------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
TESTIMONY TO THE VETERANS AFFAIRS COMMITTEE UNITED STATES SENATE
Israel Urged to Submit Nuclear Facilities to International Inspections
Experts Criticize Bush Missile Defense Plan
Pentagon Is Preparing Contract For Missile-Defense System Site
No defense for missile defense
On a slippery slope
Cheney dug the grave for star wars but didn't bury it
Pentagon to Ask for Retirement of MX Missiles
Arsenal mishandled bomb part, state says
$16 million awarded in uranium suit
Calvert's '02 Budget Funds Future Police
Berkley seeks release of nuke waste routes
Bush hints nuclear test moratorium may end
House panel debates US nuclear plant liability law
Defense Plan Faces Tough Scrutiny
U.S. Sanctions North Korean, Chinese Firms
U.S. PRESIDENTS' IQ SCORES....
Nuclear Programs Are Losing Ground on Campus

MILITARY
'What is Washington going to do about that?'
Bush bars rebels from U.S.
Milosevic Extradition Decree Suspended
Milosevic handed over to war crimes tribunal
Colombian Rebels Release 242 Police And Soldiers
Envoys mull need for flyovers
Powell Announces Peace Timeline
Clark says Milosevic handover vindicates NATO war
Navy secretary says service will lose Vieques vote
Navy Secretary Defends Bush's Decision to End Vieques Bombing
Puerto Rico Shells Out for Big Guns
World Court claims U.S. jurisdiction
The giants of the Navy face growing risks
Rumsfeld: Extra Funds Only Start
Rumsfeld Pushes Military Closures
Army Grounds Attack Helicopters
Defense Plan Faces Tough Scrutiny
Pentagon faces uphill battle in effort to close bases

OTHER
House Votes Against Oil Drilling
Poll: Calif. Doubts Power Shortage
Bush Pledges More Energy Research
Bush Sends Energy Plans to Congress
House May Ban Great Lakes Drillings
U.N. Redefines AIDS as Issue of Rights and Peril to Poor
O'Neill Again Criticizes World Bank
7,898 From 39 Nations Held in Anti-Smuggling Raids
Ex-Spy Chief Threatens to Release Videos
U.S. Penalized China, N. Korea Cos.
How the NSA is monitoring you

ACTIVISTS
Please call your member of Congress before July 10
Ex - Taiwan Leader Visit Protested
Africa's AIDS Activists Skeptical
CHERNOBYL INVESTIGATOR SENTENCED TO 8 YEARS IN BELARUS PRISON.


-------- NUCLEAR

-------- depleted uranium

TESTIMONY TO THE VETERANS AFFAIRS COMMITTEE UNITED STATES SENATE

JUNE 28, 2001
BY DENISE NICHOLS VICE CHAIRMAN NATIONAL VIETNAM AND GULF WAR VETERANS COALITION
From: DSNurse@aol.com

The National Vietnam and Gulf War Veterans Coalition, a coalition of 106 member groups including such groups as Viet Now, Rolling Thunder, Vietnam Veterans of the War, Inc, and Gulf War Veterans Groups nationally and internationally, have endorsed S409/HR612 The Gulf War Veterans Compensation Act of 2001.

In the 105th Congress, there were many hearings on the Gulf War Illnesses to include House efforts (Congressman Shay's Government Reform Committee Investigation) and multiple Senate Veterans Affairs Committee Hearings. In the hearings on the senate side at that time there was mention of a need for a blanket disability for the Gulf War Veterans. At the end of the session, legislative action and law was passed to send the Gulf War Veterans to the Institute for Medicine to review the Health consequences of over 20 known exposures. The Institute of Medicine completed their first study in November of last year on the Sarin, Depleted Uranium,PB tablets, and vaccines. Unfortunately, when the Veterans Affairs Administration awarded the contract to the IOM they limited them to the use of only peer reviewed journal articles. This was probably related to national security concerns but it prevented the IOM from requesting and reviewing DOD unpublished research and reports on these exposures, which definitely hurt the gulf war veterans obtain service connection to diseases, known and unknown, related to these exposures. There were similarities seen with the Sarin Gas Victims of the Japan Subway incident.

Anthrax reactions are still being examined by the IOM after the House of Representative (Rep Shays subcommittee on Government Reform and the Full Government Reform Committee) and the door must be kept open for the Gulf War Veterans and for those that have had health consequences from the Anthrax Vaccine. Research is on going on the interactions of PB tablets and nerve agents and other exposures. Many Federally Funded Research projects are still not reported as completed and published.

We are still receiving inquiries weekly, if not more frequently from Gulf War Veterans both deployed and nondeployed and those that have received Anthrax vaccines who are just now realizing their symptoms and who have not yet reported into the VA or the DOD medical facilities for assistance. The veterans have as normal people, with chronic type disease processes, normal coping going on where if they can they keep continuing to try to do their normal activities and deny their symptoms as long as they can before their bodies can not continue.

The research and review ongoing at the IOM has not even gotten to the stage of considering the synergistic effects of multiple exposures.

It is imperative that we continue the present coverage for the veterans and extend the time presumption period of time another ten years until 2011. We need to also remember to extend the Priority Care to these veterans as is currently in place.

The symptoms list and the time period of the symptoms to be considered chronic will not be changed in this legislation, the bill simply seeks to codify two separate sections of The 38 CFR USC code (sections 117 and 118) for clarity to the VA adjudicators, in order that the importance of proper review of claims is fully implemented. Too many claims have been denied and the veterans are the ones that suffer unnecessarily. Since 1993, the Sense of the Congress has been to care for the Gulf War Veterans and to enact the benefit of the Doubt to the Veterans! It is to this government's advantage to rectify the errors of the past and to seek adequate and effective compensation for the Gulf War Veterans. The president in his campaign even stated that he did not want the Gulf War Veterans standing in line with hat in hand.

If we do not take these positive steps, the trust and faith in our government by both the active duty and the veterans will suffer. We have seen effects on recruitment and retention due to the fact that our veterans are not as well care for as they should be when they have put their life in harms way and have been damaged. This situation creates a vicious cycle where then the government has to then funnel more money into ads, educational benefits, and other recruitment and retention efforts in order to overcome a negative effect from failure to fully compensate and care for the veterans of a war/conflict.

The other portion of the bill is the effort to direct that every benefit of the doubt goes to the veteran. The symptoms are a constellation of symptoms and normally do not consist of just one or two symptoms, the majority of the veterans have had all of the symptoms listed and the epidemiological surveys have clearly shown that problem.

The last item of the bill 1-b- highlights the overlapping of the symptoms the gulf war veterans have with some of the diagnosed illnesses re Chronic Fatigue, Multiple Chemical Sensitivities, and other autoimmunological diseases. The Art and Science of Medicine does not guarantee 100 percent accurate or correct diagnosing and therefore if the symptoms are common and overlapping the veterans claims should not be thrown out for Undiagnosed Illnesses if they have received a diagnosis for a known illness that may or may not be an accurate diagnosis. Again, this seeks to give clear legal guidance to the VA adjudicators to give the benefit of the doubt to the veteran.

The Gulf War Veterans are ill and it is real. We should not have the veterans who are ill and need assistance fight their own government for the earned benefit that they EARNED by putting their bodies and life on the line for the United States Government (and its citizens), its national policies and security. We Recommend that this bill be Fast Tracked and passed into law now.

WE must get passed the issue of compensation and into the other needs of the Gulf War Veterans such as complete and accurate diagnostic testing and medical treatment options. We have attached a list of these Identified needs and hope that other Senators and Representatives will take proactive action in these issues.

We would like to recommend that legislative steps be taken for the troops and veterans that did not serve in theater and who are ill, whether it is from anthrax vaccine, other vaccines, pb tablets, or NBC exposures from secondary routes. These veterans have also been waiting for assistance and enacting a registry, priority care, and compensation is the next step. These steps may also help us further the research into undiagnosed illness and find the factor that may have caused the most damage or the key component to their illnesses. WE need to do this for National Security and for the future soldiers of this country and for the Citizens as well.

Thank you for your time and interest at today's hearings. We stand ready to testify in person at the next Senate or House Hearing on the Issue of Gulf War Veterans Compensation/Health and Investigations relating to it.

-------- israel

Israel Urged to Submit Nuclear Facilities to International Inspections

Thursday, June 28, 2001
People's Daily (China)
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200106/28/eng20010628_73700.html

A senior Palestinian diplomat called Wednesday on Israel to submit its nuclear facilities to international inspections, Egypt's state-run Middle East News Agency reported.

Mohamed Subeih, Palestinian permanent delegate to the Cairo- based Arab League, made the appeal in a speech to a meeting of the league's committee on following up Israeli nuclear activities violating the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

"Israel's nuclear waste is being buried in a small area, posing a serious threat to the safety and security of the region, especially after an Israeli science committee predicted that a powerful earthquake could hit Israel," said Subeih.

"We have to imagine the consequences of a long-duration earthquake that may hit the Negev Desert (in Israel), where the reactor stands and the nuclear wastes are buried," Subeih said, adding that the possible quake could cause 50 billion U.S. dollars of losses.

"That's why we want to subject the Israeli nuclear facilities to international inspection," namely the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, Subeih said.

He also warned of the consequences of Israel's participation in the U.S. missile defense system. "Israel would benefit from the new system, which could cause a serious imbalance in the region. That will be more dangerous," he said.

Subeih said that Israel's strategic cooperation with some states, especially that under the U.S.-proposed missile defense shield, could bring about more risks, including a new nuclear arms race.

"We want the Mideast region to be free from weapons of mass destruction, especially the nuclear weapons," Subeih added.

Israel is believed to have a significant stockpile of nuclear warheads. But the Jewish state neither admits nor denies having nuclear weapons. It also refuses to sign the NPT and rejects international inspections of its nuclear facilities.

-------- missile defense

Experts Criticize Bush Missile Defense Plan

U.S. Newswire
28 Jun 17:37
Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers
http://www.usnewswire.com/topnews/Current_Releases/0628-165.html

WASHINGTON, June 28 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Responding to reports that President Bush will ask Congress for funds to facilitate the deployment of rudimentary national missile defense (NMD) system by 2004, experts from an alliance of Washington-based nuclear arms control organizations warned that such a proposal would be vigorously opposed at home and abroad. They charged that it would decrease rather than increase national and international security because a crash NMD deployment will not provide an effective and reliable defense against long-range missile attack and will precipitate a counterproductive and unnecessary diplomatic showdown with European allies, as well as Russia and China.

"The Bush administration's scheme for deployment of a rudimentary missile defense by 2004 would provide only the illusion of protection from potential long-range missile threats. At the same time, such a 'scarecrow' missile defense would eventually violate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and could set off a dangerous action reaction cycle, involving the United States, Russia, and China," said John B. Rhinelander of the Lawyers Alliance for World Security.

"The true purpose of such an action seems to be to shoot down the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty rather than incoming ballistic missiles. It reminds me of the poetry line, slightly rephrased, 'I shot a missile in the air, and it came to earth I know not where -- except the Treaty was there,'" said Rhinelander.

Today before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld outlined the Bush Administration's fiscal 2002 defense budget request proposed a substantial increase in spending on missile defenses. The Bush budget calls for fifty-seven percent more spending on missile defense, from $5.3 billion in fiscal 2001, to a proposed $8.3 billion for fiscal 2002.

"Throwing money at missile defense in order to carry out a campaign pledge to deploy as soon as possible is a dangerous waste of money," argued Carlean Ponder of the Women's Action for New Directions, a Coalition member organization.

While Secretary Rumsfeld said that the budget request does not contain funding for NMD deployment, the DoD budget request for fiscal 2002 would provide funds for a new anti-missile "test bed" in Alaska, which could serve as a prototype system. And, according to a report in today's edition of The Wall Street Journal, the Pentagon is readying a contract for construction of a ground-based NMD interceptor site at Fort Greeley in Alaska.

Construction could begin as soon as August if the President so orders. Legal opinions differ on when construction of the site would constitute a violation of the Treaty, but testing and deployment of anti-missile interceptors from that site would constitute a clear violation of the ABM Treaty.

"There is no quick, easy or cheap national missile defense technology. The Bush administration should be careful not to give the false impression that it can develop an effective national missile defense in the near future," said Tom Collina of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

At least 20 or more flight intercept tests, plus hundreds of component and subsystem tests will be needed before the Pentagon will be ready to attempt realistic operational testing of such an NMD system, according to the June 2001 report entitled, "NMD Development is Not Hostage to the ABM Treaty," written by Phil Coyle, former head of DoD's Operational Test & Evaluation and currently at the Center for Defense Information.

"The ABM Treaty remains important to arms control as well as nuclear nonproliferation because it promotes stability and facilitates offensive nuclear weapons reductions. We must work with Russia, China, and others to accomplish our global security goals and not act unilaterally," added Rhinelander, the former U.S. legal advisor for the Nixon Administration's ABM Treaty negotiation team.

"Secretary Rumsfeld's announcement that he would seek to retire the 50 remaining MX nuclear-armed strategic missiles is an important -- though insufficient -- step in the right direction," said Victoria Samson of the Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers.

"Rather than rush toward deployment of an unproven NMD system, President Bush should pursue deep, verifiable, U.S. and Russian nuclear arms reductions, elimination of dangerous, Cold War launch-on-warning and targeting plans, and pursue a comprehensive nuclear proliferation effort, including the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and a verifiable freeze of North Korea's ballistic missile program," concluded Samson.

The Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers is a non-partisan alliance of 14 national nuclear non-proliferation organizations dedicated to the pursuit of a practical, step-by-step program to address the threat of nuclear weapons. For further information on national missile defense and nuclear reductions, visit http://www.crnd.org

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Pentagon Is Preparing Contract For Missile-Defense System Site

Wall Street Journal,
June 28, 2001
By Greg Jaffe and Carla Anne Robbins, Staff Reporters of The Wall Street Journal
From: "Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space" globalnet@mindspring.com

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon has prepared a contract that would allow it to begin readying a site for a national missile defense system at Fort Greeley, Alaska, as early as this August, according to U.S. defense officials.

It isn't clear whether President Bush will give the go-ahead. But the Pentagon's rush to identify a contractor and prepare the documents reflects Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's eagerness to move ahead with missile defense. It is likely to anger both Russia and U.S. allies who are counting on months more of consultations with Mr. Bush before any decision is made on deploying a system.

Separately, Mr. Rumsfeld announced Wednesday that he will ask Congress for permission to retire 50 MX missiles -- with a total of 500 nuclear warheads -- by next year, five years before the deadline agreed to with Russia as part of the Start II treaty.

In an effort to allay Russian and allied fears about his missile-defense plans, Mr. Bush has pledged to make deep cuts in the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

The move on the MX missiles was applauded by arms-control advocates as a good first step. "Its real significance is as a harbinger of deeper cuts to come," said Joseph Cirincione, of the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Wednesday's announcement by Mr. Rumsfeld surprised some White House officials, who were hoping to garner maximum diplomatic and political advantage by unveiling a broader package of nuclear reductions, including the MX cuts, sometime later this year. Officials said any decision on deeper cuts is still weeks away.

The site preparation contract, prepared by the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, would allow workers to begin grading the ground and installing concrete platforms for five to 10 missile interceptors in Alaska.

Pentagon officials acknowledged the move would be mainly symbolic. The Pentagon is required under law to notify Congress 30 days prior to awarding the contract, which means the earliest that work could begin is August. Given Alaska's short construction season, the most the project would gain is about eight weeks of building time this year.

Pentagon officials say the basic site preparation won't violate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia. That point would come, they say, only after construction begins on missile silos, probably sometime in 2003 if Mr. Bush approves the plan.

There are serious questions about how effective the ground-based system would be, even against so-called rogue states such as North Korea or Iraq. In early tests of the system, the interceptors failed to hit their targets on two out of three tries. A fourth test is scheduled for this summer.

And without new radar and satellites, which are still years away from being ready, the interceptors would be incapable of distinguishing incoming warheads from even low-tech decoys.

Pentagon officials declined to name the contractor they have identified for the project. But officials said that a Native American-owned firm would do the initial site preparation.

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No defense for missile defense
President Bush should take a lesson from history and drop his ill-conceived plan

Jonathan Marshall
Thursday, June 28, 2001,
San Francisco Chronicle Page A - 23
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2001/06/28/ED103528.DTL

IF PRESIDENT Bush ever wonders why so much of the world distrusts his national missile defense plan, he need look no further than his favorite role model: Ronald Reagan.

It was the Reagan administration that chilled foes and allies alike with the doctrine that a good missile defense makes the best nuclear offense.

Reagan's team came to office in 1981,vowing to cure the paradoxical impotence of the world's greatest nuclear power. Neutralized by the threat of mutual annihilation, America's tens of thousands of lethal warheads gave presidents no strategic advantage over their primary foe.

A reliable missile shield, the Reagan camp believed, could restore the nuclear advantage the United States enjoyed after World War II and turn the threat of nuclear "war-fighting" into a credible instrument of coercion in foreign policy.

In short, nuclear war had to become thinkable again.

In a speech to NATO officials a year before Reagan's election, Henry Kissinger waxed nostalgic about the days when "the United States possessed an overwhelming strategic nuclear superiority," which it used to dictate the outcome of foreign confrontations such as the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 or in the Middle East.

The Soviet achievement of nuclear parity and thus mutual deterrence, he said, was a foreign policy disaster, "a revolution in the strategic balance as we have known it."

Kenneth Adelman, who headed the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency under Reagan, joined other administration officials in rejecting the nuclear standoff as unacceptable.

The United States, he insisted, must show that it "would indeed risk nuclear escalation on behalf of foreign commitments."

Effective brandishing of nuclear threats required a credible ability to wage and win a nuclear war -- something most lay people and experts alike had considered suicidal.

The Reagan strategy called for "hardening" nuclear command and control systems, improving civil defense and building "counterforce" weapons such as the MX missile -- with nuclear warheads so accurate that they could demolish Soviet missiles in their silos.

The administration's "Strategic Defense Initiative," popularly known as Star Wars, was central to this strategy.

In 1985, administration adviser Colin Gray said on behalf of President Reagan's missile defense program that giving the American homeland "a growing measure of direct, physical protection" should strengthen "the willingness of U.S. presidents to run risks on behalf of distant allies."

More senior officials expressed the same doctrine in less striking language.

"By increasing the survivability of our strategic forces . . . strategic defense would help deter conventional aggression" by making a nuclear response feasible, said then-Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger.

President Reagan similarly declared that "strategic defenses would strengthen the credibility of the U.S. extended deterrence," which is strategic speak for the use of nuclear weapons to deter enemies outside the United States.

In light of such doctrines, Moscow cannot help but wonder if Washington will someday try to take advantage of a missile shield to prevent Russia, say, from selling weapons to Iran.

China cannot help but wonder if the United States will brandish its nuclear superiority to defend Taiwan.

Both nuclear powers will have every incentive to neutralize U.S. superiority the cheapest way possible: by expanding their nuclear arsenals, setting off a new arms race.

A missile defense program could also bring out the worst in U.S. foreign policy by fostering illusions of a U.S. strategic advantage. An emboldened president might be more tempted to play "chicken" in conflicts of limited significance on the assumption that superior nuclear war-fighting capabilities gave him a free hand.

Unpredictable allies -- say, a nationalist firebrand in Taiwan -- could provoke a crisis based on the assumption of protection by America's nuclear umbrella.

But a miscalculation could have catastrophic results.

As former Defense Secretary Harold Brown once said, "I have always been concerned about massive ABM systems because I have always felt there was some possibility that some clever briefer could delude a political decision-maker into thinking that they were going to work."

The last thing the world needs is anyone imagining that nuclear war is thinkable.

President Bush betrays no such illusions.

But abandoning the ABM treaty in the faith that missile defenses are practical may well lead one of his successors to harbor such fanciful notions.

More certainly, the fear of such a prospect will prompt America's competitors to pursue an arms race to prevent Washington from dictating terms to them.

Foreign leaders with longer memories than President Bush's know that instead of ridding the world of the nuclear blight, ill-conceived nuclear "defenses" could needlessly increase the peril of nuclear war.

Jonathan Marshall of San Anselmo is a former Chronicle reporter who now handles public relations for a high-tech company in San Francisco.

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On a slippery slope

SUKUMAR MURALIDHARAN, Volume 18 - Issue 13,
Jun. 23 - Jul. 06, 2001
India's National Magazine on indiaserver.com from the publishers of THE HINDU, and Frontline

From: Sukumar Muralidharan <sukumar@vsnl.com>

MAD versus NUTS sums up the state of the nuclear strategic debate in the U.S. It is a debate that, but for global opposition, could tilt dangerously towards an escalation of the nuclear threat.

LESS than two months after it was announced, the U.S. government's proposal to deploy a national missile defence (NMD) system is in desperate straits - pilloried by global opposition and beleaguered by domestic scepticism. The frenetic round of mock consultations with key allies in mid-May did little to assuage their concerns. At the end of May, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell himself stepped into the proselytising mode. But the North Atlantic Council, comprising Foreign Ministers from the U.S.' closest allies, refused to give its concurrence to the NMD proposal, only making a few verbal concessions to avoid an overt appearance of acrimony.

U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld set off on his own European mission early in June, laying the groundwork for President George Bush's excursion into unfamiliar terrain later in the month. But as he began his preparations, Bush was confronted with a quite unforeseen power shift in the U.S. Senate following the defection of a long-serving Republican Senator who was obviously upset at the extreme agenda unfurled by the new administration. This deprived the Republican Party of the brief privilege it enjoyed of control over both the executive and legislative branches. The Democratic Party majority in the U.S. Senate is now expected to pose a few tough questions about the Bush administration's defence proposals.

Obviously relishing the opportunity to return the favours rendered by the Republican majority during the Clinton administration, Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee recently put two of Bush's key nominees for the Defence Department through a searching examination. A final vote on these nominations has now been deferred till Douglas J. Feith and Jack D. Crouch II - respectively the nominees for Under-Secretary for policy and Assistant Secretary for international security policy - submit detailed written clarifications on recently espoused views.

Feith has for long been credited with the opinion that the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missiles (ABM) Treaty ceased to be binding once one of the signatories, the Soviet Union, went out of existence in 1991. This is in defiance of the protocol that was signed between the U.S. and all the Soviet successor states in 1993, specifically endorsing the continuing application of the treaty. Crouch has been associated with even more extreme views, arguing in the mid-1990s that the U.S. should redeploy nuclear missiles in South Korea and bomb North Korea if it refused to comply with the U.S. diktat on its missiles programme. Both nominees have been chosen in pursuit of a clear ideological agenda and strategic vision. The world community has reason to be relieved that they are being put through the kind of scrutiny that a Republican Senate majority would have spared them.

Democrats are likely to take their cue not from high principle or commitment to nuclear sanity, but from the compulsions of public opinion. Recent polls in the U.S. have indicated that support for the NMD programme is severely qualified by considerations of its cost. Bush's central campaign pledge to cut taxes across the board, though with a special focus on the wealthy, has cleared the U.S. Congress and been signed triumphantly into law. Even before it became a reality, the supposed U.S. federal budget surplus has been dissipated in a massive transfer of riches to the rich. Financing the NMD deployment, which could involve expenses in the astronomical range, is likely to be a contentious issue. As more specific details of the Pentagon's proposals emerge, the Democrats are expected to baulk at the funding requirements.

The U.S. effort to bring Russia around proved a conspicuous fiasco. In mid-May, ahead of a visit to Washington by Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, the U.S. administration had put out suggestions that it would proceed with NMD plans irrespective of Russian sentiment. A more conciliatory tone was struck after Ivanov met Powell and the American President. But at the official briefing Powell insisted that consultations would not be indefinitely prolonged at the cost of action on deployment.

A more ardent overture was made towards the end of May, with the U.S. offering to buy large, though unspecified, quantities of Russian military hardware to equip the proposed NMD system. Weapons experts, though initially befuddled, identified the Russian S-300 missile as the focus of Pentagon's interest. But the Russian response was distinctly cool. Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov welcomed the U.S. interest in a missile system that has been sold to several other countries. But it was improbable, he said, that the S-300 could contribute to the proposed NMD system, since it was designed specifically as an anti-aircraft missile.

Contrary to the belief that the Russian line was softening in the days preceding a mid-June summit between President Vladimir Putin and George Bush, Foreign Minister Ivanov took a hardline stance. "If we assume that the ABM Treaty loses force," he said at a joint press conference with a visiting Canadian Minister, "it is logical to assume that the subsequent treaties that were based on it will also lose force." This, he concluded, would mean "a phase of total unpredictability in the sphere of global security."

The notable exception to the universal mood of scepticism was India, which seemed to be revelling in its newfound role in U.S. strategic priorities. Yet, within weeks of its unseemly rush to embrace the NMD proposal, India was beginning to find itself out on a limb. A scheduled May 31 visit by the top U.S. military official, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Henry Shelton, was postponed at the last minute. And the ardour for the American scheme soon entered into a collision course with the compulsions of re-equipping the Indian military with Russian hardware.

Jaswant Singh's visit to Moscow, in his twin persona as Minister for External Affairs and Defence, produced distinctly mixed results. New defence purchases were agreed as also a set of revised norms on price negotiations. An unexpected development though was Russian Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov's announcement that Russia would assist India in putting in place a missile defence system. This was in line with the Russian offer made to Europe early this year, for a cooperative system of missile defence that would benefit the entire continent. Though not fleshed out with specifics, it was an important propaganda device in consolidating opposition to the American plan.

Strategic analysts in the U.S. have purported to see a deeper motive behind recent geopolitical manoeuvres. Missile defence, says this school of thought, is not the real issue. Rather, the hidden purpose is to win Russia over in a strategic partnership against China or at least to pre-empt any possibility of an alliance emerging between Russia and China. This line of thinking is rendered reasonably credible by inspired leaks from the Pentagon about a broad-ranging review of overseas military engagement by the U.S. Rumsfeld reportedly has served notice of a shift in strategic focus from the Atlantic and Europe to the Pacific and East Asian theatre.

Russia is unlikely to see any dividends in this strategic architecture, since it has been distinctly angered by recent American manoeuvres which impinge on its vital interests in eastern Europe, the Arab world and Central Asia. Even if it were interested in the containment of China - which it by all appearances is not - there is no reason for it to go along with the U.S., as long as its eastern and southern flanks remain under threat. The Russian response on the contrary has been to bid for quite another strategic partnership with China and India, to counter the hegemonic designs of the U.S. India, of course, remains torn by conflicting priorities and perceptions, applauding the NMD proposal one day, and calling for the sustenance of the ABM Treaty the next. What is emerging with absolute clarity though, is that India's haste in welcoming the NMD proposal was a sign of immaturity.

Little is yet known about the scope of the NMD system and the technologies that will be deployed. Still less is known about the mix of offensive and defensive systems that will be deemed optimal in securing the national security interests of the U.S. What is clear, though, is that the existing paradigm of NMD research, with its emphasis on intercepting and destroying incoming missiles in the orbital or re-entry phase, has reported successive failures and is a guaranteed non-starter as far as actual deployment is concerned.

For this reason, there is a growing body of opinion which views the option of boost phase interception as inevitable. This involves cutting a missile off in the first four or five minutes of its flight, while its rockets are firing. Because the time available to execute the entire operation - from detecting launch to destroying the missile - is short, this concept would require the stationing of interceptors at locations close to the source of the danger. To operationalise this concept, the U.S. would need to define the vaguely phrased threat from "rogue states" with greater clarity. It would then be obliged to coopt countries in the neighbourhood of these states into the planned missile defence.

Because of the broad consensus building that boost phase interception would require, it represents a severe curtailment of the American ability to act unilaterally in nuclear strategic affairs. Most NMD advocates are for this reason known to favour a system with a much broader range of capabilities - a "multi-layered system" that would allow for interception at any stage of a missile's flight path. Inevitably, technical parameters and the U.S.' strategic concerns are impelling it towards the momentous decision of stationing interceptors in outer space. And to hedge against all possibilities, the U.S. Space Command is also known to be actively pressing for the stationing of high-energy laser systems in outer space. Lasers have a special attraction for the NMD strategists because they can act at a distance. But there is no way that laser systems of the required capability can be stationed in space except as part of a nuclear powered platform.

Rumsfeld has already dropped ominous hints that space could be the next frontier for basing nuclear weapons platforms. "More than any other country, the U.S. relies on space for its security and well being," he said at a press conference early in May. "It is only logical," he continued, "that we must be attentive to these vulnerabilities and pay careful attention to protecting and promoting our interest in space."

The Democratic Party's response has been robustly disdainful. A month prior to taking over as Senator Majority leader, Thomas Daschle had rubbished the proposal, calling it the "single dumbest thing" he had heard from the Bush administration. Simultaneously, Carl Levin, now Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called for a thorough scrutiny of the U.S. Space Command's activities, to "assure the American people" that there were no moves afoot to deploy weapons in space.

ALL this represents a rather rude deflation of the Indian response to the NMD announcement, which effusively welcomed the Bush administration's decision to cut nuclear weapons deployment. Even if there is a curtailment of nuclear force deployment, this would be of a modest order. And irrespective of the scale of the reduction, there are likely to be qualitative changes in the composition of the arsenal and new doctrines of waging war that could enhance rather than reduce global insecurity.

The scope of the nuclear reduction, if at all, will only be determined after an ongoing exercise - the Nuclear Posture Review mandated by the U.S. Congress - is concluded. The NPR is part of a broader re-evaluation of U.S. military and foreign policy goals. Its deliberations will remain confidential, as also its final recommendations. But it has been reliably reported by The New York Times, on the strength of high-level access to administration sources, that the basic parameters of the review process have been framed in a published document - "Rationale and Requirements for U.S. Nuclear Forces and Arms Control", prepared by the National Institute of Public Policy (NIPP) in January this year (The executive summary of the report is available at www.nipp.org).

The singular feature of the NIPP report is its insistence that no negotiated reductions in nuclear arms would be feasible, given the multiplying uncertainties of the global order. It makes a virtual fetish out of the "political-psychological importance of nuclear numbers", and deploys the most slippery arguments in summing up the possibilities of force reduction. "If the United States wishes to maintain an appropriately sized nuclear arsenal, it must be able to adapt that arsenal over time to dynamic strategic and foreign policy requirements. This adaptability in the post-Cold War period is absolutely critical because even the most basic of the factors driving U.S. requirements are subject to unprecedented change." This implies in turn, that there cannot be any agreed numerical targets on force reduction: "The dynamism of the strategic environment and the potential for dramatic change in U.S. strategic requirements does not preclude, a priori, recommendations for deep reductions. It does, however, weigh very heavily against the call to codify and 'lock in' deep reductions and other changes."

THE NIPP report illumines the Bush administration's "unilateralist" resolve to reduce nuclear arms in stark clarity. The emphasis, even in a unilateral disarmament programme, is on flexibility, on the capability to redeploy and reconstitute nuclear arms at will, in response to constantly changing threat perceptions. In going about this task, the U.S. would be guided by a broadly conceived role for nuclear weapons in international strategic engagement: to deter the use of weapons of mass destruction by regional powers, to prevent catastrophic losses in conventional war, to provide unique targeting capabilities (such as deep underground targets), and to enhance U.S. influence in a crisis situation.

As Spurgeon Keeny, the editor of the influential journal Arms Control Today has observed, this doctrine would call for "unspecified unilateral reductions in strategic offensive weapons". And unlike a reduction bound by treaty, "such unilateral actions could be arbitrarily changed at any time and, lacking verification measures, would not add to predictability or stability".

Aside from its rather slippery tone, which scarcely masks its incendiary message of a new nuclear aggressiveness, the authorship of the NIPP report is also important. It is crucial to note that two of the participants in the deliberations that led to the report - Stephen Hadley and Robert Joseph - are now senior officials in the U.S. National Security Council and will presumably share responsibility for the NPR. But the crucial figure in the NIPP study is its director Keith Payne, co-author in 1980 of the infamous Foreign Policy essay entitled "Victory is Possible".

Payne is clearly the reigning deity of the new U.S. nuclear theology and he is a charter member of the cabal of "nuclear use theorists", or NUTS. To appreciate his importance today, it is necessary to place his contribution to the nuclear debate in context. In 1980, as the second phase of the Cold War entered its most hostile phase, American strategists were clearly chafing at the constraints that nuclear parity - in the practical, though not in the strict numerical sense - imposed on them. The doctrine of "massive retaliation" held some credibility as long as the U.S. had the nuclear monopoly, or at least overwhelming superiority. But as the Soviet Union acquired the capability to retaliate, the West European states began to worry over their designation in the U.S. strategic doctrine as the battleground for devastating nuclear exchanges.

From "massive retaliation", the focus then shifted to "flexible response". A thrust by Soviet armour and artillery into western Europe, it was conceived, could be met by a mix of tactical nuclear weapons and conventional arms. The U.S., in this scheme, would control every rung of the ladder of escalation, determining when to bring strategic weapons into play, when to target Soviet missile sites and when to threaten Soviet cities.

THE parameters of the strategic discourse changed once again when the Soviet Union built up intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capacity that could actually threaten the U.S. with an unacceptable level of damage. A serious bid to put in place a ballistic missile defence was aborted on account of its inefficacy and high cost. From then on, the promise of "mutually assured destruction" (MAD), as enshrined in the ABM Treaty, became the only assurance of strategic stability. Ironically, having scaled the pinnacle of doctrinal excess, the U.S. and the Soviet Union could only step back and begin serious negotiations towards limiting and then reducing their deployments of strategic nuclear weapons.

Payne provided the U.S. strategic hawks with the doctrinal basis for an escape from this unacceptable situation. Writing jointly with Colin Gray, he argued in 1980 that the U.S. "needs to devise ways in which it can employ strategic nuclear forces coercively, while minimising the potentially paralysing impact of self-deterrence". The purpose of the nuclear arsenal was to "support U.S. foreign policy objectives", and this was an end that could only be served if the U.S. were to "possess the ability to wage nuclear war rationally". This strategy was to be built on a "plausible theory of how to win a war or at least insure an acceptable end to war". The U.S. should and could plan for the "actual conduct of nuclear war" and its nuclear forces should be deployed with the explicit objective of defeating the Soviet Union, at a cost "that would not prohibit U.S. recovery".

Payne's plans were denounced by saner voices in the strategic community but he found a very receptive audience in the Ronald Reagan administration. In 1982, Reagan's Defence Secretary, Caspar Weinberger, leaked the details of a strategy document that had been adopted the previous year, detailing American plans to fight and win a nuclear war. The new strategic posture required U.S. nuclear forces to "maintain themselves through a protracted conflict period". The ultimate purpose was to "prevail" and to "force the Soviet Union to seek earliest termination of hostilities on terms favourable to the United States".

A torrent of expert criticism forced an attempt at retraction. Just a few months after his attempt to create a climate of public opinion where the prospect of a "protracted" nuclear war would be viewed with relative equanimity, Weinberger issued an open letter to a host of major media organisations, indignantly disclaiming that he had ever sought to propound the outlandish concept. But the Reagan administration was clearly not making much headway with its plans to outbid the Soviet Union yet one more time in the arms race.

The breakthrough came in 1983 with the Strategic Defence Initiative or "Star Wars", the direct lineal ancestor of today's NMD proposal. In its origins, the concept of missile defence or "assured survival" was an antidote to public misgivings about nuclear escalation even beyond the point of MAD. It was in the U.S. nuclear theology, intimately tied up with the grisly doctrine of fighting and prevailing in nuclear war. It has since undergone several mutations, but retained its moorings in the notion that "victory is possible". When George Bush today calls for the debunking of the doctrine of MAD as a relic of the Cold War, the purpose clearly is not to banish nuclear weapons too as the barbarous remnant of less enlightened times. Rather, NMD is all about providing a new salience to nuclear weapons as a practical instrument of warfare and diplomacy.

--------

Cheney dug the grave for star wars but didn't bury it
Bush's running-mate is a hawk who believes in military solutions

Friday June 28, 2000
Jonathan Steele,
Guardian
http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4044954,00.html

Whether or not he emerges this autumn only a heartbeat away from the American presidency, Dick Cheney will always be remembered for one withering phrase.

The man who has just been picked as George W Bush's running mate was the grave-digger of Ronald Reagan's star wars project. He announced in March 1989 that he did not hold with the view that it would provide a complete shield capable of blocking all incoming missiles. The Reagan administration, he said with masterly understatement, "oversold the concept".

Cheney was the newly appointed defence secretary and his remarks were a powerful signal that the incoming administration led by George Bush senior, George W's father, was not going to continue with Reagan's pet project. Hundreds of critics in the American scientific community, as well as ministers in European Nato governments, already shared the Cheney assessment, but to have it come so directly from the top man in the Pentagon was damning.

As the cold war fades in people's memories and is replaced by a new set of myths, it is as well to be reminded of the Cheney decision, not just for its content but also its timing. A piece of historical nonsense has become increasingly popular as an explanation of Mikhail Gorbachev's ground-breaking reforms in Russia.

According to this complacent triumphalism, it was Ronald Reagan's decision in 1983 to up the ante in the superpower arms race by taking war-making technology into space which undermined the Soviet Union. Mikhail Gorbachev realised his country could not match America's military spending without massive economic reform. Faced with the cowboy-actor and the space gun, he and his colleagues cried uncle.

In a speech on star wars (known as the Strategic Defence Initiative) to an admiring audience in the United States, Margaret Thatcher later clothed this fantasy with her typically forceful simplicity: "I firmly believe it was the determination to embark upon the SDI programme and to continue with it that eventually convinced the Soviet Union that they could never, never, never achieve their aim by military might because they would never succeed. I believe this led to an assessment of the poverty of their own system and to require them to admit it produced neither power nor dignity and therefore led to the enormous changes in east-west relations we are seeing."

A pity about the dates. Cheney's denunciation of star wars came several months before the fall of the Berlin Wall and when Moscow was still only tinkering with economic reform. Nor were Cheney's remarks the first blow to star wars. The notion of using a colossally expensive forest of space-based mirrors and lasers to shoot down Soviet missiles had already taken a knock in the dying months of Reagan's second term in the White House.

The congressional office of technology assessment concluded in June 1988 that at its best the star wars interceptors would not hit more than 16% of incoming Soviet warheads. A sceptical Congress had long been chipping away at SDI funding and in October 1988 Cheney's predecessor as defence secretary cut star wars back by roughly half.

Far from being panicked, Gorbachev enjoyed the bureaucratic civil war in Washington in which the star wars maximalists lost out. The Soviet leader contributed to their defeat by repeatedly saying Moscow would not bother to join an arms race in space, and it was the American economy which would lose out. "I think you're wasting your money. I don't think it will work. But if that's what you want to do, go ahead," he told Reagan at the Washington summit in December 1987.

But that's the end of the good news. Star wars was not completely scrapped. It was Cheney who, recognising its impotence against a heavily armed nuclear power, launched the argument that a smaller version could be of value against lesser states. The Bush administration was to call them rogue states, though in recent months Clinton's people have diplomatically renamed them "nations of concern".

After delivering his barbed rejection of space-based missile defences against the Soviet Union, Cheney went on in his 1989 speech to say "they will become more important in the future because the possibility exists that you will have other nations with ballistic missiles, nuclear weapons, or chemical warfare capabilities that could be used against the United States". Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait and the Gulf war, in which Cheney was to play a major role, were still more than a year away. Here was Cheney already anticipating a nuclear shield against third world states.

The charitable explanation might be that Cheney could not destroy star wars in one go, given the attraction to the hi-tech community of any new scientific option plus the huge subsidies which the arms industry would enjoy. So he could only reduce it and invent a new rationale.

Sadly, there is a grimmer version. Cheney's whole career shows he was always an advocate of American global interventionism, with a propensity to exaggerate both the threats America faces and its need for military rather than political means to deal with them. As a congressman in the 1980s, he backed US funding and military help for the contra rebels in Nicaragua, Jonas Savimbi in Angola, and the mojahedin in Afghanistan. In the Pentagon under George Bush senior, he master-minded the US invasion of Panama. Months before Clinton turned it into the linchpin of its European strategy, Cheney was calling for Nato's expansion into eastern Europe. So George W's choice of Cheney for vice-president is not a reassuring sign that he wants an experienced infighter who understands how the White House has to handle powerful congressional committees. It is proof that Bush's instincts on foreign policy are ultra-hawkish.

As the father of the scaled-down version of star wars which is currently known as the National Missile Defence, Cheney is not going to find it emotionally easy to renounce it. The best hope is that as a man who must by now understand the growing desire of European governments not to be taken for granted by their American super-ally he will control his unilateralist reflexes.

The current defence secretary, William Cohen, is at least moving in that direction. He said this week that Washington must take account of European views on NMD because the system could not work without European states' radars. Britain and Denmark are the key countries, and the Cohen statement in effect gives them a veto over this damaging project. They should use it, since NMD is no different from Stars Wars. It too has been dangerously "oversold".

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

Pentagon to Ask for Retirement of MX Missiles

June 28, 2001
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/28/politics/28MISS.html

WASHINGTON, June 27 - The Pentagon will ask Congress for permission to begin scrapping all 50 of its nuclear-tipped MX missiles as a possible first step toward a unilateral reduction in the nation's nuclear arsenal, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld announced today.

The missiles with their multiple warheads and ability to decimate Russian missile silos, were a signature program of President Ronald Reagan, whose administration fought acrimonious battles with Congressional Democrats over the size of the program and the basing of the missile, which it called the Peacekeeper, in the 1980's.

But President Bush is, in essence, proposing to dismantle one of Mr. Reagan's legacies in order to advance another of Mr. Reagan's goals: building a system to defend the nation from long-range ballistic missiles. Mr. Bush has said he would be willing to cut "to the lowest possible number" the nation's nuclear arsenal as part of a new strategic "framework" with Russia that included a missile shield.

The request regarding the MX will be part of the detailed 2002 budget proposal that Mr. Rumsfeld will present to Congress on Thursday. That plan will ask for an $18.4 billion increase over the $310 billion defense budget that the president proposed in February, with most of the additional money going toward health care, higher pay, spare parts and missile defense programs.

In announcing the MX missile proposal today, the Pentagon offered almost no details about how quickly the weapons system would be dismantled, what would happen to the warheads and whether the administration was considering reductions in other nuclear weapons.

Indeed, Mr. Rumsfeld portrayed the proposal purely as a budget issue, saying he had been forced to decide whether to set aside money to maintain the missiles or to retire them before he had time to consider the appropriate size of the nuclear force. Air Force officials say it takes more than $70 million a year to maintain the missiles. The new budget asks for an initial sum of $17 million to begin retiring the weapons system.

Mr. Rumsfeld is overseeing a review of nuclear policy expected to include recommendations on the size of the nuclear force, consisting of missiles, submarines and bombers.

In a news conference today, Mr. Rumsfeld said he was recently told, "You've got the Peacekeeper, there's no money in the budget for the next five years to keep it, there's no money to retire it, and there's a law that says you can't retire it."

But defense officials acknowledged that in making his budget decision to retire the MX, Mr. Rumsfeld had dictated nuclear policy.

"The president has talked about an overall reduction in the nuclear forces, so this is heading in that direction," a senior Air Force officer said.

To retire the MX, the administration must ask Congress to rescind a law enacted during the Clinton administration that prohibits the Pentagon from reducing the nuclear arsenal below the levels set by Start I, with Russia. Congressional Republicans who supported that law said they wanted to review the administration's MX proposal before commenting.

Advocates of arms control, who have been dogged critics of Mr. Bush's missile defense plan, welcomed today's announcement, saying it was a start toward the fulfillment of Mr. Bush's campaign pledge to reduce the nuclear arsenal.

"I was happy to hear it," said John Isaacs, president of the Council for a Livable World, a nonprofit group that promotes lower military spending. "Until I saw it, I couldn't be sure it would happen."

But Mr. Isaacs and other arms control experts said the significance of the proposal would rest in its details, which have yet to be worked out. For instance, it is not clear whether the warheads from the MX missiles - each missile has as many as 10 warheads - will also be retired or remounted on other missiles.

Even before the new proposal, the Pentagon had been considering dismantling its MX missiles - which are based in hardened underground silos at F. E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming.

One plan called for remounting the missiles' W-87 warheads on Minuteman missiles scattered around the country and then retiring the older Minuteman warheads. The W-87 warheads are considered more powerful and reliable than most other nuclear weapons.

If all of the 500 MX missile warheads were retired, the American nuclear strategic arsenal would still include 6,700 warheads.

Bruce Blair, a former Minuteman launch control officer who is president of the Center for Defense Information, a Pentagon watchdog group, said Mr. Bush could have had a much greater impact on the debate over missile defense if he had proposed immediately deactivating all 50 MX missiles rather than retiring them over many years.

"It would be a spectacular announcement to say they are taking them all off alert at once," Mr. Blair said.

The MX program was initially approved by the Carter administration as a counter to a new generation of heavy Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles. But Mr. Reagan championed the weapon, depicting it as a core part of his military buildup, but Congress whittled his request to build 200 missiles to 100, and eventually to 50.

Mr. Rumsfeld's budget proposal will also request a $3 billion increase in spending on missile defense, to $8.3 billion. The request will include restructuring missile defense programs to speed development of technologies that the Bush administration considers promising, including airborne and space-based lasers.

The plan will also call for developing new missile defense test sites in Alaska. Although Pentagon officials said those sites would be used to conduct more realistic flight tests on antimissile technology, they also said the Pentagon would consider declaring them fully operational if a missile attack against the nation seemed imminent.

Mr. Rumsfeld's plan also calls for cutting the nation's fleet of B-1 bombers to about 60, from 93, and for converting two Ohio-class submarines to carry conventional weapons instead of nuclear missiles.

After being adjusted for inflation, Mr. Rumsfeld's plan would represent a 7 percent, or $33 billion, increase over President Bill Clinton's final defense budget of $296 billion, making it the largest Pentagon increase since the Reagan years.

Despite that, some senior defense officials and their supporters in Congress have said the increase is too small. At the same time, fiscal conservatives in Congress have expressed strong skepticism about the size of the Pentagon request.

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

-------- colorado

Arsenal mishandled bomb part, state says
Alleged violations could bring $3 million fine

By George Lane,
Denver Post Staff Writer,
Friday, June 29, 2001 -
http://www.denverpost.com/cda/article/detail/0,1040,53%257E53864%257E36%257E%257E,00.html

The Colorado health department has accused the Rocky Mountain Arsenal of violating state hazardous-waste laws and endangering lives during an improper search of the on-site scrap yard.

The arsenal could be fined as much as $3 million. The state is claiming Army officials mishandled part of a bomb that could have contained napalm.

Charles Scharmann, program manager at the arsenal, on Thursday called the alleged violations the result of misunderstandings. He said he believed those were being worked out with health department officials until the state's "compliance advisory" arrived Wednesday.

According to the state, after six sarin nerve-gas bomblets were found in the arsenal scrap yard late last year, the Army was ordered to stay away from the site until the health department agreed to a search plan. The Army was ordered to give the health department 72 hours' notice before doing anything involving the scrap yard.

"On April 9 (2001) the Army was out in the boneyard doing investigation (without notifying the health department)," said Doug Benevento, director of environmental programs for the health department. "In doing that, they found an M74 part of a napalm bomb. They moved it and subsequently moved it back."

The bomb didn't contain napalm, but it contained about a cup of phosphorus, Scharmann said.

"The reactive/ignitable hazardous waste M74 that was found on April 9, 2001, was stored ... through May 8, 2001 ... in an unmarked open drum located outdoors in a pile of scrap that included combustible materials such as wood," the state advisory said.

Benevento said arsenal officials will have an opportunity to explain their hand-ling of the device and why the health department wasn't notified. If that explanation isn't satisfactory, the arsenal could be fined up to $25,000 per day for each of the alleged violations.

The state alleges four violations - improperly handling the munition, searching the scrap yard without approval, not giving the health department 72 hours' notice, and poor record keeping.

Scharmann said the Army doesn't consider phosphorus to be hazardous and doesn't think the action that turned up the M74 came under the state's reporting guidelines.

He said Thursday that efforts are being made to set up a meeting with health department officials as early as Monday, and that hopefully the matter can be put to rest.

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$16 million awarded in uranium suit

By Mike McPhee
Denver Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 29, 2001
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1002,53~53955,00.html

A federal jury Thursday ordered a uranium-processing company to pay $16.3 million to 32 people who suffered radiation poisoning and other ailments while living near a mill outside Can~on City.

The amount does not include interest or future medical costs awarded to 30 of the plaintiffs who first filed suit against the Cotter Corp. in 1991. Attorney Rebecca Lorenz said the total will exceed $30 million.

Three of the plaintiffs have died in the decade since the suit was filed.

"I'm elated. Finally, the Cotter Corp. is being held accountable," said Joe Dodge, 67, whose wife, Thelma, died of radiation-induced leukemia. Thursday would have been their 48th wedding anniversary.

Dodge, who owned a thoroughbred ranch next to the Cotter mill in Lincoln Park outside Can~on City, was the original plaintiff in the lawsuit.

His daughters, Rhonda Butson and Yvonne Pegoraro, could barely speak through tears of joy.

"This is justice for the death of our mother," Butson said. "Cotter has been terrible. They still don't think they've done anything wrong."

John Watson, Cotter's lead attorney, said the case will be appealed.

"They will never see this money," Watson said as the courtroom cleared. "We feel completely confident that the 10th Circuit (Court of Appeals) will overturn this verdict."

This is the fourth trial involving pollution claims against the Cotter Mill, which was declared a Superfund site in 1984 and closed three years later.

A 1998 trial, which gave 13 plaintiffs roughly $5 million, was overturned on appeal and was retried as part of this case. Both trials were presided over by U.S. District Judge Zita Weinshienk. One case in 1992 was settled and a case in 2000 is being appealed.

Denver-based Cotter processed uranium ore at the mill starting in the early 1950s, grinding it into a powder and forming it into "yellowcake" biscuits for shipment elsewhere.

Testimony during the seven-week trial showed that the fine, yellow radioactive dust drifted across Dodge's horse farm, clotheslines, houses and into the soil and water.

The mill also handled heavy metals such as arsenic, cobalt, nickel and lead.

"People lost everything," said Suzelle Smith, one of three lawyers from Los Angeles with expertise in uranium pollution brought in to try the case. "Joe Dodge lost his wife and his horses. He lost his farm. People lost vegetables. They had birth defects, disfigurements."

Sonja and Don Luna's son Brett, 28, was born with a cleft palate, respiratory problems and mental retardation.

"I thought my heart was going to burst when they announced the verdicts," said Don Luna. "This is for Brett. We won't be around forever to care for him. He will have to have help all his life. He doesn't deserve what he has."

Jury forewoman Mary Crawford of Denver said, "This was the hardest thing I've ever done. It was long and complicated."

"I cried for two days," said juror Sandy Todd. "We just tried to do the right thing."

-------- maryland

Calvert's '02 Budget Funds Future Police
But New Force Still Awaits Approval

By Raymond McCaffrey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 28, 2001; Page SM01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A49482-2001Jun26?language=printer

Calvert County commissioners have approved a $136 million operating budget for fiscal 2002 that funds a new police department to replace the sheriff's office as the lead local law enforcement agency....

Revenue from Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant, the county's largest taxpayer, is expected to be $13.1 million in fiscal 2002 -- about $4 million less than this budget year, but the state has pledged to help Calvert make up $3 million of the public utility taxes lost through utility deregulation.

-------- nevada

Berkley seeks release of nuke waste routes
Other states' help wanted in fight against repository

By STEVE TETREAULT,
DONREY WASHINGTON BUREAU,
Thursday, June 28, 2001
Las Vegas Review-Journal
http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Jun-28-Thu-2001/news/16423932.html

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., plans to urge lawmakers today to begin pressuring the Energy Department to disclose what routes nuclear waste would travel from commercial power plants to a proposed repository at Yucca Mountain.

Berkley is set to propose a House amendment granting $500,000 to the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board for radioactive waste transportation studies.

The Energy Department has not designated routes to Yucca Mountain yet, and the legislation would not force it to do so. Berkley said the amendment could raise public pressure on the department to identify its transportation plans.

Berkley will be given at least five minutes on the House floor to press the case that nuclear waste shipments pose potential dangers to states besides Nevada. It is among the arguments the state's elected leaders are using as they try to form coalitions against the proposed repository.

"The transportation of nuclear waste remains an area of serious public concern, and members and their constituents have a right to know if they might be at risk," Berkley said in a letter sent Wednesday to other lawmakers.

If the amendment comes to a vote, it would be the first test of sentiment in this year's Congress on nuclear waste disposal. The last House vote on the issue was March 22, 2000, when a Yucca Mountain bill passed 253-167.

"I'm not sure we're using this as a temperature gauge," Berkley said. But, she added, "I realize I could say all I want that this has nothing to do with whether you agree with Yucca Mountain or not agree with Yucca Mountain, but in the minds of many people of course it does."

Berkley will try to place her rider onto an appropriations bill that funds the Energy Department, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and a handful of other agencies at $23.7 billion for fiscal 2002, which starts Oct. 1.

House appropriations leaders oppose the amendment as an unneeded change in the bill they wrote, and Berkley conceded it may not pass.

The energy and water bill approves spending $443 million to continue site characterization at Yucca Mountain and to allow the Energy Department to begin preparing a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build a repository at the site. The approved amount is only about $2 million less than the Energy Department requested.

The legislation allocates $6 million for adjoining counties to monitor progress at Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The state of Nevada would be granted $2.5 million for nuclear waste oversight.

Other Southern Nevada projects funded by the bill include $25 million to continue flood control along the Tropicana and Flamingo washes and $400,000 to continue studying wetlands in the Las Vegas Wash.

In a report accompanying the bill, the House Appropriations Committee said it was disappointed with delays at Yucca Mountain that caused the Energy Department to push back its site recommendation to late this year or early next year.

It directs the department to "take a more aggressive approach" to develop transportation routes within Nevada to the proposed repository. It also says the department should begin acquiring transportation casks that could be used to remove spent fuel from a half dozen commercial power plants in the process of being decommissioned.

-------- us nuc politics

Bush hints nuclear test moratorium may end
U.S. president asks weapons scientists for `readiness review' of Nevada desert site

Jonathan Landay
Jun. 28, 2001,
KNIGHT RIDDER, SPECIAL TO THE STAR
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?GXHC_gx_session_id_=8d0471d1b1e51bf0&pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_PrintFriendly&c=Article&cid=993679513831

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration has asked U.S. nuclear weapons scientists to find out how quickly they could restart nuclear test explosions under the Nevada desert if the government decides to end a nine-year moratorium.

At the moment, it would take one to three years to prepare a test. That long lead time could allow political opponents to block any resumption of nuclear testing, a recent study concluded.

Nuclear weapons scientists are looking at ``what it would take to do various kinds of tests on various time scales,'' Bruce Tarter, the director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, told Knight Ridder.

Tarter and others said the administration hasn't decided to resume testing. Nevertheless, the review is likely to add to fears that President George W. Bush might end the nuclear testing moratorium and push for developing new ``low yield'' nuclear warheads that some weapons scientists and conservative lawmakers advocate.

Bush has said he has no plans to end the U.S. moratorium. But Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have argued the safety and potency of the American arsenal can be assured only by periodically detonating randomly selected warheads underground.

``This is all part of a well co-ordinated effort inside and outside the government to basically resume production of nuclear weapons,'' charged Stephen Schwartz, publisher of Bulletin Of The Atomic Scientists, an arms control journal. ``If you are going to do that, you are going to need to test, and this is what this exercise is all about.''

Schwartz said the readiness review of the Nevada Test Site could provide ``cover to China and Russia, and maybe even India and Pakistan,'' to begin preparations to resume their own nuclear tests if the U.S. abandons its self-imposed moratorium on testing.

Tarter dismissed such concerns. ``Understanding the state of readiness, I think, is a non-provocative activity,'' he said.

The test site-readiness study comes as the Pentagon is conducting a separate review of U.S. nuclear strategy and forces ordered by Bush. The issues being examined include radical cuts in America's nuclear arsenal and the future of the testing moratorium.

Bush supported the Senate's 1999 rejection of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, saying a permanent global ban on nuclear testing would be unverifiable. His refusal to call for a new Senate vote on the treaty provoked a rare diplomatic protest by the European Union.

Britain, France and Russia are among 76 nations that have ratified the 1996 treaty. Like the U.S., China has signed but not ratified the pact, and is observing a test moratorium.

Many experts say returning to underground tests is unnecessary and could undermine the international nuclear arms-control system and provoke a new nuclear arms race.

These experts contend that the U.S. can continue to rely on the so-called Stockpile Stewardship Program to ensure its estimated 10,500 warheads remain defect-free. The program uses experiments, computer simulations, warhead inspections and tests of non-nuclear components.

The Nevada Test Site readiness review was requested by retired Air Force Gen. John Gordon, the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, the energy department agency that manages U.S. nuclear weapons programs.

``During this year, we will look hard again at improving test site readiness, and will review whether an appropriate level of resources is being applied to this vital element of Stockpile Stewardship,'' Gordon said yesterday in testimony submitted to a House of Representatives subcommittee.

The Nevada Test Site is spread across 3,500 square kilometres of desert northwest of Las Vegas. The main U.S. nuclear proving ground, it conducted 100 atmospheric and 828 underground tests between 1951 and 1992. It must remain prepared to resume full-scale testing if required.

Darwin Morgan, a spokesperson for the Nevada Test Site, said the thrust of the examination is determining the most valuable test to conduct if the U.S. decides to resume testing.

``The question is . . . what information do you want back from the test?'' he said. ``If it were to rattle a sword, we could do that fairly quickly. If you need good diagnostic information . . . that's where you get the time.''

Tarter said the examination of the site's readiness to resume full-scale tests involves experts from the site, the Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos national laboratories and a commission Congress appointed in 1999 to examine the nation's ability to maintain safe and reliable nuclear warheads without test explosions.

In a Feb. 1 report, the commission expressed grave concern about insufficient funding, crumbling infrastructure, and low morale at the nuclear laboratories, weapons-production plants and the Nevada Test Site.

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House panel debates US nuclear plant liability law

USA: June 28, 2001
Story by Chris Baltimore
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11359

WASHINGTON, - U.S. House lawmakers were at odds yesterday over the speed of renewing an insurance liability law that the U.S. nuclear power industry says is crucial before any new nuclear power plants can be built.

The Bush administration's national energy plan emphasizes nuclear power as a key energy source for the future, which has been criticized by environmental groups and some Democrats.

A House of Representatives Energy subcommittee hearing on nuclear power plants and hydroelectric dams was dominated by discussion of the Price-Anderson Act, to expire August 2002.

The law obligates the federal government to accept insurance liability to shield U.S. nuclear power plant owners from up to $9.4 billion in liability in the event of an accident.

Rep. Joe Barton, the Texas Republican who heads the subcommittee, pledged to reauthorize the law "well in advance of its expiration." That action would be "one of the most important signals Congress can send to people thinking about increasing nuclear capacity," Barton said.

The reauthorization is a pressing matter because the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is expected to receive more applications from utilities to renew existing licenses for nuclear plants. A fast-track approach to the law might be needed, Barton said.

But Michigan Rep. John Dingell, the ranking Democrat on the full House Energy and Commerce Committee, said lawmakers must take their time and analyze the impact of reauthorizing the Price-Anderson Act.

"To move fast may be to move poorly," Dingell said, calling for further study of the issue before the committee signs off on the bill. "I don't think Congress should act on Price Anderson...without thoughtful consideration," he said.

REGULATORS BACK PRICE-ANDERSON Key regulatory agencies have already backed a renewal of the insurance liability law.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission "strongly and unanimously recommends the act's reauthorization," Richard Meserve, chairman of the agency, told the panel.

William Magwood, director of the Energy Department's office of nuclear energy, said the department supported reauthorizing the act "without any substantial changes." The department also recommended holding liability limits at the present $9.4 billion level, he said.

Congress passed the Price-Anderson Act in 1957 as an amendment to the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, which opened the door for U.S. nuclear plant construction.

No nuclear plants have been built in the United States since the 1979 accident at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island plant, where the failure of the plant's water cooling system led to the partial melting of a reactor's uranium core.

Nuclear power currently produces about 20 percent of all U.S. electricity.

The Bush administration has touted nuclear power as a clean form of energy that is not dependent on foreign oil. Environmental groups complain the government has yet to figure out a safe way to store nuclear waste for thousands of years.

According to NRC's Meserve, the country has turned a corner in its perception of nuclear energy, which enjoys more public support. "A lot of people have gotten past some of the issues. I think Wall Street has gotten past those issues," he said.

Exelon Nuclear's chief operating officer Jack Skolds, whose company operates nuclear power plants, told the panel the current nuclear regulatory environment is "obsolete." He said the Price-Anderson Act should allow smaller, "merchant-size" nuclear plants to shoulder less insurance liability than larger plant operators.

DEMOCRATS VOICE ENVIRO CONCERNS Separately, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission chairman Curtis Hebert appeared before the subcommittee to discuss ways to streamline the process for relicensing hydroelectric dams.

Hebert acknowledged that its process for hydropower licensing is "often long and too costly," and agreed to cooperate with Congress to improve procedures.

Democratic lawmakers Dingell and Virginia's Rick Boucher accused FERC of giving short shrift to laws like the Clean Water Act in permitting hydroelectric dams.

The nation's rivers are "the property of all," not "luxury swimclubs to be run by FERC for the benefit of our nation's electric utilities," Dingell said.

Hydro industry officials were critical of a statute that allows the FERC to give equal consideration to environmental and industry interests in permitting new dams.

FERC "doesn't have to consider if the environmental measures it orders are economical," said David Tuft, spokesman for the National Hydropower Association, which represents about two-thirds of U.S. private hydropower operators About 40 percent of the nation's 100,000 megawatts of hydro capacity is licensed, while the rest is federally operated. Half of all privately licensed hydropower capacity will come before FERC for relicensing by 2016.

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Defense Plan Faces Tough Scrutiny

By Robert Burns
AP Military Writer
Thursday, June 28, 2001; 10:16 a.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010628/aponline101617_000.htm

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration's revised blueprint for 2002 defense spending faces a skeptical Congress quick to question some of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's priorities.

Rumsfeld was testifying Thursday before the House and Senate armed services committees, which authorize defense spending. A day earlier, he said the administration is asking Congress for an extra $18.4 billion for the 2002 budget year, which begins Oct. 1.

As part of that amended budget, Rumsfeld proposed shrinking the Air Force bomber fleet, retiring all 50 Peacekeeper long-range nuclear missiles and closing an unspecified number of bases in 2003.

Retiring the Peacekeepers, which were built to carry 10 warheads per missile, could be the first of the unilateral nuclear reductions President Bush has said he would make, with Congress' approval.

He said the $18.4 billion would be the biggest defense budget increase for any year since the mid-1980s, although he said it would barely begin the military modernization President Bush has promised.

The budget as proposed would total $328.9 billion. That compares to the $310.5 billion Bush proposed in February and $296 billion in the current Defense Department budget. The February proposal was amended to reflect preliminary results from Rumsfeld's review of military requirements, although most of his conclusions will not be reflected in the budget until 2003.

Contrary to the expectations of many in the military and in Congress, the administration's 2002 budget devotes relatively little to military modernization beyond what the Clinton administration had planned. Rumsfeld said that was because most of the extra $18.4 billion had to be earmarked for improving the living conditions of U.S. troops, which he said had deteriorated badly.

The plan calls for 5 percent pay raises for all troops, with some getting as much as 10 percent.

Rep. Ike Skelton, the senior Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, and other committee members sent a letter to Rumsfeld Wednesday urging a minimum pay raise of 7.3 percent.

At a Pentagon news conference, Rumsfeld accused the Clinton administration of having cut military investments too sharply.

"They overshot," he said, adding, "The coasting went on too long."

Critics say the Bush administration found itself with little room to afford the scale of defense spending increases Rumsfeld initially sought once Bush got his top-priority $1.35 trillion tax cut.

At least one key congressional Republican wasn't pleased. Rep. Jim Nussle of Iowa, the House Budget Committee chairman, threatened to block the proposed $18.4 billion increase until the Pentagon explains how it fits into its long-term budget plans.

"I'm very troubled by the administration's request for more defense money before it completes the strategic review and develops a long-term spending plan," Nussle said. "Even more troubling is that most of the money is for current operations rather than to implement the findings of the review."

Rumsfeld's plan to close more military bases also is likely to draw strong congressional reaction. He did not mention the subject at his news conference, but in a follow-up presentation the Pentagon's chief financial officer, Dov Zakheim, said Rumsfeld intends to propose base closings in 2003.

Zakheim said Rumsfeld aides are developing a plan for how to proceed on this politically sensitive subject. "We are all across the map on this," he said, indicating that there was no consensus on whether there should be a single round of base closings, multiple rounds or other approaches.

Zakheim said experts have told the Pentagon that the military has about 25 percent too many bases.

Zakheim stressed that the plan for mothballing 33 of the Air Force's 93 B-1B long-range bombers and consolidating the remaining fleet at two bases - compared with the current five - does not mean the three bases that lose B-1Bs are in danger of closing. He said the Air Force is working to adjust the missions of the three bases to minimize job losses.

The decision to cut B-1Bs from the bomber force was the biggest surprise in the budget.

Critics in Congress quickly accused the administration of playing politics, noting that the only two B-1B bases left would be in Bush's home state of Texas, at Dyess Air Force Base; and at Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota, the home state of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle.

Zakheim said $165 million in savings would be used by the Air Force to modernize the remaining B-1B bombers.

Next year the Pentagon also will retire all 50 of the Air Force's most modern and most accurate intercontinental-range nuclear missiles, the LGM-118A, more commonly called the Peacekeeper, Zakheim said. Based at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming, the Peacekeepers were first deployed in 1986. They cost about $70 million apiece and are armed with 10 nuclear warheads each.

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U.S. Sanctions North Korean, Chinese Firms

Reuters
Thursday, June 28, 2001; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A55144-2001Jun27?language=printer

The Bush administration said yesterday that it has imposed sanctions against Chinese and North Korean companies for helping Iran in violation of international pacts aimed at curbing the spread of deadly weapons.

The offending action by China's Jiangsu Yongli Chemicals and Technology Import and Export Corp. took place last year and involved "technical assistance controlled under a multilateral regime," State Department spokeswoman Susan Pittman said.

The department would not specify which international pact was at issue in the case of China or give details of the alleged transfer. Congressional aides said they had deduced it fell under the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Penalties were imposed against the North Korean company, Changgwang Sinyong Corp., "for the transfer to Iran of equipment and technology controlled under the Missile Technology Control Regime," Pittman said, referring to an accord designed to head off the spread of missiles.

President Bill Clinton also imposed sanctions against the two companies.

The new sanctions are the first imposed by the Bush administration against a Chinese entity for an alleged nonproliferation violation.

The Chinese Embassy did not return calls seeking comment.

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U.S. PRESIDENTS' IQ SCORES....

Bakersville News Service
6-28-01
by Jennifer L. Borenstein
From: Zoiritsa@aol.com

The intelligence of our presidents has never been seriously scrutinized at any time in our history until now. There is a widespread perception that President G. W. Bush is not qualified for the position he holds. That increasing awareness by the people has led to a study of the intellectual ability of all presidents for the past fifty years. There have been twelve presidents in that time, from F. D. Roosevelt to G.. W. Bush. All were rated based on scholarly achievements, writings that they alone wrote, their ability to speak effectively, and a number of psychological factors. The conclusions of the study, conducted by an independent think tank located in Scranton, Pennsylvania were surprising. This think tank includes high caliber historians, psychiatrists, sociologists, scientists in human behavior, and psychologists. Among their ranks are Dr. Werner Levenstein, world-renowned sociologist, and Professor Patricia A. Williams, a world-respected psychiatrist. All members of the think tank are experts at being able to detect a person's IQ from the criteria stated earlier. After four months of research, these learned men and women have determined the IQs of each president within a range of five percentage points. The IQs listed below are the norms for eachpresident.

147 Franklin D. Roosevelt (D)
132 Harry Truman (D)
122 Dwight D. Eisenhower (R)
174 John F. Kennedy (D)
126 Lyndon B. Johnson (D)
155 Richard M. Nixon (R)
121 Gerald Ford (R)
175 James E. Carter (D)
105 Ronald Reagan (R)
099 George HW Bush (R)
182 William J. Clinton (D)
091 George W. Bush (R)

The non-partisan researchers who evaluated the twelve presidents determined that the six Republican presidents for the past 50 years had an average IQ of 115.5, with President Nixon having the highest IQ, at 155. President G. W. Bush was rated the lowest of all the Republicans with an IQ of 91. The six Democrat presidents had IQs with an average of 156, with President Clinton having the highest IQ, at 182. President Lyndon B. Johnson ,was rated the lowest of all the Democrats with an IQ of 126. The margin of error is plus or minus five percent. This study was initiated on February 13, 2001 and completed on June 17, 2001. This study validated the widespread feeling of people about the sitting president. President Bush was rated low because of his inability to command the English language, his lack of any scholarly achievements, and an absence of anything authored by him that would reflect an intellectual effort.

-------- us nuc power

Nuclear Programs Are Losing Ground on Campus

New York Times
June 28, 2001
By MATTHEW L. WALD
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/28/national/28NUKE.html?searchpv=nytToday

ITHACA, N.Y., June 22 - Off campus, energy shortages may be creating talk of a nuclear power renaissance. But on campuses around the country, the technology's infrastructure is dying.

Here at Cornell, the trustees voted unanimously last month to close the university's research reactor, the only one in New York State and the Ivy League's last. There was a petition drive, a demonstration, even offers by the nuclear staff to have other departments use the reactor, all to no avail.

The University of Michigan and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are considering doing the same.

Where 40 campuses had reactors in 1988, there are 28 today, and only about half of those operate more than a few hours a year. Nuclear departments and programs are disappearing or being merged into electrical or mechanical engineering departments, where they fare worse in the perennial university battles for faculty slots and other resources.

The decline in nuclear engineering programs and campus reactors reflects a decline in student interest that has paralleled the industry's decline.

"It's a fact of life that kids are pretty practical these days," said Marvin M. Mendonca, who oversees licensing for nuclear reactors other than power reactors for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. What they choose to major in, Mr. Mendonca said, depends on "what they think they can get for a job."

Some question what this will mean for the future of the industry. Nuclear departments like Cornell's have supplied the senior engineering staff and executives at the nation's 103 commercial power reactors, as well as engineers for the regulatory commission.

"If we do build new nuclear plants," said William D. Magwood IV, director of the Office of Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology at the United States Department of Energy, "we're going to need people who understand the technology and can operate the plants safely, and the places that train those people are beginning to disappear. It's very depressing."

Jeffrey Merrifield, one of the five members of the regulatory commission, said that among the agency's problems was its aging staff, with five times more staff members over age 60 than below age 30.

The Energy Department counted just 570 students nationwide majoring in nuclear engineering in 1997, down from 1,500 five years earlier. The drop in student interest is somewhat paradoxical, industry experts say, since there is substantial demand for nuclear engineers.

Even without new nuclear plants envisioned by the Bush-Cheney energy plan, the applications by dozens of reactors to extend their licenses to 60 years from 40 mean a longer future for the industry.

M.I.T. and the University of Michigan face another problem, a need for modernizing their aging reactors, requiring an investment that has led administrators to consider shutting down. The Energy Department has promised those two universities and Cornell $250,000 each, and Senator Pete V. Domenici, a New Mexico Republican who is on the Energy Committee, has proposed bigger increases.

Some hope a new generation of students might show more interest.

"We're coming out of the `nuclear is bad' phase," said Danielle K. Hauck, who worked on a petition to save the Cornell reactor and just completed her junior year here.

Ms. Hauck, who was born the year of the Three Mile Island accident and was in elementary school at the time of the Chernobyl one, says she likes the idea of new reactors.

But Cornell administrators say they have better uses for their resources and even for the real estate the reactor occupies. A billboard near the reactor building here advertises a nanotechnology center that will open in the spring of 2004.

The aging of those with nuclear expertise is a cause of decline as well as a symptom. Robert C. Richardson, vice provost for research at Cornell, wrote in a letter in April to Cornell's president that the reactor should be closed, in part because "very few if any young faculty are enthusiastic about the science, about devoting their own careers to building or improving the facility, or about utilizing the reactor heavily."

This is in part the university's policy; in the mid-1990's it ended its program in nuclear engineering and reassigned the faculty to other departments, virtually assuring that no new faculty members in the field would be hired.

The nuclear staff at Cornell fought hard for survival. They volunteered the reactor as a tool for archaeology, geology and even art history, and students collected more than 1,900 petition signatures from their classmates to keep the place open. Twenty-five people demonstrated outside a faculty senate meeting, surely one of the few pro-nuclear demonstrations on campus in history. But none of this produced sufficient allies.

The reactor director, Kenan Unlu, is working on a method to analyze silicon for dopants, which are trace contaminants the electronics industry seeks to insert in the raw material of computer chips.

A professor of dendrochronology has students slicing up wood samples from trees and from the beams of medieval buildings from the eastern Mediterranean. The wood rings are then put in test tubes and irradiated in order to date the wood.

Other experiments measure trace elements in volcanic rock. The veterinary school would like to try treating cancers in animals' brains with neutrons from the reactor.

But none of this seems likely to sustain the reactor in the absence of a nuclear engineering program.

William B. Streett, who was dean of engineering from 1984 to 1993 and is now retired, pondered the problem of allocating resources based on what the students were signing up for.

"Doesn't an institution like Cornell have a responsibility to society to support areas not currently popular or fashionable?" Dr. Streett asked. "I think it does."

At some time in the future, he said, the country is very likely to return to nuclear power. "But whether nuclear engineering and science qualifies is strictly a matter of judgment, and for better or worse, the trustees have not supported it here."

-------- MILITARY

-------- arms sales

'What is Washington going to do about that?'

By Jonathan Power,
June 28, 2001
Jordan Times
http://www.jordantimes.com/Thu/opinion/opinion4.htm

IN ANY body politic there will be a group of powerful people who, if not in the inner circle of the president or prime minister, can win access to it at regular intervals. Security is their profession and they can be met at discrete academic conferences where they tend to stand out as rather earnest, if sombre, figures. It is they who bend the ear of those in authority, consistent in their solicitations, even as governments change, arguing that their country will only have true security if they possess a nuclear deterrent and that if their advice is not heeded, one day there will be an enemy who will take advantage of their country's naivetÈ.

One of these I knew reasonably well, the erudite and charming nuclear physicist, the late Dr Munir Khan, one of the fathers of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, who, it was said - although no proof was ever forthcoming - had used his previous position as a high official in the International Atomic Energy Agency to build clandestine contacts for Pakistan's bomb makers. The late Olof Palme, prime minister of Sweden for many years, told me how he had to "defang" the nuclear bomb establishment that was well under way with its plans when he came to power. It is not easy to roll back the nuclear lobby even when one is prime minister - there is always the danger, if you don't take the scientists along with you, that they, believing they love the country more than the prime minister does, will conduct their future researches clandestinely or, if not in secret, under the guise of using it for "peaceful purposes", and await for the political currents to turn in their favour.

This is in essence what happened in India. A new authoritative study, `The Politics of Nuclear Weapons in India and Pakistan' (Praeger), written by Haider Nizamani, makes clear that their nuclear programmes did not originate in response to specific security problems. They were born in visions of national identity. Adversaries were not the cause. Rather, they had to be found. This explains India's remarkable decision to put its bomb development on ice after its successful "peaceful" nuclear test in 1974. The "threat" from China had gone quiet and Pakistan, for all the acrimony, did not seem a real threat. Only in the 1990s, by arguing that China with its nuclear weapons was becoming an enemy, were the bomb advocates able to win the ear of the politicians and alternative voices were gradually marginalised as "unpatriotic".

One of the pivotal figures was the strategic thinker K. Subrahmanyam who, by sheer doggedness, transformed a minority opinion into a mainstream assumption. His calculation, correct as it turned out, is once a certain threshold has been crossed, popular opinion, invariably nationalistic, will succumb to the call of patriotism. With the rise of the Hindu-nationalist party, the BJP, the bomb became inevitable. The move by America, Russia, Britain and France to win support for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty probably backfired because it compelled India to choose between its old rhetoric of worldwide nuclear disarmament and its growing taste for nationalistic bravado.

We now see the same process afoot in Saudi Arabia. A dozen years ago, in this column, I tried to draw attention to Saudi Arabia's purchase of Chinese CSS-2 rockets. I wrote then that there could be no question that these had not been purchased for conventional military activity, as they were unnecessarily powerful and, moreover, inaccurate with a normal explosive warhead. Their sole purpose was to carry a nuclear weapon. For years, Western nuclear powers have connived to keep this, if not secret, quiet. Saudi Arabia has been a strategic ally, most important and long standing, in the oil business but relatively recently in the containment of Saddam Hussein's Iraq. As successive administrations in Washington have viewed it, discretion has been the better part of valour, even though one of the targets would be the Middle East's other nuclear power, Israel.

An article by Richard Russell in the current issue of Survival, the quarterly of the influential International Institute for Strategic Studies, argues that whilst Saudi Arabia has not yet put nuclear warheads on these rockets, it is probably only a matter of time before it does. Self-serving security issues are far more important in such decision making than "an innate friendship" with the US. Although the US more than responded to Iraq's invasion of neighbouring Kuwait, would they do so a second or third time? For the desert kingdom with its small population and army but huge territory, nuclear weapons appear a sensible option. At the same time, they would make the country less dependent on the stationing of US forces on its soil, which enrages the powerful fundamentalist lobby.

After Washington belatedly discovered the purchase of the CSS-2 from China, 31 senators called on the Reagan administration to suspend American arms sales to Saudi Arabia. But the Saudis were not intimidated. Requests by Washington to inspect the missiles have been refused.

As Israel long has, Saudi Arabia will always deny the intention to build a nuclear armoury, not least so as not to publicly embarrass Washington. But common sense and much circumstantial evidence suggest that this is the way it will go. It is not the so-called "rogues" who pose the threat of uncontrolled nuclear proliferation; it is some of the Western powers' "nearest and dearest". What is Washington going to do about that?

The writer is a syndicated columnist and author. He contributed this article to the Jordan Times.

-------- balkans

Bush bars rebels from U.S.

June 28, 2001
By Bill Sammon
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010628-91523606.htm

President Bush, who Monday sent U.S. troops to rescue ethnic Albanian rebels from Macedonian military forces near Skopje, yesterday barred the rebels from entering the United States and tried to choke off their funding.

The president issued a statement "strongly condemning the terrorist violence perpetrated by armed extremists determined to destabilize the democratic, multiethnic government of Macedonia."

To put some teeth into his condemnation, Mr. Bush barred rebels and war criminals from entering the United States. He also forbade Americans from funding the rebels, who have come under increasing fire in recent days from Macedonia's Slavic majority.

The White House sees no inconsistency in rescuing the rebels one day and condemning them another. While the administration deplores the aggression of the ethnic Albanians, it decided that escorting them to safety Monday would cool escalating tensions near Skopje.

The rebels had been holed up in the village of Aracinovo and taking fire from Macedonian government forces for several days. Mr. Bush decided to send in 81 GIs, who are part of a NATO peacekeeping force, to escort 350 ethnic Albanians to a rebel-controlled area of the Black Mountains.

Benjamin Works, director of the Strategic Issues Research Institute, said the Bush administration was not contradicting itself by condemning the rebels it had just finished rescuing.

"The actions were consistent and here's why: The situation on Monday was a real emergency," Mr. Works said. "Aracinovo overlooks the airfield and it's in mortar range of the city of Skopje. The rebels were digging in there and forcing more refugees out."

Still, the rescue mission infuriated the Macedonian Slavs, who rioted in the streets and expressed growing animosity toward the United States and NATO. Yesterday, the U.S. Embassy in Skopje ordered 30 Americans to leave Macedonia as growing tensions sparked fears of ethnic violence.

Meanwhile, at the White House, presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer blamed the strife on the ethnic Albanian rebels.

"Their violent tactics threaten U.S. and international efforts to promote regional peace and stability and pose a potential danger to U.S. military forces and other Americans supporting peacekeeping efforts," Mr. Fleischer said.

Yesterday's condemnation by the White House came in response to a call for help from Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski. Various countries in Europe and the United Nations also heeded the call.

Mr. Bush issued a proclamation shutting U.S. borders to ethnic Albanian agitators and people "who otherwise seek to undermine peace and stability in the region." Also barred are "those who are responsible for wartime atrocities committed in the region since 1991."

At the same time, Mr. Bush issued an executive order forbidding Americans from financing the ethnic Albanian rebels in Macedonia. The order bars "U.S. persons from transferring, paying, exporting, withdrawing or otherwise dealing in the property or interests in property of persons involved in violent or obstructionist actions."

While Mr. Works hailed the president's action as "a very important turnaround in U.S. policy," the effect was not immediately clear.

"The purpose of these two actions is to send a clear message to the extremists and their supporters in the region ... that such tactics are unacceptable," Mr. Fleischer said. "We will use the means at our disposal to isolate these groups and individuals and cut their access to financial support."

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Milosevic Extradition Decree Suspended

New York Times
June 28, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Yugoslavia-War-Crimes.html

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) -- Yugoslavia's Constitutional Court froze efforts to extradite Slobodan Milosevic to the U.N. war crimes tribunal on Thursday, ruling that it needed more time to consider a government decree enabling the handover.

The court -- comprised of a panel of judges appointed during Milosevic's reign -- had been expected to rule Thursday on whether the recent government measure violated the constitution, which bans the surrender of Yugoslav citizens to foreign courts. It was unclear how long the court would deliberate.

``This is the victory of law over politics,'' said Toma Fila, the head of Milosevic's defense team.

Yugoslavia's pro-democracy government wants to meet international demands on bringing Milosevic to justice ahead of an international conference Friday in Brussels, Belgium, meant to drum up financial aid for the country.

Government efforts to extradite Milosevic were welcomed by Washington, and after weeks of waiting, the United States announced Wednesday it would be attending the donors' conference.

Yugoslavia needs billions of dollars in foreign aid after 13 years of rule by Milosevic, who was ousted in October after riots forced him to concede that he had lost an election.

The court decision to suspend the extradition process came on a 4-0 vote and followed a decision by the presiding judge, Milan Srdic, 65, to resign. He said he was at retirement age and didn't wish to jeopardize the court's ruling should anyone challenge his presence on the panel.

Any decision made by the Constitutional Court can be considered by Yugoslavia's highest court, the Supreme Court. The Constitutional Court rules primarily on issues pertaining to the constitution.

The appeal was a maneuver for time by Milosevic's defense attorneys, who are seeking to delay the former president's extradition. Pro-democracy leaders have pledged to hand him over to the U.N. court in The Hague, Netherlands, and angrily denounced the Constitutional Court's decision.

``This measure was brought by judges appointed by Milosevic, and they acted in this way to protect him,'' said the country's interior minister, Zoran Zivkovic.

Some senior leaders, like Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, say Milosevic will be delivered to the U.N. tribunal no matter how courts rule.

Milosevic's lawyers had been fighting Milosevic's extradition on at least two levels -- the federal courts in Yugoslavia and the courts in Serbia, Yugoslavia's largest republic.

Earlier, his lawyers lost a battle in the republic's courts, when judges rejected attempts by Milosevic's lawyers to dismiss three court officials involved in his extradition case. The decision removed one of the obstacles for his surrender to the Netherlands-based tribunal.

Milosevic's attorneys want to slow efforts to extradite the former president, who was indicted for alleged atrocities committed in Kosovo during the crackdown he ordered two years ago on the province's ethnic Albanian population. The crackdown ended after NATO's 78-day bombing campaign.

Milosevic has been in prison since April 1 while allegations of abuse of power and corruption are investigated. If extradited, he would be the first former head of state to face a war crimes trial in front of the U.N. tribunal, which was established in 1992.

Branimir Gugl, another Milosevic attorney, said that if the pro-democracy authorities sent Milosevic to The Hague, it would amount to a ``outright kidnapping, an act of legal terrorism.''

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Milosevic handed over to war crimes tribunal

06/28/2001
USA Today
The Associated Press
http://usatoday.com/news/world/june01/2001-06-28-milosevic.htm

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) - Slobodan Milosevic was handed over to an official of the U.N. war crimes tribunal Thursday, in the start of his extradition for trial before the Netherlands-based court for alleged Kosovo atrocities.

CNN is reporting that Milosevic's plane has landed in the Netherlands.

"The former Yugoslav president was handed over to The Hague tribunal," said government spokesman Nemanja Kolesar.

Milosevic would be the first former head of government to be brought before the war crimes tribunal. The former Yugoslav president was indicted for alleged atrocities committed in Kosovo during the crackdown he ordered two years ago on the province's ethnic Albanian population. The crackdown ended after NATO's 78-day bombing campaign.

Reporters at Belgrade's Central Prison saw a motorcade leaving the building for an undisclosed location but could not verify if Milosevic was in one of the cars.

Confirmation of Milosevic's handover came just hours after the former president appeared to have won more time in his fight to avoid trial by the tribunal when judges suspended a federal government decree allowing his extradition.

In a first reaction, Milosevic lawyer Toma Fila said: "I cannot believe that this has happened."

Croatian President Stjepan Mesic is the first Balkan leader to declare publicly that he is prepared to testify at The Hague about Milosevic if he is summoned.

Speaking through an interpreter at a journalism conference sponsored by the Freedom Forum in Zagreb, Croatia, the reformist president of Croatia said he will certainly "respond positively" to any request that he testify before the U.N. war crimes tribunal and added that he is prepared to offer "facts."

"He has inflicted much harm upon many...primarily the Serbian people," Mesic said. Milosevic "initiated ethnic cleansing," Mesic said, adding that the time has come for Milosevic to pay for what he did. "The victims are many."

The Croatian president also believes Milosevic will try to portray himself as a martyr at The Hague.

The decision to have the former Yugoslav president extradited came from the government of Serbia, which together with Montenegro makes up the Yugoslav federation. Senior Serbian officials had served notice they would surrender Milosevic to the tribunal even if the federal Constitutional Court suspended the decree.

Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, in a terse statement explaining the move, said his government had decided to take over the jurisdiction of federal authorities on the extradition law.

Yugoslavia's pro-democracy government had intensified its efforts to set up a legal framework for Milosevic's extradition in an effort to meet international demands ahead of a key conference Friday in Brussels, Belgium, meant to drum up financial aid for the country.

Washington on Wednesday announced it would send representatives to the donors' conference, after weeks of waiting to see how serious Yugoslavia's efforts were. Yugoslavia is in need of billions of dollars worth of foreign aid after 13 years of rule by Milosevic, which ended in October after riots forced him to concede losing elections.

Acting earlier Thursday on an appeal by his lawyers, Yugoslavia's Constitutional Court froze Milosevic's extradition process to The Hague court, ruling it needed more time to consider a government decree enabling the handover.

The court - made up of judges appointed under Milosevic - was to decide whether a recent government measure enabling extradition violates a constitutional ban on surrender of Yugoslav citizens to foreign courts.

As the court's decision was announced, pro-democracy officials in the government of Serbia, Yugoslavia's larger republic which has jurisdiction over Milosevic, met to consider steps to counter the court action.

Branimir Gugl, another Milosevic attorney, said that Milosevic's extradition now would amount to "outright kidnapping, an act of legal terrorism."

Milosevic's defense team was also fighting his extradition on another level, the Serbian Supreme Court, where it filed Thursday for the dismissal of that court's presiding judge, after failing to win exclusion of three lower court officials involved in Milosevic's case.

Milosevic, 59, has been in prison since April 1 while allegations of abuse of power and corruption are investigated

In a related development, Serbian police said Thursday that at least 36 bodies of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo - among them corpses of nine children and an eight-month old human fetus - had been exhumed from a mass grave location in a Belgrade suburb.

The site has been linked to Milosevic, whom Serb authorities have accused of ordering the cover-up of Kosovo war crimes.

Contributing: Sam Meddis, USATODAY.com

-------- colombia

Colombian Rebels Release 242 Police And Soldiers

New York Times
June 28, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-colombi.html

LA MACARENA, Colombia (Reuters) - Colombia's Marxist FARC guerrillas released 242 captured police and soldiers from jungle camps on Thursday in a gesture aimed at reviving peace talks to end the country's 37-year-old war.

In a ceremony presided over by the FARC's commander Manuel ''Sureshot'' Marulanda, the rebels handed the prisoners over to the government's top peace envoy, Camilo Gomez, in a demilitarized area in southern Colombia that was ceded to the guerrillas more than two years ago to start the talks.

The releases have been one of the biggest steps in slow-moving peace talks between the 17,000-member FARC and President Andres Pastrana. About 40,000 people have been killed in the last decade of fighting.

Earlier in June, the FARC, Latin America's largest insurgency, released 55 sick soldiers in return for 14 ailing rebels in state jails in a landmark prisoner swap.

But even after the releases, the FARC, which is struggling to install a Marxist regime in this Andean nation of 40 million people, will still hold about 100 noncommissioned officers and officers.

-------- iraq

Envoys mull need for flyovers

June 28, 2001
By Eli J. Lake
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010628-90974890.htm

A U.S. delegation will evaluate the need for continued flights over northern Iraq during a visit this week to the region, where U.S. and Kurdish sources say Saddam Hussein has deployed as many as 10,000 members of his elite Republican Guard.

Military experts have told the London Sunday Telegraph they suspect Saddam may be planning an attack into the north to create a crisis that would undermine international support for a plan to amend U.N. sanctions on Iraq.

Farhad Barzani, the Washington representative for the Kurdistan Democratic Party, said KDP sources inside Iraq estimate that close to 9,000 members of Saddam's Republican Guard have massed northwest of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

Other sources in the region said Iraq over the last three weeks has concentrated troops in an arc between Ba'adra and Shakhan.

An administration official said yesterday that recent intelligence reports estimate the number of troops in the area at between 8,000 and 12,000.

Mr. Barzani, interviewed Tuesday evening, said, "This is a little bit more than a routine exercise, [but] I still cannot say the threat is significant and imminent."

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher was asked Tuesday about the buildup after the London Telegraph report appeared in The Washington Times.

"We have seen reports that Iraq is moving troops towards the Kurdish areas. We are trying to establish the facts on the ground. We are watching the situation closely," he said.

Qubad Talabani, a Washington representative for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the other main Kurdish political party inside Iraq, said U.S. and British forces patrolling the northern no-fly zone had responded effectively to such troop movements in the past, and that the PUK was confident the Western aircraft would defend them in case of an attack.

"We are seeing movement ... beneath the KDP territory. The response of Operation Northern Watch to a similar movement in December was very effective. It reassured the Kurdish people and sent a message to Saddam Hussein," he said.

The Iraqi troop movements come as the Pentagon evaluates the U.S. policy for patrolling the no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq, which have grown more dangerous as Iraq, with Chinese help, has upgraded its air defenses.

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, have proposed changing the rules of engagement to let U.S. planes strike Iraqi targets pre-emptively and defend civilian targets against Iraqi attacks, according to administration officials.

However, these sources said, the Joint Chiefs of Staff have opposed this tack in policy meetings, arguing instead for less-frequent flights.

The policy is bound to come up this week when a two-person State Department delegation meets in the Kurdish Iraqi cities of Sulemani and Irbil with the PUK leader Jalal Talabani and his KDP counterpart, Masoud Barzani.

A State Department official said the purpose of the visit is to try to determine "what is and what is not possible in northern Iraq -- what can we move forward on."

The official added, "There will be some discussions on how important the no-fly zone is to the north."

Kurdish leaders visited Washington in March for talks with officials at the Pentagon, the National Security Council, the State Department and the office of the vice president.

"Everyone reassured us the no-fly zone would continue," Farhad Barzani said. "People assured us there would be technical changes on the rules of engagement, but the mandate would remain for the north."

Other sources who attended the meetings said the Kurds were not given a direct assurance that Iraqi strikes against Kurdish civilian targets would be answered with American air power.

On Tuesday, Mr. Boucher said, "Our long-standing policy has been that if Iraq reconstitutes its weapons of mass destruction, threatens its neighbors or U.S. forces, or moves against the Kurds, we do maintain a credible force in the region. We are prepared to act at an appropriate time and place of our choosing."

-------- israel

Powell Announces Peace Timeline

New York Times
June 28, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-US-Mideast.html

JERUSALEM (AP) -- Secretary of State Colin Powell announced agreement between Israel and the Palestinians Thursday on a timeline to raise trust and move toward new peace talks. He also suggested observers monitor the fragile Middle East cease-fire if the two sides agree.

``It will work if we can get the violence ended,'' Powell said.

Powell, denying any U.S. policy shift, said he was not proposing that an outside force move in, though he seemed to suggest that after meeting Yasser Arafat and before seeing Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

``There was no intention on my part to surprise'' Sharon, Powell said in a news conference with the Israeli leader. ``In fact, the prime minister and I have an arrangement, no surprises.''

The United States has twice vetoed Palestinian proposals in the U.N. Security Council for an international observer group.

Powell, in his appearance with Sharon, said the process would begin with a seven-day period to see if violence can be halted that long. He described it as a period ``in which we will measure the chairman's actions.''

He was referring to Palestinian leader Arafat, who has been urged to do everything he can to halt terror attacks against Israelis.

The second stage, Powell said, would be a six-week cooling-off period, as recommended by a commission headed by former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell. This would lead to so-called confidence-building measures, Powell said. Among those proposed by the commission is a freeze on construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza.

Sharon reaffirmed his commitment to the Mitchell recommendations and the cease-fire worked out two weeks ago by CIA Director George Tenet.

``Israel is committed to peace,'' Sharon said. ``We are all committed to peace.''

At the same time, Sharon dismissed as ``mostly'' unnecessary the idea of observers overseeing the steps Israel and the Palestinians would take. ``I think it is much simpler than that,'' Sharon said. For example, he said, when a school bus is attacked the action is seen clearly.

Seeming to reverse policy, Powell had endorsed the idea of observers earlier at his news conference with Arafat in Ramallah on the West Bank. Powell said he had not discussed the idea with either leader.

``There will be a need for monitors and observers to see what is happening'' to prevent violence, Powell said beside Arafat.

Those monitors would go to points of friction between Palestinians and Israelis and serve as go-betweens to resolve disputes, Powell said. He said he had not decided on the composition of such a force.

After meeting with Sharon, Powell pulled back from his earlier remarks. What he had in mind, he said, was an arrangement that would be approved by Israel and the Palestinians to oversee security measures as part of an earlier agreement for Israel to pull back on the West Bank. Any arrangement would have to be decided by the two sides and nothing would be imposed upon them from the outside, he said.

Arafat said the force should be drawn from the United Nations, the United States, the European Community and others -- an idea Sharon rejected again. ``We never supported U.N. observers,'' Sharon said. ``We never accepted European observers. I don't think they are needed.''

On his three-day trip to the region, Powell had cited as a hopeful sign a decline in violence, noting that there had been no deaths on either side since Saturday. But on Thursday, Palestinians shot and killed an Israeli woman in an ambush along a West Bank road, the Israeli army said.

Powell denounced the attack and said he had told Arafat the killer should be brought to justice. Sharon bitterly condemned the slaying, saying it ``was more serious because it was done when Secretary Powell was in the area working on peace.''

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, who is on the dovish side of the Israeli political spectrum in contrast to the hard-line prime minister, said ``if the settler woman was not killed it could have started'' Thursday, referring to the seven-day cool down period.

``If there are incidences the clock will stop,'' Peres said.

Powell appeared determined to accelerate the movement toward negotiations. ``We cannot allow transition from one phase to another to be a stumbling block,'' he said.

In Ramallah, Arafat, switching from Arabic to English, issued a scorching indictment of Jewish settlers.

``Our people are suffering from their crimes,'' he said, adding that some settlers operate under the protection of the Israeli army.

Arafat underscored the commission's call for a freeze on further construction. Not one house can be added, he said.

Powell urged the Israelis to make it easier for Palestinians to get to and from their jobs in Israel and thanked Arafat for a commitment to do everything possible to end the violence.

-------- nato

Clark says Milosevic handover vindicates NATO war

June 28, 2001
http://famulus.msnbc.com/FamulusIntl/reuters06-28-142647.asp?reg=EUROPE

WASHINGTON, The former NATO commander who led the war over Kosovo on Thursday said the handover of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to the international criminal tribunal vindicated the 1999 air war.

U.S. Gen. Wesley Clark, who retired a year ago, also said he was not surprised by the action. ''There was no doubt the stakes in the Kosovo operation were Milosevic himself, even though that wasn't a formal objective,'' he said in a telephone interview.

''The NATO actions were the essential first steps which enabled the fledgling democratic forces to bring about Milosevic's downfall in the election,'' Clark told Reuters.

''Without the NATO action to discredit Milosevic's policies and leadership, I don't believe that democratic victory would have been possible in the election,'' he said.

Clark said the handover of Milosevic to the U.N. tribunal at The Hague was a major step, but still only a beginning.

''Obviously this is a big step for the government and the people of Serbia, but it's only the first step. Much more remains to be done to break the cycle of ethnic hatreds in the Balkans,'' he said.

''The next step should be the detention and removal to The Hague of the other Serbian war criminal indictees,'' Clark said.

To the critics of the NATO air strikes, Clark said: ''It's regrettable that force must sometimes be used to back up diplomacy. When it is, the use of force should be as minimal as possible. In the case of NATO's operation it was, and it was successful.''

Clark heard about the Milosevic handover while having lunch at the Pentagon.

''My immediate reaction was intense satisfaction, and happiness that the government of Serbia had been able to make this decision,'' Clark said.

-------- puerto rico

Navy secretary says service will lose Vieques vote

June 28, 2001
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010628-68383700.htm

Navy Secretary Gordon England testified yesterday that his service will lose a scheduled Nov. 6 referendum in which residents of Vieques are to vote on whether to keep or close a U.S.-owned bombing range.

His testimony before skeptical members of the House Armed Services Committee presented a dilemma for the Navy. Mr. England said on June 15, and again yesterday, that if Congress refuses to cancel the vote the Navy will try to win it.

But his assessment that the vote will be an inevitable defeat means the Navy would be spending millions of dollars approved by Congress on a lost cause.

"In my judgment, and the judgment of a lot of other people, we will lose the referendum," Mr. England told the committee yesterday. His testimony was designed to convince the committee to back President Bush's surprise decision to seek cancellation of the vote and get the Navy off the training range by May 2003.

At the Pentagon on June 15, Mr. England told reporters, "If we do not get the legislative relief, we will certainly follow the law and we will work to win the referendum."

Republican congressional aides say that holding out the possibility of victory, as Mr. England did in his June 15 comments, goes against the White House's position that the vote is not winnable and that Congress should approve Mr. Bush's plan to abandon the island. The sources said the administration is withholding most of the $40 million Congress appropriated to help the Navy win the referendum by improving living conditions on Vieques.

In the first congressional hearing since the president reversed himself on his Vieques campaign pledge, angry Republicans accused Mr. England of appeasing left-wing demonstrators in Puerto Rico, while Democrats said Mr. Bush's decision rested on politics.

The assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. Michael Williams, testified he does not know of an alternative site that would bring Marines to the needed skill level before deploying overseas. Vieques has served as a prime training ground for the Atlantic Fleet for simultaneous aerial bombings, amphibious assaults and naval gun practice.

"We cannot allow a small group of people to put at risk our men and women, our national security," said Rep. Robin Hayes, North Carolina Republican, referring to demonstrators, including liberal activists, who have protested on Vieques.

"The Clinton administration pandered to Hispanic votes in making the request they made last year," said Rep. Gene Taylor, Mississippi Democrat, referring to the referendum compromise deal made in 2000. "I also deeply regret that this president is pandering to Hispanic votes based on limited knowledge of the true facts, and it's going to hurt national security in doing so."

Mr. England responded that "there is absolutely no circumstance in which I would ever, ever endanger national security."

Mr. Bush announced his decision to leave Vieques at the urging of New York Gov. George E. Pataki, who is up for re-election next year and is courting the votes of about 1 million Puerto Ricans in his state. Karl Rove, the president's senior political adviser, who is mapping a strategy to capture more Hispanic votes for the Republican Party, hosted several crucial meetings on Vieques, including one with Mr. England.

Mr. England asserted again that he, not the White House, proposed leaving Vieques. He said continued disruption by demonstrators made it difficult to conduct training. He said he is confident that a panel of retired naval officers will be successful in finding new sites that come close to matching Vieques' ideal training environment.

"There are no good alternatives," he said. "But I do believe some are better than others, and in my judgment, I have made what I believe to be the best decision out of a lot of bad opportunities for this decision."

Congress authorized the referendum last year as part of a compromise agreement with the Puerto Rican government, in which Vieques' 6,400 registered voters will have the option of voting Nov. 6 to kick the Navy off the base or to continue allowing live-fire training.

----

Navy Secretary Defends Bush's Decision to End Vieques Bombing

By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 28, 2001; Page A34
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A55081-2001Jun27?language=printer

Navy Secretary Gordon R. England yesterday defended the Bush administration's decision to abandon a firing range on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques, as both Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill accused the administration of playing politics with national security.

Testifying before the House Armed Services Committee, England predicted that the Navy would lose a Nov. 6 referendum among the 9,500 residents of Vieques over the continued use of the island for training by ships, planes and amphibious forces. "It's better that this decision be made by the Department of the Navy than the voters of Vieques," England said.

Rep. Solomon P. Ortiz (D-Tex.) raised the possibility that the Navy could replace Vieques with a privately owned, 222,000-acre expanse of ranchland in his district on the Gulf of Mexico. But he said more time is needed for "consensus building" among his district's residents.

Rep. Bob Stump (R-Ariz.), the committee's chairman, chided England and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz for placing military readiness "at risk" by abandoning Vieques. Stump also said he was worried that the decision might result in "other nations and communities seeking to force the U.S. military to withdraw from other critical training facilities around the world."

The Bush administration announced June 15 that it would ask Congress to cancel the referendum, part of a deal struck last year between the Clinton administration and former Puerto Rico governor Pedro J. Rossello. The deal called for the federal government to provide $40 million for economic development on Vieques, plus an additional $50 million if voters supported the Navy's use of the bombing range.

Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), the committee's ranking Democrat, attributed the administration's decision to "political expediency," particularly the desire to lure Hispanic voters. Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.) went further, accusing both the Clinton and Bush administrations of "pandering to Hispanic voters" in a way that will benefit only rich developers eager to build resorts on Vieques.

"That's the scam," Taylor said. "And the scam hurts national security."

Taylor also told England that the Navy was not doing enough to woo Vieques voters and try to win the referendum. According to one poll this month, support for the Navy among Vieques voters stood at 39 percent and was growing.

----

Puerto Rico Shells Out for Big Guns

By Judy Sarasohn
Thursday, June 28, 2001; Page A31
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A55121-2001Jun27?language=printer

Who is getting what client is a favorite topic among Washington lobbyists. What their competitors are getting paid is even more fascinating to them.

So they can thank Kenneth McClintock, minority leader of the Puerto Rico Senate, for providing copies of contracts between the island's government and some Washington lawyers and lobbyists. McClintock, a member of the pro-statehood party, thinks Gov. Sila Calderon is spending too much on lobbying to get the Navy to stop its bombing exercises on the island of Vieques.

According to the contract papers, Puerto Rico is paying Winston & Strawn as much as $500,000 from Jan. 29 through June 30; Covington & Burling, as much as $300,000; and BKSH & Associates, as much as $250,000.

McClintock says not all of those funds are for Vieques lobbying, so he estimates that Calderon is spending at least $140,000 or so a month on the issue. He acknowledges that "it's normal for the governor to hire lobbyists" -- the island has only one, nonvoting delegate in Washington.

"But spending what she's spending on only one issue is excessive," he said in an interview.

Puerto Rico's Washington office declined to comment.

Calderon wants Vieques's use as a bombing range ended immediately. Instead, the Bush administration announced earlier this month that it would stop bombing exercises in 2003 and would ask Congress to cancel the Nov. 6 referendum over the continued use of the island for military training.

Charles Black Jr., a Republican strategist and chairman of BKSH, said his firm's payment was not for lobbying on Vieques but for other issues such as the economy, education and housing -- he defines lobbying as working Congress. The lobby shop helped organize Calderon's meetings in Washington earlier this year, including one with Josh Bolton, deputy chief of staff to President Bush. BKSH did monitor yesterday's Hill hearing on Vieques.

"I have recommended to a number of people in the White House to get the Navy together with the governor and resolve this," Black said.

Black added that whatever Calderon is spending on lobbyists, "I guarantee you it's a small fraction" of what the previous governor spent.

Covington's Richard Copehaken said the law firm is not being paid to lobby but to handle a Vieques-related lawsuit dealing with noise control legislation. Winston & Strawn's James Burnley IV could not be reached for comment.

McClintock was helped in getting his message out by The MWW Group, a government relations shop. He said he is not allowed to spend his official budget on consultants outside Puerto Rico so he's going to hold a fundraiser in August to come up with the money to pay MWW, which he says will amount to $500 to $600 a month.

-------- u.n. / world court

World Court claims U.S. jurisdiction

June 28, 2001
By Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010628-1406560.htm

NEW YORK -- The International Court of Justice yesterday criticized the state of Arizona for executing a German national in defiance of its wishes, insisting in its most explicit language that ICJ orders are binding on U.S. and other national courts.

American authorities were scrambling yesterday to understand the consequences. They could not say whether the judgment would open the United States to financial claims from Germany, or whether the ruling would have any material impact on the U.S. legal system.

"The case presented complex issues and the decision requires careful study," said State Department spokesman Philip Reeker.

"We are undertaking a close and careful review of it in its entirety."

The ICJ, also known as the World Court, had previously criticized the United States for breaching the Vienna Convention by failing to meet its obligation to notify a consulate when foreign nationals were charged with crimes.

In March 1999, Arizona executed Walter LaGrand, an indigent German national who with his brother was convicted of fatally stabbing a bank manager during a botched robbery in 1982.

At the request of Germany, the Hague-based World Court issued a provisional order -- a sort of injunction -- ordering Arizona not to execute him until it could make a final ruling on the matter. LaGrand was executed, as scheduled, the following day.

The court criticized the U.S. solicitor general and the governor of Arizona for treating its provisionary order as "mere exhortation."

Because the court can take more than two years to decide a case, these provisional orders are most often injunctions, intended to freeze the action until the court can rule.

"By failing to take all measures at its disposal to ensure that Walter LaGrand was not executed pending the [ICJ's] final decision ... the United States breached the obligation incumbent upon it," the judges wrote in a majority opinion.

The ICJ hears disputes between nations. Its decisions are considered binding and can only be appealed through the U.N. Security Council. Yesterday's ruling essentially reinforced that.

"This is an interesting step forward in terms of the ICJ asserting itself," said Lee Casey, a former Justice Department lawyer and expert on international law.

"It shows that the court is being more assertive than it has been in the past, and given where we are in the development of international law and these new criminal courts, that's important."

Mr. Casey said the ICJ is clearly concerned that the U.S. government did not do enough to compel the state of Arizona to comply with its order. "But the federal government doesn't necessarily have the authority to do that."

In a previous case involving foreign nationals on death row, then-Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright appealed to the Supreme Court to halt the execution of a Paraguayan rapist and murderer in Northern Virginia. The local jurisdiction proceeded with the execution as scheduled.

State Department officials have acknowledged that the Vienna Convention was violated in the LaGrand case, and say that a sweeping program is under way to educate state and local jurisdictions on consular notification.

"We think consular notification is important for Americans abroad and we take it very seriously," Mr. Reeker said yesterday. "We recognize that we have to provide consular notification to foreign nationals in the United States."

American lawyers argued at The Hague two years ago that the trial was fair and that the LaGrands had ample time -- nearly 15 years -- to run through appeals in four different courts.

Nor is Germany claiming its innocence.

Karl and Walter LaGrand were born in Germany but moved to the United States as toddlers. Their mother married an American serviceman, and they are said to have had no accent.

In 1982, the brothers panicked during a robbery and fatally stabbed the manager of a Tucson bank with a letter opener when he was unable to open the safe. A teller was also critically injured.

Karl LaGrand was executed in the Arizona gas chamber in February 1999. His brother, Walter, followed him two weeks later -- one day after the German government petitioned the World Court to halt the execution.

"This state of affairs is of great significance," Gerhard Westdickenberg, Germany's legal representative, argued at the ICJ hearing two years ago. "Not just for Germans, but for all foreign nationals arrested in the United States."

The failure to notify foreign authorities "could have particularly tragic consequences in cases in which, like in ours, the death penalty may be imposed." he said.

The German government said yesterday that it knows of four more Germans facing the death penalty in the United States.

The ICJ ruling comes at a time when American allies, particularly in Europe, are increasingly protesting the use of the death penalty in the United States. The European Union has made the elimination of the death penalty a condition of membership.

Many Latin American countries and the Vatican also oppose the death penalty, and the American Bar Association has suggested a moratorium on executions until questions over its fairness can be addressed.

In his arguments two years ago, State Department lawyer James Thessin suggested the German suit was a ruse to "litigate the death penalty under the guise of a violation" of the Vienna Convention.

"We must not allow Germany to lead us into ... restructuring the United States criminal justice system," he said.

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

The giants of the Navy face growing risks
As defense secretary rethinks shape of military, some say aircraft carriers will become increasingly vulnerable.

By Robert P. Hey
The Christian Science Monitor,
THURSDAY, JUNE 28, 2001
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2001/06/28/p1s2.htm

WASHINGTON - They were the workhorses of World War II in the Pacific, with fighter planes roaring off their pitching decks to pummel Japanese ships and soldiers.

Ever since, aircraft carriers have been a worldwide mainstay of American military might, moving into position whenever American forces, or those loyal to the United States, have been threatened.

But now, serious questions are being raised about their vulnerability in the 21st century. Has the age of the carriers ended? Or are they now invulnerable to destruction?

The question about this one class of ships is a pivotal one for White House and Pentagon officials as they craft a long-term vision for America's armed forces. They want to maintain US superiority in the skies, but tight budgets will likely mean tough choices.

The gray giants remain an important platform for projecting US power to the far reaches of the globe.

But even by Washington standards, carriers don't come cheap. A new, improved flat-top would run about $6 billion.

Moreover, in an era of smart bombs and unmanned surveillance planes, an aircraft carrier in combat puts roughly 3,000 US men and women at risk.

Although they are vulnerable to detection and attack, carriers at present "are also the most difficult warships to detect and attack," says longtime defense consultant Norman Polmar, the author of a coming book on the ships. For now, potential enemies lack sophisticated systems to track or seriously attack them.

"The real debate isn't whether vulnerability will occur. It's when it will occur," says Loren Thompson, the main author of a study on carrier vulnerability, yet to be released, by the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va.

It's important that defense planners do their best to figure out the "when" of vulnerability as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld tries to identify what the future shape of the military should be. Among other things, he's trying to decide whether more big carriers should be built, or smaller ones instead. Or whether some other types of weapons should be phased in soon to replace some existing carriers.

For many, it may seem hard to think of today's gargantuan carriers as vulnerable. Each is as long as three football fields, as high as a 20-floor building, and carries a crew of 3,000. Most weigh 100,000 tons, much of it armor.

Several US carriers were sunk in the early years of World War II, but they had far less armor and defensive protection. Today's carriers "are so huge, and so sophisticated, that the entire Japanese fleet couldn't have sunk one," Mr. Thompson says.

Despite their bulk, they're relatively fast, churning through waters for months at their top speed of about 34 miles an hour, on a single supply of nuclear fuel. Being fast makes them hard for any current potential adversary to find, size notwithstanding, or to zero in on with attacking missiles.

Having lots of armor makes them hard to damage seriously . Various defensive systems, including a new communications system, are able to ward off attacks today by ballistic missiles, submarines, and mines, many experts say, and the Navy is working to thwart cruise-missile attacks.

"People exaggerate [carriers'] vulnerability and overestimate an enemy's capabilities," Thompson says. Potential foes who have missiles or nuclear weapons currently lack the sophisticated satellite tracking systems to hit a fast-moving target.

With future advances in protective weapons, today's carriers may be even less vulnerable in 10 or 20 years, Thompson adds.

But how vulnerable a carrier is in the years ahead may depend on where it sails. For instance, China is trying to develop systems that could be used to track and attack ships. Trying to sail an aircraft carrier off China's coast in 15 years, if that nation were an adversary, "could be difficult," says Robert Martinage, a specialist in future weapons at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. Still, carriers will remain useful off the coasts of militarily weaker nations.

Still, some experts urge new concepts for replacing a few of today's carriers in 10 or more years. Mr. Martinage suggests developing smaller carriers that fire missiles rather than launching planes. And he recommends converting some submarines to fire a greater number of more-sophisticated missiles.

In the future, carriers will also likely face new threats. Already, cruise missiles are harder to see, and faster. Subs are quieter, can cruise undersea longer, and carry more lethal weapons.

"The big question," says Martinage, is "how fast are those ... going to mature, versus countermeasures we're working on?"

For now, carrier proponents point to the 1969 accident aboard the USS Enterprise, in which nine of its 500-pound bombs detonated. The force equalled half a dozen Russian cruise missiles, yet "the Enterprise could have resumed strike operations within hours," says the Lexington Institute's forthcoming study.

----

Rumsfeld: Extra Funds Only Start

By Robert Burns
AP Military Writer
Thursday, June 28, 2001; 3:55 p.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010628/aponline155507_000.htm

WASHINGTON -- Addressing a skeptical Congress, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld called Thursday for more military base closings and said the administration's request for an extra $18.4 billion in next year's Pentagon budget "only begins to make a dent" in needs.

Rumsfeld told the House Armed Services Committee that the problems are worse than he expected. The extra billions for the 2002 Pentagon budget will go almost entirely to fixing problems of the past rather than investing in a military of the future, he said.

"We cannot build a 21st century force quite yet," Rumsfeld said, "because the 20th century force we have is in serious need of repair."

That statement captured the essence of a dilemma the Bush administration faces at the Pentagon. President Bush campaigned on a promise to transform the military to meet new threats like computer warfare and longer-range ballistic missiles. Yet after achieving his top-priority $1.35 billion tax cut, Bush has left Rumsfeld far short of the billions he needs to fulfill the president's promise.

"This budget improves the situation but leaves us short of our goal," Rumsfeld said.

While acknowledging the difficulty of gaining congressional approval for another round of base closures, Rumsfeld said he saw no alternative. He noted that many of the House committee members who were questioning him Thursday had their own ideas on ways of spending more on the military.

"Where is it going to come from?" he asked rhetorically. "Together we're going to have to find ways to save money. There are too many urgent things that need money."

Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said studies have estimated the Pentagon can save $3 billion a year by bringing its base structure more in line with its force structure.

Rumsfeld said he intended to send Congress a base-closing proposal by the end of the year. In his testimony before the House and Senate armed services committees Thursday he gave no indication of how many bases might be vulnerable, but he said the military has about 25 percent more base capacity than it needs.

The last round of base closings was in 1997.

Rep. Joel Hefley, R-Colo., said the process used to determine which bases should be closed during the 1990s was corrupted by the Clinton administration and caused unnecessary turmoil across the nation.

"I have serious concern about us going through that, putting every community in America that has any kind of a military installation into an absolute froth of anxiety," Hefley told Rumsfeld.

Hefley suggested devising a new approach in which facilities that the Pentagon knows it wants to keep open should be publicly excluded from the list of potential closing, even before final decisions are made. In response, Rumsfeld said he saw "some attraction" in that and was actively considering it.

Rep. Bob Stump, R-Ariz., chairman of the House committee, called Rumsfeld's budget request "more of a placeholder budget than a significant change of direction or movement toward a defense transformation."

"We need to do more," said Rep. Floyd Spence, R-S.C. He also challenged the idea of closing more military bases.

"After you close a base you never get it back," he said, suggesting that one day the post-Cold War downsizing of the military might be reversed.

Rumsfeld blamed the Clinton administration for having allowed defense spending - especially investments in new weaponry - to fall too far.

"With the end of the Cold War, there was an appropriate drawdown, but it went too far - overshooting the mark by a good margin," he said.

The result is a decline in combat readiness, he said.

"The systematic under-investment went on far too long, the gap is too great," Rumsfeld said. "There is no way it could be fixed in one year, or very likely, even six."

Shelton backed up Rumsfeld's assertion on the deterioration of combat readiness.

"Our forces are not aging gracefully," the four-star general said.

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Rumsfeld Pushes Military Closures

New York Times
June 28, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Defense-Budget.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld urged Congress Thursday to allow the Pentagon to close more military bases as a cost-saving measure, but he immediately encountered resistance.

``With a round of base closings and adjustments that reduced unneeded facilities, we could focus the funds on facilities we actually need,'' Rumsfeld told the House Armed Services Committee.

Rep. Joel Hefley, R-Colo., said the process used to determine which bases should be closed during the 1990s was corrupted by the Clinton administration and caused unnecessary turmoil across the nation.

``I have serious concern about us going through that, putting every community in America that has any kind of a military installation into an absolute froth of anxiety,'' Hefley told Rumsfeld.

Hefley suggested devising a new approach in which facilities that the Pentagon knows it wants to keep open should be publicly excluded from the list of potential closings, even before final decisions are made. In response, Rumsfeld said he saw ``some attraction'' in that and was actively considering it.

Rep. Vic Snyder, D-Ark., echoed Hefley's concern, saying he hoped the Pentagon could devise a way to ensure that communities near critical military bases are ``taken off the anxiety list'' ahead of time.

Rumsfeld said base closings would be a way to save the money the Pentagon will need to transform the military. He did not suggest how many bases should close but said recent studies have indicated that the military has 20 percent to 25 percent too much base capacity. It is not possible to translate that to a specific number of potental base closings, since the Pentagon could reach what it considers the proper base capacity by closing various mixes of large, small and medium-sized bases.

Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, voiced support for Rumsfeld's proposal. ``By removing that excess capacity we could potentially save an estimated $3 billion per year, which is money that could be used to help fix the remaining infrastructure,'' he told the committee.

Rumsfeld appeared before the committee to defend the administration's revised 2002 Pentagon budget, which calls for an extra $18.4 billion.

As part of that amended budget, Rumsfeld proposed shrinking the Air Force bomber fleet, retiring all 50 Peacekeeper long-range nuclear missiles and closing an unspecified number of bases in 2003.

To illustrate the problem the administration foresees in providing sufficient funds for defense, Rumsfeld said the 2003 Pentagon budget would have to increase by another $18.3 billion, to $347.2 billion, ``just to keep the department going next year on a straight line with no improvements.''

``And that would not make a significant contribution to transformation, it would be just holding where we are,'' he added.

Retiring the Peacekeepers, which were built to carry 10 warheads per missile, could be the first of the unilateral nuclear reductions President Bush has said he would make, with Congress' approval.

Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif., said she supports the Peacekeeper decision and asked Rumsfeld how it fits into the administration's broader approach to reconfiguring the nation's nuclear arsenal.

``There's not a doubt in my mind but that this is the right thing to do,'' Rumsfeld said, adding that it was the Air Force's conclusion that the 50 missiles are ``not needed.'' He noted that the Pentagon has a total force of 7,500 nuclear weapons.

``We don't need that many. The Peacekeeper will not make even the beginning of a dent in that total force,'' Rumsfeld said.

Rumsfeld said the $18.4 billion budget increase would be the biggest defense budget increase for any year since the mid-1980s, although he said it would barely begin the military modernization President Bush has promised.

The budget as proposed would total $328.9 billion. That compares to the $310.5 billion Bush proposed in February and $296 billion in the current Defense Department budget. The February proposal was amended to reflect preliminary results from Rumsfeld's review of military requirements, although most of his conclusions will not be reflected in the budget until 2003.

Contrary to the expectations of many in the military and in Congress, the administration's 2002 budget devotes relatively little to military modernization beyond what the Clinton administration had planned. Rumsfeld said that was because most of the extra $18.4 billion had to be earmarked for improving the living conditions of U.S. troops, which he said had deteriorated badly.

The plan calls for 5 percent pay raises for all troops, with some getting as much as 10 percent.

Rep. Ike Skelton, the senior Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, and other committee members sent a letter to Rumsfeld Wednesday urging a minimum pay raise of 7.3 percent.

At a Pentagon news conference, Rumsfeld accused the Clinton administration of having cut military investments too sharply.

``They overshot,'' he said, adding, ``The coasting went on too long.''

Critics say the Bush administration found itself with little room to afford the scale of defense spending increases Rumsfeld initially sought once Bush got his top-priority $1.35 trillion tax cut.

At least one key congressional Republican wasn't pleased. Rep. Jim Nussle of Iowa, the House Budget Committee chairman, threatened to block the proposed $18.4 billion increase until the Pentagon explains how it fits into its long-term budget plans.

``I'm very troubled by the administration's request for more defense money before it completes the strategic review and develops a long-term spending plan,'' Nussle said. ``Even more troubling is that most of the money is for current operations rather than to implement the findings of the review.''

--------

Army Grounds Attack Helicopters

The Associated Press
Thursday, June 28, 2001; 8:40 p.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010628/aponline204048_000.htm

WASHINGTON -- The Army grounded its Apache attack helicopters as a precaution after a June 11 incident in which the tail rotor assembly on an Apache flown by an Israeli army pilot fell off in flight, officials said Thursday.

The Army said the tail rotor blades of all 742 of its Apaches will be inspected before they fly again. The first unit to be inspected will be a Utah National Guard Apache unit due to deploy to Kosovo soon.

Officials said they could not immediately say how long it would take to get the entire Apache fleet back in operation, but CNN, which was first to report the grounding, quoted an unidentified Army official as saying it could take as long as three months.

CNN said each inspection takes four hours.

The Army said the 500 Apaches with tail rotor blades that have more than 1,000 flight hours will not be allowed to fly again until the blades are replaced or inspection procedures are implemented.

The other 242 helicopters will be allowed to fly after an inspection but must be reinspected after every 125 hours of flight.

The grounding, ordered on June 15, was the third for the Apache fleet in the past two years. Last December they were grounded after a flaw was discovered in a key component of the flight control system. In November 1999, they were grounded to replace tail rotor bearings or to replace transmission parts.

Apaches are the Army's best attack helicopters and were used extensively in the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq. Flown with a crew of two, they are armed with as many as 16 laser-guided Hellfire missiles designed to knock out tanks. In addition, they carry 70 mm rockets and a 30 mm cannon that can fire 625 rounds per minute.

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Defense Plan Faces Tough Scrutiny

By Robert Burns
AP Military Writer
Thursday, June 28, 2001; 10:16 a.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010628/aponline101617_000.htm

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration's revised blueprint for 2002 defense spending faces a skeptical Congress quick to question some of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's priorities.

Rumsfeld was testifying Thursday before the House and Senate armed services committees, which authorize defense spending. A day earlier, he said the administration is asking Congress for an extra $18.4 billion for the 2002 budget year, which begins Oct. 1.

As part of that amended budget, Rumsfeld proposed shrinking the Air Force bomber fleet, retiring all 50 Peacekeeper long-range nuclear missiles and closing an unspecified number of bases in 2003.

Retiring the Peacekeepers, which were built to carry 10 warheads per missile, could be the first of the unilateral nuclear reductions President Bush has said he would make, with Congress' approval.

He said the $18.4 billion would be the biggest defense budget increase for any year since the mid-1980s, although he said it would barely begin the military modernization President Bush has promised.

The budget as proposed would total $328.9 billion. That compares to the $310.5 billion Bush proposed in February and $296 billion in the current Defense Department budget. The February proposal was amended to reflect preliminary results from Rumsfeld's review of military requirements, although most of his conclusions will not be reflected in the budget until 2003.

Contrary to the expectations of many in the military and in Congress, the administration's 2002 budget devotes relatively little to military modernization beyond what the Clinton administration had planned. Rumsfeld said that was because most of the extra $18.4 billion had to be earmarked for improving the living conditions of U.S. troops, which he said had deteriorated badly.

The plan calls for 5 percent pay raises for all troops, with some getting as much as 10 percent.

Rep. Ike Skelton, the senior Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, and other committee members sent a letter to Rumsfeld Wednesday urging a minimum pay raise of 7.3 percent.

At a Pentagon news conference, Rumsfeld accused the Clinton administration of having cut military investments too sharply.

"They overshot," he said, adding, "The coasting went on too long."

Critics say the Bush administration found itself with little room to afford the scale of defense spending increases Rumsfeld initially sought once Bush got his top-priority $1.35 trillion tax cut.

At least one key congressional Republican wasn't pleased. Rep. Jim Nussle of Iowa, the House Budget Committee chairman, threatened to block the proposed $18.4 billion increase until the Pentagon explains how it fits into its long-term budget plans.

"I'm very troubled by the administration's request for more defense money before it completes the strategic review and develops a long-term spending plan," Nussle said. "Even more troubling is that most of the money is for current operations rather than to implement the findings of the review."

Rumsfeld's plan to close more military bases also is likely to draw strong congressional reaction. He did not mention the subject at his news conference, but in a follow-up presentation the Pentagon's chief financial officer, Dov Zakheim, said Rumsfeld intends to propose base closings in 2003.

Zakheim said Rumsfeld aides are developing a plan for how to proceed on this politically sensitive subject. "We are all across the map on this," he said, indicating that there was no consensus on whether there should be a single round of base closings, multiple rounds or other approaches.

Zakheim said experts have told the Pentagon that the military has about 25 percent too many bases.

Zakheim stressed that the plan for mothballing 33 of the Air Force's 93 B-1B long-range bombers and consolidating the remaining fleet at two bases - compared with the current five - does not mean the three bases that lose B-1Bs are in danger of closing. He said the Air Force is working to adjust the missions of the three bases to minimize job losses.

The decision to cut B-1Bs from the bomber force was the biggest surprise in the budget.

Critics in Congress quickly accused the administration of playing politics, noting that the only two B-1B bases left would be in Bush's home state of Texas, at Dyess Air Force Base; and at Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota, the home state of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle.

Zakheim said $165 million in savings would be used by the Air Force to modernize the remaining B-1B bombers.

Next year the Pentagon also will retire all 50 of the Air Force's most modern and most accurate intercontinental-range nuclear missiles, the LGM-118A, more commonly called the Peacekeeper, Zakheim said. Based at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming, the Peacekeepers were first deployed in 1986. They cost about $70 million apiece and are armed with 10 nuclear warheads each.

--------

Pentagon faces uphill battle in effort to close bases

By Dave Moniz,
USA TODAY, 06/28/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/june01/2001-06-28-rumsfeld-testify.htm

WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Congress on Thursday that the military could save billions of dollars a year by closing excess bases, but it was unclear whether lawmakers would authorize more closings.

Senior Pentagon officials say the military branches can no longer afford to operate a base structure that is 25% larger than what's needed for the 1.4 million-member active-duty force. The Pentagon says it can save as much as $3 billion a year with fewer bases.

Rumsfeld pressed his case for the cuts when he testified to separate sessions of the House and Senate armed services committees. The administration is seeking a 2002 military budget of $329 billion.

The Defense secretary said savings from more base closings could help pay for the military's transformation to a high-tech, 21st century force. Rumsfeld didn't specify which bases should be closed.

Despite the potential savings cited by Pentagon officials, many in Congress remained skeptical.

"I don't see a groundswell of support for base closure," said Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee. He said it's "touch and go" whether a bill authorizing a round of base closings will make it out of the committee.

A top Republican on the committee, Rep. Jim Saxton of New Jersey, agreed that Congress appears to have little stomach for authorizing future reductions.

Lawmakers view bases as an important part of local economies - a source of jobs and retail sales. Saxton said he and others doubt that eliminating bases would achieve meaningful savings.

One hurdle is accurately projecting upfront expenditures and long-term environmental costs of shutting bases, Saxton said. He also said four rounds of base closings from 1988 through 1995 were so traumatic to military communities that many lawmakers don't want to do it again.

After closing 97 military bases in that period, the Pentagon still has about 600, including 250 it considers "major installations." Although the number of military personnel has declined by about one-third since 1988, the Pentagon has eliminated only about 20% of its bases.

One factor making more closings difficult: The services have already made the easiest choices by ridding themselves of costlier installations and those in poor locations.

Sen. John Warner, R-Va., the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he would support closings under the right circumstances. Among his conditions: that all the closings be done at once - preferably in 2003, a non-election year.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the committee chairman, said he will push to authorize a round of closings in 2003. Local political considerations, however, may kill the effort, he said.

"We're wasting a lot of money. Yet the people who say we need more money for defense are the very people who say, 'Oops, I'm worried about my base' " Levin said.

President Bush said during the 2000 campaign that he favored eliminating excess bases, but he won't comment further until Rumsfeld completes a strategy review that is underway, White House spokesman Mary Ellen Countryman said.


-------- OTHER

-------- energy

House Votes Against Oil Drilling

By Jim Abrams
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, June 28, 2001; 10:43 a.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010628/aponline104343_000.htm

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration's goal to increase domestic oil and gas production took another hit in Congress Thursday with a measure that would effectively ban such drilling under the Great Lakes.

The House vote on a ban follows action by the chamber last week to delay oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and block fossil fuel exploration inside national monuments.

Congress has also shown little interest in advancing one of the more controversial elements of the president's energy plan, drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in northern Alaska.

The Great Lakes amendment to an energy and water spending bill would bar the Army Corps of Engineers from allotting funds to issue new permits for oil or gas drilling under the Great Lakes. It was approved 265-157.

"Just think of the damage that would be done if a diagonal drill malfunctioned," said Rep. David Bonior, D-Mich. "Our waters would be contaminated. Oil would wash up on our shores. Once oil is in the system, it will be there for generations."

Rep. Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican, said the Great Lakes, source of one-fifth of the world's fresh water, are a national treasure. "The energy plan released by the White House indicated their intention to tap known reserves, including those under the Great Lakes. I say, gentlemen, you should look elsewhere."

While the White House plan does not specifically mention the Great Lakes, its defenders said the House vote was another example of regional interests trumping national security concerns.

Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas, the House's third-ranking Republican, said the Great Lakes amendment was "a horribly irresponsible precedent for our energy security."

"We get very selfish," said Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill. "We don't want to drill off the Great Lakes... we don't want to drill off of Florida, heavens no we don't want to go into ANWR. So my basic question is, where do we go? Well I'll tell you where we go, we go to the Saudi Arabian sheiks."

Last week, in a 247-164 vote, the House approved an amendment to an Interior Department spending bill that delayed a Bush administration plan to open part of the Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas exploration.

On the same bill the House also voted to block a Bush administration plan to pursue new oil, gas and coal development in national monuments.

The energy and water spending bill for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1 provides $23.7 billion, $1.2 billion more than the president asked, including $7 billion for environmental cleanup activities, $6.7 billion for various nuclear weapons and nuclear nonproliferation programs and $4.5 billion for Army Corps of Engineers water projects.

While critics of the Army Corps say it wastes billions on unneeded or environmentally damaging projects, it is a favorite of lawmakers because of the money it brings to their districts. The funding was $73 million less than last year but $568 million more than the president requested.

Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., questioning whether the Corps had "become almost a rogue agency," offered an amendment to shift $10 million of its budget to another program and to reduce the federal government's share of the cost in restoring beaches. Both were easily defeated.

Democrats also lost, 258-163, on an attempt to shift $50 million in the bill to renewable energy programs. They said the Bush energy plan didn't give enough attention to solar, wind and other alternative sources of energy. The bill already contains $377 million for renewable energy, $100 million more than requested.

The House bill also includes a provision that bars the Army Corps from carrying out plans to allow for higher spring water flows on the Missouri River in an effort to help three endangered species and the upstream recreation industry.

The provision is backed by lawmakers from downstream states such as Missouri and Iowa who say the plan would devastate the barge industry, make farm fields too wet for planting and heighten the risk of flooding.

Last year President Clinton vetoed an initial energy and water bill that banned the water flow plan. This year the ban is likely to have difficulty getting through the Senate because of the opposition of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D.

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Poll: Calif. Doubts Power Shortage

New York Times
June 28, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Power-Woes-Poll.html?searchpv=aponline

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A majority of Californians say there is no shortage of electricity in the state and that energy companies have manipulated the market to boost their profits, according to a Los Angeles Times poll.

The survey published Thursday also found Californians have little faith their leaders can solve the power crisis.

Although 53 percent of respondents did not believe there was a power shortage, about nine in 10 said they favor building non-nuclear power plants. Six in 10 even said they wouldn't mind a plant in their neighborhood.

The Times interviewed 1,541 residents over four days beginning Saturday. The poll has a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

Nearly half those polled gave Gov. Gray Davis low marks for handling the crisis. But Davis got nearly four times more support than President Bush when respondents were asked who was handling the crisis better.

More than 60 percent of respondents deemed the energy crisis the state's top problem and more than half believe there hasn't been enough progress to resolve it.

``This electricity mess is out of hand, and all I see are people passing the blame around,'' said Dorothy Head of Baldwin Hills. ``It seems like things are just standing still.''

Nearly two out of three respondents said they are trying to conserve power by turning off the lights. But only 13 percent said they have replaced their old appliances with more efficient ones.

Those polled have also seen a rise in their June electricity bills, and more than half said rate hikes are a financial burden.

``I'm putting my makeup on in the dark,'' said Mary Ellen Bloomingdale, a real estate broker in El Cajon, Calif. ``I'm roasting my staff at the office. We've done everything we can, and our bill is still three times what it used to be.''

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Bush Pledges More Energy Research

New York Times
June 28, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bush-Energy.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Hoping to invigorate his energy proposal, President Bush called for more research into developing energy-efficient products and said Thursday he wants the federal government to do more to conserve power -- starting in his own house.

Bush took a tour of the Energy Department, and announced $85.7 million in federal grants to encourage academia and the private sector to develop fuel technologies and energy-efficient products. Bush joked to employees whooping and cheering his arrival: ``Conserve your energy!''

But Bush aimed his remarks more at Congress, which is considering his plan to increase domestic oil, natural gas, coal and electricity generation while boosting conservation and use of solar and wind power. The plan was unveiled May 17 and has languished in the Senate since the GOP lost control. Bush was sending an outline of his plan to lawmakers Thursday.

``It is the right step for our federal government to set the example,'' Bush said. ``If we lay out an energy strategy, we must act upon the strategy.''

The president signaled frustration with the debate on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, where he has proposed drilling for oil. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., has called that proposal dead.

``Ours is the first administration that has laid out a broad strategy, a comprehensive strategy, a strategy that goes beyond the stale debates of whether or not we ought to drill for natural gas in Alaska or not,'' Bush said. ``We're talking way beyond just one single issue that seems to dominate the landscape here in Washington, D.C.''

Bush said the White House would take a series of steps to encourage its staff to conserve energy, such as installing motion switches for lights, turning off computer monitors at night and shutting down computers completely if they will not be used for three days or longer.

New chillers installed atop the Eisenhower Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House have led to a 10 percent to 12 percent savings in energy costs, said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. And, Bush also has long-term plans to replace 400 window-unit air conditioners in the Eisenhower building, Fleischer said.

The White House complex will remove halogen lamps of 100 watts or greater. External lights that shine on the White House ``as a national emblem'' will not be affected. Nor will external aesthetics, such as Christmas lights, Fleischer said. Thermostats for hot-water heaters will be set at 105 degrees.

In the long term, the White House will propose modernizing electrical and mechanical systems so they can get rid of the 400 or so window-unit air conditioners in the Eisenhower building.

All White House recommendations, if accepted and funded by Congress, could save as much as 25 to 30 percent of energy at the White House, Fleishcher said.

Bush said he will sign an executive order directing federal agencies to buy certain appliances that meet a 1-watt standard of energy consumption, rather than those that use up to 7 watts.

Bush is not the first president to try to conserve energy. Jimmy Carter famously wore a sweater during the 1970s energy crisis. Bill Clinton had light bulbs and appliances changed, claiming a savings of $1.4 million in six years, and implemented a ``Greening of the White House'' program that cut greenhouse gas emissions by 845 tons a year, roughly the same amount as taking 600 cars off the road, according to his Energy Department.

Fleischer said the chiller installation was part of conservation measures begun under former Presidents Bush and Clinton.

Bush decried what he called energy ``vampires,'' machines that drain energy when not in use, such as televisions, computers and cell phone chargers. He called Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham ``the new vampire-slayer'' and pledged his administration would take the lead in replacing such products with new, more efficient technologies.

Vampire devices account for just 4 percent of an average home's energy consumption, Bush said. But multiplied out across all American homes, vampires eat up 52 billion kilowatt hours of power each year, or the equivalent of 26 average-sized power plants.

``Because of our desire for instant convenience, many of the appliances in our homes carry unnecessarily high energy costs,'' Bush said. ``When you multiply the amount of chargers plugged into people's walls all across America, one can begin to realize significant energy savings all across the country.''

Bush, who had earlier ordered military installations in California to conserve, said the Navy has cut power usage during peak hours in California by 11 percent compared to last year.

--------

Bush Sends Energy Plans to Congress

By H. Josef Hebert
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, June 28, 2001; 8:58 p.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010628/aponline205848_000.htm

WASHINGTON -- President Bush sent Congress his proposals for a broad energy package Thursday as he sought to regain momentum for his energy plan and dampen criticism that he is ignoring conservation in favor of production.

At the same time, the House previewed the battle over energy policy as it rejected proposed drilling for oil and gas in the Great Lakes. A week ago the House delayed administration plans to drill in the eastern Gulf of Mexico.

Visiting an energy technology exhibition at the Energy Department, Bush announced $85.7 million in federal grants to encourage energy research and said the federal government must show by example the need to reduce energy use.

"Ours is a program that says: We must conserve," declared the president.

He issued an executive order for the government to cut energy use, including at the White House, where 100-watt halogen lamps are being replaced with lower wattage bulbs. Also plans were to be developed to replace window air conditioners in the adjacent Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

With Democrats assuming the majority in the Senate, the debate over energy legislation has taken a new turn with more emphasis on conservation, development of renewable sources such as wind and solar energy, and less on opening federal lands to new oil and gas drilling.

Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, the majority whip, accused the opponents of a proposal for drilling in the Great Lakes - as well as in the eastern Gulf of Mexico off Florida - of trying "to systematically choke off every promising source of domestic energy."

Bush expressed frustration that his energy plan had been portrayed by critics largely in terms of drilling for oil in an Arctic wildlife refuge.

"The strategy is much broader than that," he said. "We're talking way beyond just one single issue that seems to dominate the landscape here in Washington."

Bush, who once made drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge a key part of his energy agenda, played down energy production in his message to Congress, although the message still urged Congress to open the refuge to oil companies.

Congressional Republicans have been increasingly worried that Democrats were gaining the upper hand in the energy debate as recent public opinion polls showed lagging support for Bush handling of energy concerns.

"He clearly challenged the legislative branch today," said Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, who was among key senators and House members who met with Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney at the White House to discuss how to get energy legislation moving.

Afterward, Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said he planned to press ahead on a broad energy bill, but that it likely would not be completed until September.

"This isn't something you can pass in a day," he told reporters.

Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, also at the meeting, said his committee will begin work immediately after the Fourth of July recess on legislation focusing on renewable energy sources, efficiency programs and measures to ease the licensing of nuclear power plants and hydroelectric dams.

Some Republican senators accused Democrats of delaying action.

"They are ignoring that this is a crisis," complained Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska.

Ironically, the crisis atmosphere about energy has eased in recent weeks as both gasoline and electricity prices have come down and futures prices indicated a continuing decline in the coming months. Also, there seem to be plenty of supplies with stocks of both crude oil and gasoline having increased.

As for the prospects of legislation, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card said: "Capitol Hill is a giant sausage machine. We've given them the right ingredients, and we're going to watch to see how they put the ingredients together."

-------- environment

House May Ban Great Lakes Drillings

By Jim Abrams
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, June 28, 2001; 4:53 p.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010628/aponline165323_000.htm

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration's goal to increase domestic oil and gas production took another hit in Congress on Thursday with a measure that would effectively ban such drilling under the Great Lakes.

The House vote on a ban follows action by the chamber last week to delay oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and block fossil fuel exploration inside national monuments.

Congress has also shown little interest in advancing one of the more controversial elements of the president's energy plan, drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northern Alaska.

The Great Lakes amendment to an energy and water spending bill would bar the Army Corps of Engineers from allotting funds to issue new permits for oil or gas drilling under the Great Lakes. It was approved 265-157. The overall spending bill later passed 405-15.

Just before final passage, however, House Republican leaders won a largely symbolic effort against a natural gas pipeline from Alabama to Florida. The 213-210 vote came after several senior GOP lawmakers decried efforts by those from Florida to block drilling in the Gulf while enjoying plentiful power from elsewhere - previewing likely debate on a broader national energy policy.

"This is the height of arrogance," said House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas. "Florida is happy to burn it but they block the rest of America from securing a steady and adequate supply of natural gas."

The House Appropriations Committee chairman, Rep. Bill Young, R-Fla., said he would remove the anti-pipeline language from the bill at a later time, which is what the failed amendment would have done.

A similar debate took place on the Great Lakes drilling issue.

"Just think of the damage that would be done if a diagonal drill malfunctioned," said Rep. David Bonior, D-Mich. "Our waters would be contaminated. Oil would wash up on our shores. Once oil is in the system, it will be there for generations."

Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., said the Great Lakes, source of one-fifth of the world's fresh water, are a national treasure. "The energy plan released by the White House indicated their intention to tap known reserves, including those under the Great Lakes. I say, gentlemen, you should look elsewhere."

While the White House plan does not specifically mention the Great Lakes, its defenders said the House vote was another example of regional interests trumping national security concerns.

Last week, in a 247-164 vote, the House approved an amendment to an Interior Department spending bill that delayed a Bush administration plan to open part of the Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas exploration.

On the same bill, the House also voted to block a Bush administration plan to pursue new oil, gas and coal development in national monuments.

The energy and water spending bill for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1 provides $23.7 billion, $1.2 billion more than the president requested, including $7 billion for environmental cleanup activities, $6.7 billion for various nuclear weapons and nuclear nonproliferation programs and $4.5 billion for Army Corps of Engineers water projects.

While critics of the Army Corps say it wastes billions on unneeded or environmentally damaging projects, it is a favorite of lawmakers because of the money it brings to their districts. The funding was $73 million less than last year but $568 million more than the president requested.

Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., questioning whether the Corps had "become almost a rogue agency," offered an amendment to shift $10 million of its budget to another program and to reduce the federal government's share of the cost in restoring beaches. Both were easily defeated.

Democrats also lost, 258-163, on an attempt to shift $50 million in the bill to renewable energy programs. They said the Bush energy plan didn't give enough attention to solar, wind and other alternative sources of energy. The bill already contains $377 million for renewable energy, $100 million more than requested.

The House bill also includes a provision that bars the Army Corps from carrying out plans to allow for higher spring water flows on the Missouri River, plans intended to help three endangered species and the upstream recreation industry.

The provision is backed by lawmakers from downstream states such as Missouri and Iowa who say the plan would devastate the barge industry, make farm fields too wet for planting and heighten the risk of flooding.

Last year, President Clinton vetoed an initial energy and water bill that banned the water flow plan. This year, the ban is likely to have difficulty getting through the Senate because of the opposition of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D.

Meanwhile, the Senate Appropriations Committee unanimously approved a bill providing more money than Bush wanted for federal and state park land acquisition, energy conservation, fossil energy research and development and aid to the arts.

The $18.5 billion measure would provide $300 million more overall than Bush proposed for next year. It lacks provisions approved by the House blocking Bush plans for oil and gas drilling off Florida's Gulf Coast and in many national monuments. It also ignores a Bush effort to make it harder for environmental groups to force the government to expand its list of endangered species.

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The bill is H.R. 2311.

-------- health

U.N. Redefines AIDS as Issue of Rights and Peril to Poor

New York Times
June 28, 2001
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/28/world/28NATI.html

UNITED NATIONS, June 27 - The General Assembly approved an ambitious declaration tonight outlining how the world should proceed in its fight against AIDS. Concluding its three-day special session on the pandemic, the world body also made a plea to nations and private industry alike to provide the billions of dollars needed to help pay for the mission.

The Declaration of Commitment, as the document is known, while in no way enforceable by the international community, is nonetheless extraordinary in both its language and its tact. It views the AIDS problem as something far beyond a medical issue, framing it instead as a political, human rights and economic threat. It also addresses head-on issues like the role that the exploitation of poor women and discrimination has played in spreading H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS.

Calling the document an "instrument for accountability," Dr. Peter Piot, executive director of Unaids, the United Nations agency coordinating the fight against the disease, said that it would provide "a strong basis for future action" that would be measurable in many ways in the near future. A key goal is a 25 percent reduction of H.I.V. infection among young men and women in the most affected countries by 2005.

Recognizing that many of the document's elements would be a hard sell in nations where rural women enjoy few rights, where gays are heavily stigmatized and where sexual education is generally eschewed, Dr. Piot and Secretary General Kofi Annan said that all countries will be pushed to put cultural mores aside to save lives. "It is our job to push the edges now," Dr. Piot said.

How difficult that challenge could be was evident early in the week as some Islamic countries strongly opposed mentioning gays as one of the groups at highest risk for AIDS. (Language about high-risk groups was eventually deleted from the declaration.) "Some painful differences have been brought into the open," Mr. Annan said. "But that is the best place for them. Like AIDS itself, these differences need to be confronted head-on, not swept under the carpet."

The declaration says that by 2003 countries should identify the factors in their area leading to the spread of AIDS and come up with specific targets for improving prevention. It also calls on them to develop national strategies for combating the spread of H.I.V. and to provide treatment for all those infected.

The document says that by 2005 countries also need to increase access to male and female condoms, expand AIDS testing and counseling, ensure safe blood supplies and provide sterile equipment to drug users.

Mr. Annan said the United Nations will follow up with countries to see if they are setting and meeting these goals, and will chastise them if they fail to do so.

Calling AIDS a "global emergency," the declaration details where the disease has hit hardest, namely Africa, and outlines the many factors contributing to the spread of AIDS that were explored at length this week, including rural poverty, poor health care systems and the stigma associated seeking treatment.

But the declaration also calls for legislation and regulations to protect the rights of infected citizens and states explicitly that "empowering women is essential for reducing vulnerability," noting that social exclusion, illiteracy and sexual exploitation have contributed to new infections.

The document calls for eliminating things like "harmful traditional and customary practices" which appears to be an allusion to things like genital mutilation, a procedure in which reused knives increase the risk of contracting AIDS through infected blood. "If there is one idea that stands out clearly," Mr. Annan said, "it is that women are in the forefront of this battle."

The declaration recognizes the role of local groups operating outside of the government in helping stem the illness in ways that Mr. Annan noted was unprecedented, and calls on governments to help these groups reach out to the most vulnerable populations.

Asking the entire world to start educating rural women and help them gain economic and social currency is a tall order, considering that many countries permit things like wife inheritance and that literacy rates for women are low. Cultural impediments also exist in allowing groups to offer services to people whose behaviors are stigmatized if not severely punished.

There was an absence of leaders from Asian and Eastern European nations where infection rates are rising, a point that Dr. Piot noted with alarm.

But in spite of these impediments, officials at the special session encouraged optimism that the world had taken on such a polarizing and difficult subject in such a large forum after 20 years of not having dealt with the topic.

During the week, women from the desert regions of Western Africa were seen sitting cramped togetherwith English businessmen in a conference room discussing microbicides. Other participants from the world's most conservative nations considered sex education for unmarried citizens.

Gudmund Hernes, an official with Unesco, noted that he would never have believed that he would sit in the General Assembly of the United Nations, "discussing condoms."

Before the session, controversy erupted over treatment versus prevention, with each side arguing that one should not be subordinate to the other. The document accepted today ties the two strategies together outlining the desired world response to AIDS, but it calls for "acknowledging that prevention of H.I.V. infection must be the mainstay of the nation, regional and international response to the epidemic." The "false debate" about the two strategies is over, Dr. Piot said.

Seeking a stepped-up response to AIDS will require new money, and there was a call for public and private efforts to generate roughly $9 billion for a Global AIDS and Health Fund that Mr. Annan hopes to be up and running by the end of the year.

While the specifics of how that fund would operate are to be worked out over the next month, Mr. Annan, who held up a check for $1,000 from a private donor, suggested that the fund would be run by a small and efficient board of donor and recipient counties, United Nations officials and people from governments and private industries.

Mr. Annan said that despite the stubborn nature of AIDS and many countries' continued denial of its pervasive threat, "All in all, I feel even more confident today than I did three days ago that we can defeat this deadly disease."

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

O'Neill Again Criticizes World Bank

By Paul Blustein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 28, 2001; Page E01
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A55092-2001Jun27?language=printer

Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill yesterday delivered his strongest broadside yet at the World Bank, prompting World Bank officials to take the unusual step of firing back at the man who represents the bank's dominant member country.

In a speech to the Economic Club of Detroit, O'Neill used biting language in describing the results of the $470 billion the World Bank has lent since its creation in the 1940s. Most of that money has been used to finance projects such as roads, health clinics and nutrition programs in developing countries.

"Visit some of the poorest nations in the world, and you will see that we have too little to show for it," O'Neill said, noting that $225 billion of loans had been made in the past decade. "It's time for a new approach to eliminating poverty," he said, according to a text of his speech released in Washington.

The Treasury chief's comments marked the clearest sign to date that the Bush administration may be spoiling for a fight with the the 183-nation World Bank and its president, James D. Wolfensohn. As the bank's largest shareholder, the United States has substantial influence over its policies, so a disagreement between the bank's hierarchy and the U.S. Treasury could mean considerable turbulence for the international lender.

O'Neill questioned the bank's long-standing practice of giving loans to the world's poorest countries on very easy terms, with virtually no interest. He urged that such aid be provided in the form of grants, echoing a proposal made last year by a congressionally appointed commission headed by conservative economist Allan Meltzer. "We teach a bad lesson to the recipients when we confuse loans with grants because the message is: Obligations may not be real obligations," O'Neill said.

O'Neill, who is scheduled to travel to Rome next week to discuss the issue with fellow finance ministers from the Group of Seven industrial nations, also criticized the European Union's executive commission for its objections to General Electric Co.'s proposed takeover of Honeywell International Inc., which had been approved by U.S. antitrust authorities. After his speech, according to Bloomberg News, he said the commission's position "just seems off the wall" -- tougher words than from other administration officials, and indicative of the hard feelings between Washington and Brussels over the issue.

Reiterating an argument he has made previously, O'Neill said the World Bank's activities in developing countries have been "too diffuse" and should be focused on raising productivity -- that is, output per worker -- and income per capita.

That is a tacit criticism of the World Bank's approach under Wolfensohn to emphasize improving the lot of the poorest members of society. Although the bank's top officials agree that they should aim to boost growth and productivity in poor lands, they have moved toward the view that growth alone is insufficient because the benefits often fail to reach the most impoverished. So they have also stressed the importance of "empowering" poor people to influence the decisions that affect their lives.

Taking his criticism a step further, O'Neill said he wants to see the World Bank and other development banks, such as the Asian Development Bank, put more resources into education. "President Bush has made education a top priority for the U.S. economy. It should be a top priority for nations around the world," O'Neill said. "Over the past five years, education projects accounted for only 7 percent of total World Bank lending. That must change."

The World Bank has played down its differences with O'Neill in the past, but yesterday his speech drew a tart retort from Caroline Anstey, the bank's chief spokeswoman.

The Treasury chief's approach "is the Washington consensus all over again," Anstey said, referring to the view, prevalent among economists in the early 1990s, that growth-oriented policies such as balanced budgets and free markets are the key to lifting countries out of poverty. "The problem is, a lot of our shareholders and client [countries] have moved away from that approach, precisely because they believe it failed."

The bank agrees on the importance of education and "is committed to pro-poor growth," Anstey added. "But all our studies show that if you want to deliver services to the poor, you have to empower the local community. Those are issues that are sometimes seen as the soft side of development, but they're key to making development work."

O'Neill also reiterated previous criticisms of the International Monetary Fund, and questioned whether the IMF has overreacted to financial crises by providing bailouts because of fears about "contagion," in which turmoil spreads from one country to another. But his observations about the IMF were not much different from the views that its leadership has come around to accepting, and Thomas Dawson, the IMF's chief spokesman, said, "We largely agree with him."

-------- police

7,898 From 39 Nations Held in Anti-Smuggling Raids

By Cheryl W. Thompson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 28, 2001; Page A02
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52980-2001Jun27?language=printer

More than 7,800 illegal immigrants were arrested this month along with 75 smugglers and vendors of illegal documents in what the Immigration and Naturalization Service yesterday called its largest international anti-smuggling operation ever.

The targets of "Operation Crossroads International," who came from 39 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, were captured during a 16-day effort that involved law enforcement agencies in the United States and 13 other nations.

"We're talking about a great partnership in the Americas of going after people who try to make a profit and benefit in other ways from human misery and desperation," acting INS Commissioner Kevin Rooney said at a news conference yesterday.

The operation was aimed primarily at intercepting undocumented migrants. More than 5,600 of the arrests occurred near the Mexican border, and about 1,300 occurred in Guatemala and El Salvador. Nearly 650 people were arrested for holding fraudulent documents such as passports, visas and birth certificates, officials said.

Fifty-five hundred of the 7,898 people arrested were returned to their countries. Two people were detained in the United States. The remainder were detained in the countries where they were apprehended.

Seven U.S. citizens were arrested on immigration law violations in the crackdown. Most of the 75 people arrested for smuggling face criminal charges, authorities said.

"The message is clear: The United States is committed with its partners to pursuing smugglers wherever they operate," said Hipolito M. Acosta, the INS Mexico City director in charge of the operation.

Some smugglers operated at airports, officials said. Ninety people planning to illegally enter the country were apprehended at airports in Jamaica. Other smugglers packed 50 to 100 migrants on buses from various places for the unsuccessful journey.

Acosta recalled a woman arrested near the Guatemalan border who thanked law enforcement for stopping her. The woman said she feared abuse by her smugglers, he said. She was in a drop house with 80 other people.

"The dangers they face are not only on the border but on the entire route," Acosta said. "Don't put your lives at risk by trusting smugglers."

Law enforcement officers also seized $9 million in drugs, including 277 pounds of cocaine, 12 pounds of heroin and 157 pounds of marijuana. Thirteen people were found to be traveling with drugs, officials said.

The effort cost the federal government $600,000.

Operation Crossroads International was the ninth anti-smuggling effort by the INS in conjunction with other governments in the past five years, Acosta said.

-------- spying

Ex-Spy Chief Threatens to Release Videos

WORLD In Brief
Associated Press
Thursday, June 28, 2001; Page A25
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A55137-2001Jun27?language=printer

LIMA, Peru -- Jailed spymaster Vladimiro Montesinos says he may hand over 30,000 videos documenting dirty work carried out by former President Alberto Fujimori's government -- apparently seeking to avoid a stint in a tough anti-terrorist prison he helped design.

How much Montesinos will tell is still unknown, his lawyer said. But the government appears to be considering possibilities for seeking the extradition of Fujimori, who has been living in his ancestral homeland of Japan since fleeing the country in November.

Tuesday evening, Peruvian President Valentin Paniagua said Japan should extradite Fujimori because it "would not want to violate international norms."

Montesinos, who was Fujimori's right-hand man during his 1990-2000 tenure as president, is charged with running a web of corruption that controlled large portions of the military, police and legal system. He fled Peru in October and was captured Saturday in a slum outside Venezuela's capital, Caracas.

The videos "are in Lima and there are about 30,000," Montesinos told six anti-corruption judges during a court hearing Monday. "I have videos that show businessmen, American, Russian and European diplomats that if I release could provoke an international crisis."

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U.S. Penalized China, N. Korea Cos.

New York Times
June 28, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-China-North-Korea.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The State Department has penalized Chinese and North Korean companies for transferring sensitive technology to Iran, U.S. officials said Thursday.

The companies targeted were China's Jiang-su Yongli Chemicals and Technology Import and Export Corp. and North Korea's Changgwang Sinyong Corp.

The name of the Chinese company suggested the transfer involved chemical weapons materials but the U.S. officials declined to confirm that.

The sanctions against the Chinese company were imposed under the Iran Non-Proliferation Act of 2000 and will remain in effect until June 2003. Sanctions against the same company in 1997 for transfers of sensitive materials have not been lifted.

The measure against the North Korean company was taken under an international agreement to restrict missile transfers and will be lifted in April.

The sanctions bar U.S. government agencies from having any dealings with either company for the duration of the sanctions. The officials said there are no official links with the North Korean company. They were uncertain about the Chinese company.

The officials, asking not to be identified, noted that Secretary of State Colin Powell has said the administration will oppose the transfer of missile technology or technology related to weapons of mass destruction.

Instead of issuing a press release, the State Department made known its sanctions decision in the Federal Register, the official record of governmental actions.

Curbing North Korean sales of missiles and missile technology has been a high U.S. priority.

During negotiations last year, North Korea indicated a willingness to give up these sales but Chairman Kim Jong Il said in May he will continue these exports because his country needs the income.

President Bush announced in early June that he intends to resume negotiations with North Korea on missiles and other issues. Officials said North Korea has not responded to Bush's offer, which was relayed to Pyongyang's United Nations mission on June 12.

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How the NSA is monitoring you

By Robert Vamosi, AnchorDesk
June 28, 2001 4:50 AM PT
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/comment/0,5859,2780928,00.html?chkpt=zdnn_nbs_hl
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/comment/0,5859,2780928,00.html?chkpt=zdnn_nbs_hl

COMMENTARY--Echelon, if you don't already know, is the National Security Agency's (NSA) electronic surveillance system, designed to monitor telephone calls, faxes, and e-mails worldwide. The system looks for words or phrases that could be used by terrorist organizations to plot their next attack. The trouble is, most world-class criminals and terrorists aren't sending incriminating plain-text e-mails. They're using other methods to communicate, such as steganography (hiding files within a file).

The idea that the United States government is eavesdropping on our lives should be distressing to everyone, but few Americans even know about it or are as riled up about it as our European neighbors. Recently, ministers in the European community argued for the use of strong 128-bit encryption for even basic e-mail. Unfortunately, the use of strong encryption can cause problems for systemwide antivirus products. For more information on Echelon, the American Civil Liberties Union, along with several other free speech organizations, has created an informative Web site, Echelonwatch.org.

Instead of rooting through my e-mails, I think the NSA should be researching how to detect messages hidden within other messages. Steganography is one popular method, where a message (either text or image) can be hidden within other files containing text, images, or even sound, without a perceptible change in the original file's quality.

The concept predates modern computing. Greek soldiers tattooed maps on their heads, and then grew their hair out; after arriving behind enemy lines, they delivered the message by shaving their heads. Romans obscured messages by applying layers of wax onto the tablets on which they were written, then melted the wax to read the message. Microdots, used during World War II, is yet another example. During the recent U.S. Embassy bombing case, several documents came to light that suggest Osama bin Laden and his associates have been using steganography to hide terrorist plans inside pornography and MP3 files that are freely distributed over the Internet.

Unfortunately, identifying whether or not a file contains hidden data requires no less than a careful comparison of the compromised file to the original--which is not always possible. The human eye can't always detect photographic loss because most steganography programs use subtle algorithmic transformations of the color palette table (that's why black and white photos work the best). And, even if you did suspect that a secret message may be hidden inside one of your files, often you need to know which software program was used, and then figure out the password to unlock the file (if encrypted, which it probably is).

At last summer's Black Hat Security Briefings, I spoke with some computer forensic experts who admitted that steganography is all but impossible to detect. One expert I spoke with had been in law enforcement before switching to computer forensics and still uses the tried-and-true interrogation methods gleaned from his years in law enforcement. Often, he said, after building a sound case against an individual, that person will crack during interrogation and share secrets and even passwords. That's how the government learned of bin Laden's antics.

Recently, someone on BugTraq suggested that defaced Web sites might contain hidden stegnographic messages. Indeed, even corporate logos on HTML-enriched e-mail could be rife with secret information. But until someone figures out a way to parse the code of every GIF, BMP, JPG, or MP3 file, we're left with idle speculation. In the meantime, I wish the NSA would find something better to do than read all of our e-mail.


-------- activists

Please call your member of Congress before July 10:
A Chance to say NO to Colombia Military aid and Fumigation

SOA Watch and Latin America Working Group Colombia
June 28, 2001

Please see the bottom of this alert for background information on the Andean Regional Initiative, Bush's proposal for counternarcotics aid to the Andes. This year, the counternarcotics aid requested by the Bush administration for Colombia and the Andean region comes up in the Congress as part of two of the regular annual appropriations bills (main budget bills which designate money to different areas, such as foreign operations, agriculture, and energy).

The bulk of the aid is included in the Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill; the rest will be in the defense appropriations bill, which has not yet started moving in congress. The Foreign Ops Appropriations bill started on June 27th in the House Foreign Operations Subcommittee, where the first draft of the bill was "marked up" or debated and voted on. The debate during the markup showed that there is increasing support for cutting military aid and putting a moratorium on fumigation. See below for details on the markup.

Update and Urgent Action: House

From the subcommittee, the bill goes now to the full Appropriations Committee on July 10 and then to the House floor around July 17th. On both these dates, there are likely to be amendments offered to the bill which would cut US military aid to Colombia and put a brake on fumigation.

Please contact your representative before July 10 if they are on the Appropriations Committee to tell them to vote YES on amendments to cut Colombian military aid and YES on amendments to stop or place a moratorium on fumigation until serious alternative development programs are ready. If you get an indication of how a member will vote, please e-mail lawg@lawg.org with a report.

Thank your members who supported these amendments in the markup! On June 27th, Rep. Rothman (D-NJ) offered an amendment to place a moratorium on fumigation and Reps. Pelosi (D-CA), Lowey (D-NY) and Jackson (D-IL) spoke in favor; Rep. Kingston (R-GA) expressed concerns as well. Rep. Pelosi offered an amendment to cut $100 million from military aid to Colombia and spend it instead on international tuberculosis programs. Reps. Wicker (R-MS), Lowey, and Obey (D-WI) spoke in favor. All of these members should be thanked by their constituents. While these amendments were withdrawn and not brought to a vote, they served to bring attention to how controversial Colombia policy has become. Because of the strong debate on these issues in subcommittee, it is likely that other amendments will be offered by these members and others when the bill goes to the full Appropriations Committee and the House floor.

House Appropriations Committee members: Robert B. Aderholt (R-AL) Henry Bonilla (R-TX) F. Allen Boyd (D-FL) Sonny Callahan (R-AL) James Clyburn (D-SC) Robert "Bud" E. Jr. Cramer (D-AL) Randy Cunningham (R-CA) Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) Tom DeLay (R-TX) Norman Dicks (D-WA) John Doolittle (R-CA) Chet Edwards (D-TX) Jo Ann H. Emerson (R-MO) Sam Farr (D-CA) Chaka Fattah (D-PA) Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ) Virgil H. Goode (D-VA) Kay Granger (R-TX) Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) David Hobson (R-OH) Steny H. Hoyer (D-MD) Ernest, Jr. Istook (R-OK) Jesse Jackson (D-IL) Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) Partick J. Kennedy (D-RI) Carolyn C. Kilpatrick (D-MI) Jack Kingston (R-GA) Joseph Knollenberg (R-MI) Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) Ray LaHood (R-IL) Tom Latham (R-IA) Jerry Lewis (R-CA) Nita M. Lowey (D-NY) Carrie Meek (D-FL) Dan Miller (R-FL) Alan B. Mollohan (D-WV) James P. Moran (D-VA) John P. Murtha (D-PA) George R. Nethercutt (R-WA) Anne M. Northup (R-KY) David R. Obey (D-WI) John W. Olver (D-MA) Ed Pastor (D-AZ) Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) John E. Peterson (R-PA) David E.Price (D-NC) Ralph Regula (R-OH) Harold Rogers (R-KY) Steven R. Rothman (D-NJ) Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA) Martin Olav Sabo (D-MN) Jose Serrano (D-NY) Joe Skeen (R-NM) John E. Sununu (R-NH) John E. Sweeney (R-NY) Charles H. Taylor (R-NC) Todd Tiahrt (R-KS) Peter J. Visclosky (D-IN) David Vitter (R-LA) James T. Walsh (R-NY) Zach Wamp (R-TN) Roger Wicker (R-MS) Frank R. Wolf (R-VA) C.W. Bill Young (R-FL)

If you are not sure who your representative is, click here. Update and Urgent Action: Senate The Senate Foreign Operations Subcommittee will consider the foreign operations appropriations bill during the third week of July. Members of the subcommittee and the full appropriations committee should hear from constituents. Please contact both your senators, doing so before July 15 if they are on the appropriations committee, and tell them your opinion on US military aid to Colombia and the fumigation policy.

Senate Appropriations Committee Members: Democrats: Robert Byrd (WV) Daniel Inouye (HI) Ernest Hollings (SC) Patrick Leahy (VT) Tom Harkin (IA) Barbara Mikulski (MD) Harry Reid (NV) Herb Kohl (WI) Patty Murray (WA) Byron Dorgan (ND) Dianne Feinstein (CA) Richard Durbin (IL)

Republicans: Ted Stevens (AK) Thad Cochran (MS) Arlen Specter (PA) Pete Domenici (NM) Christopher Bond (MO) Mitch McConnell (KY) Conrad Burns (MT) Richard Shelby (AL) Judd Gregg (NH) Robert Bennett (UT) Ben Nighthorse Campbell (CO) Larry Craig (ID) Kay Bailey Hutchison (TX) Jon Kyl (AZ)

It is crucial to voice our opinions on current US policy in Colombia and the Andean region at each stage in the process. Please spread the word and contact your senators and representatives as soon as possible! Background. In late March, the Bush Administration announced its plans to continue a military counter-drug strategy in the Andes with its proposed "Andean Regional Initiative"(ARI). This initiative requests military and social and economic aid for Colombia and its neighbors: Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Brazil, and Panama. Most of this aid will come through the regular foreign operations appropriations bill, but additional aid will come through the defense appropriations bill.

Together, the aid totals about $1 billion in military and police assistance and economic and social aid to the Andean region for 2002 (this is on top of the $1.3 billion two-year package approved last year). The administration intends to send a massive $363.04 million in training, spare parts and equipment for Colombia's military and police forces. The administration is selling the ARI package as "balanced," with 50% of the money going to regional security forces and 50% for social and economic development. However, the request for Colombia is still 71% military. The package also includes sharp increases in military aid for all of Colombia's neighbors. The one positive element, a result of all of the criticism last year, is an increase in alternative development assistance (crop substitution programs) to a number of countries in the region. For a full analysis of the package by the Center for International Policy, please click here.

This action alert was written by the Latin America Working Group. For more information, please see either of these websites at

www.soaw.org or call 202-234-3440
www.lawg.org or call 202/546-7010.

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Ex - Taiwan Leader Visit Protested

New York Times
June 28, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Taiwan-Lee.html?searchpv=aponline

ITHACA, N.Y. (AP) -- More than 200 Chinese students and supporters rallied at Cornell University to denounce the visit of former Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui and the decision to name a research center in his honor.

The protesters -- mostly students from Cornell and other New York campuses -- scorned the 78-year-old outspoken statesman on Wednesday for championing a separate Taiwan.

``Lee gives Cornell money, but money is not everything. Cornell should have principles. Cornell should have morals,'' said John Chen, a Temple University math professor who is president of the Global Chinese Alliance for the Unification of China.

``Naming a building after such an evil man is insulting,'' Chen said.

The university on Wednesday announced the establishment of the Lee Teng-hui Institute for Scientific Research, which will study material science and nanotechnology.

The school declined to say how much money has been donated by Lee, a 1968 graduate whose granddaugther is attending summer classes.

Lee served as Taiwan's first elected president from 1988 until last year.

During that time, relations were often rocky between China and Taiwan, which split amid civil war in 1949. Beijing says the two sides must eventually reunify or face war, and after Lee's last U.S. trip in 1995, China held threatening war games and missile tests.

Lee scheduled no public appearances during this trip but attended several private events, including a luncheon Wednesday in a soundproofed room of the music building.

The protesters marched to the building and then chanted, sang songs and listened to speakers for almost an hour, but they did not encounter Lee, who left through a back door.

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Africa's AIDS Activists Skeptical

New York Times
June 28, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Africa-UN-AIDS.html

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) -- Africa's AIDS fighters have heard it before: the promises of action, the unenforceable commitments, the self congratulations of Western officials proud even to be discussing the pandemic ravaging the world's poorest countries.

So the conclusion of a historic U.N. summit on AIDS with the adoption of a Declaration of Commitment to tackling the disease has been greeted with skepticism on the continent most badly affected.

``I am tired of lip service,'' said Koketso Rantona, chairwoman of the Botswana Network of AIDS Service Organizations.

The three-day special session of the General Assembly ended Wednesday with adoption of a plan for nations to provide AIDS treatment and prevent the spread of the disease.

The plan sets deadlines for governments to develop programs to increase the availability of AIDS drugs, to establish education programs on AIDS prevention and to reduce the number of HIV-infected infants.

Many Africans worried these commitments might be just like the countless other promises of help to their continent that have rarely materialized.

``It's good to talk, but they have talked long and done little. We have the greatest percentage of HIV/AIDS in Africa, but resources coming to Africa in terms of care and treatment are very minimal,'' said Richard Okou, an AIDS activist in Uganda.

About 70 percent of the 36 million people infected with HIV live in Africa, the world's poorest continent.

U.N. Secretary-general Kofi Annan has called for a global fund of $7 billion to $10 billion annually to combat AIDS. The conference ended with $700 million committed to the fund, though the a key U.S. congressional committee approved an additional $750 million for it.

While the conference participants were promising to empower women to fight the disease, Rantona's Society for Women Against AIDS was continuing its struggle to survive -- its funding ran out last year.

Rantona's office is a trailer. She cannot even afford to travel to villages to educate people about AIDS.

``I sit here painfully thinking, 'I wish I could do something for communities, but my hardship is resources,''' she said.

Officials with the Treatment Action Campaign, a South African AIDS activist group, had hoped the conference would end with a substantial amount of money in Annan's proposed fund and a commitment to use a good chunk of it to treat the infected.

``With the amount of money that's there at the moment they can't (offer treatment) or they can do it on a very small scale,'' said Nathan Geffen, spokesman for the group.

Geffen said he felt that aside from a good speech or two ``this was just another AIDS conference with much talk and little do.''

The most concrete success of the past week was the United States' withdrawal of a complaint it filed with the World Trade Organization over a law Brazil used to keep down the costs of AIDS drugs, he said.

Eunice Odongo, an activist with Women Fighting AIDS in Kenya, appreciated that people living with AIDS participated in the conference: ``But there is a need for more specifics and to see policies put in place,'' she said.

Odongo complained about the gap between promises made at gatherings to discuss AIDS and implementation on the ground.

Some activists saw the very existence of such a high-profile meeting as a hopeful sign.

``This shows that AIDS is more just a disease, but that it is a menace over the future of humanity,'' said Kalifa Soulama, head of a project that cares for HIV/AIDS patients in Burkina Faso.

At the very least, the declaration would allow activists to hold governments morally accountable for fighting the disease, said Thanduxolo Doro, program manager for South Africa's National Association of People Living with AIDS.

Activists now plan to ``keep on reminding, becoming a pain in their necks: 'Remember the U.N. summit. Remember the U.N. summit,''' he said.

----

CHERNOBYL INVESTIGATOR SENTENCED TO 8 YEARS IN BELARUS PRISON.

June 2001,
Published by Socio - Ecological Union Center for Coordination and Information,
Excerpted from The SEU TIMES
From "Svyatoslav Zabelin" <zabelin@online.ru>
Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2001 15:30:24 -0700

The Belarus court sentenced prominent scientist and doctor Yurii Bandazhevsky to 8 years in prison on June 18. The false charges brought against him implied bribery.

Professor Bandazhevsky was under prosecution for two years. He revealed and made public information about the violations and theft by the Belarus officials of the money given for mitigation of Chernobyl disaster consequences. Immediately after that investigation on professor was initiated and felony charges were brought against him.

Professor Bandazhevsky became uneasy person for Belarus government also because of his studies revealing that Chernobyl impact on population health was much more serious than it was officially declared. For example, Belarus officials would not admit that multiple cases of thyroid cancer, different blood system diseases are connected to Chernobyl radioactive fallout. The Bandazhevsky case in this sense is only a part of huge prosecution campaign unleashed by Belarus government against scientists and activists investigating Chernobyl impacts.

Bandzhevsky is author of five books and dozens of scientific articles on Chernobyl health impacts. He is recipient of international Hippocratic prize and Sweizer medal. In order to protect him EU Parliament issued an EU passport to Bandazhevsky.

The guilt sentence looks especially demonstrative and cynical as it states in its text that no direct proofs of Yurii Bandzhevsky taking bribes were found. The witnesses who previously accused him of bribery before the jury told that they were forced to do that and refused from their earlier testimony. Previous prosecutor, who found Bandazhevsky innocent, was suspended from his case in February.

We are starting campaign to free professor Yurii Bandzhevsky. Currently we are setting up strategies, and any you cooperation and ideas are welcome.

written by Sviatoslav Zabelin - the SEU Council Co-Chair, <zabelin@online.ru> Olga Berlova, <seupress@online.ru> Previous Issues of The SEU Times may be found at "The Online Gadfly" at www.igc.org/gadfly



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