------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Study flags radioactive threat
Receivers of depleted uranium
Pentagon Study Casts Doubt on Missile Defense Schedule
Crash Program for Missile Defense May Be Just That
Major Changes To Missile Defense Programs
Russian Nuclear Roulette
Impoverished Russian sailors stealing submarine parts
Grozny Experiences Peace in Name Only
Nuclear Power Poised for Re-Entry into Space
COBALT-60 RADIATION LEAK
Turks Protest Nuclear Shipments in Narrow Bosphorus Strait
Dropping The Bomb
U.S. Mayors Ask Bush To Commit To Eliminating Nuclear Weapons
Contaminated Uranium Threat Widens
Wellstone: Nuclear waste must be moved
Water worries beset nuclear site
DOE must study a volcano blast's effect on Yucca
Spending in Energy Proposal Boosted
Physicist Said to Be Top Choice for Science Adviser
End Trade Sanctions that Hurt Texas Farmers

MILITARY
Macedonia parliament besieged
Behind Rebel Lines
Serbia Looks to Start Extradition of Milosevic
Milosevic Fights Transfer to Hague Trial
Partial, Shaky Truce Reached in Macedonia
Ethnic Albanian rebels pull out of strategic suburb
China Deploying Warships at Spratly Islands - Report
Toxic Drift: Monsanto and the Drug War in Colombia
Iraqi troops in position to invade Kurdistan
US Planes Attack Iraqi Air Defense
Sharon's Actions In 1982 Massacre Stir New Debate
F-4 jet mistakenly fires at cars
North and South Korean Vessels Clash at Sea
Vieques Protesters Pledge Resistance
Chechen warlord killed in Russian operation
Space, Information Warfare Gets $700 Million Boost
U.S. Military Under Attack on Environmental Grounds

OTHER
Europe trades cleaner fuels ahead of German tax break
French power bills to rise on high wind prices - CRE
Longtime naysayer Harkin lists US farm law plans
Spending in Energy Proposal Boosted
EU chief slams Boeing over gas-guzzling new jet
Pollution Site Victims Fight for Compensation
US Water Company Stops Fluoridation After 30 Years
Iran rations water to Tehran amid severe drought
EPA plans clean air rule to protect park vistas
$1 Billion Remedy For Sewer Spills
Subdivision Still Threatened by Plague
U.N. AIDS Gathering Draws Thousands
AIDS Hidden in Myanmar, Expert Says
U.S., Brazil End Aids Drug Hassle
US to Give More Money to Fight AIDS
UN AIDS Meeting Opens with Pleas for Money, Rights
African Leaders Speak at UN Summit
UN to seek agreement on access to seed banks
Harsh Chinese Reality Feeds a Black Market in Women
Court Grants Reprieve to Immigrants
Zero Common Sense
Flying high over China
Former Spy Chief Returned to Peru After Being Captured
Knowledge of KGB a 'Coincidence'
San Angelo, Texas: Home of Spies
Bin Laden aide denies attack plan
US to Help India Fight Terrorism - Report

ACTIVISTS
Married to a cause
Anti - Globalization Activists March
32 Injured in Anti-Globalization Protest in Barcelona
Violence challenges summit hosts
Macedonia on Brink After Protests, Fresh Fighting
Philippines Boosts Palace Defense Against 'Plot'
Freedom to burn shows freedom to live
In Praise of Peace Work
MISSION MURUROA: An Adventure Novel Set In Tahiti


-------- NUCLEAR

-------- depleted uranium

Study flags radioactive threat

By Peter Eisler,
USA TODAY,
06/25/2001
http://usatoday.com/news/poison/2001-06-25-hotnukes-lede.htm

WASHINGTON - Thousands more people than anticipated face health and pollution threats from plutonium and other highly radioactive elements that fouled vast amounts of uranium recycled by the U.S. nuclear weapons program over the past 50 years. Recycled uranium was shipped worldwide from 1952 until 1999, when distribution was halted by revelations of its contamination.

Now, new federal studies reviewed by USA TODAY show that the program yielded 250,000 tons of tainted uranium - roughly double the estimates of two years ago. The material was handled at about 10 times the number of sites revealed previously, reaching more than 100 federal plants, private manufacturers and universities.

The studies suggest that thousands more workers than expected might have unwittingly faced radiation risks beyond those associated with normal uranium, increasing their odds of developing cancer and other ailments. That places an unexpected burden on a soon-to-begin federal program to compensate sick nuclear weapons workers.

Contaminants from the tainted uranium also raise the potential for soil and groundwater pollution at some of the newly recognized processing sites. That threatens to complicate cleanup plans.

Most recycled uranium went back into nuclear weapons production or was used as fuel for power reactors. But thousands of tons also were used in everything from academic research to the making of armor for Army battle tanks.

The vast majority of the material contained only traces of impurities - too little, scientists say, to pose risks beyond those posed by natural uranium, which is mildly radioactive and raises health hazards if inhaled as dust. But some plants handled recycled uranium in ways that concentrated its contaminants, significantly boosting its hazards.

"This stuff circulated much more widely than we'd thought," says Robert Alvarez, an official at the Department of Energy when it launched the new studies in 1999.

"The problem is, they really don't have reasonable estimates of how much (contamination) was in a lot of this recycled uranium," adds Alvarez, now a scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies. "It could range from very tiny amounts to relatively high levels."

Federal researchers conclude in the new studies that contamination generally was "extremely low." But that finding masks problems.

The uranium's contaminants apparently were concentrated at a dozen or more previously unrecognized sites, raising pollution and worker health threats. But it's unclear which batches of uranium were most dangerous - or where they went - so not all high-risk sites are identifiable.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., says, "The government has a responsibility to follow up."

---

Receivers of depleted uranium

06/24/2001
USA Today
June 25, 2001
The Associated Press.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/poison/2001-06-25-nukelist.htm

Aerojet Ordance Company
U.S. Army, Yuma Proving Ground
U.S. Air Force , Eglin AFB
USAF, Rocket Propulsion Lab, Edwards
U.S. Army, Sierra Army Depot
U.S. Army, Seneca Army Depot
USAF, HQ Aeroscape (Norveich AB, GR)
USAF, Grissom AFB, Indiana
U.S. Air Force, Nellis AFB
GE, Armament Systems Department
U.S. Army Overseas
USAF, Sunny Point Military OCean Terminal
General Defense Corp, linchbaugh Div
GDOS, Milan Army Ammunitions Plant
USAF, HQ Aerospace (Hahn AB, Ger)
USAF, HQ Aerospace (Sembach AB, Ger)
USAF, HQ Aerospace (Bentwaters AB)
USAF, HQ Aerospace (Suwon AB, Korea)
USAF, HQ Aerospace (Cheong-Ju AB)
USAF, HQ Aerospace (Bissell AB, Ger)
USAF, HQ Aerospace (Woodbridge, RAF)
USAF, HQ Aerospace (Nordholz, RAF)
USAF, Lackland AFB, TX
USAF, HQ Aerospace (Leipheim AB, Ger)
U.S. Air Force, Eielson AFB
USAF, HQ Aerospace (England AFB, LA)
U.S. Army, Benet Weapons Laboratory
U.S. Army, Rocky Island Arsenal
U.S. Navy. Puget Sound Shipyard
Boeing Defense & Space- Oak Ridge
USAF, HQ Aerospace (Brengarten-Gas)
USAF, HQ Aerospace (Wethersfield)
U.S. Navy, Naval Research Laboratory
U.S. Army, Arsenal Research Lab
U.S. Army, Picatinny Arsenal
U.S. Army, Picatinny Arsenal
Space & Defense Electronics
U.S. Navy, Sea Systems Command
USAF, Richard-Gebaur AFB, MO
USAF, HQ Aerospace (Dejbjerg Denmark)
USAF, HQ Aerospace (N A S, New Orleans)
U.S. Navy, Air Weapons Station
Aerojet Ordnance Tennesse
U.S. Army, Armor & Engnr Bd
U.S. Navy, NAval Weapons Laboratory
U.S. Army, Jefferson Proving Ground
U.S. Air Force, Kirtland AFB
U.S. Air Force, McClelland AFB
U.S. Army, APG, Combat Systems Test

-------- missile defense

Pentagon Study Casts Doubt on Missile Defense Schedule

New York Times
June 25, 2001
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/25/politics/25MISS.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, June 24 - An internal Defense Department study concluded last year that testing on the national missile defense program was behind schedule and unrealistic and had suffered too many failures to justify deploying the system in 2005, a year after the Bush administration is considering deploying one.

The August 2000 report from the Pentagon's Office of Operational Test and Evaluation, only recently released to Congress, offers new details about problems the Pentagon has encountered in developing antimissile technology. And it raises questions about how quickly an effective system can be made operational.

The Pentagon is studying proposals to deploy a limited system - but one that would violate the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty - as soon as 2004. In recent weeks, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld has indicated a willingness to deploy a system before tests have been completed if an attack seems imminent.

But as an example of unrealistic testing, the report cited an October 1999 test in which a Global Positioning System inside a mock warhead helped guide an intercept missile toward a target over the Pacific. That test was successful, but two more recent flight tests failed.

None of those tests used the kinds of sophisticated decoys that a real ballistic missile would use to confuse an antimissile system, the report said. Instead, the decoy in each test was a large balloon that did not look like a warhead and that the kill vehicle's sensors could easily distinguish from the target.

The report also asserted that the Pentagon had not even scheduled a test involving multiple targets, the likely situation in an attack. And it found software problems with a training simulator that made it appear as if twice as many warheads had been fired at the United States as had been intended in a 1999 exercise.

The simulator then fired interceptors at those "phantom tracks," and operators were unable to override it, the report said.

The report, which President Bill Clinton read just before deferring initial construction on a missile system last September, acknowledged that the program was still in its early stages and was progressing well on some fronts. But it concluded that unless testing was significantly accelerated, at significantly higher cost, the program would not be ready for use against real attacks for several years.

"Deployment means the fielding of an operational system with some military utility which is effective under realistic combat conditions," the report states. "Such a capability is yet to be shown to be practicable for NMD," or national missile defense.

Officials with the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization disputed parts of the report, saying that the Global Positioning System used in the 1999 test did not guide the kill vehicle to the target. They also contended that the simulator did not fire at "phantom" missiles.

They acknowledged software problems with the simulator but said those flaws had been fixed. And they asserted that future tests, perhaps starting next year, would involve tougher situations, including more sophisticated decoys, multiple warheads and different trajectories.

"We fully intend to stress the system to its maximum capability," Lt. Col. Rick Lehner, a spokesman for the organization, said.

But skeptics of missile defense said the report clearly showed that even the most advanced antimissile technology needed years of testing to work out unforeseen bugs. Without such testing, they warned, the system would be at best ineffective and at worst dangerous.

"The problems have been different each time," said Philip E. Coyle, a former assistant secretary of defense and director of operational testing, who helped write the report. "In each case, the thing that failed was something you'd have liked to have taken for granted. It just shows how hard this stuff is."

The report, which members of Congress plan to make public this week, is expected to fuel a contentious debate over how swiftly a missile system should be deployed and how much money should be spent developing one.

Mr. Rumsfeld has argued that the United States should deploy a system quickly to dissuade its rivals from trying to acquire ballistic missiles. He contends that no weapon system works perfectly and that a limited missile defense can be gradually improved and expanded.

During his recent trip to Europe, Mr. Rumsfeld gave NATO defense ministers a paper stating that the United States "will likely deploy test assets to provide rudimentary defenses to deal with emerging threats."

The Pentagon has also been studying a proposal from Boeing, the lead contractor on a missile defense system, to install a basic antimissile system involving five interceptors in Alaska by 2004. The system, which would violate the ABM treaty, would use existing radar and rockets as interim technology until more advanced systems were ready.

But in an appearance by Mr. Rumsfeld on Capitol Hill on Thursday, Democrats vigorously questioned those proposals and expressed strong reservations about speeding up a system they said remained unproven.

The Democrats have also raised concerns about the Bush administration's threat to withdraw from the ABM treaty if Russia refuses to amend it. Mr. Bush has argued that the treaty prevents the United States from testing promising technologies, like sea-based or airborne weapons.

Pentagon officials have said none of the tests planned through 2002 would violate the treaty. But aides to Mr. Rumsfeld are restructuring that schedule, possibly to add tests in a few months that could violate the treaty's prohibitions, a senior administration official said.

Though the Office of Operational Test and Evaluation's report is nearly a year old and does not contain classified information, Pentagon officials asked the House Government Reform Committee, which obtained a copy, not to release it publicly, in part because they said it contained inaccuracies.

But Democrats contend that the Defense Department does not want damaging new details about its testing program to be released just as Mr. Rumsfeld is preparing to ask Congress to increase financing for missile defense research and development by $2.2 billion.

"In the mad rush to deploy, I suspect that any bad news is not what they want Congress to be debating or the public to be aware of," said Representative John F. Tierney, Democrat of Massachusetts, who has been a critic of missile defense. "This has huge ramifications. It should be part of the public dialogue and part of a very sober assessment of the system."

--------

Crash Program for Missile Defense May Be Just That

By JOHN M. DONNELLY,
Monday, June 25, 2001
Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/comment/20010625/t000052476.html

At a capital cocktail party in March filled with Pentagon officials and defense contractors, one conversation turned to scuttlebutt that the Bush administration might try to deploy a missile defense system by 2004. That would be at least two years faster than the already-rushed Bill Clinton plan, which the brass and military testers agreed was "high risk." At the party, an officer who had held a top position in the Defense Department's missile defense agency said of the rumored hurry-up defense: "Talk about a rush to failure." That phrase--rush to failure--had first been used by a 1998 Pentagon panel charged with figuring out why U.S. antimissile programs were having such trouble hitting targets--be they test missiles, costs or schedules. The answer, the panel said, was that the programs' managers had been more concerned with doing things fast than with doing things right. The military got neither in most cases. The Pentagon has corrected some of those mistakes.

Now there's talk of making them again. The officer's skeptical comment comes to mind as President Bush prepares to submit his overdue 2002 defense budget to Congress, probably this week. Press reports have indicated that the Pentagon is indeed seriously weighing a plan to deploy a national missile defense system by 2004. Boeing, the program's lead contractor, says that the tight 2004 schedule can be met by roughly quadrupling the rate of testing the military has been able to accomplish so far, the news reports said. However, it appears unlikely that an effective system, even one able to knock down a single North Korean warhead, could be fielded by 2004.

The Pentagon's top tester advised in an internal report last fall that it might not be possible to complete by 2011 the ground-based system under development, let alone sea-based, spaced-based or laser alternatives favored by some in the Bush administration. So trying to deploy a system as early as 2004 could beget the opposite of what's intended: a behind-schedule system that won't intercept even test missiles, let alone real ones. And a crash program could cause missiles to crash; it could lead to costly repeats of tests that failed because generals and defense executives cut corners to meet calendar goals rather than realistic milestones.

Boeing reportedly argues that the Bush administration can get the job done faster than Clinton did by building a five-interceptor system instead of starting with 20 interceptors, as Clinton had planned. But even if one interceptor is the goal, the same testing must be successfully done, and that's the rub. The Pentagon's ground-based interceptors have missed test targets in two out of three tries. The tests themselves used "rudimentary" technology, said the Pentagon's top testing official at the time. Also, don't believe that Clinton's land-based system was troubled because he didn't fund it adequately. The Pentagon boosted the program's budget by several billion dollars in the Clinton years. Then, each year, Congress added more.

What Clinton's effort needed, and Bush's will too, is time to do things right even if there's an urgent threat, because going too fast will only slow things down, leaving any threat unmet. The risk is that the president will end up with what may be a political shield to defend his right flank but not much of a shield against missiles. And the military will be tens of billions of dollars poorer.

In other words, the president may end up with another V-22 Osprey on his hands. That's the military's helicopter-airplane hybrid. Last year, the V-22 contractors, Boeing and Bell Helicopter Textron, were on a fast track to sign a $26-billion production paycheck. Then two crashes killed 23 Marines, and a squadron leader was caught on tape saying his Marines had "to lie" about the V-22's mechanical problems while the production decision was pending. People started to take a harder look at the V-22.

Lo and behold, they found out that the aircraft really wasn't ready for production after all and needed some redesigning; that it hadn't even proved it could do things that it was being built to do, like rescue downed pilots; and that, had testing not been cut back in the rush to production, these problems might have been discovered in time. The officer at the cocktail party knew of what he spoke. Sometimes, if you want something real bad, that's how you may get it: real bad.

John M. Donnelly Is Editor of Defense Week, an Independent Newsletter That Covers the Business and Politics of National Security

--------

Bush Administration Plans Major Changes To Missile Defense Programs

InsideDefense.com
June 25, 2001
From: Georg Schoefbaenker <schoefbaenker@aon.at>

The Bush administration will ask Congress for $7.9 billion to support a revamped missile defense program in fiscal year 2002, according to documents and sources.

The total is $2.2 billion more than the figure included in an earlier "placeholder" defense budget, states program budget decision No. 816, signed last week by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.

Some of the money will be used to accelerate the development of sea- and space-based missile defense technologies, the PBD states.

The document, obtained by InsideDefense.com, shows the Pentagon will scrap its current approach to developing missile defense systems by moving toward a technology effort that emphasizes the defeat of missiles in three stages: boost, midcourse and terminal.

"Preliminary results of the strategy review have determined that Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO) programs should be restructured to provide simultaneous research in multiple areas against threats in the boost, midcourse and terminal stages of attack, and that sea, land air and space platforms should be explored to the fullest extent possible to mitigate those threats," the PBD states. "To achieve this, it is recommended that the current BMDO program be eliminated and replaced with a streamlined program designed to merge mature and emergent technologies in innovative ways as each new combination is proven.

"This approach will allow the Department to down-select the best alternative," the document continues. "It is planned after the selected platform is tested and proves the desired capability that it would transfer to the respective service for production and operation and support."

The Ballistic Missile Defense Organization has budget and program responsibility for the Pentagon's missile defense programs and delegates execution authority to the military services. The Bush plan, however, takes three programs under BMDO's control -- the Army's Patriot Advanced Capability-3 and Medium Extended Air Defense System and the Navy's Area Missile Defense -- and gives them back to the services. According to the PBD, these programs are mature enough in the acquisition cycle to be shifted to the services.

The Air Force will see three programs it now controls -- the Airborne Laser, the Space-based Laser, and the Space-Based Infrared System-Low -- given to BMDO, according to the PBD. Because the new BMDO program architecture calls for exploring and developing technologies that "span multiple platforms," these programs, and all money tied to them, will be shifted to BMDO's purview.

"The BMDO budget will contain enough funding to transfer these systems back to the Air Force as they mature," according to the PBD.

The plan eliminates the program line separating a National Missile Defense program from those aimed at defending troops in a combat theater. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee last week that while there are distinct technical differences between the two areas, the operational differences boil down to semantics. "The point about theater and national missile defense that I have addressed is this: What is national depends on where you live," Rumsfeld said. "If you live in Europe and a missile can reach you, that's national, it's not theater. If you live in the United States and a missile can hit Europe, it's theater, not national."

Separating the two programs makes it appear the United States is only interested in protecting itself and not deployed forces or European allies, Rumsfeld said.

According to the PBD, the new BMDO program is focused on five projects, each with its own funding line: $776 million for a ballistic missile defense project; $968 million for a terminal defense project; $3.9 billion for a midcourse defense project; $683 million for a boost-phase defense project; and $495 million for a sensors project.

Because the administration is creating a new BMDO program, it has to establish new program elements for each project, according to the PBD. BMDO is to coordinate with the Pentagon's office of program analysis and evaluation to assign these new program elements.

"In addition, the major defense acquisition program structure is being significantly altered," the PBD states. Accordingly, BMDO and the under secretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics "shall coordinate with the [office of general counsel] to resolve these changes through a legislative proposal as necessary."

-- Thomas Duffy

-------- russia

Russian Nuclear Roulette

FEATURE STORY
June 25, 2001
by STEPHEN F. COHEN
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010625&s=cohen

A baccalaureate should be an occasion to celebrate the present and express optimism about the future, but I must come to you today with very bad news about Russia, my subject of study, and therefore with great alarm about the future. If America's post-cold war triumphalism has led you to believe we are now safer than we were before, I recommend an adage Russians use only partly in jest: "An optimist is an uninformed pessimist."

The bad news is this: Because of what has happened in Russia since the end of the Soviet Union ten years ago, you are graduating into a world more dangerous than ever before. For the first time in history, a fully nuclearized nation is in a process of collapse. The result is potentially catastrophic.

Most of Russia's essential infrastructures--economic, social, technological--are in various stages of disintegration. The state is virtually bankrupt, unable to reinvest in those foundations or even regularly pay the wages and pensions of its own people. The country has been asset-stripped, impoverished and left on the verge of a "demographic apocalypse," as a Moscow newspaper recently termed it. Technology is breaking down everywhere, from electricity and heating to satellites.

In these and other ways, Russia has been plunging back into the nineteenth century. And, as a result, it has entered the twenty-first century with its twentieth-century systems of nuclear maintenance and control also in a state of disintegration.

What does this mean? No one knows fully because nothing like this has ever happened before in a nuclear country. But one thing is certain: Because of it, we now live in a nuclear era much less secure than was the case even during the long cold war. Indeed, there are at least four grave nuclear threats in Russia today:

§ There is, of course, the threat of proliferation, the only one generally acknowledged by our politicians and media--the danger that Russia's vast stores of nuclear material and know-how will fall into reckless hands.

§ But, second, scores of ill-maintained Russian reactors on land and on decommissioned submarines--with the destructive capacity of nuclear weapons--are explosions waiting to happen.

§ Third, also for the first time in history, there is a civil war in a nuclear land--in the Russian territory of Chechnya, where fanatics on both sides have threatened to resort to nuclear warfare.

§ And most immediate and potentially catastrophic, there is Russia's decrepit early-warning system. It is supposed to alert Moscow if US nuclear missiles have been launched at Russia, enabling the Kremlin to retaliate immediately with its own warheads, which like ours remain even today on hairtrigger alert. The leadership has perhaps ten to twenty minutes to evaluate the information and make a decision. That doomsday warning system has nearly collapsed--in May, a fire rendered inoperable four more of its already depleted satellite components--and become a form of Russian nuclear roulette, a constant danger of false alarms and accidental launches against the United States.

How serious are these threats? In the lifetime of this graduating class, the bell has already tolled at least four times. In 1983 a Soviet Russian satellite mistook the sun's reflection on a cloud for an incoming US missile. A massive retaliatory launch was only barely averted. In 1986 the worst nuclear reactor explosion in history occurred at the Soviet power station at Chernobyl. In 1995 Russia's early-warning system mistook a Norwegian research rocket for an American missile, and again a nuclear attack on the United States was narrowly averted. And just last summer, Russia's most modern nuclear submarine, the Kursk, exploded at sea.

Think of these tollings as chimes on a clock of nuclear catastrophe ticking inside Russia. We do not know what time it is. It may be only dawn or noon. But it may already be dusk or almost midnight.

The only way to stop that clock is for Washington and Moscow to acknowledge their overriding mutual security priority and cooperate fully in restoring Russia's economic and nuclear infrastructures, most urgently its early-warning system. Meanwhile, all warheads on both sides have to be taken off high-alert, providing days instead of minutes to verify false alarms. And absolutely nothing must be done to cause Moscow to rely more heavily than it already does on its fragile nuclear controls.

These solutions seem very far from today's political possibilities. US-Russian relations are worse than they have been since the mid-1980s. The Bush Administration is threatening to expand NATO to Russia's borders and to abrogate existing strategic arms agreements by creating a forbidden missile defense system. Moscow threatens to build more nuclear weapons in response.

Hope lies in recognizing that there are always alternatives in history and p olitics--roads taken and not taken. Little more than a decade ago, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, along with President Ronald Reagan and the first President George Bush, took a historic road toward ending the forty-year cold war and reducing the nuclear dangers it left behind. But their successors, in Washington and Moscow, have taken different roads, ones now littered with missed opportunities.

If the current generation of leaders turns out to lack the wisdom or courage, and if there is still time, it may fall to your generation to choose the right road. Such leaders, or people to inform their vision and rally public support, may even be in this graduating class.

Whatever the case, when the bell warning of impending nuclear catastrophe tolls again in Russia, as it will, know that it is tolling for you, too. And ask yourselves in the determined words attributed to Gorbachev, which remarkably echoed the Jewish philosopher Hillel, "If not now, when? If not us, who?"

--------

Stripped for cash/Impoverished Russian sailors stealing submarine parts

Russell Working,
Nonna Chernyakova,
Chronicle Foreign Service,
Monday, June 25, 2001 (SF Chronicle)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/06/25/MN80532.DTL

Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Russia -- In Russia's Far East, home to the country's Pacific submarine fleet, thieves within the navy are stripping subs of everything from radio equipment to radioactive isotopes and selling them to criminals.

The crime wave threatens the fleet's safety and has sparked fears about the spread of nuclear weapons. It is all the more alarming because of the area's proximity to North Korea, whose agents operate in the region and have attempted to acquire submarine technology and information.

The most recent known incident occurred in Petropavlovsk on April 24, when three officers were arrested on charges of stealing parts that included radioactive isotopes.

The crime is the second to draw the attention of authorities this year, said Yury Sazonov, military prosecutor with Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky garrison, which is handling the cases. Earlier this year, an officer and a civilian colleague stole similar parts from another submarine.

At least 10 people are believed to have been arrested last year for stealing parts from diesel and nuclear submarines, said Igor Kravchuk, a military reporter with the newspaper Vesti. He suspects that many more thefts went unreported; the military does not publicly report convictions.

One of the most frightening scenarios is that thieves could accidentally touch off a nuclear accident.

Last year in Kamchatka, two sailors sneaked into the nuclear reactor compartment of a submarine and stole the catalysts for igniting the reactor because they contained palladium, a metal of the platinum group, Interfax news service reported. The nine stolen tubes were worth $3,571 apiece.

The thieves also stole 12 radioactive calibrating plates, which looked like gold. (The sailors didn't realize the material was radioactive and hid it under the mattresses of their beds.)

The sailors even tried to lift the control rods but failed because an engineer had welded the lever down. If it hadn't been, they could have sparked a catastrophe, venting radioactive material over the port and thousands of people in the surrounding area.

The crime rate among navy officers on the Kamchatka peninsula has been mushrooming. In 1999, the last year for which statistics are available, the military crime rate was growing by about 20 percent annually, said Sazonov.

"There are constant attacks on the submarines by navy personnel, because they are so poorly paid that they have to steal metal and cable and other things in order to get by and get their families food," said James Clay Moltz, a research professor and associate director of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

"The senior navy officials have described it as 'a state of war,' and that's really what it is."

Publicly, at least, the navy is in denial about what is going on.

Rear Admiral Konstantin Sidenko, commander of the Northeast Armed Forces, dismissed the reports from newspapers and his own prosecutorial staff.

"Nobody has stolen anything this year," he said in a phone interview. "What was written in the newspapers is nothing but lies. There was a wave of thefts in 1998, but those who did that have been punished recently."

However, Sazonov, the military prosecutor, said theft from submarines is a booming and lucrative business.

"Unfortunately, this market is developing quite fast, so we are trying to fight it," he said.

Behind the epidemic of thievery is the harsh reality of post-communist Russia.

Newly inducted sailors are paid less than $3.50 a month, according to the Pacific Fleet headquarters, and even veteran submarine officers make only about $63 a month. And like some civilian workers, their wages are often unpaid for months at a time. The national daily Trud reported recently that 48 percent of military officers earn wages at below the national poverty level.

Submarines are tempting targets because they are packed with expensive equipment. And despite Russia's current economic troubles, it boasts a large submarine fleet in the Far East.

In Kamchatka, there are nine Delta III nuclear submarines with a total of 143 long-range missiles carrying 429 nuclear warheads, along with an older Delta I sub carrying 12 missiles with single warheads, Moltz said. Another 12 nuclear attack and guided-missile submarines in port are designed to fire nuclear-tipped cruise missiles and torpedoes at enemy ships. Many of these submarines no longer go to sea and are guarded only by two-man skeleton crews.

Twelve more nuclear attack submarines and another Delta I are based in the nearby region of Primorye. Most of these submarines, too, are decommissioned and guarded by light crews.

The risky situation has resulted in international attempts to pare the fleet. The U.S. Cooperative Threat Reduction program has been paying to help Russia dismantle 14 Delta and Yankee-class nuclear submarines in Bolshoi Kamen, near Vladivostok. Likewise, the Japanese have offered $120 million to dismantle submarines, but only in Primorye, along the Sea of Japan.

Navy officials and Western Russia watchers aren't the only ones who have taken an interest in the thefts from subs.

North Korea is eager to get its hands on Russian nuclear submarine technology. In 1999, a former employee of the Zvezda shipyard near Vladivostok was arrested trying to sell radioactive materials to undercover agents posing as a broker for North Korea.

In 1996, 17 North Korean guest workers were caught trying to infiltrate a nuclear submarine facility in the Primorye region and were repatriated. And authorities have arrested North Korean workers for trying to buy dismantlement schedules and cruising patterns for nuclear vessels, Moltz said.

Many sailors and officers who steal parts melt the metal at home, producing impure ingots, Sazonov said. Precious metals such as beryllium and lithium are particularly in demand, but thieves often sell gold and platinum to local jewelry stores.

Open a newspaper in this city, and it is obvious that a thriving enterprise has sprung up.

"Company buys new and used radio equipment," state classified advertisements in the newspaper Vesti. The ads list electronic components for which the buyer offers up to $600.

The dispatcher of one company that buys equipment salvaged from the navy said her company pays up to $1,000 for some parts.

"We have a lot of competitors all over the city," said the woman, who declined to give her name. "Some are very close to the military units, so they get more business than we do."

Nuclear submarines are not the only vessels being looted. Last year, the diesel submarine fleet was even more subject to pillaging, said Kravchuk. An entire division of Kilo class submarines was disabled by thefts, he said.

The thieves even stole parts from the reactor areas, including equipment for measuring radioactivity, and they ripped out hydrogen-burning furnaces for the platinum and palladium they contained. The suspects are awaiting a verdict in a closed trial.

After the theft from the nuclear reactor compartment of the submarine in Kamchatka, Russian Navy commander Vladimir Kuroyedov fired two senior submarine officers, and 10 other officers and admirals were penalized for negligence.

But that is hardly enough to allay fears of a disaster.

"You don't want disgruntled individuals handling nuclear submarines, not to mention weapons," Moltz said. "It's a very bad recipe."

--------

Grozny Experiences Peace in Name Only
Despite Russian Assurance of Safety, Chechen Capital Lives Under Siege

By Sharon LaFraniere
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, June 25, 2001; Page A01
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41029-2001Jun24?language=printer

GROZNY, Russia -- It has been 18 months since Russian soldiers wrested this rubble-strewn capital city from the grasp of Chechnya's guerrillas and more than a year since officials declared it secure and began reopening schools and markets. Two months ago, Chechnya's pro-Russian government moved its offices here from the smaller town of Gudermes -- a symbolic declaration that Grozny was again a safe place in which to live and to rule.

Berland Kadirova begs to differ. Here in the remains of Hospital Number Nine -- Grozny's only hospital with electricity -- she sees a ceaseless stream of mangled bodies, victims of gunfire and shellings. People live under any roof they can find. Gas is rare, electricity rarer and working toilets nonexistent. Water comes from a truck.

Grozny is not safe, says Kadirova, 49, a nurse with thick, brown-rimmed glasses, who is in charge of registering patients. It is terrifying.

"We are under such stress," she exclaimed, her voice rising so loud the head nurse stuck her head in the door and urged her to calm down. "Shooting at night. Every night. Shells flying around. No life, no place to go. No one even to complain to. We are still trying to live, but we are just crawling."

To visit Grozny these days is to witness the contrast between the symbolic peace and security declared by Russian officials and the city's mine-ridden, bullet-flying reality.

No one breathes easily here.

Not the Russian soldiers, the target of dozens of ambush attacks every week. Their quarters are fortresses, mined and piled high with sandbags. Between dusk and dawn, says Grozny's former mayor, Bislan Gantamirov, they cede control of the city to the rebels.

Not the newly appointed civilian administrators, Russian or Chechen. By one estimate, rebels have picked off 17 administrators and staff workers this year. Confronted with a flock of resignations, the Russian-appointed government decided this month to issue handguns to administrators.

Not the Chechen civilians, who are subject to roundups by Russian troops and risk summary execution if they cannot convince them they are not rebels. Teachers complain that schoolboys can't even come to class without fear of arrest.

Not Grozny's dwindling population of Russian civilians. Unidentified gunmen have hunted down and killed more than a half-dozen of them in the past month.

Not even international aid workers. Three weeks ago, the international Red Cross stopped distributing bread in Chechnya after Russian soldiers at a checkpoint near Grozny shot and wounded one of its workers as he rode in a clearly marked car.

Russian officials say the only hope of curbing the violence is to show the Chechen population that Russian rule offers advantages and that the rebels offer only war.

Yet the effort to repair water plants and douse flaming oil refineries remains secondary, because even with 75,000 troops, this territory the size of Connecticut in southern Russia is still not securely under Moscow's control. Last month's loss was typical: Thirty servicemen were killed, according to the Military News Agency, an independent news service in Moscow.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's pledge in January to withdraw all but 20,000 soldiers from Chechnya has been suspended. And for the first time Kremlin officials are intimating that the conflict with secessionist rebels will continue indefinitely.

"They don't know what to do in Chechnya. They don't have any plan. It is an endless conflict," said Alexei Malashenko, an analyst specializing in Chechnya with the Carnegie Moscow Center. "Putin wanted to be a winner in Chechnya, and now everyone understands he has failed."

'There Is No Security'

Last year, the Russian government opened schools in Chechnya and began to pay pensions and salaries. Nearly 5,000 acres of wheat, rye and vegetables planted by government workers are now ready for harvest. Firemen have extinguished blazes at 24 of the 40 oil refineries that have been burning since 1999.

A train now runs to Moscow from Gudermes, Chechnya's second-largest city, and a new children's hospital has opened there. Thousands of Chechen children have been bused to summer camps.

"We have to solve the economic and social problems first," Dukuvakha Abdurakhmanov, the Chechen-born agriculture minister, said in an interview. "We have to give people bread, a place to study, jobs."

Yet government officials are afraid to display their hard-won results, because they say they cannot guarantee that visitors will not be blown up. Stanislav Ilyasov, a round-faced, diminutive Russian who is Chechnya's prime minister, abruptly canceled a recent visit to Grozny's streets arranged for a group of foreign journalists. He replaced it with an hour-long lecture, delivered in shouts, on the dangers of radio-controlled land mines and armed criminals in camouflage and masks.

"Who told you there is any security. There is no security!" Ilyasov said, glaring down the length of a polished wood conference table in the government's smart new four-story office building.

"I am not saying you can walk with a balloon and an ice cream in the city. No. That is not the case. . . . It is safer now to see everything from the air."

The government compound where he and other employees work and live in a row of tiny one-room cottages is like a little island of safety in Grozny. Even with their guards, workers say they are afraid to venture out to the central market.

And even the compound is not that safe. On April 23, Ilyasov's first night there, he said the sound of gunfire kept him awake until dawn. Two days later, an explosive-stuffed car was discovered outside the office building. Last month, a bullet came through the office window of Akhmad Kadyrov, a pro-Moscow Chechen who serves as the region's top administrator. There have been three other attempts on Kadyrov's life since March.

"Do you think I am trying to suger-coat things?" Ilyasov asked journalists. "There are only problems here. Okay. Write down: only problems."

A visit two days later to the neighborhood outside the government complex proved his point. The road to Grozny from the neighboring Russian region of Ossetia runs through fields of wildflowers and velvety hills dotted with cemeteries, the graves adorned with small metal flags atop tall, slender poles. Each flag is said to represent a Chechen killed by a Russian -- to be removed after a Russian is killed in return.

Life Amid the Rubble

Before the first Russian-Chechen war, which ended in 1996 with Chechnya's de facto independence, Grozny was home to five times as many residents. Many of them are now refugees, living in tents and train cars in the neighboring region of Ingushetia, afraid to come home.

In northeastern Grozny's Leninsky district, residents eke out an existence amid rubble, trash, rats and weeds. As elsewhere, most of the neighborhood's apartment buildings are crumbling hulks; the houses are roofless and mostly abandoned. In the last week of May, the Russian military reported that rebels fired on Grozny forces 84 times.

The district's Hospital Number Nine has a sign and a gate; otherwise it could be mistaken for more ruins. The five-story main building, once the hospital's pride, is windowless and pockmarked by bullets. The seriously hurt are now treated in a two-story pink stucco building, down a muddy path and past a crude water pump that draws a stream of children and adults toting metal containers and buckets.

One recent morning, the hospital was full of the traumatized -- nurses , as well as patients. Seven people who stopped to talk all agreed: Grozny is more dangerous now than it was even a few months ago -- maybe because the government's renewed presence has drawn the militants back. They were not short on examples.

In one, two nurses discussed how a pregnant medical student was blown up by a mine June 1 on her way home from exams. In another, two orderlies carried a stretcher into the hospital lobby, past posters illustrating how to identify mines, and deposited its occupant on the linoleum floor. The man had been high in a tree, picking cherries, when an explosion blew him to the ground, fracturing his hip. That same day, a mine exploded in another tree in a neighboring district, killing a Grozny policeman who was walking past and injuring five others.

Marian Iskhabov, the head receiving nurse, said she records five or six victims of gunfire or mine explosions every day. Many are children, like the 6- and 8-year-old brothers killed by a mine earlier this month. "Our biggest need is that this war is over. We will be able to live," she said. "We just want this to stop."

The daily exchanges of ethnic hatred in the city make it achingly clear, however, that that is not likely to happen any time soon.

Since March, six people have been killed on nearby Akademika Pavlova Street -- all Russians, all at night, all, almost certainly, by rebels. Natasha Hibulina, 40, who lives there with her husband and 7-year-old son, is a Chechen. But she, too, is terrified, because, desperate for money, she found a job as a secretary in the government pension office.

"They kill Chechens who work with the authorities," she said. "At night it is awful. Sometimes we don't even sleep here -- we go to friends. We don't have any feeling of being protected."

Maisa Algayeva, 41, the director of the nearest school, wants protection, too -- but from the Russians.

The schoolyard is deserted, unkempt and forbidding. The school itself is more than two-thirds rubble. In the remainder, Algayeva and her teachers installed windows, hauled in scrap furniture and, 15 months ago, began classes for 745 students. When planes fly overhead, they have to coax the youngest out from under their desks.

Three times last month, Algayeva said, Russian soldiers broke in, threatening to shoot the school's guard. They smashed doors, locks and desks. The last time, May 20, they took sugar, plates and a brass bell that was rung at school ceremonies.

Outraged, Algayeva said she marched over to the Russian military commandant's office and planted her thin frame in front of him. "If this happens again," she warned, "I myself will start to fight against you."

-------- space

Nuclear Power Poised for Re-Entry into Space

By Robert Roy Britt,
Senior Science Writer,
25 June 2001
http://www.SPACE.COM/businesstechnology/nuclear_space_010625-1.html

"The fact that the country is willing again to consider use of nuclear energy for commercial power may improve the prospects of applying this technology to space exploration." - George Schmidt, Marshall Space Flight Center

With increasingly ambitious missions planned to Mars and beyond, and with solar energy having demonstrated its limitations, engineers and managers inside and outside NASA say nuclear energy may be powering its way to a new dawn in space.

It's a possibility made more likely by recent shifts in U.S. energy and military policies. It's also a move anticipated by antinuclear activists, who are already planning their opposition to any effort to use nuclear power in space.

Fueled by the desire to go farther and faster with fewer dollars, managers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory -- where many of the agency's robotic missions are conceived and carried out -- are analyzing how to justify the use of nuclear power in space, both technically and in terms of the benefit to science.

"We've been thinking about this, and trying to raise it as a question that warrants some consideration, for a couple of years," says Firouz Naderi, a longtime JPL manager and newly appointed leader of the Solar System's Exploration Programs Directorate. "I think we are going to raise it again and see if the [political] system is amenable to it."

In an interview at his JPL office, Naderi said any such political balloon would have to be floated in Washington by NASA headquarters.

"I believe that if a good case can be made, not only for the science return but for safety, then I could see that [nuclear power] could be in our future," he said.

Others think Naderi may be right. And support could come from the top.

President Bush's recently released energy plan features increased reliance on nuclear power back here on Earth. In several interviews, scientists and mission planners said they were hopeful this might put space-based nuclear power generation back on the table after suffering from years of what they call misinformation.

"The fact that the country is willing again to consider use of nuclear energy for commercial power may improve the prospects of applying this technology to space exploration," said George Schmidt, deputy manager of the Propulsion Research Center at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.

Two sides, very far apart

The last nuclear-powered spacecraft launched by NASA was Cassini in 1997. Antinuclear activists protested heavily against it, saying a launch accident or potential mishap in a 1999 Earth flyby en route to Saturn could kill billions of people who might develop cancer after contact with radioactive material.

Cassini scientists have called such claims "hogwash," saying that the radiation risk is less than normal background radiation in the air or in rocks.

Before the launch, NASA did admit that "there is a small potential for public health effects." But in 1997, Cassini project manager Richard J. Spehalski said the public was "badly misinformed by alarmists."

Spehalski said that even in the highly unlikely event that the 73 pounds of plutonium on board were somehow released into the atmosphere in a breathable form, and ingested, "the radiation dose an individual would receive over a 50-year period from that exposure would be ... 15,000 times less than a natural lifetime exposure."

In the end, there were no Cassini accidents. Yet the dangers still are debated.

Few debate the potential benefits of nuclear power in space. The life of a Mars rover could be extended from days to years. Maneuverability would be measured in miles instead of feet. And many engineers agree that a human trip to Mars would go from highly impossible to practical.

Further, if humanity is ever to leave this planet permanently and set up colonies on the Moon or Mars, a nuclear power station would be nearly indispensable, most space industry experts agree.

No nukes in space

As talk of space-based nuclear power increases, so do the efforts of opposition groups.

Bruce K. Gagnon is a coordinator for the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space. The organization represents 150 groups around the world with, Gagnon says, millions of members.

Gagnon said the groups have been expecting space-based nuclear power initiatives to resurface, and they've been making plans to mount a concerted effort against all uses, from planetary exploration to military. The U.S. military would benefit from having nuclear generators in space to power huge orbiting radar stations for reconnaissance. And Bush is also pushing for a fresh look at the so-called Star Wars missile defense system.

"We see a deadly connection between each of them," Gagnon said, arguing that the nuclear industry views space as a new market and would love to get a foot in the door any way it can.

Gagnon said the missile defense system would use nuclear energy aboard satellites to refuel lasers that would shoot down foreign missiles. Bush has not committed to any specific system, however, and some expect the weapons would ultimately be ground-based or mounted on ships or aircraft.

Gagnon also argues that relying on nuclear power tends to kill research into alternatives, such as solar power. "When you go with nuclear power you're basically saying nothing else works," he says.

Exploration, not war

Meanwhile, those who plan missions to Mars and beyond have a more modest goal: getting there. And they say that a new generation of nuclear propulsion systems is safe.

Radioisotope thermoelectric generators, or RTGs as they are called, use the natural decay process of plutonium to generate heat needed to protect a spacecraft in the cold environment of space. Some of the heat is converted to electricity, which can be used for flight propulsion or to power a surface rover.

In future plans, conventional chemical rockets would be used to launch spacecraft powered by RTGs, and the reactors would not be turned on until after they are launched. Still, critics fear a release of plutonium during launch or in the atmosphere, when a rocket is accidentally or intentionally blown up.

In the case of such an accident "the radioactivity in the reactor is nil, less than that received by laying on the beach in sunny California or in Long Island," says Mohamed S. El-Genk, director of the Institute for Space and Nuclear Power Studies at the University of New Mexico.

Gagnon, however, says the greatest danger might come well before a spacecraft is even launched. In order to use nuclear power in space, he points out, the Department of Energy would have to ramp up plutonium production.

"As you contemplate expansion of the use of nuclear power in space, you'll have a dramatic escalation in worker contamination," Gagnon said.

And finally, Gagnon said a launch accident is inevitable, due to faulty parts, human error, or sheer odds.

Plenty of company

If nuclear power returns to space, it will find a lot of company. In the most recent tally provided by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, there are roughly 75 nuclear devices in space, 38 from the United States and 37 from Russia. Of these, 46 are in Earth orbit, 12 were left on the Moon or Mars, and 17 power deep-space probes.

In 1964, for example, an American satellite failed and re-entered Earth's atmosphere. As planned, it jettisoned its nuclear payload, releasing radiation over the Indian Ocean at an altitude of 75 miles, according to the Bulletin.

In 1973, the Apollo 13 spacecraft carried an RTG to be used to power a seismic station on the Moon. The mission was aborted and the spacecraft returned to Earth. The RTG was attached to the lunar module, which broke up on re-entry. NASA officials say the RTG re-entered intact, with no release of plutonium, and now sits on the floor of the Pacific Ocean.

In 1978, a Soviet radar reconnaissance satellite malfunctioned and crashed in Canada's Northwest Territory, releasing thousands of highly radioactive fragments into a lake and the surrounding area.

No evidence has tied these mishaps to any cancer cases or deaths.

Destination Mars

Still, over the years, political and social pressure from these accidents, and others in terrestrial nuclear reactors, have combined to compel NASA to design Mars probes and rovers that rely on solar power.

But for robotic exploration, especially on the surface of a planet far from the Sun, with nighttime darkness and changing seasons thwarting solar collectors, nuclear power would be an indisputably more powerful exploration tool.

A stark example of solar power's shortcomings was provided by the successful Mars Pathfinder mission in 1997, which worked in tandem with the Sojourner rover to beam back pictures of the surface of Mars. While outlasting its 30-day life expectancy, the craft's batteries died just shy of three months after landing.

Researchers expected the batteries to die, because they required constant recharging from the solar panels. Solar energy cannot be used directly, because it fluctuates so much.

And solar panels are heavy, not to mention complicated to unfurl in space or on a planet.

How to kill a mission

Bob Anderson, a geologist and mission planner, said in a recent interview at JPL that the weight of solar panels and their poor performance compared to nuclear power severely constrain the amount of science that can be done for a given mission's price tag.

"Two things will kill a mission," Anderson says. "Power and mass."

And future Mars missions will require more of both. A pair of missions in 2003 will send the most advanced and capable rovers ever designed to study Martian geology and search for signs of water. If there, this water could provide the trail to any past life that might have existed on the Red Planet.

The craft may be sent inside giant craters, where orbiting spacecraft have spotted signs of water. But to ensure safety, the spacecraft will land in flat areas, likely near the crater center.

"But the best information is probably in the rim," Anderson says.

Anderson is helping engineers design rovers that will allow the geologist to remotely drill into rocks and figure out what they're made of. It is a critical science tool, but also a tremendously power-draining activity, he said.

Nuclear power could turn short, daytime-only missions into long, 24/7 operations, Anderson said. He notes, however, that rovers would have to be redesigned to make all their parts capable of sustaining such a long mission.

Naderi, the JPL manager, worries that Americans have been jaded into assuming that going to Mars is a relatively simple operation nowadays. But given that favorable planet alignments limit Mars missions to launching every 26 months, he laments solar-powered rovers die before the next one can be launched.

"People think [landing on Mars] is like driving to Grandma's on Sunday," Naderi said. "But it is expensive and it is horribly difficult to land on Mars. Once you do, you want to last more than 90 days."

Living on the Moon

While nuclear power can improve the efficiency of a rover, some say it is imperative for more ambitious missions.

An increasingly vocal group of space enthusiasts argues that the post-Apollo space program is stagnant due to the lack of a major goal. Many think that what's needed is a firm plan to set up permanent human colonies on the Moon or Mars.

Peter Eckart, of the Institute for Astronautics at the Munich University of Technology in Germany, says that if a lunar base is to be built anywhere except at the poles, where sunlight is constant, then "the only reasonable engineering solution is to go with nuclear power."

Likewise, others say, any future colonization of Mars will likely depend not just on nuclear electric propulsion, but nuclear power generation on the surface. Most engineers question whether even the most perfectly situated site can be sustained by solar power. And at best, these sites would not necessarily be located where researchers would want to explore.

Despite the benefits of nuclear power, Eckart is not one to discount the dangers.

"I'm personally not too much in favor of using nuclear power on Earth, if we can avoid it," he said after a recent conference on space colonization at Princeton University. "But in space, it's not a problem."

Eckart calls the fear of contaminating the lunar surface with radiation "total nonsense, because up in space there's so much radiation already -- all the galactic and cosmic radiation, all the stuff that's coming in from the Sun. A nuclear reactor does not make a difference at all. The only risk is launching it, and there you have to be careful from an engineering point of view."

Such a system would be launched in safer pieces, then assembled once at its destination, providing a further measure of safety, proponents say.

Several experts say that whether nuclear power flies again depends upon public opinion. And while a significant chunk of the American public has traditionally held a dim view of nuclear energy, there is evidence that opinions can change, at least in the face of a compelling need.

Five years after the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania, a nonpartisan Field Institute poll found that roughly 61 percent of Californians opposed nuclear power. But a new poll, released this May, found that about 59 percent of Californians were in favor of building new nuclear plants.

Pollsters suggested the obvious: Rolling blackouts and soaring electricity bills had altered views.

Most space industry experts say there is no direct relationship between the fate of Bush's energy proposal -- which offers tax breaks to the nuclear energy industry and promises to re-evaluate a controversial limitation on reprocessing nuclear waste into reusable fuel -- and the potential for a nuclear powered space program.

But several of those interviewed by SPACE.com expressed optimism for a political and social trickle-down effect.

"In order to line up national support, we need a NASA mission or missions that would inspire Americans of all ages," says the University of New Mexico's El-Genk.

Dusty plan, dying experts

A potentially more difficult challenge also looms, especially regarding the construction of large-scale nuclear power plants to support Mars or lunar colonies.

Even if the social barriers were suddenly lifted, it is unclear how quickly NASA could ramp up the necessary technology, given that three decades worth of plans for nuclear propulsion and space-based power generation are stuffed away in dusty drawers around the country.

Professors are loath to bring the topic up, says El-Genk, and a generation of engineers who understood the technology is largely retired or dead.

"University education in this area is nil, due to the very low enrollment in nuclear engineering departments during the last two decades and the closure or combining of more than half the nuclear engineering departments that existed in the 80s," El-Genk told SPACE.com.

With this dying generation may die the dream of sending humans to Mars. Or, at the least, the dream might be deferred until a new generation of engineers can be re-educated.

So despite glimmers of hope within the space community, there is a realization that a tremendous public and political education effort would be needed to get nuclear energy off the ground and back into space.

Some worry the obstacle might be insurmountable.

Gary E. Mueller, an associate professor of nuclear engineering at the University of Missouri-Rolla, said he's hopeful that Bush's efforts will translate into increased use of nuclear power in space. But, tossing another obstacle into the equation, he says NASA will have to find new money to support research.

"Some leadership in Washington, which I hope the Bush administration will provide, and leadership at NASA, which will not happen with [Dan] Goldin's administration, is needed to clear up and shift political will and public opinion," Mueller said.

If President Bush were to push for a nuclear-powered space program, the effort would have a familial echo.

Bush's father spoke in 1989, on the 20th anniversary of the first Moon landing, of America's need to return to the Moon and lay plans for putting humans on Mars. His speech set no dates but spawned a flurry of studies and committees, resulting in recommendations that included nuclear power as a cornerstone for any possible Mars missions.

Twelve years later, there are still no plans for a humans-to-Mars mission. And though space-based nuclear power may be on the brink of a return to the political spotlight, it is also an idea with an uncertain future.

-------- thailand

COBALT-60 RADIATION LEAK
Victims too poor to press their lawsuit Must pay court fees, 200,000 baht each

Anchalee Kongrut,
Bangkok Post,
June 25, 2001
http://www.bangkokpost.co.th/today/250601_News13.html

Victims of last year's cobalt-60 leak may have to withdraw their complaint against the Office of Atomic Energy for Peace (OAEP) from the Administrative Court because they are unable to pay the fees.

The 12 complainants must find a total of 2.5 million baht to support their lawsuit accusing the atomic agency of negligence and demanding 94 million baht in compensation, Ida Aroonwongse, of the Alternative Energy Project for Sustainability, said yesterday.

Court regulations require each complainant in any lawsuit demanding compensation to pay 2.5% of the amount demanded, with a 200,000 baht maximum.

The complaint was originally filed with the Office of the Attorney-General last September after the victims' demand for compensation was rejected by both the OAEP and Kamol Sukosol Electric Co, owner of the cobalt-60 container which was broken open.

The case was transferred to the Administrative Court, which began operation in March this year.

The suit is based on the outcome of an investigation initiated by Arthit Ourairat, former minister for science, technology and the environment. It concluded three atomic agency officials were negligent in failing to keep records of the whereabouts of Kamol Sukosol's cobalt-60 containers.

Kamol Sukosol moved the container from a secure warehouse to its open-air parking lot, where it was taken by a group of scrap collectors, some of whom are plaintiffs in lawsuits against the company and the atomic agency.

The civil lawsuit against Kamol Sukosol was filed last February, demanding 109 million baht compensation.

The victims asked the court to consider their suit as an indigent case and to exempt the court fees.

Kamol Sukosol countersued five victims for stealing the cobalt-60 container and damaging it.

The company asked for 240,055 baht plus 7.5% interest. The amount reflected the money the company paid for the funerals of dead radiation victims.

The OAEP has again denied it was in the wrong in last year's accident, in which workers at a scrap metal yard in Samut Prakan opened the cobalt-60 housing brought in by the scrap collectors.

OAEP deputy secretary-general Pathom Yaemkate disputed the finding the agency's monitoring of radioactive sources was faulty.

He said the agency was not informed by Kamol Sukosol that the cobalt-60 containers had been moved.

"It should be the company's fault because we were not informed until the scrap collectors stole the container from the company's parking lot," Mr Pathom said.

"Our duty is to inspect registered radioactive sources. But this case is outside our responsibility."

The Public Health Ministry had helped the victims by providing medical treatment. If they wanted more compensation, the right place to go was the Department of Public Welfare.

However, Ms Ida said the department was not bound by law to provide welfare to victims who do not suffer disabilities.

Scrap collectors Jitsen Chantarasakha and Sonthaya Sapathum are the only two victims to have received assistance.

Mr Jitsen has so far lost eight fingers to radiation burns and receives a lifetime disability pension of 500 baht a month.

Mr Sonthaya is entitled to claim only 4,000-baht educational assistance for each of his children.

Ms Ida said the victims have requested help from the Environment Fund.

However, the fund does not have a provision to provide assistance to victims of industrial accidents.

Researchers from Canada's McMaster University would again collect blood samples from five of the radiation victims for a study of chromosomal change.

The team in May last year collected 28 blood samples from several cobalt victims.

Team leader Douglas Boreham from the university's Medical Physics and Applied Radiation Sciences Unit said 11 of the samples did not show a significant effect on the chromosomes.

But the team felt five of the victims need further monitoring.

Mr Boreham said the study would take at least five years to detect any long-term change in the victims' chromosomes.

The project is funded by McMaster University, Atomic Energy of Canada and two nuclear technology companies-Candu group and Ontario Power Generation.

-------- turkey

Turks Protest Nuclear Shipments in Narrow Bosphorus Strait

By Jon Gorvett
June 25, 2001
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/jun2001/2001L-06-25-01.html

ISTANBUL, Turkey, With klaxons blaring and the smoke from dozens of distress flares billowing in the sea breeze, Turkish environmentalists marked the end of a week of protest Sunday, with a flotilla of small boats surrounding tankers in the waters off Istanbul.

The seaborne demo came after a decision by the Russian parliament on nuclear waste which many Turks believe dramatically increases the risks of environmental catastrophe in the Turkish Straits - the narrow Bosphorus and Dardanelles passages that separate Europe from Asia, and the Black Sea from the Mediterranean.

On June 6, Russian lawmakers voted to accept nuclear waste from other countries for reprocessing and disposal in the country's southern region of Mayak. This would likely mean a dramatic increase in nuclear waste materials transiting the Turkish Straits to Russia's Black Sea ports.

Fire following a 1994 collision of the tanker Nassia in the Bosporus Strait (Photo courtesy Turkish Maritime Pilots Association)

Turks are already up in arms about the likelihood of a surge in transportation of other dangerous substances through the Straits - most notably oil and other oil products. With the opening up of Caspian oil fields - and most recently the signing of an agreement to ship oil from the Tenghiz field by tanker - there is concern that a tanker accident in the Straits could be fatal, particularly if it happened in the Bosphorus. This 20 mile channel runs straight through the heart of Istanbul, a city of some 12 million people.

The Bosphorus already has an accident rate twice that of the Suez canal, and 30 times that of the Mississippi River.

But despite the fact that around 50,000 vessels transit every year, 6,000 carrying hazardous materials, there is no obligation on ships to carry a pilot or accept instructions from the Turkish Coast Guard. The reason is the post-World War One Treaty of Montreaux, which defined the Straits as international waters.

"Under the treaty," says Yuksel Ustun, the organizer of Sunday's boat protest on the Bosphorus and head of the environmental NGO Peace with Nature, "ships dont have to declare their cargo either, unless it is dangerous - but who is to check this? Under the treaty, ships don't even have to listen to Coast Guard requests."

What this means, according to Ustun, is that radioactive and other hazardous substances are regularly going through the Straits - and in the Bosphorus sometimes passing within a few hundred meters of densely populated urban areas.

"Nuclear waste is being brought through the Straits to the Black Sea thanks to this manipulation of the Montreaux Treaty," he says. In addition, Ustun claims that, "often in the past other countries would load up an old ship with hazardous materials, sail it through into the Black Sea and simply scuttle it there as a form of waste disposal. As the Black Sea littoral countries were until recently divided by the Cold War, there was never any real overall control."

Greenpeace Mediterranean co-ordinator Melda Keskin agrees. She says, "The majority of Russians do not want this hazardous or radioactive material either. A petition campaign in Moscow collected 2.1 million signatures against Russia accepting the nuclear waste. Under the Russian constitution, you need two million signatures to automatically trigger a national referendum on an issue. However, the government appointed referendum commission said that 600,000 of the signatures were invalid and threw out the petition."

In addition to protest demonstrations, the Turkish government has also reacted strongly to the Russian parliament's decision.

Maritime Undersecretary Ramazan Mirzaoglu told reporters last week in response to news of the Russian move that, "The Straits traffic is very important to the Black Sea countries and to Turkey. We will not give permission to dangerous passages that would delay that traffic."

Meanwhile, on his recent visit to Turkey, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov gave assurances that any nuclear waste shipped to Russia would be transported "according to current international standards."

This promise is unlikely to satisfy many Istanbulans who live along the densely crowded shores of the Bosphorus, one of the world's most historic waterways.

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

Dropping The Bomb
Bush wants to rid America and Russia of most of their nuclear arsenals. But his problem isn't so much Putin, it's the Pentagon

By John Barry and Evan Thomas,
NEWSWEEK INTERNATIONAL,
June 25 2001 issue
http://www.msnbc.com/news/588538.asp?0dm=N31EN&cp1=1

The 20-minute briefing at the White House last month was dry and crammed with statistics and acronyms, but it got the president's attention. The U.S. nuclear arsenal today includes 5,400 warheads loaded on intercontinental ballistic missiles at land and sea; an additional 1,750 nuclear bombs and cruise missiles ready to be launched from B-2 and B-52 bombers; a further 1,670 nuclear weapons classified as "tactical." And just in case, an additional 10,000 or so nuclear warheads held in bunkers around the United States as a "hedge against future surprises. According to a knowledgeable source, Bush was stunned at the amount of destructive power in a president's hands. "I had no idea we had so many weapons," he said. "What do we need them for?"

GOOD QUESTION--but one without a simple or easy answer. Ever since U.S. nuclear-attack plans were codified into a Single Integrated Operating Plan (SIOP) in 1960, presidents have been appalled by the very notion of having one day to open the nuclear "football" and transmit the "execute order" (for years, the code words were "Red Dot"). After President Kennedy was briefed on the SIOP, he muttered, "And we call ourselves the human race." But no president has ever figured out a better way.

Now, a decade after the cold war, Bush wants to try. Last Saturday, during his two-hour "get to know you" meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, Bush began the difficult and delicate task of discussing how the former rival superpowers, which still have at least 12,000 nuclear weapons aimed at each other, might begin to reduce their arsenals. Bush and Putin didn't get into specifics, but the mood between the two men seemed surprisingly warm. Bush even invited Putin, a man he said he could "trust," to his Texas ranch, saying that "friends don't destroy each other."

With Russia strapped for cash and its nuclear arsenal rotting and rusting, the time seems right for both sides to cut back on nuclear overkill left over from the cold war. Bush appears genuinely committed to what he called "rethinking the unthinkable" --to finding ways to "take nuclear weapons out of our relationship with Russia," as a top aide puts it. With or without Russia, Bush seems more determined than his predecessors to actually make deep cuts in the nuclear arsenal. But the president's task is complicated by the top item on his foreign-policy agenda: missile defense.

Missile defense is intended not to defang Russia but to deter rogue states from trying to blackmail the United States with a nuclear-tipped rocket or two. But the Russians, understandably, don't quite see it that way. Nor do many others. For months Bush has been flayed by editorial pages in the United States and Europe for pushing a plan that, his critics argue, will "destabilize" the old balance of terror and stimulate a new arms race. For decades, both superpowers relied on the doctrine of mutually assured destruction, or MAD, to deter a nuclear war.

The idea was to make a first strike suicidal by guaranteeing that the other side would be able to hit back. The threat of a shield that could intercept their missiles--and so, in theory, make Russia vulnerable to a first strike--could make the Kremlin resistant to deep cuts in its nuclear forces. And China, which has only a small nuclear arsenal, might feel impelled to build a bigger one.

With or without Russia, Bush seems more determined than his predecessors to actually make deep cuts in the nuclear arsenal. But the president's task is complicated by the top item on his foreign-policy agenda: missile defense.

Or so the argument goes. Bush devoted much of last week's European trip to touting his missile-defense plan, but it actually would be decades, if ever, before the United States could build a system strong enough to withstand even a small missile barrage. Moscow's anxiety about missile defense might be allayed with the right sort of incentives, i.e., investment by the West. Russia is also worried about its decaying arsenal, which is increasingly blind to attack and scarily kept on a hair trigger. Last week Putin at least acknowledged the need for a "new architecture of security."

Bush's Foreign Affair

A bigger impediment to President Bush's dream of reducing the U.S. nuclear arsenal may be his own Pentagon. America's nuclear-force structure is like a Rubik's Cube, deceptively difficult to dismantle.

That's what Dick Cheney found out in the spring of 1989, a few weeks after he had taken over as secretary of Defense for Bush's father. Cheney was given a slide show on the SIOP, 60 to 100 images laying out the sequence of strikes planned in a nuclear war. Each strike was represented by a red dot. At its cold-war height in the mid-'80s, there were 16,000 Soviet targets in the SIOP database. By 1989 the number had shrunk to 12,500. Even so, close to 500 warheads were targeted on the Moscow area alone. A single anti-missile radar at Pushkino, northeast of Moscow, was targeted with 69 warheads. Cheney watched, dumbstruck, as the red dots metastasized across the Soviet Union.

Finally, he said, "Who ordered all this?" The Air Force chief of staff, Gen. Larry Welch, answered, "You did, sir. You and your predecessors."

The general meant that the military was merely carrying out the orders of its civilian masters to fulfill the logic of MAD. Maybe so, but the doomsday planners have been pretty literal-minded. Cheney actually tried to whittle down the SIOP. The 12,500-target list was cut to 10,000. One of the bright stars of the Air Force, Gen. George (Lee) Butler, was sent to Omaha to run the Strategic Command and found the SIOP to be "all 'Alice in Wonderland' stuff." Every time the Pentagon bought a new weapons system to match the Soviets, the generals needed to add new targets for the new weapons, until they were aiming at targets as small and insignificant as rural railroad sidings. Butler took an ax to the SIOP. Yet, bizarrely, the SIOP is actually 20 percent larger today than it was after Butler had finished. His successors kept adding targets back in.

To control the military and bring down nuclear forces to, say, 1,000 weapons or less, Bush is going to have to give precise marching orders. That may mean confronting a painful reality: targeting Russian cities in order to maintain deterrence. Knocking out Russia's scattered silos and other nuclear targets requires more than a thousand warheads. A single Trident submarine, on the other hand, could devastate Russia by unleashing the 192 warheads on its missiles on Russian cities. Nuclear-war planners have always argued that targeting missile silos and command centers is more "humane." It is a somewhat bogus argument--as the accompanying graphic shows, millions of Russian civilians would still die. But no president, including Bush, is going to feel comfortable explicitly aiming at the Russian population.

To help work through this dilemma, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has brought back General Butler as a consultant and tapped Richard Perle, a veteran of the Reagan administration who has radical views on nuclear weapons. It may take considerable prodding to move the top brass. A preliminary review of America's nuclear posture, ordered up by Rumsfeld a few months ago, is "a disappointing document, wholly without vision," says a knowledgeable source. In an interview with NEWSWEEK before he was lured back to the Pentagon as an adviser, Perle said, "I see no reason why we can't go well below 1,000. I want the lowest number possible, under the tightest control possible." Why? "The truth is we are never going to use them. The Russians aren't going to use theirs either." Perle accepts the truth of what Kennedy's national-security adviser McGeorge Bundy--himself no dove--wrote in 1969: that in the real world, "even one hydrogen bomb on one city" would be "a catastrophic blunder; ten bombs on ten cities would be a disaster beyond history." No doubt true. But to persuade both sides to truly reduce their arsenals will take a degree of leadership not seen since the superpowers developed the capacity to make the rubble bounce.

--

Re: NEWSWEEK ARTICLE
From: Steven Starr <shadesahoy@mail.socket.net>

If I understand this article correctly, the goal of reducing the U.S. strategic nuclear arsenal to 1000 warheads (or less) now seems to hinge upon the idea of abandoning the current SIOP counterforce strategy of targeting Russian strategic nuclear forces, and instead adopt a countervalue strategy of targeting Russian cities.

Aside from the political objections to "explicitly aiming at the Russian population", there is also another aspect to this targeting strategy which has apparently been forgotten. That is the issue of nuclear winter.

I would ask you to review the 1990 study published in Science, Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Explosions. This work reviewed six years of international scientific research on the subject of nuclear winter; specifically, it confirmed earlier research which found an extremely low threshold for nuclear winter. The soot generated by the explosions of one hundred megatons of weapons over 100 large cities was sufficient to plunge the Northern Hemisphere into ice age conditions in a matter of days.

The nuclear winter research clearly demonstrated the suicidal nature of the global nuclear arsenals, and gave the lie to the idea that anyone could win a nuclear war. It also painted a grim picture for non-combatant nations, particularly those in India and China, which would face mass starvation from the gravely altered weather conditions following a countervalue nuclear exchange.

Unfortunately, more than a decade has passsed since any further research has been done on nuclear winter. Given the vast improvements in computers and the advances in the atmospheric sciences, a much more accurate study could now be done. But there is a great reluctance on the part of most scientists to get involved with this project, because of the enormous political heat it would draw.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was kind enough to publish a letter I wrote in their March/April 2001 edition, in which I suggested that the NRDC use its extensive nuclear weapons data base as the foundation for an updated study on nuclear winter. I attempted to use this letter to encourage one of the surviving members of the TTAPS group, who helped write the article I referred to in Science, to consider contacting the NRDC about such a project. Apparently I failed to convince him to do so.

However, there are other scientists capable of performing an updated study. I would ask you to reflect upon the worthiness of such a project, and to consider adding your voices to the appeal for a new study on nuclear winter to be done.

We need a new Carl Sagan to lead the way. Do you know anyone who might be interested and capable?

Sincerely, Steven Starr <shadesahoy@mail.socket.net>

-------

U.S. Mayors Ask Bush To Commit To Eliminating Nuclear Weapons

U.S. Newswire
25 Jun 15:46
http://www.usnewswire.com/topnews/Current_Releases/0625-132.html

DETROIT, June 25 /U.S. Newswire/ -- As President Bush addressed the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Detroit today, a statement from mayors of major cities in the U. S. and abroad was released, calling on him to reduce and eliminate nuclear weapons "with all deliberate speed," and "to declare your firm commitment to the task of eliminating nuclear weapons from the face of the earth."

In addition, minutes before the President's arrival to address them today, the plenary meeting of the U. S. Mayor's Conference reaffirmed from the floor its policy in favor of eliminating nuclear weapons.

The mayors' interest in nuclear policy is significant in light of the Bush administration considering a proposal for deep cuts in U.S. arsenals down to 1000 warheads, the upcoming nuclear posture review, and the White House's interest in framing a new post-Cold War nuclear policy.

The mayors are concerned about the fact that the two most plausible nuclear threats against the U. S. today, a terrorist attack or an accidental launch of Russian nuclear missiles, would be targeted to U. S. cities.

The possibility of a terrorist strike via boat or truck bomb or other form of surface transportation would not be mitigated by the Bush administration's proposed national missile defense. An accidental launch in which Russia's deteriorating early warning systems mistake a weather rocket or meteor for a ballistic missile, triggering a mistaken retaliatory strike, cannot be deterred by maintaining U. S. nuclear arsenals. In fact, they can only be prevented by nuclear disarmament and elimination of fissile material that might fall into terrorist hands.

According to such nuclear security experts as Ambassador Richard Butler, the former chief arms inspector in Iraq, the global, verifiable elimination of nuclear weapons is the only safeguard we have against the nuclear threat to U. S. cities. Russian command and control systems have deteriorated further and the danger of accidental launches has grown accordingly since the last documented close brush with a mistaken nuclear strike by Russia against the U.S. in 1995. Meanwhile, nuclear states' continued production of fissile material increases the likelihood of terrorist groups obtaining a nuclear weapon.

"Many cities represented by mayors at the U. S. Conference today are specifically targeted by nuclear weapons," said Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson. "No matter what the likelihood of the weapons actually falling on our cities, the catastrophic consequences of even one nuclear mishap are unacceptable and unnecessary."

"We believe it is our responsibility to speak out," says the mayors'statement released today, "for if nuclear weapons are ever again used, it is virtually certain that one or more of our cities will be the target and the people we represent will be the victims."

"What the mayors are essentially saying," said Tyler Stevenson of the Global Security Institute, "is that we have a fundamental choice before us. We can choose to maintain and modernize our arsenals, endlessly managing the dangers of nuclear deterrence, which perpetuates the targeting of our own cities. Or we can choose to get rid of the weapons, taking U.S. cities and their residents out of nuclear harm's way."

The new statement was spearheaded by the Global Security Institute (GSI) and its founder, the late Senator Alan Cranston, who died on December 31, 2000. The full text and list of signatories is available on the GSI website, www.gsinstitute.org.

Among the signers of statement are past and present mayors from 37 major U. S. cities, including:

-- Albuquerque Mayor Jim Baca
-- Ann Arbor Mayor Ingrid Sheldon
-- Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell
-- Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley and former Mayor Kurt Schmoke -- Boston Mayor Thomas Menino
-- Chapel Hill Rosemary Waldorf
-- Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley
-- Cincinnati Mayor Charlie Luken
-- Cleveland Mayor Michael White
-- Dallas Mayor Ronald Kirk
-- Denver Mayor Wellington Webb, chair of the 2001 U.S. Mayors'Conference International Affairs Committee
-- Des Moines Mayor Preston Daniels
-- Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer, host of the 2001 U.S. Conference of Mayors
-- Hartford Mayor Mike Peters
-- Honolulu Mayor Jeremy Harris
-- Little Rock Mayor Jim Dailey
-- Louisville Mayor David Armstrong
-- Madison Mayor Susan J. M. Bauman
-- Newark Mayor Sharpe James
-- New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial, incoming president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors
-- Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown and former Mayor Elihu Harris
-- Philadelphia former Mayor Edward Rendell
-- Pittsburgh Mayor Tom Murphy
-- Portland (ME) former Mayor Thomas Kane
-- Portland (OR) Mayor Vera Katz
-- Providence Mayor Vincent Cianci
-- Sacramento Mayor Jimmie Yee and former Mayor Joe Serna, Jr.
-- Salem (OR) Mayor Mike Swaim
-- San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown
-- San Jose Mayor Ron Gonzales and former Mayor Susan Hammer
-- San Juan, P.R., Alcadesa Sila Maria Calderon
-- Santa Cruz Mayor Keith Sugar
-- Seattle Mayor Paul Schell
-- Saint Louis Mayor Calrence Harmon
-- Salt Lake City MMayor Rocky Anderso and former Mayor Deedee Corradini
-- Tucson Mayor George Miller
-- Washington, D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams

Several of these mayors are available to the media for comment on today's statement on eliminating nuclear weapons. In addition, others who can speak to the statement, including Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of the Detroit Archdiocese, several officials of the Global Security Institute and nationally recognized nuclear policy experts are also available for interviews. For more information and interviews, please call Stephen Kent in Detroit today at the U. S. Conference of Mayors at 914-589-5988. Thereafter, please call 845-424-8382.

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

Contaminated Uranium Threat Widens

New York Times,
June 25, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Nuclear-Contamination.html?searchpv=aponline

ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) -- Thousands more workers than first thought could face serious health threats from exposure to plutonium and other highly radioactive matter that fouled a large amount of uranium recycled by U.S. nuclear weapons programs, a published report says.

From 1952 until 1999, when the shipments ended because of the contamination threat, vast quantities of recycled uranium were shipped worldwide.

New government studies, reviewed by USA Today and reported in Monday's editions, found that the recycling program yielded 250,000 tons of tainted uranium, or about twice as much as earlier estimated. The highly radioactive material was handled at about 10 times the number of sites previously revealed and reportedly reached more than 100 federal plants, private manufacturers and universities.

``This stuff circulated much more widely than we'd thought,'' said Robert Alvarez, an official at the Energy Department when the new studies were started in 1999.

USA Today said the latest studies suggest that thousands more workers than expected might have unwittingly faced radiation risks beyond those associated with normal uranium. That exposure could significantly increase their odds of developing cancer and other diseases.

-------- minnesota

Wellstone: Nuclear waste must be moved

06/25/2001
Anne Jacobson, News Editor
June 25, 2001
Red Wing Republican Eagle (Minnesota)
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=1995885&BRD=1253&PAG=461&dept_id=158846&rfi=6

U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone told Red Wing leaders he is committed to getting nuclear waste off Prairie Island.

Joking aside about his liberal politics and past "no" votes on siting a federal waste repository, he pledged to write legislation that will ensure safe shipment of used radioactive fuel to a repository. Safe shipping is the only reason he said he has opposed opening the nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev. Once that's satisfied, he'll vote in support, he said.

"I don't see where we disagree," Wellstone told an audience of about 20 people Saturday. "You may have thought that past legislation was better than I did. That's where we disagree."

Should Xcel Energy's Prairie Island nuclear plant stay open? Should it continue to provide good, well-paying jobs? Should the spent fuel be removed? Should the federal government to held accountable to open the repository? "Yes," Wellstone responded to his own questions.

Accompanied by state Sen. Steve Murphy, DFL-Red Wing, Wellstone first met privately with Prairie Island tribal leaders Saturday morning before touring the nuclear plant. He then met over the noon hour with business, labor, city and county representatives.

The focus was energy policy and Prairie Island nuclear plant's dwindling storage space. The two-unit facility has enough dry-cask storage to operate into 2007, Red Wing Area Chamber of Commerce President Dennis Egan reminded Wellstone. If the waste isn't removed or more space approved, the plant will close, Minnesota will lose a major power source, and 300 to 500 jobs will be lost.

Minnesota isn't far behind California, which is suffering rolling blackouts, civic leaders warned. Person after person stressed the need to keep the reliable, clean, cost-efficient plant running.

"It's very critical for us to have a reliable energy source," said Jerry Dietzman of Red Wing Shoe Co. The issue ranks with skyrocketing health-care costs in whether the company continues to employ 1,600 people in Minnesota, he added.

County Commissioner Gary Iocco said farmers are straining to survive. Raise energy costs 25 to 35 percent, he said, and more farmers will go out of business.

"I'm not interested in shutting down nuclear power in Minnesota or anywhere else," Wellstone reassured them.

Wellstone said he thinks nuclear waste at power plants across the country will be sent to an interim, above-ground facility - either at Yucca Mountain or in Utah, where the Goshute tribe is negotiating with Xcel Energy and other utilities to open a dry-cask facility.

There's no chance the current Senate will initiate legislation to open the repository at Yucca Mountain, Wellstone stressed, because Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada is the majority whip.

However, Wellstone predicted that plans will proceed along an administrative avenue. A report stating that Yucca Mountain engineers have met the regulations will reach President Bush's desk soon.

Bush will sign it, Wellstone said, and then the only way it can be overturned is if a majority of lawmakers reject it.

"You'll have my vote," Wellstone promised, provided there is language ensuring safe passage of the radioactive waste as it travels through cities en route to the repository.

"I will write language. I will work with you," he said, adding, "I want the waste out of Minnesota." The Prairie Island community wants the waste away from the reservation, too. Unfortunately, the federal repository, even the temporary one, won't be ready until 2010, he added.

Scott Northard of Xcel Energy pointed out that the nuclear industry has a good shipping record. In the 1980s, 33 trains bearing spent fuel from the Monticello, Minn., plant passed through three states without incident. There have been 3,000 similar shipments nationwide over four decades. "It's pretty well demonstrated technology," he said.

We must satisfy people's perception of the hazards, Wellstone responded. "Let's give them assurance."

Wellstone then took questions and comments about some key issues before Congress, primarily health-care costs, Patients' Rights legislation and the tax code.

annej@republican-eagle.com

-------- nevada

Water worries beset nuclear site
U.S. wants to store reactor waste inside Nevada mountain

Keay Davidson,
San Francisco Chronicle Science Writer,
June 25, 2001
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/06/25/MN160177.DTL

Yucca Mountain, Nevada -- Deep beneath the desert floor, within a long, artificially lighted chamber resembling a BART tunnel, a crowd of helmet-clad visitors huddled over a grayish spot on the floor: a dried water stain.

Feeling like Hercule Poirot when he discovers the murder weapon, a suspicious reporter pointed accusingly at the water stain and demanded: What caused that?

Was groundwater leaking from overhead rocks? Isn't this chamber -- which may soon become part of the Taj Mahal of dumpsites, a proposed high-tech, $49- plus billion burial site for the world's deadliest nuclear wastes, managed by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) -- supposed to be dry as a bone?

Official representatives from a DOE contractor spent the next several minutes insisting that the water stain had not dribbled from groundwater in overhead rocks. Rather, they explained, it resulted from the condensation of vapor from outside air.

Such seemingly mundane questions could decide the fate of the U.S. nuclear industry. It might also affect the environmental future of this spectacular desert landscape, located northwest of the swelling suburbs, all-night casinos,

licensed brothels and wedding chapels of Las Vegas.

Only months remain before Energy Department scientists expect to advise Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham whether Yucca Mountain is safe enough to become America's nuclear cemetery: the last home for super-hot, murderously radioactive fuel rods discarded by the nation's 104 nuclear reactors.

Two decades ago, the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in Pennsylvania soured the U.S. nuclear industry's growth prospects. Now, emboldened by the energy crisis in California, President Bush and others advocate building more nuclear power plants as a partial solution. And surprisingly, 59 percent of Californians agree, according to a Field Poll conducted in May.

But the nuclear industry's growth is stymied partly by the cost of maintaining discarded nuclear reactor rods at its reactor sites. To date U.S. reactors have accumulated some 42,000 tons of fuel rods. At present, they're stored either in reactor pools or in "dry storage" casks nearby.

Regardless of one's personal views on nuclear power, the United States has to put all that spent nuclear fuel somewhere: "Something has to be done with it," says Allen Benson, director of institutional affairs at the Energy Department's Yucca Mountain office in Las Vegas.

Oficially, Energy Department experts say they haven't made up their minds how to advise Abraham. But it looks like their recommendation will be favorable, judging by their bubbly optimism during a guided tour of the Yucca Mountain site earlier this month.

Even if Bush goes along, Yucca Mountain faces tough going. Since Nevada's Congressional delegation vigorously opposes the repository, its fate is likely to be decided by Congress, including a newly Democrat-controlled Senate.

Two decades of study, they say, show that water creeps extremely slowly through the mountain -- so slowly that by the time it reaches the repository, the radioactivity will have decayed to a much safer level.

"We have found nothing that would disqualify this as a site," declared one of the two tour guides, mining engineer Jim Niggemeyer, who works for an Energy Department contractor.

The proposed repository would cost $49 billion -- or much higher, critics suggest. It would consist of some 50 parallel underground tunnels, containing nickel-alloy chambers within which the fuel rods would rest.

Construction of the repository could begin by 2005, assuming it gets the go- ahead. The first nuclear waste shipments could begin by 2010. Designed to hold about 70,000 metric tons of waste, the dumpsite would likely be filled by the year 2035.

Afterwards it might be expanded, said mining engineer Patrick A. Rowe, who also works for a DOE contractor.

Standing atop the mile-high mountain, Rowe gestured toward the spectacular surrounding landscape: desert hills resembling collapsed layer cakes, cinder cones of (supposedly) extinct volcanoes, basins crawling with tortoises and kangaroo rats, and -- on the horizon -- the snowcapped peak of Mt. Whitney in Southern California. The California border is less than a half-hour drive away.

Rowe pointed toward the north, indicating sites where the repository might be expanded if it's filled to capacity. That may be inevitable, he said, given the United States' energy appetite.

Nuclear power, he said, has "an incredible future" in the United States -- say, to generate electricity for tomnorrow's electric-powered cars. He also supports research on solar and wind power, but warns they aren't adequate solutions to the nation's energy needs: "I have a ranch that runs off solar and wind, and I know what the costs are."

Anti-nuclear activists have opposed the repository for decades. They warn that if it is breached -- by anything from a volcanic eruption to 25th-century gold prospectors to groundwater seepage -- then the result could be an environmental disaster of Hollywood dimensions.

Groundwater penetration of the waste repository could bleed its radioactive toxins into the soil, carrying them into the local water table. In worst-case scenarios, they could travel as far as local wells, and over many millenia, maybe even to rivers that snake through the American Southwest.

Whether such nightmares could come true turns on a key question: How fast does water travel though the mountain? Given the politically charged nature of the debate, scientists have had trouble reaching consensus on the answer.

In two decades of studying Yucca Mountain, Rowe said, "we've never found a single location of (rocks) dripping water ... We have yet to find anything in 20 years (of research) that would show Yucca Mountain is not suitable (for a nuclear repository)."

That draws a skeptical laugh from one of the Yucca Mountain site's relentless opponents, Bob Loux, head of the State of Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Development.

"DOE really doesn't know how much water there is in the mountain, doesn't know where it moves, and how it moves. The whole hydrologic environment is so complex, they can't predict how it will flow with any confidence," Loux says.

To meet federal specifications, the dumpsite must remain intact longer than any other complex human artifact -- 10,000 years. That's the same amount of time separating us from the epoch of the wooly mammoths who stomped our ancestors flat.

Groundwater typically travels slowly -- about one millimeter a year -- through the rock, Niggemeyer said. To illustrate, he held his arms apart and said: "It goes about that far every 1,000 years."

How do Energy Department researchers know this? They've wired the mountain with a dense array of scientific instruments that show water moves at an agonizingly slow pace through the mountain, a mile-high pile of solidified volcanic ash left over from a volcanic eruption 12 to 13 million years ago.

However, Niggemeyer adds, water can flow faster through cracks and faults in the mountain. But how fast? That's where the scientific debate turns fierce.

Energy Department scientists' self-confidence was badly shaken two years ago, when researchers made a shocking discovery inside one of the Yucca Mountain tunnels: traces of water containing the isotope chlorine-36. The isotope had only one conceivable source: rainwater bearing radioactive debris from nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific Ocean after World War II.

How on Earth could the rainwater have then percolated through 1,000 feet of Yucca Mountain rock in less than fifty years? That was much faster than computer models of the mountain allowed. If rainwater really seeps into the mountain that fast, then a future repository might be drenched long before its radioactivity had decayed to a safe level.

During the recent tour, Rowe and Niggemeyer said the chlorine-36 study didn't worry them. The original study was conducted by a lab that lacked the right scientific equipment, Niggemeyer said. Thus the result was "probably ... less than great science ... We have never been able to reproduce the original results."

Significantly, he and Rowe noted, the mysterious water sample lacked traces of the radioactive substance tritium, which is routinely found in rainwater contaminated by atomic debris.

Yet -- paradoxically -- the Energy Department continues to use the chlorine- 36 data in its computer models of Yucca Mountain hydrology. Why bother, if the original data was wrong?

"Even though we've refuted it, we won't walk completely away from it. I don't quite understand it," Niggemeyer acknowledged.

Soon after the chlorine-36 study was reported, the Energy Department added a major new item to its proposed budget for the Yucca Mountain repository: an $8 billion titanium shield. Like a huge, rectangular umbrella, the shield would rest over the nickel-alloy containers holding the fuel rods. The shield's purpose is to provide extra protection -- "defense in depth," as DOE calls it -- against rainwater sinking through the mountain.

The last-minute addition of the titanium shield -- a huge boost in the project cost -- was a coincidence unrelated to the chlorine-36 study, Niggemeyer and Rowe insisted.

Loux, however, suspects it isn't a coincidence at all. The addition of the titanium shield, he suggests, reflects the Energy Department's dawning realization that the repository would be much more vulnerable to groundater seepage than it admits.

In one case, Loux claims, scientists found several inches of water on the floor of a Yucca Mountain chamber that had been sealed for a while.

Loux doesn't hesitate to accuse the Energy Department of playing fast and loose with scientific facts: "It's a lot like how some people do their personal income tax: If at the end they don't like the (amount they must pay), they go back in and alter their amount of charitable contributions."

"I'm not saying they're all lying per se. But they have a tendency to represent the facts and data in a way that favors their presentation."

E-mail Keay Davidson at kdavidson@sfchronicle.com.

-------

DOE must study a volcano blast's effect on Yucca

June 25, 2001,
By Mary Manning <manning@lasvegassun.com>,
LAS VEGAS SUN
From: "L.V. Citizen Alert" <lvcitizenalert@earthlink.net>

The Energy Department has been ordered to estimate the consequences of a volcanic eruption at a proposed high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.

A Nuclear Regulatory Commission panel, which met in Las Vegas on Friday, told the DOE to calculate radiation exposures to the air, ground water and people. The calculations will be by computer models of an eruption through Yucca.

If DOE's models show danger to people or the environment from a potential volcanic eruption, that would be another obstacle to the construction of a repository, officials said. The DOE had not planned to study that danger.

It was unclear whether the study would delay the DOE's recommendation on Yucca Mountain's suitability to contain the nation's highly radioactive waste. The recommendation to President Bush and Congress is due at the beginning of next year. The new calculations could take weeks or months, officials agreed.

Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is the only site being studied to hold 77,000 tons of highly radioactive commercial and defense waste for at least 10,000 years.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission would have to license a repository before it could open. The DOE is charged with determining whether the site is scientifically suitable. and, if approved, the department will oversee the repository's construction and operation. The DOE's research of the site has cost about $7 billion so far.

UNLV geoscience professor Eugene Smith told the panel before its vote that new evidence of volcanic activity north and southwest of Yucca Mountain shows that an active field of hot magma has surfaced as recently as 20,000 years ago.

The findings show the potential for a volcanic eruption that could disrupt nuclear waste buried inside the mountain in 12,000 containers, Smith said.

DOE researchers maintain that volcanic activity near Yucca occurred more than 10 million years ago and that falling ash built the mountain in layers. Chances of a volcano affecting the site are minuscule, they said.

"I realize what I am saying is very controversial," Smith said, but he urged the DOE to calculate what would happen to the buried waste if magma flared up through the repository.

Although an eruption is unlikely, such a catastrophic event would bring dire consequences, according to Brittain Hill, an NRC consultant and senior research scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.

Hill reported to the Geological Society of America meeting in Reno last November that the greatest radiation risk to people for the first 1,000 years after a Yucca repository is sealed would come from a volcanic eruption.

The Southwest Research Institute is consulting for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on independent studies of Yucca Mountain.

Peter Swift, a scientist with DOE's chief contractor, Bechtel-SAIC, said that during a volcanic eruption most of the ash would drift south of the repository toward an uninhabited area, a point disputed by the NRC panel.

Noting wind shifts at Yucca Mountain, NRC reviewers told the DOE to calculate radiation doses from inhaling the hot and radioactive particles, from radiation in ground water and from hot volcanic particles delivering radioactive material to people's skin, even if they were inside their homes.

Smith said the latest eruption near Yucca Mountain occurred in Lunar Crater, about 100 miles north, 20,000 years ago. The next was 77,000 years ago at Crater Flat, about 12 to 20 miles west of the site.

The volcanic activity in the Southwest could be linked to a chain of mountain-building volcanoes stretching from Mount St. Helens and Mount Rainier in Washington to Southern Nevada, Smith said.

Based on 1,000 chemical samples taken from deposits near Yucca Mountain and analyzed at UNLV and the University of Kansas, Smith said all of the volcanic debris is younger than 8.5 million years. He then plotted the known eruptions in the area that showed periodic volcanic activity.

The next volcanic eruptions may not occur in the same areas, Smith said. Eruptions are hard to predict because they rarely occur in the same spot twice.

Initially, Smith said he did not believe that Yucca Mountain could be in danger of active magma beds. After the recent chemical analyses, he said, "I am slowly coming around to believing in the newer models."

A DOE scientist from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico disagreed with Smith.

Frank Perry said that Yucca Mountain is made of volcanic ash layers that are stable and at the deepest level could be a billion years old. At Lunar Crater, the deposits are not the same as evidence from that eruption is younger, he said.

-------- us nuc politics

Spending in Energy Proposal Boosted

The Associated Press
Monday, June 25, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010625/aponline190809_000.htm

WASHINGTON -- A House committee voted Monday to beef up plans for spending on renewable energy and nuclear waste cleanup as lawmakers demonstrated anew their sensitivity to the energy issue this year.

The increases were included in a $23.7 billion measure financing energy and water programs that the House Appropriations Committee approved by a voice vote.

The measure also included almost $4.5 billion for hundreds of dredging, beach restoration and other Army Corps of Engineers water projects, which are big favorites with lawmakers because of the spending they bring their districts.

The bill, covering fiscal 2002, was approved with little debate. Democrats said they might offer amendments on electricity price caps and other energy issues when the measure reaches the full House, perhaps later this week.

Overall, the measure would provide $18.7 billion for the Energy Department, $641 million more than President Bush requested and $444 million more than this year.

Spending on solar, geothermal and other forms of renewable energy would grow to $377 million, $100 million more than Bush sought and $1 million more than this year. Money for nuclear cleanups and managing nuclear waste, mostly for the Energy Department's nuclear weapons work, would exceed $7 billion, $699 million over Bush's proposal and $253 million over this year.

Programs aimed at preventing the spread of Russia's nuclear arsenal to other countries and terrorist groups would get $544 million, $87 million more than Bush requested and $86 million above this year's figure.

The Senate has yet to write its version of the bill.

----

Physicist Said to Be Top Choice for Science Adviser to President

New York Times
June 25, 2001
By ROBERT PEAR
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/25/politics/25AIDE.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, June 24 - The director of the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, John H. Marburger III, has emerged as the leading candidate to be President Bush's science adviser, federal officials said today.

Dr. Marburger, a physicist, was president of the State University of New York at Stony Brook from 1980 to 1994.

In an interview, Dr. Marburger said he was a Democrat, but not active in politics. "If there's any subject that should be bipartisan, it's science," he said.

Many scientists have criticized Mr. Bush, saying that he has been slow to name a science adviser and that he appeared to ignore scientific experts on issues like global warming and a missile defense system.

Dr. Marburger said he was aware of such criticism. Without confirming that he had been chosen for the job, Dr. Marburger said that he understood that the selection process was "nearing its end" and that an announcement was imminent.

The science adviser normally is director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and nominees for that position are subject to Senate confirmation.

One of the first tasks for the new adviser will be to review the nation's energy efficiency. The adviser will also counsel Mr. Bush on stem cell research, the human genome, nuclear weapons, bioterrorism, space, endangered species, the Internet and the training of scientists.

The science adviser will help Mr. Bush fill about 75 high-level scientific jobs in the federal government.

Dr. Marburger, 60, is an applied physicist and an expert on lasers. He received a Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1967 and was a physics professor at the University of Southern California in the 1970's.

In 1998, Dr. Marburger became director of Brookhaven, an immense research laboratory operated under contract with the government.

Dr. Marburger was chairman of Gov. Mario M. Cuomo's fact-finding panel on the Shoreham nuclear power plant in 1983. More recently, he was chairman of a university consortium that ran the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., for the Department of Energy.

-------

End Trade Sanctions that Hurt Texas Farmers

June 25, 2001
US Rep Ron Paul (TX),
Texas Straight Talk (Weekly)
http://www.house.gov/paul/tst/tst2001/tst062501.htm

Last week the Texas state legislature adopted a resolution calling for an end to U.S. economic sanctions against Cuba. Lawmakers emphasized the failure of sanctions to remove Castro from power, and the unwillingness of other nations to respect the embargo. One Representative stated: "We have a lot of rice and agricultural products, as well as high-tech products, that would be much cheaper for Cuba to purchase from Texas. All that could come through the ports of Houston and Corpus Christi." I wholeheartedly support this resolution, and I have introduced similar federal legislation in past years to lift all trade, travel, and telecommunications restrictions with Cuba. I only wish Congress understood the simple wisdom expressed in Austin, so that we could end the harmful and ineffective trade sanctions that serve no national purpose.

I oppose economic sanctions for two very simple reasons. First, they don't work as effective foreign policy. Time after time, from Cuba to China to Iraq, we have failed to unseat despotic leaders by refusing to trade with the people of those nations. If anything, the anti-American sentiment aroused by sanctions often strengthens the popularity of such leaders, who use America as a convenient scapegoat to divert attention from their own tyranny. History clearly shows that free and open trade does far more to liberalize oppressive governments than trade wars. Economic freedom and political freedom are inextricably linked- when people get a taste of goods and information from abroad, they are less likely to tolerate a closed society at home. So while sanctions may serve our patriotic fervor, they mostly harm innocent citizens and do nothing to displace the governments we claim as enemies.

Second, sanctions simply hurt American industries, particularly agriculture. Every market we close to our nation's farmers is a market exploited by foreign farmers. China, Russia, the middle east, North Korea, and Cuba all represent huge markets for our farm products, yet many in Congress favor current or proposed trade restrictions that prevent our farmers from selling to the billions of people in these areas. The department of Agriculture estimates that Iraq alone represents a $1 billion market for American farm goods. Given our status as one of the world's largest agricultural producers, why would we ever choose to restrict our exports? The only beneficiaries of our sanctions policies are our foreign competitors.

Still, support for sanctions continues in Congress. The House International Relations committee last week considered legislation that will extend existing economic sanctions against Iran and Libya for another 5 years. While I certainly oppose this legislation, I did agree with the President that we should at least limit the time period to 2 years, so that Congress could reassess the policy sooner. I introduced an amendment to this effect, but the majority of committee members voted to continue "punishing" Iran and Libya for 5 years; presumably some members would agree to maintain sanctions indefinitely. Interestingly, the bill focuses on preventing oil exploration and development in the region, even when new sources of oil are sorely needed to reduce prices at the pump for American consumers.

I certainly understand the emotional feelings many Americans have toward nations such as Iran, Iraq, Libya, and Cuba. Yet we must not let our emotions overwhelm our judgment in foreign policy matters, because ultimately human lives are at stake. For example, 10 years of trade sanctions against Iraq, not to mention aggressive air patrols and even bombings, have not ended Saddam Hussein's rule. If anything, the political situation has worsened, while the threat to Kuwait remains. The sanctions have, however, created suffering due to critical shortages of food and medicine among the mostly poor inhabitants of Iraq. So while the economic benefits of trade are an important argument against sanctions, we must also consider the humanitarian argument. Our sanctions policies undermine America's position as a humane nation, bolstering the common criticism that we are a bully with no respect for people outside our borders. Economic common sense, self-interested foreign policy goals, and humanitarian ideals all point to the same conclusion: Congress should work to end economic sanctions against all nations immediately.


-------- MILITARY

-------- balkans

Macedonia parliament besieged

Monday, 25 June, 2001,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_1406000/1406076.stm

Refugees have been fleeing to Kosovo Several thousand angry demonstrators have gathered outside the parliament building in the Macedonian capital, Skopje, to protest against what they see as the government's leniency towards the ethnic Albanian rebels.

Some of the protesters are reported to have entered the parliament building.

Several foreign journalists, including those from the BBC, were harassed and kicked.

The protest followed a deal, brokered and implemented by Nato and European Union envoys, that allowed a group of ethnic Albanian rebels to leave the village of Aracinovo close to the capital and return to guerrilla-held territory.

'Guilty party'

When the protest started President Boris Trajkovski was holding talks with Macedonian and Albanian party leaders inside the building but they were reported to have left by another exit.

Our correspondent says that many Macedonians are furious that the guerrillas were allowed to leave with their weapons, and they are especially angry at the change of attitude in the West.

It was only a few weeks ago that Nato was describing the Albanians as terrorists.

Now they believe the West is treating Macedonia as the guilty party.

"We don't understand what's happened, we don't understand why the rebels could leave with their weapons, and stay here in the country, where they want to kill other people," said one of the demonstrators.

Some of the protesters chanted "Gas chambers for the Albanians."

A Reuters reporter at the scene said several reservists were shooting into the air from the square outside as the crowd cheered.

As the crowd sang the national anthem, a group of elderly women spotted a number of foreign journalists and began haranguing them.

The mood turned extremely menacing and a brace of reporters managed to escape, walking briskly away through a volley of spittle, coins and the odd kick.

Lynch mob

But a BBC producer and cameraman were singled out, repeatedly kicked and beaten.

Human rights observers are extremely worried by the lynch mob atmosphere.

Some Macedonians are describing this as the "long night", the deadline for Albanians to move out of parts of Skopje or risk being firebombed.

Thirty Albanian shopkeepers have abandoned their properties in a warehouse district of Skopje after receiving threats from a group calling itself Macedonia paramilitary 2000.

A written warning said that the ethnic cleansing would begin at midnight. Until now, Macedonia's conflict has been limited to fighting between two small armies.

But a spokesman for the group Human Rights Watch said that if it spilled over into the civilian population, there could be widespread bloodshed.

Rebel activity

In the north-eastern town of Kumanovo, it was reported that angry Macedonians were protesting against American troops, who escorted the Albanians to safety.

About 500 rebels left Aracinovo on buses, accompanied by troops from Nato and EU observers.

A rebel commander, known as Hoxha, told Reuters: "By this type of gesture we show that we are for peace."

The withdrawal came as fresh fighting erupted around Macedonia's second biggest city, Tetovo.

AFP news agency said the clashes followed a mortar attack on a police checkpoint.

Rapid results

EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg said on Monday there was "no military solution to the present crisis".

"The political dialogue must now resume... and lead to rapid results."

Future EU aid to Macedonia would depend on the results of political dialogue with the rebels.

The EU also decided to send a resident envoy - former French Foreign Minister Francois Leotard - to Macedonia, to try to stabilise the peace process.

Nato says it is ready to send in a peacekeeping force, but only after a peace deal has been reached.

The rebels, who call themselves the National Liberation Army, say they are fighting for equal rights for Macedonia's ethnic Albanians, who make up nearly a third of the population.

They began their uprising in February and still control a string of villages near the borders with Kosovo and southern Serbia.

----

Behind Rebel Lines
As NATO vacillates over military intervention in Macedonia, ethnic Albanians advance on the capital

June 25, 2001
Vol. 157 No. 25
BY ANDREW PURVIS,
TIME
http://www.time.com/time/europe/eu/magazine/0,9868,131051,00.html

The lights of Skopje's international airport twinkled invitingly on the valley floor, plainly visible to a small band of ethnic Albanian rebels as they wound their way up a rutted mountain track one night last week. In tow were six scraggly horses carrying 1,500 crisp new uniforms, food, and a sack full of mobile phones destined for new positions 10 km from the Macedonian capital. "Boom!" whispered a teenage recruit pointing excitedly at the runway below. "Boom, boom!" Later an irascible local commander in a camouflage T shirt and red beret, with the unsettling habit of firing his automatic weapon into the air when roused, elaborated for TIME: "We control the Skopje zone all the way to Kosovo," he said. "If we wanted to hit the airport or parliament we could."

The ethnic Albanian rebels who have brought Macedonia to the brink of war in the past four months may not have much to recommend them. Their methods are an odd mixture of ancient and new, their organization is slipshod and their motives inscrutable. But last week they succeeded in again grabbing the world's attention by advancing to within mortar distance of Skopje's airport, a critical rear supply base for NATO-led troops in Kosovo. Advancing, actually, may be too grand a term. They appeared in the hillside town of Aracinovo, like hyped-up genies, brandishing guns from a dented pickup truck after encountering only token resistance from Macedonia's notoriously thin-on-the-ground security forces.

But the threat to the capital and airport helped concentrate the minds of Macedonia's fragile governing coalition and of NATO, whose members for the first time raised the possibility of sending troops, though when and in what capacity is uncertain. Skopje is requesting military help to "decommission" the rebels, while the National Liberation Army, as the rebels call themselves, wants peacekeepers deployed "in the whole territory of Macedonia," possibly with a view to solidifying territorial gains. In the near term, NATO leaders are praying for a political solution: "The idea of committing troops is one that most nations are troubled over," said George W. Bush in Brussels. "We want to try a political settlement first."

Who doesn't? In Skopje, President Boris Trajkovski presented a Western-backed peace plan that would extend the current cease-fire, provide a partial amnesty for rebels who disarm and speed up efforts to grant ethnic Albanians equal rights. The plan has not been rejected by Albanian political parties, but it falls short of addressing rebel demands for direct involvement in talks and a place for their soldiers in a reconstituted national security force. "Totally unacceptable," snorted a government official.

If the impasse is edging Macedonia toward civil war, at one rebel stronghold last week recruits appeared blissfully unaware of the anxiety they had provoked. Lounging on picnic tables outside a 14th century monastery high on a bluff overlooking eastern Macedonia, several explained how, in their view, there was little to lose. "I am 25 and haven't worked a day in my life," said one, dragging on a cigarette. "What would I do if war ended tomorrow?" A dark-haired young woman, lugging a sniper rifle two-thirds her size, said her entire family had joined the fight except her mother, and she, explained the daughter, "is proud of us." In the hot summer sun they cleaned their weapons, listened to Albanian music on a car radio and burnished the NLA myth. One spraypainted the band's initials across the monastery's fading 600-year-old frescoes. "Greater Albania" marked an outer door. "If we had tanks we could go all the way to Bulgaria and Athens," bragged the 25-year-old, before being chided by a fellow soldier: "We are fighting only for our rights in Macedonia," said his companion, carefully.

Whatever its intentions, the NLA has found an easy target in Macedonia's "national unity" government, which in five weeks has shown itself incapable of running a military campaign and introducing legislative changes at the same time. The E.U. says the government must come up with an initial package of reforms by June 25 or risk losing aid. But E.U. pressure is short on substance: cutting off Skopje now would only deepen the crisis. All of which is making NATO nervous. Former U.N. ambassadors Richard Holbrooke and Jeane Kirkpatrick issued a joint statement urging bolder action. "NATO needs to make it clear ... that it will not allow Macedonia to be destroyed," they wrote. No argument there. The question is: how?

--------

Serbia Looks to Start Extradition of Milosevic

New York Times
June 25, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Yugoslavia-Extradition.html

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) -- Yugoslav authorities, in consultation with the Serbian government, asked a court Monday to begin extradition procedures for former President Slobodan Milosevic, sought by the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands.

The state-run Tanjug news agency cited a statement from the government of Serbia, the main Yugoslav republic, as saying that Yugoslav Justice Minister Momcilo Grubac presented Belgrade District Court with a demand from the U.N tribunal to surrender Milosevic.

Concrete cooperation with the U.N. court has begun with Grubac's move, the government statement said.

The move came just one day after a Yugoslav government decree permitting the extradition of citizens came into force, removing legal obstacles to Milosevic's extradition to The Hague tribunal.

Earlier in the day, lawyers for Milosevic asked the Constitutional Court to rule against the decree governing extraditions, saying it was illegal.

Milosevic, in a Belgrade prison since April 1 for investigations of abuse of power and corruption, is sought by the U.N. tribunal for alleged involvement in atrocities committed in Kosovo during the crackdown two years ago of the Serbian province's majority ethnic Albanian population.

--------

Milosevic Fights Transfer to Hague Trial

New York Times
June 25, 2001
By CARLOTTA GALL
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/25/world/25YUGO.html

BELGRADE, Serbia, June 24 - Lawyers for former President Slobodan Milosevic said today that they would challenge a government decree that commits the authorities to hand over indicted war criminals like Mr. Milosevic to the international tribunal in The Hague.

Mr. Milosevic, who is being held in the central jail in Belgrade, is wanted by the tribunal for crimes against humanity committed in Kosovo during the war in 1999. Government officials have suggested that he could be transferred to The Hague in days or weeks, depending on the time needed for court procedures.

But supporters have promised to rally thousands of protesters to the gates of the jail on Tuesday, and vowed to contest the decree and any attempt to extradite Mr. Milosevic. But only a small number gathered outside the jail today.

Toma Fila, Mr. Milosevic's chief lawyer, said he intended to challenge the validity of the government decree passed on Saturday on the ground that Montenegrin ministers in the cabinet did not vote. He also said he would fight any attempt to send his client for trial outside the country, since extradition is forbidden under Yugoslavia's criminal law. The government contends that international covenants outweigh national law in this case.

"I visited Slobodan Milosevic today," Mr. Fila said, "and as you know, he thinks the tribunal is an illegitimate body and that our Constitution prohibits laws on cooperation that include extradition.

"Therefore he thinks the decree brought by the incomplete government contravened the Constitution," Mr. Fila said, the Belgrade radio station B92 reported.

"We will demand an assessment of the decree's constitutional validity and we will ask for the implementation of the decree to be suspended until its constitutional validity is assessed," he said.

Mirjana Markovic, Milosevic's wife and head of the Yugoslav Left party, also visited her husband in prison today. In a statement, her party condemned the decree as an "amoral, anticonstitutional, illegal and anti-Serb" measure that transforms the country into a "NATO colony."

Mr. Milosevic has been quoted in the Belgrade press as telling his guards that he is in jail because he stood up against NATO during the alliance's bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999.

His party, the Socialist Party of Serbia, described the decree as unconstitutional and said it was "not a decree on cooperation with the international community but a decree to capitulate."

Ministers were noncommittal today about when any transfers or further arrests would be made. The decree came into force today when it appeared in the official gazette.

"The decree was adopted yesterday, today is Sunday and let's await tomorrow," said Dusan Mihajlovic, the interior minister of Serbia. But he hinted that some action would be taken this week, ahead of the international donor conference for Yugoslavia, to be held on Friday.

--------

Partial, Shaky Truce Reached in Macedonia

New York Times
June 25, 2001
By IAN FISHER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/25/world/25MACE.html

SKOPJE, Macedonia, June 24 - A partial cease-fire was accepted today by the government and ethnic Albanian rebels, after three days of heavy fighting close enough to Macedonia's heart that visitors could see the smoke and shelling as they stepped off planes at the airport.

As government tanks and helicopter gunships whizzed rockets into Aracinovo, just six miles from this capital, foreign diplomats worked to press the government and the rebels to stop fighting or risk full-blown civil war. This afternoon Javier Solana, the European Union's chief envoy to Macedonia, announced a measure of success: a halt to fighting in Aracinovo, if not elsewhere.

"There's a cease-fire here," he told reporters. "It's good it is agreed. Skopje is not under threat."

Under the agreement, the rebels said they would leave the village, where their positions are near enough to bomb the capital [which they threatened to do], the airport and Macedonia's only oil refinery. In turn, the government agreed to call off its offensive, which it began on Friday after talks between the two sides broke down. Until then, a cease- fire had held for 11 days.

But today's agreement appeared shaky at best. There were signs that relations between the majority Macedonian Slavs and the Albanians, who make up roughly a third of the population, are eroding. And tonight sporadic gun fire and explosions rattled Aracinovo.

A top commander with ethnic Albanian fighters who call themselves the National Liberation Army said the rebels would leave Aracinovo only if they were replaced by a neutral outside force, like European Union monitors or NATO soldiers.

But a government spokesman, Antonio Milososki, called that "unacceptable" and said government soldiers must be permitted back into the town. "It is completely unlogical to accept that Macedonian forces are not allowed to take control of our own territory," he said.

Mr. Milososki also said it was the rebels who had asked, through foreign envoys, for a halt to the offensive. But the Albanian commander, who goes by the name Sokol, said they had in no way surrendered. "You have to understand one thing: The National Liberation Army does not have a white flag to raise," he said by mobile telephone.

Both sides claimed that they had accepted the cease-fire because they wanted to avert an ethnic war in Macedonia, which in 1992 declared full independence from Yugoslavia.

Historically, relations between the majority Macedonians, who are Christian Slavs, and the Albanians, who are mostly Muslim, have been less tense than in other areas of the Balkans. But Albanians contend that under the Constitution, they are second-class citizens, and this spring some of them took up arms for what they say is a fight for greater political rights.

The president has put forth such a plan, endorsed by the European Union. But the government says the Albanian fighters, often referred to officially as "terrorists," really want an independent state.

Last week NATO agreed to help nip the conflict by sending troops to Macedonia, but only if the two sides could come up with the start of a broader agreement on constitutional and other reforms. But talks on that broke down, and on Friday the government opened a fierce attack on Aracinovo.

Albanians and Macedonians alike say this latest fighting, so close to the capital, has hurt relations that were already strained.

Albanian shops closed down in one section of Skopje because of a threatening letter that was signed by a group calling itself Macedonia Paramilitary 2000 and ordered Albanians in the neighborhood to shut their shops within three days.

"After this time," the letter read, "all the shops are going to be burned, and if anyone stays behind to protect them, they will be killed without warning."

"What can I say?" asked one Albanian shopkeeper, who would give only a nickname, Asllan, as he and his workers moved boxes of milk out of the shop as they closed it down. "I don't know myself what to think of this." He and others shopkeepers said they had complained to the police but had been told that there was no way to protect them.

Mr. Milososki, the government spokesman, dismissed the note as the work of an "idiot."

Peter Bouckaert, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch in Macedonia, said any such attack would "be the accelerator of this conflict."

"The military action has been limited in scope, with low casualties," he said. "Once the civilian population becomes involved, it will rapidly become a no-holds-barred civil conflict. The government won't be able to control it."

--------

Ethnic Albanian rebels pull out of strategic suburb

06/25/2001
USA Today
http://usatoday.com/news/world/june01/2001-06-25-macedonia.htm

SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) - A NATO-brokered peace deal sparked riots in Skopje Monday by thousands of Slavs, some chanting "Gas chambers for the Albanians," as they demanded the Ethnic Albanian rebels be destroyed. The rebels pulled out of a strategically important suburb near the capital earlier Monday under the NATO deal designed to revive peace talks here. Buses headed out of Aracinovo carrying ethnic Albanian rebels hunkered down for days, said U.S. Maj. Barry Johnson, a spokesman for the NATO-led peacekeepers. The alliance then sent at least four trucks to the village to take out the weapons belonging to the rebels.

The rebel withdrawal came just days after government forces began an offensive against ethnic Albanian militants holed up in the suburb not far from the country's airport.

But de-escalation of Macedonia's crisis was short lived. New fighting, near Tetovo, cast a pall at the success of the negotiated end to the Aracinovo standoff, and tensions rose as thousands of angry Slavic Macedonians demanded a more hard-line approach against the rebels.

Police officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said rebels attacked police positions on the outskirts of the city and government forces returned fire, with fighting then moving away from Tetovo and near the village of Gajre in the hills overlooking the city.

In Skopje, about 5,000 Macedonian Slavs - who outnumber ethnic Albanians by more than three to one - gathered in front of parliament, nosily demanding harsher action against the rebels. Shots were fired, but there were no reports of injuries.

Some of the protesters chanted "Gas chambers for the Albanians." Others pounded two police cars, while dozens broke into the parliament building, made their way to a balcony and displayed the former Macedonian flag, replaced more than half a century ago by the communists when the country was still part of Yugoslavia.

In a smaller protest, a crowd near Kumanovo blocked a road, preventing empty buses from moving shortly after they were used to take some of the rebels from Aracinovo to Umin Dol, just outside Kumanovo. U.S. soldiers were with that convoy, along with Macedonian police who tried to negotiate their way through the crowd.

Johnson said more than 300 people, most of them rebels, were taken out of Aracinovo.

Talks had broken down last week after President Boris Trajkovski declared that ethnic Albanian negotiators were unwilling to budge on key sticking points in the negotiations.

The lack of progress has dismayed European Union leaders, who have been trying for months to persuade the Macedonian Slav leadership and ethnic Albanian political leaders to compromise and avert civil war.

To back up that point, the EU told the country's foreign minister on Monday not to count on new financial aid unless the government and ethnic Albanian opponents settle their differences.

The EU foreign ministers held 45 minutes of talks with their Macedonian counterpart, Ilinka Mitreva, who pleaded for help.

EU External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten reiterated that was only possible if progress is made in national reconciliation talks.

"We would like to support confidence-building measures, but it is difficult to build people's confidence when money, which is very clearly in short supply, is being spent on bombs and rockets," Patten said.

An American, meanwhile, was wounded by gunfire.

The man's status was unclear - NATO officials suggested he might have been part of a monitoring mission or a diplomat. The man, overheard identifying himself as John Green, was emerging from the woods with two other Americans near the rebel-controlled village of Grusinovo when Macedonian troops fired warning shots.

Two of the shots wounded Green, one in the arm and the other in the leg, but apparently not seriously. The Americans, in civilian clothes, all raised their arms in the air. Realizing the mistake, the Macedonians called for an ambulance.

Green hobbled into the vehicle after shaking hands with Macedonian officers. He waved his U.S. passport to reporters as he was driven away.

In Washington, meanwhile, the Pentagon said a U.S. army sergeant was wounded in the hand by gunfire on a road northeast of Skopje. Aracinovo is southwest of Skopje, but NATO officials could not rule out that the Pentagon report also referred to the man identifying himself as Green.

Rebel leaders had demanded American participation in the deal to pull out of Aracinovo. Some 300 rebels are covered under the agreement, Johnson said.

NATO-led peacekeepers are in Macedonia to provide logistical support to forces in Kosovo. It was not immediately clear which NATO countries were taking part in the operation.

Trajkovski, meanwhile, has appealed to all political leaders to return to the bargaining table to reconsider his peace plan. The plan calls for amnesty for most rebels who disarm voluntarily and greater inclusion of ethnic Albanians in state bodies and institutions. Talks on the plan resumed Monday.

-------- china

China Deploying Warships at Spratly Islands - Report

New York Times
June 25, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-china-p.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Chinese military forces are stepping up naval activity at disputed islands in the South China Sea, deploying more than a dozen warships over the past several weeks, The Washington Times reported on Monday.

The paper cited U.S. intelligence officials as saying the warships were raising tensions between the Philippines and China because they contradicted assurances from Beijing that it would keep its naval vessels away from the Spratly islands.

China claims ``indisputable sovereignty'' over the Spratlys, a cluster of potentially oil-rich isles, reefs and shoals which are also claimed wholly or in part by Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei.

News of the increased naval activity follows an announcement by the Manila government in April that it was investigating reports about China fortifying structures it had built on Mischief Reef, a reef claimed by Manila in the disputed island chain.

The Washington Times, citing classified intelligence reports sent to officials last week, said some 12 Chinese ships were spotted in the region around the Spratly islands, including Luhu-class destroyers.

China also sent ships to Scarborough Shoal in May, and U.S. officials suspected that Beijing was trying to build a permanent military site there, similar to its structures on Mischief Reef.

The paper quoted U.S. officials speculating that China was following the same pattern it used in occupying Mischief Reef, sending first fishing vessels to the area, followed by the deployment of warships.

It said a senior Chinese foreign ministry official had assured Manila in April that Beijing was not seeking to establish a military presence at Scarborough.

-------- drug war

Toxic Drift: Monsanto and the Drug War in Colombia

Jeremy Bigwood, CorpWatch
June 25, 2001
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11088

A prominent U.S. Senator and other government officials from both Washington and Bogotá stood on a Colombian mountainside above fields of lime-green coca -- the plant sacred to Andean Indians, but also the source of the troublesome drug cocaine. They were awaiting a demonstration of aerial herbicide spraying, part of the U.S. drug war in Colombia.

The spectacle, put on by the U.S. embassy in Bogotá last December, was supposed to address Senator Paul Wellstone's doubts about the accuracy and safety of the U.S.-sponsored drug fumigation program. Wellstone, a Democrat from Minnesota, is a fierce critic of military aid to Colombia and the demonstration needed to come off without a hitch, to win him over to the use of aerially sprayed herbicides. The night before, U.S. officials had responded to the Senator's skeptical questions by assuring him that the spraying would target coca fields without harming food crops.

"They had said that by using satellite images they could hit very precisely targets without any chance of danger to surrounding crops" said Jim Farrell, Wellstone's spokesperson, who was also there. However that turned out not to be the case. "On the very first flyover by the cropduster, the U.S. Senator, the U.S. Ambassador to Colombia, the Lieutenant Colonel of the Colombian National Police, and other Embassy and congressional staffers were fully doused -- drenched, in fact -- with the sticky, possibly dangerous (herbicide) Roundup."

"Imagine what is happening when a high-level congressional delegation is not present," Farrell noted, pointing out that careful preparation had gone into the botched flyover. Wellstone left Colombia completely unconvinced by the Embassy.

The United States has sprayed tons of Roundup and Roundup Ultra, produced by the St. Louis-based chemical and biotechnology giant, Monsanto, during the 24 year-long drug war in Colombia. The use of these herbicides (both of which we refer to as Roundup in this story) has consistently produced health complaints from campesinos in the Colombian countryside. Those complaints have gone largely ignored by government officials in Washington and corporate honchos within Monsanto.

Meanwhile, Monsanto's sordid history as the manufacturer of Agent Orange, a defoliant used during the Vietnam war, raises serious questions about its role in Colombia's drug war and the need for transparency in its dealings with Washington.

A month before Wellstone was doused with Roundup, Colombian indigenous leaders visited Congress to personally speak out against the fumigation: "The twelve indigenous peoples have been suffering under this plague as if it were a government decree to exterminate our culture and our very survival," said José Francisco Tenorio, the only leader who was not afraid to use his real name. "Our legal crops -- our only sustenance -- manioc, banana, palms, sugar cane, and corn have been fumigated. Our sources of water, creeks, rivers, lakes, have been poisoned, killing our fish and other living things. Today, hunger is our daily bread. In the name of the Amazonian Indigenous people I ask that the fumigations be immediately suspended."

So far, Tenorio's pleas have fallen on deaf ears. Last summer, Congress approved $1.3 billion for "Plan Colombia" to carry out the drug war there and more funds are forthcoming in the "Andean Regional Initiative" a bill presently moving through Congress.

Official Denial

U.S. officials proudly point to the large number of hectares of coca and poppy eradicated as proof that the fumigation is successful. But they strongly discourage journalists from probing the effects of aerial spraying any further. Last January, during a meeting between this reporter and U.S. Embassy staff in Bogotá, the top officer at the State Department's Narcotics Affairs Section was emphatic and his tone threatening: "You cannot mention Monsanto!" he boomed, spit flying from his mouth. We were a little taken aback, but also very amused: Monsanto is a major part of the Colombia story, and there is no way to ignore it.

Meanwhile, a State Department official in Washington recently said that the relationship between the U.S. Government and Monsanto "is proprietary information between us and our supplier. It's exempt from the FOIA requirements too, so I don't think you will be able to get it."

Monsanto has been equally tight lipped. "We don't divulge information about who we sell our product to, or the size of the contract or anything like that, so I can't confirm that ... I will not confirm that it is our product that is being used in Colombia," says Janice Armstrong, Monsanto Public Affairs director for Roundup.

Who Profits?

Almost 70,000 gallons of Roundup have been sprayed in Colombia so far this year, according to calculations based on amounts sprayed per hectare. Last year, roughly 145,750 gallons were sprayed over 53,000 hectares, according to a State Department official who asked not to be named. These numbers do not take into account all of the fumigation of drug crops with Roundup in Colombia since 1978.

With a retail price between $33.00 to $45.00 per gallon, and a wholesale price of perhaps less than half of that (Monsanto refused to confirm the wholesale price for such volumes), this represents tens of thousands, or more, U.S. taxpayer dollars.

Meanwhile, Monsanto boasts almost $5.5 billion in sales last year. Those sales generated almost $150 million in profits. Roundup is the world's number one herbicide and the company's flagship product. Monsanto is also involved in developing biotech agriculture and has manufactured "Roundup Ready" soybeans and other crops that resist the herbicide.

The corporate giant is no stranger to the corridors of power in Washington. It employs a prestigious lobbying firm to represent its interests on Capitol Hill. President Bush's Agriculture Secretary, Ann Veneman, was on the board of Calgene, another biotechnology company that was purchased by Monsanto. Monsanto donated $12,000 directly to Bush's presidential campaign as well as contributed to industry PACs. During the 2000 elections Monsanto dropped $74,000 on congressional campaigns, most of it to Republicans.

Agent Orange: Deja Vu All Over Again?

For many, Monsanto's Roundup is a case of deja vu. This is not the first time that a Monsanto herbicide product has been accused of doing ecological damage and harm to humans during a war.

To understand the potential ramifications of the use of Roundup in Colombia, it is worth looking at the consequences of Agent Orange in Vietnam. During the Vietnam war, the U.S. used a series of chemical defoliant "agents" named for the green, pink, blue, purple, and orange colored rings around their oil drum containers. The concept was to remove cover-foliage from the guerilla enemy to make it vulnerable to attack. One of the herbicides used was called Agent Orange (a 50/50 mixture of herbicides 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T), and it proved very effective. However, there was a problem: varying amounts of a breakdown product of the "dioxin" class called TCDD was part of the mixture.

Later -- and far too late for many people -- TCDD was shown to have various, very serious toxic effects. According to the 1994 Seventh Annual Report on Carcinogens, Agent Orange causes "toxic effects in animals includ[ing] the wasting syndrome, gastric ulcers, immunotoxicity, hepatotoxicity, hepatoporphyria, vascular lesions, chloracne, teratogenicity, fetotoxicity, impaired reproductive performance, endometriosis and delayed death."

It also proved toxic to humans. The application of Agent Orange and TCDD not only deforested large areas of Vietnam, but it also caused over 50,000 birth defects and hundreds of thousands of cancers both in Vietnamese civilians and soldiers, as well as in former U.S. troops serving in South East Asia. The effects of Agent Orange are still being experienced, 26 years after the end of the war.

This was bad enough, but after the war it came to light that Monsanto had known about this toxicity many years before, as early as the late 1940s and had tried to cover it up. At that time, Monsanto workers had regularly become sick with symptoms such as skin rashes, joint and limb pain, after being exposed to 2,4,5-T, the specific Agent Orange component that breaks down to form TCDD. After the end of the war, U.S. Vietnam veterans sued Monsanto for causing their illnesses. The company settled out of court, paying them about $80 million in damages. The Vietnamese victims received nothing.

Given this history, it is not surprising that neither U.S. officials nor Monsanto executives want a spotlight shone on the use of the company's products in Colombia, where many of the post-contact symptoms of those sprayed with Roundup are similar to those noted by the Monsanto employees in the 1940s and soldiers and civilians who were sprayed with Agent Orange in Vietnam.

Unlike Agent Orange, Roundup is also marketed for civilian use as a safe herbicide. So far, there have been no substantiated claims of gross human toxicity that compare with Agent Orange. Indeed, it is available in the U.S. as an over-the-counter weed killer in most U.S. hardware stores. "Roundup has a long history of safe use when used according to directions," says Monsanto spokesperson Janice Armstrong who points out that the herbicide is sold in 130 countries.

However, even Monsanto's own warnings point to toxicity: "Roundup will kill almost any green plant that is actively growing. Roundup should not be applied to bodies of water such as ponds, lakes or streams as Roundup can be harmful to certain aquatic organisms. After an area has been sprayed with Roundup, people and pets (such as cats and dogs) should stay out of the area until it is thoroughly dry. We recommend that grazing animals such as horses, cattle, sheep, goats, rabbits, tortoises and fowl remain out of the treated area for two weeks. If Roundup is used to control undesirable plants around fruit or nut trees, or grapevines, allow twenty-one days before eating the fruits or nuts."

Information Slowly Comes Out

As Monsanto and U.S. officials stand by the safety of spraying Roundup aerially, journalists and scientists are beginning to uncover some new facts. Last December, Dutch journalist Marjon Van Royen investigated the health reports on the ground in Colombia, and found that "because the chemical is sprayed in Colombia from planes on inhabited areas, there have been consistent health complaints [in humans]. Burning eyes, dizziness and respiratory problems being most frequently reported."

Although Roundup is billed as "safe" for mammals including humans by the U.S. State Department (but not to some insects or aquatic life), there have been too many persistent reports of skin and other problems after fumigation incidents involving farmers and their animals to ignore. Digging further, Van Royen found something alarming: another additive called Cosmo-Flux 411 F was being added to increase Roundup's toxicity. The Roundup/Cosmo-Flux mixture has never been scientifically evaluated nor has the public, either in the U.S., or in Colombia, been informed of this practice.

Recently, Colombian biologist and chemist Dr. Elsa Nivia has shown that the enhancement of toxicity by the additive could be responsible for the human health problems attributed to Roundup. In a talk at the University of California in Davis in May, Dr. Nivia said: "the [Roundup Ultra] mixture with the Cosmo Flux 411 F surfactant can increase the herbicide's biological action fourfold, producing relative exposure levels which are 104 times higher than the recommended doses for normal agricultural applications in the United States; doses which, according to the study mentioned, can intoxicate and even kill ruminants." The use of this enhanced Roundup would not be acceptable in the U.S. without prior testing and scientific evaluation.

Furthermore, the label Roundup label warns that: "It is a violation of Federal law to use this product in any manner inconsistent with its labeling. Do not apply this product in a way that will contact workers or other persons, either directly or through drift. Only protected handlers may be in the area during application."

"Drift" is a major issue, as Senator Wellstone discovered first-hand. The small cropduster airplanes and helicopters that spray chemical herbicides in Colombia often fly too high to accurately target the drug crops. For instance, a small plane flying at 65 feet is subject to the common 15-45 foot-high crosswinds that characterize rainforest ecology. These winds easily blow or "drift" the herbicide to non-target areas producing the destruction of other crops, rainforest or bodies of water. Last spring, GTZ, the German government version of USAID, lodged serious complaints against the fumigation because either consciously or due to "drift," the fumigation was destroying the Colombian "aquiculture" project they had underwritten -- fishponds that provide protein for campesino subsistence.

The Colombian government's own Human Rights Ombudsman's Office called for an end to the fumigation earlier this year. Repeated claims of foodcrop eradication, fishpond poisoning and health effects have led some campesinos and indigenous groups in Colombia to surmise that the U.S. anti-drug program is targeting them as alleged guerrilla supporters, an accusation which many in the countryside deny. They say U.S. officials hope to drive them from the conflictive areas, thereby producing thousands of refugees.

While the ecological destruction and human health impacts attributed to Roundup may not be a deliberate part of Washington's policy, at the very least U.S. officials seem indifferent to the "collateral damage" caused by the drug war. And Monsanto, which tried to cover up the dangers of Agent Orange 30 years ago, has more at stake than a cushy government contract. If its flagship herbicide, sold around the globe, proves harmful in Colombia, consumers just might wonder if it's safe to spray in their backyards.

-------- iraq

Iraqi troops in position to invade Kurdistan

June 25, 2001
By Jessica Berry
LONDON SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010625-882263.htm

LONDON -- Iraqi troops are massing near the northern no-fly zone for what military analysts suspect may be an attack inside Iraqi Kurdistan that could frustrate U.S. and British plans to revise international sanctions.

Military experts in Iraq said the buildup is centered just south of the town of Arbil, in the Western-protected enclave set up in April 1991 to protect the Kurds and to deter Iraqi attack.

President Saddam Hussein, they said, has sent tanks, artillery and armored vehicles to the northern region of Kirkuk in what was described as "excessive military activity."

A smaller number of troops and armored units have been moved to Haditha, on Iraq´s western border with Jordan, and the Iraqi president has also reopened the al-Baghdadi air base in the same area.

"By invading Kurdistan, Saddam is going to try to goad Britain and America into retaliating with air strikes," an Iraqi military expert said.

"If they do, Russia and China, who both oppose the reformed sanctions, would demand further reviews before any new sanctions plan could be implemented. Any confrontation will also boost Saddam´s popularity."

So-called "smart sanctions" are under negotiation at the United Nations with the goal of reducing smuggling by tightening inspections while allowing nonmilitary supplies to flow freely, thus denying Saddam the opportunity to claim his people are being starved by the West.

Iraq, which said last week it would fight the sanctions plan, has a hidden oil trade worth $3.1 billion a year on top of the $16 billion it earns officially.

A British foreign ministry spokesman said over the weekend: "We are monitoring the situation in Iraq very closely. We remain determined to protect the Kurds by enforcing the northern no-fly zone. There is no weakening in our resolve to protect them."

A defense ministry spokesman added: "We are aware of a troop concentration in the Arbil area and are keeping a close eye on it. What

Saddam´s intentions are we do not know yet." There is other evidence that Saddam is preparing for some kind of confrontation with the Kurds.

In the past week, he has moved ministries and security units to secret locations close to schools and hospitals, making them problematic targets. The last time Iraq moved its ministries was in December 1998, just before the Operation Desert Fox air strikes on military targets.

Iraq invaded Arbil in August 1996 when it destroyed the opposition headquarters of the Iraqi National Congress, killing hundreds of dissidents.

Saddam, who has put Qusay, his son and heir, in charge of security aspects of the current operation, has also brought in Field Marshal Ayad Alrawi, a former commander of the Republican Guard, and Field Marshal Salah Abood, both senior Ba´ath party members.

In recent television broadcasts, Saddam has called for a "final war" and has warned of imminent attack from the West and a threat from Iran. Last week, he claimed that Allied war planes fired at a playing field in the Kirkuk area, killing 23 persons. The United States and Britain denied the attack.

One Iraqi dissident in the area said it was most likely that an Iraqi missile had exploded accidentally. "They are moving a lot of weapons around at the moment, and I´m pretty sure there was an accident," he said.

----

US Planes Attack Iraqi Air Defense

New York Times
June 25, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Iraq.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A U.S. Navy fighter jet attacked an anti-aircraft artillery site in southern Iraq on Monday in what U.S. military officials called an act of self defense.

The F-14D Tomcat, flying from the aircraft carrier USS Constellation in the Persian Gulf, struck the Iraqi anti-aircraft artillery site near Basra, the U.S. Central Command said. No damage assessment was immediately available.

The attack was in response to anti-aircraft artillery fire at U.S. and British aircraft patrolling the ``no fly'' zone over southern Iraq, officials said. U.S. and British planes have been patrolling ``no fly'' zones in northern and southern Iraq since shortly after the 1991 Gulf War. Iraq disputes the legitimacy of the zones and regularly contests U.S. and British patrols by firing missiles and artillery guns.

The last U.S. air strike in southern Iraq was against a radar site on June 14.

-------- israel

Sharon's Actions In 1982 Massacre Stir New Debate

BBC Report Revisits Israeli Leader's Role In Killings at Palestinian Camps in Beirut

By Lee Hockstader
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, June 25, 2001
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41261-2001Jun24?language=printer

JERUSALEM, June 24 -- Nearly two decades after an official Israeli investigation found Ariel Sharon indirectly responsible for the massacre of hundreds of unarmed Palestinian refugees in Beirut, new calls are being issued to try him for war crimes.

No new information has surfaced regarding the role of Sharon, now Israel's prime minister, who as defense minister in 1982 led the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and was forced to resign because of the massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. Sharon, who is to meet President Bush in Washington on Monday, is riding high in public opinion polls in Israel and enjoys considerable U.S. support.

Still, the spotlight has been cast anew on Sharon and the massacre by "The Accused," a lengthy documentary broadcast last week by the BBC. A number of prominent figures, including a former U.S. envoy to the Middle East, suggest in the film that Sharon should or could be convicted for war crimes.

The day after the documentary was aired June 17, Palestinian survivors of the massacre asked a Belgian court to indict Sharon based on a law allowing trials in Belgium for war crimes regardless of where they occurred. On Friday, New York-based Human Rights Watch called for a criminal investigation of Sharon.

"I have been waiting for this moment so long," said Suad Srour Mereh, one of the 28 people who filed the case in Belgium. "It was the most horrible moment, which I won't ever forget." Mereh, who was 14 at the time, said she was raped, shot in the spine and left for dead among the bodies of her slain family members; she remains paralyzed.

The furor over a 19-year-old atrocity has reopened a bitter episode in Sharon's past at a particularly sensitive time. After nine months of renewed violence in the Middle East, Israel and the Palestinians are engaged in a public relations battle for international sympathy, and many Israelis see the rehashing of Sharon's role in the massacre as evidence of anti-Israel bias and even anti-Semitism.

Sharon has refused to comment on the BBC documentary. Israel's Foreign Ministry condemned it as "distorted, unfair and intentionally hostile," and some officials threatened to take unspecified action against the BBC's news bureau in Jerusalem.

"There's anti-Semitism, there's deception, there's malice -- all put in one show with a sinister intent," said Raanan Gissin, a spokesman for Sharon.

Even Israeli critics of Sharon have questioned the documentary. It was aired for "political reasons -- this is my only interpretation," said Zeev Schiff, a veteran defense correspondent for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, who was among the first journalists to break the news of the massacre and the details of Sharon's role. "If I were the [BBC] editor I'd call the [producer] and say, 'Very nice, but what's new?' "

The BBC denied any taint of anti-Semitism. It insisted that Sharon's election as prime minister in March, as well as the new international focus on war crimes prosecutions, justified the fresh look at the Sabra and Shatila killings.

"The investigation of human rights abuses and the notion of accountability for such abuse is recognized by all civilized states as a fundamental moral and legal obligation," Fergal Keane, the producer of the documentary, wrote on the BBC Web site. "With questions now being asked in France over the behavior of its generals in Algeria, a former U.S. presidential candidate forced to explain his actions in the Vietnam War, not to mention the case of General Pinochet [in Chile] . . . the debate over war crimes has never been more relevant."

No one has ever been indicted, tried or convicted for the September 1982 killings in Beirut. At least 700 Palestinian refugees were slaughtered at the camps; some estimates run to more than 2,000. Among the dead were women, children and the elderly, some of whom were tortured, disfigured or raped before they were mowed down with machine-gun fire.

The killings were carried out by Lebanese Christian militiamen allied with, and in some cases trained by, Israel. The militiamen, known as Phalangists, had been at war with the Palestinians in Lebanon for years, and detested them. Their passion had been stoked by the assassination of their leader, Bashir Jemayel, the newly elected Christian president of Lebanon.

Soon after the Israeli army took control of West Beirut, Sharon, who had overall command of forces in Beirut, authorized the Phalangists to enter the camps in search of Palestinian guerrillas. The militiamen found few guerrillas, but in a rampage that lasted nearly three days, they killed civilians by the hundreds.

Sharon maintained that he "never imagined" the Phalangists would go on such a killing spree. But the official Israeli commission of inquiry said that knowing the Phalangists' violent history and the tensions brought about by Jemayel's assassination, Sharon should have realized the probability of a massacre if the militiamen entered the camps. The commission also said Sharon and other Israeli military figures failed to react quickly and decisively to halt the massacre after the first reports of killings.

The commission cited Sharon for "grave mistakes" and recommended that he resign as defense minister or be dismissed. After at first refusing, he resigned.

Some of the officers under Sharon's command were also disciplined but later went on to successful careers. Brig. Gen. Amos Yaron, now director general of Israel's Defense Ministry, was division commander in Beirut. The commission found him seriously at fault for doing little to halt the killings and he was relieved of his post in 1983. While Yaron acknowledged at the time that he did "badly" and had been "oblivious" to terrible events in an area under Israeli control, Sharon has remained unrepentant.

Morris Draper, the U.S. envoy to the Middle East at the time, makes the point emphatically in the documentary that Sharon should have anticipated and prevented the massacre. "You'd have to be appallingly ignorant" not to expect a bloodbath, he says. "I mean, I suppose if you came down from the moon that day, you might not predict it."

Richard Goldstone, a South African judge who was chief prosecutor of the U.N. war crime tribunals from 1994 to 1996, says in the documentary that, in general, military commanders are "more responsible" for civilian deaths than are the people who pull the trigger.

Richard Falk, a professor of international law at Princeton who was vice chairman of an international commission that investigated Israel's invasion of Lebanon, told the BBC, "There is no question in my mind that [Sharon] is indictable for the kind of knowledge that he either had or should have had."

The BBC said its Web site had been "inundated" by responses, and after a few days announced it had stopped posting them. Israelis and other defenders of Sharon protested that the BBC unfairly persecuted Sharon, and noted there is no move to prosecute the Phalangist leaders who were on the scene when the massacre took place, including Elie Hobeika, who until recently was a cabinet minister in Lebanon.

-------- japan

F-4 jet mistakenly fires at cars

Monday, June 25, 2001
Kyodo News
http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&cat=1&id=37977

TOKYO - Vehicles in a parking lot were damaged Monday by 20-millimeter machine gun rounds mistakenly fired by an F-4 fighter plane of Japan's Air Self-Defense Force (ASDF) during a drill in Hokkaido, police said.

Nobody was injured when the shells hit vehicles in the parking lot of a rehabilitation center in Kitahiroshima, Hokkaido, at around 10:55 a.m., the police said.

The F-4 belongs to an ASDF wing stationed in Naha, Okinawa, which was on a military drill at a range of the Ground Self-Defense Force in Hokkaido.

People at the rehabilitation center saw a flash of light outside the window and heard crunching sounds before a plane passed overhead, officials at the center said.

-------- korea

North and South Korean Vessels Clash at Sea

June 25, 2001
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/25/world/25KORE.html

SEOUL, South Korea, Monday, June 25 - North Korean fishermen fired flares and brandished sticks and knives at two approaching South Korean patrol boats early Sunday before fleeing in their boat after the South Koreans fired nine warning shots, the military command said.

The command said the North Koreans had led the South Koreans on a chase for two and a half hours in the Yellow Sea until the South Koreans closed within 50 yards. The North Koreans then made clear that they planned to resist any attempt to board and search their boat.

The episode was the most serious since skirmishes in the same area two years ago that culminated when the South Korean Navy sank a North Korean Navy torpedo boat with more than 20 sailors aboard. All apparently died.

South Korean officials fear a rise in tension after intrusions by North Korean vessels south of the so-called Northern Limit Line and in the straits between Cheju Island and the southern tip of the peninsula.

In the latest episode, three South Korean patrol boats gave chase before dawn on Sunday after spotting the North Korean boat two and a half miles south of the Northern Limit Line. This line, which is not recognized by the North, has divided the two countries since the Korean War.

President Kim Dae Jung's government earlier this month proposed an agreement with the North under which vessels from each country could sail close to the other's shores. But the North has not responded to that suggestion, or to other pleas for negotiations with the South, since President Bush suspended talks between Washington and Pyongyang in March. Mr. Bush has since authorized a resumption of those talks, but the North Korean workers' newspaper Rodong Sinmun said Sunday that Washington was engaging in "shameless and sinister double dealing."

-------- puerto rico

Vieques Protesters Pledge Resistance

By Manuel Ernesto Rivera
Associated Press Writer
Monday, June 25, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010625/aponline042238_000.htm

VIEQUES, Puerto Rico -- Protesters on Vieques island pledged a new round of demonstrations to thwart U.S. Navy bombing exercises, saying they will not be satisfied until the military agrees to leave.

After a weekend without exercises, training was to resume on the Puerto Rican island Monday, said Navy spokeswoman Lt. Cmdr. Katherine Goode.

"There will be a rain of bombs and a storm of civil disobedience all week long," protest leader Robert Rabin said on Sunday.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson said he planned to return to Vieques on Monday for the second time in three days to support the protests.

The U.S. civil rights leader did not rule out the possibility that he would try to trespass on Navy lands in protest, which could land him in prison. Jackson visited activists on Vieques on Saturday but did not enter Navy land.

"I've not determined yet the most effective way to support the efforts," Jackson said by telephone from his San Juan hotel on Sunday. "My wife has encouraged me to spend time on the outside mobilizing support."

His wife, Jacqueline Jackson, was arrested last week after crossing onto Navy property with other protesters. She has remained in a federal prison in suburban San Juan since Tuesday because she refused to pay $3,000 bail.

Authorities have arrested 47 people since exercises began on Vieques last week, Goode said. President Bush has called for training on Vieques to end in 2003, but opponents want it to stop now.

During the last round of protests in late April and early May, more than 180 demonstrators were detained for trespassing on Navy property. Among them was the Rev. Al Sharpton, who has been on a hunger strike in a New York prison since May 29, consuming only liquids.

Jackson, who leads the Chicago-based Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, complained that his wife and several other women were kept in solitary confinement for refusing a body cavity search.

Prison officials did not immediately return calls seeking comment. A Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman in Washington, Traci Billingsley, said last week that all inmates have to submit to a visual search after they receive visitors. She said there is no solitary confinement, although inmates who refuse a search may end up in "special housing."

Protests against six decades of Navy exercises on Vieques gained momentum when errant bombs killed a civilian guard on the range in 1999. Since then, the Navy hasn't used live ammunition, instead using inert bombs and shells on its "crown jewel" training ground.

Activists say the training poses a health threat on the Puerto Rican island, an allegation the Navy strongly denies.

The Navy said the current exercises would last through the week.

-------- russia

Chechen warlord killed in Russian operation

YURI BAGROV
Associated Press Writer
Monday, June 25, 2001
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2001/06/25/international0519EDT0475.DTL

NAZRAN, Russia (AP) -- A prominent Chechen warlord was killed in an operation by Russian troops who had blockaded a central Chechen town for days to search for him and other rebel fighters, officials said Monday.

At least 17 Chechen rebels were killed in the eight-day operation in Alkhan-Kala that ended Sunday, said Igor Botnikov, spokesman for the Kremlin's agency on Chechnya. According to preliminary reports, one Russian serviceman was killed and six wounded in clashes, he said.

Arbi Barayev was one of the most influential rebel commanders, and his killing was likely to provide a morale boost to the military. Russian officials have been claiming for a year that the rebels are near defeat, but the campaign has dragged on and rebel raids and mines continue to inflict daily casualties among servicemen.

"This is a major success," Kremlin aide Sergei Yastrzhembsky told reporters. "All rebel gang leaders will meet the same sad end."

Movladi Udugov, a Chechen rebel leader, confirmed Barayev's death in a telephone interview. He said 20 rebels died in the battle and five others were missing.

Udugov said 150 federal soldiers were killed in the fighting and some 60 civilians died in a massive Russian bombardment of the town -- claims that couldn't be independently verified.

Federal Security Service chief Nikolai Patrushev said Monday that no civilians were hurt, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.

Barayev had been accused of kidnapping and executing three Britons and a New Zealander who had been working on Chechnya's phone network in 1998, and of abducting scores of other hostages including Kremlin envoy Valentin Vlasov earlier that year.

Military officials also linked Barayev to several raids on Russian checkpoints and pro-Moscow Chechen police, and he had reportedly been targeted in military operations before.

The acting commander of Russian forces in Chechnya, Vladimir Moltenskoi, said on ORT television that troops surrounded the house where Barayev was staying and opened fire. Moltenskoi said Barayev apparently died from wounds and soldiers found his body.

His body was identified by relatives and was to be buried on Monday.

Russian troops blocked people from entering or leaving Alkhan-Kala, seven miles west of the capital Grozny, and surrounding areas for a week as they searched for rebels.

Resident Aminat Khamidova said at least 30 homes were destroyed in the operation and scores of people detained. Shaken and weary, she fled Alkhan-Kala with her 13-year-old son Monday for a refugee camp in the neighboring republic of Ingushetia.

Federal troops regularly seize Chechens as suspected rebels, and some of the detainees have been later found dead. Human rights groups accuse Russian troops of torturing and executing them, a charge the military strongly denies.

Russian troops are trying to restore Moscow's control over the breakaway region, which achieved de facto independence in a 1994-96 war. Federal forces went back into Chechnya in September 1999 after rebels based there attacked a neighboring region, and after apartment bombings blamed on Chechen terrorists killed some 300 people.

On Sunday, most of the 230 Chechen refugees who went on hunger strike in Ingushetia earlier this month to demand an end to the war ended their protest. But 33 people, from age nine to 62, were continuing their strike in several tents on a sun-scorched field near the Chechen border.

Two of the protesters, girls ages nine and 12, were rushed to an emergency unit of a local hospital on Monday.

-------- space

Space, Information Warfare Gets $700 Million Boost in 2002 Defense Budget

By Jeremy Singer, Staff Writer
Space News
25 June 2001
From: "Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space" <globalnet@mindspring.com>

WASHINGTON - The U.S. military plans to request an additional $700 million for space and information warfare programs for the 2002 budget, according to internal Pentagon budget documents obtained by Space News. The prime recipients of the cash infusion would be radar surveillance satellites and space control efforts.

The Pentagon also will add money to its effort to modernize the Global Positioning Navigation System (GPS), allowing it to accelerate the availability of a new military signal by one year, according to Program Budget Decision 815, which is dated June 21.

The document is made up of "budget adjustments [that] implement Space and Information Warfare initiatives arising out of the Strategy Review" conducted at the direction of U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in his effort to reshape the military.

The document, which was approved by Pentagon comptroller Dov Zakheim, is marked "For Official Use Only."

The overall defense budget request for 2002 will be $345 billion.

According to that document the Pentagon will add $50 million to the U.S. Air Force budget request to continue development of space-based radar satellites that can provide continuous global surveillance.

Current work in this area is being done by the National Reconnaissance Office. Congress moved the program to that agency after canceling the planned $700 million two-satellite Discoverer 2 demonstration.

The Pentagon also will increase its spending on the development and purchase of space control technology by $53 million. That money will help fund upgrades to current space surveillance systems, as well as the development of future space control systems.

The Pentagon will also add $13 million for testing facilities to support testing, training and exercises related to space control efforts.

The additional $9 million added to the GPS modernization effort in 2002 will enable the military to field a new signal for its navigation spacecraft a year earlier than the planned 2007 date. The new signal will make the GPS spacecraft less vulnerable to enemy attempts to interfere with its transmissions.

The comptroller also added $13 million to incorporate GPS tracking at its space launch ranges.

Most of the new dollars for information warfare will go to classified programs.

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

U.S. Military Under Attack on Environmental Grounds

June 25, 2001
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/jun2001/2001L-06-25-03.html

LEWISTON, Maine, A coalition of citizens organizations is challenging the U.S. Armed Forces, alleging that the health and safety of communities across the country is under assault from past and current polluting military operations.

In a new national campaign, citizens impacted by military operations from Hooper Bay, Alaska to Vieques, Puerto Rico are participating in the Military Toxics Project's effort to hold the U.S. military accountable to the same laws that apply to all other sectors of society.

The military is not subject to most laws that protect communities and workers, either because it is completely exempt or because the Environmental Protection Agency has no enforcement authority, says Steve Taylor, national coordinator for the Maine based Military Toxics Project.

Congressman Bob Filner (Photo courtesy Office of the Congressman)

The campaign is timed to support the introduction of a bill by Congressman Bob Filner, a California Democrat, who represents San Diego, home to a large contingent of U.S. Navy ships in the Pacific Fleet, the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center, and the Naval Air Force.

On June 13, Filner introduced the Military Environmental Responsibility Act, which seeks to remove all military exemptions from existing environmental, worker and public safety laws and regulations.

To back up the new bill, the Military Toxics Project (MTP) released to Congress a report entitled "Defend Our Health: The U.S. Military's Environmental Assault On Communities." Prepared by MTP and Environmental Health Coalition, an environmental justice organization based in San Diego, the report shows how military exemptions from laws and lax enforcement by regulatory agencies have contributed to the existence of more than 27,000 toxic hot spots on 8,500 military properties across the country.

Based on the findings of this report, the citizens' groups charge that military activities like legal and illegal toxic dumping, testing and use of munitions, manufacture and use of depleted uranium ammunition, hazardous waste generation, nuclear propulsion, toxic air emissions have created "an environmental catastrophe."

Department of Defense spokesman Lt. Dave Gai says military personnel are members of the same communities that their critics say they are polluting. "We live in the same communities, we have an equally justifiable interest in maintaining the safety and preservation of the environment," he says.

While acknowledging that the military is exempt from some laws, Lt. Gai said, "We are subject to many of the same laws and regulations that industry and public sector are subject to."

Aricraft carrier USS Constellation departs its home port of San Diego, California, to begin a regularly scheduled western Pacific deployment, April 1, 1977. (U.S. Navy photo by Photographer's Mate Airman Neil Sheinbaum)

Taylor of the Military Toxics Project says the basis of most of the military exemptions is the sovereign immunity of the federal government. "The doctrine of sovereign immunity means that our government is not bound by the laws that bind the rest of us. The only laws that bind the federal government are laws the Congress passes that waive sovereign immunity."

"No federal law applies to the military unless Congress specifically makes that law apply to the military," Taylor said.

Filner's newly introduced bill, now before the House Armed Services Committee, would entirely waive any and all sovereign immunity and revoke all exemptions of the Department of Defense and all other defense related agencies within the United States and abroad from complying with all federal and state environmental laws that protect the health and safety of the public or the environment.

Certain laws do not apply to the military at all, such as the Oil Pollution Act and the Noise Act, Taylor says.

Most environmental laws, Taylor explains, are basically laws in which Congress has attempted to waive sovereign immunity and make them apply to the military, but these laws have run into problems of court interpretation or language with the waiver. These then become laws that do not apply fully to the military. Taylor says examples of such laws are the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act and the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation Liability Act, commonly known as the Superfund law.

There are some laws that do apply to the military such as the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act which governs the management of solid, hazardous, and medical waste.

F/A 18 Hornet flies over Nevada (Photo courtesy Fallon Naval Air Station)

But even for those laws there are exemptions. For instance, President Bill Clinton made a 1999 Presidential Determination renewed in 2000 that exempted the U.S. Air Force's operating location near Groom Lake, Nevada. The operation is exempt "from any federal, state, interstate, or local hazardous or solid waste laws that might require the disclosure of classified information concerning that operating location to unauthorized persons," in the "paramount interest of the United States."

The Military Toxics Project report shows that communities and individuals adjacent to military operations, as well as active duty personnel, veterans, and civilian workers suffer from elevated cancer rates, intergenerational health problems, contaminated subsistence food chains, nuclear safety threats, intolerable noise and disruption, bombing of sacred areas, and destruction of wildlife habitat.

The report offers these among other examples:

In Cape Cod, Massachusetts, the Massachusetts Military Reservation contaminated the sole source of drinking water for 424,445 permanent and seasonal residents.

In Hooper Bay, Alaska, the Cape Romanzof Long Range Radar Station contaminated the subsistence food supply that native villages depend upon for their survival.

In Lassen County, California, the Sierra Army Depot is the largest source of toxic air emissions in the state, releasing hazardous substances including mercury, lead, beryllium, copper, dioxins, and polychlorinated biphenyls.

In Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, federal health investigators tied low birth weights to exposure to volatile organic compounds released by Tinker Air Force Base.

In Fallon, Nevada, next door to Fallon Naval Air Station, 14 children have been diagnosed with cancer since 1997, all but one with acute lymphocytic leukemia. Earlier this month, one boy died of the disease, prompting Nevada Senator Harry Reid to call for an investigation the possible causes of the childhood leukemia cluster.

The Nevada Democrat, who now chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee, said he will seek additional information from the U.S. Navy, and the Secretary of Transportation on the transportation, storage, use and disposal of jet fuel in Fallon.

A Defense Department source said that much of the data presented by the Military Toxics Project report is misconstrued, and statistics are interpreted to suit the citizens' agenda.

These are not exemptions sought by the military, said the official, they were established by Congress and Executive Order and by the Environmental Protection Agency.

-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

Europe trades cleaner fuels ahead of German tax break

UK: June 25, 2001
Story by Keyvan Hedvat
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11310&newsDate=25-Jun-2001

LONDON - European oil companies are gearing up to a German tax break in favour of ultra-low sulphur fuels by buying and selling increasing volumes of cleaner diesel and petrol, traders with those firms said on Friday.

From November 1, motor fuels sold in Germany with a sulphur content higher than 50 parts per million (ppm) will be subject to an additional duty of three pfennigs per litre.

This tax burden will be extended to fuels with sulphur content of more than 10ppm from January 1, 2003.

Michael Winkler, head of environmental affairs at German refinery industry association Mineraloelwirtschafts-verband (MWV), said that there had "so far been no domestic refiner that has complained that it can't make the November 1 date."

He said the extra cost of manufacturing ultra-low sulphur (50ppm) diesel was about three pfennigs per litre relative to the current 350ppm standard grade required under existing European Union legislation.

"The price for the normal fuels will be the same as, if not higher than the lower sulphur," Winkler said. "The goal is to totally replace the higher sulphur fuels."

A diesel barge trader with an oil major active on the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp (ARA) market said he had on Thursday sold a 2,000-tonne Rotterdam refinery barge of 50ppm to another major at $25 a tonne over July IPE gas oil futures.

The trade, done at a price that was $12 a tonne above deal levels for 350ppm diesel, followed the sale of another 4,000 tonnes on Wednesday.

"I expect a total of about 10,000 tonnes of 50ppm diesel barges to be sold this week," the trader said. "That compares with about 50,000 tonnes of 350ppm diesel."

Traders said refiners were slowly but surely building up to the November 1 German deadline.

"It's starting slowly; Germany will start soon refreshing tanks for the change-over; people are trading it at the moment, testing out their storage facilities, and so on," one ARA trader said.

Ultra-low sulphur diesel (ULSD) and ultra-low sulphur petrol (ULSP) - also 50ppm sulphur - are already widely sold by petrol retailers in Britain, encouraged by government tax incentives.

ULSD is also widely available in the Netherlands, while ULSP is sold at petrol forecourts across Scandinavia.

Gasoline traders have seen growing interest in trading of ULSP on the northwest European cargo market over recent months. They expect barge trading to start in earnest this autumn.

The European Union has already set an indicative limit of 50ppm sulphur for both petrol and diesel effective from January 1, 2005, but no final agreement on these Auto-Oil restrictions aimed at reducing traffic pollution has yet been reached.

----

French power bills to rise on high wind prices - CRE

UK: June 25, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11313&newsDate=25-Jun-2001

LONDON - French electricity bills will rise significantly as the government has set high guaranteed prices for wind-generated electricity, said the country's energy watchdog CRE on Friday.

Earlier on Friday, the government confirmed wind energy producers will be paid 55 centimes per kilowatt hour for the first five years and then prices will fall to an average 48 centimes/KWh over 15 years.

State-owned Electricite de France will pay the fixed prices to the wind producers and then can pass the cost to consumers.

"The CRE (Commission de Regulation de l'Electricite) believes the price proposed for wind producers will lead to a significant increase in electricity prices in France," said the watchdog in a statement.

It estimated that if 10,000 MW of wind power was built under this system, residential prices would have to rise three percent and industrial prices by 15 percent to pay for the wind energy.

This is equivalent to an increase of between one and two centimes per kilowatt hour. The cost of subsidising France's whole renewables programme, which includes solar and biomass, will come to 3-4 centimes/KWh by 2010.

France, which depends heavily on nuclear power, has very little wind generation and the government wants to kick-start the sector to increase the amount of electricity produced from green sources.

The regulator added the proposed prices were well above wind generators' production costs and raised a question about state-aid to the sector.

"The government has chosen a very expensive way of doing this. With the same targets, the costs could be a third lower for example by using market driven mechanisms," Thierry Trouve, in charge of relations with producers and suppliers at the CRE told Reuters by telephone from Paris.

Trouve said wind generators' operating costs were between 30 and 35 centimes/KWh while typical French electricity prices were around 20 centimes/KWh.

Because EdF is government-owned, the programme could be interpreted as state aid and the government did not seek European Union approval before setting the tariffs, said Trouve.

Recently the European Court of Justice ruled that generous prices paid by German utilities for renewable energy were allowed under EU law but Trouve said that case was different as the companies were privately owned.

"The problem is to know if the French scheme is compatible with that EU decision," he said.

The French government has said it chose the guaranteed price system to develop renewables as it would be quicker than using market mechanisms like green certificates.

In market-based systems, renewable generators issue green certificates which are bought by suppliers as a way to meet legal commitments to buy a certain amount of electricity from environmentally friendly sources.

France has a target to produce 21 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2010, building on the 15 percent currently generated by hydropower.

The government is working on fixed price proposals for small hydro, solar and biomass.

----

Longtime naysayer Harkin lists US farm law plans

USA: June 25, 2001
Story by Charles Abbott
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11314&newsDate=25-Jun-2001

WASHINGTON - Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin, a farm policy critic who is now chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, says U.S. farm law should be revised to boost home-grown fuels and pay farmers for good stewardship.

The federal safety net for farmers must become "more certain and more counter-cyclical" than under the 1996 "Freedom to Farm" law that deregulated farming, he said during an hour-long session with reporters on Friday.

One of the Senate's "prairie populist" Democrats who often favor higher crop supports, Harkin became chairman of the committee when Democrats took control of the Senate this month. His chief task in the coming year will be writing a replacement for the 1996 law that he lampooned as "Freedom to Fail."

He refused to set a timeline for completing work on the bill but held open the possibility of drafting it in the fall or winter. Congress is scheduled to adjourn for the year in October.

Harkin said he wanted to retain the law's so-called planting flexibility provision that lets farmers shift from crop to crop without jeopardizing eligibility for subsidies. However, the idea of annual guaranteed payments "is a dead end," he said.

There was consensus among farm-state lawmakers that the new farm law should contain a formula for "counter-cyclical" payments that automatically would increase in size when prices fell. Harkin said he had not settled on a specific approach.

One possibility, he said, was to use loan rates, rather than market prices, in a counter-cyclical plan. Another would be to utilize the Commodity Credit Corp., the Agriculture Department's "bank" with far-reaching authority.

"The basic idea," Harkin said, is that when prices reach a specified level, there would be "a counter-cyclical that focuses on farmers who produced crops that year."

Under Harkin's outline, the farm bill would include "a new system of conservation" that "will be, I hope, the centerpiece of the farm bill." It would be a system that paid farmers for voluntary adoption of soil, water and wildlife conservation on the nation's 940 million acres of working lands.

The Conservation Reserve, which pays farmers an annual rent for idling fragile land for 10 years, would be expanded to 40 million acres. The cap now is 36.4 million acres. The Wetlands Reserve and the cost-sharing Environmental Quality Incentive Program for manure control would be beefed up.

Harkin said the farm bill should include, for the first time, an energy title to encourage use of ethanol, soydiesel and biomass fuels, as well as wind-generated electricity. He envisioned widespread use of E-85, a fuel with 85 percent ethanol - grain alcohol - and 15 percent gasoline.

In addition, Harkin said he would give emphasis to rural economic development. Farmers would see assistance for forming cooperatives and other ventures to reap some of the profits that come from processing or creation of new value-added products.

With up to a quarter of Americans living in rural areas, Harkin said there was need for up-to-date telecommunication systems and water and sewer service.

The chairman said he would "move aggressively" to include global school lunch, a food donation program patterned on the U.S. school lunch program, in the farm bill.

-------- energy

Spending in Energy Proposal Boosted

New York Times
June 25, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Congress-Energy-Spending.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A House committee voted Monday to beef up plans for spending on renewable energy and nuclear waste cleanup as lawmakers demonstrated anew their sensitivity to the energy issue this year.

The increases were included in a $23.7 billion measure financing energy and water programs that the House Appropriations Committee approved by a voice vote.

The measure also included almost $4.5 billion for hundreds of dredging, beach restoration and other Army Corps of Engineers water projects, which are big favorites with lawmakers because of the spending they bring their districts.

The bill, covering fiscal 2002, was approved with little debate. Democrats said they might offer amendments on electricity price caps and other energy issues when the measure reaches the full House, perhaps later this week.

Overall, the measure would provide $18.7 billion for the Energy Department, $641 million more than President Bush requested and $444 million more than this year.

Spending on solar, geothermal and other forms of renewable energy would grow to $377 million, $100 million more than Bush sought and $1 million more than this year. Money for nuclear cleanups and managing nuclear waste, mostly for the Energy Department's nuclear weapons work, would exceed $7 billion, $699 million over Bush's proposal and $253 million over this year.

Programs aimed at preventing the spread of Russia's nuclear arsenal to other countries and terrorist groups would get $544 million, $87 million more than Bush requested and $86 million above this year's figure.

The Senate has yet to write its version of the bill.

----

EU chief slams Boeing over gas-guzzling new jet

EU: June 25, 2001
Story by Robin Pomeroy
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11307&newsDate=25-Jun-2001

BRUSSELS - The European Union's top environmental official lashed out at U.S. aircraft maker Boeing on Friday for planning to make a gas-guzzling new high-speed airliner.

In a letter to the Seattle-based aircraft giant, EU Environment Commissioner Margot Wallstrom accused Boeing's Vice-Chairman Harry Stonecipher of nonchalance towards the environmental impact of the planned new 'Sonic Cruiser' jet.

Wallstrom criticised comments Stonecipher made to The Times newspaper on Tuesday in which he appeared to dismiss concerns about increasing greenhouse gas emissions from aviation as a "bandwagon", saying there were was "plenty of fossil fuel still around".

"I find it hard to believe that anyone today could afford himself the luxury of a 'let's-not-think-about-tomorrow' attitude which runs diametrically opposed to the aims of sustainable development," Wallstrom said in an open letter to Stonecipher.

Boeing says the Sonic Cruiser will travel at 95 percent the speed of sound - 15 percent faster than existing commercial jets. But it will consume 35 percent more fuel and emit more carbon dioxide, the main gas blamed for global warming.

SENSITIVE MOMENT FOR U.S./EU RELATIONS

Wallstrom's assault comes at a politically sensitive moment for trans-Atlantic trade relations in the aeronautics field.

The European Commission - which acts as the EU's competition authority - is coming under pressure from the United States to allow General Electric Co ., which makes jet engines, to buy avionics firm Honeywell International Inc .

The Commission has serious concerns over whether the $41.8 billion deal would damage competition in the sector and in the past week political pressure to accept the deal has been applied by U.S. President George W. Bush, members of his cabinet and several members of the U.S. Senate. Boeing's Stonecipher weighed in on the debate last Saturday, accusing the European aircraft firm Airbus Industrie of lobbying against the GE deal. He later retracted the accusation in the face of denials from GE, Airbus and the EU.

FUEL STILL TAX-FREE

Wallstrom said as air travel emits 3.5 percent of the world's greenhouse gases - and those emissions were set to double over the next 10-15 years - manufacturers should concentrate on developing more fuel efficient, rather than faster, aircraft.

"The question is whether a one-hour time saving on a trans-Atlantic flight is worth a significant increase in CO2 emissions...In my view the environmental price is simply not worth paying," she said.

The Commission has called for aviation fuel - which has a worldwide tax exemption - to be taxed as a way of slowing the growth in air transport and its environmental costs.

-------- environment

Pollution Site Victims Fight for Compensation

New York Times
June 25, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/health/science-health-pollut.html

SAUGET, Ill. (Reuters) - As a child, Nancy Mercer and her friends liked to ride their bicycles down Dead Creek, which ran past the end of their street.

``The creek was usually dried out, unless it had rained. We would skid our wheels and embers would fly in the air. We thought it was pretty cool and we did it a lot,'' Mercer said. Sometimes the creek, now designated by the federal government as one of the 1,200 most urgent hazardous waste sites, smoked by day, glowed by night and would spontaneously burst into flames.

The United States is grappling with the huge problem of cleaning up some of its most severely contaminated waste sites, which like the creek, are an unwanted legacy of its industrial past.

The U.S. General Accounting Office estimates that after nearly 20 years and outlays of more than $14 billion, the Superfund program has yet to complete cleanups of 42 percent of the 1,200 sites on the list. Thousands more sites remain to be studied.

This year, President Bush's budget requested $1.3 billion for Superfund. That's for the sites. Despite the publicity generated by movies like ``Erin Brockovich'' and ``A Civil Action,'' the human victims of such pollution are on their own.

Mercer's parents, Robert and Nancy Batson, and their neighbors did not know that Dead Creek was a deadly toxic dumping group for industrial plants. Those poisons often overflowed into the pond in their back yard.

FROGS WITH TWO HEADS

``We would see fish with tumors, frogs with two heads. It was gross,'' Mercer said. That didn't stop neighborhood kids from digging holes around the banks of the pond, jumping in to cool off in summer, skating on the poisoned surface in winter.

``I took many a mouthful,'' Mercer said.

Now, Robert Batson has leukemia, several of his neighbors have died of cancer and his four children live in constant fear they will also get sick.

Batson and some 15 other Sauget residents are suing some 30 companies for damages, alleging they negligently discharged toxic substances into the air and sewer system and failed to warn citizens of Sauget of the danger. Batson would like his medical bills covered and frequent medical monitoring for his children to ensure early detection if they develop cancer.

An analysis by PHR Environmental Consultants Inc., conducted in 1999 for the purpose of a federally mandated cleanup, identified 12 zones of extreme contamination in the area located close to the Mississippi River opposite the city of St. Louis. Until 1967, Sauget was known as the Village of Monsanto, after the largest industrial company operating within its bounds.

``Contaminants identified to date in the subject area include: PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), heavy metals including arsenic, barium, copper, lead, mercury, nickel and zinc; volatile organic compounds, including chloroform, benzene, 111-trichloethene, tetrachloroethene, chlorobenzene, toluene and xylenes; semi-volatile organic compounds such as phenol, naphthalene and pentachlorophenol; pesticides; the breakdown products of chlorinated hydrocarbon solvents have also been detected in the ground water,'' the report said.

Exposure to many of these compounds, especially PCBs, dioxins and benzene, is known to cause cancer in humans and animals.

The PHR report states that pollution of Dead Creek began in 1918 when St. Louis-based Monsanto Co. began manufacturing chemicals there. As early as 1923, six local landowners sued Monsanto for damages to their agricultural land caused by the release of chemical wastes into Dead Creek.

Over the years, dozens of companies contributed to the problem. Some are no longer in business; some have been acquired by other companies. Monsanto itself has spun off its Sauget plant to a subsidiary, Solutia Inc.

Solutia has taken responsibility for cleaning up the site and spent around $17 million trying to do so. Solutia bought the Batson's house for $40,000 last year and demolished it.

But the company, which last April settled a similar case of PCB contamination in Alabama for $40 million, is fighting the lawsuit. Solutia has petitioned to have the case transferred from an Illinois county court to federal court, arguing much of the pollution stemmed from a period during World War Two when the company was producing poisoned gas for the military.

``We believe the U.S. government will be a defendant and therefore it should be heard in federal court,'' said Solutia spokesman Glenn Ruskin.

Additionally, Ruskin stated: ``I have not heard of any medical knowledge or studies that the form of leukemia Mr. Batson has is associated with exposure to chemicals.''

Chemical engineer Melvyn Kopstein, an expert retained by Batson's lawyer Bill Gavin, said in an affidavit: ``Benzene has long been known to cause myelogenous leukemia in humans.''

Gavin believes Solutia's attempt to shift the case to federal court is aimed at avoiding disclosure of documents. ``The federal court system has strict restrictions on the kind of discovery that can be conducted,'' he said.

The federal judge has told plaintiffs they can only send 50 interrogatories, or questions, to each defendant and 20 requests for production of documents.

``That severely limits my ability to shake information out of them,'' Gavin said.

-------

US Water Company Stops Fluoridation After 30 Years

By Matt Shafer
Bishopville Item (SC) Staff Writer
6-25-01
http://www.theitem.com/CityDesk/010625b_news.html

BISHOPVILLE - Water - it runs from every spigot, every faucet, every shower head. And in Bishopville, it soon will become more natural.

At the end of June, Bishopville will discontinue adding fluoride to its water, a practice that started more than 30 years ago.

The American Dental Association began promoting adding fluoride to town water supplies to fight tooth loss. But because there has been data showing fluoride both harms and helps teeth, controversy has swirled about the mineral.

Mike Deas, the Bishopville utility director, got curious one day and started studying its effects.

"I started to do some research, and I started to read all these things where fluoride could be dangerous," Deas said."I started thinking, what if 20 years from now, it turns out that fluoride is harmful, and we didn't stop using it? What would they think of us?"

Needed by the body in trace amounts, fluoride helps the body retain calcium required for bone and tooth development. But research, Deas found, pointed to long-term problems and diseases resulting from drinking water containing fluoride.

Some studies show a link between fluoridation and hip fractures. One study shows a 5 percent increase in cancers in communities that add fluoride to the water.

Deas said he was braced for backlash when the decision was announced, but he hasn't received one phone call or visit. The state Department of Health and Environmental Control has no official opinion and allows towns and water companies to make their own decision on fluoride.

"There is no requirement that anyone use it," said Ronny Rentz, the director for DHEC's Wateree District. "I don't know what the general feeling is, to be honest."

The South Carolina Board of Dentistry has never issued an opinion on fluoride use, either.

The Item contacted both dentists in Bishopville, and both declined to comment.

Also, several European countries including France, Germany, Austria and Luxembourg either never used fluoride or have stopped using it.

Locally, Sumter uses fluoride while Manning never has added it.

"The only thing we add to our water is chlorine for disinfectant,' said Rubin Hardy, public works director for Manning.

Al Harris, director of public services for Sumter, doesn't plan on getting rid of fluoride any time soon.

"There's some controversy on it as it is with any chemical; but right now, we plan to probably leave it in for a while," Harris said.

The American Dental Association has maintained that fluoride is a key component of dental care.

The ADA cites study after study that shows that adding fluoride to the water supply is an effective means of helping tooth growth in poorer communities.

Still, Deas said he believes the people of Bishopville could be better served by fluoride through other sources.

While the most common source of fluoride is water, it is also in meats such as liver and kidneys; fish and seafood, including canned sardines; and apples, grape juice, eggs and tea.

Additionally, much of the fluoride Bishopville adds to the water gets returned to the environment. Once in the environment, it is considered a contaminant and has to be regulated.

Deas estimates that less than one-tenth of a percent of Bishopville's water is actually consumed. Lee County has several industries and farms that use water for irrigation and industrial purposes.

After reviewing the situation, Deas has come to one conclusion.

"If they could prove we knew it was harmful and didn't do anything about it, the lawsuits could wipe out a town like this," he said.

On the Web www.ada.org/public/topics/fluoride/fluoride.html www.fluoridation.com

----

Iran rations water to Tehran amid severe drought

IRAN: June 25, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11315&newsDate=25-Jun-2001

TEHRAN - A water rationing plan is to go into force in Iran this weekend after three consecutive years of drought as supplies hit critical levels.

The hydro-electric power authority in Tehran, a city of 10 million people, said that from Saturday, supplies would be cut off to three districts at a time between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. according to a rotation plan, state television reported.

A similar rationing plan will also go into force in Mashhad, Iran's second city, the official IRNA news agency said. Many other provinces are expected to follow suit.

Officials say water supplies have reached a critical state after three years of drought.

Last year, the water shortage destroyed about three million tonnes of wheat and barley and a million head of livestock, increasing Iran's dependency on food imports.

Reserves in three dams that provide 60 percent of Tehran's supply have sunk to dangerously low levels. Tehran officials speak of a shortage of 200 million cubic metres this summer. The authorities have enforced water conservation measures, threatening families who consume more than 20,000 litres of water per month with hefty fines.

An environment protection official told IRNA the drought threatened wildlife in the northeastern region of Tabas, which shelters cheetahs and some other animals facing extinction.

The drought has also scorched farms and many villages in the Gulf province of Hormuzgan, the television said.

----

EPA plans clean air rule to protect park vistas

USA: June 25, 2001
Story by Patrick Connole
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11302&newsDate=25-Jun-2001

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration on Friday issued a proposed federal rule to tighten clean air standards for old coal-fired power plants that are blamed for spoiling vistas at dozens of national parks and wilderness areas, like the smog-plagued Smoky Mountains of Tennessee.

In a move anticipated by clean air activists, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Whitman signed the national park visibility protection proposal, widely known as the "BART" rule, which is nearly the same plan as one first put forward by the administration of President Bill Clinton.

The announcement comes at a time national polling data shows most Americans believe President George W. Bush is weak on the environment, favoring energy development and industry needs over advances in clean air, water and land programs.

The EPA said the proposed rule provides guidelines for states and tribal air quality agencies to determine air pollution controls for a number of older, large power plants and other industrial facilities.

BART, which stands for Best Available Retrofit Technology, had been delayed until the EPA completed an energy impact analysis. A White House executive order issued on May 18 directed all federal agencies to prepare an energy impact statement on any major regulatory action.

Vistas at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the most visited park in the country, extend more than 50 miles (80 km) on good days, but only around 15 miles (25 km) on days when smog accumulates.

Other parks affected by pollution from nearby plants are mainly along the East Coast, from Maine's Acadia National Park to Virginia's Shenandoah National Park, experts said.

MIXED REACTION

The proposed rule, which experts said could become final in six months after public hearings and comment periods, aims to clear the skies in national parks and wilderness areas.

Frank O'Donnell, executive director of the Clean Air Trust environmental group, said he would wait until the rule becomes final before accepting it as a mirror of what the Clinton administration had planned.

"It's still a proposal, and it could ... change before the rule becomes final," O'Donnell said. "It's something that we will reserve judgment on until we see the final product."

But the National Association of Manufacturers said it was the wrong time for "expensive pollution controls and an increased regulatory burden," as the group fears a squeeze on energy supplies.

"At a time when energy supply is on the minds of many American consumers and businesses, this regulation may unnecessarily drag some companies into an expensive emissions-control program that prevents utilities from fulfilling all of our energy needs," the group said.

The EPA said the plan specifically amends the agency's 1999 regional haze rule to guide states and tribal air quality agencies in deciding which facilities must install air pollution controls and the types of controls to be installed.

The 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments required EPA to establish a rule to improve visibility in 156 national parks and wilderness areas.

The amendments also called on states to require these older plants to install the best air pollution controls available.

The rules cover 26 sources of pollution, including power plants, incinerators and paper pulp mills. The regulations would cover power plants built between 1962 to 1977 that release more than 250 tons of pollutants like sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide into the air on a yearly basis.

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$1 Billion Remedy For Sewer Spills Miles of Tunnels Proposed for D.C.

By Steve Twomey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 25, 2001; Page A01
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A40469-2001Jun24?language=printer

When the skies unleash enough moisture -- and about 75 times a year they do -- the antiquated system of disposal beneath Washington cannot cope. Water rushes down street drains to join the everyday raw sewage below, until the mains will hold no more. At that moment, overflowing human waste and storm runoff spill into emergency pipes that take the mixture straight to the city's rivers, untreated by its Blue Plains facility.

Roughly 3 billion gallons of such unprocessed brew winds up annually in the Anacostia and Potomac rivers and Rock Creek, breaching water quality standards, harming aquatic life and helping to render swimming unhealthful. An embarrassment in the shadow of the national government, the storm-induced releases of raw sewage have been studied for years but never curbed.

Now, though, the District's Water and Sewer Authority has a draft plan for a $1 billion remedy that would feature the most extensive subterranean work since Metro's heyday: the carving of miles of tunnels in which to bank millions of gallons of overflow until it can be treated.

Not only would the system enhance -- though not guarantee -- the possibility of swimming and better fishing, officials said, but cleaner water could foster development along shorelines, particularly that of the Anacostia, which absorbs the bulk of the dumping.

"I think we are now, for the first time, on a path that brings us to a solution instead of another study. And that's very exciting," said Marchant Wentworth, of the Sierra Club, who has followed the issue for three decades.

Scheduled to be released Friday, the proposal was described in broad terms by WASA officials in interviews. It has two elements likely to raise concerns during the public reviews and hearings that, by year's end, will lead to delivery of a final draft to the Environmental Protection Agency, which controls WASA's operating permit.

If sanctioned, the solution might increase residential sewer bills in Washington by 20 percent over time, even if the federal government covered as much as three-fourths of the cost. Second, WASA's improvements would eliminate only 92 percent of the overflows. A quarter of a billion gallons of storm runoff laced with sewage would still be diverted to rivers during a handful of heavy storms annually.

Already, environmental groups have demanded that WASA try to get closer to eliminating all discharges and insisted that pollution laws not be relaxed to accommodate any.

"They're lowering the bar at the very beginning of the process, rather than making every effort to get us to standards," said David S. Baron, a lawyer for Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund, which helped several groups sue WASA over the storm overflows. Baron said he was also concerned about how long it would take WASA to implement its tunnel plan, roughly two decades.

Even so, many environmental groups, impressed with WASA's effort, said the authority seems poised to make cuts in discharges, 29 years after passage of the federal Clean Water Act. They credit, in part, Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D), who appointed the WASA board.

"People are finally realizing it's just time," said Jim Connolly, executive director of the Anacostia Watershed Society.

Sewer and storm water releases are hardly unique to Washington. About 950 jurisdictions serving 40 million people have systems in which sewage and storm runoff share pipes, according to the EPA. The combined systems date from the era before treatment plants, when blending sewage with runoff helped to dilute the impact of human waste before it wound up in rivers or lakes.

About one-third of the District -- 12,955 acres in older, core neighborhoods and including the White House and Capitol Hill -- is served by a combined system largely built in the 19th century. The rest of the city uses a more modern disposal method, in which sewage goes into one set of pipes, which takes it to Blue Plains, and storm runoff goes into another set, which takes it to rivers.

Most days now, the contents of the city's combined system -- effluent from toilets, dishwashers, sinks, baths and showers, along with runoff from light rain or snow -- wind up at Blue Plains, too. There, in Southeast Washington, pollutants are removed before the water is discharged into the Potomac.

But when precipitation is heavier -- as it was Friday -- the combined system can run out of room in places, and the excess is sent to the rivers through 58 outlets, all downstream of intake pipes for drinking water. Some of the overflow receives cursory treatment immediately before being dumped, but not nearly enough to render it clean.

Overall, the emergency overflows contain a gallon of sewage for every three or four gallons of runoff, and the annual total of sewage released in the overflows is about equal to what Blue Plains treats in two days, about 700 million gallons.

WASA officials have said repeatedly that their storm releases are far from the only source of pollution in the rivers, particularly the Anacostia. Toxins, sediments, fecal matter and many other pollutants flush into the Anacostia from upstream in Maryland or elsewhere in the District. Controlling storm releases would not cleanse the river, they said.

But Jim Collier, chief of the bureau of environmental quality in the District's Department of Health, said controlling them "is necessarily priority number one" because "sanitary sewage carries a huge number of human pathogens," microorganisms that cause disease.

Yet the overflow problem has been allowed to continue because the EPA had other priorities; the city had other issues; and solutions are costly, officials said. Baron, of Earthjustice, said there was "an endless desire to study it and not resolve it." But a new mayor, better finances, the Earthjustice lawsuit and a new EPA emphasis have changed the atmosphere, officials said.

WASA rejected one solution: putting sewage and storm water in separate systems. That would be too costly and require too much disruptive construction, officials said. Remedies focusing on increasing treatment capacity were considered too expensive or complex as well.

Under the WASA plan, the centerpiece would be three storage tunnels, bored as many as 70 feet below the city by hundreds of workers. Whenever the old storm-and-sewer system filled, excess flows would be diverted to the concrete-lined tunnels until the crisis eased and the parked contents could be released back into the main system for treatment at Blue Plains.

One tunnel, about eight miles long and 16 feet in diameter, would hold 90 million gallons. It would run roughly from Seventh Street and Florida Avenue NW to Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium, then south to the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge. A second tunnel, roughly from the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Bridge to Key Bridge, would be about 1.5 miles long and 20 feet in diameter and bank 25 million gallons. The last, 15 feet in diameter, would store 4 million gallons and run about three-quarters of a mile, from 16th Street NW to Rock Creek Parkway.

Michael S. Marcotte, WASA's chief engineer, said that the tunnels would be constructed with minimal disruption of neighborhoods. Boring equipment would be lowered into shafts and then cut horizontally, largely following the streets above. Residents should hear and feel little, Marcotte said.

The plan also calls for significant improvements in pumping capacity. And there would be stepped-up efforts to reduce how much runoff reaches the underground system by, for example, planting more vegetation to absorb rain atop buildings.

Overall, emergency discharges would be cut 92 percent. Storm overflows could be reduced further with bigger tunnels, Marcotte said. But additional capacity costs proportionately more, and the community must decide whether that money is best spent on further reductions in overflows or on attacking other pollution sources, Marcotte said.

But some environmentalists said achieving greater reduction might not be disproportionately expensive. They said that the goal should be to get as close to full elimination as possible.

"This is not only the 21st century here, but we're in the nation's capital here, and we ought to be a model for the nation and the rest of the world," Baron said.

Another issue will be the $1 billion price tag. Because the federal government built the combined sewer system and because its buildings occupy a significant portion of the area served by the system, it should pay a major share of the cost, WASA and other officials said.

-------- health

Subdivision Still Threatened by Plague

NATION IN BRIEF
Monday, June 25, 2001
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41246-2001Jun24?language=printer

COLORADO SPRINGS -- Bubonic plague will threaten the Colorado Centre neighborhood for another month, according to El Paso County health officials, who told residents Saturday to wear insect repellent, spray their lawns for fleas and protect pets from fleas.

Health officials confirmed Tuesday that prairie dogs in and around the 1,000-home subdivision were infected with bubonic plague. A 28-year-old man who appeared to have plague symptoms died, but the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta said it was unlikely he died of the plague.

A few dozen people in the neighborhood were taking antibiotics as a preventive measure. Plague is transmitted through fleas or by direct contact with sick or dead animals that are infected. Humans and cats are susceptible. Dogs cannot catch it but can carry the infected fleas.

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U.N. AIDS Gathering Draws Thousands

New York Times
June 25, 2001
By CHRISTOPHER S. WREN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/25/world/25CND-NATION.html

UNITED NATIONS, June 25 - Asserting that "in the ruthless world of AIDS, there is no us and them," Secretary General Kofi Annan pleaded today for greater solidarity with AIDS victims, and said the battle against the disease would never be won by blaming or isolating those who become infected.

"When we urge others to change their behavior, so as to protect themselves against infection, we must be able to change our behavior in the public arena," Mr. Annan said as he opened the General Assembly's special session on AIDS, the first devoted solely to a health problem.

"We cannot deal with AIDS by making moral judgments or refusing to face unpleasant facts - and still less by stigmatizing those who are infected, and making out that it is all their fault," Mr. Annan said.

"We can only do it by speaking clearly and openly, both about the ways that people become infected, and about what they can do to avoid infection," he said.

In some African countries, the disease had set back by development by a decade or more, M. Annan said, and was now spreading "with lightning speed in Eastern Europe, Asia and the Caribbean.

Some of the statistics he recited underscoring the toll that the disease has taken: almost 22 million killed, 13 million children orphaned, more than 36 million living with AIDS or the HIV virus that causes it.

"Every day, another 15,000 people acquire the virus," Mr. Annan said.

The secretary general also asked member countries for more contributions to fight AIDS, and said that spending to help developing countries stricken with the disease needed to rise to about five times its present level.

"We must mobilize the money required for this exceptional effort," he said, "and we must make sure it is used effectively."

In April, Mr. Annan proposed creation of a Global Fund, to raise $7 billion to $10 billion annually to fight AIDS and other infectious diseases like tuberculosis and malaria. Today, he said the goal was to make the fund operational by the end of the year.

So far, the United States, France, Britain and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation together have pledged a little more than $500 million.

More than 70 heads of state and government officials are listed to address the delegates in the General Assembly today on the AIDS crisis, including Secretary of State Colin Powell of the United States.

The United Nations conference is scheduled to conclude Wednesday with the signing of a formal declaration setting out goals and targets for containing and reserving the disease.

The drafting of the declaration was delayed after some conservative countries complaining about language in the text, including explicit references to condoms and to homosexuals, prostitutes and intravenous drug users as people who are vulnerable to the disease.

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AIDS Hidden in Myanmar, Expert Says

New York Times
June 25, 2001
By BARBARA CROSSETTE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/25/world/25NATI.html

In American expert on AIDS in Southeast Asia says that the military government of Myanmar is falsifying statistics to hide evidence that the disease has reached epidemic levels there.

The specialist, Chris Beyrer, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health in Baltimore, has just completed a study concluding that 3.46 percent of adults are infected with the virus that causes AIDS.

Dr. Beyrer's study will be presented Monday during a special United Nations General Assembly session on AIDS.

Although this percentage is well below the worst levels of some African nations, it would make Myanmar the second-worst case in Southeast Asia, which has the highest reasonably confirmable rates in all of Asia. Cambodia, for instance, has a rate of infection of about 4 percent of adults.

Medical experts classify a disease as an epidemic when the level of the population affected reaches 2 percent or more.

"The bottom-line issue here is that people who know about the H.I.V. epidemic in the region are very concerned about the situation in Burma," Dr. Beyrer said in an interview, using the country's traditional name. He described the response of the military government as "ominous silence."

The conclusions of Dr. Beyrer, who has worked as a consultant for the World Health Organization in Myanmar, are broadly supported by the findings of United Nations AIDS experts. Unaids, the coordinating body working on the disease within the organization, estimates that 48,000 people in Myanmar died of AIDS in 1999, the year on which Dr. Beyrer and his team based their study. That year, the Burmese government officially reported 802 AIDS deaths.

In the mid-1980's, Myanmar began to follow Thailand's example and take regular measurements of the spread of H.I.V. infections. Dr. Beyrer added that Health Ministry officials compile accurate numbers - which international agencies get and pass on to experts abroad - only to have them brushed aside by the country's military leadership.

In conducting the Johns Hopkins research, Dr. Beyrer and his team looked at the government's own figures collected at clinics and hospitals.

Among Burmese men aged 20 to 44, the researchers calculated, the infection rate is about 5.3 percent. The infection rate for women nationally was below 3 percent, except in the Shan states. In general, the study found, 1 in every 29 adults in Myanmar carries H.I.V.

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U.S., Brazil End Aids Drug Hassle

New York Times
June 25, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-WTO-US-Brazil-AIDS.html

GENEVA (AP) -- The United States has withdrawn a complaint it filed with the World Trade Organization over a law Brazil uses to keep down the costs of AIDS drugs, the two governments said Monday.

Brazilian trade negotiator Jose Alfredo Graca Lima told reporters the two countries had ``come to an understanding'' over the patent law, which requires companies with patents to sell their products in Brazil to manufacture the products there as well.

``It is a victory for both sides, a victory for common sense,'' he said.

In Washington, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick said the U.S. case had nothing to do with AIDS drugs and was a general patent case.

He said that even without the law, Brazil had other options to keep the costs of AIDS drugs down. He noted that under WTO rules, a country experiencing a health emergency -- like the AIDS epidemic -- can force local production of patented drugs.

The United States went to the WTO in February to complain that the 1996 industrial property law violates patent protection rules. It gives the Brazilian government the right to license a company's manufacturing rights to another producer if it doesn't make its product in Brazil -- and imports it instead.

Brazil maintained that its laws are acceptable under WTO rules.

WTO spokesman Keith Rockwell declined to comment, but added that WTO Director-General Mike Moore feels generally that it is better to settle trade disputes ``out of court.''

International aid group Medicins Sans Frontieres, also known in English as Doctors Without Borders, said the Brazilian government's program allowed it to offer free treatment to more than 90,000 patients. That would be threatened if Brazil had to accept higher-priced imported drugs.

Graca Lima said Brazil had agreed with Washington that it would give 10 days' notice before it licensed a company's manufacturing rights to another company.

In a joint statement released in Rio de Janeiro, the two governments said that they considered the agreement to be ``an important step toward a greater cooperation between the two countries in relation to our common objectives of the fight against AIDS and of protection of intellectual property rights.''

Ellen 't Hoen, spokeswoman for MSF's Access to Essential Medicines campaign, described the agreement as ``very good news.''

``Local production of pharmaceuticals is at the core of Brazil's successful AIDS program. Through local production they've managed to lower the prices of retrovirals by 78 percent,'' she said. ``Because of the threat of this case we were all very worried that Brazil would over time lose the ability to do that.''

In a statement, the Brazilian government said it felt ``great satisfaction'' at the U.S. withdrawal of the complaint.

It said it believed its law is ``an important instrument available to the government, in particular in its efforts to increase access of the population to medicines and to combat diseases such as AIDS.''

---------

US to Give More Money to Fight AIDS

New York Times
June 25, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-UN-AIDS-Powell.html

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Calling the AIDS pandemic worse than war, Secretary of State Colin Powell promised on Monday that the United States would give more money to a global fund to fight the disease and would remain a leader in funding AIDS research.

Powell told the first U.N. special session ever to focus on a disease that the 36 million people afflicted with the HIV virus or AIDS must be treated with ``compassion, not ostracism.'' The key to ending the epidemic, he said, is ``prevention, prevention and more prevention.''

``Our response to AIDS must be no less comprehensive, no less relentless, and no less swift than the pandemic itself,'' Powell said, decrying that it had taken 20 years to gather the world's nations to address what has become a global scourge.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called for a war chest of $7 billion to $10 billion annually to halt and start reversing the spread of AIDS, which has killed more than 22 million people and left tens of millions more facing a death sentence, the vast majority in Africa.

Last month, President Bush announced that the United States would give $200 million in ``seed money'' to the global fund.

Powell said the United States would eventually increase its contribution, but did not say how much more money would be contributed or when.

``We hope this seed money will generate billions more from donors all over the world, and more will come from the United States as we learn where our support can be most effective,'' Powell told delegates from more than 180 nations.

``I think it's always been clear that as we are able to, we would add more money to the trust fund as we went forward,'' he told reporters later, after meeting privately with Annan. ``I would expect that additional funds will be found in the future, and appropriated for this purpose in the future.''

Powell also said he and Annan want the fund -- which he expects to grow to a billion dollars with new pledges during the conference -- to start being used to fight AIDS by the end of the year.

Beyond the global fund, he told the General Assembly that the United States has been, and will remain, the largest bilateral donor in the fight against AIDS, providing 50 percent of all international funding.

``To date, the United States has dedicated over $1.6 billion to combat AIDS in (the) developing world. President Bush's budget for the next fiscal year seeks $480 million, more than double the fiscal year 2000 amount,'' Powell said.

Bush is also requesting more than $3.4 billion for AIDS research, he said.

``The United States, I pledge today, will continue to lead the world in funding vital research,'' Powell said.

``No war on the face of the world is more destructive than the AIDS pandemic. I was a soldier. I know of no enemy in war more insidious or vicious than AIDS, an enemy that poses a clear and present danger to the world,'' said the retired four-star general and former chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Last September, leaders from more than 150 nations pledged to halt and start reversing the AIDS pandemic by 2015. The three-day U.N. conference will adopt interim targets and a blueprint to combat the killer disease.

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UN AIDS Meeting Opens with Pleas for Money, Rights

New York Times
June 25, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/science/science-aids-un-dc.html

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Declaring AIDS had wiped out a decade of progress in some areas, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Monday called on the world to speak frankly about the disease that has already killed 22 million people.

``We cannot deal with AIDS by making moral judgements or refusing to face unpleasant facts -- and still less by stigmatizing those who are infected and making out that it is all their fault,'' he told the opening of the U.N. General Assembly's first special session on AIDS.

The meeting, attended by presidents, prime ministers, and health ministers, runs for three days with a myriad of side events and 3,000 activists, health experts, business leaders and AIDS victims descending on New York for the conference.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, in his address, said the AIDS epidemic was more destructive than any war and promised the United States would provide more money for a global fund as well as research for a cure.

He did not say how much more the Bush administration would contribute but said the initial $200 million U.S. contribution was ``seed money'' and ``only a beginning''. The U.N. estimates that some $10 billion is needed to fight the epidemic.

Appealing for compassion for AIDS victims, Powell told the Assembly, the United States also would continue to lead the way in financing research for a cure.

``From this moment on, our response to AIDS must be no less comprehensive, no less relentless and no less swift than the pandemic itself,'' he said.

``No war on the face of the world is more destructive than the AIDS pandemic,'' he said. ``I was a soldier and I know of no enemy in war more insidious or vicious than AIDS, an enemy that poses a clear and present danger to the world.''

Annan's remarks touched on one of the main controversies in the conference's final declaration that is still in dispute, Assembly President Harri Holkeri of Finland told delegates.

Islamic states and others oppose Western and Latin American nations in naming homosexuals, intravenous drug users, prostitutes and prisoners as groups particularly vulnerable to AIDS in a declaration the conference will approve. They say such behavior offends religious and moral sensitivities.

The same countries also objected to participation in a round-table on Tuesday of the San Francisco-based International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, an issue Holkeri said would have to be settled at the end of the day.

Consequently, an uproar resulted at the end of the morning speeches with Islamic states leaving the assembly hall to deny a quorum after they, and some allies from Africa, had lost a 63-46 vote with 19 abstentions to exclude the group.

But Halkeiri said they could not speak and then pretend they were not in the room as delegates continued to debate procedures.

GALLOPING EPIDEMIC

Annan, in his remarks, warned nations that all AIDS victims, regardless of their background, should be addressed or the world could not come to grips with the galloping epidemic.

``Let us remember that every person who is infected -- whatever the reason -- is a fellow human being, with human rights and human needs,'' Annan told the assembly.

``When we urge others to change their behavior so as to protect themselves against infection, we must be ready to change our own behavior in the public arena,'' Annan said.

The epidemic has struck some 36 million people, 25 million of them in Africa. The disease, first discovered exactly 20 years ago, has killed almost 22 million people and left 13 million children without parents.

In some African countries, the virus has set back development by a decade or more, infecting the most productive workers. And now AIDS is spreading with ``frightening speed'' to eastern Europe, Asia and the Caribbean, Annan said.

Calling the global response not enough to meet the challenge, Annan said spending on AIDS in the developing world needed to rise to roughly five times its present level, now estimated at $2.3 billion, half of it for treatment in Brazil.

He appealed again for nations and private donors to contribute to his proposed global war chest to combat AIDS and related diseases, saying developing countries were ready to provide their share ``but they cannot do it alone.''

Speaking at the conference are Cabinet ministers from dozens of nations, but nearly all the 26 presidents and prime ministers are from heavily affected African or Caribbean countries. However, South African President Thabo Mbeki, though in Washington this week, is not attending the meeting.

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African Leaders Speak at UN Summit

New York Times
June 25, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-UN-AIDS-Conference.html

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- One after another, African leaders at the United Nations' first global gathering on HIV/AIDS made emotional pleas for help Monday in ending the devastation wrought by the epidemic. Nigeria's president warned that entire populations face extinction.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan, seeking $7-10 billion for a global AIDS fund, said AIDS spending ``in the developing world needs to rise to roughly five times its present level.'' The Americans pledged to provide more aid, but did not say how much.

Annan, a native of Ghana who has made the fight against AIDS his personal priority, opened the three-day special session by urging world leaders to set aside moral judgments and face the unpleasant facts of a disease that has killed 22 million people and ravaged many of the world's poorest nations.

Kenya and Nigeria are each home to more than 2 million HIV patients. In Botswana, more than 20 percent of the adult population is infected, and in South Africa, AIDS will knock off 17 years of life expectancy by 2005.

``The future of our continent is bleak, to say the least,'' Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo said. ``The prospect of extinction of the entire population of a continent looms larger and larger.''

Obasanjo and others called for ``total cancellation of Africa's debt,'' which takes badly needed money away from health and social programs including the fight against AIDS.

``The undeniable fact is that with the fragility of our economies, we simply lack the capacity to adequately respond to the magnitude of the HIV/AIDS epidemic,'' the Nigerian leader said.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, leading the U.S. delegation, said more money would come from the United States -- which has already pledged $200 million in seed money -- ``as we learn where our support will be most effective.''

``Our response to AIDS must be no less comprehensive, no less relentless, no less swift than the pandemic itself,'' Powell told the General Assembly.

Several speakers, including Powell, acknowledged that the global response to AIDS has been woefully late. Britain's Clare Short, secretary for international development, went a step further by criticizing the very gathering she addressed.

``We waste too much time and energy in U.N. conferences and special sessions. We use up enormous energy in arguing at great length over texts that provide few if any follow-up mechanisms or assurances that governments and U.N. agencies will carry forward the declarations that are agreed,'' she said.

Indeed, the Monday morning session ended in more than two hours of arguments over whether to exclude the U.S.-based International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission from the conference. Eleven unidentified countries wanted to keep the group out, but Canada led a successful vote in the assembly to include it.

Elsewhere in the building, diplomats squabbled over a final conference document that will map out a global strategy to halt the disease and reverse its effects. Muslim countries and the United States object to language that specifically names vulnerable groups in need of protection, including men who have sex with men.

Noting the weeks of infighting among delegates leading up the gathering, Annan told the 189-nation General Assembly: ``We cannot deal with AIDS by making moral judgments or refusing to face unpleasant facts, and still less by stigmatizing those who are infected. We can only do it by speaking clearly and plainly, both about the ways that people become infected, and about what they can to avoid infection.''

But expectations for a successful gathering remained high and varied for many of the 3,000 participants, including health experts, politicians, scientists, AIDS activists and patients working to find an end to the scourge.

Three days of conferences and meetings touch on everything from drug prices to homosexuality, AIDS orphans and funding.

To allow some delegates to participate, the United States waived visa restrictions that prevent those with HIV or AIDS from visiting the country.

U.N. radio and an online Webcast will broadcast many of the events around the world in the six official languages of the United Nations -- Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish.

Two dozen heads of state, mostly from Africa, are attending the General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS, though no wealthy nation sent a president or prime minister

``It is important for the fund to have criteria that will ensure that resources are used to meet the needs of countries most affected by HIV/AIDS such as my own,'' President Festus Mogae of Botswana said.

Uganda, a rare success story among African nations battling the disease, became the first developing nation to give to a global AIDS fund Monday with a $2 million donation. Rates of infection in Uganda have declined by two-thirds since 1993.

Canada added its contribution to those made earlier by the United States, Britain and France, for a total of some $600 million so far.

Pfizer's chairman, president and CEO said that the $7-10 billion goal was overly ambitious. U.S. delegate Henry McKinnell said that even if that amount could be raised, the infrastructure does not exist to put it to work.

A study published Friday in the journal Science said the world's poorest countries will need $9.2 billion a year to deal with AIDS -- $4.4 billion to treat people with the illness and $4.8 billion to prevent new infections.

-------- human rights

UN to seek agreement on access to seed banks
Story by David Brough
REUTERS
ITALY: June 25, 2001

http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11316&newsDate=25-Jun-2001

ROME - Talks at the United Nations world food body next week will seek agreement on access to public seed banks, which could affect the ability of scientists to develop new crops to feed the hungry.

The meeting of the Commission for Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, part of the Food and Agriculture Organisation, will bring together representatives of 161 nations seeking to conserve the world's genetic resources.

A main focus of the meeting, which runs from June 25-30, will be to reach agreement on how life science companies and plant breeders should pay for resources kept at the world's public seed banks.

Public seed banks lend out crop seeds at no charge to enable plant breeders and geneticists to develop new crop varieties, which could improve yields to tackle hunger and increase resistance to global warming.

"The meeting aims to facilitate access by plant scientists to seeds," Jose Esquinas-Alcazar, Secretary of the Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, told Reuters on Friday.

"There should be an equitable sharing of the benefits derived from genetic resources," he said.

Until now, seed exchanges have operated informally on the principle of "common heritage" - an agreement that they are a shared international resource.

However, change has been forced by the U.N. Convention for Biological Diversity, which made nations responsible for their own genetic resources.

Representatives at the meeting will discuss payment options for access to public seed banks, such as royalties paid into a central fund.

PROTECTING GENETIC RESOURCES

Esquinas-Alcazar said a main aim of the meeting was to protect the inherited components of biodiversity, which were dwindling fast.

"Records show that more than 7,000 species of plants have been used by mankind since agriculture started more than 10,000 years ago," he said.

"Today there are just 120 cultivated crops. Only 12 of these provide for more than 80 percent of our food, and only four - rice, maize, potatoes and wheat - represent 60 percent of our food," he added.

Esquinas-Alcazar said more than 90 percent of the agricultural diversity that existed at the beginning of the 20th century had been lost.

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Harsh Chinese Reality Feeds a Black Market in Women

New York Times
June 25, 2001
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/25/world/25BRID.html?pagewanted=all

GAOSHI, China - When a man offered Feng Chenyun temporary work in another city, she jumped at the chance. Barely literate and desperately poor, Ms. Feng had two children, 10 and 16, and it was nearly impossible to scrape together school fees from her small plot of rice and rape seed.

Her husband was working as a migrant laborer 1,000 miles away, in Guangdong Province. At 37, she had never left her county in Sichaun Province and was feeling restless.

"I went with him because he was offering me work," she said, recounting from her small dark home the start of a tale that still brings tears three years later. "I just wanted to get out and earn a bit of money."

Instead, Ms. Feng was kidnapped, drugged, placed on a train and sold for about $1,500 as a bride to a brick maker in faraway Xinjiang Province - becoming one of the tens if not hundreds of thousands of poor Chinese women who are sold on a black market each year.

Since last year, the government has been waging a harsh campaign against trafficking in women, featuring highly publicized arrests, death sentences, rescues and the like. But the trade, though significantly damped, still thrives in rural areas because it arises from the mathematics of gender in rural China, reflected in the equations of supply and demand:

¶In rural China, there are nearly 120 boys for every 100 girls because rural couples, who favor sons, abort fetuses and abandon newborns that are female.

¶In much of rural China, it is considered culturally and economically essential that 100 percent of the men find brides and produce heirs.

¶Net sum: For every 100 rural men who marry, 20 others must resort to extraordinary measures to find brides, like buying women kidnapped from urban areas.

The trade also reflects the extremely low social status of poor rural women. Rural girls get inferior schooling, training and medical attention when compared with boys. Not surprisingly, they grow up with little hope or confidence. Most kidnappings occur when uneducated young women leave their hometowns looking for jobs.

"Abduction is a very serious problem for these women," said Xie Lihua, editor of Rural Women Knowing All, a self-help magazine. "They have few resources to draw on. They are desperate for work, but don't know what is suitable or how to find it. So they can be easily tricked, then forced to work as prostitutes or sold to poor men who can't find wives."

It is unclear exactly how big the problem is, although reports in the state press say that as of 1999, the police were rescuing 10,000 women a year, clearly representing only a fraction of those kidnapped. That year, before the current crackdown started, abductions of women were rising 30 percent a year, the state press reported. Abductions of children, generally young boys bought by heirless families, were rising 15.3 percent a year.

The densely populated, hardscrabble mountain villages of Sichuan province, like Gaoshi, have become a principal source of women for sale.

In Sichaun's capital, Chengdu, the dirt lot around the vast concrete Nine Eye Bridge Labor Market, the city's largest, is dotted with young country girls in loose shifts and plastic sandals. "Do you need a worker?" they hopefully ask each visitor who enters.

"So many are abducted from this place," said Zhu Wenguang, a private detective who rescues abducted women, noting that the city government recently moved the labor market from a bridge to the edge of town to try to cut down on the trafficking.

In April, a court in Sichuan sentenced Zhou Legui, a trafficker, to death for selling more than 100 women to other provinces, many of whom were abducted from this labor market, press reports said.

"In villages, there is a long tradition of prizing males and looking down on females," Mr. Zhu explained. "So the best local women from the countryside can hope for is to get away, to look for work elsewhere - and that leaves them very vulnerable."

Mr. Zhu said most of the women are sold to remote places that are even poorer than rural Sichuan or where the ratio of men to women is even more lopsided. Studies have found that it approaches 140 to 100 in some places, generally those with strict enforcement of the family planning policy that limits parents to one or two children.

In such places, the scarcity of women has already dramatically altered the economics of marriage: young men must pay the families of their brides-to-be huge sums, "bride prices," dowries in reverse.

Bride prices in some areas can run over $4,000. "But you can get an abducted wife on the black market for a quarter of that," Mr. Zhu said. "So that fuels the trade."

Once the girls have left Sichuan, locating them and bringing them home is costly and time-consuming, since relatives most often have no idea where they have gone. Police campaigns have focused mostly on breaking smuggling rings and bringing traffickers to justice.

Families with money hire Mr. Zhu, a former policeman, to help rescue those who have disappeared. But he spends months researching and preparing for each rescue and his services cost about $500, or 10 years' income for many rural families. Many simply give up on ever seeing their daughters or wives again, just another hardship to endure.

Down a dirt path in a mountain village so poor and remote that it is still called the 281 Brigade, a name dating from the Mao-era collectivization of farms, Peng Zhihua and his wife cling to a picture of their younger daughter, their only keepsake.

Tall and thin, wearing bright red lipstick, a blue V-neck sweater and high heeled boots, this trendy girl, Jinlian, is hard to imagine in her family's crude mud home, where sky peeks through the rough timbers that serve as a roof and large woven trays of silkworms - food for the ducks - are the main fixture in a sitting room.

Peng Jinlian was fond of fashion, so her parents scraped together the money to send her, at 15, to a seamstress course in nearby Guangfu Township. She never returned.

On Sept. 29, 1998, she and two friends were lured from Guangfu by the promise of work, and she was sold as a bride to a man in Shanxi Province. One friend later escaped and reported her whereabouts.

Mr. Peng said that family has spent about $270 buying police officers meals and gifts of cigarettes, "hoping to induce them to help us." But the local police said that they could not pursue the case until they had caught the trafficker, and that there was no money for rescues in distant provinces anyway.

For nearly three years, the Pengs have not heard from Jinlian. They do not know whom she married, whether she has children, if she is happy or miserable. Many abducted girls, penniless, illiterate and without friends in their new homes, have no means of escaping or contacting their families. Brigade 281, like many mountain villages, has no phones.

The abduction has created an economic nightmare for the Pengs, since they have lost not just their child, but also the only old-age insurance they had. In rural China, grown son's families usually take care of aging parents. But the Pengs have only two daughters, and the older one is already married and living in another village.

They remain hopeful, though the odds may be against Jinlian's return. Over time abducted women often become accustomed to their new life, particularly if they are young and the village is not so bad off.

Having been promised in marriage to a man they do not know may not seem so repugnant to poor rural girls. In traditional families, a daughter's spouse is chosen by her father.

And once the transplanted brides give birth to children, they have a strong incentive to stay, since they often must leave their children behind if they move away. "In many of these places, children stay with the man since at least that way he has his heir," Mr. Zhu said. "The local authorities know that he can't possibly buy another wife."

The police acknowledge that some rescued women refuse to return home. Last year, out of 300 sold women rescued from Lufeng, a prosperous southern coastal city, more than 20 decided to stay, state press reports said.

Ms. Feng, the woman who was sold to a brick maker in Xinjiang, said that from the start, she was desperate to return home, but also resigned to her fate. A small stout women with pigtails, she said she did not realize that she was being sold until she got off the train in Xinjiang and was handed off to her new mate. "I was miserable and homesick," she said, "but they had taken my money and my ID before when I was abducted, so I really didn't have any choice."

Soon after her arrival, they had a small wedding ceremony with his work mates, a banquet, with sweets and cigarettes. But she complained bitterly, so he kept her in the house 24 hours a day.

Over time, he began to trust her enough to give her small amounts of money to buy food. And on one of her outings, she managed to place a call to the pay phone near her family's house. She spoke to her 16-year-old daughter, who was living alone with her 10-year-old son. "I told my daughter I wanted to come home and that if they still wanted me, they could come rescue me," she recalled, explaining that she felt her abduction had tainted her. "If not, I said they could forget it."

Two relatives organized a first failed attempt, which ended up with the two men beaten by the brick maker's friends. He hid her in another location.

Finally, Ms. Feng's family contacted Mr. Zhu, the detective. With the help of the local police, he managed eventually to find and free her nine months after she was abducted. Three months pregnant at the time, she has since had an abortion.

Poor men who buy brides, sometimes for 10 times their annual income, never let them go easily, Mr. Zhu said. When he finally finds an abducted woman, he immediately handcuffs her to himself, so an enraged man can not steal her back.

Ms. Feng said that her family spent about $1,250 of mostly borrowed money on the rescue and that she will never be tempted to leave Gaoshi again. But other women, naïve and desperate for work, will certainly take her place. Her daughter recently left the village in search of work. "She's very confident, but she's young, and I worry a lot about her," she said.

Some women are kidnapped again and again. Last year Gu Xuchen, 34, was sold to a man in Inner Mongolia. She too was pregnant when Mr. Zhu rescued her this March, dropping her back at her family home in a remote mountain valley surrounded by terraced fields of dry red earth.

One month and one abortion later, she headed out along the same path that had led to her abduction.

"She left a while ago, but I don't know where," said a grizzled old man, her father-in-law, who was sifting corn in front of the simple mud house early last month. "She had to find work."

--------

Court Grants Reprieve to Immigrants

New York Times
June 25, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Scotus-Immigrants.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court granted a reprieve Monday to many legal immigrants with criminal convictions, ruling they cannot be deported without a court hearing.

The 5-4 majority disagreed with a provision of a 1996 law that barred court review of removal orders for immigrants convicted of aggravated felonies.

The rulings, in two separate cases, primarily concerned those who pleaded guilty under an old law that provided such review -- but faced deportation proceedings under the new, more restrictive legislation.

Lawyers representing immigrants have contended Congress could not prevent judges from reviewing constitutional claims. The Justice Department argued in favor of the law, saying the intent was to avoid delays in removing criminals from the country.

The rulings in both cases were 5-4.

Justice John Paul Stevens, in the majority opinion, said aliens who pleaded guilty under the old law ``almost certainly relied'' on their right to a court review ``in deciding whether to forgo their right to a trial. The ``elimination of any possibility of ... relief ... has an obvious and severe retroactive effect,'' he wrote.

``We therefore hold that relief remains available for aliens ... whose convictions were obtained through plea agreements and who, notwithstanding those convictions, would have been eligible for ... relief at the time of their plea under the law then in effect.''

Two 1996 laws were at issue: the Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. They dramatically altered the government's treatment of aliens who commit crimes or face deportation for other reasons.

Previously, some aliens facing deportation could seek a waiver from the attorney general. The option disappeared for immigrants convicted of aggravated felonies.

One case involved a government appeal seeking to deport a man from Haiti who pleaded guilty to a drug crime in Connecticut. The other involved an appeal by three natives of the Dominican Republic, Mexico and Guyana who were ordered deported for drug crimes in New York state.

Immigration officials ordered all four aliens deported and said the new law barred them from seeking a waiver.

Stevens was joined in the majority by Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer. Dissenting were Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas and Chief Justice William Rehnquist.

The Haitian, Enrico St. Cyr, won rulings by a federal trial judge and the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals allowing him to seek a waiver because his crime occurred before the new law took effect. The other three aliens took similar arguments directly to the appeals court.

In each case, the 2nd Circuit court said that because the new law barred appeals court review of such issues, the aliens could file a petition in federal trial court.

Denying all court review would ``raise a serious constitutional question,'' the appeals court said in the St. Cyr case.

The cases are Immigration and Naturalization Service v. St. Cyr, 00-767, and Calcano-Martinez v. Immigration and Naturalization Service, 00-1011.

-------- police

Zero Common Sense

Monday, June 25, 2001; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41203-2001Jun24?language=printer

I read with horror the June 20 news story "2 Boys, a Paper Gun and a Heap of Trouble." I suppose we need to change the words of the chant to "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can land me in juvenile court."

The incident -- an 8-year-old boy in New Jersey being charged with making "terroristic threats" for brandishing a paper gun -- would be laughable if it weren't so ridiculous and, worse yet, true. If anything is worse than the proliferation of well-intentioned but ill-conceived laws that allow for such a travesty, it's the enforcement of them by adults who choose blind adherence to the letter, not the spirit, of the law.

I agree with the school district's zero-tolerance policy, but in this case, there's nothing to tolerate. Little boys like to "play guns," and they'll use their index finger and the word "bang" if nothing else is available.

The most serious wound young Hamadi Alston could have inflicted with his pretend weapon is a paper cut. I don't think that justifies a juvenile record.

JOHN HINGEL, Fairfax Station

-------- spying

Flying high over China

June 25, 2001
Jed L. Babbin
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20010625-28663854.htm

President Bush´s decision to not sell Taiwan the Aegis destroyers and Patriot PAC-3 missiles they need to defend themselves against the Chinese missiles arrayed against them was obviously an effort to placate the mainland Chinese. And it failed.

Now, as we sit back and watch the communist Chinese hold their practice invasion of an island near Taiwan, we must continue our reconnaissance flights near China and over the areas where the war games are held. In these flights, we can learn more about Chinese communist capabilities and intent than from any other intelligence source.

After the Chinese forced the grounding of our EP-3 reconnaissance aircraft, the fainthearts raised the question of the need to continue these flights. Many of those advocating ending the flights are simply afraid of offending someone, and anxious to substitute their timidity for policy. Set aside for the moment that our aircraft are operating in international airspace, and have every right to do so. You have to proceed from the fact that the Chinese are an adversary. There is no other word for them. People can argue forever about the how and why of it, but the Chinese are as much an adversary now as the Russians were throughout the history of the Soviet Union. Our national security depends, in no small part, on our ability to gather intelligence on the capability and intent of China.

If intelligence about Chinese abilities and intents is essential, then there are two reasons that the reconnaissance flights are important. First, satellites can and do provide both imagery and listening capability. Whether by photo reconnaissance or radar imaging, satellites can bring us very refined pictures from the relative safety of space. The ability to resolve images i.e., see details down to the size of someone´s Jeep gives satellites the ability to provide essential data about who is where, how many they are and where they may be headed.

The other part of satellite intelligence, the listening in to someone´s radio and other electronic traffic, is also quite good, but not as good as the closer-in aircraft. And both imagery and listening capabilities are sporadic. Satellites don´t stay over the same place all the time, they orbit the Earth and only pass over a given area every hour or so. Adversaries know the orbits, positions and periods of our satellites all too well. Their own radar and satellites tell them where ours are. And they can hide ground forces from them with relative ease.

But the second reason that we need to continue these flights is that they provide an entirely different type of information than we can get from our high birds. Call it sampling dynamic responses.

To tell what an adversary´s capabilities are, you have to see how they respond to different stimuli. If we know how our allies react, it´s because we train and conduct military exercises with them to develop tactics and share methods. To tell how an adversary will react, you need to play a bit of a cat and mouse game with him.

You can learn an enormous amount about what an adversary will do, and can do, by flying an aircraft near its shores. Which radars get turned on first? How far away can they track you? How much radio traffic is generated, and from where? How long does it take for them to scramble an aircraft to challenge you or take your picture, and where do they come from? What types of aircraft come up on short notice? How many transmissions do you detect before something visible happens? From that, you can tell how many layers of command have to get their 2 cents in before someone actually does something.

In addition, when an adversary is conducting military exercises like the ones about to go on, a nearby aircraft can see and hear things that tell you a huge pack of facts about how it does its business. Details of tactics and order of battle the who, what, where, when and why of combat can be seen up close and personal from a nearby bird. Satellites can take some of this in, but one closeup is worth a thousand far off guesses. And it´s worth the risks and costs. Reconnaissance flights over their war games give us information that is priceless.

When you gather these data, you can analyze the traffic to see the adversary´s methods and means. You can tell a lot about its command structure, how long it takes to react and where the commanders are likely to be located at a given time.

Seeing how an adversary reacts to your non-intrusive sniffing, you learn how good its people are. The Chinese lost a pilot not just because he was a hot-dogger. Every fighter pilot is a hot-dogger, or he´s not a real fighter pilot. The Chinese lost a pilot because he was a poor excuse for a hot-dogger. That showed us how limited the Chinese pilots are in skill and training, and tells us a lot about how we can deal with them in peace or, if necessary, in war.

The reconnaissance flights should continue because they can give us information we can´t get elsewhere, information that can save American lives, and win battles. Keep 'em flying.

Jed L. Babbin is a former undersecretary of defense in the prior Bush administration.

----

Former Spy Chief Returned to Peru After Being Captured in Venezuela

New York Times
June 25, 2001
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/25/world/25CND-PERU.html

BUENOS AIRES, June 25 - Vladimiro Montesinos, the former Peruvian spy chief and longtime C.I.A. agent wanted on charges of gun running, money laundering and collaborating with drug traffickers, was returned to the Peruvian capital today after being captured in Venezuela on Saturday night with crucial help from the F.B.I.

A Peruvian National Police plane that left Caracas early this morning touched down in Lima after a brief refueling stop in a jungle border city, and Mr. Montesinos was whisked to a waiting helicopter.

The helicopter took off after a few minutes but it was not immediately clear where he would be taken - to a high-security prison or to the maximum-security naval prison in Lima's port of Callao.

Justice Minister Diego Carcia Sayan said a decision would be made based on concerns for the safety of Mr. Montesinos.

Mr. Montesinos, who was the principal aide to the ousted Peruvian president, Alberto K. Fujimori, was seized by Venezuelan military intelligence officers in a hideout in Caracas and held at a local military headquarters there. It marked the end of an eight-month international manhunt.

President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela announced the seizure Sunday during a meeting of Andean region leaders and said he had told his interior minister to speed legal proceedings to send him back to Peru to stand trial.

Mr. Chávez, long considered a secret ally of Mr. Montesinos, came under pressure from Peru to make the arrest. He long insisted, despite mounting evidence, that Mr. Montesinos was not under protection in Venezuela. He vowed on Sunday that the 56-year-old spy would be sent back "more quickly than immediately."

"Last night, fortunately, and I thank God for it, we captured Vladimiro Montesinos alive," President Chávez said. He refused to give details of the capture.

Witnesses reported having seen Mr. Montesinos in Venezuela in December seeking plastic surgery. There were persistent reports that he was hiding out at a ranch owned by a Venezuelan tycoon associated with the Venezuelan interior minister in the province of Barinas, protected by 100 guards. Mr. Montesinos had a $5 million bounty on his head.

A Bush administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the F.B.I. had played a crucial role in the capture.

Investigating Mr. Montesinos's money-laundering trail, the F.B.I. arrested three people in Miami on Saturday, including a Venezuelan who said he knew where Mr. Montesinos was hiding, the official said. Senior Peruvian officials were immediately notified, and Peru then demanded that Venezuela take action.

The two other people were later released.

United States officials said that given the overwhelming new evidence of Mr. Montesinos's whereabouts, Mr. Chávez had no choice but to order the arrest.

"We're extremely pleased that Vladimiro Montesinos has finally been caught," said a statement issued by the American Embassy in Lima. "The longstanding U.S.-Peruvian cooperation in the hunt for Montesinos bore fruit over the last few weeks, generating leads which led to the detention of Montesinos."

The statement said United States support over the course of the manhunt had "played a vital role in Montesinos's capture."

The Peruvian interior minister, Antonio Ketin Vidal, agreed that the F.B.I. had played an important role in the capture, though Mr. Chávez credited his own intelligence agency for spotting the fugitive.

Mr. Chávez told reporters Sunday that "certain people" in Venezuela had been hiding the fugitive. Mr. Chávez said he had never seen Mr. Montesinos in person.

Nevertheless, the Venezuelan leader added, "There's bound to be someone who's going to say, `You see, Chávez did have him all along.' "

For months Peruvian authorities have asked that Washington make every effort to find Mr. Montesinos, arguing that the United States had a moral obligation to pursue him.

As a young junior army officer, Mr. Montesinos first helped the C.I.A. in the 1970's by passing the agency documents disclosing Soviet arms purchases by the leftist military government that ruled Peru at the time. He was cashiered and jailed for a year for sabotage, and he became a defense lawyer for drug trafficking suspects after he was freed.

Mr. Montesinos eventually became Mr. Fujimori's personal lawyer, handling a potentially embarrassing tax problem for him during his first presidential election campaign, in 1990, and later his divorce.

On taking office, Mr. Fujimori made Mr. Montesinos his spy chief. The C.I.A. set up an anti-drug force within the National Intelligence Service under Mr. Montesinos's command in the early 1990's.

Mr. Montesinos was credited with coordinating an anti-drug campaign that decreased coca cultivation in Peru by more than half, but he was accused of taking bribes from a number of traffickers.

He used his closeness to American intelligence as an asset in garnering increasing power in Peru, although he was a contentious figure within the Clinton administration. There were repeated debates in the United States government over whether to break off ties with him.

The Clinton administration finally distanced itself from Mr. Montesinos early last year when evidence mounted that he was working to fix the 2000 presidential election and that he was involved in trafficking arms to Colombian guerrillas while the United States was planning an anti-drug plan for Colombia.

Peru's public prosecutor charged Mr. Montesinos last week with amassing a fortune of some $265 million during Mr. Fujimori's decade in power. Mr. Fujimori resigned and fled to Japan last November, escaping looming corruption charges.

Mr. Montesinos has been linked to death squad activities, taking protection money from drug traffickers, running guns to Marxist guerrillas in Colombia and committing electoral fraud to ensure the re-election of Mr. Fujimori to a third term last year, according to prosecutors and Peruvian congressional investigators. He was also linked to purchases of faulty military equipment in return for kickbacks.

Peruvian prosecutors said they would seek a sentence of life in prison for the former spy chief, but they have hinted that they may be more lenient if he agrees to cooperate in other investigations.

Hundreds of videotapes already captured from Mr. Montesinos after his flight have shown him giving bribes and conspiring with congressmen, business executives, army generals, election officials, mayors and owners of television stations. It is likely that he could offer information on scores of officials and others who remain in powerful positions.

Born into a family of Marxist labor organizers, Mr. Montesinos was given Lenin's first name, Vladimir. Former associates said Mr. Montesinos had a taste for diamond-crusted watches, double-breasted suits, military history books and Bach. He had several houses and apartments, including one in Argentina and a beachside mansion outside Lima with a secret tunnel leading from his bath.

Peru's interim president, Valentín Paniagua, expressed satisfaction at the news of the capture, calling Mr. Montesinos the "the mastermind of the worst-ever web of corruption in Peru." He sent Interior Minister Vidal to Caracas to escort Mr. Montesinos back to Lima.

"This is an encouraging development, and it makes possible the ultimate success of the fight for the moralization of Peru," Mr. Paniagua said from the Peruvian city of Arequipa, where he was overseeing a rescue effort after a powerful earthquake that struck southern Peru on Saturday afternoon, killing at least 50 people and leaving thousands homeless.

Peru's prime minister, Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, was in Venezuela for the meeting of Andean leaders in the city of Valencia and is expected to remain in the country to monitor the extradition process.

President-elect Alejandro Toledo, who met with Mr. Chávez on Thursday in Lima, said he hoped that the capture of Mr. Montesinos would accelerate the extradition of former President Fujimori, who is living in an apartment in Japan and has Japanese as well as Peruvian citizenship.

"This is good news for the men and women of Peru anxious for justice," Mr. Toledo, who takes office on July 28, said in a radio interview. "I'm not going to be party to a witch hunt or to vendettas, but neither am I going to be party to impunity."

Mr. Chávez may have owed Mr. Montesinos and Mr. Fujimori a favor, since Peru gave refuge to several Venezuelan officers allied with Mr. Chávez in a failed coup attempt in 1992. After the tainted Peruvian election last year, Mr. Chávez was one of the few Latin American leaders who defended Mr. Fujimori.

--------

Knowledge of KGB a 'Coincidence'

New York Times
June 25, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Military-Espionage.html

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) -- A retired Army Reserve officer accused of spying for the Soviets testified Monday it was only a coincidence that he knew the first names of several KGB officers whose pictures were shown to him by an undercover FBI agent.

Trofimoff, 74, the highest-ranking U.S. military officer to be arrested on spy charges, has denied accusations that he sold thousands of pages of military documents to Moscow over a 25-year period. The retired Army Reserve colonel faces life in prison if convicted.

A former KGB general has described Trofimoff as one of the Soviet Union's top spies during the 1970s.

Testimony wrapped up Monday. After hearing closing arguments, the jury was expected to begin deliberations Tuesday.

Trofimoff repeated his defense that he made up a detailed account of his life as a spy in hopes of getting money from the undercover FBI agent, who was posing as a Russian agent.

Some of Trofimoff's explanation drew snickers from the jury.

``If he had asked me, `Did you give us the Brooklyn Bridge?' I would have told him yes,'' Trofimoff said.

While he was in the Army Reserve, Trofimoff was the civilian head of an Army installation at Nuremberg, Germany, where defectors and refugees from the Soviet bloc were interrogated.

He was living in a military retirement community in Melbourne when he was arrested last year.

--------

San Angelo, Texas: Home of Spies

By Bill Lamb,
Wired News, 2:00 a.m.
June 25, 2001 PDT
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,44578,00.html

SAN ANGELO, Texas -- As president of the chamber of commerce, it is Michael Dalby's job to be this city's biggest civic booster, always available to talk glowingly about the tax base, jobs, home prices and good corporate citizenship.

But his repertoire of good news and optimism contains a little something extra: "We understand the security business."

No doubt.

Thanks to neighboring Goodfellow Air Force Base, this isolated West Texas city of 87,000 may harbor more spies, ex-spies and future spies per capita than any place in America, save Washington, D.C.

Since the late 1950s, the relatively obscure base, 90 miles of two-lane highway south of Abilene, has trained thousands of men and women in the increasingly high-tech art of signals intelligence, known in military jargon as SIGINT.

The stock and trade of the super-secret National Security Agency, SIGINT is one of the most closely held, least discussed aspects of U.S. intelligence efforts.

In San Angelo, however, it's a secret that really isn't, although it may be spoken of in euphemisms or simply referred to in vague terms. Publicly, the base's new armed forces firefighter training program grabs most of the spotlight simply because it is a mission that can be talked about.

"From what (a new resident) reads, he thinks all they do at Goodfellow is train firefighters," said retired Air Force Col. Charles E. Powell, Goodfellow's commanding officer from 1980-1984. "As you well know, that's far from the truth."

Smoke rising from Goodfellow's firefighter training grounds may attract the public's attention, but the work inside windowless brick buildings keeps the NSA's worldwide front lines manned and takes place without acknowledgment. Even passersby -- civilian and military alike -- who photograph nearby flight exhibits are warned not to shoot buildings in the background.

But these simple rules belie the level of security that surrounds Goodfellow's mission. In many respects, the public's perception of how secret something can be is wholly inadequate for describing how carefully the details and technologies of SIGINT operations are guarded.

With an average base contingent of 3,000, and military retirees living in the area numbering in the hundreds, San Angelo residents can never know if a new acquaintance is ­ or was ­one of America's high-tech spies.

Glenn Miller would be one of those unassuming strangers with stories to tell, but don't count on hearing any.

He joined the Air Force in the early 1970s with plans to become an air traffic controller. Those plans changed when he scored well on language aptitude tests and was made an offer he didn't want to refuse. After 37 weeks of Russian language training, he arrived for his first tour at Goodfellow, as a student, in 1972.

"San Angelo was one of those places (the students) either liked or hated. And I think the people who hated it were the single guys," Miller said. "They used to roll the streets up at 9 o'clock around here."

Twenty-three years of active duty led him to additional language studies, multiple tours in Europe -- including a two-year stint at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, a tour at NSA headquarters in Maryland and two additional tours at Goodfellow as both an instructor and supervisor.

Following his second tour at Goodfellow, the Pennsylvania native decided San Angelo was a good place to call home. He and his wife Janet retired to the city in 1994, and he is now a county veterans service officer.

"It was friendly. Low cost of living. And totally different from Pennsylvania. And we didn't want to go back there," he said. "We liked it. We just liked it."

It's not an uncommon story, according to Dalby, who cited two of the more well known Goodfellow retirees: a former base commander who served as mayor and another veteran who established a highly successful chain of convenience stores in the area.

"(Retirees) are serving on different boards and committees here in the community, and that makes for maybe a better understanding of the base's mission than perhaps other communities would have," said Dalby.

While a growing number of European governments question and fear the scope of American SIGINT missions, and privacy advocates protest the presence of American intelligence personnel at overseas collection sites, Goodfellow Air Force Base remains mostly unknown to the public and largely ignored. But the scope and importance of worldwide events aren't ignored in West Texas.

"As a community, we tend to take a little more interest in those kinds of stories," said Dalby.

The only serious threats to Goodfellow have been home grown: A series of proposed base closings during the past two decades left civic leaders scrambling to save the facility. In 1992, thousands of San Angelo residents lined the streets to greet members of a base closure committee in town for a public hearing. At stake was not only the base's financial impact -- Goodfellow is estimated to pump more than $250 million annually into the local economy -- but civic pride.

"Now, that's legendary throughout the Air Force," Dalby said of the outpouring of support.

"That wasn't orchestrated by the chamber or the Kiwanis Club or the Rotarians," Powell said. "It was spontaneous. We even saw school children beside the highway whose teachers had brought the class out. They had crudely printed signs that said, 'We Love Goodfellow.'"

Whether the turnout influenced the decision is debatable, but the committee instead chose to shut down Lowry Air Force Base near Denver. In the end, survival meant growth, since Goodfellow absorbed many of the intelligence missions previously given out to other bases that are now closed. Now, according to Powell and others, it would be difficult to spend a career in Air Force intelligence without some association with Goodfellow and San Angelo.

-------- terrorism

Bin Laden aide denies attack plan
As U.S. forces remain on alert, Israel also warns of terror threat

NBC NEWS AND WIRE REPORTS,
June 25, 2001
http://www.msnbc.com/news/591020.asp?cp1=1

Osama bin Laden is seen in a video report by the Arabic satellite television channel MBC.

http://a799.ms.akamai.net/3/799/388/1a28fa18914551/www.msnbc.com/news/1067494.jpg

As U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf remained on high alert, a close aide to alleged terror kingpin Osama bin Laden on Monday denied a report that his followers were planning strikes against U.S. and Israeli interests in the coming weeks, the Taliban-run news agency reported. Also on Monday, an Israeli minister warned that bin Laden was seeking recruits among the Palestinians to launch attacks on Israel.

"THE REPORT is baseless," bin Laden deputy Abu Hafas said, according to the Bakhtar news agency.

He said that he and bin Laden met the reporter who filed the story, but no such remarks were made by either of them.

"The journalist lied in his report," because no such attack was planned, Hafas said.

The Arabic satellite channel Middle East Broadcasting Corp. footage shown Sunday showed a cross-legged bin Laden sitting on a couch along with a companion and MBC reporter Bakr Atyani.

Bin Laden seemed "happy with the talk of his aides, who said that the coming weeks will hold important surprises that will target American and Israeli interests in the world," Atyani said in the report by the London-based, Saudi-owned broadcaster.

The MBC report said bin Laden refused to comment himself because Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia does not allow him to make statements to the media.

Other footage in the report showed bin Laden's followers, dressed in black with their faces covered, performing military training. Atyani said they were in a major state of mobilization.

THREATCON DELTA

The MBC report comes at an uneasy time. The U.S. State Department issued an alert on Friday, saying that American citizens may be the target of a terrorist threat from extremist groups with links to bin Laden and his Al-Qaida organization. U.S. military forces in the Gulf were put on a heightened state of alert.

The Threatcon Delta alert followed Thursday's indictments in the deadly 1996 bombing of a U.S. Khobar Towers military housing complex in Saudi Arabia.

Combined with the indictments in the Khobar Towers blast and this week's fifth anniversary of the attack, which killed 19 U.S. military personnel, ordering the troops to the highest state of alert was considered the "prudent thing to do," the officials said.

One official acknowledged that by itself, one intercepted threat probably would not have triggered the higher military alert, but after the bombing of the USS Cole, "nobody's going to take that chance."

Bin Laden, accused by the United States of masterminding bombings that killed 224 people at two American embassies in East Africa in 1998, has been living in Afghanistan since 1996. The United States fired Tomahawk missiles into what it said were terrorist training camps in Afghanistan to retaliate for the bombings.

NBC's Robert Windrem reported Monday that that an advance warning by bin Laden flies in the face of his standard operating procedures. In fact, according to U.S. officials, it runs directly counter to how he operates in that there is a history of bin Laden and his operatives calling off attacks when they believe their cover has been blown.

The officials emphasized that there were significant and credible indications of a terrorist attack that led to the terror alert in the Middle East last Friday, but that the specificity of the MBC report did not conform with the threats.

Historically, bin Laden, at least in his public comments, does not take responsibility for an attack. He "goes right up to the edge, but not over it" as one U.S. official noted. There is no history, either, of bin Laden predicting or overtly promoting an attack, again at least publicly.

ISRAELI FEARS

Meantime, Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said that bin Laden was seeking to recruit local operatives to attack Israeli targets.

Ben-Eliezer told a Jewish Agency conference in Jerusalem that bin Laden "is trying very hard to penetrate into the country through local people and through people that he wants to send in different ways to enter Israel to establish an infrastructure here in this country.

"They also plan to attack American and European targets," the minister added. "A coalition has been formed recently between terror organizations, Palestinians, Shi'ites and bin Laden operating against Israeli, American and European targets," he said.

Israel, the target of bombing attacks since a Palestinian revolt against Israeli occupation erupted in September, has faced an array of militant Palestinian and Islamic groups in past years.

The real enemy in the Middle East is Islamic fundamentalism, which has grown most in Iran. They possess missiles which could reach almost any place in Israel and Europe as well. Iran is striving to attain nuclear capabilities and poses the main danger to the free Western world," Ben-Eliezer said.

TALIBAN DENIALS

Despite international pressure and U.N. sanctions, the Taliban have refused to hand bin Laden over for trial on terrorism charges in the United States or a third country. They say he is their guest and that the United States has no evidence that he is involved in terrorism.

The Taliban control about 95 percent of Afghanistan and espouse a strict version of Islam in a country ravaged by decades of chaos and civil war.

The Taliban said Sunday that there was no reason for the United States to be concerned about the possibility of a terrorist strike by bin Laden's followers.

All the activities of Osama bin Laden are under the tight control of the Taliban," Usman Shaharyar, a Taliban Foreign Ministry official, told The Associated Press. "Osama has no such facility in Afghanistan which can be used against any country."

The Taliban decried as falsified a videotape that has circulated among Muslim militants recently, showing members of bin Laden's Afghanistan-based group boasting that its followers carried out the bombing attack that killed 17 U.S. sailors and wounded 39 aboard the USS Cole in Yemen last year.

We thank God for granting us victory the day we destroyed Cole in the sea," says a rallying song that runs with footage of masked men allegedly connected with bin Laden training in a desert camp in Afghanistan. The video shows Islamic militants training in the camp and an interview with bin Laden.

This is all propaganda and remote from reality," Shaharyar said. "Osama has no such facilities."

NBC News' Jim Miklaszewski, Chris Brown and Robert Windrem, and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

----

US to Help India Fight Terrorism - Report

New York Times
June 25, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-india-t.html?searchpv=reuters

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The United States is expected to help India set up a center to fight terrorism and the two countries are expected to forge closer intelligence cooperation on the problem, the Hindu daily reported on Monday.

Indian police arrested four people earlier this month on suspicion of involvement with a group linked to Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden and suspected of plotting attacks on U.S. embassies in India and Bangladesh.

The two countries are likely to discuss the center and agree to step up sharing of intelligence when their officials meet at a two-day session of the Indo-U.S. Joint Working Group on Counter-Terrorism in Washington from Monday, the paper said.

The group has already held two rounds of talks and this week's session is the first since the administration of President Bush took power.

Officials were also expected to discuss the implications of the use by terrorists of chemical and biological weapons, the newspaper said.

India is battling separatist violence in its northeastern states bordering Myanmar, Bangladesh and China, and in the disputed Kashmir region. It is also facing Maoist guerrillas in the jungles of eastern and southern India.

India did not have close relations with the United States during the Cold War when India was generally seen as closer to the then Soviet Union.

Relations between New Delhi and Washington have improved steadily over recent years.

India is among the few countries that have expressed understanding of Bush's planned missile defense system, which has sparked major concern in Russia, Europe and China.

Last week, Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh, said military cooperation with the United States was possible in the era of new ties between the two countries.

-------- activists

Married to a cause
Priest will serve time again for missile protest

By Barry Bortnick/
The Gazette Colorado Springs,
June 25, 2001
http://www.gazette.com/archive/01-06-25/daily/loc1.html

DENVER -- Carl Kabat has spent more than 14 years in federal prison for trying to beat the nation's nuclear swords into plowshares.

The tally will likely go higher next month when the Catholic priest is sentenced in U.S. District Court for trespassing on a Weld County weapons site where he broke bread, poured wine and prayed over a Minuteman III missile silo near the Colorado-Wyoming border.

At 67, Kabat knows the sand is running out of his hourglass. He understands that he could die behind bars.

Kabat does not care. In fact, he laughs at the notion.

"It's worth it to me," a chuckling Kabat said during an interview at a federal detention center in Englewood, recalling 25 years of protests that have put him inside a handful of jail cells since the mid-1970s. "It is worth it even if I die in here tomorrow."

Kabat could receive a term for donning a clown suit, then scaling a barbed wire fence at the N-7 silo 30 miles north of Fort Morgan. The protest occurred Aug. 6 to commemorate the nuclear blast at Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945.

Kabat may get additional federal time for committing the crime while on parole for past anti-military protests. His sentencing date is July 12.

"I expect to get three years," Kabat said, still smiling.

The Weld County Minuteman III silo is one of 49 nuclear launch locations in Colorado. The Minuteman III carries three independently targeted nuclear warheads. Each warhead is 15 to 20 times more powerful than the atomic bombs that leveled Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the close of World War II.

A self-described "fool for Christ," Kabat wore a clown suit, a rainbow-colored wig and white face paint at the Weld County site to draw attention to himself and to illustrate what he says is the absurdity of nuclear weapons.

"We are nutballs, fools, clowns," Kabat said of him and the small band of fellow protesters that has pestered the federal government for decades in an effort to eliminate weapons of mass destruction.

Federal authorities find nothing funny about the Catholic clown's antics.

Armed Air Force personnel surrounded Kabat after he ignored well-posted warnings and scampered over the barbed-wire fence with a sign that read, "We Have Guided Missiles and Misguided Men."

"They deployed security folks, who ran 10 yards and hit the dirt and surrounded us from the back," said Bill Sulzman, an ex-priest and Colorado Springs resident who helped the protest. "It was kind of rough. No broken bones. It was a face-down-in-the-gravel sort of thing."

A bad hip prevented Sulzman from scaling the fence. Authorities later dropped their case against him.

The federal government was not as lenient with Kabat. Prosecutors pointed out that Kabat's peaceful protests put the military on alert inside the weapons site.

"An alarm went off and people had to mobilize," Assistant U.S. Attorney George Gill said during closing arguments in Kabat's May trial. "Forty people had to spend hours dealing with this to make sure the area was secure and the people were not hostile or leaving booby traps."

Kabat's attorney, famed Denver defense counsel Walter Gerash, who represented the priest for free, wept as he tried to convince jurors that Kabat's actions were meant to save humanity from a nuclear holocaust.

"If a mountain lion was mauling a child behind the gate at N-7, wouldn't you go over the wall?" Gerash asked jurors. "He was not trying to save one child from being mauled but billions."

Gerash likened Kabat to nonviolent activists like Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Gandhi, all of whom surrendered their freedom for a moral cause.

"He places his body on the line in order to do good and resist evil," Gerash said in court. "He is an uncommon person among us commoners.

"I'd be ashamed to prosecute this case."

Federal authorities maintain that Kabat planned his protest, expected to be arrested and knew he'd be punished.

"He wanted to get caught so he could extend the message, extend the playtime on this," Gill said in court. "One means of getting attention is to break the law."

The son of an Illinois farmer, Kabat went into the ministry at an early age. He became a missionary in the Philippines and Brazil in the 1960s.

Those posts put Kabat up close and personal with unspeakable poverty and starvation. Upon his return to the United States in the 1970s, he vowed to take a stand and save hungry souls.

He could not understand why the U.S. government spent billions on weapons while millions starved around the globe.

An epiphany of sorts occurred when he saw a detailed documentary on the Hiroshima bomb and its aftermath. He attended peace conferences and church meetings but grew tired of all the pledges and promises.

"All I heard was talk," he recalled. He was ready for action.

The breakthrough happened in 1976 when Kabat and a handful of nuclear proliferation protesters traveled to Plains, Ga., and demonstrated near then-President Carter's home.

Kabat stood by the side of the road with a sign that read, "No More Hiroshimas." He was arrested for obstructing traffic.

It was his first offense and his first taste of jail.

"My body shook my first night in a cell, but from the neck up I felt great," Kabat said. "Finally we had done something."

The charges were quickly dropped, but Kabat had found a lifelong calling.

"Some 6 million people can be killed with one Minuteman III," Kabat said. "That makes no sense."

The anti-nuclear fever sent Kabat on a mission across the country. He poured human blood on the Pentagon and at the White House in 1978 and got six months in prison for his efforts.

"The Pentagon sheds blood," he explained.

He helped anti-weapons activists sneak into a General Electric weapons facility in King of Prussia, Pa., in 1980. That got him a sentence of 18 months in prison.

"I distracted the guards while others went inside and used household hammers to bang on bombshells and beat them into plowshares," Kabat said.

He did six months in 1982 for illegally entering the Strategic Air Command in Omaha, Neb.

He was at it again in 1984 at a Minuteman III site in Missouri. This time he went after the silo cover with a jackhammer, causing about $30,000 damage.

The federal courts sentenced Kabat to 18 years in prison for that stunt. He served seven years but returned to the controversial calling again on April Fool's Day 1994.

The date coincided with Good Friday. Kabat seized on the irony, clothed himself in clown gear and headed to a bomb site in North Dakota where he beat a silo cover with a sledgehammer.

"Had North Dakota seceded from the Union, it would be the world's third nuclear power behind the United States and Russia," Kabat said. "They had 300 missile silos there."

The feds gave him 41/2 years for his crime.

'I'd rather sing and dance'

Kabat walked free from the federal prison in Florence in 1998. He spent time with his brother and younger sister and managed to lie low until last August.

"I got to rest up once in a while," he said with a joyful giggle. "I am not Superman."

"He is the most Christ-like person I have met," said Kabat's sister-in-law, Shirley. "He will do anything for anyone and will sacrifice for anyone. This time in prison is a sacrifice for the rest of us."

Kabat's only surviving brother, Bob Kabat, said his sibling couldn't let people starve while money is "wasted" on weapons.

"He is dedicated and I know he is right," Bob Kabat said. " ... This is his life, and he honestly believes the good Lord wants him to sacrifice himself. Someone will eventually catch on to what he is doing."

Meanwhile, Kabat sits in yet another jail cell each night. He plays slow-pitch softball with fellow inmates and waits for one more federal hammer to fall.

And as always, he'll take his lumps with a laugh.

"I could lose heart, I suppose," Kabat said. "But I'd rather sing and dance, then spread mustard seeds and hope something grows."

----

Anti - Globalization Activists March

The New York Times
June 25, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Spain-Protests.html

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) -- Led by a samba band banging on homemade drums, hundreds of anti-globalization activists marched Monday to protest what they called police-incited violence at a weekend rally that injured 32 people.

About 750 people marched under a blazing sun to a downtown courthouse, where they chanted ``Freedom for the detained.'' Police arrested 22 people after they broke up Sunday's rally, which was attended by thousands.

The activists accused undercover police of posing as protesters and smashing shop windows and shoving one another to give themselves an excuse to break up Sunday's rally. Riot police pushed into the crowd behind shields, wielded nightsticks and fired blank shots, leaving 32 people slightly injured.

``We're going to follow up on the beatings'' and demand that Catalonian security chief Julia Garcia Valdecasas be dismissed, said Ada Colau of the Campaign Against the World Bank, speaking on behalf of 350 groups that participated in the march.

The human rights commission of the Barcelona Bar Association urged a court to investigate Sunday's violence by examining video footage, then issue a report. The panel accused the Spanish Interior Ministry of waging a policy of police intervention aimed at inciting violence in order ``to delegitimize certain social groups.''

Activists scheduled another march for next Sunday, this time to protest what they see as police repression.

Municipal Assemblywoman Roser Veciana and Jordi Pedret, a Socialist Party member of the national Parliament, also called for an investigation into the police conduct. Pedret said he had been told that police undercover agents threw rocks through store windows and then arrested protesters.

Garcia Valdecasas denied allegations that police agents incited the violence and called such suggestions ``barbaric.''

Spanish Interior Minister Mariano Rajoy also defended the police action, calling it proper.

The weekend protests were organized to coincide with a World Bank meeting originally scheduled for this week. Officials canceled the meeting last week to avoid violent protests that have marred similar meetings over the past two years.

Meanwhile, Austria on Monday temporarily reintroduced controls at some border crossings, just days ahead of an economic summit that organizers fear will be the target of protesters.

The move comes in the wake of violence that accompanied protests at the recent European Union summit in Goteborg, Sweden, when scenes of street fighting and looting shocked the host country and left more than 70 people injured.

Anti-globalization activists from a range of organizations have been showing up at summits of the World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, institutions they claim widen the gap between rich and poor.

----

32 Injured in Anti-Globalization Protest in Barcelona

New York Times
June 25, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/25/world/25GLOB.html

BARCELONA, Spain, June 24 - The riot police charged anti- globalization protesters gathered in a city park today after the demonstrators held a midday march down a main boulevard. At least 32 people were slightly injured and 19 were arrested.

Thousands of the demonstrators, some with small children, fled as the police pushed into the crowd behind shields, wielding nightsticks and firing blanks.

The march along Passeig de Gracia and rally at the Plaza de Cataluna were organized to coincide with a World Bank meeting originally scheduled for this week. Officials canceled the meeting last week to avoid the violent protests that have marred similar meetings during the last two years.

The march was largely peaceful, but windows of stores were broken along the route, among them a Burger King restaurant and a Swatch store. Small groups of men and women taunted the riot police.

Thousands of other demonstrators joined the protesters at the park after the march. They had been listening to speakers and chanting slogans when the police swept through the plaza.

"The police provoked the fight; they were part of it," said Ada Colau, a spokeswoman for the Campaign Against the World Bank, one of the protest organizations.

Protesters said the police staged a fight as a pretext to charge the crowd. The police said they were unaware of any instigation.

State television said 19 people were arrested, and the news agency Efe quoted emergency medical services as saying 32 people were slightly injured.

Anti-globalization activists from an array of organizations have been showing up at main gatherings of the World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, institutions they claim make the gap between rich and poor larger, not smaller.

Some protests have resulted in violent clashes with the police, most recently at the European summit meeting in Sweden this month, when several people were wounded by gunshots fired by the police.

----

[One is reminded of the Reichstag fire -- who in fact is instigating the violence? Could the enormous police presence be having the opposite effect of its intent? et]

Violence challenges summit hosts

June 25, 2001
By David R. Sands
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010625-9814140.htm

A major international summit, once considered a plum for the host city, has become a distinctly dangerous honor.

Pitched battles in the street at this month´s European Union summit in the Swedish port city of Goteborg proved just the latest in a string of violent confrontations at major international gatherings, with masked anarchist protesters and helmeted local police squaring off in city after city in North America and Europe.

"We were all shocked by what happened in Goteborg," said Andre Querton, press officer for the Belgian Embassy in Washington. Brussels plays host to the next EU summit Dec. 14 and 15.

"We are very much aware of the problems there and are working now to make sure that the works of the December summit are not impeded," Mr. Querton said.

The World Bank, a frequent target of anti-globalization groups, last month quietly canceled a conference of development scholars set for June 25 to 27 in Barcelona after learning that protest groups planned major demonstrations at the gathering.

The development conference instead will be conducted over the Internet, details of which were announced by World Bank officials last week.

"We were deeply disappointed to have to take that step, but from what we learned of the scope of the protests, we did not feel it would be in keeping with the peaceful, scholarly discussions that we wanted," said World Bank spokesman Lawrence MacDonald.

Mr. MacDonald said bank officials invited various protest groups to participate in some of the conference discussions.

"But some of these groups would rather remain outside the hall, shouting at us across the barricades," he said.

Dating back to the ill-fated November 1999 World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial meeting in Seattle, protester violence and vandalism have been constants at major international gatherings. In addition to "mainstream" protest organizations, many of the demonstrating crowds have been infiltrated by shadowy anarchist and extremist groups seeking to provoke police reaction.

The list of organizations and institutions that have been targeted has expanded to include the WTO; the World Bank and International Monetary Fund; the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland; the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City in April; and now the European Union.

Summits provide a tempting target, security analysts say. They are announced well in advance, they are tightly scheduled in predictable locations, and the presence of world leaders guarantees heavy press coverage of any significant disruptions.

Protests forced the annual IMF and World Bank meetings in Prague in September to conclude a day early. In Goteborg, the EU summiteers called off a lavish closing dinner at a local restaurant, while several delegates were moved from their hotels because police could not guarantee their safety.

Intense attention now is being trained on the July 20-22 Group of Eight industrial nations´ summit in Genoa, Italy. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has criticized the previous government´s choice of Genoa, with its small central city and numerous small roads into town, as the site for the summit.

During the summit, Genoa´s harbor will be closed to maritime traffic for what is believed to be the first time ever.

Sandro Biasotti, governor of the region that includes Genoa, told the Reuters news agency last week: "I´ve been seriously worried [about the threat of violence] for about a year, and my worries were compounded when I saw the footage of recent [EU] summits in Nice [France] and Goteborg."

Some 20,000 Italian security personnel will police the summit city, compared with 2,000 police in Goteborg. Officials in Rome last week attempted to scotch rumors that the summit might be moved to a more secure location, possibly a military base or even on a ship put out to sea.

Italian Security Services Minister Franco Fattini said in a radio interview that the government planned a "zero-tolerance" stand against violence.

Italy´s lower house of parliament last week voted 498-13 to double the budget for the July summit to $53 million, money that will go to organizing the event and ensuring security.

The bill now will go to the Senate for final approval.

Several of the 13 deputies who voted against the draft law have called for the summit to be canceled entirely.

Italian protest groups say they intend to organize a flotilla of boats to the summit if land routes are closed off.

The fear of violence has prompted the Italian government to move the July 18-19 pre-summit meeting of G-8 foreign ministers from Portofino, near Genoa, to Rome.

----

Macedonia on Brink After Protests, Fresh Fighting

New York Times
June 25, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-balkans.html

SKOPJE (Reuters) - Macedonia teetered on the brink of civil war on Tuesday after a Western bid to end an army assault on ethnic Albanian rebels sparked fierce protests in the capital and heavy fighting elsewhere.

Police reservists armed with Kalashnikovs broke into parliament and fired volleys into the air while thousands of Macedonian Slavs, including some unarmed army conscripts, cheered them on.

``Albanians to the gas chambers! Give us weapons!'' people chanted while others fired shots in the air from the square. The numbers grew as news spread that a policeman had been killed.

Macedonia's hawkish Interior Minister Ljube Boskovski slammed NATO for escorting ``terrorists'' out of the village of Aracinovo under a cease-fire deal and pledged to wipe them out, saying they had launched an attack on police within minutes of the pullout.

``Peace will be restored only when we clean up terrorists from the state,'' he told reporters outside parliament.

``How can we have a cease-fire when they killed a policeman and wounded three right above Tetovo?'' he said, before being chased back inside the parliament building by the mob.

Heavy exchanges of fire broke out around the western town of Tetovo shortly after the guerrillas left Aracinovo under an escort including U.S., French and Italian soldiers as well as international monitors.

The evacuation was completed without incident, but a crowd of Macedonians stopped one of the convoys from returning to the capital, throwing stones and blockading the road.

The convoy, led by U.S. soldiers, waited for several hours before turning back. A diplomat with the group, contacted by telephone, said it had returned to Aracinovo, where it appeared to be preparing to stay the night.

PANIC AMONG ALBANIANS IN CAPITAL

The crowd in the center of the capital began to filter away after midnight. Most of the streets in the suburbs became eerily quiet, with cafes and bars closed.

``Albanians are in a panic and everyone's preparing to leave. For now, we are staying at home and waiting to see what will happen,'' said one young Albanian man who lives in an Albanian-populated quarter of Skopje.

The violence left Western diplomats at a loss. They had been hoping the Aracinovo deal would be a first step toward easing tensions and edging toward a political settlement involving rebel disarmament in return for more rights for the minority.

If any conclusion could be drawn from the day's events it was that neither of the warring sides was ready for peace.

One Western envoy who had been skeptical of the Aracinovo agreement from the start said the resulting violence was predictable but would not be drawn on what might happen next.

``I think there's a lot of understandable frustration out there and trying to figure out what's going to happen is extraordinarily difficult,'' he said.

There were fears that mobs might attack Albanian property overnight, as happened in the southern town of Bitola in early June after police from the town were killed in rebel ambushes, but there were no signs of that by the early hours on Tuesday.

The rebel commander of Aracinovo, contacted by telephone on Monday, claimed that the Albanian guerrillas had two ``brigades'' in the capital which could be activated if necessary.

So far the four-month-old ethnic Albanian guerrilla revolt has been mostly confined to skirmishes with the security forces, but diplomats fear it could take just one incident to tip the country over into an all-out war.

----------

Philippines Boosts Palace Defense Against 'Plot'

New York Times
June 25, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-philipp.html

MANILA (Reuters) - Philippine police called in reinforcements from the provinces on Monday to boost defense of the presidential palace from what they said were planned protests aimed at overthrowing President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

The supposed plot, said to be code-named ``Matahari,'' would include assassinating detained former leader Joseph Estrada when he is taken to court on Wednesday and other violent actions, which national police chief General Leandro Mendoza said could: ``Put...the entire country into a state of unruly mobs, armed street encounters and lawlessness.''

Mendoza did not name the alleged plotters but told reporters they belonged to the group which instigated the failed May Day attack on the Malacanang palace by thousands of supporters of Estrada.

Arroyo has linked several opposition figures to the May Day violence.

Manila police chief Colonel Nicolas Pasino told reporters he had deployed 600 police troopers around the presidential palace and that police reinforcements had been called in from surrounding provinces to bolster the palace defense.

Army troops were standing by as reserves to back up the palace security force, a military spokesman said.

Estrada is scheduled to be arraigned before the anti-graft court on Wednesday on a charge of perjury for allegedly falsifying official papers on the extent of his assets.

He is also to be arraigned at a later date on separate charges of graft, using an alias to hide his bank deposits and economic plunder, an offence punishable by death.

The former actor, who denies any wrongdoing, was ousted from power in a popular revolt which swept Arroyo to the presidency in January.

ASSASSINATION and hasten Arroyo's downfall, police said.

Mendoza unveiled the general outlines of the plot in a petition to the anti-graft court on Monday.

He asked that the venue of Wednesday's arraignment be transferred from the court-house to the heavily-guarded state military hospital, where Estrada is undergoing medical treatment.

Mendoza told the court the police had gathered intelligence information showing a plot to ``endanger, during travel, the safety and person of the accused through ambuscades and assassination.''

The plot also calls for ``massive demonstrations and violent actions'' to disrupt court proceedings and destabilize the government ``with the end intent of grabbing power,'' Mendoza said.

Transferring the arraignment to the military hospital would substantially reduce the security risks for Estrada, he added.

The court has not made a ruling on Mendoza's request.

Arroyo said last week that some groups were plotting to use Estrada's scheduled court appearance to foment disturbances similar to what happened on May Day in order to destabilize her government.

She also did not name the supposed plotters but a presidential spokesman said the group had approached retired generals for support.

The political opposition has denied involvement in any plot against Arroyo.

Armed forces chief General Diomedio Villanueva confirmed the military had stepped up security preparations ahead of Estrada's court appearance.

``The preparations may be excessive but for as long as our preparations are there, I think that would be better for the country than to have inadequate preparations,'' Villanueva told Manila's ABS-CBN television.

----

Freedom to burn shows freedom to live

June 25, 2001
Nat Hentoff
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20010625-83968190.htm

In the June 14 editions of The Washington Times, John Fonte, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, forcefully presented the most seemingly logical argument in support of the constitutional amendment now before Congress that would give that body the power to prohibit the desecration of the flag of the United States. This amendment, he writes, does not diminish the First Amendment by punishing speech. It punishes conduct.

This analysis, however, ignores the core reason the U.S. Supreme Court has twice ruled that flag-burning is indeed protected by the First Amendment as it now stands. Speech is a key component of flag-burning when the flag is desecrated as an expression of political protest. In the first flag-burning case, Texas vs. Johnson (1989), the majority of the Supreme Court ruled that when Johnson poured kerosene on the flag and set it on fire in a political demonstration outside the 1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas, his conduct was "directly related to expression."

Writing for the majority of the Supreme Court, Justice William Brennan pointed out that "to say the government has an interest in encouraging proper treatment of the flag is not to say that it may criminally punish a person for burning a flag as a means of political protest."

Also joining Mr. Brennan in the majority was Justice Antonin Scalia, who is invariably described as the most conservative member of the Supreme Court. During oral arguments in that case, Mr. Scalia made it clear that there is not "a flag exception for the First Amendment." And Justice Anthony Kennedy, not known as a liberal, in joining the majority decision, said that the flag expresses "the freedom which sustains the human spirit." He continued, "It is poignant but fundamental that the flag protects those who hold it in contempt."

Mr. Brennan added, "We can imagine no more appropriate response to burning a flag than waving one´s own." That is precisely what my wife and I did during the Vietnam War. We were against the war. Although the anti-war sentiment of many of the people in our neighborhood had turned into a virulent anti-Americanism, we flew the flag on the Fourth of July to bear witness to the fact that America is a place where we are all free to protest against the government.

Obviously, many Americans are enraged when the flag is desecrated, and they make no distinction if that act is done as part of a political protest. Knowing that, Mr. Brennan, in his majority opinion in Texas vs. Johnson, quoted from a 1943 opinion by Justice Robert Jackson, who later became the chief U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg war-crimes trials.

In West Virginia State Board of Education vs. Barnette, Mr. Jackson penetrated to the very essence of what it is to be an American in a passage I quote every time I´m asked to speak at a school:

"If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein."

During a previous national debate about whether there should be "a flag exception" as Mr. Scalia called it to the First Amendment, Dale Greer wrote in a letter to the Dallas Morning News:

"If the flag is a symbol of freedom and of our democracy, then it represents ideas just as words represent ideas, and in that case, we´ve got no more business telling people what they can or can´t do with the flag than we do telling them how to think."

Mr. Greer then envisioned what would happen to a citizen in Iran or China I would add Cuba who burned or otherwise desecrated the flag of his nation. "Do we really want," Mr. Greer said, "to emulate countries such as these?"

I once gave a commencement address at a college in Pennsylvania and commended the Supreme Court for its decision in Texas vs. Johnson. Outside the building, an angry veteran of the Vietnam War confronted me to protest my view that the First Amendment protects flag desecration. I asked the veteran, who had been seriously wounded in Vietnam, what our flag meant to him.

"Freedom," he said. Then he paused, nodded his head slowly, said "Yeah!" and walked away.

Nat Hentoff is a columnist for The Washington Times. His column runs on Mondays.

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In Praise of Peace Work

By Sarah Booth Conroy
Special to The Washington Post
Monday, June 25, 2001; Page C02
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41232-2001Jun24?language=printer

Dutch Ambassador Joris Vos was recently host to the National Peace Foundation at his country's elegant embassy.

NPF, founded in 1982, is a private, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that promotes peace-building and conflict resolution. It is based in Washington and supported by its 8,000 members.

James W. Symington, a member of the NPF's advisers board, introduced Vos, who was honored last Wednesday for his own contributions as well as those of his government toward peace, such as hosting the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

NPF Chairman Stephen P. Strickland presented six honorees with handsome, green crystal sculptures inscribed with the NPF's bird of peace.

NPF advisory board member Betty Bumpers, founder of Peace Links, introduced honoree Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa).

Harkin said, "When we gained our independence, Benjamin Franklin called for establishment of an American Academy for Peace. Years later, the National Peace Foundation took up that charge and, like you, I still look forward to realizing that vision.

"Don't get me wrong, I strongly support the U.S. Institute of Peace and especially the training it does. I still think we need a full-fledged world-class peace academy for in-depth training in peace-building skills.

"All gathered here tonight are united in one fundamental belief: If you want more peace in our world, then you have to work for more justice."

Harkin added that he "discovered the horrors of the 'tiger cages' in Vietnam and had to decide whether and how to bring them to the attention of the American people amidst that terrible war."

Harkin also recalled Cardinal Raul Silva Henriquez in Chile, who told him in 1976 "that the U.S. was the only nation in the world founded on a philosophy of respect for human rights. We find it very confusing and disturbing when we hear the United States talk so much about its support for human rights and then see your government continue to support repressive regimes."

Harkin's first major legislation in the 1970s linked American foreign assistance to respect for universal human rights. Harkin said "many in this gathering also stood up in active opposition to the contra wars in the 1980s that brought so much bloodshed, suffering and turmoil to the impoverished nations of Central America."

In the 1990s, Harkin said he "turned his attention to fight [the] growing global scourge of child labor, encouraging nations to cut wasteful military expenditures to free up resources for education, primary health care and the rights of disabled persons."

Sarah Harder, NPF president, introduced Jeanette R. Mansour, consultant in conflict resolution for the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. Mansour said her "parents were born and raised in Nazareth, coming to this country in the early 1920s, proud of their Arab heritage and their American citizenship."

Mansour accepted the award, which she shares with the Mott Foundation board.

"The challenge for many of us is to take best practices learned elsewhere and steadfastly apply them in the West Bank and Gaza," she said.

John McDonald, chairman of the Institute for Multi-Track Diplomacy and co-chairman of Peacebuilders Partnership, introduced B. Stephen Toben, vice president of the Flora Family Foundation. Toben was honored for his work with the foundation's conflict resolution program.

Marsh Blakeway, director of NPF programs in schools, introduced Colman McCarthy, author, lecturer and Washington Post syndicated newspaper columnist. His family -- wife Mazourneen, and children Colman, Mav and John -- help teach conflict resolution in schools.

Priscilla Prutzman was also honored. Introduced by NPF's Strickland, Prutzman is co-founder of Children's Creative Response to Conflict, which has 30 networks and affiliates around the globe. She has been executive director of the enterprise in national and international schools since 1992.

In a time of wars and rumors of wars, an evening with the theme "Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God" gives hope.

---------

MISSION MURUROA: An Adventure Novel Set In Tahiti

BOOK RELEASE NEWS
For Further Infomation contact: Rosemary I. Patterson, Ph.D., at 604-522-2051; rpatter262@aol.com
http://www.rosemarypatterson.bigstep.com.

ISBN07388-6399-8.
HIGHLIGHTING LEAKING RADIONUCLEIDES FROM THE MURUROA ATOLL.

This entertaining but provocative and timely novel can complement existing Anti-Nuclear Weapons Testing Literature by adding the versatility of Adventure Fiction. The novel is timely with such press headlines emerging as: "FRANCE TO BE QUIZZED ON NUCLEAR TEST SITE DAMAGE" (South China Morning Post, Mar. 1, 200l.) and 'NUCLEAR ATOLL NEAR COLLAPSE" (New Zealand Herald, March 1,200l.)

In this novel, the scene is set when Lazarus Tretiiak, a Physics Instructor and four of his students at the French University of the Pacific in Tahiti, decide to hijack an advanced deep-ocean submersible and its research vessel. The activists are determined to use the submersible to photograph the Mururoa Atoll near Tahiti to prove to the world that dangerous radionucleides from previous atomic testing are leaking into the South Pacific.

To force the commander of the submersible tender, Admiral Alain Gagnon, to travel to the Mururoa Atoll the activists involve the Admiral's stepdaughter, Terri'i. The result is a fast-pitched adventure matching Jacques L'Amareau, Head of the French equivalent of the CIA, against the ringleader of the nuclear protestors.



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