------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
NUCLEAR QUESTIONS FOR NORTH KOREA AND IRAQ
British Atom Bombs Could Have Caused 25 Hiroshimas
Raytheon Sees Gains From Defense Spending
CZECH REPUBLIC: NUCLEAR PLANT TO RESTART
Pakistan to abide by nuclear test ban
Musharraf Makes Himself Pakistan's President
Putin presses Norway on missile defense cooperation
Invitation to an Arms Race
Accident launch wake-up call
Putin hails 'new trust' with U.S.
Bush Urged to Abolish Nuclear War Plan
Bill Addresses Radiation Victims
Independent Reviewer Blasts INEEL Worker Health Program
Beryllium workers' witness denies try to force mistrial
Sick-worker payment plan faces doubts
Michaels to help with sick-worker compensation plan
K-25 water records missing
Government has broken its covenant with citizens
Senator OK with compensation plan
Nuclear Waste Disposal: A Safer Solution?
Uncle Sam's Nuclear Welcome

MILITARY
Algeria Bans Protests in Capital
Pentagon notifies Congress of possible F-16 lease
Castro denies weapons shipments from China
Fast Facts on Arms Sales
EU, NATO Envoys Due in Macedonia to Push Peace Talks
Last Chance in Macedonia
NATO Ready to Send Troops to Macedonia
Milosevic Extradition Law Addressed
FAA-Lockheed Contract Stalled
Combating American hegemony
Bolivia withdraws troops, halts eradication in coca-growing region
Greening of the drug war
Twenty-three Iraqis killed, in US-British raid over northern Iraq
Russia Seeks Open UN Meeting on Iraq
Allies Deny Raid That Iraq Says Killed 23
Israel Decides to Stick With U.S.-Brokered Truce
As Japan tries to cut expenditures, defense pact with U.S. is tempting target
Specter of a Rearmed Japan Stirs Its Wartime Generation
Turkey fears EU force will aid Greece
Powell Discusses NATO in Macedonia
Rove played a major role in Vieques move
Protesters Stall Navy Bombing Run
U.S. Gears to Defend Its Satellites
Taiwan Test-Fires Patriot Missiles
Taiwan Says Patriot Test - Firing a Success
Pentagon to scrap two-war readiness
US general foresees need for access to larger bases in SE Asia
Liquidation.com to Take Over Military Surplus
Stealths May Be Prone to Radar

OTHER
EU Renewable Energy Law Virtually Finalized
Asia makes big push into clean, alternative fuels
Southern Power Companies Form Pact
NEW ONLINE SOURCE OFFERS ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION
Japan Minister Urges Kyoto Protocol
Virus Shows Promise Against a Brain Cancer
Better Cancer Care Urged
Medicine Mines Metals to Heal And Cure
Holbrooke Has New Role: Leading Fight Against AIDS
Protests Grow Over Australia's Detention Camps
U.S. Attorney in Calif. Favored for Top FBI Job
The US jails 25% of all prisoners in the world
Ex-KGB General Says Army Retiree Was a Top Source
Inspector general criticizes CIA's mismanagment
Cuba Calls U.S. Spy Convicts Heroes
Does Europe Covet Own Echelon?
Russia Investigates Threat to Bush
Bill targets environmental terrorists
Bin Laden video crows over Cole bombing
Bin Laden Rides Again: Myth vs. Reality
Russia Investigates Threat to Bush

ACTIVISTS
NRC TRYING TO STRIP PUBLIC OF MEANINGFUL PARTICIPATION
JOIN EUROPEAN BOYCOTT OF EXXON
India Begins Protesters' Funerals


-------- NUCLEAR

UNITED NATIONS
NUCLEAR QUESTIONS FOR NORTH KOREA AND IRAQ

June 20, 2001
World Briefing
Christopher S. Wren
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/20/world/20BRIE.html?searchpv=nytToday

The International Atomic Energy Agency said it was unable to verify that North Korea and Iraq are not diverting nuclear material for military purposes. The agency said it could not confirm North Korea's insistence that it had produced only a few grams of plutonium because inspectors had not been given sufficient access. (The C.I.A. thinks North Korea could have produced enough for two nuclear weapons.) The agency also cannot say if Iraq is eliminating any nuclear weapons program because Baghdad has not admitted inspectors since December 1999.(NYT)

-------- britain

British Atom Bombs Could Have Caused 25 Hiroshimas

New York Times
June 20, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/science/science-science-brita.html?searchpv=reuters

LONDON (Reuters) - While researching its own nuclear bomb in the late 1950s, Britain held enough nuclear explosives to cause hundreds of Hiroshima blasts, declassified Royal Air Force papers showed Wednesday.

Up to a dozen fission weapons were supplied to RAF bases between 1958 and 1960 -- each with the explosive capacity of 25 Hiroshima bombs, the New Scientist magazine said.

The bombs held around 70 kilograms of uranium-235 each -- enough to create a 500-kilotonexplosion -- but were packed with 450 kilograms of steel balls in order to separate the sections of uranium and avoid a blast.

Yet the papers showed the RAF still had safety concerns.

``A high-yield nuclear explosion could be possible if the weapons were jettisoned, or in the event of a crash on return, or an accident in de-bombing,'' one memo, dated January 1959, said.

The Ministry of Defense, however, said there was no risk of an accidental explosion.

-------- business

Raytheon Sees Gains From Defense Spending

New York Times
June 20, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/business/business-airshow-rayt.html?searchpv=reuters

PARIS (Reuters) - Raytheon Co., maker of the Patriot missile and combat electronics systems, on Wednesday told investors it was poised to gain from an expected boost in U.S. defense spending, regardless of which programs the Bush administration pursues.

Speaking at an SG Cowen investor conference, Chief Executive Dan Burnham declined to discuss Raytheon's quarterly earnings outlook or its ongoing legal dispute, and instead focused on the prospects from its technological expertise in missile defense, radar, sensors and systems integration.

``Our technical capabilities really position us in the sweet spot of defense spending,'' Burnham said. ``Raytheon leads very strongly in each and every critical growth area.''

Lexington, Massachusetts-based Raytheon, the third-largest U.S. defense contractor, plans to take advantage of the expected jump in spending to increase its free cash flow as it nurses its balance sheet back to health.

SPENDING PRIORITIES

The company reiterated previous guidance on earnings, forecasting annual per-share profit growth of 10 percent on revenue growth of 4-6 percent.

Industry analysts have only been able to speculate on the Bush administration's plans for military spending, because Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is reviewing all military policies before announcing new spending initiatives.

Raytheon participates in nine out of 10 programs that analysts say have the greatest chance of moving forward under the new administration.

Burnham noted that the Bush administration has already stated it wants to develop a missile defense system.

``The only question in missile defense is how much more, not will there be more,'' he said.

Among missile defense projects, Raytheon pointed to its ground-based CLAWS development, or the complementary low-altitude weapons system, which the company said would easily amount to $1.5 billion over five years.

Raytheon also said it plans to explore international opportunities in Korea, Egypt, Taiwan, Greece and Kuwait for the light-weight, highly maneuverable missile defense system.

Burnham noted that in intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, Raytheon could see more than $3 billion generated from its cooperative engagement capability, which allows data to be shared among allied warfighters in real time.

SHADOW CAST

He did not discuss the company's ongoing legal dispute with Washington Group International over an asset sale last year, or the resulting investigation by federal securities regulators.

Raytheon is under investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission regarding the sale of its former engineering and construction business to Washington Group.

The fight caused Raytheon to take $325 million in pre-tax charges against earnings in the first quarter, and the company has warned that the situation would hurt operating cash flow over the next four to six quarters.

The unit at the center of the dispute was just one of many operations Raytheon sold in an effort to focus on its core business and raise funds to whittle down its debt load.

Burnham said Wednesday the company would continue to sell non-core assets as part of its strategy.

Since 1999, Raytheon has sold 17 businesses for $1 billion.

-------- czech republic

CZECH REPUBLIC: NUCLEAR PLANT TO RESTART

Agence France-Presse
June 20, 2001
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/20/world/20BRIE.html?searchpv=nytToday

Nuclear reactor No. 1 at the Temelin plant is to be restarted July 21 after being shut down for two months for repairs, the plant's spokesman announced. The reactor was shut in early May when faults were detected in its nonnuclear secondary circuit, the latest in a series of technical problems since it was put into service in October. The plant, 37 miles from the Austrian border, was conceived in the Soviet era but has been updated with Western technology. It has attracted fierce opposition, particularly in Austria, which voted in 1978 to be nuclear-free.

-------- india / pakistan

Pakistan to abide by nuclear test ban

June 20, 2001
By Emily Charnock
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010620-896798.htm

Pakistan Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar, in Washington to appeal for the lifting of U.S. economic sanctions, pledged yesterday that his country will not be the first to resume nuclear testing in South Asia.

"Pakistan will maintain the moratorium on nuclear tests," Mr. Sattar told reporters after a meeting with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.

The United States and other countries sanctioned India and stiffened existing penalties on Pakistan after the Islamabad government responded in kind to a series of Indian nuclear tests in 1998.

Pakistan "has not been the first in the past" to test weapons and will not be in the future, the foreign minister said.

Speaking a day earlier at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Mr. Sattar said sanctions retard efforts to relieve poverty, "which breeds hopelessness and desperation, and fosters extremism that needs to be opposed."

The Pakistani minister´s visit comes amid strong signals that the Bush administration is preparing to ease or lift the sanctions on India, which is being cultivated as a strategic ally in Asia.

Mr. Powell would not commit to a similar course for Pakistan yesterday, but said simply, "The process of removal will be dealt with in the spirit of cooperation."

Mr. Powell also described the discussion as "good and fruitful," and noted that "no issue could not be discussed in the spirit of mutual openness."

The two spoke "at length" about Afghanistan, Mr. Powell said, but there was no indication whether Pakistani support for the extreme Islamic Taliban regime would affect the removal of sanctions or general U.S.-Pakistani relations.

The Afghan issue will continue to hamper the foreign minister during his visit. Afghan Americans plan to protest outside the National Press Club when the minister speaks there this afternoon.

Nastrine Gross, who is organizing the protest, said, "The world knows that the Taliban would not be possible without the military, political and financial support of Pakistan."

She asserted that the Taliban regime exists not for the well-being of the Afghan people, but as a means of exerting Pakistani authority in Afghanistan.

Pakistan has been under military rule since a coup by Gen. Pervez Musharraf in October 1999. Mr. Sattar said his government was "building and strengthening foundations for the reconstruction of democracy in Pakistan."

Mr. Powell said he was "encouraged by the preparation for elections next year."

Mr. Powell and Mr. Sattar also discussed plans for a summit next month between Gen. Musharraf and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee of India.

The two countries announced yesterday that the summit, the first between them in two years, will be held July 14-16 in New Delhi.

Nuclear issues will figure at the summit, along with continuing violence in Kashmir, the disputed region over which India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars. Mr. Sattar expressed hope that the issue would be addressed in a constructive fashion, speaking of a "moment of hope" in Pakistani-Indian relations.

Mr. Sattar would not comment on his discussion with Mr. Powell about Kashmir.

Mr. Powell maintained an impartial air, referring to India and Pakistan as "two great countries" and expressing hope that the India-Pakistan summit meeting would bring "results which will benefit both countries."

--------

Musharraf Makes Himself Pakistan's President

New York Times
June 20, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-pakista.html

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Military ruler General Pervez Musharraf had himself sworn in as Pakistan's new president on Wednesday, raising his official stature ahead of a summit in India but earning sharp criticism from opponents and Washington.

The chief justice of the Supreme Court administered the oath of office less than five hours after state media announced the figurehead president, Mohammad Rafiq Tarar, had been removed.

The formal role of head of state added new weight to the position of Musharraf, who had ruled only as ``chief executive'' since seizing power in a bloodless coup in October 1999.

``I, in all sincerity, think I have a role to play and I have a job to do here...so I will not let this nation down,'' Musharraf told officials and diplomats invited to the presidential palace for the ceremony.

``I have been thinking about this change for a number of months. It's one of the most difficult decisions I have taken; it was the most difficult decision because it involved myself.''

Pakistan's main political alliance opposing military rule called Musharraf's move a ``great tragedy.''

``This is another coup,'' Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan, president of the 16-party Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy, told a news conference in Lahore.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters: ''We are very concerned and we are very disappointed that Pakistan takes another turn away from democracy rather than, as we had hoped, a step toward democracy.''

``COUNTRY RULED BY DECREE''

He said the action ``severely undermines Pakistan's constitutional order and casts Pakistan as a country ruled by decree rather than by democratic process...''

And he said U.S. sanctions imposed because of Musharraf's military coup could not be lifted until a democratically elected government took office.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said: ``There is bound to be widespread anxiety that this represents a setback in the transition to elected democracy.''

Pakistan's neighbor and arch-rival India, which has invited Musharraf to talks with Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee on July 14, said it would recognize his new role, although it offered no congratulations.

Musharraf said he would remain ``chief executive,'' overseeing the government and commanding the armed forces.

But the presidency gave him a formal constitutional status ahead of his talks in India, where some Pakistani politicians had questioned his authority to make any agreements.

Musharraf's move also reinforced his vow that reforms he has begun will not be scrapped with the return of a civilian government that he has promised by October 2002, in compliance with a Supreme Court ruling.

He also formally abolished the elected legislatures that he had suspended on ousting prime minister Nawaz Sharif in 1999.

``As far as the political process is concerned, there is no change whatsoever,'' said Musharraf, dressed in civilian clothes.

``Let there be no doubt...the Supreme Court decision of holding elections by October 2002, we will abide by that.''

A senior member of the government said Musharraf's move would give a ``sense of stability,'' adding: ``It shows consistency of policy and continuity of reforms.''

``REASSURANCE FOR INVESTORS''

Musharraf said that reassuring potential investors, who the heavily indebted country badly needs, about the future stability of Pakistan was one of his reasons for taking the presidency. His coup followed a decade of chaotic civilian rule.

But a Western diplomat in Islamabad said Musharraf must make a case for his legitimacy with his actions: ``What he says, how he presents it, will be vital.''

The military government had hinted strongly that Musharraf would become president upon restoration of civilian rule to enforce his vow that there would be no turning back on reforms.

The move to install him immediately appeared to be tied directly to the summit in India.

This will be the first such meeting between the arch-foes since he took power, and will focus on the 54-year-old dispute over whether Kashmir should be part of India or Pakistan.

India once expressed reluctance to deal with someone its media often call a ``military dictator.'' Musharraf was in charge of the military when heavy fighting between Indian and Pakistani forces broke out two years ago along the cease-fire line separating the two countries' forces in Kashmir.

India accused Musharraf of sending troops over the ``line of control.'' Pakistan has never admitted the incursion but the fighting ended after Washington put pressure on it to withdraw.

Foreign governments have pressed Musharraf for an early return to civilian rule, but his military administration has won international support for his efforts to set the nation's finances in order.

His government, which includes civilians in all key economic posts, unveiled a budget for the next July-June fiscal year on Monday that continued its tight fiscal policies to counter a mountainous public debt run up under previous governments.

-------- missile defense

Putin presses Norway on missile defense cooperation

Wednesday June 20, 12:30 AM
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010619/1/12dmg.html

MOSCOW, June 19 (AFP) - President Vladimir Putin received assurances from NATO member Norway Tuesday that its radar station will not be used by the United States as part of its missile defense project.

Coming fresh off his historic summit with US President George W. Bush, Putin expressed concern about reports the United States was planning to use Norway's Globe-2 radar station in Vardoe as part of its controversial missile defense system.

Sensing the tension, Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg took pains to assuage Russian fears about the listening post and the prospects of NATO's potential expansion in general.

"This radar station is in no way part of any missile defense system, or of any US activity. It is part of Norway's normal intelligence activity," Stoltenberg said in a speech before Russian diplomats.

"We believe that good intelligence, both on the Norwegian and the Russian side, contributes to peace, trust and understanding," he said.

Putin earlier briefed the Norwegian leader on the outcome of his landmark weekend summit with Bush in the Slovenian capital Ljubljana, where differences over missile defense and NATO expansion marred an otherwise genial atmosphere.

Norway is the only one of the alliance's 19 members to share a common border with Russia proper. Poland, which joined NATO in 1999, borders Russia's Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad, which is geographically cut off from the rest of the Russian Federation.

"Putin presented the Russian position on anti-missile defense," Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said after the talks.

The two leaders also discussed economic partnership, energy cooperation, fishing, nuclear security, and environmental issues, Ivanov told journalists.

Putin also highlighted the rapid growth in commercial contacts between Russia and Norway, which he said he planned to visit in 2002.

"During the New York Millennium summit (in September 2000) you gave me an invitation from King Harald V of Norway, and I want to confirm today that this visit will indeed take place next year," Putin told Stoltenberg.

Putin added that "commercial exchanges between Russia and Norway have significantly increased compared to the same period last year."

Earlier the head of the Kremlin's influential security council, Vladimir Rushailo, met Norwegian Defense Minister Bjoern Tore Godal to discuss beefing up a military partnership between the two countries.

Russia has bristled at the idea of its former Warsaw Pact allies -- and even former Soviet republics -- joining NATO.

The nine official candidates seeking admittance at a NATO summit in Prague next year are Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.

At Saturday's landmark summit with Putin in Ljubljana, Bush argued that Moscow has nothing to fear from the process of NATO enlargement into its own "back yard."

But Putin remained adamant that it was difficult for Russians to ignore that the alliance was a military organization formed in 1949 to contain the Soviet threat.

Still, Stoltenberg stressed that the expansion of NATO and the European Union should only work in favor of building trust between the two sides.

"The larger picture of gradual enlargement of institutions such as NATO and the EU, enlargement that does not confront any state or group of states, but provides a framework for democracy and economic development," he said.

"And it is a picture of a Russia expanding its ties and relations with Europe."

--------

Invitation to an Arms Race

June 20, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/20/opinion/20WED2.html?searchpv=nytToday

Last Saturday President Bush and Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, talked hopefully about bridging the differences between Washington and Moscow on missile defense. On Monday Mr. Putin indicated what might happen if they did not. If Washington withdraws from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, he warned, Moscow will set aside its 1993 nuclear arms reduction treaty with the United States and put multiple warheads on its missile force.

The White House should take Mr. Putin's warning seriously. Even a cash-strapped Russia could afford to add hundreds of multiple warheads to new and existing missiles. Mr. Putin's words reinforce an already strong case for amending or replacing the ABM treaty rather than simply abandoning it. If both countries start renouncing existing arms control agreements, Americans will be less secure from nuclear missile dangers than they are now.

Land-based multi-warhead missiles, each capable of delivering powerful nuclear bombs to as many as 10 separate targets, were the most dangerous weapons in Russia's cold-war arsenal. The 1993 treaty that provided for their eventual elimination was one of the great achievements of the first Bush presidency. It should not be needlessly jeopardized now. The United States can proceed with all the research and testing it needs in the next few years without withdrawing from the ABM treaty. Meanwhile, the administration should work with Russian officials to negotiate treaty changes that will be needed to perform tests that may be required years from now and to start building a limited missile shield when it becomes practical.

Multiple-warhead missiles were first developed in the late 1960's, partly to assure both the United States and the Soviet Union that, even after a surprise attack, they could overwhelm the first generation of missile defenses then being developed. Their ability to overwhelm the defenses persuaded the Nixon administration to agree to the ABM treaty and the Ford administration to deactivate the modest missile defense program the treaty permitted. With defensive systems strictly limited, Washington and Moscow felt comfortable enough to negotiate limits and then reductions on offensive weapons, including the eventual elimination of land- based multi-warhead missiles. These arms control agreements, which have done so much to reduce cold-war nuclear dangers, were premised on both sides' continued adherence to the ABM treaty.

But with the end of the cold war and the emergence of new threats, political support has grown in America for a limited missile defense against unpredictable countries like North Korea, Iraq or Iran. The Bush administration wants to move quickly toward building such a shield, even though much more testing and research are needed to determine if it would be effective.

For the next few years that testing can proceed within the framework of the ABM treaty, which permits extensive testing of land-based interceptor rockets, restricted testing of sea- and air-based defenses and almost all forms of research. During this period every effort should be made to work out new agreements with Russia to amend or supersede the ABM treaty, so as to permit testing and construction needed to meet today's new threats while maintaining the restrictions still necessary to prevent a dangerous new arms race.

-------- russia

Accident launch wake-up call

June 20, 2001
James Hackett
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20010620-99217830.htm

Twice in the past month accidents involving Russian missiles and missile warning systems have served to remind us that the possibility of a nuclear accident still exists.

In the most recent incident a surface-to-air missile complex in the Moscow region´s Ramenskoye district exploded on June 8, destroying three S-300 missile launchers and 12 missiles. Eyewitnesses said they saw what appeared to be a missile launch following the explosion and Moscow television reported two missiles were launched. But a Russian Air Force spokesman said there were no launches. Whether a missile was launched or not, one or more might have been.

A short-circuit in a missile engine is believed to have caused the explosion and resulting fire. Windows were broken in a nearby town, where witnesses said they counted six loud explosions and saw a mushroom cloud rising over the forest.

But it was not a nuclear explosion these missiles normally are not nuclear-armed. The S-300 is Russia´s counterpart to America´s Patriot, a solid-fuel missile designed to intercept aircraft, cruise missiles, and short-range ballistic missiles. It is in widespread service in Russia, and Moscow is eagerly trying to sell it abroad.

Less than a month earlier, on May 10, a major fire broke out at a mission control center of Russia´s military space forces near Kurilovo, some 60 miles southwest of Moscow, causing a loss of contact with four military satellites. The fire, reportedly caused by a short-circuit in a power cable, broke out at 2:30 in the morning and was so severe that the three-story command center was still burning at noon.

The function of the military satellites that were out of service was not reported. Whether missile early warning satellites or military communications satellites, they could play an important role in Russia´s ability to maintain control of its nuclear missiles. Remember 1995, when a sounding rocket launched from Norway caused Russian nuclear missile forces to go on alert and President Boris Yeltsin´s nuclear briefcase was activated, ready to launch a missile attack on the U.S.? Even a brief, unexpected interruption in the functioning of Moscow´s early warning satellites could be dangerous.

These two recent incidents are only the latest in a string of accidents that reflect Russia´s declining infrastructure, diminishing military effectiveness, and lack of funds. Last August, the explosion and sinking of the Kursk nuclear submarine was followed by a major fire in the Ostankino TV tower that knocked out Moscow television.

With infrastructure that has not been modernized for 20 to 30 years, more disasters are waiting to happen. The Russian economy has been buoyed this year by the high price of oil on the world market, but the next downturn in price could produce an acceleration of Russia´s infrastructure decline.

Last year an article in the paper Komsomolskaya Pravda claimed that the unnatural Soviet economy had forced technological expansion beyond the country´s means. Now, with few resources to modernize the aging infrastructure the chance of a nuclear disaster or crisis involving Russia´s huge stockpile of nuclear weapons will increase. All of Russia´s intercontinental and sea-launched ballistic missiles, except for the 26 new SS-27s produced over the past three years, will be obsolete by 2010 and should be retired.

Since Russia is not an enemy, there has been a tendency to forget its nuclear-armed missiles. The main reason for a national missile defense is to prevent missile-armed countries from using their weapons to blackmail or intimidate, and to stop any missile that a rogue state may launch. But another important reason is to stop an accidental or unauthorized launch from any country.

The main concern in this regard has to be the 736 intercontinental ballistic missiles and hundreds of submarine-launched missiles still operational in Russia and carrying some 6,000 aging nuclear warheads. The decline of Russia´s command and control network, with equipment that tends to have "short-circuits," is sending us a warning.

The time is short to deploy at least an initial missile defense to deal with an accidental launch, and to accelerate the disassembly of nuclear weapons, both here and in Russia.

President Bush is on the right track in seeking a new strategic framework that moves away from mutual suicide, toward deep reductions in nuclear weapons, and deployment of a national missile defense. The plan to put even a handful of interceptors in silos in Alaska by 2004 or 2005 should be pursued with vigor. Moscow´s deteriorating missile control system may not wait.

James T. Hackett is a contributing writer to The Washington Times based in San Diego.

----

Putin hails 'new trust' with U.S.

June 20, 2001
http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/06/19/russia.putin/index.html

MOSCOW, Russia -- Russian President Vladamir Putin welcomes a new "trust" with the United States, but warns that differences remain over defence plans.

In a lengthy interview with U.S. journalists on Monday, Putin warned against the unilateral undermining of key strategic treaties.

Speaking of his first meeting with U.S. President George W. Bush at a weekend summit in Slovenia, Putin said a new trust emerging between the two countries and he was pleased Russia was no longer considered the enemy.

"It seemed to me the words that we said during the press conference were not just formal statements," Putin was quoted by the Associated Press as saying. "They indeed reflected a very high level of trust between the two of us. I must say that the president is a nice person to talk to."

But he warned that unilateral U.S. withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty "will result in a hectic uncontrolled arms race" in countries near Russia with nuclear aspirations.

Scrapping the treaty -- which he said would also mean "throwing into the trash automatically" the START I and START II treaties -- Putin said would compel Russia to beef up its nuclear capacity.

"Our nuclear potential will be strengthened," he said, adding that it would not take much money to upgrade the nuclear arsenal and that it would be done by putting multiple warheads on strategic missiles.

The new U.S. administration has said that it needs its controversial national missile defence (NMD) system to counter attacks from "rogue states," dismissing the 1972 ABM treaty -- which allowed each signatory only a single site ringed with defensive missiles -- as a relic of the Cold War.

At the summit Putin defended the 1972 treaty as the cornerstone of three decades of strategic stability.

Putin said that he and Bush had agreed to work together to identify security threats.

"Here we do not have a common position," Putin said.

"The two sides needed to agree on what they meant by the term 'threat,' and work out what prevents us together, or each separately if our partners so wish it, from countering this threat?," Reuters quoted him as saying.

He dismissed U.S. concerns over North Korea saying Pyongyang's technology was antiquated, but did cite religious extremists, among whom he included the Taliban in Afghanistan, as a real threat.

Putin insisted that missile defence shield as proposed would never work.

"It's like a bullet hitting a bullet. Is it possible today or not? Today experts say that it is impossible to achieve this," AP quoted him as saying.

But he said if key treaties were undermined Russian would be forced to reinforce its nuclear capability.

He denied that Russia helped spread the technology for weapons of mass destruction or provided weapons to Iran that the United States or Israel could consider a threat.

The Russian leader also revealed publicly for the first time that he had passed on a message from Chinese President Jiang Zemin to Bush saying his country was ready to put the April downing of a U.S. reconnaissance plane by the Chinese military behind them.

-------- u.s. nuc weapons

Bush Urged to Abolish Nuclear War Plan
Environmental Group Opposes Targeting Nations, Backs Arsenal Reductions

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 20, 2001; Page A08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18932-2001Jun19?language=printer

An environmental advocacy group yesterday called on President Bush to abolish the secret U.S. nuclear war plan directed against Russia, China and other potential enemies, saying it is "a recipe for unceasing arms requirements by the Pentagon and a continuing competition with Russia."

The Natural Resources Defense Council recommended reducing the U.S. arsenal to a few hundred nuclear weapons and transferring nuclear war planning to a civilian-military staff with congressional oversight.

The study is a reflection of the ferment taking place inside the Pentagon and among arms control groups since the Bush administration launched a major review of U.S. nuclear strategy. That review is expected to be completed this summer.

Some scientists at U.S. weapons laboratories have called for a resumption of underground nuclear testing and the development of new types of warheads. Other experts have argued for mutual reductions in the American and Russian arsenals.

Bush has held out the prospect of unilateral U.S. reductions, along with efforts to build missile defenses and to develop a new strategic framework for the post-Cold War era.

The nuclear war plan, known as the single integrated operation plan, or SIOP, was first developed in 1960 at the height of the Cold War. It called for thousands of warheads to be aimed at Soviet targets, including factories, command bunkers, and nuclear and conventional military forces.

Under the latest SIOP, approved by President Bill Clinton in 1997, more than 2,000 warheads are kept on constant alert on land- and sea-based missiles. They are able to respond within 30 minutes in the event of a surprise attack on the United States from Russia, China or another nation.

"At this stage in the disarmament process," the NRDC contended in a report released yesterday, "a U.S. stockpile numbering in the hundreds is more than adequate to achieve the single purpose of deterrence."

The organization's two-year study of simulated nuclear effects predicted that even a U.S. strike that avoided big cities but attempted to knock out Russian missile silos and other nuclear forces -- a "counterforce" attack -- would kill 8 million to 12 million Russians.

A separate NRDC study concluded that a single U.S. Trident missile submarine, which carries 192 nuclear warheads, could inflict "in excess of 50 million casualties" if the missiles were aimed at Russian cities.

Referring to Bush's repeated statement that Russia is not an enemy, the environmental group urged the administration to drop the SIOP and place nuclear targeting on a "contingency" basis.

This would mean the United States would "not target any country specifically, but create a contingency war planning capability to assemble attack plans in the event of hostilities with another nuclear state," it said.

Robert S. Norris, a senior analyst for the NRDC, said, "Any proposal by the Bush administration that does not abandon counterforce as the ruling assumption and strategy for the war plan is flawed and dangerous."

The process of developing the SIOP begins with formal guidance from the president on the broad goals of U.S. nuclear planning. The secretary of defense then produces a policy on the use of nuclear weapons.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff refine that into a document that sets targeting and damage criteria. Finally, the U.S. military's Strategic Command writes the SIOP, setting specific targets and the number and type of warheads aimed at them.

The NRDC described the Strategic Command's war planners as "a self-perpetuating constituency that needs fundamental reform."

Noting that the SIOP "has its own level of classification" far above top secret, it said Congress "has been powerless" to affect or even scrutinize the war plans.

For example, former senator Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.) tried during his last two years in office to legislate a reduction in the number of U.S. nuclear weapons and limit those on alert, but was repeatedly denied access to information about the SIOP.

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

Bill Addresses Radiation Victims

New York Times
June 20, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Uranium-Miners.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Ill uranium miners and residents sickened by radioactive fallout from nuclear tests are a step closer to long-awaited compensation from the government.

Money to pay government IOUs worth $84 million will be included in the version of a $6.5 billion spending bill going Thursday to the Senate Appropriations Committee.

``Our people don't have to wait very long,'' said Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M. It was unclear, however, how soon checks could arrive if the spending were to be approved.

Lori Goodman, a spokeswoman for the group Dine CARE, which represents sick Navajo Indians who worked in the uranium mines, remained wary: The allocation still must be approved by the Senate, agreed by the House and signed by the President Bush.

``It's hard to get all excited about it anymore,'' she said. ``We've been waiting, and we'll be cheering when it does happen.''

The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act was passed in 1990 to provide cash payments of $100,000 to uranium miners and $75,000 to ``down-winders'' -- residents exposed to radioactive fallout caused by nuclear weapons tests in Nevada.

Many of the uranium mines were in Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona and many of the miners were Navajos. The down-winders lived in southern Nevada and Utah and northern Arizona, where fallout settled from nuclear weapons tests near Las Vegas.

Last year, the act was expanded to cover more people, but no new money was added. Starting in May 2000, qualifying claimants received letters informing them the program was out of money.

Several have died from their illnesses awaiting payments.

``In a situation that has added insult to injury, the federal government has been issuing worthless IOUs for months,'' said Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., in a statement. ``It is high time we appropriate the funds necessary for compensating the uranium workers who dedicated their lives to helping us win the Cold War.''

The Bush administration has proposed spending $97 million next year and $710 million over the next decade to pay RECA claims, but that money would not be available until the next fiscal year, which begins in October.

Despite lobbying from southwestern members of Congress, Bush did not include the $84 million in his request for supplemental appropriations, which would be available much sooner.

Domenici and Bingaman persuaded Sen. Robert Byrd, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, to add the money to the Senate bill.

It was one of the few departures from the president's request, said Domenici, who was grateful for Byrd's consideration.

The money will come out of a surplus in a loan program designed to help oil and gas companies hurt by foreign imports.

The Senate vote could come as early as next week. Domenici said he expects Senate negotiators to persuade House conferees to include the money in the version of the bill to go to the president.

-------- idaho

Independent Reviewer Blasts INEEL Worker Health Program

Immediate Release
June 20, 2001
For More Information
Tom Carpenter (206) 292-2850 mailto:tomc@whistleblower.org

Idaho Falls, ID: Lawyers for a worker at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL) today welcomed the findings of an independent doctor about significant deficiencies in the industrial health program that could have led to undocumented worker exposures, but criticized the conclusion that workplace exposures were not the likely cause of his illnesses.

The report by Dr. Melissa McDiarmid, hired by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to review the medical history and occupational work history of INEEL worker Clint Jensen, was released by the DOE today. DOE owns the INEEL site, a nuclear weapons production facility. Bechtel Babcock and Wilcox (BBWI) operate the facility under contract to DOE.

Jensen, a production technician with over twenty years of service to INEEL, worked with depleted uranium ("DU") materials at the site's secret Special Manufacturing Capability ("SMC"), which makes DU armor for M1 Army Abrams tanks. While incinerating solutions containing DU, Jensen received several acute exposures to unidentified substances. He was not given a respirator, and the incinerator was of "home-made" design, consisting of two lab ovens bolted together. He was exposed to chemicals and radioactive materials routinely and through accidents, such as spills, and while incinerating DU.

Jensen began to experience headaches, dizziness, shaking, blurred vision, blackouts, and gastro-intestinal disorders, including a cancerous tumor. He started raising concerns to his employers about workplace exposures to depleted uranium and other unknown chemicals.

Though sick, Jensen's employer denied him medical leave and workers compensation and Jensen started racking up unpaid doctor bills. Jensen began to think that his employer was retaliating against him for raising concerns, so he turned to the Government Accountability Project ("GAP"), a non-profit watchdog organization that protects whistleblowers based in Washington, D.C. and Seattle, WA.

GAP filed a complaint on Jensen's behalf with the Department of Energy and the Department of Labor. Dr. McDiarmid was hired to investigate questions surrounding his workplace exposures.

Among the findings in Dr. McDiarmid's report included:

A March 1998 spill involving radioactive and other contaminated materials that resulted in contamination of Jensen's clothing (and which was likely responsible for a high uranium count in Jensen's urine) was not documented by the company (BBWI), revealing "significant deficiencies in the industrial hygiene program" at SMC; There is a lack of on-site expertise in the industrial hygiene program at SMC, including

Lack of training and experience on the part of the SMC Industrial hygienist; Spot checks for basic elements of a hygiene program were found wanting; "No truly competent person was identified by me who would have the working knowledge and experience to know what hazards to expect in a new operation . . ." Little sampling data exists for any substance except DU (depleted uranium); There is a disconnect between the safety program and the health program; The bio-assay program at SMC (which analyzes contaminants from possible exposures) requires a full review, especially the practice of automatically subtracting large uranium values for every measured result (which Dr. McDiarmid characterized as a "poor practice") On the issue of potential chemical exposures, Dr. McDiarmid was able to verify that Jensen encountered potential exposures to acids and trichloroethane (a neurotoxin absorbed through the skin and as a vapor). She stated, "[w]hile sufficient industrial hygiene documentation does not exist to adequately characterize Mr. Jensen's exposure intensity or duration to these substances, there are little data to indicate that he was likely significantly exposed to them."

GAP lawyer Tom Carpenter noted that "while Dr. McDiarmid excoriated the site's lack of an industrial hygiene program, and knowing full well that the exposure data was inaccurate and incomplete for Mr. Jensen, she nonetheless unfairly placed the burden of proof on Jensen to prove that workplace exposures caused his medical conditions."

Carpenter stated, "It is clear that INEEL failed to supply Mr. Jensen, and, by extension, other SMC workers, with a safe work environment."

Carpenter also pointed to the framework provided by the new compensation laws for DOE workers who worked around radioactive and toxic materials. Under that policy, when a worker proves that he worked around radioactive or hazardous materials, has suffered an illness and can show an ineffective industrial hygiene program (with inaccurate or incomplete data), the benefit of doubt is given to the victim, not the perpetrator. Compensation is then granted to the worker if that worker has suffered cancer, and lifetime medical screening and treatment.

GAP also pointed out that Dr. McDiarmid failed to take into consideration DOE's own studies of worker illnesses and cancers - which found increases in gastro-intestinal and nervous disorders. These same studies, ignored by Dr. McDiramid, were presented to White House by an interagency review team and subsequently served as underpinning for the compensation law for DOE radiation workers. (See, www.whistleblower.org/www/DOEreportpr.htm)

In light of the findings of the report by Dr. McDiarmid related to the lack of worker protection at SMC, GAP is calling upon the Department of Energy to - -

Conduct a formal Price Anderson Act investigation into the lack of an adequate or effective industrial hygiene program at SMC, resulting in the knowing endangerment of workers there;

Provide medical monitoring, screening and treatment for all SMC workers;

Resolve the outstanding issues with Clint Jensen related to his case, including reinstating his sick leave, reimbursing doctor bills and other costs that he has incurred, reimbursing back pay for lost work days, and ongoing medical monitoring and treatment, regardless of his employment status at INEEL.

Clint Jensen is waiting to see how the Department of Energy and his employer, BBWI, will respond to McDiarmid's report, and whether any reforms will be undertaken to respond. A case is still pending before the U.S. Department of Labor between Jensen and BBWI, and Jensen has been kept out of the SMC program pending Dr. McDiarmid's review.

Tom Carpenter, Government Accountability Project, 1402 3rd Avenue, Suite 1215, Seattle, WA 98101; (206) 292-2850, (206) 396-9582 cell; (206) 292-0610 fax; www.whistleblower.org

-------- ohio

Beryllium workers' witness denies try to force mistrial

ASSOCIATED PRESS,
June 20, 2001
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/artikkel?Avis=TO&Dato=20010620&Kategori=NEWS17&Lopenr=106200015&Ref=AR

GOLDEN, Colo. - An occupational health historian who testified on behalf of former nuclear facility workers who say they were sickened by beryllium denied he violated a gag order.

A state judge threw out David Egilmanâ€(tm)s testimony Monday after being told the Brown University professor made comments about the case on his web site and threatened to deliberately cause a mistrial.

Judge Frank Plaut threatened to punish the plaintiffs by removing their lead lawyers. But he denied the defense motion for a mistrial in the case, in which 55 people are suing Brush Wellman, Inc. of Cleveland.

Beryllium is used in a variety of products, despite growing evidence that breathing the tiniest amount can bring on an incurable, wasting lung ailment.

Mr. Egilmanâ€(tm)s site accuses Brush Wellmanâ€(tm)s law firm of criminal activity and makes references to a company medical director being educated in Nazi Germany. Portions of its content were read by Judge Plaut in the courtroom.

Mr. Egilman said he did not violate the order because he required a password for access to the web site. He said defense lawyers hacked into the site. The jury did not hear discussion about the site and was told to disregard his testimony.

The workers say Brush Wellman conspired with the federal government to conceal the dangers of beryllium for 50 years because it was needed to make nuclear weapons at the Rocky Flats facility. It is the first of 76 lawsuits filed against Brush Wellman by 200 beryllium victims across the country. The juryâ€(tm)s verdict is expected to influence whether settlements should be made in other cases.

In 1999, The Blade documented a 50-year pattern of misconduct by the federal government and the beryllium industry. Among the findings: Government and industry officials knowingly allowed workers to be exposed to unsafe levels of beryllium dust. The series sparked major safety reforms.

About 1,200 people nationwide have contracted beryllium disease, a fatal lung ailment, since the 1940s, including at least 75 present or former workers at the Brush Wellman plant near Elmore.

-------- south carolina

Sick-worker payment plan faces doubts

Wednesday, June 20, 2001
By Brandon Haddock,
Augusta Chronicle
http://augustachronicle.com/stories/062001/met_srs.shtml

For some people, the assurance that the federal government finally plans to compensate sick nuclear-weapons workers was enough.

For others, a payment will be the only proof.

''If they ever give us anything, I'll believe it when I see it,'' said Eloise Roberts, a former Savannah River Site worker who attended a public meeting Tuesday in North Augusta about the federal plan to compensate sick workers at SRS and other nuclear-weapons sites.

More than 400 people attended the two meetings about the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act.

The act, which will take effect July 31, will provide lump-sum payments of $150,000 to some current and former sick workers. Eligible workers also will receive compensation for medical expenses from the date their claims were filed.

Many people who attended Tuesday's meetings indicated that they might file claims because of cancer. Such claims will be screened using guidelines developed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said Jeffrey Nesvet, a deputy associate solicitor for the U.S. Department of Labor.

If the department finds a 50 percent or greater chance that a person's cancer was caused by nuclear-weapons work, then that employee or survivors would become eligible for benefits, Mr. Nesvet said.

Some studies suggest that a few SRS workers also might qualify for benefits because of beryllium sensitivity. The condition, similar to an allergy, can develop into chronic beryllium disease, an inflammation of the lungs caused by exposure to beryllium, a metal used in weapons production.

In addition, the Energy Department must help employees found to suffer from work-related illnesses not covered by the federal program, such as asbestosis, Energy Department officials said.

The agency will help those workers file state workers' compensation claims, said Jeff Eagan, a special assistant in the Energy Department's Office of Environment, Safety and Health.

But some attendees questioned whether help truly was on the way. They noted the Energy Department's historic denials that anyone was sickened from weapons work, and the difficulty many employees have faced in receiving complete medical records from the agency and its contractors.

''I don't see any hope for sick people, period,'' said Freddie Fulmer, an Aiken resident who suffers from a multitude of diseases he says were caused by his work at SRS.

''This is just a way to make people happy, to have another meeting. I have been to meetings like this since 1999.''

Eartha Rogers worked at SRS for more than 14 years and said she was unjustly fired shortly after she was diagnosed with lupus. Ms. Rogers plans to file for benefits, but said she is skeptical because officials will determine how much exposure employees suffered, something she says they won't accurately do.

''I can't tell you how many nights I stayed late while they cut our clothes off and scrubbed us down after working,'' she said.

Federal officials urged critics to give the program a chance. An Energy Department spokesman acknowledged that some workers' medical records were incomplete, but said that shouldn't prevent anyone from applying for help.

''I'm glad the issue is being addressed, and I would encourage people to apply through whatever program through which they can receive benefits,'' said Bill Taylor, an Energy Department spokesman at SRS.

Curtis Young, who attended the Tuesday evening meeting, suffers from heart maladies and other conditions, problems he says are a result of working at SRS for more than 30 years. He said he is glad the compensation plan now exists, but wishes more people qualified.

''There should be no question about it,'' Mr. Young said. ''The government should compensate people for all those years of exposure.''

The Labor and Energy departments will open a resource center in North Augusta to help people seeking to file claims, Mr. Eagan said. The center will be open before July 31, he said.

Getting compensation

The Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program will provide lump-sum payments of $150,000, plus medical expenses from the date of claim, to some employees sickened from work at nuclear-weapons plants, including Savannah River Site.

In some cases, surviving family members of deceased workers also will be eligible for benefits.

Illnesses covered by the program include radiation-induced cancers and chronic beryllium disease. People diagnosed with beryllium sensitivity will be eligible for medical screenings. If their condition advances into chronic beryllium disease, they will become eligible for the compensation package.

The program also will compensate groups of employees who contracted particular illnesses from work at gaseous diffusion plants, nuclear test sites or uranium facilities.

To apply for compensation, employees or their survivors must file a claim. People can request claim forms by calling a toll-free hot line, (866) 888-3322. The forms also are available at the U.S. Department of Labor's Web site, www.dol.gov.

Claims must include:
A history of the illness or condition
A physical examination and its findings
Results from clinical laboratory tests
A diagnosis and the date it was first documented

Completed claims should be mailed to: Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Act; U.S. Department of Labor; P.O. Box 77918; Washington, DC 20013-7918.

The Energy Department also is obligated to assist employees who have work-related illnesses not covered by the federal program, such as asbestosis. In such cases, the Energy Department will help workers file state workers' compensation claims. For more information, call the Energy Department's toll-free number at (877) 447-9756.

Source: U.S. Department of Labor

Other resources

The Augusta Building Trades Medical Screening Program for SRS can provide free health screenings to current and former construction and maintenance workers at the site. For more information, call (800) 866-9663.

The SRS Former Production Worker Health Project can provide free health screenings to former production workers at the site. For more information, call (888) 286-2588.

Staff Writer Teresa Wood contributed to this report.

Reach Brandon Haddock at (706) 823-3409 or bhaddock@augustachronicle.com.

-------- tennessee

Michaels to help with sick-worker compensation plan

Wednesday, June 20, 2001,
Oak Ridger
http://www.oakridger.com/stories/062001/new_0620010043.html

A former Department of Energy assistant secretary for Environment, Safety and Health has been tapped to help administer the compensation program for job-sickened nuclear workers.

David Michaels served in his DOE role from 1988 through the end of the Clinton administration. He will now serve as a consultant for the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act that Congress passed last year.

"A month ago, I wrote [Labor Secretary Elaine Chao] asking that she appoint Dr. Michaels to this post and she recognized that he is the absolute best candidate for the job," said U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-3rd District. "He was pivotal in creating the legislation that started this sick-worker compensation program, so he would obviously be the ideal person to help carry out the plan."

The Department of Labor is running the program, which offers $150,000 plus lifetime medical benefits to workers whose health was ruined by Cold War-era exposure to radiation, silica or beryllium. A series of meetings have been scheduled by the Labor Department to inform the public about the compensation plan. The Oak Ridge meetings are scheduled for 1 and 7 p.m. on June 26 and 27.

----

K-25 water records missing

by Paul Parson,
Oak Ridger staff,
Wednesday, June 20, 2001
http://www.oakridger.com/stories/062001/new_0620010018.html

Another potential problem has surfaced in the investigation of historic water contaminations at the Oak Ridge K-25 Site.

The project's oversight team has learned that the Department of Energy apparently did not keep any documentation concerning building K-1001 that may be pertinent to sick worker issues. K-1001, which was completely demolished earlier this year, was an administration building in which several sick workers say they worked.

"I can't believe this was just an innocent mistake," said Sherrie Farver, who represents the Coalition for a Healthy Environment on the oversight team. "It never should have happened. It's a serious blow to the investigation."

The investigation began after concerns were voiced by site workers last August about cross-contaminated water lines at K-25.

Initial tests indicated that K-25's current drinking water is safe to consume. Findings stated that there were no contaminants in the drinking water at K-25 whose levels exceeded Environmental Protection Agency- and state-regulated standards.

The latest part of the K-25 investigation, which examines historic water contaminations, is being conducted by a project team that includes engineering firms Malcolm Pirnie Inc. and TerraGraphics Environmental Engineering.

Opinions vary on how the loss of K-1001 will affect the investigation.

Remains from the building, including water pipes, have been disposed of at an undisclosed landfill and may have been contaminated with other materials during the burial, according to officials with Parallax Inc., the DOE contractor for the K-25 investigation. Thus, the project team may never know if various water lines were cross-connected, which could have led to possible contaminations.

K-1001 was built in 1944 as part of the World War II Manhattan Project. The 93,700-square-foot building stayed operational until 1999, when it was determined to no longer be suitable for office space.

Donzettia Hill, who worked in K-1001 for five years in the early 1990s, says she suffers from illnesses related to her work in the building. Because she is beryllium sensitive, Hill runs the risk of developing berylliosis, a permanent, disabling and incurable lung disease.

"I'm really concerned," she said. "We have no way of knowing what could've been in the flooring or in the walls."

Hill, who's 46 years old, added that DOE should have had some protocol in place for preserving information critical to people's health.

"They have shut the door in my face," she said. "I'm not insurable. By doing this, they could have buried my long-term health care with it (the piping)."

The K-1001 incident isn't the only problem the K-25 investigation has endured. It was announced in April that two hard drives were missing from a computer believed to contain information beneficial to the project.

Some members of the oversight team felt the computer situation was so troubling that the matter was turned over to the DOE Inspector General's office and Roane County District Attorney General Scott McCluen for investigation, which apparently has not been initiated yet.

----

Government has broken its covenant with citizens
And if promised cleanup was not a covenant, it was a con game by Washington

Al Brooks commentary:
Wednesday, June 20, 2001
Oak Ridger
http://www.oakridger.com/stories/062001/opE_0620010039.html

During the last decade, public participation in the DOE Environmental Management program has been a significant contributor to the shape and advancement of the necessary planning to produce a sound environmental restoration and stewardship program.

Not all members of the public have seen the level of cleanup they felt necessary; some have seen more.

It is important that the open and democratic process has produced a set of plans compliant with the Superfund laws, acceptable to the federal and state regulators, endorsed by the public and within the once projected federal funds available to DOE.

In a very real sense, these publicly produced plans are a covenant between the federal government and the greater Oak Ridge public to make the federally owned portion of our city clean and safe both in the near term and the long term. If it was not a covenant, then it was a con game from the start.

The FY 2002 president's budget reduces the Oak Ridge funding by $91 million from the FY 2001 allocated funds; scarcely more than enough to keep the overhead and waste storage functions going.

The projected cuts in the DOE Environmental Management budget along with the reallocation of funds from Oak Ridge to Portsmouth for a cold plant standby are a clear and present danger to the success of the carefully laid plans and promised cleanup.

Where the original FY 2002 plans showed 15 items of continuing cleanup work, the new plans under the president's budget show a mere four items of continuing work and three at a reduced level. Where the old plans showed 22 items of new cleanup work, the new plans show 32 cleanup items were eliminated.

The public health dangers are not immediate, but as surely as night follows day, the failure to improve and maintain the waste disposal facilities in Oak Ridge will one day unnecessarily send undesirable amounts of radioactive waste down the Clinch River. Lesser amounts will proceed from Y-12 down the Lower East Fork Poplar Creek through the city of Oak Ridge.

The city and region will continue to bear its undeserved reputation of being too dangerous to live in or even enter .

Very clearly, the federal government has broken its covenant with the citizens of the Oak Ridge region who have every right to be outrageously mad.

We accepted the challenges and risks when they were deemed necessary to the security of the country. We acted in good faith in accepting reasonable cleanup at reasonable costs only to be betrayed by the presidential budget.

Betrayal demands an appropriate and indignant outcry. The citizens of the Oak Ridge region, especially the down-streamers, should be expressing their concerns and outrage to the president and to Congress now.

It will be too late after the waste pits are eroded and breached and the waste outflow has begun.

The expression of public opinion had a great effect upon Superfund cleanup planning; it can also cause those plans to be implemented as was promised.

Our nest has been fouled; let them clean it up.

Al Brooks is a resident of Oak Ridge long active in civic and environmental concerns.

-------

Senator OK with compensation plan

June 20, 2001
By Frank Munger
Knoxville News-Sentinel senior writer
http://www.knoxnews.com/editorsview/munger/fm06202001.shtml

Sen. Fred Thompson was in Oak Ridge this week in the company of Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, his friend from their years together in the Senate.

During a break on their tour, I asked Thompson about the status of the compensation program for sick workers at federal nuclear facilities in Oak Ridge and elsewhere.

Some former workers have complained that the plan being implemented by the Labor Department is too restrictive and provides financial assistance to a relatively small percentage of those made sick by workplace exposures.

Should the plan be broadened?

"I think a little farther down the road," Thompson said. "But we better get what we've got in our position first. We went from zero to where we are, and although none of us feel like it is absolutely everything we want, it's a whole lot better than anybody ever thought we'd get or what we've had in the past.

"So let's get that in operation and get those claims processed. It's going to cover a lot of people adequately. Some it may not. But we'll have time to address those."

EEEK: No, folks, they don't allow strip-mining in the city of Oak Ridge (not even for uranium), it just looks that way.

Where once visitors were greeted by wooded hillsides as they entered the Atomic City via Highway 62 (Illinois Avenue), they now get to see a ridge top being whacked to the dirt line to make way for a group of storage buildings or some other contemporary business venture.

For those who remember a pretty view of years ago, well, hold that thought -- it's disappearing fast.

DON'T DO IT: The scientific staff at Oak Ridge National Laboratory got another security reminder recently, this time warning them not to send anything -- even research results published in the open literature -- to terrorist states.

"Although openly published literature is not subject to export control, DOE's policy does not support interaction with seven terrorist countries: Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan, Syria," the memo said.

"Simply put, government funds should not be used to reproduce, mail, ship, or e-mail open published literature or fundamental research to these countries; therefore, DOE funds should not be used to support any interaction."

ORNL Director Bill Madia said he did not think any incident prompted the warning.

"Nothing specific, but over the past three to six months, we've been monitoring materials going out of the country -- just because of the general concern .... This is a regular reminder that these kinds of communications are embargoed."

Oak Ridge counter-intelligence chief Fred Evans said there is a need to continuously refresh workers about the rules and regulations.

Although the recent warning wasn't necessarily prompted by a security incident, Evans said he does recall a situation several months ago where workers in the ORNL mailroom saw a package addressed to someone in one of the forbidden countries. The mailroom folks contacted the counter-intelligence folks, who in turn talked with the lab staffer.

It turned out to be an innocent situation, where the guy was simply fulfilling a request for information and didn't remember that rule, which bars any communications with federal resources.

In other words: no pen pals in Damascus or Havana.

BACKTALK: John Mitchell, the president and general manager of BWXT, the contractor at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant, said he doesn't worry about people talking about him behind his back.

"My style is such that people normally don't have to talk behind my back," he said. "I'm more than willing to deal with them up front."

He has an interesting perspective of Oak Ridge, coming to the Atomic City last year when the partnership of Bechtel and BWX Technologies won the big contract at Y-12.

"Oak Ridge is a very good community. It's got a lot of history, and we need to help it get more future. One of the things you find with people like me, when you show up we know about the history, but we didn't live it. But the future is really real because we're going to live that. So, sometimes what we focus on is slightly different from other people."

He said Y-12's relationship with the city of Oak Ridge is different than what's he seen at any other DOE location, partly because of the plant's physical presence so close to town.

"It's a much closer relationship, and therefore you have to participate in it that way .... Every employee I have at the site, as far as I know, has at least four relatives who've worked at Y-12 before .... That means, like everything else, if the relationship is much tighter, there's stresses and strains and pulls and priorities and stuff."

Senior Writer Frank Munger covers the Department of Energy for the News-Sentinel. He can be reached at 865-482-9213 or at twig1@knoxnews.infi.net. This column is also available on the Web at www.knoxnews.com/editorsview/munger/

-------- us nuc waste

Nuclear Waste Disposal: A Safer Solution?

Posted 6/20/2001,
Science Daily
Source: Texas A&M University
(http://www.tamu.edu/)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/06/010620074006.htm

COLLEGE STATION - Disposal of nuclear waste has always been a hot topic, but a Texas A&M University chemist's new approach could lead to new waste treatment procedures - and even a boost to nuclear medicine.

A main component of President George W. Bush's energy policy is to increase use of nuclear energy. However, according to Abraham Clearfield, a professor of chemistry at Texas A&M, "to accept this part of Bush policy, the general public must be confident that nuclear waste disposal will be effectively dealt with."

One of the most common ways to dispose of highly radioactive waste is to use devices similar to water softeners called ion exchangers, which are either inorganic - mineral-type - compounds or synthetically produced organic resins.

An ion exchanger usually contains a harmless element such as sodium, present in ordinary salt, which is exchanged for a harmful element such as cesium 137, present in radioactive waste, says Clearfield.

Clearfield has been developing inorganic ion exchangers for more than 30 years. He has been studying their role in nuclear waste for 10 years in collaboration with Pacific Northwest National Laboratories and the Savannah River Site, a weapons research facility based in South Carolina.

Nuclear waste coming from nuclear weapons plants is made of highly radioactive elements, mainly strontium 90, cesium 137 and plutonium 239 and 240, as well as other less radioactive elements.

The highly radioactive waste is either extracted by a solution that does not mix with the waste solution - a process called solvent extraction - or is removed by ion exchangers. The high-level wastes are then to be immobilized in a special glass, placed inside steel drums and buried about 1,000 feet deep in salt mines, in sites to be designated. The remaining low-level waste may then be encased in cement and stored on site at Hanford, Wash., and the Savannah River Site, S.C.

The inorganic ion exchangers remove cesium and strontium 90, while plutonium is handled separately. Clearfield and his collaborators have devised more than a dozen of these exchangers. Among them is a class of crystals called titanium silicates that have tunnel structures containing sodium ions. One of the most important was developed at Sandia National Laboratory, by the late Robert Dosch and Rayford Anthony of Texas A&M's Department of Chemical Engineering.

"In these tunnels, sodium ions are very loosely held," explains Clearfield. "Because cesium ions are bigger than sodium ions, when a cesium ion goes in and replaces a sodium ion, it cannot move around like the sodium ion. Instead it gets trapped."

In other inorganic ion exchangers, the ingoing and outgoing ions can each have different charges or the channels have different sizes. To study the exchangers' properties, Clearfield and his collaborators study their crystal structure by X-ray diffraction before and after the exchange of different types of ions.

"We try to make compounds in which either a sodium or a potassium ion is exchanged, and then we do the crystal structure," says Clearfield. "We try to exchange a given ion species with these crystals and then we do the crystal structure again, and we see what has happened to the ingoing and outgoing species. It can take from a few weeks to many months before we understand what happened."

Inorganic ion exchangers can also be used in nuclear medicine. Radioactive elements with short half-lives currently are used to determine blood flow or to locate a tumor. With the ion exchanger, it might be possible to better target the tumor by sparing surrounding healthy cells.

"If you could target a radioactive species directly into the tumor," says Clearfield, "and the health physicist would calculate, from the size of the tumor, how much radioactivity to inject, you would not damage the healthy tissue around."

Work is in progress and part of a project with Lynntech, Inc., a technology development company based in College Station, where most of the scientists are Texas A&M alumni.

"The first phase of that work has just been completed," Clearfield says. "We are now waiting for a second phase of funding on the project."

Clearfield has shown that inorganic materials exchange ions more efficiently than organic materials, and they can better withstand radiation as well.

"For applications in nuclear waste and nuclear medicine, organic exchangers can only do part of the job," he says," because radioactivity may destroy the carbon-carbon bonds, which are essential in organic compounds."

Clearfield is eager to participate in a major project currently being set up by the European Commission, called the European Consortium. Focusing on the many applications of inorganic ion exchangers, the project will be led by the University of Helsinki in Finland, with groups at the University of Aveiro in Portugal, and the University of Salford in the United Kingdom, and four industrial firms.

Clearfield says that work on inorganic exchangers is far from being over.

"There are thousands of naturally occurring inorganic materials that can be used," he says. "Some of them are clays, others are natural minerals. Having solved their structure, we can use the information to synthesize materials that could select, by removing them, harmful species from the environment or industrial processes."

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Texas A&M University for journalists and other members of the public. If you wish to quote from any part of this story, please credit Texas A&M University as the original source.

--------

Uncle Sam's Nuclear Welcome
U.S. Invites Europe to Dump Radioactive Waste Here

by James Ridgeway,
June 20th, 2001
Village Voice
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0125/ridgeway1.shtml

WASHINGTON, D.C., JUNE 20-Yesterday the federal government dispatched a convoy of vehicles carrying European nuclear waste under armed guard from its Savannah River, South Carolina, nuclear facility across the country to the National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory in Idaho. To reassure the public, the Department of Energy said it will have a satellite tracking the convoy every inch of the way as it moves west. The burned-out nuclear fuel comes from a reactor in Heidelberg, Germany.

The trip underscores a seldom noticed practice, begun as part of the Eisenhower Atoms for Peace program, in which the U.S. acts as a nuclear dump for 41 other nations. Under Atoms for Peace, the U.S. tried to spread atomic power for so-called peaceful uses to the rest of the world. To ensure other countries wouldn't jump in and use the technology to build bombs, Ike promised to take back the spent radioactive fuel and dump it somewhere here. Atoms for Peace turned into a colossal failure and was abandoned long ago, but the dumping policy lives on, and indeed was reasserted under Clinton's Foreign Research-Reactor Spent Nuclear Fuel Acceptance Program, which was started as a way of preventing U.S.-produced nuclear materials from getting into the hands of terrorists or foreign governments trying to build nuclear weapons.

Over the next decade, ships carrying spent fuel will dock in California and South Carolina, unload the highly enriched fuel, and haul it to storage sites in Idaho and elsewhere. Trouble is, the U.S. has no disposal sites for its own spent fuel, now piling up around the country and awaiting a decision from Congress on where to bury it. Even so, the Bush administration is touting nukes as a clean, safe source of energy.

Last summer, the government was blocked from sending a similar shipment through Missouri after intense public outcry and resistance from the state government. Now, however, Missouri wants to ship its own nuclear wastes to South Carolina and so is relenting and allowing the foreign fuel to pass through. Opponents worry about it leaking into the environment on the trip west, or contaminating people along the road, for example harming a pregnant woman's unborn baby. "The thing that to me is so incredible is that we don't have any location for our own irradiated fuel rods," says Kay Drey of the Missouri Coaltion for the Environment. "Underground isn't safe. It could potentially get into the water people drink, animals drink, forever. So here we are taking away waste from 41 other countries with no other place to put it."

The Energy Department insists the shipment is safe. "There's no danger," a spokesperson said. "The fuel is in containers called casks, made of stainless steel and lead, and it is safe to walk around them, and there is no harm to the environment."

Said another spokesperson, "I've heard that you could spend the whole day hugging the thing and it would be less radiation than a dental X ray."

Additional reporting: Ariston-Lizabeth Anderson and Sandra Bisin


-------- MILITARY

-------- africa

Algeria Bans Protests in Capital
Government Moves to Stop Unrest That Has Killed Dozens

By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, June 20, 2001; Page A19
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A21474-2001Jun19?language=printer

PARIS, June 19 -- Algeria's embattled military-backed government, facing growing social unrest after eight weeks of often-violent protests, has banned all public demonstrations in the capital, Algiers, and has signaled that a crackdown might be imminent.

In a statement late Monday, the government of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika announced the ban "until further notice." Political analysts said the action may allow the government to use the military to try to restore order to the capital and the neighboring Kabylie region.

The government says 56 people have been killed and thousands injured since the unrest began on April 18 in the Kabylie region, where most people are members of the Berber minority. Opposition figures and Algerian journalists say the violence has claimed as many as 87 lives.

The protests, sparked by the police killing of a young Berber man, began as an appeal for more recognition of Berber cultural rights but quickly spread to encompass broad-based demands for civil liberties and an end to the shadowy military-dominated regime known to Algerians as simply Le Pouvoir, or The Power.

The ban on rallies in Algiers follows the second of two major demonstrations in the capital, which drew as many as a quarter-million people and turned violent. Four people were killed in the protest last Thursday, including two Algerian journalists, and hundreds were injured as demonstrators battled police.

The size of the uprising, which has been sustained over two months and has tapped into widespread discontent over the country's high unemployment rate and dismal economic situation, appears to have caught the government off guard.

The statement Monday announcing the new restrictions seemed to carry a warning of sterner measures ahead. It said that "certain parties were trying to exploit" events in order to "install chaos and anarchy." The government vowed to use "determination" in tackling the "serious deviations witnessed during the tragic and painful events of these last few days," but did not specify what steps it might take.

In a televised address later, Prime Minister Ali Benflis appealed for calm, saying, "We have only one country -- Algeria. We must, in all the regions, preserve our dear homeland and the people's property." Sounding a more conciliatory tone than that in the statement, he promised "urgent measures" to deal with the "legitimate demands" of the protesters.

There was more violence Monday in the Kabylie region. Algerian newspapers reported today that at least seven more people were killed, including three paramilitary policemen. There were also press reports of two protesters being killed in the Tebessa region, about 375 miles east of Algiers, after a hotelier opened fire to protect his hotel from demonstrators. The report said the crowd then beat the man and burned his establishment.

Another newspaper reported that more than 30 people were injured in Ain M'Lila, also east of Algiers, when protesters tried to storm city hall and the mayor's sons opened fire with shotguns.

In addition, the Associated Press reported that two police officers and a demonstrator were killed today in Kabylie. The deaths were not confirmed by authorities.

The announcement in Algiers came as newspapers also reported an ambush by Muslim insurgents that killed between 13 and 27 army soldiers, which would make the attack one of the bloodiest of the year.

Newspapers said the attack occurred overnight Sunday in a village in the Chlef region about 125 miles west of Algiers. The attack was attributed to a force called the Armed Islamic Group.

For the past decade, the government has been battling an armed Muslim insurgency, which appeared after the government canceled elections for Parliament that an Islamic fundamentalist party was poised to win. Now the insurgents are mostly confined to the mountainous areas away from urban centers.

The insurgency has been largely overshadowed by the growing street unrest, and many opposition figures and journalists accuse the government of continuing to use the threat of Islamic terrorism to justify their grip on power.

-------- arms sales

Pentagon notifies Congress of possible F-16 lease, and related sale to Hungary

Wednesday June 20, 2001
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010619/1/12ik4.html

WASHINGTON, June 19 (AFP) - The Pentagon has notified Congress of a possible lease to Hungary of 24 used F-16 fighters and the sale of four others that would be cannibalized for parts, a spokesman said Tuesday.

Hungary would pay only 4.4 million dollars to lease the two dozen F-16A/B fighter jets over a five year period, said David Desroches, a spokesman for the Pentagon agency that handles the sales.

A related support package, including four additional F-16s that would be cannibalized for parts to refurbish the other F-16s, was valued at 370 million dollars, the Pentagon said. The package also includes parts, support equipment and training.

Hungary also is considering a competing bid from Sweden to lease it 24 used Gripen fighters.

Hungarian Defense Minister Janos Szabos said in February that his government had opted for the F-16, but Desroches said the United States is still competing for the Hungarian contract.

The fighters would be used as replacements for Hungary's fleet of MiG-29 aircraft.

"This proposed sale and the associated lease aircraft will enhance NATO interoperability while simultaneously providing operational capabilities as the Soviet-era aircraft in Hungarian inventory are eventually retired," the Pentagon said in a statement.

The F-16 is built by Lockheed Martin Tactical Aircraft Systems in Fort Worth, Texas.

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Castro denies weapons shipments from China

June 20, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010620-98910256.htm

From combined dispatches

Cuban President Fidel Castro flatly denied yesterday that Havana was importing arms from China, calling reports of such shipments "lies."

It was the first official Cuban reaction to a report in The Washington Times last week that China was shipping arms and explosives to Cuba. The report concluded that the shipments signaled increased military cooperation between the two communist states.

"For more than 30 years, Cuba has not imported a single weapon from China," Mr. Castro said in a television appearance broadcast live.

Furthermore, Mr. Castro said, Cuba in fact had bought no arms since the collapse of the Soviet bloc at the start of the 1990s.

"Since the beginning of the 'special period,´ more than 10 years ago, Cuba has not invested a single cent in arms," he said, using the official term for the economic crisis Cuba suffered after the collapse of its ally, the Soviet Union.

The Cuban communist leader said, however, that three Chinese ships did arrive to unload supplies for Cuba´s military such as textiles, beans and rice, but also included explosive material to be used in the construction industry. Mr. Castro provided what sounded like a manifest of the three ships´ cargo.

"There you have the great arms shipment," he said.

Mr. Castro fired a diatribe against the report, calling it a "little campaign" by a "reactionary organ."

Mr. Castro´s detailing of the arrivals of three Chinese ships and admission that the second of the three carried explosives aboard confirmed the essential contours of The Washington Times report, which was based on accounts by U.S. intelligence officials.

According to the June 12 report, the three military shipments were traced from China to the Cuban port of Mariel over the past several months. All the arms were aboard vessels belonging to the state-owned China Ocean Shipping Co. (Cosco), say U.S. intelligence officials.

The latest shipment took place in December. That arms delivery coincided with the visit to Cuba in late December by China´s military chief of staff, Gen. Fu Quanyou. Gen. Fu signed a military cooperation agreement with Havana aimed at modernizing Cuba´s outdated Russian weapons.

U.S. intelligence officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity said details of the arms shipments are sketchy but all involved a "known Chinese arms dealer" who arranged the transfers.

One of the cargoes was described as dual-use explosives and detonation cord. The explosives were said to be "military-grade" material.

On the day of the disclosure, the State Department confirmed that China had been delivering military equipment to Cuba, but signaled that the weapons were not "lethal" enough to trigger sanctions against Beijing.

"We are very much concerned with this PLA cooperation and movement of military equipment into Cuba," said James Kelly, assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs.

The next day, China´s government denied selling weapons to Cuba.

Cuban newspapers carried Beijing´s angry denial but withheld an official Cuban reaction until yesterday.

In Washington, Zhang Yuanyuan, a Chinese Embassy spokesman, said in an interview at the time that Beijing had not shipped weapons to the communist island off the U.S. coast.

"China and Cuba have diplomatic relations, and the two countries´ militaries have relations," Mr. Zhang said. "For some years, China has supplied the Cuban military with logistics items, never arms."

He declined to specify what type of equipment was transferred, but foreshadowed Mr. Castro´s comments by saying "explosives could be used for civilian purposes, to clear some mine shaft."

The issue of economic sanctions against China and Cosco arises because of a 1996 amendment to the 1962 Foreign Assistance Act, which requires that economic sanctions be imposed on any nation or company that provides lethal military assistance to a nation designated as a state sponsor of terrorism. Cuba is on the State Department´s list of nine nations designated as supporters of global terrorism.

Mr. Castro, who spoke on state TV´s nightly "round table" a two-hour program that began during the saga over Cuban shipwreck survivor Elian Gonzalez and has since been institutionalized as a mouthpiece for official views took apparent glee in listing precisely what had been in the three shipments.

The first, he said, did indeed include equipment for Cuba´s Revolutionary Armed Forces. But it consisted of more than 1 million cubic meters of fabrics, 5,000 pairs of boots, more than 3 million buttons, nearly 100,000 needles, large quantities of thread and various items of medical equipment all donated by China.

The second boat brought several tons of materials for use in explosives for Cuba´s construction ministry in the building of tunnels, sewage channels and other works, as well as a cargo of beans, Mr. Castro said.

The third of the three boats, all of which came to Cuba last year, was bringing only foodstuffs rice and beans for the local population.

Mr. Castro said that as well as "industrial quantities" of munitions, Cuba retained the capacity to lay a network of anti-tank and anti-infantry mines, which was why Havana had not signed a global anti-mine treaty.

"What do want? To invade us without any problem, march all over the country without any problem?" he asked.

----

Fast Facts on Arms Sales

Federation of American Scientists,
June 15, 2001
http://fas.org/asmp/fast_facts.htm

The Facts

Since 1990, the United States has exported more than 152 billion dollars worth of weaponry to states around the world. The U.S. dominates this international arms market, supplying over half of all arms exports in 1999, four times more than the second largest supplier. U.S. weapons sales help outfit non-democratic regimes, soldiers who commit gross human rights abuses against their citizens and citizens of other countries, and forces in instable regions on the verge of, middle of, or recovering from conflict.

U.S.-origin weapons find their way into conflicts the world over. The United States supplied arms or military technology to more than 92% of the conflicts under way in 1999. The costs to the families and communities afflicted by this violence is immeasurable. But to most arms dealers, the profit accumulated outweighs the lives lost. In the 1990's, over 65% of world arms deliveries were sold or given to developing nations, where lingering conflicts or societal violence can scare away potential investors.

Of course, a loss of investment opportunities is not the only way Americans are impacted by the weapons trade. In addition to paying billions of dollars every year to support weapons exports, Americans may also feel the impact of increasing instability overseas. The United States military has had to face troops previously trained by its own military or supplied with U.S. weaponry in Panama, Iraq, Somalia, and Haiti. Due to the advanced capabilities these militaries have acquired from past U.S. training and sales, the U.S. had to invest much more money and manpower in these conflicts than would have otherwise been needed.

There are few restrictions on whom the government may export arms to. One notable exception is the Leahy Law, which prohibits U.S. military aid or training to foreign military units known to have committed human rights abuses. Under the Pentagon's interpretation of the law, however, these restrictions may be lifted if the foreign government filters out the "few bad apples" in that particular unit. An International Code of Conduct on Arms Sales is also being negotiated with other arms exporters in the hopes of creating a common set of export criteria. Read on for more facts.

U.S. Arms Exports

There are primarily two channels through which U.S. arms manufacturers sell weaponry to foreign countries: Foreign Military Sales (FMS) and Direct Commercial Sales (DCS).

Foreign Military Sales: These are sales of new and used weapons, spare parts, and related services purchased directly from the U.S. government by foreign governments. [Data covers actual deliveries of military equipment or services.]

FY1999 total: $16.4 billion FY1998 total: $13.9 billion

Direct Commercial Sales: These transfers are negotiated directly between the U.S. manufacturing company and the foreign buyers, and approved by the Department of State through the issuance of an export license. [State Department export reports are in licenses granted rather than in actual deliveries, as listed above.]

FY1999 totals: $46.9 billion in license issuances $416 million in estimated deliveries

FY1998 totals: $26.4 billion in license issuances $4.9 billion in estimated deliveries* *note: delivery numbers are only preliminary estimates.

For more facts:

*searchable database of license and delivery breakdowns for a country or region for one or more years

*State and Defense Departments' annual "655 reports" to Congress

*database of required notifications to Congress on U.S. arms exports to much of the world

The Global Picture

As reported by Richard Grimmett of the Congressional Research Service (in "Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 1992-1999"), U.S. weapons sales for 1999 accounted for 54% of all registered international arms deliveries. This was more than 4 times the value of exports by the United Kingdom, the second largest exporter, 7 times the level of exports registered by France and Russia, and 54 times the level of exports registered by China.

World Military Expenditures

World military expenditures topped $798 billion in 2000. The United States government's military spending accounted for 37% of that amount.

For more facts:

consult SIPRI's "Yearbook on Armaments, Disarmament and International Security" for further statistics on military expenditures and arms production by country and region (highlights and graphs & tables covering regional expenditures available on-line)

State Department tables on global military expenditures, including
spending levels, armed forces, GNP, and population; broken down by region, organization, and country; available through 1998

Your Tax Dollars at Work
Foreign Military Assistance

On average, less than one percent of the federal budget goes to international affairs, and this pot must pay for everything from U.S. diplomacy to the Peace Corps, humanitarian aid, debt relief, the United Nations, and, of course, weaponry for foreign militaries. Of this international affairs budget, roughly a quarter - $5 billion - provides arms transfers and other military aid to Middle East allies.

FY2001 estimated International Affairs budget total: $22.6 billion

FY2001 estimated amount for security assistance: $7.4 billion

The following is a partial breakdown dividing this security assistance budget among some of it's larger programs:

Foreign Military Financing(FMF): U.S. tax dollars serve as military grants to foreign governments, underwriting their purchases of U.S. weaponry and services.

FY2001 estimated FMF budget total: $3.6 billion ($3.4 billion to the Middle East) FY2000 FMF budget total: $4.8 billion ($4.7 billion to the Middle East)

Economic Support Fund: (ESF) are grants promoting stability in locations where the U.S. government sees special security interests.

FY2001 estimate ESF budget total: $2.3 billion FY2000 ESF budget total: $2.8 billion

Military Training: The U.S. government is training soldiers in upwards of 70 countries at any given time. The most transparent, and consequently well known of these training programs is the Pentagon's International Military Education and Training Program (IMET). Recent graduates as well as soldiers soon to be trained by this program come from countries at war or with horrific human rights records, including Indonesia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Congo, and Cote d'Ivoire.

FY2001 estimate IMET budget: $58 million FY2000 IMET budget: $50 million

For more facts:

*compilation of U.S. security assistance programs to the western hemisphere - provided by the Center for International Policy

*U.S. Department of State account tables

Research & Development

The Pentagon spends over $30 billion annually in research and development (R&D), costs often not included in the price of arms sold to foreign purchasers. The General Accounting Office recently estimated that if "recoupment" fees were charged on all weapons exports to make up for the subsidized development costs, at least $500 million per year would be returned to the U.S. Treasury. more on R&D

Offsets

Offsets are another form of economic support for U.S. arms exports. Offsets are side deals made by arms manufacturers to attract customers, usually consisting of agreements to allow a portion of the production to occur in the purchasing country. The largest recipients of U.S. military aid (Israel, Egypt, Greece, and Turkey) have been commonly known to use U.S. aid in offset deals, aid originally granted for the purchase of U.S. weaponry and services and expected to feed back into the U.S. economy by way of our arms manufacturers. However, due to offsets, this means U.S. tax dollars may actually support foreign weapons manufacturing. The U.S. Department of Commerce reports that from 1993 to 1997, 35 U.S. military contractors reported signing 231 new offset agreements valued at $19.0 billion. These offsets were in support of $35.0 billion in export contracts. more on offsets

Giveaways

The U.S. government can give away or sell at deep discount up to $425 million worth of surplus weaponry annually through the Excess Defense Articles (EDA) program. The Pentagon can transfer another $200 million worth of military equipment on an "emergency" basis through the Drawdown program. more on giveaways

The Defense Industry

Top defense contractors (including sales to both U.S. government and foreign buyers):

FY2000:
1. Lockheed Martin Corp. $15.1 billion
2. Boeing Co. $12.0 billion
3. Raytheon: $6.3 billion
4. General Dynamics: $4.2 billion
5. Northrop Grumman: $3.1 billion

One reason the defense industry has such influence in our government is because of federal campaign contributions. Past industry contributions as reported by the Federal Election Commission and presented by the Center for Responsive Politics:

2000 Election Cycle: $13.6 million 1998 Election Cycle: $10.6 million

Top Lobbyists for 2000 Election Cycle: Lockheed Martin ($2.38 million) General Dynamics ($1.2 million)

Small Arms

Small Arms are the most common tool used in conflicts, repression, and crime. Having killed millions in the 1990's alone, they set a trend expected to continue into the new century. The versatility of these weapons directly correlates with the diverse and potent impact these weapons make on various regions of the world. One of these impacts is that due to their light weight and small size it is possible for combatants to compel children to become soldiers.

Small Arms kill an estimated 500,000 people every year, injuring many times more.

There are approximately 500 million small arms in circulation around the world.

For more facts:

*small arms fact sheets relating to children, women, human rights, humanitarian relief and law, peacekeeping, tourism, and trafficking

*database on (state authorized) small arms imports and exports, country-specific profiles on small arms industries and weapons, national laws governing arms exports, and documents on illegal arms trafficking -provided, by NISAT

*information on July 2001 U.N. Conference on Small Arms

Human Rights

In Fiscal Year 1999, the United States delivered roughly $6.8 billion in armaments to nations which violate the basic standards of human rights (figure is conservative and based only on countries with major human rights problems).

For more facts:

*pending transfers of U.S. weaponry to specific countries with questionable human rights standards.

*testimony by William D. Hartung before the House International Relations Committee on "The Role of U.S. Arms Transfers in Human Rights Violations: Rhetoric Versus Reality."

*country profiles covering U.S. military aid and human rights records in particular African states -provided by the Center for International Policy

Conflicts

Of the active conflicts in 1999, the United States supplied arms or military technology to parties in more than 92% of them --39 out of 42. In over one-third of these conflicts - 18 out of 42 - the United States provided from 10% to 90% of the arms imported by one side of the dispute.

Between 1986 and 1995 the United States delivered $42 billion worth of armaments to parties in 45 ongoing conflicts.

U.S. arms or U.S. military technology were used by adversaries confronting U.S. soldiers in Panama, Iraq, Somalia, and Haiti. A significant portion of the $6 billion in covert U.S. arms and training sent to Afghan rebel groups in the 1980s was funneled to right-wing Islamic fundamentalist forces that now use these resources to attack U.S. allies and citizens.

For more facts:

*Above statistics on conflict collected and reported by William D. Hartung in a March 7, 2001 Testimony before the House International Relations Committee on "The Role of U.S. Arms Transfers in Human Rights Violations: Rhetoric Versus Reality."

*Armed Conflicts Report covering yearly world conflicts -by Project Ploughshares

*SIPRI compiles yearly information on armed conflicts (on-line highlights)

Did You Know ?

The International Red Cross has estimated that one out of every two casualties of war is a civilian caught in the crossfire. NISAT

Half of the world's governments spend more on defense than health care. Arias Foundation

The U.S. share of total world military expenditures per year has been roughly 36%, while comprising under 5% of the world's population.

The U.S. Arms Industry is the second most heavily subsidized industry after agriculture.

1999 world military expenditures topped $780 billion. While at the same time an estimated 1.3 billion people survive on less than the equivalent of U.S. $1 a day. Arias Foundation

If you were to count by one number every second, without stopping, it would take you 11-and-a-half days to reach one million, and 32 years to reach one billion. (as reported by Earth Action)

Iceland has no military and no military expenditure.

The early 90's saw a post-cold war decline in world arms production. This decline has slowed considerably in the latter half of the 1990's, and military expenditure in Africa has been on the increase since 1997. SIPRI

The United Nations estimates there to be over 300,000 child soldiers around the world, now serving as combatants in over 30 current conflicts.

The Center for International Policy estimates that around 80% of U.S. arms exports to the developing world go to non-democratic regimes.

1% of the U.S. budget is slated for International Affairs. Only 0.6% of that 1%, or $152 million, is allocated for U.S. peace-keeping operations. State Department budget

There are more landmines planted in Cambodia than people. Cambodia is just one of 64 countries around the world littered with some 100 million anti-personnel landmines.

Intended primarily to maim, landmines can lie in wait years after a conflict ends, causing 500 deaths and injuries per week. more on landmines

The U.S. government is training soldiers in upwards of 70 countries at any given time.

In the United States 32,000 people are killed per year by small arms, 13,000 of which are murders. SAWG

False Facts / Point - Counter Point

The United States Defense Industry is losing its share of the world market to increasingly aggressive foreign competitors. Counter-Point: The U.S. share in world arms exports rose from 35% in 1990 to 54% in 1999

If we supply the arms, we can control the use of the weapons. Counter-Point: When anti-independence militias organized and assisted by the Indonesian armed forces went on a violent killing spree in East Timor in September 1999, they were equipped with U.S. -origin M-16 rifles and other U.S. -origin equipment. The missiles attached to the wing of the Chinese fighter that collided with a U.S. surveillance plane in April of 2001 were Israeli Python missiles; missiles designed by studying the technology of U.S. Sidewinder missiles sold to Israel years earlier. These are just two of a multitude of scenarios in which U.S. arms exports have led to "uncontrolled" consequences.

"If we don't sell (fill in weapon) to (fill in country) someone else will." Counter-Point:: The U.S. can use its considerable political-economic clout to encourage its allies to adopt common export criteria. With ballistic and cruise missiles and anti-personnel landmines, the U.S. government ceased exports unilaterally and then successfully encouraged others to follow suit, effectively removing these weapons from the international market.

Point: Article 51 of the U.N. Charter gives every country has the right to self-defense. Therefore, since many nations do not produce their own weaponry, we are required to trade in arms. Counter-Point: The U.N. Charter in no way mandates that any government must provide arms to any other government.

Point: If we restrict arms exportation American jobs will be lost. Counter-Point: When assessing the employment "benefits" of arms exportation we must take into consideration the $7 billion plus in subsidies that underwrite the arms trade. The same investment in any other industry would create as much -if not more- employment. By moving productions jobs overseas, offsets also undercut the jobs argument.

Notable Quotes

"I have seen no evidence in my 24 years in Congress of one instance where because of American military involvement with another military that the Americans have stopped that foreign army from carrying out atrocities against their own people."-Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA)

"I would not feel any better to find American troops shot down with technology supplied by American companies if I knew there was mass marketing of those products." -Senator Fred Thompson (R-TN)

"No solution to ... the broad challenge posed by illicit arms sales worldwide will be complete or materialize overnight. But governments have a responsibility to keep arms transactions transparent and make those involved accountable." -former Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright

-------- balkans

EU, NATO Envoys Due in Macedonia to Push Peace Talks

New York Times
June 20, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-balkans.html

SKOPJE (Reuters) - EU and NATO envoys are due back in Macedonia on Thursday to press politicians to finalize a disarmament plan for Albanian rebels and to revive stalled talks on improving Albanian rights, diplomats said on Wednesday.

Delegates at cross-party talks launched last week to prevent a four-month-old ethnic Albanian rebellion spiraling into civil war were told to produce some results by Wednesday, when a NATO meeting in Brussels will discuss the troops both sides want.

But diplomats in the Macedonian capital said they did not expect any major announcement, suggesting Thursday might be more decisive and that the main deadline for ``substantial progress'' was an EU meeting early next week.

EU Foreign Affairs chief Javier Solana and NATO special envoy Peter Feith were both expected in Macedonia on Thursday.

``They are two big hitters coming here to bash heads together,'' one diplomat said.

Another diplomatic source said NATO would approve a ``concept of operation'' at Wednesday's Brussels meeting, signaling its willingness to help without committing itself for now.

``Today is not the day when they will go from flash to bang. It doesn't commit NATO to anything,'' the source said.

Albanian politicians have been particularly insistent on international involvement, saying it is their only guarantee against what they say is unfair treatment by the Slav majority.

``If by the end of the day NATO confirms its involvement in finding a solution to the problem in Macedonia, then we can expect some agreement today,'' a senior official in one of Macedonia's two main Albanian political parties said.

A Macedonian government official said a deal to encourage the guerrillas to lay down their weapons may be finalized on Wednesday, but did not make clear whether it would be announced.

``Maybe today they will come up with that, together with an appeal to them to lay down their weapons, a deadline for that and a way for that to be done,'' he said.

He said the talks were stalled over unreasonable demands by the Albanians, who are seeking wholesale changes to the constitution that would give veto powers to the minority.

``I think the talks up to now have not produced results,'' he said, adding that he nevertheless expected them to continue.

Another Albanian politician, asked about the pressure for results before the NATO meeting, said: ``There are some additional elements that should be discussed today.

``I think today they'll come up with something at least to get the political talks moving again because if they don't, there is no point in continuing afterwards,'' he said.

The other Albanian blamed the hiatus on the Macedonians.

``The Macedonian side reacted in a harsh and cynical way to the suggestion made by the Albanian side for changes to constitution,'' he said.

In Brussels, alliance sources said NATO ambassadors were meeting to discuss sending a force of around 3,000 troops into Macedonia for the collection of arms to be surrendered by Albanian guerrillas.

They said such a disarmament operation would only take place following an agreement between the rebels and the Macedonian government to end their five-month-long conflict.

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Last Chance in Macedonia

Wednesday, June 20, 2001; Page A26
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A21431-2001Jun19?language=printer

MACEDONIA'S fractious politicians and the Western diplomats nervously hovering over them are facing what may be that country's last opportunity to head off another full-scale ethnic war in the Balkans. Political parties representing the majority Slav and minority Albanian communities are engaged in intensive negotiations about political reforms to end official discrimination against Albanians. Meanwhile, NATO is nearing a decision on deploying a force to oversee the disarmament of Albanian rebels who launched a guerrilla campaign last February. If a political deal can be struck in the coming days and a NATO force deployed, Macedonia may just avoid the fate of Bosnia and Kosovo, which were devastated by communal warfare that ended only after NATO military campaigns. But success will require concerted engagement by Western governments in the coming weeks and months; that poses a test for the Bush administration.

Macedonia is a pro-Western democracy whose political leaders readily admit they cannot overcome their crisis by themselves. Repeating the mistake of other Balkan regimes, the Slav-dominated Macedonian government tried to wipe out the Albanian insurgent movement with a clumsy military campaign, which only succeeded in strengthening the guerrillas and bringing the Albanian and Slav communities to the brink of a communal war of ethnic cleansing. Now, under heavy pressure from the European Union and United States, a cease-fire prevails and the two major Slav and two Albanian political parties are talking; but the question is whether the Slavs are prepared to take the steps that could fully integrate Albanians into a unitary state, including changes in the Macedonian constitution that would put Albanians on an equal political footing with Slavs. The moderate Albanian leadership also must execute a tricky feat, obtaining enough concessions to satisfy the Albanian population and obligate the militants to disarm, while avoiding demands that would make the reformed state unworkable -- like a communal veto over all major government decisions.

In trying to broker this deal, the Bush administration and European governments are engaged in their own precarious balancing act. Administration officials say they recognize that U.S. engagement is essential to a successful settlement. But in keeping with President Bush's determination to reduce U.S. commitments in the Balkans, American participation has been carefully limited. In place of the high-profile U.S. brokers who were dispatched to Bosnia and Kosovo, a State Department deputy assistant secretary accompanies more senior European Union and NATO envoys to Skopje, the Macedonian capital. And while supportive of a NATO disarmament force, the administration so far has declined to commit any American troops -- though even a single company would help to fill out a NATO contingent that could number 1,000 or fewer. If the arm's-length strategy works, Macedonia could serve as a demonstration of how European governments and troops can take the lead in handling a crisis on the continent. But given the disastrous failure of previous Europeans-first strategies in the Balkans, it represents a real risk. If this peace process breaks down, Macedonia is unlikely to get another chance.

--------

NATO Ready to Send Troops to Macedonia

New York Times
June 20, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-NATO-Macedonia.html

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- NATO agreed Wednesday to send several thousand troops to Macedonia to help disarm ethnic Albanian rebels if Slav and ethnic Albanian leaders can resolve the country's crisis over how to safeguard minority rights.

However, prospects for such an accord faded shortly after NATO made its announcement when Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski said in Skopje that talks between Slav and ethnic Albanian representatives had stalled.

He accused ethnic Albanians, who seek constitutional changes to give them more rights, of trying to carve up the country.

After a NATO ambassadors meeting, the alliance issued a statement stressing ``the urgent need for a successful outcome of the political dialogue'' between Macedonia's political leaders.

It called a lasting cease-fire ``an essential precondition for any NATO assistance.''

A shaky cease-fire has been in effect in Macedonia since last week while political parties debated a plan put forward by the president to resolve the country's political crisis. The broke out late last year after rebels launched attacks against Macedonian police.

NATO gave no operational details of its proposed Macedonia force.

However, several officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said NATO contemplated deploying as many as 3,000 soldiers to supervise the disarming of National Liberation Army fighters who give up their weapons voluntarily.

``The only mission of NATO will be to collect weapons. In other words, a limited disarmament,'' said one official.

NATO military strategists are expected to need ``a few weeks'' to draft an operational plan.

Several nations have said they want to participate in the force. The United States was expected to provide only logistical support.

Since Macedonia's president has formally asked NATO to help, the Macedonia force would not need a U.N. mandate, NATO official said.

The official also said the troops in Macedonia would not come from the NATO-led peacekeeping mission in nearby Kosovo, remain in Macedonia ``something like six weeks, rather than six months'' and have ``clear'' rules on what to do if they come under fire.

``The rules of engagement will be strong and made very clear for everybody,'' said the official, without elaborating.

The alliance envisages a NATO-only operation but would keep non-NATO members -- most notably Russia -- abreast of the force's activities.

Talks to reconcile differences between Macedonia's rival Slav and ethnic Albanian camps dragged into their sixth day Wednesday, then stalled.

``Talks are blocked in this phase because of a major change of position by the Albanian parties,'' Trajkovski said.

He accused ethnic Albanian negotiators of seeking to ``block the talks completely ... with an expectation that the international community will intervene and support their unreal political demands, which would include cementing terrorist positions in temporarily occupied territories.''

The 15-nation European Union has taken the lead in trying to mediate an end to the conflict. On Wednesday, the EU's foreign policy and security chief said diplomacy was at a critical point in Western efforts to prevent full-scale civil war.

``We must continue to do the utmost to avoid war in Macedonia,'' Javier Solana told the foreign affairs committee at the European Parliament. ``This is a crucial week ... We hope we will be able to resolve these constitutional difficulties.''

Solana also said he hoped European countries would contribute to the NATO force. ``I don't think that extraordinarily big numbers will be required,'' he said.

--------

Milosevic Extradition Law Addressed

New York Times
June 20, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Yugoslavia-War-Crimes.html

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) -- A law for extraditing Slobodan Milosevic to the U.N. war crimes tribunal will be adopted despite opposition by the former leader's allies, Yugoslavia's president promised Wednesday.

But The Hague tribunal in the Netherlands said such legislation was unnecessary, since Milosevic would be handed over to a U.N. body and not a foreign government.

President Vojislav Kostunica said such a law was needed and said he wants to get it passed before the end of June. An international donors conference is scheduled for June 29 in Brussels, Belgium, and the United States has conditioned its participation on Yugoslavia's cooperation with The Hague tribunal.

``In the case of Milosevic, we need a law to be passed, and we hope this will take place before the end of June,'' Kostunica said. ``It is important that we have a legal cooperation with The Hague.''

Lawmakers from Montenegro, the small republic that with Serbia forms Yugoslavia, have pledged to block an extradition bill in the federal parliament. Montenegrin federal deputies were allied with Milosevic before his ouster in October. They oppose extradition of Milosevic and other Yugoslav war crime suspects to ``foreign courts.''

To bypass such opposition, Kostunica said in Budapest, Hungary, that the bill would be removed from consideration in the federal legislature and instead be discussed in the separate Serb parliament, where his pro-democracy forces have an overwhelming majority.

As the Yugoslav officials clashed over the bill, the U.N. tribunal in The Hague, which has indicted Milosevic for atrocities in Kosovo, insisted that he be handed over for trial -- with or without the new law.

``Yugoslavia doesn't need a law to hand over Milosevic and other accused still at large,'' spokeswoman Florence Hartmann said.

The chief prosecutor of the U.N. tribunal, Carla Del Ponte, postponed a trip to Belgrade, originally planned for Friday, apparently waiting to see what decision the Yugoslavs will make on the proposed law.

Milosevic was arrested April 1 at his Belgrade villa. He has since been in detention, pending an investigation into allegations of corruption and abuse of power during his 13-year rule.

The Belgrade district court Wednesday again refused Milosevic lawyers' appeal that he be released from prison because of claims of deteriorating health.

In his first interview from jail, published Wednesday by the Blic News weekly, Milosevic was defiant, saying the reason for his detention was his ``triumph over NATO.''

He said Yugoslavia's pro-democracy leadership has no legal grounds to keep him in jail. Asked how he felt, Milosevic said: ``I feel like I won a moral victory.''

-------- business

FAA-Lockheed Contract Stalled
Raytheon Protested Single-Source Award on Air-Traffic Gear

By Don Phillips
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 20, 2001; Page E03
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A20320-2001Jun19?language=printer

The Federal Aviation Administration failed to adequately explain why it proposed giving a single-source contract to Lockheed Martin Corp. for a major acquisition of air-traffic control equipment, according to the FAA Office of Dispute Resolution.

The decision means the FAA must either redraw its proposal to more adequately define its reasons or allow a second contractor, Raytheon Co., to bid on the contract. Raytheon had protested the single-source award.

The dispute-resolution office made the decision based on a recommendation of a General Services Administration board judge who reviewed the Raytheon complaint.

"The FAA will further define its requirements before deciding on its future acquisition strategyfor the En Route Automation Modernization program," said an FAA statement.The agency declined to give further details.

The system, known by its acronym, ERAM, is a replacement of computer hardware and software in the 23 Air Route Traffic Control Centers that control traffic between airports and at altitudes above 18,000 feet. The current computer system has been upgraded, but its software is written in the outdated Jovial language.

ERAM, scheduled to be ready by 2008, will give the FAA greater flexibility to accept new software to support future modernization efforts.

John Carr, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, the controllers' union, said the decision will slow the FAA's efforts to operate more efficiently. "When they finally act like a business, they get a shot," Carr said. "They say, 'I made a business decision. I'm going with a single source.' Then [others say], 'Aha! The fix is in.' They can't win."

Bethesda-based Lockheed Martin reacted cautiously to the decision. "The FAA is our largest single customer for air-traffic control, so we have a long history with them," said Lockheed Martin spokesman Hugh Burns. "We stand ready to do whatever they would like done. If they would like to compete it, we're ready to bid. We're ready to take whatever action the customer requests."

Staff writer Greg Schneider contributed to this report.

-------- china

Combating American hegemony

By Willy Wo-lap Lam,
Senior China Analyst, CNN,
June 20, 2001 http://asia.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/east/06/19/china.russia.willy/index.html

"Today's date will be celebrated in history," said President Jiang Zemin at the inauguration of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) last Friday.

Beijing has made impressive strides in relations with Russia and Central Asia. And Jiang, the originator of "Great Power Diplomacy," has gone beyond predecessor Deng Xiaoping's cautious dictum about world affairs: "Adopt a low profile and never take the lead."

The extraordinary move of assembling China, Russia, Kazahkstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan in a close-knit grouping will be followed by Jiang's summit with counterpart Vladimir Putin in Moscow next month.

The Beijing leadership is convinced it has made much headway in combating "American hegemony" and building a multi-polar world order.

While it is too early to say whether these claims are justified, there is little question Beijing's frenetic diplomatic maneuvers the past couple of months have broken new ground.

Firstly, Beijing has for the first time joined a regional bloc. This is despite former premier Zhou Enlai's commitment way back in the 1950s that the nation would always remain non-aligned.

Compared with the Shanghai Five, the SCO's precursor that was formed in 1996, the new entity envisages exchanges and cooperation that are tighter and more extensive than a number of regional grouping of nations.

This was despite Jiang's assertion last week that the SCO was opposed to the formation of alliances, and that it was not "aimed at other countries."

Jiang, Putin and other leaders also took pains to play down defense ties among the six, saying there was no question of a military alliance.

The SCO communique pointedly omitted the military dimension when it cited areas of interaction, which include politics, trade, technology, culture, education, culture and the environment.

However, the defense ministers of the six nations were in Shanghai last week, and military cooperation, including joint exercises and research and development of weaponry, was very much on the agenda.

The joint exploitation in Central Asia of oil and gas, which are essential to Chinese ability to achieve civilian and military targets, will also be a major catalyst for synergy among the SCO states.

NATO counterweight

Last week, the SCO heads of states dwelled mostly on "internal" concerns, particularly fighting the "three evil forces" of terrorism, separatism and extremism.

There seems little doubt, however, that Jiang and Putin regard the SCO, which covers more than one-quarter of mankind, as a counterweight to NATO and an important pillar of a multi-polar world structure.

The SCO was a particular triumph for China because as Shanghai-based commentator Zhu Jiajian pointed out, it was the first international organization that bears the name of a Chinese city.

And this has special significance for Jiang, who heads the Shanghai Faction, the largest clique within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Jiang would also set another precedent for China next month when he signs the Sino-Russian Treaty of Good-Neighborly Friendship and Cooperation with Putin.

It will be the first formal friendship treaty that Beijing has concluded with a foreign country after the Cultural Revolution.

The Jiang-Putin summit will likely be more fruitful than that between Putin and U.S. President George W. Bush last weekend. Analysts are looking particularly for breakthroughs in military cooperation.

It is understood Beijing is seeking Russian hardware as well as technology in its long-standing bid to combat the threat of American aircraft carriers, the most likely weapon that Washington would deploy to the Taiwan Strait.

Pooling resources

There have also been reports of Beijing and Moscow pooling resources to develop equipment, including a radar that can track American "stealth" jetfighters.

In any case, a sizeable corps of senior Russian engineers already works in China's munitions establishment. Several of these experts have reportedly helped Beijing look at data collected from the U.S. spy plane that is still stranded on Hainan Island.

However, whether Beijing can achieve the goal of countering "neo-hegemonism" either jointly with Russia or within the confines of the SCO, depends on a number of factors.

Despite achieving a quasi-alliance relationship, Beijing and Moscow harbor mutual suspicions -- and potential rivalry could erupt in the course of SCO-related interactions.

Going by most indicators, including what Jiang terms "comprehensive national strength," Beijing has overtaken Moscow -- and Beijing seems keen to set much of the SCO's agenda.

Fearing domination

There are also possible rivalries and conflicts between China and Russia on the one hand, and the four smaller countries on the other.

Both Beijing and Moscow have played up alleged efforts by Washington and NATO to subvert and undermine Central Asian regimes.

Diplomatic analysts have pointed out that owing to historical and other factors, the four republics would also have ample reasons to fear domination by China or Russia.

They say since Western countries and corporations are offering better terms for their oil and gas, a sizeable number of political and economic groups in the four lesser SCO partners actually favor cozier ties with the U.S. and EU.

The question of SCO cohesiveness looms larger given the likelihood that one or more countries, including Mongolia, Pakistan and India, may join the body in the coming year or so.

Paradoxically, while the SCO's hidden agenda is to halt U.S. predominance, much of its success depends on future developments in Sino-American as well as Russia-American relations.

It is a truism among students of the triangular ties among China, Russia and the U.S. that in areas including the economy, Beijing and Moscow need Washington more than they need each other.

For example, China's trade surplus with the U.S., which is more than US$80 billion, is ten times its entire trade with Russia.

In internal meetings, top CCP cadres such as Jiang and Premier Zhu have continued to put Sino-U.S. ties at the top of their foreign-policy agenda.

For example, both Jiang and Zhu have vowed to follow Deng's "low profile" diplomacy. They have reiterated that given China's dependence on the U.S. market as well as investment, it will be futile for Beijing to knock horns with Washington.

From one perspective, playing the SCO card is a clever way of projecting Chinese power and serving a warning on Washington without a head-on collision with the superpower.

Given the complexity of the triangular relationship among Beijing, Moscow and Washington, however, striking the right balance may require skills and strengths that may go beyond the Jiang leadership and the country's capacities.

-------- drug war

Bolivia withdraws troops, halts eradication in coca-growing region

Wednesday June 20, 2001
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010620/1/12vjt.html

CHULUMANI, Bolivia, June 19 (AFP) - Government officials late Tuesday announced it was canceling plans to eradicate coca plantations in the Los Yungas area, where peasant coca growers recently clashed with soldiers and police.

A commission comprising Interior Minister Guillermo Fortun, Agriculture Minister Hugo Carvajal, and Defense Minister Oscar Vargas adopted the measure, following negotiations with coca-growers union representatives here at Chulumani, some 120 kilometers (75 miles) from the capital.

Carvajal announced the repeal of a decree ordering the destruction in Los Yungas of illegal coca crops -- the raw ingredient of the narcotic cocaine.

Coca however has also been raised since ancient times for other purposes, including chewing on raw leaves.

"We understand that the people here favor and want to live with coca leaf crops," Carvajal said.

"We aren't going to set any limits," said Interior Minister Fortun. "If a farmer wants to eradicate on his own account, he can do so. But the government won't be going in by force to eradicate (the crops) or in any way apply pressure."

The announcement came just hours after the government's Bolivian Information Agency published news of a volte-face over troop deployments into the area.

Around 500 soldiers, who had been gathered at Chulumani since last Thursday to deal with protesting workers, immediately began to move back toward La Paz, according to eye witnesses at the scene.

The soldiers had been sent to tackle road-blocks manned by farmers opposed to the government's coca crop-eradication scheme. Earlier Tuesday, news had been published that "heavily armed" reinforcements were to join soldiers already in the area.

The government of President Hugo Banzer had planned a drive to eliminate up to 2,300 hectares (5,700 acres) of illegally planted coca crops in the mountainous Los Yungas region.

Local farmers who say they depend on the crops for their livelihood had erected dozens of roadblocks in an attempt to prevent the operation from being carried out.

Despite similar local opposition, authorities said that a crop-eradication drive in the Chapare region of central Bolivia successfully destroyed some 38,000 hectares (93,000 acres) of coca crops destined for processing and distribution by drug-traffickers.

--------

Greening of the drug war

June 20, 2001
F. Andy Messing Jr.,
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20010620-83918890.htm

Debates concerning the War on Drugs have focused broadly on socio-economic, political and even security factors. Unfortunately, one of the most crucial subcomponents of the drug issue, environmental devastation, has been largely ignored. Now, there is indisputable evidence that the production of illicit crops is wreaking environmental havoc in some of the world´s most pristine locations, from Laos to Peru. Accordingly, saving dolphins and the trees in Oregon should not be our only concern.

The cultivation, production and trafficking of illegal drugs in just Bolivia, Peru and Colombia is responsible for the wanton deforestation of 960,000 acres in the past 20 years. That is equal to almost half of Yellowstone National Park. According to satellite photos, the past decade has seen the destruction of more than 300,000 acres in Colombia alone. Expanding narcotics production is destroying the lungs of the world.

Methods used to grow coca and poppy plants harm the environment in a variety of ways. The coca leaf can be harvested from four to six times a year. This rapid turnover destroys dense vegetation, leaving virtually nothing behind to protect the soil from massive erosion. In addition to making thousands of acres essentially useless, this increased erosion also greatly enhances flooding, ruining more land.

Additionally, slash-and-burn techniques used to cut down millions of trees contribute to air pollution, which accelerates the greenhouse effect, thus raising worldwide temperatures.

Ironically, the recent White House study on global warming neglected to associate drug users who create this demand as prepetuating this problem.

Just as devastating as the growth of illicit crops is the refinement of raw coca leaves into finished cocaine. Precursor chemicals, like sulfuric acid, acetone and hydrochloride acid, used to produce refined cocaine, are dumped into rivers and lakes. This radically decreases oxygen content in the waters, and increases pH levels. Soil and plant life also absorb these toxins, further polluting the food chain. For every two acres used to grow coca then processed into cocaine, two tons of pesticides, fertilizers and toxic chemical waste are dumped into Colombia´s soil, streams and rivers.

This horrific level of contamination leads to the agonizing death of millions of rare and innocent animals and fish, as well as the pollution of the Amazon River itself. In attempts to avoid law enforcement agents, or get more fertile soil, drug producers often move to new areas, only to start the raping process all over again.

One solution to this problem, eradication, will help reverse this negative process. The cogent use of a number of relatively environmentally friendly chemicals makes it possible to simultaneously reduce the supply of narcotics and protect the Andean region.

The seemingly most effective chemical is Glyphosate. Farmers in more than 160 countries, including the United States, use this herbicide. In spite of misinformed claims by some environmental groups, Glyphosate is biodegradable, water-soluble and described in a recent State Department report as "one of the least harmful herbicides available on the world market." As an example, in 2000 the Colombian government used Glyphosate to successfully spray 22,800 acres of coca and poppy fields, thus reducing the killing supply to us, and allowing a portion of the jungle to reclaim itself.

Aside from destroying illegal crops and protecting the environment, eradication enables the indigenous population to grow a variety of legal crops. A U.S. agricultural station in the Huallaga Valley of Peru in the late 1940s found that more than 20 high-cash crops could grow in that environment. The eradication of narcotics, coupled with a plan of crop substitution, would enable the peoples of the Andean region to begin a process of environmental, economic and social reform. Colombian officials have stated clearly that spraying "stimulates the return of involved communities to the cultural, economic, social and labor conditions of the region."

Unfortunately, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and others have neglected this mortal threat to our planet. A lack of physical courage or intellectual foresight has prevented them from either taking a proactive role on this issue, or aligning themselves with other groups.

Environmental activists should stop wondering about the limited possibilities of environmental damage resulting from eradication and start aggressively fighting the massive destruction presently being wrought by drug producers.

Ecological groups have repeatedly demonstrated their ability to bring constructive national awareness to an issue. If these groups would spend as much time and effort on the effects of narcotics production, a problem infinitely more pressing than saving coyotes, they could play a crucial role in turning the tide in the War on Drugs, helping reduce it to its lowest manageable level. They should be actively in convincing every junior high school student in the United States that aside from hurting themselves, cocaine and heroine use kills trees, animals, fish, thereby hurting our environment.

A coalition of anti-drug activists and environmental groups would provide the balanced pressure required to reduce both drug supply and demand as well as raise national consciousness about ecological concerns. Failure to produce cooperation between both ends of the political spectrum may very well lead to the loss of critical environmental treasures.

F. Andy Messing Jr., executive director of the National Defense Council Foundation, is a retired Special Forces major, who advised then-Gov. George W. Bush on narcotics issues in July 1998. Patrick J. Oswald is a research assistant at NDCF.

-------- iraq

Twenty-three Iraqis killed, 11 hurt in US-British raid over northern Iraq

Wednesday June 20, 2001 10:01 PM
Agence France Presse
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010620/1/13h1g.html

- A US-British air raid over northern Iraq has left 23 Iraqis dead and 11 others wounded, the official INA news agency reported.

The Iraqis were killed when warplanes hit a piece of land being used as a football pitch in Tel Afr, 45 kilometres (28 miles) west of Mosul, INA said Wednesday.

The agency denounced the bombing as "another vile crime carried out by the United States and its ally, Britain against the combattant Iraqi people."

Tel Afr residents "buried their dead on Wednesday ... shouting out their anger against this American and British crime," INA said, not specifying when the attack took place.

There are almost-daily clashes between Iraq and US and British planes patrolling the northern and southern exclusion zones aimed at enforcing the military restrictions imposed on President Saddam Hussein's regime after the 1991 Gulf War.

Baghdad does not recognise the zones, and claims that 350 people have been killed and more than 1,000 injured in raids by the Americans and British since 1998.

The latest deaths come just a day after an Iraqi military spokesman said anti-aircraft defences had hit a British or US warplane during bombing raids on civilian targets in the north of the country.

Earlier Tuesday, Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz called on UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to put an end to the US-British raids, dubbing them an "aggressive policy ... against Iraq that has become a staple since 1991."

"The Iraqi government completely rejects the so-called no-fly zones imposed unilaterally by the United states and Britain," Aziz said.

----

Russia Seeks Open UN Meeting on Iraq

By Edith M. Lederer
Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, June 20, 2001; 7:02 a.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010620/aponline070211_000.htm

UNITED NATIONS -- Russia has called for an open Security Council meeting on Iraq next week in an apparent move to make public the debate over a U.S.-British plan to overhaul sanctions on Iraq.

Iraq opposes the overhaul. Russia and China, Baghdad's closest allies on the 15-member council, said last week it would be difficult to complete the work necessary for the kind of changes it envisions by the current deadline of July 3.

Russia's U.N. Ambassador Sergey Lavrov asked the Security Council president in a letter circulated Tuesday to convene an open meeting to consider ways of improving the humanitarian situation in Iraq in light of the negative effect of decade-old sanctions on the Iraqi people.

The council meeting should also consider "ways of implementing all the Security Council resolutions on Iraq and a post-conflict settlement in the Gulf region," Lavrov said.

The Security Council imposed sanctions on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. The sanctions cannot be lifted until U.N. weapons inspectors certify that the country's programs to build weapons of mass destruction have been dismantled.

But Iraq has barred U.N. weapons inspectors for 21/2 years, demanding instead that sanctions be lifted unconditionally. Baghdad maintains it has fulfilled all the U.N. resolutions.

The U.S.-British plan, first submitted May 22, would lift most restrictions on civilian goods to Iraq while tightening enforcement of the arms embargo and plugging up smuggling routes. But the two were unable to muster the quick support needed to get the plan approved June 3, when the U.N.'s oil-for-food plan in Iraq was up for renewal.

Since the extension was approved for a month, technical experts have been meeting on details of the proposal.

The oil-for-food program allows Iraq to sell unlimited quantities of oil provided the money goes to buy food, humanitarian supplies and spare parts for the oil industry, and to pay war reparations.

On Tuesday, a top Iraqi foreign ministry official called reports that Baghdad evaded U.N. sanctions in the 1990s "sheer lies and fabrications."

Naji Sabri, Iraq's state minister for foreign affairs, said the unpublished U.N. weapons inspection reports obtained by U.S. arms control researchers were aimed at "preparing excuses" to drum up support for a U.S.-British plan to overhaul sanctions.

"The lies were leaked by intelligence offices to prolong and tighten sanctions, to prevent Iraq from using its resources and practice its rights in independence and conducting trade ties with other countries," he told The Associated Press.

The findings by Gary Milhollin, director of the Washington-based Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, a nonprofit watchdog group, and researcher Kelly Motz, are being published in the July-August issue of Commentary magazine.

The unpublished U.N. weapons inspection reports were obtained by sources outside the United Nations, according to Motz.

According to the report, Iraq decided in the early 1990s to target Eastern Europe for purchases, following the collapse of the Soviet empire, which spurred a wholesale weapons market.

--------

Allies Deny Raid That Iraq Says Killed 23

New York Times
June 20, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-iraq-ra.html

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq said Wednesday 23 people, including at least one child as young as four, died when Western warplanes fired at a playing field in a northern Iraqi town. Britain and the United States swiftly denied any attack.

The Iraqi News Agency INA said U.S. and British warplanes raided Talafar district near the city of Mosul in what would be the bloodiest reported Western attack for two and a half years.

``The raids, which targeted a football field, martyred 23 citizens and wounded 11 others who were playing football,'' it said.

Iraqi television said the dead were aged between four and 30 and that four brothers were among those killed in the ''heinous crime'' which had taken place Tuesday.

It showed the site where it said the planes struck. The short footage showed an open sandy field surrounded by houses.

On the pitch lay a broken crutch, a bloodied cloth and fragments of a missile, one of which bore the words ``Guided Bomb'' in English.

``I was watching the football match when the missile hit the place,'' Taha Nyef Hussein told the television. He said two of his brothers had died.

The United States and Britain denied any attack.

``Coalition forces (U.S. and British aircraft) did not conduct any raids on northern Iraq yesterday,'' Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told Reuters.

``We conducted routine enforcement of the no-fly zone. We did not engage. All our aircraft returned safely,'' said a spokesman for the U.S. European Command, based in Germany. The Ministry of Defense in London also said no weapons had been dropped.

Iraqi TV showed badly injured boys lying in hospital beds, with their fathers saying their sons had been hurt in the raid.

It also showed hundreds of people carrying Iraqi flags in a funeral procession, chanting ``America is the enemy of God'' as coffins were carried atop red and white taxis.

WORST REPORTED TOLL SINCE 1998

In an earlier report Tuesday, also denied by the Western allies, Iraq said its anti-aircraft defenses had hit one of a group of allied planes that patrol the northern no-fly zone from their airbase in southern Turkey.

Western air raids have become a regular occurrence since Baghdad decided in December 1998 to challenge jets patrolling the northern and southern no-fly zones that were set up by Western powers after the 1991 Gulf War.

Tuesday's is the highest single-day death toll reported by Iraq since that challenge prompted the United States and Britain to conduct a four-day ``Desert Fox'' campaign at targets across Iraq at the end of 1998.

If confirmed, it would bring the reported toll from frequent bombings since then to over 300 dead and 1,000 wounded.

In the previous deadliest toll since Desert Fox, Iraq says 19 civilians died in widespread raids on August 17, 1999.

NO-FLY ZONES

The two no-fly zones were set up after the expulsion of Iraqi troops from Kuwait in 1991 to protect Kurdish dissidents in northern Iraq and anti-Baghdad Shi'ite Muslims in the south from attack by President Saddam Hussein's army.

Iraq does not recognize the zones and allied forces say that since the end of 1998, they have been regularly threatened by Iraqi anti-aircraft units and have fired bombs and missiles back at them.

U.S. and British forces have also staged large-scale raids on wider targets in Iraq, at times incurring the wrath of their own Western partners.

Iraq's deputy foreign minister Nizar Hamdoon, on a visit to Norway, said he had not seen the INA report but condemned all U.S. and British air raids.

``Those bombings continue on an almost daily basis in violation of international law and in violation of Iraqi sovereignty,'' Hamdoon, a former ambassador to the United Nations, told reporters.

-------- israel

Israel Decides to Stick With U.S.-Brokered Truce

New York Times
June 20, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/world/mideast.html

JERUSALEM, June 20 (Reuters) - Israel pledged on Wednesday to stick to a battered U.S.-brokered ceasefire deal, but said it would not fully lift a blockade of Palestinian towns and villages until attacks on Israelis stopped.

An Israeli security cabinet reassessment of the week-old truce ended with Israel and the Palestinians again trading accusations that the other side was violating the agreement, aimed at ending nearly nine months of bloodshed.

As charges and counter-charges flew, one Palestinian and one Jewish settler were shot dead in separate incidents in the occupied West Bank. The death toll since the violence erupted in September is now nearing 600.

The Israeli army said the settler died after being shot by Palestinian gunmen near a settlement in the northern West Bank. Army Radio said Israeli soldiers had shot dead a Palestinian who resisted arrest at a checkpoint near the Israeli border.

Palestinian President Yasser Arafat said Israel was trying to fool the world by professing support for the ceasefire while dragging its feet on one of its key elements, the end of what Palestinians call a siege of the West Bank and Gaza.

``It is an attempt to deceive international public opinion,'' he told reporters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

``They are still firing from their tanks and machineguns and are still using internationally banned weapons, and the settlers are pursuing their crimes under the protection of the Israeli army. So their claims to be committed to a ceasefire are a lie.''

REASSESSMENT OF TRUCE

Israel launched what it described as a reassessment of the truce on Tuesday after Palestinian gunmen killed two Jewish settlers in the West Bank this week and Israeli right-wingers pressured Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to take action.

But Sharon, who holds talks with U.S. President George Bush in Washington next week, had not been expected to walk away on Wednesday from the deal brokered by CIA Director George Tenet.

``The Israeli government determines that the Palestinian Authority has yet to fulfil its obligations under the Tenet document -- stopping terror, arresting terrorists, halting incitement and foiling attacks,'' the security cabinet said.

``Despite this, Israel will still continue its efforts to implement the Tenet document,'' the statement said.

It said, however, that Israel would make clear at a meeting with Palestinian security chiefs later on Wednesday, due to set a timeline for lifting the blockades, that a ``redeployment plan'' would be implemented ``only after a cessation of terror.''

In all, five Palestinians and three Israelis have been killed since the ceasefire went into effect last Wednesday. At least 461 Palestinians, 116 Israelis and 13 Israeli Arabs have been killed in the last eight months of violence.

In what it calls a security programme and Palestinians call economically crippling collective punishment, Israel has limited movement between Palestinian towns and villages by placing cement blocks and earthen mounds on roads.

``The Israelis are still besieging villages, cities and camps,'' Arafat said earlier in the day in Egypt.

``The Israelis were supposed to pull out within 48 hours (of the start of the ceasefire) to their former positions and, at the same time, (the two sides) were supposed to have begun the diplomatic process.''

ROOM TO MANOEUVRE

However, the actual wording of the agreement appeared to leave Israel with room to manoeuvre on the timeframe and scope of a redeployment to positions held before the Palestinian uprising began on September 28.

The document said ``demonstrable on-the-ground actions on the lifting of the closures will be initiated within the first 48 hours'' of the truce and ``will continue while the timeline is being developed.''

Israel has removed some roadblocks in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but Palestinians called the moves cosmetic. After this week's attacks on the settlers, it dug trenches and again placed barriers around several towns where the blockade had been eased.

In Wednesday's statement, the security cabinet reserved the right of ``self-defence'' although it stopped short of threatening specific retaliation for the latest killings.

``We are trying to give the ceasefire another chance, but I must say time is running out and it's up to Arafat to stop the hostilities, stop the violence and the incitement and come back to the negotiating table,'' Sharon spokesman Raanan Gissin said.

Earlier, Palestinian security chiefs repeated orders to step up searches to end mortar bomb attacks on Jewish settlements.

As the security cabinet met, a bomb exploded in a rubbish bin in the Israeli town of Hadera, causing no casualties. Police said they suspected Palestinians had planted the device.

U.S. spy chief Tenet brokered the truce after a Palestinian suicide bombing killed 21 people at a Tel Aviv disco on June 1.

Israel and the Palestinians say the agreement is a first step in implementing a wider peace plan sketched by a committee led by former U.S. senator George Mitchell.

-------- japan

As Japan tries to cut expenditures, defense pact with U.S. is tempting target

Wednesday, June 20, 2001,
By Wayne Specht and Hiroshi Chida,
Stars and Stripes
http://ww2.pstripes.osd.mil/01/jun01/ed062001b.html

As Japan undertakes restoring economic order, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi will be examining contributions Japan makes to the U.S.-Japan mutual security treaty.

Deemed by many observers as one of the most viable bilateral relationships in Asia, the treaty costs Japan ¥257.3 billion, approximately $2.2 billion this fiscal year.

But the nation's ailing economy is forcing Koizumi to look at many areas where Japan can cut back or streamline expenditures, and contributions made to U.S. forces is a fertile target.

A possible harbinger of reductions came April 1 when Japan's fiscal year budget began. The moribund economy led the Japanese government to suspend utility payments that benefit American GIs living off base in Japan, an amount totaling about $32 million and now shouldered by the U.S. government.

Payments for certain consumable fuels used at U.S. bases were also lowered under the Special Measures Agreement.

"Reductions in utility payments represent a very small step backward after more than a decade of significant steps forward," says Lee Branstetter, assistant professor of economics and director of the East Asian Studies Program at the University of California, Davis. "Recent events should be seen in that context, because over the last 15 to 20 years, the Japanese government has increased its financial support for U.S. troops stationed in Japan, reaffirming its political support for this alliance."

Branstetter, who specializes in Japan, said that shortly after Makiko Tanaka was appointed Japan's foreign minister she stated unequivocally that the U.S.-Japan security alliance would remain a cornerstone of Japanese foreign policy.

However, she also stated that the nature of that alliance should be reviewed.

"There are some domestic political reasons for this," he said. "The U.S. military presence in Japan is overwhelmingly concentrated on the island of Okinawa, and [Okinawans] feel - with some justification - that the burden of the U.S.-Japan security alliance has fallen disproportionately on them."

Tanaka met with President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell in Washington on Monday to lay the groundwork for the upcoming Japan-U.S. Summit at the end of the month.

Suggestions that financial contributions to the U.S. military may have to be adjusted surfaced last month when Upper House member Yoriko Madoka asked Finance Minister Masajuro Shiokawa how Japan's financial restructuring would affect support provided to U.S. forces, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported.

Shiokawa responded by saying defense contributions must also be considered as part of the country's overall restructuring plans.

A Japan Defense Facility Administration official, speaking on customary anonymity, said while reductions may happen, any cutback requests "are not on the table yet."

Finance Ministry officials said if there are any reductions, they will not be made until the fiscal 2002 budget. Budget requests from the Japanese Defense Agency are normally forwarded each August and the preliminary budget is issued in late December.

Kensuke Ebata, an independent military affairs specialist and former chief of Jane's military publications in Japan, said key questions are where and how much Japan will cut the financial assistance to U.S. forces.

"Nothing is clear at this stage, because I cannot tell how Prime Minister Koizumi thinks and handles the matter," he said. "He is different from previous Japanese prime ministers."

Need for troops doubted

Ebata believes Japan has to think about how the United States would react to cuts in defense support.

"Japan thinks it's financial assistance, while the U.S. calls it 'burden sharing,'" he said.

"Moving a heliport or building a new airport on Okinawa has to be handled in a different category," Ebata said. "It will cost far more than the money Japan spends for U.S. forces annually."

Even among Japanese committed to the security alliance, some question whether so many U.S. troops need to be stationed in Japan.

Two significant political developments prompted this questioning, Branstetter said.

"One is the collapse of the Soviet empire and the continuing military and economic weakness of Russia," he said.

In the absence of this immediate security threat, Branstetter said, it is less clear to many Japanese why there is a need to station a large number of U.S. troops in the country.

"The second development is the evolution of American high-tech methods of warfare. Japanese are well aware that much of the successful U.S. bombing campaign in Kosovo was carried out by long-range bombers based in the United States."

Given the success of the Kosovo campaign, the Japanese want to know if the United States could successfully defend itself with a smaller, highly equipped force.

No cause for alarm

During her meeting with Powell, Tanaka brought up the thorny issue of reducing the number of Marines on Okinawa.

A Japanese Foreign Ministry spokesman, speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity, said Tanaka asked Powell about the possibility of shifting Marine Corps training exercises to other locations and relocating a planned air station to be built near Nago after Futenma Air Station is closed.

The spokesman said Powell replied that all base-related issues are headaches and he wants to study all the alternatives.

"Powell said the U.S. presence is important and so are the military exercises, but he would pass on to Secretary of Defense [Donald H.] Rumsfeld Japan's concerns about base-related issues," the official said, according to Tanaka's recounting of the conversation. That account was confirmed by a State Department official.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Powell made clear to Tanaka that the U.S. goal is to have the smallest U.S. presence possible consistent with the security needs of the region.

Another official said the Pentagon is looking at sites elsewhere in Asia to which some training activities could be relocated from Okinawa.

Despite this overture, Branstetter said, the Koizumi administration, like its predecessors, remains strongly committed to its military alliance with the United States.

"I think the U.S. should not be alarmed by this effort by the Japanese government to think seriously about the nature of the alliance, and the way the costs of this alliance are allocated across regions within Japan," he said. "I do not expect any substantial decline in political or financial support."

More important, he added, is the debate is over the exact form that alliance will take.

"Because of this, I don't think Japan's Asian neighbors are particularly troubled by this process of 'reconsideration' of the nature of the alliance."

Seeking revision

Shortly after becoming prime minister, Koizumi stated there should be a debate about revising the Japanese constitution - and that, in particular, Article 9 should be revised or reinterpreted to give Japan explicit rights to defend itself from attack.

"Many Japanese politicians have long urged that the constitution be revised in order to give Japan's military an explicit right to exist and to defend the country," Branstetter said. "Many Americans support this because this would allow Japan's military to take a more active role within the context of the security alliance.

However, in his first news conference after his election, Koizumi was quoted as saying: "It would be very difficult to change constitutional interpretation [regarding collective defense]."

U.S. security policy-makers expect that the Japanese government will change its interpretation of the constitution to enable the nation to exercise the right to collective defense.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage reportedly told a group of visiting Japanese Diet members last month that he was "encouraged by Prime Minister Koizumi's remarks on the right to collective defense."

News reports said Armitage believes Japan itself must make the decision whether to change the constitutional interpretation, but added refraining from exercising that right would pose an obstacle to the U.S.-Japan alliance.

"If Koizumi does succeed in persuading the Japanese people to amend the constitution, then this will represent a major break with postwar policy," Branstetter said. "This would clear the way for the Japanese military to play a larger role in the defense of Japan and, potentially, the rest of Asia."

Should Koizumi manage to push the country that far, Branstetter believes Japan's military would still be committed to - and, in many areas, dependent on - the alliance with the United States.

U.S. Forces Japan's commander, Lt. Gen. Paul V. Hester, said in a recent Stripes interview he expects "security with Japan to be the premier piece of our engagement in the Pacific."

Hester added Japan must play "a key role" in the Bush administration's proposed shift of military focus from Europe to Asia because of the U.S.-Japan security agreement that aims to protect Japan while maintaining stability in Asia.

Branstetter said Japan's neighbors are not disturbed by the prospect of Japan reconsidering the exact details of its security alliance.

"Japan's neighbors would be disturbed if Japan were to amend its constitution in a way that gives the Japanese military greater legitimacy.

"I think that thoughtful individuals in the rest of Asia would be willing to countenance an increased role for the Japanese military as long as the Japanese military remained closely tied to the U.S. military in Asia. The exception to this is China."

Branstetter said the Chinese increasingly see the U.S.-Japan military alliance as something that exists to contain and counter their own military strength.

Jennifer H. Svan contributed to this report.

----

Specter of a Rearmed Japan Stirs Its Wartime Generation

New York Times
June 20, 2001
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/20/world/20JAPA.html?pagewanted=all

TOKYO, June 19 - It did not take long, after he was shipped out to New Guinea as a 20-year-old infantryman to fight in a series of ferocious battles against advancing Allied forces in 1943, for Shigeru Mizuki to conclude that Japan's Pacific war was absurd.

Of the men in his company, only two survived a determined assault by better-equipped Australian troops. And in addition to the many friends who perished in the jungle, some shot by their own officers as they sought to retreat, Mr. Mizuki lost his left arm.

"It was a pure loss," he says today, looking back not just on that battle, but on Japan's entire war. "Even as a young man, I wondered how could people who have been sent so far from home feel like they are protecting our country. Japan was attacking other countries, and if protecting ourselves was the mission, all we had to do was stay at home."

Mr. Mizuki offered his recollections against the backdrop of what may be Japan's first real passionate public debate on the long-taboo subject of the nation's 20th-century history of conquest and defeat.

This rare national conversation has been provoked by an early proposal by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi that would break with decades of official pacifism and revise the American-written postwar Constitution, which bars Japan from raising an army.

It is a conversation largely confined to those who were alive during the war. Younger Japanese display at best a sketchy knowledge of the Japanese imperial conquest in the 1930's, in part because the history curriculum in schools ends before that period. And the apathy about policy and politics that characterizes many Japanese born after World War II extends to the question of changing the Constitution.

While Mr. Koizumi and other politicians push for a more assertive Japan, many Japanese who lived through Japan's expansion in Asia and war retain vivid memories of the immense cost to their country and are cautioning against the vogue of revisionism. In a series of interviews, they expressed strong reservations or outright opposition to a constitutional change.

They also revealed deeply mixed feelings about Mr. Koizumi's intention to visit a Shinto shrine dedicated to the nation's war dead in August, an announcement that enraged China and Korea, which were brutally occupied during the war.

Among the millions of fallen victims to Japan's modern wars, that shrine honors 14 men, like the wartime prime minister, Tojo, who were condemned as so-called Class A war criminals for their roles in World War II.

Reflecting the fact that Japan has never really held a national discussion of the war, the comments of these people, mostly in their late 70's or their 80's, were remarkably varied in their understanding of Japan's midcentury militarism.

While Mr. Mizuki viewed the war as a colossal and misguided waste, other veterans still accepted the official wartime explanations of Japan's expansion in Asia and attack on Pearl Harbor: that Japan was being strangled by Western powers and was determined to liberate its fellow Asians from colonialism.

Mr. Mizuki described the Constitution as "fine just the way it is."

"For the time being we are remaining quiet," said the 79-year-old veteran, who is a well-known manga artist, or cartoonist. "We lost the war and have been putting on a kind of camouflage of modesty. But if you look at our history, you see our aggressiveness. And if we change the Constitution the natural consequence will be for us to rearm."

Toyoko Senda, a retired teacher, remembers well the little ceremonies that were held in her small hometown in Hokkaido to see off fresh recruits. Just as vividly she recalls the mournful gatherings of people to greet the returning ashes of those who died in battle.

There are memories too of when her town came under American naval bombardment, and of the shock she felt as a 20-year-old hearing Emperor Hirohito's voice for the first time, like all Japanese, announcing that Japan had been defeated.

For this 75-year-old woman who does volunteer work as a research assistant at a conservative Shinto university in Tokyo, the prime minister's proposed visit to the war shrine revives an anger over official hypocrisy and deceptions that have remained unresolved for decades.

"Until the end of the war we were taught that people who died for Japan would become gods and would be enshrined at Yasukuni," Ms. Senda said. "The shrine only became an issue after Tojo and the other criminals were enshrined there.

"But when you think about it, telling people that the deceased will become gods is rather strange, isn't it? And what of the Koreans who were killed? Why aren't they enshrined also?"

Ms. Senda, who spoke in a sleek cafe overlooking Shibuya, one of Tokyo's trendiest neighborhoods, attacked the nationalist historians who are writing school textbooks that embellish Japan's past. One such book, a new junior high history text that seeks to exonerate the nation of guilt for its expansionism in Asia and war with the United States, has become a nationwide best seller.

"Their views are very close to the imperial history of the past," she said. "I was made to worship the emperor then, so maybe this is a personal reaction. But I would say that the roots of the war lay in our emperor system, and it bothers me that the emperor never apologized or accepted responsibility.

"Germany has apologized. The United States apologized to Japanese-Americans. But we are still dragging around issues like comfort women, and you wonder if it is because we've lacked good politicians, or because the Japanese character prevents us from apologizing."

Minoru Mizuno, a sprightly veteran of battles from Manchuria to the Philippines who fought for 13 years in the army tank corps and ended the war with the rank of second lieutenant, not only begged to disagree, but delivered a nearly hourlong soliloquy on the justness of Japan's combat.

Repeating with conviction the very themes that were used in the indoctrination of Japanese throughout the war, Mr. Mizuno said his country had been fighting strangulation by Western colonial powers like America, Britain and the Netherlands. Moreover, he insisted, the war had a noble purpose: the liberation of other Asians.

"The West wanted to exhaust us," said Mr. Mizuno, who followed handwritten notes as he spoke in the neat and narrow study of his central Tokyo home, where he bragged that he still used an abacus. "The Western countries were colonizing Asia and subjecting people to slavery. They couldn't tolerate the idea that Japan could wage a war of liberation for Asia."

Mr. Mizuno said the Constitution had to be written so that "Japan could never again pose a threat to the United States," but insisted that times had changed and the country's Constitution should be allowed to change too.

"We don't want to fight a war against anyone," he said, "but we must be able to defend ourselves too."

Asked about the inclusion of people like General Tojo, the hard-line militarist who served as prime minister during the war, among those honored at Yasukuni, Mr. Mizuno, who still uses the war's euphemistic old name, was unbothered.

"Indeed they were war criminals," he said, "but the Japanese people do not believe that the Greater East Asian War was the wrong war. It's that the wrong means were used, but the criminals were executed so we should forgive them."

For a man who defended his country's actions so strenuously, Mr. Mizuno seemed briefly perplexed when asked if he would have liked for Japan to have won the war. "The military was running rampant in our country, and Tojo was a dictator," he said. "So I think it was good that Japan lost. We were able to become a democracy."

Another veteran, Ichiro Niimi, graduated from Japan's leading military academy, served as an engineer for one of Japan's most famous air wings in Southeast Asia and ended the war as a major.

He broke off from a group of veteran friends visiting Yasukuni Shrine to speak with a foreign journalist, and sat in the cooling shade on a park bench, near a huge artillery piece and locomotive from the so-called Burma-Thailand Death Railway, whose construction killed many thousands of forced laborers.

"As a person who fought in the war, I think it is natural for the prime minister to go to the shrine and worship the dead," said the 80-year-old former officer. "China and other countries are complaining that war criminals are enshrined here, but those people didn't die for their own purposes. They gave themselves for the peace and happiness of Japan, just like the war dead from anywhere else, and I do not regard them badly."

At 69, Shigeyuki Hiruma was too young to fight in the war, but he still cannot forget its devastation. One month before Japan's surrender, his older brother died of starvation in New Guinea. A sister who moved to Manchuria was killed there as the Soviets attacked.

Mr. Hiruma had just returned to Tokyo from an evacuation to the countryside when the city was firebombed by the Americans in March 1945. He was 13 when the war ended.

"There is no one who hates war more than I do," he said.

Mr. Hiruma had come to Yasukuni Shrine on this sweltering day to stand before its giant cedar altar, summon the Shinto deities with a clap of his hands and visit with his brother's spirit. "I wanted to tell him that we've done some work on the family grave," he said.

Mr. Hiruma said he had no objection to a revision of the Constitution, as long as military service was voluntary. Japan will remain peaceful, he said, because "no country could fail to learn its lesson after such a horrible war."

But he reached starkly different conclusions from Mr. Niimi's. "It was obvious to me even as a child that Japan was after resources," he said. "We had no oil, and that led us to invade other countries. Vehicles in Tokyo back then ran on charcoal. But it was a mistake for Japan to try to colonize other peoples, in China and Korea and even Manchuria."

"It is normal for public figures to visit this shrine," Mr. Hiruma said, "but I have reservations about the criminals. They didn't die in a battle. Frankly speaking, Tojo and the others cheated the people of Japan by pursuing a war we had no hope of winning."

-------- nato

Turkey fears EU force will aid Greece

June 20, 2001
By Andrew Borowiec
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010620-163643.htm

NICOSIA, Cyprus -- Europe´s planned military intervention force has found its first target: the ancient feud between Greece and Turkey. No easy solutions are in sight.

The influential Turkish generals have finally spelled out the reasons for their opposition to the European Union´s rapid deployment corps: fear that it might operate in the sensitive areas of the Aegean Sea and Cyprus to protect Greek interests.

The European Union hopes to have a 60,000-strong force independent of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to intervene in crises in which NATO does not want to get involved. But the Europeans count on using some NATO facilities, including electronic surveillance, transport and bases.

Turkey, a staunch NATO member since 1952, has opposed the plan as potentially "creating new division lines on the European continent."

Turkey has asked for a voice on the EU´s military activities close to its borders, an idea opposed by Greece, which also fears that under Turkish pressure Cyprus and the Aegean could be excluded from military contingency plans.

In a briefing to Turkish journalists, Gen. Huseyin Kivrikoglu, the chief of the general staff of the armed forces, described the planned European corps as "not a force which will fight big battles or wars. It is not a force which can be compared to NATO."

And he added, showing sensitivity to the attitude of some European capitals: "Turkey deserves Europe more than many European countries. ... It has been a NATO member since 1952. It has contributed more to the security and defense of Europe than many other countries."

Turkey is a candidate for EU membership, but it is unlikely to be admitted in the foreseeable future. At their summit in Gothenburg, Sweden, last week, EU leaders said Turkey particularly needed to improve its human rights record.

"Turkey is urged to take concrete measures to implement the priorities of accession partnership," an EU communique said. "In a number of areas, such as human rights, further progress is needed."

Turkey has NATO´s second-largest armed forces after the United States. It has argued that EU access to various NATO assets should be decided on a case-by-case basis and not as a permanent factor.

Turkey´s role in NATO has always been considered crucial during the Cold War, the demise of the Soviet Union and the Persian Gulf war.

Last week, Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit pointed out that "Turkey is the only NATO ally having borders with countries developing or possessing weapons of mass destruction. ... Turkey believes that NATO´s pioneering role in maintaining security and stability in Europe should not be damaged."

Commenting on Turkish and U.S. skepticism about the planned European rapid-reaction force, the German daily Suddeustche Zeitung wrote: "The Europeans themselves are in the way. No will has yet been discerned to make the necessary financial means available for material and equipment."

According to the Greek daily Kathimerin, "It will be very difficult to produce a diplomatic formula which would meet Turkey´s demands, fulfill EU principles and, above all, satisfy Greece´s position."

--------

Powell Discusses NATO in Macedonia

New York Times
June 20, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-NATO.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Secretary of State Colin Powell said Wednesday that U.S. peacekeeping troops in the Balkans may eventually help disarm fighters in Macedonia ``but we have not made a commitment yet.''

Testifying before the Foreign Relations Committee, Powell said some NATO allies had proposed establishing disarmament points in the conflict-scarred country to collect weapons once ethnic Albanian militants agree to turn in their arms if peace terms with the government are worked out.

President Bush supports NATO's decision to help Macedonia with disarmament, and expressed that support last week during meetings in Belgium, said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. ``We hope that the political parties in Skopje can reach an agreement quickly,'' Fleischer said.

Powell said the NATO troops would not be ``going after the people,'' but merely setting up sites to recover weapons. Powell said some 700 U.S. peacekeepers handling logistics in Macedonia and several hundred others patrolling the border from the Kosovo side might become involved.

But in response to the chairman, Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., Powell said it was a decision ``we don't need to make yet.''

NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson, in Washington to meet with Powell and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, confirmed that the alliance is thinking of deploying 3,000 or more soldiers to supervise disarming National Liberation Army fighters if there is a peace agreement.

Robertson declined to say whether the U.S. military has agreed to participate, but said other NATO member countries have volunteered.

``They would be armed, carrying weapons for their own protection, of course,'' Robertson told reporters, referring to the proposed NATO force.

As for the timing, Robertson said the government of Macedonia and the ethnic Albanian rebels would first have to reach peace terms, a difficult prospects since talks have stalled.

``It will happen when and only when there is an agreed cease-fire,'' Robertson said. ``This is not an armed intervention.''

Biden, who took an active role in urging the Clinton administration to use force to protect ethnic Albanians in Kosovo from Serbian ``ethnic cleansing,'' told Powell ``we cannot temporize'' in making decisions about Macedonia.

In reply, Powell said the Bush administration was pressing the government in Skopje to ``deal with the aspiration and hopes of the Albanian minority'' by bolstering their rights and participation in Macedonia society.

That is the only way, Powell said, to keep moderate ethnic Albanians from joining ``the extremists.''

Also during the hearing, Sen. Jesse Helms, senior Republican on the committee, criticized President Bush for ``an excessively personal endorsement'' of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Helms said he was ``raising my eyebrows'' over Bush's assertion that Putin was ``trustworthy,'' ``a remarkable leader'' and a man with whom ``we share common values.''

Helms read a long list of complaints about Putin's leadership. He said the Russian press had felt the ``jackboot of repression,'' arms-control treaty obligations were being violated and dangerous weapons technologies transferred to ``rogue states.''

``For these reasons,'' Helms said, ``Mr. Putin was far from deserving the powerful political prestige and influence that comes from an excessively personal endorsement by the president of the United States.''

In fact, the North Carolina senator said, ``Prematurely personalizing this relationship only undercuts the incentives he has to reorient Russia's domestic and foreign policy goals.''

At the outset, Biden praised Bush's actions in Europe and said he was ``very heartened'' by the talks Bush held with European leaders on issues of substance.

At the same time, Biden said he supports ``limited'' NATO military involvement in Macedonia. He said the few hundred American peacekeeping troops already there need protection, and by moving in more NATO forces now, there would not be a need for many more later.

``I would think we would want to protect them,'' Biden said.

Biden took over the chair of the committee from Helms when Democrats regained control of the Senate with the defection of Republican Sen. James Jeffords of Vermont, who became an independent.

-------- puerto rico

Rove played a major role in Vieques move

June 20, 2001
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010620-3481667.htm

In the days before President Bush´s stunning decision to abandon the Navy´s bombing range on Puerto Rico´s Vieques island, the man at the center of the decision was not a Pentagon or National Security Council official.

Karl Rove, the president´s chief political adviser and developer of a strategy to capture more Hispanic votes for Mr. Bush, hosted two crucial meetings at the White House before the decision was publicized.

Mr. Bush´s announcement has spurred the strongest criticism to date of the president from his allies on the political right. They charge that the White House sacrificed military readiness for potential Hispanic votes.

And yesterday, the American Legion, the country´s largest veterans group, also pointedly criticized the president, suggesting in a letter that he violated a central campaign pledge to bolster the military´s combat readiness.

On June 12, Mr. Rove met with New York Gov. George E. Pataki, who is up for re-election in 2002 and has pressed the president to close the Vieques range. The next day, Mr. Rove summoned Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Navy Secretary Gordon England to the White House to discuss Vieques.

In addition, Puerto Rico´s governor, a member of the anti-statehood Popular Democratic Party who wants the Navy evicted, also has a powerful ally on the payroll.

Charles Black, a longtime political adviser to the Bush family and a registered lobbyist for the Puerto Rican government, said in an interview he has had conversations about Vieques with Mr. Rove. Mr. Black said he limited his pitch to urging a meeting among the governor, the Navy and the White House.

Mr. England left Mr. Rove´s office and went to Capitol Hill to brief lawmakers who had waged a vigorous fight last year to keep the all-purpose training site open while Vieques´ 6,000 residents vote on the issue in a November referendum.

But while Mr. England was telling Rep. James V. Hansen, Utah Republican and House Armed Services Committee member, that leaving Vieques was still only an option, the White House leaked to the TV networks a story that Mr. Bush had made a final decision that the Navy would leave in 2003.

"The White House cut England off at the knees," said a Republican congressional aide.

Mr. Rove´s role and the sequence of White House meetings have fueled the strong suspicions of pro-defense Republicans that the White House dictated the Vieques decision to the Navy. It comes, they say, at the expense of the Navy and Marine Corps, who will lose the most ideal training site for the Atlantic Fleet to train for ground, air and sea combat.

In the process, Republican congressional sources say, Mr. Bush has driven a wedge between himself and normally loyal Republicans such as Mr. Hansen, Sen. James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma and Rep. Bob Stump of Arizona, House Armed Services Committee chairman.

Mr. Inhofe vows to wage an all-out battle to prevent the White House from repealing the federal law mandating the Vieques referendum.

Congressional sources said some senators are so upset with Mr. Bush they are thinking of holding up all future Navy nominations. They may also target the governor of Puerto Rico, Silva Calderon, by voting to mothball a Navy and Army base on the island, and taking away hundreds of millions of dollars in rum-tax revenue.

"Mr. Hansen´s only point of view is it´s a rather strange thing for the deputy secretary of defense and secretary of the Navy to be meeting with the president´s political director," said Bill Johnson, the congressman´s legislative director. "We know the Marine commandant and the chief of naval operations did not get such a meeting."

Mr. Hansen and 23 other House Republicans have sent a letter to Mr. Bush saying they are "gravely disappointed" by his decision.

"Such a decision will send exactly the wrong message to both our men and women in uniform, and those who would seek to block them from training in Vieques, around the country and around the world," the members said.

Yesterday, the American Legion also criticized Mr. Bush, who actively sought the votes of veterans during the 2000 campaign. National Commander Ray G. Smith, in a letter to Mr. Bush, said he was "surprised and disappointed."

"You campaigned on a promise to shore up combat readiness," Mr. Smith wrote. "By this recent decision, we are abandoning what the Navy and Marine Corps consider their most important East Coast training site. The American Legion urges you to reconsider your decision."

The White House this week defended Mr. Rove´s role. "Karl is often involved in meetings that deal with matters pertaining to states and in this case Puerto Rico," said spokesman Ari Fleischer. "So that is part of his purview."

The Navy-owned range and its 10-mile buffer zone has been the scene of repeated protests organized by Puerto Rican left-leaning activists and supported by such Democratic Party liberals as the Rev. Al Sharpton.

"I think it´s fair to say that without this action, the Navy would not have any incentive to look for any other facility in which to train," Mr. Fleischer said. "So by taking this action, the president is able to work with the people who are involved locally to make certain that whatever is done there can be done effectively."

Mr. England told reporters Friday that he brought the exit strategy to the White House. The new Navy secretary, however, knew what the president wanted more than a month ago.

In a May 4 interview with the Spanish-language Univision network, Mr. Bush said that the Navy must leave Vieques.

"The ultimate solution will be, in a reasonable period of time, the Navy needs to find another base," the president said then.

At the time, Mr. England had been picked for Navy secretary, but not confirmed by the Senate, and was in the Pentagon studying Navy issues.

Republican sources were also troubled by the words Mr. Bush chose when he announced his decision on Thursday.

"These are our friends and neighbors, and they don´t want us there," Mr. Bush said. By referring to Puerto Ricans as "friends and neighbors" and not the U.S. citizens they are, the president used the preferred words of the commonwealth´s Popular Democratic Party.

A spokesman for Mr. Pataki confirmed that the New York governor met June 12 with "senior administration officials" to discuss Vieques.

"The governor has had a number of conversations with senior officials to discuss ending the bombing of Vieques," said spokesman Michael McKeon. His state is home to about 1 million Puerto Ricans. "This is an important human rights issue from the governor´s perspective."

Mr. Black defended the president´s action, saying it defused a dangerous situation and gave the Navy time to find a new site.

"Nobody in either part of the island will tell you that the Navy could win that referendum," Mr. Black said. "The only people who had the pipe dream they could win the referendum was the Navy."

Navy supporters see a ray of hope. The "talking points" Mr. England used to brief reporters contains a clue that Mr. Bush may let the Navy continue its 60-year stay. The words "have decided" are crossed out and the word "plan" is written in.

--------

Protesters Stall Navy Bombing Run

New York Times
June 20, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Vieques-Bombing.html

VIEQUES, Puerto Rico (AP) -- Security officials detained two protesters Wednesday after they allegedly ignited a warning flare from the edge of the Vieques island firing range, forcing Navy jets to abort a bombing exercise.

``The important thing is that we identified these guys before the aircraft came in and were able to ensure that nobody got hurt,'' said Lt. Cmdr. Katherine Goode, a Navy spokeswoman.

The protesters were arrested, and bombing runs resumed a few hours later after a search to make sure no more trespassers were on the range, Goode said.

Seven other protesters were arrested after they cut through a fence to enter Navy land. At least 47 protesters have been arrested this week.

Protesters have been invading the Navy's land in hopes of blocking the latest in six decades of bombing exercises that they charge have harmed the environment and health of people on the outlying Puerto Rican island.

Activists have not been appeased by President Bush's announcement last week that the Navy will withdraw in two years, saying the bombing should stop immediately.

Goode said that around 1 p.m., as jets were flying in for the first bombing sortie of the day, two men were spotted and one let off a flare.

``They were just outside the range,'' Goode said. ``They were close enough for us to turn the aircraft around. We have a wide safety margin.''

She would not give more details, but the Navy has been dropping 25-pound and 500-pound dummy bombs since it resumed exercises here on Monday.

The Navy previously has insisted that its land was free of protesters before it started bombing runs, while activist groups have published the names of protesters they said were on range.

Protest leader Robert Rabin said it was not the first time protesters were there when the jets came over.

``This has been constant,'' he said. ``The Navy won't admit it. They're still saying there are no people out there.''

Rabin, who keeps in contact with protesters in Navy land, said the protesters also had placed a large sign declaring ``Fuera la Marina'' -- Navy get out.

Rabin is among a small group of activists and environmentalists whose years-long campaign to stop the bombing became an island-wide cause after two stray bombs killed a civilian guard on the range in 1999.

The cause has attracted supporters within the U.S. civil rights movement. The wife of civil rights campaigner Jesse Jackson, Jacqueline Jackson, was jailed Tuesday for trespassing. The Rev. Al Sharpton was sentenced to 90 days for trespassing during May exercises and has been on a hunger strike in a New York jail since May 29.

On Wednesday, Jesse Jackson said he will travel to Puerto Rico on Friday to visit his jailed wife.

``She is spiritually resolved to use her presence and her suffering to help stop the bombing in Vieques,'' Jackson said by telephone from Los Angeles. The Jacksons lead the Chicago-based Rainbow/Push Coalition civil rights group.

Jackson said he had no plans to try to enter Navy land himself.

``We want to meet with President Bush to ask him to stop the bombing now -- not wait until 2003,'' Jackson said. He said he had called the White House on Wednesday to ask for a meeting with congressional and religious leaders but had not yet received a response.

Meanwhile, the Navy said that a destroyer participating in the exercises, the USS Ross, struck and killed a whale.

Sailors had received special courses in spotting whales, but the animal was submerged when the ship hit it Monday, Navy spokesman Bob Nelson said.

Sailors spotted the carcass floating in the water, Nelson said. It was not clear what type of whale it was. ``It's an unfortunate accident,'' he said.

Activists have begun a campaign to persuade islanders to vote for an immediate end to the exercises in a nonbinding referendum scheduled by the Puerto Rican government for July 29.

The July 29 referendum gives Vieques residents the option to demand the Navy leave immediately. A federal government-sanctioned referendum scheduled in November only allows islanders to decide whether the Navy should stay or leave in 2003.

-------- space

U.S. Gears to Defend Its Satellites

New York Times
June 20, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/science/science-arms-usa-spac.html?searchpv=reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has set up two Air Force squadrons in anticipation of having to defend against attacks on commercial satellites and other spacecraft, a top military officer told Congress on Wednesday.

``To ensure our forces are fully prepared to defend against attacks on our space-based infrastructure, we have recently activated two new squadrons,'' said Army Lt. Gen. Edward Anderson, deputy commander in chief of the U.S. Space Command.

The mission of the Air Force Space Command's new 527th Space Aggressor Squadron is to ``replicate the known capabilities of potential adversaries,'' he testified.

The unit -- with headquarters at Shriever Air Force Base in Colorado -- would play the role of the enemy in war games like that held at Shriever Jan. 23-25, the first of a series of Air Force exercises based on conflict in space, Anderson said.

The other start-up, the Peterson Air Force, Colorado-based 76th Space Control Squadron of the Air Force Space Command, is to ``explore future space control technologies by testing models and prototypes of counterspace systems with the goal of rapidly achieving space superiority,'' he said. It was activated on Jan. 22, according to an Air Force fact sheet.

Anderson's remarks, in testimony prepared for two panels of the House of Representatives' Armed Services Committee, reflected the growing importance attached to the use of space for national security purposes by President Bush's administration.

Citing growing U.S. reliance on satellites for everything from highway traffic management to supporting military operations and monitoring treaties, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced May 8 that he had tightened reporting lines for military space policy issues.

ORBITING WEAPONS

At the time, Rumsfeld denied suggestions that the changes -- which put the Air Force in charge of military space programs and created a space policy coordinating panel on the White House National Security Council -- were a prelude to putting offensive weapons, such as lasers, in space for the first time.

The reshuffle grew out of a call this year from a congressionally mandated commission to elevate space on the U.S. national security agenda. Rumsfeld himself headed the panel until he was tapped to become Bush's defense secretary.

That so-called Commission to Assess U.S. National Security Space Management and Organization said conflict in space was inevitable. The president should retain ``the option to deploy weapons in space to deter threats to and, if necessary, defend against attacks on U.S. interests,'' it concluded.

Currently, TRW Inc., Lockheed Martin Inc. and Boeing Co. are teamed under an Air Force contract to build an experimental space-based laser that could become part of a future layered ballistic missile defense. If deployed, a space leg would supplement ground-based and sea-based systems.

``The mere fact that the United States is developing means to employ force in space may serve as a significant deterrent,'' Anderson told the panels on military procurement and military research and development.

The deputy commander of the Peterson Air Force, Colorado-based U.S. Space Command urged lawmakers to push up ''the space superiority throttle.''

``We have left this throttle at idle for too long,'' Anderson said in written testimony. ``Space is important enough to warrant a significant investment -- it is not just a higher hill.

``This is the medium crucial to our American military operations and one we'll have to fight for in the future,'' he added. In reply to a question from Research and Development panel chairman Duncan Hunter, Republican from California, Anderson rated at ``about 3'' on a 10-point scale the U.S. ability to protect its 140 orbiting military satellites from such threats as jamming.

He said both China and Russia were assumed to have or be working on ways to knock out U.S. satellites in wartime, adding that both had been actively involved in selling military technology overseas in the past.

-------- taiwan

Taiwan Test-Fires Patriot Missiles

By Annie Huang
Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, June 20, 2001; 9:03 a.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010620/aponline090322_000.htm

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Taiwan's army said it successfully test-fired U.S. Patriot missiles on Wednesday, knocking targets out of the sky in a demonstration of the island's best defense against a rocket attack from China.

The official Central News Agency said three missiles were launched, downing two targets - a dummy missile and a dummy aircraft - over the island's southeast coast.

The report, citing unidentified sources, did not make clear what the other missile had done. But analysts familiar with the U.S.-made system's design said it was likely fired first to track the target missile and transmit data back to the base so a second Patriot could hit it.

Officials in Taipei said the tests were conducted with Washington's blessing. U.S. military personnel and contractors were to be at the test site in southeastern Taiwan, according to local media reports. Taiwan's military refused to discuss this.

A military expert, Shih Hsiao-wei, said the army has proven that it can accurately fire the missiles, but that might not be enough to beat back a missile attack by China.

Taiwan still needs to acquire long-range radars and facilities to receive missile information from spy satellites, said Shih, who edits the monthly Defense International.

"As it is now, we are hard pressed on warning time to knock down a missile," Shih said.

The army issued a brief statement saying the Patriot missiles had all hit their targets in "one of the major drills to test our air defense capability," but it did not specify how many missiles were fired or how many targets were hit.

Earlier, cable television showed one missile arching through the sky, trailed by exhaust smoke as Taiwan tested weaponry intended to deter one of China's biggest military threats - the many missiles Beijing has aimed at the island.

The missiles were fired from Chiu-Peng base in southern Pingtung County under the direction of a missile battalion that received congratulations on the "good news" in a phone call from President Chen Shui-bian, the army said.

Eastern cable TV said one of the Patriots, launched from the Pingtung army base, hit a missile fired from a mountain in neighboring Taitung County.

The Defense Ministry has declined to take questions from reporters. But a ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that based on the cable TV footage, which showed the flying missile, "it appeared to be a perfect launch."

Taiwan has purchased 200 Patriot missiles from the United States, an improved version of the weapons that gained notoriety for missing their targets in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The Patriots are defensive missiles intended to intercept incoming targets.

They have been deployed around Taipei, the capital, and Wednesday's tests were the first time the missiles had been fired on Taiwanese soil.

The Patriot tests are occurring at the same time rival China is conducting massive war games, but Taiwan says the timing is coincidental and it is not trying to provoke Beijing.

Washington does not have formal ties with Taiwan but it has repeatedly said it is committed to selling the island weapons needed for its defenses.

Although Taiwan and China have been governed separately for more than half a century, Beijing considers Taiwan to be a breakaway province that must be reunited with the mainland, by force if necessary.

Taiwan has sought to build up its missile defense, arguing that China may have as many as 800 missiles pointed at the island within the next decade.

----

Taiwan Says Patriot Test - Firing a Success

June 20, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-arms-ta.html

TAIPEI (Reuters) - Highlighting a growing military threat from China, Taiwan Wednesday test fired its U.S.-made Patriot missiles for the first time and military officials declared the exercise a success.

All three Patriots launched from a military base in the southern county of Pingtung hit their targets -- a missile and an aircraft, an official taking part in the tests said. Two of the Patriots were used to shoot down the missile.

``We are pleased with the result,'' said the official, who declined to be identified.

Neighboring China is holding war games on a nearby island. Taiwan military officials insist there is no connection between the two exercises. But the military activity underlines deep tensions.

Former Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui is scheduled to leave on a private visit to the United States Sunday, the latest in a string of events to strain U.S.-China ties.

The last time Lee visited the United States, in 1995 when he was president, Beijing menaced the island with war games and missile tests for months, badly shaking confidence.

``MAJOR TEST''

The military, which had declined to comment for security reasons, released television footage and pictures of the tests showing the launch of a missile and an explosion after it hit the target.

It also issued a statement saying President Chen Shui-bian had been informed about the good news.

``The test-firing of Patriot missiles is part of the armed forces' annual routine training programs. It is a major test of our air defense capability,'' it said.

China views Taiwan as a breakaway province and has vowed to attack if the island declares independence or drags its feet indefinitely on unification talks.

Over Beijing's objections, Washington agreed in 1993 to sell Taiwan the Patriot Advanced Capability, or PAC-2, anti-missile system. Taiwan began taking delivery in 1996 and has deployed three batteries of Patriots -- 200 missiles in all -- in the northern part of the island.

PAC-2 is a major upgrade of the Gulf War version of the system and has been fielded by the U.S. army.

Military experts say while Patriots finally give the island the ability to shoot down at least some ballistic missiles, they can only provide low-altitude air defense and are of little use against advanced missiles.

Taiwan leaders have warned of an ever-growing battery of missiles on the Chinese coast where up to 500 of the weapons have been deployed within easy reach of the island's main political, economic and military centers.

Taiwan is also eager to buy a more advanced version of the Patriot -- PAC-3 -- and the Aegis air defense system. Requests for both systems were turned down by Washington this year.

The United States says PAC-2 would be used against warplanes and helicopters, and PAC-3 against ballistic missiles.

Asked to comment on Taiwan's Patriot test-firing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue reiterated Tuesday opposition to foreign countries selling advanced weapons to the island.

Zhang said arms sales to Taiwan were a gross interference in China's internal affairs.

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

Pentagon to scrap two-war readiness

June 20, 2001
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010620-3186790.htm

The Pentagon has decided to dump the two-war readiness requirement that has shaped the armed forces in the post-Soviet 1990s, senior officials said yesterday.

President Bush visited the Pentagon yesterday for an update on the progress of the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) from Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

"They talked about the Quadrennial Defense Review," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, referring to the major force structure and strategy review. "It was a private meeting."

Pentagon officials said Rumsfeld aides are working at a furious pace to finish the QDR´s most important component: the global war-fighting requirement that dictates the size of the Air Force, Army, Navy and Marine Corps. Aides have wrestled with at least six versions of a new requirement. Drafts state that the military should be able to fight one war and manage various smaller missions.

"The two-war requirement is dead," a senior official said. "The real question is one plus what?"

Officials said Mr. Rumsfeld may settle on a new guiding principle by this week or next.

Mandated by Congress, the QDR is due for completion in September. Mr. Bush campaigned on transforming the military to prepare it for 21st-century threats. Five months into his administration, the Pentagon has yet to produce a new strategy or its first budget to reflect the new thinking.

A Pentagon official who has seen several versions of language designed to replace the two-war scenario says the options center on readiness to fight one war while holding an enemy´s advances in another part of the world. The language would be further augmented by stating an ability to carry out smaller contingencies and homeland defense, which would include missile defense and anti-terrorism.

One holdup is that some White House officials are suggesting words that are not typical military jargon, and planners are searching for replacement language.

The readiness requirement ultimately will dictate the size of the force. The 1997 QDR and its two-war capability set force structure at 1.36 million active-duty troops. The study put Army strength at 10 active divisions, the Navy at 12 aircraft carrier battle groups, the Air Force at 12 active fighter wings and the Marine Corps at three expeditionary forces.

A shift from two wars to "one-plus" would not necessarily result in a major reduction in force structure, officials said, because the force still would have to be able to hold the enemy in another region and be ready for other contingencies, such as a Kosovo-style bombing campaign.

The 1997 QDR was written with North Korea and Iraq in mind. Planners want the military able to nearly simultaneously fight an invasion of South Korea and Saddam Hussein´s forces threatening a Persian Gulf oil-producing nation.

A win-hold plan would envision the military, for example, keeping Saddam´s army in a box while defeating North Korea.

Once Mr. Rumsfeld settles on a new requirement, other parts of the QDR start to fall into place and budgeters can start programming dollars for the fiscal 2003 spending plan this fall. That budget will be presented to Congress next winter.

Mr. Rumsfeld has hinted in media interviews that he plans to change the two-war capability.

He told reporters earlier this month, "There are those who might say [the two-war requirement] has become a reason for continuing doing reasonably precisely what you are doing, rather than looking at how the world has changed, and capabilities have changed, and therefore what kind of capabilities we might best have."

With the president talking about leaping a generation in weapons technology, widespread speculation has been that the QDR would result in cancellations of major systems. But study panels appointed by Mr. Rumsfeld endorsed as transformational most big-ticket items, such as the Air Force F-22 stealth fighter and the multi-service Joint Strike Fighter.

----

US general foresees need for access to larger bases in SE Asia if strategy shifts

Wednesday June 20, 2001 12:50 AM
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010619/1/12ebo.html

WASHINGTON, June 19 (AFP) - The United States will need access to larger bases in southeast Asia to project military power across the region if US strategy shifts to the Asia Pacific region, a top air force general said Tuesday.

General Charles Robertson, commander in chief of the US Mobility Command, said high velocity transport planes and bases that can handle them are key to overcoming "the tyranny of distance" in the Asia Pacific region.

"Infrastructure is the thing I worry about the most when you get past just having enough airplanes to move through the system," said Robertson, whose command coordinates the movement of ships and planes that supply US forces worldwide.

Six bases in the region -- the same as in the smaller European theater -- now handle the C-17 and mammoth C-5 transport planes that are used to move equipment and forces into the region at times of crisis.

Those bases are oriented to northeast Asia, where US forces are positioned for a potential conflict on the Korean peninsula. They are Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska, Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii, Anderson Air Force Base in Guam, Yokota Air Base in Japan, Kadena Air Base in Okinawa and Osan Air Base in South Korea.

But the potential for conflict over Taiwan, separatist turmoil in Indonesia, and the nuclear rivalry between India and Pakistan have prompted calls for a southward tilt in the US Asia-Pacific strategy.

"Right now we have a very, very small toehold in Australia, a very small toehold in New Zealand, a very small toehold in Singapore, in Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, and we use Thailand quite a bit," Robertson told defense reporters.

"If our emphasis shifts south significantly and we can't take advantage of some of the old infrastructure that we used in Vietnam era, then the answer to that is, yeah, probably we'll need to at least expand those toeholds," he said.

"We operate out of Kadena, Guam and Hickam into the Indian Ocean through Singapore to Diego (Garcia) over to Qatar and UAE as our Indian Ocean run. But it is a limited throughput, so we will have to look at that strategy change," he said.

During the Vietnam War, the United States relied heavily on bases in the Philippines to support its forces in southeast Asia, but Manila closed the bases in 1991.

----

Liquidation.com to Take Over Military Surplus
D.C. Company's Subsidiary Wins Sales Rights For 7 Years

By Ellen McCarthy
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 20, 2001; Page E05
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A21452-2001Jun19?language=printer

A new subsidiary of Liquidation.com Inc., a D.C.-based Internet seller of surplus assets, won a contract to sell hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of surplus military goods.

Company officials said the contract was a breakthrough for the company and the online asset-sales market it helped launch.

"Not only is this our biggest contract ever, it's the single largest asset-disposition contract in history," Liquidation.com co-founder Bill Angrick said. "These types of initiatives only happen once a generation."

For the next seven years, the subsidiary, Government Liquidation LLC, will be the exclusive dealer of surplus military equipment and supplies purchased for an estimated $23 billion.

That doesn't mean Liquidation.com will sell $23 billion worth of stuff. The value of the goods has depreciated considerably since they were purchased; in recent years the military has sold its surplus assets for an average 1.6 percent of their original cost.

Surplus military electronics, aircraft parts, medical equipment, textiles, clothing, and industrial machinery that have not been recycled or given to state and local governments can be sold to businesses or individuals.

The contract with the Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service is the result of an effort by the Defense Department to privatize some of its surplus distribution.

The service was given permission, under the Defense Reform Act of 1997, to explore privatization to cut government expenses. Its first commercial contract, for about a third of the Defense Department's total surplus, was awarded in 1998 to Levy/Latham Global LLC of Arizona. The DRMS estimates that deal saved the agency between $5 million and $8 million a year.

Levy/Latham Global, also known as SurplusBid, was outbid for the second contract, for the remaining surplus, by Government Liquidation's $3.3 million offer. They were the only companies to submit bids.

As required by the deal, the Government Liquidation subsidiary was created for the sole purpose of executing the seven-year contract. Over the next few months Government Liquidation will take over 45 sites nationwide and in Puerto Rico and Guam that are holding stations for the DRMS. The company also plans to begin hiring a 130-person sales and administration workforce.

Angrick, chief executive officer of Liquidation.com Inc., will serve in the same capacity for the subsidiary.

If the sales continue at the 1.6 percent of initial purchase price, surplus sales will total $368 million for the next seven years. The contract awards the Department of Defense 80 percent of that sale price, earning Government Liquidation about $73.6 million, or about $10.5 million a year.

Angrick said Government Liquidation will be able to increase the efficiency and profitability of the DRMS's current system.

"It's going to be much easier for people to bid on assets that are located throughout the nation and trust that they will be delivered," Angrick said. "The strength of their 60,000 existing customers with our expanded base of buyers will put these assets at a higher premium."

Angrick also said the contract will set a precedent for other government agencies that are considering privatizing surplus sales.

"We see this as our chance to create a demonstrable case study that will become a model for other contracts," Angrick said. "This is certainly going to increase our profits, but the big winners here will be the Department of Defense and U.S. Treasury."

----

Stealths May Be Prone to Radar

New York Times
June 20, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Hunting-Stealths.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- America's stealth bombers may be in danger of having their cover blown by a new type of radar that uses cell phone technology, researchers say.

The Air Force says it's a limited problem and America's unique stealth fleet is in no danger. Yet U.S. intelligence reports label the radar a serious threat, and several scientists agree.

``We're talking about radar technology that can pinpoint almost any disturbance in the atmosphere,'' said Hugh Brownstone, a physicist at the Intergon Research Center in New York who has worked for the cell phone giant Nokia.

``You might not be able to distinguish between a stealth plane and a normal one, but you might not need to. The point is, you can see the stealth plane as a blip.''

The potential risk comes from radar towers used by cell phone companies to draw in signal patterns. The new technology, called passive radar, watches signals from common cell phone transmissions. When a plane passes through, it leaves a hole in the pattern, giving away its location.

Traditional radar -- the kind stealthy B-2 and F-117A bombers can fool with their angles and radar-absorbing paint -- sends out signals and waits for them to bounce off large objects in the sky and return.

Some aviation experts suspect the Serbs used a rough version of passive radar -- plugging computers into their existing air defense system -- to locate an F-117A Nighthawk stealth bomber, shot down in 1999.

There are more than 100,000 cell phone towers and other sites within the United States. Industry analysts estimate there are 210,000 sites in Europe. The rest of the world is unevenly covered, but even the smallest and poorest nations often have several cell phone towers.

The passive radar system has drawbacks. It can't effectively pinpoint whether a plane is indeed a stealth plane or some other aircraft, scientists say. It's also much more difficult to make work.

``The success rate of these systems is just below the success rate of traditional radar,'' said Air Force Capt. Eric Knapp.

A major hurdle is the complex math necessary to translate cell phone signals into easy-to-understand blips that move across a computer screen. Without the computer programming to make sense of the cell phone signals, it would be impossible to fire a missile at a plane.

Still, the passive radar technology is basically sound, said Nick Cook, an aerospace consultant for Jane's Defence Weekly.

``It needs further work, but the theory is there,'' he said. ``Still it would be some time before I could imagine something like this compromising stealth technology completely.''

John Hansman, professor of aeronautics and astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said passive radar is still in its ``infancy, but is something that will lead to new stealth research.''

``This is another trick that will force stealth researchers to push forward,'' Hansman said.

The British defense contractor Roke Manor Research is in the forefront of passive-radar technology.

Peter Lloyd, head of research there, said, ``We would be utilizing technology that we already have available. The mobile telephone base stations would not have to be altered at all. ``

His company's Web site claims existing stealth technology already has been rendered obsolete.

Brownstone believes China, Japan and Russia already have passive radar in various stages of development. He is concerned that those countries might sell the technology to smaller countries that are hostile to the United States.

Keeping stealth planes safe from enemy radar has always been a back-and-forth contest, pitting American ingenuity against developing concepts in radar.

The F-117A, developed in great secrecy in the 1970s, was not disclosed until 1988. It saw its first combat in the 1989 invasion of Panama and was a star of the 1991 Gulf War.

The B-2 bomber, which saw its first combat in NATO airstrikes against Yugoslavia, uses stealth technologies that are more advanced than the F-117A's. An even newer version of stealth is used in the F-22 fighter now in development. No other country has stealth aircraft in active use, although Russia and others have researched the idea.

Six of the $2 billion B-2s, in their first combat use, flew about 50 secret missions out of a total 30,000 NATO bombing runs over Kosovo in 1999. They dropped about one of every 10 bombs in the campaign.

-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

EU Renewable Energy Law Virtually Finalized

June 20, 2001
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/jun2001/2001L-06-20-01.html

BRUSSELS, Belgium, A draft European Union law to promote electricity from renewable sources came close to finalization today as the European Parliament's energy committee endorsed a compromise reached between governments and the assembly's rapporteur Member of the European Parliament Mechtild Rothe.

Member of the European Parliament Mechtild Rothe of Germany (Photo courtesy EU Parliament)

But an argument over whether biodegradable waste burning should be classed as renewable is likely to delay adoption of the law.

Under the deal, individual EU country targets to increase renewable electricity generation will remain non-binding. National renewable support plans will enjoy a seven year transition period once the European Union agrees on a harmonized support scheme.

The European Commission, the EU's executive branch, is to propose harmonizing rules within four years of the directive's entry into force.

The parliament earlier called for mandatory targets and a 10 year transition period to protect successful feed-in subsidy schemes in Germany and France.

In return for dropping these, the rapporteur won a stronger commitment to introduce binding targets if the indicative approach fails. She also won better access to electricity distribution networks, including possible transfer of connection costs from generators to grid operators.

Center for Art and Media Technology building in Karlsruhe, Germany where high efficiency solar modules are being tested in a European pilot project to direct connect to a tram system. The array can produce 90,000 KWh per year. (Photo courtesy BP Solarex)

Rothe negotiated the deal last night with the Swedish presidency representing all 15 European Union governments. The move is unusual, and is aimed at avoiding a lengthy conciliation battle. The compromise must still be approved at a parliamentary plenary session.

The one remaining sticking point is whether the biodegradable fraction of mixed municipal waste should be classed as renewable.

At first reading of the draft law, EU governments agreed it should be, while the parliament took the opposite view, urged on by environmental groups claiming the move would divert subsidies from "real" renewables and discourage waste prevention.

Italy and the Netherlands are strongly opposed to changing the classification, backed by Portugal and the UK.

To force a conciliation over the issue, the parliament would have to reiterate its demand. The energy committee voted to do this today, but only by 25 votes to 22. This signals a very tight plenary vote, since at second reading of the measure an absolute majority is needed to adopt the proposals.

{Published in cooperation with ENDS Environment Daily, Europe's choice for environmental news. Environmental Data Services Ltd, London. Email: envdaily@ends.co.uk}

----

Asia makes big push into clean, alternative fuels

Wednesday, June 20, 2001
By Reuters
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2001/06/06202001/reu_asia_44048.asp

SINGAPORE - In a few years, you could be driving along Australia's Great Ocean Road or the treacherous Karakoram Highway in Pakistan in a vehicle powered by coconut oil.

That is what some scientists in Asia are hoping. From petroleum sludge to coconuts, the region is considering radical clean alternatives for the essential but pollutant-spewing lifeblood of the region's transport industry - gasoline.

"This whole push is being driven by a bid to at least halt our carbon dioxide emissions," said Stephen Lucks, a renewable energy scientist at Australia's Curtin University. Carbon dioxide is one of the many noxious gases released through tailpipe emissions that cause smog and health problems.

"In Southeast Asia alone, carbon dioxide emissions rose 69 percent to 618 million tons from 1990 to 1998," said Guillermo Balce, executive director of the ASEAN Center for Energy.

Why bother about seeking an alternative fuel, especially when the United States, the world's largest energy consumer, recently withdrew from the Kyoto treaty on global warming?

Part of the answer is available in the balance sheets of most Asian countries: crude oil imports. Gasoline is refined from crude oil, which remains Asia's main source of energy.

Since the region does not produce enough oil for its own purposes, it has to import most of it. Last year, oil demand totaled 20.55 million barrels per day out of global oil demand of about 76 million bpd, the International Energy Agency said.

While expensive crude oil imports remain the prime reason for the push, the search for alternatives has recently been kicked into overdrive because toxic emissions from vehicles were found to be the leading cause of air pollution in Asia.

Vehicle emissions pose a greater threat than industrial emissions as they are close to ground level and are constantly swirled in the air by passing traffic, said senior environmental engineer with the World Bank, Jitendra Shah.

"Much needs to be done if you look at the air quality trend in cities such as Manila, Jakarta and Dhaka. It's not getting any better," Shah said.

MANY DEATHS BLAMED ON AIR POLLUTION

The World Health Organization says 4 to 8 percent of all deaths in the Asia-Pacific region are due to air pollution. This prompted the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank to launch a Clean Air Initiative in February with officials from eight Asian countries, seeking to share knowledge and expedite pilot air-quality projects through a series of workshops.

So from Pakistan to China, Asian governments are trying to encourage the use of different types of alternative fuels.

Pakistan and Australia have turned to natural gas, in compressed or liquefied form, because of its relative abundance in those countries.

Resource-poor countries such as Singapore are pursuing fuel-cell technology. A fuel cell is an electrochemical device that combines hydrogen fuel and oxygen from the air to produce electricity, which can power a car.

Other countries such as China, India and Thailand are looking at biofuels. The two most common are ethanol and biodiesel, a diesel-engine fuel that can be made from vegetable oils, animal fat or algae.

Thailand has even explored using coconut oil and palm oil, with King Bhumibol Adulyadej taking an interest in the latter by patenting a palm oil formula last month. The formula, one part crude palm oil and nine parts diesel, can easily power vehicles with no harm to the engine, said the Petroleum Authority of Thailand, which conducts tests for the king.

Australian Lucks has also developed a technology to convert discarded petroleum sludge at the bottom of oil tanks and tankers into gas that can be used as a source of energy.

"Basically, this is stuff that refiners throw on the ground ... hoping it eventually goes away, but by introducing a special bacteria, I can turn it into natural gas," Lucks said.

But not everyone is popping champagne corks at this push toward alternative fuels. It stands to reason that producers of gasoline could either lose a large chunk of their profits or incur extra costs to export their product somewhere else.

Take Pakistan as a case in point. It has about a million vehicles on the road, but only 160,000 to 170,000 are equipped to use compressed natural gas - the alternative fuel of choice in Pakistan.

But this number is growing rapidly.

"Every day, we see about 300 to 400 older vehicles being converted from petrol to compressed gas, while most new cars already come equipped with compressed gas kits," said manager of supplies at Pakistan State Oil Nazir Zaidi.

Gasoline demand, which had been expected to grow 3 to 5 percent year-on-year, has now shrunk to 1995 levels, he said. This has left Pakistan refiners with about 500,000 tons of surplus gasoline this year.

With total annual production running at 1.5-1.6 million tons, a third of all gasoline produced is now surplus to domestic requirements and much of it is being exported.

-------- energy

Southern Power Companies Form Pact

New York Times
June 20, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Southern-Power.html

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) -- Owners of electric transmission systems in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina have signed a memorandum of understanding to develop a regional transmission organization for the Southeast.

Alabama Electric Cooperative, Georgia Transmission Corp., the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia, Santee Cooper of South Carolina, Southern Co., South Mississippi Electric Power Association, city utilities in Dalton, Ga., and in Tallahassee have joined Jacksonville's JEA in signing up to work for the formation of the regional transmission organization.

Bruce Dugan, a spokesman for JEA, said the memorandum is just a document to begin talks about forming such an organization, as is now required by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. No decisions have been made on where this organization will be headquartered or how it will operate.

If the alliance is formed, it would be one of the nation's largest, covering more than 39,000 miles of transmission with a gross investment in excess of $6 billion.

The companies said the process is not being controlled by any individual transmission owners, but the participants will establish rules by which they will operate and make decisions.

-------- environment

NEW ONLINE SOURCE OFFERS ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION

June 20, 2001
ENS
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jun2001/2001L-06-20-09.html

WASHINGTON, DC, Environmental and economic information from different countries, including data on energy output, greenhouse gas emissions, water and food supplies, and forest resources, is now available through a single source.

A free, interactive website developed by the World Resources Institute (WRI), "EarthTrends: The Environmental Information Portal" provides the most comprehensive, current data, maps, articles and country profiles about the environment and sustainable development.

The website, http://earthtrends.wri.org, can also be reached through the redesigned WRI website, http://www.wri.org/wri/.

"EarthTrends is an a highly selective online collection of the latest timely, relevant and accurate information focused on the environmental and social trends issues that shape our world," said Christian Ottke, project manager. "EarthTrends really is a one stop shop. It provides internationally comparable data, available in a variety of formats, which can be used to analyze trends, assess progress, and plan for the future. It also provides direct links to original sources and to other essential websites."

EarthTrends was designed to make key environment and sustainable development information available not only to policy makers but also to the general public. All the data can be accessed through articles and maps about leading trends, a searchable database for with over 400 variables for 210 countries spanning recent decades, data tables, and country profiles.

"The lack of easy access to relevant and authoritative information has been a persistent impediment to good policy making," said Dan Tunstall, director of WRI's Information Program. "We started improving access to key environmental information with the publication of the first World Resources report in 1986 and have been improving our information ever since. EarthTrends takes us into the 21st century."

The data for EarthTrends are provided by a number of international agencies and other sources. They include the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the U.S. Geological Survey, the World Bank, the United Nations Children's Fund, the World Conservation Monitoring Centre of the United Nations Environment Programme, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

EarthTrends is sponsored by the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Environment Programme, the World Bank, the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, the Ford Motor Company and the V. Kann Rasmussen Foundation.

----

Japan Minister Urges Kyoto Protocol

New York Times
June 20, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Japan-Climate-Control.html

TOKYO (AP) -- Japan proposed itself as an arbiter Wednesday between the United States and Europe on the topic of global warming, saying it will urge Washington to return to the Kyoto Protocol but also seek more ``flexibility'' from the EU.

Environment Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi said that as the origin of a quarter of the world's carbon dioxide emissions, the United States must commit itself to reducing greenhouse gases. But she also said that tough anti-U.S. talk by the European Union is counterproductive.

``Japan and the EU are in the same camp,'' she told reporters at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan. ``But Japan is trying to persuade the EU to soften its stance in order to bring the U.S. back.''

President Bush rejected a 1997 international pact aimed at climate control that had been approved by his predecessor, President Clinton. Bush called the Kyoto Protocol ``fatally flawed'' and unfair to U.S. companies.

On Wednesday, Kawaguchi warned that it will be impossible to persuade developing countries to reduce their own emissions if the world's biggest industrial powerhouse won't take the lead.

Disagreeing with the assertion of many European nations, Kawaguchi said the Kyoto Protocol was more like a work-in-progress than a finished treaty. She added that Japan will exert its influence with the United States to persuade it ``to return to the fold.''

``There is a good deal of maneuvering room here,'' she said. ``The Kyoto Protocol is like a house being built ... What we are looking at now is finishing out the details.''

Kawaguchi said Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi will bring up the global warming controversy during his summit with Bush on June 30.

She said she plans to visit Washington to discuss the Kyoto Protocol before a fresh round of talks on climate control in July in Bonn, Germany.

The environment minister said Japan remains committed to reaching its own target of a 6 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2010 as set out by the Kyoto Protocol, despite U.S. objections to the treaty.

Unlike many environmentalists in Europe, however, Kawaguchi said she opposes punishing countries that fail to meet reductions targets. She said she favors advising them on ways to meet those targets in the future.

``Things don't improve simply by saying there will be penalties,'' she said.

-------- health

Virus Shows Promise Against a Brain Cancer

FINDINGS
Wednesday, June 20, 2001; Page A11
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A21420-2001Jun19?language=printer

An innocuous virus commonly found in the human body shows promise for treating the most common form of brain cancer, researchers reported yesterday.

The University of Calgary scientists tested whether the reovirus, which does not cause disease in people, could be used against malignant gliomas. The virus destroyed human glioma cells growing in a test tube and human glioma cells that were implanted into mice, the scientists said. It also killed cells from brain tumors removed from human patients, the researchers reported in today's Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Malignant gliomas are aggressive, invasive and resistant to treatment. Most patients die quickly and long-term survivors are rare.

The reovirus, short for respiratory enteric orphan virus, is commonly found in the human respiratory and gastrointestinal tract, and does not appear to do anything bad in the body.

----

Better Cancer Care Urged
Focus on Cure Hurts Treatment of Symptoms, Study Says

By Susan Okie
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 20, 2001; Page A14
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A20802-2001Jun19?language=printer

Many of the 550,000 Americans who die of cancer each year suffer needlessly from pain, nausea, depression, fatigue and other symptoms because the U.S. medical system has focused so heavily on curing cancer, according to a report released yesterday.

Most cancer patients in the United States do not receive medical care that combines freedom to choose the treatments they want with adequate symptom control when their disease becomes advanced, according to the report by the National Cancer Policy Board, an expert committee assembled by the non-profit Institute of Medicine and National Research Council.

"It's become an issue now because people used to die fast," said Joanne Lynn, director of the RAND Center to Improve Care of the Dying and a contributor to the report. "Now, most of us who get cancer will live for many years, even knowing that we will not overcome the illness."

Nine million Americans, or 3 percent of the population, are living with cancer, said Kathleen Foley of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, a member of the committee and co-editor of the report. "While we work to cure the many types of cancer, nothing would have greater impact on the daily lives of cancer patients and their families than good symptom control and supportive therapy," she said.

Inadequate insurance coverage, insufficient training of doctors and other health care workers, a lack of standards for treating many symptoms, an absence of research and a dearth of public information are major barriers to improving palliative care -- that is, care for people whose disease cannot be cured, the report found.

More than half of all dying cancer patients use hospice services, but health insurance rules often force patients to choose between such services or treatments aimed at prolonging their lives rather than allowing them to receive both. The federal Medicare program covers hospice care only if patients are expected to live less than six months, thereby excluding many others who might benefit from such services.

Many problems that the report identified in cancer care apply equally to the treatment of people with heart failure, Alzheimer's disease and other incurable illnesses, experts said yesterday at a briefing to release the report, entitled "Improving Palliative Care for Cancer."

"I think we need a new research agenda that focuses on alleviation of disease-related distress," said Charles S. Cleeland of M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, another contributor to the report.

Members of some minority groups and people living in inner cities appear to have less access to palliative care for cancer than whites and suburban residents, the report found. African Americans make up 14 percent of the population but only about 7 percent of hospice patients, even though their cancer incidence and mortality rates are higher than for whites.

The report singled out the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the lead agency in the government's war against cancer, for failing to fund research on palliative care, to improve training of doctors in the care of dying patients or to inform the public about symptoms and their treatment.

The NCI spent less than 1 percent of its 1999 budget of $2.9 billion on research and training related to palliative care, the report noted. It urged the NCI and its comprehensive cancer centers -- specialized hospitals around the country -- to take the lead in remedying the situation.

The policies of public and private insurers also have contributed to inadequate palliative care, with insurance coverage for children dying of cancer significantly worse than for adults, the report found. Insurers often pay for chemotherapy but not counseling or pain medications, and for hospital care but not support at home, Lynn said.

Brochures and publications of the NCI, the American Cancer Society (ACS) and other organizations focus on cancer treatments and rarely deal with managing symptoms or caring for dying patients, the report found. It urged the agencies to provide such information and also to make it easier for people to find reliable statistics on survival by stage of cancer.

Although hospitals are required to follow accepted standards on pain treatment as a condition of accreditation, standards need to be developed and tested for other common symptoms, the report said.

NCI Director Richard Klausner "is very enthusiastic about the report," spokesman Mike Miller said. He said Klausner plans to convene a group to determine how to implement its recommendations.

"This is a real major step forward in integrating the kind of care that people in hospice programs have been delivering for the past 20 years," said Carla Alexander, vice president for medical affairs of Hospice and Palliative Care of Metropolitan Washington.

"We all have to learn that sometime we're all going to die," Alexander added. "We have to learn ways to make it more comfortable and peaceful, not just for those who die but for those who are left after."

--------

Medicine Mines Metals to Heal And Cure

New York Times
June 20, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/science/science-bizminerals-m.html?searchpv=reuters

LONDON (Reuters) - The basic building block of life is carbon. Or is it? If a living organism gets a disease, the answer is organic. Isn't it?

The Oxford dictionary says life is the condition that distinguishes active animals and plants from inorganic, or non-carbon, matter. But medical researchers differ.

``Life is not just organic. For a chemist, organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon -- but life is certainly inorganic as well as organic,'' said Dr. Peter Sadler, professor of chemistry at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

``In fact there are about 23 elements other than carbon needed for daily life. Life depends on inorganic elements,'' he said.

And here a growing number of scientists envision a potential treasure chest in the metals neatly lined up in the Periodic Table of Elements.

These metals might help unlock treatments or tests for medical conditions ranging from cancer to arthritis to Alzheimer's disease, heart attacks and microbial or viral infections.

Most drugs on the market make use of different combinations of just a half-dozen or so of the 110 elements in the table.

``Why are there so few drugs on the market that do include metal ions? We have carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and sulphur, but not very many elements of the Periodic Table, said Dr. Peter Preusch, a scientist and program director at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), which has just launched a grants offer to stimulate such research.

``Are we missing opportunities?'' asked Preusch, of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences.

METALS USED IN MEDICINE SINCE ANTIQUITY

Though doctors have used metals in therapy through the ages and some traditional healing systems also employ them, research in the field really took off in the last two decades after a fortuitous discovery and two runaway successes.

``The use of metals in medicine goes back to antiquity, but mercury and arsenic and such were used, most of which were toxic,'' said Dr. Michael Abrams, president and CEO of AnorMED, a Canadian company which researches and licenses metal-based therapeutic products.

``The reason there is a lot more interest in the last 10 to 20 years is that metals can let you do things that conventional organics cannot...They can accomplish medical tasks that can't be accomplished by conventional organics.''

The two dazzling successes that have researchers' attention are a drug and a diagnostic tool.

The metal gadolinium is the contrast agent that makes Magnetic Resonance Imaging, a diagnostic tool that has revolutionized imaging, work. The magnetic property of the metal gives you more information more quickly and has fewer side effects than prior technologies.

Several decades ago, Michigan State University researcher Barnett Rosenberg was testing the effects of an electric field on a strain of bacteria -- when it inexplicably stopped dividing.

After months of study, he traced the phenomenon to a platinum electrode created by the electrolysis, and thus was born an $800 million market and the world's largest-selling anti-cancer drug.

``There are a couple of very successful metal-containing drugs on the market: Cisplatin and Generation 2 carboplatin that have clearly been successful in a disease niche. The question is: Is that a fluke?'' said Preusch.

WHAT CAN METALS DO?

``The National Cancer Institute has studied a large number of compounds for their potential activity against cancer or the HIV virus. They found that the frequency of success among metal-containing compounds was similar to that of organic compounds,'' Preusch added.

Some researchers are looking at those metals that naturally occur in the body and their metabolism -- how they are absorbed and released, where they are found in the cell and what varying functions they fulfill, such as regulating oxygen levels or controlling major biochemical pathways within enzymes.

Others are examining metals not needed for daily life, such as platinum, to see what they might do for us, said Edinburgh's Sadler.

Still others are looking at illnesses, like malaria, which is difficult to treat, to see what metals might offer. Some are researching ways to block iron or zinc's pathway into bacteria.

``There are pathogenic bacteria that cause meningitis. (Bacteria) must get iron. If they don't get iron, they die. They are clever at finding iron and getting it away from us,'' he said.

Still others are looking at radioactive metals for diagnostic equipment.

THE QUALITIES OF METALS

For AnorMED there are a number of interesting quirks to metals that give them potential.

Metals have diverse, three-dimensional structures that provide novel shapes for fitting into biological targets, which are not easily duplicated by simple organic molecules.

This is especially true of the platinum cancer-fighting drugs, which AnorMED has helped develop. It has licensed its ZDO473, a new platinum-based anti-cancer agent designed to overcome platinum drug resistance, to Anglo-Swedish drug group AstraZeneca.

Metal ions also tend to attach themselves to biological molecules, which can be harnessed to scavenge and remove unwanted compounds from the body.

Using this ability, AnorMED has developed drug Foznol, which it has licensed to U.K.-based Shire Pharmaceutical. Foznol is used to help control phosphate levels in end-stage kidney disease patients.

Researchers also note that metal compounds, unlike most common organic molecules, are capable of losing or adding electrons, so-called oxidation and reduction reactions. In diseased environments, these reactions could help inspire new drugs.

But scientists say much more basic research must be done on the metals to see how they behave.

``The more we understand about the nuts and bolts of how it (the interactions of metals with living cells) works, the more opportunities might present themselves,'' Preusch said, adding that interest in the field was growing.

``In response to the NIH program announcement, I have received a reasonable number of inquiries. I expect we will receive over one hundred applications over the next three years. The amount of money we will invest in the area will depend on the number of applications that are received and how well they do in the peer review,'' he said.

Edinburgh's Sadler sees a bright future for the field.

``People are looking for dazzling treatments (but) there is a need for more research. Slowly, slowly this will make a big contribution,'' he said.

-------

Holbrooke Has New Role: Leading Fight Against AIDS

New York Times
June 20, 2001
By CHRISTOPHER S. WREN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/20/world/20NATI.html?searchpv=nytToday

UNITED NATIONS, June 19 - Five months after Richard C. Holbrooke stepped down as United States ambassador to the United Nations, he is returning to the international arena to try to persuade companies to join the fight against AIDS.

Mr. Holbrooke, currently vice chairman of Perseus L.L.C., is now also serving as the unpaid president and chief executive officer of the Global Business Council on H.I.V. and AIDS, a group formed in London in October 1997. "Of all the major problems we face today - wars, famines, racial conflict, terrorism, nuclear weapons - I believe the greatest problem comes from AIDS," he said in an interview today. "This is not simply the most serious health crisis in 700 years, it's also a direct threat to social and political and economic stability."

Members of the Global Business Council on H.I.V. and AIDS (www.gbcaids.com) already include Coca-Cola, AOL Time Warner, AIG, Unilever and Viacom, he said.

As chairman of the Security Council in January 2000, Mr. Holbrooke organized its first session on a health issue, defining AIDS as a security threat as well as an illness. He subsequently visited 10 African countries affected by the continent's AIDS pandemic. And on his final day at the United Nations, last Jan. 19, he had the Security Council address the issue of AIDS being spread by United Nations peacekeepers.

Now Mr. Holbrooke said he wanted to press businesses to educate their employees on preventing AIDS, to remove the stigma attached to workers who have become H.I.V. positive, and to undertake testing and treatment in the workplace.

AIDS is the subject of a special conference at the United Nations next week, when participants discuss targets and timetables for trying to contain the condition and reducing its devastating impact.

Secretary General Kofi Annan has proposed that $7 billion to $10 billion be raised to finance the effort to stop AIDS. Today, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation pledged to contribute $100 million. "We believe that there is no higher priority than stopping transmission of this deadly disease," Mr. Gates, the Microsoft founder, said in a statement announcing the donation.

Manoel de Almeida e Silva, a spokesman for Mr. Annan, said the contribution of the Gates was the largest private contribution so far. "It will form a cornerstone of the emerging global effort to reverse the H.I.V./AIDS pandemic," he said.

-------- human rights

Protests Grow Over Australia's Detention Camps

June 20, 2001
By REUTERS Filed at 4:16 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-rights-.html

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Protesters in two Australian cities demanded the release of asylum seekers from remote outback camps on Wednesday as criticism of the government's policy of mandatory detention of illegal immigrants grew.

The protests marked the U.N. World Refugee Day and came after a diverse group of politicians said they were appalled by conditions in the detention centers.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees also stepped up its criticism of the conservative Australian government's policy of sending asylum seekers who arrive illegally to the spartan detention centers in remote, harsh parts of the country.

UNHCR spokeswoman Ellen Hansen said Australia was one of only a handful of countries that locks up illegal immigrants, including children, while their refugee claims are assessed in a process that can take months or, in some cases, years.

``We don't think it is appropriate to use detention as a deterrent or as a punitive measure,'' Hansen told Reuters.

``We acknowledge that there may be some need for the purposes of security checks or verifying identities but if that is the case we ask that it be done for as short a time as possible. We do think that children should not be detained,'' she said.

Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock was widely criticized in newspaper editorials and letters on Wednesday.

``While (Ruddock) steadfastly refuses to admit any failing with his refugee gulags across the country, an increasing number of respectable critics are crying out in protest,'' columnist Mark Day said in the tabloid Daily Telegraph newspaper.

The Australian newspaper accused Ruddock in an editorial of sacrificing an Australian tradition of tolerance for cheap, political point-scoring.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard stood behind Ruddock after Monday's release of a joint parliamentary committee report into the six largest camps which recommended putting a 14-week limit on the length of stays and releasing low-risk inmates.

About 100 protesters gathered outside the Department of Immigration offices in Sydney, Australia's biggest city, demanding the immediate release of asylum seekers.

The protesters carried placards which read ``Stop Racism Against All Immigrants'' and ``Free the Refugees.'' A similar number of protesters gathered outside immigration offices in Melbourne.

The camps, which have been criticized by other U.N. bodies and human rights groups, came under scrutiny after riots and escapes. The camps hold about 2,500 asylum seekers.

Howard and Ruddock argue that asylum seekers must come through the proper channels instead of ``jumping the queue.''

The mandatory detention policy has had bipartisan support since the camps were set up in 1994 to stem a growing number of mostly Middle Eastern illegal immigrants.

-------- police

U.S. Attorney in Calif. Favored for Top FBI Job

By Dan Eggen and Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, June 20, 2001; Page A25
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A20872-2001Jun19?language=printer

President Bush is leaning toward naming San Francisco U.S. Attorney Robert S. Mueller III as the next director of the FBI, but officials have some reservations about whether Mueller has the "star power" needed to turn around the troubled agency, administration sources said yesterday.

A White House official said Bush's advisers like Mueller and that he will be selected "unless someone else falls out of the sky." Still, administration officials are keeping open the possibility that another candidate could be considered, noting that they do not expect to announce a decision this week.

"President Bush thinks very highly of Mr. Mueller," a senior White House official said. "He has not yet made up his mind."

If chosen, Mueller would replace departing FBI Director Louis J. Freeh, who announced his resignation in May after eight years in the often tumultuous job. Freeh is expected to leave office later this week, officials said.

Freeh will be leaving behind an agency that has dramatically expanded its scope and ambition, opening offices around the world and taking a lead role in the USS Cole case and other terrorism investigations.

At the same time, the bureau has come under withering criticism in Congress after a protracted series of blunders, including the pursuit of a wrong suspect in the Olympics bombing case and the highly criticized investigation of former Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee.

Just this year, authorities arrested former FBI agent Robert P. Hanssen and charged him with spying for Moscow undetected for 15 years. Moreover, Attorney General John D. Ashcroft delayed the execution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy J. McVeigh -- finally carried out last week -- after the bureau admitted failing to turn over thousands of pages of documents in the case.

The bureau's troubles will come under scrutiny on Capitol Hill beginning today, when the Senate Judiciary Committee opens hearings on FBI reforms. Democrats, now in control of the Senate, have pledged more FBI oversight.

Mueller is known as a no-nonsense former Marine with expertise in criminal investigations, a tough management style and an ability to get along with both political parties. Mueller, a conservative Republican, was recommended for his current post by liberal Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer (Calif.), and he has since earned accolades for turning around the troubled U.S. attorney's office in San Francisco.

He grew to prominence heading the Justice Department's criminal division under Attorney General Richard L. Thornburgh in the previous Bush administration. He later led the homicide division in the U.S. attorney's office in the District.

Mueller was recommended to the White House by Ashcroft, who interviewed him and two other candidates last month. Mueller worked with Ashcroft this year while serving as acting deputy attorney general.

Some White House officials, however, had favored George J. Terwilliger III, a well-respected former deputy attorney general who also served in the previous Bush administration. But he was taken out of the running because of Democratic objections on Capitol Hill, several sources said, over his prominent role in the Florida vote recount effort on behalf of Bush.

A spokeswoman said Mueller was unavailable for comment. Terwilliger did not return a telephone call.

Bush administration officials played down the significance of the internal concerns about Mueller, saying the president only wants to be sure that the right person is chosen for the 10-year appointment.

"There's nothing wrong with being cautious," one Justice Department source said. "Other than judges, which are lifetime appointments, there aren't many jobs out there with the same kind of longevity and stature."

-------- prisons

The US jails 25% of all prisoners in the world with only 5% of the population ... 70%, from racial minorities.

Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles -
Wednesday June 20, 2001,
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,509696,00.html

Just four cookies and you're out - for 25 years

His offence was the theft of four cookies from a restaurant. His punishment was jail for 25 years to life.

Now an appeal court in California has upheld the sentence for a homeless man who had fallen foul of the state's "three strikes" law, under which anyone committing three crimes is liable to spend between 25 years and life in jail.

Kevin Weber has served more than five years for the theft in 1995 of the four cookies, but a Santa Ana appeal court has decided he is a career criminal and the sentence should stand. He may not be released until 2021.

The case is the most extreme example of California's three strikes law since a man was jailed for 25 years in 1994 for grabbing a slice of pizza from some children. His sentence was reduced on appeal.

Weber had broken into a restaurant in Santa Ana through an air vent. The appeal court argued that had he not been caught when a burglar alarm was activated he would probably have stolen more items. "A safe-cracker who cracks an empty safe is nonetheless a safe-cracker," said Justice David Sills in a unanimous judgment.

"It shocks one's conscience to think that a man could spend the rest of his life in prison for stealing four cookies," said public defender Carl Holmes, whose office defended the homeless alcoholic. "For some unapparent reason the system still has no sense of compassion."

The case may be appealed to the supreme court on the grounds that a life sentence for the non-violent theft of four cookies is a cruel and unusual punishment. A plea for clemency may also be made to Governor Gray Davis.

Weber's previous offences include burglary, assault with a firearm and receiving stolen goods. He qualified for the sentence because he had committed three felonies which made him subject to the so-called Three Strikes and You're Out law, approved by California voters in 1994.

Critics of the law say there is no indication that it has reduced crime. Its supporters say it takes hardened criminals off the streets. The US jails 25% of all prisoners in the world although it accounts for only 5% of the world's population. There are 2m people in US jails, 400,000 of them for drug offences and 70% of them from racial minorities.

-------- spying

Ex-KGB General Says Army Retiree Was a Top Source

Associated Press
Wednesday, June 20, 2001; Page A28
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A21459-2001Jun19?language=printer

TAMPA, June 19 -- A former KGB general testified at the espionage trial of a Florida retiree today that he met with the man in the mid-1970s and put him at the top of a list of valued Soviet sources.

Oleg Kalugin, who was chief of counterintelligence for the former Soviet spy agency, said he spent hours with George Trofimoff at an Austrian resort town discussing Trofimoff's work as a Soviet spy during the Cold War.

Kalugin said the KGB considered Trofimoff a valued agent but wanted him to obtain even more important documents than he had been supplying.

From 1969 to 1994, Trofimoff was a civilian chief of a U.S. Army installation in Nuremberg, Germany, where refugees and defectors from the Soviet bloc were interrogated.

"I cautioned him he should not go overboard in his zeal to obtain the documents and compromise his security clearance," Kalugin said. Kalugin told the jury he called the meeting because he wanted "to look him in the eyes" and judge the agent for himself. "I had no reason to doubt his honesty and integrity as a Soviet agent," Kalugin said.

Trofimoff, 74, could be sentenced to life in prison if convicted of espionage.

He has denied the allegations.

----

Inspector general criticizes CIA's mismanagment

June 20, 2001
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010620-7716973.htm

The CIA has failed to adequately manage its money and work force and must make improvements or face a diminished role in government, according to the agency´s outgoing inspector general.

"Unless these difficult issues are tackled, I worry that the agency could see its usefulness diminish over time," wrote L. Britt Snider, who left recently as the IG, in a Jan. 19 memorandum. A copy was obtained by The Washington Times.

Praising the agency as being "in good shape" overall, Mr. Snider offered unusually blunt criticism of CIA management problems in an indirect slap at CIA Director George Tenet and his top deputies.

The CIA has come under criticism in recent years for underestimating long-range missile threats, missing India´s underground nuclear test and providing incorrect bombing coordinates that led U.S. planes to accidentally attack the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in 1999.

Congress has also criticized the CIA for what it views as inaccurate analysis of China security issues. A 1999 congressional report said the agency´s China analysts were guilty of "group think" on China.

Mr. Snider said his office recently investigated a CIA covert action program that "exceeded its mandate." He provided no details.

The CIA inspector general, who is relatively independent within the agency, warned in the end-of-tour memorandum that the agency is running out of money and risks becoming irrelevant because of the explosion of publicly-available information.

"Putting the situation in simple terms, the agency, whose mission is to collect and analyze information, finds itself in the middle of an information revolution that churns on relentlessly in the private sector," he said.

The CIA is no longer "the only game in town" as it was during the Cold War in reporting on the Soviet Union and other closed nations.

"Unless the agency can continue to add value to what customers are increasingly able to do for themselves, the agency´s output is going to diminish," he said.

If the CIA fails to produce useful intelligence reports that are unique and based on clandestine sources, "our ability to influence the decision-making process is apt to erode over time," Mr. Snider said.

To maintain its edge, the CIA must harness technology currently in use in the private sector, Mr. Snider said, noting the recent creation of the CIA technology center known as In-Q-Tel. He described the semiprivate office as having an "uncertain" probability of success.

Mr. Snider said because "we thrive on secrecy," it has been difficult to exploit advanced information technology, which benefits from "transparency."

Budget shortfalls also will constrain the CIA. "Given the current budget levels envisioned for the near term ... I am not confident that the agency will have the wherewithal to carry on at its current level of activity, much less keep itself at the forefront of technological change," he said.

The problem with asking the White House and Congress for more money is that the agency has failed to show "it has done all it can on its own to manage and conserve its resources," Mr. Snider said. "And at this juncture I think it is a long way from being able to do so."

The CIA´s annual budget is classified. Spending for all U.S. intelligence agencies is said to be between $26 billion and $30 billion annually.

A lack of centralized management and control over resources is the main obstacle to better money management, Mr. Snider said. Despite setting up a "corporate structure" with business-style chief officers, CIA directorates remain largely autonomous in controlling funds, he said.

"It is often impossible to know where money is and how it is actually being spent," Mr. Snider said.

Mr. Snider said reducing personnel costs would help, but he noted that CIA employment practice "defies any effort to weed out poor performers," even with CIA´s flexible firing power.

CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield said the IG noted that the agency is in good shape and that its morale is "higher" than in the past.

--------

Cuba Calls U.S. Spy Convicts Heroes

New York Times
June 20, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Cuban-Espionage.html

HAVANA (AP) -- In its first reaction to the conviction of five Cubans for spying, Fidel Castro's government on Wednesday called the men heroes who risked their lives to protect their nation from terrorism.

A Miami jury on June 8 found the five men guilty of operating as foreign agents without notifying the U.S. government and of conspiracy. Three face possible life sentences and two up to 10 years in prison.

Cuba's Communist Party daily Granma, in a front-page editorial under the headline ``heroic conduct in the entrails of the monster,'' praised the men as heroes.

The five ``risked their lives daily to discover and inform on the terrorist plans hatched against our people by the Cuban-American Mafiosi,'' read the official English translation of the Granma story, posted on the newspaper's Web site.

The editorial said that later Wednesday the ``real story'' of the Cubans' work in the United States would be told, presumably on the government's regular weeknight round-table television program.

Also published in Granma was a letter to the American people from the five Cubans, who said their country ``has every right to defend itself from its enemies who keep using the U.S. territory to plan, organize and finance terrorist actions.''

``We are just Cuban patriots and it was never our intent to cause any harm to either the values or the integrity of the American people,'' said the front-page letter that carried their signatures.

Three of the five were convicted of espionage conspiracy for efforts to penetrate U.S. military bases even though they received no U.S. secrets.

One, Gerardo Hernandez, was also found guilty of contributing to the death of four American fliers whose planes were shot down Feb. 24, 1996, by Cuban MiGs off the island's coast.

He faces up to life in prison. Ramon Labanino and Antonio Guerrero, who were assigned to study U.S. military bases, also face life sentences on the espionage conspiracy charge.

Fernando Gonzalez and Rene Gonzalez, who are not related, face up to 10 years in prison on charges of failing to register as foreign agents and conspiracy.

All are to be sentenced between Sept. 24 and Oct. 2.

The charges, said Granma, ``were never proved'' and now the five ``could be sentenced to remain for the rest of their lives in hostile, ruthless and subhuman jails in the United States of America.''

The defense argued that Gerardo Hernandez was prosecuted as a scapegoat for Cuba's government, which had warned U.S. authorities that intruders risked being shot down after nearly two years of airspace violations.

Previous flights by Jose Basulto, founder of the exile fliers group Brothers to the Rescue, had included a low-level pass over Havana and a mission to drop 500,000 political leaflets. His plane crossed into Cuban airspace on the day of the attack. He was the lone survivor.

--------

Does Europe Covet Own Echelon?

By Steve Kettmann,
Wired News, 12:29 p.m.
June 20, 2001 PDT
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,44689,00.html

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- Maurizio Turco, an Italian member of the European Parliament, shook up the last scheduled meeting of the temporary committee investigating the Echelon interception system in more ways than one Wednesday afternoon.

Turco, who describes himself as a "radical," charged that the committee's year-long investigation may have raised international awareness about the satellite-based surveillance system, but it was in effect nothing more than a smokescreen.

"The fact is, the Europeans set the whole thing up to distract attention while they set up their own system," Turco alleged.

Committee chairman Carlos Coelho dismissed Turco's accusation as an attempt to grab the spotlight for himself, and there was no question that Turco has his own agenda.

Minutes after the meeting started, Turco moved for an adjournment on the grounds that parliamentary procedure had been violated by the failure to translate and circulate all the minutes from previous Echelon committee meetings.

What at first seemed a mere attention-grabbing ploy set off a lengthy discussion, and in the end the committee postponed its final vote on its resolution. It also delays consideration of the final version of a 113-page report on Echelon, prepared by Rapporteur Gerhard Schmid, a German Parliament member.

Now, a vote on whether to submit a formal protest to the United States concerning Echelon, originally planned for Thursday, has been pushed back to July 3.

But whether or not Turco -- president of a block called the Radical MEPs of the Lista Bonino -- was grandstanding, his charge that Europe is establishing its own Echelon-type system was not dismissed lightly.

The reasoning is simple enough: If the United States and its partners are monitoring telephone calls, faxes and e-mail through Echelon, can anyone be surprised if other governments covet similar capabilities?

Ilka Schroeder, a German Green Party member who spoke at the meeting, said that while she often disagrees with Turco, she thinks he might have a point about European efforts to establish their own version of Echelon.

She referred to recent talks among European ministers concerning the expansion of a program called ENFOPOL to include such sensitive areas as credit-card information and IP ports.

"This could be much worse than Echelon," Schroeder said. "If this is a report (from the Echelon committee) that pretends to protect the fundamental right to privacy in the European Union, then it must talk about ENFOPOL, because that could be a worse threat to privacy than Echelon. "Even as a member of Parliament, it is hard to get information about what they have decided. They aim to have complete surveillance of anyone in the European Union in real time."

Her position is that all secret services are fundamentally untrustworthy and ought to be disbanded. She objects to the Echelon committee's emphasis on trying to bring the satellite-based surveillance activities of the United States -- in league with Great Britain, New Zealand, Australia and Canada -- under some kind of legal oversight, perhaps even through the World Trade Organization.

"This is not a matter of law," she said. "Secret services have broken laws so many times, you cannot just make a law. Any democratic control makes secret services more legitimate."

As for whatever efforts are underway to give Europe an Echelon-type system, Turco said he was serious about the charges he made in the meeting.

"I think that certainly in Europe, there is the political will to establish a snooping system which has the same technical aspects as Echelon, a kind of European Echelon," he said. "Surely in Germany, for example, there is already the technology that makes it possible."

Coelho, the Portugese Christian Democrat who oversees the committee, looked weary when the subject of Turco came up later.

"I can't understand why he says what he says, and I can't understand why he tables the amendments (to the resolution) that he does," Coelho said. "It seems to me he is trying to make a good headline in the Italian press. If I say something strong like that, I can make headlines, too. But I don't want to do that."

But as Schroeder pointed out, there were other signs during the committee meeting of strange currents at work.

For example, one of the 160 amendments up for discussion Tuesday -- Amendment 151 -- called on the European Commission and the member states "to invest in new technologies in the field of decryption and encryption techniques."

And if the point was lost on anyone, Erika Mann of Germany, who offered the amendment, reiterated the point in the meeting.

"If we are to have an independent security policy, and we've said that we want that in the European Union, then we should make the necessary investment in decryption," she said. "It's just as important as encryption."

Decryption? Not just encryption? Sounds like more fodder to get the conspiracy theorists running wild again.

-------- terrorism

Russia Investigates Threat to Bush

Wednesday June 20 9:57 PM ET
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010620/ts/russia_summit_terrorism_1.html

MOSCOW (AP) - Russian security officials are investigating apparent threats by terrorist suspect Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) against President Bush (news - web sites) at a July summit in Genoa, Italy, a news report said.

``All the special services concerned are watchful in view of the threats which we regard as quite serious. But I hope we will resolve all matters through joint efforts,'' Yevgeny Murov, head of Russia's Federal Bodyguard Service, was quoted as saying Tuesday by the ITAR-Tass news agency.

Murov did not elaborate on the alleged threats by bin Laden, the elusive Saudi exile who has declared all U.S. citizens targets of his followers. The service could not be reached for comment Wednesday night.

In Washington, Mark Holland, a spokesman for the U.S. Secret Service, said the agency is aware of the news reports and ``will take all of the same precautions it always takes when the president travels abroad.''

Murov said Russian agents are in Genoa coordinating with counterparts from the other nations taking part in the July 20-22 G-8 summit to investigate terrorist threats.

Italy's new interior minister on Tuesday promised tight security event, which will include leaders from Italy, Germany, France, Britain, Canada, Japan, the United States and Russia.

----

Bill targets environmental terrorists

June 20, 2001
By Audrey Hudson
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010620-25190590.htm

Terrorism by radical environmentalists is costing taxpayers millions of dollars, says a congressman who is pushing for mandatory prison sentences -- and even the death penalty -- for such crimes.

"Criminal action in the name of environmentalism is unacceptable," said Rep. George Nethercutt, Washington Republican and sponsor of the sentencing bill.

Members of the radical Earth Liberation Front (ELF) simultaneously burned the office of an Oregon commercial tree farm and its fleet of 13 trucks, and the University of Washington´s Center for Urban Horticulture in Mr. Nethercutt´s home state.

"You cannot control what is wild," the group said in its statement claiming credit for the May 21 incident.

The university fire caused $3 million in damage, and ELF has caused more than $40 million in damage since 1997 "to entities who profit from the destruction of life," the group´s Web site states.

On Monday, ELF claimed responsibility for last week´s sabotaging of the University of Idaho biotechnology building -- the second such attack on the new facility by the organization, which opposes genetic engineering.

"Ecoterrorists are becoming more aggressive and wasting taxpayer money," Mr. Nethercutt said. "The Washington fire and others at research facilities are destroying not only the progress of researchers, but taxpayer dollars."

Should lives be lost in future acts of destruction, Mr. Nethercutt says, the guilty parties also should pay with their lives.

"When someone dies, you have a terrorist act similar to Oklahoma City. This is serious," Mr. Nethercutt said.

Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, Utah Republican, failed to attach similar legislation to a justice bill during the last congressional session. The ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee has not introduced a bill this session, but Hatch aides say he is watching how Mr. Nethercutt´s legislation proceeds in the House.

A spokesman for Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Wisconsin Republican and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said Mr. Sensenbrenner has not reviewed the bill, but that the issue merits concern.

"He takes any act of terrorism by extremists, including so-called ecoterrorists, very seriously," said spokesman Jeff Lungren.

Supporters of the measure say a May 16 National Public Radio commentary by Mary Sojourner is indicative of the lax attitude toward crimes by environmental radicals, and that Mr. Nethercutt´s bill sends a message to those attracted to the underground movement that their actions will have consequences.

Miss Sojourner praised ecoterrorists for burning down houses in a new Arizona development and said she wanted to "send money for matches" and that "vengeance is a moral response."

"It´s tragic that Nethercutt´s efforts are necessary, especially when other publicly funded entities are cheerleading terrorism," said Rob Gordon, executive director of the National Wilderness Institute.

"I don´t generally like the idea of hate crimes, but if I did, this would be at the top of the list," Mr. Gordon said.

"They try to romanticize this movement, these public entities that glorify the revolutionary nature of these people, when, in fact, I think they have a screw loose," Mr. Nethercutt said.

----

Bin Laden video crows over Cole bombing

June 20, 2001
By Diana Elias
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010620-31495250.htm

KUWAIT -- Islamic militant Osama bin Laden´s Afghanistan-based group boasts in a recruitment videotape that its followers bombed the USS Cole in Yemen´s Aden harbor last year.

The video, circulating among Muslim militants and viewed here yesterday, would represent the clearest link yet between Osama Bin Laden and the Oct. 12 attack that killed 17 Americans sailors and wounded 39. But bin Laden himself does not specifically make that claim on the tape and has not accepted responsibility in the past.

Yemeni officials have said they have no evidence personally linking bin Laden, an exiled Saudi millionaire, to the bombing of the U.S. Navy destroyer. But the U.S. government considers him a prime suspect and has sought evidence to tie him to the suicide bombers who detonated an explosives-packed boat alongside the Cole.

"We thank God for granting us victory the day we destroyed Cole in the sea," says a rallying song that runs with footage of bin Laden´s masked men training in al-Farouq desert camp in Afghanistan.

The Associated Press viewed the tape at the offices of Al-Rai Al-Amm, a Kuwaiti daily newspaper that published a story about the video yesterday. The newspaper would not say how or where it acquired the video.

The video begins with a line saying it is presented by "Al-Sahab Productions." There is no indication of where Al-Sahab -- which means "the clouds" in Arabic -- is located.

The video does not say that it was made or financed on bin Laden´s orders. But it contains lengthy footage of bin Laden that could not have been shot without the reclusive leader´s knowledge.

At the start of the 100-minute tape, bin Laden, wearing a traditional Yemeni dagger on a belt around his waist, recites a poem that includes these lines:

"And in Aden, they charged and destroyed a destroyer that fearsome people fear, one that evokes horror when it docks and when it sails."

Although the poem does not name the Cole, it is followed by the image of a fiery explosion. Superimposed on the picture in red script are the words, in Arabic, "the destruction of the American Destroyer Cole." Footage of the bombed vessel follows.

The tape describes its purpose as "diagnosing" the illnesses of Muslims today and "prescribing the medicine." It shows footage of injured and dead Muslims in the Palestinian territories, Chechnya, Iraq, Lebanon, Indonesia and Kashmir, as well as American troops in Saudi Arabia during and after the 1991 Gulf war that ended the seven-month Iraqi occupation of Kuwait.

The bearded bin Laden, who appears repeatedly preaching from the pulpit of a mosque and talking to his men in the field, says Muslims have to leave countries that are ruled by "allies of Jews and Christians," and come to his camp to be "prepared" for holy war.

In an address to Palestinians at the end of the tape, bin Laden calls for "blood, blood and destruction, destruction."

"We give you the good news that the forces of Islam are coming and the forces of Yemen will continue in the name of God," he says.

On the tape, bin Laden´s followers are shown traveling through the rugged desert terrain holding black flags and copies of Islam´s holy book, the Koran. They are shown jumping hurdles, handling explosives and target-shooting at a large screen with images of former President Clinton and the late King Hussein of Jordan.

The tape ends as it starts, with a verse from the Koran -- and with a request for whoever watches it to distribute it.

-------

Bin Laden Rides Again: Myth vs. Reality
A 'plot' to assassinate President Bush and a second to attack the U.S. military in the Gulf -all in the same week.

TIME.com
BY TONY KARON
Wednesday, Jun. 20, 2001
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,131866,00.html

That It Boy of international terror, Osama Bin Laden, is back in the news. Headlines from just the past week: "Russians Reveal Bin Laden Plot to Kill Bush at G8 Meeting." "Bin Laden Video Claims Responsibility for Cole Bombing." "Yemen Foils Bin Laden Plot to Kill U.S. Investigators." "Bin Laden Group Planned to Blow Up U.S. Embassy in India..." And finally, at week's end, U.S. forces all over the Gulf confined to barracks and ships put to sea because of a "non-specific but credible threat" from Bin Laden's group. Vile acts and wretched conspiracies reported from all over the world, all carrying the imprimatur of the Saudi terror tycoon skulking in the hills of Afghanistan, his name now the globally recognizable shorthand for Islamist terror in the same way that "Xerox" has become for "photocopy."

In the language of advertising, Bin Laden has become a brand - a geopolitical Keyser Soze, an omnipresent menace whose very name invokes perils far beyond his capability. To be sure, his threat is very real. Bin Laden is a financier of considerable means who maintains a network of loyalists committed to a war of terror against the U.S. And he has put his money, connections and notoriety to work in attracting a far wider web of pre-existing Islamist groups to his jihad against Washington.

If Bin Laden didn't exist, we'd have to invent him

Still, the media's picture of Bin Laden sitting in a high-tech Batcave in the mountains around Kandahar ordering up global mayhem at the click of a mouse is more than a little ludicrous. Yes, the various networks of Islamist terror have made full use of the possibilities presented by technology and globalization. But few serious intelligence professionals believe Bin Laden is the puppet-master atop a pyramid structure of terror cells. It's really not that simple, but personalizing the threat - while it distorts both the nature of the problem and the remedy - is a time-honored tradition. Before Bin Laden, the face of the global terror threat against Americans belonged to the Palestinian radical Abu Nidal. Or was it Colonel Ghaddafi? Ayatolla Khomeini, perhaps? And does anyone even remember the chubby jowls of Carlos the Jackal, whose image drawn from an old passport picture was once the icon of global terror?

Personalizing makes it seem more manageable. Bin Laden may be out of reach right now, safe in the care of Afghanistan's Taliban rulers. But by making him the root of the problem, we hold out the possibility that his ultimate removal from the scene will make the world safe from Islamist terror. A comforting thought, but a delusion nonetheless.

The dangers are real. The Cole bombing, and this week's indictments handed down in the Khobar Towers attack, are brutal reminders of the vulnerability of U.S. personnel stationed in the Arab world to attack by extremists. Last Saturday, Indian police arrested a group of men allegedly planning to blow up the U.S. embassy in New Delhi and quickly turned up evidence linking the plot to Bin Laden. Two days later, an unrelated plan, involving suicide bombers killing U.S. agents investigating the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, was foiled in Yemen; their trail, too, leads back to Bin Laden. He was in the news again the following day after Western reporters were shown a Bin Laden promotional video in which he appeared to claim responsibility for the bombing of the Cole in a macabre poem.

Then there is the sublime: For sheer diabolical genius (of the Hollywood variety), nothing came close to the reports that European security services are preparing to counter a Bin Laden attempt to assassinate President Bush at next month's G8 summit in Genoa, Italy. According to German intelligence sources, the plot involved Bin Laden paying German neo-Nazis to fly remote controlled-model aircraft packed with Semtex into the conference hall and blow the leaders of the industrialized world to smithereens. (Paging Jerry Bruckheimer...) The Russians, who believe a Bin Laden attack in Genoa is more likely to be carried out by their old enemy, the Chechens, have sent an advance team of anti terrorism experts (armed, we hope, with small-scale anti-aircraft weapons).

But Bin Laden's role has always been that of facilitator. That was his function in the 'Islamist International' formed, with the active encouragement of the CIA and Egyptian and Saudi intelligence, to recruit volunteers to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. His considerable wealth (and ability to raise funds from others) and his organizational expertise played a key role in helping the "Arab Afghans," as the volunteers became known, play a creditable role in the war against the Soviets. And once that war was won, he continued to play the same role, keeping its veterans together and maintaining an infrastructure to arm, train and fund Islamist warriors for deployment in Muslim armies in places as diverse as Bosnia, Chechnya, Western China and the Philippines.

He's not ducking blame, he's demanding it

Having come under the influence of radical Egyptian Islamists in Afghanistan, Bin Laden found himself in conflict with the pro-Western regime in his native Saudi Arabia. The Gulf War proved to be his breaking point with the Saudi royal family. Driven by a desire to expel the U.S. from the Gulf region and overthrow a royal family he denounced as corrupt apostates, he turned his fire increasingly against America. The World Trade Center bombers may have been motivated by similar concerns - and they may have been inspired by some of the same militant teachings of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman - but the two don't appear to have been directly linked.

Bin Laden subsequently claimed his men were behind the 1993 debacle in Mogadishu, where 17 U.S. servicemen were killed in a botched raid on a local warlord. Whether or not there's any basis to the claim, Bin Laden wants to be held responsible for that and any other attack for which the media is prepared to blame him. The reason he has spent the past decade offering assistance to a wide range of pre-existing Islamist groups is precisely because he wants to paint himself as the personification of the considerable anti-American sentiment inflaming much of the Arab world, a latter-day Salah el Din driving out the imagined Crusaders. The Western need to personalize the terrorist menace plays into his hands. Indeed, most experts agreed that President Clinton's 1998 cruise missile strikes on Bin Laden were probably the single most important PR boost in the Saudi's career. And the fact that his name is cited by way of explanation for the fact that the world's most powerful military has moved into defensive positions all over the Gulf certainly doesn't do his carefully cultivated image any harm.

Even when groups involved in malfeasance around the world have had dealings with Bin Laden or those close to him, intelligence experts don't believe that the Saudi financier is necessarily pulling the strings when they act. What Bin Laden may in fact personify is the coming together of diverse Islamist groups during the Afghan war, and their identification of the U.S. as their primary enemy during the decade that followed. So lop off the head, and the body continues to function, because it remains a diverse and diffuse set of groups and cells with their own internal structures, driven by a common sense of implacable grievance. That menace will remain, even if Bin Laden is removed. We may simply have to find a new name and face for it.

----

Russia Investigates Threat to Bush

New York Times
June 20, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Russia-Summit-Terrorism.html

MOSCOW (AP) -- Russian security officials are investigating apparent threats by terrorist suspect Osama bin Laden against President Bush at a July summit in Genoa, Italy, a news report said.

``All the special services concerned are watchful in view of the threats which we regard as quite serious. But I hope we will resolve all matters through joint efforts,'' Yevgeny Murov, head of Russia's Federal Bodyguard Service, was quoted as saying Tuesday by the ITAR-Tass news agency.

Murov did not elaborate on the alleged threats by bin Laden, the elusive Saudi exile who has declared all U.S. citizens targets of his followers. The service could not be reached for comment Wednesday night.

In Washington, Mark Holland, a spokesman for the U.S. Secret Service, said the agency is aware of the news reports and ``will take all of the same precautions it always takes when the president travels abroad.''

Murov said Russian agents are in Genoa coordinating with counterparts from the other nations taking part in the July 20-22 G-8 summit to investigate terrorist threats.

Italy's new interior minister on Tuesday promised tight security event, which will include leaders from Italy, Germany, France, Britain, Canada, Japan, the United States and Russia.

-------- activists

ALERT!
NRC TRYING TO STRIP PUBLIC OF MEANINGFUL PARTICIPATION IN ALL REACTOR LICENSING
HELP STOP THEM!

YOUR COMMENTS NEEDED BY SEPTEMBER 14, 2001

From: "michael mariotte" <nirsnet@nirs.org>
To: <nirsnet@nirs.org>
Wednesday, June 20, 2001 2:37 PM

McLicensing for Nuclear Power Companies

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is attempting to change its rules in a manner that would drastically reduce public participation rights in nuclear licensing hearings. In commenting on the NRC's proposed "streamlining" of the public hearing process, Corbin McNeill, chief executive for nuclear giant Exelon, told the Wall Street Journal, "It's maybe 1% to 10% what it used to be." As McNeill points out, stripping the democratic process from public hearings on nuclear safety has become the new selling point to investors considering building more atomic reactors.

At the urging of the nuclear power industry, the NRC is proposing to go beyond its current "one-step" licensing process and push the public entirely out of any kind of meaningful licensing hearings. For the first time in regulatory history, all reactor licensing proceedings-including the initial licensing for new reactors, license extension for aging reactors and license amendments to reactor safety procedures-could be conducted under expedited hearings where the public's due process to legally challenge reactor licensing issues is systematically eliminated.

By rulemaking, the NRC is trying to reinterpret the statutory mandates of the Atomic Energy Act for what is traditionally recognized as a community's right to formal trial-type hearings. Under the proposed rule the Commission would have "flexibility" to entirely eliminate the public's basic right to a formal hearing.

How the Proposed Rule Would Change NRC Public Hearings The rule change proposes to "deformalize" public interventions by replacing trial-type public hearings (Chapter 10 of the Code of Federal Regulation Part 2 Subpart G) with "informal" hearings (Subpart L). These informal hearings would be stripped of key due process procedures, such as mandatory discovery of documents for the disclosure of opposing evidence and cross-examination to confront witnesses on statements of fact. The rule would also make it even more difficult than it is now to get a NRC hearing. Once a contention is admitted, hearings would be expedited and participation rights would be drastically curtailed, so as to make the hearing meaningless.

More specifically, the proposed NRC rule change on the adjudicatory hearing process:

1. Creates a new Subpart C Hearing Selection Process. This new subpart consolidates all previous hearing procedures under one general subpart to apply to all NRC adjudications and leaves to the Commission's discretion placement of petitions into specific hearing "tracks" under Subpart G (formal proceeding), K (irradiated fuel storage expansion), L (informal hearings), M (license transfer) or a new Subpart N (fast track). Virtually all reactor licensing would be channeled into informal hearings except those that, according to the NRC, "involve a large number of complex issues." The NRC hearing process for licensing a nuclear waste repository (10 CFR 2 Subpart J) would remain a formal proceeding due to the agency's astute recognition that a move to informal hearings would likely "engender substantial opposition" and a "very negative reaction." Ironically, NRC has chosen to ignore the same process concerns and eroding public confidence in expediting its approval process to generate more nuclear waste through fast track reactor licensing. Let's make sure the NRC understands the "substantial opposition" and "very negative reaction" its reactor licensing proposals are causing!

2. Alters the submission of contentions. Under current rules, after filing a petition for a hearing, intervenors generally have a period of a month to familiarize themselves with the application and formulate "contentions" that describe and provide documented support for the public safety concerns. As a result of a 1989 rule raising the admissibility standard, it is already difficult to get contentions admitted for hearing. Under the proposed rule, intervenors would have to submit their contentions almost immediately after the publication of a hearing notice-- giving the public virtually no time to review the nuclear industry's application, draft contentions and hire expert witnesses to help them formulate contentions. Thus, the proposed rule would make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for the public-including state and local governments--to even get a hearing.

3. Eliminates the procedures of discovery and cross-examination. Under the current rules, parties are entitled to request a range of relevant documents otherwise not available through the NRC Public Document Room. At the hearing, the right to confront adverse witnesses through cross-examination is guaranteed. Under the new informal process, the amount and quality of information accessible to the public would be restricted to what NRC staff and company officials deem relevant to be placed in the NRC Public Document Room. Oral cross-examination and the line of questioning by the public intervenor would be eliminated and replaced with written questions submitted as suggestions to the presiding officer to ask at their discretion.

What You Can Do:

1. Submit comments to the NRC by September 14, 2001 by mail to Secretary, NRC, Washington DC 20555. Or use the interactive website at http://ruleforum.llnl. NIRS will be publishing model comments on our website at http://www.nirs.org

2. Encourage others to comment. The threat by the proposed rule to our democratic process regarding health and safety issues calls for a massive public outcry, from governmental, civic environmental and other groups. Urge them to get involved. Write to your newspaper.

3. Contact your Congressional representatives and state government. The public is entitled to full and meaningful participation in a hearing process that provides for a complete record. The nuclear industry should be required to defend its proposals in formal public hearings, as Congress intended when it passed the Atomic Energy Act in 1954. Ask your Senators and Representative to advocate for an accountable energy policy that protects the public's democratic participation in NRC hearings on the risks and hazards posed by nuclear power.

The proposed rule is published in the Federal Register, April 16, 2001, Vol. 66 at pages 19609-19671 and is available along with other specific documents at NRC's website:

http://ruleforum.llnl.gov/cgi-bin/library?source=*&library=CAP_PRULE_lib&fil e=

For more information, contact Paul Gunter at Nuclear Information and Resource Service, 202-328-002; pgunter@nirs.org

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A modest proposal - If you drive, and care about the environment-
JOIN EUROPEAN BOYCOTT OF EXXON

From: Mort and Gila, by way of Bill Smirnow <smirnowb@ix.netcom.com>,
Wednesday, June 20, 2001 8:39 PM

Greetings:

I got inspired this morning when I read an OpEd piece by Thomas Friedman in the NY Times.

Apparently, environmentally minded Europeans are boycotting Exxon Mobil, the major backer of President Bush's decision to pull the U.S. out of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which called for industrialized nations to steadily reduce their carbon dioxide emissions. The company contributed more than $1 million to the Bush campaign, and is the force behind the Global Climate Coalition, the oil-business lobby that opposes efforts to reduce greenhouse gases. They have also created advertisements that cast doubt on the seriousness of global warming and its link to fossil fuel emissions.

Friedman writes that in Europe, "Environmentalists...are mobilizing consumers to fight multinational polluters on their own ground. You have to admire it. It's so Republican - using the free market.

"I say, why not here? Writing letters to the Texans that are running this country is a waste of time. Our objections can't compete with the barrels of cash that a company like Exxon-Mobil throws at them. We have no place to turn but the market. If we have to buy gas, why feed the Exxon-Mobil machine? Alternatives include Shell and BP-Amoco (which happens to be the world's biggest solar-energy company). They're not exactly angels, but both Shell and BP-Amoco withdrew from the oil-industry lobby that scuttled Kyoto. If I have a choice on where to buy gas (and usually I do), I'm going to drive past the Exxon and Mobil stations, and buy my gas somewhere - anywhere - else. There's no need to reply to this message. But if this idea makes any sense at all to you...spread the word.

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India Begins Protesters' Funerals

New York Times
June 20, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-India-Violence.html

IMPHAL, India (AP) -- One after another, police trucks brought bodies from the morgue to a hilltop park where funeral pyres were lit Wednesday for 13 protesters shot by Indian police during rioting over the government's cease-fire deal with separatists.

Hindu women wept and fainted as 13 piles of oil-soaked wood were lit. Police restricted the number of relatives to 200, fearing a bigger crowd might erupt into more violence.

In Monday's rioting, police opened fire on protesters who set fire to the state legislature building, political offices and the homes of a dozen politicians. The death toll rose to 16 on Wednesday when three injured people died.

Imphal looked like a ghost town Wednesday as police and army patrols enforced a curfew for a third day. Outside the capital, however, protests broke out, with dozens of people taking to the streets in Bishenpur district, 30 miles east of Imphal.

They shouted slogans against the truce agreement reached last week between the government and the separatist Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagaland. Government and guerrilla leaders were burned in effigy.

The government and the Naga rebels agreed to extend a four-year cease-fire for another year and to expand it beyond Nagaland state, a predominantly Christian region in Hindu-majority India.

Nagaland's neighboring territories -- Manipur, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh -- fear that parts of their land could be sliced off and merged into Nagaland in any settlement with the Naga rebel groups who have been fighting since India became independent from Britain.

Christians make up only about 2.3 percent of India's more than 1 billion people, but in the seven northeastern states they make up about 20 percent. In Nagaland, 90 percent of the 1.8 million population is Christian, as are the rebels.

All 60 lawmakers of the Manipur provincial assembly threatened Wednesday to resign if the federal government does not revoke its extension of the cease-fire by July 31.

The federal government, meanwhile, sent in 1,000 additional paramilitary soldiers to patrol the streets of Imphal and said more were on the way.

Soldiers surrounded the cremation site Wednesday, keeping journalists at a distance of about 100 yards.

After a standoff was resolved between police and protesters demanding the cremation be open to all, the police vans began arriving with the bodies.

Mourners held banners saying, ``Here lie the martyrs who sacrificed their lives for Manipur's territorial integrity.''

The five-mile-long road from the airport to the city was littered with burned tires and dozens of charred government vehicles set ablaze during the rioting.

``I have been living in this town for the past 30 years, but I have never seen such a sight,'' said Ibotombi Singh, peeping out of his house near the funeral pyres.


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