------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Army free of depleted uranium ills
Powell Dismisses Putin Threat
Putin Pushes ABM Treaty
Nuclear weapons facility safeguarded by secrecy
Yucca funding proceeds
Powell Interview Glance

MILITARY
Russian paratroopers ready to enter Macedonia: general
Macedonia Launches an Offensive Against Albanian Rebels
Yugoslavs closer to extraditing Milosevic
Detention centre awaits Milosevic
56 soldiers, rebels slain in Colombia fighting
Colombian Military Claims Victory
America, free or 'drug-free´?
Firm's Iraq Deals Greater Than Cheney Has Said
Missile Fragments Collected in Iraq
Israeli forces enter Gaza Strip, destroy houses: Palestinians
Japan-U.S. Security Treaty Should Be Scrapped
Japan PM Vows to Reduce Burden on Okinawans
Navy's Plans Could Hasten End of Island's Equine Charm
1,000 Russian Soldiers Fight Fire
Villages Evacuated As Russian Arms Dump Blazes
Ex-U.N. Officer Sues U.S. Firm Over Dismissal
U.S. Forces in Gulf On Highest Alert
Threat scrambles U.S. troops, ships in Mideast
Bush Seeking Defense Increase '02
Rumsfeld to Seek $33 Billion Rise for Military
U.S. Crew Rescued in Mediterranean
Rumsfeld: 'U.S. vulnerable to emerging threats'

OTHER
Witnesses Say Generator Cut Power Supply to Raise Price
California Wins Power to Limit Oil Exploration
China Announces Extensive Plan to Combat Its Water Shortage
Bush Discusses Genetic Testing
Giving Aid To Torturers
The Nun Who Knew Too Much
U.S., Mexico Set New Border Effort
Immigrant Ship Heads for Nigeria
U.S. Loses Trade Case To Europe
Preliminary Decision on a Trade Dispute
U.S. and Mexico to Improve Border Safety
'Pepperball' latest in anti-protester weapons
Ala. Ex - Cops Admit Robbing Hispanics
Bin Laden readying to hit US, Israeli interests
Terror, Iran and the U.S.
Saudis: Bomb suspects can't be tried in U.S.

ACTIVISTS
June 25-29 STAR WARS CALL- IN DAYS TO CONGRESS
Jackson's Wife Mistreated In Jail, Congressman Says
Hundreds March for AIDS Awareness


-------- NUCLEAR

-------- depleted uranium

Army free of depleted uranium ills

NZ Herald
Saturday June 23, 2001
From: uranium@t-online.de

A New Zealand Defence Force investigation has found it unlikely the health of personnel was put at risk by exposure to depleted uranium munitions in the Gulf and the Balkans.

The risk was "negligible," Defence Minister Mark Burton said yesterday.

"In summary, based on the available information, the NZDF investigation has concluded that it is unlikely that any personnel were exposed to residue from expended DU munitions and that if any exposure had occurred it is unlikely to have presented a health risk," he said.

The Defence Force sent 1557 questionnaires to present and former service personnel who were deployed in the Gulf and the Balkans. Only 733 questionnaires were returned and Mr Burton said that indicated a "low level of concern" among personnel who felt they were unlikely to have been exposed.

Some questionnaires were still trickling in and there remained a possibility someone may have had exposure to depleted uranium.

"However, I am advised that knowledge of the exposure areas and movement of NZDF personnel in those areas make it reasonable to conclude the risk is negligible," he said.

There have been fears that veterans exposed to depleted uranium weapons were at more risk of developing cancer and leukaemia after six Italian soldiers who had served in Kosovo died of leukaemia.

European Union and Nato experts have separately concluded that depleted uranium weapons, used by Nato in the Bosnia war in 1994-1995 and in the 1999 war over Kosovo had no negative effect on health.

Mr Burton said Nato medical experts found there was no increase in morbidity and mortality rates for Balkans veterans compared with non-deployed forces and civilians.

The Defence Force survey was initiated in January following the international concern.

Depleted uranium is an extremely dense metal used on the tips of shells against armoured vehicles because of its penetrating power.

New Zealand personnel served in Bosnia for 18 months from late 1994 and three have served as military observers in Kosovo since Christmas 1999.

Mr Burton said there were gaps in knowledge about depleted uranium, particularly the long-term effects. A database would be maintained indefinitely and any present or former service personnel with health concerns would have access to full medical assistance.

-------- missile defense

Powell Dismisses Putin Threat

New York Times
June 23, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Powell-Interview.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Secretary of State Colin Powell is brushing aside a warning by Russian President Vladimir Putin that he will upgrade his country's strategic nuclear arsenal if the United States deploys a missile defense system.

Putin has issued the warning on several occasions, including this past week, but Powell seemed almost dismissive of the Russian leader's stand when asked about it Friday in an interview with The Associated Press.

``I am not in charge of Russia but I don't think that's what they would do,'' Powell said. He said he was confident that Putin would not try to enhance Russia's strategic force once he takes into account the cost. Powell added that Putin also will come to realize that a U.S. missile defense is not a threat to Russia.

Critics of the missile defense system argue that its deployment by the United States would touch off an arms race, with Russia and China taking steps to build up their arsenals to overwhelm the U.S. defense shield.

Putin said last Monday he would try to work cooperatively with the United States in developing a new security framework. But, he said, Russia would enhance its nuclear forces if the United States pursued a go-it-alone posture on missile defense deployment.

He said it would not take much to upgrade the Russian nuclear arsenal and that it would be done by putting multiple warheads on strategic missiles. ``The nuclear arsenal of Russia will be augmented multifold,'' he said.

On NATO, Powell said he was not surprised that many allied countries have expressed reservations about the U.S. missile defense plan, given the fact that it represents a major doctrinal change from the current security framework. But he said there is more openness among the allies about the concept than there was before President Bush began consulting them in early May.

``I think we have made progress,'' he said.

For 40 minutes, Powell fielded questions from AP reporters and editors gathered around a long table in a conference room not far from his 7th floor State Department office.

Powell, who leaves for the Middle East Tuesday evening, said that even though the Arabs are looking for a quick fix to the Arab-Israeli conflict, ``nothing starts'' until the level of violence goes down sharply.

That appeared to echo the sentiment of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who, as Powell put it, is ``very, very clear as to what he wants, and that is zero (violence).''

``Before peace comes security,'' Powell said while acknowledging that the unsettled dispute between Israel and the Palestinians was having a negative affect on U.S. ties with Arab countries.

The situation ``has caused a great deal of distress in the Arab world, and they want to see this problem resolved, and they would like to see America resolve it right away. But it isn't that easy,'' he said.

He also said he does not envision a major negotiating role for CIA Director George Tenet, who persuaded Israel and the Palestinians to resume security cooperation two weeks ago.

Tenet will play a useful role but will be used sparingly, Powell said.

Powell spoke a day after U.S. indictments were handed down against 13 Saudis and one Lebanese in the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 American servicemen.

Even though U.S. evidence pointed toward links between elements of the Iranian government and the indictees, Powell said he saw some hope that Iran may some day change.

He noted that moderate President Mohammad Khatami won 78 percent of the vote in presidential elections earlier this month.

The outcome suggests Iranians believe their country ``should be thinking in new directions,'' Powell said.

``We'll wait and see how that level of support for President Khatami manifests itself in changed cultures,'' he added.

Reflecting on the ups and downs of his five months in office, Powell was upbeat about ties with Latin American countries and also said U.S. relations with China should be ``more productive'' now that the two countries are getting past the ``little hiccup'' over the U.S. reconnaissance that collided with a Chinese military plane in April. As for trans-Atlantic ties, he said, ``We are as attached to Europe as we ever have been. We are attached to NATO.''

On Iraq, Powell expressed frustration over the difficulty in winning a U.N. Security Council consensus on what potentially dual use goods should be denied Iraq in the effort to overhaul the sanctions regime against that country. In an apparent reference to Russia and France, Powell said ``it was kind of astonishing'' to see the difficulty in reaching an agreement.

Powell will address a special U.N. General Assembly session on Monday on the AIDS epidemic, and he spoke with fervor on that issue. He used words like ``astonishing,'' ``amazing'' and ``mind-boggling'' in discussing the HIV infection rate in Botswana -- 36 percent.

He said contributions in the struggle against AIDS should not come solely from donor governments. Private citizens, foundations and corporations should pitch in as well, he said.

On Japan, Powell indicated he has been paying close heed to the ongoing debate in Tokyo about a possible enhanced role for that country on international security matters.

There are constitutional bars to an activist role, and Powell said any change will be up to the Japanese people.

``It is not something for the American government or the American people to dictate to them,'' he said.

Powell and Bush will discuss that issue further when they welcome Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to Camp David at the end of the month.

-------- treaties

Putin Pushes ABM Treaty

New York Times
June 23, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Russia-Missile-Defense.html?searchpv=aponline

MOSCOW (AP) -- President Vladimir Putin repeated his threat of a Russian nuclear buildup if the United States abandons the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, but asserted that the Kremlin's response would not be aimed at the United States.

World stability has been preserved ``thanks to the balance of powers and interests'' in the nuclear sphere, Putin told reporters after a meeting with Austrian President Thomas Klestil.

``We are certain that the elimination of the 1972 ABM treaty and the creation of the Nuclear Missile Defense system by the United States disrupts this balance,'' he said.

Putin reiterated Russia's position that scrapping the ABM would mean the collapse of the START I and START II treaties limiting nuclear weapons.

``This means that all countries, including Russia, will have the right to install multiple warheads carrying nuclear weapons on their missiles,'' he said. For Russia, he said, installing multiple nuclear warheads on existing missiles ``is the cheapest response.''

In an interview with American reporters Monday after his first summit with President Bush, Putin warned that Russia would strengthen its nuclear arsenal if the United States developed missile defenses that violate the ABM treaty.

However, he said Friday that such a response should not be seen by the United States as a threat. ``I want to say that if such a response does take place, it will not be aimed against the creators of the NMD system,'' he said, adding that ``it should not worry anyone.''

Despite Putin's statement, Russian officials have said repeatedly they fear a U.S. system could undermine the deterrent value of their missiles. They have threatened to respond to a U.S. shield by equipping their missiles with multiple warheads in order to overwhelm such defenses.

American officials have said the aim of a missile defense system would be to protect against possible attacks by unpredictable nations such as North Korea, Iran and Iraq, not former U.S. Cold War foe Russia.

In an interview with The Associated Press on Friday, Secretary of State Colin Powell said he was confident Putin would not try to enhance Russia's strategic force once he takes into account the cost -- and will come to realize that a U.S. missile defense is not a threat to Russia.

Upgrading the Russian nuclear arsenal is just one of several options, Putin said. ``There are many other response options and that is just one of them,'' he said.

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

-------- kentucky

Nuclear weapons facility safeguarded by secrecy

Saturday, June 23, 2001
Hopkinsville, Kentucky
http://www.kentuckynewera.com/cgi-bin/view.cgi?/200106/23+Nuclear-weapons-facility-safeguarded-by-secrecy_news.html+20010623+news

Armed Marines and military attack dogs protected the perimeter of Clarksville Base where nuclear weapons were hidden in underground tunnels below Fort Campbell during the Cold War.

But the real safeguard of the government operation was secrecy.

"The people who worked there were not allowed to talk about their jobs," Fort Campbell historian John O'Brien said.

The civilian workers at the Navy compound knew that government officials were watching and listening to them even when they left work. A whisper to a neighbor or talk in a bar wouldn't be tolerated.

"You had to have top-secret clearance to work there. It was very controlled," O'Brien said.

Even today, 36 years after Clarksville Base closed, former workers won't say exactly what they did because they aren't sure what information has been declassified.

In 1948 the Air Force established Clarksville Base on 5,000 acres at Fort Campbell. It was surrounded by four fences, including one with high-voltage electricity, and became known as "The Birdcage."

Two years later the Navy took over the operation. It was maintained separate from the Army and Fort Campbell until 1965, when it closed.

Nuclear weapons were stored in a series of underground tunnels. They were locked behind huge bank-vault doors. Each lock had two combinations, requiring two workers to be present when a door was opened, according to O'Brien.

"Everything was very compartmentalized," he said, to ensure that no one person ever knew the full scope of the operation.

Some of the weapons required regular modifications. Bomb initiators containing polonium-beryllium, the nuclear reactive material, had to be replaced every 138 days. The initiators were about the size of a test tube and fit into the nuclear capsule.

Clarksville Base was one of 13 nuclear storage facilities in the United States during the Cold War.

Today, it is the only one left virtually intact. The facility was maintained for storage at Fort Campbell and at one time was used by the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Air Assault). The elite helicopter unit, known as "The Night Stalkers," supports the Delta Force and routinely undertakes classified missions.

-------- nevada

Yucca funding proceeds
$443 million about to pass receptive House

By STEVE TETREAULT
DONREY WASHINGTON BUREAU,
Saturday, June 23, 2001
Las Vegas Review-Journal
http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Jun-23-Sat-2001/news/16387921.html

WASHINGTON -- The House of Representatives is on a path to largely grant the Bush administration's budget request for the Yucca Mountain program next year.

The Appropriations Committee is scheduled to consider a $23.7 billion energy and water spending bill on Monday that contains $443 million for radioactive waste disposal in fiscal 2002, a decrease of $2 million from what the Energy Department requested.

The action is an early development in this year's congressional spending process. The House, where a proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository has stronger support, customarily has funded the project at close to levels requested by the Energy Department.

The Senate, where Yucca Mountain critic Harry Reid, D-Nev., sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee, usually follows by seeking deeper reductions. Final compromises in Congress have left the nuclear waste disposal program with budget cuts in recent years ranging between 4.5 percent and 14 percent.

Rep. Sonny Callahan, R-Ala., chairman of the House energy and water subcommittee, which is recommending the $443 million allocation, said he wanted to largely comply with the Energy Department's request.

After the subcommittee developed its recommendation, it released a statement saying the nuclear waste allocation "will keep the program on schedule." Energy Department officials have said they hope to complete a site recommendation late this year or early next year.

Callahan said he toured the Yucca Mountain work site several weeks ago and came away satisfied with the work being done.

"This is not a matter of right or wrong," he said, adding that Congress has decided that the mountain ridge 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas should be studied as a potential repository.

-------- us nuc politics

Powell Interview Glance

The Associated Press
Saturday, June 23, 2001; 1:16 a.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010623/aponline011647_001.htm

Highlights of Secretary of State Colin Powell's interview with The Associated Press:

AIDS-AFRICA:

Powell called on European nations to give more money to an international AIDS fund, saying the $582 million donated so far - $200 million of which came from the United States - is "nowhere near" the amount needed to combat the disease, particularly on the African continent. Powell, who will lead the U.S. delegation to a special United Nations session on AIDS next week, said he would press Congress for a larger U.S. contribution as well.

CHINA:

Powell described the dispute over a U.S. Navy spy plane as a "little hiccup" in relations with China. Now that the plane is being dismantled and returned to the United States, he said he expected the countries to move on to a productive relationship. He said President Bush is looking forward to visiting China in October for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum and Powell expects to visit "in the not-too-distant" future. China refused to let the United States repair the plane after it made an emergency landing after a collision with a Chinese fighter jet.

COLOMBIA:

Powell said he hasn't considered expanding the U.S. role in Colombia beyond counternarcotics activities. A recent RAND study sponsored by the Air Force suggested the United States do more to help Colombia's military fight leftist guerrillas. Last year's $1.3 billion Colombian aid package and a follow-up $882 million proposal for the region are specifically for fighting drugs.

IRAN:

Iran's possible involvement in the 1996 Khobar Towers attack that killed 19 American airmen shouldn't shock the United States or cause it to change its policy toward Iran. Powell noted the United States has long been concerned about Iran's support for terrorism. Fourteen people were indicted Thursday in the bombing in Saudi Arabia. Attorney General John Ashcroft said the attack was carried out by a group inspired and supported by the Iranian government. Iran has rejected the allegations.

IRAQ:

Powell, expressing frustration, said it was "kind of astonishing" to see other countries on the U.N. Security Council - apparently referring to Russia and France - resist efforts to reach agreement on an overhaul of U.N. sanctions. He complained that some U.N. members that had argued for years that the impact on Iraqi civilians should be eased were now "frustrating that effort." Members can't agree on a list of military-related items to bar from Iraq, while easing sanctions on civilian goods.

JAPAN:

Powell said it is up to Japan to decide whether to alter its constitution to broaden the role of its military. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has proposed changing the constitution drafted by the United States after Japan's defeat in World War II. "It is something for the Japanese people to decide," Powell said. "This is not something for the American government or the American people to dictate to them."

MIDDLE EAST:

Despite an attack Friday that killed two Israeli soldiers, Powell said he sees "a few hopeful signs" of movement toward peace in the Middle East. He cited a slight drop in the daily number of violent incidents and a "somewhat more positive tone" in meetings between Israeli and Palestinian officials. "Frankly, it is not a whole lot to grasp, but it is something," he said. He travels to the region in the coming week.

MISSILE DEFENSE:

Powell questioned Russian President Vladimir Putin's warning that he would re-stock Russia's strategic nuclear arsenal if the United States built a missile defense system. "I don't think that's what they would do," Powell said. He predicted Putin would find building up Russia's arsenal too costly, and ultimately would realize that a U.S. missile defense is not a threat to Russia.

-------- MILITARY

-------- balkans

Russian paratroopers ready to enter Macedonia: general

June 23, 2001
AFP
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010623/1/159zj.html

MOSCOW, Russian paratroopers are "ready" to enter Macedonia to help disarm ethnic Albanian rebels if the order is given, the commander in chief of Russia's airborne forces told the Ria-Novosti news agency Saturday.

"We are ready to do it, and if we are given the order, we will enter Macedonia," General Georgi Shpak was quoted as saying.

----

Macedonia Launches an Offensive Against Albanian Rebels

New York Times
June 23, 2001
By CARLOTTA GALL
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/23/world/23MACE.html

BELGRADE, Serbia, June 22 - Macedonian forces launched a heavy offensive today against Albanian rebel positions just north of the capital, Skopje, breaking the tentative cease-fire in the southern Balkan republic and leaving diplomatic efforts for a peace agreement in tatters.

The operation, which started at 4 a.m. with an assault by helicopter gunships and tanks, and lasted throughout the day, was designed "to eliminate the terrorists," a Defense Ministry spokesman, Georgi Trendafilov, said. The main assault, which the rebels appeared to have repelled, was on the settlement of Aracinovo - just five miles from Skopje's center and within firing range of the city's airport. The rebels have occupied the settlement for more than two weeks.

But the Macedonian military also turned its guns against villages farther north in an assault strongly denounced by NATO's secretary general, Lord Robertson, as madness.

Lord Robertson, in a statement issued on behalf of NATO, which is planning to send thousands of troops to Macedonia if a peace settlement can be reached, branded the military action "complete folly."

"There is no military solution to this crisis, and overreactions at this moment simply deepen already critical divisions," the statement said.

Macedonia's prime minister, Ljubco Georgievski, the most hawkish Slav politician in the leadership, warned today, "We've reached that red line that Macedonia cannot cross." Speaking after talks between the Slav and Albanian political parties to find a settlement had stalled once more, Mr. Georgievski added, "You cannot ask Macedonia to do something it cannot do."

In recent weeks, Mr. Georgievski has vociferously advocated a military solution to the insurgency. After the talks reached an impasse on Wednesday, President Boris Trajkovski, who like Mr. Georgievski is a member of Macedonia's Slav majority, also blamed the Albanian parties, saying they were not willing to compromise. As commander in chief of Macedonian forces, Mr. Trajkovski had the authority to order today's military operation.

The Macedonian Slav parties apparently feel at a disadvantage in negotiations with the Albanian parties while the rebels threatening to fire on Skopje and its airport, where NATO troops are based. Today's offensive, diplomats said, was intended as a move to gain the upper hand in the intraparty negotiations.

But it was not at all clear whether the talks would resume. The European Union's foreign policy director, Javier Solana, was expected back in Skopje tonight, after just 24 hours away on a visit to the Middle East.

Mr. Solana remained optimistic that he could bring the parties back to the negotiating table. "Neither side can defeat the other militarily, this is obvious from more than three months of fighting," he said.

But the Albanian parties, who remain part of Macedonia's deeply divided coalition government, are bitter that they were not even consulted before the offensive was launched and are pessimistic that talks could be resumed with such heavy fighting under way. The fighting will only strengthen the fighters and the radicals, the Albanian parties said.

"If we have several civilian casualties, I don't know how we can continue the dialogue," Zamir Dika, leader of the Democratic Party of Albanians, told Reuters. "The credibility of the Albanian parties will be diminished."

The Albanian political parties have been negotiating with the main Macedonian parties to forge a program of political reforms that would answer their demands and those of the rebels, and pave the way for the rebels to disarm and disband. NATO is already planning to send a force of at least 3,000 troops to Macedonia to assist with the disarmament if the parties reach a peace deal.

The Albanian parties' first request to Mr. Solana "will be to stop the fighting," Mr. Dika said. "Only a political dialogue can calm the situation, and I am very sure there will be no winners in the fighting," he said.

The rebels in Aracinovo appear to have fought off the offensive today and showed no signs of caving in under the pressure. Three civilians were killed and 18 wounded.

"It is a real fight," one rebel commander, who identified himself as Hoxha, told Reuters. "They tried to come in, but we broke them and they withdrew," he said of the government forces. He said one rebel was killed, and he claimed to have killed some members of the police forces, but a report by state radio said only that four men had been wounded.

The renewed fighting caused another surge of refugees fleeing into Kosovo. The United Nations refugee agency said 1,450 Albanians had crossed from Macedonia into Kosovo on Thursday, bringing the total since February to more than 50,000.

--------

Yugoslavs closer to extraditing Milosevic

06/23/2001
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/june01/2001-06-23-yugoslav.htm

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) - The Yugoslav government adopted a decree Saturday that clears the way for Slobodan Milosevic's extradition to the U.N. war crimes tribunal - a key condition for billions of dollars in Western aid.

The 59-year-old ousted president and other indicted war crimes suspects in Serbia could be sent very soon to the court in The Hague, Netherlands, said Yugoslav Deputy Prime Minister Miroljub Labus.

The decree takes effect Sunday and after that ''it will be a matter of days,'' Labus said. ''There is no dilemma about the indictments that are out there. Those people have to go to The Hague.''

Milosevic would be the first former head of state to be brought before the court, established in 1993 to prosecute crimes against humanity committed during the bloody breakup of the former Yugoslavia.

Veselin Cerovic, one of Milosevic's lawyers, said his client is certain no one will dare surrender him to the UN tribunal.

Milosevic has been in Belgrade's central prison since April 1, pending an investigation into allegations of corruption and abuse of power during his tumultuous, 13-year rule.

But the UN tribunal wants him tried in The Hague for alleged war crimes against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. Milosevic's crackdown on Kosovo's ethnic Albanians led to NATO's 1999 bombing campaign that ultimately forced Yugoslav troops out of the southern province.

Ministers from Serbia's pro-democracy coalition drafted the decree Friday after abandoning efforts to push a bill through the Yugoslav parliament on cooperation with the UN tribunal.

Pro-democracy Serb officials lack a majority in the federal parliament, but did have enough votes in the federal Cabinet to pass the decree without officials from Montenegro, the smaller Yugoslav republic.

The decree was intended to provide a legal basis for cooperation with the UN court, including extradition of Yugoslav citizens - a move banned by current legislation.

Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica, who initially rejected the idea of sending Milosevic to The Hague, now backs the extradition efforts.

"Yugoslavia's international obligation as a UN member state is to cooperate with The Hague tribunal," said Nebojsa Covic, a Serb pro-democracy leader. "We must no longer allow ourselves to be Milosevic's hostages."

A couple dozen Milosevic supporters gathered outside the federal administration building to protest the Cabinet meeting, chanting "down with the NATO government" and "treason."

The decision on extraditing war crimes suspects such as Milosevic has become increasingly urgent ahead of a key donors conference Friday in Brussels, Belgium. The United States and other Western countries insist that Milosevic face justice at the tribunal or Yugoslavia will risk losing billions of dollars in financial assistance.

The decree was designed to give the prime minister and his Cabinet from Serbia or Montenegro - depending on which republic the defendant is from - final authority to decide on extradition. Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic supports Milosevic's extradition.

Montenegrin ministers who were once allied with Milosevic remained resolute in opposing the decree, asserting that the court is biased. They boycotted the meeting and offered to resign from the Cabinet - a move that could lead to early elections. The resignations must be approved by the party's main board, however.

The Montenegrins' adamant stand has led to speculation they still hold some loyalties to the former president, even though they officially switched sides after his ouster last October.

Pro-democracy officials in Montenegro, who have been pushing for independence from Serbia, boycotted the last federal elections and are not part of the Yugoslav government.

A resignation by the Montenegrins could force the Serbian pro-democracy ministers to run the country with a minority government, or ultimately lead to a government collapse and call for new federal elections.

--------
Detention centre awaits Milosevic

Saturday, 23 June, 2001,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_1404000/1404566.stm

Slobodan Milosevic: Extradited and awaiting trial By Geraldine Coughlan at The Hague

Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has been handed over to the International War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague.

As the tribunal prepared to receive its prime suspect, there were questions about what type of accommodation awaits the former president, who will be his associates in detention, and how he is likely to pass the time before his trial.

Mr Milosevic was expected to be accompanied by United Nations officials on a flight to a Dutch military airport.

From there, he will be taken to the tribunal's detention centre in Scheveningen - a pleasant seaside suburb of The Hague, about 2km (1.2 miles) from the tribunal.

But Mr Milosevic will not be joining the tourists. Instead, he will become acquainted with his new environment - a bright, modern detention facility, fronted by a grandiose castle-like facade.

Familiar faces

Inside, he will meet some familiar faces including the only woman detainee, the former Bosnian Serb President, Biljana Plavsic, and the former speaker of the Bosnian Serb Parliament, Momcillo Krajisnik.

Also detained is Bosnian Serb General Radislav Krstic, accused of the genocide of Muslims at Srebrenica.

When Slobodan Milosevic arrives he will become the 39th detainee at the UN facility.

The conditions at the detention unit are comfortable and informal. The staff pride themselves on providing a good quality of life to the Serbs, Croats and Muslims who mix freely.

The inmates have access to sports facilities, satellite television and special family rooms to spend time with relatives.

They may telephone their families for seven minutes a day, cook for themselves, paint or play the piano or guitar.

Their physical and emotional well-being is cared for by doctors and psychiatrists, and if someone needs a massage, that is provided as well.

Slow process

But one of the main concerns of the tribunal's Chief Prosecutor, Carla del Ponte, is the length of time that the suspects spend in detention.

Although the tribunal was set up in 1993, only four war crimes suspects are actually serving prison terms in Germany, Finland and Norway.

At present, 41 detainees are in proceedings before the tribunal - but only 10 are on trial in court.

But 27 new temporary judges are taking on some cases, which will speed up the trial process. In September the tribunal will be able to hold six trials simultaneously instead of the current three.

-------- colombia

56 soldiers, rebels slain in Colombia fighting

06/23/2001
USA Today
http://usatoday.com/news/world/june01/2001-06-22-colombia-clashes.htm

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - In what appeared to be the heaviest rebel resistance yet to a U.S.-backed counterdrug offensive, clashes in Colombia's main coca growing region have left at least 30 soldiers and 26 guerrillas dead, the army says.

The fighting broke out Friday at an army base near the riverside town of Puerto Leguizamo, 318 miles south of Bogota in southern Putumayo state, a launching point for Colombian marine operations against rebels and drug traffickers.

The high troop losses were a setback for Colombia's U.S.-supported military, which has struggled to regain the upper hand against rebels growing mightier with profits from ties to the drug trade. The bloodshed also contrasted with recent breakthroughs in peace talks to end the South American country's 37-year conflict.

The army said it sent in reinforcements and was pursuing retreating guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

Only six guerrilla bodies had been recovered, but army Gen. Nestor Ramirez placed the number of dead at 26.

He said the soldiers were on anti-narcotics operations when they came into contact with the FARC rebels.

A Russian-made army helicopter was forced to make an emergency landing after its pilot and co-pilot were hit by rebel gunfire, the army reported. They were the only ones injured in the forced landing.

In another development, police Friday arrested 57 suspected members of a Colombian gang accused of seizing oil workers in Ecuador last year and killing at least one American hostage.

Police said the group was believed responsible for at least eight separate kidnappings in Ecuador since 1990, abducting at least 12 Americans.

In the latest case, 10 foreign oil workers were seized late last year from an Ecuadorean oil camp, just south of the Colombia border. The kidnappers killed one U.S. hostage in January before the remaining hostages were freed in March, reportedly after a $13 million ransom was paid.

Officials said the troops killed Friday were not members of the Putumayo-based battalions recently trained by US Special Forces under a $1.3 billion anti-drug package for the Andes. Nor were the U.S.-trained battalions participating in the counterattack, according to army spokesman Capt. Fernando Avila.

The Pentagon has provided armed speed boats and training for river-based forces operating out of Puerto Leguizamo. Putumayo, along the southern border with Ecuador, is the largest cocaine-producing province in Colombia - the South American country producing 90% of the world's cocaine.

The area is also stronghold of the FARC and rival right-wing paramilitary groups who have muscled in on the drug trade. The groups tax drug operations for huge profits.

Even as fighting raged in the jungles Friday, President Andres Pastrana's government freed three ailing FARC guerrillas from jail and handed them over to the rebels - completing a prisoner swap both sides say will boost slow-moving peace talks.

The rebels were released from a northern prison and flown into a southern FARC stronghold. The three were supposed to have been delivered last weekend along with 11 other sick rebels swapped for 55 government servicemen. Legal red tape held up their release.

The FARC had earlier announced plans to free as many as 300 police and soldiers next week as a peace gesture. Many of the captures servicemen fell prisoner in similar surprise attacks.

--------

Colombian Military Claims Victory

New York Times
June 23, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Colombia-Fighting.html

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- Despite taking its heaviest casualties since a U.S.-backed counter-drug offensive got underway last year, Colombia's military claimed success Saturday in defeating guerrillas trying to open an arms and cocaine corridor.

At least 30 troops died Friday in jungle clashes when rebels assaulted an army base outside the riverport town of Puerto Leguizamo. The port is a main launching ground for army operations in southern Putumayo State, where nearly half of the country's cocaine is produced.

It was the army's highest casualties since the drug offensive began in December, and a reminder of the guerrillas' ability to attack by surprise and inflict damage on government forces.

But army spokesman Paulino Coronado said the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which also lost 26 fighters in the battle, had failed to achieve its objective of opening up a strategic corridor through the area.

``This is a war, and in a war there are deaths,'' Coronado told the Associated Press, brushing aside questions about whether the army casualties constituted a new setback for armed forces, a growing recipient of U.S. aid.

Coronado said reinforcements flown to the battle zone were pursuing retreating FARC rebels through the jungles on Saturday, but that fighting had tapered off. He said troops had located the bodies of all 56 dead soldiers and rebels.

Putumayo is the main target of hundreds of millions of dollars of mostly military aid being provided by Washington to the South American country that produces 90 percent of the world's cocaine. The FARC and a rival right-wing paramilitary army earn huge profits by ``taxing'' traffickers and peasant coca farmers.

The rebel drug ties are blurring the lines between Colombia's 37-year armed conflict and the war on drugs.

The U.S. aid includes helicopter gunships and training for nearly 3,000 Colombian counternarcotics troops, most of whom are based in the area including Putumayo and neighboring Caqueta state. Record eradication between December and February in Putumayo wiped out 62,000 acres of coca, about a third of the area under cultivation.

Puerto Leguizamo, located on the Putumayo River dividing Colombia and Ecuador, is a staging ground for operations to stop rebel movements and shipments of cocaine and drug-processing chemicals through the state's labyrinth of rivers.

The Pentagon has provided speedboats and training for the Colombian marine units stationed there. However, Coronado said no U.S.-trained counternarcotics troops were involved in Friday's fighting.

The army said 500 rebels were involved in the assault on the base. They were repelled with the help of reinforcements helicoptered in.

``If we had not cut off the guerrillas' advance, surely today Puerto Leguizamo would have been demolished,'' Coronado said. ``That would definitely been an embarrassment for the army.''

There was no immediate comment from the FARC. The last time the army took such heavy losses in a battle was in October, when 54 police and soldiers were killed, and a Blackhawk helicopter shot down, during clashes with the FARC in northwest Antioquia State.

-------- drug war

America, free or 'drug-free´?

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
June 23, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20010623-78954524.htm

The U.S. Supreme Court ruling against law enforcement´s use of thermal imaging to fight crime highlights a major flaw in the drug war ("Dimmer switch for high-tech eyes," Commentary, June 19). Simply put, it´s not possible to wage a war against consensual vices unless privacy is completely eliminated along with the Constitution. The United States can be either a free country or a "drug-free" country, but not both.

The court ruling stemmed from police use of thermal imaging to detect indoor growing lights used in marijuana cultivation. The drug war is, in large part, a war against marijuana, by far the most popular illicit drug. In 1999, there were 704,812 arrests for marijuana, 620,541 for possession alone. For a drug that has not been shown to cause an overdose death, the allocation of resources to enforce marijuana laws is outrageous.

Of course, a reform of marijuana laws would derail the entire drug war gravy train. Marijuana is demonized as a "gateway" drug that leads to harder drugs when, in fact, marijuana prohibition is best described as a gateway policy. Illicit marijuana provides the black-market contacts that introduce users to such harder drugs as heroin. As for protecting children from drugs, the thriving black market has no age controls.

Taxing and regulating marijuana is a cost-effective alternative to spending tens of billions annually on a failed drug war. It makes no sense to waste scarce resources on failed policies that finance organized crime, facilitate the use of addictive hard drugs and threaten to undermine our country´s Constitution.

ROBERT SHARPE Program officer The Lindesmith Center-Drug Policy Foundation (www.drugpolicy.org)> Washington

-------- iraq

Firm's Iraq Deals Greater Than Cheney Has Said
Affiliates Had $73 Million in Contracts

By Colum Lynch
The Washington Post
Saturday, June 23, 2001; Page A01
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35751-2001Jun22?language=printer

UNITED NATIONS -- During last year's presidential campaign, Richard B. Cheney acknowledged that the oil-field supply corporation he headed, Halliburton Co., did business with Libya and Iran through foreign subsidiaries. But he insisted that he had imposed a "firm policy" against trading with Iraq.

"Iraq's different," he said.

According to oil industry executives and confidential United Nations records, however, Halliburton held stakes in two firms that signed contracts to sell more than $73 million in oil production equipment and spare parts to Iraq while Cheney was chairman and chief executive officer of the Dallas-based company.

Two former senior executives of the Halliburton subsidiaries say that, as far as they knew, there was no policy against doing business with Iraq. One of the executives also says that although he never spoke directly to Cheney about the Iraqi contracts, he is certain Cheney knew about them.

Mary Matalin, Cheney's counselor, said that if he "was ever in a conversation or meeting where there was a question of pursuing a project with someone in Iraq, he said, 'No.' "

"In a joint venture, he would not have reviewed all their existing contracts," Matalin said. "The nature of those joint ventures was that they had a separate governing structure, so he had no control over them."

The trade was perfectly legal. Indeed, it is a case study of how U.S. firms routinely use foreign subsidiaries and joint ventures to avoid the opprobrium of doing business with Baghdad, which does not violate U.S. law as long as it occurs within the "oil-for-food" program run by the United Nations.

Halliburton's trade with Iraq was first reported by The Washington Post in February 2000. But U.N. records recently obtained by The Post show that the dealings were more extensive than originally reported and than Vice President Cheney has acknowledged.

As secretary of defense in the first Bush administration, Cheney helped to lead a multinational coalition against Iraq in the Persian Gulf War and to devise a comprehensive economic embargo to isolate Saddam Hussein's government. After Cheney was named in 1995 to head Halliburton, he promised to maintain a hard line against Baghdad.

But in 1998, Cheney oversaw Halliburton's acquisition of Dresser Industries Inc., which exported equipment to Iraq through two subsidiaries of a joint venture with another large U.S. equipment maker, Ingersoll-Rand Co.

The subsidiaries, Dresser-Rand and Ingersoll Dresser Pump Co., sold water and sewage treatment pumps, spare parts for oil facilities and pipeline equipment to Baghdad through French affiliates from the first half of 1997 to the summer of 2000, U.N. records show. Ingersoll Dresser Pump also signed contracts -- later blocked by the United States -- to help repair an Iraqi oil terminal that U.S.-led military forces destroyed in the Gulf War.

Former executives at the subsidiaries said they had never heard objections -- from Cheney or any other Halliburton official -- to trading with Baghdad.

"Halliburton and Ingersoll-Rand, as far as I know, had no official policy about that, other than we would be in compliance with applicable U.S. and international laws," said Cleive Dumas, who oversaw Ingersoll Dresser Pump's business in the Middle East, including Iraq.

Halliburton's primary concern, added Ingersoll-Rand's former chairman, James E. Perrella, "was that if we did business with [the Iraqi regime], that it be allowed by the United States government. If it wasn't allowed, we wouldn't do it."

Dumas and Perrella said their companies' commercial links to the Iraqi oil industry began before the U.N. Security Council imposed an oil embargo on Baghdad in the wake of its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

They returned to dealing with Iraq after the council established the "oil-for-food" program in December 1996, permitting Iraq to export oil under U.N. supervision and use the proceeds to buy food, medicine and humanitarian goods. The program was expanded in 1998 to allow Iraq to import spare parts for its oil facilities.

The Halliburton subsidiaries joined dozens of American and foreign oil supply companies that helped Iraq increase its crude exports from $4 billion in 1997 to nearly $18 billion in 2000. Since the program began, Iraq has exported oil worth more than $40 billion.

The proceeds funded a sharp increase in the country's nutritional standards, nearly doubling the food rations distributed to Iraq's poor.

But U.S. and European officials acknowledged that the expanded production also increased Saddam Hussein's capacity to siphon off money for weapons, luxury goods and palaces. Security Council diplomats estimate that Iraq may be skimming off as much as 10 percent of the proceeds from the oil-for-food program.

Cheney has offered contradictory accounts of how much he knew about Halliburton's dealings with Iraq. In a July 30, 2000, interview on ABC-TV's "This Week," he denied that Halliburton or its subsidiaries traded with Baghdad.

"I had a firm policy that we wouldn't do anything in Iraq, even arrangements that were supposedly legal," he said. "We've not done any business in Iraq since U.N. sanctions were imposed on Iraq in 1990, and I had a standing policy that I wouldn't do that."

Cheney modified his response in an interview on the same program three weeks later, after he was informed that a Halliburton spokesman had acknowledged that Dresser Rand and Ingersoll Dresser Pump traded with Iraq.

He said he was unaware that the subsidiaries were doing business with the Iraqi regime when Halliburton purchased Dresser Industries in September 1998.

"We inherited two joint ventures with Ingersoll-Rand that were selling some parts into Iraq," Cheney explained, "but we divested ourselves of those interests."

The divestiture, however, was not immediate. The firms traded with Baghdad for more than a year under Cheney, signing nearly $30 million in contracts before he sold Halliburton's 49 percent stake in Ingersoll Dresser Pump Co. in December 1999 and its 51 percent interest in Dresser Rand to Ingersoll-Rand in February 2000, according to U.N. records.

Perrella said he believes Halliburton officials must have known about the Iraqi links before they purchased Dresser. "They obviously did due diligence," he said.

And even if Cheney was not told about the business with Baghdad before the purchase, Perrella said, the CEO almost certainly would have learned about it after the acquisition. "Oh, definitely, he was aware of the business," Perrella said, although Perrella conceded that this was an assumption based on knowledge of how the company worked, not a fact to which he could personally attest because he never discussed the Iraqi contracts with Cheney.

A long-time critic of unilateral U.S. sanctions, which he has argued penalize American companies while failing to punish the targeted regimes, Cheney has pushed for a review of U.S. policy toward countries such as Iraq, Iran and Libya.

In the first expression of that new thinking, the Bush administration is campaigning in the U.N. Security Council to end an 11-year embargo on sales of civilian goods, including oil-related equipment, to Iraq.

U.S. officials say the new policy is aimed at easing restrictions on companies that conduct legitimate trade with Iraq, while clamping down on weapons smuggling and other black-market activity.

If the plan is approved, there would be "nothing to stop Iraq from importing [as many] oil spare parts as it needs" from Halliburton and other suppliers, according to a British official who briefed reporters on the proposal when it was introduced last month.

Cheney resigned as chairman of Halliburton last August. Although he has retained stock options worth about $8 million, he has arranged to donate to charity any profits from the eventual exercise of those options, Glover Weiss said.

Confidential U.N. documents show that Halliburton's affiliates have had broad, and sometimes controversial, dealings with the Iraqi regime.

For instance, the documents detail more than $2.5 million in contracts between Ingersoll Dresser Pump Co. and Iraq that were blocked by the Clinton administration. They included agreements by the firm to sell $760,000 in spare parts, compressors and firefighting equipment to refurbish an offshore oil terminal, Khor al Amaya.

The Persian Gulf terminal was badly damaged during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War and later was destroyed by allied warplanes during Operation Desert Storm. At the time, Cheney was secretary of defense.

Washington halted the sale because the facility was "not authorized under the oil-for-food deal," according to U.N. documents. Under the terms of the oil-for-food program, Baghdad is permitted to export crude oil, subject to U.N. supervision, through only two terminals, Ceyhan in Turkey and Mina al Bakr on the Persian Gulf.

The equipment was never delivered to Iraq, but Baghdad subsequently repaired the Khor al Amaya facility on its own.

A senior Iraqi oil ministry official, Faiz Shaheen, told an official Iraqi newspaper that Iraq would soon be able to export about 600,000 barrels a day of crude oil from the terminal.

Dumas said he was not aware of the dispute over the Khor al Amaya terminal. It was unlikely, he added, that Cheney or other top Halliburton executives would have known about the specific deals. "We had great independence in running our business," he said.

U.S. officials say the Bush administration is prepared to allow Iraq to resume exports from Khor al Amaya, as long as the earnings are placed in a U.N. escrow account that is used to pay for humanitarian supplies and further improvements to the oil industry.

"The U.S. attitude towards Iraqi exports has evolved considerably," said James A. Placke, a Washington-based analyst for Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a consulting firm. "They used to tightly restrict Iraqi oil exports, and now there is no limitation on Iraqi exports."

Iraq's power to entice foreign investment, meanwhile, has increased with the soaring demand for oil. U.S. companies, which have been able to trade with Iraq only through foreign subsidiaries and middlemen, are wary of dealing with Baghdad but eager to get a piece of the action, according to industry sources.

"The American oil industry is very interested in trying to enter Iraq," said J. Robinson West, chairman of Petroleum Finance Co., a consulting firm. "But I think that they are quite respectful of U.S. policy towards Saddam Hussein. There is a very strong feeling that in fact he is the greatest threat to oil production in the Middle East."

--------

Missile Fragments Collected in Iraq

New York Times
June 23, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq-Activists.html

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Six American and British activists opposed to U.N. sanctions against Iraq said Saturday they had collected fragments of a missile that reportedly killed 23 Iraqis to determine whether it was fired by allied warplanes, as alleged by Iraq.

The United States had denied dropping bombs Tuesday on a soccer field in Tall Afar, 275 miles northwest of Baghdad. Washington said if there were deaths in the attack, they were likely caused by Iraq's own misdirected ground fire.

``We saw a soccer field with a small crater and there were missile fragments, clothes and children's sandals,'' said Bilal Moose Patel, a 31-year-old British member of the Chicago-based Voices in the Wilderness pressure group.

``The nearest large facility was a grain elevator, which is at least one half to three-quarters of a mile away,'' he said.

American activist Philip Steger, from St. Paul, Minn., said he planned to ask the Pentagon to check on the serial numbers on the fragments.

``Since we now have only initial observation, we are not prepared to draw any conclusions,'' he told reporters.

Since arriving in Baghdad on June 14, the three Britons and three Americans have visited Basra, 340 miles south of Baghdad, and the province of Mosul, where the attack allegedly occurred.

The activists said they want to voice their support for Iraqis suffering under 11 years of U.N. sanctions, imposed after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990.

Allied aircraft patrol the skies over southern and northern Iraq, zones established after the 1991 Gulf War to protect Shiite Muslim rebels in the south and Kurds in the north from Saddam Hussein's forces. Iraq does not recognize the no-fly zones and has challenged allied aircraft since December 1998.

-------- israel

Israeli forces enter Gaza Strip, destroy houses: Palestinians

June 23, 2001
AFP
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010623/1/154w4.html

GAZA CITY, The Israeli army entered a Palestinian autonomous zone of the Gaza Strip overnight, destroying 17 houses, Palestinian sources said early Saturday.

They said the incursion took place at 3:30 am (0030 GMT), only hours after a car bomb blast which killed two Israeli soldiers.

-------- japan

Japan-U.S. Security Treaty Should Be Scrapped

Eijiro Noda,
Saturday, June 23, 2001
International Herald Tribune
http://www.iht.com/articles/23757.htm

TOKYO It is not uncommon in Japan to hear vogue words that lack substance. "Domei," which means alliance, may be an example. Press reports often mention that the United States now wants to strengthen the Japan-U.S. alliance. But the arguments in favor of doing so are questionable.

"Alliance" presupposes a common enemy. Japan, however, has had no enemy from at least the '90s, let alone a common enemy with the United States.

For the United States the maintenance of military bases is the most important aspect of the existing Japan-U.S. Security Treaty. But the so-called base problem has been the source of constant friction between local people and the American military since 1945, particularly on the island of Okinawa. Residents complain bitterly about frequent raucous low-flying and night-landing exercises, in addition to recurrent incidents arising from improper behavior by American servicemen.

Most Japanese cannot understand why they should put up with this when Japanese taxpayers pay 75 percent of the cost of maintaining these bases. According to an opinion poll conducted in Okinawa by the Cabinet Office, publicized on May 19, only 9.8 percent of locals said that the U.S. bases there were necessary for Japan's security.

The constitution of Japan states that power resides with the people and that we recognize that all peoples have the right to live in peace, free from fear and want. Yet these base problems remind me of life in a Soviet satellite state. In the early '70s I was stationed in Prague. The Czechs enjoyed a relatively high standard of living, but their government could not exercise control over foreign policy with Soviet forces stationed permanently to the north of the capital.

The sinking of the Japanese trawler Ehime Maru by the U.S. submarine Greeneville was not only a tragedy, but it also seriously damaged the image of the American military in the minds of Japanese.

Then came the collision of the U.S. and Chinese warplanes off Hainan Island. Is it necessary for the United States to continue surveillance flights off the Chinese coast when the U.S. government officially states that it does not see China as an enemy? Why should Japan approve such flights from bases located in Japan? Japan risks impairing friendly relations with China should a similar incident lead to a conflict between China and the United States.

On April 25, President George W. Bush declared that the United States would do whatever it takes to help defend Taiwan. But Japanese voters are very unlikely to approve of cooperation with the United States should an armed conflict occur in the Taiwan Straits.

The great majority of Japanese people undoubtedly wish to maintain friendly relations with the United States and appreciate the historic mission already accomplished by the treaty for the security of Japan. We are deeply indebted to the United States for helping us rebuild Japan in the postwar years by initiating democratic reforms.

However, the present system of defense cooperation based on the treaty has become increasingly irrelevant and is untenable. This so-called alliance does not exist beyond diplomatic rhetoric, both in terms of the geopolitical situation in the Far East and the unfortunate reality of base problems.

Some American defense experts have been pressing since the '90s for the alliance to be revitalized, but these efforts have not been able to convince the vast majority of Japanese, and unwittingly encourage ultra-nationalist forces in Japan, which seem eager to undo the fruits of democratization.

For Japan and the United States to mutually enjoy a more salubrious and durable relationship, it would be in the genuine interest of both governments to terminate the security treaty. All U.S. military bases would be withdrawn and a new treaty of friendship and cooperation worked out.

Japan should and can manage its own security without going nuclear, in keeping with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were naturally conducive to a strong antipathy to nuclear weapons. Japan has adequate conventional defense capabilities - naval and air in particular - with an annual defense budget of $50 billion.

The emergence of an economically interdependent community of nations in Asia is the best guarantor of peace. Political neutrality would enable Japan to live up to its constitutional pledge to be a peace-loving nation.

The writer, Japan's ambassador to India from 1987 to 1990, contributed this personal comment to the International Herald Tribune.

---

Japan PM Vows to Reduce Burden on Okinawans

New York Times
June 23, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-japan-k.html

TOKYO (Reuters) - Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi vowed on Saturday to do whatever he could to solve problems faced by residents of the southern Japanese island of Okinawa, home to about a quarter of the 100,000 U.S. troops in the Asian region.

Koizumi attended a gathering of some 6,000 people in Itoman city on subtropical Okinawa to mark the 56th anniversary of the ''Battle of Okinawa'' in which more than 200,000 people died in the closing days of World War Two.

``About 75 percent of U.S. military premises in Japan are concentrated in Okinawa, putting various burdens on the local residents,'' Koizumi told the gathering.

The island's 1.2 million people are host to a vast array of marine camps and airforce bases. About half of the 48,000 U.S. troops in Japan are based on the island which is a popular holiday resort for Japanese.

``It is an important task for my administration to resolve various problems in Okinawa. I will strive to reduce the burden on the people of Okinawa,'' Koizumi said.

Many Okinawans argue that with only one percent of Japan's land and one percent of its population, they carry an unfair burden.

Koizumi said he would convey the feelings of the Okinawans to President Bush when he holds his first summit with the U.S. leader at Camp David on June 30.

DEEP SCARS FROM WAR

Resentment toward the U.S. forces in Okinawa has been strong for decades and erupted in 1995 when a 12-year-old girl was abducted and raped by three U.S. servicemen.

A recent spate of criminal incidents in which military personnel have been implicated further fanned anti-base flames.

``The wounds suffered in the war will never be heeled,'' Okinawa Governor Keiichi Inamine told the same gathering.

``We will correctly convey the lessons we learned from the tragic war to future generations without letting them fade away.''

Strategically located in easy range of China, Taiwan, and North Korea, about half of U.S. forces in Asia are based in Japan and a significant realignment or cutback would be a military planner's nightmare.

The U.S. presence is a legacy of the last great battle of World War Two, the ``Battle of Okinawa.'' Over 100,000 Japanese troops fought to the death and over 150,000 islanders -- one-third of the then local population -- were killed or ordered to commit suicide by the Imperial Army.

The United States lost more than 7,000 soldiers, with 40,000 more wounded. That nightmare was the only land battle fought in Japan itself during the Pacific War.

After its defeat, Japan ceded Okinawa to U.S. military rule which lasted until 1972. In those years, the Okinawa economy never caught up with the rest of Japan, and the prefecture is now the poorest in the country, with a per capita income half that of Tokyo.

-------- puerto rico

Navy's Plans Could Hasten End of Island's Equine Charm

Saturday, June 23, 2001;
Washington Post
Sue Anne Pressley
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33848-2001Jun22?language=printer

VIEQUES, Puerto Rico This little-traveled island is best known for its role as a training site for the U.S. Navy over the past 60 years, a sliver of land that has been strafed and bombed by countless military jets in exercises like the ones this week.

But for its 9,000 islanders, and the 5,000 tourists who visit each year, something else provides Vieques' special quality. Wild horses roam here, peering out of the tropical forests, eating mangoes by the roadside, prancing down the narrow highways.

They reflect the still-rustic rhythms of life here -- and probably have the most to lose should this bit of rural paradise be discovered and, as many expect, developed, now that the Navy has declared it will end its training and close its base by 2003.

Already the horses, known as Pasofinos, pay a high price for their contact with people. Unlike the ponies of Chincoteague, Va., which remain aloof from the hordes, the Pasofinos mingle with residents and tourists who visit Vieques each year.

They have the battered look of old prizefighters: foreheads cross-stitched with scars from the barbed-wire fences that exist in abundance here (but don't seem to contain very much); flanks gouged from run-ins with branches and briars and the small jeeps that cruise the island.

Andrea Kaufman of the Vieques Humane Society & Animal Rescue Inc., the island's only veterinarian, says she sees about one traffic casualty a month, and hopes for a time when Vieques residents will put up stouter fencing. Last summer, Vieques officials approved the first cattle-crossing signs for the island and briefly considered horse warnings, too, before nixing the idea, figuring they would only be stolen.

Now some are worried that as Vieques inevitably changes into a tourist venue -- its first resort is about to open -- the horses will be reined in or put in harm's way more often.

"I see a lot of the old wise ones . . . hanging on doing the best they can," Kaufman said. ". . . I would hate to see them go, but I want it to be safe for them."

The name "Pasofino" means "delicate step," a reference to the horses' distinctive four-beated gait, a feature that gives them a dainty, hurrying look. Brought to the island by Spaniards several hundred years ago, the horses have run loose as long as anyone can remember -- keeping the roadsides clipped with their grazing and wandering as far as they can on an oval of land that is only 21 miles long and 5 miles wide.

Island youth, too young to drive, rope and ride them as a rite of passage, and while most residents see nothing remarkable about the horses' presence, tourists are usually thrilled.

They encounter the horses on isolated dirt roads, where the animals appear to look them in the eye before fading back into the thickets, or on the few main highways, where they seem to show motorists their backsides as they haughtily take control of traffic flow. One thing Pasofinos have is attitude.

"Sometimes they act like 'We own this, don't bother us, this is our road,' " said Fernando Nunez, acting manager of the 3,100-acre Vieques National Wildlife Refuge, who thinks the horses "bring some character to the island."

"It's different from the rest of Puerto Rico," he said.

Kaufman hopes microchips will one day be embedded in the animals to identify them. She also says that more of the male horses should be castrated to control the growing population, now estimated as well over 1,000.

"They're good horses, they have good temperaments," Kaufman said. "They're easygoing, easy to break, nice riding horses. Everybody has varying opinions about them. Some say round them up in one place, but if you do that, an owner will show up." Though the animals roam free, many are owned by island residents. Vieques cattle, which tend to be the bone-colored, droopy-faced, hump-backed Brahman variety, do not excite the emotions as the horses do, although they also can play havoc with traffic when a herd goes slouching down the road, pausing every few steps in confusion.

Stephen Earson, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service here, says the ever-grazing horses may not be as harmless as they seem, given the island's fragile ecosystem. Its tropical plants may be tasty, but they are also rare, he said.

"From a biologist's standpoint, they are not naturally here," he said, "and that means they can affect those species that are supposed to be here."

For that reason, Earson and others try to keep the horses away from the wildlife refuge, which is covered in mangrove swamps anyway. The animals also are prohibited by strong fences from some of the property owned by the Navy, which lays claim to two-thirds of Vieques.

But for now, the horses are seen almost everywhere on the island, in threesomes and foursomes, often including a mother and a young colt.

The latest young patient to come to Kaufman was recuperating at the seaside humane society on a recent morning, but not alone. The colt had cut itself terribly, carving a huge flap out of its chest when it ran into the rough edge of a sheet of corrugated metal.

At first, workers had taken the mother home -- the owner was found after the usual round of island inquiries -- but the colt became so upset that they were forced to bring the older horse back. The two stood quietly under a mango tree, protected for the moment from the changes that may be coming here.

-------- russia

1,000 Russian Soldiers Fight Fire

New York Times
June 23, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Russia-Fire.html

MOSCOW (AP) -- About 1,000 Russian soldiers on Saturday extinguished a fire that had ignited container cars full of ammunition and rockets at a military base in Siberia, officials said.

Five servicemen who had been standing guard at the base before the fire started Friday were initially reported missing, but were later found unharmed, ITAR-Tass news agency reported.

Officials quoted by ITAR-Tass said the cause of the fire was lightning, but NTV television reported that local prosecutors had opened an investigation into safety violations on the base.

NTV showed videotape of a crater with an exploded rocket sticking out of it and damage to a roof 5 miles from site of the fire in the Chita region, about 3,000 miles east of Moscow.

The fire was out Saturday, but cleanup workers could not yet move into the area for fear of more explosions, Valery Shcheblanin, a spokesmen for the local military district, said.

Lax safety has led to several ammunitions dump explosions in Russia in recent years.

--------

Villages Evacuated As Russian Arms Dump Blazes

New York Times
June 23, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-russia-.html

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A huge blaze at a Siberian artillery dump spewed shrapnel for miles Saturday, forcing the evacuation of two villages, officials said.

The fire, apparently caused by lightning Friday, blazed through the night at the arms dump near the town of Nerchinsk, in Russia's remote Chita region of Siberia, north of China and Mongolia.

Firefighters kept their distance, letting the blaze burn itself out. About 1,000 soldiers -- protected by 100 armored vehicles -- were mobilized to clear up unexploded shells, an operation officials said would not be safe to begin for days.

``The zone of the arsenal is completely destroyed,'' Valery Sheblanin, spokesman for the Siberian military district, told NTV television.

``The fire has more or less died down, but the military has not been able to start full-scale clear-up efforts because of the threat of explosions of ammunition,'' he said.

Interfax news agency quoted Sheblanin as saying one military officer was injured but in satisfactory condition. Five soldiers were briefly thought missing, but were later found safe.

He said more than 2,000 people had been evacuated from the two nearby villages but had later been allowed to return.

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

Ex-U.N. Officer Sues U.S. Firm Over Dismissal
Lawsuit Alleges Retaliation for Reporting Co-Workers' Sexual Misconduct in Bosnia

By Colum Lynch
The Washington Post
Saturday, June 23, 2001; Page A20
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36025-2001Jun22?language=printer

UNITED NATIONS, June 22 -- A former U.N. police officer today filed a civil lawsuit in Britain against a major U.S. contractor, alleging she was fired for investigating allegations of sexual misconduct in Bosnia by her fellow officers.

Kathryn Bolkovac, 40, a former U.N. human rights investigator from Lincoln, Neb., sued DynCorp Aerospace Co., the British subsidiary of U.S.-based DynCorp Inc., in South Hampton's Employment Tribunal on charges of wrongful dismissal, sexual discrimination and violation of Britain's whistle-blower laws.

Bolkovac said the Reston-based company, which hires U.S. officers to serve in U.N. missions around the world, laid her off in April because she constantly reported allegations that U.N. officers patronized sex clubs and participated in sexual trafficking.

"I was driven out because I was outspoken on this issue," Bolkovac said today in a telephone interview. "I expected some action to be taken, but accountability at DynCorp and the IPTF [International Police Task Force] is basically zero. There is nobody that can step in and say, 'Let's get to the bottom of this.' "

U.S. and DynCorp officials dispute the charges.

They said Bolkovac was fired because she falsified work documents, claiming hundreds of dollars in unwarranted per-diem expenses.

She also took leave without permission to attend her daughter's state basketball championship game in Nebraska.

She acknowledged that the leave was denied by headquarters but said that the dispute over the per diem expenses was the result of a bureaucratic mix-up and that she never intended to cheat the United Nations.

It is the second lawsuit filed against DynCorp in a year by an employee claiming to have been punished for uncovering wrongdoing.

Ben D. Johnston, an aircraft mechanic who was hired by DynCorp in 1998 to repair U.S. military helicopters in Tuzla, Bosnia, sued in Fort Worth in August, contending that DynCorp discharged him because he cooperated with a U.S. Army investigation into allegations that DynCorp employees illegally purchased weapons and engaged in sexual slavery in Bosnia.

The suits have cast a spotlight on a company that has supported American national security goals around the globe for decades. And they raise questions about the accountability of contract workers who engage in criminal activities while conducting business for the government.

DynCorp officials said they fired eight employees serving in Tuzla between 1999 and 2000.

The workers were the subject of Bosnian and U.S. military investigations into allegations that they purchased women and weapons and consorted with organized-crime figures.

One of the employees was exonerated. None faced criminal prosecution in the United States.

"The notion that a company such as DynCorp would turn a blind eye to illegal behavior by our employees is incomprehensible," Charlene A. Wheeless, a DynCorp spokeswoman, said in a statement. "We encourage our employees to be proactive in reporting inappropriate behavior and commend those who follow our procedures by reporting it."

But, she added, "There is no jurisdictional authority to prosecute American civilians for crimes committed on foreign soil."

She said it was unfair to blacken the company's reputation because a few employees "behaved inexcusably."

Johnston, who filed the first lawsuit, said in an interview this week that his supervisor and several co-workers were regular customers at Bosnian brothels.

Frustrated that his efforts to stop the illicit trade failed to yield results, he turned to the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command, which conducted a sting, obtaining weapons, a pornographic video featuring a DynCorp supervisor and admission by another employee that he had bought a Romanian woman and an Uzi.

Although the investigation confirmed many of Johnston's allegations, a former DynCorp employee accused him of trying to sell weapons to co-workers.

DynCorp officials said Johnston became an Army informer to seek revenge against the company, which had planned to end his $120,000 contract.

Bolkovac said her efforts to uncover similar sexual crimes by U.N. police, military personnel and foreign diplomats cost her job.

Bolkovac said a Bosnian narcotics officer alleged in August that an American police officer had "bought a woman for a thousand dollars and also assisted in forging her documents."

She also came across evidence that a NATO soldier had been stopped by local police with four Moldavian women in the car.

Questioned by U.N. police a week later, "their statements indicated they were brought across the border illegally, sold and forced into prostitution," Bolkovac said.

In an e-mail to more than 50 people -- including Jacques Klein, the U.N. secretary general special representative in Bosnia -- Bolkovac described the plight of trafficked women and noted that U.N. police, NATO troops and international humanitarian employees were regular customers.

Within days, she said, she was told she would be reassigned by Michael Stiers, the top U.S. police officer in Bosnia.

Stiers, who has since left the United Nations, said in an interview that Bolkovac was reassigned because she had behaved unprofessionally in her quest to help trafficked women and had lost sight of the police's main priority: ending the ethnic violence that threatened to unravel the country's fragile peace.

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

U.S. Forces in Gulf On Highest Alert Threats Also Prompt Travel Warning

By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 23, 2001; Page A22
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35929-2001Jun22?language=printer

The Pentagon has put all U.S. military forces in the Persian Gulf on the highest state of alert and ordered ships from the 5th Fleet in Bahrain out to sea because of increased terrorist threats linked to Osama bin Laden, U.S. officials said yesterday.

News of the threats, which a senior official called credible but "non-specific," sent stocks tumbling on Wall Street.

The Pentagon ordered all forces in the Persian Gulf on "Threat Condition Delta" late Thursday night after U.S. intelligence agencies detected increased surveillance activity and movement throughout the region by individuals associated with al Qaeda, bin Laden's network of Islamic extremists, the official said.

The signs of a possible terrorist attack are not thought to be related to Thursday's federal indictment of 14 suspects in the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, the official added.

"We don't have a geographic focus, and we don't have a date" for an attack, the official said. "We just have an angst."

A new bin Laden videotape circulating in the Middle East is reminiscent of propaganda that preceded the bombing of two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998, according to the official.

Bin Laden, an exiled Saudi millionaire who has taken refuge in Afghanistan, appears in the video wearing a traditional Yemeni dagger and reciting a poem in which he refers to the suicide bombing of the destroyer USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden in October.

Without claiming credit for the bombing, bin Laden says: "And in Aden, they charged and destroyed a destroyer that fearsome people fear, one that evokes horror when it docks and when it sails."

U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf have gone on heightened alert several times since the Cole bombing, which killed 17 sailors. Most recently, they moved to "Threat Condition Charlie," the second-highest state of alert, on May 29 because of intelligence reports of increased terrorist threats.

Under a Delta alert, access to U.S. military facilities is severely restricted. All vehicles entering bases are stopped, and many are searched; shore leaves and other non-business visits are canceled; packages and supplies are carefully inspected; patrols are increased, and troops are urged to be vigilant.

Retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, who until last year was commander of U.S. forces in the Mideast, said yesterday that "the mood out there isn't good. I've not seen it worse."

The State Department, meanwhile, reissued a worldwide caution for Americans traveling abroad, warning they "may be at increased risk of a terrorist action from extremist groups." The global advisory was last updated May 29 after four al Qaeda operatives were convicted of conspiracy in the embassy bombings, which killed 224 people and wounded 4,600 in Kenya and Tanzania.

State Department security officials also closed the U.S. Embassy in Dakar, Senegal, early yesterday so that security precautions could be reviewed. The embassy in Manama, Bahrain, will be closed today for a similar review.

At the port in Manama, Navy minesweepers were sent to sea yesterday as a precaution against terrorist attack. The aircraft carrier USS Constellation and its battle group were already at sea.

A contingent of 2,200 Marines also cut short a training exercise yesterday in Jordan and left the country on three ships led by the USS Boxer.

Staff writer Thomas E. Ricks contributed to this report.

----

Threat scrambles U.S. troops, ships in Mideast

06/23/2001
USA Today
The Associated Press.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/june01/2001-06-22-us-persiangulf.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - In response to a threat against Americans in the Middle East, a Marine Corps training exercise in Jordan has been cut short and Navy ships have been ordered out of port in Bahrain, Pentagon officials said Friday. The threat was described by the officials as "non-specific," meaning it was aimed at Americans but not necessarily against members of the military.

At the same time, the State Department said the U.S. government has learned that American citizens and interests abroad may be at risk of a terrorist attack from extremist groups,

A "worldwide caution" urged U.S. citizens to maintain a high level of vigilance and to take appropriate steps to increase security awareness to reduce their vulnerability.

Officials said it was possible the threat against Americans in the Middle East was related to Thursday's announcement by the Justice Department of indictments against 13 Saudis and one Lebanese in connection with the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers apartment complex in Saudi Arabia. Nineteen members of the U.S. Air Force were killed in that attack.

It was not immediately clear whether the source of the new threat was known to U.S. officials.

In response to the threat, several Navy minesweeping ships were ordered out of port in Bahrain, which is headquarters for the U.S. 5th Fleet that patrols the Persian Gulf area. The aircraft carrier USS Constellation and her battle group already were at sea, officials said.

Other additional security measures also were taken, but the officials would not disclose details.

The level of security for U.S. forces in the Middle East - known as the "threatcon" - was raised a notch, the officials said. They would not be more specific.

A contingent of 2,200 Marines operating as an Amphibious Ready Group cut short training in Jordan, the officials said. The Marines of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit from Camp Pendleton, Calif., were being taken back aboard their three ships, led by the USS Boxer, an amphibious assault ship.

U.S. Embassy officials in Amman were not immediately available for comment. Jordanian government officials confirmed a joint military exercise with U.S. Marines was suspended indefinitely.

Extra security precautions for U.S. forces in the Middle East have been ordered several times since the bombing last October of the USS Cole in Yemen.

------

Bush Seeking Defense Increase '02 Budget Request Adds $18.4 Billion

By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 23, 2001; Page A01
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35704-2001Jun22?language=printer

The Bush administration said yesterday it will propose a 6 percent boost in its planned 2002 defense budget, an increase that contains new funds for missile defense, military pay and other benefits but is less than many senior officers had expected.

The $18.4 billion addition, coming on top of previously announced increases, would raise next year's Pentagon budget to about $330 billion. That is roughly 10 percent more than this year's level but at least $10 billion less than the Joint Chiefs of Staff have said privately they believe is necessary.

Administration officials described the increase as a temporary move that simply stabilizes the military while Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld plans far-reaching changes in strategy, weapons and troop structure. But by deferring the military's expectations, the administration may be setting up a brawl next year with Congress and the armed services.

President Bush and Vice President Cheney made reinvigorating the military a major issue during last year's election campaign, with Cheney promising the armed services that "help is on the way." That rhetoric led some in the military to expect the new administration to pursue a military buildup reminiscent of the early years of the Reagan presidency.

But the administration also has emphasized that its first priority this year was a tax cut. Experts say it is not clear whether much money will be left over for defense after the $1.35 trillion tax cut passed by Congress last month.

Even the increase proposed yesterday will put pressure on Congress to hold down other spending or dip into funds earmarked for Social Security.

The defense budget for fiscal 2002, which begins on Oct. 1, does not reflect Rumsfeld's reforms, which he has said will not be ready until later this year. Moreover, it appears likely there will not be a big boost in defense spending in the 2003 budget, which is supposed to begin putting the reforms into effect.

An administration official said the most that the '03 budget is likely to be increased is about $20 billion. That is what will be available after paying for Social Security, Medicare and tax cuts, budget experts said.

But that amount is a fraction of what military leaders contend they need to conduct military operations and also begin to carry out Rumsfeld's priorities of higher spending on satellites, intelligence and missile defenses.

The 2003 defense budget, which will be written during the next six months, "is becoming a big problem," said Robert Hale, a former comptroller of the Air Force. "If they're going to modernize and transform the military, they're going to be forced to look at force cuts."

Another defense budget expert agreed, saying that the '02 amendment points toward an eventual across-the-board reduction in the size of the military, a course Rumsfeld has hinted at but has not explicitly endorsed.

"I think this could be a recipe for cutting two [Army] divisions, one [Air Force] fighter wing, and some Navy ships," the expert calculated.

The alternative would be to severely limit military reform, one of the administration's major initiatives, said Rep. John M. Spratt Jr. (D-S.C.), a member of the House Armed Services and Budget committees, and a former staffer in the Pentagon comptroller's office.

After paying for the essentials of operating the military, he said, "I think you won't see a lot of funding [left over] for transformation."

In hearings this week, some members of Congress warned Rumsfeld against cutting conventional forces such as troops and aircraft. Some lawmakers already are upset by the unexpectedly small supplemental budget that the administration sought earlier this month for defense spending in the current year.

The amendment to the '02 budget revealed yesterday would boost spending on missile defense by about $600 million to a total of about $7 billion, a senior Pentagon official said, briefing reporters on condition of anonymity.

The Clinton administration had proposed spending $5.3 billion in '02 on missile defense, and the Bush administration already had added $1.6 billion to that figure this year.

But most of the proposed $18.4 billion increase, which the administration plans to send to Congress as early as next week, mainly covers the meat and potatoes of the defense budget, such as spare parts, training and fuel for ships and aircraft. The request includes $4.1 billion for military pay and housing, and $2 billion for military health care.

"The administration has inherited severe shortfalls in readiness, in health care, in operations, maintenance and infrastructure -- far worse than was originally understood," the senior Pentagon official said.

But, contrary to what some officials had promised, the '02 amendment does not try to begin carrying out Rumsfeld's vision by cutting some weapons programs and boosting others. "No platforms are killed, no systems are killed, and no force structure changes" are in the amendment, another Pentagon official said.

"This is a purely transitional effort, to recover and get back to the level necessary to begin making adjustments," an administration official explained. "There is a lot of fixing of potholes."

The '02 amendment indicates that Rumsfeld's reshaping of the military is moving more slowly than he had planned. Just a few weeks ago, Pentagon officials predicted that it would provide the first solid indication of how Rumsfeld intended to address the emerging threats of the 21st century.

In a briefing on May 31, for example, Pentagon comptroller Dov Zakheim said he thought the '02 amendment would provide "seed corn for some transformation projects."

--------

Rumsfeld to Seek $33 Billion Rise for Military

New York Times
June 23, 2001
By THOM SHANKER and JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/23/politics/23MILI.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, June 22 - Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld will propose increasing the Pentagon's budget for next year to $329 billion, an increase of $33 billion over President Bill Clinton's last military budget, officials said today.

Mr. Rumsfeld's figure was also $18.4 billion above the Pentagon budget proposed by President Bush in February. Still, the increase was immediately criticized by Republicans as insufficient and by Democrats as beyond reach because of the recent tax cut.

Mr. Rumsfeld had originally asked the White House for substantially more money, and the final figure, which officials said would be presented to Congress next week, was certain to disappoint senior military officers who had thought President Bush's arrival at the White House would bring an even larger increase in military spending.

The total proposed military budget of $329 billion for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1 represents a 7 percent increase, after adjusting for inflation, over the current $296 billion military budget, President Clinton's last. That would make it one of the largest increases in percentage since the military buildup of the 1980's under President Ronald Reagan.

Even so, officials have said that this budget request does not lay out the grand transformation of America's military that was promised by President Bush; that design will await the fiscal 2003 budget. The increases in the new budget request are mainly to improve pay and benefits, as well as maintenance and housing programs.

Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, said tonight that the budget request's "guiding principle is a commitment to quality of life issues, and that is people: pay, housing, health care." In a telephone interview, Mr. Daniels said Mr. Bush also wanted to "restore readiness."

But Republicans on Capitol Hill said they were not satisfied, and would try to increase the total by $5 billion or more to provide more money for weapons programs.

"I wouldn't use the word fight, but we're going to have to work with the White House," said Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee. "I know the president will want to do the right thing for the armed forces."

But Democrats said the Pentagon's request might be too large because President Bush's $1.35 trillion tax cut had drastically reduced the surplus. Republicans dispute that.

"It is not clear at all where the money is going to come from to meet Mr. Rumsfeld's transformation of the defense budget," said Representative John M. Spratt Jr., Democrat of South Carolina, his party's ranking member on the Budget Committee, who also serves on the Armed Services Committee.

"The bottom line will be strained to accommodate this request for 2002," Mr. Spratt said. "And then, presumably, this is not a one-time, nonrecurring increase, but will staircase upward by some amount each year for several years. They say we can have it all, but it is becoming clear we can't."

Democrats have already warned that the Pentagon increase might have a tough time competing with other proposals, including for education, agriculture and a payment plan for prescription drugs. And they suggested that the Bush administration might have to take the politically risky step of dipping into surplus Medicare money to pay for the military increase.

Some Congress members and Pentagon officials who said they had recently spoken with Mr. Rumsfeld said he had indicated that he hoped for substantially more, perhaps an increase of closer to $40 billion. A senior official said tonight that the White House had granted Mr. Rumsfeld only his "top priorities."

The administration's total 2002 military request will be $343.5 billion; most of the money over and above the Pentagon's $329 billion is for the nuclear arms program managed by the Energy Department.

A senior Pentagon official said increases for the 2002 military budget would include $4.1 billion for pay and housing, $2 billion for health care and $1.6 billion for readiness, operations and maintenance. A $1.3 billion increase is to be proposed for flying hours. Other categories of readiness, including depot maintenance, spare parts, range and training center modernization and force protection, would receive $2.6 billion more under the Rumsfeld plan. Infrastructure would rise by $2.6 billion.

The senior Pentagon official also said that the missile defense program would receive $600 million in new financing under Mr. Rumsfeld's proposal. The official pointed out that with other increases already proposed by President Bush, spending on missile defense would increase by $2.2 billion in 2002.

Officials declined tonight to discuss details on whether the 2002 budget proposal would provide evidence of pending changes in major weapons programs, and said those decisions were likely to await the budget for the fiscal year 2003.

"You'll find that most of those decisions will await completion of the defense review," one official said, referring to the Quadrennial Defense Review, which is mandated by Congress and is now under way at the Pentagon. "That's just as the president asked it be. Procurement decisions, decisions on weapons systems, should follow strategy, and not the other way around."

The proposal included $3.6 billion for buying new weapons, a figure that many officials on Capitol Hill said was surprisingly low. "It tells me that they have not yet made decisions on major weapons programs," said Steve Daggett, a military analyst with the Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan research division of Congress.

Mr. Rumsfeld has said that he will begin a major overhaul of the forces starting with the 2003 budget. But Democrats have warned that the budget will be even tighter then because of the way the tax cut has been structured. Mr. Rumsfeld acknowledged as much during testimony before Congress on Thursday.

"The fact that the tax bill was accelerated in its effective date changed the numbers," Mr. Rumsfeld said, "quite significantly, as I recall."

---------

U.S. Crew Rescued in Mediterranean

New York Times
June 23, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Italy-US-Crash.html

ROME (AP) -- Four U.S. Navy servicemen were rescued unharmed after their helicopter crash-landed in the Mediterranean Sea off the Greek island of Crete, the Navy said Saturday.

The four, including two pilots and two crew members, had been on a routine training operation about 55 miles south of Crete when they crashed late Friday, a statement said.

The HH-46 helicopter had been operating from the USS Kearsarge, said the statement from the U.S. Sixth Fleet, based in Gaeta, Italy.

An investigation was under way to determine the cause of the crash.

--------

Rumsfeld: 'U.S. vulnerable to emerging threats'

06/22/2001
USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-06-22-rumsfeld.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - The "two war" strategy that has underpinned U.S. military planning for the past decade has outlived its usefulness, leaving the United States increasingly vulnerable to emerging threats like ballistic missiles and cyberattack, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told Congress.

"The current strategy is not working, so we owe it to ourselves to ask: What might be better?" Rumsfeld said.

He spoke before the Senate Armed Services Committee and later the House Armed Services Committee. It marked Rumsfeld's first public congressional testimony since he took office in January. Some in Congress have complained that Rumsfeld was keeping them in the dark, although several committee members applauded him Thursday for undertaking an in-depth review of defense needs.

The U.S. defense strategy, fashioned in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, is based on a capability to win two "major theater wars" - on the scale of the 1991 Gulf War - at nearly the same time. The idea is to have enough combat forces to sustain a conflict in the Persian Gulf, with enough in reserve to dissuade North Korea, for example, from starting a conflict with South Korea.

Rumsfeld said this approach worked well during the 1990s but has been undermined by a lack of investment in the advanced military technologies needed to meet emerging threats. He also said the Pentagon had "skimped on our people, doing harm to their trust and confidence."

Rumsfeld said the Defense Department has sketched the general outlines of a new defense strategy and hopes to present it to the White House for President Bush's approval by late summer. It is being closely examined now by a civilian-military team of experts as part of a broad defense review, he said.

Rumsfeld also told the committees that the administration hopes to have an amended 2002 defense budget request ready for Congress by Wednesday. He provided no figures.

He described the emerging new defense strategy in broad terms, with the barest of detail. He said it would emphasize being prepared for future threats while defending the United States against current threats like terrorism and nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

It also would enable the United States to maintain forces abroad capable of defeating any adversary, repelling attacks in "a number of critical areas," and conducting a limited number of smaller-scale military missions.

He said the new strategy could require modifications in war plans, but did not elaborate.

Underlying the Bush administration's push for a new defense strategy is the president's belief - shared by Rumsfeld - that the existing approach has put too much strain on the troops and emphasized near-term threats like war on the Korean peninsula at the expense of emerging threats like cyberwar.

Evidence of the difficulties in finding an alternative emerged in Thursday's exchange with members of the House Armed Services Committee.

Rep. Floyd Spence, R-S.C., told Rumsfeld he thought it was premature to drop the current approach because it serves an important purpose in dissuading potentially hostile nations from thinking that they could catch the United States short if it became involved in a war in the Gulf.

"If we change it we confuse a lot of people - friends and allies," Spence said.

Rumsfeld said he fears the United States has become complacent about defense, since the Cold War is over, the U.S. economy is strong and the country faces no immediate threat to its existence.

To illustrate his point he told the story of a Union general who surveyed his Confederate adversary across the battlefield and, confident in his superior position, turned to an aide and said, "They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance." A moment later a sharpshooter's bullet struck him under his left eye, killing him instantly.

"Complacency can kill," Rumsfeld said.

-------- OTHER

-------- energy

Witnesses Say Generator Cut Power Supply to Raise Price

New York Times
June 23, 2001
By MATT RICHTEL
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/23/national/23POWE.html

SACRAMENTO, June 22 - Three former workers at a plant operated by one of the biggest power producers in California testified today that the company shut production units in what they said was an apparent effort to drive up electricity prices.

The three men, who worked at a plant in suburban San Diego owned by Duke Energy, told a hearing in the State Legislature that the plant's managers also threw out spare parts needed for repairs and took other measures that reduced its output and helped drive up prices.

Executives at Duke, based in Charlotte, N.C., denied the accusations, saying the company learned about them only on Thursday afternoon and was not invited by the Legislature to rebut them.

"These allegations represent just one more page in a very long chapter of misinformation disseminated by people who don't know the full story," said Bill Hall, vice president for Duke's western operations.

The employees worked for the San Diego Gas and Electric Company, which operated the South Bay plant in Chula Vista as a subcontractor for Duke starting in April 1999. The employees were let go when Duke took full control of the plant in April.

Mr. Hall noted that Duke Energy produced 50 percent more electricity in 2000 than in 1999. "The average price we sold into the market last year was $76," he said, referring to a megawatt-hour, "far less than the spot market price last year."

Duke supplies about 5 percent of California's electricity from its four in-state plants, including three bought from Pacific Gas and Electric for $501 million in 1998.

The testimony, before a select legislative committee investigating price manipulation in California's deregulated electricity market, came from two plant mechanics and a control room technician.

They said they were asked to throw out new parts that could have been used for maintenance; not complete necessary maintenance; and run a more expensive emergency turbine when circumstances did not warrant its use. "In my opinion, there was price manipulation," Glenn Johnson, a certified power plant mechanic, said in an interview.

As an example of what he called questionable procedures, Mr. Johnson said the plant's output fluctuated sharply in a way that could have damaged the turbines. "They were running the units like yo-yo's," he said. "They would run them up, and run them down."

Mr. Johnson and Edmond Edwards Jr., another former mechanic at the plant, along with Jimmy Olkjer, an assistant control room operator, supported their testimony with copies of control-room logs Mr. Johnson smuggled out of the plant.

But Tom Williams, a Duke Energy spokesman, said the output levels fluctuated because the company was receiving orders for different levels of power from the Independent System Operator, the agency that runs the power grid in California. Mr. Williams said an analysis of records from the plant and the agency would prove that Duke was merely responding to the market.

The testimony today was one of the first times employees of a power producer discussed its operations publicly, a development that the companies' critics say is essential to understand why Californians have paid such high prices for electricity since last year.

"This is the first smoking gun that's appeared - whistle-blowers," said Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, who attended the hearings, according to The Associated Press. "That is called market manipulation, and that, in effect, ended up costing the ratepayers of California billions."

For months, Gov. Gray Davis has asserted that power producers, most of them out of state, have earned huge profits at California's expense. This week, at a hearing in Washington, he accused federal regulators of ignoring his state's predicament. Mr. Davis and Mr. Bustamante are Democrats.

The Independent System Operator concluded in March that Californians might have been overcharged $6.7 billion for energy bought since last summer. Several state agencies, including the Public Utilities Commission and the attorney general's office are investigating whether generators have charged excessive prices.

In March, Duke Energy offered to negotiate a broad settlement. The outlines of Duke's proposal included a compromise on the money owed by California utilities, in exchange for the dropping of private lawsuits, California's complaints to federal regulators and the state investigations.

Among other accusations today, Mr. Johnson said he had been asked several times to stop maintenance in the middle of a project and to put a partly fixed piece back online.

On two occasions, Mr. Edwards said, he was asked to throw out new parts that could have been used for maintenance. Mr. Edwards said he was told to discard them so Duke would not accrue inventory tax.

Mr. Williams of Duke said the company inherited inventory from San Diego Gas and Electric. "We chose to keep some of it and to not keep some of it."

-------- environment

California Wins Power to Limit Oil Exploration
U.S. Judge Rules State Has Approval Rights, Can Enforce Environmental Laws

By Rene Sanchez
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 23, 2001; Page A14
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36434-2001Jun23?language=printer

LOS ANGELES, June 22 -- A federal judge has given California significant new power to review, and possibly restrict, any future oil and gas exploration or drilling near its coast.

In a decision praised by environmental groups, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken in Oakland has ruled that the state has the right to approve any federal attempts to open its coastal waters to new oil exploration and to subject any such activity to its own environmental laws.

The ruling will likely make it much more difficult for petroleum companies that have production leases in federal waters off the California coast to begin work if a federal ban on new drilling near the state's coast is lifted.

If environmental studies by the state conclude that exploration and drilling would be harmful to marine life and to the coast, the judge said, the leases would be terminated.

The judge's decision resolves a lawsuit that Gov. Gray Davis (D) and environmental groups filed nearly two years ago to stop the enactment of several dozen offshore oil leases along the scenic central coast of California. Davis strongly opposes offshore drilling.

He praised the judge's decision in a statement tonight, saying that it entitled California "to be the engine, not the caboose of the train" in resolving the issue of offshore drilling in coastal waters.

Drew Caputo, a lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council in San Francisco, said the decision could scuttle all the plans that oil companies have been advocating for the coast.

"It's really significant for us," he said.

Under federal and state law, new oil and gas drilling is prohibited off the California coast, but those steps were taken after nearly 36 leases had been signed decades ago for fields in coastal waters. They have never been opened to production, but the Clinton administration had allowed companies with leases to begin planning for exploration -- prompting the lawsuit from Davis and environmental groups.

No drilling to look for new deposits of oil and gas has been conducted since 1989, and the last new oil platform off the California coast was built in 1994.

But the issue has been gaining new attention since the Bush administration is advocating new domestic oil and gas production. In Washington Thursday, the House voted to delay a Bush administration effort to open part of the Gulf of Mexico near the Florida coastline to oil and gas exploration.

In California, political leaders in both parties have long expressed concern or outrage about opening the state's coast to new drilling or exploration. An oil spill in 1969 that significantly damaged the picturesque coast of Santa Barbara is often cited as an example of the hazards of offshore oil production.

--------

China Announces Extensive Plan to Combat Its Water Shortage

New York Times
June 23, 2001
By ERIK ECKHOLM
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/23/world/23BEIJ.html

BEIJING, June 22 - The Chinese government has announced details of a crash, multibillion-dollar plan it hopes will salvage the deteriorating water supply here, which along with other northern cities has suffered from years of unusually low rainfall and decades of unchecked pollution and poorly planned development.

The plan includes construction of new sewage-treatment plants, the closing of polluting factories, changes in farming practices and graduated pricing of water. It aims to ease the water shortage before Beijing can benefit from another grandiose project - to pipe water from the Yangtze River basin in southern China to the north.

Beijing sits on a plain without large rivers or high rainfall and as its population surged past 14 million, with little conservation, shortages were perhaps inevitable. Urban water needs have soared while the surrounding region has thousands of factories that are polluters and heavy water users and large farming areas that rely on irrigation. Pollution, as much as skimpy supply, has been blamed for the immediate crisis because much water has been rendered unusable.

Until recently, Beijing drew its drinking water from two reservoirs. But since 1997, pollution has forced the city to stop using one of those reservoirs, at Guanting, said Zhang Jiyao, deputy minister of water resources. To make up the deficit, Beijing has resorted to overpumping of underground waters, Mr. Zhang said.

Sewage services have not remotely kept up with the city's growth. Choked by sewage and factory effluents, some river channels here have become virtual cesspools. Only 22 percent of wastewater in greater Beijing is now treated, but officials said the rapid construction of new sewage treatment plants will bring that number to 90 percent by 2005.

With a top-level national coordinating group and a projected 2005 budget of nearly $3 billion - most of it to be provided by the Beijing city government - officials insist that things will change rapidly. "This plan will turn Beijing into an international city with guaranteed water sources and a beautiful water environment," Mr. Zhang pledged, no doubt with the city's pending bid for the 2008 Olympics in mind.

The project aims to restore the Guanting reservoir while improving protection and augmenting flows into the other key source, the Miyun reservoir. Already, irrigation has been stopped in large areas formerly devoted to rice paddies, and water- conserving farm methods will be introduced upstream while other areas are restored to forest and grassland.

Officials offered no details of how they would meet the huge cost of building so many plants and hooking up sprawling communities to the main sewerage system.

-------- health

Bush Discusses Genetic Testing

New York Times
June 23, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bush-Genetic-Discrimination.html

CRAWFORD, Texas (AP) -- With science promising to offer patients vast new information about their genetic codes, President Bush said Saturday that he wants to outlaw discrimination based on genetic testing.

It's a popular issue with significant support in Congress. But as with another health issue -- the patients' bill of rights -- Bush parts company with Democrats over whether to give people who are harmed the right to sue insurance companies or employers for damages.

The patients' rights issue, prompted by the explosion of cost-conscious managed care, is in its fifth year of intense debate in Congress, with the Senate now moving into its second week of floor debate.

The genetic discrimination issue is newer, but it gained momentum earlier this year when scientists completed the mapping of the human genome.

``By better understanding the genetic codes in each human being, scientists may one day be able to cure and prevent many diseases,'' Bush said Saturday in his weekly radio address. ``As with any other power, this knowledge of the codes of life has the potential to be abused.''

The president's comments were recorded at his ranch, where he is spending a three-day weekend with first lady Laura Bush.

New genetic research may make it possible to identify an individual's lifetime risk of cancer, heart attack and other diseases, and experts worry that this information could be used to discriminate in hiring, promotions or insurance.

Employers and insurers could save millions of dollars if they could use predictive genetics to identify in advance, and then reject, applicants who are predisposed to develop chronic disease. And fear of discrimination could discourage people from seeking useful information about their genetic makeup.

Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., a principal sponsor of genetic discrimination legislation in the House, responded that Bush and many Republicans are latecomers to the genetic discrimination issue.

``The Republican leadership in the House has failed to act on this issue,'' she said Saturday in a statement. She added that her bill now has support of more than 250 House members, including nearly 50 Republicans.

Identical legislation is moving through the Senate pushed by Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and Slaughter said it is expected to be passed this year.

``I hope the president will support this strong, enforceable nondiscrimination bill,'' Slaughter said. The bill gives people the right to sue in cases involving both health insurance and employment.

Bush said that his administration is working on its own version of the legislation now.

``I look forward to working with members of Congress to pass a law that is fair, reasonable and consistent with existing discrimination statutes,'' the president said.

In the case of both genetic discrimination and the patients' bill of rights, there's considerable agreement on the need for protections but deep difference on how to enforce them.

On patients' rights, which gives patients new rights in dealing with their insurance companies, Bush repeated his contention that the Democratic bill before the Senate would needlessly encourage lawsuits.

``The system should not favor HMOs and it should not favor trial lawyers,'' he said. ``It should favor patients with quick action to make sure they get the treatment they need.''

Responding for Democrats, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, said that as it now stands health maintenance organizations and foreign diplomats are the only two groups with total immunity from lawsuits.

``It is past time that we stood up for ... millions of other Americans who have been harmed when an HMO refuses to live up to their word,'' Harkin said.

Republicans are particularly concerned that employers who provide their workers health insurance will wind up facing lawsuits, and on Friday, they proposed giving them ironclad protection from lawsuits. Democrats said they were willing to limit, if not eliminate, liability.

-------- human rights

Giving Aid To Torturers

By Sister Dianna Ortiz
Monday, June 25, 2001; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41197-2001Jun24?language=printer

They can't be humans, I thought: the policeman, the indigenous man with one eye, the even-featured Ladino who abducted me from the convent in Guatemala. They removed my blindfold before leaving me in a room with a woman I befriended. When they came back, the policeman put a machete in my hand, trapped my hand under his and forced me to stab the woman.

Humans aren't this evil, I thought; they must be forms the devil has taken. That thought softened the blow of their words: "If you live through this, no one will believe you. No one will listen. No one will care." Satan, I knew, was the father of lies. And I was an American, a citizen of a democracy. If I survived I would be heard.

The torturers tried to break this belief in the power of my own voice. In the "cigarette game," if I answered a question the way they liked, I could smoke. If not, they would burn me. Those were the rules. By the end of the "game," I knew they would burn me whatever I said. The lesson: Words are useless. Nothing can stop the torture.

Years later, gathering testimonies for a National Institute of Mental Health publication, I found that torturers around the world often tell their victims no one will listen to them. No one will care. The torturers, presumably, hope survivors will not dare put this prediction to the test. The survivors will be unable, then, to demand justice or find support to help in healing but will remain apart, still imprisoned, walking signposts for the torturers' power.

Those of us who refuse to be silent will gather this year -- as we have for the past three years -- for a vigil in front of the White House tomorrow, the United Nations' International Day in Support of Torture Victims and Survivors. Throughout the week we will meet with U.S. officials to plead for policy changes.

We met with a National Security Council official in 1999. Eighteen survivors from 16 countries spoke for three minutes each -- long enough to establish that all but one of us had been tortured by militaries supported, trained or funded by the United States. This year, we will conduct a training session for staff of the Immigration and Naturalization Service to sensitize them to torture survivors who may apply for asylum in the United States.

These have been the highest-level meetings we've been granted. President Clinton and Vice President Gore couldn't meet with us either of the past two years. Former attorney general Janet Reno ignored our request, as did George Tenet of the CIA. Then-Gov. Bush was busy. And this year, our request to meet with Secretary of State Colin Powell was declined (though a low-level official from the Department of State will meet with us). No one will listen. Nobody cares. The torturers' words seemed prophetic.

Amnesty International, which eight months ago launched a two-year campaign against torture, has called on governments to take specific measures, including putting an end to training and funding torturers. The campaign is a bulwark against despair. Sometimes, back in the United States, I've struggled with the idea that I'm still in the secret prison: in 1995, for example, when I learned that I and all U.S. citizens had been funding the Guatemalan death squads. Although the U.S. government supposedly suspended military aid to Guatemala in 1990 to protest human rights violations, $5 million to $7 million flowed annually through the CIA to the worst elements of the Guatemalan army as we fought a secret war.

I had the sense that I was reliving the nightmare, opening my eyes to find my hand, bloody, on the handle of a knife. If the torturers knew the thought that I had held before me like a shield -- that I live in a democracy -- they would have been laughing as they pocketed their checks. My government did to me what they had done, forcing me to participate in cold-blooded murder.

Where military aid is overt, national interest, drug-traffic control and terrorism are often invoked as justifications for overriding human rights concerns. But the most deadly terrorists are the well-connected, well-financed governments that torture with impunity. According to reports received by Amnesty International, in 1999 the United States provided military aid and training to 49 countries where government officials were involved in torture.

While visiting Guatemala in 1999, Clinton stated publicly, "What we did in Guatemala was wrong." Must we always take off the blindfold after the fact?

This is not the torture chamber. I have to remind myself. This is not a secret prison. No one is holding our hands on the handle of weapons. We can say no. We can demand an end to government secrecy. We can put a stop to covert operations. We can disallow presidential waivers that override concerns on human rights. This isn't a game in which our voices are useless, our answers futile. Why, then, does the torture continue?

The writer, a Roman Catholic nun now living in Washington, was abducted and tortured while working as a missionary in Guatemala in 1989. She co-founded the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition in 1997.

--

The Nun Who Knew Too Much

By Frank Smyth
Sunday, May 12, 1996; Page C01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A99068-1996May12?language=printer

THEY MET last month on the set of NBC's "Today" show. Jeanne Boylan, the forensic artist who drew the Unabomber suspect, is the expert the FBI most often hires for top-priority crimes. Dianna Ortiz is a Roman Catholic nun who says that in November 1989 in Guatemala she was kidnapped, raped and tortured in a clandestine prison. The two women worked together to compose sketches of four men who were present. But unlike most of those Boylan has drawn, one of these men, according to Ortiz, may have been working for the U.S. government.

Only 5-foot-3 with delicate features making her look much younger than 37, Ortiz, over the past six weeks, has managed to reopen wounds in this country first incurred in the 1980s over Central America. She has gained ground in her search for her assailants, which even White House officials admit may yet implicate the U.S. intelligence community.

"We're going to let the chips fall were they may," says Nancy Soderberg, the Clinton administration's deputy national security advisor. "Our premise is that none of this happened on our watch. We just want to get to the facts."

The Ortiz case once again draws America's attention to Guatemala, where a succession of military governments have compiled the hemisphere's worst record for brutality. Human rights organizations estimate that as many as 100,000 Guatemalans have been killed by their own government over the last four decades; torture, disappearances and massacres have been routine. Whatever one makes of Ortiz's story, her bid for U.S. government documents on her ordeal puts to the test CIA Director John Deutch's assertions that he will clean up the agency and tests the White House's ability to get the answers about the relationship between U.S. intelligence officials and the D-2, Guatemala's military intelligence service.

The Bush administration doubted Ortiz's credibility. Last week the Clinton administration released documents about Ortiz's case from that period. In one cable to Washington, then-ambassador Thomas F. Stroock, a newly arrived political appointee of George Bush, wrote that he did not believe her account. He rejected her claim that one of her abusers, "Alejandro," was a North American man who spoke Spanish poorly and cursed in English. Stroock questioned "the motives and timing behind the story," writing that it may have been a "hoax" designed to influence an upcoming vote in Congress on Guatemala over U.S. military aid.

"I know something happened to her in Guatemala," says Stroock by telephone from Wyoming. "What I don't know is what it was." Stroock, who met Bush at Yale, has long complained that Ortiz failed to cooperate with both U.S. and Guatemalan authorities after her ordeal. "It is one thing to be traumatized, but it's another thing not to talk to the police." About her story, Stroock adds, "I don't know whether to believe her or not." But today a growing number of people in the White House, Congress and elsewhere do believe Ortiz and her story.

"I'm so stunned that there was a credibility question," says sketch artist Boylan, who was called in to work on the case of Susan Smith, the South Carolina woman who falsely claimed that her children had been abducted by a black man but later admitted to having killed them herself. Boylan doubted Smith's story. "It is part of my job to look for such factors," Boylan adds, explaining that she constantly evaluates whether a subject's emotional reactions and the details communicated are appropriate in the context of the alleged crime." With Ortiz, she says, "I found nothing to indicate deception of any kind."

Boylan and Ortiz worked for four days to reconstruct her memories of her abductors. Ortiz, who by then was down to 87 pounds, reacted differently to each image. "At first it took her an hour to look at Alejandro. She hyperventilated, and then passed out," recalls Boylan. "[Later] she curled up in a ball on her bed weeping." The two women finished the sketches last Sunday, releasing them at a press conference the next day.

Ortiz, who has broken down during many previous press encounters, appeared stronger and more confident than in any before. "Even though I carry their faces with me, they can't haunt me anymore," she said in response to one reporter's question: "They're out there. I'm free."

Ortiz also announced that she was suspending the vigil and fast that she had begun in front of the White House, and admitted taking some of her inspiration from Jennifer Harbury, a Harvard-educated attorney. Last year Harbury fasted in Lafayette Square to find out what the U.S. government knew about the disappearance of her leftist guerrilla husband. Twelve days later, Rep. Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.) revealed that a CIA-paid Guatemalan D-2 intelligence officer, Col. Julio Roberto Alpirez, was involved in his torture and extra-judicial execution.

Torricelli is one of 103 members of Congress from both parties who last week signed a letter to President Clinton backing Ortiz's demands for all U.S. government documents related to her case and others. The next day the State Department released more than 5,800 documents related to her case and 17 other U.S. citizens who have suffered human rights abuses in Guatemala. The documents released so far about Ortiz, however, elaborate only on the Bush administration's previous doubts about her story, not on the information she demands.

One document, from a yet unidentified agency, states: "We need to close the loop on the issue of the `North American' named by Ortiz \.\ .\ .\ . The EMBASSY IS VERY SENSITIVE ON THIS ISSUE but it is an issue we will have to respond to publicly when the [ABC News `Prime Time'] show airs." The next paragraph and the whole next page of this document is censored for national security reasons.

The Clinton administration, while saying that so far it has found nothing on "Alejandro," has recently been sending conflicting signals about Michael DeVine, an American innkeeper murdered in Guatemala in June 1990 (Col. Alpirez is also implicated in that killing). But the administration has promised to release more information about these cases and others in June. Taking a personal step, National Security Adviser Anthony Lake paid three visits to Ortiz during her Lafayette Park vigil.

Her ordeal began on November 2, 1989, just days before the Berlin Wall started to crumble. Ortiz, who had come to Guatemala to teach Mayan grade-school children how to read and write, was a guest at a religious retreat in the colonial town of Antigua. From there at around 8 in the morning she disappeared. U.S. embassy officials, including Ambassador Stroock, helped anxious nuns and priests try to find her. They did after about 24 hours. Stroock later saw her briefly in Guatemala City inside the Papal Nuncio. But he did not believe the statement outlining her main claims later distributed by the office of Guatemala's archbishop. It "is in Spanish and not in the first person," he wrote.

Although he offered assistance, Stroock and other U.S. officials were denied the opportunity to question Ortiz. Neither he nor any member of his staff saw the cigarette burns which she allegedly had on her chest and back. The embassy could find no witnesses nor confirm any material details of her account. These facts "seem to indicate that the story as told is not accurate," Stroock told his superiors in Washington.

The following week Congress was scheduled to vote on economic and military aid to Guatemala, El Salvador and other countries, a package which the Bush administration was backing. In the months before, Guatemala, especially, was overcome by a wave of violence. These attacks led some to argue that Congress should put conditions on military aid to the country.

"The old Guatemala of the early '80s seems to have returned with a vengeance," wrote Philip B. Heymann, a Harvard University law professor who was then directing a U.S.-funded criminal justice project in Guatemala, in a September 1989 letter to Sen. Robert Byrd. "The Senate should condition any military aid on the Guatemalan government's investigation, prosecution and conviction of the perpetrators of the recent political violence. The entire $9 million earmarked for such aid should be held in suspension until adequate measures are taken."

The Bush administration disagreed, and Stroock feared that Ortiz's case might have been fabricated to try and sway Congress. Such logic led him and other Bush administration officials to eventually doubt her completely. Sue Patterson, the embassy's consul general, wrote in April 1992 that the case was a "big political problem for Guatemala, because everybody believes a nun more than they do the [Guatemalan government] \. \. \. . I don't believe [her], nor does anyone else who knows the case well."

Ortiz, however, still bears signs of her experience, including 111 small round scars. Seen by another doctor as well as by church officials in the Papal Nuncio, Ortiz was later examined by Dr. Gelbert Gutierrez in her home town of Grants, N.M. He confirms the scars: "All over her body, second degree burns," he says curtly between patients by telephone.

In Guatemala, the then-defense minister, Gen. Hector Gramajo, was quoted as saying that Ortiz's scars were the result of a bizarre "lesbian love tryst." Gramajo, who has admitted his own working relationship with the CIA, said that he learned of the alleged tryst from the U.S. embassy.

Who in the embassy? ABC News reported that Lewis Amselem, then the embassy's human rights officer, was responsible for disseminating that rumor about the alleged love tryst. Amselem later threatened to sue ABC News but never did. Recently reached for comment at his State Department office in Washington, Amselem denies he made the statement.

Ortiz tells a different story. She was behind the religious retreat house in Antigua when she says she was abducted by armed men, who later threatened to release a hand grenade if she did not get on a public bus. It stopped in the small town of Mixco, where the men escorted her to a waiting police car, before driving her to a secret prison. There, Ortiz says, she was raped repeatedly. Later, "I was lowered into an open pit packed with human bodies -- bodies of children, women and men, some decapitated, some lying face up and caked with blood, some dead, some alive -- and all swarming with rats."

Recently Ortiz has made public one alleged detail of her ordeal that few people had heard besides her therapist, Mary Fabri, a Chicago-based clinical psychologist who is now treating Bosnian torture survivors. Fabri says that this act destroyed Ortiz's personality. At some point, her abusers handed her what she has described as either a small machete or large knife. Says Ortiz: They "put their hands onto the handle, on top of mine \. \. \. . I was forced to use it against another" victim. Ortiz thinks she may have killed her.

What saved Ortiz from suffering the same fate? She says Alejandro, the North American, intervened. Earlier in the experience, she says her abusers had intermittently referred to this man as their boss. Later, she says, they brought her to him. Upon realizing that Ortiz was American, Alejandro, she says, ordered his men to stop.

"He kept telling me in his broken Spanish that he was sorry about what had happened to me," says Ortiz. "He claimed it was a case of mistaken identity," that his men had confused Ortiz with Veronica Ortiz Hernandez, a leftist guerrilla. Alejandro, according to Ortiz, then offered to drive her in his own vehicle, a gray Suzuki four-wheel-drive, to the U.S. embassy to talk to a friend who would help her leave the country. She says she agreed. But only blocks before reaching the embassy, while the Suzuki was stuck in heavy traffic, Ortiz says she jumped out and ran.

Stroock told Washington that the archbishop's third-person statement describing her ordeal was not consistent with what "persons around Ortiz" had told him at the time. They behaved erratically, explaining as fear what Stroock suspects was disingenuousness. And "when [I] saw her, [I] was not permitted to see her alone and she said nothing."

Ortiz needs no intermediaries now: "I have been consistent in my account since the beginning. The U.S. embassy was inconsistent and, in fact, deceptive." Alice Zachmann is a youthful 70-year-old nun who is a close friend of Ortiz. She says, "If none of this had happened to Dianna, I think she'd be teaching children in Guatemala right now."

Instead Dianna Ortiz has gained exactly what some U.S. officials have always feared: credibility in Washington.

Frank Smyth, a freelance journalist, has previously written about Guatemala for Outlook, the New Republic and the Wall Street Journal.

----

U.S., Mexico Set New Border Effort

By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, June 23, 2001
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34445-2001Jun22?language=printer

MEXICO CITY, June 22 -- Mexico and the United States today announced a new effort to reduce violence, death and disorder along their shared 2,000-mile border.

The plan is designed to stem the number of immigrants illegally crossing the border, to improve joint efforts to locate and rescue immigrants attempting to cross in dangerous desert areas, and to crack down on organized crime gangs specializing in human smuggling.

The border accord results from an agreement reached by President Bush and Mexican President Vicente Fox at a summit in Mexico in February. The two leaders, both elected last year, pledged a new era of cooperation between their nations -- starting with regaining control of the chaotic and dangerous border.

"This is the first step toward a border that both countries can be proud of," Enrique Berruga of Mexico's Foreign Ministry told reporters today.

The agreement calls for both nations to take steps they have resisted in the past. The United States promised to immediately review its controversial border control operations, which include heavy fortifications and a growing number of Border Patrol agents. Increased security measures in populated areas have forced immigrants to seek out more dangerous routes across the desert or mountains.

Washington also promised to begin immediately a pilot program of arming U.S. Border Patrol agents with nonlethal weapons, as Mexican officials have .

In a separate announcement today in San Diego, Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) officials said the program would involve arming agents in the San Diego area with 45 "pepperball launchers."

The air-powered devices allow agents to fire pellets of a pepper-like chemical about 100 feet. Officials said the devices would give Border Patrol agents a way to fend off rock-throwing and other attacks without resort to gunfire. The agents would still carry regular weapons as well.

Also breaking with past practice, Mexico agreed to stop migrants before they attempt crossings in dangerous areas, particularly desert regions such as the Arizona wasteland where 14 Mexicans died last month. Mexico historically has argued that it could not stop people -- even those standing near the border and obviously intending to cross -- because its constitution guarantees freedom of movement.

"Mexicans still have the right of free passage," said Javier Moctezuma of Mexico's Interior Ministry. "But in certain high-risk zones, the state has the obligation to stop them for their own safety."

Moctezuma and Berruga said 491 Mexicans died crossing the border last year and 157 have died already this year six since the 14 recent deaths in Arizona.

Mexico also said it would increase its Beta Group patrols, which offer assistance and advice to would-be migrants along the border. Mexico also promised to expand its programs to publicize the perils of trying to cross the border.

The plan calls for both nations to conduct an "unprecedented binational effort" to combat human smuggling. Johnny N. Williams, western regional director of the INS, said in an interview that the new efforts would involve greater sharing of intelligence on suspected smugglers who have often benefited from the lack of cross-border law enforcement efforts.

Mexico and the United States also said they would conduct aerial surveillance along the border to search for stranded immigrants. U.S. officials said they would use more helicopters to beef up search-and-rescue efforts, especially in the hot and dangerous summer months.

--------

Immigrant Ship Heads for Nigeria

New York Times
June 23, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Africa-Stranded-Ship.html

LOME, Togo (AP) -- A ship packed with immigrants that has been refused entry at ports along the coast of West Africa for more than three weeks headed for Nigeria on Saturday.

The boat, carrying 186 mostly Liberian immigrants, left Togolese waters after divers there helped free the boat's propeller from a web of fishing nets that had ensnared it, said the ship's Swedish captain, Henning Kielberg.

The cargo ship Alnar appeared off Togo on Friday, but Togo -- like Ghana and Benin before it -- refused to let the boat dock.

President Gnassingbe Eyadema instead ordered key supplies -- including 1,320 gallons of drinking water and milk, sugar, rice, bread and cooking oil -- be delivered to the ship's passengers, who've been growing hungrier and sicker by the day.

The Alnar has struggled to dock since it left Monrovia, Liberia, on June 1 with what Kielberg said were 79 children, 63 women and 44 men.

West African nations, stung by recent allegations of child-trafficking and apparently leery of such a large group of immigrants, have refused to allow the boat into their ports.

But Nigerian authorities said last week they'd allow the boat to dock there on humanitarian grounds.

Kielberg said the boat didn't have enough fuel to make it to Lagos on its own. But the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees would donate the needed fuel when the boat stopped over in Cotonou, Benin, on its way to Nigeria, the agency's representative in Togo, Anna Agbeviade, said.

The U.N. refugee agency believes at least some of the passengers might be asylum-seekers.

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

U.S. Loses Trade Case To Europe
WTO Export Ruling Could Cost Billions

By Paul Blustein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 23, 2001; Page A01
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35137-2001Jun22?language=printer

The United States lost an international trade case to the European Union yesterday that could result in billions of dollars of punitive duties on U.S. exports to Europe, according to industry and official sources.

Such sanctions, if imposed, would far exceed any that have been allowed in previous cases decided by the World Trade Organization, which has handed its confidential decision to the U.S. and EU governments.

The decision involves a $4 billion tax break for U.S. exporters that a WTO panel found to be an export subsidy that violates international trade rules. Because of the amounts of money at stake, the ruling threatens to seriously inflame transatlantic tensions and could set back efforts to launch a new round of negotiations aimed at lowering trade barriers worldwide.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert B. Zoellick exhorted European officials last month to settle the dispute, warning that "it would be like using a nuclear weapon" on the global trading system if the European Union were to win the case and fully exercise its right to impose sanctions.

A U.S. appeal of the decision is virtually certain, and it would take months. But if that ruling also goes in the EU's favor -- and WTO panel decisions are rarely overturned on appeal -- Washington would face a painful prospect: If the United States failed to abandon or substantially alter its export tax system, the EU would be entitled to $4 billion in "compensation." That could involve duties of 100 percent and possibly more on selected U.S. products, enough to price the American products out of the European market.

It is impossible to say which U.S. products might be subject to European sanctions because WTO rules give the winner of a case considerable leeway in deciding how to take its compensation.

Many of the companies that would be vulnerable, though, would presumably be among the hundreds of U.S. multinationals, such as General Electric Co., Boeing Co., Caterpillar Inc. and Microsoft Corp., that benefit from the tax break in dispute.

The duties would hurt European importers, too, which is why companies on both sides of the Atlantic have been urging a negotiated settlement. Zoellick and his EU counterpart, Pascal Lamy, have expressed determination to keep the issue from damaging broader relations, but both are under severe pressure to stick to their guns.

Congress rewrote the export tax law last year when a previous version was ruled illegal by a WTO panel, and lawmakers are loath to change the current law. On the European side, many policymakers feel strongly that the United States shouldn't be allowed to wriggle out of WTO rulings.

Moreover, the ruling comes at a time when ties between Washington and Brussels are under strain because of disagreements over environmental and defense issues and the recent opposition by EU antitrust authorities to a proposed $45 billion merger of GE and Honeywell International Inc.

"This is a very dangerous case because of the size of any retaliation that might follow a U.S. loss," said Willard Berry, president of the European-American Business Council, a group that includes large U.S. and EU firms. "It's clear that both EU and U.S. companies would be terribly hurt."

U.S. exports to the EU totaled $152 billion last year. Although $4 billion might seem small by comparison, it would dwarf the $191 million in sanctions that Washington imposed on European products in a recently settled dispute over bananas and the $117 million in sanctions that remain on European products in another EU-U.S. dispute over hormone-treated beef. The WTO ruled in Washington's favor in both of those cases, and when prohibitive tariffs were raised on products such as French handbags, Italian cheese and Scottish sweaters, European manufacturers of those goods howled.

The export tax provision that was initially ruled illegal allowed U.S. exporters to exempt some foreign profits from tax by making sales through offshore companies, called foreign sales corporations. That arrangement was deemed to violate WTO rules after the EU complained that it favored sales to foreign customers over sales to domestic customers.

After Congress changed the law, the EU complained that the new version differed only in cosmetic ways from the old one, although Washington maintained that the changes brought the law into compliance with WTO rules.

One possibility raised by Zoellick last month is that if the EU pushes its case too far, the United States could retaliate by bringing complaints against European corporate tax preferences to the WTO. That scenario is of particular concern to trade experts on both sides because it could lead to a tit-for-tat trade war involving large amounts of goods.

Zoellick and Lamy, who enjoy a warm personal relationship, demonstrated remarkable comity earlier this year when they resolved the bananas dispute, which had dragged on since the mid-1990s. As the top trade negotiators for the two largest economies in the world, their cooperation is essential if a WTO ministerial meeting in Qatar scheduled for November is to succeed in launching a new round of trade liberalization talks.

Yesterday, both governments were mum on the WTO panel's decision. "The United States will respect the confidential nature of the report and will not comment on its findings, nor its implications, at this time," Zoellick's office said in a statement. A spokeswoman for the EU mission in Washington likewise declined to comment beyond confirming that the report had been delivered to Brussels.

In another development that doesn't augur well for transatlantic trade, Zoellick yesterday formally asked the U.S. International Trade Commission for a broad investigation into whether increased imports are causing serious damage to the U.S. steel industry. The independent commission could issue a finding that would lead to stiff duties on steel imports.

President Bush announced his decision to seek the probe June 5 but left unstated what type of steel products would be covered. Zoellick's announcement made clear it will cover many major types of steel.

--------

Preliminary Decision on a Trade Dispute

New York Times
June 23, 2001
By ELIZABETH OLSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/23/business/23TAX.html?searchpv=nytToday

GENEVA, June 22 - A World Trade Organization dispute panel ruled today that a United States tax subsidy for businesses violated international trade rules.

The interim ruling in favor of the European Union, which brought the complaint, may result in Europe's imposing $4 billion in sanctions against the United States.

The decision, in a long-running dispute involving higher stakes than any other dispute before the organization, was not made public. But news agencies reported that the panel ruled against the United States.

Only the European Union and United States officials were given copies of the preliminary ruling, and both sides said they would not comment on it.

The unusually silent stance - in most such cases, the winner, at least, is quick to discuss rulings with reporters - reflects the dispute's major implications for trans-Atlantic trade relations.

Underlining that point last month, the United States trade representative, Robert Zoellick, said that if the European Union were to impose sanctions on American goods in the case, it would be like using a "nuclear weapon" on the trading system.

"The United States has acted inconsistently with its obligation" to eliminate export subsidies, according to the document, which was provided to Bloomberg News by a lobbyist for American companies affected by the decision.

The report also said the panel had recommended that the United States scrap the program "without delay."

A final version of the report is scheduled for release on Aug. 13 and may then be appealed, pushing the final outcome into 2002. The European Union agreed last year to wait until the appeal process was exhausted before imposing any sanctions.

The disputed provision is known as the foreign sales corporation program, and it partly exempts from tax the profits that offshore subsidiaries of American companies earn from sales of certain goods. Some of the biggest corporations in the United States, including Microsoft, Ford Motor and Exxon Mobil, take advantage of the program, usually through entities incorporated in the Virgin Islands.

The World Trade Organization ruled against the program once before, in 1999. Congress then revised the law in an effort to bring it into compliance with the trade group's rules. But the European Union said the new version was worse than the old, because it expanded eligibility to more companies, including Boeing and Caterpillar. The union complained to the trade group again, and asked for authority to impose $4 billion in sanctions, based on its estimate of the value of the tax breaks to American companies.

Even if the European Union wins permission to impose the entire amount, though, it is unlikely to try. Instead, analysts expect it to try to negotiate a settlement with the United States, as it did in a dispute over bananas in which the trade group ruled in favor of the United States.

But tensions between the union and the United States have risen lately because of the union's objections to General Electric's planned $42 billion purchase of Honeywell International on antitrust grounds.

Another complication is the contention by the United States that the current version of the law is very similar to tax provisions in many European Union member countries, which it will challenge if the trade group continues to rule against the American law.

-------- police

U.S. and Mexico to Improve Border Safety

New York Times
June 23, 2001
By ERIC SCHMITT
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/23/national/23CND-BORDER.html

WASHINGTON, June 22 -- The United States and Mexico announced several steps today to improve safety along the California border, including a pilot program to arm Border Patrol agents in San Diego with nonlethal weapons that launch marble-sized pepper pellets to disperse crowds.

Border Patrol agents are now equipped with batons and pepper spray, but those devices are effective only at close range. The new launchers, which officials said were used by several police departments in the United States, can hit targets 100 feet away.

The measures, including better mapping of remote desert areas and improved sharing of intelligence to combat immigrant smugglers, begin immediately. They come in response to the May deaths of 14 Mexicans abandoned by smugglers in an Arizona desert.

American and Mexican officials in San Diego and in Mexico City praised the new measures as meaningful ways to reduce violent clashes, like rock attacks against Border Patrol agents who sometimes respond with deadly force.

"Mexico has long insisted that it is one thing to have a person cross the border in search of work," Deputy Foreign Minister Enrique Berruga said, "and it is another to have that person be subjected to attacks by authorities. We are most interested in preventing people from being hurt simply because they have crossed the border, and this is a very important advance."

Mr. Berruga said the immigrants' deaths and the fatal shooting of an immigrant, Roberto Chávez Reséndiz, by a Border Patrol agent near Sells, Ariz., are examples of the kinds of incidents that Mexico hopes to avoid.

"Most times migrants are poor people who barely have clothing, much less weapons," he said. "And so we want the level of force used against them to match the threat. You wouldn't use an atomic bomb to quell a civil strife."

Mexican officials said that by the end of the year they intended to increase by 40 percent the presence of immigration agents on the Mexican side of the border. The agents, called Grupo Beta, try to discourage immigrants from crossing the border by warning them of the dangers.

The agents advise immigrants of their rights and have helped to rescue them from drowning and dehydration. But, by Mexican law, the agents cannot forcibly stop immigrants from trying illegal crossings.

Critics of the border policy, which was begun in the Clinton administration, argue that the new measures fail to correct a strategy that drives border-crossers away from heavily patrolled urban areas and into scorching deserts and rugged mountains.

"Anything that is a step toward dealing with border violence in a nonlethal way is welcome, but this is just a fraction of the problem," said Claudia Smith, head of the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation's border project, an immigrant advocacy group in Oceanside, Calif. "The bulk of the deaths are because of a strategy of diverting migrants into vast expanses of hell."

--------

'Pepperball' latest in anti-protester weapons

06/23/2001
USA Today
http://usatoday.com/news/nation/june01/2001-06-23-pepperball.htm

SAN DIEGO (AP) - Police preparing for a wave of demonstrations at next week's biotechnology industry convention have a new weapon in their arsenal, but some protesters say it's an example of non-lethal force taken too far.

It's called the Pepperball launcher, a weapon designed to pelt people or the area around them with marble-sized plastic balls that break on impact into a dusty cloud of acrid pepper dust.

San Diego police bought two dozen Pepperball launchers and plan to have them ready for the BIO 2001 convention that runs from Sunday through Wednesday, said SWAT team commander Lt. Cesar Solis.

"It gives the officers one more option, rather than resort to something that could be lethal," Solis said.

But Paul Marini, a political activist from Oakland, said such devices can still cause serious injuries. The Pepperball can fire six rounds per second.

"It's an unholy alliance between pepper spray and the rubber bullet," said Marini, who works with the Midnight Special Law Collective, an organization that provides assistance to demonstrators.

"What they really are is maiming weapons," he said.

Officials with Jaycor Tactical Systems Inc., the San Diego company that manufactures Pepperball, said serious injuries aren't likely.

Company videos show employees and volunteers being hit with the plastic ball, which causes a welt but doesn't break the skin.

"The only way you are going to kill someone with this is if you hold them down and shoot it down their throat," said Dennis Cole, a retired San Diego County sheriff's captain who is a salesman for the company.

Unlike pepper spray, Pepperball doesn't require officers to approach a suspect and can be fired from 30 feet away. And unlike tear gas, there are no canisters that can be tossed back at police.

The air-powered launchers run from $180 to nearly $1,000. Jaycor officials said the company has sold Pepperball to 400 law enforcement agencies, including the police departments of New York and Los Angeles.

Officers receiving training for the San Diego conference know all about other protests in recent years, including during the 1999 World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle that resulted in more than 600 arrests and $2.5 million in vandalism and property damage.

"We will be very aggressive," police spokesman David Cohen said. "Our goal is to not let it become a Seattle."

-------

Ala. Ex - Cops Admit Robbing Hispanics

New York Times
June 23, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Ex-Officers-Hispanics.html

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) -- Four former police officers accused of harassing and demanding money from Hispanics at traffic stops have pleaded guilty to federal civil rights charges.

The four admitted Friday they stole from Hispanics and others during traffic stops from April 1998 to July 2000. The indictment also charged the men with stealing items from schools and businesses, including portable radios and a printer.

Bobby M. Hunt, 31, was a sergeant in the Boaz police department. Jonathon R. ``Bull'' Jones, 27; Rickie T. Dobbs, 30; and 32-year-old Jeffery K. Sanders were patrol officers.

All four admitted targeting Hispanics. The officers believed Hispanics were more likely to carry money, while language barriers and their immigration status would make them less likely to resist or be believed if they complained.

The Hispanic population of Boaz, in northeast Alabama, has grown rapidly to fill agricultural jobs.

The former officers are expected to testify in the trial later this year of former Capt. Timothy Don Hooks, who was also allegedly part of the scheme. Hooks, 40, has pleaded innocent.

The four ex-officers will be sentenced Oct. 26. Civil rights violations carry a prison term of up 10 years, a fine of up to $250,000, or both. Prosecutors are expected to recommend the men receive lighter sentences for cooperating.

-------- terrorism

Bin Laden readying to hit US, Israeli interests: TV

June 23
AFP
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010623/1/15d48.html

DUBAI, Fighters Saudi-born extremist Osama bin Laden are preparing to hit US and Israeli interests around the world, the Arab television channel, the Middle East Broadcasting Centre (MBC) said Saturday.

"I met with bin Laden near Kandahar (Afghanistan) over the last few days and his main supporters said in front of him that there will be a big surprise over the next two weeks," the MBC correspondent said.

Among the bin Laden supporters quoted were Abu Hafs, considered as bin Laden's right-hand man, and Ayman al-Zawahirit, the leader of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad.

The United States on Friday ordered its war fleet in the Gulf to put to sea because of credible threats of terrorist actions, and published a worldwide warning for US citizens travelling abroad.

Washington holds Bin Laden responsible for the 1998 bombings of its embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed more than 200 people.

----

Terror, Iran and the U.S.

New York Times
June 23, 2001
By JAMES RISEN and JANE PERLEZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/23/world/23TERR.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, June 22 - The United States has never known quite what to do about Iran's role in anti- American terrorism. From the embassy bombings and hostage taking in Lebanon during the early 1980's to the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia in 1996, Washington's response to evidence that Tehran was sponsoring violence against American interests has been marked by deep ambivalence and contorted internal debates among several generations of policy makers.

To critics who advocate a harder line toward Iran, the government's indictment of 13 Saudis and a Lebanese in the Khobar Towers bombing, handed down Thursday, just short of Monday's five-year anniversary of the attack, once again revealed an American reluctance to tackle Tehran head-on on state-sponsored terrorism. United States officials have said they have evidence of Iranian involvement, and at a news conference announcing the indictment, Attorney General John Ashcroft charged that Iranian officials "inspired, supported and supervised members of Saudi Hezbollah" in the attack. But prosecutors stopped short of bringing charges against any individual Iranian officials.

"Why haven't we been more forward leaning on Iran?" asked one former United States official familiar with the long debate in the government over the Khobar Towers case. "The intelligence on Iran is pretty strong, and they could have named names of Iranian officials."

But even Thursday's rather limited indictment has stirred up a hornet's nest in the volatile Persian Gulf region, as Iran denied any role in the bombing and Saudi Arabia disputed American jurisdiction in the case. That underscored the difficult balancing act American policy makers confront whenever dealing with Iran on the issue of terrorism.

For diplomatic and economic reasons, Washington has declined to lean heavily on Saudi Arabia either to extradite suspects it holds in the bombing attack that killed 19 American servicemen and wounded 372 others, or to crack down on the Saudi branch of Hezbollah.

In addition, Pentagon officials said today that American forces in the gulf region had been placed on heightened alert because of the threat of a terrorist attack against United States interests in the region.

As a result of the alert, six Navy ships stationed in Bahrain - four mine sweepers, a supply ship and a destroyer - have been put to sea, joining the Constellation carrier battle group that was already deployed in the region. A Marine exercise in Jordan was cut short, and security has been tightened at bases and ports used by American forces in the region, officials said.

Officials speculated that the threat might be related to the Khobar Towers indictment, and might involve groups related to Osama bin Laden, the Saudi exile who has been charged by the United States with leading the conspiracy to blow up two American embassies in East Africa in 1998.

The Clinton administration was widely criticized for its failure to pursue evidence that Iran was behind the bombing, but now, the Bush administration has shown that same reluctance. Prosecutors did not cite Iranian officials by name despite what some officials said was the hope of Louis J. Freeh, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, that Iranian officials would be charged. Mr. Freeh, who had taken a personal interest in the case, said on Thursday that it would remain open, and Mr. Ashcroft made it clear that the United States would be willing to pursue charges against Iranian officials if more evidence emerged.

One United States official said today that while there was information pointing to Iranian involvement, "that's a long way from being able to make a case in court."

The United States has often been willing to punish lesser nations when they step over the line into support for terrorist acts, often with less evidence of their involvement in specific acts than was the case with the Khobar Towers bombing. The United States bombed Libya in 1986 after it linked it to the bombing of a Berlin nightclub that killed American soldiers. The Clinton administration launched missile strikes against Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998 after the embassy bombings in East Africa. Yet, several administrations have hesitated to retaliate against Iran.

The Khobar Towers case has been complicated by the fact that the attack occurred on the soil of one of America's most important allies in the region, Saudi Arabia, and that most of those suspected of direct involvement are Saudi citizens.

On Friday, Saudi officials complained publicly about the indictment, arguing that the United States had no right to bring a legal case over an incident that occurred in Saudi Arabia. The defense minister, Prince Sultan bin Abdel Aziz, said legal steps in the case "fall within the jurisdiction of Saudi Arabia."

Iran, meanwhile, denied any role in the Khobar bombing. A Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hamid Reza Assei, said today that the "U.S. judiciary has leveled charges against Iran which have no legal and judicial basis," the Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

Early on, the United States approached the incident almost purely as a law enforcement matter, in contrast to the way the government responded to the East Africa embassy bombings two years later. After those, the United States quickly retaliated with cruise missile strikes against Afghanistan and Sudan, in an effort to punish Mr. bin Laden and his network. Only later did Washington seek indictments against Mr. bin Laden and others in his organization.

"We chose law enforcement retaliation versus military retaliation," the former Clinton administration official said. The Khobar investigation, however, bogged down in turf battles between the F.B.I. and the Saudis. The bureau complained of a lack of cooperation from the Saudi authorities, while the Saudis privately began to complain that the Clinton administration did not seem interested in hearing about evidence that Iran was behind the attack.

Ultimately, American officials said cooperation improved, and the Saudis are believed to have provided much of the evidence that led to the indictments.

By 1999, the evidence linking Iran to the bombing was strong enough so that President Clinton sent a secret letter to Iran's president, Mohammad Khatami, asking for help in solving the Khobar case. The letter was sent after the United States obtained convincing information that Iranian officials were behind the attack. The letter came in the midst of Mr. Clinton's broader efforts to reach out to Mr. Khatami and engage the reformist forces in Iran.

But the Iranians refused to help on the case. Mr. Freeh reportedly concluded that the Clinton administration was not serious about solving the case, and he is said to have waited until Mr. Clinton left office in order to try to bring charges in the matter. The indictment came in Mr. Freeh's last week in office as F.B.I. director.

"I'm disappointed that they didn't name the Iranians," said Fran Heiser, of Palm Coast, Fla., the mother of one of the bombing victims. "There has been so much talk around and around it. I hope they have a reasonable answer."

--------

Saudis: Bomb suspects can't be tried in U.S.

06/23/2001
USA Today
The Associated Press.
http://usatoday.com/news/world/june01/2001-06-23-saudis.htm

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) - Interior Minister Prince Nayef dismissed the prospect Saudi Arabia ever would send Khobar bombing suspects to the United States for trial and, in an interview published Saturday, said the kingdom was excluded from indictment preparations.

"The Americans never informed us or coordinated with us on this issue," Nayef said in an interview with Al-Riyadh daily newspaper, which often reflects government views.

Prince Nayef's remarks expanded on those Friday of Saudi Defense Minister Prince Sultan, who said legal action against suspects in the Khobar bombing was a matter for Saudi Arabia alone and that the United States should send the kingdom all documents and evidence relating to the case.

The United States does not have an extradition agreement with Saudi Arabia. And Nayef appeared to dash the hope voiced by some U.S. officials that suspects in Saudi custody for the 1996 bombing that killed 19 U.S. servicemen and injured more than 350 people would be sent to the United States for trial.

"The trials must take place before Saudi judicial authorities and our position on this question will not change," he said. "No other entity has the right to try or investigate any crimes occurring on Saudi lands."

Nayef said the kingdom is still seeking two Saudis and a Lebanese in connection with the attack. "The rest of the suspects are in Saudi jails," he said.

It wouldn't be long before those in Saudi prisons were brought to trial, he said, without specifying the number of imprisoned suspects or a time frame.

Although he acknowledged "cooperation" between Saudi Arabia and the United States in the investigation, Nayef denied American investigators had observed the interrogation of suspects, saying: "We informed them of information we discovered."

Nayef's comments also indicated Saudi and U.S. investigations were not necessarily proceeding in the same direction. He said there is "no truth" to claims contained in the indictment - handed up by federal prosecutors Thursday charging 13 Saudis and a Lebanese man in the bombing - that the plotters were members of "Saudi Hezbollah."

"There is absolutely no party called Saudi Hezbollah in the kingdom," he said.

Saudi Hezbollah was founded by members of the desert kingdom's Shiite Muslim minority who fled into exile in the 1980s to escape what they said was persecution by the Sunni majority. Most were from Eastern Province, which lies along the Persian Gulf, opposite Iran. Many of the exiles wound up in Iran.

Nayef suggested that some of the plotters might be connected with the Lebanese-based Hezbollah, which fought Israeli forces in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah of Lebanon has denied any involvement.

Nayef also said Saudi Arabia has no proof of official Iranian involvement, adding, "the Iranian government assured us that it has no relation to the matter as a government."

-------- activists

June 25-29
STAR WARS CALL- IN DAYS TO CONGRESS

From: "Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space" <globalnet@mindspring.com>

CONGRESSIONAL CALL-IN DAYS
TO OPPOSE STAR WARS RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

JUNE 25-29, 2001

NO NMD! NO TMD! NO SPACE-BASED LASER! NO STAR WARS R & D!

This is the time of year that Congress makes decisions about how they will spend taxpayer dollars in the coming year.

While some in Congress are calling for a delay in deployment of National Missile Defense (NMD) they support moving toward deployment of Theatre Missile Defense (TMD) as soon as possible. TMD will be used to surround and provoke China.

Many politicians in both parties also support a continued "robust" research and development program for Star Wars.

In order to increase pressure on Congress the Global Network urges you to call your Senator and Congressperson during the week of June 25-29.

Demand a real end to Star Wars and the waste of our tax dollars! Please pass this message on to others as well.

- Congressional Switchboard: (202) 224-3121

- Congressional E-mail Listings: http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/index.html

Thank you.

Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space PO Box 90083 Gainesville, FL. 32607 (352) 337-9274 http://www.space4peace.org globalnet@mindspring.com

----

Jackson's Wife Mistreated In Jail, Congressman Says

By Sue Anne Pressley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 23, 2001; Page A03
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35946-2001Jun22?language=printer

MIAMI, June 22 -- Jacqueline Jackson, the wife of civil rights leader Jesse L. Jackson who was arrested Monday for protesting against the U.S. Navy on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques, allegedly has been subjected to repeated strip searches and other mistreatment while in custody, Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) said today.

In a letter to Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, Conyers demanded to know why Jackson also was threatened with a body-cavity search and put into solitary confinement when she balked; was denied her reading glasses, a book and a change of clothing; and has been treated like "a violent and dangerous felon" rather than "an upstanding citizen committing a courageous act of civil disobedience."

Jackson was one of 47 people detained this week by Navy and other law enforcement personnel, then turned over to the U.S. Marshals Service, after trying to illegally enter Camp Garcia, one of the Navy's training installations on Vieques.

Jackson's husband, who arrived in San Juan today, said his wife "would not submit to a search of her private body parts" and was locked up alone in "a dingy hole that is damp" in a federal jail in suburban San Juan. He accused the federal government of trying to intimidate protesters with excessive jail terms, fines and cruel treatment after he met with his wife at the jail.

Protests against the Navy's longtime use of the island as a site for war-training games continued this week -- as Navy jets began dropping inert bombs on Vieques targets -- despite President Bush's recent announcement that the Navy will pull out of the area in 2003. The protesters say only an immediate departure will do.

"Mrs. Jackson is being treated consistent with long-standing Bureau of Prisons policies and procedures," said Chris Watney, a Justice Department spokesman. "We believe that Mr. Conyers's letter is based on some inaccurate information." Watney would not elaborate on specific inaccuracies.

The allegations about Jackson's mistreatment come on the heels of additional charges made recently by Vieques protesters before the Congressional Hispanic Caucus about their mistreatment by Navy personnel during the last round of Vieques protests, April 27 to May 1. The Navy has denied the allegations.

Like most protesters, Jackson was charged with federal trespassing, a misdemeanor. She has refused to pay a $3,000 bond, Conyers said, "because of her moral beliefs and principles."

After the meeting with Ashcroft, Conyers was still upset, a spokesman said.

"I call on the Attorney General to stop hiding behind the mistakes and misjudgments made by low-level bureaucrats in his employ," Conyers said in a statement, "and take full responsibility for the actions of the U.S. Attorney's office in Puerto Rico."

--------

Hundreds March for AIDS Awareness

New York Times
June 23, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/nyregion/AP-AIDS-Conference-March.html

NEW YORK (AP) -- Hundreds of AIDS activists demonstrated in pouring rain Saturday in a call for increased support for people with AIDS worldwide.

Their march and rally were held to coincide with the United Nations General Assembly's first special session on the health crisis that has claimed more than 22 million victims and left 36 million others facing a death sentence.

``People are dying, whether we want to admit it or not, and we have to do the right thing,'' said Mercy Makhalemele, founder of the Tsa Botsogo AIDS organization of South Africa, who came to New York to speak at the rally and attend the U.N. session.

Representatives of dozens of nations planned to meet starting Monday to adopt new targets for a global campaign to halt and start reversing the epidemic.

``The United States should cancel all debts to African nations and that money should be used to keep people from dying,'' Makhalemele told cheering demonstrators, who huddled under umbrellas and held soggy placards reading ``Money for AIDS care, not debt'' and ``Generic AIDS drugs save lives.''

``One in five South Africans are infected with HIV, but it's not about numbers, it's about people. I can't count the number of friends I have lost to AIDS,'' she said.

Ruth Messinger, former Manhattan Borough president, called AIDS ``a crisis that is destroying the future of the world,'' and urged the Bush administration to do more to fight the disease.


------- OneList (submissions from subscribers)

------- Depleted Uranium Keeps On Killing!