------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Today In History
A Matter of Ethics
China Backs Treaty To Ban Weapons in Space
Too many babies without eyes
Vets were exposed to uranium: study
EU Mulls a New Deal With Turkey
Armies of Europe Failing to Meet Goals, Sapping NATO
NATO Tunes Up for Bush Visit As Macedonia Smolders
HAVEL, NATO, AND RUSSIA
German nuke industry plans to share accident risks
WARMER WORDS ON MISSILE SHIELD
U.S. Will Resume Talks With N. Korea
Bush will renew missile talks with Kim
S. Korea Welcomes U.S. Intervention
U.S. - North Korean Talks Offer Ray of Sunshine
Ministers Announce SFOR Reduction, Mull U.S. Missile Plans
Congress asked to boost funds for anti-missile laser
White House to increase funding for airborne laser
The Economics of European Missile Defense
NATO to Hear Missile Defense Gospel
Rumsfeld Promotes Missile Defense
Duma Approves Plan to Import Nuclear Waste
Russia imports nuclear waste
Worker testifies in injury lawsuit
U.S. feared loss of beryllium
Campbell moving to free up miner's money immediately
U.S. Justice Department may intervene
Limit for Radioactive Leaks Is Set for Nuclear Waste Site
Nevada Nuclear Sites Faces Limits
What Yucca offers...for 10,000 years
Industry sues to stop Yucca radiation limits
Subcommittee to address I-131 releases in meeting
US Holds Up Release of Reagan Papers
White House accepts tougher rules for nuclear-waste site

MILITARY
Central Africans Head Home After Bangui Bloodshed
Former Argentine President Is Arrested
OAS asks Central America minefield effort to continue
China Urges Work to Ban Space Arms
Chinese missile moves near Taiwan worry U.S.
Israeli Claims Iran Arms Smuggling
CIA Chief Begins Meetings With Israel
Weapons amnesty declared in Pakistan
Vieques Protesters Allege Rough Treatment by Navy
'Army of One' campaign a success with young people
Bush Leads Tribute to D-Day Veterans

OTHER
Environmentalists meet Cheney, see some progress
New US coal plants to power 20 million homes
EPA says most US refiners breaking green laws
SWITZERLAND: GYPSIES PLAN TO SUE I.B.M.
ASIA AFGHANISTAN: AID GROUP WARNS TALIBAN
China Says U.S. Spy Plane Row 'Basically' Over

ACTIVISTS
Liberator: Free Vieques
Nuclear Energy Industry: Sooo 20th Century
Utah citizens protest nuclear waste dumping


-------- NUCLEAR

Today In History

The Associated Press
Wednesday, June 7, 2001; 8:00 p.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010606/aponline200031_000.htm

In 1981, Israeli military planes destroyed a nuclear power plant in Iraq, a facility the Israelis charged could have been used to make nuclear weapons.

-------- australia

A Matter of Ethics
World Wakes Up to Use of Dead Babies in Nuclear Tests in 1950s

By Leela Jacinto,
June 7, 2001
Australian Broadcasting
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/australia010507_sunshine.html

Half a century after secret studies on the effects of radioactive fallout were carried out in the United States and Britain, the world is waking up to the "body snatching" of the 1950s.

Called "Project Sunshine," studies conducted on dead babies sought to measure the amount of radioactive strontium-90 being absorbed by humans due to nuclear testing.

On Tuesday, the Australian Ministry for Health and Aged Care launched an investigation into reports of Australian baby samples being dispatched for Project Sunshine without the parents' permission.

"We need to verify if Australian babies were used in this manner, how many, and from where they came," said a spokesman for Australian Health Minister Michael Wooldridge.

The investigation was launched days after a British newspaper reported that British scientists obtained children's bodies from various hospitals and shipped their bones and other body parts to the United States for classified nuclear experiments.

Oceans away in Hong Kong, a British colony until 1997, the newspaper report set off a furor, prompting authorities to launch an inquiry on Wednesday.

'Serving Their Country'

More than 1,500 cadavers - many of them babies - were gathered from half a dozen countries from Europe to Australia in the 1950s for the studies on the effects of radiation conducted by the now defunct Atomic Energy Commission, according to U.S. government documents.

Project Sunshine, which was conducted under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority, attempted to study the absorption of strontium-90 in human tissue, primarily bone.

In June 1995, a presidential Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, set up by former President Clinton released classified documents from the Atomic Energy Commission, which showed that scientists working on Project Sunshine were aware of the dubious ethical and legal grounds on which their research was being conducted.

In a transcript of a secret meeting on Jan. 18, 1955, Dr. Willard Libby, a University of Chicago researcher, who went on to win the 1960 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, acknowledged that the difficulty in getting human samples was resulting in "great gaps" in the project's findings.

"I don't know how to get them," Libby is quoted as saying. "But I do say that it is a matter of prime importance to get them and particularly in the young age group. So, human samples are of prime importance and if anybody knows how to do a good job of body snatching, they will really be serving their country."

'Bits and Pieces'

For many unsuspecting parents, the experience was nightmarish.

In a 1995 British documentary, Deadly Experiments, Jean Prichard, a British mother of a stillborn baby whose legs were removed by British hospital doctors in 1957, said she was forbidden to dress her daughter for her funeral to prevent her from finding out what had happened.

"I asked if I could put her christening robe on her, but I wasn't allowed to, and that upset me terribly because she wasn't christened," she said. "No one asked me about doing things like that, taking bits and pieces from her."

Though British and Canadian media have, in the past, reported that cadavers of infants were sent to the United States for Project Sunshine, there have been no official investigations into the murky shipments.

Fifty Years Later

While admitting that British scientists did indeed work on Project Sunshine, Elizabeth Taylor, a spokeswoman for the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority said the organization was only beginning to sift through hundreds of documents, not all of which have been declassified.

"Following the [Observer] report, we started to look at this, it's a mountain of information," said Taylor. "This is about what happened in the 1950s, it's not easy to do this."

Taylor said the organization had so far not been able to trace records of bodies being sent by British scientists to the United States.

The sheer volume of papers and the fact that they were conducted around 50 years ago make investigations a challenging prospect and could explain why governments of countries that participated in Project Sunshine are only recently waking up to their parts in the ghoulish studies.

Wooldridge himself was not aware that Australian babies were allegedly sent to the United States until the British media carried reports earlier this week, said a spokesman.

He said the DOE had not yet been contacted to assist in the investigation though he fully expected the department to cooperate.

When contacted, a spokesman for the DOE confirmed the department had not been contacted: "My understanding is the Australian inquiry is looking at their own records."

ABCNEWS reported details of the program in 1995, including the practice of obtaining cadavers from cities where tracking was lax, particularly in poverty- stricken areas.

ABCNEWS' Andrew Chang contributed to this report.

-------- china

China Backs Treaty To Ban Weapons in Space

By Alexander G. Higgins
Associated Press Writer
07 June 2001
http://www.space.com/spacenews/spacepolicy/china_space_weapons_ban_010607.html

GENEVA (AP) -- China proposed a treaty Thursday to ban weapons in outer space because of the imminent "danger" stemming from U.S. missile defense plans.

Chinese Ambassador Hu Xiaodi made the proposal at the 66-nation Conference on Disarmament, the world's only multinational forum for negotiating arms-control treaties.

"All space-based weapons and all weapons attacking outer space targets from the earth are to be prohibited once and for all," said Hu, who introduced draft wording for the proposed treaty.

There was no immediate U.S. reaction, but Western diplomats said Hu's comments only added detail to China's known position on the issue.

China, a bitter critic of U.S. plans for a National Missile Defense system and the expectation that it would involve deployments in space, has long called for a treaty to prevent an arms race in outer space.

The United States has said it was willing to discuss outer space issues, but that it is too soon to say if a new treaty is needed.

A congressionally appointed U.S. panel in January urged Washington to pay more attention to defending the country's assets in space. Donald H. Rumsfeld, now Secretary of Defense, was a member of the panel.

The panel said the United States depends on space more than any other country for a range of activities from military surveillance to weather forecasts and communications.

Hu noted the panel urged steps be taken to protect against the danger of a "space Pearl Harbor" and said the report and U.S. plans "clearly demonstrate that the weaponization of outer space is by no means a remote issue."

"The danger is imminent," he said.

Following diplomatic practice Hu never named the United States, but his direct reference to U.S. plans left no doubt that he was talking about the Bush administration.

"Outer space is now faced with the danger of being weaponized, which manifests itself in two aspects, namely the development of the missile defense program and the 'space control' plan," Hu said.

He was referring to the U.S. Air Force's long advocacy of "space control," which could include weapons to deny an enemy the use of space for combat operations against the United States or its allies.

The Bush administration has been trying to allay fears of China, Russia and other countries about the plan to construct a system to defend against limited missile attacks from "rogue" states like Iraq or North Korea.

It has indicated that it hopes the key other countries can be won over to its approach in the long run, but the Chinese speech showed Beijing remains deeply skeptical.

The disarmament conference has been deadlocked over starting any new negotiations since 1996, when it wrote the treaty to ban nuclear test explosions.

Washington has been urging the conference to work on preventing the spread of nuclear weapons by negotiating a treaty to ban the "fissile materials" -- plutonium and highly enriched uranium -- needed for their manufacture.


-------- depleted uranium

Too many babies without eyes

Dutch Journal Medical Science,
26 May, 2001; 145(21), p.1024
From: "Laka Foundation" <laka@antenna.nl>
Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2001

Mohammed A. Salman, an eye surgeon from Baghdad, is reporting via the internet about the phenomenon anophthalmos: babies who have been born with only one eye or who are missing both eyes. This is a rare anomaly, which normally exists at 1 of the 50 million births. The Iraqi eye doctor, however, is reporting 9 cases in two years; 8 babies are missing both eyes. The Flemish eye doctor Edward De Sutter from the Groeninghe Hospital in Kortrijk picked up the message from internet and started a scientific discussion with Salman per e-mail. On the critical and unbelieving questions from De Sutter, Salman proposed to come and to look by himself. De Sutter accepted the invitation and came to Iraq, together with two other colleague eye doctors. What he saw in Iraq, was horrible, like he writes in the Flemish daily 'De Standaard' (5 May, 2001).

De Sutter examined a number of children by himself which was born without eyes, but also saw some pictures of children with grotesque anomalies, such as the start of one eye in the middle of the face: the so- called cyclops. His colleague Roland Bonneux examined children with an absent crown of the skull who were keeping alive in the incubator. "I am not so much bewildered about the presence of the anomalies as well about the great number out of them", says De Sutter. Out of the 4000 births there are 20 with such anomalies. "Iraq seems to be a scientific curiosity."

The cause is evident according to Salman: from 7 of the 8 anophthalmosic babies who missed both eyes, the fathers have been exposed to U.S. antitank weapons during the attack of the U.S. on Iraq in 1991. At this depleted uranium was used. According to the official point of view from the U.S. the radioactive particles, which released during the use of such weapons, pose no danger for the health, but various groups ­ amongst them participants of the conflicts in Kosovo in 1999 ­ disputing this.

Leaving all political sensitivities aside it has been clear to De Sutter that Salman needs help. Not only concrete aid of medicines and material, but also aid in the field of scientific knowledge and support. On a special web page of the Association of Eye doctors in Flanders (http://www.vvov.be) more is mentioned about the mission of De Sutter to Iraq and the aid program that he and his colleagues want to set up.

Translation by Henk van der Keur

Notes: The web page is Dutch; however also for not Dutch speaking people it is worth to visit. There is a report with pictures.

Contact: Dr.Med.Dr.Sc. Edward De Sutter

Dienst Oogziekten, C.A.Z.K. O.L.V. Groeninghe, Campus Sint-Maarten, B. J. Vercruysselaan 5, B-8500 Kortrijk, Mail to: edward.desutter@azgroeninge.be

The web page on which Dr. De Sutter is referring to is probably: http://www.uruklink.net/iraqnews/echild.htm

----

Vets were exposed to uranium: study

By CP,
June 7, 2001
http://www.canoe.ca/EdmontonNews/es.es-06-07-0051.html</A>

HALIFAX -- New research indicating a possible connection between depleted uranium and illnesses suffered by Gulf War veterans should interest Ottawa to study the issue further, says a researcher in radioactive substances.

"It's frustrating the (Canadian) government doesn't take this more seriously," said Mary Ripley-Guzman, a research co-ordinator with the Uranium Medical Research Centre based in Washington, D.C.

"We've come up with data that show there is depleted uranium in these veterans.

"It's low-level and it's coming out of their urine."

Ripley-Guzman will present the results of the centre's recent study of dozens of Persian Gulf veterans, from several countries, to a Commons Veterans' Affairs committee in Ottawa today.

She will be accompanied by Sue Riordan of Nova Scotia, whose husband Capt. Terry Riordan died in 1999 after a long illness she believes was linked to his service in the Gulf War.

It was the first conflict where weapons coated with a radioactive substance were used.

Ripley-Guzman said while the Canadian government dismisses the research, laboratories in Europe and England are looking into a possible connection.

A series of government-sponsored U.S. studies have failed to explain why thousands of soldiers who fought in the 1990-91 conflict have contracted unexplained illnesses. The theory that depleted uranium weapons might be responsible was boosted when tests on the bones of Capt. Riordon showed high levels of the radioactive substance.

A civilian doctor said Riordan died of Gulf War Syndrome, but it's a conclusion the military refuses to accept.

Last August, a senior Canadian military doctor dismissed the alleged connection between depleted uranium and illnesses after 69 other veterans were tested for the substance.

Col. Ken Scott said there was no evidence Canadians were exposed to this type of coated ammunition and said there was no such diagnosis as Gulf War Syndrome.

-------- europe

EU Mulls a New Deal With Turkey

JUNE 07, 02:06 EST
By JEFFREY ULBRICH
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=EUROPE&STORYID=APIS7CFHJIG0

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - The European Union is considering a new deal with Turkey, a strategic military ally, that would clear the way for the creation of the EU's planned 60,000-man rapid reaction force.

The EU hopes to field the force by 2003 for use in peacekeeping or humanitarian crises in which NATO does not want to get involved.

To avoid duplication and expense, the EU also wants access to NATO's planning facilities and other assets such as intelligence, communications and transport. NATO is willing to do this, but Turkey seeks greater influence over how and when the assets are used.

Turkey is one of six European members of NATO who are not members of the EU; only 11 of the EU's 15 members belong to NATO. The United States and Canada round out the Atlantic alliance.

Turkey, which has one of the largest military forces in NATO, is adamant that it have a strong voice in any EU decision to mount a military operation using NATO assets, or an operation that would affect what Turkey considers its sphere of interest.

Negotiations have been underway since last year. Because NATO operates by consensus, Turkey has an effective veto over any decision on assets. After a final push by Britain and the United States, diplomats hammered out a compromise last week.

Turkey itself has been sending mixed signals about the tentative deal, which one NATO official called a ``non-paper,'' because it carries neither name nor claim of ownership. Some diplomats say that is because Turkey's armed forces have not signed off on it yet.

Officials hope the compromise can be formally approved by the time President Bush attends a NATO summit next Wednesday.

The six-point proposal provides for consultation between the non-EU European NATO allies - Turkey, Norway, Iceland, Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary - and the EU on any decision affecting their security interests.

One of Turkey's main demands had been the right to participate in the initial decision-making phase of any EU operation, not just operational planning. While allowing the non-EU allies to consult during the decision-making phase, the proposal does not give them a veto. It only promises to consider their views.

EU foreign ministers meet Monday and Tuesday in Luxembourg and will have to decide if they can accept the proposed level of participation of nonmember states in EU business.

Diplomats are anxious to clear this hurdle, which is only one part of a larger agreement that will govern relations between NATO and the emerging military arm of the EU.

----

Armies of Europe Failing to Meet Goals, Sapping NATO

New York Times
June 7, 2001
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/07/world/07NATO.html

LONDON, June 6 - Two years after NATO vowed to improve its military forces, the organization is falling well short of its goals, leaving a yawning gap between the United States and its European allies.

An internal NATO review has concluded that if the alliance's current spending plans are carried out, it will fulfill less than half its "force goals" - its 1999 plans to build up its military effectiveness and deal with problems that surfaced during the bombing campaign in Kosovo.

And NATO's secretary general, Lord Robertson, said in an interview that European members of the alliance are not doing enough to remedy their deficiencies.

As a result, European forces could be overly dependent on the United States if they became involved in a new conflict. And if European nations try to tackle the crisis themselves, they may find they lack the means to do the job.

"For the Europeans there is a clear message," Lord Robertson said. "If a crisis comes along, the capability will not be there."

The sobering assessment comes at a crucial time. The allies' defense ministers are to meet in Brussels on Thursday, and President Bush is to visit NATO's headquarters there next week.

A major topic on the ministers' agenda is NATO's effort to fill the gaps that emerged during its war with Yugoslavia. The conflict demonstrated that European nations have fallen well behind the United States in many areas, including precision- guided weapons, mid-air refueling, airlifting of war matériel, electronic jamming and weapons to knock out enemy air defenses.

European leaders have promised to remedy the shortfalls, both to strengthen their role within NATO and to develop the means to act independently of the United States through a 60,000-member rapid reaction force, which the European Union plans to establish by 2003. But only limited progress has been made.

"We need to do more," Lord Robertson said.

Much of the consternation at NATO headquarters centers on the objectives the alliance set for itself at its summit meeting in Washington in 1999, for NAT0's 50th anniversary.

At the time, it was clear that the United States was carrying the main burden for the air campaign against Yugoslavia. And with much fanfare NATO approved a program to redress the imbalance and improve the alliance's ability to mount multinational operations, a program it calls the Defense Capabilities Initiative.

A series of "force goals" were specified for five areas: logistics, command and control, mobility, the survivability of forces and infrastructure, and "effective engagement," which essentially means the ability to find and strike targets from the air with precision-guided munitions.

A committee, with NATO's deputy secretary general, Sergio Balanzino, as chairman, was set up to monitor progress. But a review overseen by Mr. Balanzino indicates that NATO's current spending plans would enable it to completely fulfill less than half the "force goals."

Nor is it clear whether remaining objectives will be met. The review notes that one-third of these objectives would be only partly reached under current spending plans. Other goals are still under discussion or appear to be effectively abandoned.

According to the review, most of the progress has been in logistics and in the matériel needed to sustain a conflict.

Effective engagement, the term for precision-guided munitions and the systems that support them, is the weakest of the five areas: NATO's spending plans will only enable it to meet 35 percent of its goal, the review states.

One major reason for the meager progress is lagging support in Europe for military spending. NATO's calculations show that only 11 of its 19 members have increased their spending, after inflation is taken into account.

"The constituency for defense spending is weaker now that the threat appears to have gone away," Lord Robertson said.

Spending estimates by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based research center, paint a bleaker picture. The institute notes that European Union nations as a whole spend about 60 percent as much as the United States.

The level of effort varies widely. Britain's military spending, for example, far outstrips that of Germany, whose defense reforms are faltering. Another problem is competition among military programs.

"Rising personnel costs and a wave of systems acquisitions initiated some time ago, as well as the costs of ongoing operations, leave little room for investment to satisfy newly identified requirements," the institute noted in its annual Strategic Survey.

Two items on Thursday's agenda for the defense ministers illustrate the alliance's difficulties.

One is a proposal to acquire the ability to find and track enemy forces using an airborne radar, a program known as aerial ground surveillance. This has been a top priority for NATO's military command since 1991. But the alliance has not agreed on how to proceed, and few members have indicated any enthusiasm for paying for it.

The United States currently has such a system, known as J-Stars. And it would like NATO nations to join Washington in developing a system for the alliance. But Europeans have different programs and ideas for how to go about this.

The other subject is development of weapons to attack enemy air defenses, like missiles fired from warplanes that home in on enemy radars. With the public increasingly loath to accept casualties, such suppression of enemy air defense is important.

But only seven NATO nations have or are acquiring such systems. And of these, few can attack air defenses with real precision. Only the United States has an effective airborne capability to jam enemy communications.

The shortfalls have implications that go beyond NATO. With the encouragement of the United States, NATO has supported the European Union's efforts to develop a rapid reaction force.

NATO's reasoning was that the European Union force might take on tasks that NATO is not eager to handle. Also, casting defense as an exercise in European integration, allied officials argued, could be a useful way to encourage support in European parliaments for military spending, which could end up benefiting NATO.

In return, the organization has offered to give the European Union access to its military planners and, on a case-by-case basis, assets like bases and Awacs battle-management planes.

But Europe's faltering effort raises the question of whether European Union nations are keeping their side of the bargain and whether their rapid reaction force will ever be more than a paper tiger.

"Capabilities is the European side of the bargain," Lord Robertson said. "If we are going to be able to handle a crisis with the E.U. in the lead or NATO in the lead, we need to have a better capability, or the crisis will simply not be tackled."

----

NATO Tunes Up for Bush Visit As Macedonia Smolders

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

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - NATO defense ministers met on Thursday to practice marching in step before President Bush makes his first visit to Europe next week.

The 19-member alliance has been stung by media reports -- hotly denied then and since -- of a European policy rebuff for Secretary of State Colin Powell when foreign ministers met last week in Budapest.

Accounts of transatlantic splits in NATO since Bush came to office with a new set of defense and strategic ideas were nonsense, Alliance General George Robertson told ministers at Thursday's opening session.

``I think that this meeting today will bear out the fact that last week's news stories of an alliance divided were in reality pure fiction,'' Robertson said.

His complaint made clear, however, how sensitive NATO is to any whiff of disunity, and how much it wants to avoid any further appearance of discord before the Bush visit, be it over U.S. missile defense plans or Balkan peacekeeping.

But the mounting crisis in Macedonia may spoil the choreography, yanking NATO's attention back to a threat far more imminent than that posed by the missile acquisition plans of ''rogue states'' or even genuine but civilized differences over future risks.

MACEDONIA SMOULDERS

Robertson condemned the ``cowardly and senseless'' killing of five Macedonian soldiers by ethnic Albanian guerrillas on Wednesday, urging the ``men of violence'' to lay down their guns and join the normal political process.

Last month, Robertson denounced the guerrillas as ``murderous thugs'' who would never win a seat at the negotiating table at the point of their guns and should simply disappear.

In contacts which have failed to remain secret, however, NATO and European Union powers are desperately trying to end the conflict by engineering blanket amnesty for the rebels.

But hope of dialogue is literally going up in smoke.

The central Macedonian city of Bitola, home to three of the latest victims, was still smoldering on Thursday after a night of rioting in which Albanian shops and homes were burned.

The widening gulf between Slavs and minority Albanians could lead Macedonia closer to a civil war on the doorstep of Kosovo, scene of NATO's biggest military undertaking in its 52-year history, where 36,000 peacekeepers are on duty.

Robertson said Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had given the allies a briefing on a far-reaching U.S. defense review taking in missile defense and nuclear posture.

``It marks an important opportunity to consult about the direction of U.S. thinking before any decisions are made, and we welcome this commitment to consultation in NATO,'' he said.

While America's allies accept that the proliferation of missiles and weapons of mass destruction is giving rise to new threats which will need new responses, they are concerned about consigning classic Cold War arms control to the garbage bin.

Rumsfeld told reporters on Wednesday that planned testing of missile defenses technologies could soon collide with the provisions of the U.S-Soviet anti-ballistic missile treaty of 1972, which some see as the ``cornerstone'' on arms control.

Rumsfeld told NATO defense ministers, however, that nothing stays the same and while the United States did not possess a crystal ball to clearly discern future threats, it would be a failure of duty not to try to address them.

He outlined the architecture of a ``layered'' missile defense that might provide protective shields are different altitudes, but there was no precise detail in the presentation and, as one senior diplomat put it, ``no attempt to close the sale.''

--------

HAVEL, NATO, AND RUSSIA

Chronicles Magazine,
by Michael Stenton
Thursday, June 7, 2001
http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/News/Stenton/NewsMS060701.htm

President Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic has given another very bad speech. Addressing a meeting of the prime ministers of nine former communist countries seeking NATO membership and Croatia in Bratislava on May 11, he presented his justifications for expanding American military power and excluding Russia from Europe.

New NATO has a certain logic that should be plain to everyone. America cannot remain the world's unrivalled superpower unless she leads in Europe. As the European Union hardens this will be increasingly difficult, and it would already have become impossible without a NATO policy in Eastern Europe that could legitimate and conciliate German aspirations without providing motive or opportunity for Russo-German rapprochement. Hence the expansion of NATO. But the costs--ideological overdrive, Balkan adventures and the acquisition and rearmament of a club of anti-Russian states--may have consequences that go far beyond the original motive. American policy-making does not generate long and complex plans, but it has an almost horticultural vigor. It starts with a series of ideological suggestions that, unless weeded out early, congeal as imperatives into a rigid structure which can then function on automatic pilot as a political engine. Vietnam showed how hard it can be to stop. On the Russian front we are well into stage two--with a confrontational political engine in sight as stage three. Furthermore, American policy is not the sum of White House intentions: NATO leaders, media corporations and favored NGOs can all push or, less often, resist. Havel is not just a minor NATO leader, he is still a sort of one-man NGO. As a politician he has lost his sparkle and is no longer inspirational, but a hard-earned reputation such as his is always useful to the very powerful and he is aware of it.

Havel evidently knows the obvious objections to New NATO. But he does not give clarifying answers, he offers myths and pretence. He claims, for example, that NATO is a "truly regional" alliance that will eventually fit into a "future multipolar world order." But he does not say what or where the other pole (or poles!) will be, which is shrewd of him since the signs of this multipolarity are lacking and the present reality is that we have just one military superpower, which Havel wants to strengthen. NATO is about to ungrade Czech airfields to take large U.S. troop transporters. These, Mr. Havel, are transit facilities. Transit to where? Havel does not say. But the moral destination is identity:

The European post-communist countries truly belong to the West--geographically, historically, culturally as well as in terms of their values. Thus they have every right to stress that they were torn out of the Western community by force and that their natural place is within that community.

This seems fair enough for the Czechs, if we can overlook the little local difficulty they were having with their "Western" neighbors 1938-45 when so rudely interrupted by the Asiastic horde. But should we overlook it? The Soviet bloc states were not cut out of the West by the Soviet Union: They were all under Nazi control when the Red Army arrived. Was Nazi Europe "the West"? Was the Soviet tyranny after 1948 more damaging than Nazi occupation or even, to go three centuries further back, the Habsburg clerical tyranny after the battle of the White Mountain in 1620? Or is there some special dispensation for damage inflicted by Germans which does not apply to Stalin's henchmen? Few thought so in 1945. Besides, it would be merely silly to say that Bulgarians and Romanians--even Ukrainians could qualify providing they turn against Moscow and embrace NATO--were "torn out" of the West in 1945. They were never considered "western" before Communism: they were torn out of the Christian West--the Christendom to the west of Asia--long ago. The Mongols destroyed Kiev in 1240, and the Balkan peoples had their national potential shattered by the Ottoman victories at Kosovo in 1389 and Nikopolis in 1392. This laceration was far worse than Soviet control of Czechoslovakia after 1948. (But the heartland Europe is invariably sniffy about the Christian "reconquistas" whether in Spain, Muscovy or the Balkans.) Let us put aside the term "West" for a moment. The 20th-century story is that Russia itself was removed from the community of European nations by the Bolsheviks; Germany by the Nazis in 1933; the Czechs by Nazi occupation in March 1939; and Spain by Franco at the same period. Havel wants them all in NATO, except Russia.

Is Havel again an underground writer using one name as code for another? He offers this on Russia:

Those who lack order in themselves, or at home, try to impose some kind of a substitute concept of order on everybody else. Distrust of oneself and uncertainty about one's own identity necessarily generate a distrust of others, imputation of evil intentions to the rest of the world and, eventually, an aggressiveness that may result in the invasion of other people's territories, or at the least in forcing one's own domination upon those who do not desire it.

This cuts two ways. It sounds like the USA, as the author must know. Even if Havel means to analyze "eternal" Russia, let us apply his formula to the present. Cechnya is Russian territory. It is plain that the Russians were extremely reluctant to fight for it, and did so for the sake of the principle of federation sovereignty. Alexander Lebed's peace policy was surely more intelligent and certainly more humane, and Russia may pay dearly for abandoning it, but the Chechen war was pragmatic. Havel's psychological profile fits NATO-land much better. The United States broke the agreement with Moscow not to expand NATO eastwards. After the seizure of Kosovo, U.S. intentions and justifications are acutely disturbing. Russia went out her way not to impute evil to NATO until events forced a change of judgment. An America ready to conciliate Russia in her time of weakness could have kept her word and achieved a truly civilizing detente. That chance was fully understood in Washington and deliberately thrown away.

Havel's idea of NATO territory--"the one that we call the West extends from Alaska in the west to Tallinn in the east." He is mistaken. NATO command and control does not operate in the United States. This is an important technicality. Europe would not be consulted if the U.S. wanted a nuclear exchange with China. In any case, Havel's 'Euro-Atlantic' alliance is a misnomer. Turkey is not an Atlantic power and is only marginally European. America is most certainly a Pacific power. American power stretches from the Philippines, Taiwan, Okinawa and Korea through the Americas, across Europe, through the Mediterranean and the Middle East and into the Indian Ocean. This is an area of land and sea that is vast beyond all comparison. It is in no sense regional. Like the British Empire it is commercial and strategic: it is not a geographical translation of spiritual sources. Today it stretches not just to Estonia but towards candidate countries that we don't talk about very much but which do receive whispered promises: Ukraine, Georgia and Azerbaijan for example. Havel knows perfectly well that his list of Western values--reader, you know them--are these days widely asserted outside Europe. So he reverts to geography after all. Having boasted that values are even more defining for NATO than geography, he dances back to geography to defend the conclusion he wants: Russians out. For Havel, there must be a river in Eastern Europe--preferably, I suspect, the river Dnieper, but in principle, whichever river the U.S. State Department may care to name--which is wider than the Atlantic Ocean. Pan-Slavism was no doubt unhistorical, but a vast NATO billowing forth on a wave of cliches called values is no improvement.

Havel's Eurokitsch is considerable, but he says nothing to suggest why the European territory of the former Ottoman Empire is the West and Russia is not. Perhaps some Viennese scribbler in 1914 might have dared to called Turkey "Europa" and Russia "Asien," but are we to be reduced to such gibberish? Did we really survive the Cold war to receive new ambitions and geopolitical missions from voices mimicking the Mitteleuropa of yesteryear?

To be fair, Havel does not use this voice. He is as silent about Turkey as an unprovoked German. He admits that European Russia played an important part in European history. (And what a sense of history! Even at the start, Ivan III could warn a Viennese advocate of a papal crown for Russia: "My ancestors were friendly with the Emperors who gave Rome to the popes.") But it seems that Russia with Siberia and the Pacific territories is just too much for him. The vastness of Siberia, however, is not the real Russia. Russia is a European state with a lot of Asian real estate attached. Havel excludes Russia from the NATO "not because it [was] in any way inferior," but simply because we must have "clearly delimited regions" and "historically determined entities" without which "anything could extend anywhere" and "any balance would be disrupted" and all organizations become "absolutely toothless."

This is ludicrous. Can the man not hear his own arguments? The "West" is not a region; it is an intercontinental novelty; and Europe is simply not clearly delimited. USA/NATO is the object that can extend anywhere, and it is NATO that has shattered all semblance of balance. But Havel's crucial term is "toothless." He must have something that can bite Russia. All the rest is flim-flam:

The West has had, in essence, a common political and economic history emanating from the same set of spiritual sources. For many centuries the character of its civilization and its inner ethos equipped it to exert a major influence on all the other regions and to eventually predetermine the shape of the entire planetary civilization of today.

Perhaps. But which spiritual sources? The 12th-century renaissance, or the trained alacrity with which British sailors scampered around their naval guns? Havel knows well enough that the modern easy-approval values were simply not there "for many centuries." He would love to trace membership of a club for today to ancient spiritual sources but he knows he cannot be specific.

It is true the Latin West had more violent disagreement in its Christianity than did Greek Orthodoxy. The product was wild diversity. Free Bohemia, for example, was squashed by the Counter-Reformation. The free-speech liberalism of the English-speaking world was very different from the imperial conformism of the Habsburg Empire. Did this somehow amount to the same thing? There is no common political and economic history of the Latin West. Its unity was fractured centuries ago. The invocation of common "spiritual sources" is cultural kitsch; it is not meant to illuminate serious modern problems. We can concede Prague's claim to have long been at the center of Europe. But to what effect? Was the liberalism of 1848 in central Europe so much superior to the same trends in Russia before 1914? And if both failed, must only the failure in Russia be unforgivable when it comes to modern political maps? The Russians, it may be said, never voted for communism to anything like the extent that the Czechs did.

Havel knows that the imperialist crimes of the West constitute an historic objection to a Western military alliance that is no longer defensive. So he disapproves of imperialism in a phrase, and his disclaimer is hollow. He walks as if hypnotized towards the current reincarnation of imperial arrogance. He has become the leading "Soviet bloc" proponent of this arrogance, as if having embraced NATO he must make its worst actions the best proof of his wisdom. It may be that his natural anti-Soviet bitterness is growing more acute at the end of his life, and it is likely that the Germans, who are helping to satisfy Czech hunger for the fruits of capitalism, told him in no uncertain terms and at an early stage what they wanted; but it is likely that he has another strategic motive. Havel wants to ensure that no future line of political or economic division shall ever separates his people again from German central Europe, but he does not want to be alone with the Germans. Hence the showman's assiduity: his concern to be as conspicuous as possible to Washington. What other motive could he have for suggesting that Mrs. Albright should be his successor? The more America picks up the new Drang nach Osten, the more happy he is about it. Havel says that he abandoned his dream that NATO could fade away at the end of the Cold War in the late 80's, that is just before the "Velvet Revolution." Was there a quid pro quo, a bargain struck when he was identified by Western powers as a figurehead? He says that an alternative "structure" to NATO would have been costly, dangerous and would have created a power vacuum. But was there the least need for a "structure"? The Czechs are in NATO because they were wanted by specific powers and because they wanted to be patronized by the rich again. It had nothing to do, at least when it happened, with "defense." As for the power vacuum: NATO was the only thing generating the pressure to get itself sucked in. There were no other candidates. On this argument the Czechs joined NATO to prevent NATO getting sucked in. One can forgive the Czechs, Hungarians and Poles for wanting security from a Soviet Union that is no longer there. It is perfectly natural. But they should ask in whose interest it is to go on expanding.

Havel is a recognizable figure: a brave man who does not want a brave policy for his people. Edward Benes, the Czechoslovak leader in 1938 and 1948, had even more to be afraid of and he was just as determined to avoid a brave policy. In 1938, Benes surrendered at just the point he knew a British cabinet majority had challenged Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler. In 1945, he groveled to the Soviets to give his people long-term protection against Germany. By the first decision he scuppered the chances of German military opposition to Hitler and achieved a disastrous postponement of the war in Europe, by the second decision he threw away what chance there was of Czechoslovakia keeping out of the Soviet zone. Benes was a very clever man solving the wrong problem. An educated blunderer. We must hope President Havel is more fortunate in his foolishness.

Russia is not, as Havel pretends, a vast Eurasian power that will "always" play a major role in the world balance of power. It once seemed so and perhaps Russia will recover the role, but today her future is entirely unclear. It may even become possible to destroy Russia as a major power. Her population is in demographic collapse and her mineral resources will almost certainly attract predators. Russia needs a European economic anchor, and some strategic reassurance, not a rerun of the Cold War in which former satellites exorcize their ghosts by arming themselves for the humanitarian interventions which become attractive as Russia decays. Does Havel want America, Germany or Turkey to feel the temptation? Provided the Czechs are safe, perhaps he does not mind. But his NATO cheerleading might have alarming consequences.

Dr. Stenton, an occasional contributor to Chronicles, is Director of Studies of The Lord Byron Foundation for Balkan Studies. He writes from London.

-------- germany

German nuke industry plans to share accident risks

GERMANY: June 7, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11087

FRANKFURT - Germany's four nuclear plant operators plan to share increased liability risks for accidents amongst themselves rather than buying more cover on the market, a spokeswoman for utility RWE said this week.

The scheme was among a number of open discussion points ahead of the planned signing of the operators' nuclear power phase-out programme with the government on June 11, she said.

"The industry in last June's atomic compromise deal was given a choice how to arrange cover for additional risks," the spokeswoman for RWE Power AG, the plant division of leading utility RWE, said from Essen.

"The operators are still in talks to clarify their plan to set up a scheme of mutual risk sharing."

"But they will find a consensus...this will not hold up the signing of the phase-out programme next Monday."

She made the remarks on behalf of the board chairman of RWE Power, Gert Maichel, who is also the current president of the nuclear industry body, German Atomic Forum (DAtF).

Apart from RWE, the nuclear operators are E.ON , HEW , and EnBW .

The spokeswoman said Maichel was responding to a press report claiming the operators were trying to save money on insurance policies by rolling over the risk to the public sector and possible victims.

The phase-out agreement with the German government, which requires the country's 19 plants be closed by the mid-2020s, raises the mandatory accident cover from currently 500 million marks ($216.2 million) to five billion marks ($2.16 billion).

"The (last June's) agreement said the additional risks could be covered through insurance policies or through arrangements of equal value," the spokeswoman said.

"The industry is clear it will bear the additional risk."

-------- japan

JAPAN: WARMER WORDS ON MISSILE SHIELD

New York Times
Calvin Sims
June 7, 2001
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/07/world/07BRIE.html?searchpv=nytToday

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said Japan "understood" American policy on building a missile defense, which he said merited research. Mr. Koizumi's comments, delivered before Parliament, seemed intended to counter criticisms of the Bush administration's missile-shield plans reportedly made recently by his foreign minister. Howard French (NYT)

JAPAN: TREATY TALKS WITH RUSSIA Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka and her Russian counterpart, Igor S. Ivanov, agreed in a telephone conversation to hold talks on signing a long-sought peace treaty that would formally end decades of antagonism between the countries over a group of islands seized by Soviet troops at the end of World War II. The two ministers plan to talk in Italy next month at the annual meeting of the major industrialized nations, a Japanese Foreign Ministry official said. (NYT)

-------- korea

U.S. Will Resume Talks With N. Korea
Decision Follows 3-Month Review

By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 7, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32852-2001Jun6?language=printer

The Bush administration said yesterday that it will resume negotiations with North Korea aimed at restricting Pyongyang's missile development, halting its missile exports, tightening inspections of its nuclear facilities and easing military tension along its border with South Korea.

Just three months ago, President Bush had cast doubt on the wisdom of holding talks with North Korea, calling its Communist leadership untrustworthy. But in a statement last night, he announced that the United States will restart "serious discussions" on a "broad agenda," and he dangled the prospect of U.S. assistance.

"Our approach will offer North Korea the opportunity to demonstrate the seriousness of its desire for improved relations," Bush said. "If North Korea responds affirmatively and takes appropriate action, we will expand our efforts to help the North Korean people, ease sanctions, and take other political steps."

The decision follows a three-month policy review and opens the way for a resumption of negotiations that had been pursued intensively toward the end of the Clinton administration. Some Clinton administration officials said last year that they had made important progress in those talks, citing North Korea's acceptance of the principle of restricting its missile program and exports.

But when the Bush administration took office, it sought to distance itself from the approach of the previous administration and suspended negotiations while conducting the policy review. A senior administration official said yesterday that Bush officials will emphasize "transparency and verification," two of the most difficult issues in the Clinton administration's negotiations.

A senior Pentagon official added that the Bush administration is not likely to consider a presidential trip to Pyongyang, which Clinton had contemplated, or a trip like the one made by Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright in October, when she attended a large rally at a stadium with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

"I don't think you're going to see Secretary [of State Colin L.] Powell carrying on in the Pyongyang stadium anytime soon," the Pentagon official said. "You have to deal with these people, which requires a certain degree of holding your nose, but you should not forget who they are and not let other people forget who they are."

Still, many foreign policy experts said the decision to restart negotiations with North Korea represents a return to the basic Clinton approach.

"You have to discover it yourself," former U.S ambassador to South Korea James Lilley said of the Bush policy review.

"They're more or less right back where they started, with a minor tweak in the language," said a Democratic aide on Capitol Hill.

Some also saw the announcement as a victory for Powell, who said on March 6 that the administration planned to "engage" North Korea and "pick up where President Clinton and his administration left off." The next day, Bush expressed skepticism, saying that "we're not certain as to whether or not they're [North Koreans] keeping all terms of all agreements." Another senior administration official said at that time that North Korea was a "failed regime" and that "you cannot rely on Kim Jong Il's word."

Bush's remarks at that time, made during a visit by South Korean President Kim Dae Jung, cast a shadow over Kim's "sunshine policy" of engaging North Korea. Some Korea experts said Bush had undermined and embarrassed the South Korean leader.

Bush's delay in resuming the talks also dealt a setback to Kim's effort to arrange a visit to Seoul by the North Korean leader before June 14, the anniversary of a historic visit to Pyongyang by the South Korean president.

In his statement yesterday, Bush specifically said the United States will "seek to encourage progress toward North-South reconciliation." The senior Pentagon official added: "We've definitely got to be supporting our South Korean allies, who had made some progress on this."

Powell will meet today with South Korea's foreign minister, who arrived in Washington last night.

Bush cited three goals for the talks: "improved implementation of the Agreed Framework relating to North Korea's nuclear activities; verifiable constraints on North Korea's missile programs and a ban on its missile exports; and a less threatening conventional military posture."

The Agreed Framework, negotiated by the Clinton administration in 1994, froze North Korea's nuclear weapons program in return for billions of dollars in fuel assistance and help in building safer, light-water nuclear reactors. Bush administration officials said yesterday that they want to make sure the framework's provisions on International Atomic Energy Agency inspections are implemented quickly. They made no mention of the desire, previously voiced by leading Republicans, to renegotiate the framework in order to replace the nuclear reactors with coal-fired plants.

Over the past three years, the United States has also sought to curb Pyongyang's missile program. After North Korea tested a long-range missile in 1998, that weapons program was cited as a prime example of a "rogue state" threat to the United States and a justification for missile defense. In addition, U.S. officials have accused Pyongyang of selling missile technology to Pakistan and Iran.

Bush's call for changes in North Korea's conventional military posture apparently refers to the hundreds of thousands of North Korean troops stationed along the border it shares with the South, a short distance from Seoul. The United States has 37,000 troops based in the southern half of the divided peninsula.

Robert Manning, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said it remains unclear what Bush would be willing to offer North Korea in return for concessions. The president's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, last year criticized the Clinton administration's 1994 offer of food, fuel and other aid to North Korea as a "bribe."

"What are we putting on the table? They're not going to lay down their arms because they like us," Manning said. "There's going to have to be some sort of incentive structure, and that's the kind of thing they [the Bush officials] have a hard time with."

----

Bush will renew missile talks with Kim

June 7, 2001
By Ben Barber
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010607-85237934.htm

The Bush administration announced yesterday that it will resume talks with North Korea on its missile program and would also push for discussions on border troop concentrations.

No date was announced for the resumed dialogue, which was suspended soon after President Bush took office. The talks were halted while the new administration began a review of whether the previous administration had been too accommodating to the communist regime in Pyongyang.

"I have directed my national security team to undertake serious discussions with North Korea on a broad agenda," said President Bush in a statement released by the White House.

The talks will include "improved implementation of the agreed framework relating to North Korea´s activities," which was signed by the Clinton administration and North Korea in 1994, the president said.

The U.S. agenda will also include North Korea´s missile programs, a ban on missile exports and "a less threatening conventional military posture" by its million-man army near the border of South Korea, where 37,000 U.S. troops are stationed.

Secretary of State Colin Powell meets today with South Korean Foreign Minister Han Seung-soo and will disclose to him the results of a review of U.S. policy toward North Korea, a State Department spokesman said yesterday.

"The meeting tomorrow will provide us with another opportunity to discuss the situation on the peninsula and future policies with our South Korean ally," said spokesman Richard Boucher yesterday.

"We´ll have something to say tomorrow to the South Korean foreign minister."

State Department officials speaking on the condition of anonymity said the review had largely decided to continue the Clinton administration´s policy of engagement with the North and to support the 1994 U.S.-North Korea Framework Accord.

But the Bush administration had sought to mollify severe critics of that policy in Congress who had spent seven years accusing the Clinton administration of appeasement of the North.

Under the Framework Accord, North Korea froze its nuclear program, which was suspected of aiming at weapons production, in return for U.S. fuel oil and twin nuclear power reactors to be provided by South Korea and Japan.

The United States also provided substantial famine relief to North Korea since a series of natural disasters beginning in the mid-1990s.

South Korea´s President Kim Dae-jung used the Clinton opening to North Korea to begin his own "Sunshine Policy" of engagement, trade and diplomacy, which led to a summit meeting in Pyongyang, the North´s capital, last year.

The North´s leader, Kim Jong-il, while retaining absolute, Draconian and totalitarian control over his people, moved to open diplomatic relations with Western countries and openly courted American trade, aid and diplomatic contacts.

Mr. Powell at first said the Bush administration would continue the Clinton policies of engagement with the North.

But, during a visit by the South´s president, Mr. Bush shifted course and pulled the plug on all talks on halting the North´s missile programs and other issues.

Mr. Bush said that the North was not to be trusted, and that verification systems must be in place on any agreements before any further talks would proceed.

The review of policy was then started.

Even though the U.S.-North Korean talks were halted, the North announced to visiting European diplomats recently that it would unilaterally continue its moratorium on long-range missile tests for another two years.

----

S. Korea Welcomes U.S. Intervention

By Paul Shin
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, June 7, 2001; 8:40 a.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010607/aponline084051_000.htm

SEOUL, South Korea -- South Korea's government said Thursday it hopes that stalled inter-Korea reconciliation efforts will be revived now that the United States has decided to resume talks with communist North Korea.

There was no immediate reaction from the North's reclusive government, but its unofficial spokesman in Japan also welcomed the development.

After months of extensive deliberations, the Bush administration said Wednesday that it is ready to open talks with North Korea on that nation's missile program and its massive deployment of troops close to the border with South Korea.

The U.S. decision was a relief to Seoul. Upset by what it felt was a tough U.S. policy toward it, North Korea had cut off all government exchanges with South Korea and declared that it would not resume inter-Korea dialogue while Washington reviewed its policies toward the North.

That set back efforts to have the North's leader, Kim Jong Il, travel to Seoul to meet with President Kim Dae-jung, something the two leaders had agreed to do during their first-ever summit in Pyongyang last year.

We "hope that North Korea will engage in dialogue with the United States with sincerity and make meaningful progress, thereby bringing peace and stability to the Korean Peninsula," said Park Joon-young, a spokesman for South Korea's presidential Blue House.

There was no immediate reaction from the North Korean government or from its state-run media. However, Kim Myong Chol, an official in Japan who has long been regarded as the North's unofficial spokesman, praised the breakthrough.

"North Korea is ready for talks with the United States. North Korea is ready to discuss the missile issue," Kim said in a telephone interview.

But he added that the North may be less conciliatory on other issues.

Kim said North Korea would be willing to discuss its troop deployment along the Demilitarized Zone that separates the North and South, "but only when the U.S. withdraws its troops from South Korea."

According to U.S. and South Korean officials, two-thirds of North Korea's 1.1-million-member military are deployed close to the border with South Korea. South Korea has a 650,000-member military, assisted by 37,000 U.S. troops. Washington has repeatedly ignored demands by the North that it withdraw its forces from the South.

Kim also said Pyongyang officials would use the talks to remind the United States that it must comply with the nuclear accord that it signed with Pyongyang in 1994.

In return for freezing its development of nuclear technology, the North was promised two nuclear-powered reactors by the United States, Japan and South Korea that would be built in the North by the year 2003.

----

U.S. - North Korean Talks Offer Ray of Sunshine

June 7, 2001
By REUTERS Filed at 9:06 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-korea-n.html?searchpv=reuters

SEOUL (Reuters) - President Bush's decision to hold broad negotiations with North Korea may dispel some of the clouds over South Korea's ``sunshine policy'' toward its former enemy, officials and analysts said.

Bush announced Wednesday that the United States would resume talks with North Korea and broaden them to include conventional forces and nuclear issues as well as missiles.

Bush, whose administration halted talks three months ago to conduct a policy review, promised that if North Korea ``responds affirmatively, we will expand our efforts to help the North Korean people, ease sanctions and take other political steps.''

South Korea welcomed the decision, which it said was ``based on the series of recent close discussions and cooperation between South Korea and the United States.''

A statement from Seoul's presidential Blue House urged North Korea to ``take a very sincere attitude'' toward the talks.

South Korea can expect visible changes later this month in its relationship with North Korea, Seoul's semi-official Yonhap News Agency reported, quoting a former official who returned from a visit to Pyongyang.

``A high-ranking North Korean official stressed unfailing actions regarding the opening of rail and highway links and other items,'' said the South's former Agriculture Minister Kim Sung-hoon, identifying the official only as a close aide to the North's leader Kim Jong-il.

The South has hoped to open rail and road links across the heavily armed border by September. But the project has been delayed because the North has stopped talks about military cooperation needed to allow construction through an area littered with land mines.

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

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

Bush has also promoted an ambitious and hugely expensive missile shield to deal with threats from ``rogue states'' with long-range missile capabilities such as North Korea, which has reacted bitterly to its pariah status.

RETURN SUMMIT

Washington's resumption of talks with North Korea could clear the way for the North Korean leader's long-awaited return summit in South Korea this year. Kim told a visiting European delegation in May he planned to visit South Korea once the Bush administration completed its policy review and resumed contacts.

``South Korea and North Korea obviously both want to talk with each other, but they have to await the result of a dialogue between the United States and North Korea,'' said Kim Young-yoon, of the state-run Korean Institute for National Unification.

Analysts said North Korea appeared to be trying to signal something by sending cargo ships into South Korean waters in recent days -- the first such incursions since the Korean War.

``With the ship incursions this week, North Korea was trying to say 'I want to have a dialogue with South Korea,''' Kim Young-yoon said. South Korea's said armed force would be used if the incursions continued.

CONVENTIONAL THREAT

Some analysts also saw less than smooth sailing for the talks. Bush's decision to address North Korea's nuclear program and the threat from its conventional forces, much of it arrayed along the world's most heavily fortified frontier, could pose problems for both Koreas, they said.

``The U.S. position on the reduction of conventional weapons is in direct conflict with the South Korean government,'' said Kwak Tae-hwan, former director of Seoul's Institute for Far Eastern Studies and professor at Eastern Kentucky University.

``The South Korean government position is conventional weapons should be handled by both Koreas, not the U.S, and the nuclear and missile issues handled between North Korea and the U.S.''

The administration will not seek to renegotiate a 1994 accord -- signed under the Clinton administration -- that gives Pyongyang nuclear power reactors in exchange for a freeze on its nuclear arms program, U.S. officials said.

But it will insist that North Korea begin now -- rather than at some indefinite future point -- to bring its nuclear program under the safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and produce evidence of the nature and scope of its now frozen nuclear weapons program, they added.

For its part, North Korea wants compensation for delays in building the reactors, now at least four years behind schedule, and says the 1994 accord stipulated that the IAEA inspection can only take place once most of the work on the reactors is done.

FAMINE AND SHORTAGES

The famine-plagued North relies on international aid to feed its 22 million people and much of its industry has been shuttered because of chronic energy shortages.

Improved ties with the United States could unlock billions of dollars in aid from the World Bank and other agencies.

The decision to reopen talks will be communicated to South Korean Foreign Minister Han Seung-soo at a meeting with Secretary of State Colin Powell Thursday.

China, Australia and Japan welcomed Washington's decision.

``We regard the improvement of U.S.-Korea relations as an important accelerating factor,'' China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi said.

``We hope they will continue the process of dialogue, and play a positive role in the peace process on the peninsula.''

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told reporters in Canberra: ``In my view it is the only policy that can conceivably lead to a constructive outcome.''

Kazuhiko Koshikawa, spokesman for Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, said the decision was in line with recent talks held in Hawaii between Washington, Tokyo and Seoul which have been coordinating policy on North Korea.

-------- missile defense

NATO: Ministers Announce SFOR Reduction, Mull U.S. Missile Plans

7 June 2001
RFE/RL
http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/2001/06/070607120837.asp

Brussels, NATO defense ministers met today in Brussels to discuss issues including U.S. missile defense plans and the situation in the Western Balkans.

After the meeting, NATO's Secretary-General Lord George Robertson said NATO ministers had agreed to a "small reduction" in peacekeeping forces in Bosnia. But Robertson said the cuts would not affect KFOR troops in Kosovo:

"Ministers also approved the six-month reviews for the Stabilization Force in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Kosovo Force in Kosovo. They concluded that while a small reduction in troop levels in SFOR may be possible, no change will be made in the size and the structure of KFOR."

During the meeting, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld also briefed his NATO colleagues on U.S. missile defense plans.

Robertson said Rumsfeld's presentation on dangers of proliferation of nuclear and chemical weapons had been "thought-provoking". He also said Rumsfeld had reiterated the U.S. commitment to consulting its European allies on U.S. thinking on the issue.

But some NATO defense ministers expressed skepticism over the U.S. plans. French Defense Minister Alain Richard said security threats could also be solved by "political dialogue".

And German Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping said the U.S. missile plans were "sketchy".

The United States also announced it is testing new technologies and assets as part of a new strategy of "layered defense."

U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said the layered defense strategy focuses on the ability to intercept even small numbers of ballistic missiles "of various ranges in various phases of flight."

He said a layered defense will also create a protective shield against both nuclear weapons and such new threats as cyberwarfare and terrorism.

Rumsfeld said the allies will be consulted on U.S. plans but Washington will not be deterred from its determination to test and deploy the new defenses.

Rumsfeld said the U.S. remains committed to helping maintain European security and arms control, but he also said the new defense system will go beyond the limitations imposed by the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

For more on the NATO ministers' meeting, please see NATO: Ministers Discuss Missile Defense, Western Balkans.

----

Congress asked to boost funds for anti-missile laser

Jun 07, 2001,
Agence France-Presse
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/010607054732.1qlx2abn.html

WASHINGTON The Bush administration's concept of ballistic missile defense began taking shape when top Air Force officials asked Congress for additional 153 million dollars to finance development of an air-borne laser (ABL) capable of shooting down missiles.

"We think it's a revolutionary capability," Air Force Chief of Staff General Michael Ryan told a Senate subcommittee that handles defense appropriations on Wednesday.

"We think to be able to put a high-powered laser, to be able to acquire, track and destroy missiles in their ascent phase, is terribly important to future capabilities in defense and force protection," he added.

The request represents a 65-percent boost for the program that had its ebbs and flows in the 1990s and was initially allocated 234 million dollars in the current financial year.

The plan calls for mounting a laser on a Boeing-747 aircraft, which would patrol near suspected enemy missile launch sites.

It would autonomously detect launches with on-board infrared sensors, track the missile with highly accurate, low-power lasers, and fire its high-energy laser to destroy it by tearing through its metal core and causing it to fall apart under strong in-flight pressures, according to Air Force documents.

"Under this scheme, the warheads and destroyed missile components fall on enemy territory, making the aggressor's nation vulnerable to the effects of whatever warhead they employed," the Air Force said in its 1997 issues book. "As such, the ABL will provide a strong deterrence against the use of weapons of mass destruction."

Ryan, who argued air-borne lasers "will revolutionize some of the ways we wage war," said the Pentagon wanted to test a prototype of the system as early as 2003.

"We certainly want to do that and hold to that schedule, and hence that's the reason that we put more money into it," he explained.

The plane would have to be no farther than 400 kilometers (250 miles) from the target to be effective.

Because of these limitations, military experts believe air-borne lasers could be effective against missiles fired by North Korea and Iraq, provided no-fly zones over Iraq's north and south remain in effect.

However, they could be less effective against Iran, one of the targets of US President George W. Bush's plan to deploy a national missile defense system.

In one of the crucial speeches of his presidency, Bush vowed last to deploy a shield against ballistic missile attacks by states like Iraq, Iran and North Korea.

----

White House to increase funding for airborne laser
Weapon intended to hit missile miles from Earth

Knight Ridder/tribune
June 7, 2001
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/printedition/bal-te.missile07jun07.story

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration has decided to increase spending on an airborne laser capable of destroying missiles in flight as part of its pursuit of ballistic missile defenses.

The laser, mounted on a Boeing 747-400, would destroy a ballistic missile during its fiery ascent. President Bush has proposed adding $153 million this year for the airborne laser program, the first substantial increase in spending for missile defense that he has requested.

The airborne laser is one of eight missile defense programs the administration has been reviewing. Most have not yet been proved to work, and some experts doubt the most complex ones ever will. The administration is trying to determine which ones could be developed into a global system that could detect and destroy ballistic missiles and their warheads at any point of flight.

A senior administration official said the airborne laser is a priority.

"Clearly the airborne laser has been identified as one of the most promising technologies that we are going to pursue," the official said.

The additional funds, part of a $6.1 billion supplemental budget for the Pentagon, would be a 65 percent increase over the airborne laser's 2001 budget of $234 million. It's also $55 million more than what the Air Force asked for in January.

The airborne laser program began in 1994 and is scheduled to be completed in 2008 at an estimated cost of $11 billion for seven Boeing 747-400s armed with the missile- killing lasers. The contractors are the Boeing Co., Lockheed-Martin Corp. and TRW Inc.

A prototype is more than halfway completed at Boeing's plant in Wichita, Kan. It is to be delivered to the Air Force next year and test-fired against a SCUD-like missile over the Pacific in late 2003.

If the airborne laser is proved, built and used, it would work this way: A plane, flying near an enemy's front lines, would detect a ballistic missile launch and then focus its powerful laser, mounted in a nose turret, on the projectile as the missile broke through the clouds at about 35,000 feet.

The beam's heat would buckle or rupture the target's sleek metal skin, causing the missile to be torn apart by the enormous stresses of high-speed flight.

The difficulty in developing such a laser is making it powerful enough to destroy a missile and yet light enough to be carried aloft. The laser also must be able to compensate for atmospheric turbulence that would disrupt its beam.

Because it will have to fire within about 250 miles of its target, the aircraft may be unable to operate against large nations whose missile programs are considered threats by the United States, such as Iran, said Geoffrey Forden, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher who has analyzed the program.

The weapons could be effective, however, against Iraq or North Korea because they could hit missiles launched from anywhere within those countries without having to fly too close to their borders, Forden said.

Many U.S. fighter planes would be needed to protect the aircraft armed with the lasers.

Although Bush and the Democrats are divided over deploying a missile defense system to protect the United States, much of the Senate's Democratic leadership supports systems, like the laser, aimed at intercepting missiles just after launch. These would comply with the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

----

The Economics of European Missile Defense

Center for Defense Information Briefing Monitor
www.cdi.org - Volume 5, Issue #22 -
June 7, 2001
Tomas Valasek, Senior Analyst, tvalasek@cdi.org

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is meeting NATO officials in Brussels, Belgium on June 7-8. U.S. plans to deploy a homeland missile defense system are expected to be high on the defense ministers' agenda. The meeting comes amidst an intensive series of U.S.-European consultations, which will continue with President Bush's visit to Europe later this month. The European allies' skepticism on the need for a ballistic missile defense (BMD) system protecting U.S. territory is well documented. Less known is the impact of these deliberations on the defense plans of the European countries themselves. The debate about ballistic missile threats to NATO has prompted, at least in some European countries, a search for an alternative to the current reliance on diplomacy and deterrence (see "Europe's Missile Defense Options, CDI Defense Monitor, Issue 3, March 2001). But even as the political will seems to be changing, budgetary realities make the deployment of a European missile defense system a distant goal at best.

Missile defenses are very expensive even by the standards of modern weapons systems. Preliminary estimates of the cost of the U.S. homeland BMD system range from $60 billion to over $100 billion over a period of ten to fifteen years. The U.S. Department of Defense spent $4.2 billion dollars on missile defense development in 2000 alone, which is more than the entire defense budget of 8 of the other 17 European NATO allies.

European BMD prospects face two kinds of budgetary obstacles. The overall amount of military spending as a percentage of total government outlays has been steadily decreasing in most European countries since the end of the Cold War. The absence of an easily identifiable military threat makes substantial defense spending increases difficult to justify. Moreover, defense funds compete with a host of other priorities. European Monetary Union membership imposes indirect constraints on government spending by limiting the amount of budget deficit relative to the country's gross domestic product. The next round of the European Union enlargement, expected to occur around 2005, will bring additional costs. Many current members will likely lose a portion of their subsidies from the EU while their contribution to the Union may have to increase in order to pay for aid to newer, poorer members. Over the long term, the demographic trends in most of Western Europe will put an increasing strain on national pensions systems. These may require higher government subsidies, thus further reducing the amount of funds available for other priorities, including defense.

Most European countries are in the midst of costly transitions from Cold War-era stationary (territorial defense) militaries to more expeditionary-type armed forces better suited to conflicts such as the missions in Bosnia and Kosovo. These processes, which generally began in the mid to late 1990s, have tied up budgetary resources at a time when, in virtually all European NATO countries, overall defense spending dropped sharply. In 1996, France unveiled a military reform plan that called for conscription to be abolished, 38 of 129 regiments to be stood down, and overall military personnel to be cut from 500,000 to 350,000. In Great Britain, the 1998 Strategic Defence Review reduced the size of the Territorial Army by around 17,000 and the size of the operational budget by about ten percent. In Germany, the 2000 military reform plan outlined by Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping envisions reductions of the number of military personnel from 310,000 to 285,000. Some 47 military sites and installations will also be closed.

However, a leaner, trimmed-down military does not necessarily guarantee savings, especially not in the short term. While the personnel expenditure - which constitute the largest portion of defense spending in most European countries -- can be expected to decline, these savings will be at least partly offset by increased procurement expenses. For example, the renewed emphasis on mobility necessitated the lease by the United Kingdom of four C-17 military transport aircraft from the United States at the cost of $210 million. The Strategic Defence Review also calls for the Royal Navy to acquire two new aircraft carriers and a number of support vessels.

Moreover, the savings derived from base closures and downsizing may take years to materialize, as the experience with base closures in the United States showed. The U.S. Defense Department shut down hundreds of installations beginning in the early 1990s in a bid to trim excess infrastructure and save money. The U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) put the savings from base closures in the 1990-1999 period at $16.1 billion. However, during the same period, the Pentagon incurred one-time implementation costs (environmental cleanup, relocation, construction etc.) of almost $16.3 billion. Therefore, during the initial ten years of the process the Pentagon actually lost $189.6 million.

The two components of defense budget that, in general terms, would determine a country's ability to acquire a missile defense system are procurement spending and research and development (R&D) spending. R&D spending is crucial for developing the nascent missile defense technology. U.S. BMD development is being supported by an R&D program which totaled $36.5 billion in 1999. As one expert pointed out, the amount is greater than reliable estimates of the entire defense budget of any other country." In contrast, R&D spending for European NATO members plunged from $11.9 billion in 1995 to an estimated $8.9 billion. This comparison actually exaggerates the European part of the equation because a portion of the investment in Europe is lost due to duplication and lack of coordination of the countries' R&D efforts. The disparity actually prompted worries in the NATO alliance of a two-tiered membership, with Europe unable to keep up with the United States in developing and deploying modern warfighting technology.

Procurement spending dropped sharply across Europe as well. By some accounts, French equipment expenditures decreased by nearly 30 percent between 1990 and 1999. Much like R&D, procurement usually bears the brunt of spending cuts in times of financial crises because it does not require painful personnel cuts or reductions in ongoing operations. Moreover, the impact of the reductions is not felt until later. When Germany's Defense Minister, Rudolf Scharping, concluded in March 2001 that the government's defense allocation would not meet the needs of his department, he responded by ordering cuts of $240 million, a vast majority of it from the military procurement and R&D accounts.

Even countries with relatively robust procurement budgets such as Great Britain will not be in a position to allocate substantial amounts to missile defense in the near future. Britain's multi-year, $30 billion procurement plan is already appropriated for a mix of upgrades and new weapons purchases. London is planning to buy 55 new Eurofighter aircraft, as well as dozens of transport aircraft and attack helicopters. Long-term plans envision a purchase of up to 150 Future Carrier-Borne Aircraft, at a cost of $11 billion. Even without a missile defense system, critics are questioning the country's ability to finance the ambitious procurement program. But the changing nature of NATO's operations as well as EU plans for a Rapid Reaction force will continue to dictate more spending on mobility and sustainability. Even though the new posture also provides an argument for acquisition of a BMD system, it continues to sap most of the financial resources available for the near future.

Missile defense currently figures low on most European governments' list of defense priorities. Typical of the view of many allies, Britain 's 1998 Strategic Defence Review concluded that "technologies in this area are changing rapidly and it would, at this stage, be premature to decide on acquiring such a capability." Similarly, a European military official in Washington, DC told CDI that "there is a feeling [in Europe] that we need not hurry. The technology is not there and the governments have yet to decide on what type of missile defense they want."

But in many regards, the technology argument merely masks a larger budgetary problem. Defense budgets across Europe cannot accommodate the sheer cost of missile defense, at least not in the near future, without sacrifices in other procurement areas. The overall amount of defense spending in Europe is expected to stay flat or even decline. An internal NATO paper leaked to the European press concluded that only six of 16 European members of NATO plan real increases over the next five years, and these countries are all minor players, with the exception of Turkey. Similarly, the UK-based Institute for International Strategic Studies predicts that European defense spending will continue to fall at a rate of nearly 5 percent a year.

Under these circumstances, a sizable investment in missile defense would require cuts in other weapons programs, a step that may not be popular with the European defense establishments. There is "an apprehension about the cost of missile defense and what it might mean for the real investment that the European countries have got to make in the nuts and bolts of defense, like getting their soldiers and their sailors and their air crews much more relevantly trained and organized and configured for the challenges of tomorrow," said NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson.

Unlike the United States, where military spending is geared toward providing the maximum level of security technologically feasible and politically acceptable, fiscal conservatism permeates the thinking of budgeters in Europe. This philosophy is nicely reflected in the British Strategic Defence Review. "We must not skimp on the premium because we will pay a heavy price if we get it wrong. At the same time, we cannot afford the luxury of having additional forces 'just in case'." The European approach ensures fierce competition for defense funds, in which the cost of each new program is measured in terms of very real and painful trade-offs. Assuming that defense budgets in Europe will not increase substantially, European BMD programs face an uncertain future unless they assume a far more central role in the countries' defense plans.

(This article is a portion of an upcoming CDI monograph on ballistic missile defense in Europe).

Massive Problems Prevent a Grand Design for U.S. Foreign Policy Nicholas Berry, Senior Analyst, nberry@cdi.org

Scholars, analysts, and policy makers have tried mightily to create a U.S. foreign policy grand design to replace the Cold War paradigm.

All have failed.

The current State and Defense Department reviews -- now underway for over four months -- are likely to fail as well.

The closest anyone has come to a new design are variations on the globalization theme made popular by Thomas Friedman's The Lexus and the Olive Tree. Foreign Policy magazine proceeded to measure globalization by counting and categorizing the rapidly increasing volume of exchanges between countries. So far, translating descriptions of the new, more interactive globe into a foreign policy design has eluded even the best minds in Washington.

While efforts continue, no one has tried to explain why creating a new foreign policy design has proven elusive.

Ironically, explaining why the task is so elusive also explains why the most obvious design is destined to fail. Once it is proclaimed, the rest of the world would loudly condemn it and reject playing by America's grand design.

A grand U.S. design fully in tune with national interests would have to emerge from answers to three essential questions:

1.How can the world, including rogue states, be integrated into international regimes whose rules would facilitate conflict resolution, economic exchanges, information flows, and human migration that would result in a stable world order?

2.How can the United States create enforcement mechanisms to punish rule breakers?

3.How can the United States mask its global domination to make it acceptable to major and minor powers alike?

All historically dominant powers -- from the Chinese Qin Dynasty, to Greece, Rome, Spain, Portugal, France, Britain, and the United States -- have sought ways to create rules to guide international relations so they could stay on top. Dominant powers, of course, like the status quo and intensely dislike challenges to the international system that so rewards them. The last attempt, so very short lived, was Franklin Roosevelt's "Grand Design," which created the Security Council, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund and their rules for establishing a universal, liberal, world order under an American-dominated United Nations. Alas, the Soviet Union would not play by the rules and prevented the United States from consolidating its dominance.

The demise of the bipolar Cold War removed any security challenge to the United States and opened the world to a single system -- hence globalization. This new system has indeed facilitated the growth of international regimes and myriad sets of rules to regularize international relations. Although far from perfect, structuring trade relations via the World Trade Organization, managing regional conflicts via the UN Security Council, stabilizing financial transactions via the IMF, and orchestrating other exchanges through a vast number of other international organizations has made the world the most stable it has been in human history. No international wars of any note exist today (unlike many brutal internal conflicts), and none are on the horizon.

It would seem that all U.S. policy makers would welcome such a global system and build on it. The Clinton administration certainly tried, most notably in successful efforts to integrate Mexico, China, India, Vietnam, and North Korea into various international regimes. There were limits, however. One problem was ancient enemies. Domestic pressure groups working through Congress would not countenance the integration of Cuba, Iran, and Iraq into global systems. Another problem found the far left and far right opposing globalization on a series of nationalist issues ranging from loss of U.S. jobs to hatred of the sovereignty-robbing UN. As a result, U.S. accession to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), the International Criminal Court (ICC), Anti-Personnel Mine Treaty, Kyoto Accord on global warming, and other treaty-based regimes failed.

However, integrating countries into international regimes generally proved easy because virtually all governments (with the exception of Afghanistan and possibly Burma) wanted to join. Despite occasional outbursts that the United States was making too many of the rules (and avoiding the rules it disliked), revisionist blocs hostile to the United States did not emerged. The answer to the first question, therefore, was relatively easy for the Clinton administration. The United States would encourage virtually all governments to join the international community. It wanted an integrated, orderly, and peaceful world.

The second question became much more difficult to answer.

Enforcing the rules of the various regimes faced numerous problems. Any grand design authored and enforced by Washington would bring strong opposition at home and abroad. At home, opposition to "peace operations" emanated from the Pentagon, Congress, and segments of the media. Peacekeeping and peace enforcement (Somalia, Rwanda, Sinai, Bosnia) diverted the military from its combat role, it was argued, and put soldiers in harm's way in conflicts far removed from U.S. interests. An alternative enforcement mechanism, economic sanctions, generated minority opposition from international business groups and humanitarian non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

But the main opposition to U.S. military operations and sanctions arose abroad. Russia and China had misgivings over U.S.-led operations in the former Yugoslavia. They were joined by France and others in rejecting heavy-handed sanctions against Iran, Iraq, Cuba and elsewhere, arguing that the people, not governing elites, suffered under sanctions and that Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein, and other tyrants actually used sanctions to blame the United States for their economic failings and thus remained in power.

No consensus at home or abroad, therefore, favors U.S.- (or UN-) led enforcement of the rules of international regimes. No grand design can be proclaimed. At best, the Bush administration can only suggest that regional groupings, such as the European Union in Bosnia, should bear the burden of enforcement. Letting others be responsible for keeping regional security and economic stability is no grand design.

The third question is truly impossible to answer. Even if the United States could figure out how to permanently structure U.S.-led punitive operations against aggressors, rogue states, weapon proliferators, international terrorists, and human rights violators, it could not mask its unipolar domination. Pax Americana is not an option in the world of sovereign nation states. By definition, a state cannot be under the command of another state (or international organization) and be a state. Certainly China, Russia, France, India, and the rest of the world would demand a role in shaping mutually beneficial international relations and punishing aggressors.

This is not to say that a design, perhaps one far less grand, is impossible.

The formula for international leadership has been and will remain largely based on muting self-interest. The United States provided leadership in World War II and the Cold War by taking the interests of other states into account and defending them. The process was ultimately a diplomatic one. One gave in order to receive. Against known foes, whether the Axis or Soviet Union, Washington built coalitions to overcome the enemies who threatened peace and prosperity. Its military forces and aid were tailored to meet the needs of that coalition, not just to defend the United States. The ability to create winning coalitions was the test of their validity and of American leadership.

That formula has not changed.

What is troubling is the growth of a unilateralist design in Washington that sees defensive capabilities, especially a national missile defense, as the foundation of American security. That is a self-centered design that rejects leadership, avoids diplomacy, and designates enemies.

--

Changing Direction Colonel Daniel Smith, USA (Ret.), Chief of Research, dsmith@cdi.org

As undersecretary of defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics between 1997-2001, Jacques Gansler often spoke about the "death spiral." He was referring to a sequence that, from the Pentagon's viewpoint, threatened the ability of the military to perform its missions: the inexorably increasing average age of military weapons in the inventory -- especially tactical aircraft; the resultant high costs of maintaining the systems to ensure the readiness of combat forces; and the subsequent reductions in force modernization accounts which delay the entry of new weapons into the inventory.

Edward Aldridge, the new undersecretary of defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, also likes the "spiral" image. But his is an "evolutionary " -- hence a presumed ascending -- spiral. As reported in the defense trade publication, Aerospace Daily, during his Senate confirmation hearing, Mr. Aldridge indicated he would not oppose fielding weapon systems before they had reached their final configuration, thus leaving room for improvements and upgrades.

On its face, following the principle that the perfect is often the enemy of the good, this policy orientation makes sense. It would encourage reductions in costs by not trying to "hang bells and whistles" on every new system, which also prolongs development time (which now can stretch to 15-20 years) and contributes to massive sub-system obsolescence by the time troops get their hands on the item.

But a caution is also in order. While it may be desirable to field systems that have not reached full potential, they must still meet rigorous, minimum performance standards -- and above all must have proven through equally rigorous testing that they are better than the equipment being replaced.

Equally, for a system that provides virtually new capabilities, such as the proposed national missile defense, whatever is operationally deployed must be credible -- to the users of the system, to the American public, and to the leaders of other nations. Deploying a "scarecrow" missile defense system whose reliability would be questionable to these three key audiences -- and which might not be evolutionary -- would be a colossal waste of human talent, resources, and time. Under such conditions, the spiral would simply unwind and collapse.

----

NATO to Hear Missile Defense Gospel

Washington Post
By Jeffrey Ulbrich
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, June 7, 2001; 1:55 a.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010607/aponline015540_000.htm

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, armed with fresh evidence of a growing security threat from unpredictable nations, will again preach the anti-ballistic missile defense gospel to the NATO allies.

He faces skeptical allies on Thursday, the first day of a two-day defense ministers meeting at NATO headquarters here. He faces an even more skeptical Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov on Friday during a meeting of the NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council.

It's unlikely Rumsfeld will make any more headway in bringing the allies around to Washington's view than Secretary of State Colin Powell did last week at a NATO foreign ministers meeting in Budapest, Hungary. But he vows he'll keep plugging away.

"We're going to keep talking to our allies," Rumsfeld told reporters Wednesday, suggesting no breakthrough is on the horizon. "We're going to talk to our friends. We're going to talk to the People's Republic of China, and we'll keep moving this along."

The allies also will discuss the situation in the Balkans, where NATO leads more than 60,000 troops on peacekeeping missions in Kosovo and Bosnia, Macedonia, NATO-Russia relations, and the 19-nation alliance's cooperation with the emerging defense arm of the European Union. But missiles, clearly, will be uppermost on everybody's mind.

Washington wants to develop and deploy a system that will protect the United States and its allies from ballistic missiles fired by what it calls "nations of concern." Exactly what kind of system that might be has yet to be determined.

Many of the allies fail to see a real threat. Many who do believe the solution is political, not military, and others believe that abandoning the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty between the United States and Russia would be detrimental to overall European security. The Americans believe the ABM treaty has outlived its usefulness.

Rumsfeld is expected to lay out the threat Washington sees from nations like North Korea, Iran and Iraq, in some cases illustrating actual deployment of missiles capable of reaching allied territory, a senior NATO diplomat said. Rumsfeld also will give the allies details of plans by North Korea and Iran to acquire the capacity for reaching even deeper into alliance territory.

"The technological genie is out of the bottle," the senior diplomat said. "Some of these missiles are in actual service."

Rumsfeld said the United States believes that in addition to having a retaliatory nuclear and conventional strike capability, the allies need to develop missile defenses to dissuade a potential enemy from launching an attack.

"I will be talking about changed circumstances in the world and our recognition that with those changes it's important the United States as well as the NATO alliance adjust to those changes," the defense secretary said. "The Soviet Union is gone. The Cold War is over."

He said the United States intends to press ahead with testing a wide array of missile defense technologies.

The Russians, who strongly oppose the American missile defense ideas, have made a counterproposal, but that proposal, made nearly a year ago, remains vague and lacks any real detail, NATO officials say. Until details are forthcoming, they say, no extensive discussions can start.

Both Rumsfeld and NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson plan to confront the allies with their lagging progress on the program adopted at the NATO summit in Washington two years ago to upgrade and modernize military capability. While all maintain their pledge to do so, few are devoting sufficient resources to the effort.

----

Rumsfeld Promotes Missile Defense

Washington Post
By Jeffrey Ulbrich
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, June 7, 2001; 9:06 a.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010607/aponline090659_000.htm

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, armed with graphic aids and fresh evidence of a growing security threat from unpredictable nations, pushed the anti-ballistic missile defense to NATO allies Thursday.

But he faced skepticism on the first day of a two-day defense ministers meeting at the NATO headquarters.

"Our lack of defenses against ballistic missiles creates incentives for missile proliferation which, combined with the development of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction, give future adversaries the ability to hold our populations hostage to terror and blackmail," Rumsfeld told the allies.

It's unlikely Rumsfeld will make any more headway in bringing the allies around to Washington's view than Secretary of State Colin Powell was able to do last week at a NATO foreign ministers meeting in Budapest, Hungary.

And he faces an even more skeptical Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov on Friday during a meeting of the NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council.

"We're going to keep talking to our allies," Rumsfeld told reporters Wednesday, suggesting no breakthrough is on the horizon. "We're going to talk to our friends. We're going to talk to the People's Republic of China, and we'll keep moving this along."

Lord Robertson, the NATO secretary-general, said the gathering in Brussels was "an important opportunity for allies to consult about the direction of U.S. thinking before any decisions are made."

"Responding to today's challenges means discussing not only new U.S. thinking, but also developing European thinking," he said.

The allies also were discussing the situation in the Balkans, where NATO leads more than 60,000 troops on peacekeeping missions in Kosovo and Bosnia, Macedonia, NATO-Russia relations, and the 19-nation alliance's cooperation with the emerging defense arm of the European Union.

But missiles, clearly, will be uppermost on everybody's mind.

Washington wants to develop and deploy a system that will protect the United States and its allies from ballistic missiles fired by what it calls "nations of concern." Exactly what kind of system that might be has yet to be determined.

Many of the allies fail to see a real threat. Many who do believe that the solution is political, not military. Others fear abandoning the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty between the United States and Russia would be detrimental to overall European security. The Americans believe the ABM treaty has outlived its usefulness.

"We understand this conclusion is not welcomed by some," Rumsfeld said in his presentation to the allies. "It is simply inescapable."

The secretary laid out the threat Washington sees from nations like North Korea, Iran and Iraq, in some cases illustrating actual deployment of missiles capable of reaching allied territory.

"Rogue states are acquiring ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction," he said. Biotechnology, robotics, and high density energy sources "are putting unprecedented power in the hands of small countries and terrorist groups."

He said the United States believes that besides having a retaliatory nuclear and conventional strike capability, the allies need to develop missile defenses to dissuade a potential enemy from launching an attack.

These defenses will be deployed against "handfuls of missiles, not hundreds," he said, adding that the United States intends to press ahead with testing a wide array of missile defense technologies.

Both Rumsfeld and Robertson plan to confront the allies with their lagging progress on the program adopted at the NATO summit in Washington two years ago to upgrade and modernize military capability.

While all maintain their pledge to do so, few are devoting sufficient resources to the effort.

"Unless the nations around this table develop and maintain the necessary defense capabilities, the ability of our governments to respond to political calls for military action - whether through NATO or indeed through the EU or elsewhere - will be severely limited."

-------- russia

Duma Approves Plan to Import Nuclear Waste

By Susan B. Glasser
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, June 7, 2001; Page A28
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33046-2001Jun6?language=printer

MOSCOW, June 6 -- The lower house of Russia's parliament gave final approval today to a controversial plan to import thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel in exchange for a possible $20 billion cash windfall, voting despite widespread public criticism of an effort that environmental activists say will turn the country into the world's "nuclear waste dump."

Public opinion polls have shown that more than 90 percent of the Russian public is against the plan, and more than 2 million Russians signed petitions for a referendum to block it, which failed. But the State Duma gave easy approval to the measure today in its third and final vote on the matter, 243 to 125.

"There is nothing to be afraid of," said Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznev.

Alexander Rumyantsev, head of the Atomic Energy Ministry, has pushed the plan as a financial boon.

The ministry says it hopes to enter a lucrative world market, bringing in as much as 20,000 tons of used fuel from nuclear reactors in Germany, Switzerland, Eastern Europe, Taiwan, South Korea and China in exchange for hefty payments. The waste would be put in "temporary" storage, according to the ministry, for at least 10 years, then reprocessed into fuel.

Protesters chained themselves to the Duma's doors today in hopes of blocking the vote, but only two reformist factions voted against the measure.

"One hundred million people in Russia are against this decision, and only 500 politicians and bureaucrats in Moscow are pushing it," Grigory Yavlinsky, leader of the Yabloko party, said in an interview after the vote. "This is the best example that we have no real democracy in Russia today."

In a new opposition tactic, environmental groups are lobbying the United States to prevent the imports. More than 90 percent of Russia's potential spent nuclear fuel market reportedly originated at U.S.-designed nuclear reactors, and Washington retains final say over its disposition. The environmental group Greenpeace today called on President Bush to block the Russian plan.

"Without U.S. approval, the whole scheme cannot go forward," said Tobias Muenchmeyer of Greenpeace International. In a State Department meeting last month, Muenchmeyer said he was told the United States has several conditions that Russia is unlikely to accept, including halting nuclear cooperation with Iran and India and prohibiting reprocessing of the spent fuel.

----

Russia imports nuclear waste

BY ANGELA CHARLTON
The Associated Press,
June 7. 2001
http://www.suntimes.com/output/novak/cst-edt-novak07.html

MOSCOW - In a landmark vote, Russian lawmakers defied broad public opposition and passed a law Wednesday allowing nuclear waste to be imported and stored indefinitely. Critics said the move will turn Russia into the world's nuclear waste dump.

Proponents say the measure will create jobs and bring in billions of dollars to needy government coffers. They vow to use some of the riches to clean up radioactive swathes of the world's largest country that have been scarred by decades of Soviet nuclear development.

Opponents question whether the money will be really used as promised, and whether Russia is equipped to safely handle the expected quantities of spent foreign nuclear fuel.

Russia's safety record is spotty at its underfunded nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons facilities. Corruption among officials is rife. And some prominent scientists say the cost of building or upgrading waste reprocessing facilities would outstrip potential profits.

"Our citizens are against turning Russia into an outhouse," Sergei Mitrokhin of the liberal Yabloko faction said during Wednesday's debate in the lower house of parliament, or State Duma.

Nonetheless, the 450-member house approved the three-bill package after a 20-minute debate on votes of 266-117, 243-125, and 250-125. For passage, 226 votes were needed on each bill.

The measure must pass the upper house, the Federation Council, and be signed by President Vladimir Putin in order to become law.

Federation Council speaker Yegor Stroyev said the bill would likely pass the upper house, but only after some "corrections," ITAR-Tass reported. "First, it is necessary to create guarantees that this decision will not cause any trouble for future generations," he said, without elaborating.

Putin did not comment publicly on the bill Wednesday, but its relatively smooth passage in the Duma suggested it had backing from the Kremlin.

While opinion polls show most Russians oppose the idea, there is little sign that the issue will prompt mass public protest in a country where most people are more worried about pocketbooks than ecological woes.

The Atomic Energy Ministry claims it could earn up to $20 billion by importing 22,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel over 10 years.

"I am voting for this bill because I don't want places in my country remaining dead zones, contaminated by radiation," said Deputy Yegor Ligachev, a Communist and a former member of the Soviet Union's ruling Politburo.

Even if there is money to spare for the cleanup, the task is overwhelming.

Russian towns, rivers and permafrost were exposed to radioactive pollution during the secretive development of the Soviet nuclear industry, and environmentalists say they remain dangerously polluted.

Dmitry Ayatskov, a Federation Council member and governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region, home of a huge nuclear research center, said he would oppose the bill. "We have our own waste to deal with. I have firsthand knowledge of nuclear safety problems," he said.

The environmental group Greenpeace, which has campaigned intensively against the bill, urged President Bush to veto shipments of spent nuclear fuel to Russia.

The group said 92.5 percent of the radioactive waste produced by Russia's potential client nations is under U.S. control. The United States has built reactors for and exported fuel to countries around the world under deals requiring U.S. approval for any transfer of spent nuclear fuel.

"U.S. permission for the export of spent nuclear fuel to Russia would be a clear contradiction of the most fundamental U.S. nuclear non-proliferation policy," Greenpeace nuclear campaigner Tobias Muenchmeyer said.

Without U.S. approval, Muenchmeyer said, potential waste exporters would be China, Eastern Europe and former Soviet states that have Soviet-built nuclear plants. But Russia already accepts spent fuel rods from Ukraine, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Hungary under Soviet-era contracts, and they pay far less than Western nations could.

Norway has expressed concern that the waste could be transported by ship near its Arctic coast. Norwegian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Gry Haaheim said Wednesday that Norway plans to work actively to get other countries not to send waste.

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

-------- colorado

Worker testifies in injury lawsuit
Beryllium's danger kept secret, he says

By Stacie Oulton
Denver Post Staff Writer
June 07, 2001 -
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1002,53%257E43612,00.html

GOLDEN - Ronald Roerish, a 59-year-old Boulder resident whose job once was to cast beryllium most every day at Rocky Flats, said he wished he'd been told that the metal was considered the most deadly element known to mankind.

"I would have had different feelings about working with it," Roerish testified Wednesday in Jefferson County District Court.

Suit alleges conspiracy

Roerish and three other workers from the former nuclear weapons plant west of Denver are suing Brush Wellman, an Ohio-based company that supplied beryllium to Rocky Flats. The four workers have chronic beryllium disease, a lung disease caused by the metal's dust. Roerish was the first of the four to testify.

He never knew that Brush Wellman's own medical director had in 1949 labeled the metal the most deadly element, because the company censored that information from a medical article, and the federal government let Brush do it, according to court records.

The lawsuit alleges that Brush and the government conspired to keep such information secret, even from Rocky Flats managers, to protect the production of beryllium for the nuclear weapons industry. Brush denies that.

Roerish still works at Rocky Flats. He testified with his oxygen tank resting near his shoulder. When asked if he would have taken the casting job if he had been told beryllium caused lung disease, he said yes. He just would have expected the company to fully inform him about what it knew.

"If we would have got all the right information from Brush Wellman, yes," Roerish testified.

He knew beryllium was hazardous and followed the plant's procedures of wearing a respirator any time he worked with the metal, he said. He believed the respirator protected him, although that might not have been the case.

Break room near shop

But the company showed that Roerish and other employees took breaks in a room adjacent to the beryllium shop, where the metal was machined. Workers walked through the machine shop without respirators to reach the break room, where they drank coffee and ate.

Roerish also was present when an oven, which was heating metal items, blew a top. He also testified that the Rocky Flats plant never provided any training on how to safely deal with beryllium until he moved on to other jobs at the plant.

Brush is blaming the workers' illnesses on Dow Chemical Co., Rockwell International and other companies that operated the plant for the government. Those companies failed to protect the workers because they didn't have safety devices such as proper ventilation in place, Brush claims.

----

U.S. feared loss of beryllium
Company drove hard bargain, ex-Brush Wellman exec says

By Ann Imse,
Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer
June 7, 2001

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_617067,00.html

The federal government delayed tighter regulation of "the most deadly element of all time" for 20 years, after its sole producer said it would stop making beryllium for nuclear bombs without that protection, according to testimony Wednesday in a Jefferson County courtroom. About 50 people are suing beryllium producer Brush Wellman Inc. of Cleveland for allegedly conspiring with the federal government to hide the metal's dangers.

Retired Brush Wellman vice president Steve Zenczak testified Wednesday that after the only other producer quit the business in 1979, defense and energy department officials called a meeting to make sure that Brush Wellman would continue to mine and process beryllium. Rocky Flats needed beryllium to produce nuclear weapons.

Company officials told the government officials that to continue production, they needed an immediate 35 percent price hike and relief from OSHA efforts to tighten the safety standard, Zenczak testified on videotape.

Zenczak said Brush Wellman told the federal officials it needed help with "OSHA efforts to lower the standard to what was viewed by us as unreasonable, unnecessary and possibly unattainable levels." He said the federal officials promised to talk to OSHA.

In fact, OSHA has not tightened the standard to this day.

The plaintiffs say they were exposed to beryllium while working at the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant, and they now suffer from chronic beryllium disease, a wasting lung ailment. Plaintiffs also include workers' spouses.

Zenczak said Brush Wellman did not directly threaten to quit producing beryllium if OSHA was not stopped. But "the inference could have been drawn," he said.

Brush Wellman consistently told employees and customers that workers would be protected from chronic beryllium disease if they were exposed to less than 2 micrograms per cubic meter of air, the government standard set in 1949.

The plaintiffs claim Brush Wellman has known for decades that some people suffer chronic beryllium disease after exposure to less than 2 micrograms of the strong, lightweight material.

It was only in 1999, about 20 years after Brush Wellman's warning, that OSHA issued an alert stating that the 2-microgram standard might not be sufficient to protect workers, according to court documents.

Plaintiffs' attorney Allen Stewart also presented to the jury on Wednesday a 50-year-old document signed by Brush Wellman's then-medical director that said an investigative group believed even then that as little as 2.5 micrograms per cubic meter of air could result in beryllium illness.

That level would make beryllium "the most deadly element of all time" on the basis of molecular weight, the letter said.

Even 2 micrograms is an extremely small amount. It is equivalent to a pencil tip crushed and dispersed in the air six feet high over an area the size of a football field, according to court documents.

The jury also heard from a beryllium disease victim, 59-year-old Ronald Roerish, who walked to the witness stand carrying his oxygen bottle.

Roerish testified that Rocky Flats never gave him training in the dangers of beryllium until 1988, after he stopped working in the beryllium foundry.

Roerish testified that he wore a respirator in the foundry, but Brush Wellman attorney Roy Atwood drew testimony from Roerish that he did go into the beryllium machine shop without one.

Contact Ann Imse at (303) 892-5438 or imse@RockyMountainNews.com.

----

Campbell moving to free up miner's money immediately

By GARY HARMON
The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel -
June 7, 2001
http://www.gjsentinel.com From: "Lori Goodman" kiyaani@frontier.net

Colorado Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell will move to tie $84 million for uranium miners to an expected military funding request, he said Wednesday.

Campbell, a Republican, will try to make the money available immediately, rather than wait until the beginning of a new fiscal year in October.

"It is imperative that we help these seriously ailing miners who contracted terminal illnesses upon serving their country in mining," Campbell said in a news release.

Congress in 1990 recognized uranium miners for their contributions and sacrifices in the nation's Cold War effort and established a program under which miners suffering from radiation-related illnesses would be eligible for $100,000 compassionate payments. Congress in 2000 expanded the act to include more miners and make ill uranium millers and haulers eligible for payments, as well.

The U.S. Justice Department last year began issuing more than 250 IOUs to miners who were found to qualify for the payments. The fund from which the payments were issued had run dry and budget negotiations between President Clinton and Congress failed to replenish the fund.

President Bush has laid out plans to spend $710 million on uranium miners, millers and haulers over the next 10 years beginning in the coming fiscal year. But he declined to seek a supplemental appropriation for the IOU-holding miners this year.

"This amendment will provide much-needed relief and assistance to the many victims of radiation exposure," Campbell said.

U.S. Rep. Scott McInnis, R-Colo., also has promised to try to attach $84 million for the miners as the supplemental-spending measure passes through the House Appropriations Committee.

-------- kentucky

U.S. Justice Department may intervene

By Bill Bartleman bbartleman@paducahsun.com,
June 7, 2001
Paducah Sun
From: magnu96196@aol.com

A Washington watchdog group says attorneys for the U.S. Department of Justice want to intervene in a whistle-blower lawsuit that claims a former operator of the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant falsified environmental records to earn tens of millions of dollars in operating bonuses.

The group Taxpayers Against Fraud also claims in memos distributed to The Paducah Sun that top officials in the U.S. Department of Energy oppose intervention and are trying to convince top Department of Justice officials to reject the recommendation by government lawyers who investigated the allegations.

The final decision is pending in Attorney General John Ashcroft's office, according to Bill Campbell, assistant U.S. attorney for the Western District of Kentucky and the government's lead attorney in the matter.

Campbell would not comment on the statements of the watchdog group, but said the government could reveal its intentions as early as today. "We have a pleading that most likely will be filed this week," he said, without revealing its contents.

It could range from requesting U.S. District Judge Joseph McKinley to extend Wednesday's deadline for making a decision, to notifying the judge the government wants to become a plaintiff.

Campbell also confirmed that a meeting was held in Washington on May 29 involving attorneys for the two cabinet departments to discuss evidence uncovered in a two-year investigation, and whether the government should join in the suit.

James Moorman, a former assistant U.S. attorney general who is president of Taxpayers Against Fraud, said the DOE argued against intervening in the suit. He said he didn't know if the arguments were successful.

The suit was filed in June 1999 under the federal False Claims Act by four current and former plant employees against Lockheed Martin, formerly Martin Marietta, which operated the uranium enrichment plant from the early 1980s until 1997 when it was privatized and taken over by the by U.S. Enrichment Corp.

The suit claims Lockheed Martin filed false reports involving environmental conditions in order to receive millions of dollars in performance bonuses from the DOE, which owns the plant.

If the claims are substantiated in court proceedings, Lockheed Martin could be ordered to repay the government millions of dollars. Those who filed the suit would receive up to 25 percent of the amount refunded.

Campbell said Wednesday and in previous court documents there have been negotiations with Lockheed Martin to settle the suit without further court action.

"The parties are continuing to talk," Campbell said. "We have a much better understanding of Lockheed's position. We are making our concerns clear (to Lockheed Martin) and will continue to exchange information toward reaching a resolution."

Jeff McCord, a spokesman for Taxpayers Against Fraud, said the source of information on the decision by investigators to join in the suit was Joe Egan, the lead attorney for the "whistle-blowers" who filed the suit. Egan, in a telephone interview, said the statements attributed to him were misleading and were made public without his permission.

After the Sun inquired about the accuracy of the statement, McCord issued a new memo which said:

"I have learned that ... (Egan) feels he cannot confirm for the record the information we attributed to him. He does, however, acknowledge the accuracy of what we said."

Taxpayers Against Fraud describes itself as a nonpartisan, nonprofit group that fights fraud against the U.S. government. McCord said his group is interested in this suit because it has the potential of forcing Lockheed Martin to return tens of millions of dollars to the U.S. Treasury.

A move by the Department of Justice to join the suit would indicate that government investigators found evidence to confirm the allegations. Justice officials have spent two years reviewing thousands of pages of documents and computer generated files, interviewing current and former employees and excavating at several locations in and around the plant.

If the Department of Justice does not become a plaintiff, the current and former employees who filed suit would have to proceed on their own, and the pursuit would likely be costly and time-consuming.

Western District U.S. Attorney Steve Reed would not comment on the statements of Taxpayers Against Fraud.

-------- nevada

Limit for Radioactive Leaks Is Set for Nuclear Waste Site

New York Times
June 7, 2001
By MATTHEW L. WALD
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/07/national/07YUCC.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, June 6 - The Environmental Protection Agency announced today that it had set a standard on how much radioactive waste could be allowed to leak from from a proposed repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., opening the way for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to decide whether the site, about 100 miles north of Las Vegas, is suitable.

Setting the rule is seen as an essential step before the Yucca Mountain site can be opened, and supporters of nuclear power say the repository is necessary before anyone can order a new power reactor. The Bush administration favors such power plants.

The burial site still faces numerous challenges.

The environmental agency stuck with its draft standard, which it proposed in the Clinton administration. It says the dump should be allowed if, during the first 10,000 years, leaks will result in annual exposure to members of the public of no more than 15 millirem, an amount equal to what the average American receives in about two weeks from natural and man-made sources.

In a statement, Christie Whitman, the agency administrator, said, "As a nation, we must address our nuclear waste disposal problem, but we must do so in a way that protects public health and the environment."

The agency also said that no more than four millirem of exposure should come from water. This might turn out to be the more stringent standard, because releases into underground water are expected to be the biggest pathway to exposure.

Nevada's senators, Harry Reid, a Democrat who today became the assistant majority leader, and John Ensign, a Republican, said the rule was a victory in their efforts to block the dump. Mr. Reid praised Ms. Whitman for "not bowing to the wishes of those who sought to limit the E.P.A.'s role."

Last year Congress passed a bill that would have prevented the agency from setting standards for Yucca, but President Bill Clinton vetoed it.

An environmental group that specializes in nuclear waste, the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Washington, complained that the agency had created an exclusion zone of about 11 miles around Yucca Mountain, within which the water standard would not apply.

"This is the first time that the E.P.A. has exempted a portion of a currently used aquifer from the Safe Drinking Water Act," said Arjun Makhijani, president of the institute.

In the future, Mr. Makhijani said, the government could establish such zones its land all over the West.

But at the environmental agency, Stephen D. Page, director of the Office of Radiation and Indoor Air, said that in 1992 Congress gave his agency the authority to set a rule for Yucca Mountain that would neither be bound by precedent nor set one.

"If you have a source of groundwater and it is going to be used for drinking water, what you care about is what comes out of the tap," Mr. Page said. No taps are in the immediate area, because it is the Nevada Test Site, where the government has exploded hundreds of nuclear bombs.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission chairman, Dr. Richard Meserve, has argued that there is no reason for a separate water standard, since what matters is the total dose, not the amount that comes from water versus the amount from air. But Mr. Page said that the Safe Drinking Water Act applies and that the four millirem limit was the law.

----

Nevada Nuclear Sites Faces Limits

Washington Post
By H. Josef Hebert
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, June 7, 2001; 12:01 a.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010607/aponline000103_000.htm

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration agreed to tougher health protection requirements for a proposed nuclear waste site in Nevada, ignoring pleas from the nuclear industry and Republican allies in Congress.

The requirements announced by the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday would limit radiation exposure from the Yucca Mountain site to no more than 15 millirems a year for people 11 miles away, including no more than 4 millirems from groundwater.

A millirem is a measurement of the biological effects of radiation on human tissue. According to the EPA, the standard would mean a person living 11 miles from the waste site would absorb every year a little less radiation than a person would get from two roundtrip transcontinental airline flights.

By comparison, background radiation exposes people to about 360 millirems of radiation annually. Three chest X-rays expose a person to about 18 millirem, the agency said.

The Nuclear Energy Institute responded with separate lawsuits in two federal courts challenging the EPA standard. The industry had sought less stringent standards, arguing that recommendations from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission of a 25 millirems overall limit and no groundwater standards would provide safety to people living near the site.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, who has favored the NRC proposal, said the EPA standards were "tough and challenging" and that "we believe we can meet the requirements."

The government's health standards for the Nevada site have been considered crucial in determining whether the federal underground storage facility at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, can be built.

The scientific review of the site has not been completed. Abraham is expected to make a recommendation to President Bush this year with a final decision by the president likely in early 2002. The plan is to keep 70,000 tons of used reactor fuel now at commercial power plants in canisters 600 feet below the surface.

Nevada officials say the federal government has failed to prove that the waste, which will stay highly radioactive for tens of thousands of years, would not contaminate an aquifer running through the area and surrounding countryside. The state also has protested transportation plans for thousands of shipments of waste, including some traveling near Las Vegas.

The EPA standard is designed to limit public exposure to any contamination over the next 10,000 years.

"Under these standards, future generations will be securely protected," Christie Whitman, the EPA administrator, said in a statement. She said the limits were designed "to ensure that people living near this potential repository will be protected now and for future generation."

The nuclear industry moved quickly to challenge the standard, suing in U.S. District Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

"The nuclear industry is extremely disappointed," said Marvin Fertel, director of business operation at the NEI, the industry trade group. He said the added groundwater exposure limits "will cost taxpayers and electricity consumers billions of additional dollars to license and build the repository without making the facility any safer."

Some environmentalists and nuclear watchdog groups said the standards were inadequate.

"The EPA has created an exclusion zone to safe drinking water," said Arjun Makhijani, a nuclear physicist involved in the anti-nuclear movement. Makhijani said that people live within several miles of the site, but the groundwater tests will be taken 11 miles away.

Also, he and other critics said, the standard would apply for 10,000 years, while the maximum radiation exposure from decaying isotopes is projected to be many years beyond that.

In a related development, a National Academy of Sciences report Wednesday said deep geological disposal "remains the only long-term solution" for dealing with nuclear waste despite the difficulty in winning public support for a repository.

The report said wastes can be kept above ground safely, but that the major uncertainty would be "in the confidence that future societies will continue to monitor and maintain such facilities" for tens of thousands of years.

------

What Yucca offers...for 10,000 years

Washington Times
June 7, 2001
Charles Rousseaux
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20010607-9374124.htm

Last of two parts.

When was the last time you bought a product guaranteed to last until 12001? And how would you get a refund if it didn´t? As noted in yesterday´s article, high-level nuclear reactor waste will remain harmful to humans for eons, and so a repository holding it needs to be untouchable and unharmful to even potential Indiana Joneses thousands of years from now. Over the past two decades, 2,000 scientists have spent 20 years and $2 billion attempting to determine if Yucca Mountain is just such a site.

Specifically, according to the administration´s just-released health and safety standards, the repository is allowed to give off no more than 15 millirems, less than 5 percent of natural background radiation, per year. Can that standard be met at Yucca?

The answer is an empathetic neon-blinking spotlight-blinding jackpot-winning "yes." thanks to Yucca Moutain´s unique mix of geological and geographical features, not to mention the man-made barriers that will be engineered into the repository.

Jim Niggemyer, a project mining engineer called Yucca Mountain one of the best-studied hunks of rock on the planet, and he´s probably right. Certainly its contours have been more thoroughly (and more expensively) studied than that of any Vegas showgirl. Practically every -ologist worth a science Ph.d. has studied the place, including geologists, seismologists volcanologists, climatologists, and even hydrologists.

Aside from its potential use as a repository (and the fact it is probably the only place in Nevada without a slot machine), it is hard to imagine why anyone would want to go near the place. Yucca Mountain is an undistinguished basaltic ridge covered with sand and scrubrush located in the middle of the Amargosa Desert. It is so isolated that it is easy to imagine even Willie E. Coyote attempting to hitchhike away. He would probably have his tongue hanging out too, since the area only receives about 7 inches of rain each year.

In fact, it´s more likely he would have an another anvil drop on his head out of the clear blue than that he will see anyone since the nearest settlement, Amargosa Valley, is nearly 20 miles away. Nor are settlements likely to move any closer, since, like nearly 90 percent of the land in Nevada, Yucca Mountain and the area surrounding it are owned by the government. Nor would anyone want to move much closer, since the potential repository is not too far from where nuclear devices (bombs), once were tested.

Yucca Mountain was formed from another cataclysmic event a titanic series of eruptions that rocked the region about 12 million years ago. Since then, things have calmed down a bit. A few volcanoes dot the region and minor earthquakes rock the region just as infrequently as good taste is displayed on the Las Vegas Strip. Scientists believe there is an extremely low chance of volcanic action erupting in the area any time soon, and engineers are confident they can build the repository to withstand any possible ground-shaking event.

In fact, water is the most likely candidate to ruin the repository, even though less than 5 percent of the precipitation that falls on the area will actually percolate into the mountain. Eventually, scientists foresee, water will drip into the repository, rust through the extensive shielding surrounding the waste containers, and then, laden with radioactive particles, eventually make its way down into the water table and thence out into the ecosystem where biologicals can get at it.

The repository at Yucca is being designed with just such a possibility in mind. On average, less than 5 percent of the pittance of precipitation that falls on the area actually makes it into the mountain. The water that does has to percolate through 2,600 feet of rock, nearly one-half mile, before it falls into the water table, a process that can take thousands of years, and perhaps even longer, since heat escaping from the waste storage containers will shunt water away from the area.

As planned, the repository will consist as a series of 18-foot diameter horizontal shafts set almost a football field apart running roughly perpendicular to the ridgeline, bored into a dense layer of rock running roughly half-way between the top of the ridge and the water table. Waste packages will be sandwiched by a titanium drip shield above and a drip invert below.

The packages themselves will be cylindrical sandwiches of material more unbreakable (and die-harder) than Bruce Willis. The outer layer is set to be built of inch-thick hyper-corrosion resistant Alloy 22, which will in turn protect the inner layer, 2-inch-thick stainless steel.

The design will allow safe storage of at least 70,000 metric tons of reactor waste 50 years of nuclear power. "Safe" may be a bit of an understatement, since no radiation is expected to escape from the repository for 10,000 years, according to Richard Craun, a Senior Policy Advisor of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management. DOE estimates that maximum radiation exposure from the repository will come about 300,000 years in the future, at which point a few people in Amargosa Valley (if, at that point, there still is a "valley" and "people" are still there) may experience somewhat higher than average doses of radiation.

Building the modern equivalent of a sphinx with radiation storage capacity won´t be cheap, but the entire project has already cost between $5 billion and $6 billion. Besides, if, as Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, South Dakota Democrat, says, the waste should not be stored at Yucca Mountain, then where? Short-term storage is continuing to build into a nightmarish NIMBY ("not in my back yard") problem at more than 100 sites across the nation, and high-level reactor waste needs to go somewhere safe and secure, sooner rather than later.

The repository at Yucca Mountain may not be the perfect solution, but its the best by a long shot. You can bet the house on it for 10,000 years.

Charles Rousseaux is an editor for the Commentary pages of The Washington Times.

--------

Industry sues to stop Yucca radiation limits

Thursday, June 07, 2001
By STEVE TETRAULT and KEITH ROGERS,
Las Vegas Review-Journal
http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Jun-07-Thu-2001/news/16268734.html

WASHINGTON -- A nuclear energy industry group filed lawsuits Wednesday challenging new government radiation limits for a proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, just hours after they were announced by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The Nuclear Energy Institute -- the trade arm of the nuclear industry -- charged the EPA went too far in proposing a radiation standard for groundwater near Yucca Mountain, in addition to general limits on radiation exposures from a repository.

But environmentalists and Nevada's elected officials said they are pleased that the EPA finally set Yucca Mountain standards after eight years in the works, even though some aspects of the standards were criticized as too lenient and ineffective.

A consortium of citizens watchdog groups described the standards as "a regulatory framework for legalized radiological contamination in Nevada."

"This is another example of the Bush administration weakening environmental regulations to keep a bad project alive," said Lisa Gue, policy analyst for Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program.

The nuclear industry, which through ratepayer charges has financed much of the $7 billion spent on the ongoing study of Yucca Mountain, said in a statement the groundwater provision "lacks a sound scientific basis."

"It's application to Yucca Mountain will cost taxpayers and electricity consumers billions of additional dollars to license and build the repository without making the facility any safer," said Marvin Fertel, senior vice president for business operations.

Lawsuits were filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., and in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, said NEI spokesman Steve Kerekes. They ask the court to set aside the regulations and direct EPA to issue a rule consistent with the 1992 Energy Policy Act "and other declaratory judgments that are lawful."

"This reminds me of the automobile manufacturers being against seat belts or air bags," said Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev.

"This is just one big cry. (The nuclear industry) has not been able to have it their way, now they want to yell and scream in the courts. These rules will stick," Reid predicted.

Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said if the nuclear power industry is unhappy with the regulation, "it's got to be a decent thing for Nevada."

Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., said the lawsuit "tells me we're somewhere between where we want to be in terms of safety and where the nuclear industry wants to be in terms of no safety."

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., was generally critical of the standards. "I was not happy last year (with a draft), and I'm less happy now," she said, echoing past state concerns that a repository is supposed to isolate the waste and not let it escape into the environment.

The nuclear industry contends EPA disregarded directions from Congress in the 1992 energy bill to develop radiation standards "based upon and consistent with the findings and recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences."

In 1995, an academy panel recommended the EPA adopt standards based on risks of people dying from "all pathways" exposure to radioactive contaminants that might escape the proposed repository. "All pathways" means exposure through any means, including air, soil, water and the food chain.

The EPA on Wednesday put in place an "all pathways" standard of 15 millirems per year of allowable radiation exposure, plus a separate 4 millirem per year limit for radiation in groundwater. A millirem is one-thousandth of a rem, the measurement of a radiation dose.

The standards are more stringent than a 25 millirem guideline suggested by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the point where the standards apply -- 11 miles from Yucca Mountain -- is closer than the 12-mile buffer zone that project scientists were analyzing.

"We don't think it will make much of a difference in the calculations," said Joe Ziegler, a Department of Energy nuclear engineer.

"It may cause the estimated dose to be slightly higher, but I would expect it to still be close to zero" millirems during the 10,000 year time frame when the limits are in effect, Ziegler said.

Frank Marcinowski, director of the EPA Radiation Protection Division, said the 11-mile distance was derived from what his staff considered to be the "accessible environment," which is also the southern boundary of land controlled by the Department of Energy.

"The reason we think groundwater protection is important is because it's a scarce resource in Nevada and the repository site sits over a currently used source of drinking water," he said.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said Wednesday the EPA issued "tough and challenging standards, tougher than the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the National Academy of Sciences considered necessary, but we believe we can meet the requirements of environmental and groundwater standards."

The legal action came at a crucial time in the process to determine whether a Yucca Mountain repository can be licensed as a safe burial ground for 77,000 tons of the nation's most lethal nuclear waste, most of which is spent fuel currently stored at commercial power plants.

Nevada officials also are reviewing the standards with an eye to a possible court challenge, according to Bob Loux, director of the state Office of Nuclear Projects.

In a statement, Gov. Kenny Guinn said while the standards "represent a step in the right direction ... Nevada remains prepared to fight any aspect that would hamper our ability to have the Yucca Mountain site declared unsafe."

A Nevada lawsuit, officials said, could focus on two issues: The 11-mile buffer that allows groundwater contamination up to the federal safe drinking water limit; and the 10,000 year time frame for controlling radiation from a repository.

Nevada Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa said 10,000 years is an unreasonably short compliance period given that federal scientists estimate that peak doses from the waste will occur between 200,000 years and 800,000 years.

-------- tennessee

Subcommittee to address I-131 releases in meeting

June 7, 2001
by Paul Parson
Oak Ridger staff
http://www.oakridger.com/stories/060701/new_0607010003.html

A discussion on past radioactive iodine-131 releases in Oak Ridge will be part of a local health advisory panel's upcoming meeting.

Several officials are expected to participate in the discussion at the June 11 meeting of the Oak Ridge Reservation Health Effects Subcommittee. They include Owen Hoffman of SENES Oak Ridge Inc., an organization that analyzes health risks related to radiation exposure, and Tom Widner, who participated in a dose reconstruction report that looked at I-131 releases locally.

The dose reconstruction report was released in 2000 and was prepared by scientists working under contract with the Tennessee Department of Health.

One of the things the study investigated is the possible risks of thyroid cancer from releases of I-131.

The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry recently had a technical review conducted on the I-131 portion of the dose reconstruction report. That review will be presented at Monday's subcommittee meeting.

The subcommittee consists of citizens primarily from the Oak Ridge area, including Knoxville and Roane County residents, who are working with community members and advocacy groups to offer advice and recommendations to several federal agencies regarding health concerns in Oak Ridge.

The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, is responsible for appointing subcommittee members.

The subcommittee will be meeting from 12:30 to 7 p.m. on Monday and from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Tuesday at the Crown Conference Center Club Room (Suite 216) in the Oak Ridge Mall. The iodine-131 discussion will take place from 2:30 to 6:30 p.m. on Monday.

Other agenda items include a discussion on basic epidemiology and an update on the health needs assessment for Oak Ridge. That assessment is being conducted in part by George Washington University.

The subcommittee meetings are open to the public. Audience members will be given an opportunity to make comments from 2 to 2:15 p.m. and from 6:30 to 7 p.m. on Monday and from noon to 12:15 p.m. and from 4:15 to 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday.

-------- us nuc politics

US Holds Up Release of Reagan Papers

Washington Post
By Deb Riechmann
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, June 7, 2001; 2:11 a.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010607/aponline021118_000.htm

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration is holding up release of 68,000 pages of presidential records that offer an insider's view of how decisions were made in the Reagan White House.

The confidential memos, letters and briefing papers passed among Ronald Reagan and his top advisers were to have come out in January - 12 years after Reagan left office, as established by post-Watergate laws.

But the White House counsel's office asked the National Archives to delay the release until at least June 21 so government lawyers can look at the files that researchers and others are waiting to dig through.

White House officials say the Reagan documents are the first that would have been released under a presidential records law passed in 1978. They say care must be taken to make sure it's done right.

Historians, on the other hand, say they think President Bush is worried about what some of his top aides might have written when they worked for Reagan in the 1980s.

"I think what Bush is doing is protecting the people who were in the Reagan administration and his father's administration who are still around," said American University historian Anna Nelson. "I think this is part of that everlasting fear that somebody did something in the past that they can't remember. I think they're trying to protect their own people."

Secretary of State Colin Powell was on Reagan's national security team. Budget Director Mitchell Daniels Jr. was Reagan's political director. Chief White House economist Lawrence Lindsey was on Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers. Many others, including White House chief of staff Andrew Card, Interior Secretary Gale Norton and Ken Dam, nominated for the No. 2 job at Treasury, all worked for Reagan. And of course Reagan's vice president was George Herbert Walker Bush, the president's father.

"Some of these people are veterans from the Reagan administration, and they don't want the documents seen," said Vanderbilt University history professor Hugh Graham. "They don't know what's in there, so they're worried."

Anne Womack, assistant White House press secretary, denied allegations that the president is trying to protect his aides.

"We've asked for a short extension in order for the documents to undergo a legal review at the Justice Department," she said. "The extension was requested to ensure that the Presidential Records Act is implemented correctly. We are setting precedent for future administrations. It's important that we address all the relevant issues."

The Presidential Records Act of 1978 followed Watergate and former President Nixon's attempt to hold on to his papers and tape recordings. Nixon said they were personal property. The act made presidential records government property, beginning with Reagan's. The records are stored at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif.

The law also put a 12-year hold on a category of records containing "confidential communications requesting or submitting advice between the president and his advisers, or between such advisers."

That 12 years is already up for these Reagan papers. And the documents can no longer be kept under wraps by provisions in either the Presidential Records Act or the Freedom of Information Act.

But before these kind of records are opened, the National Archives is required to give the incumbent president a heads-up. In late February, the National Archives gave Bush the required 30-day notification. At the end of the 30 days, the White House asked for an extension until June 21.

Most records received by the National Archives are more than 30 years old, but presidential records are retrieved from the White House right after a president leaves office, said Sharon Fawcett, a top presidential library official at the National Archives.

"So 12 years later, people are still in office, still active in government and playing significant roles," she said. "But it's not only the people, it's also the issues that are still ongoing concerns - like missile defense."

It's unclear whether the documents will be released after June 21.

Nelson and others worry the Bush administration wants to find a way to keep the Reagan documents sealed, or it is looking for ways to put more restrictions on how and when presidential papers can be opened. The 12-year hold on similar papers from former President Bush's administration expires in 2005 - the year Bush could be starting a second term.

-------- us nuc waste

White House accepts tougher rules for nuclear-waste site

Seattle Times Company
Nation & World :
Thursday, June 07, 2001
By H. Josef Hebert
The Associated Press
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis/web/vortex/display?slug=yucc07&date=20010607

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration yesterday agreed to tougher health-protection requirements for a proposed nuclear-waste site in Nevada, ignoring pleas from the nuclear industry and Republican allies in Congress.

The requirements announced by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would limit radiation exposure from the Yucca Mountain site to no more than 15 millirems a year for people 11 miles away, including no more than 4 millirems from ground water.

A millirem is a measurement of biological effects of radiation on human tissue. According to the EPA, the standard would mean a person 11 miles from the waste site would absorb every year a little less radiation than a person would receive from two round-trip transcontinental airline flights.

By comparison, background radiation exposes people to about 360 millirems of radiation annually. Three chest X-rays expose a person to about 18 millirems, the agency said.

The Nuclear Energy Institute, challenging the EPA standard, responded with separate lawsuits in two federal courts. The industry had sought less stringent standards.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said that the EPA standards were "tough and challenging" and that "we believe we can meet the requirements."

On the same day, an international panel of scientists and nuclear-industry representatives reported that underground repositories such as the one proposed for Yucca Mountain represent the only practical solution to long-term, nuclear-waste storage.

The advisory group urged governments to undertake campaigns to convince their wary publics what technical communities have believed for 40 years.

The two developments were timely, given that after a 20-year process of planning and preparing for possible long-term storage of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, the administration likely will make pivotal decisions in the next several months.

Abraham is expected to make a recommendation to President Bush this year. A decision by the president is likely early next year.

The plan is to keep 70,000 tons of used reactor fuel now at commercial power plants in canisters 600 feet below the surface. Cost of the project has been estimated at $35 billion.

Information from the Los Angeles Times is included in this report.

-------- MILITARY

-------- africa

Central Africans Head Home After Bangui Bloodshed

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

BANGUI (Reuters) - A steady stream of people headed through the Central African Republic's capital on Thursday on the way to rebuild their lives after more than a week of bloodshed.

It was the first day since a failed coup attempt on May 28 that was not marked by sporadic bursts of gunfire as President Ange Felix Patasse's loyalists, helped by Libya and Congolese rebels, battled the mutineers.

``We have routed those who attempted this coup d'etat and we have captured all the positions they had taken in recent days,'' Defense Minister Jean-Jacques Demafouth told Radio France International.

The worst fighting since a series of army mutinies in the 1990s left streets strewn with bodies in parts of the riverside city of more than half a million.

``Rebels were hiding in our house, but we've heard they are gone so now we are going home,'' said Sonia Komb-Aba, who carried a television on her head as she traveled toward the former rebel stronghold of Ouango.

Ouango was the base for dissident leader Andre Kolingba, a former army ruler now on the run with a $32,000 price on his head.

Street children ran in and out of one of Kolingba's houses in central Bangui. Others satisfied themselves with a quick peek around the open metal gates at a scene of scattered papers.

Kolingba, who handed power to Patasse after losing a 1993 election in the former French colony, is accused of launching the attack with a force of dissident troops and 300 African mercenaries led by two Rwandan generals.

Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi and Jean-Pierre Bemba's rebels from the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo sent military help to Patasse.

Some Congolese soldiers returned home across the Oubangui river on Thursday, leaving the positions they occupied in the center of the city for the last few days.

Diplomats said local staff had returned to work on Thursday. Many shops opened, with little on the shelves. A lone trader stood with a dozen eggs in the usually bustling central market.

``The fighting has finished. Everything is calm, but life won't return to normal for a few days,'' said teacher Alphonse Toleque.

The Department of Health began counting and clearing up bodies, some burned with petrol by people trying to stop the odor of decomposition and prevent the spread of disease. There were no clear estimates of the death toll.

The government has dismissed accusations of reprisals by loyalist soldiers against members of Kolingba's Yakoma tribe, from the forested south of the country of some 3.5 million. Patasse is from the savannah north.

-------- arms sales

Former Argentine President Is Arrested

New York Times
June 7, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Argentina-Menem-Arrest.html

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) -- Carlos Menem, the flamboyant former president who resurrected Argentina's economy a decade ago, was arrested Thursday as part of an investigation into illegal arms sales, his nephew confirmed.

Menem was ordered held by a federal judge probing accusations that the former president headed an ``illicit organization'' that funneled arms to Croatia and Ecuador in 1991 and 1995, despite international arms embargoes on both nations. Menem, whose decade in power ended in 1999, has denied any wrongdoing.

-------- central america

OAS asks Central America minefield effort to continue

Thursday, June 7, 2001
By Reuters
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2001/06/06072001/reu_minefield_43904.asp

HEREDIA, Costa Rica, - The Organization of American States Tuesday asked members, observers and the international community to continue to aid Central American efforts to clear minefields from civil wars in the 1980s.

The minefields "continue to pose a threat to the population and have horrible effects," the OAS General Assembly said in a resolution adopted to promote further efforts to clear the deadly mines.

Nicaragua said in April it had finally cleared its southern border with Costa Rica of thousands of land mines planted during its civil war in the 1980s. The $1 million project was financed by the European Union, Denmark and the OAS.

The OAS praised efforts by Peru, Ecuador, Honduras and Nicaragua for their efforts to clear anti-personnel land mines.

-------- china


China Urges Work to Ban Space Arms

New York Times
June 7, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Disarmament-China-US.html

GENEVA (AP) -- China proposed a treaty Thursday to ban weapons in outer space because of the imminent ``danger'' stemming from U.S. missile defense plans.

Chinese Ambassador Hu Xiaodi made the proposal at the 66-nation Conference on Disarmament, the world's only multinational forum for negotiating arms-control treaties.

``All space-based weapons and all weapons attacking outer space targets from the earth are to be prohibited once and for all,'' said Hu, who introduced draft wording for the proposed treaty.

There was no immediate U.S. reaction, but Western diplomats said Hu's comments only added detail to China's known position on the issue.

China, a bitter critic of U.S. plans for a National Missile Defense system and the expectation that it would involve deployments in space, has long called for a treaty to prevent an arms race in outer space.

The United States has said it was willing to discuss outer space issues, but that it is too soon to say if a new treaty is needed.

A congressionally appointed U.S. panel in January urged Washington to pay more attention to defending the country's assets in space. Donald H. Rumsfeld, now Secretary of Defense, was a member of the panel.

The panel said the United States depends on space more than any other country for a range of activities from military surveillance to weather forecasts and communications.

Hu noted the panel urged steps be taken to protect against the danger of a ``space Pearl Harbor'' and said the report and U.S. plans ``clearly demonstrate that the weaponization of outer space is by no means a remote issue.''

``The danger is imminent,'' he said.

Following diplomatic practice Hu never named the United States, but his direct reference to U.S. plans left no doubt that he was talking about the Bush administration.

``Outer space is now faced with the danger of being weaponized, which manifests itself in two aspects, namely the development of the missile defense program and the 'space control' plan,'' Hu said.

He was referring to the U.S. Air Force's long advocacy of ``space control,'' which could include weapons to deny an enemy the use of space for combat operations against the United States or its allies.

The Bush administration has been trying to allay fears of China, Russia and other countries about the plan to construct a system to defend against limited missile attacks from ``rogue'' states like Iraq or North Korea.

It has indicated that it hopes the key other countries can be won over to its approach in the long run, but the Chinese speech showed Beijing remains deeply skeptical.

The disarmament conference has been deadlocked over starting any new negotiations since 1996, when it wrote the treaty to ban nuclear test explosions.

Washington has been urging the conference to work on preventing the spread of nuclear weapons by negotiating a treaty to ban the ``fissile materials'' -- plutonium and highly enriched uranium -- needed for their manufacture.

----

Chinese missile moves near Taiwan worry U.S.

June 7, 2001
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010607-2643640.htm

China is mobilizing some of its short-range missiles near Taiwan as other military forces are engaged in the largest war games in five years, according to U.S. intelligence officials.

The missile activity at two bases across the Taiwan Strait is raising concerns inside the Pentagon that China´s military may be set for test missile firings at Taiwan -- similar to 1996 missile flight tests that led to a U.S.-China confrontation.

According to officials with access to U.S. intelligence reports, a U.S. spy satellite photographed several CSS-6 missiles at a base in Fujian province that was used for training exercises in the past but is normally left unoccupied.

Two transporter-erector launchers loaded with CSS-6s were spotted in the open at the training base. Six others were in sheds and an unspecified number of other missiles were hidden under camouflage nearby, the officials said.

"The missile unit occupied a base that is only used for training," said one official. The exact location of the missile training base could not be confirmed. One official said it was located at Fuzhou, directly across the strait from Taipei.

China has built several missile bases in Fujian province over the past several years, including the two newest ones at Xianyou and Yongan. The regional command headquarters for the short-range missile forces is located at Leping.

U.S. intelligence agencies reported in March that a new base for CSS-7 short-range missiles was completed at Xianyou -- about 135 miles across the Taiwan Strait from the island. Additionally, part of a CSS-7 brigade recently left another base opposite Taiwan for a mobile deployment exercise, the officials said.

The missiles are among the more than 300 CSS-6s and CSS-7s, also known as M-9s and M-11s, that China has deployed opposite Taiwan in the past several years. Administration national security officials have said China plans to deploy up to 600 missiles at bases opposite Taiwan.

The Pentagon views the continuing, large-scale missile deployment as destabilizing. The weapons can attack all of Taiwan´s military bases with little or no warning, according to a recent Defense Intelligence Agency assessment.

A Chinese government-owned newspaper in Hong Kong, Wen Wei Po, reported earlier this week that the "large-scale" beach landing exercises centered on Dongshan island will involve 100,000 troops, along with naval and air forces.

The last time Chinese forces conducted a similar amphibious landing exercise was November 1995, the newspaper said. As part of that exercise, Chinese missile forces fired several short-range missiles in provocative flight tests that hit waters near the northern and southern tips of Taiwan.

A respected nongovernment Hong Kong newspaper, Ming Pao, reported Tuesday that the exercise had begun with "tens of thousands" troops from several regions near Fujian province moving toward Dongshan island. It said the war games would continue for two weeks.

"It is pointed out that the main aim of the exercise will be to attack and occupy Taiwan´s offshore islands and counterattack U.S. military intervention," the newspaper stated.

Commercial aircraft were routed around Dongshan, and Chinese marines had taken control of the ferry between the island and mainland.

One source told the newspaper that the exercise involved electronic warfare operations, and that the Chinese military for the first time was using reconnaissance satellites and satellite navigation systems.

The exercise reportedly kicked off Monday night with an airborne assault on Dongshan.

In reaction to the 1996 missile tests, the Pentagon dispatched two aircraft carrier battle groups to waters near Taiwan in a show of force.

China reacted by building up its military capability to attack U.S. ships, including the purchase of two Russian Sovremenny-class guided-missile destroyers equipped with SSN-22 supersonic anti-ship missiles.

Until the recent missile activity, Pentagon spokesmen have downplayed a series of Chinese military exercises taking place along China´s coasts.

The first exercises took place on Woody island in the South China Sea, where China has built an airstrip for projecting its power into strategic sea lanes. Several thousand Chinese marines, accompanied by several warships, stormed ashore on the island as part of maneuvers last week.

While the Woody island war games were under way, China´s northern navy conducted a sudden dispersal exercise that is normally conducted before a military attack or for protecting ships in port from bad weather.

Then in what officials called "phase two" of regional war games, the Chinese began massing more than 200 amphibious warfare vehicles on Dongshan island.

The official Chinese military newspaper also reported this week that a Chinese bomber division practiced low-level bombing runs May 28 as part of another exercise.

Also, Wen Wei Po quoted an unidentified Chinese military source as saying the Dongshan exercise will employ "advanced fighter planes, warships, missiles and electronic-warfare equipment."

The source also told the government-owned newspaper that the war games are practice for testing new tactics and for "quickly launching and winding up a war."

It also will help troops study "ways of applying new-type equipment and translating new type equipment into fighting capacity through real operations."

Some Pentagon officials believe the war games could be preparation for military action by Chinese forces against an outlying Taiwanese island, or as part of sabre-rattling designed to intimidate the Taipei government.

Sun Yuxi, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, said Tuesday in Beijing that the war games are routine and normal.

-------- iran

Israeli Claims Iran Arms Smuggling

JUNE 07, 12:03
Associated Press
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=MIDEAST&STORYID=APIS7CFQBJG0

WASHINGTON (AP) - Iranian weapons are being smuggled to Palestinian fighters for attacks on Israel, an Israeli diplomat said Thursday.

The weapons are shipped through Syria for use by Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad guerrillas in Lebanon, said David Ivry, the Israeli ambassador to Washington.

From there they are smuggled to Palestinians, possibly through Egypt although Egyptian officials say they are not aware of penetration of their borders by weapons smugglers, Ivry told military and diplomatic reporters over breakfast.

Jordan is trying to prevent smuggling, but it is hard to stop, the ambassador said.

With a shaky cease-fire holding, CIA Director George Tenet is in the region for talks with Israeli and Palestinian security officials.

Ivry said security arrangements have broken down and ``it's going to be difficult to get it back.''

On a quiet front, Sinai, Ivry said the Israeli government had told the Bush administration it would accept a reduction in the contingent of U.S. troops helping to man an international force along the border between Israel and Egypt.

But Ivry said Israel would like the United States to continue to ``show the flag'' by keeping some of the troops there, He said they serve as a guarantor of the peace process.

There are 865 Americans in Sinai, a mountainous desert region between Israel and Egypt that was a battleground in several Arab-Israeli wars.

The Americans serve in an observer force of about 1,850 soldiers from 11 countries at a cost to the United States of about $16 million a year. The force has been in Sinai since 1982,

Israel gave up the vast buffer zone as part of a 1979 peace treaty with Egypt.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld approached Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who would have to give their approval for a reduction in the force.

Ivry said Israel had agreed reluctantly to a reduction. He did not say how many of the Americans his government would be willing to have withdrawn.

Meanwhile, a senior U.S. official said violence must stop before Sharon would agree to freeze construction at Jewish settlements on the West Bank and in Gaza.

Sharon is not going to do anything under threat of violence, said the official, who spoke at reporters at the State Department on condition he not be identified.

The ``cutting edge'' of current U.S. diplomacy is to get a real cease-fire and then to move through the proposals made by a fact-finding commission headed by former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell.

These include a freeze on settlement construction, a major Palestinian demand that has the endorsement of Secretary of State Colin Powell.

The United States and Israel are closing in on an agreement that would ban new settlements, stop construction beyond the confines of existing ones and halt the expropriation of Palestinian-owned land for settlements.

The official said that concluding an agreement would require Palestinian approval of whatever steps Israel offers to take.

-------- israel

CIA Chief Begins Meetings With Israel

JUNE 07, 10:06 EST
By SUSAN SEVAREID
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=MIDEAST&STORYID=APIS7CFQBJG0

JERUSALEM (AP) - CIA chief George Tenet launched separate talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders Thursday, trying to reinforce a shaky cease-fire while Palestinians and Israeli soldiers clashed in the West Bank.

Tenet met with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Thursday afternoon and was to hold talks with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in the evening in an attempt to restore security cooperation that has been shattered by nearly 600 deaths in eight months.

Sharon ``expressed the Israeli demand for an end to the violence, terror and incitement that have not ceased,'' his office said in a statement after the meeting, which included Israeli security chiefs.

Israel has been increasingly critical of Arafat's enforcement of a cease-fire that he called Saturday, a day after a bomber killed himself and 20 Israelis outside a Tel Aviv disco. Though violence has lessened since, daily clashes continue.

In the West Bank town of Hebron, soldiers fired rubber bullets at dozens of Palestinians throwing stones and chased them into a part of the city under full Palestinian control. The soldiers pulled back after about 30 minutes. Two Palestinians were injured by rubber bullets.

Outside Ramallah, Israeli soldiers closed a street, preventing students from reaching Birzeit University. Students threw stones at the soldiers, who responded with rubber bullets. Eleven people were slightly injured, according to doctors.

Palestinian officials said Israeli army bulldozers entered Palestinian territory Thursday near the Gaza Strip border with Egypt and razed farmland and a Palestinian security outpost.

The Israeli army spokesman's office denied the allegation and said Palestinians had opened fire and thrown grenades and stones at soldiers near the Israeli-Egyptian border close to Rafah. Soldiers returned fire, the spokesman said. No injuries were reported.

Tenet's visit to the region is part of renewed U.S. involvement in the Palestinian-Israeli crisis after a lull since President Bush took office in January. Tenet met Wednesday with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Violence since Sept. 28 has left 484 people dead on the Palestinian side and 108 on the Israeli side.

Israeli officials have given mixed reviews of Arafat's enforcement of the cease-fire. Israel began easing restrictions on Palestinians on Wednesday because of what a Defense Ministry statement called a ``significant reduction in the number of attacks.''

But Sharon adviser Raanan Gissin was critical: ``What cease-fire? We are ceasing, they are firing.''

Palestinian parliament speaker Ahmed Qureia said he hopes Tenet will be able to help ``not only to solve the recent crises, but to solve the crises from its roots.''

That means ``avoiding trickery on the issue of settlements,'' he said, repeating the Palestinian call for a full freeze on settlement construction. Israel maintains settlements should be allowed ``natural growth,'' though the United States is trying to work out a deal for a broader freeze.

Tenet's visit comes at a time when Sharon has been under pressure to strike back militarily for the Tel Aviv bombing. Israel has warned it will act if the truce doesn't hold.

A few thousand hard-line supporters of Sharon, angry with his policy of restraint, prayed at the Western Wall late Wednesday before marching to west Jerusalem to join others and urge force against the Palestinians.

Many settlers at the rally said Sharon - long one of Israel's strongest settler advocates - has fallen down on his campaign promise to bring them security. Since late September, 24 settlers have been killed in drive-by shootings or roadside ambushes in the West Bank.

A 5-month-old baby, the son of a settler couple, remained in critical condition Thursday with a severe head injury after a stone shattered the window of the car in which he was riding Tuesday night. A drive-by shooting Wednesday night near the West Bank settlement of Neve Yair left three Israelis wounded, the army said.

-------- pakistan

Weapons amnesty declared in Pakistan

June 7, 2001
By Arnaud de Borchgrave
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010607-68206745.htm

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Pakistan´s military government yesterday began a countrywide crackdown on illicit weapons possession by allowing unlicensed guns to be turned in with impunity until June 20.

After that, mandatory 14-month prison sentences will be imposed.

Enforcement methods have been left in the hands of the governors of the country´s four provinces -- Sind, Punjab, Northwest Frontier and Baluchistan.

Pakistan´s 150 million people have more weapons per capita than the civilian population of the United States .These include hundreds of thousands of automatic weapons, heavy and light machine guns, bazookas, rocket-propelled grenades and even shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles.

Previous governments have attempted similar gun confiscation campaigns, always with meager results.

Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the military ruler who has pledged to heed a Supreme Court order to restore civilian government by October 2002, is the first Pakistani leader to have established a correlation between weapons and religious extremism.

Fearing Islamist demonstrations, Gen. Musharraf has advised provincial governors against house-to-house searches.

Observers of previous "de-weaponization" drives say the best that can be expected this time is that religious and ethnic militia will refrain from carrying AK-47 Kalashnikov assault rifles as they swagger around cities in pickup trucks.

In the past, licenses for arms, and free weapons handouts from government armories were granted to political supporters and neighborhood thugs who know how to get the vote out.

Religious militancy, backed by armed cadres, has spread from Karachi to Peshawar, 600 miles to the north.

The Musharraf government is reluctant to take on Islamist extremists lest they turn their guns against the authorities.

In a March interview, Gen. Musharraf conceded that 1 percent of the population -- or 1.5 million people -- is in the extremist camp "holding the other 99 percent hostage."

Already, the "fundos," as the fundamentalists are dubbed, are spreading word that weapons seizures are part of a "Zionist-Indian plot" designed to provoke the disintegration of Pakistan.

-------- puerto rico

Vieques Protesters Allege Rough Treatment by Navy
House Hispanic Caucus Hears About Body-Cavity Searches, Food Deprivation, Pepper Spraying

Washington Post
Thursday, June 7, 2001; Page A08
Associated Press
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32975-2001Jun6?language=printer

Students vomiting from the effects of pepper spray. Women subjected to repeated body-cavity searches. Little food and water for long periods.

Such were the conditions endured by protesters taken into Navy custody in April during bombing exercises on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques, according to about a dozen accounts given Tuesday at a hearing before the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

Those testifying included a congressman, several members of the Puerto Rico Senate, local religious leaders and actor Edward James Olmos. They were among 180 people arrested from April 27 to May 1 for trespassing on Navy property to try to stop the exercises, which the military says are vital to national security.

The 18-member caucus held the five-hour hearing to bring attention to allegations that the Navy severely mistreated peaceful protesters. Most of the all-Democratic caucus oppose the bombings on Vieques as a threat to the health and livelihood of island residents.

"We do not question that acts of civil disobedience have consequences," said Rep. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), who chaired the hearing. "What we do question are the allegations about the dehumanizing, degrading and punitive treatment received by those arrested at the hands of the United States Navy."

Acting Navy general counsel William Molzahn refused to comment on the arrests, saying it could compromise criminal proceedings. The U.S. District Court for Puerto Rico has not yet tried all those arrested on trespassing charges.

Those testifying detailed physical abuse of detainees, obscene gestures toward young women and racially charged insults. They said that pepper spray, rubber bullets and tear gas were used, even after protesters were in custody.

Detainees, who remained handcuffed for many hours and even when in secure areas, were forced to use portable toilets while cuffed and with military officers watching through the open door.

Puerto Rican Sen. Norma Burgos said she and others with her went 14 hours without food, were repeatedly denied requests to hear the charges against them and to speak to a lawyer, and waited 51 hours to see a judge.

Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) said sailors kicked his legs out from under him when he attempted to clear away sharp rocks after being ordered to his knees. As he lay face-first in the gravel, they kicked him, picked him up by the shirt and pants, and dropped him several feet away, where an officer held him down with a boot on his neck, Gutierrez said.

At the time, a Navy spokesman in Puerto Rico said the accounts by Gutierrez and others were "absolutely false" and that all the protesters were treated with dignity and respect.

At the hearing, photographs, videos and the testimony of all the other witnesses backed up Gutierrez's claims, and those of others.

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

'Army of One' campaign a success with young people

Washington Times
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
June 7, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20010607-24641235.htm

Please let me set the record straight on the success of both Army recruiting and the campaign "An Army of One" ("Army ad not right 'one,´ foes say," May 31). In just a few months since the campaign´s launch, virtually every index we have indicates that both Army recruiting and the campaign are right on the mark.

Contrary to your story, the Army is much more top-of-mind among young men and women this year than last. Young adults are now much more interested in the Army. Internet traffic at goarmy.com has skyrocketed beyond last year´s record levels. Qualified leads are up 25 percent. Contracts from qualified leads are up 44 percent, year to date. In the ultimate analysis, we actually have sent at least 1,600 more young people into our training centers so far this fiscal year than during the comparable period last year.

Our overall contract-recruiting mission has not been reduced or shifted. We will meet our recruiting mission this year, next year and in the years to come. Our recent decision to shift when we bring new recruits into the Army and where we place personnel was based on the Army´s needs and priorities and was made even before we began recruiting for the month of May. Soldier re-enlistment already is at 105 percent of our goal. As a result of this success and the gains brought by the "An Army of One" campaign, we can place more recruits into our Delayed Entry Program pool for accession next year. This permits the Army to manage our manpower resources more purposefully and efficiently and to enhance the overall readiness of the Army.

MAJ. GEN. DENNIS D. CAVIN U.S. Army Commanding general U.S. Army Recruiting Command Fort Knox, Ky.

----

'You Have Raised A Fitting Memorial'
Bush Leads Tribute to D-Day Veterans

By Steve Vogel
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 7, 2001; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32010-2001Jun6?language=printer

BEDFORD, Va., June 6 -- In the town that lost more than any other in America, President Bush presided over the dedication of the National D-Day Memorial today, the 57th anniversary of the Allied invasion of Normandy.

"You have raised a fitting memorial to D-Day, and you have put it in just the right place," Bush said. "Not on a battlefield of war, but in a small Virginia town -- a place, like so many others, that were home to men and women who helped liberate the continent."

Bedford, then a town of 3,200 people, suffered the highest per-capita loss of life of any community in the United States during the D-Day invasion. Nineteen soldiers from the town died within 15 minutes of landing on Omaha Beach when their company was mowed down by German machine guns.

Before his first trip to Europe as president, Bush used the occasion celebrating the great alliance against Nazi Germany to try to ease concerns that his administration is not committed to a strong transAtlantic relationship. "When I go to Europe next week, I will reaffirm the ties that bind our nation in a common destiny," Bush said. "They have seen our nations through a world war and a cold war."

He added: "We have learned that when there is a conflict in Europe, America is affected, and cannot stand by."

The theme was echoed by national security adviser Condoleezza Rice in a briefing tonight to preview Bush's five-day trip to Spain, Belgium, Sweden, Poland and Slovenia. Bush faces objections from allies over a range of administration positions, particularly missile defense and willingness to abrogate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, rejection of the Kyoto accord on global warming and eagerness to reduce troops in the Balkans.

"The one thing the president will really underscore is that we have more in common than we have in disagreement, and that we really should be celebrating that which we have in common," Rice said.

Rice sought to play down tensions over U.S. disagreements with the Europeans.

She characterized the rift over a global warming agreement as "exploring the different approaches to meeting our common goal of addressing climate change." On missile defense, she said, "I would not characterize it as disagreement. I would say that we're in the midst of ongoing consultations with our allies about how to best move forward." On removing troops from the Balkans, she said, "We do have to keep assessing the circumstances. But the president has made very clear he has no deadline."

Rice said the administration expected few breakthroughs on the trip, during which Bush will discuss AIDS in Africa and free trade. In Poland, he will visit the Warsaw Ghetto. On Bush's two-hour meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Slovenia, their first meeting, Rice said the leaders would merely "get to know each other," adding: "We are not expecting major agreements here."

Bush will use the trip to showcase examples of countries' successful transitions, Rice said: Spain as an example of post-authoritarian transition, Poland and Slovenia as post-communist success stories.

Still, even as Bush and Rice sought to emphasize common ground, the United States made another decision that risks aggravating European leaders. The administration told the European Union this week that it will cut one of the two annual summits between the United States and Europeans.

There was only talk of close alliances in Bedford, however. A crowd estimated at 15,000 filled the memorial plaza, an expansive nine-acre site with granite bunkers, bronze sculptures and a simulated beach depicting the invasion. The $13.6 million monument was paid for by private donations and state and local government money.

Hundreds of D-Day veterans came for the dedication, in what was perhaps the last great gathering of those who landed at Normandy as part of the largest amphibious invasion ever launched. Accompanying Bush on Air Force One was Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), 98, who landed in a glider in Normandy on D-Day with the 82nd Airborne Division.

Reminders of the continuing U.S. military presence in Europe were present in the form of present-day Virginia National Guard soldiers from the 29th Infantry Division, the same unit to which the Bedford men who landed at Omaha Beach belonged. Soldiers from the 29th will be deployed this summer to Bosnia on a six-month peacekeeping mission.

The 29th Infantry thus will be shipped to Europe "to defend for the third time in 83 years the right for people to live free," said Virginia Gov. James S. Gilmore III (R), who introduced Bush.

Low clouds added to a solemn mood that prevailed through much of the two-hour ceremony. The order given by Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower and the prayer written by President Franklin D. Roosevelt for D-Day were read aloud, as was Anne Frank's D-Day diary entry -- filled with hope that the invasion signaled a release for Jewish families in hiding. She died in a Nazi concentration camp at the age of 15.

France's ambassador to the United States, Francois Bujon de l'Estang, gave a poignant salute to those who died. "Their future was stolen away from them by a far-away war," he said. "Ladies and gentlemen, France does not forget."

Bob Sales, 75, who landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day, came to the ceremony in a wheelchair from his home 30 miles from Bedford. Every other man in his boat was killed or wounded landing on D-Day. "I wasn't the best soldier, not by far," Sales said. "The best soldiers all were killed."

Staff writer Dana Milbank in Washington contributed to this report.

-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

Environmentalists meet Cheney, see some progress

USA: June 7, 2001
Story by Randall Mikkelsen
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11086

WASHINGTON - The White House and environmentalists agreed this week to seek more renewable energy sources but stayed divided on other green issues that have battered President George W. Bush's popularity.

After a meeting of representatives of four major environmental organizations with Vice President Dick Cheney, both sides emerged to say that the White House had agreed to work to develop targets for increasing renewable energy use as part of a national energy policy.

The environmentalists said that the meeting represented a change in tone by an administration battered by charges it was hostile to environmental concerns but that major differences remained over issues such as Bush's plan to allow drilling for oil in an Alaskan wildlife refuge and his policy on global warming.

"They're talking to us, and they didn't talk to us before," said Dan Becker, director of global warming and energy policy for the Sierra Club. "Their (energy) plan was greeted with strong opposition by the American people. I think they are reading the polls and reading that reality and have decided to put things back on the table they had not put on before."

White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said: "The administration is committed to increasing renewables and (energy) efficiency. This is an area where we have common ground."

FACTOR IN RATING DROP

Disapproval of Bush's environmental and energy policies helped drive down the president's overall job approval rating in an ABC News/Washington Post poll released this week.

The nationwide poll found 58 percent of the adults surveyed disapproved of Bush's energy policies and 50 percent disapproved of his environmental policies.

The overall approval rating was 55 percent - down 8 points since late April - with 40 percent disapproving.

Bush unveiled his energy plan on May 17. It drew sharp criticism from environmentalists, who said it overemphasized oil, coal and nuclear fuel production while giving scant attention to energy conservation and renewable power sources such as wind and solar energy.

Bush in the last two weeks has been trying to portray himself as more environmentally friendly, traveling to Sequoia National Park in California and Everglades National Park in Florida to discuss his views of "21st-century environmentalism."

Besides the Sierra Club, the groups that met with Cheney and White House aides this week were the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Union of Concerned Scientists and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.

Organization representatives said the administration acknowledged that current trends in U.S. consumption of fossil fuels could not be continued.

CURRENT PATH CALLED "NOT SUSTAINABLE"

"The administration made a extremely important statement ... which is that in their view business as usual, continuing on the energy path we are on, with the reliance we presently have on fossil fuels, is not sustainable," Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope said.

Howard Ris, executive director of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the administration did not agree to specific targets for renewable energy use but was willing to develop such "benchmarks." The four groups recommended that 20 percent of U.S. power come from nonhydropower renewable energy sources, up from about 2 percent now.

The groups' officials said they also outlined concern about a pending study by the National Academy of Sciences that the White House has said will be a basis for a decision on whether to raise mandatory fuel-economy standards for cars and light trucks.

The officials said the study group was biased in favor of automakers, who oppose higher standards.

Overall, Pope said, "the dialogue, I think, was extremely helpful" and "there was enough here to warrant further conversations."

But he noted that "there are important issues which were not on the table - issues on which we and the administration are not in agreement, even in principle."

These include drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, research into reprocessing spent nuclear fuel and the administration's unwillingness to regulate power plant emissions of carbon dioxide, which is believed to contribute to global warming, environmental group officials said.

-------- energy

New US coal plants to power 20 million homes

USA: June 7, 2001
Story by Timothy Gardner
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11089

NEW YORK - After a decade in which almost no coal-fired power plants were built in the United States, suddenly 34 coal plants are being planned across the country to meet increasing power needs, analysts said this week.

"New coal-fired power generation will play a critical role in solving the nation's electricity needs in the coming decades," said Merrill Lynch analyst Daniel Roling.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, looking to avoid the growth of California-style rolling brownouts, has called for 1,300 new power plants over the next 20 years to meet booming electricity demand.

Electricity demand has more than doubled over the last 20 years, according to the Edison Electric Institute.

Coal, which currently fires more than half of U.S. electricity production, would surely play a role in such an expansion. But until now the expansion of coal power plants been put off because the fuel emits large quantities of smog components sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide as well as mercury and greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.

Cleaner burning natural gas produces only 15 percent of the nation's power, but its use is set to grow faster. Natgas emits 43 percent less carbon dioxide than conventional coal burning, according to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). As a result, 90 percent of planned electricity plants are natgas.

Coal proponents say the fuel can get cleaner. Scrubbers that cut up to 90 percent of sulfur dioxide emissions and growing amounts of nitrogen oxide, are the result of joint industry and government clean coal research, according to coal groups. In addition, many coal companies tout their planting of trees, which swallow carbon dioxide as they grow.

If all of the 34 proposed plants are built, they will provide 20,217 megawatts (MW) of power. One MW powers about 1,000 average homes.

Two plants are scheduled to come on line next year. Jacksonville Electric is building a 300 MW plant in Duval, Florida, and Global Energy is building a 540 MW plant in Lima, Ohio.

Many of the proposed plants are slated for Wyoming and Kentucky, the No. 1 and 3 coal producing states. Wisconsin would also add 2,800 MW from 2007 to 2013.

Peabody Group , the largest coal company in the world, is planning a $1.5 billion 1,500 MW Thoroughbred plant slated to come online in 2005 in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky. That plant, which Peabody plans to make an environmental showcase, will be built beside an underground coal mine, so that coal transportation, which in itself releases carbon dioxide and smog agents, will be eliminated at that plant.

Illinois plans to build three plants. Last week the state legislature approved a $3.5 billion package of tax incentives and low-cost loans for the construction of new power plants that can burn high sulfur coal from Illinois.

Opponents of the rapid building of power plants point to a DOE study from last year that says broader adoption of conservation and energy efficiency such as the use of compact florescent lightbulbs could free up power. They say conservation can create more power than 600 new power plants and that use of alternative wind, biomass, geothermal and solar can obviate the need for an additional 180 power plants.

"We don't need the government to tell us to make 1,300 new power plants," said Lexi Shultze, attorney for U.S. Public Interest Research Group. "That would lead to a great deal of oversupply."

----

EPA says most US refiners breaking green laws

USA: June 7, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11082

NEW YORK - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said yesterday that roughly 80 percent of the nation's 152 refineries are violating pollution laws, and the agency is having trouble keeping up.

"Based on our investigations and our best estimates, we believe there is at least an 80 percent noncompliance among refineries," said a high-level EPA official. "We can't be everywhere. We need the resources and we need to determine which cases present the greatest risk."

The high rate of environmental violations among refineries, the EPA said, is due primarily to oil companies neglecting a rule that requires them to report new sources of emissions at their plants that come during upgrades or expansions.

The Bush energy plan unveiled in May calls for a review of that rule, the New Source Review which was enacted in the 1970s, to determine how hard to crack down on the industry, already struggling to increase thin supplies and meet looming low sulfur regulations for gasoline and diesel.

Environmentalists have warned against a weakening of enforcement in favor of energy supplies, saying it is vital to keep curbs on an industry that represents one of the most significant sources of air pollution. U.S. refiners process roughly 16 million barrels of crude oil each day.

Ahead of the review, companies remain vulnerable to complaints by the EPA, agency sources said. Citgo Petroleum Corp., a leading U.S. gasoline refiner and marketer, said in April it faces "significant penalties" for failure to report new emissions at two of its refineries.

-------- human rights

SWITZERLAND: GYPSIES PLAN TO SUE I.B.M.

New York Times
Elizabeth Olson
June 7, 2001
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/07/world/07BRIE.html?searchpv=nytToday

Gypsy groups said they would sue I.B.M., asserting that its tabulating machines helped Nazi Germany track and identify people killed during the Holocaust. An estimated 600,000 Gypsies are believed to have died at the hands of the Nazis. The groups plan to sue under Swiss law because I.B.M.'s German and Swiss subsidiaries were then situated in Geneva. (NYT)

----

ASIA AFGHANISTAN: AID GROUP WARNS TALIBAN

June 7, 2001
World Briefing
Reuters
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/07/world/07BRIE.html?searchpv=nytToday

The group coordinating almost all assistance to Afghanistan warned that the policies of the ruling Taliban could bring the entire aid program to a halt. "How are we going to continue to work if on the Taliban side the conditions for working in Afghanistan become more difficult?" said Hans-Joachim Däerr, chairman of the Afghanistan Support Group, made up of 15 countries. The Taliban's strict interpretation of Islamic law has led to increasing conflicts with aid organizations.

-------- spying


China Says U.S. Spy Plane Row 'Basically' Over

New York Times
June 7, 2001
By REUTERS Filed at 5:42 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-china-u.html

BEIJING (Reuters) - China and the United States said on Thursday the long-simmering row over a crippled U.S. spy plane held on Hainan Island was basically over after the two sides agreed on how it should be dismantled and shipped out.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi said Beijing now hoped that relations with Washington, beset by a series of disputes since President Bush took office in January, would now get back on track.

``China and the United States have basically solved the matter of the plane, both the crew and the aircraft,'' Sun told a news conference.

``Yesterday, both sides reached an agreement on the technical issues and now both sides are preparing for the disassembly and transportation of the plane,'' he said.

``We hope bilateral relations can come back to the normal track.''

A team of U.S. technicians has been in Beijing since last Thursday to discuss details of the return of the plane EP-3 spy plane which made an emergency landing on Hainan after a collision with a Chinese fighter jet on April 1.

U.S. TEAM STAYS IN CHINA

China detained the plane's 24 crew members for 11 days until Washington said it was ``very sorry'' the Chinese pilot was killed and the damaged EP-3 landed on Hainan without permission.

But talks on removing the plane had dragged on as fresh rows erupted over issues including the biggest U.S. arms package to Taiwan in a decade and a pledge from President Bush to do ''whatever it takes'' to defend the island regarded by Beijing as a renegade province.

The long delay in the plane's return angered U.S. lawmakers and threatened to spill over into the two countries' trade ties and Beijing's bid to host the 2008 Olympics.

But U.S. officials softened their tone in recent days, pledging not to let diplomatic disputes derail China's entry to the World Trade Organization.

``We have reached agreement with the PRC on a plan of action regarding the return of our EP-3,'' a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy told Reuters.

The four-person U.S. technical team was expected to remain in China for as long as it took to complete the operation, he said.

The United States initially wanted to repair the plane and fly it out and sent a team of technicians to Hainan to confirm that was possible.

But China, insisting that U.S. spy flights off its coast be halted, said allowing the plane to fly off Hainan would be a national humiliation.

There was even talk the $80 million eavesdropping plane might have to be cut up and shipped out by sea.

CHINA OPPOSES SPY FLIGHTS

Sun said China's position on U.S. surveillance flights had not changed.

He declined to say long it might take to get the spy plane off Hainan and said some small problems could arise during its dismantling and transportation.

``The plane is now on Hainan,'' Sun said. ``They have already started preparatory work for its disassembly.''

``Certainly there will be people from the U.S. side going to Hainan.''

He did not give any details of how the EP-3 would be removed from Hainan.

But Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral Craig Quigley said on Tuesday the talks with China revolved around loading the aircraft in pieces on a giant Antonov-124 cargo plane.

-------- activists

Liberator: Free Vieques

Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2001 16:42:27 -0400
From: Max Obuszewski <MObuszewski@afsc.org>

It is classic David versus Goliath: citizens of an island of less than 10,000 challenge the most powerful navy in the world.

The Liberator 2001 #4 Classic satyagraha campaign on Vieques

Nonviolent Direct Action

The protests against the Navy's bombing on Vieques, Puerto Rico are following a traditional pattern. Henry David Thoreau first expounded on "Civil Disobedience" in an 1848 Concord Lyceum lecture. Like any institution, the state can err. Thus a citizen's duty is first to justice, not the law.

His classic book motivated activists in Russia and India and Birmingham, Berkeley and Baltimore. In Thoreau's time, the government took Mexican land, so he refused to pay a tax and spent a night in jail. Today the Navy "legally" bombs Vieques, and protesters "illegally" enter the bombing range to face arrest and imprisonment.

Gandhi coined the term satyagraha--firmness in the search for truth--to define the use of nonviolent action against injustice. The Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques (CRDV) is now using this weapon of the spirit.

Many peace and justice organizations condemn the bombing, which has included the use of napalm and depleted uranium ammunition. For example, the National Action Network, on the front lines of such issues as racial profiling and police brutality, is part of the struggle. Its president, the Rev. Al Sharpton, one of few national leaders willing to risk freedom for his beliefs, is serving a 90-day sentence for protesting the bombing.

Representatives of the Fellowship of Reconciliation traveled to Vieques to see firsthand the civil rights struggle. A solidarity demonstration has been called by the Baltimore Emergency Response Network, as the Navy will resume the bombing on June 13. The Ithaca Catholic Worker formed a Vieques Support Group.

Hard Times for Vieques Protesters

Previously, protesters received light sentences or fines. But as the trials began for the 180 people arrested from April 27 to May 1, a crackdown is underway. Puerto Rican Independence Party members Ruben Berrios and Samuel Soto Bosques received the most severe sentences--four months.

On May 23, Rev. Sharpton and three New York City politicians--City Councilperson Adolfo Carrion, state Assemblyperson Jose Rivera and Bronx County Democratic Party chair Roberto Ramirez appeared before U.S. District Judge Jose Fuste. The defendants, dubbed the Vieques Four, requested their own counsel, but remarkably the judge denied their motions before finding them guilty. The politicians received 40-day sentences.

About 140 others are yet to be tried, including Robert Kennedy Jr., U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., actor Edward James Olmos, New York City labor leader Dennis Rivera and Mirta Sanes, the sister of security guard David Sanes Rodriguez. His death in April 1999 by errant Navy bombs ignited the current movement.

The protesters were also subjected to rough treatment: tear gas, rubber bullets and excessive force. A three-month old was among those hospitalized. One protester died of kidney failure shortly after his release, and his family wonders if his death resulted from dehydration while detained. Amnesty International is investigating the abuse, and the Hispanic Caucus of the U.S. House of Representatives held a June 5 hearing on the treatment of protesters. Video footage presented at the hearing confirmed the inhumane treatment.

The intimidation could backfire. Severe sentences for trespassing at Fort Benning, Georgia, has only emboldened the movement to close down the infamous School of the Americas.

FASTING

The hunger strike is another weapon of the spirit. So it was not surprising to hear the "Vieques Four," being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in New York, began a hunger strike. This action is not unprecedented as last year, from July 25 until Oct. 2, Andres Thomas Conteris, a United Methodist lay missioner and member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, engaged in a seventy day fast, the last fifty on water only. He was unsuccessful in his appeal to President Bill Clinton to meet with Puerto Rican leaders.

A hunger strike can differ from Gandhi's fasts, which were designed to convert, in that strikers may die if a demand is unmet. The Irish nationalist Bobby Sands, for example, fasted to his death.

Jail as a Campaign Office

The Rev. Sharpton is hinting his jailing may spur him to run for president. This reminded me Eugene Debs, the remarkable pacifist union leader, ran for president on the Socialist ticket five times. Debs spoke out against World War I and was convicted of sedition. In 1920, he garnered almost one million votes for president after campaigning from his jail cell in Atlanta.

For a protest against missile defense at Menwith Hill, an NSA listening post in Yorkshire, England, Helen John was found guilty April 30 of criminal damage and sentenced to three months. Despite her incarceration, she ran as an independent parliamentary candidate on a No Star Wars platform in the recent British elections. A jail experience can be a boost for a third party candidate.

Satyagraha Cannot Guarantee Success

Vieques activists believe the ill-tempered response to the civil disobedience campaign will strengthen the movement. No matter how just the cause, though, failure is a possibility. However, the Governor of Puerto Rico, Sila M. Calderón, opposes the bombing and hopes to sponsor a referendum, which will include the option of ending the military exercises permanently.

As a long-time civil disobedient, I applaud those who risk arrest in the search for truth. Before dismissing the intentions of people in jail, critics, judges and prosecutors should first experience life behind bars.

During nonviolence training, I ask who knows the name of the British judge who sentenced Gandhi to six years imprisonment. Invariably, no one knows his name. I suspect the judge who sent the "Vieques Four" and others to prison for mere trespass will soon be forgotten, but the nonviolent movement to Free Vieques will be long remembered.

William Lloyd Garrison, the impassioned anti-slavery abolitionist, printed the first copy of his newspaper, The Liberator, in Jan. 1831: "I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice."

Hiroshima-Nagasaki Commemoration Committee, 4806 York Road, Baltimore, MD 21212 Ph: 410-323-7200 Fax: 410-323-7292 Email: mobuszewski@afsc.org

----

Nuclear Energy Industry: Sooo 20th Century

CAMPAIGNS: Greenwash
By Kenny Bruno Special to CorpWatch
June 7, 2001
http://www.corpwatch.org/greenwash/awards/2001/nei.html

She's cute, she's wholesome, she's All-American. With scooter, headphones and helmet, she's wired and sooo contemporary. And this highly likeable kid is saying, into her cell phone, that nuclear power is "so important to America's energy future."

Our Summer Greenwash Award goes to the Nuclear Energy Institute, for the ad "Clean Air is Sooo 21st Century."

For choosing an adolescent girl -- someone more susceptible than average to the harmful effects of radiation (and advertising) -- to represent the renewed aspirations of the nuclear energy industry, the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) wins the CorpWatch Summer (Blackout) Greenwash Award.

NEI is no newcomer to greenwash. In 1991, the organization, then known as the US Council for Energy Awareness, ran an ad saying, "Trees aren't the only plants that are good for the atmosphere." That ad pictures a lovely lake, trees and blue skies, co-existing harmoniously with the characteristic dome of a nuke. The copy includes blanket statements like nuclear plants "don't pollute the air," " reduce certain airborne pollutants more 19,000 tons every day," and "produce no greenhouse gases."

In 1999, Public Citizen and Nuclear Information Research Service filed a petition (http://www.citizen.org/cmep/restructuring/ftc.pdf) to the Federal Trade Commission alleging that NEI environmental ads with similar claims were false and misleading. The FTC agreed that the ad was inaccurate, but also ruled that it was political, not commercial speech, and therefore protected.

The 2001 version (21st Century nuclear greenwash) brings in the human factor in the form of the modern girl. It assumes we all agree, including the nuclear industry of course, that clean air is a must. And that plenty of energy is likewise a must. And then comes the great news for the girl: there need be no trade-off between environment and consumerism. Nukes can see to that.

The attempt to rehabilitate the image of nuclear power is understandable, since not a single nuke has been ordered in the US since 1973. To overcome opposition, the industry will have to overcome not only economic obstacles but its own reputation as the quintessentially scary technology. Several recent events have given the industry what they see as an opportunity to make a comeback.

http://www.corpwatch.org/greenwash/awards/2001/nei.html

----

Utah citizens protest nuclear waste dumping

Thursday, June 7, 2001
Environmental News Network
http://www.enn.com/news/enn-stories/2001/06/06072001/utahdumping_43878.asp

BLANDING, UTAH - Citizens and environmental groups in southern Utah held a "Walk Against Nuclear Waste" last week. More than 40 individuals walked simultaneously from Blanding (San Juan County) to Moab. The eighty-mile walk, led by longtime San Juan County activist Ken Sleight, followed U.S. Highway 191. Cosponsoring groups included Moab-based Living Rivers, Glen Canyon Action Network, and the Sierra Club Glen Canyon Group, as well as HEAL-UTAH from Salt Lake City.

The event was held in conjunction with a Utah Radiation Control Board tour of a mill operated by the International Uranium Corporation (IUC) at a site near Blanding. The mill uses an acid heap leach process to extract uranium and other minerals from the waste. Activists are protesting the recent application by IUC to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which seeks to transport and process radioactive lead waste, by truck from a site near San Bernardino, California, for processing into high-grade material. The Sierra Club is fighting the application.

"We want this mill closed and the awful mess cleaned up," said John Weisheit, Chair of the Glen Canyon Group. "This multinational corporation is hauling out-of-state nuclear waste through our communities, and dumping it in the backyards of Utahns."

As the volume of radioactive materials grows at White Mesa, residents increasingly express concerns that the IUC mill could become "another Moab," a reference to the highly polluting Atlas uranium mill tailings site near that community on the banks of the Colorado River.

The mill site, just north of the White Mesa Ute Indian Reservation, has been controversial since its opening in 1980. Currently the mill receives shipments of waste material from a number of toxic and radioactive dumps around the country. The uranium-bearing wastes are brought to the IUC facility--in unmarked containers on trucks and by rail--from sites in New York, New Jersey, and Missouri. Proposals to bring nuclear wastes in from other locations, such as Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, are pending.

Meanwhile, the company's annual report indicates that it has lost substantial sums of money in recent years. The company is only responsible for closure costs of ten million dollars. This news has stirred fears that IUC may be intentionally stockpiling large amounts of radioactive and toxic metals and other wastes, with the intention of declaring bankruptcy and closing the facility.

A similar situation exists in Moab, where one of the nation's largest uranium tailings piles leaches thousands of gallons of radioactive ammonia into the Colorado River each day. Cleanup estimates of this site, formerly owned by Atlas Corporation, range into the hundreds of millions of dollars. Atlas spun off the Moab mill to a subsidiary, then allowed the new company to go bankrupt, thereby avoiding liability.

The latest proposal would bring radioactive sludge material to the IUC mill by truck from Unocal's Molycorp Mountain Pass Mine in San Bernardino County, California. The mine sludge is laced with lead, a potent toxin known to cause a host of serious health problems in humans, as well as environmental damage.

The Sierra Club is currently appealing a decision by a NRC administrative law judge, seeking a hearing on the Molycorp license amendment. The judge denied the group's request, saying that the Sierra Club lacked standing in the case. The well-known conservation group may take the NRC to court over the matter.

The environmental groups will called on the Radiation Control Board to regulate existing wastes at the mill and to oppose all incoming shipments of additional wastes. "We will march to the Governor's office in Salt Lake City if need be," said Ken Sleight, a San Juan County businessman. "There's no excuse for Utah state government to spend our tax dollars fighting the Goshute Indians who want to dump nuclear waste on their own lands, while sitting quietly and letting white people dump poison next to the White Mesa Ute Indians."


------- OneList (submissions from subscribers)

------- Depleted Uranium Keeps On Killing!