, electrically shocked or forced to squat for hours in painful positions - accusations leveled in postings on Falun Gong Web sites.

Su said she and her colleagues have received threatening letters and harassing phone calls from Falun Gong practitioners. She dismissed as ``groundless fabrication'' Falun Gong claims last year that guards stripped 18 practitioners and forced them into cells with men.

``My fellow police officers and I are very angry about this,'' she said. ``Every time we redeem a Falun Gong practitioner we are attacked.''

A Falun Gong spokeswoman based in New York, Gail Rachlin, dismissed the visit as propaganda and said China had months to hide any abuses.

``There have been women in that particular (camp) as well as in others who have been persecuted and tortured, including to death, and physically abused with electric batons. Some of them can't walk for weeks,'' said Rachlin.

China says some practitioners have committed suicide in custody but none have died from mistreatment.

China's decision to allow the reporters' visit comes as Beijing is seeking support in its battle with Toronto and Paris to play host to the 2008 Summer Olympics. The 2008 host city will be named on July 13.

China has long faced international criticism for its labor camp system. The top U.N. human rights official, Mary Robinson, has urged China to abolish the camps. Chinese critics say the system is illegal and lacks oversight.

Police can send detainees to labor camps for up to three years without trial. China says its nearly 300 re-education-through-labor camps last year held 300,000 people. The number appears to be increasing: they reportedly held 230,000 people in 1997.

Two organizers of the visit said they believed China had never before allowed foreign reporters inside a camp or let them interview followers who renounced Falun Gong.

Reporters were accompanied by officials throughout the visit and were told they could not talk to inmates playing basketball or in two classrooms receiving lessons on mental health and Chinese laws.

Reporters were allowed to freely question other inmates, but officials were generally within earshot.

``I hope that all those who haven't transformed come to Masanjia,'' said Li Fu, a 50-year-old university researcher serving a two-year sentence for distributing Falun Gong pamphlets. ``Banning Falun Gong was absolutely correct.''

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

World Bank Cancels Poverty Meeting

MAY 22, 00:43 EST
By JAMEY KEATEN
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=EUROPE&STORYID=APIS7C4V0A80

PARIS (AP) - World Bank officials have canceled a meeting on the battle against poverty, saying that an expected anti-globalization protest would have been too disruptive.

Organizers over the weekend canceled the Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics, a forum on poverty that had been scheduled to take place in Barcelona, Spain, from June 25-27.

World Bank officials plan to reschedule the meeting, Elkyn Chapparo, a senior adviser, said Monday.

World Bank officials have been on alert since large anti-globalization protests at other recent conferences across the world.

``We saw the history of Prague, Nice and Quebec. We decided that you can't have a meeting of ideas behind a cordon of police officers,'' Chapparo said in a telephone interview Monday. ``We wanted to take a stand against the threat to free discussion.''

While a conference forum last month in Washington was convened without major incident, organizers said officials in Barcelona warned them that a protest was looming for the meeting next month.

Protesters in Barcelona claimed victory.

``We are deeply happy that the event doesn't take place in Barcelona,'' said Agusin Company, a member of an anti-globalization platform.

The conference expected to unite about 100 academics and political leaders for panel discussions, with up to 500 people total in attendance, Chapparo said.

-------- police

In Mexico, Ashcroft Praises Police Links
Distrust Yields To Cooperation

By Mary Jordan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, May 22, 2001
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A58162-2001May21?language=printer

MEXICO CITY, May 21 -- U.S. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, standing beside his Mexican counterpart, hailed what he called a new era in U.S.-Mexican law enforcement cooperation today and said the "border is a line that unites us, not divides us."

Ashcroft said he chose Mexico for his first trip outside the United States, just as President Bush did, to underscore the importance of the U.S. relationship with Mexico and to focus on improved cooperation in law enforcement.

Mexico has stepped up the extradition of Mexican suspects wanted in the United States. Police here have also returned at a record pace American fugitives who had fled south of the border. In return, the FBI plans to intensify specialized training for Mexican police officers.

In the past, the relationship between law enforcement agencies in the two countries has been marked by distrust, and the two sides often refused to share intelligence. While the problems have not been completely solved, Bush and President Vicente Fox have pledged to put those days in the past.

Ashcroft and the Mexican attorney general, Rafael Macedo de la Concha, put finishing touches on an agreement for prosecuting criminal suspects facing charges in both countries. Eduardo Ibarrola, deputy attorney general for international affairs, said the pact allows suspects to face consecutive trials in each country before beginning to serve their prison terms.

In the past, a suspect convicted in either Mexico or the United States would have to complete his prison term before being sent to the other country to stand trial on the second charge. That often meant a delay of years before the second trial, during which time evidence would grow cold.

Ibarrola cited at least one case in which someone committed a crime in Mexico specifically to be sentenced to prison in Mexico to delay his extradition to the United States for trial there.

The two countries' chief law enforcement officers also discussed the perennial problems of drug and arms trafficking and money laundering, but announced no new proposals.

Ashcroft said Bush favors a new guest worker program to allow more Mexicans to work legally in the United States. The details of such a program, which would have to be approved by Congress, are still to be worked out.

Ashcroft also addressed the highly charged issue of the mounting deaths of immigrants trying to illegally cross the border. An average of about one Mexican a day dies trying to cross the 2,100-mile border. The growing number of crosses in the ground marking those deaths has become an ugly symbol of divisions between the two neighbors.

"Our first priority is border safety," Ashcroft said.

Researcher Bianca Toness contributed to this report.

-------- activists

Demonstrators Protest in Argentina

MAY 22, 18:59 EST
By LAURENCE NORMAN
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=CSA&STORYID=APIS7C5F29O0

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) - Demonstrators blockaded highways in scattered protests across recession-strapped Argentina on Tuesday, with groups of unemployed demanding jobs.

The protests mark the latest spasm of discontent as Argentina enters its fourth year of its economic malaise, marked by a jobless rate of nearly 15 percent and a quarter of the 37 million Argentines are living below the poverty line.

In downtown Buenos Aires one group of protesters marched, held a drum-banging demonstrating and lit firecrackers outside the pink Government House. Thousands of others gathered outside the capital, blocking key routes into the city amid commuter chaos.

In a separate protest, hundreds of honey producers in beekeeper suits sprayed the smoke canisters they normally use on the job as a way to protest a new U.S. tariff on Argentine honey imports.

The protesters set up wooden boxes containing the hives of live bees on a downtown boulevard. They maintain that Argentine honey is being unfairly hit by a tariff in excess of 50 percent from the United States over complaints that Argentine subsidies amount to an unfair advantage.

Argentina is in a ``grave social situation,'' President Fernando De la Rua admitted last week. But he added that the country was heading in the right direction amid government austerity moves.

Economy Minister Domingo Cavallo, speaking at a regional economic forum here, said a more robust economy would go a long way to easing the nation's problems.

``The best way to resolve the social problems is to promote economic growth and recovery and we are working to produce those effects,'' said Cavallo, who has advocated spending cuts and tax changes to restore growth.

Sporadic protests have been going on for weeks as groups of unemployed have braved rainstorms and cold weather of the South American autumn to continue the demonstrations.

On Tuesday, a two-week-old march by hundreds of children of unemployed parents from the northern province of Jujuy arrived in the capital.

The children waved placards proclaiming their ``right to life'' and ``an end to poverty.''

----

Mexican Indians March Against Bill

MAY 22, 00:06 EST
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=EUROPE&STORYID=APIS7C4UF300

OCSINGO, Mexico (AP) - More than 2,000 Indians in Mexico's restive southern state of Chiapas marched Monday to protest a watered-down Indian rights bill passed recently by Congress.

The protesters marched down the same streets where the Zapatista rebels clashed with federal troops during a short-lived January 1994 revolt in the name of Indian rights.

Open warfare lasted only two weeks, but the guerrilla presence in the jungle canyons has led to repeated clashes between pro-government forces and dissident groups emboldened by the revolt.

Passage of a bill granting Mexico's Indians broad new rights was one of the three conditions established by the Zapatistas as a condition to renewing peace talks with the government.

But the Senate made significant revisions in the bill before both houses of Congress passed it last month. The Zapatistas broke off all contacts with the government and called on Indian groups across the country to march against the bill, which they said was gutted by the Senate changes.

``We will continue fighting for a real Indian law which takes into account our rights and the autonomy of our natural resources,'' said Maria Nunez, a Chol Indian woman marching Monday.

``Legislators betrayed their duty, which is to legislate as the people say and not how they (the legislators) want,'' she said.

The Zapatistas want regional autonomy for Indian areas on issues like native languages, as well as traditional government and law based on councils of elders or village assemblies rather than federal standards.

Congress' version would weaken the proposed autonomy and subject laws based on Indian customs to approval by state legislatures.

Many of the protesters came from Zapatista rebel strongholds in the Lacandon and Las Canadas jungle areas.


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