------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Federal Court unsure of Maralinga victim's injuries
Gen'l Dynamics Extends Newport News Offer
General Dynamics Offer Extended
ROYAL SOCIETY MEETING ON DU, JUNE 13
Appeal against French DU storage project finally turned down
Tie-up with Pak. normal, says China
Japan power utility bows to nuclear 'no' vote
N. Korea Said to Warn Of New Missile Tests
Korea Compensation Demand Dismissed
U.S. Warns Pyongyang on Moratorium
N.Korea Tests Waters As S.Korea Minister Visits US
Missile Shield Realities
Tanaka Denies Opposing Missile Plan
Framing Missile Defense
Don't go wobbly on NMD
Price Anderson Soon to be Revisited
ANNUAL ASSESSMENTS FOR NUCLEAR PLANTS RELEASED
Flats workers' suit eyed
Rocky Flats lawsuit could reveal government cover-up
Boy Dies From Leukemia; 13 Kids Ill
Long Island authority seeks new Shoreham power plant
Meetings set to inform Ridgers about nuclear worker compensation
Nuclear industry optimism on rise
Radiation revelation
Rumsfeld Limiting Military Contacts With the Chinese
Nuclear power not the answer to U. S. energy needs
Reprocessing Used Fuel
New Focus on an Old Nuclear Problem
Recycling nuclear waste

MILITARY
Congo Rebel Group Begins Withdrawal
Fighting Flares in Central Africa
'Commander Poison' Sheds Name, and His Taste for War
India, Russia Discuss Arms Deals
Pentagon Chief Checking Iraq Zone
Rumsfeld: Aid to Iraq Causes Risks
Rumsfeld Thanks U.S. Troops in Iraq
Countdown: Palestinians brace for invasion
Lebanese army fires at Israeli warplanes
Israel waits with finger on the trigger
Arafat's Arsenal of Missiles
Philippine Army to Wipe Out Rebels
Rumsfeld: Chinese aid raises risk to U.S. pilots
Army Corps Seeks to Relax Wetlands Rules

OTHER
Brazil Energy Rationing Kicks In
Bush Will Not Overturn Clinton Marine Protections
Colonial mops up 60,000 gallons after pipeline spill
Launch fear
Global warming melts Australia's glaciers
CAUTION ADVISED IN RELEASING GENETICALLY MODIFIED SPECIES
Security Forces Defy Indonesian Leader
Cops Raid S.Korea Plant To End Strike
Judge Limits Depositions in Lee Case

ACTIVISTS
1,500 nurses at two Twin Cities hospitals go on strike
The U.S. "Tiananmen Papers"
Ghosts of Tiananmen Massacre Haunt Chinese Leaders


-------- NUCLEAR

-------- australia

Federal Court unsure of Maralinga victim's injuries

Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Mon, 4 Jun 2001
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newslink/weekly/newsnat-4jun2001-82.htm

The Commonwealth has asked lawyers for a man suing for psychological injury over nuclear testing at Maralinga to state more precisely the damage they say he suffered.

Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) mechanic Barrie Dinnison fears poor health throughout his later life is the result of having suffered radiation contamination.

Mr Dinnison was 19 in 1957 when he served at Maralinga.

In that time there were three nuclear blasts, the third, which Mr Dinnison observed from a distance of nine miles, was twice the power of the Hiroshima blast.

The Commonwealth has told the Federal Court in Sydney it is not clear if Mr Dinnison is suing for nervous shock, psychological damage from ongoing exposure or damage which developed afterwards.

His counsel, John Graves SC, replied Mr Dinnison's observation of the third blast induced stress upon his psyche and he left Maralinga with a small voice of doubt about whether he was contaminated and 12 years later his health started to go wrong.

-------- business

Gen'l Dynamics Extends Newport News Offer

By REUTERS
June 4, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/business/business-arms-newport.html?searchpv=reuters

FALLS CHURCH, Va. (Reuters) - Defense contractor General Dynamics Corp. (GD.N) on Monday said it extended the expiration date on its offer for Newport News Shipbuilding Inc.after only 56 percent of the outstanding shares were tendered by shareholders.

General Dynamics extended the tender offer to June 22.

The offer was previously scheduled to expire June 1, and as of that date, about 17.5 million Newport News shares had been tendered, General Dynamics said. Newport News, maker of the U.S. Navy's nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, had about 31.4 million shares outstanding at March 31.

The $2.1 billion merger agreement between General Dynamics and Newport News has been challenged by rival Northrop Grumman Corp. (NOC.N), whose unsolicited offer for Newport News is set to expire June 20.

Both offers value Virginia-based Newport News at $67.50 per share. Newport shares traded up 31 cents at $64.15 in Monday morning trade on the New York Stock Exchange.

----

General Dynamics Offer Extended

JUNE 04, 17:11 EST
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=BUSINESS&STORYID=APIS7CDVIV81

FALLS CHURCH, Va. (AP) - General Dynamics Corp. on Monday extended its pending tender offer for shares of Newport News Shipbuilding Inc.

The Falls Church-based defense contractor extended its offer until midnight, June 22. The earlier deadline was June 1. General Dynamics said about 17.5 million Newport News shares were tendered by the first deadline.

General Dynamics is offering $67.50 per share for the Newport News shipyard, or about $2.1 billion, which designs and constructs nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and submarines for the Navy and services ships in the Navy fleet.

Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics' primary competitor for Navy shipbuilding contracts, has also offered $2.1 billion for Newport News, giving shareholders the opportunity to sell their shares for $67.50 each or exchange them for shares of Northrop Grumman.


-------- depleted uranium

ROYAL SOCIETY MEETING ON DU, JUNE 13

A public meeting to discuss the recent Royal Society report on the health hazards of depleted uranium munitions, Part 1, will be held on Wednesday 13 June 2001, 3:00 - 5:00 pm at the British Academy, 10 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AH. Admission is by ticket only. Tickets are free and can be obtained by contacting Sarah Dodman at the Royal Society, details above. Please also notify Sarah if you require wheelchair access.

The principal aim of the meeting is to allow anyone concerned about the health hazards from depleted uranium an opportunity to debate the issue and to question the discussion panel which will consist of the:

* Chairman of the Royal Society working group on depleted uranium

* Chief Scientific Adviser to the Gulf War Veterans

* Representative of the Low Level Radiation Campaign

* Chief Scientific Adviser to the Ministry of Defence

If you are unable to attend the meeting but have questions you would like to have raised, please contact Sarah Dodman, Science Advice Section at the Royal Society, e-mail science.advice@royalsoc.ac.uk tel. 020 7451 2585. This meeting is part of the continuing consultation with interested parties on this issue.

----

Appeal against French DU storage project finally turned down

From: uranium@t-online.de
Date: Mon, 04 Jun 2001

On May 23, 2001, the French Conseil d'Etat finally turned down the appeal of the environmental organization ADEPAL against the license for Cogéma's depleted uranium storage project at the former uranium mill site of Bessines (Haute Vienne). The Conseil d'Etat followed the appeals court's ruling that the material is not a waste. ADEPAL was sentenced to pay 20,000 Francs (US$ 2,600) in damages to COGEMA.

France's nuclear fuel company COGEMA now is going to store 199,900 tonnes of depleted uranium (DU) at the site of the former uranium mill of Bessines-sur-Gartempe (Haute Vienne) near Limoges. At the time of this ruling, five of eleven storage buildings have been completed and 32,600 tonnes of depleted uranium have already been stored.

The project originally was licensed on 20 December 1995.

This license was revoked by the Administrative Tribunal of Limoges on July 9, 1998. The license was revoked mainly for the reason that the DU has to be regarded as a waste under current conditions, though an extraction of the residual uranium-235 might be viable in the future. On Nov. 5, 1998, a Bordeaux appeals court ruled that the material is no waste, but a "directly usable raw material that is effectively used for multiple uses". Following this court decision, COGEMA sent the first DU shipment to Bessines on Nov. 12, 1998.

-------- india / pakistan

Tie-up with Pak. normal, says China

Monday, June 04, 2001
The Hindu
http://www.indiaserver.com/thehindu/2001/06/04/stories/01040004.htm

BEIJING, JUNE 3. China has reacted sharply to India's charge of a Chinese military build-up and termed as ``irresponsible'' New Delhi's objection to the ``normal'' military cooperation between Beijing and Islamabad.

Asked to comment on the annual Defence Ministry report for 2000- 2001 released last Thursday, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mr. Zhu Bangzao, offered a three-part answer.

``Attempting to seek an excuse to develop the military is not wise. Secondly, the Chinese stand on the Indian nuclear issue is known to all,'' Mr. Zhu said referring to India's May 1998 nuclear tests. Moreover, the China-Pakistan military cooperation was ``normal'', he added.

``For no reason finding fault is irresponsible,'' the spokesman said referring to repeated statements from the Chinese leadership that Sino-Pakistani military cooperation did not violate Beijing's commitments to the international community. The MoD annual report had pointed out that China was working towards the goal of achieving ``superpower'' status in the new millennium and rapidly modernising its armed forces.

``Every major Indian city is within reach of Chinese missiles and it is reported that this capability is being further augmented to include submarine-launched ballistic missiles,'' the report said. ``The asymmetry in terms of nuclear forces is strongly in favour of China which additionally has helped Pakistan to build missile and nuclear capability.'

On the Defence Minister, Mr. Jaswant Singh's statement that the Indian Government had approved the development of ``longer range'' missiles under the Agni project and that the 2,000 km- range Agni-II missile was operational and planned for induction during 2001-2002, the spokesman said China was paying ``close attention'' to India's decision.

- PTI

-------- japan

Japan power utility bows to nuclear 'no' vote

JAPAN: June 4, 2001
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11050

TOKYO - Buckling under public pressure, Japan's largest power utility said on Friday it would postpone loading a controversial nuclear fuel at a plant in the country's rural north.

Tokyo Electric Power Co Inc's (TEPCO) plans were derailed after residents in nearby Kariwa village opposed the loading of MOX fuel at the nuclear plant, the world's largest and which supplies the capital with a fifth of its power.

"In view of the request that we received, we decided not to load MOX fuel during the current maintenance period," TEPCO said in a statement, referring to a formal request for a postponment from local authorities following a weekend referendum.

The decision had been widely expected after the referendum, but TEPCO added that it nevertheless remains "firmly committed" to the use of MOX.

The non-binding vote, in which some 53 percent of voters opposed TEPCO's plans, has put the government in a bind on energy policy.

Nuclear power is being pushed as the solution to resource-poor Japan's energy needs, but a series of accidents and mishaps has heightened public concern over its safety.

The referendum result has sent government and industry officials scrambling to reaffirm their commitment to nuclear power and to win back public trust.

Anti-nuclear campaigners said TEPCO's statement was a step in the right direction, but had not gone far enough.

"I do not think TEPCO's statement fully respected the wishes of the people of Kariwa because it said only that it will not load MOX during current maintenance, and not that it had abandoned MOX, which is what the people want," said Hideyuki Ban, co-director of Citizens Nuclear Information Centre, Japan's largest anti-nuclear group.

KARIWA ONLY ONE BATTLE

While Kariwa residents may have won the battle with their "no" vote, analysts say the wider debate is far from over given the massive levels of investment by companies and the government.

The Japanese nuclear industry has set a target of having 16-18 nuclear reactors using MOX fuel by 2010, but it has been unable to load the fuel at any of its 51 commercial nuclear reactors, which provide a third of the nation's power supply.

TEPCO had been expected to use an April-July maintenance period at the No 3 reactor at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant in Niigata Prefecture to begin loading MOX fuel - a blend of uranium and plutonium recycled from spent nuclear fuel.

It has yet to say if or when it will try again, but in the meantime the industry plans to step up its campaign to win public understanding.

Some utilities, including TEPCO and Japan's second largest utility Kansai Electric Power Co Inc , have already set up in-house committees to promote the benefits of MOX fuel to a suspicious population.

Critics say it is expensive, potentially dangerous and an inefficient way of using up the plutonium produced by burning uranium. Supporters say it reduces uranium consumption and is a way to use up plutonium, but their case has not been helped by a series of recent mishaps.

The nuclear industry was forced to postpone initial plans to begin using MOX fuel in 1999 after British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL) admitted in September of that year that it had falsified data on MOX fuel shipped to Kansai Electric.

The same month saw the nation's worst nuclear accident at a uranium processing facility in Tokaimura, 140 km (90 miles) northeast of Tokyo. Hundred of residents and workers were exposed to radiation and two plant workers later died.

TEPCO shares have weathered the Kariwa set back well and on Friday closed Tokyo trade down 0.33 percent at 3,030 yen, up from a year low of 2,500 yen set on February 1.

Story by Miho Yoshikawa REUTERS

-------- korea

N. Korea Said to Warn Of New Missile Tests

By John Pomfret
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, June 4, 2001; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A16748-2001Jun3?language=printer

BEIJING, June 3 -- Senior North Korean officials have told an American scholar that Pyongyang will not stick to its promised two-year moratorium on missile tests unless the Bush administration signals it is willing to pursue the possibility of normalizing relations.

Senior North Korean military officers, meanwhile, repeated their recent threat to resume the country's nuclear weapons program unless the United States speeds up a plan to build two nuclear reactors in North Korea, according to Selig Harrison of the Century Foundation, a nonprofit research organization based in New York.

Harrison, who has made seven visits to North Korea, had talks with four senior officials there last week, including a three-hour meeting with Foreign Minister Paek Nam Sun and five hours with Gen. Ri Chan Bok, the North Korean representative at Panmunjom, the village at the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas.

The meetings, the first between an influential North Korea expert from the United States and North Korean officials since President Bush took office, came as the United States is reviewing its policy toward the isolated Stalinist government. The Bush administration has so far adopted a tough stance toward North Korea, questioning South Korea's policy of opening up to the North and slowing the Clinton administration's policy of pursuing closer ties.

It is unclear whether the North Korean statements represent a hardening of policies or are a tactical maneuver before the expected resumption of negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang. Harrison contended the tough Bush policy was playing into the hands of "hawks" in North Korea who oppose opening to the West.

"What I sensed in this visit is that the hard-liners in North Korea have gotten a new lease on life as a result of the Bush administration," Harrison said in an interview. "They have put North-South progress on hold and I am afraid they will continue to gain strength unless the tone of the administration changes and the Bush administration reiterates its commitment to pursue normalization."

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il told a European Union delegation last month that he would continue the country's moratorium on missile tests for another two years. But Harrison quoted Paek, the foreign minister, as saying that Kim's commitment was predicated on signs from the Bush administration that it was interested in better relations. Harrison also quoted Paek as saying that Kim's offer last year to then-Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright to freeze missile testing and production was being reconsidered. "As to whether we will maintain the moratorium until 2003, that is yet to be decided," Harrison quoted Paek as saying. "It depends entirely on the policy of the new administration."

Harrison said Gen. Bok was even more blunt, directly threatening to resume North Korea's nuclear program if the United States did not modify its demands. Washington is seeking to strengthen the system of monitoring North Korea's compliance with a 1994 deal under which North Korea agreed to abandon its nuclear weapons program in exchange for two nuclear power plants to be built by a U.S.-led consortium.

"Right now our government has not decided that we need nuclear weapons, but everybody is thinking in that direction in view of the hostile attitude of the Bush administration," Harrison quoted Bok as saying.

Speaking more broadly about North Korea's views of the United States, the general continued: "It has come to the level of an explosion."

----

Korea Compensation Demand Dismissed

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
June 4, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Koreas-US-Nuclear.html?searchpv=aponline

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- The chief of a U.S.-led international consortium on Monday dismissed North Korea's demand for extra compensation for expected delays in building two nuclear reactors in the reclusive communist country.

The Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, or KEDO, agreed in 1994 to build two light-water reactors in North Korea by 2003 and to provide heavy fuel oil in return for a freeze of Pyongyang's suspected nuclear program.

The reactors would replace Soviet-designed, graphite-moderated reactors, which experts say produce greater amounts of weapons-grade plutonium.

However, the $4.6 billion reactor project will be delayed at least until 2008 because of funding problems and tension on the Korean Peninsula, consortium officials say.

North Korea is threatening to scrap the deal unless the consortium -- which includes delegates from the United States, Japan and South Korea -- compensates it for the loss of electricity caused by the delay.

KEDO chief Charles Kartman rejected that demand, saying 2003 was a target date, not a contracted date. North Korea will receive 500,000 tons of heavy fuel oil worth $100 million a year until the first reactor is completed, he said.

``Pyongyang will continue to receive heavy fuel oil even during years of delay,'' Kartman said. ``This is compensation.''

Kartman arrived in Seoul on Monday for a three-day visit to discuss the project with Chang Sun-sup, the chief South Korean delegate to the consortium, and Foreign Minister Han Seung-soo.

Kartman said he planned to visit North Korea this summer but no date was set.

Verification is a major issue with North Korea's nuclear program. Some U.S. experts suspect that the North may have extracted enough plutonium to make one or two atomic bombs before freezing its nuclear program in 1994.

The Korean Peninsula was divided into the communist North and the pro-Western South at the end of World War II in 1945. The 1950-53 Korean War ended without a peace treaty.

----

U.S. Warns Pyongyang on Moratorium

JUNE 04, 17:05 EST
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=ASIA&STORYID=APIS7CDVG7O0

WASHINGTON (AP) - The United States told North Korea on Monday that progress toward better bilateral relations would be blocked if the communist government lifts a moratorium on tests of long-range missiles.

The comment followed reported statements by North Korean officials that they would not stick to the two-year old moratorium if Washington stops negotiations to seek normal relations begun during the former Clinton administration.

``Failure of North Korea to maintain its moratorium on the launch of long-range missiles would block any potential progress,'' State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

He recalled that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il was reported in May during meetings with European Union officials that he would maintain his long-range missile launch moratorium, at least until 2003.

He said an administration review of North Korea policy, which Bush announced in March, still is under way.

Senior North Korean officials outlined their views to Selig Harrison, of the Century Foundation, a nonprofit research organization based in New York. Harrison discussed his trip to North Korea in an interview in the Washington Post.

On the Net: State Department's North Korea page: http://www.state.gov/p/eap/ci/kn/

----

N.Korea Tests Waters As S.Korea Minister Visits US

By REUTERS
June 4, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-korea-u.html

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean Foreign Minister Han Seung-soo flies to Washington on Tuesday to try to persuade the Bush administration to resume talks with North Korea, which is literally testing the waters of its relationship with the South.

Three North Korean cargo ships on Monday again sailed into South Korean waters, ignoring South protests following similar incidents over the weekend.

The ships sailed into the strategic Cheju Strait, linking the Sea of Japan and the Yellow Sea off the southern tip of the peninsula, shortly after Seoul expressed regret about the earlier incident but said it would consider allowing such passage in the future if North Korea sought permission first.

Ties between the two Koreas -- technically still at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended in armed truce -- had begun to improve markedly in the heady days following last June's landmark summit in Pyongyang.

But the momentum has sputtered since President Bush took office in January, expressing skepticism about Pyongyang's leadership and announcing a review of North Korean policy.

At the same time, the Bush administration has been promoting an ambitious and hugely expensive missile shield to deal with threats from ``rogue states'' with long-range missile capabilities such as North Korea.

MISSILE DEAL

Former president Bill Clinton came close to sealing a deal that would have mothballed Pyongyang's missile program in exchange for aid and improved ties.

But top North Korean officials have told a U.S. scholar that it will cut short a two-year moratorium on missile tests unless the Bush administration shows it is willing to consider normalizing relations, the Washington Post reported on Monday.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said a North Korean long-range missile test would set back talks with the United States, which are expected to resume when the Bush administration has completed its policy review.

Some key administration officials want to deal with North Korea only through ``working level'' channels in New York instead of through high-level negotiators and put the focus back on direct dialogue between North Korea and South Korea.

But North Korea has clearly indicated that ties with South Korea will suffer unless the U.S. resumes high-level talks. North Korea has canceled a series of meetings and exchanges with the South in reaction to the harder line from Washington.

The United States has 37,000 troops scattered across dozens of installations in South Korea and would be a party to any talks on reducing military tensions on the Cold War's last frontier.

BILLIONS IN AID

Washington also holds the key to potentially billions of dollars in aid money for Pyongyang from the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, agencies in which the United States is a key stakeholder.

Analyst Selig Harrison said the tough Bush policy was fueling opposition within North Korea to any opening to the West.

``... the hard-liners in North Korea have gotten a new lease on life as a result of the Bush administration,'' the Post quoted Harrison as saying.

``They have put North-South progress on hold and I am afraid they will continue to gain strength unless the tone of the administration changes and the Bush administration reiterates its commitment to pursue normalization.''

Harrison quoted North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam-sun as saying that Pyongyang was reconsidering its offer last year to then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to freeze missile testing and production.

The South Korean foreign minister is due in Washington on Thursday to meet Secretary of State Colin Powell, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and other senior officials, the foreign ministry here said.

-------- missile defense

Missile Shield Realities

June 4, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/04/opinion/04MON1.html?searchpv=nytToday

Faced with resistance from Moscow, objections among NATO allies and opposition from Democrats about to assume control of the Senate, the Bush administration needs to reassess its missile defense plans and scale them back to a realistic level. The kinds of ambitious systems that Bush advisers have described are not technologically or politically attainable today. Clinging to these outsized concepts can only damage American diplomatic interests and delay the development of more modest and feasible missile defenses that could enhance the nation's security.

Long-range missiles now being developed by North Korea, Iraq and Iran pose a legitimate security concern. The Pentagon should target its missile defense efforts on meeting that specific threat. There is a good chance that a system designed to achieve that limited purpose could be made palatable to Russia and America's European allies and, once tested and proved to be technologically reliable, win funding from Congress.

Russia's thousands of intercontinental ballistic missiles could easily overwhelm any defensive shield the United States could build today. Moscow's real concern is that if the restraints built into the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty are abandoned, America might one day be able to develop more advanced technologies that could blunt the effectiveness of Russia's strategic missile force and leave it vulnerable to attack. It is unrealistic to expect Moscow to agree to such open-ended development. But the Kremlin has signaled that it might be willing to contemplate a more limited defensive system bound by mutually agreed restrictions.

The Bush administration seems to recognize that an agreement with Russia on missile defenses would help dispel European and Congressional misgivings. In recent weeks, Washington has made constructive proposals for cooperation with Moscow on related issues like early-warning radar and tactical missile defenses. But the administration has not yet addressed Russia's core concerns.

There is ample time to pursue further diplomacy with Moscow before any defensive system is built. Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who is soon to become chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has rightly stated that whatever technology the Pentagon decides on must be thoroughly tested and shown to be reliable before funds are appropriated for construction. But some increased financing would be justified over the next few years for expanded research and testing.

That would allow the Pentagon to explore sea- based systems designed to shoot down missiles soon after they are launched, as well as refining the land- based approach pursued by the Clinton administration that is designed to intercept enemy warheads in mid-flight. Both technologies hold some promise of successful development. But neither is yet far enough advanced to justify construction of a system within the next several years, a step that would breach the ABM treaty. Space-based interceptors are a bad idea. As the country most dependent on satellites for reconnaisance and communications, America has the most to lose if space becomes a potential battlefield.

The time needed for further testing and research should be used to try to negotiate a deal with Moscow. The administration also ought to consult further with its NATO allies and begin serious discussions with China. Beijing understandably worries that an American missile shield could undermine the credibility of its small force of long- range missiles and require it to build many more.

A narrowly targeted, technologically reliable missile defense is desirable and may be possible to develop. To produce such a system, the Bush administration must set aside its exaggerated expectations and commit itself to a program of careful testing and patient diplomacy.

----

Tanaka Denies Opposing Missile Plan

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
June 4, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Japan-US-Missiles.html?searchpv=aponline

TOKYO (AP) -- Japan's foreign minister denied voicing doubts about the U.S. missile defense plan, saying Monday the government's top spokesman inaccurately portrayed her remarks to Australia's top diplomat.

The denial by Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka came after Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda said the foreign minister had expressed reservations about the missile proposal, and that the government would contact Washington ``so there will be no misunderstanding.''

Fukuda said Tanaka told former Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto that she expressed her doubts in a meeting last week with Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer.

Japan has refrained from openly supporting a U.S. missile defense shield proposed by President Bush, saying only that it ``understands'' the U.S. government's plans.

Leaving a parliamentary meeting Monday, Tanaka denied Fukuda's account.

``There is no change in our stance to continue discussing the issue closely with the United States,'' she said. ``I don't understand why these things are reported, and if leaked, why they are not leaked accurately.

``Moreover, I find it extremely strange why the former prime minister is saying these things,'' she said of Hashimoto, who is widely known for his influence with Foreign Ministry bureaucrats.

Since being named Japan's first female foreign minister by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in April, Tanaka has made waves -- and garnered strong public support ratings -- for her attempts to exert control over ministry bureaucrats.

But she was criticized in foreign policy and media circles for canceling a meeting with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who visited Tokyo to discuss Bush's missile plan with Japanese leaders.

Koizumi, meanwhile, played down Tanaka's reported remarks, saying Monday: ``I don't think it's a big problem.''

Downer also dismissed reports about his discussions with Tanaka.

``I deeply regret that my very constructive and friendly meeting with Ms. Tanaka has been subjected to the distortion and misrepresentation evident in recent media reports,'' Downer said. ``Both Australia and Japan's positions of understanding the United States rationale for a missile defense system are well known.''

----

Framing Missile Defense

Monday, June 4, 2001; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A16777-2001Jun3?language=printer

THE BUSH administration now has completed its first round of consultations with allies and other nuclear powers about its missile defense initiative and has received, by most accounts, mixed reviews. China and Russia have been negative, at least in public; India has been remarkably positive. Somewhere in the middle are the Europeans, who acknowledge that ballistic missiles pose a potential threat -- and that the United States is determined to develop some kind of defense against them -- but who are reluctant to abandon existing schemes of arms control, including the U.S.-Russian treaty that bans missile defenses.

At a NATO meeting last week in Budapest, Secretary of State Colin Powell suggested that the administration is taking all the feedback into account, even while sticking to its underlying determination to move forward with some kind of anti-missile system. "This is not a phony consultation," he said. Oddly, that that is true is evidenced by one of the main complaints heard from European governments, which is about the lack of detail in the administration's position. Though it says it wants to move forward as quickly as possible, the White House has yet to spell out what sort of missile defense it would like to pursue. It has a range of technologies to choose from, all of which carry their own set of technical problems and political pluses and minuses.

More significant, administration officials also have not yet fleshed out the "new framework" for global nuclear security that President Bush promised in his speech on missile defense last month. The president sketched an ambitious concept in which missile defense would be blended with sharp reductions in offensive nuclear weapons and more aggressive counter-proliferation measures. In theory, the result would be a new means of achieving strategic balance among the nuclear powers and heading off threats from rogue states in the post-Cold War world. That is a bold and worthy goal, but administration officials concede that they are not yet ready to back it up with specifics -- such as how many weapons the United States would retain, or how comprehensive its missile defenses would be, or what guarantees would be offered to Russia in lieu of the existing Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

Without such specifics, the administration cannot expect to win real support for its plan from Russia or the allies, not to mention the skeptical Democratic senators who now head the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees. In truth, the heart of the plan will lie in those details: They will show whether the administration is focused narrowly on defending the United States from attack from a rogue state or on trying to gain a new strategic advantage over Russia or China; whether it truly can replace the Cold War security order with something that offers improved stability and safety to Europe, Russia, and Asia as well as to the United States.

To reach the latter goal, President Bush likely will have to accept elements that some of his top policymakers have expressed discomfort with, such as negotiated limits with Russia on both offensive nuclear weapons and the prospective defensive systems. He also will have to address China and its legitimate security concerns straightforwardly. The president has made clear that he will not grant other nations veto power over U.S. defense plans. But if the consultations on missile defense during the past month have made one thing clear, it is that the United States cannot pursue this potentially momentous leap in weapons technology unilaterally and still achieve increased security for itself -- not to mention the rest of the world.

----

[Please respond at letters@washingtontimes.com]

Don't go wobbly on NMD

EDITORIAL • June 4, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20010604-22356192.htm

"Remember, George, this is no time to go wobbly," British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher sternly warned President George H. W. Bush in 1990 as he was assembling the multinational coalition that would later oust Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein´s army from Kuwait. That was excellent advice then, the American president recalled after waging the successful Gulf War, adding at a March 1991 White House reception for Mrs. Thatcher, "Never, ever, will it be said that Margaret Thatcher went wobbly."

Now is the time for President George W. Bush to reverse the trans-Atlantic direction of Mrs. Thatcher´s sound advice. On the issue of missile defense, the message Mr. Bush must sternly deliver to America´s wavering left-wing allies in NATO particularly the French, the Germans and the British is clear: "Remember, Lionel, Gerhard and Tony," Mr. Bush should soon tell Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin of France, Social Democratic Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of Germany and the Labor Prime Minister Tony Blair of Great Britain, "this is no time to go wobbly."

As the foreign ministers of NATO gathered last week in Budapest, Hungary, for their first meeting ever in a former Warsaw Pact nation a development that should have said volumes about the end of the Cold War and the onset of new strategic challenges longtime European allies were playing an irritating obstructionist role in NATO´s discussion of the new strategies required to meet new challenges. In a word or two, they were "going wobbly."

Indeed, Secretary of State Colin Powell had great difficulty convincing the French and the Germans that rogue nations, such as Iraq, Iran and North Korea, surely represented evolving threats to the democratic industrialized nations. The French and Germans who, as it happens, were the least helpful allies during the Balkan wars of the 1990s and who were not particularly helpful in protecting their own oil supplies during the 1991 Gulf War refused to acknowledge in a joint statement that NATO countries faced a "common threat" of missile attack. A joint statement issued last year referred to a "potential threat," a level of security assessment the foreign ministers of France and Germany refused to upgrade.

At a subsequent news conference, Mr. Powell, noting that "there is a recognition that there is a threat out there," even if there is disagreement about the immediacy of the threat, clearly stated the U.S. position. "It would be irresponsible for the United States as a nation with the capability to do something about the threat not to do something," Mr. Powell declared. Moreover, while insisting that this week´s meeting with his NATO counterparts and previous missile-defense briefings delivered by American emissaries to allied governments represented the "real consultation that President Bush wants and not a phony consultation," Mr. Powell nonetheless signaled America´s ultimate intentions. "We really want to hear back from our allies," the U.S. secretary of state said, but "at the same time we made clear to them we have to move forward. We see a threat." Moving forward, the allies must understand after the time for "real consultation" has ended, means deployment of the most effective missile defense system possible one that would not only defend the American heartland but also defend the 100,000 American troops serving in Europe and the tens of thousands of U.S. troops protecting other allies. Inevitably, that will mean providing missile defense for NATO allies, whether they like it or not. If Germany objects, Mr. Schroeder should be pointedly told that the United States has no intention in this century of relying on the sorts of pieces of paper arms control agreements, to be specific that failed to prevent Hitler from rearming the Rhineland. If France objects, Mr. Jospin and French President Jacques Chirac should be told the United States declines to accept strategic military advice from the nation that built the Maginot Line and failed adequately to arm itself to protect its oil lifeline or to stop a two-bit dictator in the Balkans.

This is precisely the message Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld should deliver to his counterparts when he briefs them this week on the technological options of the missile defense systems he is considering. It is a message President Bush should reinforce at a meeting of NATO heads of state in the middle of June. NATO allies must be told, "This is no time to go wobbly." For his part, Mr. Bush could never hope to receive a higher compliment in the future from the leader of a NATO ally than the compliment his father paid to Mrs. Thatcher. To wit, "Never, ever, will it be said," Mr. Bush´s legacy could read in a future world that has been rid of ballistic missile threats from rogue nations that mean harm to Western democracies, "that George W. Bush went wobbly."

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

Price Anderson Soon to be Revisited http://www.njpcgreens.org/priceanderson.html

SIGN PETITION at http://www.petitiononline/repealpa/petition.html

----

ANNUAL ASSESSMENTS FOR NUCLEAR PLANTS RELEASED

WASHINGTON, DC, June 4, 2001 (ENS)
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jun2001/2001L-06-04-09.html

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has issued annual assessment letters for all operating nuclear power plants and posted them to its web site.

The assessment letters sent to each licensee are available from the NRC Office of Public Affairs, at: http://www.nrc.gov/OPA/ppr on the NRC web site, and through ADAMS, the Agencywide Documents Access and Management System.

All commercial nuclear power plants - with the exception of the two D.C. Cook plants, due to their extended shutdown - are now being evaluated under a revised reactor oversight process initiated on April 2, 2000. The NRC expects to make additional refinements to the program based on lessons learned from the first year of initial implementation.

The revised reactor oversight process reflects several important themes for all of NRC's activities - a greater focus on safety, an effort to improve objectivity and timeliness, a commitment to stakeholder involvement, and improved transparency of agency activities for both licensees and the general public.

As part of the new program, each plant will receive an assessment letter every six months: a mid-cycle review letter and the annual assessment letter. Updated information on plant performance will be posted to the NRC web site every quarter.

The NRC is in the process of aligning the inspection and assessment cycle with the calendar year. In order to transition to a calendar year, the current inspection and assessment cycle will consist of three quarters (the second, third and fourth calendar quarters of calendar year 2001). The next annual assessment letters will be issued in March 2002, and the next mid-cycle review letters in September 2002.

Public meetings at each plant are planned to review the assessments.

Details about plant performance can be found at: http://www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS/index.html

-------- colorado

Flats workers' suit eyed
Trial tests claim of beryllium exposure

By Stacie Oulton
Denver Post Staff Writer
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1002,53%257E42414,00.html

June 04, 2001 - Dave Norgard lives every day with the fear of ending up tethered to an oxygen tank, choking to get every breath. Worse yet, he could die.

The daily worry drove him into a depression that required medication.

"I was getting suicidal there. My family was getting pretty worried about it," Norgard said.

The 45-year-old is one of hundreds of workers across the country who has chronic beryllium disease, a lung ailment contracted by working amid particles and the dust of beryllium.

Many of those who are sick worked in the country's nuclear-weapons facilities, where the lightweight but strong metal was highly prized. And most of the disease's victims worked at Rocky Flats, the former nuclear-weapons plant near Arvada.

Norgard will be closely watching a trial starting today in Jefferson County District Court involving some of those stricken Rocky Flats workers. He may come here from his Michigan home to attend the four-week trial. His daughter and son live in the Denver area.

He knows that it's a case that could gain national prominence for several reasons. It will be the first time a jury reviews documents showing what the federal government and the world's leading beryllium supplier knew about what was happening to workers, according to union officials, attorneys and others.

"I would like to think that the average man and woman on the street and the working individual will be able to see the significance (of the documents). We are talking about something similar to what happened to (cigarette) smokers," Norgard said. "To not know something (is harmful) and to try to do the best to find out is one thing. But to know something (is harmful) and to carry on as if nothing has happened is something else."

Fifty Rocky Flats workers are suing Brush Wellman Inc., a Cleveland-based company that is the world's leading supplier of beryllium. The company shipped beryllium to Rocky Flats, where workers fashioned the metal. The Jefferson County case will involve an initial four workers and their wives.

The lawsuit alleges that Brush has always known that workers could contract the lung disease, even from the most minute exposure. Moreover, it claims Brush and the federal government conspired to keep secret information that the federal safety standard for beryllium dust in the workplace didn't protect workers.

The workers are seeking unspecified monetary damages.

The Jefferson County case also will be the first trial involving employees from a federal nuclear facility. The outcome could set the tone for other federal workers who have sued, one attorney in the case said.

The company maintains it has done nothing wrong and actually has worked hard to research the problem and help workers.

"We intend to defend (ourselves) vigorously," said Patrick Carpenter, a Brush Wellman spokesman.

Across the country, the company faces 71 lawsuits involving 192 plaintiffs, Carpenter said. While some of the company's documents and declassified federal reports have been part of other lawsuits, those cases have not yet come before a jury.

The metal also has gained favor outside the defense industry, showing up in parts for cars, cellphones, computers, bicycles, dental work and golf clubs. As many as 800,000 employees in a variety of industries could be working with the metal, according to the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

The federal safety standard, known as the "taxicab standard" because it was set during a conversation among officials in a taxicab more than 50 years ago, remains in place today.

The federal government is considering lowering the standard, and a new one could be proposed in December.

Norgard had worked in one of Brush's plants for just a month when he experienced a full-body rash and skin ulcers. He heads the National Advocates for Beryllium Education and Reform and is also suing the company.

"The fact that the company won't fess up is one of the hardest things to deal with," he said.

Attorneys on both sides of the Jefferson County case declined to comment, and the workers who have waited five years for the trial to begin also were told by their attorneys to not comment.

The internal company documents and declassified government material introduced in the case indicate:

The company knew as early as 1951 that workers were becoming sick when exposed to beryllium levels below the federal safety standard.

The federal government allowed Brush to censor medical documents for years. For example, a report from Brush's medical director, concluding that beryllium was one of the "most deadly (elements) known to mankind," was censored.

Brush was allowed to change a 1972 government report to make false conclusions about those who had contracted the disease. The report ultimately concluded the federal safety standard protected workers.

Plaintiffs plan to use admissions by Bill Richardson, energy secretary under President Clinton, that the government colluded with Brush Wellman to keep beryllium flowing to the defense industry, sacrificing workers' health.

As for conspiring with the government, Brush says that could hardly be true.

The company notes that when the federal government set the safety standard on dust exposure in 1949, it warned that it was only a "tentative" standard and that it might not protect all workers.

The company also cites several government documents, including 1984 and 1986 reports by two federal agencies, warning that not all people will be protected by the federal standard.

"The fact that there were questions about the protectiveness of the existing standard for exposure to airborne concentrations of beryllium was certainly no secret," one company court brief said.

---

Rocky Flats lawsuit could reveal government cover-up

04-Jun-2001 09:18
http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/news2001/nn11248.htm<

GOLDEN, Colo. (AP) - A lawsuit filed against the world's leading beryllium supplier alleges that the federal government knew the radioactive metal's harmful effect on workers but took little action. Fifty Rocky Flats workers are suing Brush Wellman Inc., a Cleveland-based company, claiming it and the federal government conspired to hide information that showed federal workplace safety standards for beryllium did not protect workers.

The company shipped beryllium to Rocky Flats, where triggers for nuclear weapons were made. The Jefferson County trial is expected to begin Monday.

Brush Wellman maintains it did nothing wrong and researched the problem. "We intend to defend (ourselves) vigorously," said Patrick Carpenter, a Brush Wellman spokesman.

The lawsuit alleges that Brush Wellman has always known that workers could contract chronic beryllium disease, which afflicts the lungs, even from the most minute exposure.

A tentative workplace standard set in 1949 warned its guidelines might not protect all workers, Brush Wellman said in court documents. Several government documents, including reports in 1984 and 1986 also warn not all people will be protected by the federal standard.

Attorneys on both sides of the case declined to comment.

Internal company documents and declassified government material introduced in the case indicate that Brush Wellman knew as early as 1951 that workers were becoming sick when exposed to beryllium levels that were within the federal safety standard.

Workers allege the federal government allowed Brush Wellman to censor medical documents for years. For example, a report from Brush Wellman's medical director concluding that beryllium was one of the "most deadly (elements) known to mankind" was allegedly censored.

Dave Norgard, 45, is one of the plaintiffs afflicted with chronic beryllium disease.

"I would like to think that the average man and woman on the street and the working individual will be able to see the significance (of the documents). We are talking about something similar to what happened to smokers," Norgard said.

"To not know something and to try to do the best to find out is one thing. But to know something and to carry on as if nothing has happened is something else."

The metal has also been used in cars, cellphones, computers, bicycles, dental work and golf clubs. As many as 800,000 employees in a variety of industries could be working with the metal, according to the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Across the country, Brush Wellman faces 71 lawsuits involving 192 plaintiffs, company spokesman Carpenter said. While some of the company's documents and declassified federal reports have been part of other lawsuits, those cases have not yet come before a jury.

Feds provide compensation

A trial starting today on behalf of Rocky Flats workers suffering from a debilitating lung disease is not the only action putting a spotlight on the sick workers.

The trial in Jefferson County is getting underway just as the federal government begins work on compensating nuclear-weapons workers exposed to beryllium.

Congress passed legislation last year allowing workers to receive up to $150,000 each and medical coverage for cancer and other diseases they contracted while working at Energy Department facilities or for its contractors.

As of April, 119 Rocky Flats employees have been diagnosed with chronic beryllium disease and another 184 have been "sensitized" to the metal. Some 10 percent of those sensitized could end up with the disease, said Karen Lutz, a Rocky Flats spokeswoman.

Nationwide, 165 workers in the government nuclear-weapons complex have the disease, she said.

Spouses and relatives of deceased workers also are eligible for the benefits, potentially opening up the program to an estimated 2,000 Coloradans, Lutz said.

The U.S. Labor Department will administer the program with the help of the Energy Department. Workers can call a toll-free number with questions, 866-888-3322. Applications for benefits can also be obtained on the Internet at www.dol.gov.

If workers lose their suit in court, it's unclear whether they will be able to receive the federal compensation, labor officials and attorneys have said.

The Jefferson County lawsuit could be significant because documents released in that case could make it easier for workers to assemble and file claims under the act, union officials said.

-------- nevada

Boy Dies From Leukemia; 13 Kids Ill

The Associated Press
Monday, June 4, 2001; 12:52 p.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010604/aponline125204_000.htm

FALLON, Nev. -- A 10-year-old boy has become the first to die among 14 youngsters afflicted by a mysterious cluster of leukemia cases in the Fallon area.

Adam Jernee, who became ill about 18 months ago, died Sunday at Orange County Children's Hospital in Southern California, where he was taken to be near his mother's family, said his father, Richard Jernee.

Jernee said he planned to return to the northern Nevada community, 60 miles east of Reno, to press officials to find the cause of the cluster.

Since 1997, 13 children who lived in the Fallon area for varying lengths of time have been diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia, the most common form of the blood cell cancer. A 14th child was diagnosed with a less common form, acute myelogenous leukemia.

State and federal researchers have made plans to test for air, water and soil contamination in the Navy air base and farming community of 8,300 people.

Health officials have said that normally the rate of acute lymphocytic cases would be about three in every 100,000 people.

Adam Jernee became sick after he and his father moved to Fallon from Oregon in 1999, and doctors found a fist-sized tumor in the boy's chest.

Medication reduced the tumor's size, but Adam was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia.

He underwent two courses of chemotherapy, two bone marrow transplants and radiation, his father said.

Adam lapsed into a coma and awoke just once in recent weeks, Jernee said.

"He opened his eyes," he said. "I told him I loved him."

-------- new york

Long Island authority seeks new Shoreham power plant

USA: June 4, 2001
Story by Scott DiSavino
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11049

NEW YORK - The Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) said on Friday it wants a small power plant built by April 2002 at the Shoreham, N.Y. site, in the shadow of what remains of a nuclear power plant that was never allowed to open amid heavy local opposition.

The Long Island Lighting Co. (LILCO), which preceded LIPA as the local utility, lost billions of dollars on the Shoreham nuclear station. The plant was decommissioned in 1994 without ever going into commercial operation after years of heated political battles.

LIPA is now seeking proposals from generating companies to build a non-nuclear facility at Shoreham, with the capacity to light about 80,000 homes. The authority issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) to build units with a generating capacity of less than 80 megawatts, it said in a statement on Friday.

Under current state law, any unit under 80 megawatts does not need go through the rigorous Article 10 siting process, which can take up to a year.

LIPA, however, has encouraged potential responders to consider the possibility of building a plant that has room to boost its generating capabilities in the future.

LIPA said it would enter into a 15-year agreement to purchase the electric output of the units that would be built.

UNIT MUST BE READY BY SUMMER 2002

"Long Island needs more on-island generation in the years ahead to meet the ever-growing demand for electricity," LIPA Chairman Richard Kessel said in the statement.

LIPA projected that while there was a sufficient supply of electricity available to meet this summer's needs, the supply could get very tight during the summer of 2002 if new on-island generating capacity is not put into operation.

"The Shoreham site offers a unique opportunity to locate a modest amount of new generating capacity at that location, which would go a long way toward meeting our summer 2002 needs," Kessel said.

LIPA currently owns 10 acres of property at Shoreham, which includes the former nuclear power station.

The new generation unit, or units, would be built on a portion of a 47-acre parcel of property that LIPA is in the process of purchasing from Long Island's gas and electric supplier KeySpan Corp. of New York City.

-------- tennessee

Meetings set to inform Ridgers about nuclear worker compensation plan

by Paul Parson
Oak Ridger staff
June 4, 2001
http://www.oakridger.com/stories/060401/new_0604010053.html

An overview of how the compensation plan for job-sickened nuclear employees works will be the topic of meetings scheduled later this month in Oak Ridge.

One of the items expected to be discussed at the June 26-27 meetings is how to fill out claims forms for the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act. A resource center where employees can file claims is anticipated to open in Oak Ridge in July.

The compensation plan offers $150,000 plus lifetime medical benefits to workers whose health was ruined by Cold War-era exposure to radiation, silica or beryllium.

Congress gave the Department of Labor a $60.4 million appropriation to set up the compensation program because it was viewed as the government's expert on occupational illness and compensation programs.

Earlier this year, Labor Secretary Elaine Chao voiced dissatisfaction about running the program. She changed her mind about doing so shortly after 10 House members introduced a bill to force the Labor Department to run the program.

Since then, the Labor Department has published proposed regulations for governing the plan and recently launched a toll-free number, 1-866-888-3322, that affected workers can call with questions about the compensation program.

The Oak Ridge meetings are scheduled for June 26-27 at the American Museum of Science and Energy. Tentative times for the meeting are 1 and 7 p.m. both days. To verify the times of the meetings, call Walter Perry with the Department of Energy at 576-0885.

----

Nuclear industry optimism on rise ... but dwindling number of university reactors raises concern

June 4, 2001
By Frank Munger
News-Sentinel senior writer
http://www.knoxnews.com/science/munger/fm06042001.shtml

It's not a scientific measure by any stretch, but I can gauge the optimism in the nuclear industry by the number of press releases I receive from the Nuclear Energy Institute, and lately those have arrived with unusual regularity. Optimism is running high.

Indeed, some advocates believe the power crisis in California may jump-start the industry, attracting public support for nuclear in a way that other, much-publicized issues -- such as global climate change -- have not.

The nuclear industry also sees a friend in the White House. The Bush administration's early overtures, including an energy strategy that prominently includes the nuclear option, have been received enthusiastically.

"The White House rightly has recognized that nuclear energy plays an essential role in helping our nation achieve its economic and environmental goals," said Joe Colvin, president and chief executive officer of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's policy pusher in Washington.

"The administration's support for nuclear power as a proven energy technology that protects our air quality is a tremendously positive development for our nation. Among other things, it sends an important message to Wall Street and to young people considering careers in the engineering field that national policy at the highest level envisions continuing and even greater reliance on nuclear power as part of our long-term energy strategy."

It's interesting that the NEI touted the message being sent to young people considering nuclear careers, because those same people are receiving other messages -- not all of them positive, either.

For instance, Cornell University announced that it will shut down its 500-kilowatt research reactor and phase out all activities at the university's Ward Center for Nuclear Sciences.

The reactor's operating license is due to expire next year, and a top official said the university could not continue spending the money needed for the nuclear research facility.

"The reactor has far too little use," Vice Provost Robert Richardson said in a release. "There is small change that the demand will increase significantly in the next decade. Possession of nuclear fuel is a liability to the university."

The Cornell decision, of course, mirrors ones made at universities across the nation in recent decades.

The number of nuclear reactors on campus has declined dramatically, with the U.S. total now somewhere in the range of 26 -- and most of those are tiny facilities with limited capabilities.

"It's a great concern to us," said James Lake, current president of the American Nuclear Society and an associate director at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory.

Lake was in Oak Ridge recently to visit ORNL and speak to the local chapter of the American Nuclear Society.

He said the universities reactors are important educational and research tools, which are needed to prepare a new generation of nuclear experts.

The problems range from lack of government support to universities doing a poor job of identifying potential users among their faculty, Lake said.

"The government should be putting money into reactors to support operations, upgrade control systems and maybe put some advanced research instrumentation ... so that these tools are well-equipped," Lake said.

Why is this a government responsibility?

"Because they serve a national need," Lake said. "They're training scientists and researchers that are valuable national assets."

Jim Roberto, an associate director at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, said the reactors -- even small ones -- are expensive to maintain and are complex from a regulatory standpoint. Even though the student training is valuable, some universities simply don't want the hassle, he said.

"That's unfortunate," Roberto said. "With computers, you can do a lot of simulation, but you still need hands-on experience."

John Gilligan, associate dean of engineering at North Carolina State University, calls the demise of research reactors and nuclear engineering departments "a slow strangulation."

N.C. State is one of two universities in the South to host a research reactor. The other is the University of Florida.

"It's a fight every year to keep the reactor going and relevant and modernized," Gilligan said.

He said North Carolina State is trying to upgrade its 1-megawatt reactor with an ultra-cold neutron source to enhance the experiments. If so, that will complement the research activities at big facilities at ORNL, including the High Flux Isotope Reactor and the Spallation Neutron Source now under construction.

Gilligan bemoans the lack of federal support for university reactors.

Even if proposed legislation is passed in Congress supporting a series of nuclear centers, that could have a negative impact on those universities left out in the cold, he said. "There's always a problem."

Lee Riedinger, deputy director of ORNL, said there's always a tendency for funding agencies to want to put their money into the biggest and best facilities -- including those at national laboratories.

"It's hard for universities to compete," said Riedinger, who headed the University of Tennessee's Physics Department before coming to ORNL, "but we have to ensure that we maintain that capability."

-------- us nuc politics

Radiation revelation

Scientists' requests for blood tests on servicemen taking part in British nuclear tests in the 1950s were overruled by military commanders

New Scientist
Rob Edwards
June 4, 2001
http://www.newscientist.com/dailynews/news.jsp?id=ns9999829

Scientists' requests for blood tests on servicemen about to take part in British nuclear tests in the 1950s were overruled by armed forces commanders, newly declassified documents reveal.

The revelations are increasing pressure on the government to compensate test veterans who have become ill.

The minutes of a secret meeting on 15 July 1958 reveal that scientists at the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment (AWRE) at Aldermaston in Berkshire wanted 4,500 people who took part in nuclear tests at Christmas Island in the Pacific to have their blood examined. But this was rejected as "impossible" by commanders of the armed forces.

"AWRE were concerned about the political repercussions which might ensue if charges of negligence, however unfounded, could be proved," record the minutes. Blood counts might have helped to show whether radiation from the nuclear explosions reduced the number of white cells - and increased the risk of disease.

But Air Commodore Stamm, who ran an RAF hospital, told the meeting he did not want records showing that veterans' counts were normal before the nuclear tests, in case they later developed leukaemia. "It might be difficult to refute the allegation that this was due to radiation received at Christmas Island," he said.

No compensation

Successive UK governments have refused to offer veterans compensation on the grounds that there was no proof that the radiation they were exposed to from the tests made them sick.

In May, declassified military documents highlighted how some servicemen were used to test the effectiveness of protective clothing against radiation.

Now, the new revelations have infuriated the British Nuclear Tests Veterans Association, which claims that blood counts were denied in order to avoid legal liability.

"Officials at the time and successive governments have sought deliberately and explicitly to evade their duty of care to servicemen," says Sue Rabbitt Roff, a radiation researcher from the University of Dundee who works with the association.

Correspondence about this story should be directed to latestnews@newscientist.com

1800 GMT, 4 June 2001


----

Rumsfeld Limiting Military Contacts With the Chinese

By MICHAEL R. GORDON
June 4, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/04/world/04MILI.html

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has cut off virtually all of the Pentagon's contacts with the Chinese armed forces in a move that is prompting concern among China experts within the United States military establishment.

The Pentagon says that it is conducting a case-by-case review of seminars, visits and other contacts with China and that no sweeping decisions have been made.

But internal Pentagon memoranda indicate that Mr. Rumsfeld is personally deciding which contacts should be allowed with the Chinese and that he has rejected an overwhelming majority of them.

Under Mr. Rumsfeld's policy, no direct contact between American and Chinese military officers has been authorized in recent months.

A trip to China by Vice Adm. Paul Gaffney, the president of the United States National Defense University, which had been scheduled to occur last week, was canceled.

And Chinese officers are no longer being invited to seminars at the Asia- Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu, the Pentagon's primary research center on security issues in that region.

Mr. Rumsfeld authorized American officers to attend multinational seminars on relief operations to which Chinese officers were also invited. But the defense secretary issued specific guidance that the American officers were to "minimize contact" with their Chinese counterparts at the April symposia, according to a Pentagon memo obtained by The New York Times.

Under the new policy, the United States is also no longer requesting port calls in Hong Kong, requests that the Pentagon had previously made to reinforce the territory's unique status.

Senior aides to Mr. Rumsfeld said the decisions were intended to signal deep displeasure over China's handling of the collision between a Chinese fighter and a United States Navy EP-3E, which resulted in an 11- day detention for the crew, the loss of the Chinese pilot and weeks of wrangling over the return of the aircraft.

But even before the collision, the Bush administration was taking a more skeptical approach toward China, though it had maintained military-to-military ties. And it is not clear how energetically the Pentagon will pursue contacts, even once the dispute over the EP-3E, which remains on Hainan island in China, is fully resolved.

"It is not business as usual," a senior Pentagon official said. "The Bush administration was going on the belief that the relationship was not balanced and that China perhaps was obtaining more access here than we were from our visits there. We were in the process of reviewing this to try to strike a better balance when the April 1 collision occurred."

Mr. Rumsfeld's policy worries some former and current United States officers. They argue that an interchange gives the United States insight into Beijing's thinking, develops contacts that may prove useful in the future and contributes to deterrence by showing China the high caliber of the United States military.

H. C. Stackpole III, the retired three-star Marine general and Vietnam war hero who leads the Pentagon-funded Asia-Pacific Security Center, said cutting off contacts is counterproductive.

"I think it ensures that the hard- liners in Beijing have ammunition for an increased arms buildup," he said in an interview. "When you have the kind of position we are taking right now, only one view becomes prevalent. Those in China who do not wish to have the U.S. as an enemy find their voices become muted."

Bernard Cole, known as Bud, a professor at the National Defense University and a retired navy captain, said China's penchant for secrecy about its armed forces makes military exchanges a potentially valuable tool for learning about Beijing's military.

"I would agree that the Chinese have more access in the United States than we have in China, but we get more out of the relationship," said Mr. Cole, who is a leading expert on the Chinese Navy.

Mr. Rumsfeld's decisions also suggest that the Pentagon's policy on contacts with the Chinese military is tougher than the Bush administration has previously acknowledged. On April 30, the Pentagon issued a memo instructing the United States armed forces to cut off ties with Chinese military and civilian officials until further notice.

After the White House raised concerns, Mr. Rumsfeld later dismissed the memorandum as the work of a policy aide who had misunderstood his intentions. But Mr. Rumsfeld's rulings suggest that the spirit of the initial memo has prevailed after all.

Asked to comment, Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, Mr. Rumsfeld's spokesman, said: "There is a dearth of activity right now. First things first. We need to get the plane back."

After the plane is returned, Admiral Quigley said, Mr. Rumsfeld will consider future contacts on the basis of two main factors: is the United States being provided with reciprocal access, and are the exchanges of equal value.

The Pentagon's contacts with the Chinese have a long history. During the Reagan administration, Washington's goal was to contain Soviet power. The United States sold arms to the Chinese and provided the Chinese military with advice on logistics and personnel.

After the crackdown at Tiananmen Square in 1989, United States contacts with the Chinese military were suspended. But during the Clinton administration, William J. Perry, then the defense secretary, restored the ties.

"I think there are a couple of things we have gotten out of it," Adm. Dennis C. Blair, the head of the Pacific Command, said in an interview. "I have sense of what is going on on the other side. I think that this is a fundamentally safer situation, even if it does not lead to a nice, neat solution of a crisis, than a situation in, say, North Korea, where none of us know who those people are.

"On the Chinese side, although they don't much like it, they are generally impressed with the superiority of our armed forces. That is a useful antidote to their self-propaganda," Admiral Blair added.

Republican conservatives, however, have long questioned such exchanges, arguing that the Chinese use them to learn about tactics that would strengthen their ability against Taiwan. Last year, Congress adopted legislation limiting the content of the contacts.

In additional to canceling the trip to China of the president of the United States National Defense University, Mr. Rumsfeld called off two separate visits by students at the National Defense University.

The visit of a senior Chinese officer, Gen. Guo Boxiong, which had been scheduled for May 10, was also canceled.

As a result of another ruling by Mr. Rumsfeld, a Chinese general was disinvited from a one-week program for senior military and civilian officers at General Stackpole's Asia- Pacific center.

The defense secretary also disallowed the participation of a Chinese professor at a three-day seminar at the center. The professor is the deputy director of a Johns Hopkins University program in Nanjing.

Later, when the center sought to invite two Chinese military officers for a 12-week program this summer its invitation was blocked by the American Embassy in Beijing. Instead, the center invited two Chinese Foreign Ministry officials, but the Chinese turned down the invitations. As relations have deteriorated, the Chinese have rejected some contacts as well.

Washington has proposed that a working group be convened under the Military Maritime Consultative Agreement, an accord aimed at avoiding incidents at sea. The purpose would be to discuss procedures to avoid incidents in the air as well. The Bush administration had hoped to hold the meeting last month, but the Chinese did not agree.

Advocates of contacts with China are fighting an uphill battle. General Stackpole was initially rebuffed when he sought approval to invite a Chinese researcher to his institute, but the Pentagon eventually relented. The researcher is from the South China Sea Institute, on Hainan.

-------- us nuc power

Guest column: Nuclear power not the answer to U. S. energy needs

By David Kyler
Savannah Morning News
Monday, June 4, 2001
http://www.savannahmorningnews.com/smn/stories/060401/OPEDtwo.shtml

In these times of rising energy costs, it may seem difficult to argue against nuclear power as a supposedly inexpensive,"clean" energy alternative. Like many claims about technological fixes, closer examination of nuclear energy reveals far different conclusions than what may be suggested by conventional wisdom.

Nuclear fuels and related radioactive materials are extremely dangerous if leaked into the environment, even in minuscule amounts especially because they last so long. Forms of uranium most commonly used as fuel have a life of many hundreds of years. Plutonium, another radioactive material proposed as nuclear plant fuel, remains hazardous for thousands of years.

All radioactive materials threaten the health of humans and wildlife that are exposed to them, producing symptoms ranging from severe and persistent nausea to nervous system dysfunction, cancer, reproductive abnormalities, birth defects and death.

Most troubling, because of their longevity, these materials can build up in the systems of animals, plants and habitats (water bodies and land areas). At exceptionally low levels, a single dose may not produce any significant adverse health risks, but continued or accumulating exposure can be deadly.

Because these materials can be moved by wind, evaporation and rain and can wash off land areas into rivers and ground water, radioactive substances travel great distances. Dispersion of radioactive materials through air and water can introduce threats downwind and downstream for thousands of miles.

This issue should be of particular interest to the people of coastal Georgia. Plant Hatch in Baxley near the Altamaha River is being relicensed. Although there has never been a terrible catastrophe at this facility, the aging condition and defective design of Plant Hatch make it ripe for a serious incident of contamination.

Even more threatening is a proposal at the Savannah River Site near Augusta, now under review, for processing plutonium from decommissioned nuclear bomb warheads into fuel to be used at nuclear power plants in other locations. The SRS site is already known to be dangerously contaminated, with over 50 unlined"seepage ponds" believed to be releasing radioactive contaminants into the area's groundwater systems. Introducing the proposal for plutonium processing greatly adds to SRS's prospective threats to human health and the environment.

Since plutonium is a more persistent form of radioactivity, and arguably the most toxic substance known, it represents an even greater threat than conventional uranium fuel. A single incident, whether caused by human operator error, an engineering or processing failure, natural catastrophe or act of terrorism, could produce far-reaching health hazards for any generations and essentially shut down all contaminated ecosystems.

Considering the huge potential costs of these risks, it is highly doubtful that nuclear power or fuel processing is truly practical. Efforts to demonstrate the acceptability of this form of energy production are, in effect, attempts to seize short-term benefits at serious long-term risk to human health and critically important environmental balance.

Perhaps the public may seem to gain in the short term from energy produced, but clearly the most notable benefits would be in the form of private profits. There are safer ways to produce energy at a profit, and to improve energy conservation, without severely jeopardizing the public.

Improving the efficiency of lighting, appliances and various industrial processes, as well as making further headway in solar, wind, tidal and hydrogen-cell technologies come to mind. Ironically, the Bush administration is proposing to cut funding for such research by 47 percent.

On the cost side, it is likely that communities whose health or business and employment interests are endangered by radioactive contamination would incur a substantial burden of using nuclear materials. Over hundreds of years, these costs could be cumulatively immense, unless safeguards were unfailingly ideal in every respect.

The history of technology and human limitations do not substantiate belief in the flawless design and operation of such facilities. Nuclear energy is perhaps the most dangerous application of blind faith as a tool of public policy. Misleading economic and environmental assessments that portray nuclear power as practical rest upon willfully naive assumptions that are nothing short of science fiction. We accept such fantasies at our own risk and, worse, at the peril of future generations.

David Kyler is executive director for the Center for a Sustainable Coast, based at St. Simons Island.

-------- us nuc waste

Reprocessing Used Fuel

By MATTHEW L. WALD
June 4, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/04/national/04PYRO.html

WASHINGTON, June 3 - Is it really waste? For years, nuclear engineers have argued that used fuel should be "reprocessed" to extract the uranium fuel that was not consumed and the plutonium that was produced in the reactor.

In the early days of nuclear power, when uranium was scarce and expensive, they argued (wrongly, it turns out) that this would save money. Now they say it would simplify disposal, by removing the elements that last the longest and feeding them back through a reactor, where they would be converted into shorter- lived radioactive materials.

The idea has surfaced again in the Bush-Cheney energy plan, which calls for research on a new form of reprocessing called pyroprocessing. Opponents say the idea was put in the report as a sop to the Nevadans who oppose Yucca Mountain as a burial ground for waste; supporters say it is a realistic option.

Pyroprocessing was tested at the Argonne National Laboratory's Idaho test station, where researchers chopped up used fuel and ran electric currents through the mixture. With the right electrode and the right voltage, uranium will migrate to the electrode, along with plutonium, neptunium and lawrencium, the so- called transuranic family of elements found at the bottom of the atomic chart.

The transuranics are created in reactors by adding neutrons to uranium. While they take thousands of years to lose radioactivity, most of the fission products, which are the fragments of split uranium atoms, take hundreds.

But the transuranics are not good fuel for the existing generation of reactors, because of the neutrons used to sustain a chain reaction in them. In existing designs, those neutrons are slowed to a speed where they are more likely to split uranium atoms, but that speed is too low to break up the transuranics. Pryroprocessing might be technically feasible, but experts say it would require hundreds of newly designed reactors to use the resulting fuel.

----

New Focus on an Old Nuclear Problem

By MATTHEW L. WALD
June 4, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/04/politics/04NUKE.html

PEACH BOTTOM, Pa., June 1 - The nuclear plant here split its first atom in December 1973. Both halves are still here.

So is all the other fuel that the twin Peach Bottom reactors have used in almost three decades of making electricity. The same is true at more than 120 other nuclear power plants around the country, even though nearly 20 years ago their owners signed a contract with the federal government for the Department of Energy to take the fuel to Nevada for burial, beginning in January 1998.

What to do with used nuclear fuel is a technical and political conundrum that is getting new attention as the Bush administration pushes for a greater role for nuclear power, while Senate Democrats say they will not agree to the longstanding plan to bury the waste at the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada.

The problem will only grow as reactors built years ago seek license renewals to keep running for many more decades. Next month, the owners of the Peach Bottom power plant will apply to extend its operating license from the once standard 40 years to 60.

Recognizing the storage problem, in the last few months Peach Bottom has set itself up to store its fuel on site for decades to come.

"We never intended that Peach Bottom become a temporary storage site for used fuel," said James P. Malone, vice president for nuclear fuels at Exelon, the company that runs Peach Bottom's two reactors and 15 others around the country.

But Yucca Mountain, the federal government's proposed site for permanent storage, was never a sure thing and is about to become even less so when Nevada's senior senator, Harry Reid, a longtime opponent of the project, becomes assistant majority leader.

An engineer here who is now deeply involved in waste storage, Paul R. Rau, said that when he first went to work for the company that runs Peach Bottom 23 years ago, "I would never have thought about it."

But the neat grid of 3,819 spaces at the bottom of a pool where the plant stores its spent fuel has steadily filled with fuel rods.

So at this 620-acre site on the banks of the Susquehanna River, just north of the Maryland state line, Mr. Rau has built enough storage space to handle waste far beyond the expected lifetime of the reactors. The company built what looks like an exercise yard at a prison, a concrete pad two to three feet thick, surrounded by floodlights, motion detectors and two dozen cameras, with a double row of 10-foot fences topped with concertina wire. On the pad, which is the size of a football field, the company installed four casks last summer, each 18 feet high and 8 feet in diameter, each weighing 90 tons and holding 24 tons of spent fuel. This summer the company will add five more; eventually the total could reach 72, and even after that, the pad could be expanded.

The casks, which could also be used for shipping, are designed to last at least 40 years. They are filled with inert gas to prevent corrosion, and require no mechanical cooling systems; David J. Foss, an engineer here who supervised their loading, said maintenance consisted mostly of inspecting them and sweeping the leaves off the pad.

Peach Bottom's approach is typical. For now, the 103 operating power reactors around the country store their wastes in spent-fuel pools like the ones here, 40 feet on a side and 40 feet deep, designed to withstand earthquakes and filled with purified water. Since the fuel rods still generate heat, even years after being removed from a reactor, the water is needed to prevent meltdown. It also provides radiation shielding. But the pool requires additional systems: heat exchangers to keep the water from boiling away, and filtration systems to pick out the radioactive material that builds up in the water. Over the long term, corrosion and cooling are concerns.

The Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's main trade association, says there are already 16 reactor sites with dry cask storage, and an additional 20 that will run out of space in their spent-fuel pools by the end of 2004 and will probably need such storage. Nearly all will need it by 2010.

But it costs more than $1 million for enough casks to store a year's worth of fuel for one reactor. So Peach Bottom's operator, at the time the parent company of the Philadelphia Electric Power Company, was one of 12 utilities to sue the Energy Department to recoup its costs after the 1998 deadline; Peach Bottom, like other reactors, had been paying the government a tenth of a cent per kilowatt-hour generated, in exchange for a government promise, now broken, to take the fuel.

Peach Bottom settled, with the department agreeing that the plant could skip payments equal to the price of the casks. But this has not placated Exelon, which is highly likely to be a builder of new plants if any are ever ordered in this country. The company, like other utilities, would like the waste problem solved first.

The cask storage sites have created a political role reversal: the companies that build them hate them, and the people who want to phase out nuclear plants see them as bolstering their argument.

The companies are eager to empty them and have the Energy Department move the fuel, preferably to a federal burial site, but at a minimum to a centralized above-ground repository - probably looking much like the one here, only bigger. For the companies, the casks are a reminder of an unresolved problem.

But opponents are happy to emphasize that the problem is unsolvable, and that the waste should stay in its containers, right where it is, a reminder in five dozen locations that there is no permanent repository. Their goal is to convince the public that the reactors should stop producing waste - in other words, that they should stop operating.

"Their ulterior motive is to say that there is no solution," said Marvin S. Fertel, senior vice president at the Nuclear Energy Institute.

But storing the fuel in casks is "not a pressing problem," said Dr. Arjun Makhijani, the president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, a nonprofit group often critical of the Energy Department. Assuming proper regulation, Dr. Makhijani said, cask storage is quite safe, probably safer than Yucca.

"So long as the reactors are operating - and this is not a plug for relicensing - the waste should be stored on site," he said.

Dr. Makhijani and others say that the government has proved unable to deal with its own nuclear wastes, from weapons production, and should not be trusted to find a burial spot that will stay essentially intact for 10,000 years.

But other scientists like burial, and the industry contends that Congress will, too. "If you don't vote for it, the waste stays in your state for 40 or 50 years," Mr. Fertel said. Under the language of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, any senator can introduce a motion to approve the project, and the Senate must then take up the matter.

When the reactors now operating were designed, mostly in the 1960's, the builders assumed that reactors would store their wastes for only a few years before they were reprocessed for further use. One reprocessing plant ran for a few years in the 1960's, in West Valley, N.Y., but was a technical and financial failure. When Jimmy Carter was president, he barred a second plant, in Illinois, from opening. The Bush administration's energy report raises the possibility of reviving reprocessing, but experts say that technology's prospects are highly uncertain.

Even if Yucca Mountain opens, it is too small; under the 1982 law it is supposed to accept 77,000 tons of civilian and military wastes, but the civilian wastes alone will come to more than that, partly because of license renewals, which were not anticipated in 1982. The industry hopes that by the time this becomes a problem, Nevadans will see the economic benefits of the repository and support a change in the law to accept more waste. But the other possibilities are lengthy storage in casks and the search for a second site, which no one wants to undertake.

----

Recycling nuclear waste

MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2001
OPINION, Christian Science Monitor Letters
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2001/06/04/p8s3.htm

Regarding your May 29 article "Ground zero in nuclear-power battle": There is a dramatic absence of any discussion about recycling nuclear waste for replenishing nuclear-power plant fuel and degrading the remainder to low-level radiation material that is much safer to store. One or two "fast breeder" reactors could process all the nuclear waste in the US. France recycles German, Japanese, and its own waste into nuclear fuel in its fast-breeder reactor. The $7 billion recently spent on Yucca Mountain would have paid for recycling reactors. Bill Grazier Duluth, Minn.

• The Monitor welcomes your letters and opinion articles. All submissions are subject to editing; only a selection can be published. Letters must be signed and include your mailing address and telephone number. Mail letters to "Readers Write," and opinion articles to Opinion Page, One Norway St., Boston, MA 02115, or fax to 617-450-2317, or e-mail to oped@csps.com

-------- MILITARY

-------- africa

Congo Rebel Group Begins Withdrawal

JUNE 04, 13:10 EST
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=AFRICA&STORYID=APIS7CDS1S00

LUSAKA, Zambia (AP) - A Congolese rebel group has begun withdrawing troops from battle zones in northwestern Congo, U.N. officials monitoring the cease-fire said Monday.

The Congolese Liberation Front's nine-mile withdrawal from former battle zones follows the deployment of military observers and humanitarian agencies in five areas under its control.

Congo's war erupted in August 1998 when Rwanda, Uganda and their Congolese rebel allies took up arms against then-President Laurent Kabila - accusing him of backing Rwandan and Ugandan rebels who threatened their security. Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia backed Kabila with thousands of troops and military hardware.

An often-violated 1999 cease-fire gained momentum following Kabila's assassination Jan. 16 and the succession of his son, Joseph, to the presidency.

The Congolese Liberation Front, led by Jean-Pierre Bemba, was previously the only warring party not to have complied with an agreement to pull back its troops.

The group ``began disengaging its forces last week Friday, following the deployment of military observers and humanitarian agencies in Basankosu, Bolomba, Emate, Bafale and Imese,'' Brig. Gen. Njuki Mwaniki, the chairman of the U.N. Joint Military Commission overseeing the cease-fire, said Monday.

Mwaniki had just returned from visiting the five areas in northwestern Congo.

He told The Associated Press that it had also been verified that troops had disengaged from 90 percent of the Kasai area in south-central Congo. An assessment still had to be conducted of the Kalemie area, which is partly controlled by the Congolese Rally for Democracy, a separate rebel group.

Parties to the war in the Congo are scheduled to meet June 22 to discuss the next phase of implementing the cease-fire.

----

Fighting Flares in Central Africa

By JOSEPH BENAMSSE
Associated Press Writer
JUNE 04, 18:42 EST
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=AFRICA&STORYID=APIS7CE0TE00

BANGUI, Central African Republic (AP) - Mortar blasts and automatic gunfire echoed in the capital of the Central African Republic Monday as fighting flared again despite President Ange-Felix Patasse's claim to have defeated coup plotters.

Presidential spokesman Prosper Ndouba said troops were going after about 100 remaining mutineers. Fighting erupted about noon, the latest of several outbreaks of violence since the coup attempt one week ago.

Patasse went on state radio to announce a reward for the capture of the opposition leader, former President Andre Kolingba, who is blamed in the failed coup. The reward was $33,000, dead or alive.

The coup attempt began May 28, when a mutinous unit within the army opened fire on Patasse's villa in Bangui, the capital.

Loyalist soldiers estimate the death toll since then in the hundreds. Most of the dead have been Yacomas, Kolingba's ethnic group.

Libya, trying to build its influence in the region, sent tanks and troops to help the government.

Rebel leader Jean-Pierre Bemba in neighboring Congo dispatched fighters as well. On Monday, the government apologized for looting by its Congo rebel allies and asked them to control themselves.

Patasse had declared victory over the coup forces Sunday, urging the last holdouts to surrender to avoid further bloodshed. Loyalist soldiers said then that Kolingba had been killed or captured, but the government did not confirmed the report.

Patasse first won election in 1993, ending military rule in the former French colony. The 1990s saw three major army rebellions, with soldier pay being a main complaint of mutineers.

----

'Commander Poison' Sheds Name, and His Taste for War

By Douglas Farah
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, June 4, 2001; Page A15
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A16738-2001Jun3?language=printer

MANGE, Sierra Leone - After more than a decade in the thick of West Africa's most brutal civil wars, "Commander Poison" wants to go home. And he politely asks that he now be called Richie.

Richie is among the first of the commanders of the rebel Revolutionary United Front to lay down his weapons as part of a process that appears to be nudging this tiny country toward peace. His story, related during an interview near the bridge he successfully defended against government and U.N. troops for the past two years, offers a window onto the conflicts that have bled the region for years and robbed tens of thousands of people of their childhoods.

"My life is much better now, sir," said Richie, a fresh-faced 25-year-old dressed in a black World Wrestling Federation T-shirt and jeans. "I am very happy to put down my gun. Now I just want to go home. I have not seen my family for these many years."

Home for Richie is neighboring Liberia. He said he was attending a boarding school there in 1990 when he and most of his classmates were abducted by the forces of Charles Taylor, the rebel leader who is now Liberia's president.

After three months of training, he was assigned to Taylor's infamous Small Boys Unit, the group of child soldiers that acted as Taylor's bodyguards and most ruthless combat force.

In 1991, while still fighting in Liberia, Taylor helped launch the civil war in Sierra Leone by providing troops, training and supplies to Foday Sankoh, leader of the Revolutionary United Front. Richie was assigned to Sankoh's forces for their first incursion into Sierra Leone and has been fighting here ever since.

"I came with Pop Sankoh and was around him very much," Richie said, invoking the term of affection commonly used by young RUF combatants for the rebel leader. "We had the determination to win the war militarily. We did not [win], but now the war is done. I don't fight no more."

In 10 years of war that turned broad swaths of Sierra Leone into wasteland, Sankoh's forces amputated the hands and legs of civilians, razed villages and abducted children. Taken from their families, they were usually taught that Sankoh and local commanders were their fathers. Then they were taught to kill.

As Commander Poison, Richie earned a reputation for ruthlessness in a war that was one of the most vicious on the continent. He said he saw "serious" combat, giving no details other than that he served in eastern Sierra Leone with Sankoh's original core force for several years before being moved to this strategic river crossing 50 miles north of Freetown, the capital. The Mange Bridge under Poison's command was a vital north-south link crucial for keeping open the RUF's supply lines to neighboring Guinea. Once a palm oil-producing region, the area now consists largely of abandoned, bombed-out villages.

Poison's commander, Brig. Bai Bureh, was another infamous RUF leader who long opposed any peace process. He surprised the United Nations and the government, however, by agreeing to be the first to disarm.

Since Sankoh's capture and imprisonment last year, the new RUF leadership has agreed to a cease-fire, disarmament and the presence of U.N. peacekeeping forces across the country in exchange for status as a legal political party allowed to participate in December's presidential and legislative elections.

On May 25 the RUF released about 600 child combatants to the United Nations. It was not only the first such release by the rebels, but the first time they had acknowledged having abducted the children and an important signal they are serious about the peace process.

But despite the progress in Sierra Leone, this country still runs the risk of being dragged back into bloodshed by low-level fighting going on in Liberia and Guinea.

Regional intelligence reports say that at least one senior RUF commander, Dennis Mingo, known as "Superman," has gone to Liberia with several hundred men to help Taylor's government battle dissident Liberians who are launching cross-border raids from Guinea. Sources familiar with developments here said Taylor has asked the RUF for further reinforcements but so far has been rebuffed.

At the same time, Guinea has been providing arms and food for the Liberians fighting Taylor as well as supplying militia groups in Sierra Leone who refuse to accept the current cease-fire and continue to attack the RUF.

Richie said he wants no part of it. Though he knows he has lost his childhood, he said he wants to get away from war while he's still young enough to turn his life around.

Richie -- who refuses to divulge his family name for fear of reprisals against his relatives in Liberia -- said he'd like to resume his studies, but doesn't know if he can still read and write. "I have had no practice, no review for a very long time, sir," he said wistfully. "I feel like, in learning, I have been demoted, and I want to be promoted again."

Asked what he would like to become, Richie at first said a doctor, but added that he needed time to "recover" from the war.

"I want to be a businessman first," he finally said. "I want money. Money speaks anywhere you are. You can achieve anything with money."

-------- arms sales

India, Russia Discuss Arms Deals

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
June 4, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Russia-India-Arms.html

MOSCOW (AP) -- Officials from India and Russia met in Moscow on Monday to discuss prospective arms deals, including the planned joint development of a new fighter plane.

Indian Foreign and Defense Minister Jaswant Singh and Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov hosted a session of the Russian-Indian commission on military cooperation.

Klebanov declined to name the types of weapons New Delhi wants to purchase, but said they would help equip India's air defense, air force, navy and ground forces.

He also told reporters the two countries plan to sign a contract this year to jointly developing a new-generation of fighter plane and a military transport aircraft, the Interfax news agency reported. He did not provide further details about the proposed planes.

Singh said India had signed contracts to buy $10 billion worth of Russian weapons in recent years, Interfax said.

Russia is short of funds to develop the costly fighter and officials have said they might pool efforts with another country. Klebanov was the first official to name India as a partner.

Since Soviet times, India has been one of the largest customers of Russian weapons, which make up about 70 percent of New Delhi's arsenal.

Russian and Indian officials agreed on a series of prospective arms deals when President Vladimir Putin visited India in October. The countries have already signed deals for India to manufacture 140 Su-30 MKI fighter jets and 310 T-90 tanks, worth about $1 billion.

The recent Russian-Indian arms deals have raised concern in Pakistan, which is locked in a long-standing conflict with India over the Himalayan region of Kashmir. Pakistan and India have fought three wars since they gained independence from Britain in 1947.

-------- iraq

Pentagon Chief Checking Iraq Zone

By Robert Burns AP Military Writer
Monday, June 4, 2001; 7:04 a.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010604/aponline070456_000.htm

ANKARA, Turkey -- The help Iraq has received from China and other countries to strengthen its air defenses is raising the risks to U.S. and British pilots flying over northern and southern Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Monday.

After a series of meetings with senior Turkish government officials, Rumsfeld told reporters that Ankara continues to support the basing of allied warplanes in Turkey to enforce the no-fly zone over northern Iraq.

"The discussions have been very positive," he said.

Rumsfeld spoke before flying to Incirlik Air Base in south-central Turkey to visit U.S. air crews who patrol the northern zone. He said their mission, known as Operation Northern Watch, is necessary to keep a lid on Iraq's military.

"There is a risk to pilots that fly in areas that are dangerous and defended," he said.

"The risk grows to the extent that other nations assist Iraq in strengthening its military capability, its air defense capability," Rumsfeld said.

He cited as an example U.S. assertions that Chinese workers were in Iraq early this year to install fiber optic links in Iraq's air defense network. The Pentagon cited those sophisticated communications links as a main reason for bombing targets in and around Baghdad in February.

Rumsfeld said President Bush plans for now to stick with the Clinton administration's policy of regularly patrolling the skies over Iraq to contain Saddam Hussein's forces.

Some, including U.S. military commanders, have questioned whether the air patrols are worth the risk of having a U.S. or British pilot captured by Iraqi forces. No planes have been lost in the 10 years since the no-fly zone enforcement began in the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War, but Iraqi air defenses regularly fire on allied planes with surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft artillery.

Rumsfeld said the administration is still studying the matter of enforcing the no-fly zones.

"We don't have any proposals to alter that at the present time," Rumsfeld said in an interview with reporters traveling with him Sunday from Washington to the Turkish capital.

Turkey was the first stop for Rumsfeld on a weeklong European tour that is his most extensive overseas trip since taking office. In February he spent one day at a European security conference in Germany.

For the most part, he has been closeted in the Pentagon reviewing U.S. military commitments and practices with an eye to speeding modernization of the armed forces and making the Defense Department more efficient.

In the interview Sunday, Rumsfeld said the administration is not considering reducing the 100,000-strong American force in Europe but is reviewing the way troops there and elsewhere abroad are arrayed.

He said some have gained the mistaken impression that he might recommend to Bush that the United States pay more attention to security issues in the Asia-Pacific region at the expense of its deep involvement in Europe.

"Yes, Asia is growing and it is an important part of the world," Rumsfeld said. "Any suggestion that the United States is going to, or ought to, or might, turn away from Europe is fundamentally flawed in logic."

A chief focus for U.S. troops in Europe in recent years has been peacekeeping in Bosnia and Kosovo. On Tuesday, Rumsfeld is scheduled to visit with the Kosovo peacekeepers and their support troops in neighboring Macedonia.

Rumsfeld, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, dismissed speculation that he favored withdrawing some forces from Europe.

"There has been no discussion about any troop adjustments, and it would be wrong to inject that into the discussion and cause tremors unnecessarily and inaccurately," he said.

"We are, of course, looking at how forces are arranged," not only in Europe but elsewhere in the world. "What might come out of it, I don't know."

The administration is considering whether the traditional mix and location of U.S. forces in Europe - mostly ground troops stationed in Germany - might be changed to better match the most likely military challenges in that region, aides to Rumsfeld said. They added that these may be only slight adjustments.

----

Rumsfeld: Aid to Iraq Causes Risks

By Robert Burns AP Military Writer
Monday, June 4, 2001; 10:23 a.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010604/aponline102355_000.htm

INCIRLIK AIR BASE, Turkey -- The help Iraq has received from China and other countries to strengthen its air defenses is raising the risks to U.S. and British pilots flying over northern and southern Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Monday.

After meetings with senior Turkish government officials in Ankara, Rumsfeld visited Incirlik Air Base in south-central Turkey and spoke with U.S. pilots who patrol the northern zone and told him of the heightened danger.

From inside an aircraft hangar, Rumsfeld praised the troops for risking their lives to help contain Iraq's military and limit the threat to the Kurds in the northern region of the country.

"For all the difficulties you face, you do it remarkably well. Your resolve helps keep that still-dangerous regime in check," Rumsfeld told a few hundred troops, representing all the U.S. services as well as British and Turkish military.

A U.S. Air Force fighter pilot who has flown missions over northern Iraq since February said in an interview the threat from that country's air defenses has become greater in recent months.

"The threat has increased significantly. In the past five months, it has been greater than what we've seen in the past," said the pilot, who could not be identified for security reasons.

"They are shooting much more frequently," he said of the Iraqi air defenders.

Rumsfeld said the troops' mission, known as Operation Northern Watch, is necessary to keep a lid on Iraq's military.

"The risk grows to the extent that other nations assist Iraq in strengthening its military capability, its air defense capability," Rumsfeld said.

Speaking to reporters in Ankara, Rumsfeld gave as an example U.S. assertions that Chinese workers were in Iraq early this year to install fiber optic links in Iraq's air defense network. The Pentagon cited those sophisticated communications links as a main reason for bombing targets in and around Baghdad in February.

Rumsfeld said President Bush plans for now to stick with the Clinton administration's policy of regularly patrolling the skies over Iraq to contain Saddam Hussein's forces.

Some, including U.S. military commanders, have questioned whether the air patrols are worth the risk of having a U.S. or British pilot captured by Iraqi forces. No planes have been lost in the 10 years since the no-fly zone enforcement began in the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War, but Iraqi air defenses regularly fire on allied planes with surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft artillery.

Rumsfeld said the administration is still studying the matter of enforcing the no-fly zones.

"We don't have any proposals to alter that at the present time," Rumsfeld said in an interview with reporters traveling with him Sunday from Washington to the Turkish capital.

Turkey was the first stop for Rumsfeld on a weeklong European tour that is his most extensive overseas trip since taking office. In February he spent one day at a European security conference in Germany.

For the most part, he has been closeted in the Pentagon reviewing U.S. military commitments and practices with an eye to speeding modernization of the armed forces and making the Defense Department more efficient.

In the interview Sunday, Rumsfeld said the administration is not considering reducing the 100,000-strong American force in Europe but is reviewing the way troops there and elsewhere abroad are arrayed.

He said some have gained the mistaken impression that he might recommend to Bush that the United States pay more attention to security issues in the Asia-Pacific region at the expense of its deep involvement in Europe.

"Yes, Asia is growing and it is an important part of the world," Rumsfeld said. "Any suggestion that the United States is going to, or ought to, or might, turn away from Europe is fundamentally flawed in logic."

A chief focus for U.S. troops in Europe in recent years has been peacekeeping in Bosnia and Kosovo. On Tuesday, Rumsfeld is scheduled to visit with the Kosovo peacekeepers and their support troops in neighboring Macedonia.

Rumsfeld, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, dismissed speculation that he favored withdrawing some forces from Europe.

"There has been no discussion about any troop adjustments, and it would be wrong to inject that into the discussion and cause tremors unnecessarily and inaccurately," he said.

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Rumsfeld Thanks U.S. Troops in Iraq

By Robert Burns AP Military Writer
Monday, June 4, 2001; 2:01 p.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010604/aponline140115_000.htm

INCIRLIK AIR BASE, Turkey -- Inside a stuffy aircraft hangar on this sun-baked airfield, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld thanked U.S. and allied troops Monday for patrolling the skies over northern Iraq despite what he called a growing threat from Iraqi air defenses.

"Your resolve helps keep that still-dangerous regime in check," Rumsfeld told a couple of hundred U.S., British and Turkish troops at this staging base for aircraft enforcing a "no fly" zone over Iraq.

After speaking from a hangar platform framed by U.S., British and Turkish flags, Rumsfeld mingled with the troops and posed for pictures near an Air Force A-10 attack plane on display outside. The presence of the A-10, which is deployed here for combat search and rescue missions, was a reminder of the possibility that one day, Iraq may attain its goal of downing an American or British pilot.

Some U.S. military commanders question whether the risk of an Iraqi success is worth the benefit of keeping Iraqi aircraft from flying. The Bush administration is reviewing all aspects of its policy toward Iraq.

"We've been very fortunate that we've not had a loss," Rumsfeld said.

His visit here was his first with U.S. troops abroad since he became defense secretary in January.

In remarks earlier in the day in Ankara, the Turkish capital, Rumsfeld said the help China and other nations are giving Iraq to improve its air defenses has raised the risk of an allied pilot being shot down.

"The risk grows to the extent that other nations assist Iraq in strengthening its military capabilities, its air defense capabilities," Rumsfeld said after meeting with Foreign Minister Ismail Cem at his Ankara residence.

Rumsfeld cited China as an example, noting U.S. allegations - denied by the Chinese government - that Chinese workers were in Iraq early this year to install fiber-optic cables intended to give Iraq's air defense network a greater capability to zero in on U.S. and allied planes.

The Pentagon cited the fiber-optics project as one reason for launching a bombing raid against Iraqi radar and other air defense sites in southern Iraq in February. Although American and British planes for more than two years have periodically attacked elements of Iraq's air defenses in both the south and north, Rumsfeld cited Iraq's "increasing capabilities" and said the risk of losing a pilot cannot be ignored.

A U.S. Air Force fighter pilot, who spoke under ground rules that prohibit the use of his name or rank due to security concerns, told reporters at Incirlik that he has flown over northern Iraq several times a week since February and has witnessed an increasing volume of anti-aircraft artillery fire.

"The threat has increased significantly," the pilot said. "In the past five months it has been greater than what we've seen in the past."

He said virtually every allied mission encounters Iraqi air defense fire, although his description of Iraq's poorly guided surface-to-air missiles as "science projects" suggested that it might take a lucky hit for Iraq to down an allied plane. Iraq is said to be reluctant to turn on air defense radars to provide better guidance because once they are active, the radars are vulnerable to U.S. attack.

The United States flies Air Force F-16 fighters and F-15 attack planes from Incirlik are supported by a wide variety of reconnaissance aircraft, refuelers, AWACs command and control planes and electronic jamming aircraft. British pilots fly Tornado GR-1 attack planes, and Turkey flies support planes.

While at Incirlik, Rumsfeld received a classified briefing from Air Force Brig. Gen. Edward Ellis, the American commander of Operation Northern Watch, as the air patrol mission is known.

He described the mission of U.S. and allied pilots as "not a great thing to have to do, it's not a pleasant thing to have to do." They have been doing it since shortly after the 1991 Gulf War.

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Countdown: Palestinians brace for invasion

SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Monday, June 4, 2001
http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/Archive-2001/me-israel-06-03.html

TEL AVIV - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had hours to decide yesterday on a plan to invade Palestinian areas Monday in response to a Palestinian suicide bombing attack that killed 20 Israelis.

Sharon convened his senior ministers on Sunday to discuss options for an attack on the Palestinian Authority as U.S. Secretary of State Powell called on Israel not to retaliate. Israeli officials dismissed a pledge by PA Chairman Yasser Arafat to stop the violence and did not rule out an invasion on Monday. The officials said Arafat has already evacuated all installations, eliminating many targets for Israel.

Breaking: Sharon rejects air strike

On late Saturday, PA security chief Maj. Gen. Abdul Razik Majaydeh ordered all Palestinian security forces to enforce an immediate ceasefire. The order did not include such Islamic allies as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Middle East Newsline reported.

Overnight Sunday, however, Palestinian gunners continued to fire on Israeli communities and military posts in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Sharon discussed the issue on late Saturday with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell. Both men cancelled foreign tours amid the escalating tension.

Arafat's Fatah movement met on late Saturday and called on Palestinians to prepare for an Israeli invasion of PA areas. PA radio urged Palestinians to shut off gas and electricity and store food for what officials termed an impending attack.

"The [proposed] operation is to ensure that there will not be terror," Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Silvan Shalom said minutes before the Cabinet meeting. "We are not looking for the collapse of the PA."

Israeli officials said the borders with Egypt and Jordan have been sealed and Palestinian workers have been expelled from Israel. For the first time, they said, Arafat will not be able to leave PA areas.

Israeli officials said Sharon is giving Arafat no more than several hours until Israel responds. They said Sharon expects Arafat to end all attacks and round up Islamic fugitives released from PA prisons.

A Palestinian bomber blew himself up and killed 20 Israelis outside a Tel Aviv nightclub in the bloodiest attack in the more than eight-month-old Israeli war with the Palestinians.

Another four people are described in criticial condition in a Tel Aviv hospital. In all, more than 50 people were injured.

Israeli officials blamed Palestinians for the bombing on late Friday. The military was not ordered to respond to the attack. Tel Aviv youngsters stoned a nearby mosque on Saturday.

Leading Israeli Cabinet ministers met on Saturday to discuss the attack amid a declaration by Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat that he was ready to declare a ceasefire. Officials said Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres decided to give Arafat until Sunday afternoon to determine whether the Palestinian leader has implemented his pledge.

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Lebanese army fires at Israeli warplanes

World Scene, June 4, 2001
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010604-634568.htm

BEIRUT -- Lebanese anti-aircraft guns opened fire yesterday on Israeli warplanes on a reconnaissance mission over Lebanon, Lebanese officials said.

The shooting -- which was denied by Israel even though reporters heard the gunfire -- was the first response to such overflights since Israel´s withdrawal from southern Lebanon a year ago.

Fighter jets were seen flying at medium altitude over southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley yesterday morning and early afternoon. The Lebanese army opened fire from anti-aircraft batteries dotting the area but did not hit any aircraft, according to Lebanese security officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The jets reached as far as Beirut in central Lebanon, some 120 miles from Israel, and were audible on the ground.

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Israel waits with finger on the trigger

By Dan Ephron
THE WASHINGTON TIMES,
June 4, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010604-27566262.htm

JERUSALEM -- Israel yesterday buried its dead from the worst Palestinian guerrilla attack in five years but refrained from retaliating amid some signs that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was serious about a cease-fire.

For a second day running, the level of violence was down sharply in the West Bank and Gaza Strip after Mr. Arafat, fearing a massive Israeli reprisal for a Tel Aviv nightclub bombing that killed 20 youths, announced he was ready for a truce.

But the threat of escalation still loomed, as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suggested Mr. Arafat´s announcement might have been a ruse and called on him to carry out three immediate steps to implement the cease-fire.

"I don´t believe in statements. I believe only in actions, so I don´t know if is a tactical step or some other kind of step," Mr. Sharon told reporters at a Tel Aviv hospital after visiting Israelis wounded in Friday´s suicide bombing.

"The things that must be done by him immediately is one -- to end incitement; two -- to end acts of terror and violence; and three -- to re-arrest all the many terrorists freed by Arafat and who stand behind terror activities today," he said.

A senior security official said Israel had been poised to launch a "very severe air strike" on Saturday but called it off when Mr. Arafat agreed to a cessation of violence. The official, who refused to be named, said he was sure Israel would go through with the retaliation plan because Mr. Arafat would not stick to the cease-fire.

"I am sure you will see it. It will happen," he said.

Many Israelis shared hi