------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
How low should we go on deterrence
UK Scientists Conducted HK Baby Nuclear Tests
Bulgaria sets up insurance pool against N-plant risk
EU Imperils GE-Honeywell Deal
Del Ponte is asked to prosecute NATO for DU
Bush Offers Vision of Europe United in 'Alliance of Liberty'
Pakistan, India Ready for Summit
U.S. Suspects Iran Getting Nuclear Components
S. Korea Defense Minister to Visit US
General Says Missile Shield Needs Money and Prudence
NMD will slow India's rise
US 'planned nuclear first strike on Russia'
Asian Forum Against U.S. Defense Plan
Bush Proposes Lifting Limits on Membership in NATO
Baltic States See NATO as Shield From Russia
Bush Eager to Meet Russia's Putin
Bush Wants Russia to Be 'Partner'
Russians en route to get U.S. spy plane
Bush Urges Russia to Forge New Ties
Putin Treads Carefully Toward Bush
Misrepresenting the ABM Treaty
Presentations Start for Nuke Workers
DOE secretary to visit
Uranium cleanup on House's wish list
Court denies downwinders' appeal
Bush Spotlights Poland's Democracy
U.S., Russia At Odds on Iranian Deal
Diplomat sets meeting with Powell
The Bush vision. . .
Bush Offers Vision of Wider Europe
Despite safety advances, the public remains wary of nuclear power

MILITARY
Inside the Ring
China. Russia, 4 Others Form Bloc
Global arms outlays up to $798 bil., U.S. share 37%
Two Suspected Arms Dealers Held
Bush pressured to increase military role
Two Serbs Jailed for War Crimes
Chinese forces observe joint mine-sweeping exercise
Colombian Military Empowered by Law
Americans blamed in Colombia raid
Iraq Says It Hit Allied Warplane
CIA Chief Puts Clout to Work in Mideast Effort
Chiapas Rebels Haunt Mexico Plans
Lott Opposes Bush's Vieques Plan
Why Bush Bowed Out of Vieques
Vieques Closing Angers Military, Hill GOP
Both Sides Attack Bush Plan to Halt Bombing on Vieques
Puerto Rico Will Vote on Vieques
Give Puerto Rico Its Independence
Cambodians Lose Faith in U.N.
Rumsfeld: Accelerate New Military Strategy
War Games Begin at Fort Bliss
Defense Chief Will Propose Military Change in Course

OTHER
Norway has significant wind power potential - NVE
Five Beheaded in Saudi Arabia
Calif. Looks into Energy Overcharges
African dust storms send germs to America
Sweden Police Call for Reinforcements
Senate panel plans probe of FBI's internal security
Handling of Deportees Faulted
U.S. Near Hanssen Plea Deal
Erosion of privacy on a global scale
China, Russia to launch anti-terrorism exercises

ACTIVISTS
Turner Starting Indie Movie Company
Protesters, Police Clash at EU Summit
Court Upholds Sharpton's, Vieques Allies' Sentences
Marchers demand ban on fluoride in water
Campaign to Revive Whistleblower Rights!!!!!
Vigil in Oak Ridge Tennessee


-------- NUCLEAR

How low should we go on deterrence

[Please reply to this guy!!! You can contact him directly at the U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, DC 20015; send a letter to the editor of the Washington Times at letters@washingtontimes.com. et]

Washington Times
June 15, 2001
William M. "Mac" Thornberry
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20010615-99950721.htm

Fifteen years ago, Ronald Reagan traveled to Reykjavik, Iceland, for his second summit meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev.

The turning point of the summit came when Mr. Reagan rejected Mr. Gorbachev´s challenge to abandon development of a missile defense system in exchange for unprecedented cutbacks in the size of the U.S. and Soviet nuclear arsenals.

Although he was roundly criticized for it at the time, many now believe Mr. Reagan´s decision to hold firm hastened the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.

Tomorrow, President Bush will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Clearly, the world has changed a great deal since 1986. However, one thing that has not changed is that the security of America continues to rest upon the strength of our nuclear deterrent.

In early May, President Bush spoke of shrinking the size of our nuclear arsenal to achieve "a credible deterrent with the lowest possible number of nuclear weapons consistent with our national security needs, including our obligations to our allies." Undoubtedly, we can safely reduce our current inventory of nuclear weapons without compromising our security.

But with some commentators suggesting that U.S. security needs can be met by a few hundred warheads in our arsenal, we need to consider some fundamental questions about what deterrence means and how we accomplish it.

What does nuclear deterrence mean today? During the Cold War, nuclear deterrence was clearly defined. It meant having an arsenal big enough to deter the Soviets from attacking first and potent enough to respond effectively if they did.

Today deterrence comes from a more delicate balance of reducing proliferation, dissuading adversaries, and assuring allies. Our nuclear deterrent also may discourage use of other weapons of mass destruction, such as chemical or biological weapons. This broader concept of deterrence should be considered as we determine the number and the characteristics of our future stockpile.

Still, there is power in sheer numbers. Published estimates indicate Russia still has about 6,000 to 7,000 strategic and 10,000 to 20,000 tactical nuclear weapons. Unlike the United States, Russia is still manufacturing new warheads. But we must look beyond just Russia. From China and North Korea, to India, Pakistan, and countries in the Middle East, more and more nations are seeking to strengthen their regional influence by enhancing their nuclear capability. The U.S. may face possible alliances among them or terrorist groups that are actively seeking a nuclear capability.

The lower we make the threshold for becoming a world power, the more tempting it becomes. There may not be an appreciable difference whether the U.S. has 7,000 or 4,000 weapons. Even 2,500 weapons may seem unreachable for an emerging nuclear power with a few dozen weapons on hand. But matching a U.S. stockpile of 500 or 1,000 weapons may seem much closer and much more achievable, both practically and psychologically. We do not want to lower the bar so much that others are encouraged to try to jump up and reach it particularly those who see nuclear weapons as a shortcut to global influence.

How can we achieve deterrence as our nuclear stockpile grows older and more strategically limited? Since we are unable to build new weapons or conduct nuclear tests on old weapons, our most significant challenge may be keeping our existing deterrent credible.

The science-based stockpile stewardship program is still unproven and underfunded despite the best efforts of our scientists and nuclear work force. And those who expect significant budget savings from a smaller arsenal will be disappointed, for the tools and processes cost roughly the same for 1,000 weapons as for 5,000. But it could get worse. Deep cuts in the total number of warheads would reduce how many types of warheads we will have. For example, under START I the U.S. has nine different types of warheads. If we were to have only a few hundred weapons, we would probably keep only our submarine launched missiles, leaving just two or three different types of warheads. Logically, with fewer types of warheads, a problem with any one type and problems do develop from time to time disables a greater percentage of the stockpile. If we put all of our eggs into one or two baskets, a hole in one of those baskets could have devastating consequences.

The bottom line is that nuclear weapons have helped provide a stabilizing force in the world for more than 55 years. In the future, they may have a different role to play, but they will still be central to the security of the United States and world peace. A reduction in America´s nuclear arsenal may be sound policy. But how low we can go will depend on assessing the future threat accurately, deterring adversaries while assuring allies, and maintaining confidence in the weapons that remain. Just as President Reagan held firm at Reykjavik when challenged to drop his plans for a missile defense system, so too should President Bush hold firm when called upon to cut our nuclear arsenal below levels on which the security of the United States and the world depends.

William M. "Mac" Thornberry is a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Texas and serves on the House Armed Services and Budget Committees and is chairman of the Special Oversight Panel on Department of Energy Reorganization.

-------- australia

Paper: UK Scientists Conducted HK Baby Nuclear Tests

New York Times
June 15, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/health/science-health-hongko.html?searchpv=reuters

HONG KONG (Reuters) - British scientists listed specific body parts of dead Hong Kong children they needed for nuclear experiments between the 1950s and 1970s, the South China Morning Post reported on Friday.

Citing official British records, the newspaper said some Hong Kong medical officials had given approval for bodies of Hong Kong children to be used in the tests without parental consent.

Pressure has been mounting on the Hong Kong government for a probe into recent reports in British newspapers that some 6,000 stillborn babies and dead infants were sent from Australia, Britain, Canada, Hong Kong, the United States and South America over a 15-year period.

The bodies and body parts were used by the U.S. Department of Energy for tests to monitor the impact of fallout and radioactivity from nuclear tests.

The remains of Hong Kong babies were also used by British scientists for similar tests and research that ended only in the 1970s.

According to the Post, Hong Kong health authorities were given detailed instructions by British scientists.

``What we most need are bones from children 0-5 years of age with the following minimum requirements: one complete femur from each child, cleaned from soft tissue,'' it quoted documents obtained from Britain's Public Records Office as saying.

``The following particulars about each subject: name; date of birth; date of death; whether breast or bottle-fed; place where the child lived; any other information thought relevant.''

In 1961, one scientist and a colleague analyzed samples from 31 Hong Kong children, which did not indicate dangerous levels of radioactive element Strontium 90.

The Hong Kong government has said it would not investigate the reports unless specific evidence came to light that Hong Kong babies had been used in the tests.

Government representatives were not immediately available for comment on the Post report.

Australia confirmed last week that cremated bones from some Australian babies, children and adults of up to 39 years old had been shipped to the United States and Britain to test for radioactive fallout from nuclear tests.

-------- bulgaria

Bulgaria sets up insurance pool against N-plant risk

BULGARIA: June 15, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11201

SOFIA - Eleven Bulgarian insurance companies yesterday set up the first ever Bulgarian national insurance nuclear pool against an accident at the Soviet-designed Kozloduy nuclear power plant.

"Today we signed a contract with Bulgarian companies for establishing a national insuranace pool against a nuclear accident in line with Vienna Convention on Civil Liabilities for Nuclear Damage," said State Energy Agency chief Ivan Shilyashki.

The annual premium will be $500,000, an insurance official said.

Among the 11 firms in the pool is Energia with 27 percent, second-ranked is Allianz Bulgaria, owned by Germany's Allianz AG with 20.5 percent, followed by Orel with 14 and State Insurance Institute-General Innsurance - 11.7 percent.

"The Bulgarian state guarantees some 51 million levs ($22.4 million) and 30 percent out of it would be covered by the national pool," Shilyashki told reporters.

The remaining 70 percent would be re-insured by foreign pools and experts from the nuclear isurance pools of Great Britain, Germany and Switzerland are now at the Kozloduy site to assess the level of the reactors' risk, he said.

In February the government appointed the Kozloduy plant as an operator of its nuclear facilities after it was legally separated from the state-owned National Electricity Company last year.

Now Kozloduy, being an independent entity, has the civil liability for damage in case of nuclear event.

The 3,760-megawatt Kozloduy plant, which supplies half of the country's power, will start in 2003 decommissioning its oldest 440-megawatt reactors one and two earlier than planned following safety fears of the international community.

The earlier closure of the other two 440 MW aging reactors, three and four, would be determined after negotiations with the European Commission.

The worst accident that the Kozloduy plant has registered so far has been of the second level of the seven-levelled International Nuclear Events Scale, the plant's spokeswoman Yordanka Stoyanov told Reuters.

-------- business

EU Imperils GE-Honeywell Deal
Antitrust Panel Demands Combined Firm Divest $6 Billion in Assets

By William Drozdiak
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, June 15, 2001; Page E01
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3053-2001Jun14?language=printer

BRUSSELS, June 14 -- General Electric Co.'s $45 billion bid to buy Honeywell International Inc. appeared seriously jeopardized today after the companies said the European Union's antitrust authorities had set intolerable conditions for approving the deal.

The possibility that the EU may effectively veto the combination of two U.S. industrial giants threatened to increase economic tension between the United States and Europe just as President Bush was holding a summit meeting in Goteborg, Sweden, with the 15 leaders of the European Union.

Executives for both companies said they had gone as far as they could to appease EU concerns by offering to divest Honeywell businesses that generate $2.2 billion in annual revenue. But merger experts for the European Commission, the EU's executive body, want them to dispose of $6 billion in assets, a price the companies consider exorbitant.

"We have always said there was a point at which we wouldn't do the deal," said GE chairman and chief executive John F. Welch Jr. "The commission's extraordinary demands are far beyond that point."

Welch, who traveled to Brussels last week hoping to resolve the last obstacles to the deal, said the EU's demands would require sacrificing virtually all of Honeywell's avionics business and rob the merger of its original strategic purpose.

"In this case, the European regulators' demands exceeded anything I or our European advisers imagined, and differed sharply from antitrust counterparts in the U.S. and Canada," who have approved the deal, Welch said.

EU antitrust regulators, who have authority to review the deal because of the large European presence of both companies, have demanded that the firms divest some assets to reduce the likelihood they will acquire overwhelming control of certain global aerospace markets.

Specifically, the EU's antitrust commissioner, Mario Monti, and his staff have repeatedly warned about the danger of GE and Honeywell "bundling" the sales and services of their different businesses. For example, GE Capital Aviation Services (GECAS), the largest aircraft-leasing company, might buy only GE jet engines and Honeywell aerospace products. This combination, the EU commission fears, would produce package deals for commercial jet airplanes that would annihilate the competition and lead to much higher prices for customers.

The companies had until 6 p.m. today, Washington time, to submit their final concession offers. The EU's executive members must decide whether to approve the merger by July 12. Many antitrust experts predicted the companies will withdraw their proposal in the coming days.

Some industry analysts believe that GE officials, after rethinking the terms of the deal, and considering the U.S. economy's slowdown, are not unhappy the merger is falling apart.

"It's very, very possible GE has set terms it knows won't be accepted," said James Kelleher, an analyst at Argus Research.

With the United States and the European Union struggling to resolve a raft of trade conflicts at a time of growing weakness in the world economy, some Europeans expressed fears that an EU veto of the merger could anger members of the U.S. Congress.

A Bush administration spokesman confirmed that White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card had spoken with Welch about his negotiations with the EU commission while the Bush delegation was in Brussels on Wednesday for a summit conference with NATO leaders. The spokesman said administration officials might raise the merger issue at the summit in Sweden.

Monti's spokeswoman, Amelia Torres, rejected suggestions that the EU's antitrust review had political implications and said that pressure from the United States or any other foreign government would not sway the panel. "As to political intervention, that's something that can happen and has happened in the past, but it really never impresses the commission," Torres said.

"The commission must review mergers and acquisitions solely based on competition grounds," she said. "That's always what the commission has done and that's what it intends to keep doing."

If the EU blocks the deal, it would mark the first time that European regulators foiled a merger of two American companies that had already been approved by the U.S. government.

Until now, U.S. and EU antitrust officials have collaborated closely in policing the competitive impact of mergers as a growing number of companies combine to compete on a global scale. But the divergent views of the GE-Honeywell merger held by regulators on either side of the Atlantic could portend new uncertainties for future mergers.

Monti and Welch met twice on Wednesday but made no headway, according to sources familiar with the discussions.

GE said today it had offered to set up GECAS as "as a separate, 'ring-fenced' entity to deal at arm's length with Honeywell avionics and non-avionics products." But the EU's merger task force demanded a complete spinoff, which GE claims is a deal-breaker.

It was unclear whether Welch's complaints today were an attempt to intimidate the EU commission into relaxing its demands. But Monti showed no signs of giving ground. He said his staff had spent a great amount of time with GE executives trying to find an acceptable compromise, but GE would not accept the commission's proposed solutions.

"We have explored commitments which would not have entailed further divestments in the aerospace industry but rather a structural commitment to modify the commercial behavior of GECAS," Monti said in a statement. "We regret that this avenue has not been pursued."

Staff writer Robert O'Harrow in New York contributed to this report.

-------- depleted uranium

Del Ponte is asked to prosecute NATO for DU

IHT-KATHIMERINI English Edition,
ARCHIVE SECTION ATHENS,
FRIDAY, JUNE 15, 2001 NEWS & COMMENT
http://www.ekathimerini.com/news/content.asp?aid=86413

The head of the Athens Bar Association and two human rights groups yesterday asked the chief war crimes prosecutor for Yugoslavia to charge NATO officials for allowing the use of depleted uranium ammunition in the Balkans.

In a request filed with Carla del Ponte, the three asked for the prosecution of any NATO political or military official who authorized the use of the armor-piercing ammunition.

They claim use of the ammunition violated international agreements barring the use of toxic or "other" materials during a war, and the 1949 Geneva Convention intended to protect civilians in areas of conflict. No NATO officials are named in their request.

The request was made by bar association president Andonis Roupakiotis; Constantinos Menoudakis, a high court judge and president of the Greek judicial workers union for democracy and freedom; and Aliki Maragopoulou, head of a human rights group.

Depleted uranium is a slightly radioactive heavy metal which is used in shells and can pierce the armor of a tank. There is concern that dust from the uranium can cause cancer.

A NATO committee which acts as a clearinghouse about possible health risks has said no evidence of a link between depleted uranium munitions and an increase in illness has yet been found.

The studies followed concerns in several European countries after Italy began studying the illnesses of 30 veterans of Balkans peacekeeping missions, seven of whom died of cancer, including five cases of leukemia. (AP)

-------- europe

Bush Offers Vision of Europe United in 'Alliance of Liberty'

New York Times
June 15, 2001
By FRANK BRUNI
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/15/world/15CND-PREXY.html?searchpv=nytToday

WARSAW, June 15 - In this old world city whose people have suffered through war and tyranny, President Bush today offered his vision of a new Europe united in "a great alliance of liberty" and fortified by an expanded NATO.

"The bells of victory have rung," Mr. Bush declared at the Warsaw University Library. "The Iron Curtain is no more. Now we plan and build the House of Freedom whose doors are open to all of Europe's peoples, and whose windows look out to global challenges beyond."

Mr. Bush spoke on the eve of his meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, and despite his speech's allusions to a Soviet Union and a Communist empire that are no more, he took pains to include Mr. Putin's nation in his vision.

"Tomorrow I will see President Putin and express my hopes for a Russia that is truly great - a greatness measured by the strength of its democracy, the good treatment of minorities, and the achievement of its people," Mr. Bush said in a speech interrupted frequently by applause.

"I will express to President Putin that Russia is a part of Europe and therefore does not need a buffer zone of insecure states separating it from Europe. NATO, even as it grows, is no enemy of Russia. Poland is no enemy of Russia. America is no enemy of Russia."

The President acknowledged America's debt to the far older culture of Poland, and he went further, "All who believe in the power of conscience and culture are in your debt."

Mr. Bush said it is high time to move beyond the "false lines" that divide East from West, one culture from another.

"This free Europe is no longer a dream," he said. "It is the Europe that is rising around us. It is the work that you and I area called on to complete. We can build an open Europe; a Europe without Hitler and Stalin, without Brezhnev and Honecker and Ceausescu and, yes, without Milosevic."

Mr. Bush foreshadowed his speech at a news conference after meeting with President Aleksander Kwasniewski of Poland, which has become a NATO member. "My government believes NATO should expand," Mr. Bush said. "We believe no one should be excluded because of history or location or geography. And we don't believe any nation should have a veto over who is accepted."

Moscow has complained about the expansion of NATO, a Western alliance that was originally created to counter potential Soviet aggression. Mr. Bush said that when he meets Mr. Putin on Saturday in Slovenia, he will assure him that the United States is no longer Russia's enemy and regards it as a potential partner and ally.

"I also will stress that my vision of Europe includes Russia," Mr. Bush said, "and that Russia should not fear the expansion of freedom-loving people to her borders. Russia has got fast potential and great opportunity, particularly if she makes a commitment to democratic institutions and to the rule of law, and embraces the open market."

Mr. Bush's schedule in Poland, the latest stop on his European trip, also includes meeting Prime Minister Jerzy Karol Buzek and visiting the Warsaw Ghetto memorial and Poland's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

On Thursday, at a summit meeting of the European Union in Goteborg, Sweden, President Bush and European leaders expressed sharp differences and conflicting intentions about global warming

It was Mr. Bush's first appearance at a European Union meeting, and his first introduction to several of the leaders, but it was also the second day in a row that he found himself at odds with European officials. On Wednesday he clashed with leaders of the Atlantic Alliance on his plans for a missile defense shield.

That contentious issue is certain to come up again when he concludes his five-day, five-nation trip on Saturday.

During his meeting with Mr. Putin, Mr. Bush is certain to debate another issue that has already been a contentious one during his European trip -his desire to abandon the antiballistic missile treaty in effect between Moscow and Washington for nearly three decades.

Mr. Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, sought today to play down any expectation that he would persuade the Russian president to agree. She told reporters at a briefing in Warsaw that Mr. Bush would return to some themes he had sounded earlier in his trip - that the cold war was over, a new day had come for Europe and Russia should assume its rightful role. But she said the two leaders would not discuss any specific projects.

"I don't think I would expect the presidents to sit down and design a security framework," Ms. Rice said.

Mr. Bush told reporters on Thursday that he would express to Mr. Putin Washington's concern about the threat of weapons proliferation. "I am concerned about some reports of the proliferation of weapons throughout - on Russia's southern border, for example," Mr. Bush said, without going into further detail.

"I think it's important for Russia to hear that our nation is concerned about the spreading of weapons of mass destruction," he said. "And I'll bring it up in the context of explaining why it is important for us think differently about missile defenses, to think differently about the Cold War doctrine that is codified in the A.B.M. treaty of 1972."

In Thursday's meetings, the leaders of the European Union seemed intent on starting their relationship on a respectful note, using a studiously cordial tone and carefully measured words.

Even so, Mr. Bush and the Europeans laid bare their split over the wisdom of a 1997 treaty, known as the Kyoto Protocol, to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. At least publicly, European leaders say they will press ahead with the accord, while Mr. Bush remains firmly opposed to it.

As leaders on each side defended their positions Thursday, the statements underscored tensions in the relationship between the United States and Europe and European leaders' fears that Mr. Bush was marching resolutely to his own drummer as he dealt with foreign policy issues of common concern.

"We don't agree on the Kyoto treaty," Mr. Bush bluntly stated at a news conference after talks with Prime Minister Goran Persson of Sweden and the president of the European Commission, Romano Prodi. "But we do agree that climate change is a serious issue and we must work together."

-------- india / pakistan

Pakistan, India Ready for Summit

New York Times
June 15, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Pakistan-India.html?searchpv=aponline

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Pakistan's military ruler Gen. Pervez Musharraf on Friday said he hoped an upcoming summit with India's prime minister will bring ``a new beginning'' in the troubled relations between the two nuclear rivals.

In a surprise move last month, Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee invited Musharraf to New Delhi for talks. The invitation broke a two-year deadlock in high-level contacts between the countries. The meeting is expected to take place in early July, though an exact date has not been set.

``I will go to India with an open mind and my open mind will be directly in proportion to the open-mindedness shown by the Indian leader,'' Musharraf said in a televised question and answer program.

``We can change history if the Indian leaders also show open-mindedness -- and we can have a new beginning,'' he said. The chances of moving forward have never been brighter than they are now.''

Musharraf said that he had ``cautious optimism'' about the talks, which are expected to touch on Kashmir, the disputed Himalayan region over which India and Pakistan fought two of their three wars since their independence from Britain in 1947.

``Kashmir is the core issue. That is the baseline,'' Musharraf said when asked about the agenda for talks.

Clashes in Kashmir between Indian security forces and Kashmiri militants fighting for either independence or merger with Pakistan claimed 21 lives on Friday.

Also Friday, four leaders of the All Party Hurriyat Conference -- an umbrella organization of political and religious separatist groups in Kashmir -- were detained in their homes to prevent them from taking part in a protest against recent clashes between militants and armed forces in two mosques in Kashmir.

Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the arrests and called for the immediate release of the leaders.

Pakistan -- which has one of the world's highest rates of poverty and illiteracy -- spends 35 percent of its national budget on defense, mostly because of tensions with India.

On Friday, Musharraf said Pakistan will seek to emerge from a ``debt trap'' through a combination of funding by the International Monetary Fund, fresh lending and rescheduling of payments.

The military leader took power in a bloodless coup in October 1999 and has promised a return to democracy by October 2002.

While the press has remained largely free during Musharraf's rule, political rallies have been suppressed.

The general said Friday that he will allow political expression as long as activists ``do not cause disruption and do not disturb civic life.''

-------- iran

Post: U.S. Suspects Iran Getting Nuclear Components

New York Times
June 15, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-iran-us.html?searchpv=reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States believes Iran obtained material that could be used to make nuclear weapons through a Russian metals trader earlier this year, the Washington Post reported on Friday.

Washington and Moscow have exchanged a series of diplomatic messages over U.S. and Israeli allegations that Moscow allowed a suspicious shipment of high strength aluminum to Iran soon after President Bush took office Jan. 21, the newspaper said.

According to the Post, U.S. officials were told by the Russians that the aluminum headed for Iran was intended for aircraft manufacture, but the U.S. did not accept that explanation.

Citing American officials, the Post said the U.S. and Israel have evidence that the aluminum was delivered to Iranian institutions connected with what they suspect is Iran's nuclear weapons project.

The newspaper quoted a Kremlin export official, Sergei Yekimov, as saying that Russia had made an ``exhaustive'' reply to U.S. concerns about the aluminum shipment.

According to the Post, U.S. officials did not know the origin of the aluminum, but said the shipment was arranged by a Russian metals trader -- leaving open the possibility that it did not involve the Russian government.

U.S. officials told the newspaper Bush would raise nuclear proliferation concerns in his first-ever meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday in Slovenia. However, the officials said Bush would not go into details of specific cases.

The report said National security adviser Condoleezza Rice raised the aluminum case directly with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, while he was still head of the Kremlin Security Council. Ivanov provided her with written assurances that the aluminum was intended for aircraft manufacture, according to the Post.

The newspaper said Putin gave former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak a similar answer shortly before Barak left office on March 7, citing the official sources.

The Post said U.S. officials believed the aluminum could be intended for the manufacture of rotor blades in gas centrifuges used to produce weapons-grade uranium.

``U.S. experts say that Iran has been attempting to acquire centrifuge technology, as well as other technology for enriching uranium, for much of the last decade as part of a larger effort to build an atomic bomb,'' the paper said.

-------- korea

S. Korea Defense Minister to Visit US

New York Times
June 15, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-SKorea-US.html?searchpv=aponline

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- South Korean Defense Minister Kim Dong-shin will visit Washington next week for his first meeting with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the government said Friday.

Kim, who took the post in a Cabinet shake-up in March, will meet Rumsfeld on Thursday for a discussion on North Korea and other security issues, Kim's office said in a statement.

During his weeklong visit, Kim is scheduled to meet Secretary of State Colin Powell and other top U.S. government officials. Kim will speak on the U.S.-South Korea military alliance at a meeting sponsored by the private think tank Heritage Foundation, the statement said.

The U.S. government said last week that it will start talks with North Korea over that country's missile and other weapons of mass destruction.

South Korean officials are hopeful the recent decision by the Bush administration to open security talks with the North will encourage the totalitarian North to resume a dialogue with the South.

Earlier this year, North Korea cut off virtually all contact with Seoul over tensions with Washington.

The United States keeps about 37,000 troops in South Korea as a deterrent against a possible North Korean invasion.

-------- missile defense

General Says Missile Shield Needs Money and Prudence

New York Times
June 15, 2001
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/15/world/15MISS.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, June 14 - The head of the Pentagon's missile defense program warned Congress today that accelerating development of a missile shield, as President Bush has urged, would be a mistake without meticulous planning and a major infusion of money.

In testimony before a House subcommittee, the Pentagon official, Lt. Gen. Ronald T. Kadish, injected a note of caution into the White House's plans to speed up deployment of the antimissile system, suggesting that similar efforts during the Clinton administration led to failed tests and bad publicity for the experimental program.

After considering plans to deploy a system by 2005, President Bill Clinton deferred initial construction of an antimissile system last year because of doubts about the technology. Mr. Clinton cited two test failures out of three attempts to shoot down long- range missiles.

But today General Kadish, director of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, was generally upbeat about the progress of the program, showing videotape of three successful intercepts. And he said he would support a more aggressive testing program on an array of technologies, provided adequate financing was allocated.

"If we rush development imprudently, I will guarantee that we will get less-than-satisfactory results," General Kadish told members of the House Subcommittee on Military Research and Development.

"If it is done prudently, with the right amount of resources," he added, the program "might prove to be very effective in rapidly advancing fielded hardware."

The general declined to say how much more money would be needed for a more ambitious testing program, but Pentagon officials said it would require billions or tens of billions of additional dollars. A typical test involving an attempted interception of an intercontinental ballistic missile costs $100 million.

But at a time when the federal surplus has been drastically reduced by President Bush's $1.35 trillion tax cut, it is unclear whether Congress is willing to invest billions of additional dollars on new antimissile systems - particularly when other military and social programs are competing for the money.

Representative Gene Taylor, a conservative Democrat from Mississippi, for example, said he came from a shipbuilding state and needed to be convinced that Congress should spend money testing antimissile weapons rather than enhancing the American fleet.

"I have got to decide in my mind whether or not we would have been better off with that same $63 billion having built 12 carriers or 70-plus destroyers," Mr. Taylor said, referring to the total amount spent since 1985 on the missile defense program.

Asked by Mr. Taylor when the Pentagon might have a working system, General Kadish said within 10 years, and possibly as soon as 2004, in time for the next election.

The Pentagon has asked defense companies to submit proposals for a limited system that could be operating by 2004, which has prompted Democrats to accuse the Bush administration of rushing the program for political reasons. The Pentagon has denied that assertion.

While General Kadish was making his remarks today, President Bush was in Europe trying to persuade the NATO allies of the urgent need to build a ballistic missile defense program as soon as possible to defend against attacks from nations like Iraq, Libya and North Korea.

Mr. Bush, along with Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, who visited Europe last week, have argued that the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty is hampering research and development of promising new antimissile technologies that could be fired from ships, planes or possibly space.

The treaty prohibits testing and development of systems that defend against long-range missiles, if those systems are land-based and mobile, or can be fired from ships, planes or space. It does allow fixed, land-based antimissile systems, provided they are constructed in specific places.

Responding to a question today, General Kadish said that the treaty had not yet interfered with tests involving the land-based system. He did not mention the treaty's influence on future tests or on other kinds of systems.

But a Pentagon official close to the missile defense program said all tests scheduled by the missile defense organization through 2003, and perhaps several years beyond that, complied with the treaty, including ones involving an airborne laser and ship-fired missiles.

Those tests, the official noted, were planned by the Clinton administration which, Republicans said, was overly cautious about treaty compliance.

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NMD will slow India's rise

By Steve LaMontagne,
The Hindu Thursday,
June 14, 2001
From: aiindex@mnet.fr

The United States President, Mr. George W. Bush has found little support abroad for his costly and controversial National Missile Defence (NMD) proposal. European responses have ranged from skepticism to outright opposition, while Russia and China have warned that unilateral abrogation of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty could undermine global security and ignite a new arms race, one that could easily spread to South Asia.

Why, then, was India one of the first and only country to express its support, albeit lukewarmly, for the NMD? The anwser lies in the fact that conditions are ripe for a fair-weather friendship between India and the U.S. The Bush administration is anxious to tap India's pool of skilled labour and market of over one billion people. Moreover, several administration officials view India as a valuable strategic counterweight to China, with whom U.S. relations have soured because of the recent spy- plane incident and differences over Taiwan, weapons proliferation, human rights, and missile defenses.

India, for its part, would like to see the U.S. lift what remains of the sanctions imposed after the 1998 nuclear tests, most of which prohibit the export of military and dual-use goods. In addition to the prospect of military and technological assistance, India also hopes to win U.S. support for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council. Being the only country to jump on the NMD bandwagon therefore seems like a good way to grease the wheels of India's rise to greatpower status.

Unfortunately, any potential benefits of currying favour with the U.S. will be washed out by the long-term consequences of a U.S. anti- missile system. The implications for India's national security are especially worrisome. First, the likely Chinese response would be a qualitative and quantitative buildup of its nuclear forces. A classified U.S. National Intelligence Estimate released in August 2000 confirms this assessment, reportedly predicting that China's strategic arsenal could swell to 10 times its present size as a response to the NMD. To achieve such a buildup, China may decide both to equip its nuclear missiles with multiple independent re-entry vehicles and to resume nuclear tests, steps that India would find threatening.

Second, China will be less likely to honour its non- proliferation commitments in the face of growing U.S. unilateralism and support for Taiwan. Traffic of sensitive nuclear and ballistic missile components and technologies to Pakistan, among other countries, would likely increase.

The fallout from the NMD may simply increase the threat to India from its two immediate neighbours, with both of whom it has a history of conflict. China and Pakistan will be engaged in rapid nuclear buildups and will be cultivating a strategic relationship based on the proliferation of nuclear technology and ballistic missiles. These unsettling security trends could undermine improved relations between India and China as well as halt progress towards a resolution of the longstanding dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir.

India's social and economic development may be affected as pressure rises to respond with further increases in military spending levels, which have already risen by double-digit percentages each of the previous two years. India may also be pushed closer to a decision to fully weaponise and deploy its nuclear forces. Such a step would entail massive expenditures on nuclear command, control, communications, and intelligence, and force officials to make critical decisions about nuclear doctrine, such as how many weapons would constitute a sufficient deterrent and which cities or facilities to target. Individual military branches will squabble for control over the largest piece of the nuclear pie.

Spending more money on bombers and nuclear weapons means that fewer resources will be available for priorities such as disaster relief, poverty alleviation, and economic development that are more important to India's future than senseless and destablising arms races. India will still be able to pursue its interests without endorsing the concept of missile defences. Indeed, supporting the NMD may ultimately slow India's rise to greatness, not accelerate it.

(The writer is a specialist on nonproliferation at Council for a Livable World Education Fund, a Washington DC-based arms control advocacy group.)

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US 'planned nuclear first strike on Russia'

Friday 15 June 2001
By Michael Smith
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=000118613908976&rtmo=V15PPuxx&atmo=99999999&pg=/et/01/6/15/nuke15.html

Richard J Aldrich, School of Politics - University of Nottingham

The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence, Richard J Aldrich - Amazon UK

Cold War hot links - Saint Martin's College, Washingtonn

Moscow had Cold War spy base in north London

BRITISH intelligence warned in 1951 that the Americans were planning to wage a "preventative" atomic war on the Russians the next year with or without the support of their Nato allies.

The Director of Naval Intelligence said the United States military was convinced that "all-out war against the Soviet Union was not only inevitable but imminent". Vice-Admiral Eric Longley-Cook went on to say that the Americans had, accordingly, "gone ahead to prepare for an inevitable clash of arms with the Soviet Union, 'fixed' for mid or late 1952."

Details of the report, and the British concerns that their ally was about to provoke a third world war, are contained in a new book by Richard J Aldrich, Professor of Politics at Nottingham University. The Hidden Hand says Longley-Cook's report, so secret that only six copies were produced, was the culmination of two years of tension in which the Russians had exploded their first atomic bomb, four years before the earliest Nato intelligence prediction.

During that period, a succession of senior British officers had returned from visits to America expressing alarm over the apparent conviction among their United States counterparts that they should attack Russia. Longley-Cook said that the Russians were far too cautious to start a war themselves. The main threat to strategic stability and the security of Britain appeared to come from the United States where McCarthyism was in full flow.

"Many people in America have made up their minds that war with Russia is inevitable and there is a strong tendency in military circles to 'fix' the zero date for war," he said. "It is doubtful whether, in a year's time, the US will be able to control the Frankenstein monster which they are creating. There is a definite risk of the USA becoming involved in a preventative war against Russia, however firmly their Nato allies object."

It was not just the view of senior United States generals and intelligence officers, who seemed unwilling to endorse a threat assessment based on "factual intelligence" rather than their own prejudices. Many ordinary Americans shared their opinions. There was an apocalyptic view among the inhabitants of major American cities, "who visualise in their own concentrated home town the ruins of Hamburg and Berlin", Longley-Cook said.

"These and other Americans say, 'We have the bomb, let's use it now while the balance is in our favour. Since war with Russia is inevitable, let's get it over with now'. Some talk of an 'ultimatum from strength', but many more believe in the necessity for 'smashing the Russians' at the earliest possible moment."

There was certainly evidence to support the British assessment. One US general had said that the West could not afford to wait until Europe or even America was devastated by a nuclear holocaust. "We can afford, however, to create a wilderness in Russia without serious repercussion on Western civilisation. We have a moral obligation to stop Russia's aggression by force, if necessary, rather than face the consequences of delay."

Another US general said that his country was already at war with Russia. "Whether we call it a Cold War or apply any other term we are not winning. It seems to me that almost any analysis of the situation shows that the only way that we can be certain of winning is to take the offensive as soon as possible and hit Russia hard enough to at least prevent her from taking over Europe.

"If we plan and execute the operation properly, the weight of our attack in the early stages may be sufficient to compel Russia to accept our terms for a real peace. It will not be a preventative war, because we are already at war."

Most copies of Longley-Cook's report were ordered to be destroyed once read but one was passed to Winston Churchill after he returned to power in late 1951. He was initially highly dismissive, even suggesting that Longley-Cook must be a communist and ordering that "a sharp eye should be kept on the writer".

But in April 1952, after returning from Washington having failed to obtain a veto on US strikes from British bases, he had changed his mind. He told his private secretary: "I want to see the secret report prepared by the late Director of Naval Intelligence and sent to me by the First Lord when I was in America. Let me have it back again."

The Hidden Hand by Richard J Aldrich (John Murray) is available for £22 plus 99p p&p. To order please call 0870 1557222 or write to Telegraph Books Direct, 32-34, Park Royal Rd, London, NW10 7LN.

2 May 2001: [International] Bush 'shield' could fuel new nuclear race 30 March 2001: [International] US warns Russia on nuclear spread 17 February 2001: [International] Russia tests nuclear missiles after war of words with US

----

Asian Forum Against U.S. Defense Plan

JUNE 15, 12:22 EST
By MARTIN FACKLER
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=ASIA&STORYID=APIS7CL3C980

SHANGHAI, China (AP) - Defense ministers of a new six-nation Asian forum led by China and Russia criticized U.S. missile-defense plans Friday as harmful to world security.

At a ceremony to inaugurate the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, leaders of China, Russia and four Central Asian republics said they hoped the group would counterbalance American dominance of world affairs.

The leaders lauded the new group as a step toward a world with more than one power center - a veiled reference to the United States.

The group will foster ``world multi-polarization,'' said Chinese President Jiang Zemin. Kyrgyzstan President Askar Akayev said it would nurture the ``establishment of a fair and reasonable international order.''

Other members of the group are Uzbekistan, Kazakstan and Tajikistan. It replaces the Shanghai Five, a forum created in 1996 to resolve border disputes and fight rising Islamic militancy.

In a meeting Friday, defense ministers of the six nations singled out Washington for criticism, saying its proposed missile defense would have a ``negative impact on world security,'' according to Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Deguang.

Zhang said the new group was not a military alliance aimed at the United States.

The governments want stability and security in Central Asia, but not by ``seeking military confrontation or establishing a military alliance, which was a feature of the Cold War era,'' Zhang told reporters.

The leaders on Friday pledged to cooperate in exploiting oil, natural gas and minerals, which Central Asia has in abundance. China is keen to gain access to new energy for its expanding economy.

But much of the agreement was devoted to joint efforts against Muslim separatists. The issue has given common ground to rivals Russia and China and the newly independent Central Asian republics, which are wary of domination by Moscow or Beijing.

Many of the governments face rebels who they believe are getting arms and training from Afghanistan's ruling Taliban Islamic militia.

``The cradle of terrorism, separatism and extremism is the instability in Afghanistan,'' President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakstan warned.

The leaders discussed an anti-terrorism center that they agreed to set up last year. Chinese officials refused to confirm reports that they also talked about joint military exercises and Chinese military aid to Kyrgyzstan.

Moscow wants help in cutting outside support for Muslim guerrillas who are fighting a bloody independence war in Chechnya. Central Asian nations are worried about armed rebels based in Uzbekistan.

China is fighting Muslim separatists who are waging a campaign of assassination and bombings in its western region of Xinjiang. The biggest ethnic group there, the Uighurs, are Muslims with ties to Turkic groups dominant in much of Central Asia.

-------- nato

Bush Proposes Lifting Limits on Membership in NATO

New York Times
June 15, 2001
By FRANK BRUNI
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/15/continuous/15CND-PREXY.html?searchpv=nytToday

WARSAW, June 15 - On his first visit to Poland, President Bush urged today that NATO be opened to virtually any democracy that wants to join.

"My government believes NATO should expand," Mr. Bush said, speaking at a news conference after meeting with President Aleksander Kwasniewski of Poland, which has become a NATO member. "We believe no one should be excluded because of history or location or geography. And we don't believe any nation should have a veto over who is accepted."

Striking a theme that he is expected to amplify in a speech today at the Warsaw University library, Mr. Bush said that "it's not a matter of whether NATO expands, it's a matter of when NATO expands. We strongly stand on the side of expansion of NATO."

Moscow has complained about the expansion of NATO, a Western alliance that was created originally to counter potential Soviet aggression. Mr. Bush said that when he meets President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia Saturday in Slovenia, he will assure him that the United States is no longer Russia's enemy and regards it as a potential partner and ally.

"I also will stress that my vision of Europe includes Russia," Mr. Bush said, "and that Russia should not fear the expansion of freedom-loving people to her borders. Russia has got fast potential and great opportunity, particularly if she makes a commitment to democratic institutions and to the rule of law, and embraces the open market."

"We want Russia to be a partner and an ally, a partner in peace, a partner in democracy, a country that embraces freedom, a country that enhances the security of Europe," Mr. Bush said.

Mr. Bush's schedule in Poland, the latest stop on his European trip, also includes meeting Prime Minister Jerzy Karol Buzek and visiting the Warsaw Ghetto memorial and Poland's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

On Thursday, at a summit meeting of the European Union in Goteborg, Sweden, President Bush and European leaders expressed sharp differences and conflicting intentions about global warming

It was Mr. Bush's first appearance at a European Union meeting, and his first introduction to several of the leaders, but it was also the second day in a row that he found himself at odds with European officials. On Wednesday, he clashed with leaders of the Atlantic Alliance on his plans for a missile defense shield.

That contentious issue is certain to come up again when he concludes his five-day, five-nation trip on Saturday with a meeting with Russian President Putin.

During their meeting, Mr. Bush is certain to debate another issue that has already been a contentious one during his European trip - his desire to abandon the anti-ballistic missile treaty in effect between Moscow and Washington for nearly three decades.

Mr. Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, sought today to downplay any expectation that he would persuade the Russian president. She told reporters at a briefing in Warsaw that Mr. Bush would return to some themes he had sounded earlier in his trip - that the Cold War was over, a new day had come for Europe and Russia should assume its rightful role. But she said the two leaders would not discuss any specific projects. "I don't think I would expect the presidents to sit down and design a security framework," Ms. Rice said.

Mr. Bush told reporters today that he would express to Mr. Putin Washington's concern about the threat of weapons proliferation. "I am concerned about some reports of the proliferation of weapons throughout - on Russia's southern border, for example," Mr. Bush said, without going into further detail.

"I think it's important for Russia to hear that our nation is concerned about the spreading of weapons of mass destruction," he said. "And I'll bring it up in the context of explaining why it is important for us think differently about missile defenses, to think differently about the Cold War doctrine that is codified in the A.B.M. treaty of 1972."

In Thursday's meetings, the leaders of the European Union seemed intent on starting their relationship on a respectful note, using a studiously cordial tone and carefully measured words.

Even so, Mr. Bush and the Europeans laid bare their split over the wisdom of a 1997 treaty, known as the Kyoto Protocol, to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. At least publicly, European leaders say they will press ahead with the accord, while Mr. Bush remains firmly opposed to it.

As leaders on each side defended their positions Thursday, the statements underscored tensions in the relationship between the United States and Europe and European leaders' fears that Mr. Bush was marching resolutely to his own drummer as he dealt with foreign policy issues of common concern.

"We don't agree on the Kyoto treaty," Mr. Bush bluntly stated at a news conference after talks with Prime Minister Goran Persson of Sweden and the president of the European Commission, Romano Prodi. "But we do agree that climate change is a serious issue and we must work together."

Later Mr. Bush added, "I say loud and clear that our nation is willing to lead on this issue." Nonetheless, he said, "We didn't feel like the Kyoto treaty was well balanced. It didn't include developing nations. Its goals were not realistic."

Mr. Persson and Mr. Prodi, speaking at the same news conference, offered dissenting assessments.

"The European Union will stick to the Kyoto Protocol and go for a ratification process," Mr. Persson said. "The U.S. has chosen another policy."

In what came across as a gentle rebuke of Mr. Bush, Mr. Persson added that "climate change is not isolated" to Europe and is a global threat. "So, nevertheless, if you are in favor or against the Kyoto Protocol, you have to take action," he said.

The Kyoto accord would require industrialized nations to cut emissions of greenhouse gases below 1990 levels, a year that the Bush administration has said was chosen to make achieving compliance easier for certain European countries than for the United States.

Neither the United States nor any country in the European Union subsequently ratified the treaty, and administration officials said that was in part because some European governments, despite statements of support designed to please voters with environmental concerns, had their own reservations.

When Mr. Bush and Mr. Prodi were asked why European countries had not moved faster, Mr. Bush said, "I think that's a good question." And there was a hint of disbelief on the president's face when Mr. Prodi subsequently said that every country would indeed ratify and that the "process will start soon."

The divergence over Kyoto is just one symbol of various issues on which European leaders believe that the Bush administration is not sensitive to their concerns.

Mr. Bush seemed muted during Thursday's news conference and gave several erroneous, unclear or unwelcome characterizations of the other issues he was addressing.

He said at one point during that news conference that "Europe ought to include nations beyond the current scope of E.U. and NATO" and that "my vision of Europe is a larger vision" that included "more countries."

He appeared to be advocating expansion of the European Union, which was to be discussed by the 15 member nations today and Saturday. And his remarks prompted a stern response from Chris Patten, the union's external affairs commissioner, who said pointedly, "The United States is not a member of the European Union."

Mr. Bush, turning his attention to another continent, told reporters, "We spent a lot of time talking about Africa, and we should. Africa is a nation that suffers from incredible disease."

Mr. Bush had unwaveringly stated his opposition to the Kyoto agreement before he left Washington earlier this week for his first overseas trip as president, which will conclude in Slovenia on Saturday when he meets Mr. Putin.

The Bush administration's position is that it wants to work to cut emissions by leading the world in the research and development of technologies that will combat global warming without hurting American industries and the country's economy.

While the European dissatisfaction with that was stated in relatively polite terms Thursday by Mr. Persson and Mr. Prodi, it is seriously felt, and administration officials acknowledged that it was a more divisive disagreement than the one over the missile treaty.

And the nature and depth of the suspicion among some Europeans feel toward Mr. Bush - a sentiment that other new American presidents have also faced - was suggested by a statement by Mr. Persson to antiglobalization protesters on Wednesday, before Mr. Bush arrived here.

Referring to the European Union, Mr. Persson said, "It's one of the few institutions we can develop as a balance to U.S. world domination."

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Baltic States See NATO as Shield From Russia

New York Times
June 15, 2001
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/15/world/15BALT.html?searchpv=nytToday

VILNIUS, Lithuania, June 14 - Ten years ago last January, Soviet tanks and machine gunners stormed the central television studios and broadcasting tower of this Baltic capital, killing 15 people and wounding hundreds, as the Red Army tried to put down the wave of independence movements that was tearing the Soviet Union apart.

It was one of the darkest hours of Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev's rule as he lurched between conservatives and liberals in the final days of empire before he himself was swept aside, first by a conservative coup, and then by the man who rescued him from it, Boris N. Yeltsin.

Now, as President Bush prepares for his first meeting with Mr. Yeltsin's successor, Vladimir V. Putin, a reckoning of sorts will be on the agenda for Lithuania and its two Baltic neighbors, Latvia and Estonia. Call it a national insurance policy that what happened here in January 1991 - and in 1940 when the Soviet Army forcibly incorporated the Baltic states into the empire - will never happen again.

For these three small and fiercely independent democracies lead the list of nine nations seeking to enter the NATO alliance in 2002. But Mr. Putin, his top military commanders and most of the Russian establishment strongly oppose what would be the first NATO advance onto the territory of the former Soviet Union.

"Accepting Lithuania into NATO is a signal to Russia that never and never will Lithuania be taken over by Russia again," said President Valdas Adamkus in an interview here. "This is a formal declaration to Russia politically that we are free, and declaring ourselves free forever."

It won't be easy. Between them, the Baltic states have no competent armed forces, no tanks or artillery and a few transport planes that could hardly be called an air force. But they are working on it, and have contributed a few hundred peacekeepers to NATO forces in the former Yugoslavia. And in the event that NATO ever had to defend the Baltic states from attack, some Pentagon and NATO military planners believe that such a defense could not be accomplished with conventional forces.

"Because it is unlikely that NATO members would wish to ensure a country's protection through a nuclear guarantee alone," a 1999 congressional study said, these Western military officials said they doubted that the Baltic states would be offered NATO membership "until alliance relations with Russia improve dramatically."

Besides the three Baltic states, NATO has accepted formal applications from Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Croatia is seeking to join this group as a 10th applicant. This week, in a NATO summit meeting Mr. Bush attended in Brussels, Western leaders agreed that they would invite new members to join the alliance at a summit meeting in Prague next year, but they were silent on which ones. This fall Mr. Bush is expected to notify Congress which applicants the United States will support.

In a speech in Warsaw on Friday, the president will elaborate his administration's position on how far NATO's door remains open to the emerging democracies in Eastern Europe and among the former Soviet republics. He is also expected to reaffirm that Russia will have no veto over NATO's decisions. But at the same time, Mr. Bush is seeking to engage Russia in a constructive discussion on missile defense and, more generally, on how to improve international security.

Here in Vilnius, the generation of leaders who defied Soviet rule and have worked more than a decade to build democratic institutions and a market economy expect America's voice to be crucial in NATO's decision and have thus riveted their attention on Mr. Bush.

"The United States is the main pillar of our hopes to join NATO soon," said Vytautas Landsbergis, who led Lithuania in its first days after independence and who now sits in Parliament as a faction leader. "And if Russia succeeds to delay this decision, it is a great victory for Moscow and a big concession to Russia by the United States."

The question of NATO expansion to Russia's frontiers lies at the heart of Moscow's growing worry that instead of integrating Russia deeper into the common European enterprise of building new security structures, the Bush administration is erecting the foundations for some future containment of Russia.

As Mr. Bush and his top advisers have in recent weeks spoken in more conciliatory tones about engaging Russia as a security partner, the anxiety level in the Baltics has risen.

The Baltic leaders fear a tradeoff in which Russia might be convinced to go along with Mr. Bush's missile defense project in return for leaving the Baltic states outside NATO.

Mr. Putin's closest adviser on national security matters, Sergei B. Ivanov, who became defense minister this spring, last week issued a pointed warning that relations between Russia and the West will deteriorate should NATO expansion plans move forward.

"NATO enlargement symbolizes the formation of a security system in Europe in which Russia is not an equal party and it is a direct infringement on Russia's vital interests," he said in Brussels after meeting with NATO officials. "Politicians of the alliance should think once again of the possible losses to the European community if deciding on the enlargement of NATO ignores the opinion of Russia."

In the Baltics, Moscow's warnings are taken as so much bluster and officials here are quick to point out that Russia just as vehemently opposed the entry of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic into NATO in 1999. Instead of any deterioration, they point out, relations between those countries and Russia have , if anything, led their leaders to speak to each other with a new clarity and self-assurance.

"We insist that Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are not a direct threat to Russia whether they are members of NATO or not," said Mr. Adamkus. "The issue here is psychological: Russia cannot accept that their former Soviet republics, which were incorporated by force, suddenly are not only separating themselves physically and politically, but they are even becoming a member" of the Western alliance.

But Russia has other concerns, which Mr. Putin is likely to raise with Mr. Bush.

Most prominently, Russia's Baltic Fleet and home port in the enclave of Kaliningrad, already cut off from Russia proper, will be flanked by NATO countries if Lithuania joins the alliance. A key lifeline connecting Kaliningrad to Russia is a military railroad that crosses Lithuania and Belarus.

In March, Mr. Putin invited Mr. Adamkus to the Kremlin for their first meeting, which turned out to be a long and intense negotiation in which Russia pressed for a treaty guaranteeing Moscow's right to resupply its military forces in Kaliningrad - mainly with fuel - along this rail line.

By gaining such a bilateral treaty, Mr. Putin apparently hoped to protect Russia from the day when NATO might order Russian military traffic halted on the rail link.

Mr. Adamkus, beaming with pride over his own tenacity, said he "succeeded" in withstanding Mr. Putin's barrage of charm and pressure. He looked Mr. Putin in the eye, he said, and told him that the informal agreement that now allows Russian military cargos - on a case-by-case basis - to cross Lithuania is adequate. "I used the American phrase, I said, `Mr. Putin, if it isn't broken, why fix it?' " The Russian leader "sat in silence for about five seconds, then he smiled and said, `Yes,' and the issue was dropped."

But Mr. Adamkus and other senior officials here acknowledged that if Lithuania joins the Western alliance NATO would have the right to shut down Russian military traffic through Lithuania in a period of tension.

But Russia has its own leverage over the Baltic states as a major supplier of energy to the region.

In Lithuania, the only oil refinery depends on cheap Russian crude oil to operate profitably. Lukoil, the Russian oil company that supplies the refinery, cut back its supplies last year in a commercial dispute with the American company, Williams International, that Lithuania has retained to operate the refinery.

And Lithuania will likely need Russian cooperation to deal with the nuclear waste from the Soviet-built Ignalina power station, whose reactors are of the same design as the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine that exploded in 1986.

Lithuania had pledged to close one of the two reactors by 2005 as a condition for entering the European Union, but will need as much as $3 billion in Western assistance to do so, Mr. Adamkus said. Where the radioactive fuel and wastes get stored may depend on Russia.

-------- russia

Bush Eager to Meet Russia's Putin

New York Times
June 15, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Summit-Chemistry.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Ronald Reagan couldn't wait to meet Mikhail Gorbachev, ``get him in a room alone and set him straight.'' Richard Nixon found commonality with combustible Soviet leaders and said the world was safer as a result.

Now it's President Bush, meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday, who says he's been eager to ``look him in the eye.''

U.S. presidents have been great believers in the power of the personal touch and never more so than when dealing with Moscow.

Putin said Friday he was going into the Slovenia meeting ``in a good mood'' and with hopes for advancing world security. Bush said his priority was to establish personal ties, ``to develop a trust between us.''

Over the decades, U.S. and Russian leaders sometimes have come together like oil and water -- a smooth operator here, a coarse one there. Men on the rise and in their twilight. Leaders in command of all the details and leaders interested only in the big picture.

The results have been personal chemistry at times, poison at others. Gorbachev and Reagan formed an unlikely friendship. Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin seemed to be in on some hilarious private joke.

John Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev sparred in Vienna in a session that left the new American president down, rattled and empty-handed, and the bellicose Russian believing he could push JFK around. That feeling changed a year later in the showdown over the Cuban missile crisis.

Few expect the spark of friendship to come easily for the affable Bush, 54, and the guarded Putin, 48. They have little outwardly in common beyond an interest in working out with weights.

``I don't think personal relationships are going to carry the day here,'' says Edward Turzanski, a political scientist who advised the Reagan administration on Soviet affairs. ``These are very different men.''

Peg Hermann, who specializes in political psychology at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University and has examined the makeup of Russian leaders, says Putin's strength is his ambiguity, which lets people see in him what they want, yet keeps them at a distance.

``Part of his political astuteness is not to let people know him,'' she said.

Bush is more of an open book in some respects. But his ideology has ranged, too, sometimes emphasizing the moderate, other times the conservative.

Summits can have an emulsion of their own, blending mismatched personalities, although historians say the payoffs tend to be seen in meetings after the first one.

``Some things can happen, it's amazing,'' said Dennis Dunn, a history professor at Southwest Texas State University. With Gorbachev, Reagan the anti-Soviet hard-liner ``felt this was a man he could actually work with.''

As much as he considered Leonid Brezhnev driven by the goal of communist expansion, Nixon was able to negotiate with him on arms control and said their relationship was as important as their agreements in maintaining peace.

During his vice presidency, Nixon even established a rapport of sorts with the explosive Khrushchev, a man he considered a ranting, wily drunk.

Turzanski, who teaches at La Salle University in Philadelphia, says it's an American trait to think there is nothing like eye contact, an iron handshake and a head-to-head talk to make the other guy see matters your way.

Americans come to the table with neither the baggage of a thousand-year history, nor its lessons, he says. Faith in the power of eye contact is a young country's way of making up for its youth.

Yeltsin gave Putin a heads-up on this characteristic.

``Even such a phrase from the younger George Bush as 'I want to meet Putin to have a look in this guy's eye' sounds coarse,'' said Yeltsin, who hardly had the reputation of a smoothie himself.

``But this is American style,'' he said. ``One needs to get accustomed to this.''

Dunn, who wrote a book on Soviet-U.S. diplomacy in the era of Franklin Roosevelt and Josef Stalin, said FDR overestimated the force of his personality.

``In some cases it worked,'' he said. ``Against Stalin it had very little impact.

When chemistry has happened, it has not always lasted.

Much was made of the ``spirit of Camp David'' when President Eisenhower met Khrushchev in 1959; yet the following years saw the shooting down of a U.S. spy plane, the Berlin Wall, the missile crisis.

Jimmy Carter and Brezhnev signed an arms treaty and bear-hugged about six months before the Soviets invaded Afghanistan -- another setback history has not forgotten as Americans and Russians search now for a spirit of Slovenia.

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Bush Wants Russia to Be 'Partner'

By Ron Fournier
AP White House Correspondent
Friday, June 15, 2001; 10:49 a.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010615/aponline104953_000.htm

WARSAW, Poland -- On the eve of his first meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, President Bush said Friday he wants to make Russia a "partner and an ally" but raised worries about Moscow's nuclear programs.

"I am concerned about some reports of proliferation of weapons throughout Russia's southern border, for example - countries on her southern border - and I'll bring that subject up," Bush said at the opening of a state visit to this former Soviet-bloc nation.

The United States suspects Russia of shipping high-grade aluminum - used to produce uranium - to Iran. Bush said he would raise the topic at the U.S.-Russian summit Saturday in Slovenia as part of his rationale for building the U.S. missile defense shield that Russia so strongly opposes.

The more a "rogue nation," such as Iran or Iraq, has the capacity to build weapons of mass destruction, Bush said, "the more necessary it is for freedom-loving people to halt any political blackmail they may choose to inflict upon us."

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice called Russia's suspected commerce with Iran "an impediment to full cooperation" with the United States.

"We believe that some of the things that the Russians are doing with the Iranians may lead to an increased danger of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to Iran," Rice told CNN.

The United States has no expectations of an agreement on the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which Bush wants to scrap in order to build his anti-missile system. Putin prizes the treaty as a foundation for controlling nuclear weapons.

Aides said Bush also will propose to Putin that they scale down the level of contacts between their two countries in order to lower the profile of arms-control negotiations.

Bush will not put on the table any major specific proposals, Rice said. Briefing the press, she did not rule out moving ahead later with incentives to ease Moscow's opposition to missile defense.

U.S. officials say Bush is willing to offer a broad range of arms purchases, military aid and join anti-missile exercises to Russia in hopes of easing opposition to his missile defense plans. Rice indicated that Russian and American advisers will work out the details of "a new security framework" that the presidents could address later.

Putin and Bush meet again next month in Italy at a summit of world leaders.

"We want Russia to be a partner and an ally, a partner in peace, a partner in democracy, a country that embraces freedom, a country that enhances the security of Europe," Bush said at his joint news conference Friday with Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski.

After months of mixed and chilly signals toward Russia, Bush said his first priority in his high-stakes inaugural meeting with Putin is "to develop a trust between us."

"He doesn't know me, and I don't know him very well. But at my press conference tomorrow, I'm confident I'll be able to say I've got a pretty good feel for the man, and he's got a good feel for me. And he'll see that I'm the president of a peace-loving nation, a nation that wants Russia to succeed and to do well," Bush said.

"The definition of the relationship will evolve over time, but first and foremost, it has got to start with the simple word "friend," Bush said.

Russia's economic success is in American interests, Bush said, adding that "if Russia makes the right choices, she will attract a lot of U.S. capital."

On Russia's embrace of democratic institutions, including free speech and free press, Rice said there are "some troubling signs" though the nation has made lots of progress.

Two senior administration officials, previewing the U.S.-Russian talks, said Thursday that Bush will resist a Russian overture to set up two working groups to deal with missile defenses and further reductions in U.S. and Russian offensive arsenals.

While prospects for an arms-control accord are remote, the president intends to approach Putin for cooperation against terrorism and hopes the U.S. proposal for managing bilateral relations could give their summit special weight, said the officials. Chechnya and Afghanistan are terror concerns.

As part of the proposed overhaul, Bush wants to abandon the high-level panel, run by then-Vice President Al Gore and then-Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, that oversaw major U.S.-Russian issues during Bill Clinton's presidency.

The Gore-Chernomyrdin commission is "deader than a doornail," one official said. The process Bush wants is "decentralizing."

Bush's approach is that issues involving the two countries should be managed by departments in Washington and Moscow instead of by formal commissions that can involve massive delegations, the officials said.

Some defense cooperation may emerge from Saturday's meeting, such as shared work on early warning of accidental missile launches.

Spurgeon Keeny, president of the private Arms Control Association, says the United States is asking Russia for a "blank check" on missile defense and very little can come out of the Bush-Putin meeting.

"The worst that can come out of it," Keeny said, "is that they can get into substance. And if Bush tries to push withdrawal from the ABM treaty or expansion of NATO into the Baltics it's going to be a disaster."

EDITOR'S NOTE - AP Diplomatic Writer Barry Schweid in Washington contributed to this report.

----

Russians en route to get U.S. spy plane

06/15/2001
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/june01/2001-06-15-russia-plane.htm

KADENA, Okinawa (AP) - A huge Russian cargo plane arrived for a stopover at a U.S. air base on this southern Japan island Friday on its way to retrieve an American spy plane forced to make an emergency landing in China more than two months ago. The Russian Antonov 124 arrived at Kadena Air Base Friday morning and was expected to leave for the Chinese island of Hainan soon, though military spokesmen refused to comment on its exact schedule.

Plans call for the EP-3 spy plane to be dismantled and loaded in pieces onto two Antonov 124s and flown to the U.S. base on Okinawa. Officials refused to comment on the schedule of the other Russian plane, or whether it was flying directly to Hainan.

The EP-3 has been held at an air base on Hainan since making an emergency landing there April 1 after colliding with a Chinese jet fighter. The Chinese pilot is presumed dead. China held the 24 American crew members for 11 days as it tried to compel Washington to apologize for the incident.

Dismantling and loading the EP-3 onto the two Russian Antonov 124s is expected to take nearly a month. The U.S. Navy said in Hawaii that it expected work to be finished by July 11.

China rejected a U.S. proposal to repair the plane and fly it home, apparently hoping to punish Washington by forcing it to destroy its aircraft in order to retrieve it.

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Bush Urges Russia to Forge New Ties

New York Times
June 15, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/15WIRE-PREX.html?searchpv=aponline

WARSAW, Poland (AP) -- In the heart of the old Soviet bloc, President Bush chastised Russia on Friday for suspected nuclear commerce and encouraged the former Cold War rival to help ``erase the false lines that have divided Europe.''

A day before his first meeting with Vladimir Putin, Bush urged the Russian president to forge new ties with the West and become ``a partner and an ally.'' Aides said Bush will seek to open talks between U.S. and Russian military leaders aimed at easing Moscow's opposition to an American anti-missile shield.

``The Europe we are building must also be open to Russia,'' Bush said at Warsaw University in the signature speech of his first overseas trip.

``We have a stake in Russia's success -- and we look for the day when Russia is fully reformed, fully democratic, and closely bound to the rest of Europe.''

In Moscow, Putin said he heads to Slovenia for Saturday's summit ``in a good mood'' and eager for a face-to-face talk on missile defense.

``I would like to hear from the U.S. president in person his point of view ... and, for him, it would probably be interesting to hear from the Russian head of state Russia's position on this problem,'' Putin said, according to the news agency Interfax.

Bush's daylong state visit to this former Warsaw Pact city, where Soviet troops once stood as a menace to the West, provided breathing room between the two chapters of his five-day trip. After haggling with NATO and European Union allies over global warming, trade and missile defense, Bush looked toward even tougher discussions with Putin.

``Europe's great institutions -- NATO and the European Union -- can and should build partnerships with Russia and with all its countries that have emerged from the wreckage of the former Soviet Union,'' Bush said.

Even as he reached out, differences with Moscow reared up.

``I am concerned about some reports of proliferation of weapons throughout Russia's southern border ... and I'll bring that subject up'' at the summit, Bush said at joint news conference with Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski.

The United States suspects Russia of shipping high-grade aluminum -- used in the production of bomb-grade uranium -- to Iran, which National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice called ``an impediment to full cooperation'' with the United States.

Rice also said there were ``troubling signs'' that Russia, while making progress, is struggling with democratic principles such as a free press.

The criticism illustrated the pitfalls ahead as Bush tries to reach across the former Iron Curtain to a wary ex-rival.

In his address at the university library, a city landmark whose facade of giant copper plates includes fragments of scholarly writings, Bush sought to incorporate Russia into his vision of a Europe at peace ``whole and free.''

Outside, some 200 demonstrators held banners, one of which read: ``Bush to outer space; Missiles to dust bin.''

Bush borrowed language from his father, the former president, who visited Poland in 1989 as Eastern Europe shed the yoke of communism.

``Today, I have come to the center of Europe to speak of the future of Europe,'' Bush said in a speech that cited historic figures from former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to Pope John Paul II, a Pole. ``It is time to put talk of East and West behind us.''

``Our goal is to erase the false lines that have divided Europe for too long,'' Bush said.

He hopes to start at Saturday's summit. Although Bush does not carry with him any specific proposals, advisers said the summit could produce first steps toward a new framework for U.S.-Russian relations.

A senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the president hopes for agreement to begin consultations among U.S. Cabinet secretaries and Russian ministers on what Bush calls ``a new security framework.''

Under Bush's plan, defense officials for both countries would begin talks on a number of issues, including a proposed missile shield.

As Bush reminded Russia of the economic benefits that come with democratic reforms, aides said the summit also may yield talks between U.S. and Russian economic ministers.

Bush hopes the summit will lead to the kind of military-to-military contacts that are routine between the U.S. and allies, the official said. Such contacts could produce deals on arms purchases, military aid and joint anti-missile exercises with Russia, easing Moscow opposition to his missile defense plans.

The Americans want to build a system capable of shooting down ballistic missiles fired from unpredictable nations such as North Korea, Iraq and Iran. Bush needs Russia's acquiescence to his anti-missile system if he is to sell his own allies on the deal.

``Only together can we confront the emerging threats of a changing world,'' he said.

Bush would be willing to offer to buy Russian-made S-300 surface-to-air missiles that America could use to defend Russia and Europe, the official said, but he wants defense ministers in both countries to consult on whether another missile system or approach would be better.

Putin and Bush meet again next month in Italy at a summit of industrialized powers, but the administration does not plan to have the new framework ready by then.

``We want Russia to be a partner and an ally, a partner in peace, a partner in democracy,'' Bush said.

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Putin Treads Carefully Toward Bush

New York Times
June 15, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Russia-Putins-Test.html?searchpv=aponline

MOSCOW (AP) -- Vladimir Putin has enchanted European leaders and championed arms sales to China and India in a dizzying year of foreign travel since his election as Russia's president. But the tireless ex-spy's toughest foreign policy test looms Saturday: his first meeting with President Bush.

Observers say Putin will try to probe Bush's weaknesses -- such as limited foreign experience -- while guarding his own, such as Russia's deflated economy and uncertainty about the country's political direction.

With relations in recent months frosty over U.S. missile defense plans, spy scandals and Russia's growing military and nuclear ties with Iran, both Putin and Bush are approaching the summit in Slovenia with caution. The meeting will produce no written agreements and will last just an afternoon, Russian Foreign Ministry officials say.

That means personal impressions may well play a crucial role in the success -- or failure -- of the summit.

Bush said Friday he wants to overcome earlier tensions and that the United States wants Russia as ``a partner and an ally.'' But his first priority was the personal tie with Putin, ``to develop a trust between us.''

``He doesn't know me, and I don't know him very well. But at my press conference tomorrow, I'm confident I'll be able to say I've got a pretty good feel for the man, and he's got a good feel for me,'' Bush told reporters in Poland.

An easy rapport between the presidents is considered unlikely, and the kind of chummy camaraderie that characterized the early years of their predecessors -- Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin -- is virtually ruled out.

Controlled and pragmatic, Putin owes his overwhelming public support to a populace deeply resentful of America -- unlike when Yeltsin and Clinton exchanged guffaws and bear hugs during their meetings in the 1990s.

Misused and misguided U.S. aid and advice, along with NATO expansion, dashed the admiration of America that blossomed in Russia after the 1991 Soviet collapse. According to recent opinion polls, Russians again see the United States as the greatest external threat to their shaky nation.

Putin is under pressure to make an impression on the U.S. policy team as a firm negotiator whose nation's needs cannot be dismissed -- but without risking confrontation or global isolation.

The Kremlin has been tightlipped about Putin's agenda for the meeting, fueling speculation that Putin has no major policy proposals to present.

``The Russian administration hasn't decided where its position is in the world,'' Dmitry Trenin, deputy director of the Carnegie Endowment's Moscow office, said Thursday.

Some say the important thing is that the meeting, which the Kremlin had long sought, is happening at all.

``We prove to ourselves, as well as to the rest of the world, that we are still a world power and we are still equal to the U.S., because the U.S. discusses something with us,'' Russian military observer Alexander Golts said at a recent Carnegie forum.

Despite Russia's weak global position, some Moscow observers say Putin has several advantages going into the summit.

``Putin has achieved serious success on the global chessboard,'' Trenin said.

For example, he said, Putin arrives in Ljubljana from China, which he has visited twice since his election and which joins Russia in denouncing many U.S. policies.

Putin also has more experience as president than Bush, and he's a better linguist. While Bush is making his first foray into Europe, Putin used his good German to help cultivate close ties with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. He also made a good impression on British Prime Minister Tony Blair, dispelling worries about his KGB past.

Europe is an easier backdrop for Putin than the United States, although the Russian leader is now learning English. He has pushed for closer economic integration with Europe, especially as ties with Washington have cooled, while Europeans' skepticism of America is high.

Though Bush has spent the last several days in Europe pitching U.S. missile defense plans, Russian officials insist the Bush-Putin summit will address much more than their dispute over the proposal.

Cooperation in settling conflicts in the Balkans and the Middle East, jointly fighting international terrorism and organized crime, and Russian proposals for deep nuclear weapons cuts are also on the agenda, Foreign Ministry officials said.

Still, ``no revolutionary decisions are expected,'' V.I. Chkhikvishvili, head of the ministry's North America department, told a news conference. ``An important principle in our relations with the United States is no surprises.''

-------- treaties

Misrepresenting the ABM Treaty

New York Times
June 15, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/15/opinion/15FRI1.html?searchpv=nytToday

Arguments over the merits of the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty between Washington and Moscow have been a feature of President Bush's European trip this week and could affect the atmosphere of his meetings tomorrow with Russia's president, Vladimir Putin. The Bush administration would have Americans believe that the treaty is a discredited cold-war relic that bars the way to a new era free from fear of nuclear missile attack. That is bad history and bad policy.

For decades, the ABM treaty restrained competition between the United States and the Soviet Union to build increasing numbers of offensive missiles. Since the cold war's end it has allowed Russia and America to dismantle significant portions of their nuclear arsenals without fear that they would be unable to respond effectively to a surprise attack.

In future years the ABM treaty could serve as a bridge to a new era in which further reductions in offensive missiles could be accompanied by the testing and building of limited defensive systems to blunt emerging threats from unpredictable countries like North Korea, Iran and Iraq. But to arrive at that desirable result the administration will have to stop maligning the treaty and engage in constructive discussions with Russia and China. The goal of this diplomacy should be agreement on how to either amend the treaty or supersede it with a new agreement that can regulate the development of reasonable missile defenses.

• As it now stands, the ABM treaty allows testing and construction of missile defenses, but under very strict limits. No nationwide coverage against long- range warheads is permitted. Mobile-based interceptors, like those launched from ships, are prohibited and cannot even be tested, although mobile defenses against short-range missiles are allowed. These rules were designed to assure that neither Washington nor Moscow could launch a nuclear attack without fear of suffering effective retaliation. Without the treaty, both would have faced irresistible pressures to build thousands of additional offensive missiles to overwhelm any defensive system. With the treaty in place, additional agreements were reached that limited, then sharply reduced, the number of offensive missiles on both sides.

Since the end of the cold war, new kinds of missile threats have arisen from smaller, more erratic nations, and new defensive technologies have been designed that may prove able to counter them. Those technologies still need further testing. But if they do prove workable, the treaty would have to be modified or replaced to permit building them. The ABM treaty has already been amended once before, in 1974, and a second set of agreed changes was negotiated in 1997 but never ratified.

Amending or replacing the treaty is a better course than simply abrogating it. Russia fears that if there were no agreed limits on missile defenses, future technological improvements could render even its present missile force of several thousand inadequate. China has more immediate fears that even a limited missile defense could nullify its far smaller number of long-range missiles. These concerns are legitimate, and the United States, along with the rest of the world, has an interest in these countries' feeling secure with the lowest possible number of intercontinental missiles.

But Washington is right to seek new scope to develop limited missile defenses. The answer is to seek a new strategic equation that encourages the United States and Russia as well as China to field a minimal number of offensive weapons and reasonable defensive systems. The groundwork for this can begin to be laid when President Bush meets Mr. Putin for the first time in Slovenia tomorrow. That meeting is planned primarily as a chance for the two men to get acquainted. But they will meet again at next month's economic summit conference in Italy. By summer's end they could be ready to designate representatives to begin substantive talks.

The Bush administration ought to stop demonizing the ABM treaty and start building on it.

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

Presentations Start for Nuke Workers

By Masha Herbst
Associated Press Writer
Friday, June 15, 2001; 4:09 a.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010615/aponline040912_000.htm

HARTFORD, Conn. -- Cold War-era defense workers and their families are hearing presentations from the U.S. Department of Labor about compensation that may be available for people sickened by dangerous raw materials.

A program approved last year provides workers who contracted radiation-related cancer, beryllium disease or chronic silicosis with a $150,000 lump-sum payment. If the worker has died, the payment could go to relatives.

The presentations, which began Tuesday in Connecticut and Washington state, are expected to continue for about six weeks. Representatives plan to visit 30 cities in 19 states.

Between 650,000 and 750,000 workers nationwide may have been exposed to radiation and the toxic materials beryllium and silica, said Hal Glassman, a representative of the employment standards division of the Department of Labor.

"We encourage people to file claims because we regard the people who worked in these plants as very dedicated Americans working in highly classified areas of the national defense who helped us win the Cold War," Glassman said.

Among the 50 people attending the session were Pertina Younger Grant of Hartford. Her husband, Vibert, is in a nursing home with multiple illnesses, many of which his relatives believe were brought on by exposure to dangerous materials while working at Combustion Engineering in Middletown.

Grant said she thinks the program, the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act of 2000, could be a good one. But she points to a provision that says the children of a deceased worker are only eligible for benefits if they were under age 18 or full-time students under age 23 at the time of their parent's death.

"They let you believe that each relative is eligible if a person is deceased," Mrs. Grant said.

Hartford attorney Brian Prucker, who specializes in worker's compensation and came to the session to learn more about the program, said disputes are inevitable.

"The question of what's a covered employer and who's a covered employee is going to lead to litigation," Prucker said.

Some said the Labor Department had misread the age guidelines, but department officials defended their interpretation.

"The statute says in ways that we would have no ability to modify ... that the definition of a survivor is how our regulation has defined it," said Shelby Hallmark, acting director of the department's Office of Worker Compensation Programs.

The Labor Department is required to accept public comment through August. Claims from former employees and survivors will be processed beginning in August.

-------- tennessee

DOE secretary to visit

from staff reports,
June 15, 2001 Oak Ridger
http://www.oakridger.com/

Department of Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham will visit Oak Ridge Monday. His tour will include Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Y-12 National Security Complex, the Spallation Neutron Source construction site and East Tennessee Technology Park at the Oak Ridge K-25 site.

According to a media advisory from DOE, Abraham will highlight "the important role scientific and high-tech research and advancements play to help solve America's energy challenges."

This will be Abraham's first visit to Oak Ridge, according to DOE. He'll be joined by U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson, U.S. Reps. Zach Wamp and Jimmy Duncan and others.

-------- washington

Uranium cleanup on House's wish list
Lawmakers provide money for study of site

By CHRISTINE DORSEY
DONREY WASHINGTON BUREAU,
June 15, 2001
http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Jun-15-Fri-2001/news/16328173.html

WASHINGTON -- House lawmakers have provided $1.95 million to be used by the Department of Energy to pay for a study this summer on how best to clean up a huge pile of radioactive uranium tailings that is leaking into the Colorado River near Moab, Utah.

The money was tucked into a $6.5 billion bill to eliminate shortfalls in the 2001 budget. The supplemental spending bill provides money primarily for military, disaster relief and high energy costs.

President Bush requested $2.8 million in his 2002 budget for activities at an Energy Department office in Grand Junction, Colo., some of which would have been used for the study, a department spokesperson said.

Under legislation in a defense authorization bill last year, cleanup of the Utah site will be turned over to the Energy Department in September. This provided more incentive for the House to include money in the supplemental bill for a mandatory study of cleanup options by the National Academy of Sciences.

"They're going to have to jump on it," said Bill Hedden, Utah conservation director for Grand Canyon Trust, an environmental group that has been monitoring the mine tailings.

In March, Utah Republican Gov. Mike Leavitt wrote to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham urging him to include "the necessary funding" to move the tailings from where they sit, 750 feet from the river.

In April, seven members of Congress, including Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., wrote a letter to the House Appropriations Committee requesting $10 million for the Energy Department to pay for the cleanup this year.

Hedden said the Energy Department will need at least $8.25 million in 2002 to begin serious work on preparing a new site for the uranium. In the meantime, the football field-sized pile sits in a Colorado River flood plain just outside Arches National Park.

"If we have a good water year, we're done," said Hedden, noting that when water levels are high, the river laps up against the exposed tailings.

Most of Southern Nevada's drinking water comes from the Colorado River, via Lake Mead, about 450 miles downstream of the Moab tailings pile.

Federal officials know of no evidence that uranium is traveling down river into water supplies for Nevada or Southern California, but some reports show the tailings are leaking radioactive uranium into the river.

The Southern Nevada Water Authority regularly tests for traces of radioactive substances, and has consistently found levels to be well below the minimum federal level, the office has said.

Some officials estimate it could cost as much as $300 million to remove the 13 million tons of radioactive tailings left behind by Atlas Mining Corp. The Denver-based company used to mine uranium during the Cold War. The company filed for bankruptcy in 1997, turning the cleanup over to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Congress voted last year to turn over the project to the Energy Department.

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Court denies downwinders' appeal

Fri, Jun 15, 2001
By Annette Cary
Tri-City Herald staff writer

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decided against Hanford downwinders who are trying to force the federal government to pay for medical monitoring.

During production of plutonium for nuclear bombs and tests, as much as 1.1 million curies of radioactive iodine was released at Hanford between 1944 and 1957 and spread downwind. Radioactive iodine collects in thyroid glands, where it can cause cancer and other thyroid illnesses.

Trisha Pritikin, a California attorney and activist who was exposed to radioactive iodine as a child in Richland, sued the Department of Energy under the Superfund law that governs Hanford's cleanup to require DOE to pay for a program to monitor the thyroid health of downwinders.

Her father, a Hanford scientist, died of a rare form of thyroid cancer, and she believes the radioactive iodine also damaged her thyroid gland and endocrine system. Children were particularly susceptible to thyroid damage. Their thyroids are small, and the radioactive iodine concentrated in the milk of cows that grazed on contaminated grass.

In March 1999, U.S. District Judge Edward Shea dismissed her suit, saying the Superfund law does not give a private citizen the right to require DOE to pay for medical monitoring.

Wednesday, the Court of Appeals upheld Shea's decision. It agreed that Pritikin cannot require DOE to make budget requests and to shift environmental cleanup money into a medical monitoring program.

Pritikin has argued through her attorney that the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, or ATSDR, is legally required to monitor downwinders for thyroid problems, and DOE is liable for the costs.

However, the appeals court found that ATSDR, which was not named in the suit, could seek another way to pay for the program and need not wait for DOE money to start the program.

"Thus, any failure to implement the medical monitoring program lies at the hands of ATSDR," the court wrote.

ATSDR proposed a program to monitor the thyroids of 14,000 people who lived downwind of Hanford in Eastern Washington and Eastern Oregon in the 1940s and 1950s at a cost of nearly $50 million.

However, that was scaled back to a proposal to emphasize providing information and education to eligible downwinders and doctors.

Since the ATSDR medical monitoring program was proposed, an $18 million study failed to show that thyroid disease in vulnerable downwinders had increased with larger estimated doses of radioactive iodine.

-------- us nuc politics

Bush Spotlights Poland's Democracy

By Robert Burns
AP Military Writer
Friday, June 15, 2001; 9:28 a.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010615/aponline092806_000.htm

WARSAW, Poland -- President Bush crossed Europe's old Iron Curtain divide Friday to spotlight Poland's successful transition from communism to democracy. "Poland serves as an example of what's possible," he said.

With a nod to Russia, Bush said he envisions Russia as an ally, and said the former Soviet empire "should not fear the expansion of freedom-loving people to her borders."

Bush began his Warsaw visit - the fourth stop on an inaugural five-nation European tour - by meeting with President Aleksander Kwasniewski at the 17th century Presidential Palace, a Baroque-style mansion where his father attended a state dinner in 1989.

He announced that the United States had begun the process of transferring a second frigate to the Polish navy, and expressed support for Poland to gain membership in the European Union. The two leaders also discussed NATO expansion, which Bush said is inevitable and should be not be based on the politics of exclusion.

"And we don't believe any nation should have a veto over who is accepted," Bush said.

Of his first face-to-face meeting with Vladimir Putin, Bush said he would seek to assure the Russian president that he wants to help elevate Russia's role "in the world and Europe" while raising concerns about possible Russian shipments of weapons material to Iran. The two leaders meet Saturday in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia.

His primary goal, Bush said, is to build trust with Putin so that when their meeting is over, "I am confident I'll be able to say I got a pretty good feel for the man, and he's got a good feel for me."

Bush met later Friday with Polish Prime Minister Jerzy Karol Buzek, and laid wreaths at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial.

Bush faced the tomb at attention while two soldiers placed a wreath of red, white and blue flowers before the tomb's eternal flame. He then stepped up to the tomb and stood silently with hands clasped while a small crowd looked on from behind a barricade a few hundred yards away.

Bush was making the only public address of his trip Friday afternoon at the Warsaw University Library, whose facade of giant copper plates with fragments of great scholarly writings is a Warsaw landmark. He said he would use the address to stress that NATO nations have to be more receptive of countries aspiring for membership.

Bush flew to Poland from Goteborg, Sweden, where he and European Union leaders parted ways Thursday on a key environmental issue. At a news conference in Goteborg, Bush offered a preview of Friday's speech.

"I believe we have an opportunity to form an alliance of peace, that Europe ought to include nations beyond the current scope of the European Union and NATO," Bush said. He said the time has come to further expand the boundaries of both institutions - a prospect that deeply troubles Russia.

"My vision of Europe is a larger vision: more countries, more free trade, and one which welcomes Russia and the Ukraine, welcomes Russia and encourages Russia to make the right choices," he added.

But Europeans seem uncertain about the Bush administration's approach to their continent.

For example, the president has created concern by declaring his intention to deploy a missile defense that would violate the basic tenets of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty. Many European leaders consider the pact a pillar of global stability; Bush has called it a relic of the Cold War.

In Goteborg, Bush was at odds with the European Union on the 1997 Kyoto treaty on reducing environmentally harmful emissions. Europeans favor the treaty, which Bush has abandoned as scientifically unrealistic.

The Warsaw speech appeared aimed at burying any doubts about Bush's commitment to Europe's future, as well as his interest in persuading Russia it has nothing to fear from a more united Europe.

Bush sees Poland as a shining example of a formerly communist nation that wisely managed its transition to a free-market democracy. That transformation was sparked by the Solidarity union movement in the early 1980s, clinched by the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and capped by Poland's entry into NATO in 1999.

The idea of continuing the integration of the formerly communist nations of Eastern and Central Europe into institutions born during the Cold War is one Bush raised at each stop on his first trip to Europe as president, which began Tuesday in Spain and included a NATO summit in Brussels, Belgium.

The Czech Republic, along with Hungary and Poland, joined NATO in 1999 over Russia's strong objections. Bush has not said which new candidate countries he supports for membership, but his administration has made clear that Russian objections will not stand in the way.

Candidates for NATO membership include nine former communist nations - Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Macedonia and Albania.

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U.S., Russia At Odds on Iranian Deal
Bush to Raise Atomic Issues at Summit

By Michael Dobbs
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 15, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2772-2001Jun14?language=printer

The United States and Russia are at odds over American and Israeli allegations that Moscow permitted a shipment of high-strength aluminum to Iran that could be used to manufacture enriched uranium for use in nuclear weapons, according to U.S. and Russian officials.

The officials said the two countries exchanged a series of diplomatic messages after the United States and Israel alerted Russia to a suspicious aluminum shipment on a Russian boat that was headed for Iran via the Black Sea soon after President Bush took office Jan. 21.

According to the American version, Russian inspectors boarded the vessel and reported that the aluminum was intended for aircraft manufacture, an explanation not accepted by the United States. The shipment was allowed to proceed to Iran.

The precise origin of the aluminum is not known, but U.S. officials said the deal was arranged by a Russian metals trader. The officials said that the United States and Israel have evidence that the aluminum was delivered to Iranian institutions connected with what they suspect is Iran's nuclear weapons project.

The aluminum shipment is the latest in a series of nuclear proliferation disputes that have clouded U.S.-Russian relations in recent years. U.S. officials said Bush is expected to raise proliferation concerns with Russian President Vladimir Putin during their first face-to-face meeting Saturday in the Slovenian capital of Ljubljana without going into detail about specific cases.

"It's a big deal," said one well-placed administration official, referring to fears that Iran is experimenting with different ways of enriching uranium to produce bomb-grade material that would serve as the basis for a crude nuclear weapon.

U.S. officials said they suspected that the aluminum alloy delivered to Iran was intended for the manufacture of rotor blades used in gas centrifuges that separate out the enriched uranium that can produce a chain reaction for a nuclear explosion. U.S. experts say that Iran has been attempting to acquire centrifuge technology, as well as other technology for enriching uranium, for much of the last decade as part of a larger effort to build an atomic bomb.

Under heavy pressure from the Clinton administration, Russia agreed in 1995 to shelve plans to sell Iran a gas centrifuge plant. Boris Yeltsin, then the Russian president, subsequently promised Clinton that Russia would not provide Iran with uranium enrichment technology of any kind, although it would go ahead with a contract to complete a civilian nuclear reactor at Bushehr.

Several countries, including Pakistan and Iraq, have used gas centrifuges to enrich uranium and accumulate sufficient fissile material to build an atomic bomb. As a result of these efforts, Western governments devote a great deal of attention to attempting to prevent would-be nuclear weapons states from acquiring the high-strength, relatively lightweight materials that can be used to build centrifuges.

The challenge of combating nuclear proliferation is complicated by the fact that many of these materials can have such ordinary industrial uses as aircraft manufacture, and there is often legitimate debate about the purpose of a particular shipment.

Proliferators have become adept at disguising the identity of the end-user and producing fictitious billing statements. Evidence collected by intelligence agencies is often ambiguous and can lead to differing conclusions.

A Kremlin official responsible for export controls, Sergei Yekimov, said that Russia had made an "exhaustive" reply to U.S. concerns about the aluminum shipment, which left for Iran from the Russian-controlled Black Sea port of Sevastopol. He declined to provide further details, citing the sensitive nature of the issues involved.

According to U.S. officials, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice broached the aluminum case directly with her Russian counterpart, Sergei Ivanov, while he was head of the Kremlin Security Council before becoming defense minister. Ivanov provided her with written assurances that the aluminum was intended for aircraft manufacture. Putin gave then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak a similar answer in a telephone conversation shortly before Barak left office on March 7, the official sources said, while Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has raised the issue with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov.

The officials said that the shipment was arranged by a private Russian metals trader, suggesting the Russian government was not involved. U.S. officials are divided over whether the Russians deliberately misled their U.S. and Israeli counterparts over the nature of the shipment, or merely repeated erroneous information provided to them by subordinates.

Russian officials have often insisted in recent years that the government does not sanction the spread of materials to build weapons of mass destruction to such countries as Iran. But critics point out that the materials nonetheless appear to be leaking out of Russia, sometimes from state-run research institutes. In the most dramatic example, gyroscopes used in missile guidance systems were sent to Iraq in 1995 after being disassembled from Russian strategic rockets.

Nuclear experts say the acquisition of sufficient quantities of fissile material is the single biggest barrier faced by such countries as Iran in building a nuclear weapon. Iran's continuing attempts to acquire enrichment technology and relevant materials suggest that it has not been able to buy or steal fissile materials on the international black market, the shortest route to manufacturing a bomb.

In addition to centrifuges, Iran has displayed an interest in purchasing laser equipment that could be used to separate nuclear isotopes. Last year, according to U.S. and Russian officials, Moscow agreed to suspend plans to sell Iran laser separation technology that it had contracted to buy from the Efremov Institute in St. Petersburg, which reports to the Atomic Energy Ministry.

Russian officials said they had agreed to halt the sale as a "goodwill gesture" even though they did not believe it would have contributed in any significant way to the Iranian nuclear weapons program. While U.S. experts concede that the Russian equipment was capable of producing only tiny amounts of highly enriched uranium, they also feared that the Iranians might discover ways to use the equipment on a larger scale or as a "building block" for a more ambitious laser separation program.

In contrast to the laser separation technology, centrifuges are a proven route to acquiring significant quantities of weapons-grade uranium, and can be difficult to detect once they have been manufactured. However, nuclear experts say it is far from a simple matter for a country such as Iran to build a centrifuge plant without large-scale foreign assistance.

"We can assume that the Iranians have a workable centrifuge design, but it is still difficult for them to make the parts and get the centrifuges to run so they don't explode," said Gary Milhollin, of the nonprofit, Washington-based Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control. "They need to be very precisely balanced."

Milhollin added that Iran has not yet demonstrated that it can convert its plentiful uranium supplies to the uranium hexafluoride gas used to feed a centrifuge.

Most U.S. experts, both in and out of government, say that Iran is still in the research and development stages of building a gas centrifuge. To produce enough material for an atomic bomb, a country needs several thousand centrifuges linked together in a cascade. Centrifuges operate on the principle of centrifugal force created by rotor blades spinning at supersonic speeds, pushing the heavy uranium-238 molecules to the wall of the container and leaving lighter uranium-235 molecules in the center.

Because they spin so rapidly, the rotor blades must be made out of a light but high-strength material such as specialty steel or aluminum alloy. At the same time, they must be able to withstand the highly corrosive gases that feed the separation process. Aluminum is often used as a first stage for building centrifuges, as it is easier to work with than other materials.

The origin of the aluminum shipped to Iran is still unclear. Although most of Sevastopol's port is controlled by the Russian navy, the city belongs to Ukraine. However, U.S. officials appear to have accepted Ukrainian assurances that the material did not originate in Ukraine. Ukraine has a joint civilian aircraft project with Iran that U.S. officials say could have been used as a cover for nuclear procurement.

"The U.S. side was satisfied with our explanation," said Ukraine's ambassador to Washington, Kostyantyn Gryshchenko, adding that Ukraine does not produce the special aluminum alloys that U.S. officials allege were part of the shipment.

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Diplomat sets meeting with Powell

June 15, 2001
By Ben Barber
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010615-68783.htm

Japanese Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka, who has irked Washington with skepticism on missile defenses and by refusing to see a senior U.S. envoy in Tokyo, is to meet Secretary of State Colin L. Powell in Washington next week.

Because the United States and Japan have one of the world´s closest diplomatic and military alliances, few have doubted that such a meeting would take place.

Nevertheless, Washington kept Mrs. Tanaka guessing after she announced the trip on Monday.

It took until yesterday to confirm an appointment Monday with Mr. Powell.

The State Department said in a statement that the two would discuss security and other issues and prepare for a summit between President Bush and Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in Washington June 30.

Since she was named foreign minister in April, Mrs. Tanaka has emerged as a major skeptic of closer U.S.-Japan ties.

In May, she refused to meet with Richard Armitage, who had been sent to Tokyo as a special envoy by Mr. Bush to explain his approach to missile defense.

Mr. Armitage, who subsequently became U.S. deputy secretary of state, has been a longtime supporter of closer ties between Washington and Tokyo.

During the presidential campaign, he pledged that Mr. Bush, if elected, would make the U.S. alliance with Japan a cornerstone of U.S. policy in the Pacific.

At the time, he criticized the Clinton administration for having failed to treat Japan with enough respect and for neglecting the relationship.

Japan was particularly slighted when Mr. Clinton made a long and colorful visit to China in 1998, calling China a "strategic partner" and failing to stop off for a visit to nearby Japan, where 48,000 U.S. troops were stationed.

Mr. Koizumi this week refused to rule out Japanese opposition for the proposed missile shield.

Mr. Koizumi said the Japanese Diet, or parliament, needs to "carefully consider" its position.

The government´s earlier official position on the missile defense was neutral.

Mr. Armitage, who was sent to Asia to explain the proposal to build a missile defense system that could shoot down attacks by rogue states, ran into reluctance to endorse the plan in both Japan and South Korea.

Analysts say both nations fear antagonizing China, which believes that its 18 to 24 nuclear-tipped missiles capable of reaching the United States would be neutralized by any missile defense system.

"We have to carefully consider this issue, which has enormous influence on global security," Mr. Koizumi said.